Lady Lucy's Lover (16 page)

“No, Your Grace, we have plenty of bedchambers. Mr. and Mrs. Hartford are in residence and they will be delighted to see you.”
Why are we so formal?
thought Lucy wildly.
Is this the man who kissed me so passionately?
“If you would care to accompany me to the house…” she began.

“No,” he said. “I think not. What I have to say to you is better said in private.”

“As you will,” replied Lucy nervously, looking around. “There is a summer house over by the lake, a gazebo, out of the wind.”

She turned and led the way across the shaggy autumn lawns, through the swirling clouds of colored leaves, her blue coat billowing about her slight figure.

“And how are things in Town, Your Grace?” she asked, determined to be as formal as he.

“Very bad.”

“The economy?”

“No. The scandal. It is that I wish to discuss with you.”

“Oh,” said Lucy ineffectually. The wind was ruffling the waters of the lake. A mallard duck bobbed past and disappeared among the reeds.

The gazebo was perched on a little knoll beside the lake. The wind whistled eerily though the criss-cross latticed slats over the windows like a dirge for summer past.

He indicated one of the stone seats and then sat next to her, arranging the skirts of his coat.

His face looked harsh and set and two grooves she had not noticed before ran down either side of his mouth. His eyes were hooded by their drooping lids. He slowly drew off his gloves, turning the soft leather this way and that in his long fingers.

“Has Mrs. Hartford said anything to you about London's latest scandal?” he said.

Lucy blushed painfully. “She said your mama was putting it about that she was not in residence when we… when we were together.”

“Exactly. I made her deny the rumor, which she did by weeping and saying pathetically to her court of spongers, ‘Simon has
commanded
me to say that I was present.' She was, in fact, there, you know, sulking in her rooms.”

“Well… that was all very long ago,” said Lucy, and it did seem to belong to another sunny world, far away on the other side of the black pit of her husband's death.

“But the gossip is very present,” he said. “I do not care for myself. But you are very young and should not have your life blighted so.”

“I do not plan to return to London,” said Lucy, looking unseeingly out at the water, “so what society says about me need not affect me.”

“That is the way you feel now,” he said, “but that feeling will not last forever. Marry me.”

“What?”

“I am asking you to marry me.”

“Guy asked me, just as he was dying, not to marry again. He said he loved me. I gave him my promise.”

“Selfish unto death,” said the Duke coldly. “Do you know why I did not come near you? Because there were already ugly stories about that we had conspired to have your husband killed. Did you think me unfeeling and callous?”

“Yes.”

“Did you think perhaps
I
had killed Guy?”

Lucy looked down at her shoes and said nothing.

“I see that you did. Never has my character been more maligned. I assure you, it will be the sensible thing to marry me.”

“It would be shocking… so shocking, so soon after Guy's death.”

“It is months since Guy's death. A year is not yet up. I suggest we become unofficially engaged.”

“And this is the
business
proposition you mentioned earlier?”

“Yes.”

“I have already been married once through a business proposition. I do not care for another.”

“I see,” he said in a low voice. “I thought it would be thus.”

“Thought
what
would be thus?” said Lucy crossly. Oh, why didn't he take her in his arms? Why did he sit there, so aloof, so elegant? Had he never cared for her? Obviously not.

“I feel you really cared for your husband deeply.”

“Oh,” said Lucy, looking away. Well, her pride was not going to let her correct him. If marriage to her was only to be in the nature of a business proposition, then she wanted none of it.

She arose and shook out her skirts.

“I must refuse your kind offer,” she said coldly. “But you are welcome to stay as my guest. The Hartfords will be delighted to see you again. Our cook does fairly well but not quite in the grand manner of a French chef….”

She led the way out of the gazebo, talking lightly all the while, without ever looking back to see if he were following her or if he had accepted her invitation.

The Duke had elected to stay and had retired to the rooms allotted to him. Lucy found herself relieved to find that the Hartfords had gone to the village. She felt she could not bear to face Ann's questioning and hopeful eyes.

Her husband's effects, desk, and papers had been put away in an unused servant's room at the top of the house. Lucy had not looked at any of his belongings, but all at once she was overcome by a desire to search for evidence of his infidelity. To search for anything that would remove the guilt engendered by his last words.

The room smelt damp and musty and unaired. The papers which had been strewn about his study when it had been ransacked had all been collected into neat piles and placed on top of the desk.

The steward had gone through them to take away any outstanding bills and deal with them. Lucy's face suddenly went hot at the idea of the steward having come across the sort of evidence she herself was looking for.

She pulled up a hard kitchen chair, sat down in front of the desk, and lit a candle, for the day was growing dark as black clouds massed in the sky above.

The papers were mostly letters from friends discussing arrangements to meet at prize fights or cock fights or coffee-houses.

There were no letters from women. Lucy discovered this after more than an hour of diligent reading.

Perhaps, she thought, she should have looked through bank letters and bills before the steward took them away. Although he had given the diamond earrings and pendant to Harriet, he had bought them for her, but the bills might have revealed evidence of other trinkets.

The desk was a tambour-fronted bureau, its top rolled back to reveal the flat top of the desk with its little pigeon-holes and drawers. She pulled open drawer after drawer in front of her, having already searched the larger ones below the desk top.

But all the papers seemed to have been removed and laid on top. One of the small drawers would not open. Feeling sure mere would be nothing in it either, she somehow felt impelled to force it just to see.

She picked up a chisel-ended poker from the hearth and carefully inserted it under the drawer and yanked it up. There was a sharp splitting sound as the front of the drawer came away completely and fell in two pieces in front of her.

“Now I have ruined a perfectly good desk for nothing,” mourned Lucy. The drawer was empty and she was about to rise when she sensed rather than saw a cavity at the back.

She held a candle up to the drawer and saw there was indeed a secret space at the back of the desk. She thrust her hand in and with a gasp of triumph felt a thick bundle of paper, which she pulled out.

Poor Lucy found herself looking down at all the evidence of her husband's infidelity that she could possibly require. There were letters from Harriet Comfort, and not only from her but from various other ladies of the
demimonde
who seemed delighted to flatter her late husband by praising, in quite startling detail, his prowess between the sheets.

She thrust the letters away from her finally, in disgust, and, as she did so, a small thick diary fell to the floor. She picked it up and turned the pages, looking curiously at the neat rows of figures. At the end of the book, in front of the last section, the Marquess had written, “If I should die, this is of Nashinul importance.”

He never could spell, thought Lucy ruefully, tucking the diary into a pocket in her apron to study it more carefully later. Then she took the pile of love letters, put them in the fireplace, and then thrust the candle through the bars, watching them turn brown, curl up, and finally catch fire.

If only Simon loved me
, thought Lucy sadly,
then I should accept him on the spot, for these letters have proved that Guy was never faithful to me. In fact it seems he began being unfaithful to me from the day we married
.

But there was nothing else to do except pray to get through the evening ahead with a modicum of dignity.

It was better than she expected. Ann and her husband were delighted to share the dinner table with the Duke of Habard and talked so gaily that they failed to notice that the elegant Duke was somewhat more somber than usual.

He looked heartbreakingly handsome, thought Lucy. His evening clothes were perfection, and only his eyes were as hard and cold as the diamonds in his stock and on his fingers.

“I have been wondering about Standish,” he suddenly said when Ann paused for breath. “I cannot believe that his death was the result of some footpad's greed. If he had been stabbed or bludgeoned, it would seem more likely. But footpads do not normally shoot people, nor do they frequent the fashionable squares of the West End as much as they used to. There are very nasty rumors about Barrington. And Standish was involved with Barrington. Sir Percival Burke became very bosky at White's and started to mutter sinister remarks about Barrington having power over him. The next day, Sir Percival was found floating down the Thames.”

“Oh, the bill broker fellow,” said Giles Hartford comfortably. “Well, he's not sinister, you know. He fleeces young men of their lands and property, but so do all the other bill brokers and money lenders, not to mention the gaming hells. Ain't anything sinister about that. Just sad.”

“I have heard that Barrington craves power and a peerage or a knighthood, at the very least,” said Habard as if Giles had not spoken.

He turned to Lucy and spoke to her directly for the first time since he had proposed to her in the gazebo.

“Did Standish say anything… or leave anything in his papers that might…?”

“Oh, a most
odd
thing,” cried Lucy, suddenly remembering the diary. “Wait!”

She ran from the room and Ann watched the way the Duke's eyes followed her retreating figure.

In a short time Lucy was back, the diary in her hand. “Only see,” she said, bending over the Duke's chair with the diary. “Where he wrote that bit about his death and it being of national importance.”

Ann noticed with wry amusement that in her excitement Lucy was leaning over the Duke, pressed against his shoulder, and that a faint flush was mounting to the Duke's cheeks.

Lucy was dressed in severe mourning but the black enhanced her fair looks, and the little lace cap, which she had donned in the hope that the Duke would realize she had joined the ranks of the dowagers, had slipped slightly to one side and gave her a frivolous, coquettish appearance.

“It is some form of code,” said the Duke slowly. “It's probably very simple. The numbers represent the different letters of the alphabet. Let me see.”

“Oh, we cannot possibly leave you gentlemen to your wine with all this excitement,” said Ann. “Let us all retire to the drawing room and find pencils and papers. This is the best party game ever.”

But try as they would, the numbers did not correspond to the letters of the alphabet. D, for example, should have corresponded with 4, but it did not.

The Duke tapped his pencil thoughtfully against his teeth. “There must be something important here,” he said. “Perhaps he had a favorite book?”

Lucy shook her head. “Guy never read anything. I do not think he had been very well educated.”

“Do you mind if I take this back to London with me when I leave tomorrow?” asked the Duke.

“No, of course not,” said Lucy, feeling sad. She had hoped somehow that he would have decided to stay a little longer. On the other hand, he did not love her. Only witness how courteously aloof his behavior had been since he arrived.

“I think we should retire, Giles,” said Ann suddenly.

“Eh, what? Night's young, m'dear.”

“And I'm
tired
,” said Ann, giving him a loaded look and jerking her head in the direction of the Duke and Lucy.

“Oh, what? Eh? Oh,
I
see. Well, of course, I'm tired myself. You will excuse us, Lucy, Habard?”

Lucy flushed delicately. “Since His Grace is leaving us tomorrow, perhaps we should all retire?”

“I did not say anything about leaving early,” murmured the Duke, his eyes on the thick diary in his hands.

Ann whipped her smiling and chuckling husband out of the room and Lucy looked at the Duke rather helplessly. If he did not care for her and only wanted to marry her because of a lot of malicious gossips, then she wished to be shot of him.

But he had once kissed her so passionately. Men, on the other hand, had mysterious lusts which women were supposed to tolerate, but not understand. Lucy raised her little hand to her suddenly hot face. Perhaps she had been rationalizing love into lust.

The Duke looked up suddenly and studied her flushed face.

“What are you thinking?” he asked abruptly.

“I was thinking about lust,” said Lucy, and then blushed so hard she felt as if she had been dipped in boiling water.

He looked at her thoughtfully and then stretched out his long legs and leaned his head back against the wing of the chair.

“About whose lust, I wonder?” he murmured. “Yours or mine?”

Lucy made an embarrassed little movement with her hands. “My unruly tongue,” she said wretchedly. “I was merely considering the difference between men and women.”

“When it comes to lust, there is no difference,” he said.

“But love…?”

“Ah, love. What is your definition of love, Lucy?”