“Vauxhall Gardens is becoming far too popular. All manner of City men are taking their wives and daughters to such places these days, I hear. Persons of real refinement will soon shun it.”
“Then I shall take them,” Lady Acton said. “You were not so fine in your taste last summer, Augusta, when you accompanied our party to Vauxhall yourself. Major Crabtree escorted us, and Viscount Jasper and Mr. John Mallard were with us, as well. Miss Blanche Harrison suddenly joined our party, white as a sheet. Surely you remember?”
“Yes, I do, Felicity. As I recall, the result was a thorough soaking for all concerned. When the weather is so unsettled, it cannot be prudent to seek amusement outdoors.”
“Lord Ranking will no doubt join our party,” Lady Acton said. “You cannot object if he escorts Diana, surely?”
Eleanor looked at her mother with dismay, but if Ranking’s presence was necessary to get Lady Augusta’s permission for Diana to come with them, she would have to accept it.
“Of course, as son of the Duke of Maybury, Lord Ranking lends consequence to any situation. Diana may go if she wishes, but I hope you will understand if I do not attend.”
Lady Acton ignored the insult and laughed.
“How very sorry I am to hear it,” she said wickedly. “We shall have a dull evening without you.”
* * *
Lord Ranking, it seemed, was to be their only male escort, and to Eleanor’s relief, Lady Acton insisted he take her arm and allow the girls to follow behind them. The heir to the Duke of Maybury, however, could not relax.
“I am very afraid it may rain, Countess,” he said to Lady Acton. “I cannot abide the least exposure to rain.”
“Oh, nonsense! I think the night augers very fine. Let us take a seat here under this canopy, if you are worried.” Then she laughed aloud. “Why, how very odd and unexpected! I do believe that’s Mr. Downe and Mr. Campbell.”
The countess waved to the young gentlemen and winked privately at Eleanor.
At which point Eleanor realized that her mother had plans of her own, and was by no means averse to aiding Diana’s courtship with Walter, if for no other reason than to annoy Lady Augusta.
It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that within fifteen minutes Eleanor and Diana were walking with Mr. Campbell and Walter Feveril Downe along a tree-lined pathway toward the bandstand, leaving Lord Ranking fretting about the night air and how it might affect his lungs, much to the wicked delight of Lady Acton.
“Your plan succeeds, Lady Eleanor,” Mr. Campbell said. “My sister is once again blissfully enjoying the private company of her beloved. Unfortunately, you have overlooked one small drawback to this conspiracy.”
“Which is?”
Eleanor walked stiffly beside him, stifling the longing to take his arm and lean into him, as Diana was doing with Walter ahead of them.
“That you have to put up with me, of course, and there’s no telling how disgraceful I might become.”
She glanced up at him. He seemed to be deliberately baiting her. “I’ll endeavor to stand it,” she replied acidly. “We are only here for Diana’s sake, after all.”
“‘For some must watch, while some must sleep; / So runs the world away—’”
She would not let him get away with it any longer. “I think you do more than watch and sleep, though, don’t you, Mr. Campbell? I know you fought in the Peninsula. My brother told me.”
“Did he?” He laughed and the bitter edge to his voice dropped away. “Your brother is a good man, brown hen. He sees only the best in those around him.”
“Richard is more than that; he’s a reformer. If you claimed your birthright and became earl, you could help him do a lot of good. I don’t know that Diana would care, as long as she could marry Walter. If he loves her, he’ll take her even if she is illegitimate.”
“You are full of brave plans to see Diana wed, aren’t you? Even to declaring her a bastard? What of my stepmother?”
Eleanor hesitated. Why should she want him to let the world know his real birth? Did she somehow think that if he could be shown to be an earl’s rightful heir, then he couldn’t have been capable of wickedness?
“Yes, I know, but Lady Augusta is a horrid dragon of a woman.”
Lee stopped and turned to her. “A cruel deed is a cruel deed, whether done to the wicked or the good, don’t you think? It’s not by the character of the victim that we judge the perpetrator.”
“And have you never done anything cruel, Mr. Campbell?”
“Too many times and sometimes deliberately, when the occasion warranted. And so have you, though unwittingly.”
Eleanor gazed up at his face. She couldn’t read his expression, but her heart thudded wildly in her breast. Violet lights danced between his dark lashes as he smiled down at her.
“Unwittingly?” she repeated. “How?”
“It’s cruel for you to have such eyes, brown hen. And to be so very tempting to touch.”
“I’m not in the least tempting,” she said, choking.
He laughed. “Don’t you think you should let me be the judge of that?”
He began to guide her away from the public path into a little grove of trees. The light from several lanterns scattered like drops of water across the ground. Somewhere in the distance the band was playing the tune of a pretty popular song. Eleanor knew some of the words: “Oh, don’t deceive me. / Oh, never leave me. / How could you use a poor maiden so?”
They were entirely shielded from anyone passing by. She knew what was going to happen. She knew she ought to refuse. Instead she allowed him to touch her cheek, before gently sliding his long fingers into her hair. Delicate, delicious shivers of heat ran over her skin. He studied her face for a moment, then he smiled.
She smiled back, feeling a little tremulous.
“For old times’ sake, Eleanor,” he said softly, bending his head and taking her mouth with his.
The kiss deepened, lovely, both tender and passionate. She clung to him, drowning in sensation. More than anything, she wanted this moment to go on forever, but he released her and stepped back.
“You are the memory of England I shall take with me,” he said. “And all the guilt of using you so selfishly is mine. Marry for love, Lady Eleanor.”
“That’s what Helena said to me,” she replied shakily. “Because she’s lucky enough to have been found by Richard. You know it’s impossible advice.”
“Is it?”
She gathered her courage. “Don’t you think Lord Ranking would be a perfect match for me?”
“Unless you swear this instant that you’d rather die an old maid, I shan’t be able to go.”
Her heart stuck in her throat. “Go? To India?”
“No, to Belgium where our troops assemble. Napoleon gathers an army in Paris. Wellington and the Allies can’t attack France before July, but Boney may move first. If he does, I must be there. I’ve purchased a commission and I go to Brussels next week. There’s a great deal that I leave unfinished behind me, but I can’t help that. In the meantime, it’s traditional for a soldier to steal what kisses he may.”
So Richard’s prediction that he would rejoin Wellington was coming true immediately. She couldn’t bear it.
“From any girl who crosses his path, I suppose,” she said blindly.
“No, only from those who cross swords with him. Now, we had better catch up with my sister and her swain before I decide I need another keepsake.”
He took her hand in his and tucked it into his elbow. Eleanor walked with him back onto the public path. He was leaving to join the army. What had Richard said?
There will be another terrible battle, I’m afraid.
What if Leander Campbell was killed? And even if he survived the inevitable fight with Napoleon, he was going to spend the rest of his days in India. So it had been a farewell kiss. Dread sunk into her heart and turned it to ice.
“So you leave Diana and Walter to their own devices?”
“Now your mother seems to have become a willing conspirator, Lady Augusta’s cause is doomed. There’s nothing more I can do, anyway. They’ll wait for each other. Diana may pine, but she’ll not give in. I predict my sister will be Mrs. Feveril Downe within the year. Meanwhile, I have duties to my country.”
“Don’t you have other responsibilities in England?”
His face looked bleak. “I thought I did, but they have come to naught.”
Eleanor said nothing. It wasn’t her place to pry.
Yet he went on, “I made a promise to myself when my friend Manton Barnes died, but I’m going to break it.”
“What kind of promise?”
He smiled. “One of pride, perhaps, or revenge. I apparently underestimated my opponent, the man who blackmailed your mother. I still don’t know his identity.”
There was no question he was telling the truth. Eleanor stopped, forcing him to halt also.
“But you got the letters back—”
“Not directly from him. Sir Robert had already retrieved them.”
“My mother knows who he is, too. Major Crabtree told her.”
“Lady Acton?” He laughed. “Why didn’t I think to ask her? And why do I think she would never tell me? Especially now that a dangerous rake such as myself has taken the liberty to kiss her brown-eyed daughter, more than once.”
“She would think that it’s valuable experience for me, and since I have a sound head on my shoulders, I won’t refine too much upon it,” Eleanor said desperately.
“A very sensible attitude! I like your mother, brown hen.”
“Everybody does.” Eleanor was vainly trying to make sense of this whole evening. “But she likes you, which is more rare.”
“But I am prepared to wager,” he said, glancing up at the sky, “that she doesn’t take kindly to rain.”
“Oh, good heavens!” A large drop of water fell on the back of Eleanor’s hand. “Poor Lord Ranking! He’ll catch a chill and have to wrap his feet in mustard plaster.”
“Come on,” he said, laughing and catching Eleanor by the hand. “We’ll rescue them.”
As a distant growl of thunder rolled overhead, the crowds on the walks began to scatter.
Diana and Walter hurried up, and they all raced back to the canopy where Lady Acton and Lord Ranking had stayed to admire the illuminations.
“Does no one have an umbrella?” Lady Acton said, as Eleanor reached her. “Surely you didn’t come unprepared, Lord Ranking?”
“You said it wouldn’t rain,” the duke’s heir moaned. “I cannot abide wet. If I am soaked now, I shall be abed this fortnight.”
“Here, take my wrap,” Eleanor said, gallantly handing over her shawl. “Come, Mr. Campbell, have you no protection to offer poor Lord Ranking?”
“Let me offer you my coat, my lord,” he said instantly.
He stripped off that garment and held it over Lord Ranking’s head. His shirtsleeves shone white against the dark canopy overhead.
“You will be soaked yourself, Mr. Campbell,” Lady Acton cried gaily. “Oh, dear! Must I have to witness gentlemen giving up their cloaks for another every time I come to Vauxhall? Last summer it was Sir Robert gallantly protecting Blanche Harrison, and now it’s to benefit Lord Ranking.”
“Major Crabtree knew Miss Harrison?” Mr. Campbell said with sudden intensity.
“Oh, indeed! She was engaged to his nephew. Oh, good heavens, he was your friend, wasn’t he, the one you mentioned to me at Hawksley? I never met Manton Barnes, as I told you, but I knew Blanche, and Sir Robert seemed to know her very well. She was upset over something, almost hysterical. The engagement had just been broken off, of course, yet this was some very dreadful distress. Sir Robert took her home. It was most touching to watch. He offered her such a gallant and sympathetic ear. I believe she must have poured out her heart to him. Of course, very shortly afterwards, she went to America.”
And Manton Barnes received his first blackmail demand,
Lee thought with an absolute certainty. So, it was indeed Blanche who’d told Barnes’s secret to the blackmailer, just as he’d suspected. This was the proof. How could he have been so very blind?
* * *
“I can’t bear it anymore,” Diana said sadly.
Eleanor sat with her friend in the drawing room of Acton House. She was trying to busy herself with some embroidery, but it wouldn’t go right. Impatiently, she pulled out the last two rows of stitches. Ever since the meeting with Leander Campbell three days before, she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else. And now he seemed to have disappeared. At least no further messages had arrived from him.
As if to echo her thoughts, Diana went on, “And now Lee’s going away. I shall miss him so much. If only he were the heir! If I were just a younger sister to the Earl of Hawksley, Mama couldn’t stop me marrying Walter.”
Eleanor looked down. Diana was indeed a younger sister to the earl, but an illegitimate one. And so Mr. Campbell would never do anything to change the situation.
“Your brother is confident that you and Walter will be married within the year, Diana dear. He told me so.”
“Your mother is being very kind to us, too,” Diana replied. “Walter is to call here today. Did you know?”
“Then that must be him now,” Eleanor said, hearing footsteps in the hall. “Oh, fiddlesticks! I have run out of blue thread. I shall have to go and get some.” She gave Diana a wink. “You won’t mind being left alone with him for a bit, will you? It’ll only take me a moment.”
Eleanor met Walter in the doorway and showed him in to Diana.
As she turned to go to her own room, she saw her friend run into her lover’s arms. It wasn’t proper, but who would ever know? She shut the door firmly behind her.
It may have been half an hour later, when Eleanor suddenly became aware of a commotion in the hall. Running to the banister, she leaned over to see Lady Augusta handing her gloves to the maid.
“My daughter is here, is she not?” The booming tones echoed up to the ceiling.
“Yes, my lady,” the maid replied with a curtsy. “Lady Diana is in the blue drawing room with Lady Eleanor. Allow me to show your ladyship upstairs.”
Eleanor raced to intercept them, almost colliding with Lady Augusta at the head of the stairs.
“Oh, good morning, Lady Augusta!” she said as loudly as she dared.
“Is something the matter with your voice, young lady? I am not deaf. There is no need to shout. Most unseemly in a young girl. Where is Lady Acton?”