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The Duke Heist

Page 6

by Erica Ridley


  A quicksilver, seductive impulse tempted him to show her his collection. Just to see how she reacted. To see if she could appreciate his collection even a fraction as much as he did.

  He tamped down the desire. Impulsiveness was how his father had ruined himself and his family. The damnable trait was also the reason Lawrence was in his current scrape with Miss Wynchester.

  “Good afternoon,” he told her firmly. “Hastings will see you out.”

  She dipped a curtsey.

  “Oh,” Lawrence said, “do not take your disruptive baby jaguar back to the Yorks’.”

  Miss Wynchester’s wide eyes met his. “I’ve no choice. Crowds cause me anxiety, and Tiglet is the only creature capable of giving me comfort.”

  With that, she was gone.

  Traces of jasmine remained in the empty place where she had stood.

  He stepped into it despite himself, as though he would be able to feel her if he placed his body where hers had been. The long legs beneath her skirt, the swell of her bosom. What would it be like to kiss that fleeting smirk from her lips?

  Hastings swept into the parlor. “It is a pleasure to see you entertaining callers, Your Grace. What a unique young lady.”

  Lawrence stepped away from Miss Wynchester’s ghost. “She cannot mean to drag that beast all over society, can she? Good God, just imagine it loose here during my gala.”

  Hastings arched gray brows. “You adore animals. If I recall correctly, there once was a time when you begged your father for—”

  Lawrence cut him off with a frosty glare.

  Hastings returned his gaze with faux innocence.

  Of course the blasted man “recalled correctly.” Hastings had been butler since before Lawrence’s birth. He could recall any number of memories Lawrence had worked very hard to forget.

  Such as the dark days after the funeral, when Lawrence had come to realize the full extent of his father’s debts. After years of being resentful every time another of his ancestors’ treasures vanished from the wall, Lawrence realized he would be forced to do the same…and that the sacrifice would not be enough.

  He reduced staff to a minimum in both the London town house and the entailed country seat, then sold any items that held no sentimental value—and several that did. He settled long-overdue accounts with tradesmen before addressing his father’s gambling debts because hatters and cobblers and haberdashers did not have the benefits of titles to protect them.

  As a peer, Father could not be sent to debtors’ prison no matter how profligate he became. The working class was not so lucky. Lawrence would not put their lives in jeopardy just because “gentlemen” prioritized debts of honor to their peers.

  His lip curled. There was no honor in living lavishly on credit one could not repay and allowing the less fortunate to bear the brunt of one’s selfishness.

  By selling heirlooms and being frugal, there was just enough money for one final season. He must wed an heiress before Parliament ended in mid-June or he would not be able to provide for his tenants, repair the failing estate, and pay his loyal staff’s wages.

  Destitute, Lawrence would no longer be able to fight for reforms in the House of Lords, because he would not be able to afford a town house or any rooms for rent, much less possess any extra money to make investments that might help him out of this mess.

  Miss York’s dowry could not arrive fast enough.

  “I’ll be in the library,” he informed Hastings, then strode down the corridor to his sanctuary.

  Lawrence unlocked the door, stepped into the large room, and let himself breathe.

  He adored the rich scent of books, of old paper and worn leather. The comforting crackle of a cozy fire drew the eye toward a plush sofa and two worn leather chairs, arranged invitingly near the warm blaze.

  The walls did not boast nearly the quantity of books they’d once held, but the thin spaces above and between the shelves were now filled with paintings. He had brought them all here to the one remaining place where his heart felt full instead of empty.

  As always, he started to the left of the doorway, making his unhurried way canvas by canvas. He knew every brushstroke, every play of light against darkness. It was here that Lawrence could let himself think, and be, and feel.

  He liked to imagine himself in the shoes of the artists who had lived before him. Would he have chosen this color, this canvas, this style, this subject? Might he have added a flying horse for whimsy? Or painted the trees purple instead of green? Would his imagination mirror the real world at all?

  His peers believed Lawrence spent every spare moment in his library out of an overabundance of studiousness. It would shock them to know how much time he spent daydreaming about learning to paint so he could add a creation of his own to these walls.

  Many gentlemen had hobbies. Once his pockets were flush again, there would be an opportunity to hire an art tutor when Parliament was not in session.

  An opportunity he would not take.

  Money was not enough. The perfect wife was not enough. Lawrence also had to be perfect. If he were to make the attempt and discover all the tutors in the world weren’t enough to coax passable art from talentless fingers… No. It did not bear considering.

  If Lawrence could not be the best, he would not do it at all.

  He was respected in Parliament because of long hours and hard work. Sleepless nights writing and rewriting every sentence of every speech.

  It was also why he eschewed society events whenever possible. The only time he received callers was at the end-of-season gala that he controlled.

  Lawrence kept others out not because he believed himself superior but because, if they knew the real him, they would no longer be interested—or, worse, he would be mocked.

  He was not good at doing and saying the right things unless he’d had time to craft the perfect response.

  The smell of fresh coffee reached his nose and he turned to see his housekeeper, Mrs. Root, enter the library. She arranged the contents of a silver tray on the small table next to his favorite chair.

  Her blue eyes normally sparkled, but today they were filled with concern.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  Her hands shook. “My niece.”

  Mrs. Root had four nieces, but there was no need to inquire which one. Betsy, the youngest, had always been sickly. Now she was expecting a child.

  “What does the doctor say?” he asked, his voice gruff. There was nothing worse than losing a loved one.

  “That a month of confinement remains and Betsy should spend it in bed.” Mrs. Root twisted her hands. “My next holiday isn’t for a fortnight, but would you mind if I took a day or two—”

  “Go.” Lawrence held up his palm. “Take as much time as you need.”

  Betsy was a washerwoman. A month of no wages, the cost of medicines and doctors, weeks to recover with the baby… Lawrence scanned the thinning shelves until his gaze lit upon a volume that might earn a reasonable amount. He would send a donation on the morrow.

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Root curtseyed.

  “You can depart now if you like. I’ll ring for someone else to collect the tray.”

  She made no move to leave.

  He frowned. “Was there something else?”

  Her eyes softened. “Hastings says you’re to acquire a kitten.”

  Deuced meddlesome butler!

  “Hastings is mistaken,” Lawrence said coldly.

  Mrs. Root looked as though she wanted to pinch his cheek. “It’s a wonderful idea.”

  “I am not in the market for a kitten,” he enunciated.

  “A puppy, was it?” Her smile widened. “I thought Hastings had misunderstood. How you used to long for a dog! ‘He’d be the best friend a lad could have,’ you told your father. One must lay newspaper for a puppy, of course, so I’ll have a word with Peggy and Dinah before I go—”

  He exaggerated each syllable. “No. Pets.”

  Mrs. Root appeared crestfallen.
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  “I knew it was too pleasant a thought.” Her gaze brightened. “What if…what if you didn’t purchase an animal from a breeder but rescued one off the street? If you haven’t the time or dislike it, you can always give her to someone else.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You think if I let it in, I’ll never give it away.”

  “I would never call you sentimental, Your Grace.” She placed a hand to her bosom and backed away toward the door. “Hastings, on the other hand…”

  “I am not sentimental!”

  It was already too late. Mrs. Root had left him in the center of a library stuffed with family portraits and every scrap of art he could scrounge from the Faircliffe estate.

  “Not that sentimental.”

  But his feet led him to an empty pedestal where he intended to place the one item of beauty Father had ever valued. A gift for his wife.

  Lawrence had been perhaps six years old when he realized his mother was increasing in size. He could still remember how happy he’d been at the knowledge he’d soon have a sister or brother to love and play with.

  He’d yearned for a huge family, full of love and laughter and adventure. A sibling was a dream come true. In the afternoons he would sneak into the drawing room where his mother embroidered by the fire, watching for the smile that played at her lips and the way she would touch her belly whenever she received a kick. He counted down the days.

  The baby was stillborn.

  There had been no more smiles in his household after that. Mother was inconsolable. Father commissioned an exquisite crystal vase clutched in the plump hands of a beautiful cherub. An angel, just like Lawrence’s sister who had not lived. Every morning Father replaced the flower in the vase with one from their garden. Eventually, Mother emerged from her darkness. The angel accompanied her to the dining room, to the drawing room, to her bedside.

  The following year, when a fever sent Mother to heaven with her daughter, the vase disappeared from her sickroom. Father had placed the angel in his study, where it never held flowers again.

  Sometimes, Lawrence would sneak into the duke’s study and hide in a corner, arms wrapped about his knees, to watch his father work and to catch glimpses of the vase, still as delicate and painfully beautiful as Lawrence recalled.

  Every time his father caught him, there was a dreadful row. Nannies were sacked. Father would shake him and toss him into the corridor. He began to lock the study even while inside the room. The duke guarded that angel as jealously as a dragon protected its treasure.

  It was the one thing Father still cared about.

  Lawrence swallowed the old hurts. It was past time to give his mother’s vase its rightful place of honor here in the library, amongst things of beauty.

  He rose unsteadily to his feet. He would not be cowed by his father’s ghost any longer.

  After the old man’s death six months before, a footman had entered the duke’s study in order to relocate the papers and journals to Lawrence’s study. The closed door still seemed cold and forbidding, but Lawrence was no longer the boy he had once been.

  He did not need to fear the study and the rejection it symbolized. It was empty now. He had a key. Father was gone, but the angel could live here in the library with Lawrence.

  He strode to his father’s study, ignoring the way his breath accelerated and his muscles tensed as if preparing for the inevitable blow. It took three tries to fit the key into the lock, but this time there were no angry shouts when he pushed open the door.

  The room was dark. It seemed much smaller without his father. The air was stale. It filled Lawrence’s lungs like brackish water, making it difficult to breathe. There was no need to tie back the curtains. This would be quick.

  He shoved open the door until it banged against the interior wall. A small act of defiance he would never have dared if his father were alive. Dim light from the corridor brightened the gloom just enough for Lawrence to glimpse the angel’s glass case.

  The vase was gone.

  Lawrence jerked back against the doorjamb, the blood roaring through his veins and his mind awhirl.

  Stolen.

  Father would never have parted with his angel willingly. It must have been taken by one of the servants Lawrence had been forced to let go once he’d realized how close he was to financial ruin.

  His muscles twitched with rage. By now his mother’s vase could have changed hands any number of times. Strangers’ hands. His mother’s angel reduced to a cheap monetary transaction, nothing more meaningful than the exchange of a few coins.

  Lawrence would find that vase and prosecute its theft to the fullest extent of the law. He would sell every book and every painting for reward money if that was what it took to bring the angel home. He turned from the study and headed for the front door.

  It was time to visit the Bow Street Runners.

  9

  Chloe attacked the crown of ringlets she’d spent all morning perfecting with a wet brush until her hair hung about her face in uneven, limp chunks. Excellent. She shoved every strand behind her head in a knot—competent enough to indicate she’d tried, bland enough not to garner a second glance—and then returned her pearl drop earrings to the mahogany drawer with all of the other baubles.

  She carefully removed her white crepe frock with its cerulean-striped puffed sleeves and matching sarcenet slip. Like the rest of her fashionable attire, this gown would never be worn outside the privacy of her dressing room.

  It still felt strange to keep a secret from her siblings—especially Tommy, whose cot had been near Chloe’s at the orphanage. Before Bean, there had been no practical means to have privacy.

  If a tiny part of Chloe couldn’t stop wondering what Faircliffe might think when he saw her in an hour, well, that was just silly. He wouldn’t be looking at her. He was to wed Miss York.

  Nor was Chloe the least bit interested in the duke’s vaunted opinions!

  Her objective was to gain enough of Faircliffe’s confidence to find out where he’d hidden the painting that belonged to her family—or ledgers to indicate where he’d sold it.

  Nothing more.

  Once she was down to shift and stays, Chloe hunted through the smaller wardrobe for something appropriate to wear to a Blankets for Babes charity tea. Brown? Sand? Ash? She settled for a lackluster gray-violet.

  There. Chloe couldn’t look in the mirror without wanting to snore. She grabbed her most unflattering pelisse and strode from her bedchamber.

  Before heading downstairs, she paused at the open doorway to the empty Planning Parlor. Bean’s face smiled down at her from his frame above the mantel.

  “I wish I’d been your daughter by blood,” she whispered, “so I would have been born with rank.”

  Bean’s oil-on-canvas smile did not reply.

  It didn’t matter. She’d confessed her desire to be his “real” daughter hundreds of times while he was still alive. Sometimes his loss was so big, it threatened to burst from her chest and rend her to pieces. But she was strong. All of the Wynchesters were.

  Bean always said the stars had brought them together. He loved her as she was. What could be more real than that?

  The family depended on her to do her part. She would never let them down.

  She stepped out of the Planning Parlor in time to catch Jacob frowning in the corridor, sniffing the air with confusion on his handsome face.

  “Someone ought to check the flues,” he told her when he caught her quizzical expression. “One of the fireplaces smells like burnt hair.”

  Er, that would be Chloe’s room, courtesy of her curling tongs.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she assured him, and hurried down the marble steps before he could ask any questions.

  Graham sat alone in the dining room, surrounded by empty tea plates and stacks of society papers, some trapped by a vase of daffodils. He looked up as Chloe entered the room.

  “What do you think?” He was adding to one of his hand-written journals. “Is P
rincess Caraboo actual royalty?”

  Chloe switched his fork for a flower while he wasn’t looking. “Nobody ever is who they say they are. I don’t know why you read this rubbish.”

  But she picked up one of the pages anyway. Lord D—injured in a duel. Heiress K—caught in the arms of a notorious rake.

  It was silly to envy these people’s plights. Finding one’s name in the scandal sheets often spelled disaster for a respectable lord or lady. A permanent tumble from social grace. Chloe was grateful she had no further to fall.

  “There’s your basket.” Graham motioned to the opposite side of the table.

  Chloe peeked beneath the wicker lid. “Where’s Tiglet?”

  “I banished him to Balcovia.”

  As Balcovia was the small principality in the Low Countries where Bean had been born, this turn of events seemed unlikely.

  “You’ve no idea where Tiglet is.” Chloe shook her head fondly. “A rhinoceros could charge from the teakettle whilst you read your papers and you wouldn’t even notice.”

  He grinned unrepentantly. “I’m trying to fathom out how I can become Prince Caraboo. Wouldn’t it be a lark if people believed me to be royalty?”

  And now she was jealous at the thought of her brother being fawned over and written about when Graham was only jesting. Wasn’t he? Chloe tried to picture him as royalty. She imagined he would make a striking prince…if he set down his society papers long enough to overtake a castle.

  It was Chloe who was always in the midst of it all. Like the scuffed brown parquet of a dance floor: omnipresent and invisible, useful and unnoticed. Witness to everyone else’s fun.

  A flicker of calico fur flashed between the curtains.

  She scooped Tiglet up, tucked him into the basket next to the blankets, and hurried out to the waiting carriage.

  As the wheels inched forward with the queue of eager attendees, Chloe arranged her gown and her basket as neatly as possible. She shouldn’t care about her appearance, and she especially ought not to care what sort of impression she made on Faircliffe—if he even came. She definitely shouldn’t care how she compared to Philippa York.

  Until recently, Chloe hadn’t given Philippa much thought. She was a typical young lady inasmuch as any beautiful, spoiled daughter of a powerful MP could be considered typical.

 

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