“Ooh,” sighed Dorrie. “Do you suppose if I become an actress I will have such elegant gowns?”
Phoebe offered the young girl a hug in response. “What I suppose is that you will be called away to dinner at any moment, young lady, and that you need not worry your pretty head about such grave matters as the future just now.”
A light knock at the door seemed to confirm this pronouncement, until the maid opened it to admit David, Thomas, and William, come to inspect their aunt. As usual they were full of questions once they had given her appearance their unanimous approval.
“Will Prinny be there?”
“Is the Duke of York as fat as they say he is?”
“Will they give Lord Devenham a medal?”
“Will the earl wear his uniform?”
“Heavens, David, don’t let anyone hear you call His Royal Highness the Prince Regent by that awful nickname!” Phoebe responded in her best governess voice. “It is rude to call anyone fat, even if they are,” she added, “and undoubtedly Lord Devenham will be wearing his uniform. And no, they are not giving out any medals. At least, not right now.”
She suspected that her firm tone did not fool the children. They never failed to notice even the smallest betraying twinkle that might show in her eyes. This evening she probably had a sparkle as bright as the gas lights on Pall Mall.
***
In his rooms at the Clarendon, Devenham was finishing his own toilet, with Mullins’s able assistance. Packed away in a trunk in his quarters, his dress uniform had escaped the brutal punishment of Quatre Bras and Waterloo. It had only been out of the trunk one other time since then, when he had showed it to the children at the Allingtons’. It looked fresh and crisply presentable on him now.
He stood patiently while his trusted servant brushed imaginary specks of lint from the dark blue jacket with its scarlet facings, collar and cuffs, and silver buttons and lace. Its design was far less spectacular than that of the hussar regiments or even the old-style dragoon uniforms, but still handsome and infinitely more practical without all that braid. It occurred to Devenham that Phoebe had never seen him in his uniform; he wondered what she would think.
Phoebe occupied his mind a great deal lately, he thought with a smile. He was looking forward to the reception simply because she would be with him. The prospect of going through the rest of his life with her by his side had crossed his mind more than a few times, although the idea scared him like little else. He definitely needed more time to examine it. In the meantime, he thought Phoebe’s receptiveness to him had improved, and that gave him hope.
He had spent the last few days pursuing information that might be useful against Richard Brodfield, for he was more convinced than ever that the man was a key to Phoebe’s past. It was the past that had made Phoebe barricade her heart and deny herself a future, and he was determined to uncover it and free her. His suspicions about Richard were growing uglier every day, although he had not shared those suspicions with Phoebe. The names she had gotten for him from her late husband’s papers had opened up several new avenues of inquiry.
“Right, my lord, that should do it,” Mullins announced, stepping back to inspect the earl’s appearance. Devenham glanced in the cheval glass and caught the look of approval in his servant’s face. From the shirt points standing above his black velvet neck stock to the perfect fit of his white inexpressibles and the shine on his silver-tasseled Hessians, he was the pattern card of a proud officer of the 16th Light Dragoons. At least for a moment, he could feel like the Honorable Major John Allen Jameson once again instead of the Earl of Devenham.
“Thank you, Mullins. Enjoy your free night. You have earned it.” He was ready. He scooped up his silver-trimmed shako from the small table near the door and jammed it on his head as he headed out, tucking the tasseled cap lines under his epaulet and fastening them to the button on his shoulder as he went.
He walked the short distance from the hotel to the livery stable where he had hired space for his new curricle. He had found time to go to Tattersall’s, and had purchased a first-rate rig and a beautiful pair of chestnuts for a rather princely sum. He would enjoy driving Phoebe to the reception in such fine style and would gladly pay the fee to have the duke’s lads or those attached to Carlton House mind his horses during the reception.
At this moment, the livery’s ostlers held the horses as he climbed up into the seat, thinking of how much his leg had improved in the past two weeks. He took up the ribbons and clucked to start the animals. The horses were not only handsome, but superbly trained; he believed them worth every guinea he had paid for them. They turned the tight corner out of the livery into the mews with perfect coordination and calmly proceeded toward the entrance of the narrow alley.
Moments before they reached it, however, a wagon suddenly pulled across the opening and blocked it. Devenham was forced to draw the horses up hard. The frightened animals reared and were in danger of injuring themselves against the wheels of the opposing vehicle. Even as the earl opened his mouth to shout a protest, two figures materialized out of nowhere and clambered onto his vehicle. Before he could get a single word out, something struck his head, producing incredibly sharp pain followed by blackness.
***
The Allingtons and Phoebe waited an hour before going ahead with their dinner. They still expected the earl to arrive, but Judith thought Cook was close to having a fit that would leave regrettably permanent results if they did not proceed. When Devenham still had not arrived by the time they finished eating, Phoebe’s initial mild concern had passed through annoyance into very real anxiety.
“Perhaps some unexpected business called him away suddenly, Phoebe dear, and he still plans to take you to the reception. Perhaps he did not have time to send a note,” Judith said in an obvious attempt to comfort her. She seemed far more ready to defend the tardy earl then Edward.
“I hope he has a good explanation,” Phoebe’s brother-in-law muttered. “This is not much of a way to show his gratitude to us.”
“Edward, I am positive he must have a reason,” Phoebe said. She just wished she knew what it was.
“A reason, yes. I can think of several—none of them good. I thought he was settling down, done with stirring up scandals and trying to shock people. Could I have been so wrong?” He looked at Phoebe in distress. “I never thought he would make you a victim of his capriciousness, dear Phoebe.”
“Edward! Was it not you who convinced me to take Lord Devenham under our roof in the first place?” Judith responded. “He has proved himself more kind, generous, and noble than I could have dreamed. I learned a lesson about judging people for myself while he was here. Do not lose your faith in him now, after the faith you had in him before!”
Phoebe thought the clock ticked relentlessly and rather loudly, although perhaps that was only in her head. When the hour for the start of the duke’s reception came and passed, she said quietly, “I would like to send a note ’round to the Clarendon, Edward. May I send Goldie with it?”
“Of course, my dear, of course. Write your note, and as soon as it is ready, we’ll send him off. In fact, I’ll let him take the gig.”
The note she wrote was very brief, only expressing her regrets that the earl had been unable to join them for dinner and inquiring politely if there had been a change in plans or if there was any trouble with which either she or the Allingtons might assist him. She thought it hid very well the mixed agonies of dread and doubt that were starting to torture her as the night wore on. Had something happened to him? Or had he suddenly realized he did not want to be seen with the shamed Lady Brodfield at the reception, and not known how to tell her?
The note was sent off, and she settled down to play at cards with Judith and Edward while they waited to see what results it might bring. They played five-card loo, but Phoebe could not concentrate. Their shared laughter every time she
had to put more counters into the pool was hollow, as if no one could truly enjoy the game.
More than two and a half hours crept by before Goldie returned to Wigmore Street. When he finally did, Mullins was with him.
“There was nobody there when I first got there—I mean to say, both his lordship and Mullins was out, so I waited,” the young footman explained hastily.
“Lord Devenham gave me the night off,” Mullins said. “I’d no idea ’e had not showed up ’ere. I just thank God I stopped back at the hotel—your man might have been waitin’ there for me till an even later hour.” He stopped and looked meaningfully at Edward. “P’rhaps we should speak privately, Sir Edward?” He rolled his eyes at Phoebe and Judith.
“I want to know anything that Mullins has to say,” Phoebe insisted before Edward could even reply.
“As do I,” Judith agreed.
Edward nodded and the serving man continued quickly. “Lord Devenham left in plenty o’ time to be here for ’is dinner engagement. Goldie and me checked at the livery, an’ he did go there and pick up his carriage. Just to be sure, we went to Carlton House. O’ course we knew we couldn’t go in, but one o’ the grooms took our message to a footman, who passed it inside. After a while one of His Royal Highness’s own servants comes out and tells us the earl hasn’t been there, and the duke is none too pleased about it. I’m afraid now ’e is in more than one kind of trouble. But I don’t have any idea where ’e is.”
Phoebe had to swallow twice before she managed to voice her question. “Did you think he was intending to keep his engagements when he left you, Mullins?”
“Yes, Lady Brodfield, I did.”
The next query was even harder. “Do you still think so now in light of what has happened?”
Mullins stared straight at her with that determined look she had come to know so well during their first days. That look conveyed more to her than his words, and while it soothed some of the pain in her heart, it left fear there instead.
“Yes, madam, I do.”
Mullins’s words meant that Devenham had not intentionally abandoned her. They meant he had met with some accident or foul play. Phoebe felt positively chilled as she thought of the hours that had already passed. He could be lying in an alley somewhere, the victim of street thieves. Or, there was another possibility, so terrible to consider that she could scarcely believe she had thought of it. What if Devenham had found something more about Richard? How often had he warned her that Richard was dangerous? Was Richard truly wicked enough to have taken some form of retribution against the earl?
She was appalled by the very idea, and she also did not know how to learn if there was any truth to it. There was no evidence to take to the authorities. It was terribly late at night now to barge in on Lady Tyneley demanding to see Richard. Richard was probably at a club or home in his own bed, and what would she say? I just wanted to inquire whether you had kidnapped Lord Devenham?
She felt sick with worry and also utterly helpless. Apparently the others felt the same, for they all stood about in a little worried knot, staring into each others’ faces as if they might find some clue there to what they should do.
Finally Mullins said, “Well, I’m going to go back out and search every mews and alley between ’ere and the livery stable, if it takes me all night.”
“Goldie shall accompany you,” said Edward, “and so shall I.” He looked quickly at Phoebe, who was just opening her mouth. “No, Phoebe, don’t even think it. There is no way under either sun or moon that I would permit you to come with us.”
There was no use arguing, Phoebe realized. Men had more freedom to move about in the streets at midnight than a mere woman had even in daylight. She would only be a hindrance to them, and of course they had no way of knowing how she felt. She thought that just now she would willingly face the most hardened criminal or suffer the most complete destruction of her reputation if either thing could put Lord Devenham safely in the Allingtons’ drawing room.
She did argue with Judith after the men had left them, when her sister suggested they retire. There was no point in trying to sleep, for her mind was too occupied to permit it. She urged her sister to go to bed and settled herself on the sofa to await the searchers’ return. Heartsick, she did not know what to hope for most, beyond her prayers that Devenham was alive.
***
Devenham was definitely alive; the intense pain that blossomed anew in his head with each bounce of the carriage confirmed the fact most unpleasantly. He was not exactly awake, but seemed instead to be hovering in a groggy state of semiconsciousness.
He could tell by the sound and the motion that he was in a carriage, but whose it was or whither it was bound quite eluded him for the moment. He knew it was not his own—this one was closed, and it smelled of straw and blood. The impossibly uncomfortable position of his body and the hard surface he could feel beneath him led him to believe that he was on the floor.
He flexed his fingers to see what would happen and almost instantly came in contact with the hard leather of someone’s boot. He also discovered that he could do little else with his fingers; his hands were bound at the wrists.
Experimenting, he shifted his feet very slightly. Apparently they were still free, although it was difficult to determine with his legs cramped beneath him. What did that mean? He tried to focus his mind. It must mean that someone wanted him to be able to walk. The owner of the boot? He had his answer a moment later.
“Do I see some small signs that you are waking up at last, Devenham? I suspect that you will be very sorry.”
The low voice took time to penetrate the fog in his brain, but he recognized it. He had not forgotten the one other occasion when he had heard it. “You may be the ones to rue the consequences,” Richard Brodfield had said that other time in Phoebe’s garden. Was this what he had meant?
The boot prodded him. “What, nothing to say? I didn’t think a peer of the realm was ever at a loss for words.” Brodfield laughed. “Then again, I never thought I’d have a peer at my feet. I’m rather enjoying this.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“I suppose you would want to know that, but in the end, does it matter? You want to know too many things—too bad you did not learn to be less inquisitive. I am taking you somewhere very quiet where you shan’t cause me any more trouble.”
At least he did not say the docks. Men shipped aboard the slavers were seldom heard from again.
Devenham weighed his questions carefully. It was never a good idea to show weakness in front of an enemy. Abducting a peer was the act of a desperate, possibly demented, certainly unpredictable man. Brodfield undoubtedly planned to kill him—he would have to. Yet if that was his intention, why had he not done so already? The earl decided to try to draw him out.
“Why are you doing this?”
Brodfield laughed. “Do you mean to say it is not obvious? Perhaps you are not as smart as I thought. You insinuated yourself between me and Phoebe.”
“You and Phoebe?” Devenham could not keep the note of incredulity out of his voice.
Brodfield’s amused tone turned surly. The boot prodded Devenham again, suggestively close to his ribs. “You think that simply because she does not like me there can be nothing between us? That there is nothing between us? You are a fool. Have you never bedded a reluctant whore? They are the best kind.”
The toe of Brodfield’s boot shifted closer to Devenham’s belly, but that was not the reason for the sudden nausea that swept through him. The utter depravity of what Brodfield was suggesting stunned him.
“I thought at first I’d have to thank you,” Brodfield continued. “Having her name linked with yours served my purposes well enough—it did her reputation little good, especially with you both under the same roof. Too bad Allington is so insufferably respectable. At any rate, people will be all the more
ready to believe it when they hear her name linked with some of the others they’re going to hear. By the time they hear mine, there will be no one left anywhere who will still receive her.”
“What is the point of ruining her?” Devenham was beginning to suspect that Richard Brodfield was mad.
“Don’t you see? She’ll be desperate; she’ll have nowhere else to go. She’ll be completely dependent upon me.”
“You never did intend to purchase Beau Chatain from her, did you?” Devenham was feeling his way, trying to maintain a deadly calm.
“Not once I realized I could have both. Why should I? If I have Phoebe, I will have the property, too. Not legally perhaps, but in every way that counts. I need a place to keep her, and God knows my income is never sufficient. I see them both as potential for increasing it. Too bad you had to start meddling.”
“I take it that you intend to kill me.”
“Eventually. I need you for a little while yet. Phoebe is not likely to cooperate with me at first. I underestimated her spirit, as it happens. I have you to thank, again, for helping me see that.”
“I don’t follow.”
“She loved Stephen so passionately, don’t you see? I did not think she would ever be able to form an affection for anyone else after she came to believe that he’d betrayed her so completely. I thought her will, her heart, would be as dead as he was. I thought in her grief she might accept me. How wrong I was!”
Devenham could not see Brodfield’s face from his cramped position on the floor of the carriage, but he could hear the passion beginning to swell dangerously in his voice. He was not sure what the man was going to do.
“She fled, you see? She moved out of the house and disappeared. And as long as my father still lived, I could do little about it. He would have stopped me from selling out my commission or trying to find her. Who would have guessed that he’d last so long, the bastard? I had to help him along.”
Persistent Earl : Signet Regency Romance (9781101578841) Page 20
