Virtue's Reward (16 page)

“The ruffian dropped it in terror at my fearsome appearance—although Mr. Hardy had fortunately recovered just in time to help, as well. I trust he will be suitably recompensed. So your sword is now innocent of stain and returned to its case. It would appear that someone doesn’t like you very much.”

“I had noticed.” Richard grinned at Hardy. “And thank you, sir. You’re a rich man, as of this moment.”

Dagonet stood and put on his coat. “You must rest. No one knows you are here. I planned on using this room for a servant as soon as I could afford one. In the meantime, it’s yours. I, regrettably, am about to go out and gamble. I have just arrived in London myself, and it’s time I savored her less wholesome delights.”

“ ‘And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy?’ ”

“I certainly can’t put it better than Wordsworth. Farewell until tomorrow!”

Dagonet made an elegant bow and left the room.

Richard closed his eyes, but sleep eluded him. The faithful Mr. Hardy, who had a sore head of his own, was soon nodding off in a chair beside the bed. The man’s snores began to echo about the small chamber.

There was no doubt of it this time. Someone wanted him dead. If Charles de Dagonet had not happened along, this time they would have succeeded.

Richard smiled a little ironically to himself. There had been times when it really wouldn’t have mattered very much. Now, however, he wanted rather badly to live and he couldn’t be quite sure why.

* * *

Lady Acton, Richard’s beautiful mother, arrived at Acton Mead with three carriages, outriders, and her own servants, and announced that she would not be staying more than one night. She had more fashionable friends to visit, no doubt.

“And where is Richard?” she said as soon as she had removed her gloves.

“He is in London, my lady,” Helena replied.

The perfect eyebrows rose a little above the lovely black eyes—so like Richard’s!

“Then I am sorry to miss him. When do you expect him back?”

Helena knew to her chagrin that she had blushed. “I can’t say, Lady Acton.”

But Richard’s mother did not, as Helena expected, make any cruel comment.

Instead, she smiled and led the way to the drawing room, where Helena had ordered tea and cakes.

The beautiful eyes surveyed the room. “You would seem,” she said archly, “to know how to run a house, at least.”

“I may come from the remoter corners of the realm, your ladyship, but we are not all savages there.”

“I meant no such thing, I assure you. Does my son intend to take you to town?”

“I don’t know,” Helena said.

“Because if he does, you will need clothes. I recommend Madame Trouet. I use her for my own daughters when necessary. Of course, schoolgirls don’t need much, but they must look a credit to their name when they visit friends in the holidays.”

“They don’t come home for the holidays?”

“Of course not! Acton and I will be with friends for Christmas and we can’t have three girls who aren’t ‘out’ trailing at our heels, nor can they rattle about alone at King’s Acton. If they do not receive invitations, they will stay at school.”

“For Christmas?” Helena asked, horrified. To be left at school when all the other girls left to be welcomed home by loving families! “What about John? How old is he? Surely he can’t be left at school?”

“John is a frightful handful,” Lady Acton said with the slightest of elegant shudders. “At fourteen he has hardly acquired enough polish to grace a drawing room.”

“Then they can all come here,” Helena said instantly.

“My dear child!” Richard’s mother gave a little laugh. “You don’t know what you’re saying. I can hardly imagine that Viscount Lenwood would want his siblings under his feet at Christmas.”

“I don’t expect him to be home,” Helena said.

As she said it, she knew with a sinking heart that it was true. Richard would be in London, sharing the holiday with his mistress. She had no idea if he would still be in any danger from his brother, but he seemed to treat the attacks very lightly. He must know that he could handle Harry, after all. Either way, there was nothing to bring him back to Acton Mead.

“No, of course, he will hardly rusticate here. Richard was the most difficult of my children, you know. He has always done as he liked.” Lady Acton sighed. “If you want to entertain his siblings, you are welcome to try. They used to come here in the summer when the dowager was alive, as did Richard. It was convenient enough.”

“Yes, he told me,” Helena said.

His words came back to her as clearly as if he were in the room:
‘It was the only place, I think, that we ever were happy.’

Richard’s mother smiled. It seemed more sad than sarcastic.

“You are doing a brave job of holding up your head by yourself, aren’t you?” she said.

To Helena’s amazement, she leaned forward and laid her hand over Helena’s fingers.

“He will never love you as want to be loved,” she added. “Don’t break your heart over him, my dear. Men aren’t worth it.”

Richard was out of bed by the time Dagonet returned, a little the worse for lack of sleep, in the early morning. Mr. Hardy had washed and bandaged his wounds. Then he sent the fellow to fetch him new clothes. It was too risky to have him go back to their lodging, so Hardy hurried off to Richard’s tailor in Bond Street and purchased anew everything that the viscount would need.

Time after that to send Mr. Hardy home with a fat purse. There was no use in endangering the man further and he had earned his retirement.

“Good God!” Dagonet said as he entered. “Apart from the interesting colors of your skin, you would seem to be arisen from the dead unscathed, like Lazarus.”

“And hungry.” Richard gave the other man a lazy smile. “I have taken the liberty of having my fellow fix us breakfast.”

“And then?”

“And then I think I must discover who so urgently wishes my untimely demise.”

The men sat down at the table. Mr. Hardy served them with coffee, fresh bread, and a selection of meat and egg dishes, before he took his purse, grinned widely at both gentlemen, and left for home.

“Then last night’s brawl was not an isolated incident?” Dagonet asked once Hardy had gone.

“It was the fourth attempt in the last ten days.”

“Good God! Have you any idea why?”

Richard had been looking in a rather abstracted way at his plate of eggs, but he leaned back and laughed.

“None at all! I thought my manners so impeccable that I had managed to scrape my way around the world without once giving offense. I swear I am innocent of enemies, Dagonet. I admit I have collected a rather motley crew of friends over the years, but—”

“Il est plus honteux de se défier de ses amis, que d’en être trompé?”

“Disgrace is more in suspecting a friend than being deceived by him—exactly!”

Dagonet sat back in his chair and surveyed his companion. “What about that business in Paris?”

“A handful of girls were rescued and brought back to England, only to be immediately replaced. My man there finds no pattern to their procurement, and I have no idea who’s behind it, but the villain can have no reason to kill me. Even if he knows that I have interfered, it has hardly put any serious dent in the operation.”

“No, it seems extremely farfetched that he would find your existence intolerable. You can’t have done more than mildly inconvenience him, and why wait until now?”

“Yet I can’t think of any other reason for these attacks.”

“If only what we found in Paris weren’t so blindly tolerated by the law! Did you talk with your father as you planned?”

Richard’s brutally suppressed his emotion.

“The Earl of Acton has no interest in changing the situation, though he admits his influence would go a long way toward so doing. He believes strenuously that government has no business interfering in the private affairs of gentlemen, or in regulating the working conditions of the less fortunate.”

“Even when those private affairs are with children?”

Dagonet’s face did not change, but his voice betrayed his disgust.

Richard stood and helped himself to more coffee. His movements were still damnably careful and stiff.

“We quarreled seriously about it, I’m afraid. It made my last visit to King’s Acton even more frosty than I expected.”

“And since then?”

“I have been otherwise employed. I have come into possession of Acton Mead. I married Edward Blake’s cousin Helena.”

Dagonet raised a brow. “My felicitations!”

“It is a marriage of convenience for us both, of course. Yet Helena is rather a remarkable woman. I owe her more than to abandon her there.”

As he said it, he felt overwhelmed by a longing to see her again. Not only to touch her and know her generous, lovely response—though he craved that with an almost bitter desperation—but just to talk with her.

“It’s damnable that all this should begin so soon after our wedding. Two of the attacks put her in some danger as well. I can’t in honor stay with her and watch the bullet take her life next time. It’s both absurd and ironic: I married to try to win some domestic peace and instead find my very existence imperiled.”

“Then it would seem you must stay here until some kind of sense can be made out it. What will you tell your wife?”

“What can I tell her?” Richard asked. “That some of her countrymen are selling young girls into Paris brothels, and her father-in-law sees nothing wrong with it? That her husband went to one of those establishments—”

“Yes, but not for that reason, sir. I was with you, so you malign us both to suggest otherwise.”

“But what difference can that make? No gently reared female can be told any part of such a thing! Anyway, as I told you, it’s a marriage of convenience. Helena is very self-sufficient. I don’t suppose she’ll miss me.”

“Yet if you stay in London and display your rather unique coloring in public, there will surely be another attempt.
C’est guerre à outrance, n’est-ce pas
? It is possible that a reward is out for your death among the less-principled inhabitants of our noble capital.”

Richard eased himself back into his chair. Infuriatingly he was aware that at least one of his wounds was bleeding again.

“I have thought of that. Fortunately I have the solution—the one I used in North Africa.”

He stood painfully once more and went into the bedroom, where his clothes from the previous night were still draped over a chair. He felt in the pockets. In a moment he was back and displaying some small round objects in the palm of his hand.

“What are those interesting members of the vegetable kingdom?” Dagonet asked.

“Something I stole from my wife,” Richard answered with a grin. “Galls of Aleppo. But if you will excuse me for an hour or so, dear fellow, I think I must retire yet again to your spare chamber.”

With that he slipped gracefully to the floor. Dagonet bent over him and felt for his pulse. Viscount Lenwood was quite unconscious.

* * *

Helena now had the household running like clockwork and she began to take an interest in the estates. Acton Mead possessed a home farm that supplied the house with all of its meat, milk, cheese, fruit, and vegetables. There were also several properties leased to tenants, and she spent several days in Mead Farthing going over the books and records with the agent.

She asked the man take her out on a tour of inspection. Everything seemed to be in excellent repair. Even the farm laborers’ cottages boasted snug roofs and pretty gardens.

“Everything is very well ordered,” she said to the agent. “Even though there’s been no family in residence?”

“No, my lady. But Viscount Lenwood himself saw to it that I was kept on. His lordship’s taken a keen interest in Acton Mead’s wellbeing these many years.”

Helena smiled and said nothing. But Richard had made sure all was well here, even when he was away fighting, even though it was not then legally his. It confirmed everything she already believed about her husband. He was an excellent judge of men and he cared deeply for justice and fair treatment. Why, then, was he so blind about his own brother?

* * *

“Dare I think, dear sister, that you are dreaming of me?” an amused voice asked quietly.

Helena jumped and turned around. She was enjoying the sweet October sunshine in the little courtyard outside her sitting room. Leaves had begun to turn brown in the home woods, but there was still a scattering of white roses on the trellis where the warmth of the house had protected them from the early frost. She had planned to gather a few for the house—in case Richard came home?

She missed her husband now with an almost physical pain, but it was Harry who leaned nonchalantly in the doorway, smiling at her.

“Mrs. Hood said I would find you here,” he added.

“Good heavens, are you in the habit of creeping up on people in their own homes, Harry?”

He walked forward to sweep her a bow. “I am sorry. I should have had the footman announce me. But I used to play in this house as a boy, you know. I rather hoped I’d be welcome.”

Helena had no idea how to reply. Of all people, Harry was the least welcome right now. She had bravely struggled with her loneliness and her longing for Richard, and tried to fill her days so that she wouldn’t actively pine for him. No doubt he was enjoying all the pleasures of London with his mistress. Somehow for Harry to find her here alone and neglected made the humiliation that much worse.

“I can hardly deny family,” she said.

“But you would if Richard had not disallowed it, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

Harry grinned. “Well, you aren’t in the least happy to see me, are you? You are anyway reputed to have very little family feeling, my lady. I have met your cousin Nigel Garthwood, you see.”

Helena sat down suddenly on the stone bench. “Garthwood!”

“The same. I can hardly blame you if you don’t want to see him—not the pleasantest of fellows. But he told me that you cared very little for your other cousin Edward Blake, who was killed. You don’t even treasure a keepsake for his memory, I understand, even though you were to be married.”