Lord of Scandal

by Nicola Cornick

  She saw him take a deep, steadying breath. “If you hate Withers so much then help me,” he said. “This is to do with Ned Clarencieux’s death. Clarencieux was no forger and no murderer either. Oh, he was foolish and reckless and spendthrift, but—” He broke off as though he was catching himself on the verge of some admission. Catherine understood. He was revealing vulnerability and he did not want for her to see it.

  She looked at him. “So you do at least care for someone?” she said.

  Ben shot her a look of dislike. His whole body was rigid with tension. “Clarencieux was framed,” he said. “He was set up and I think that Withers did it. I do not wish that to happen to me. That is all.”

  Catherine stared as his words started to sink in. The murder of Sir James Mather had been an unpleasant surprise to her. He had been her trustee, a man she had known for a long time, appointed by her grandfather. When she had heard that Ned Clarencieux was involved, the reasons seemed perfectly clear. Mather was a banker; Clarencieux, like her, was one of his clients. Clarencieux had become embroiled in financial trouble and had started to try to pass counterfeit notes to buy himself out of his difficulties. Mather had discovered the fraud and Clarencieux had killed him to stop him exposing the truth. He had been seen running from Mather’s chambers after the shot had been fired. His pistol was discovered beside the banker’s body. And counterfeit notes had been found in his rooms….

  Catherine shook her head. She did not want to believe what Ben was saying. Why would Withers frame him? And if Clarencieux was innocent, who had killed James Mather?

  “You must be mistaken,” she said. “Mr. Clarencieux was surely guilty! Besides—” She stopped, looked at him. “Why would Withers wish to frame him? Or bring you down, for that matter?”

  “That,” Ben said grimly, “is what I am trying to discover. But you heard him, Catherine. You were there when he made the threat.”

  That gave Catherine pause. “I did,” she allowed. “But I did not think he meant anything by it.” Unconsciously she fingered her cheek where Withers had hit her that time. “He can be violent,” she said, “but I thought his threats were no more than words.”

  Ben caught her hand in his. “Has he hurt you?”

  For a moment Catherine stared at him, unable to decipher the expression in his eyes.

  “He hit me once,” she admitted, and heard Ben swear violently.

  “But this has nothing to do with me or to do with—” Catherine stopped herself just in time before she betrayed Maggie’s name. “I promise I know nothing of this,” she began again, but Ben interrupted her, his face hard.

  “You can promise all you wish but until I find out your link to Clarencieux, I do not intend to let you go.”

  Suddenly Catherine was tired to her bones with an aching, empty exhaustion that made her long for a hot bath and her own bed. She wanted to go home, no matter how chill and barren the house in Guilford Street. She flung out a contemptuous hand and scattered the pile of golden guineas across the floor.

  “You may buy information from whomever you can persuade to betray me, my lord,” she said, “but I will tell you nothing more. I took the portrait back on behalf of a friend who was Edward Clarencieux’s mistress. I did it because she was terrified her husband would find out and denounce her. As for Withers’s threats, I understood nothing of them. And that is all I know.” She glanced ostentatiously at the clock.

  “You paid for an hour, I believe. Your time is almost over.”

  Ben took her arm, swinging her around to face him. Catherine’s breath caught in her throat. She felt so vulnerable. She had wanted to be indifferent to him now that was all that was left to her, but the moment he touched her, she was undone. Her body still responded to his touch and her heart betrayed her.

  “Then since talking has been so unprofitable for us,” Ben said pleasantly, “perhaps we should spend the rest of our time employed in something we found more enjoyable.”

  Catherine saw the flash in his eyes but read his intentions a second too late. He had put a hand on the nape of her neck and now he pulled her close enough to kiss her. She was taken by equal parts of shock and desire. His touch reawakened all the painful longings she had so recently discovered. She felt the hot stroke of his tongue, urgent and deep, and then her knees threatened to give way and he swept her up into his arms and carried her to the sofa.

  “Ben…” It was the first time she had called him by his name, but instead of a reproach, it came out as a plea and he groaned, drawing her closer, as close as she could get, so that she lay along the hard length of his body. She could feel every ragged breath that he drew, every beat of his heart. Her body was softening again at his touch, wanting him. She felt ripe and ready to fall. Her mind struggled to control the sensations but then he was kissing her again, savagely, hungrily, and she let go of all thought and returned the kiss, unable to resist. His mouth left hers and brushed the lobe of her ear, sending delicious shivers down her spine. Her nipples hardened beneath the material of her shift and when his hand came up to cup her breast, its heat branded her through the silk. Her head fell back against the sofa cushions and she felt his mouth trace the line of her throat down to the neck of her dress, and linger where the swell of her breasts strained against the cloth. His teeth nipped at one tight peak where it rubbed against the silk and Catherine caught her breath on a scream. Ben tangled his fist in her hair and turned her head so that her mouth met his again. Catherine felt as though she had a fever. She could not understand the desperation between them, but she knew with an instinct deeper than time that Ben felt it, too.

  She opened her eyes and saw the golden guineas scattered across the floor and something shriveled in her heart, turning it to ice. Ben Hawksmoor had paid for an hour of her time and now he was making love to her in a whorehouse. There was precious little romantic in that. A short while ago she had promised herself never to make the same mistake twice, yet here she was doing precisely that. Ben did not love her, did not even care for her beyond the desire he so evidently felt for her. To forget that, to allow herself to be deceived by his touch, was madness.

  She struggled to sit up and he let her go immediately.

  “Catherine?” His voice was unsteady.

  “Do not think to seduce the information you want from me,” Catherine said, wanting nothing more than to strike out and hurt him as he had hurt her. “I am not so naive as I was a few hours ago. You have seen to that.”

  Ben released her so suddenly she almost fell to the floor. She had thought that her taunt would have been as ineffectual as the scratching of a kitten, and was taken aback. She scrambled to her feet, but by then he was already halfway to the door.

  “You are correct, of course,” he said. “I had better go.”

  Catherine sat braced upright upon the sofa until she heard the sound of the front door closing and then she curled herself up tightly, her knees to her chin. She had been a child starved of affection and had become a woman whose natural sensual instincts had been locked away, stifled, until Ben Hawksmoor had released them. She had learned so much of herself in one night that she could scarce believe it.

  She had given herself to a man who desired her but did not care for her one whit.

  And that, she thought, was the bitter end to her first lesson in love.

  THE WATCH HAD ANNOUNCED the hour of four and the night was darker than pitch when a closed carriage left Mrs. Desmond’s House of Enchantment and rumbled through the frosty streets to Guilford Street.

  At the same time, a messenger was knocking on the door of Lady Paris de Moine’s house in Cheyne Gardens. The night porter took the letter and went, yawning, to wake Edna. He knew that such an action would prove unpopular but the messenger had insisted that the matter required the utmost urgency.

  Edna was not happy to be disturbed. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, took the missive and when the porter told her unhappily that it was for Lady Paris’s eyes only, she told him sharply to get back
to his post. She knew better than to trouble Paris with anything that was not a matter of life and death, especially now that my lady was so poorly.

  Even so, when she had broken the seal and read the contents, she leaped from her bed as though someone had applied a hot coal to her feet. She was down the corridor and knocking on Paris’s bedroom door before the night porter could do more than splutter in amazement.

  And a bare two minutes after that, the whole house was awoken by the sounds of breaking china and glass, as Lady Paris de Moine gave vent to her feelings with an intensity that none of them had previously heard at all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  An inefficient chaperone is a great drawback to a young lady.

  —Mrs. Eliza Squire, Good Conduct for Ladies

  SIR ALFRED FENTON WAS ASLEEP in his armchair, the London Chronicle sliding farther from his lap with each rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. He had dined at his club that night with Algernon Withers, who had been anxious to acquaint him with the latest faults he had to find with Catherine’s behavior. These were legion, and Withers’s complaints had been sufficient to put Sir Alfred in a black mood; so bad, in fact, that he was glad to see the back of the man when Withers finally took himself off for some low gambling den or other.

  He knew that he should never have got in so deep with Withers. When it had all begun he had thought that he needed someone with the brand of ruthlessness Withers possessed. Too late he had realized that the man was not only ruthless but undisciplined, too. He never knew when to stop. And in his arrogance he would bring them all down.

  Already matters had spiraled far, far out of Sir Alfred’s control. He had only wanted someone to help him break the trust fund, a fellow signatory to help him deceive Sir James Mather. Sir Alfred had been running short of money and Catherine’s fortune was like a prize that glittered just out of his reach. Catherine’s grandfather, that old rogue McNaish, had arranged it so. McNaish’s only weakness had been his love of his family—his daughter, Violet, Sir Alfred’s first wife, and his granddaughter, Catherine, whom he had adored. He had tied up his fortune so that Catherine should inherit and Sir Alfred would have nothing but the interest on the principal. Sir Alfred knew McNaish had done it on purpose. It was almost like a taunt.

  At first Sir Alfred had not cared. His own business interests had prospered and he did not need his daughter’s money. But gradually a series of reversals had reduced his wealth until he could no longer maintain the style to which he had become accustomed.

  It had been easy to persuade Mather to take Withers on as the third trustee when McNaish had died. Sir Alfred had vouched for Withers, and Mather had been an honorable man who had not suspected dishonor in others. The deed had been done, the papers signed, and Withers and Sir Alfred had been fleecing the fund ever since. But then Withers had turned to funding criminal excess, gangs of body snatchers who worked the graveyards of London. It had sickened Sir Alfred to hear of it, but Withers had just laughed and said there was money in old bones. And then Mather had discovered the fraud of the trust and had had to be silenced….

  Sir Alfred twitched and groaned as his sleep was riven with images of greed and violence. The paper fell from his lap to crumple on the floor.

  Sir Alfred’s dream quieted and now he was imagining the haven of the house in Chelsea where his mistress waited patiently for his visits. She would have known by now that he was not planning to come to her this night and would have taken to her bed in the peach-scented boudoir where he had known such pleasure.

  She would not be waiting for him once she knew he was bankrupt, even less so if he were under criminal investigation, as surely he would be if Withers continued in his current ways. She would be gone to another protector, taking his refuge and his diamonds with her, leaving him with nothing but cold memories and a wife who was colder still.

  Sir Alfred snored so loudly that he woke himself up and sat up with a start, staring about him. The clock registered fifteen minutes past four. The fire had died and the house was cold and silent.

  At first, when Sir Alfred had returned home, he had not been concerned that both his wife and his daughter were missing. He had assumed that they were attending some social occasion and had retired to his study with the newspaper. But as the hours ticked by, he had become irritated to be sitting at home alone in the early hours and had called for the butler. Getting information from Tench had been on a par with pulling teeth from a hen, but eventually he had ascertained that Catherine had gone out at a little before midnight, and that Lady Fenton had left separately, just before he had arrived home. Neither lady had vouchsafed their destination.

  Sir Alfred had digested the information in silence. He had left Catherine’s chaperonage very much in his wife’s hands since such matters bored him and it was only now that it was becoming apparent just how inadequate Maggie Fenton’s sense of responsibility was. Sir Alfred supposed that his wife might have arranged for another matron to chaperone Catherine if she herself had a separate engagement, but nevertheless, his uneasiness persisted. He had known for some time now that Maggie was deucedly dependent on her laudanum bottle and how attached she was to certain rackety young men about town. He had known, but he had not wanted to confront the truth. And then the business of Ned Clarencieux had forced him to face matters. Withers had told him about Clarencieux. And had promised to deal with it just as he had sworn to deal with Mather.

  Sir Alfred stood up a little stiffly and marched over to the door, but stopped with his hand on the knob. What good would it do to call Tench now and make a scene? The butler had already told him all he knew. The situation would only serve to emphasize how little Sir Alfred was in control of his own household, with an errant wife and a daughter who mystified him.

  Sir Alfred stared at his reflection in the pier glass above the mantel. He looked old and tired. In Chelsea, Rosabelle would have caressed him into contentment and told him he was a fine figure of a man. He would have known she was lying, of course, but he would have liked to believe her.

  He flung open the door of the study and at the same moment heard the sounds of a carriage pulling up outside the house. The front door opened and Catherine walked in, drawing off her gloves as she did so. She wore no bonnet and her hair was down. Sir Alfred, no expert when it came to women’s fashion, was still able to discern that his daughter was not dressed for a ball or a social occasion. Indeed, she looked as though she were hurrying home from an assignation.

  Catherine looked horrified to see him. Her face was so pale with exhaustion that she was almost translucent. There were dark marks beneath her eyes and smudges on her cheeks from dried tears. She dropped her gloves and stooped automatically to pick them up.

  Sir Alfred found his voice. “Where the devil have you been, girl?”

  Catherine did not answer immediately. They stared at one another and Sir Alfred was suddenly keenly aware of the close resemblance Catherine bore to her mother. Violet had had that stance; the courage, the defiant tilt to the chin. He had never loved her. He had married her for the connection to McNaish, just as he had later married Maggie Arden because she was the daughter of a baron. Acquisition was his way of life.

  And even as they stared at one another, and Sir Alfred realized how little he knew his daughter and how thoroughly he had failed her, the door opened again and Maggie stumbled inside. If Catherine had looked disheveled, Maggie looked abandoned. Her hair was in rats’ tails and she was wearing her gown inside out, and she appeared neither to know nor care. Her eyes were wild.

  For a long moment, the three of them stood captured in the silence, as though they knew that whoever spoke first would finally break the code that had held the Fenton household together in uneasy truce for all these long months. Then Maggie opened her mouth and the words started tumbling out, and everything was changed forever.

  “I know,” she said. “I know that you had Ned Clarencieux killed. You did it because of me.”

  For a moment, Sir Alfred did not unde
rstand what she was talking about. There was a rushing sound in his ears and a mist before his eyes. He shook his head slowly.

  “What the deuce are you talking about, Margaret?”

  Suddenly Maggie started to pummel his chest with her fists. “You knew I loved him!” she shrieked. “You were jealous! I know you killed him! Withers told me this evening. He told me everything!”

  Sir Alfred grabbed her wrists and held her from him at arm’s length. Catherine had not moved. She was standing still and stiff, her face a white mask. Maggie was kicking and wriggling in Sir Alfred’s grip but she was tiring now. He looked her up and down, at the gown that was inside out and only half-fastened, and all he could think of was the frightening truth that Withers had betrayed him twice over. Withers had told Maggie that he was responsible for Edward Clarencieux’s death and then—Sir Alfred swallowed convulsively—Withers had slept with Maggie, carelessly, casually, for no other reason than that he wanted to and that it demonstrated his power. There was a mist of fury before Sir Alfred’s eyes. Withers must have gone from taking dinner with him to taking his wife.

  “You come back to me from Withers looking like this?” His fury burned higher. He was angry with her and with Algernon Withers, but for the most part he was despairing at his own weakness. He should have stopped Withers long ago but now it was too late. The man had despoiled everything that was important to him.

  “You trollop!” he snapped. “How could you do this to me?”

  Maggie did not answer. She was drooping in his grip now like a cut flower. She was weeping softly. He shook her again and from the pocket of her cloak fell a bottle of laudanum. It rolled back and forth, coming to rest by Sir Alfred’s left foot, as though a mute answer to his question. He let Maggie go and she dived to pick the bottle up, but Sir Alfred was too quick for her. He splintered the bottle beneath his foot, crunching the glass into the floor, even as his wife was down on her hands and knees in a desperate attempt to get there first, and her wail of loss filled the room.