A Spirited Affair

by Lynn Kerstan

  Jillian didn’t answer. The Earl would take care of everything. In what was left of the night, when she was alone, she’d think of how to tell him, but for now she didn’t want to think at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THROUGH THE LONG night, Jillian sat by her bedroom window, sifting the truths she would tell the Earl from those better left unspoken.

  Love said tell him everything, but Reason had a very different opinion and, after all, Reason had been with her from the beginning. Reason knew him for what he was, an aristocrat to the bone, bred to rules that allowed no exceptions. Love was a definite latecomer, altogether a surprise when it broke into her heart and went quickly on its way again. Well, perhaps not quickly, for Mark would always be the love of her life, but she’d no intention of pining hopelessly from afar. She had been happy before she met him and would be again.

  But first she had to get through tomorrow.

  Pressing her forehead against the cool glass, she asked herself, for the last time, if there was any chance the Earl would let her go and not interfere if she confessed everything. Indeed, he could find out for himself should he make the effort, so what was the point of lying?

  But the answer to that had not changed since first she took his measure. The best solution, for everyone,

  was Jillian Lamb’s speedy return to Kent, and if things went as planned, she’d be on her way within a few hours. Mark would believe what she told him—she knew him well enough by now to be sure of it—and he’d ask no questions. Certainly, he would despise her and she was prepared for that, but she doubted he’d pursue the matter beyond ridding himself of her as quickly as possible.

  Hours of consideration had brought her to where she’d begun. She dared not risk the precious thing she held in trust, not for Margaret’s good will or Mark’s respect or the love that still urged her to confide in them both.

  As the black sky faded to grey, she heard the household begin to stir and rang for her abigail. Propriety be damned, she had to get this over with. She chose a dark blue morning gown, scribbled a note to Margaret explaining she’d gone with friends for a morning drive in Hyde Park, and asked the footman to summon a hackney. A bit shocked, he escorted her to the street and helped her inside.

  Lies and more lies. Heart in her throat, she waited until they’d turned the corner before directing the jarvey to Berkeley Square.

  Unable to sleep, the Earl was still fully dressed, pacing the library as he tried to make sense of things that made no sense at all. “I don’t want any breakfast,” he barked in response to a knock on the door.

  Jaspers entered, looking very smug. “That female is here, Milord. Alone. She wishes to speak with you. Shall I send her away?”

  Feeling his heart plunge to his heels, Mark rubbed his bristly jaw with a shaking hand. Jillian here,” alone. Dear God. “Send her in,” he charged, “and then take yourself downstairs. If I catch you listening at the keyhole, I’ll slice off your ear.”

  Stunned to silence, the butler made a quick exit. Mark crossed to the bay window behind his desk and stared into the garden, suddenly realizing how often he turned his back on situations he didn’t want to face. Like this one.

  Jillian’s voice, quavering with what sounded like fear, barely carried down the long room. “I know this is improper, My Lord, but I must speak with you.”

  “Close the door,” he said.

  Obeying, she moved to a position in front of the heavy oak desk and sank into a chair. It was as if he’d expected her. He hadn’t changed clothes, and his usually sleek hair was wildly ruffled. But he’d removed his cravat, which lay across the desk, and she picked it up,’ catching the scent of him.

  “What do you want?” he growled past a constriction in his throat.

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  Stiffening, the Earl lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “Devil take it, when shall we cease to debate this, Miss Lamb? I cannot believe you have come here, alone at this hour, to discuss again the impossible. Have you no shame? No sense at all of the proprieties?”

  “None, My Lord.” She twisted the cravat in her hands, glad for something to hold on to. “Last night, I realized this farce cannot continue any longer. I am a fraud, a disgrace to you and to Aunt Margaret, and now it must end.”

  He closed his eyes. “I am aware you have deceived me,” he said in a low voice, “but I cannot fathom why. You pretended to be an unschooled farm girl, yet in a matter of weeks you conquered London. How are you a disgrace? And what in God’s name possesses you to want to go back to a sheep (aim when the whole world is spread out in front of you?”

  She sucked in a deep breath. “My daughter.”

  In the long silence that followed her words, an arctic wind seemed to sweep through the library. Jillian imagined that icicles were forming on the chandelier and frost was crystallizing over the drapes and furniture. Cold and silence stretched between them, until the Earl turned, slowly, to face her. She came to her feet. They gazed at each other, blue-grey eyes meeting coffee-brown in a moment of shared pain, and then it was gone. If it ever existed.

  “You have a child,” he said tonelessly.

  “Anna.”

  “I see.” He fumbled with a letter opener on his desk. “Should I presume you do not also have a husband?”

  “Her father is dead, killed in the war. He never knew about his daughter. And no, we were not married.”

  Suddenly he drove the letter opener into the desk. It quivered there, and both of them stared at it. Weakly, Jillian fell back into the chair, arms wrapped around her waist.

  “Well, that puts a new twist on things, does it not?” The Earl glared icily at her down his long, slender nose. “Of course you must depart London, and the sooner the better. Have you informed Margaret of your . . . indiscretion?”

  “N—not yet,” Jillian faltered.

  “Would you prefer me to do so?”

  “Oh no! I must tell her myself. And I’ll do so the minute I get home . . . that is, when we are finished here.”

  “What surprises me more than anything is that you have deceived her. Used her. Embarrassed her before her friends.”

  Tears flooded Jillian’s eyes and she wiped them with a clenched fist. “It was the last thing I meant to do. I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid. I kept hoping you’d send me home before it was necessary. Then everything happened so fast, and I got swept up in it all. I was so worried about me that I didn’t consider what this might do to you and to Lady Margaret. You both seemed so . . . invulnerable.”

  “I expect,” he said dispassionately, “that the Coltrane reputation will survive even you, Miss Lamb. For now, shall we attend to the details? Naturally, I shall provide a carriage for your journey. Is it possible you can leave today?”

  “I packed last night,” she told him.

  “You will travel with a maid, of course. I hesitate to involve Margaret and her staff, but you were attended by a girl here, were you not?”

  “P—Polly.”

  “She may accompany you and return with the coach. A footman will ride ahead to reserve rooms, for as I recall from my own trip, an overnight stop is necessary. I shall also see that funds are available, and that should take care of our immediate problems. For the future, a bailiff will be dispatched to Choppingsworth Downs as soon as possible. You will be better occupied raising your daughter than trying to manage a sheep farm. He will report to Barrows, and money will be dispensed from your account when necessary. I shall continue to administer your fortune. Have I left anything out?”

  Jillian shook her head, unable to speak.

  “Then we are quit of one another and none too soon. Is there anything else you wish to say?” There were a hundred things,, but not a one for which she could find words. Jillian stood, head bowed, and stumbled toward the door, still clutching
his neckcloth.

  “Miss Lamb,” he said.

  Haltingly, she turned around and stared at his open shirt.

  “I remain your guardian,” he reminded her. “Should you or your daughter require anything above the assistance provided, I expect you to notify me.”

  She shrugged helplessly. “Goodbye, My Lord,” she whispered.

  MARK STARED AT the closed door for a long time. Then he sank into his chair and buried his head in his arms. So the little lamb was a tart after all, a farm girl who had lifted her skirts for a soldier and now paid the price. Hell, no wonder she operated a refuge for strays. Likely she never slept alone.

  He should have listened to the voice in his head. It told him she was other than she seemed. There were signs. Warnings. A man who’d survived in Paris four years, dined with Bonaparte, and seduced the Little Colonel’s sister ought never to have been fooled by a rustic trollop.

  To be fair, she’d demanded to go home from the beginning. He was the one who’d compelled her to stay, forced her into Margaret’s care, foisted her on Society. And last night, he’d almost been seduced by her himself. For a moment, under a sky blazing with fireworks, he’d imagined himself falling in love.

  Jaspers was halfway into the room before the Earl knew he was there. “I told you she was no good,” he said scornfully, setting a tray with coffee and sliced melon on the desk. “We are well rid of her.”

  With effort, Mark focused on the cadaverous shape poised in front of him.

  The butler’s grey lips curved in a taunting smile. “Will there be anything else, Milord?”

  “One thing only.” The Earl pulled out his watch. “Consider yourself dismissed, from this exact moment. Eight forty-two. And that includes your singularly useless sister. I want you both out of this house before nightfall. You will have a month’s wages and whatever reference I can bring myself to produce.”

  “Your Lordship—”

  “Get out, Jaspers.”

  “But—”

  “Out.” Eyes glittering with menace, the Earl of Coltrane rose to his feet. “You have five seconds to reach that door,” he warned savagely.

  On the count of four, Jaspers disappeared.

  Mark slumped back into his chair. How easy that was. Thirty years . . . more or less, considering infancy . . . he’d detested the man. Now he was gone. Just like that. A flick of his wrist, a simple command, and everyone went away.

  And now he was alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A WEEK AFTER Jillian’s departure, Prince George had his way with the Earl of Coltrane. There was no changing his mind once the government figured out a way to honor one of its spies without officially acknowledging his existence, and Prinny made it clear the unofficial spy was to present himself. Blackstone saw to it that he did.

  The pompous ceremony, in the Lords, was mercifully brief. With the Prince determined to be the star of the show, Mark had only to stand in his wide shadow and try to look interested. Tall, broad-shouldered, and resplendent in his red velvet ermine-trimmed cape, he endured the speeches and florid encomiums with a stoic face and a tight-lipped two sentences of appreciation. The heavy gold medal, featuring a bizarre engraving of a svelte Prince on one side and the Coltrane coat-of-arms on the other, felt like a ball of lead around his neck.

  “We’re calling it the Order of Skinny Prinny,” Blackstone whispered during the applause, eliciting Mark’s first smile in a week.

  Prinny did know how to throw a party, and all of London seemed to have been invited to the evening festivities at Carlton House. For Mark, the banquet and ball were only a bit less racking than the real thing. His hand was practically wrung off in the receiving line, and if he’d been forced to drink every time a sotted politician rose to toast him at dinner, he’d have been under the table before the third remove.

  As course followed course, he grew more self-conscious. With hundreds of eyes focused on him, eating seemed an awkward business, but His Rotund Highness was having no difficulty. Between mouthfuls, Prinny confessed to having been a great admirer of the previous Earl’s art collection. Somewhat of a collector himself, he added modestly, and always on the lookout for Chinese antiquities to grace the Oriental rooms planned for the new Brighton Pavilion. Coltrane wouldn’t part with so much as a set of chopsticks until two years ago, and then he seemed in a hurry to sell off his best pieces. The price was inflated, of course, but Parliament would soon vote funds to cover the bill.

  Mark choked on a mushroom. This humiliating public spectacle was designed to help pay off his own family? Truly the sins of the father are visited on the son, he reflected sourly.

  The ball had all the delights of the Spanish Inquisition. Is Napoleon really an underbred boor? Not always. Do French women live up to their reputations? Always. Is it true you were tortured? Only the women asked that, obscenely pumping him for details.

  Worst of all, again and again, What has become of your charming ward? To that, he replied shortly that Miss Lamb’s visit was always intended to be a brief one. Something in his eyes deflected further interrogation on that subject and he ruthlessly left it to Margaret to salvage the chit’s reputation. So far as he was concerned, Jillian Lamb had forfeited any claim to decency and was just lucky a surge of misdirected hero-worship diverted the gossip swirling around her abrupt departure.

  When the hoopla was finally done with, he hid out at Coltrane House for a month, determined to stay out of the public eye. It was past time for business affairs to be put in order, and he closeted himself with Barrows fourteen hours a day. At night, when the exhausted secretary stumbled to a guest room for some sleep, Mark worked alone with his father’s personal papers.

  Most related to the art collection, which was worth a considerable fortune. The records were meticulous, if incomprehensible, and he resolved to hire an expert to evaluate the holdings. With luck, a professional would be able to decipher the peculiar shorthand his father had used to track his acquisitions. He was especially curious about a slender leather notebook that seemed to record losses. Possibly this was where the Old Earl had listed bad investments, or forgeries. He added the notebook to a stack of papers requiring John Lakewood’s attention. Perhaps the solicitor held the key to that mysterious code.

  Mr. Lakewood was delighted to welcome the Earl, stretching what should have been an hour of consultation into a long afternoon of dull reminiscence. Mark stifled his impatience as they worked through the papers, and he was relieved to finally uncover the last item. “I expect this relates to the art collection,” he said, handing over the notebook, “but I can’t make out what the symbols mean.”

  Pushing thick glasses up his nose for the hundredth time, Lakewood peered myopically at the book. “His Lordship never involved me with the collection,” he said, “but I shall have a go at it.” Brow wrinkled, he studied the figures. “But of course,” he declared after a few moments. “This is the ransom.”

  Mark felt an icy chill at his spine.

  “I can tell by the dates.” Lakewood held out the notebook and Mark leaned over to examine it. “There are four blocks of transactions, representing the four payments. See here. This was the first amount, thirty thousand pounds, sent a month after we got word you were imprisoned. Mind you, the Old Earl handled all this with some government fellows, strictly hush-hush, but I was told the Frogs took the money and demanded more. His Lordship was frantic, and when the same thing happened twice again, I thought he’d go mad. His heart gave out two weeks after he sent the last payment, and I remember thinking he must have got another refusal. But you were sent home, so it couldn’t have been that.” Stunned, Mark seized the book. Even a rough calculation showed that more than one hundred twenty thousand pounds had been paid over a period of fourteen months. Unable for the moment to consider what that meant, he closed the notebook with trembling hands and slumped back in the
chair. Nothing like that sort of drain had occurred on the Coltrane finances. His father must have raised the money by selling off his precious collection.

  With a control the Old Earl might have approved, he thanked Mr. Lakewood for his assistance, gained the street, and managed to hail a cab.

  “Where to, Guv?” the jarvey called cheerfully. The last place he wanted to go was Coltrane House. Leaning out the open window, he caught a glimpse of a dome and said randomly, “St. Paul’s.”

  For a long time, Mark huddled in a dim corner of the cavernous cathedral, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. Distantly, he was aware of people coming and going, candles being lit by the vergers, and finally the sweet sound of a boys’ choir intoning Evensong. When the service was over, he still didn’t move.

  So wrong, he kept thinking. His father had not abandoned him. All those cold months of despair, when only his anger and resentment kept him warm, his father had been sacrificing all that meant anything to him to gather a king’s ransom. And the French took the money and upped the price. Hell, if he’d broken and identified his contacts, they’d have had it both ways. So long as the Old Earl paid out, there was no reason to let him go, but when the cow went dry, the calf was freed. He’d be there yet if his father still lived.

  St. Paul’s was dark and eerily silent when he fell to his knees on the marble floor. I’m sorry, he murmured again and again. It was all he could think to say. The marble was cold and hard under his knees. How long since he’d prayed? Years, probably. Like the Old Earl, God was a remote figure of authority, to be obeyed, addressed formally on proper occasions, never spoken to directly. Even now he could do no more than mutter the Lord’s Prayer in the same rigid tones he used in the Coltrane family pew.

  He wished he’d never found out. It shattered everything he’d believed for more than thirty years. All his life the Old Earl had been a model to be copied, never a father. Love was no part of the Coltrane household. Discipline, integrity, hard work, good breeding, and duty, always duty, but never love. How could he emulate a man he’d never known? How could he be something he didn’t understand?