“What do we do at the interval? He’ll try to call on this box, for sure and certain.”
Richard considered, then brightened. “Richmond is over there. We’ll make a call on his box.” He exchanged a glance with the duke and received a miniscule nod for his pains. “The boy will receive no welcome there.”
“Why not?” I had learned to ask when I didn’t know instead of trying to struggle through.
“His father was a stickler, never allowed his daughters to sit in his presence. Richmond has four sisters, you know. My mother had one of them in mind for me.” He paused, and behind the low parapet of the box, his hand covered mine. “Beauties, all of them, but my heart lies elsewhere. The old duke connived with my father. I daresay he considered the lesser title of earl excusable when he considered my father’s wealth and influence. As a result, I got to know the current duke quite well. Remarkable mind. He has a scientific intelligence not bettered by anyone I’ve ever met.”
“I’ve met him,” Gervase said. Somehow that didn’t surprise me. Gervase had a remarkable intelligence too. “That will work well.”
“If we meet John and his partner on the way there or on the way back, we nod civilly but don’t stop.”
My mouth twisted in a half smile. “I worked that one out for myself.”
He gave my hand a squeeze. “Sorry.”
“I didn’t.” Until now, my brother Ian had remained silent. “What’s going on?”
“Would you mind if I told you later?” Gervase said.
“Tell him everything,” Richard advised. “He might need to be in full possession of the facts.”
Someone else who knew. John might see Ian as a weak point and attack Richard that way. That they were in the box with us meant we condoned the relationship, and while we enjoyed the company of Gervase and Ian, that was one of our reasons for ensuring people saw us in company. Gervase had learned the hard way how to play society’s game. If anyone cared to check his financial records, they’d find the salary that Gervase paid my brother. They’d also find Ian’s payments, which coincidentally were of the same amount, to Coram’s orphanage. If members of society chose to turn a blind eye to the fact that Ian’s position necessitated living in Gervase’s house, in a chamber very close to his, then they could do so. That worked very well for most people, but it meant my brother and Richard’s shared a secret their enemies—or ours—could use against them. John would do that. Already I could see his eyes glitter as he ignored the play and stared at our box.
Mr. Garrick was losing his struggle to obtain the audience’s attention, and not for the first time this evening I wished he would give a full-bodied performance and win them back. Most of the audience watched us instead of the action on the stage.
“Never fear,” Richard said. “I will see this end, and I will try not to hurt Susan in the process. I’ll arrange for us to see her tomorrow. I’d like an explanation. For all we know she’s decided to throw in her lot with her brother, but I very much doubt it. She appears quite uncomfortable.”
She did indeed. Susan stared at the action on the stage, answering any questions put to her in a lacklustre fashion, her chest rising and falling as if she were short of breath. She leaned closer to Sir Andrew than she did to John, showing no fondness for the brother she had missed for so long. Last year she’d spoken to me of her sorrow that she had lost contact with him. “We should have told her of his existence when we came to London.”
“I thought it might cause her more distress.” Richard smiled as if he were conversing lightly. “I was wrong. I should have told her, then she would have known. I should have realised that he’d make a move like this. I wasn’t particularly kind to him last year.” His smile grew fixed. “He was not particularly kind to Rose. I don’t regret my actions. I do regret not taking more care afterwards to close the door on him.”
I wasn’t sure how he could have done that, short of killing his son. So I couldn’t be sorry that he’d failed in that aim, although I couldn’t deny that the boy had made a nuisance of himself since. And he might still win.
ALICIA SET ASIDE A room for us at Thompson’s, one I was now familiar with. It contained the bare minimum of furniture, a mismatched set of chairs and a plain wooden table, but Alicia provided us with tea, which was probably the best tea in London. It always tasted that way, at any rate.
Susan had already arrived, as had Richard. No awkwardness existed between them these days, although sometimes I felt a restraint about him. I thought it was because before we met Susan, we’d assumed that our daughter Helen was Richard’s only child.
Susan’s attention went to my waist. That happened even at the highest echelons of society, that furtive “Is she showing yet?” glance at my stomach before they looked at my face. They didn’t have to say it. I didn’t care, I bore my burden with pride.
Interesting to note that Richard’s daughter wasn’t immune to the urge to look. Today she could see, as I’d dressed for comfort rather than fashion, and allowed Nichols to loosen my stays below my breasts. Richard enjoyed that aspect of my pregnancy, and Nichols delighted in my deeper cleavage, since exposing it was in fashion this year. As it seemed to be every year for some people, but at least I had a good selection of fichus. I didn’t care to prance around in society half naked.
Susan dropped a curtsey and I examined her drawn features with concern. I glanced at Richard. “I only just arrived myself,” he said.
I poured tea for all of us, not needing to ask how Richard or Susan liked it. When he stood to help me into my chair, I gave him my best quelling glance. “I’m not incapable yet.”
He grinned. “You sound like my grandmother. Hale and hearty to her dying day, when she just keeled over and expired. The neatest corpse I’ve ever seen.”
Susan grimaced. I laughed. “Hopefully I’ll go that way.”
Finally, we elicited a slight smile from Susan. The last time I’d seen her she’d seemed delighted with her fortune. Although a good deal older than she was, Sir Andrew suited her very well. She liked his comfortable presence and his kindness to her. I thought she was probably also relieved that she only had one man to please. But I wouldn’t know about that aspect of her work. I’d only ever had one man to please, and it pleased me to do so.
She cleared her throat. “And are you well?”
I asked her to call me Rose in private, but she had some difficulty doing so. I had no idea why, but Richard thought I was gaining some of the gravitas of the viscountess. I doubted it, especially in private. I was always and would ever be Rose.
“I’m very well indeed. This condition suits me.”
“Good.” She paused and glanced at Richard. “Have you ever considered becoming a grandfather?”
I had never seen Richard spill his tea before, or choke on it for that matter, but there’s a first time for everything. When he’d recovered and lodged his tea dish safely on the table, he said, “Are you saying that you are—?”
She wrung her hands together. “Possibly.”
“You’re barely eighteen.”
She smiled. “It doesn’t seem to matter. But in any case, Sir Andrew wishes to marry me. He doesn’t have an heir.”
“What about your profession? Won’t that cause him some concern?” I had to ask. And I wondered why she didn’t seem happier.
“Yes. Yes, he knows. He says it doesn’t matter. He wants to take me to his home in Wales and introduce me as his wife.”
“Do you need anything from us?” That from Richard, sharply. “I’m very willing to settle a reasonable amount on you, if you wish it.” I knew Susan’s news would please him. Her choice of profession had troubled him, but he had the sense to understand that he came into her life too late to dictate how it should go. I had no doubt that his father wouldn’t have hesitated in ordering his illegitimate daughter’s life to please himself, but his son wasn’t cut from the same cloth. Thank God.
“I’d appreciate that.” A settlement would give Susan a modi
cum of independence and a jointure for her possible widowhood. But if she bore Sir Andrew an heir, that would appear moot. “Sir Andrew thinks that you are remiss to allow me the freedom that you do.” She gripped her hands together so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “I didn’t tell him who you were until last night. Now he seems intent on confronting you.”
I took over the conversation, since Richard seemed overtaken by Susan’s news. Not that most people would have noticed, but white lines bracketed his mouth and his eyes contained a panicked expression I couldn’t recall seeing there before. My husband could face down any number of smugglers, it seemed, but not the news that he was about to become a grandfather. It gave me something to tease him with in our more private moments, but not before I’d gauged his true reaction, after the shock had died down. “So tell us from the beginning. When did you meet John most recently?”
“I heard of his appearance in society. People were talking everywhere. I accompanied a friend to the opera and heard the rumours there. I thought to contact you and discover the truth, but before I did so, he visited me. I don’t know how he found my address.”
“Harris’s list,” Richard said glumly. A certain Mr. Harris kept a guidebook to the best whores in London, and on her first appearance in the demimonde, Susan had appeared in it. Not that it mentioned Susan by name, but it gave a few clues which John could have picked up. Still, I thought it a bit of a stretch, and I said so.
“I think it more likely that he sent people to discover her address. Her movements aren’t secret, only her connection to us, so she could have been traced from the days when she served as a housemaid to Lady Godolphin.” My godmother, and our first contact with Susan, although we hadn’t met her until later. Someone else could have traced her from there. I decided to visit my godmother soon and see if anyone had visited her recently, someone out of the ordinary.
They both nodded and not for the first time I remarked the similarities between them. They had the same sharp features, the same fair hair, although today Richard’s was covered with a fashionable wig. Sometimes the way they echoed each other’s movements unnerved me.
“He found me readily enough,” she said, “and I had a great shock when I saw him on my doorstep. I knew him at once. He introduced himself, told me how delighted he was to see me and pleaded with me to join him in his house. He’s taken a house near Grosvenor Square.” That at least wasn’t a surprise to us. “But how can I do that?”
I had worked out some of John’s tactics. “He wants someone to recognise you. He’s already established himself in society as a country gentleman in possession of a tidy fortune. The kind that can aspire to a gentleman’s daughter. If he produced you, he knows someone will know you and then he can announce that you are his sister and your father has treated you both badly.”
Richard nodded. I had thought on this last night and tried to put myself in John’s place, distasteful though I found the exercise. But I had found it illuminating. “He doesn’t have to say anything. People will decide for themselves. That means he can admit the truth of it, or deny it. It gives his schemes flexibility and allows him to jump either way.” I put down my empty tea dish, but I hadn’t spilled a drop, unlike my husband. “He had Lady Southwood on his side already, but she’s playing her own game. She thinks to use him. His youth and his air of innocence fools many. No doubt he is also adding a few years to his age, as he did last year.”
Susan’s attention jumped to mine. “Yes, he did mention something about that. He said there was no use announcing our age, and it gave us more gravitas if we appeared a little older.”
“You’re sure it’s him? Your brother, I mean?” John and Susan had separated at the age of fourteen, but Susan had been the last to see the boy who was indisputably Richard’s son. I still held out a faint hope that this John Kneller was an impostor.
But Susan sighed and proceeded to destroy my desperate hope that the boy was, after all, an impostor. “Yes, I’m sure. He reminisced with me, and I recognised him. He’s harder than he was, but he is my brother John, the boy who was brought up with me in France and who ranted against our mother.”
“He’s spreading his net,” Richard said. “He claims to have a marriage certificate between your mother and me.” He grimaced at the flare in Susan’s eyes. “No, don’t get up your hopes. We didn’t marry. And even if we had, I was fourteen at the time and marrying without the permission of my parents. I can’t imagine that any court of law would uphold the claim, even if it were true. My mother spirited her away before I even knew she was pregnant.” He paused and glanced at me, his eyes warm. “But on the off chance, I married Rose again. No, Susan, don’t think that. It was to iron out any legal difficulties for our descendants.” He paused. “And to have a second wedding night.” He didn’t hide the warmth in his voice, but most people who didn’t know him so well would have missed it. Susan wasn’t most people.
She shrugged, her fine green silk gown slipping on her shoulder. Without paying special attention to it, she hitched it up. I’d send a dressmaker. If she married Sir Andrew, she’d do it in a good gown. “I wondered, that’s all, but if my mother had married you, she’d have kept the certificate. And I’d have seen it. She’d have been sure to show me. Her last years were bitter ones.”
I knew that. Lucy had deteriorated into housemaid and part-time prostitute, walking the streets at night without the knowledge of her employers, like an addict seeking opium. Her early association with Richard gave her ideas that she could make her fortune that way, although by the time we’d found her, she’d worn out her beauty in pathetic hopes and constant worry. A slough of despond, I thought, remembering one of the books I’d pored over as a child.
Richard passed his hand over his face, sighing. “I know.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Your mother found her a husband and a new start. It wasn’t her fault that the husband turned out abusive and she couldn’t settle. She saw you as her one chance. She never understood that you’d never have been allowed to marry her.”
“What I want I usually find a way of getting.”
“At fourteen?” I exchanged a glance with Richard. That was when he’d started to learn, to gather around him the strength he had today. I thought it was probably also the time he’d realised that he’d have to fight for an identity of his own. Certainly, although the money he’d made with Thompson’s wasn’t anything like the fortune he’d inherit, he’d used his share of the profits to make financial investments that ensured he’d never be poor, even if he never touched the family fortune. He’d done it for himself. Nobody could take the title and inheritance away from him, short of his death, but he wanted a place of his own, an independence outside the Southwood estate.
He said nothing to Susan now about that. “I need to know what he’s planning. I don’t want to destroy him, but I will if he threatens Rose again. I want to know so I can stop him without him doing more damage.”
Susan nodded. “I understand that, but I won’t spy on you for him, or the other way about.”
“We expected him to ask you. I’m glad you won’t,” I said. It spoke to her integrity.
Richard had thought of it too, and yet he’d still asked to meet her here. True, we had a few trusty men distributed around the building and inside it, but she wasn’t to know that. And John wouldn’t come here. To do so would ensure he walked into a trap.
Susan left after assuring us she wouldn’t tell John what she knew, but Richard persuaded her not to tell him too much about her plans, either. “I’ll give you a good settlement, and I can facilitate your wedding, if you need it.”
“That might be a good idea,” she admitted. “But John knows where Andrew lives in Wales, and he might visit. I don’t want that. I want a complete break.” Her gentle words and her softened expression told me all I wanted to know about her relationship with her client. I had never seen her appear in that way before. After her troubled childhood, an older man might give her what she neede
d, stability and care. I could only hope so.
Chapter Nine
THE BRUSQUE SUMMONS to visit his father in Southwood House came as no surprise. Richard received many such these days, as he was working more closely with his father on estate matters, but this struck him for some reason as odd and he asked me to accompany him.
Lord Southwood received us in his book room, a simple name for a grand apartment where he received his men of business. His secretary, a dour-faced man of impeccable but unimaginative approach, showed us in with all the pomp he felt his master deserved.
Lord Southwood glanced at me with surprise as he greeted me, but said nothing untoward until a maid had brought a tray of tea and left. Perhaps he thought Richard had brought me to pour for him. I obliged, although I would soon inform him otherwise, if he tried to dismiss me.
Which he did. “I believe Lady Southwood is at home, my dear.”
“How nice for her,” I said. His lordship stared but said nothing as I retook my seat, a chair his man had hastily pulled up to accommodate my presence. I was tiring of all these meetings and furtive discussions. Richard glanced at me, arched a brow and smiled. I didn’t need his approval, but it warmed me nonetheless.
“So who is this upstart and what does he want?” At least his lordship got straight to the point.
“He’s my son, his sister is a courtesan and he claims that I was married to his mother.” When his lordship had stopped spluttering, Richard continued, without allowing him to get a word in. “I was not, but he has a document purporting to be marriage lines. I promised to marry her once, but not in the presence of witnesses.”
“I will deal with this.” Lord Southwood stuck out his jaw and glared down his nose at his son.
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