Lady Notorious

by Theresa Romain

  “Dinner?” George replied doubtfully. “It’s very early for dinner. Is she having a late breakfast?”

  “Maybe.” Which meant that Gatiss could be anywhere, and back anytime.

  “I’ll leave the ring on the writing desk,” he said. No other servants would enter the chamber before the lady’s maid returned, so it would be safe enough. Now that it wasn’t on Cass’s hand anymore, he was done with it. He didn’t want to look at it.

  The duchess made a noise that could have been agreement. It could also have been a protest. It could, for that matter, have been the first bars of a song she’d sung to him when he was a baby.

  It meant nothing.

  With a clack that rang loud and solid through the silent room, he set the ring onto the desk and turned his back on it.

  “She will be back,” said the duchess faintly, “before my next dose. Gatiss never misses a dose.”

  “Of course she doesn’t, because you’ve told her you cannot live without it.”

  When the duchess turned her head to regard him, he saw a vague suggestion of the mother who had once looked at him with reproach. “I cannot. It eases the days. They are all the same, but I hardly notice.”

  By now, he supposed this was true. What had begun the decline of her health, he wasn’t certain. It might have been nothing more than a strained back or a twisted ankle. But the injury had stilled her, stripping the usual activities from her day. And the empty place had to be filled somehow.

  George knew that. He’d filled so many spaces with late nights and strong drink. When he’d stopped, seeing his mother’s health slipping away, he hadn’t known what to do with the gaps in his life. He’d thought maybe nothing would ever come to fill them.

  He had drifted, tethered only by the first of his unsuccessful experiments at capturing images with chemicals and light. His father’s request to return to Ardmore House had been something to do. Someone needing him. It was always nice at first when someone needed you, until you found you could make no difference to them at all.

  “You are a duchess,” he said now. “You have power to make your days whatever you wish.”

  “I thought so once. But this is easier.”

  He couldn’t control what she did all the time, especially if being present to the world—or even alive in it—was against her own inclination. He knew that, and yet he’d given up his own lodging and redirected his life to try to help.

  He wasn’t sorry. He had helped—though himself more than his mother. No one could deny he was better off, financially and physically, than he’d been when he’d been playing the role of Corinthian and rake.

  And the duchess was still alive. That was about all he could say to the good. It was helping that had gone its course. Now it felt more like control, and . . . did a grown woman, a duchess, deserve to be spied upon and chided? Even for the sake of her loved ones?

  It wasn’t an easy question. But George rather felt the answer was no. If his father was allowed to ruin their finances with gambling, his mother must be allowed to ruin her health with laudanum.

  He didn’t have to be a part of their destruction, though. Not anymore.

  “You never fought for us,” George said, not really expecting a reply. “Your husband and children. You surrendered to laudanum.”

  The moment of clarity in her eyes faded, and they closed again. Blue eyes, veiled. “It was the cards. Your father. If I never fought back, I could never be beaten.”

  “Rubbish,” said George. “If you never fight back, you are beaten from the start.”

  Why did George himself not fight back more against his father’s will? Why did he accept impoverishment and ignorance, wasted days and years, as inevitable?

  So he thought about what could come next. What he truly wanted and had the power to get, beyond the case and the damned tontine. He’d thrown himself into Cass’s plan, because it was something to do. Some reason not to feel so damned useless, like a man biding his time and hating that he was doing so. God willing, he’d outlive his father and become the next Ardmore—but he couldn’t wait until that day to make more of himself than a consumer of fabric and tea and Antoine’s delicious cream sauces.

  And the kisses of a woman beautiful in and out.

  He didn’t want to. It wasn’t fair to his father, and it certainly wasn’t fair to himself. Even if he never won Cass’s heart, he’d become a better sort of man. The process was worth the effort, just like shooting arrows into the target in the yard.

  Aloud, he decided, “I’m going to solve the tontine case. And then I will return to my own lodgings.” The sentences were the impulse of a moment, but they were right. They felt right. He’d make them true.

  His mother smiled faintly. “What will you do until then? Try another experiment with your camera?”

  “A camera obscura, Mother. Camera is merely the word for a room, not for a device.”

  “You knew what I meant.”

  “Yes, yes.” And, he decided, the conciseness of it was nice. “A camera,” he tried out. “I will carry out more experiments with my camera.”

  There was much he would have liked to record, to pin on paper with the camera’s light. Not just Lily’s face, stolen away by time, but his mother’s when she was young and fresh and active. When she cared; before years and worry and laudanum—remorseless all—had turned her into a shell.

  Then he added a fuller answer. “I will write a letter to Father’s steward in Berkshire. It’s time I learn how the estates are being managed, since Father takes no notice. And it’s time I do what I can to make them function better.”

  But first he would leave Ardmore House. Take rooms in a hotel; he could have them this very night. Given a few more days, or weeks if need be, he could find suitable bachelor quarters for the long term.

  He looked at the ring, emerald and gold, on her desk, then looked away. “I won’t be staying here any longer. You’ll have to survive on your own.”

  But she was already drifting away again, there but absent all at once, and he knew she was exactly where she wanted to be.

  When he exited the room, he almost ran into the lady’s maid. “Beg pardon, my lord. Were you visiting Her Grace?” Gatiss sounded breathless. One hand pressed her side as if against a stitch; the other clutched a familiar glass bottle bearing a chemist’s label.

  George explained where he’d left the ring. “The duchess knew you’d be back shortly. In time for her dose.”

  “That’s where I was—getting more laudanum.” Gatiss held up the bottle. “I was that sure there was another bottle in the dressing room, but it was empty.” The placid-faced servant’s brow knit. “If you’ll forgive my saying so, my lord?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s my opinion your mother is taking more laudanum than she ought.”

  George almost laughed at the obviousness of this statement. “Yes, Gatiss, I quite agree.” But really, there was nothing funny about it.

  “I’m sorry for it,” he added. “I wish I knew how to make her stop. But I’ve never had the least success, because she doesn’t really wish to stop.”

  “Ah, well. Her Grace has been doing as she wished longer than either of us has known her.” Yet Gatiss looked troubled.

  “I promise you this,” George decided. “When I remove from this household again, I’ll come back and visit her. Real visits, not just brief calls to drink tea and pay my respects. Do you think once a week would do her good?”

  “Whenever you like, my lord. Her Grace doesn’t always know what day it is, or what time of day.”

  “Well do I know it.” It seemed unfeeling to schedule time with one’s own parent. But it would be more unfeeling never to come at all, or to forget that she’d once been more than what she’d let herself become.

  And it would be unfeeling, too, not to toss out a rope—of time, of remembrance, of occupation. If the duchess were lonely or bored, he could help with that, or at least try.

  But he wouldn’t g
ive up pieces of his own life in exchange. Not anymore.

  Next, then, he descended to the first floor and knocked at the door of the duke’s study. Instead of the barking that would have once succeeded his knock, growls followed. When the duke grunted—the human equivalent of a growl—George entered. He didn’t bother greeting the painting of card players this time. Froggy was always there. He’d never finish playing his hand.

  From the floor, the great hounds regarded George balefully. Crouching, George looked them in the eye. “She taught me all the tricks. I know how to handle you now.” One of the dogs growled, so George turned to the other and scratched it behind the ears with his good hand until its yellow eyes blinked slowly and its doggy tongue lolled.

  “Did you come in to play with them?” Ardmore barked. “I need to take them out to the yard.”

  George straightened, regarding his father across the wide, cluttered desk. “Miss Benton could have taught them to use chamber pots.”

  “She was good with Gog and Magog,” granted the duke. “But it’s just as well that she left. This whole idea was foolishness, that someone in the tontine was coordinating attacks on—”

  “You say this as I stand before you with my arm in a sling, my shoulder bone broken.”

  One of the dogs—George still couldn’t tell Gog from Magog—gave a hearty sneeze. “Thank you,” George replied. “Father. You cannot deny the truth.”

  Behind his desk, the duke picked up a letter, squinted at it, then shook his head. “Could’ve been coincidence. Could’ve been chance.”

  “And the slashing of your arm? Even now, you move it stiffly.”

  “A thief.”

  George smacked his hand on the surface of the desk, sending papers flying and falling and scattering. “It was not. All these things are connected. Why can you not admit the truth?”

  “Because I don’t know what to do!” the duke roared, shoving back his chair into the painting of the card players and sending it rocking. Two canine heads lifted, bristling. The duke gave them a command to calm, then added more quietly to George, “If there’s a plot, it’s among men I’ve known my whole life. And I don’t know how to tell which or how to stop them.”

  “Miss Benton does.”

  “If she did, she’d have done it.”

  “She did do it. She will,” George replied. Of this, he felt sure. Cass wouldn’t let the case go unsolved, because then it would never leave her. And then she’d never be able, truly, to leave George and Ardmore House behind.

  He trusted in her stubbornness more than in her feelings for him.

  Just for a moment, some emotion must have shown on his face, for his father’s eyes sharpened. “You’ve fallen in love with the lady, haven’t you?”

  “You called her a lady,” George replied. “It’s about time.”

  “She was,” granted the duke. “Is. Though I never saw the need for her presence in this house.”

  “Neither did she, in the end.”

  “You haven’t answered me.” Ardmore leaned close, closer. He never smiled, but he looked as if he were considering the notion. “Did you fall in love with Cassandra Benton?”

  Did he? Had he? It was . . . something. It was the feeling of wanting to be with her; not wanting to be without her. Not remembering what he’d been like before he met her; not sure how he’d been able to stand it.

  She’d changed him. And better yet, she’d made him want to change.

  And if he never saw her again, he would never stop missing her.

  He’d been foolish not to spot the pattern before. But it was a new one to him, and he’d been wrapped up in the feel of it without seeing it for what it was.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “I love her.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  George arched a brow, gesturing with his free hand to the cluttered top of the desk. “Really? You’re going to lecture me about doing things?”

  Ardmore stood, then shuffled around the side of his desk. “Heirs are more trouble than they’re worth.”

  And that was the end of their familial moment. “Indeed. Shameful how they want to inherit something of value, isn’t it?”

  The promise of a smile vanished. “Get your hands out of my purse.”

  “I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about value.” George fumbled for words, not quite knowing what he meant. The idea teased him. “Maybe they’re the same thing.”

  The duke looked old and tired. Like the sort of man who’d gambled away his life forty years before, thinking the reckoning would never come, or that he would never have to bear it. “And maybe they’re not.”

  It was an olive branch, a white flag, a dove. George grasped it. “Father. You can trust me. Let me help you.”

  The duke looked at the piles of correspondence unanswered, bills unpaid. “I can’t afford to. I can’t take the chance. There’s so much here, if you . . .”

  He trailed off. George understood, or thought he did. Every day brought another wave of responsibilities and expenses, and once the duke had fallen behind, he could not catch up alone.

  “You can trust me,” George said again. “You’ve never let me prove myself, and several years ago it was wise you didn’t try. But now—I could help you.”

  The duke pulled out his watch. “I haven’t time to teach you anything now. I must take the dogs to the yard, then I’m due.”

  “At a gambling den?”

  Ardmore stiffened. “It’s not for you to question my actions.”

  “Which means yes.” George sighed.

  “It’s the only place I get any peace,” grunted the duke. “Only place I have things as I like them.”

  If George had been able to move his right shoulder, he would have pressed his temples. “A place where someone is literally dipping into your purse, and you bring home vowels. That’s what you like.”

  The duke swept his hand across the desk, scattering papers and spilling ink and shoving everything to the floor. Gog and Magog leapt to their feet, yelping.

  “It’s the only time I get away from all this!” shouted the duke. Breathing hard, he stared at the ruin of letters and writing tools. “It’s the only time I get to be myself, not Ardmore.”

  “If you don’t feel you’re Ardmore after all this time, then no wonder you want to get away,” George said quietly.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be. I wasn’t raised to it. But my older brother took sick, and . . . that was that. My father was a selfish sort, chasing women instead of running his dukedom. He hired good servants, good stewards.” The duke kicked at a pile of fallen papers. “In that, I’ve copied his example.”

  But he was still chasing, George realized. Chasing what he wished for. A duke ought to be the one running the race, and at his own pace.

  But he kept that thought inside, saying only, “I see you have never had an example of someone who could do what they say, and no less. Take what they ought, and no more.”

  “Nor have you,” said Ardmore, looking at his litter of possessions with a lost expression.

  His grandfather had chased oblivion in women; his father, in cards. George had joked before that he needed his own defining flaw, a vice that dominated his life. It didn’t seem funny now.

  “Go, then,” he told his father. “I will tidy this.”

  “That’s what servants are for,” snapped Ardmore. “Know your place.”

  “I do. This is it. This should be it.”

  Blue eyes met their match. George held his father’s gaze. At last, with one of his expressive grunts, with a nod of agreement, the duke turned away.

  “Come,” he summoned the dogs. And with a thump of boots and a click of canine toenails, they left.

  Then George discharged his purpose, crouching on the floor to flip through the letters littering it. Most of them hadn’t even been opened.

  The duke was like a man in a skiff on the ocean. Every day brought a new wave, and he was almost drowning, and he was
afraid to take a hand from the rudder in case his reaching fingers found no help.

  George would give him that help without making him reach out for it.

  It was easy enough to find the latest communications from the steward in Berkshire, from the old caretaker at the hunting box in Scotland, and from the smaller estate in Northumberland.

  He’d take them and read them and learn from them, and he’d begin writing replies. With his father’s blessing if he could get it; if he couldn’t, he’d simply write to the men on his own. Not with orders, but with questions. And not from here, but from wherever he chose to live instead.

  But he rather thought he could get his father’s blessing. Who would do more work than absolutely required? Besides Cass, he thought. Cass would, and maybe she’d had an influence on George.

  And the restaurant, he thought. That had been enjoyable. Maybe he’d find someone else with a talent that needed funding to grow. What would Cass say? Find the pattern.

  As if summoned by this thought, a note came to hand. It had been scattered along with everything else from atop the desk, spattered with ink from a tossed inkpot.

  Unmistakably, the writing was Cass’s. And it bore no postmark, so it had been delivered by hand, which meant that it must have arrived today.

  It was directed to both George and his father. It was short, and it was polite—and it was full of hope.

  We can solve this. Indeed, I believe we already

  have. Proceed with the plan: Saturday at nine

  o’clock in the evening. George knows the place.

  Cass

  Well. Wasn’t that an interesting development? George crumpled the note in his hand, smiling.

  Find the pattern. Try everything.

  Complete the case.

  Maybe that was the answer to winning Cass, too. Not that George was a gambler by nature—but some stakes were irresistible.

  Chapter Eighteen

  At last, it was Saturday evening. Nine o’clock.

  Cass had given Angelus the text to be included on the note: “an exclusive gathering by invitation only.” The invitation didn’t say what the gathering was for.