The Courtship

by Catherine Coulter

  “Father, Spenser and I are the only ones here, and he doesn’t drink champagne.”

  Lord Prith heaved a deep sigh and held up his hand. “We will wait, Flock, until we have a more ample supply of palates.” He sat down and leaned back, smiling at both of them. “Now, have you decided what you will do about Gerard Yorke?”

  “We are just beginning our thinking,” Spenser said. “And food will help.”

  Flock said from the doorway, “Cook has excellent timing. Dinner is served.”

  Over a splendid dinner of pork tenderloin with mushrooms, fish and capers in black butter, innumerable side dishes, including cook’s specialty—eggs au miroir—and redcurrant fool for dessert, they decided that everyone would go to London the next morning. Helen and her father, Flock and Teeny, would stay at the Beecham town house. It was the first time the town house would welcome guests since three years before, when Lord Beecham’s great-aunt Maudette had arrived with her ten best friends, all very old ladies, all of whom tatted and left their work in progress all over the house. Actually, looking back on it, Spenser had enjoyed himself immensely during those chaotic two weeks.

  “Flock and I will be ready to leave tomorrow by ten o’clock,” Lord Prith said to Spenser. He added, “Goodness, what with the Sherbrookes hanging about all the time, my little Nellie will be very well chaperoned indeed. Now I won’t have to worry about you taking advantage of her, my boy.”

  There was another small bit of dead silence.

  “And then,” Lord Beecham said, clearing his throat, “Douglas Sherbrooke and I will go to meet with Sir John Yorke at the Admiralty.”

  “Yes,” Helen said, “but you must be alert, Spenser. Sir John is ruthless and shrewd. I know that Gerard was afraid of his father. His father ruled not only him but his entire family with an iron fist. I do want to see what truths you manage to get out of that old curmudgeon.”

  Late that night Lord Beecham lay wide awake in his bed thinking about his life. It was at once extraordinarily complicated and very simple and as clear as a spring rain, and he smiled into the darkness. He remembered his words with Lord Prith just before they had all retired. “I have decided that you deserve to stay in the Dancing Bear’s Room, in my town house,” Spenser had said.

  “An odd name, my boy. Wherever did that name come from?”

  “Well, some fifty years ago, my grandfather had a trained bear and he kept him in the house. In that bedchamber.”

  “What was the bear’s name?”

  “Guthry, I believe. He did enjoy dancing with my grandfather. I was told that he died shortly after my grandfather did.”

  “I hope,” Lord Prith said, “that they were not buried together.”

  “I understand that it was discussed, but I don’t believe it happened. But you know, I have learned over the years that nothing in my family is ever what you expect.” Except for his father, he thought, who was a thorough rotter, no doubt about that; but now, Spenser didn’t flinch from it. He just dismissed it. It felt very good. He felt like a house that the ghosts no longer haunted.

  As he was nodding off to sleep, Lord Beecham realized that life was fascinating, a thousand years ago and today. Who else had dancing bears hanging about in the past? He wondered now as he had when he’d been a boy, what it would be like to have a bear living in the house.

  Beecham Town House

  London

  It was Claude, Lord Beecham’s acting butler, who assigned the name “the War Room” to the large, shadowed study at the back of the house.

  On Friday morning everyone was gathered around talking. Everyone had an opinion. When Ryder and Sophie Sherbrooke unexpectedly joined the company some thirty minutes later, Ryder simply stood in the doorway and said in the special voice he used for his fifteen children, which was actually a bellow, “Close your mouths or no dessert!”

  That got everyone’s attention. One by one, each occupant ceased speaking and stared at Ryder.

  Douglas Sherbrooke said, “Ryder, Sophie, welcome to London. Come join us. This is a conundrum both of you will enjoy. Ryder, did you know a naval man, Gerard Yorke? He supposedly drowned back in ’03 off the coast of France?”

  Ryder Sherbrooke frowned, looked thoughtful, stroked his chin, then announced, “I hope this doesn’t distress anyone here, but he cheated at cards. He nearly got his throat slit over one incident where I was present. I remember him whining that his father never gave him enough money and that he was desperate. When he was asked why he was desperate, he said he was three months behind in paying his mistress. I remember he was a seedy fellow, complained a lot. Yes, I remember now that he reportedly drowned. What’s this all about? What’s the matter?”

  And so the mix increased and the noise level escalated until Mrs. Glass, the Heatherington housekeeper, poked her head in the door and whistled, just like a man. “Claude has a slight cold and his voice isn’t all that strong at present,” she said once she had everyone’s attention. “Who would like tea and cakes? No, don’t speak. Raise your hands. Ladies first.”

  One countess, one sister-in-law of a countess, and Miss Mayberry all dutifully raised their hands.

  “Good. Now gentlemen.”

  And so an earl, two viscounts, and the brother of an earl all raised their hands. Lord Prith requested a touch of champagne in a subdued voice.

  Sophie Sherbrooke said to Helen, “We haven’t met, but I’ve heard a lot about you, from Alex, who wanted to garrote you before, but then she decided that you were just fine as long as you kept your distance from Douglas. Is it true that you are going to marry Lord Beecham?”

  “Yes,” Helen said. “But first as you have already heard, we must determine if my husband is still alive, and if he is, what sort of evil he is brewing. It is a horrid thing to have a husband pop up when he was supposed to have croaked it eight years before. It is particularly difficult since I want to marry Spenser.”

  “I see,” said Sophie Sherbrooke, without blinking an eye. She could, after all, deal quite well with fifteen children forced indoors on a rainy day. “Tell me all about it.”

  Thirty minutes later, when everyone was eating cook’s delicious chocolate puffs, peach fritters, and caraway seed cakes, Ryder announced, “Behold the new member of the House of Commons. That is why Sophie and I are here in London at this particular moment. I handily beat a very obnoxious paunchy man by the name of Redfield. I will now be representing Upper and Lower Slaughter and environs.” He beamed at everyone.

  “Hear, hear,” Lord Prith said, and raised his crystal flute of champagne. “Er, are you certain you wish to do this, young man?”

  “He wants to reform the wretched laws that allow for the terrible exploitation of children, sir,” Sophie said. “He will succeed, you know.”

  They briefly discussed Ryder’s Beloved Ones, the children he saved from dreadful situations and brought to live at Brandon House.

  Plans were made, shifted, reevaluated. Ryder and Sophie decided to stay with Douglas and Alexandra. They were on the point of leaving when Lord Prith strode into the drawing room, Flock on his heels carrying a large silver tray.

  “What is this, Father?”

  “Ah, my dear, I believe we now have a suitable number of gullets to experiment on. No, don’t look alarmed, Sophie, this is champagne.”

  “Sir,” she said, “it’s purple.”

  “Well, yes. It is something I have invented. You see I added some grape juice to the champagne to give it that healthy purple color. Splendid, don’t you think? All of you will try it, if you please. Except you, Spenser, since you would turn quite green and ruin the evening.”

  Nobody wanted to, but everyone was polite, and so everyone drank the strange grape mixture with Spenser watching, a look of total revulsion on his face.

  Alexandra cocked her head to one side as she lowered the lovely crystal flute after two small sips. “It is very different, sir. Actually, to be blunt about this, it is close to revolting. I think perhaps you should try somet
hing else to mix with the champagne.”

  Lord Prith looked hopefully toward Douglas, who mournfully shook his head and kept his mouth shut. When his eyes met Sophie’s, he looked near to tears. Sophie cleared her throat, gave her husband an agonized look, and said, “I am so very sorry, sir. Perhaps it is the sort of grapes you used. Perhaps grapes from the Mediterranean region would work better.”

  Helen said, “Father, it is a good try, but Alexandra is right. If I were dying I would have difficulty drinking it even if I was promised that it would bring me back.”

  Lord Prith said, “Not even you, my little Nell? My daughter adores me, you see, and if she doesn’t approve, then it must be very bad indeed. But wait—Ryder, you did not give me your opinion.”

  “Sir, I have found in the years I have been married that if I disagree with my wife, she refuses to give me her sweet smiles, as well as sweet other things. I am sorry, sir, but I cannot.”

  “I can understand your hesitation,” Lord Prith said.“Ah, well. Flock, what was it that we called this lovely purple drink?”

  “Grapagne, my lord.”

  “I do like the name. It has a certain cachet. Hmmm. What do you think of apricot with champagne?”

  Evidently no one thought anything of it, since there was dead silence.

  Both sets of Sherbrookes left shortly, everyone ready with his assigned task.

  27

  IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when there was a tap on Lord Beecham’s bedchamber door.

  He was naked, lying on his back in his mammoth bed, a sheet pulled to his waist, thinking about kissing the soft flesh behind Helen’s knees, something he hadn’t managed to do yet.

  “Enter,” he called out.

  Helen floated in—no other way to put it, he thought, stunned, watching her glide toward him. She was wearing a crimson-silk nightgown with an even darker red dressing gown over it, and strangely enough, that incredible ensemble was not the least bit tawdry. In fact, it gave a man absolutely no hint as to what treasures lay beneath.

  “Go away, Helen. I mean it.”

  “I will,” she said, walked right up to the bed and stopped. “Do you like it?” She did a graceful twirl and the soft slithering sounds of all that fabric would have sent him to his knees if he hadn’t been lying on his back.

  “If you don’t go away I will rip it off and examine it in the morning.”

  “I wore it to punish you. This is discipline, Spenser, a divine sort of discipline. What do you think—perhaps a Level Four?”

  “Helen, I want you naked so badly that all I can see is far too much red stuff for me to strip off you.”

  “Alexandra told me it was something a mistress would wear, a mistress who wished to seduce a very dashing, exciting, flamboyant protector. It was something, she said, that she would wear for Douglas, even though she was his wife. Sophie said Ryder would laugh his head off if she wore something like this and then he would strip it off her in a second flat.

  “I thought about that. Well, I decided, we aren’t married, and we were rather intimate, and so, does that make me a mistress?”

  “No. You aren’t a mistress. You are a lover. If you did not have any money, then you could be a mistress. Now leave, Helen.”

  She smiled at him, turned around, and walked back to the door. She said over her shoulder, one white hand laid against the door frame, “I didn’t want you to think that I wasn’t fully aware of you.” Then her seduction fell away and she lowered her face into her hands.

  He was out of his bed and was pulling her against him, all in under ten seconds. “No, love, don’t cry. I would cry, but it isn’t manly. There are certain standards that a man must uphold. Let me hold you, but please do not think lustful thoughts. Yes, all right, stop crying. We will deal with all of it, Helen. You and I are very smart indeed, and look at all our talented assistants. And now we’ve even added Ryder and Sophie Sherbrooke to our army. They are very resourceful. They have to be to survive dealing with fifteen children.

  “Now there are at least ten people who know about the lamp, at least ten people who know about your blasted husband, who had better be good and dead. There are many more who know about Reverend Mathers’s murder. Word will continue to spread. Things will happen. I have never believed in secrecy. It is having everyone know everything, that’s the key. Then the truth will pop up. You’ll see, dearest. No, please don’t cry anymore.”

  She sniffed and raised her head. Again, he was struck by how close they were to having their noses touch. His big girl was right there in his sights. He wanted her very much. “I’ve been wondering if we also shouldn’t just announce to the world that the scroll verified the existence of a powerful lamp. That the lamp had probably been hidden with the scroll. What do you think?”

  “You’re naked, Spenser.”

  He honestly hadn’t realized it. He did now, and in less time than it would have taken him to remove an eyelash from his eye, he was hard and ready to leap. “Well, damn.” He kissed her. “Go to bed, dearest. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

  She gulped, then blurted out, “I slept with you knowing he was alive. I deceived you. I was dishonorable. I don’t deserve you. I don’t want to tell anyone about the lamp.”

  “Ah.” He began rubbing his big hands up and down her back. The silk slithered between his fingers. The feel and sound of that slithering silk would make a man of even greater will tremble. He shook his head. He got a grip on himself and managed to say, “Well, as a matter of fact, you did deceive me. So what? The blasted fellow has been gone for eight years. I would rather say that you couldn’t help yourself, you had to have me, regardless of this hopefully dead bastard who may or may not have written you one single letter six months ago.

  “You are not dishonorable. You are one of the most honorable people I have ever known. Now, if everyone knows about the lamp, most will simply discount it as a myth, since who would talk about it if it truly existed? Perhaps a few simpletons will go dig up anywhere they think the lamp could be hidden, not find anything except an occasional worm, and then it will eventually be forgotten. I don’t believe that many people will believe that the ancient scroll had anything to do with the lamp. It is too farfetched.”

  She leaned forward, touching her forehead to his. “Still, I took you, and I realize that you really had no choice in the matter.”

  Now that was interesting, he thought, remembering how they had been sodden and shivering and miserable until they’d happened to touch each other in that dilapidated cottage with the rain pouring down not two feet away from them.

  “Yes,” he said, kissing her ear, “you took me, and I had no say in the matter at all. I remember trying to tell you I didn’t want you, but you just wouldn’t let up on me. Stop it now, Helen—any lapses you are feeling in your moral character are just minor ones. But I wonder. Would I have made love to you if I’d known about Gerard? I can’t answer that. I don’t know.”

  “But that’s why you don’t want me now.”

  He closed his hands over her beautiful white arms and shook her just a bit. “That’s not the truth at all and you know it. I want you all of the time, Helen. But the thing is, I want to know while I’m caressing you and kissing you and nibbling at your white neck that you are my wife, not my almost-wife or my lover or even just my partner. I want you for all of it, Helen. I want us to be married when we come together again. There’s nothing more to it than that. What you and I are together is very important. It is forever. Do you understand?” He touched his forehead once again to hers.

  “Maybe, but—”

  “Now,” he said quietly against her mouth, “you said you don’t deserve me. That is a repellent thought. I also cannot accept what made you say it. It is nonsense and it makes me angry. Take it back—now. We’ll keep mum for the time being about the bloody lamp and the scroll.”

  “All right.” She sniffed. “Would you just kiss me one time? If you do, then I swear I’ll run.”

  He kissed her and she r
an. He stood there in the middle of his bedchamber, panting like the messenger who had run from Marathon to Athens, only to drop dead at the end. He wondered what it was this particular woman did to him. And he was very grateful for it.

  Sir John Yorke was a desiccated old relic who was perfectly bald, had very frightening eyes because they had practically no color at all, and had a tic by the side of his left eye.

  He was still very powerful. He was known to be ruthless and vicious when he perceived the need.

  He was tapping together his steepled fingertips. The skin was loose on the back of his age-spotted hands.

  He merely nodded to the three gentlemen. He knew all of them, not as friends but as powerful men, and that gave him no choice at all but to see them, to listen to them. He had no idea what they wanted. He looked at them, all young, healthy, well made. Their ranks were higher than his. They were all richer than he was. But the only one he truly feared was the earl of Northcliffe, who was still involved in the ministry for an occasional mission that a lesser man would not be able to perform. He was well connected to everyone of power in the government. As for his brother, Ryder Sherbrooke was newly elected to the House of Commons. He detested all of them. He had no choice but to deal with them, but then, thank God, they would leave. Good riddance to all the worthless bastards. He smiled a stingy, false smile.

  He did not rise. “What may I do for you gentlemen?”

  Lord Beecham said pleasantly, “We are here to verify that your son, Gerard Yorke, indeed drowned off the coast of France in 1803.”

  Ryder Sherbrooke watched those pale lashes flicker just once over the nearly colorless eyes. Got you, he thought, sat back, and folded his hands over his belly.

  “Of course he drowned,” Sir John said, his voice rising. “He was a hero. He would have followed me into the Admiralty had he survived. Your question is nonsense.”