Mistress of Two Fortunes and a Duke

by Tessa Candle

  “Indeed. She seemed to be of the impression that your brother, Mr. Delacroix, might be induced to return to England if the right gifts were offered to him.”

  Genevieve's lips flattened. “Well, perhaps she has not had news of it, but I can assure you that he is already in England. In London, in fact.”

  “Forgive me for saying it,” observed Tilly, “but you do not sound especially happy about this fact.”

  “I should have been.” She stabbed at her fancy sewing. “However, when I received him—I did so on the quiet you see, and you must not tell Frederick, for he cannot abide my brother—Pascal did not scruple but to threaten me with vicious gossip.”

  “Oh indeed?”

  “Yes, well, you are among the very few who are aware of a misunderstanding that occurred last year—the incident involving the Viscount Essington.” She straightened her spine primly.

  Tilly smiled reassuringly at Genevieve. “But you are a married woman now. That is all water under the bridge.”

  “Only my brother is threatening to tell anyone who will listen!” Genevieve blurted out, throwing aside her sewing. She stood and paced the room.

  “How could he possibly know about the incident with Essington?”

  Genevieve put the knuckle of a fist to her mouth. “I am a great fool and told him about it myself. He was there at Dunston when Frederick and I got married. I do not know why I told him. Only he was still bed-ridden from being shot, and we have always shared secrets. I never believed he would be such a foul beast as to use them against me.”

  “Calm yourself.” Tilly stood and guided her distraught sister-in-law back to her virulent red chair. “I know it is very hard when our relatives disappoint us. But perhaps you have had some occasion to observe that Mr. Delacroix's manners are not always what they ought to be.” Tilly winced at her own understatement, but a little diplomacy was in order.

  “Yes. I knew he had treated other people badly.” Genevieve shook her head in disbelief. “But I never thought he would turn on his own sister.”

  Tilly nodded patiently at this calm confession of selfish indifference. “But now you do know. My brother will protect you, Genevieve. He will not allow anyone to speak ill of you unchallenged, and Mr. Delacroix must know that he cannot prove whatever he thinks he knows about that night. Your brother's threats are empty.”

  She sighed. “Do you think so?”

  “Indeed.” Tilly tilted her head and asked, “What did he demand of you?”

  She looked reluctant to reply. “What do you mean?”

  “I think we both know he did not show up on your doorstep to threaten you merely for his own amusement.”

  Genevieve stood again and walked to the mantel to fondle a particularly saccharine Wedgwood figurine of two children. “Yes, you have the right of it. He was aiming to blackmail me. He asked for a monkey to start.”

  “Five hundred pounds?”Tilly gave a faint whistle. “I hope you did not give him any money.”

  Genevieve kept her face turned away. “I had a hundred pounds of pin money handy. I gave it to him.”

  Tilly shook her head. “If you feed a stray cat, it will keep coming back.”

  “It is not a comparison favourable to my brother, but I cannot contradict you.” She laughed bitterly. “I have already seen him skulking about the park when I go for an outing with friends. And I am sure I saw him in the shadows at the Beauchamps’. Then as I returned home from the card party last night, he approached me again. He said that as he could no longer get anything out of Beauchamps' wife, he should require two monkeys from me. He had the audacity to reckon that I owed him nine hundred pounds.”

  Out of Beauchamps' wife? The former Lady Aldley? No doubt Delacroix wished to blackmail her too, with what he knew of her past scandalous tryst with Beauchamps, before she married Aldley's father.

  Tilly suppressed a bitter laugh. Now that the lady was married to Beauchamps, there was not much to blackmail her with. Their history had slowly become public knowledge, and the lady had given up pretences to high social standing when she married a merely knighted gentleman. In the end, she proved to be much more romantic than anyone would have thought. And, if personality counted for anything, she was definitely not susceptible to blackmail.

  “You must listen to me, Genevieve. He will not stop there. If you pay him, you show him you fear his words, which you should not. And he will always come back for more. In your heart, I think you know this of him.”

  Genevieve nodded sadly.

  “So you must tell your husband of your mistake.” Tilly smiled encouragingly. “I know Frederick. He will forgive you, my dear. And you must never receive Delacroix again. It is hard, I understand, but you see how things are. Whatever there once was between you, he has changed into a ravening beast who will only try to take advantage of your vulnerability. You must cut him off.”

  “But what will Mama say?” Genevieve looked apprehensive.

  “I imagine she will not like it. But she is only your mother. Frederick is your husband and master.” Tilly winced internally at using this tactic. “Simply inform Lady Delacroix that you must be ruled by your husband's edicts. I know Frederick is not a tyrant, but it is a line of reasoning your mother will surely understand.”

  Genevieve pursed her lips and looked like she were devising a plan. “I suppose it would help if I were to give her a grandchild.”

  “Yes.” She smiled at her sister-in-law. Tilly was really growing fond of the little minx. “That would be wonderful news for us all. And I suppose it might help shut your brother's gossiping mouth.”

  She doubted this last piece of optimism. But it had been long enough since the incident with Essington that, even if Delacroix made insinuations, no one would believe the child was sired by anyone but Frederick.

  “Perhaps...” Genevieve looked uncomfortable and cleared her throat. “Perhaps you might suggest the notion to Frederick. I am not certain he is keen to have a child.”

  Oh, but he was keen. Genevieve seemed so vulnerable that it gave Tilly pause. Only a desperate woman would admit what Genevieve was hinting at. When Tilly had arranged the marriage to her brother, she had not thought Genevieve to be an especially romantic type. Quite the contrary, she had thought the girl to be delightfully ruthless and calculating, and all but incapable of love.

  But Tilly could now see that there was a heart hidden behind all the fan-fluttering, upper class posturing and mercenary fortune-hunting. She was not, as Tilly had thought before, just bored. She wanted a child to love, and, unless Tilly was very mistaken, the girl might even be a little bit in love with Frederick. Tilly sighed. A girl in love with her husband. Once again Tilly had made a proper mingle-mangle of things.

  She remarked upon the mortified look on Genevieve's face and realized she had waited too long to reply. Tilly reached out to pat her sister-in-law’s arm. “Forgive me. I was caught in my own thoughts. I think what you are describing is quite normal.”

  “Really?” The word came out with the release of the breath that Genevieve had been holding.

  “Well, yes. I am not an expert, of course, but I have read books that suggest some young husbands need a little encouragement.”

  Genevieve's face brightened with hope. “Oh, you do not know how relieved I am to hear it.”

  Tilly could imagine. And if she were one to learn from her mistakes, Tilly would not even entertain a notion of doing what she was now contemplating. Her interference had already caused enough trouble. Enough trouble. She would stop right now. Not intervene any further. She looked at Genevieve's desperately vulnerable face. Ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  Tilly's eyes crinkled sweetly as she said, “Let me see what kind of reading material I can find on the subject.”

  Before she left, she popped into Frederick's study, where he was sitting with DeGroen. They had their heads together admiring Frederick's latest work. It was a painting from memory of dancers at the Moulin Rouge. There were no definable li
nes. It was a flurry of gaudy colour, motion and sexual energy—very unlike the fine detail work of his architectural renderings. Frederick often experimented with styles.

  Tilly admired the painting. “It is beautiful, Frederick. Breathtaking and transporting.”

  Frederick shook his head, unable to accept praise. “I am a mere hack. You should see what some artists in France are getting up to. Amazing stuff. Truly visionary.”

  Tilly was too accustomed to Frederick's natural auto-criticism to argue with him. “Have you shown it to Mama?”

  Frederick smiled a little sideways smile. He knew how their mother was, but could not help adoring her. “She has been working on a series of sketches, at the moment, and is too absorbed.”

  Their mother was always working on a series of sketches, as this theme or that preoccupied her, though she rarely showed her work. Tilly knew Frederick was right. She shared a roof with her parents and yet seldom saw her mother when she was under the spell of her art.

  Nor did she see much of her father in these periods, for he was under the spell of his wife. He would sit in her art room and fetch her things, make her take food by standing at her side and feeding her by hand. Or, when there was nothing else to do, he would sit and sip wine or brandy while he watched her work in rapt adoration.

  They were both so single-minded that they scarcely had time for their children or their own financial affairs. Growing up in such a household was like living in a kingdom under a spell. Tilly and Frederick had been raised by servants, and if they had not taken matters into their own hands, the family fortune would by now be in serious decline.

  Tilly shook her head. “Ah yes, a series of sketches. Well, one must have some novelty in life.”

  Frederick took her hand and squeezed it. “Do not judge her so, Tilly. She is a true artist, brimming with such passion and sensibility that she may do without the fashionable distractions that divert society. She sees so deeply that a single leaf or shadow on the window pane holds for her myriad possibilities of beauty and meaning.”

  “I shall allow that she is a luminary, brother.” It was true.

  When Tilly had become engaged to DeGroen, her mother formed a sudden obsession with turning out her daughter. She frantically designed and picked fabrics for a hundred beautiful dresses for Tilly's trousseau. And Tilly's wedding dress was the crowning glory.

  It would probably be the envy of every duchess in the land, but that was little consolation to Tilly. “But you must allow that she is not much of a mother.”

  “But we get on well enough.” Frederick jounced her elbow. “Do we not, Tiddly?”

  “I should say you do,” agreed DeGroen with a look of love in his eyes. “And at least your parents do not take issue with every little thing you do.”

  “And yours are very hard on you, DeGroen, though you do not deserve it.” Frederick looked sympathetic. “I have never seen such relentless criticism.”

  “My marrying you is the only thing they approve of, Tilly.” DeGroen gave her a look that conveyed a shared joke.

  “I am flattered, to be sure.” She assumed a bland ingénue smile. “They are, if officious, at least excellent judges of character.”

  All three laughed for several moments, then Tilly continued, “But speaking of parental misconduct, I would have a word about your future fatherhood, Frederick.”

  Chapter 21

  Tilly returned to her own home by noon, which was late by her standards. She felt as though she would collapse from exhaustion and fell upon her ration of two bonbons and a biscuit. It would be another two hours before she could have more, but for now she was slightly restored.

  Her servants prudently waited until she had consumed her sugar ration, before they approached her with the news.

  “We have been broken into, Miss.”

  “What?!” Was there no end to the parade of troubles and bad news?

  “Last night Miss. We are still checking inventory, but it seems as if nothing was taken. However every room what didn't have someone sleeping in it was gone through. Made a right mess of things. Even your room, Miss, and your mother's art room. The missus is right beside herself. Mr. Ravelsham has been attending to her all morning.”

  Tilly merely rolled her eyes at this. “Oh yes. Well, they will console one another. But nothing is missing, you say?”

  “No, Miss. Not even your jewels, nor the silver, even all the wine in the cellar.”

  “They searched the wine cellar?”

  “Indeed.”

  Tilly's mind began to turn over immediately. This was certainly Screwe's doing. It was a relief that Frederick and DeGroen had stayed home last night, or Frederick's house might have been searched as well. There was not much to hide, but she did not fancy anyone discovering the secret meeting room in the wine cellar. It could be taken as a mere eccentricity, but it could also generate suspicion. She walked to the parlour with a window facing the street and peered out.

  It was a quiet neighbourhood, with a broad avenue down which the occasional carriage travelled. A few parties enjoyed leisurely walks in the park across the street. No one looked out of place. At first. Then Tilly noticed a man standing alone in the park in the shadow of a great tree. She sensed him, before she saw him. There was something unusually cold about that shadow, and it was as though she could feel his gaze slithering over her.

  It was not possible. He could not see her against the glare of the window's glazing. And yet, she could make out that he was watching the house. He must have watched her arrive home. She shuddered. She could not perceive much detail of the man, but she was certain it was Screwe. She stepped back from the window.

  She had to be more cautious about where she went, if Screwe was watching her. He did not know of her many other enterprises. But if he discovered them, and he became aware that she had stolen away his slave, he would certainly try to ruin her, even if it cast further shade upon his own reputation. She needed to get some of the lads to guard Frederick's house, discreetly. And she needed to get a message to him, to put him on his guard.

  She wanted more sugar. Tilly tapped her fingers to her lips and walked to her study. She quickly wrote a note to her brother. Frederick could send word to Crump at the warehouse, tell him what happened and that guards were required for her house and Frederick's. He should also send guards to the servant academy.

  “And when you leave,” she instructed the servant as she gave him the letter, “make certain you are not followed. In particular, there is a well dressed, quality gentleman across the street, with a silver falcon head on his cane. Do not let him see you leave. You will know him if you see him, for all the hairs will stand up on your arms. So go the back way. If you believe you are pursued, go somewhere else, like the market square, and get lost there. Do not go to my brother unless you are certain you are not followed.”

  “Yes, Miss.” The servant's face did not betray the least disturbance at these unusual instructions.

  “Then go to Bow Street, for we should report this burglary.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  Tilly collapsed into a slouch in the desk chair. “And will you ask someone to bring me a cup of tea?” She grimaced sullenly. “With no sugar.”

  Chapter 22

  Rutherford loaded Molly and Mack into his barouche and seated himself for the trip to Blackwood Manor. He did not feel in any condition for travelling, but refused to permit himself further wallowing in self-pity. And besides, he did not know how long his uncle would remain in this world.

  He should have made a greater effort to get to know Bartholmer. He had told himself that the man was a recluse and preferred to be alone. But the truth was that, as usual, Rutherford was being selfish. He was enjoying his youth and wealth and saw no reason to trouble himself about an ageing uncle whose title he had no wish to inherit, and who had sealed himself off like a hermit, far from the amusements of town.

  On the other hand, there was no doubt some good sport to be had at Blackwood, and getti
ng exercise was on his list of things to do. Rutherford hoped it would distract him from the discomfort of weaning off of laudanum.

  He scratched Molly's ears and idly stared out the carriage window, looking enviously at other people’s equipage.

  Rutherford perked up when they entered Tilly's neighbourhood. He always asked the driver to take this longer route, as it was easier for the man to navigate these broad streets and minimal traffic, and as it afforded Rutherford a view of the scenic park.

  But the true reason was that it allowed him to moon about around Tilly's domicile and perhaps catch a glimpse of her, which he rarely did. But still, it gave him pleasure to gaze upon her home and dream about her in a more domestic context. Stolen moments in the dark, no matter how pleasurable, were not truly satisfying. They were no longer enough for him, if they ever had been. In fact, they had started to carry a sort of guilty sadness with them.

  A smart carriage was waiting near the park and he recognized the colours. It was Lord Screwe's coach. This was odd to Rutherford, for an amble in the park was not Lord Screwe's sort of amusement. And one rarely saw him out before dinner time, for he was a creature of night time diversions. Then he saw Screwe himself, staring straight out of the park in the direction of Tilly's house.

  Right at that moment, Tilly's carriage rolled up, and she disembarked. Rutherford's heart fluttered. He made to wave, but of course she would not see him in his carriage. She seemed preoccupied and walked straight into the house without looking about her.

  He smiled. Someday she would be in his house. They would take breakfast together and talk about current events, or play whist to while away an afternoon. He shook his head. His illness was making a bore of him. Even his fantasies were becoming dull.

  Rutherford turned away as she disappeared through the door. He saw that Lord Screwe had moved into the shade of a tree, but was still staring. The hairs stood up on Rutherford's spine. Was Screwe watching Tilly? He gritted his teeth. Well, he had planned to start regular sword practice. Why not start with Screwe? No one would miss that piece of filth.