The prince of pleasure n-5

by Nicole Jordan

  "It will be nearly impossible to find rooms at an inn at this late date. The Guineas is a leading meet, and the entire racing world will be in attendance."

  "Well, if you want me there, you will find a way."

  Julienne gave him an arch smile of her own. "I'm certain the resourceful Marquess of Wolverton can rise to the occasion and charm a set of rooms from a Newmarket innkeeper."

  "You drive a hard bargain, love, but I will do my best to satisfy you."

  "Satisfying me will be quite a feat," she reminded him in dulcet tones.

  Dare's frustration hadn't lessened as he watched Julienne's performance the following evening. He had sidestepped her questions about the companion's lover because he could see no point in alarming her unnecessarily.

  There was no reason to tell her about finding the pearl broach in his carriage or the likelihood that Caliban had planted it there. Lady Castlereagh had confirmed that the bauble was indeed the one Alice Watson had worn, which made Dare almost positive Caliban had been taunting him.

  Dare's thoughts were centered on his nemesis rather than Shakespeare's play by the time Lady Anne was supposed to be poisoned. He watched Julienne take a sip from her wineglass and launch into an impassioned speech lamenting King Richard's malevolence. It was perhaps five minutes later when her voice suddenly quavered and she touched her throat. She managed a few more words, but then her delivery faltered altogether, making Dare wonder if she had forgotten her lines.

  Suddenly she swayed and slowly sank to the stage floor, as if in a faint.

  Her collapse just now was not part of the script, Dare was certain.

  Her fellow actors seemed bewildered by the digression. One of the "palace guards" knelt at Julienne's side, making up lines as he went. "My queen! Are you ill?"

  When Julienne gave no response, fear snaked along Dare's spine. Without conscious thought, he rose from his seat and hurriedly left his box, making his way along the corridors and down to the pit.

  By the time he leapt up on stage, a crowd of actors had gathered around Julienne, and there was an audible buzz from the puzzled audience.

  He pushed his way through to kneel beside Julienne.

  She was barely conscious, he realized. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse so weak it was almost undetectable.

  "Summon a doctor!" Dare demanded, his voice rough with dread.

  He chafed her wrists to no avail. When someone handed him a vial of smelling salts, he waved it under her nostrils. Her eyelids fluttered and she gave a soft moan, but her body remained limp.

  Lifting Julienne in his arms, he carried her backstage to the green room, ignoring the questions directed by the anxious manager, Samuel Arnold.

  Dare laid her down on the chaise and loosened the tight bodice of her gown, his gaze riveted on her pale face, her blue lips that were barely moving as she tried futilely to speak. The last time he'd seen such a bloodless visage, it was that of a dead woman.

  To his relief, a man claiming to be a physician appeared almost immediately, saying he had been in the audience. Dare paced the floor during the examination of Julienne, scarcely hearing one of Kean's oratories in the distance as the play continued.

  In only moments, the doctor frowned. "Perhaps the wine she drank was noxious, but it is possible… My lord, I wonder if she might have been poisoned."

  "Poisoned?" Dare rasped, his chest clenching, while Arnold echoed the same shocking question.

  "Yes. Ingesting wolfsbane will have this particular effect."

  "Will she die?" Dare forced himself to ask.

  "I doubt she drank enough to kill her, but the poison must be purged from her body, else her heart will slow too much."

  Dare stared down at Julienne as she lay there so weak and helpless. His own heart had stopped beating the moment she sank to the floor, but the possibility that she might have been poisoned sent fear and rage pulsing through his veins.

  "Someone fetch me some vinegar, if you have it," the doctor urged. "Or some soap and a glass of water, if vinegar cannot be found."

  The manager hastened to do his bidding, returning shortly with a half-full bottle of vinegar. While the doctor made preparations, Dare drove all the onlookers but Arnold from the room so as to give the patient privacy.

  The doctor forced Julienne to drink, then turned her onto her stomach. With her head hanging over the side of the chaise, he pumped on the small of her back until she emptied the contents of her stomach into a chamber pot.

  "I think that should do the trick," the doctor said, his tone grave but satisfied.

  After a moment he gave way to Dare, who sat beside Julienne on the chaise and gently sponged her face and lips with a moist cloth.

  At length her eyes fluttered open, and she raised a hand weakly to her temple. "What… happened?"

  He brushed a tendril from her damp forehead. "Something you drank disagreed with you," he said with a warning glance toward the doctor, not wanting to alarm her. "We'll talk later, love. I will have my carriage summoned and take you home to your lodgings. For now just try to rest."

  A puzzled frown etched her brow, but Julienne nodded trustingly and shut her eyes.

  Dare covered her with a blanket, then ushered the other men from the room, leaving Julienne in peace for the moment.

  The doctor could have been mistaken about the poison, Dare knew, but he didn't believe in coincidences. He suspected, rather, that Caliban was worried he was getting too close in his investigation and that this was an attempt to warn him off.

  Dare's mouth thinned with determination. He would take the warning to heart, of course. If Julienne were to die because of him… It didn't bear thinking on.

  He had no intention of abandoning his search, though. But he would have to change tactics if he hoped to win the battle against a determined killer.

  Dare took Julienne home and arranged for her landlady to watch over her for the night. To his relief, when he called at her rooms the next morning, she had recovered enough to sit up in bed and question him about what had happened.

  Dare told her about the suspected poisoning and how the manager's inquiries after the play had lead nowhere. No one in the theater company had any notion how poison could have come to be in her wineglass. No one had seen anything suspicious.

  "Do you honestly think Caliban meant to kill me?" Julienne asked.

  "No," Dare answered. "I think he merely meant it as a warning for me. But I'm taking no chances. I've arranged for a footman to escort you to and from the theater and to be with you wherever else you go."

  "Surely you are exaggerating the threat," she protested.

  "Perhaps, but I don't want your demise on my conscience," Dare replied emphatically.

  What worried him, though, was that if Caliban truly wanted Julienne dead, there might be no way to stop him.

  He sent a report to Lucian in Devonshire about the attack and conferred with Lucian's assistant, Philip Barton. But they uncovered no clues of any sort during the next two weeks. Once again the treacherous Caliban had eluded any efforts to trace him.

  There were no further threatening incidents in the interval, at least. Dare considered canceling the trip to Newmarket, but decided that having Julienne out of town was preferable to letting her remain in London as a target. And by leaving town, he could give the appearance that he'd abandoned the investigation, even if he had no intention of doing anything of the kind.

  Caliban's taunts, however, had affected Dare more than he cared to admit. He could go nowhere without looking over his shoulder, searching the shadows for further threats. And he knew he would spend the entire time at the race meet doing the same thing.

  It was late afternoon when they arrived in Newmarket. Dare had again urged Julienne and her friend to stay with him at his lodge, but Solange declined, saying that it was one thing to enjoy a house party with dozens of other guests but quite another to be quartered with a notorious bachelor with no one but servants to play chaperone, and that surely wha
tever madman had poisoned Julienne in London would not follow them here.

  Dare reluctantly agreed. He didn't believe Caliban would pursue them here, but he would take the added precaution of arranging with the innkeeper to keep a sharp eye out for the ladies' protection.

  All the inns were packed, as Dare had predicted, but for the eminent Lord Wolverton, waters parted. The Harriford Arms managed to provide two very elegant rooms for Miss Laurent and Madame Brogard and maid during the week of the race.

  Solange professed to be weary after the fifty-mile drive, even with Dare's well-sprung traveling chaise, so he proposed they remain at the inn to rest before his coach returned for them at seven, when they would dine with him at his lodge.

  As the ladies were settling in their rooms and being refreshed with tea, their rotund host became effusively forthcoming about Lord Wolverton and his racers.

  "His lordship has winners more often as not, and I've reckoned a good bit of blunt on him this week. He is a member of the Jockey Club, too. When he wanted rooms, I gave him rooms. A canny sort don't refuse a request from him."

  "What is this Jockey Club?" Solange asked.

  "I believe they are the rulers of the British Turf," Julienne said wryly. "Dare will no doubt be happy to satisfy our curiosity tonight."

  As she expected, Dare's hired lodge turned out to be a mansion. And as usual, his chef had prepared an excellent dinner.

  The conversation proved just as fulfilling to Julienne. She had resolved to think of this outing as a holiday-to enjoy herself and try to forget the danger lurking over their heads. Since she had never attended a race meet, she found Dare's explanations about the racing of blood horses highly engrossing.

  "The race this week will be run over a mile on a straight course," Dare said. "And the winner will receive a purse of two thousand guineas, thus the name."

  In past centuries, grueling heats were run over distances as long as four miles, he explained. But nowadays match races were shorter and run for money, while plate and cup races were run for trophies. The 2000 Guineas on Friday was a match race, with a field of twenty-three horses. Huge sums would be wagered on side bets, Dare added, predicting that the amount for this race would reach two hundred thousand pounds.

  "So much?" Solange exclaimed.

  "Would you care to place a wager?" he asked.

  "Not I," Julienne responded first. "I have no intention of depleting my hard-earned purse on an absurd wager like some outrageous noblemen we know."

  Dare merely grinned at her jibe. "Well then, if you ladies are amenable, we will observe the training at the course tomorrow morning and tour the Jockey Club headquarters in the afternoon. And there is an assembly tomorrow night. Newmarket boasts some of the premier studs in the country, but we can save visiting them till the following day."

  Solange wrinkled her nose. "Mais non, I do not care to suffer a smelly stables, but I should very much like to attend a dance."

  The following morning, they rode out on hired hacks to watch the training on Newmarket Heath. The mist was just dissipating, and Julienne could see vast stretches of green sown with copses of splendid beech trees. On the landscape beyond rose the turrets and cupolas of countless stud farms and stables.

  The horses looked magnificent, with their coats shining in the sunlight and powerful muscles flexing as they cantered past in warm-up laps.

  "Possibly a third of the Thoroughbreds in England train here," Dare informed them.

  Several dozen trainers and owners stood beside the course, studying watches and giving instructions to jockeys.

  There were no special seats for spectators or booths selling food or any other amenities. As a result, there were few ladies present, for few of the fairer sex would tolerate the spartan discomfort of the Newmarket course. Most of the observers, Dare said, would watch the race from horseback or from the top of coach roofs.

  "You cannot expect us to climb upon a coach!" Solange protested-to which Dare flashed an amused grin and assured her that his servants would provide his guests with every comfort.

  Despite the current lack of accommodations, however, the excitement was contagious. They saw the two colts Dare had entered in the race and watched their breathtaking performance as they pounded down the heath in a surge of thundering hooves and flying manes. Afterward, Dare introduced his trainer and spoke privately with him while Julienne and Solange waited.

  "My apologies," Dare said at the conclusion. "The fellow is as temperamental as any blooded mare and must be handled with care. But he's the best there is at his profession."

  That, too, didn't surprise Julienne, for she suspected Dare would hire only the best.

  They lunched at a public house in Newmarket and later toured the Jockey Club on High Street, the center of breeding and racing in England, where the Stud Book and Racing Calendar were kept.

  That evening they attended an assembly at the home of one of the local noblemen for supper and dancing. Dare, it seemed, knew everyone. The moment his party entered the ballroom, he was surrounded by acquaintances wanting to renew old friendships and requesting his opinion on their racers.

  Julienne and Solange were given little chance to feel neglected, though, for the company was lively and congenial, and both ladies found themselves much sought after by gentlemen eager to dance.

  Eventually Julienne enjoyed a waltz with Dare. And they partook of the buffet supper with him. But then she was drawn away again when her next partner claimed her.

  Near the end of the evening, Julienne was returning from the floor to where Solange awaited her when out of the corner of her eye she caught a sight that froze her in her tracks: a tall, dark-haired figure of a man hovering at the edge of the crowd.

  Ivers.

  He disappeared from view just as suddenly, but a sense of unease washed over Julienne. Her skin felt cold and clammy, and she had difficulty breathing.

  "Are you unwell, mon amie?" Solange asked solicitously. "You look quite pale."

  "No, I am fine," she lied, telling herself she had only imagined him. Ivers was nothing but a remnant of a particularly unpleasant nightmare.

  She hadn't seen him for seven years and had hoped never to see him again. Anthony Gale, the Earl of Ivers, had been a neighbor of Dare's grandfather-a wild young buck who'd developed a not-so-friendly rivalry with Dare over the course of that infamous summer.

  They were both considered rakes and both stunningly handsome, but Ivers's coloring was as dark as Dare's was fair, while his suave charm had always seemed too calculating for Julienne's taste. Even she, however, hadn't realized just how despicable a cad Ivers was- to her everlasting regret.

  With a shudder, she fixed a smile on her lips and greeted Solange's latest dance partner. But she was glad when the assembly ended and they drove back to the Harriford Arms in the quiet of Dare's luxuriously appointed coach.

  He escorted them inside the inn, reminded Julienne that he would collect her at ten in the morning for her tour of the local stud farms, and then left them with a bow.

  She had started to follow Solange up the stairs when the innkeeper spied her from the taproom and hurried to catch up to her. It puzzled her when he handed her a note.

  "Go ahead, Solange," Julienne told the Frenchwoman absently as she tried to peruse the writing in the dim light. "I will meet you for breakfast in the morning."

  Unable to make out the message, though, she mounted the stairs after a moment and moved down the corridor toward a wall sconce. It was quieter here away from the noise of the crowded taproom, so quiet she could hear the thudding of her heart as she began to read.

  My dear Miss Laurent,

  I believe we have much to discuss. Meet me at dawn tomorrow behind the inn.

  It was signed with a bold scrawl: Ivers.

  Prickles crawled along her spine at the same moment she heard the stealthy fall of footsteps behind her.

  Whirling, she stared, her heart in her throat as the Earl of Ivers came sauntering toward her.r />
  He stopped barely a few feet from her. He seemed to have changed little in the past seven years, Julienne thought. Except there were more lines of dissipation etching his noble features, and his eyes were a trifle bloodshot.

  "Mademoiselle Laurent."

  His knowing smile chilled her. She couldn't breathe, couldn't speak. Help was only a shout away, but she was too shocked to move.

  "How fortuitous that I find you alone. I thought I would have to wait till the morrow."

  "What…?" The word came out a croak. Swallowing, Julienne tried again. "What are you doing here?"

  "Why, I wish to speak to you."

  Knotting her fists, she struggled for a semblance of composure. If he smelled her fear, he would only be more dangerous. "I am listening."

  "I believe you can help me. I find myself in rather straitened circumstances at the moment. Debts of honor, you see. The Turf has proved my weakness, alas. I may have to flee the country if I cannot raise the necessary funds."

  "What could that possibly have to do with me?"

  "I was in London recently, and yours was the name on everyone's lips. You've become renowned as an actress. And you have several rich patrons at your beck and call… including Wolverton, I understand. It seems you've come full circle if he is your lover again. It shouldn't be difficult for you to wrest some of his wealth from him."

  "You must be mad," Julienne said through gritted teeth, "if you think I would give you so much as a shilling for any reason."

  "Not mad. Merely desperate." His eyelids drooped in speculation. "The Jewel of London… How long would your fame last if your past nefarious activities were made public? If it was revealed that you committed treason?"

  "You know very well those accusations were false!"

  "But you should have no doubt that I can unearth any amount of evidence against you if I choose."

  Julienne felt her stomach knot. Ivers could doubtless fabricate more lies, but she wouldn't bow to his threats this time. "I have no intention of succumbing to your blackmail again."

  "It would be foolish to ignore my request."

  "Then I will simply be foolish. My answer is no."