Ben stood quite still as the door of the bedroom closed behind her. He could hear the faint tread of her footsteps fading away down the corridor and then silence.
He had been walking away from situations like this for all of his adult life, he realized, yet when Catherine walked away from him it was deeply unsatisfactory. Rather like Catherine’s first experience of lovemaking. A self-deprecating smile twisted his lips. She had not been wrong. In the end it had been very far from pleasurable, although before that it had been absolutely exquisite….
His body responded to the thought but he ignored it and tried to concentrate. He had robbed a young woman of her virginity yet she had sworn she had no wish to entrap him into marriage. Perhaps the morning would give the lie to that when an angry father or intemperate brother arrived on the doorstep with a shotgun. He shrugged. If that were the case, it would cause a huge scandal but in the end Catherine would be the one to suffer. The Ton expected such behavior from him. The lady was always the one whose reputation was ruined.
Ben went over to the table and poured some wine into one of the crystal glasses, drinking deeply. To his surprise, he found he did not like the thought of Catherine’s reputation being ruined, of some other man spurning her as a fallen woman. He hated the hypocrisy of society in such matters. Yet now he had put her in precisely the situation where that might happen. And if she were to bear a child, she would be utterly destroyed. He froze as the possibility struck him for the very first time. It was unlikely, but it was not impossible.
It was so long since Ben Hawksmoor had suffered the twin torments of guilt and responsibility that he barely recognized them. He had done plenty of things in his life that would have caused another man to lose sleep but he had always been able to forget them. Until now.
He put his glass of wine down slowly. He needed brandy and he needed it now. He rang the bell for Price, his butler.
I had heard that you never do the decent thing, so why should you start now?
Catherine’s words echoed in his head. Ben winced. She had an uncanny knack for getting to the point of things.
Price arrived with a bottle. His butler knew his tastes. In fact, his butler generally knew everything. Ben had always found it essential to have good intelligence at his disposal. It kept him a step ahead of the game.
Ben saw the butler’s gaze take in his state of undress and the tumbled bedclothes, but although Price’s lugubrious expression deepened, he made no comment. Ben was accustomed to Price’s disapproval from twelve years experience. He could still visualize the expression on Price’s face when he had been assigned as his batman when Ben had joined the regiment all those years ago. Price had looked like a man who had just realized that fate was punishing him for some terrible wrong he had not even been aware that he had committed. His mournful face—fatter then, but still with its pursed lips and sucking-on-lemons expression—had fallen ludicrously before he had recovered himself, given a slight, precise bow and muttered, “Very good, sir,” to the commanding officer. And Ben had not been particularly surprised at his new manservant’s reaction. Serving the hell-raising, outcast son of a wastrel baron was nothing to boast about in the barracks.
Since then, Ben had inherited the wastrel baron’s title, but he suspected that Price thought that this was very little to boast about either.
The butler placed the tray on the table and unstoppered the brandy decanter.
“I secured a hackney carriage for the young lady, my lord,” Price said suddenly. “This is no night for a lady of quality to be out alone.”
Ben looked at him. The thought of Catherine fleeing his bed and Price calmly calling a hack for her made his mind boggle. There was a tone of reproach in the butler’s voice that made him wince a little. He had enough disapproval of his own conduct not to wish to tolerate his butler’s disapprobation.
He turned the brandy glass idly around in his hands. “Did you hear where Miss Fenton instructed the hack to take her?”
Price’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Yes, my lord.”
There was a short silence. Ben raised a brow. “I beg your pardon, Price. Clearly I did not explain myself adequately. Do you know the lady’s destination so that you can tell me?”
The butler looked haughty. “I understand, my lord,” he said. “The lady asked for Mrs. Desmond’s House of Enchantment, in Covent Garden.”
Ben felt shocked. It was another emotion so alien to him that for a second he failed to recognize it. So few things shocked him these days. But suddenly nothing was making any sense anymore. It was true that he had seen Catherine in company with a Lily St. Clare, a cyprian from Mrs. Desmond’s brothel. It was one of the things that had misled him as to her quality. But what was irrefutably true was that she had been no whore herself. He knew that now, now that it was too late.
The questions hammered at his mind. Why had Bradshaw thought her guilty when she was surely no more than an innocent caught up in Withers’s intrigue? And if she was innocent, why had she come to his house that night?
He put his brandy down abruptly, repelled by the smell of alcohol, and ran a hand through his hair.
“I do not understand,” he said slowly.
“No, my lord.” Price sounded very lugubrious indeed.
Ben frowned. He was accustomed to young ladies of good family conceiving a tendre for him, although none of them had ever taken matters this far. Plenty of them sent him love notes drenched in lavender water and proffering impassioned declarations of naive worship. He threw them in the fire. Then there were the women who sent him their unmentionables—a variety of underclothes from wisps of lace to bodices the size and consistency of sacks, to suit every imaginable sexual taste—and wrote of all the things they would like him to do to them in bed. He usually threw those letters in the fire as well. Debutantes and harlots did not interest him. Nothing interested him.
Nothing except Catherine, who had stepped into his bedroom hiding her innocence behind a facade of semi-sophistication and had ended up being ruthlessly seduced, as much by her own desires as by his. And yet despite what had happened, Ben’s instinct told him that she had not come originally either to seduce or to compromise him.
“Do you know why she came here tonight, Price?” he said slowly.
“I think I may do, my lord.” Price reached into the pocket of his coat and held out something in the palm of his hand. “I found this in the drawing room, my lord. It was not there earlier. It was there after the lady left. Thus the conclusion is inescapable, my lord.”
Ben took the silver miniature from Price’s outstretched hand and stared down in shock at Ned Clarencieux’s smiling face. The theft of the painting had caused him an inordinate amount of trouble. It had gone missing after one of his riotous parties the previous year and at first he had hoped someone had merely taken it as a joke. But then the silversmith had insisted on being reimbursed for the whole sum, picture and silver frame together. Ben could not afford to pay, but nor could he afford to lose French’s patronage nor that of his colleagues. In the end he had had to extend his debt with Henshalls, the moneylenders, and he had called in the Bow Street Runners, although he’d had little hope of them discovering the piece no matter what they claimed in the papers. And now here it was. Catherine Fenton had brought it back.
Bradshaw had said that she was connected with Clarencieux, had suggested that she had been his mistress. But that could not have been true. Ben had the irrefutable proof. Further, she had disclaimed all involvement in Withers’s affairs and he had believed her because her shock and horror at his accusation had been so acute it could not have been feigned. Some debutantes did become involved with unsuitable men. In Ben’s experience, men and women alike had strong feelings and emotions that would lead them into all manner of behavior whether that behavior happened in the bordellos of Covent Garden or the drawing rooms of Berkeley Square. His own blatant stupidity had just proved it. But it had also proved that Ned Clarencieux had not been Catherine’
s lover. And in that case, how had Clarencieux’s miniature come into her possession?
Suddenly Ben wished heartily that he had paid more attention to Clarencieux’s amours. His friend’s affaires had been as numerous and varied as his own were not, and he had never really been interested in Ned’s fleeting fancies.
Of one thing he was certain. He had an absolute conviction that he had never met Catherine before the day of the hanging. If she had been to his house with Ned, even for a masked ball, he would have seen her, spoken to her, felt her presence….
He shook his head sharply. It was madness to imply that he would have known her, recognized her on some deeper level. She was no different, no more important to him than any other pretty girl. He had some guilt over the way he had treated her but that was all.
He realized with a sudden flash of intuition that on all the occasions she had met him, Catherine had never wanted him to know her full name nor guess her identity. She had never told him, nor had he seen her in her true persona. When he had addressed her as Miss Fenton that night, she had been shocked. And with the discovery of the miniature, her imposture suddenly made perfect sense. She had not wanted him to know her true identity because she had a secret to keep.
“I must find her and get the truth from her,” he said softly. “This has something to do with Ned and Withers, and I cannot simply let it lie.”
“Will that be all, my lord?” There was a gruff note of disapproval in Price’s voice.
“Yes, thank you,” Ben said.
“Very good, my lord.” The old soldier’s tone was still grumpy.
Ben gave him a quizzical look. “Disapprove of me, do you, Price?”
“Not my place, my lord.” Price was stiff.
“But if it was your place…”
Price drew himself up. “That lady was no piece of Haymarket ware, my lord. Nor is she guilty of whatever it is you seem to suspect of her. Have you lost all judgment that you treat a lady with such contempt? Your behavior has been despicable.”
There was a long pause. Ben glanced from the disheveled bedcovers to his butler’s furious face. “I see. Thank you for your observations, Price.”
“My lord.” The butler’s tone had eased slightly now that he had got his feelings off his chest, but he made no move to leave. Ben raised a brow. “Was there something else, Price? Some further strictures on my behavior, perhaps? Be assured that I can take it. My shoulders are broad.”
“You sail too close to the wind, my lord.” Price sounded more resigned than critical now. “This matter of Mr. Clarencieux, my lord…He had powerful enemies. You will overreach yourself.”
Ben nodded. “I do believe you are correct, Price. Thank you. That will be all.”
The butler hesitated. “You came through Bussaco and Salamanca, my lord,” he said, “and since then you have done nothing but attempt to get yourself killed. Why throw your life away drowning in the Thames or challenging some fellow to a duel over a trifling gambling debt, or digging into matters that can only lead to trouble?”
There was a pause. Ben felt nothing but coldness where his heart should be.
What was the answer to Price’s question? I will throw my life away because there is nothing better to do with it? All he knew was that he could never go back to the filthy streets and the hungry days and the desperation of poverty.
“I said that will be all, Price.”
“My lord.”
The door closed behind Price with a reproachfully quiet click and Ben reached automatically for the brandy bottle. He poured for himself, but then stood with the glass untouched in his hand as he stared into the fire. Tonight was unsettling. Price had raised questions he would rather not face and Catherine had stirred emotions he did not even know he possessed. Perhaps that was why his feelings about her seduction had turned out to be so much more complicated than he would ever have imagined. This did not feel like something he could merely walk away from. It had been a betrayal of innocence, unpardonably cruel. It was unforgivable.
Ben shifted uncomfortably. He had done a number of unforgivable things in his life and had still managed to forget them. Perhaps in time his conscience would be stilled on this matter, too.
Except that he had to go after Catherine. He wanted to know how she had come by the miniature and why she had brought it back.
There was a knock at the door.
“I wished to remind you that Mr. Hilliard will be here to paint you early in the morning, my lord.” Price was at his most formal.
“Thank you,” Ben said. “I will make sure I am available.” He sighed as the door closed once again. No doubt Price disapproved of portrait painters as well as everything else. When the project had first been mooted, he had thought Price was going to have an apoplexy. His face had reddened and swelled with outrage, and Ben had thought he was going to tell him that no red-blooded man would ever act as an artist’s model. It simply was not British.
He threw himself down in the armchair. He could not afford to turn down good money on a commission like this. Hilliard needed a model and he needed cash. He was perpetually short of it. He had a mouldering mausoleum of a country house that was mortgaged to perdition, and it cost a fortune to sustain his lifestyle. And he would never, ever, go back to the poverty he remembered from his youth. The thought brought him out in a cold sweat. He could feel it prickling between his shoulder blades. The fear of financial ruin stalked him like a malign ghost. Sometimes he thought that he would never be free of it. Sometimes he thought he would be better off dead.
The sound of Price’s measured tread in the corridor outside raised him from his reverie. Tomorrow Price, bless him, would help Hilliard to carry his easel, canvases and paints, no matter how much he despised the man’s profession. For a moment Ben felt something dangerously akin to affection for his old servant. Then, more practically, he prayed that they would not dislodge any of the statuary on display in the hall when Hilliard arrived. He had borrowed it, the shop being flatteringly eager to have their wares exhibited in his home. He could not afford actually to pay for it.
And after he had sat for Hilliard, he would track down Miss Catherine Fenton, debutante, and demand that she tell him the truth about Clarencieux’s portrait. He would concentrate on that sole matter and refuse even to think about the sublime pleasure he had found in taking her to his bed. He tried to dismiss his recollection of the softness of her skin beneath his hands and the warmth and sweet taste of her as she had parted her lips to allow him in, but the memory of her stubbornly refused to be dislodged. Suddenly the thought of posing through an interminably long sitting with Hilliard seemed intolerable. He would be thinking about Catherine the whole time and then—he looked down in exasperation—he would have an erection of monstrous proportions again, which simply would not do when Hilliard was supposed to be painting him in the guise of King Edward the Confessor. He doubted that the saintly monarch had ever felt the sort of earthly lust that was troubling him now.
With an oath, he reached for his jacket and flung open the bedroom door. He could not simply sit here while Catherine was in some Covent Garden bordello. He had to find her now. He had to ask her what was going on. He had to find out about the miniature.
He passed Price in the hallway.
“I am going out, Price,” he said. “To Covent Garden. Pray do not wait up for me.”
And as he strode past, he had the strangest impression that Price was actually smiling. He turned quickly to check, but the butler’s face was impassive once more.
“Of course, my lord,” Price said, as though he had known all along that this would be the inevitable course Ben would take.
CHAPTER FIVE
If you are engaged to another man and accept the attentions of anyone other than your affianced husband, your conduct is reprehensible and disgraces you.
—Mrs. Eliza Squire, Good Conduct for Ladies
LADY PARIS DE MOINE WAS sitting in front of her dressing table in a state of extreme déshab
illé. She had returned early from a dinner engagement because she was once more suffering from a headache brought on, she was sure, by the maddening inability of the Duke of Beaufoy to propose to her. To think that she had turned down the opportunity to attend Ben Hawksmoor’s ball—in company with the Prince Regent—only for Beaufoy to hum and haw and waste his opportunities! It was insupportable. And as if that were not bad enough…
The fine satinwood surface of the table was cluttered with pots and potions. The air in the boudoir was rich with the mingled scent of lily of the valley and musky rose. The satin ribbons on Lady Paris’s peignoir were trailing in the face cream, but for once she did not notice. She was staring into the mirror—it was an extremely large mirror—with a look of abject horror on her beautiful features.
“What,” she said, stabbing a finger toward her reflection, “is that?”
Edna, the maid who was the only person in the world who knew all Lady Paris’s secrets, wrinkled up her nose and peered into the glass.
“It is a pimple, my love.”
“No,” Paris said. She pointed at another part of her face. “That is a pimple, Edna. This is…it is…a carbuncle! A monstrosity! How can I possibly attend Lord and Lady Askew’s breakfast tomorrow when I look like this? I will be a laughingstock.”
Edna peered closer. “We can hide it—”
“With what? A marquee?”
Lady Paris got to her feet and flounced away across the room. “I have had the headache for days. I feel sick and I look like a freak show. I am going to bed. Cancel all my engagements.”
The maid bent and started to pick up the first of a huge mound of discarded clothes that littered the floor.
“Of course, my lady.”
“For tomorrow and the next day.”
The maid paused. “All of them, my lady?”
“All of them.” Paris’s voice was muffled. She had put a large pillow over her face. “Close the drapes, Edna. And the window. It is too cold in here. Fresh air is very dangerous to the complexion.”
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