“I’m going to disguise myself,” Lord Dunsmore explained. “Perhaps, you should as well. We can pretend to be other gentlemen looking to do business with this Mr. Bones.”
“All right,” Charles said, even though his pulse raced at the utter danger this would put them in. He had figured that they were going to eventually come face to face with this Mr. Bones, but not like this. He opened his desk drawer pulling out his pistol. He set it down on top of the desk.
“When can we go?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The day after her father had kicked Charles out, Arabella waited for her father to go out, himself. She watched through her window as he climbed into the carriage, on the way to his club. As soon as the carriage pulled away, she got up.
She knew that the best place to look would be in his study. That was where he kept all of his important papers. When she entered, she turned the key to lock the door behind her.
She sat down in the chair. First off, she opened the desk drawers looking for something that might contain a list of secret expenses. Finding nothing, she knocked on the bottoms of the drawers. Nothing there, as well.
She sat back, in the chair, thinking. He wouldn’t have hidden something from her in the study. He had always made such a show of how much he trusted her—wanted her involved in his business dealings. She now knew that that wasn’t true.
Over the past few weeks, during which he’d treated Charles as nothing more than a glorified lapdog, she had begun to wonder. She had seen a different side of her father—one she’d never known existed. Who had that been?
He’d been dangerously angry. She couldn’t help but wonder—if she hadn’t been his daughter, what would he have done, in his rage?
I need to think like my father. He wouldn’t hide something from me in here. It’s too obvious.
He would hide it somewhere else—somewhere that Arabella wouldn’t know about. He would have needed a place that was secret from everyone, even her mother.
Arabella recalled the history of the house. The previous owner had done some interesting things with the planning of it. There were secret passages throughout, so one could travel about, in secret. The previous owner had been sent to prison for being a pirate.
She had assumed that that was for the benefit of the servants, but what if those were for the previous owner—so he could move about the house unseen?
What if he had built a place in the house—one which no one knew about? Except for the person who had bought it. She got up, letting herself out of the study, making her way into the library.
The blueprints for the house were kept in a drawer. Opening it, she slipped them out. She spread them out on the large wooden library table, finding the secret passageway. Running her finger over its length she found that there was, in fact, a tiny room at one end of it.
The room was located right outside of her father’s dressing room. Anticipation made her skin tingle. She bit her lip, nervously. She would have to go, quickly. She didn’t know just how much longer her father would be out. She’d already spent so much time in the study.
Charles waited outside of his house for Lord Dunsmore to pick him up. He was dressed in his finest suit of clothing which he had deemed passable for a gentlemen’s club. His heart was racing. He buried his hands in his pockets, one of which held the pistol. He felt better going in armed.
He glanced across the street. There was a dark figure standing in the shadows in the alley which ran in between two houses. He frowned. He had almost missed them but they had moved. He squinted trying to see the individual better.
Whomever it was they were wrapped in a dark cloak with the hood pulled low. He couldn’t tell if the person was male or female. He had an odd feeling, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rising. It wasn’t the cold which chilled him.
That was when a barouche-landau pulled up and Lord Dunsmore opened the door, peering out at him. The curtains were all drawn so they could put on their disguises on the way.
“Come in, come in,” he said. Charles got in. He glanced through the window peering out around the curtains. The figure was gone.
“What are you looking at?” Lord Dunsmore enquired.
“I thought I saw someone,” Charles replied. “Watching me from across the street.”
“You should really wait inside,” Lord Dunsmore said, tapping on the roof of the carriage with a silver-tipped cane. “There’s a murderer about, you know.”
Charles nodded. Had he really just seen the murderer? Why would he be watching Charles, who was not a gentleman, and had no quarrel with anyone?
Dunsmore began pulling things out and thrusting them at Charles.
“What’s all of this?” he asked, forgetting the hooded figure. His hands were full of different bits and pieces of things.
“Disguises,” Lord Dunsmore replied. “Stuff that cotton into your mouth. If you hold it between your teeth and your cheek, it will add some weight to your face.”
“We’re not going to plan out our entrance?” Charles asked. “Shouldn’t we at least—”
“No, Mr. Conolly,” Lord Dunsmore replied. “It’s best to just go in. We’re going to pretend to be visiting Lords from the Continent.”
“As you wish,” Charles muttered.
“Can you do a French accent, Mr. Conolly?” Lord Dunsmore asked, curiously.
“I’ve never tried,” Charles admitted.
“Let me do the talking, then,” Lord Dunsmore said.
Lord Dunsmore helped Charles to put on the disguise—a blond wig, with a pair of spectacles. Meanwhile, Lord Dunsmore had colored in his eyebrows, giving himself a darker beard. He had put on clothes a size bigger, then stuffed them to give himself a bit of a paunch.
“You’re going to let me do the talking,” Lord Dunsmore repeated. “We’re going to say that your English is atrocious.”
Charles merely nodded. He wasn’t usually one to be nervous. But if he were caught, sneaking into the Millgate Club, he might lose business.
As the carriage raced through the streets, he listened to Dunsmore’s hurried plan. “We’ll visit tonight, observe. Get them to relax. Then, we will return. Their guards will be down and then we will begin to ask about Mr. Bones.”
“Oh, and by the by—you will be Lord Gilbert Durand, le Duc du Champignon. And I—” He thought for a moment, very seriously. “I shall be Lord Olivier Simon, le Marquis de Bordeaux.”
Charles sighed. “Don’t you think they’ll notice that I’m the Duke of Mushrooms, My Lord?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Lord Dunsmore said. “The more confident that you are in the lie, Mr. Conolly, the more people will believe you.”
“I imagine that there are many individuals pretending to be long-lost French nobility these days,” Charles replied.
“I might have done it once or twice,” Lord Dunsmore said, shrugging.
“Why? You’re actually a Lord,” Charles pointed out.
“Yes, but sometimes, I need to not be myself,” Lord Dunsmore pointed out. He stared at Charles for a long moment, frowning.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Charles asked.
“Here,” Dunsmore said, pulling out a charcoal pencil. “I’m going to give you a mole on your cheek, and a little bit of a moustache.”
Charles felt silly, but he figured that Dunsmore knew what he was doing. The carriage came to an abrupt halt. The footman opened it, and Charles climbed out, Le Duc du Champignon. Beside him, his good friend, the Marquis du Bordeaux, stood.
“Allons-y!” the Marquis declared. For once in his life, Charles found that he was very glad not to be the one talking. His French, while passable, was heavily accented by his very British pronunciation.
Moving as silently as she could, Arabella went into her parents’ bedroom. Luckily, her mother was out, as well. She made her way into her father’s dressing room, which was off through a side door.
His room was empty. Arabella crossed it quickly, going right
over to the paneled wall. She had been in the secret hallway many times when she was a child. She had snuck through it, with a candle, sometimes bringing a book with her. She reached up, pressing the panel which opened the secret hallway.
It was pitch black in there. It felt cold, and she shivered in the chill draft that blew through it. While Arabella had used the secret hallway often when she was a child, she had not much since. It came to an abrupt halt, something, she now knew, was because there was a room.
She faced the wall, running her hands along it, looking for the catch to open it. In the darkness, she wished that she’d brought a candle. She worked her way along it. Wherever it was, it was well-hidden.
Finally, her fingers found it—it was all of the way at the top—she would never have found it when she was small. As it was, she had to go up and onto her tiptoes to reach it. It swung open. She met with more darkness, and an overwhelming scent of cigar smoke and roses.
She had to go back—she needed a candle. She ran toward her father’s rooms, grabbing a candle and matches, then returning. Quickly, she struck the match, lighting the candle.
She held it up as she looked into the room. It was tiny—only enough room for one person to fit inside. There was a small wooden desk, with a maroon velvet chair pulled up to it.
There, sitting on top of the desk, there was a ledger. Her blood ran cold as she looked at it.
Arabella was faced with a dilemma. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Charles hadn’t told her. She opened it up, peering at it. In the center, there were several letters.
She glanced at their directions—all of them, addressed to her father. She set them aside, peering at the ledger. She saw many, many names. She scanned them, but found nothing. Only the names of his friends—Lord Diggar, Lord Drysdale, Lord Danbury. She even saw the Duke of Longmire’s name. There were many others, besides. Even Lady Linton.
Setting the letters back, she closed the ledger. She felt like she’d been snooping on her father. This had resulted in nothing. She wasn’t quite sure what business her father was conducting, but it was likely nothing to be worried about. She turned, her candle’s light falling on the shelf that was in the corner of the room.
There was what looked like a folded sheet of some sort in a dark fabric. She shook it out to find that it was the Jolly Roger, the skull face grinning back at her. She felt disappointed—it was likely left by the previous owner. Folding up the flag she left the room closing the secret panel after her.
The Marquis de Bordeaux was having a phenomenal success in mingling with the gentlemen of the Millgate Club. With a brandy in one hand and his silver-tipped cane in the other, he was telling them all the story of how he escaped the Revolutionaries.
“Et puis, my friend et moi, we escaped Paris, in the back of a wagon, filled with cabbages!” he said, elbowing his friend, Le Duc du Champignon.
“Oui,” Charles said, taking a sip of his gin and tonic. He did his best not to soak the cotton in his mouth as he drank. He was reduced to monosyllables, in a vain attempt to sound barely literate in English. He winced at the taste of the beverage, which had been handed to him after he had tried to order a bourbon, in his awful French accent.
“My God,” Lord Fulton said, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine. I’m so glad that we’re all so red-blooded English around here that the peasants couldn’t rise up against us.”
“Quite right,” Lord Pritchett agreed. “They know that we have their best interests at heart.” He had his daughter, Lady Violet’s, red hair, but that was where the similarities ended.
The Duke of Longmire walked up to them. “Oh, do meet the Duke of Longmire,” Lord Fulton said. “Alexander—these are two refugee nobles, from the Continent—the Duc du Champignon, and the Marquis de Bordeaux.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, My Lords,” the Duke of Longmire said, frowning a little, likely at their odd names.
“And yours, Your Grace,” Lord Dunsmore said, in his very thick French. He sipped his drink, thankfully pausing in his tale of woe and danger.
“Are congratulations in order, Your Grace?” Lord Pritchett asked the Duke of Longmire.
“Well, since I sent the Lady a horse, I think things are going along well. Her father has agreed to let me court her; however, Lady Arabella has not yet agreed.”
“Lady Arabella?” Lord Fulton asked. Arabella’s name was like a lightning strike through Charles. “I told you, she’s going to be a tough sell.”
“Not at all. You just have to know how to manipulate her. A Lady like her believes that she knows her own mind, but the truth is, she has no idea what she wants. The Duke of Tiverwell told me all about how he keeps her in line.”
Lord Dunsmore gripped Charles’s sleeve.
“Ah, mon ami, you are gripping your glass so tightly, your hand is pale,” he whispered in Charles’s ear. “You don’t want to break it.”
The Duke of Longmire was continuing on, about how to manipulate Arabella. Charles took a large gulp of his drink.
“He keeps going on about how glad he is that someone will take care of Lady Arabella as she is used,” the Duke of Longmire went on. “The Duchess will be happily ensconced in Bath, so I won’t have to worry about any pesky Mother-in-Law.”
“Can you blame him?” Lord Prichett asked. “I mean, if I were getting letters of that sort, I would be doing all of my estate planning, forthwith. Lord Drysdale did. Did you know he left a tidy sum for Lady Violet?”
“I have ‘eard about these murders,” Lord Dunsmore cut in.
“How could you not have?” the Duke of Longmire asked. “They’re all over the papers.”
“Have any of you received them?” Lord Dunsmore asked.
“I have,” the Duke of Longmire replied.
“Alexander!” Lord Fulton exclaimed. “Have you told the constables?”
“I have not,” he replied. “Nor do I plan to. I agree with the Duke of Tiverwell—so long as I’m not walking about alone after dark, or in some seedy inn, I should be fine.”
“You are a very brave gentleman,” Lord Dunsmore commented in his faux French accent. “Who do you theenk eet eez?”
“Mr. Charles Conolly,” the Duke said, without hesitation. It took every ounce of Charles’s self control not to panic visibly at the sound of his own name. “He’s the link between all of the others. Not to mention, he had the absolute gall to ask the Duke of Tiverwell for Lady Arabella’s hand.”
“What?” Lord Pritchett asked. “But…he was in my house, just this week, talking to my Violet.”
“I would watch out,” the Duke said. “He’s a social climber, set on marrying a lady. He’s angry that he can’t have Lady Arabella, so he’s going to punish both of us. Once we’re out of the way, he means to swoop in and have her.”
“Have you told the Duke of Tiverwell?” Lord Fulton asked. Charles’s heart was pounding in his chest. If they knew that he was there…If he was recognized, then things would likely go very badly for him. He kept his face a blank, as though he had never heard his own name before.
“Yes, and he doesn’t agree,” His Grace said, shaking his head. “He believes that it’s one of his former servants.”
“What would be the link, there?” Lord Fulton asked. “With the other gentlemen, I mean?”
“Not a clue,” His Grace replied. They all went silent, sipping their drinks and thinking about how Charles was guilty. Charles himself was in a panic. Luckily, Lord Dunsmore had not forgotten himself nor his mission.
“My Lords,” Lord Dunsmore began. “I was wondering if you know of someone ‘oo might ‘elp me procure something…of a secret nature?”
The Duke of Longmire grinned. “Well, if you’ve been allowed into the Millgate Club, then you can certainly use our procurer.” He pulled a card out of his pocket, handing it to Lord Dunsmore, with a bit of a flourish. “I will warn you, though—he’s hard to get to.”
“How so?”
His Grace raised his eye
brow. “He’s well-protected. He doesn’t come out often. You will be expected to provide proof that you’re a noble. He only deals with nobles.”
“But he’ll be able to get me what I want?” Lord Dunsmore asked.
“Of course, My Lord. He’s…very well situated for that sort of thing,” His Grace assured him with a confident smile.
“Merci, My Lord,” Lord Dunsmore said, tucking the card away in the breast pocket of his coat. He flashed Charles a triumphant grin.
Chapter Thirty
Arabella returned to her rooms, where she found Annette, setting out Arabella’s clothes for dinner that evening. Arabella looked at the pink satin dress.
Forbidden Desires of a Seductive Duchess: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 20
