A Vixen for a Viscount: Book 2: Hyacinth - Clean Regency Romance (A Duke's Daughters - The Elbury Bouquet)

by Arietta Richmond

  At Kevin’s words, Puglinton had gone very pale, all of the previous flush draining from his face. He made one more attempt at bluster, however.

  “What ludicrous accusations! I deny all of it.”

  “Then you are a fool. If we reveal these documents, and the sworn witness statements, to the magistrates and to society, you will not only be ostracised, but will most likely be charged with a number of crimes. As gentlemen, we wanted to give you the opportunity to avoid such disgrace. But obviously, we have wasted our time.”

  “Now, now, don’t be too hasty. If I accept, for a single moment, the idea that these ‘proofs’ do exist, what do you gentlemen stand to gain, by speaking with me now, rather than simply exposing it all? I must assume that there would be a price for your forbearance.”

  “How astute of you, Lord Puglinton. Yes, there would be a price, for allowing you to continue to live as you have – with wealth and social position.”

  “How much? I can be as blunt as you can, gentlemen.”

  “The price is not one which will be paid in money, Lord Puglinton, not directly. There are four conditions on which we will leave your sins unexposed. One – you will never gamble again. Two – you will cease to print the ‘Voice of Truth’ column in the ‘Society Commentator’, three – you will hand to me now, the red leather covered journal which rightfully belongs to Lady Hyacinth Gardenbrook, and four, you will never attempt to threaten Lady Hyacinth again, in any way, on any matter. You may not do any more than greet her politely at social events.”

  Puglinton blustered again, pacing about the room.

  “Never gamble! Preposterous! And what journal? Really, these are most peculiar conditions.”

  “Nonetheless, they are the only conditions on which your reputation may be saved. I know that you have the journal, and you would be wise to admit it, and comply. Otherwise, your misdemeanours will be well-known within days.”

  “How do I know that you really have what you say you have?”

  Kevin opened the satchel, and drew forth a stack of papers. Selecting one, he handed the rest to Hunter, and took that one to Puglinton, holding it up that Puglinton might see it. The man’s eyes trailed over the page for a moment, then he raised his gaze to meet Kevin’s. He slumped where he stood, and his defeat was clear in his expression.

  “I see.”

  “Yes, we have the entire correspondence, which makes your guilt very clear.”

  “Very well then. You have my agreement. What you ask is, in the end, a small price to pay for my reputation and my business interests. Please, come with me.”

  They followed him down the hall, and into a well-appointed study, where Puglinton unlocked a drawer in his desk, and withdrew a dark red leather-bound book. Kevin took it, and opened it, confirming that it genuinely was Lady Hyacinth’s journal. He nodded, satisfied.

  “Thank you. You have made a wise decision.”

  Puglinton looked as if he wished to spit in their faces.

  “Now that you have what you came for, get out!”

  “I am happy to leave. But… remember – we are watching you, we have excellent contacts, and if you do not comply with the agreement we have made, your misdemeanours will be immediately exposed. I expect to see a notice in tomorrow’s ‘Society Commentator’, announcing that the ‘Voice of Truth’ column has been permanently discontinued. It has not been a pleasure doing business with you, in any way. Good day, Lord Puglinton.”

  They turned and left, without any further acknowledgement of the man’s existence. The old butler regarded them with some confusion, but opened the door as requested. He slammed it after them.

  They walked along the street to where the carriage waited.

  “Thank you for your assistance. I fear that he would not have been anywhere near so easily convinced without your status as a Duke, and your reputation as having spies as connections, backing me.”

  “What use is it, to be a Duke, if I cannot use it to assist my friends at times? Something must balance out the endless social obligations and the huge estates to manage!” Kevin handed Hunter the satchel of papers, keeping Lady Hyacinth’s journal in his grasp. Hunter smiled as he took them. “I will lock these away in a suitable place – a place from which the right people can easily retrieve them, should Lord Puglinton renege on his promises.”

  “Thank you, again.”

  Hunter stepped up into the carriage, and rapped for the coachman to drive on. Kevin turned, the journal tucked under his arm, and walked around the square towards Elbury House.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hyacinth had just finished writing in her new journal, hating the fact that Lord Puglinton would publish her words, but afraid to do anything other than what he had requested, until she knew what had happened. For Lord Kevin had assured her that, within this few days, his plan would be put into action. She rang for Sally, then stared out of the window at the perfect early summer day as Sally fastened the buttons at the back of her gown.

  Her mind was a tangle of conflicting emotion – that Lord Kevin loved her, that they would marry, still seemed impossibly wonderful, yet the spectre of Lord Puglinton’s threats still hung over her. Once Sally had fastened the last button, and set the last pin in her hair, Hyacinth left her room, intending to go to the parlour, where her sisters were, no doubt, engaged in vigorous debate over some inconsequential thing. But before she reached the stairs, she found Marks hurrying towards her.

  “My Lady! Lord Kevin is here, and asks that you see him privately.”

  Hyacinth’s heart pounded wildly. Why would he want privacy, unless it was to give her news of the success, or failure of his plan?

  “Thank you, Marks. Where…?”

  “I have shown him into the library, my Lady.”

  Hyacinth nodded, and set off towards the library, her heart still pounding. What would he tell her?

  The library door was ajar, and she wasted no time in entering, and closing it behind her. He stood near the window, gazing out at the garden. As always, the sight of him quite took her breath away.

  At the sound of the door, he turned towards her, a broad smile on his face. He said nothing, but instead extended his arms towards her, palms flat. On those palms rested the familiar red leather-bound journal. Relief coursed through her, and she wavered, grasping the edge of a nearby bookcase for support.

  “My journal… does this mean…?”

  “Yes. Our plan has been successful. The man is, at the core, a coward. When his reputation and his fortune were threatened, he very rapidly ceased to bluster, and agreed to our terms. It is often so with those who threaten others – they have no courage of their own. But come, take your journal.”

  She drew herself up, steadied by his words, and went to him, lifting the journal from his hands. She looked at it, opened it, and assured herself that all of the pages were still intact, then she set it aside, on the small escritoire which stood by the window, and turned back to Lord Kevin.

  “Thank you.”

  She stepped forward then, her face lifted to his, and he reached out, and drew her into his arms. His lips came down upon hers, and she melted into the kiss, a mad and reckless sense of joy filling her. She was safe! He had saved her. And he loved her! The kiss deepened, full of the promise of passion to come, and her lips parted on a sigh of pleasure, as his tongue traced their outline. Heat flooded her body, and the world seemed to fade away, until there was only the sensation of his lips on hers, his arms around her.

  Eventually, they drew apart, their breathing uneven, their eyes shining.

  “Tomorrow, in the ‘Gossip Gazette’, you will see a statement which sadly discontinues the ‘Voice of Truth’ column. Lord Puglinton will never approach you again, beyond a normal polite greeting as is required at social occasions. Nor will he ever gamble again – for we could not allow him to ruin others for his own gain, by cheating, again.”

  “That is wonderful to hear!” She turned, and lifted the journal. “I had best take t
his, and put it safely away, immediately. I will see you in the parlour shortly. For, whilst we are betrothed, I should not spend too much time alone with you here… it could still be seen as rather scandalous…”

  He bowed, with a soft laugh, and waved her to the door.

  <<<< O >>>>

  Kevin had received a letter from his mother. In it, she spoke of his father’s failing health, and her deepening concern. She asked that Kevin return to Chester Park, as soon as possible. She did not, explicitly, say that she feared that Lord Chester was dying, but the unwritten words were still clear to Kevin.

  He sent a letter in return, assuring her that he would be there soon, but also that he would be bringing guests, as a result of his having become betrothed to Lady Hyacinth Gardenbrook. He hoped that the news would bring his mother joy, in the midst of her distress about his father.

  Over the next two days, as preparations for the trip to Chester Park proceeded, Kevin’s mind came back to his mother’s letter, over and over, and to his father’s words, some months ago – ‘I don’t know how long I have, but I doubt it’s more than a year, at most’. What if his father was right? What if he was dying? Was that, truly, why he had been so glad to see Maria married again? Was that why he had urged Kevin to marry?

  What if… what if his father did not live long enough to see him married to Lady Hyacinth? The thought horrified him. He wanted his father at his wedding. He sat, pondering, then leapt up. He would, this very moment, go and obtain a marriage license. A common license should be enough, for they could marry in the small church near Chester Park – what was important was to remove the need to wait whilst the banns were read – what if his father did not have the weeks that would take?

  All else was in readiness, he believed, for the Duke of Elbury, and his family, to depart for Chester Park the following morning. Kevin himself was packed and ready. So the license was all that was needed. He called for his coat and hat, and hurried to the door.

  <<<< O >>>>

  Kevin looked at his father, and knew that his fears were true.

  Lord Chester had greeted them cheerfully, overjoyed at the news of Kevin’s betrothal, and had maintained that positive attitude throughout dinner, and beyond. Now that their guests had retired for the night, Kevin sat with his father, alone in the study, a brandy in his hand. Lord Chester’s face was grey, and he coughed often, no longer able to repress it. His hand shook as he lifted the brandy glass to his lips.

  “What did the physician say, father?”

  “What I knew he would say. That I am not long for this world. That some canker of the lungs is eating me away from the inside. It cannot be cured, or even slowed in its progress. I resisted taking laudanum for as long as I could, but now… the pain is too much without it. I… I have written, more than a week ago, and asked that Charles and Maria, and Hunter and Nerissa, come to Chester Park as soon as possible.”

  Kevin swallowed, emotion surging through him.

  “Do you really expect to be gone from us so soon…?”

  “I do. But do not talk of that, at least for now – tell me of Lady Hyacinth – do you love her? How did this betrothal come about?”

  “If I am honest, it came about because I was uninspired by the ladies of the ton, filled with ennui, and beginning to wonder why I went to social events at all. So at the start of this season, I decided to study the people around me intensely, to determine whether there were any young women who were not dull. Lady Hyacinth – and her whole family, for that matter, is definitely not dull. She has a reputation for being sharp tongued and shrewish – but that is simply because most gentlemen cannot abide being told the truth by a woman.”

  Lord Chester laughed, and the laugh rapidly became a rasping cough. Kevin waited, allowing him the time to compose himself, before he went on.

  “I decided that I would approach her, dance with her, simply because others didn’t. For, surely, a woman with a reputation like hers would at least provide interesting conversation. And that she did. I became intrigued by her, completely. I think that I fell a little in love with her from our very first conversation. Which was delightfully blunt and refreshing. Over time, we began to see each other often – almost courting, without making it formal. Then, for no reason that I could determine, she became withdrawn and quiet, no longer offering her rather astringent and amusing comments on the people of the ton – comments which she had honoured me by sharing, when she usually kept those observations private.”

  “Oh? And what brought about that change?”

  “Oddly enough, it was gossip, and the ‘Gossip Gazette’. What I am about to tell you must go no further, but I believe that you will find it darkly amusing.”

  “My dear boy, of course it will go no further – it will go to the grave with me, and all too soon.”

  Lord Chester’s laugh was self-deprecating, and Kevin admired his fortitude in the face of his illness. Yet he winced internally, at the reminder of his father’s fragile mortality.

  “Well… yes… you will remember, I hope, our conversations about the newssheet?” At his father’s nod, he went on, “Well, it took me some little time to work it out, and connect what you had said, with what was happening, but I eventually did. For Lord Puglinton had threatened Lady Hyacinth.”

  “The bounder! But how had he done so?”

  “Well… those sharp observations of society, which Lady Hyacinth had shared with me – she had generally only ever written them in a private journal. She did that, she told me, so that she could better prevent herself from making the observations directly to those they involved.” Lord Chester laughed again, and coughed again. “What had happened, which allowed Lord Puglinton to threaten her, was that her journal had been lost – under circumstances which could, in a sense, be blamed on me. Puglinton found it, and began to publish her words in that scurrilous newssheet. At that stage, he had no idea who had written the journal, for it did not have her name in it.”

  “Then… how did he come to threaten her?”

  “He worked it out. There was a very poor watercolour of a hyacinth flower in the journal, and he added that to her reputation for having a sharp tongue, to the fact that she had been present at all of the events which articles in the journal described, and concluded that it had to be her. He demanded that she either marry him, and write for him, or at minimum write for him, or he would expose her as the writer, which would destroy her reputation, and that of her sisters. And he implied that, even if she refused to marry him now, he might force her to it at any time, if she did not write enough, fast enough, to suit him.”

  “I knew that the man was unscrupulous, but I had never imagined he would take things that far.”

  “I hadn’t either, until you gave me his name as associated with the ‘Gossip Gazette’ – then it all made sense.”

  “So… what have you done about it?”

  “Well… the simplest way to protect Lady Hyacinth from him forcing her to marry him, was for her to be already married to someone else… and by then, the idea of marrying her had become very appealing, for the more time that I spent with her, the more I was coming to love her. But before I proposed, I wanted a solution to the whole problem – a way to remove his ability to blackmail her into writing for him. And you gave me that, when you told me of the suspicion that he had consistently cheated, when gambling, with the intent to ruin specific people.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I concluded, although it did not sit so well with my principles, that the easiest way was going to be to blackmail the blackmailer. But that meant that I needed evidence of his wrongdoing. For that, I needed some assistance from Hunter’s… associates… from his time in the military. They found what was needed, in a remarkably short time, assisted by that contact you had provided. Puglinton had been most careless with his correspondence in the past, most careless. And once confronted with that evidence, and the risk that it presented to his reputation and his fortune, he became most cooperative abo
ut returning the journal, and ceasing the publication of that column. We have those documents locked away, as a permanent bond for his good behaviour.”

  Lord Chester looked at his son, and a wide smile spread across his face.

  “Whilst, of course, I cannot endorse blackmail… well done, Kevin, well done. So, once you held the evidence, you proposed?”

  “I did, and she accepted me. I hope that you are happy with my choice, Father.”

  “I am, I am – I like the girl, sharp tongue and all. I prefer wit and opinion in a woman to insipidness. But… have the banns been read at all yet? How soon can you marry her? For I would fain see you married before I am gone.” His speech was broken off by a fit of coughing, which resulted in an alarming amount of blood on the kerchief that he held to his mouth. His face had gone a frightening shade of grey. Kevin went to him, and clasped his hand on Lord Chester’s shoulder, unsure of what he might do to ease his father’s discomfort. Eventually, Lord Chester straightened in his chair, and sipped his brandy, then spoke. “And I not sure that I have the weeks to wait for the banns.”

  Kevin reached into his coat pocket, and withdrew the license. He unfolded it, and placed it on the desk before his father.

  “Mother’s letter did not explicitly address just how ill you have become, yet the sense of urgency it conveyed… I thought it best to take precautions. I am sure that both the Duchess of Elbury and Mother will adjust to the disappointment of having to act with speed, rather than pomp and ceremony, given the circumstances. Hyacinth does not know of this, yet, for I had hoped… but it seems that my hope for your improved health was very much in vain.”

  Lord Chester looked up at him, his face full of gratitude and pride.

  “You will make a fine Viscount, my boy, there is no question of that.”