The Deception

by Joan Wolf

  “I still have to finish Oxford,” he said.

  “Yes, but after you finish I am sure that there is a family seat you could have.”

  “There is, of course.”

  The House of Commons was nominally elected by the commons of England, but what usually happened was that the common people in a particular district voted as their local lord decreed.

  “I’ll talk to Adrian about it,” Harry said. The suppressed excitement was now bubbling in his voice. “I think I might quite like to go to the Commons.”

  We were finally through the sheep, and the horses once more picked up a trot. I thought of the way Adrian’s face had looked when Harry and I had left the house this morning, and I realized the major cause of my dejection. I might have just triumphed over my enemy, but I would never be truly happy as long as I was at odds with Adrian.

  * * * *

  Adrian was not at Harley Hall when I returned, and I learned from Mr. Bellerton that he and several of the other men had gone to look at one of the large stud farms in the area. I waited all afternoon for him to return, hoping that a few hours of looking at beautiful Thoroughbred mares and their foals might have put him in a better temper. I wanted very much to tell him about what had transpired at the Jockey Club meeting. But the afternoon hours slipped relentlessly by, and still there was no sign of Adrian.

  Lady Barbury had invited a crowd of people from some of the other house parties in the area to come to Harley Hall for an informal dance that evening, and when Adrian did finally make an appearance I was sitting in front of my dressing-table mirror having my hair done.

  I swung around to look at him, causing Jeanette to pull the strand of hair she was working on rather sharply. I yelped, and she apologized profusely.

  “Never mind,” I said. “It was my fault.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late, but we stayed rather longer than we intended,” Adrian said to me. “It won’t take me long to change.” He disappeared in the direction of his dressing room, where his valet had been waiting for the last hour.

  He had not smiled, and his voice had sounded distinctly wintry. He was still angry with me for keeping secrets from him.

  Damn.

  I stared resolutely in the mirror while Jeanette fiddled with my hair.

  This is all my fault, I thought. I hurt his feelings by not confiding in him.

  My pride didn’t seem important any longer. In fact, at this point nothing seemed more important than having Adrian smile at me again. The first chance I got, I was going to tell him that I loved him.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  At six-thirty Sir Charles’s own house party, augmented by a few extra guests, sat down to a formal dinner; the other guests would not begin arriving for the dance until nine. I was seated on Sir Charles’s left, directly opposite the Duchess of Wareham, who as the ranking female guest was honored by the place at her host’s right hand. The duchess had not been precisely friendly to me during this visit, but at least she was no longer shooting dagger-looks every time she saw me. Lady Mary’s attachment of Mr. Bellerton had evidently gone a long way toward reconciling the duchess to the fact that her daughter had been cheated out of Adrian.

  Sir Charles and I discussed the races, his horses, his hounds, and the weather. An unspoken mutual agreement kept us from mentioning the Marquis of Stade or the morning’s meeting. When Sir Charles politely switched his attention to the duchess, I turned to the gentleman on my other side and we talked about the races, his horses, the weather, and, finally, Adrian’s future in the government. I was enthusiastic about the first three topics, and noncommittal on the last.

  “You will have to speak to my husband about his plans, Lord Denham,” I said sweetly. “I am afraid that I can tell you nothing.”

  “He is making far too great a thing of these government sanctions,” Viscount Denham, who was in the Home Office, assured me earnestly. “We are simply concerned for the public safety.”

  I tried to keep my lip from curling cynically. Public safety, hah, I thought to myself. You are concerned for your own privileges, my lord.

  I smiled and said with big-eyed innocence, “I know that my husband feels great concern for the welfare of the many veterans who have fallen upon hard times with the peace they fought so gallantly to secure.”

  Lord Denham, who might have been handsome if he had owned a chin, shook his head sadly, “I fear many of these ex-soldiers and sailors have turned into nothing but a lawless rabble, Lady Greystone,” he told me.

  “It is hard to be law-abiding when the law is making you go hungry,” I replied.

  Making a visible effort, he smiled benignly. “I was hoping that you would use your influence with your husband to persuade him to join Lord Liverpool’s government, Lady Greystone. It is the natural place for a man of Greystone’s stature and talents.” He leaned his head a little toward me and said with great significance, “After all, Lord Liverpool won’t be prime minister forever.”

  I stared at him in profound surprise.

  He favored me with a look that he managed to make both humorous and condescending. “I know you are thinking that the Duke of Wellington would be the natural successor to Lord Liverpool, but there are those of us who think Greystone might be a better choice.”

  In fact, I had not been surprised at the suggestion that Adrian might one day be prime minister. I probably wouldn’t have been surprised if he had said that one day Adrian might be king. It was something quite else that had startled me.

  “Whatever makes you think that I would have any influence with Greystone on a matter such as this, Lord Denham?” I asked in amazement.

  His smile became even more condescending. “Beautiful young wives always have influence with their husbands, Lady Greystone,” he said.

  I did not reply immediately, but took a bite of the stuffed venison on my plate. Lord Denham took several sips of wine and watched me over the rim of his glass. After I had swallowed the venison, I said gently, “The only thing that influences my husband is his conscience, Lord Denham. You may rest assured that he will do whatever it may dictate.”

  The viscount did not look as if he liked this answer at all.

  * * * *

  After dinner the ladies withdrew to freshen their toilettes, and by the time I came back downstairs the guests had begun to arrive. A thought struck me, and I turned to the lady who had come down just behind me and asked, “Do you happen to know who has been invited to this dance, Lady Mary?”

  She nodded gravely. “My mother and I helped Lady Barbury write out the invitations.”

  The implication, of course, was that the duchess and her wonderful daughter had been perfect guests, while I had done nothing but drive off to the races every day. Well, I had been invited for the races, damn it.

  I said, “Was the Marquis of Stade invited?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He has the Marions staying with him, and the Stoningtons.”

  It seemed as if the dance would be thinner of company than Lady Barbury had expected, I thought. Not even Stade would have the nerve to show his lace after what had transpired at the Jockey Club this morning.

  The dance was an informal affair. The drawing-room rugs had been taken up, the chairs pushed back, and three musicians stationed in front of the fireplace. The atmosphere was much jollier than anything I had attended in London. No Almack’s patronesses, with their gimlet eyes, were present to put a blight on people’s sense of fun.

  Adrian avoided me. He didn’t do it obviously; he even danced a country dance with me. Adrian would never publicly humiliate me; but he knew and I knew that he was avoiding me.

  I tried not to let this worry me. I even told myself that Adrian must care about me a little if he was so upset by my keeping secrets from him. I would have him to myself tonight, and if all else failed, I knew I could effect some kind of a reconciliation in bed.

  At ten-thirty, the musicians struck up a waltz. I had been sitting out the previous dance with Mr. Bellerton
, who had not danced all evening, and now I said, “Please won’t you dance this waltz with me, Mr. Bellerton?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I’m afraid that Napoleon put an end to my dancing days, Lady Greystone. But don’t let me detain you. There are at least a dozen men present who would love to dance the waltz with you.”

  But I had seen the wistful glances he had cast toward the dance floor earlier, and I was not about to let him off. “If you step on my toes, I won’t say a word,” I promised him. “And there is so much dipping in a waltz that no one will notice your limp.”

  He laughed, and once more tried to get out of it.

  “Do you know how to waltz, Mr. Bellerton?” I demanded.

  He set his jaw. “Yes, Lady Greystone, I do. The last time I waltzed was in Brussels, on the night before Waterloo.”

  “I think you are giving up too easily,” I informed him. “You have been looking longingly at that dance floor all evening. I think it’s cowardly to let a little limp keep you from doing something that you so clearly enjoy.”

  I could see that he was getting angry. I have found that calling a man a coward is usually guaranteed to produce this result. “This is the perfect place for your return to the dance floor,” I continued annoyingly. “An informal atmosphere, a small group of friends,” I waved my hand comprehensively, “what could be better?”

  Poor Mr. Bellerton was in a quandary. He could not tell me to go to the devil, which he clearly wanted to do; nor could he get me to give up. He finally said grimly, “Very well, Lady Greystone, I will attempt the waltz. But you must promise to allow me to retire if I cannot do it.”

  “Done,” I replied. I took his hand and almost pulled him out to the floor before he could change his mind.

  His steps were tentative at first, and they were certainly a little uneven, but he kept time with the music and I had no trouble following him. We waltzed down one side of the room, executed the corners with commendable expertise, and went back up the other side. A few of the men on the floor grinned when they saw him and said things like “Good show.” Mr. Bellerton displayed no signs of wanting to sit down. In fact, he was smiling.

  When the dance was finished we stood together for a moment at the edge of the floor. He looked down at me, a faint smile still on his lips. I grinned and said, “I told you so.”

  He laughed.

  Lady Mary’s voice said, “Richard! You were dancing!”

  Astute of her to have noticed.

  We both turned to look at her. Her expression was not pleased.

  He said, “Lady Greystone bullied me into it.” His eyes were sparkling as he turned to me once more. “Do you always know what’s best for people, Lady Greystone?”

  “Well... perhaps not all the time.”

  He laughed again, and Lady Mary gave me an extremely nasty look. She stared at her beau and complained, “You would never dance with me!”

  “He wouldn’t dance with me, either, until I forced him to,” I remarked. “Men are so sensitive about how they look.”

  “Thank you, Lady Greystone,” Mr. Bellerton said with amusement.

  I looked at Lady Mary’s face and understood how she must be feeling. She had been being so careful not to hurt Mr. Bellerton’s feelings, so sympathetic to his fear of being humiliated, that she had gone along with his refusal to dance.

  And now she found him waltzing with me—and loving it! When she gave me another nasty look, I couldn’t blame her.

  A roar of laughter came from the other end of the room, and when I looked I saw that the noise was coming from a small group of people surrounding Adrian in front of the terrace doors. His face was bright with amusement, and I wanted so badly to walk over and join him, but at that moment Mr. Cruick appeared at my side and asked me to join him for supper. Suppressing a sigh, I agreed.

  When we came back from supper I immediately scanned the drawing room, but Adrian was nowhere to be seen. He had not been in the supper room either, and I wondered if perhaps Lord Denham had dragged him off somewhere to talk politics. As my eyes made one more quick circle of the room, I saw the terrace doors opposite us open, and then Adrian came in with Lady Mary. He closed the door behind them, turned to her, and lifted her hand to his mouth. Their eyes met, and she smiled. I felt stabbed to the heart.

  As if from a long way away I heard Mr. Cruick’s voice asking, “Are you all right, my dear? You just went deathly pale.”

  I don’t know what I answered him. I don’t know how I got out of the drawing room. I only know that I was standing all by myself at the bottom of the stairs when a footman came up to me bearing a note upon a silver tray.

  “I was asked to give this to you, Lady Greystone,” he said.

  I took the note. I opened it and stared at the strong, black lines of script that seemed to jump up at me from the cream-colored paper. The words cleared my brain immediately.

  If you desire to receive information that will connect the Marquis of Stade to the death of Daniel Fitzgerald, come immediately to the kitchen garden gate. Alone. It was signed A Friend.

  In defense of myself, I must say here that I was so upset by the scene that I had just witnessed between Adrian and Lady Mary that I was not thinking clearly, I like to think that under ordinary circumstances I would not have been such a fool. However, nothing I say can disguise the fact that I proceeded to lift one of the guest’s cloaks from the small salon where they were all piled, and to slip unseen out one of the side doors of the house.

  The night was very clear and chilly, I hugged the borrowed velvet cloak close around my bare shoulders and arms as I made my way along the graveled path that led to the back of the house, where the kitchen garden was situated. The almost-full moon was hanging in the sky above the trees, illuminating the world with an eerie white light.

  I reached the garden gate and stood for a moment, watching and listening. The only movement in the moonlit night was the gentle swaying of the boughs of the apple trees on the far side of the stone wall that separated the garden from the part of the drive that tradesmen used. Slowly I opened the gate and moved into the garden.

  Somewhere a nightingale was singing. I tripped on the edge of my too-long borrowed cloak and halted, my attention caught by the shadow of the shed that lay against the wall in the corner of the garden. The apple trees rustled softly in the breeze, and I stared at the line of light that showed under the front door of the garden shed. From the far side of the wall came a jingling sound, and I recognized the noise a harness makes when a horse shakes its head.

  Danger.

  I realized in a rush of panic that I had been a fool to answer this mysterious summons alone. My heart began to pound, and then I heard behind me the sound of a footstep crunching on gravel. I whirled around, hands extended to protect myself, just as a heavy blanket was thrown over the entire upper part of my body, catching my hands helplessly within its folds. Strong hands wrapped the blanket tightly around me, lifted me like a sack, and began to carry me, even though I fought as ferociously and uselessly as a trapped cat.

  We did not go very far. I was still struggling when I was flung to the ground. I landed hard and lay still for a moment, the wind knocked out of me. As I struggled to catch my breath, a hand grasped the end of the blanket, gave it a vicious jerk, and tumbled me out of it onto the hard-packed dirt floor of the garden shed.

  “Get up.” The voice fairly vibrated with hatred and fury. The line of light that had caught my attention earlier had come from the lantern that, when I raised my eyes, cast enough light in the shed for me to see the Marquis of Stade standing over me—with a pistol pointed at my chest.

  Oh my God, I thought. Oh my God,

  My heart was hammering as I cast a quick look around the shed, trying to see if there might be some way out of this.

  “You little bitch,” he snarled. “Get up.” He called me other unspeakable names as I got unsteadily to my feet, my eyes now riveted on that pistol. The rage poured from him in waves that were
almost tangible.

  I gained my feet. My mouth was so dry I didn’t know if I could speak, but I had to try. “You won’t get away with this, Stade,” I managed to croak. “You got away with killing Papa, but you are a suspect now. You won’t get away with killing me.”

  His neck muscles were swelled like a bull’s. “Yes, I will,” he said. “They may suspect me, but they won’t be able to prove anything. No one has seen me this time either.”

  My hands had involuntarily spread themselves in front of my stomach in a futile gesture of protection.

  My baby, I thought. I can’t let him kill my baby.

  Once again my eyes desperately searched the shed. There were some garden tools leaning against the far wall, but I would never have the time to get to them.

  “You won’t get away with this,” I repeated.

  “I’m going to kill you,” he said, and raised his pistol so that it was once more trained on my chest.

  At that moment the door behind him swung open. He heard it and started to swing around, but he had already begun to squeeze the trigger. His hand jerked, and the shot boomed out and buried itself in the wooden wall behind me.

  Through the black smoke given off by the pistol, I saw Harry standing in the doorway, a fireplace poker in his raised hand. He was in the act of bringing it down on Stade’s head when Stade once more got his double-barrel pistol pointed. It went off at the same moment that Harry’s poker connected, and both men fell crashing to the ground.

  “Harry!” the bloodcurdling scream of Harry’s name came from me. There was blood streaming from Stade’s forehead as he lay sprawled motionless on the ground. I stepped on his stomach as I frantically scrambled to get to Harry.

  There was blood all over his shoulder, but his eyes were open and his voice was clear as he said to me, “You all right, Kate?”

  “Oh my God, Harry,” I said, “you’ve been shot!”

  I thought I heard Stade beginning to move, and I turned around to check on him.

  Another voice spoke from the doorway. “Kate! What in the name of God is happening here?”