Lord Perfect

by Loretta Chase

  Peregrine straightened his own shoulders, puffed out his chest, and marched up to them. Instead of the persuasive and tactful speech he’d rehearsed, he said, “Miss Wingate, I’ve come to take you home.”

  Her big, blue doll eyes widened. “Why? Has something happened to Mama?”

  “No, something has happened to you,” Peregrine said. “A head injury is my guess. It’s the only way to explain this cork-brained scheme of yours.”

  Scowling, the bull-boy moved in front of Olivia. “Here, bugger off, you,” he said.

  “Bugger off yourself,” Peregrine said. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  The boy grasped the front of Peregrine’s coat.

  “Take your hand away,” Peregrine said.

  “Oooh, will you listen to him?” said the boy. “Ain’t he the fine lady, though?”

  “No, I ain’t,” Peregrine said, and slammed his fist into Bull-Boy’s jaw.

  BENEDICT WAS AT his club when he was informed that one of his servants wished to speak to him.

  This was not a good sign.

  The last time a servant had come to the club for him was when Ada had collapsed upon her return home after a prayer meeting.

  Still, Benedict appeared calm and composed when he entered the antechamber where Thomas waited.

  At his entrance, Thomas’s face worked.

  A very bad sign.

  Ignoring the cold spreading in his gut, Benedict told him to say what the matter was in as few words as possible.

  “It’s Lord Lisle, my lord,” Thomas said, blinking hard. “I don’t know where he is. He went in the print shop door like he always does. I went into Porter’s Coffee House to wait, like I always do. I come out like I always do, a few minutes early. He never come out, sir. I waited a quarter hour past the time, then I went up. The classroom was locked up tight, and no one answered when I knocked and called. I went down to the shop and asked Mr. Popham if the drawing lessons was over for today. He said there wasn’t any. Mrs. Wingate went home early, he said, on account her pupil never came.”

  The cold spread further, numbing feeling. Time itself seemed to slow, as though frozen, too. “I see,” said Benedict. Then he ordered his hat and coat and left with his footman.

  During the short walk home, his feelings safely closed down, Benedict disciplined his mind to analyze the problem as though it were like any of the other problems he was called upon every day to sort out and solve.

  By the time he entered his house, the thousands of wild possibilities he might have entertained had narrowed to the two likeliest, in the circumstances:

  1. Peregrine had run away.

  2. Despite all their precautions, someone had found out who Peregrine was and had kidnapped him.

  Benedict went up to the boy’s room with Thomas. A search revealed no signs of a planned departure. No clothes were missing, Thomas said, except for those Lord Lisle had worn today. Questioned more closely, however, the footman did produce two relevant pieces of information. First, the boy had struck up an acquaintance with a red-haired girl at the British Museum two weeks ago. Second, Peregrine was in the habit of visiting the garden several times a day.

  Benedict destroyed several shrubs and a flower bed before he discovered the loose bricks near the back garden gate. Stuck to one was a broken piece of sealing wax and a fragment of paper.

  Benedict returned to the bedroom. His gaze went to the window seat, which looked out into the garden. He often found his nephew there, bent over a book. A few minutes later, Benedict found the cache of letters, folded between the pages of Belzoni’s Narrative.

  IT DID NOT take Lord Lisle long to leave Nat Diggerby in a stunned heap by the side of the road. It was time enough for a crowd to gather, though, which gave Olivia a chance to slip away unnoticed.

  The crowd aroused the curiosity of passersby, and traffic slowed in consequence. The road on both sides of the tollgate became jammed with vehicles, horses, and pedestrians. Among those forced to wait was a young farmer driving a small wagon. Olivia approached him. Tears filled her great blue eyes. From her trembling lips fell a poignant tale about an ailing mother in Slough.

  Moved, the farmer offered her a ride in his cart as far as Brentford.

  She climbed in.

  Before the cart was through the tollgate, Lord Lisle came running alongside. “You beastly girl!” he said. “I won’t let you do this.”

  “Oh, look, it is my poor brother,” she told the farmer. “He is mad with grief. I told him to stay in London. He is sure to find work eventually. But he . . .”

  She went on to tell a tragic tale of family woes. The farmer swallowed it whole. He told Lord Lisle he was welcome to join his sister if he chose.

  Lord Lisle looked wildly about him. A couple of soldiers had got hold of Nat Diggerby and were dragging him to the watch house.

  Lord Lisle climbed into the cart.

  BATHSHEBA LIT ANOTHER candle and read the letter again, because the first time, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her.

  After the second perusal, she was furious.

  Olivia’s scheme was all too familiar. It was the same method her parents used to deal with their difficulties. They’d count on a crackbrained scheme to solve all their problems at once, rather than tackle them directly, one at a time. They’d chance their money on a throw of the dice, rather than pay the rent with it.

  She flung the letter down. “Only wait until I get my hands on you, my girl.”

  But Bathsheba must find her first.

  The letter did not reveal her destination. Olivia said she was going to find Edmund DeLucey’s legendary treasure, however, and that was clue enough.

  She would head for Throgmorton, the Earl of Mandeville’s country house, because that was where Jack had said the treasure was, and why listen to boring Mama when Papa’s stories were so much more exciting and romantic?

  The only question was how great a head start she had. Not more than a few hours, Bathsheba guessed. Had Olivia missed school, Bathsheba would have heard from Miss Smithson by now. With any luck, one might catch up with the girl in a matter of hours rather than days.

  Still, to pursue her, Bathsheba needed money, which meant she needed a pawnbroker. She was not sure where the nearest one was. But Mrs. Briggs would know. Meanwhile, Bathsheba must find something to pawn.

  She began to tear the rooms apart. She emptied cupboards and drawers, pulled bed linens from the mattresses. She flung everything into a heap in the center of the room. She was wrapping up her few pieces of cutlery when someone knocked on the door.

  She rose, pushed her hair out of her face, and walked to the door, praying the visitor was the watchman, the beadle, or a constable, with Olivia in tow. She opened the door.

  The man standing in the dimly lit hall was not the watchman, the beadle, or a constable.

  “Mrs. Wingate,” said Lord Rathbourne, looking excessively bored. “I believe your daughter has made off with my nephew.”

  THE PLACE WAS a shambles, and so was Mrs. Wingate.

  Her coiffure was tumbling to pieces, the raven-black curls falling over her forehead and bouncing against her neck. Her face was flushed. She had a smudge on her nose and another on her cheek.

  She glared at him.

  Benedict wanted to snatch her up and kiss the scowl away.

  He had to drag his mind back to reality, and remember why he’d come: Peregrine.

  . . . who wasn’t here, as Benedict saw in the instant it took him to survey the room. His spirits sank. All the evidence had indicated his nephew would try to stop Miss Wingate, rather than go along with her.

  Still, Benedict had endured nearly two weeks of stultifying boredom, and it was impossible to gaze at Bathsheba Wingate, tousled and cross, and feel completely cast down.

  “I beg your pardon for giving no warning,” he said. “I should have asked Mrs. Briggs to announce me, but she had company. I was disinclined to wait in her parlor, making her guests uncomfortable, while she c
ame up to ask whether you were receiving visitors. I have let her believe I have come to inspect the place. May I enter?”

  “Yes, why not?” With a dismissive wave, Mrs. Wingate moved away from the door. “I was about to go to the pawnbroker, but this. . .” She dragged her hand through the glossy black curls. “Lord Lisle is gone, too? With Olivia? But they scarcely know each other.”

  “It seems they have become well acquainted,” he said. “They have been corresponding secretly for weeks.”

  After briefly explaining this day’s discoveries, he took out from his inside breast pocket the most recent of the letters he’d found and gave it to her.

  She scanned it quickly, then paused, her color mounting. “ ‘Pale and thin,’ indeed,” she said. “That is her overactive imagination at work.”

  Benedict did not think so. Though Mrs. Wingate wasn’t pale at the moment, her face seemed thinner, more drawn. While she read on, his gaze slid lower. She had seemed more rounded the last time he saw her. . . .

  Kissed her.

  Touched her.

  Think about the weather, he told himself.

  She briskly folded up the letter and gave it back. “She will have hidden his somewhere about,” she said. “I see no reason to waste time looking for them. Time will be better spent finding her—and Lord Lisle, if he is with her, which I can scarcely believe. He is such a logical boy. He does question everything, as you said. I cannot believe he did not question Olivia. I should have thought he had better sense than to be drawn into one of her madcap schemes.”

  Benedict returned the letter to his coat pocket. “I had the same thought,” he said. “I could not believe Peregrine had fallen in with her plan. Her latest letter, you must have noticed, names one Nat Diggerby her chosen escort and refers to Peregrine’s misgivings about her quest. He must have tried to dissuade her. In which case, one might reasonably suppose he went to stop her. I came here, hoping he’d retrieved her and brought her home.”

  “Not on his own, he couldn’t,” she said. “If he’d asked my advice, I should have recommended he take a law officer with him. Or a large body of soldiers.”

  Any other mother would be in fainting fits or hysterics, Benedict thought. She did not even appear anxious. She was definitely out of temper, though.

  “Not being a thirteen-year-old boy, I shall not require a regiment,” Benedict said. “Not that I should dream of alerting the authorities. The last thing I need is for anyone to hear of this.” If any member of his set found out, the story would be all over London within hours. It would reach Atherton in Scotland within days. That was not a pretty prospect.

  “The footman Thomas should be sufficient for my purposes,” he went on. “Between us, I reckon we can recover a pair of children.” He started for the door.

  She moved quickly to block his way. Her blue eyes flashed, and he almost took a step back—in surprise, that was all.

  “You are distressed,” she said. “I excuse your obliviousness on those grounds.”

  “You excuse my what?”

  “This is Olivia’s doing,” she said, “and Olivia is my problem. I understand how her mind works. I know where she is going. I am the one who will search for her.” The color came and went in her cheeks. “However, you can save me time if you would lend me the money to hire a vehicle.”

  His jaw almost dropped. He caught himself in time.

  “You have taken leave of your senses if you believe I should sit at home twiddling my thumbs while you hunt for my nephew,” he said. “He is not your responsibility but mine.”

  “Your wits are wandering if you expect me to sit at home,” she said.

  “One of us must go,” he said. “One of us must remain. We cannot travel together.”

  “Obviously,” she said. “But you are too overset to think clearly.”

  “Overset?” he echoed incredulously. “I am never overset.”

  “You are not using logic,” she said. “You want to keep this quiet, do you not?”

  “Of course I—”

  “I should attract far less attention than you,” she cut in impatiently. “You cannot make enquiries about a pair of children without causing talk. Everything about you screams who and what you are. You will act bored and sound sarcastic, and behave in that superior way, and simply assume you are in command. It will be as plain to everyone who you are as if you had a sign hanging from your neck, proclaiming your title and antecedents.”

  “I know how to be discreet,” he said.

  “You do not know how to be ordinary,” she said.

  As though she could be ordinary, Benedict thought, with that face and body. She would turn heads wherever she went. She would have men trailing after her, their tongues hanging out.

  He clenched his hands. She, setting out after dark, traveling alone, in a hired vehicle, without an escort, without so much as a maid . . .

  Unthinkable.

  “You cannot travel alone,” he said in the frigid accents anyone else would have recognized as ending the discussion.

  “I have traveled alone for the last three years,” she said.

  He wanted to shake her. He made himself unclench his hands. He summoned his patience. “You had your daughter with you,” he said. “People behave differently toward solitary women than they do toward mothers traveling with their children.”

  “This is absurd,” she said, turning away abruptly. “It is a waste of time, arguing with you. I shall do as I planned.” She marched to the heap of belongings on the floor and started to make a bundle.

  She had said she was on her way to the pawnbroker.

  Benedict wondered how he could stop her, short of knocking her unconscious or wrestling her into a strait-waistcoat or tying her to a heavy piece of furniture.

  “Stop that,” he said, in a tone he usually reserved for rambunctious MPs. “Never mind the pawnbroker. We shall combine forces.”

  “We cannot—”

  “You leave us no choice, you obstinate woman,” he said. “I shall be hanged before I let you set out alone.”

  WHILE HE WAITED for her to collect her bonnet and spencer and whatever other items she deemed necessary, Benedict tried to reconnect his tongue to his brain.

  He never spoke to women in that way.

  He was always patient with them.

  But she . . .

  She was a problem.

  Matters did not improve once she’d emerged from the house, after having stopped briefly to speak to Mrs. Briggs.

  “A curricle?” she said, pausing on the steps to take stock of the vehicle standing at the curb. “An open vehicle?”

  “Did you suppose I should take a coach and four?” he said. “Do you imagine I should wish to bring a coachman along on such a journey?”

  “But this will never do,” she said. “It is far too smart.”

  “It is hired, it needs a coat of paint, and it is at least ten years old,” he said. “You haven’t the least idea what smart is. Get in.”

  She clutched his arm, her gaze riveted upon Thomas, who held the horses. “We cannot travel with a servant,” she said.

  Patience, Benedict counseled himself. “Someone must look after the horses,” he said patiently. “You will not know he is there. He will sit in the seat at the back, gazing at the passing scene and thinking his own thoughts.”

  She tugged on his arm, to pull him toward her, and stood on her toes to whisper in his ear, “You must have been completely distracted to bring him here. Servants are dreadful gossips, worse than old ladies. By this time tomorrow, everyone in London will know what you have been doing and with whom.”

  Her breath tickled Benedict’s ear. He was acutely aware of the slim hand clutching his arm.

  He picked her up and tossed her onto the carriage seat.

  When he climbed in beside her, she said, “May I remind you that this is the nineteenth century, not the ninth? That sort of behavior went out of fashion with chain mail and wimples.”

  Tho
mas hastily took his place in the servant’s seat.

  Benedict gave the horses leave to start before he answered her.

  “I am not accustomed to explaining myself, Mrs. Wingate,” he began.

  “Obviously,” she said.

  He started to grind his teeth. He made himself stop, and reminded himself of the rule: Women and children, possessing smaller brains and thus a smaller capacity for reason, require a correspondingly greater degree of patience.

  Now he said, patiently, “Thomas is not a London-bred servant. He is a countryman, who grew up on the family property in Derbyshire. Though he is now my footman, he is as competent with horses as any of my grooms. I took him into my confidence weeks ago, when Peregrine began his drawing lessons. I would not have entrusted so delicate a business to him had I not complete confidence in his discretion.”

  Mrs. Wingate let out a huff, sat straighter, and folded her hands in her lap. “I beg your pardon for questioning your judgment,” she said. “It is nothing to me, after all, if it proves faulty. I am not the one responsible for the Marquess of Atherton’s heir and sole offspring. I am not the one who will be toppled from my pedestal if the world learns I have not only permitted but encouraged my nephew to associate with the most shocking persons. I am not the one who—”

  “I wish you were the one who had heard of the rule Silence is golden,” he said.

  “I am not a politician,” she said. “I am accustomed to saying what I think.”

  “I should have thought that anxieties about your daughter would fully occupy your mind.”

  “I greatly doubt Olivia will come to any harm,” said her mama. “I only wish I could say the same for those who cross her path.”

  Chapter 7

  THOUGH THE CURRICLE WAS MUCH TOO dashing a vehicle for people who wished to remain anonymous, Bathsheba had to admit it had certain advantages, like speed and maneuverability.

  They halted near Hyde Park Corner shortly before the church bells chimed six o’clock.