Reckless Rules (Brambridge Novel 4) (28 page)

“Victoria Colchester, pull yourself together,” he yelled suddenly. Victoria’s form twitched but still, she lay staring away from him. He put his head down to her pillow and spoke in her ear. “Victoria, you are a very silly woman. I have seen plenty of women like yourself act in exactly the same way and it helps no one. If you persist in locking yourself away then you will only feel worse. You need to talk about it.” Bill shook his head as there was no response from the bed. There was nothing he could do to help her whilst she persisted like this. The lady in Brambridge with the peacocks in the back garden had been just the same. He trod back to the door. Perhaps a bit of a shock might help.

“Look, I know you know Celine. How would you feel if I told you I’ve seen her in exactly the same state?”

“What?” Victoria sat up straight on the bed.

Bill laughed. Already he could see that Victoria was thinking clearly again. Good. That was what she needed. Especially if Moreno was to come back. Bill glanced at Brutus, who stood halfway between Bill and the bed. It seemed Brutus had taken on the role of protector to Victoria. He was grateful. Victoria would be safe enough in her own home, and even safer when his men arrived. Pablo Moreno wouldn’t get near her again.

“Didn’t she tell you?” he asked innocently. With a smooth movement, he turned the door handle and stepped back into the hall. A squawk of rage followed by a babbling in French followed him. He grinned.

Carruthers was still in the hall. “What did you do to her?” he said, aghast.

“I think you will find that I woke Sleeping Beauty up again,” Bill said confidently. More seriously he looked into Carruthers’s face. “Pablo Moreno is not to be allowed into this house, do you hear me, Carruthers? He is a
very
dangerous man.”

Carruthers nodded. “I understand. Lady Colchester doesn’t want him back either.”

Bill set off down the hall. He needed to find out what the Heracles Club was and where it met. As he stood at the top of the stairs, he caught sight of the large portrait of Victoria and Lord Colchester. He could almost feel the intimacy in the portrait. As an afterthought, he turned back to Carruthers.

“Tell me, your Isabelle. That first thing on the list—what was it?”

Carruthers raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Surely sir you—” Carruthers caught the look on Bill’s face and subsided. “Love. That is what Isabelle said. Love.”

CHAPTER 27

Carruthers ducked as another precious vase flew through the doorway into the hall. It smashed on the floor, spreading pottery across the Persian carpet.

“My lady!” he cried, “If you would like, I can bring some kitchen plates up from downstairs—”

“Just go away, Carruthers, and I’ll stop throwing these…
pots.
”

“But they are not pots, they are precious Meissen vases collected by your husband fifty years ago.” Carruthers ducked as yet another vase sailed past his head.

“Ha. My husband. My dearly beloved departed husband. Why did you let
him
in?”

Carruthers got up slowly from his crouching position on the floor. “Let in your husband?”

“Keep up, Carruthers. That blasted smith. The one with the enormous body and to die for eyes. Standish, of course. Why did you let him in?”

“You didn’t tell me not to let him in, my lady.” Carruthers jumped to the side of the door as a glass receptacle flew through the door with uncanny accuracy. “Oh dear, oh dear,” he muttered.

“Oh man up, Simon.” Chantelle appeared at the top of the stairs. She carried a tray of toast and hot chocolate. “’Ere, have some toast. Eet zounds like she might be some time.”

“I don’t understand what I’ve done.” Carruthers reached for the toast and took a bite.

“Oh. I zink she is just letting off a leetle steam. She’s had her bath and is feeling more relaxed. Zis is much better than that corpse that was lying on the bed. Standish is too good for her.”

Chantelle cocked her head on one side as a squawk emanated from the bedroom. Victoria poked her head out of the door.

“I can hear every word you are saying, Chantelle. Is that my toast? Hands off my toast!”

Carruthers stopped with a perfectly cut triangle of bread halfway to his mouth. He swallowed. “I’m sorry…”

“Oh, don’t be such an idiot, Carruthers. Of course you can have it.” Victoria surveyed the mess in the hall with satisfaction. “My aim must be getting worse.”

Carruthers choked on his next mouthful. “Those precious pots, my lady…”

“Bah. Turns out the whole lot is probably not mine anyway. Don’t just stand in the hall, you two. Come in.”

The scene in the bedroom was very different to that from a few days before. The heat and darkness had gone, and airy light had returned. Victoria hadn’t let anyone fix the drapes, however. It served to remind her of Bill’s visit.

“I’ve been doing some thinking.” Victoria paused and rubbed her mouth. “And I’ve decided that—”

“Oh congratulations, my lady! I know you will be very happy.” Carruthers clapped his hands in delight. It was Victoria’s turn to be confused.

“You already know what I’m about to say?”

“Mr. Standish told me. You two will be perfect together. Just like me and my Isabelle.”

Victoria raised her eye brows at Chantelle. Had the man taken leave of his senses?

Chantelle rolled her eyes. “I think Simon means Mr. Standish’s proposition of marriage.”

“He told you about that?”

Carruthers nodded enthusiastically. “He will be perfect for you, madam, allow you to spread your wings a little, enjoy life outside this house a little more, take you on the adventures you were made for –”

Victoria licked her lips. This was an unexpected turn in events. Carruthers, a normally rational person, seemed to have fallen hook line and sinker for the man. He had to know about Bill’s womanizing, surely? After all he was the one who had made the comment about a leopard not changing its spots.

“You think that I don’t have enough adventures, Carruthers?”

“Err, wee...eelll, err...perhaps.”

Chantelle took pity on the stuttering man. “Of course you do not.” She stuck her pointy chin in the air and gestured wildly with her arms. “Look at you and this house. You ’ave a picture of your ex-husband in the hall that reminds everybody who is still in control, even though he died five years ago.”

“It’s a good picture,” Victoria protested, but Chantelle was just getting into full flow. She advanced towards Victoria.

“You ’ave these stupid leetle rules which I hate hate hate.” Chantelle prodded Victoria in the chest. “Eet is not natural to make every decision according to a rule that your husband gave you.”

“I have some of my own,” Victoria protested, trying to step away from the poking finger.

“Even when you are ‘investigating’ you are somebody else. An ice queen. An
automaton
we zay in French.”

“Robot,” Victoria murmured.

Chantelle nodded. “Ze only time I have seen you come alive is when you have seen zat man.”

Carruthers nodded vigorously. “Tis true, my lady. Take for example two days ago. He woke you from your stupor with only a few words…”

“We are not going to talk about that,” Victoria said sharply. She couldn’t talk about it yet. It was too raw.

“That man,” Chantelle said triumphantly, “was built for adventures.”

Oh no. Chantelle had fallen for it too. Victoria stared at her companions. Her normal, level-headed investigators-in-arms had taken leave of their senses.

She turned and looked out of the windows to the street beyond. They were covered in condensation from her hot bath obscuring the view. “It doesn’t matter anyway, he won’t marry me when he finds out the truth.”

“What truth?” Chantelle demanded. “He has seen everything about you now.”

Victoria nodded. The Frenchwoman had a point. Nothing was lower than the harridan who had greeted him from the bed. “He has seen everything but doesn’t
know
everything.”

“My lady?” Carruthers took a step forward.

She turned to face them again and sighed. “It turns out that I wasn’t married to the real Lord Colchester. I was married to an imposter, his friend who took his place when he died. Paul Butterworth told me. It turns out that I was married to Butterworth’s brother, Ponsonby, who masqueraded as the Lord for forty years.”

Chantelle gasped. “Butterworth’s investigation into his brother’s death…”

Victoria nodded. “A sham to get my attention. He knew that his brother wasn’t dead. He said he came to confront him five years ago but that Ponsonby had died the day before and that I refused to meet him.”

“I don’t understand.” Carruthers sat down in a bed chair with a frown.

“There is not much to understand,” Victoria twisted her lips bitterly. “I am not Lady Colchester. I’m back to being Victoria Anglethorpe. My married life was a sham. That pottery is not mine. None of this is mine. I’ve been living a lie.”

Carruthers looked up with a compassionate stare. “No, I don’t mean about that. Analyse what you have learnt, rule number five.”

“If I have to hear any more about rule number five I will scream.” Victoria smoothed at her hair. “Especially after Chantelle’s comments.”

“Let the man speak, my lady.”

Carruthers swallowed and coughed. “What I mean to say is, why now? Why has Butterworth come after you now? He’s had five years in which to approach you. Surely if he was so keen to expose you he could have done it earlier with much more effect?”

“Does it really matter?” Victoria picked up a brush from her dressing table and yanked at her hair. “He’s done it. And when Bill finds out he won’t want to marry me. All he wants is the title and the standing that I can bring him. He’s picked me off like a seagull and blackbird chick.”

“Surely not, my lady,” Chantelle said softly, pulling the hairbrush away from Victoria’s hands. She started to brush Victoria’s hair with long smooth strokes. “He doesn’t seem to be that kind of man.”

Victoria sniffed. What about all those women who hankered after Bill, all the women he had allegedly been with? “I’ve said it before. He’s seen everything about me. Why would he come back for more when he could have Celine or, or any other woman?”

“Celine?” Chantelle sniffed. “I heard Mr. Fiske gave her her
congé
after she was seen lunging at Mr. Standish, who didn’t seem too happy about the affair. Have you approached her directly?”

“Approached a courtesan about her relationship with Bill? I saw her with my own eyes with him, Chantelle. She was still putting her clothes on when she walked out of the room with him alone. She told me he was the very best at
treatment
.”

“That’s an unusual word to call it,” Carruthers said unexpectedly. “I agree with Chantelle. I don’t know much about women—” Chantelle sniffed. “—but I agree that Mr. Standish does seem to be an unlikely lothario. Not like Mr. Cryne.”

“Good God no.” Victoria was appalled. Bill was as far apart from Mr. Cryne as could be. Just the thought of Mr. Cryne’s hands on her body made her shudder. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He won’t marry me anyway. There is no point in approaching the woman.”

Chantelle looked at her pityingly. “You should always have hope, my lady.”

“Sometimes there is no hope,” Victoria said despairingly. She waited for the beast in her mind to wake up, but unusually there wasn’t even a whimper of a response.

“I agree.”

Victoria gasped and turned towards the doorway to the room. A man in an outsize top hat that covered his white hair pushed himself away from the door jamb and took a step into the room.

Victoria screamed. Where were her dogs? “Brutus, Ponzi!”

“You can scream all you like, my lady,” the man sneered, stepping further into the room. “But I think you’ll find them in the hallway, dead to the world. All mutts fall at a bit of poisoned food.”

Victoria frowned. Her dogs couldn’t be dead? “What do you want, Pablo? I don’t want to marry you. I’ve got that wedding present you offered me here. I won’t be bought with a diamond and amethyst necklace… ”

The man shook his head. “Not Pablo.”

Victoria squinted at the figure, who tipped back his top hat. The eyes were younger. It was the man that they had all seen in the café. “Pedro,” she breathed in horror. It came back to her quickly what she had told Pablo before the blackness had descended.

The man nodded. With a lithe grace, Pedro tiptoed his way across the room and snatched the hairbrush from Chantelle’s hand. At her protest, Pedro pulled a small gun from his pocket. “I don’t need to use this. But I can. Leave us. I need to talk to my aunt
alone.
”

“My lady,” Carruthers protested. But Victoria stayed motionless, not moving her eyes away from Pedro.

“Go,” she said with as much bravery as she could. “I will be alright. As Chantelle said, there is always
hope
.”

As Carruthers and Chantelle backed reluctantly through the bedroom door, Victoria grimaced. Would they be able to understand her message? Would they even be able to find Bill? In some funny way at least Bill would be nearer catching Pedro if she was with the villain. Victoria looked at her dressing table. A single brass pin lay on the desk. Victoria’s hair fell to her side all around her. Chantelle had swept all the pins in the desk drawer the night before. She edged towards the table.

“What do you want, Pedro? Why have you threatened my servants with your gun?”

“You are going to come with me, dear Aunt. My father thinks that he and I have gained some kind of rapprochement. But he couldn’t be more wrong. I started to hate him on that day when he took that silly woman Agatha Beauregard’s bag of gold away from me. He denied me that money. He thinks that anything that he says will make me jump to his tune. He’s wrong. I’ve waited a while to find his weak spot. I knew that he was up to something. Calling himself Mr. Durnish. Buying a large house in Kensington. And then he comes here. Tells me excitedly that I’ve got an aunt. That we’ll be richer than we’ll ever have been. That we’ve now got access to society. And that he’ll marry again.”