by Mary Balogh
The duchess turned her head and called new instructions to the coachman. Then she turned back to Viola.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “We are such meddlesome creatures, Angeline and I. But we both love Ferdinand, you see, and hate to see him miserable. Now it breaks my heart to see that you are every bit as unhappy as he. We chose the park deliberately as our destination. We wanted to be seen with you. We want to make you respectable.”
Viola laughed bitterly. “You do not understand.”
Lady Heyward touched her arm. “Oh, yes,” she said, “we do. But Jane chose the wrong word. We are not going to make you respectable, Miss Thornhill, but respected. We Dudleys have never been respectable, you see. I would never be a simpering miss. Tresham was forever fighting duels before Jane intervened one time and caused him to get shot in the leg—and it was always over women. Ferdie can never resist the most outrageous and dangerous challenges. But we never wanted to be respectable—how dull that would be! We are respected, though. No one would dare not respect us. We could make you respected too if you would give us the chance. How exciting it would be. I would give a grand ball—”
“Thank you,” Viola said quietly but firmly. “You are both very kind. But no.”
Conversation lapsed until the barouche turned into the inn yard again. The duchess’s coachman jumped down from his perch to assist Viola to alight.
“Miss Thornhill.” The duchess smiled at her. “Please come for tea with your mother tomorrow. I believe she would be disappointed if you refused.”
“I am delighted,” Lady Heyward said, “to have met Miss Thornhill of Pinewood Manor at last.”
“Thank you.” Viola hurried into the inn before the barouche turned to leave again.
She had a new plan. It had come to her full-blown after they had left the park. It filled her mind with dizzying hope and bleak despair both at the same time. She needed to think through a few details.
22
ERDINAND ROSE FROM HIS BED THE FOLLOWING morning much later than he had intended. Of course, he had been out most of the night, dragging John Leavering and a few of his other friends from party to party—not the sort he normally attended—and even to a couple of the more notorious gaming hells. But there had been no sign at any of them of Kirby.
He intended to spend the day at Tattersall’s and a few other places where the man was likely to be. He would have to be patient, he decided, though patience was not a virtue he had much cultivated. If Kirby was seeking clients for Viola, then he must do so in the places Ferdinand intended to haunt.
He was just finishing breakfast when his valet announced that a visitor had called. He handed his master a calling card.
“Bamber?” Ferdinand frowned. Bamber up and about before noon? What the devil? “Show him in, Bentley.”
The earl strode into the dining room a few moments later, looking as ill-natured as ever and more dissolute than usual. His hair was disheveled and his eyes bloodshot. He was unshaven. He must surely have been up all night, but he was not wearing evening clothes. He was dressed for travel.
“Ah, Bamber.” Ferdinand got to his feet and extended his right hand.
The earl ignored it. He strode up to the table, reaching into a capacious pocket of his carriage coat as he did so. He pulled out a couple of folded papers and slapped them down.
“There!” he said. “It was an ill wind that blew me to Brookes’s that night, Dudley. I wish I’d never set foot there, and that’s the truth, but I did, and it can’t be helped. Damn you for all the trouble you have caused me.” He was reaching into an inner pocket as he spoke. He brought out a sheaf of banknotes and set them down beside the other papers. “Here is an end of the matter, and I hope not to hear another word about it for the rest of my days—from anyone.”
Ferdinand sat back down. “What is this?” he asked, gesturing to the papers and the money.
Bamber picked up one of the papers and unfolded it before shoving it under Ferdinand’s nose.
“This,” he said, “is a copy of the codicil m’father made to his will a few weeks before he died and left with m’mother’s solicitor in York. As you can see for yourself, he left Pinewood to that chit, his by-blow. The property was never mine, and so it was never yours, Dudley.” He tapped his forefinger on the money. “And this is five hundred pounds. It is the amount you set on the table against the promise of Pinewood. It is in payment of my debt to you. Are you satisfied? It is not one fraction the worth of Pinewood, of course. If you want more—”
“It is enough,” Ferdinand said. He took the paper and read it. His eyes lingered on four of the words written there—“my daughter, Viola Thornhill.” The late earl had made this public acknowledgment of his relationship to her, then. Ferdinand looked curiously at the other man. “Have you just come from Yorkshire, Bamber? It looks as if you have been traveling all night.”
“I damned well have,” the earl assured him. “I may be a ramshackle fellow, Dudley. I may be known as something of a loose screw, but I’ll not have it said that I have been a party to any fraud or cover-up. As soon as the chit said she had met m’father here just before he died—”
“Miss Thornhill?”
“She had the effrontery to come calling on me,” Bamber said. “You could have knocked me over with a bald feather. I didn’t know she existed. Anyway, I knew as soon as she said it that if he had been going to do anything to his will he couldn’t have done it that week he was here. I remember because I asked him to go to Westinghouse to have my allowance raised. I was living on pin money, for the love of God, and old Westinghouse always made a great to-do about giving me an advance on the next quarter. Anyway, m’father told me he had been to see Westinghouse the day before but he had not been there. His mother had died in Kent or something inconvenient like that and he had gone off to bury her. M’father left London the same day. He sometimes went to my mother’s solicitor on small matters. It struck me that he might have gone to him about this—and that other matter the chit mentioned too. In fact, she seemed more concerned about that than about the will.” He tapped the other folded paper.
“Why did these not come to light before now?” Ferdinand asked.
“Corking is not the brightest light,” Bamber said carelessly. “He forgot all about them.”
“Forgot?” Ferdinand looked at him incredulously.
The earl leaned both hands on the table and looked narrow-eyed at Ferdinand.
“He forgot,” he repeated with slow emphasis. “My questions jolted his memory. Leave it at that, Dudley. He forgot.”
Ferdinand understood immediately. The York solicitor was primarily the Countess of Bamber’s. The late earl had used him out of desperation because Westinghouse had been gone from London and Bamber had known he did not have much time left in which to make all secure for his newly restored daughter. The countess had found out about the codicil, and she had persuaded her solicitor to say nothing about it. Whose decision it had been not to destroy the papers, Ferdinand could not even guess. He could merely feel grateful that one or both of them had not been prepared to go that whole criminal length.
“I don’t know where to find the chit,” Bamber said. “And quite honestly, I don’t intend to put myself out trying. I don’t feel any obligation whatsoever to her even if she is m’half-sister. But I won’t do her out of what is rightfully hers either. I daresay you know where she is. Will you take her these?”
“Yes,” Ferdinand said. He had no idea what the content of the other paper was or why she had said it was more important to her than the will. She was going to be ecstatic to learn that her unwavering faith in Bamber had not been misplaced. So she did not owe Pinewood in any way at all to him, he thought wryly.
“Good,” Bamber said. “That is it, then. I’m going home to sleep. I hope never to hear the names Pinewood or Thornhill ever again. Or Dudley either, for that matter. Corking has sent a copy of the codicil to Westinghouse, by the way.”
He turned to leave.<
br />
“Wait!” Ferdinand said, an idea popping into his head. “Sit down and have some coffee, Bamber. I haven’t finished with you yet.”
“Devil take it!” the earl said irritably, pulling a chair out from the table and plumping himself down onto it none too elegantly. “I would set a light to Brookes’s with m’own hands today, and stand around to watch it burn to the ground too, if it were not somewhat akin to shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. What now?”
Ferdinand looked assessingly at him.
VIOLA FELT HORRIBLY EXPOSED as she approached the front doors of Dudley House on Grosvenor Square. She was terrified that they would open and the duchess would step out—or that the duchess would be looking out through one of the many windows that overlooked the square. After she had lifted the knocker and let it fall against the door, she was afraid the duchess might be in the hall.
A very superior-looking butler opened the door. His eyes alit on her and then went beyond her to note that there was no carriage and no companion, not even a maid. He looked back at her.
“I wish to see his grace,” she said. She felt as breathless as if she had run a mile uphill. Her knees were unsteady.
The butler raised his eyebrows and looked at her as if she were a little lower on the social scale than a worm. Viola had realized, of course, that the very strong chance the duke was away from home so close to the middle of the day was not the least of her worries.
“Kindly inform him that Lilian Talbot wishes to speak with him,” she said, holding his gaze with a confidence she did not feel. She reminded herself that she was still wearing the clothes she had worn for the drive in the park. They were the clothes of a lady, the clothes Viola Thornhill of Pinewood Manor had worn for afternoon visits.
“I believe,” she said, “he will agree to see me.”
“Step inside,” the butler said, after such a lengthy pause that she feared any moment to have the door slammed in her face. “Wait here.”
She had hoped he would show her into a room to wait. At any moment one of the doors that lined the hall might open to reveal the duchess. Or she might come down the grand staircase that the butler was now ascending. Viola stood just inside the front doors with one silent liveried footman for company. She stood there for what felt like an hour at the very least but was perhaps five minutes. Then the butler came back downstairs.
“This way,” he said as frigidly as he had spoken before. He opened a door to her right, and she stepped into what was obviously a reception room—a square, elegant apartment with chairs arranged about the walls. “His grace will be with you soon.” The door closed.
Another five minutes passed before he came. Viola thought a dozen times at least of bolting, but she had come this far. She would see it through to the end. If the Duke of Tresham was the man she thought he was, he would agree to her suggestion. Then the door opened again, and she turned from the window.
She felt a strange shock as soon as he stepped into the room. He was as austere, as forbidding, as … frightening as he had been at Pinewood. Yet he was holding a tiny baby. The child was against his shoulder, making fussing noises and sucking loudly on one fist. The duke was patting its back with one long-fingered hand.
“Miss … Talbot?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
She curtsied and lifted her chin. She would not be cowed. “Yes, your grace.”
“And how may I be of service to you?” he asked her.
“I have a proposition to make to you,” she said.
“Indeed?” His voice was soft, but all her insides jerked with alarm.
“It is not what you think,” she said hastily.
“Am I to feel flattered or … shattered?” he asked her. He cupped his hand over the back of the baby’s head when the child fussed in an obvious attempt to find a more comfortable position. There was gentleness in that hand, she thought. But there was none whatsoever in his face.
“I do not know,” she said, “if you are aware that Lord Ferdinand Dudley has restored Pinewood Manor to me. Or that he has offered me marriage.”
His eyebrows rose again. “But do I need to be aware?” he asked her. “My brother is seven-and-twenty, Miss … Talbot.”
She hesitated before continuing. “And I do not know,” she said, “if you are aware that the duchess and Lady Heyward called upon my mother this morning and then took me driving in the park. Or that the duchess has invited my mother and me to tea here tomorrow. I do not wish to cause any trouble for them,” she added.
Two of his long fingers were rubbing lightly over the baby’s neck. “You need not fear,” he said. “I do not make a habit of taking a whip to my wife. And my sister is Lord Heyward’s responsibility.”
“I am aware,” she said, “that my presence in London can be nothing but an embarrassment to you.”
“Are you?” he said.
“I might have been seen in your barouche this morning,” she said. “I might have been seen coming here. I might be seen tomorrow when I come with my mother. And recognized.”
He appeared to consider for a moment. “Unless you wear a mask,” he agreed, “I suppose that is a distinct possibility.”
“I am prepared to go back to Pinewood,” she said. “I am prepared to live there for the rest of my life and repel any attempt Lord Ferdinand may make to write to me or to see me there. This I will swear to—in writing, if you will.”
His stare was as black as his brother’s, she thought during the silent moments that followed. No, blacker. For Ferdinand’s stare always gave evidence of some emotion behind it. This man seemed as cold as death.
“This is extremely magnanimous of you,” he said at last. “I assume there is a condition attached? How much, Miss Talbot? I suppose you are aware that I am one of the wealthiest men in England?”
She named the sum baldly, without any explanation or apology.
He strolled farther into the room and turned half away from her. The baby—its eyes were blue—stared sleepily at her. The neck-rubbing was putting it to sleep.
“Apparently,” the duke said, “you do not realize how wealthy, Miss Talbot. You might have asked for considerably more. But it is too late now, is it not?”
“It is a loan I ask for,” she said. “I will pay you back. With interest.”
He swung around to look at her again, and for the first time his eyes looked less than opaque. She had sparked his interest, it seemed.
“In that case,” he said, “I am ensuring the respectability of my name and my family at remarkably small cost. You surprise me.”
“But you must do something else for me,” she said.
“Ah.” He tipped his head to one side to note that his child was sleeping. Then he looked back at Viola. “Yes, I am sure there is. Proceed.”
“The money is to be used in payment of a debt,” she said. “I want you to pay it for me—in person. I want you to get a receipt stating that the debt has been paid in full and that there are no others. I want you to send me a copy at the White Horse Inn, signed by both you and him.”
“Who?” His eyebrows were raised again.
“Daniel Kirby,” she said. “Do you know him? I can give you his direction.”
“Please do.” He spoke softly. “Why, if I am permitted to ask, can you not pay him yourself if I give you the money?”
She hesitated. “It will not be enough,” she explained. “He will discover other unpaid bills or he will claim that I was mistaken about the interest rate. If you go to him, the amount will be right. You are a powerful man.”
He stared at her for a long time while his child slumbered peacefully against his shoulder.
“Yes,” he said at last. “I believe I am.”
“You will do it?” she asked him.
“I will do it.”
She closed her eyes. She had not really expected him to agree. She had not been sure if she would be more relieved or disappointed if he would not. She was still not sure. She had not yet permitted he
rself to look ahead to the rest of her life, when she must keep her side of their bargain.
“I will wait for that receipt to be delivered to my uncle’s inn, then,” she said after giving him Daniel Kirby’s address. “Do you wish to say now, your grace, in what installments you will expect the loan to be repaid? And what interest will be acceptable to you? Shall I sign something now?”
“I think that will be unnecessary, Miss Talbot,” he said. “I am sure I can trust you to repay your debt in a timely manner. I know where you may be reached at any time during the rest of your life, after all, do I not? And I am, as you observed a short while ago, a powerful man.”
She shivered.
“Yes. Thank you,” she said. “I will leave for Pinewood on the next stagecoach after the receipt has been delivered into my hands.”
“I am sure you will,” he said.
She hurried across the room and opened the door. The butler was in the hall. He opened the front doors, and a few moments later she was out on the steps, gulping in fresh air. It had been so very easy.
She had just been saved from what had appeared to be an unavoidable future.
Mama and Uncle Wesley had been saved.
So had Claire.
She hurried out of the square, her head down, the warmth of bright sunlight soaking into her. Why did life still appear bleaker than bleak? Why was she cold through to her very soul?
THE DUCHESS OF TRESHAM looked around the open door of the reception room before stepping inside.
“She has gone?” she asked unnecessarily. “Why did she come alone and ask to speak with you, Jocelyn? Why did she use a false name?” The duchess had been looking out through the nursery window earlier while nursing the baby and had observed the arrival of Viola Thornhill. She had remarked on it to her husband, who had been reading their elder son a story.
“Lilian Talbot was her working name,” he said.
“Oh.” She frowned.
