Perhaps she would still be happy had she not crossed paths with Miss Black. The woman clearly put thoughts in her head that had no place being there. Arabella had been satisfied with their arrangement. He was as sure of it as he was of his own name. And he’d been content.
Sighing, Nicholas climbed out of the coach and walked up the stone steps, the slightest of nods his only acknowledgment to his butler, Alfred.
Alfred nodded. “Your Grace.”
All sorts of wicked possibilities for extracting his pound of flesh from Miss Black tumbled in Nicolas’s head, each worse than the previous one. Most ended with her chained hand and foot for a year or two in a dank dungeon.
However, he knew he’d do her no physical harm. He couldn’t go that far. No, she had to suffer in other ways; deep, dark, devious ways that showed no scars. His father had taught him the art of subtle torment, and for a second he recognized the old man in himself. He quickly brushed off the association. Miss Black was not his mother. The woman deserved her comeuppance.
But he needed help with his plans, for a man of privilege did not soil his hands doing nefarious deeds.
He paused outside the library and turned back to Alfred. “I need you to fetch Mister Crawford. Tell him I have another job that requires his special talents.”
Alfred nodded his graying head. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Nicholas slipped into the library and poured himself a brandy. The high-backed leather chair conformed to his body as he tugged his cravat loose and let the heat of the fire ease some of the chill in his bones. This space was his favorite when he had troublesome thoughts on his mind. The smell of dusty old books, a painting of his mother over the fireplace, boyhood memories of her laughter as she pulled some treasured book off the shelf always filled him with warmth and contentment.
Not today. Nothing could ease his sour stomach and take away his anger. With Arabella in place, he’d begun to seek a future bride from the pack of freshly minted debutantes tossed into the marriage mart this Season. Collingwood House needed a duchess and children. It was entirely too long since laughter had filled these cavernous halls and children’s footsteps had clattered across these marble floors. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had laughed with unabashed joy in this house.
He’d chosen Lucy Banes-Dodd as the best of the batch of beauties and had begun making preliminary overtures to her father. Though she was a bit flighty for his taste, she was an attractive chit with an impeccable bloodline. With Arabella in place to warm his bed and Lucy to keep his home and bear his children, he could have found himself quite satisfied that all was as it should be, with his plans perfectly organized and executed the way he ran every aspect of his life. Neat and tidy.
It had all tumbled to ruins with Arabella’s disappearance.
“Damn that meddling woman,” he muttered under his breath.
The door to the library opened and Mister Crawford walked in unannounced. Tall and stout, the shabbily dressed investigator loped across the room, his ungainly gait the result of an old injury to his left leg.
Though not the sort of man one would invite for afternoon tea, Crawford was very good at his job. He traveled on the fringes of society, dabbled in some disreputable dealings, and was loyal as long as gold continued to flow into his pockets.
“You called for me, Your Grace?”
“You arrived faster than I expected.” Nicholas indicated a chair opposite him. The man dropped into it and stretched out his damaged knee. “Were you seated on my stoop?”
Crawford grinned and waved a thin hand. “I was coming to see you, Your Grace. I crossed paths with your footman at the corner. I wanted to see if your confrontation with Miss Black was successful.”
Nicholas frowned and lifted his glass. Crawford had found the missing Arabella for him, but that was where their connection with the matter ended. He’d not gossip about his relationship with her, nor relive today’s disastrous meeting with Miss Black with the investigator. His private life was just that, private.
“Arabella is no longer my concern,” he said dismissively. He leveled a frown on the other man to make his point clear. “Her name will not be mentioned again between us.”
The man shrugged. “Aye, Your Grace.”
Satisfied, Nicholas knitted his fingers and brought them to his lips. “I have another job for you. I need you to find out as much as you can about Miss Black. Where she goes when she leaves that dreadful town house, who she spends time with, if she has outstanding debts. I want to know every time she blinks or visits the privy. Everything.”
“Do you mind me asking why, Your Grace?” Crawford leaned back in his chair. Leather creaked. “She isn’t the sort of woman who would attract the likes of you, Your Grace.”
“No, she isn’t.” His lips turned downward. Not in the least. If he and Miss Black were the last two people alive on this Earth, he’d take up celibacy, or leap from the Tower of London headfirst before giving her a second look. “My interest in her is not personal. She stole from me, and I intend to return the favor.”
A slow grin crossed Crawford’s lined face. “I see.”
Somewhere near age forty, the investigator had lived long enough to know London inside and out, and where to dig to find all sorts of salacious information about anyone. He dressed as a man without means, invisible, as it were. If Miss Black had dead bodies hidden in her wardrobe, Crawford would flush them out.
“This might cost you plenty,” Crawford said, tapping a finger on his temple. “Miss Black was nearly impossible to find in the first place. The woman holds her secrets close.”
Nicholas waved a hand. When he was done with her, her life would be laid bare for all to see. “Cost is of no consequence. I want this done quickly and quietly.”
“I will begin right away, Your Grace.” Crawford stood, nodded, and hobbled to the door. “When I’m finished with Miss Black, you will know her better than her own mother does.”
With a grin, he tottered out the door.
After a moment, Nicholas stretched out his legs and braced his elbow on the arm of the chair. The spinster had faced him down like a growling mutt, her amber eyes filled with scorn, as if he were something vile she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe.
When he was finished with Miss Black, she’d be on her hands and knees, begging for some kindness and consideration of her plight.
He chuckled and poured another drink.
E va climbed into the coach and removed her spectacles. She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, then removed her bonnet and began the slow process of taking the multitude of pins from her hair. The routine of the simple task and the sway of the hack as it rolled through the streets eased some of the tension behind her eyes.
She’d be home soon, and safe.
The day had gone on slowly, long and troubling. After His Grace left, she’d tried to reclaim her schedule with the ladies, but found her mind occupied elsewhere. The enraged look in Nicholas Drake’s ducal eyes left her fearful she’d fallen into a viper’s pit and faced poisoned fangs. He was a powerful man with powerful friends. He could make her life a nightmare.
Still, to him Arabella was property. There were many young and beautiful women in London, eager for a man like him to keep them in luxury with coin and baubles in exchange for sexual favors. Surely one wayward mistress would not be missed very long, no matter how much he thought he cared for her. Men such as he ultimately cared for no one but themselves.
“And yet, he’d spent months searching for Arabella,” she whispered. That worried Eva most of all. Obviously the girl had meant something to His Grace. But was it the fact she’d left him that had him so disturbed? Or did he actually care for, or perhaps love, Arabella?
Eva dropped the pins into her valise, then reached to remove the heavy wig. Released from bondage, a tangle of red-gold curls fell across her shoulders and tumbled down her back in a path of sunshine and fire.
As she began to braid the mass and the rented h
ack rumbled slowly toward Mayfair, she hoped His Grace would soon claim a new courtesan and forget her, and his former mistress. It irked her that he blamed her for Arabella’s defection, as if she’d kidnapped the girl from under his long nose and dragged her screaming before a minister. Arabella had made her own decision to leave him. And had no regrets.
“If only His Grace had seen, or cared, how unhappy she was,” Eva said softly, and tied a blue ribbon around the loose braid and replaced her bonnet. “Maybe the sting of her rejection would not be so great.”
The moment the girl and Captain Greenhill had met, they’d both fallen deeply in love.
If His Grace knew his courtesan had taken up with a lowly American ship captain, well, Eva hated to think what his opinion of such a situation would be. The British nobles thought the sun rose and set on their command, and His Grace was no exception. How dare Arabella leave him? How dare Eva interfere?
She’d dared, and she would never regret Arabella’s joy or that of her handsome husband. In many ways, Eva envied their love and happiness. She might not believe in love or marriage for herself, but she wasn’t above enjoying the delight it brought others less jaded.
The town house was quiet when Eva arrived home a short time later, emotionally overwrought and exhausted from worrying about His Grace. After she hung her cloak on a peg and removed her prim gray bonnet, she took a moment to look around the simple but elegant green entryway and vowed that from this moment on, she would never give another thought to the duke. He could rage all he wanted and cut a swath of destruction across London, but he’d quickly learn that in spite of his power and wealth, he couldn’t always have everything he wanted.
“There you are, Miss.” Bessie walked out of the parlor. The dour pinch of worry evaporated from her plump face and eased the lines around her eyes. “I was beginning to worry. You are not usually out so late.”
“I was detained by a situation beyond my control, and it put me behind schedule.” Eva blinked the duke’s handsome visage out of her mind, and straightened. “How is Mother?”
“Miss Charlotte is resting in her room.” Bessie Clark had lived with Eva and her mother since right before Eva was born. She knew everything about Charlotte’s past and the circumstances of Eva’s conception, yet she never judged. Like Harold, the housekeeper kept their secrets and watched over both women like a broody hen. “She was doing well this morning but took a turn after her luncheon. I believe she was thinking of your father again. She had that look in her eyes.”
Eva nodded slowly. Whenever her mother thought of His Lordship, it was as if ten years hadn’t passed since his death. She’d slip into a trancelike state, then fall into a deep melancholia once she realized he wasn’t coming back to her. Ever.
“If you could ask Cook to make us a tray, I’ll go to her.” Eva headed for the stairs. As tired as she was, her mother always took comfort in her presence. If she was in a state, only Eva could ease her quiet suffering. “Oh, and perhaps you could include some of the lemon cakes. Mother does adore them.”
“Yes, Miss.”
Though it was still light outside, her mother’s room was dark behind drawn drapes, and not even rose pink walls and a soft pink quilt could brighten the space. Propped against pillows, Charlotte Rose Winfield, once the most celebrated courtesan of her time, lay sleeping, with a cloud of gray-blonde curls spread out around her head and shoulders.
A floorboard creaked beneath Eva’s foot, and her mother’s blue eyes opened. A slow, sleepy smile crossed her face, in it a hint of the beauty she once had been, and still was.
“Evangeline. There is my angel. Come sit with me.” Charlotte lifted her hand, and Eva moved to her side and took a place next to her on the bed. The soft odor of rosewater, her mother’s signature scent, filled her senses. “You look tired, dearest. When I spoke to your father today, he agreed that you are working too hard. Though I know you like to help those poor destitute women, you must also watch out for your health.”
The household, and her mother in particular, thought she assisted impoverished widows to find work. Only Bessie and Harold knew the truth. Society as a whole scorned courtesans and courtesans’ bastard daughters, so she and her mother kept to themselves, hidden away from Charlotte’s past.
Because of her mother’s history and the circumstances of her own birth, Eva would already have more than one black mark against her in the eyes of society if the truth were known. To further lower herself by helping courtesans to a better life, though some might find it a noble calling, would horrify most people. Society would view her as lowering herself to speak to someone of such low rank.
The humor in this was that, unbeknownst to her acquaintances and lofty neighbors, she was a member of that same lower rank, a bastard offspring of a whore. A situation Eva found amusing in spite of the sadness that normally came of such a state of affairs.
Truthfully, she was content with her lot. She had her mother, a nice home on a pleasant street, and her work to keep her busy. What more could she desire?
“I will rest tonight, Mum, I promise.” She looked down at the delicate hand in hers. Theirs was an odd pairing. Mother had become daughter, and daughter, mother. The roles had reversed that awful morning when Father’s solicitor came to the door, hat in hand, with the worst news imaginable. Father had died in a horrible coach accident on an ice-slick road while on his way to visit them one snowy night.
The already fragile Charlotte had plunged into a gray place in her mind for close to a month. Only through Eva’s forceful will had she taken any food. When Charlotte finally broke free of her deepest mourning, Eva had become her caretaker, Mother a near invalid. If not for her beloved child, Eva was certain her mother would have succumbed to her grief and followed her lover to his grave.
“God was smiling on me when he gave me you, sweet Evangeline.” Mother squeezed her hand and smiled softly. “Did I ever tell you how happy your father was when I told him I was with child? He was happier than I’ve ever seen him. After ten years together, we finally had you.”
“I know the story well, Mum.” Unhappily wed to a shrewish woman of perfect breeding, Father chose Mother for love. A love he had no right to give when he had a wife and children at home. Still, Eva had loved him with childish innocence. His loss had shattered her heart, and she’d never quite managed to piece it back together. “Yours was history’s grandest love affair,” Eva teased. As grand as a love match could be when one of the two parties belonged to another.
Her mother smiled wistfully and closed her lids. “All women should be so lucky in love.”
Lord Seymour and her mother cared not what society thought of their arrangement. They lived and loved with their hearts. However, in the end, Charlotte had ended up alone with a bastard child to raise and a small monthly stipend from his estate that her father had seen fit to put into place at Eva’s birth. His wretched wife had tried, and failed, to discreetly cut off Charlotte and Eva from their inheritance.
Finally accepting defeat in the courts, and risking public shame by pursuing the matter further, Lady Seymour and Eva’s two spoiled half sisters faded off to Kent to enjoy the massive bulk of the family fortune, without giving another thought to Charlotte or Eva. And Eva was happy to be left in peace.
“He loved you dearly, you know, angel.” Charlotte opened her eyes and deep sadness filled the blue depths. “You were his little love, his treasure.”
“I know.” Eva tucked the coverlet up to her mother’s shoulders. “He was a wonderful father. I miss him every day.”
Turning away, Charlotte tucked her arms to her chest and sadness filtered through her eyes. Once she began to fade away to her memories, there was no pulling her back into the present. “I will sleep now.”
Eva sat in the chair for a while until her mother’s breathing evened out and she slept. Half a lifetime of loving one man had come to this. Her mother suffered for love, a tragic figure alone in a bed, grieving still for her knight who had died alone on a
dark road while traveling to spend two nights in her arms while his wife was off visiting family.
Love. A condition Eva chose never to experience if her mother’s fate was to be her example. She’d long ago vowed never to love a man, any man, if this was the way such grand love played out. Love was not worth the price one paid when one life ended.
So she devoted herself to her mother, and her courtesans, for they had no qualms about love and marriage. And she was content. Never would a duke, or any man, come looking to the far reaches of the Earth for her, obsessed by what he’d lost, determined to drag her back into his life and bed.
To the world outside she was a poor young woman whose wealthy merchant father was lost at sea. She took care of her widowed mother, ill from a weak heart, or so the neighbors thought, and kept mostly to herself. Charlotte Rose, once a beautiful and celebrated courtesan, had vanished years ago, following her lover’s death, into obscurity and speculation. No one would ever put Eva’s mother and the courtesan together as one.
Out of the ashes of her father’s death, thirteen-year-old Eva had grown up fast in the following ten years and made a new life for them, free of the shadows of her mother’s former profession. And she’d do whatever it took to keep their secrets from destroying them both.
Chapter Four
I do not understand this.” Eva stared blankly at Mister Smith, her solicitor, as if he’d grown a giant wart in the center of his forehead. The man was pale beneath a mop of brown hair, his face screwed up with concern. “Mother’s town house was a gift from a, ah, friend. The note should be paid in full.”
Mister Smith picked through a stack of financial documents, then removed one from the bottom. He slid it across the desk, and she pulled it to her with her fingertips.
“This should explain everything, Miss Winfield,” he said.
The School for Brides Page 4
