To Seduce an Angel (21 page)

“No, but Will says she's the kind of woman to melt a man's brain.”

“Because she's lovely, you're convinced she's false?”

“I haven't met her. I'm convinced she has Dav unable to think.”

“Well, let Helen and I meet her, tomorrow, and give you our opinion.”

 

 

A COOL March wind fluttered the skirts of his mother and sisters-in-law. It was a sober party that examined the pile of stonework on his drive. By day it was plain that a wire had been attached to the five clay chimney pots that topped the stack above his favorite rooftop spot. Each one easily weighed three stone. Will studied the destruction on the roof itself. Lark climbed the stack to report on what he found where the chimney pots had stood. As Will suspected, tools had been used to loosen the masonry base. He would send his man Harding into the village to scout about who might have the skill for such a job and the need for ready if ill-gotten cash.

Those chisel marks meant Dav's grandfather had not given up the fight to destroy him. Whatever his brothers thought, he could not continue to hide at Daventry Hall expecting the old man to quit the game or die.

Tears streamed down his mother's face. She gave his hand a squeeze, begged his forgiveness for being a watering pot, and went off with her major for a drive. Xan and Will advised the major to go armed.

Dav moved them all inside for a round of sparring matches between the members of the group. They turned the hall into a ring for the occasion. Today, he would prove to Xan that he was ready for a match. Once he proved himself in the ring, his brothers would have to see that he was ready to take on Wenlocke.

THE Royal Lodge at Windsor taught Charlotte once again the childhood lesson that even the Duchess of Wenlocke would be wise to recall. Getting what one wished for—say, an audience with the king—was not always a blessing. George's overheated rooms were even more of a trial than his delaying tactics. For this, her third visit, Charlotte wore a lavender muslin borrowed from her daughter though March frosts covered the park.

Charlotte wondered that Lady Conyngham, the king's longtime mistress, could endure the heat and the winks and nods of her fat lover.

Charlotte supposed that Lady Conyngham would not be counted harmful to the state by most observers. She had not used her position to interfere in government or military affairs but only to advance her complaisant husband and ambitious offspring. Yet she could be blamed, Charlotte felt, for reducing the king of England to a spoiled, cosseted child unable to support even the rigors of his duty. He was beyond stays now and beyond even the modest exertions required by his station—appearing at state events or meeting with ambassadors. Putting his signature to a pardon for Emma would be an effort for him.

Elaborately dressed servants led her to an anteroom and left her, and she was reminded of yet another challenge she faced. She must sweetly flatter in a way that went against her nature and against her long dominance at Wenlocke. She must let go of all command and be the bereaved mother begging for the life of a child. She must rouse him to believe that in signing her scrap of paper, he was performing a heroic act, a further defeat of upstarts and Jacobins everywhere.

Her influence had been greater at Bow Street, where she met with the magistrate himself. He had recommended a Runner named Jack Castle and assured her that Castle was as good a man as she could find for the job of finding Emma, for he had recovered Lady Bellingham's spaniel.

Charlotte had managed to hold her tongue and suspend her judgment until she met Castle himself, a small, neat man with a mop of brown curls above a long face and ears like mug handles.

He did not fear her authority or blink at the reward she offered. He did listen, and he agreed to help her in spite of the limits of what she could tell him. He remained her best hope for extricating Emma from Aubrey's hold.

An eel-backed equerry ushered Charlotte into the royal presence. The king sprawled on a red velvet sofa, his fat legs in white breeches splayed below his great mound of a belly, his swollen feet in tasseled black silk slippers propped on a regal red-and-gold ottoman. He wore a greasy green night turban and dirty blue silk jacket. At his side Lady Conyngham rested a bejeweled hand on one of his enormous thighs. He studied Charlotte and took up a glass of cherry gin, the scent of it ripe in the air. Charlotte tried to conceal the shock of coming face-to-face with all that laxity.

“Escaped that cold stick of yours, have you, Duchess?”

“Your Majesty is most kind to receive me.” Charlotte dipped into a low curtsy as she had not done in many years. In the room, degrees warmer than the anteroom, an unaccustomed moisture beaded on her skin.

“We'll warm you up, I'm sure.” The king winked at Lady Conyngham. “You've not visited before, so you must want something very badly, very badly indeed.”

There was for a moment a shrewd glimmer in those eyes, the cunning of a child, who seeks to manipulate an adult to his advantage.

“There is no one else to whom I can turn, Your Majesty. Only you have the power to right a terrible wrong against a defenseless young woman.”

He laughed, and it took his breath away. For several moments he lay back, eyes closed, gasping, while Lady Conyngham fanned him lightly. Charlotte looked away discreetly. The room was hung with portraits of great military heroes and of George himself in a hussar's uniform mounted on a gray.

“You must forgive me, Duchess, illness takes its toll, I'm afraid. I'm not the man I once was, leading the German Legion at Waterloo, you know, but I'm still ready to take on the enemy.”

“I thought you would be, Your Majesty, that's why I came.”

“Didn't come to see my giraffe, did you? I'll wager you could look him in the eye. She could, don't you think, Lizzy?” He turned to Lady Conyngham, who laughed politely at the joke. “We should make an excursion to the menagerie.”

Lady Conyngham flicked Charlotte a sharp look. Charlotte did not know who was more desperate to quash the idea of an excursion.

“Oh dear, Your Majesty, let us not venture out into the cold, today. Really, you have been gracious enough with your time. I have just one small favor to ask.”

The word
favor
brought an instant frown to the king's brow, and he sipped his cherry gin again.

Charlotte removed the letter from her bag. “With your signature I can rescue a dear child from a terrible fate.”

“My signature, did you say?” The king's tone was querulous.

Charlotte could see a difficulty. She could not hand the document directly to the king. He did not stretch out his hand to receive it, and Lady Conyngham sat with her hand occupied with the king's thigh. “It will be a heroic signing. With the stroke of your pen, you confer freedom, but it must remain our secret.” She glanced at Lady Conyngham.

“May I tell you in strictest confidence, of course, the identity of the young woman in question?”

An interested gleam lit the king's eye. “Our secret, eh? Lizzy'll keep it.” He nudged Lady Conyngham, who stretched a languid hand to receive the document.

 

 

A HEAVY knock on Emma's door signaled the inevitable. She must dine with his family. She had avoided them all day not simply from a fear of questions but from a desire not to expose Daventry to speculation. She wore bruises from her elbow to her shins. Ruth had seen them and stopped her usual commentary. Without words she had arranged a square black-bordered gold wrap to cover Emma's arms where the puffed sleeves of her poppy gown might give her away.

Daventry stood in the hall in his polite host guise with a frowning Adam Digweed at his side. Adam looked as if he wanted to pound someone with those great fists of his. Daventry looked as if he wanted to push his way into her room and shut the door.

Emma looked down at once under the heat of that gaze. He offered his arm, and she reached to take it, and as she did so, her shawl slipped. He frowned, his concentrated gaze narrowing on a brown and purple patch above her elbow. With a controlled move, he raised the soft fabric to cover the blemish and tucked her arm in his.

“Ready, Miss Portland? I promise you I won't let them attack you.”

She nodded. His family should attack her. She had done little to help Wallop, but the little she had done had already endangered the man at her side. They should seize her and cast her out in the darkness, and she should go, begin running. She had delayed as long as she could. Now if the law caught her, Tatty and little Leo would still go free. By Emma's count of days Tatty must have reached the coast and the waiting messenger and sailed to freedom.

The journey through the long gallery to the south drawing room was accomplished in silence. Adam's heavy tread followed them. Emma's skirts whispered and brushed Daventry's leg. The point of contact between them where her hand rested on his solid wool-clad arm seemed the only warmth. Emma felt the heat of him rise and draw her closer. She did not think she had been warm since they had left the roof the night before.

She had not allowed herself to sleep for hours after she had heard him return to his room, fearing a nightmare. In sleep falling chimney pots would be magnified and distorted and joined to all the fears she kept locked away. By day falling masonry assumed its normal size and dimension. By noon she had heard from Ruth how someone had chiseled loose the heavy pots that topped the chimney stack and set a wire across the roof to pull them down on whoever crossed there. Only one person regularly crossed that stretch. The accident had been intended to knock Daventry senseless or tumble him from the roof to the ground below.

His grandfather and Aubrey meant to kill him. She could not now deny that she was a tool of his enemies, like Wallop and whoever had climbed the roof. No one in Daventry's household had turned on him, she was sure, and Wallop could never heave his bulk to such a height or come unnoticed anywhere near the house. The boys could go to the roof any time, and Lark was angry, but surely not angry at Daventry, not enough to want to harm him. So Wallop had someone else working for him, someone who had gotten to that roof.

The puzzle of it had consumed her as she had stripped off her ruined gown, one of the ones the duchess had provided, and washed and brushed away the dust and stone fragments from her hair, tossing the evidence on the fire, and tended the scrapes to her hands, knees, and elbows. She could not get warm.

“Anything to report from the schoolroom?” he asked.

She looked up, and his gaze sent a bolt of heat crackling through her, not a mere spark from the friction of clinging garments, but something swift and hot and jolting to her core.

It took a moment for the words themselves to register. “Finch,” she said. “Finch has read his slate. Tomorrow or the next day I expect the others will follow his lead.”

“Finch, huh. I'd have thought Lark would want to be first.”

“In most things, yes, but he resists reading the most. I've blundered with him, you know. I can't blame him.” She looked up at him. “He believes you'll send the boys away when they can read.”

A shadow crossed his face. “I'll talk with him.”

They reached the drawing room, and he leaned down to whisper assurance as Emma looked up. Their gazes caught, and it was impossible to look away. The candle and the candlestick.

He looked away first, and when Emma turned she met the lively green gaze of a woman in chestnut brown taffeta with white collar. Her knowing look reminded Emma instantly of Tatty, though the woman hardly resembled her cousin.

A tall, gangly youth with a head of untamed fawn-colored curls had the attention of most of the room's occupants. He had gathered three candelabras on one table and placed one candlestick on another, inviting them all to compare the light. His listeners joked and teased.

“Seriously,” the youth claimed. “There's no escaping it; Xander's going to light the insides of your houses, too. It's merely a matter of who wants to be first.”

“Gas flames in every house? You two will burn London to the ground.”

The youth rolled his eyes as if he'd heard this objection before. He caught Daventry's gaze. “Dav, you should try the new lighting here at the hall, where there are no adjoining buildings.”

They all turned at the appeal to Daventry and saw him with Emma. Talk halted with comical abruptness.

Daventry showed no sign of unease. “Can it be done in a house as old as this one, Charlie?”

“That's the point. Candles are the past. Gas lighting's forward-looking, the wave of the future and all. You don't want this place to be a mere museum.”