by Joan Wolf
I glared at him. “I don’t want any money from you, Mr. Asherton. What more can I tell you?”
Lord Winterdale’s voice broke in on our tête à tête. “Ah, there you are, Miss Newbury. I was hoping that I might claim you for the next dance.”
I looked at him in relief. For one thing, we had not yet danced, and to be truthful this had somewhat put my nose out of joint. And secondly, I was grateful for any interruption of my conversation with the creaking Mr. Asherton.
“Of course, my lord,” I said.
Lord Winterdale stood with us for a few minutes until the waltz had finished, and then we were able to leave Mr. Asherton by the pillar while we took the floor.
“You looked distressed, Miss Newbury,” Lord Winterdale said as we stood side by side in the midst of the line of dancers. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I said briefly.
He gave me a speculative look. “Asherton wouldn’t by any chance be one of the other chaps your father was blackmailing?”
I gave him a cautious look. “Why should you think that?”
“He has a reputation for playing high and he is not wealthy,” Lord Winterdale replied bluntly. “I should think that the temptation for such a man to cheat would be great.”
Before I could reply to this comment, the orchestra started up again, and Lord Winterdale took my hand in his. His grip was light and impersonal, but I felt again the odd shock his touch on my hair had produced.
What was the matter with me, I thought in annoyance. This was not the man for me to get all silly over. I had watched him in action at dinner. The other women at the table might have been fooled, but I had seen through his performance. He had used his personal charm and magnetism with all the conscious deliberation with which someone else might use a weapon.
I pitied the poor woman who lost her heart to such a man.
The steps of the dance brought us back together again, and he frowned down at me. “We can’t go out onto the terrace together; there are too many people watching us tonight. But I think we need to talk. Do you think you could get out of bed for a ride in the park tomorrow morning?”
“Of course I could,” I answered promptly.
“Good. Be in the stables at seven,” he said.
I glanced up at him. His brows were drawn together, his mouth was hard.
What was bothering him? I wondered.
“All right,” I said. “I will see you at seven.”
CHAPTER
seven
IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK BEFORE I SAW MY BED AND IT seemed like I had scarcely closed my eyes before Betty was awakening me at six-thirty. I struggled out of bed, however, got dressed in my old habit, and made my way to the stables, yawning the whole time.
Lord Winterdale was already there, looking disgustingly alert and awake. He wore a russet-colored riding coat this morning and brown-leather breeches, attire that was more suited to the country than to the elegant requirements of London. Cato was ready for me once more, and my erstwhile guardian and I set off through the London streets, which were quite amazingly busy for such an early hour.
Fruits and vegetables were piled on wagons which lumbered through town on their way to the Covent Garden market; fishmongers were carrying the purchases they had just made at the wharves to their various shops; and haunches of freshly slaughtered meat were bleeding through the bottoms of wicker baskets as they were driven by cart into the butcher shops. The myriad number of people who inhabited London had to be fed, and this was the hour at which their food was moved.
Isabelle was much more fidgety than she had been on our last ride, jumping when a milkman’s truck rumbled up beside her and cantering in place when a big wagonload of fodder hay came lumbering by.
“She’s actually getting better,” Lord Winterdale informed me. “When I first brought her to London she regularly tried to put me under the wheels of the wagons going by. Now she just dances around.”
“Do you take her to the park every morning?” I asked.
“Yes. She needs exercise and she can’t get it in the afternoon in that fashionable parade that fills the park from five o’clock onward. And before five there are too many children around for me to feel that it is safe to gallop her full out. So we come in the morning, when the park is empty.”
“Why don’t you leave her in the country, where she can get all the exercise she needs?” I asked curiously.
His answer surprised me. “Because I would miss her, and I think that she would miss me. We’ve been together for four years, Isabelle and I, and we suit each other. I don’t want to ride another horse.”
It was the first time that I had ever heard him express affection for another creature.
We entered the park as before from the Oxford Street entrance and immediately our surroundings underwent a magical change. Deer grazed under the budding trees, and the city seemed to disappear magically, like Atlantis sunk beneath the waves. A slight morning haze hung in the air, giving the light a particularly diffuse and pearly look that was extremely lovely.
“Shall we gallop?” Lord Winterdale said.
“By all means,” I replied readily, and our two horses took off down the path at the same time, stretching out in full gallop, obviously enjoying themselves. Isabelle easily pulled away in front of me, but Cato kept going, impressing me with his gameness and his general good condition.
We went around half the lake at a flat-out gallop, coming back to a canter as we circled the top of the Serpentine and turned down the other side. By the time we came down to a walk I was feeling wide-awake and full of energy and not at all as if I had had only four hours sleep the previous night.
We walked the horses side by side on a loose rein and when Lord Winterdale remained silent I couldn’t contain myself any longer, and asked, “What was it that you wished to speak to me about, my lord?”
He patted Isabelle’s glistening black shoulder and turned to look at me. “How many men was your father blackmailing?” he asked.
I thought about telling him it was none of his business, but then I met his eyes and changed my mind. “Five, including your uncle,” I admitted.
He was hatless, and the breeze blowing off the lake ruffled the black hair on his forehead. Two deer gazed at us serenely from beneath the trees to our left. He asked, “And who were they?”
I hesitated at that. “I don’t think I should tell you.”
His black brows drew together. “I think you had better tell me, Miss Newbury. Particularly, I think you had better tell me why George Asherton should have sought you out last night. Did you get in contact with him at all? Are you trying to blackmail the rest of those men, the way your father was?”
“No, I am not!” I glared at him, indignant that he could even suggest such a thing. “As a matter of fact, I wrote to all of the other men and told them that I had destroyed the evidence that Papa had collected on them. I said that they could consider themselves free men, that I would never bother them with what I knew.”
He reached over and put a hand on Cato’s bridle, forcing us to stop. The horses stood side by side on the path, and Lord Winterdale and I looked at each other. “Did you really destroy that evidence?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, I did.”
His incredulous look did not change, and I began to feel defensive.
“Surely it was the right thing to do. I had no intention of using the information, and I thought that Papa’s victims would be relieved to know that it no longer existed. That is why I wrote the letters, to let them know that the evidence was destroyed and that they were now safe.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “How could you have been so stupid?”
By now I was partly angry and partly frightened. “What do you mean, I was stupid? What should I have done?”
“Tell me,” he said. “What did Asherton want with you last night?”
“He wanted the evidence Papa had against him,” I said. “He said he didn’t think he coul
d trust my word that I had destroyed it.”
“Precisely,” Lord Winterdale said. We were still standing side by side, and a squirrel ran across the path close to the horses’ legs. Isabelle began to jig and Lord Winterdale patted her again and spoke softly to her. I stared at him in astonishment. I had not thought his voice capable of sounding so gentle.
Then he looked back at me and when he spoke the gentle note was quite gone. “Allow me to tell you, Miss Newbury, that Asherton is not going to be the only victim who feels that way. None of those men are going to feel safe until they have the incriminating papers in their own hands.”
I had never thought of that. I bit my lip. “But I don’t have the incriminating papers anymore. I burned them.”
“Not a brilliant move, Miss Newbury,” he said sarcastically. “Not a brilliant move at all.”
I said furiously, “So I made a mistake. I’m sorry if I don’t have much practice at blackmailing.”
“Really? I have found you to be remarkably gifted,” he replied suavely.
I glared at him but didn’t answer. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could say.
He took note of my obvious frustration and said with hateful satire, “Ah, but you are not doing it for yourself, are you? You are only concerned for your little sister.”
He began to walk Isabelle forward, and Cato followed without my even asking him. I seethed in silence.
Finally Lord Winterdale said, “Who are the other men on your father’s infamous list?”
I glanced at him and didn’t answer.
“You had better tell me,” The hard, ironic tone I so disliked was very evident in his voice. “After all, I am your guardian and consequently am supposed to be in charge of your welfare.”
“You are not my guardian, my lord, and we both know it,” I returned emphatically.
He lifted those reckless eyebrows. “Then what am I, Miss Newbury?”
I could feel a flush stain my cheeks. “Well, I suppose you are my pretend-guardian,” I muttered.
He looked at me as if I were two years old. “Then, as your pretend-guardian, I think you ought to tell me the names of those men.”
“Oh very well,” I said a little sulkily. “Besides Mr. Asherton there was Sir Henry Farringdon.”
He gave me a surprised look. “I did not know that Farringdon gambled.”
I said reluctantly, “I believe it was more a matter of a . . . ah friend . . . that Lord Henry did not want his wife to know about.”
“Sophie Henry,” came the instant reply. “Of course. Poor Farringdon was afraid his wife would find out about Sophie and then her father would cut off his funds.”
“How did you know this Sophie Henry’s name?” I demanded suspiciously.
“Oh, Sophie has been about the town for years,” came the easy reply. “She used to be a diamond of the first water, but she’s come down a bit lately. Farringdon doesn’t have the money that her earlier protectors had, but he kept her in a certain style. The fact that he was keeping her on his wife’s money would probably have caused his father-in-law to cut off his allowance. I can see where Farringdon would prefer to pay up than to have that happen.”
It was not at all proper for Lord Winterdale to be discussing the ladies of the demimonde with me, but I was aware that our relationship was not precisely the ordinary one of gentleman to lady. I decided that, under the circumstances, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to protest.
I said instead, “The next one of Papa’s victims was Mr. Charles Howard.”
He scowled. “Charlie Howard? I knew he was a gambler, and a weak fool to boot, but I hadn’t thought it was as bad as that.”
“Yes. He wrote Papa a number of truly pitiful letters, but I am afraid that Papa was not moved. He squeezed him for almost thirty thousand pounds.”
“Howard could not possibly afford to pay thirty thousand pounds.”
“He wrote to Papa that he was going to have to get the money from a moneylender.”
The branches overhead rustled in the breeze. The air smelled of grass and trees, and the daffodils and daisies and cowslips and buttercups that waved in the grass along the lake were as sunny as the morning.
Lord Winterdale said, “Miss Newbury, allow me to tell you that your estimable father was a scoundrel.”
I sighed mournfully. “I am afraid that he was.”
We were approaching the end of the lake. “And who was the last recipient of his tender mercies?” Lord Winterdale asked me a trifle grimly.
“The Earl of Marsh,” I said.
Silence. Then, “Would you repeat that, please?”
“The Earl of Marsh,” I said.
“Wonderful.” This time the sarcasm in his voice was like dripping acid. “That is truly wonderful. The Earl of Marsh, Miss Newbury, is one of the most dangerous and unscrupulous men in all of London. In fact, the only man I know who is probably more dangerous than Marsh is me.”
“The information Papa had collected on him was not pleasant,” I said in a small voice.
“Did you write to Marsh also and tell him that you had burned the papers pertaining to his cheating?”
“Yes,” I said in an even smaller voice than before.
He cursed. I winced. Then I put my chin in the air.
“I think you are making a mountain out of a molehill,” I said. “When time passes, and these men see that I am going to make no demand on them, then surely they will feel that they can rest easy.”
“Don’t you think that they will deduce that you are making demands on me?” he said. “As you yourself have pointed out, there is no sensible reason for your father to have appointed me as your guardian. Of course there is gossip about it—which is why I said that we should not go out together on the terrace last night. If there is any thought that you might possibly be my mistress, your reputation will be destroyed.”
I stared at him in horror. “Your mistress! Why should anyone think that I am your mistress?”
“Because that is the way people’s minds work,” he replied. “And because, to be perfectly honest with you, Miss Newbury, my own reputation is not quite spotless.”
He was staring ahead, directly between Isabelle’s ears as he spoke, and I looked at his hard, taut profile and thought that at that moment he looked more alone than any human being I had ever seen.
We arrived back at Grosvenor Square at eight-thirty, and by then I was starving. The dining room was still in a state of disarray from the evening before, however, and Lord Winterdale ordered food to be brought to the library. Almost as an afterthought, he invited me to join him.
A footman set up a sofa table for us in front of the fire and another footman carried in a tray of eggs and pork chops and muffins. There was also hot chocolate and coffee. I had chocolate and eggs and Lord Winterdale had two pork chops and coffee.
We ate in silence. Finally, as I was wiping my mouth with a napkin, I said ruefully. “I cannot believe how much food I have consumed these past two days. First the dinner, then all those lobster patties, and now these eggs. If I am not careful I will get as fat as a pig.”
As I am reed-slim, this was a blatant lure for a compliment. I didn’t get one.
“I believe it is more difficult for ladies to keep their figures in town than it is in the country,” he said. “Men have the options of exercising at Gentleman Jackson’s boxing saloon, or Angelo’s fencing establishment, but all ladies can do is shop.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “And that you do very well.”
I gave up on the compliments. “Well, I will do my best to get myself off your hands as soon as I can, my lord. I did dance with quite a number of young men last night, and several of them asked if they might call upon me today.”
“I noticed that you were quite occupied,” he said. “Catherine, unfortunately, was not as successful in collecting admirers.”
I frowned. “Wasn’t she? I looked for her when I went into supper, and I couldn’t find her.”
“She spent a
bit of time sitting with the chaperones,” Lord Winterdale said. His face was unreadable.
“Oh no, poor Catherine,” I said. “Lady Winterdale will be furious.”
“Yes, I rather believe she was.” He actually sounded pleased, and I glared at him.
“If Catherine wasn’t dancing, then why didn’t you introduce partners to her?” I demanded. “You certainly seemed to know everyone who was in that room. You could have made sure that Catherine always had someone to dance with her.”
“That was her mother’s job. My job was to speak to all my guests and to dance with all the dowagers. Which I did with scrupulous politeness, Miss Newbury, and I can assure you that it was not fun.”
I said stubbornly. “Still, it wouldn’t have taken a great deal of time for you to have introduced a few of your friends to Catherine.”
“I didn’t have to introduce young men to you,” he said.
“Catherine is quieter than I am. She doesn’t put herself forward. She needs help.” My glare increased. “You deserted her just because you wanted to infuriate Lady Winterdale, didn’t you? That is why you forced her to present me along with Catherine, so that Lady Winterdale would be humiliated by seeing her daughter outshone by a nobody from the country.” I jumped to my feet. It was impossible to glare any harder, but I tried. “It’s true, isn’t it. Isn’t it?”
He looked back at me, his eyes clear as a summer sky, his face impeturbable. He said softly, “Would you prefer that I sent you back to the country? I am perfectly prepared to do that if that is what you want.”
What I wanted was to slap his too-good-looking face, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try that. Instead I said, “I think you are despicable,” and stalked out of the room.
I think you are despicable.
Strange words coming from a blackmailer to the man she was blackmailing, perhaps, but I thought that they were true. He had used me for his own purposes, which was to infuriate and possibly humiliate Lady Winterdale. To be honest, I didn’t care about Lady Winterdale, but I did care about Catherine.
I went upstairs and knocked on Catherine’s door and when her voice told me to come in, I entered a little tentatively.
