A Most Demanding Mistress (Fashionably Impure Book 2)

by Natasha Blackthorne

  “Neither did I, until I took the time to learn. That’s one thing that Anne and I agreed upon, you are intelligent and, when you apply yourself, you learn fast. I don’t know anyone more suited to do this for us than you.” Jon tapped the table. “Do this job for me, this duty for your family and you’ll have enough money to wed Miss Jones in style.”

  “It is not that easy. It can’t be.”

  “Bah! You are being a hen about this.” Jon waved his hand dismissively. “When you return, wealthy, they will line up then, begging to accept this chit of Winterton’s as your wife, your countess.” Jon chuckled dryly. “Believe me, you’ll find such power delicious when it comes.”

  “You want me to go to China. To be your eyes and ears there.”

  “Eventually,” Jon allowed. “You would of course, take your sons and your wife with you. You could live like a king there. But please, let’s take this one step at a time. Let’s see you go to America first and see how things really are there.”

  Adrian said nothing.

  “You know, quiet ladies…” He shook his head. “You have to watch out for them.”

  “Is that a fact?” Adrian said, listlessly.

  “Hmm—” Jon retrieved the case from his pocket and withdrew a cigar. “They seem lost in their own worlds but they are always observing others around them. They miss very little and they think very deeply on what they have seen.”

  Jon went and lit his cigar and then came back to his seat. “My Anne is just such an observant lady. You asked if I take her advice, well of course I do. Just the other day, she was saying that she thought there might be another reason that you hesitate to make this chit you’re obviously so in love with your wife.”

  Adrian looked up, feeling his attention engaged truly for the first time since Jon had joined him. “Does she really?”

  Adrian wondered if Anne agreed with him that he was unworthy of Miranda.

  Jon drew on his cigar, drawing out the suspense for Adrian. Extending that moment when he would hear himself condemned.

  Finally, Jon spoke. “She thinks you are afraid that Miss Jones will say no, because she doesn’t want to share your genteel poverty. Or you believe that she will not be able to live with such genteel poverty and austerity. You think she cannot be trusted to make such a sacrifice for love.”

  “What do you think?” Adrian asked.

  “I think my lady is completely correct, as she so often is.”

  Adrian stared at his drink then pushed it away. “The hell you say.”

  Adrian returned to his townhouse simply because it was his habit to return home in the evenings and bathe and shave. Inside, he was seething with rage. Someone had hurt his child. He knew himself that mental pain was often the worst kind of pain.

  He had not gone to Davey and asked for confirmation.

  Or to ask who had done this.

  The boy had been napping and it wasn’t the time to upset him over something like this. Also, Adrian admitted if Miranda couldn’t get the truth of who had done this out of Davey, then he likely couldn’t either.

  Adrian felt as though he could gladly kill the culprit.

  But if it was a woman, what was he to do then?

  One couldn’t call a woman out for satisfaction in a duel.

  He could call the watch but the only thing she had done was speak words.

  He opened his door with the key and walked inside, tugging his cravat loose with a savage pull.

  “Oh my God, Adrian!” Dorothy gasped as he entered the vestibule.

  Anger swept through him. “What the devil are you doing here, Dorothy?”

  “You allowed that woman to take your son to her home!”

  He frowned. “What business is it of yours?”

  “I thought that I was releasing him into your care. But you have abdicated that care.”

  “He’s safe where he is. He is happy and eating and sleeping again.” Adrian’s eyes narrowed “he is sleeping peacefully now—” He leaned closer, menacingly. “Now that he has confided in Miss Jones about the woman who told him his mother is calling him home to heaven to be with God’s angels.”

  He watched her carefully for her reaction.

  Had she paled?

  She did take a step or two backwards, but that was surely just a reaction to his aggressive stance.

  “Well, that sounds absolutely mad! Absurd.”

  “Hmm,” he mused dragging his cravat completely untied. “Yes, it does. But it would answer many unsolved questions, would it not?”

  “Who do you believe this mad woman is?”

  “I don’t know. The boy will not say.”

  “Do you know what I think, Adrian?” She moved closer and placed her hand on his chest, reminding him of their previous intimacy. “I think Miss Jones made this whole matter up.”

  “Why should she do that?”

  “To confuse you. To confuse Davey.”

  “Why would Miranda want to cause me such pain?”

  Dorothy shrugged. “Perhaps she believes you’re showing me far too much attention lately.”

  “I haven’t shown you any special attention.”

  “Well, you know how young women are, with their imaginations. Just look at Jane.”

  “What does Jane have to do with this?”

  “Jane was flighty, unbalanced. I find Miss Jones the same.”

  “How strange, I was just thinking, on my way here, how different Miss Jones is from Jane.”

  “Ah, you see, you compare her to Jane and find her lacking. She is bound to sense the conflict within you.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “What other woman cares enough about you to want to hurt you through your son? I think she wants to disrupt your life, to break your son and then, grief-stricken, you will be but putty in her hands.”

  “It must be one of the servants.”

  “You think a mere servant could enact a scheme this clever? This well carried out?”

  Adrian’s head began to pound, fiercely. A side-effect of putting off his first brandy of the day. He put his hand to his head. “Leave.”

  “What?”

  “Please, just leave me. I need to be alone.”

  Dorothy chuckled, continuing on as though she had not heard him. “Believe me, no servant girl could ever, in a thousand life times, come up with a scheme that well thought out, that well carried out.”

  “Be that as it may, I will be coming to your home to question your servants. By God, I shall find this culprit or die trying.”

  “Look no further than your caged night bird. I think she’s ready to fly away on you.”

  He scowled, whilst massaging his forehead. “You just said she’s the one who manipulated Davey out of frustrated love for me.”

  “No, she will break your heart, Adrian. She’s a cold-hearted harlot. She’ll break you just like she did Papa.” Dorothy’s voice broke a bit. “I knew, from the first time I observed you watching her. I saw how lustfully your eyes followed her. I knew that we would have to go through all of this. I knew that you would have to lose your heart to her and have broken by her. You would have to get that all worked out before you could appreciate me and what we had.” She rushed at him, placing her hands on his chest and staring up at him, avidly. “What we can have again! Only better, deeper, stronger this time!”

  He took her hands and pulled them from himself. “Dorothy, I don’t love you. I never did and I never will.”

  “No, no, you just don’t think that you do. But you do love me!”

  He shook his head, released her wrists and walked away from her, moving toward the stairs. “I love her, only her. If it is to break my heart, as you say, I love her so much that it should be my pleasure to have my heart broken by her.” He let his lip quirk upwards. “I’ll become one of those sad, yet romantic men, those broken figures that linger around the park and the alehouses.” He laughed then, hearing the cynical echo in the sound.

  “No, no it wasn’
t supposed to turn out this way. He promised.”

  Adrian frowned. “Who promised?”

  “I turned your protective instincts to Froster. I thought then that you would see what a little heartless tramp she was. But then those boys did what they did. They interfered with what should have been a natural, effortless thing. And you didn’t see her as she is. Sympathy clouded your mind. What evil demon of fate, what diabolical angel of discord could have recreated Jane’s death scene to engage your sympathies so deeply for that-that harlot! That I never saw coming. I didn’t plan for such an occurrence!”

  He whirled on her. “Shut your filthy mouth!”

  “I had to do it! Don’t you see? I had to do it all for you. For us.”

  He took her by the shoulder, roughly and he glared down at her. “Dorothy, I’d best not discover any ugly truths about you and what happened with Davey.”

  “Anything I did, I did for you! To save you!”

  He took her by the shoulder and shoved her towards the front door. “Leave, get out of here before I forget that you’re a woman.”

  “You don’t understand…all that I have done for you.” She placed a hand to his chest, again.

  Cold, clammy nausea overtook him. “What the devil, Dorothy?”

  “Ha! You don’t believe me. It was Winterton who told me the truth about Miss Jones and how evil she was. How she had been extorting money from Papa with her lover and how she had slowly poisoned him with Foxglove. You understand now why we had to fight the will so hard. She couldn’t be allowed to live in luxury on Papa’s money.”

  He saw the glow of hysteria in Dorothy’s eyes.

  She had been driven insane by Winterton.

  And Winterton had someone else, perhaps a servant in his employ to slowly poison Carrville. He gained two things in this way. One, he took Miranda’s protector from her.

  Two, he set up this current situation where Dorothy was supposed to, presumably with more finesse and without revealing Winterton’s name, accuse Miranda of being a murderess.

  Only Winterton could have the ultimate arrogance to believe he could carry such dramatic, grand schemes out successfully.

  Why would Winterton go to such extremes?

  Because he was a devil and he didn’t want to kill Miranda. That much Adrian understood in a flash. He wanted Miranda to live and to suffer, greater and greater indignities and losses.

  Winterton had created that scene with the boys and the poisoned wine, not to kill her, as Miranda had thought. No, her father had done it to recreate Jane’s death scene to bring Adrian closer to Miranda.

  To bring two people who were undeniably attracted together.

  Bring them together so that Winterton could scheme to tear them apart once Miranda fell in love?

  No, no it couldn’t be like that. It would have required extensive spies in Carrville’s house, in Miranda’s house, in Dorothy’s house and Adrian’s too. Winterton would have to have been consumed with nothing else but daily reports on every little glance and word exchanged by the main people involved, surely.

  It was much too complicated for Adrian to comprehend.

  But such was the scheme of a man, driven mad by hatred for his own flesh and blood?

  Or was it hatred for himself, projected onto Miranda?

  A little of both?

  Perhaps.

  Yet, maybe Adrian’s imagination was running riot.

  No one, not even Winterton, could possibly be so arrogant, so insane to believe such a scheme could be carried out to successful completion.

  However, one thing was for certain.

  He looked down at the woman he held onto so fiercely. “Dorothy, you’re quite mad. I am going to find you some help.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Adrian found himself placed in the most uncomfortable position of pulling his former lover into the withdrawing chamber by force. Walters had held Dorothy still whilst Adrian tied her hands behind her back. At first, she fought. Then her eyes became glazed, and she was babbling about their future as man and wife and how they should have been together all along.

  Adrian sent Walters out for the doctor. He didn’t know what else to do. He might have sent for the watch but what good would it do to instigate a scandal?

  The whole matter made him nauseated.

  He rubbed his stomach and poured himself a brandy. But when he lifted it to his lips, he found himself unable to drink it,

  He called for tea to be brought to him. He stared at the closed withdrawing chamber door.

  Should he mix some tea with laudanum and dose Dorothy with it?

  Should he wait for the doctor?

  Was she suffering in some manner? The reality of all that she had done kept crashing in on him, in wave after wave of greater acceptance of an unacceptable truth. In the wake of that horror, he found himself caring less and less about what she felt.

  A knock sounded at the door, pulling him from his troubled thoughts. A vague feeling of increased dread centered around his navel.

  What now?

  The thought came unbidden, and he frowned.

  Why should he expect any greater trouble? He didn’t know, but he did.

  He put his drink down on a side table and walked to answer the door. As the housekeeper came running, her face flushed, he held up a hand. “I’ll see to it.”

  He opened the door.

  Clad in a suit that was so dark blue it was almost black, Stephen Drake stood on his doorstep. “Good evening, Lord Danvers,” he said in his characteristically hoarse voice.

  An urge to close the door threatened to overcome Adrian’s good manners. Jon was exactly right; the man exuded darkness.

  Death.

  And there had been enough darkness and death to last Adrian the remainder of his whole life.

  But he pushed his instincts down. “Baron Drake, what a pleasant surprise. Won’t you come in for a drink?”

  “With pleasure, Lord Danvers.” The raven-haired baron walked in. “But I would prefer tea, with much cream and honey, if you have it.”

  And Adrian took his hat then handed them to the housekeeper who had caught her breath somewhat. “Tell Walters when he returns that we’ll be up in my study,” Adrian informed her.

  But Baron Drake was looking intently at the closed withdrawing chamber door. He offered a smile full of friendly charm.

  Completely disarming.

  “We could use your withdrawing chamber.”

  Baron Drake had never been a guest in Adrian’s house. But Adrian supposed he might have simply guessed which door was the one to the withdrawing chamber. Yet, it gave Adrian a sense of unease all the same.

  “I’ll be blunt, my lord” Drake said. “You have something of great interest to me waiting in your withdrawing chamber.”

  Something almost sinister flashed in Drake’s eyes.

  Adrian scowled. “Have you been spying on my household?”

  Drake came closer and spoke in a low voice. “Having made it my business to learn more about this Winterton fellow, I have developed a greater interest in his dealings.”

  Now the baron had Adrian’s attention. He nodded towards the withdrawing chamber. “You have an interest in—”

  Drake glanced at the housekeeper who stood waiting with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open.

  All Adrian’s servants had received an eye and earful tonight. Too much, in fact, for his comfort. He pulled his keys from his pocket and made a beckoning gesture to Drake as he walked to the withdrawing chamber.

  When they entered, the footman and maid, brother and sister, who had been placed there to guard Dorothy, stared at him with wide eyes. Tersely, he ordered them to leave.

  Dorothy’s eyes lit with recognition as Drake sat on the settee.

  Another pang of dread and foreboding struck through Adrian’s gut.

  “We’re going to get you help now,” Drake said.

  “I have called for the doctor.”

  “I know,” Drake said,
mildly. “I have had to detain your servant in my carriage—”

  “What?!” Adrian exclaimed as he stormed towards Drake. “You will release him immediately!”

  Drake held up a hand and shook his head. “My lord, hear me out. This lady,” he gestured to Dorothy. “Was driven quite mad by Winterton, who apparently is good at exploiting people’s weaknesses, discovering their deepest fears and vanities and manipulating them. For his pleasure.” A grim expression hardened Drake’s elegant features. “Or in this case vengeance against his daughter. The man is a true sadist in the evilest sense of the word. However, he seems to prefer inflicting emotional and mental pain the most.”

  “You know her. You’ve added to this somehow,” Adrian said, giving full vent to his instinctive distrust of Drake.

  “I did do a little inquiry and persuasion with the lady.” Drake was studying Dorothy with the same interest a schoolboy gives to a butterfly pinned to a board. “She is very experienced with poisons and their administration.”

  Dorothy had almost seemed in a trance the last few moments. Now her eyes came alive, and she whimpered. “No, don’t…”

  “Quiet now, Dorothy,” Drake said in an authoritative voice.

  Dorothy visibly quelled.

  “In addition to her emotional manipulation of your youngest son, she also recently purchased a bottle of arsenic.”

  “Arsenic!”

  “I gather that she believed once your son and been broken and gone mad, and your favorite mistress died so suddenly and unexpectedly that you would have been shattered and forced to turn to her, for comfort. With a deeper appreciation for Lady Chadwick, you likely would have offered marriage. These are the kinds of scenarios that Winterton enjoys creating the most. The drama and the heady power of using others like pawns. But he used her, simply to be the one to purchase the poison and to in time hand it to his spy in Miranda’s house, Sally. And that she would have given the poison to you in your brandy, and you would have died and left Miranda alone and heartbroken.”

  Adrian was frozen, not only with horror but with the compelling note to Drake’s voice. Winterton was not the only one who enjoyed a good, dark drama; that much was clear from the rapt expression on the baron’s face.