Maddy turned a page of the book she was reading without looking up from the text. “You are confusing me with my mother, sir,” she said coldly. “It was she, not I, who set such store by titles.” They were the first words she’d spoken to the old tyrant since he’d posted the announcement of her engagement in the Times.
“Still moping about, are you,” he asked, obviously not the least bit fazed by either her silence or her caustic words. “Well, just wait until you’ve waltzed with a duke and had your hand kissed by the Regent himself. You’ll sing a different tune then, my girl.”
“Dear Caleb is right, Madelaine,” Lady Ursula interjected setting aside the list of wedding guests she was writing and rising to her feet. “Once you’re over your initial shyness, you’ll find this world to which you’ve gained entrée more exciting than your wildest dreams. Just think, my dear, with your father’s money and your new title, you could easily become one of the ton’s most prominent hostesses. And what a feather that would be in all our caps.”
“And so she will be, with you to guide her, dearest lady,” Caleb Harcourt purred, rising to stand beside her. “Now let us adjourn to the book room to make our plans for the wedding.” He offered his arm to the diminutive countess. “I want this to be the grandest affair of the Season, and I defer to you in all matters of taste.”
“You are too kind, dear Caleb,” the countess smiled, and arm in arm they departed the room, beaming happily at each other.
“When did my father become ‘dear Caleb’ and the countess his ‘dearest lady’?” Maddy asked Lady Carolyn when the two of them were out of earshot. “How have I managed to miss this interesting development?”
Carolyn looked up from the scarf she was embroidering. “I believe you’ve had other things on your mind. The two of them have been inseparable ever since the announcement of the engagement of their children.”
She flushed. “Do not think too badly of Mama for falling in with your father’s plan, Miss Harcourt. You must understand, the only way she could survive thirty years with my rakehell father was to turn a blind eye to the nightmare of reality and pretend her life was happy and serene. Self-delusion has become such a habit with her she has already convinced herself that you and Garth are ideally suited. I feel certain that by the day after tomorrow she will believe you are deeply in love and this marriage was your idea, not Mr. Harcourt’s.”
“You are wise beyond your years, Lady Carolyn,” Maddy said, setting her book aside. “And your compassion for your mother does you credit.” She hesitated. “I shall need a sage friend to help me through this ordeal ahead,” she added tentatively. “I would hope you would be that friend as well as my sister. Can we not seal that pact by agreeing to call each other by our given names from now on?”
Carolyn nodded solemnly. “I would deem it an honor to be both friend and sister to the woman my brother, Garth, marries—and my brother, Tristan, loves.”
Maddy’s heart skipped a beat. “Tristan has spoken to you?”
Carolyn nodded. “He confessed his love for you before he left for Winterhaven. But only to me. Neither Mama nor Garth is aware of his feelings. It would upset them dreadfully to know he is made unhappy be your marriage.”
“As it has upset you. I know now why you have turned into a water pot this past fortnight. And I suspect at least half of your tears are for your brother, Garth, and the lady he loves.”
Lady Carolyn’s face went blank with surprise. “You know about Sarah?”
Maddy turned down the corner of the page she was reading and set her book aside. “I didn’t know her name, but it was not difficult to see the earl was nursing a broken heart.”
“Garth and Lady Sarah Summerhill, the daughter of our neighbor Viscount Tinsdale, pledged themselves to each other when they were but children. There has never been anyone else for either of them, and they are so much in tune with each other, it almost seems as if they are one person, not two,” Carolyn said, threading her needle with dark green embroidery thread.
“Sarah is four and twenty. Long past the marrying age,” she continued, jabbing her needle into the scarf and pricking her finger in the process. “But she turned every suitor down and waited for Garth all the years he was on the Peninsula as Wellington’s aide. It nearly killed him to have to tell her that she’d been waiting in vain.”
Maddy regarded her companion with solemn eyes. “I assume Lady Sarah’s family is in the same serious financial straits as the Ramsdens then.”
“Lud, no. Viscount Tinsdale is as rich as Croesus.”
“Then why didn’t he help your brother?”
Carolyn looked up from her embroidery, the sadness in her eyes making her resemblance to her brother more apparent than ever. “For one thing, Garth didn’t ask for his help. For another while Viscount Tinsdale is a loving husband and father, he is also a high-stickler. I imagine he considered a man tainted with financial scandal to be beneath his daughter’s notice.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I just wish both Sarah and you could be my sisters, and for the right reasons. I cannot bear to see my brothers and the ladies they love so unhappy. And all because of our fathers. Mine, who cared nothing for anyone but himself—and yours and Sarah’s, who care so much, they are blinded by their ambition for their daughters.” She brightened suddenly. “Maybe Mr. Harcourt will develop a tendre for Mama. Surely he wouldn’t send the son of the lady he was courting to debtor’s prison.”
Maddy grimaced. “You mean by withholding the funds to pay his creditors.”
Carolyn’s eyes widened with shock and the scarf, threads, and scissors slid off her lap and landed in a tangled mess on the carpet. “Oh dear, I thought you knew,” she wailed, pressing her fingers to her lips.
“Knew what?”
“I dare not say. Garth told me in strictest confidence and made me promise I wouldn’t breathe a word of it, lest it upset you unduly.”
Maddy watched the color recede from Carolyn’s face. “But you must tell me this thing I should know and obviously do not. It may be information I can use to advantage. Perhaps there is yet a solution to this dreadful riddle in which we find ourselves.”
Carolyn hesitated, obviously wrestling with her conscience over betraying her brother’s confidence, and Maddy felt her heart thump ominously in her breast. Her woman’s intuition told her this information Carolyn possessed could well be the clue she needed to extricate herself and the earl from the stranglehold her father had on them.
“Tell me, Caro. I must know,” she urged.
“Garth has only one creditor,” Carolyn said finally, her voice sinking to a whisper.” Mr. Harcourt bought up all my father’s gambling vowels and the mortgages he took out on the Ramsden estates…”
“And blackmailed Tristan into bringing me back from France, and Garth into promising to marry me,” Maddy finished for her. An icy rage swept through her, chilling yet another of the newly kindled sparks of warmth she felt toward her father. “Nom de Dieu,” she muttered under her breath. “No wonder the old tyrant is the richest merchant in England; he has no scruples when it comes to accomplishing his own aims.”
Rising to her feet, she paced to the pianoforte and back again, deep in thought. “But maybe we can beat him at his own game if I can lay my hands on the records of the earl’s debts.”
She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Where would my father keep them? I have been in every room in his house and seen no sign of a safe.” She stared into space, envisioning the house in Bloomsbury Square. “He often sits at his desk in the back room, working on his accounts. They could be there in a locked drawer I suppose.”
Carolyn’s worried gaze followed Maddy’s pacing. “It is more likely they’re in the office on the waterfront. That was where he showed them to Tris and Garth. But how could you search for them there? No lady would dare be seen on the Billingsgate docks.” She frowned. “And what will you do with the papers if you find them? I’m not certain it would be entirely honest to des
troy legal documents.”
“It would be entirely dishonest, as a matter of fact. But then how honest is blackmail?” Maddy sighed. “But you have point. Knowing Tristan and the earl as I do, I shall probably have to find some honorable way of disposing of the records of the debts. Well, I’ll worry about that after I locate them. At least they will be rendered harmless in my possession.”
She stopped her pacing to stand before Carolyn, her arms folded across her chest. “First I’ll search in my father’s desk at the house. But if they’re not there, then we’ll have no choice; we’ll have to pay him a visit at his place of business.”
“We?” Carolyn blinked. “You mean you and me?”
“Of course. I shall need you to create a diversion. You know, swoon or some such thing, while I search the desk in his office,” Maddy said, hoping she had not been mistaken in thinking Carolyn was a creature of spirit.
“Oh my goodness, I really don’t think I could.” Carolyn’s voice cracked. “I mean what would Mama say? Besides I never swoon. I shouldn’t have the slightest idea how to pretend I had.”
She hesitated, a mischievous smile tilting the corners of her pretty little mouth. “Still even Mama has often remarked that I could have made my living on the stage, had I not been born a lady.”
The papers were not in the desk at the house in Bloomsbury Square. Maddy had held out little hope they would be, so she was not too bitterly disappointed. But before she could divulge her plan to Carolyn on how they should lay siege to the Billingsgate office, she was caught up in a series of fittings for her bride’s clothes which took all of three precious days.
She dared not refuse to submit to Madame Héloïse’s pinning and draping, but she took so little interest in the fabrics and designs of the proposed frocks, Lady Ursula threw up her hands in despair. “How shall I ever turn you into a lady of the fashion, Madelaine, if you take no interest in your appearance? Do you wish to break your poor, dear father’s heart?”
Maddy held her tongue, though she longed to say, “He has shown no compunction about breaking mine.” Caro was right about Lady Ursula. She had closed her eyes to the possibility that this marriage Caleb Harcourt had arranged was not the perfect solution to all the problems the Rand family faced. Hiding her frustration beneath a meek smile, Maddy made a pretense of studying La Belle Assembelée with a view to choosing the design for her wedding dress.
Then finally, with the fittings at an end, she could set in motion her plan to visit Billingsgate. Her father had put a carriage at her disposal and luckily both the coachman and groom he’d provided were elderly seamen, whose knowledge of ladies had heretofore been restricted to ladies of the night. Hence, neither of them raised a question as to the propriety of two young women visiting the Billingsgate counting house owned by their employer.
“Do you remember exactly what you are to do?” Maddy asked as she departed the carriage at the door of her father’s office.
“I remember,” Carolyn said. “But I hope I shall not have to sit here too long. If I do, I fear I shall never get the smell of fish out of my garments, and this is my favorite carriage dress.”
Maddy gave her a quelling look. “A small price to pay considering the future happiness of both your brothers is at stake.” Without another backward glance, she marched to the door bearing her father’s nameplate.
The discreet buzz of conversation which greeted her as she opened it ceased instantly, replaced by a communal gasp of astonishment. She stared at the collection of soberly dressed men of business positioned about the room like so many blackbirds in a cornfield and felt a flush of embarrassment heat her cheeks. This was definitely a male milieu that did not welcome female intrusion into its hallowed confines. She took a deep breath, thought of Tristan, and stepped boldly into the room
The blackbirds scattered before her, all except one odd-looking fellow who shuffled forward from the midst of the flock. “Here now, miss, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. This is a house of business—no place for a lady,” he said, his thin lips pursed in disapproval.
Maddy stared down her nose at him with the hauteur that had put many an eager young Royalist in his place. “I am Madelaine Harcourt, sir, here to see my father.”
“Miss Maddy? Is it really you?” The old fellow peered up at her with rheumy eyes. “I can scarce believe it, though the Cap’n did mention you were home again where you belonged.”
The wrinkles crisscrossing his ancient face rearranged themselves into a smile. “I don’t imagine you remember me, Lord luv you, you was no taller than this when last I saw you.” He held out his hand waist high.
Maddy blinked as long-forgotten memories struggled to the surface of her mind. “Mr. Scruggs? My goodness, don’t tell me you’re still with my father.”
“Aye, that I am, and likely to be until they fit me for a coffin. We’re getting old, the Cap’n and me. ‘Tis a good thing you’ve come back to see to his welfare, for he’s naught but those two old sea dogs to do for him now.”
Maddy felt a brief twinge of conscience as to how she was currently seeing to her father’s welfare, until she reminded herself to what lengths he had gone to force her to marry against her will.
“Follow me, Miss Maddy,” her father’s old clerk said. “I’ll show you to the Cap’n’s private office. As you’ve no doubt noticed, we’re a bit more elegant now than we was in the old days when you and your mama lived above the Cap’n’s shipping office on Fleet Street.”
“Indeed you are,” Maddy agreed, staring about her at the elegant furnishings and fine paintings.
Crooking his finger, the old fellow beckoned her to follow him to the massive, carved door gracing the far wall of the huge waiting room. He knocked once, then turned the knob. “Here’s Miss Maddy to see you, Cap’n,” he said and stepped aside to let her enter her father’s office.
“Maddy? What the devil are you doing here? And alone? Good God, girl, hasn’t Lady Ursula told you time and again you should never leave the house without a proper companion?”
“But I have a proper companion, Papa,” she declared. “Lady Caroline is waiting outside in the carriage.”
“Hell’s bells!” Her father leapt to his feet. “The Billingsgate fish market is no place for an innocent child like Lady Carolyn.”
“So I found out,” Maddy said petulantly. “The missish creature was too terrified to leave the carriage, so I left her to drench the squabs with her silly tears and came in without her.”
“The devil you say! Lord, Maddy, I’m beginning to think there’s naught but an empty space between your ears.” Grim of face, he marched to the door and threw it open. “Don’t leave this room. I will fetch Lady Carolyn and then, miss, I will have a few words with you.”
No sooner had the door closed behind him than Maddy rushed around the desk and began searching through the drawer. Luck was with her. In the second drawer from the top on the right-hand side, she found the papers she sought. Quickly she stuffed the stack of vowels into her reticule and slid the mortgage documents into the slit she’d made earlier in the lining of her pelisse. Then, closing the drawer, she hurried to seat herself in one of the two chairs opposite the desk.
She glanced about her at the quiet, tastefully decorated room. So incongruous with the noisy, stench-ridden market beyond its wall. Less than two months earlier Tristan and the earl had sat in these very same chairs and listened to her father’s ultimatum. In her mind’s eye she could see him waving the damning evidence she now possessed in the poor earl’s face—demanding he acquiesce to his demands or suffer the humiliation of being thrown into debtor’s prison.
She gritted her teeth, envisioning how helpless Tristan must have felt watching his brother squirm; how desperately he must have wanted to help rescue him from the clutches of the powerful cit who held his future and that of his stepmother and sister in his hands. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for them,” he had said, and proved the truth of his words by choosing honor over love.
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br /> A good ten minutes passed before the door opened and her father led a weeping Lady Carolyn to the chair beside Maddy’s. Caro had apparently thrown herself wholeheartedly into the task of stalling their return long enough for a thorough search—and from the looks of it she was enjoying her theatrical stint immensely.
“I hope you’re satisfied with this day’s mischief, miss,” Maddy’s father declared after pouring Carolyn a glass of water from the pitcher on his desk. “This poor child had swooned away before I reached her, and even when she recovered consciousness, she was so terrified, I literally had to pry her from the coach.” Like a great bear, he patted Carolyn’s heaving shoulders with his mammoth paw, while sobs racked her body and tears coursed down her cheeks.
“It was so dreadful,” she wailed, wringing her hands till the knuckles shone white. “All those horrible men whacking the heads off poor, helpless little fish with cleavers the size of Saxon battle axes—and I shall have to bathe in lemon juice from head to toe or smell like something dragged from the bottom of the Thames when I go to Almack’s tonight.”
The most seasoned actress in Drury Lane could not have played the scene more convincingly, and Maddy was still shaking with laughter when Carolyn and she arrived back at the Ramsden townhouse an hour later.
“So now that we have the papers, what do we do next?” Carolyn asked when the two of them had repaired to her bedchamber to discuss their minor triumph. It was obvious from the tone of her voice she was more than ready for another adventure.
Maddy kicked off her shoes, settled onto the window seat and drew her knees up to where she could rest her arms on them. “I have a plan,” she said, watching the steady stream of carriages and pedestrians in the street below. “But first, you must arrange to introduce me to Lady Sarah Summerhill, for I shall need her help.”
“In that case, your plan will be certain to fail. Sarah is a dear soul, but the shyest, most retiring creature alive. She couldn’t say ‘boo’ to a baby in leading strings, much less your father.”
The Misguided Matchmaker Page 21
