Never a Duke, page 10
And clearly, they included Ned Wentworth in the family fold. “This bewilders you.”
“The Wentworths would bewilder anybody.”
Just as clearly, Rosalind’s escort saw himself outside of their family circle. Why? If she asked him that, he’d come up with some half-humorous observation about the guitarist taking her place at the front of the room.
Rosalind limited her mental agenda for the interval to what progress Mr. Wentworth had made questioning the demimonde, and the news of Calliope Henderson’s disappearance.
Those were important matters, very important. That Rosalind also wanted more of Mr. Wentworth’s kisses did not signify in the least, but it was uppermost on her mind for the duration of the first half.
* * *
Do not stare at Lady Rosalind’s mouth. Ned’s internal litany sounded very like Her Grace in a sermonizing mode. Do not sniff her. Do not drop your program like some callow swain who needs the most obvious, pathetic excuse to bend nearer to the woman he’s longing to impress.
Do not glower at Althea and Constance. Do not surreptitiously tromp on Lord Nathaniel’s damned toes.
Ned had all but elbowed his lordship away from Lady Rosalind’s side. Only Althea’s gentle hand on Lord Nathaniel’s arm had spared the blighter some discreet parlor pugilism.
The guitarist strummed and plucked for six eternities. The duet thereafter lasted eight more, and the soprano was an undeserved penance for all in attendance.
“No more musicales,” Ned muttered, rising at the interval to offer Lady Rosalind his hand. “I beg of you. I will endure your at-homes, walk dogs with you in the park, or steel myself for a literary salon featuring American poets on the subject of humanity’s many ills, but no more musicales.”
“Agreed.” She put her hand in his and rose. “The accompanist was as enthusiastic as the singer, and they appear thoroughly besotted with each other. One fears for their children’s hearing.”
She smiled at Ned, and every rational thought departed his brain. The spacing of the chair rows meant he and the lady stood quite close, and—
“Neddy,” Constance called, “spring the horses, would you? Nathaniel is determined to be sociable while my burning objective lies in the direction of the buffet.”
Ned escorted Constance and Rosalind from the music room and across the corridor to the library, which had been pressed into service to house the buffet. Most of the guests had tarried at their seats, and thus Ned could make a flying pass down the offerings, holding a plate for each lady.
“Now seat us up on the mezzanine,” Constance instructed. “We want privacy, but also to keep an eye on the proceedings. I’ll find you.”
She swanned off after aiming a particularly fierce look at Ned. She would find them at her leisure, but find them, she would.
“She’s lending me her consequence,” Rosalind said, winding her way toward the spiral steps that led to the library’s mezzanine. “She’s a duchess, and she need not favor anybody with her company. Your family is kind.”
They are not my family. “In their way, they are very kind. Also ferocious. I haven’t made much progress with our investigation.”
Lady Rosalind preceded him up the steps, and Ned nearly dropped both plates.
“It has been mere days, Mr. Wentworth. If there’s a scheme afoot to collect decent women from Mayfair’s streets, we won’t uncover it by surviving ‘Caro Mio Ben’ rendered as a marching song.”
Ned found them a sofa with a low table before it. The library proper began to fill with guests, conversations blending into a dull roar. Constance had chosen well, for few would think to look up, though through the balusters of the banister, Ned had a clear view of the gathering.
Like perching in a tree in an alley to eat a purloined pie. The beadles and constables never looked up.
“I have called upon several parties likely to hear of a scheme such as you allude to,” Ned said, though Mrs. Hepplewhite had yet to receive him. “They all profess ignorance.”
Rosalind settled on the sofa. Ned set down the plates and took the place beside her. Constance could make of that presumption whatever she pleased.
“Do you believe their protestations of ignorance?” Lady Rosalind stripped off her gloves and draped them across her lap. Though the action was brisk, Ned had not braced himself for the impact of her bare hands and arms exposed so casually.
He was in thriving good health and on excellent terms with his manly humors, and the sight of Lady Rosalind’s wrists, of her building a sandwich from soft white bread, strips of cheese, and thin slices of ham…
Steady there, bucko. “I believe the women I spoke with lack particular knowledge, but they’ve heard something, they’ve seen something. A scheme is afoot, and they want no part of it.”
“Then whoever crafted this scheme has power.” Her ladyship passed Ned the sandwich. “Gloves off, Mr. Wentworth.”
Gloves off, shirt off. Ned’s imagination chose now of all times to torment him. He peeled off his gloves and accepted the food.
“Power in those circles comes in many forms,” he said. “There’s the kind of power polite society respects—wealth, standing, influence in the Lords. Your father is powerful, in that way. Then there’s the simple power to take a life, to inflict suffering. In between those extremes is the power I see wielded at the bank, the power to ruin or rescue. For women trading on their charms, any of those sorts of power can affect them.”
Her ladyship made a second sandwich and took a bite. Do not stare at her mouth.
“All of those forms of power are typically wielded by men,” Lady Rosalind said. “The flesh trade is one we commonly think of as being more in the hands of women.”
“True.” A fact nobody much noticed unless to complain about it. “But to physically overpower young women in good health takes brute force. I’ve asked my badgers to make discreet—”
“Might we refer to them by another name?”
Rosalind was protective of badgers, bears, and vicious dogs—of any creature subjected to needless suffering for the sake of profit and amusement.
“My intelligence officers,” Ned said. “Ignoring the children populating London’s streets has become a virtue, my lady. If the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity has its way, nobody will feed, clothe, or house these children, and—so the Society insists—the beggars will magically cease their greedy, lazy ways, despite having no skills, no letters, no proper food to eat, and in many cases, poor health. The bank takes a different approach, employing and educating those boys who accept our terms.” And keeping the little imps safe, warm, and fed.
A man’s laughter drifted up, polite, genteel, cordial.
“Whose idea was this?”
Never explain, never apologize. Walden himself had laid down that edict to Ned many times when it came to the bank’s loan decisions and its choice of employees or clients.
“Her Grace of Walden is a preacher’s daughter,” Ned said, “and genuinely charitable. She has causes, and she has His Grace’s devotion. The badgers are the result of both.”
Ned had offered a few suggestions when asked, but not until then. Management of the boys had fallen to him by default—or at the duchess’s insistence, Ned had never been quite sure which.
“I want to know more about your bank boys and intelligence officers, but I need to tell you of a third disappearance.” She summarized a situation much like that of her lady’s maids. A decent girl in service apparently snatched from the streets on her half day.
“And she was pretty,” Lady Rosalind concluded. “Well spoken. A companion is a step above a lady’s maid. A considerable step. She had wages due and didn’t collect those.”
This was bad news. Very bad news. Questions piled up in Ned’s mind: Was this woman melancholic? How proximate was the Abercrombie household to Rosalind’s dwelling? Did the woman have any followers?
Was there any halfway innocent explanation for yet another disappearance? Before he could pose the first query, Constance appeared at the top of the steps and crossed the mezzanine with a stride more determined than the situation warranted.
“Neddy, you forgot our lemonade. Rectify your oversight, please.”
Rosalind was on her feet in the next instant. “I can fetch my own lemonade, Your Grace, and I will be happy to bring you some as well. Mr. Wentworth’s hands were occupied carrying both plates, and even he lacks the power to make glasses of lemonade levitate at will.”
Constance did not enjoy an outgoing personality. Like Walden himself, she tended to seriousness and introspection. Her spouse, His Grace of Rothhaven, was a similarly reserved fellow and legendarily reclusive. Only Rothhaven, though, had the knack of confronting Constance and coming away unscathed.
Only Rothhaven, and apparently, Lady Rosalind, who stood, chin up, glowering at the duchess.
“My apologies, Lady Rosalind,” Constance said, her smile startling for its warmth. “Hunger makes me irritable. I should have brought up drinks for all, but I wanted a chance to interrogate you. Neddy, be a love and find us some punch, won’t you?”
“Come along, Your Grace,” Rosalind said, offering her arm. “Neddy can be a love and guard the food while we fetch our own drinks, for I want a chance to interrogate you too.”
The ladies departed and Ned sank back to the sofa, his knees curiously weak. The food sat forgotten while he wrestled with a daunting realization.
Lady Rosalind had been ready to do battle on behalf of Ned’s dignity. She’d taken umbrage at Constance’s preemptory words, when all Ned had felt was a passing annoyance.
Kisses were lovely, and Lady Rosalind’s kisses in particular had much to recommend them. But kisses didn’t explain why she made him want to laugh, cheer, applaud, and offer her his heart. Kisses didn’t explain the half of it, and that was a problem.
Though a lovely problem indeed.
* * *
The Wentworths maneuvered so subtly that Rosalind didn’t catch them at it until she was alone with Mr. Wentworth in his coach, the horses plodding along at a sedate walk.
“I did not see that coming,” she said as the carriage drew away from the Rothhaven town residence. “I did not…One minute, Mrs. Barnstable was maundering on about her nerve tonic, and Lord Nathaniel was handing her up into the ducal coach…”
“The next,” Mr. Wentworth said, “we’re setting Her Grace down, and left with my own conveyance to ourselves. I will take you directly home of course.”
“But Mrs. Barnstable will think Her Grace chaperoned me when in fact…” Her Grace had pleaded fatigue and asked to be dropped off first.
Mr. Wentworth hadn’t objected.
Neither had Rosalind.
“I need to let you know something,” he said, taking off his top hat and setting it on the bench beside him.
“Might you share the forward-facing seat when you do?”
His lips quirked. “Is that wise, my lady?”
The shades were drawn, the lamps turned down, but the mischief in his smile blazed brightly. “If you change seats, you will spare me the effort, Mr. Wentworth.”
His gaze became considering, then troubled.
“You are afflicted by an excessive concern for propriety, sir. I was sent down from two finishing schools, and that’s in addition to the one that rejected me because of my stammer.”
“You were not sent down,” he replied. “You were allowed time at home for a repairing lease. You were given leave to quit the term early. Earls’ daughters are not sent down.”
“In the first instance,” Rosalind said, “I proposed that for one week, the students and teachers change places with the servants, in inverse order. Headmistress would become the scullery maid, while the scullery maid would have the running of the school.”
“What prompted that mad flight?”
“Headmistress decreed that our debate topic for the term be the benefits and burdens of enslavement. Her family held property in the Indies, and her views on abolition were less than enlightened. Her brother was our vicar. The sermons he propounded made me bilious.”
“Headmistress did not take your suggestion about switching places?”
“I proposed that firsthand experience with both powerlessness and authority would enrich the depth of our argument. Just as Wellington—a seasoned soldier—was regarded as an expert on the effective use of the military, nobody without experience being subjugated should support policies that perpetuate it. Headmistress opined that I had been reading too many philosophers, and was suffering a brain fever. I told her…”
Rosalind had shouted at her, in fact. Probably the last time she’d raised her voice to anyone.
“What did you tell her, my lady?”
“That a headmistress with so feeble a grasp of logic ought not to be permitted any role in the education of impressionable young females. My bags were packed for me, and I was on my way home the next morning, before my condition worsened.”
Rosalind had never related that story to anyone, though the telling of it fortified her somehow.
“I thought my suggestion entirely rational,” she went on. “You don’t ask the butler to cook or the head stable lad to greet callers, do you? Why are people, particularly a lot of men, who’ve never beaten a rug or hoed a row of turnips…” She fell silent, for Mr. Wentworth’s gaze had gone unreadable. “You will think me ridiculous.”
Whatever he thought—and he was thinking something—he remained on the opposite bench. “What occasioned your second fall from grace?”
“I permitted the curate’s brother liberties. He was visiting for the summer, which was a way of saying that he hadn’t been welcome to holiday with the family that employed him as a tutor. He lent me books, and The Wealth of Nations was my downfall. I found it fascinating, but Mr. Woodhouse only let me read one chapter at a time, and to earn a chapter…”
“You had to part with some of your own riches?”
Rosalind nodded. “His French was atrocious, and his lovemaking worse than that. All the while he was about his pleasures, I was reading the titles on the bookshelf behind him, choosing which volume I’d seize upon next. He was found in a compromising situation with another girl. She implicated me, and my literary aspirations were disappointed.”
Mr. Wentworth sat forward enough to take Rosalind’s hands. “Listen to me, my lady. I don’t care if you bore the curate and his brother six sons apiece. Just because the Wentworths have schemed to provide us some privacy doesn’t mean…”
“Doesn’t mean you want that privacy?” Well, blast and perdition. Heat flooded Rosalind’s cheeks, and she held her tongue lest the moment provoke her to stammering.
“What I want shocks me,” he said, letting go of Rosalind’s hands. “And before you demand further explanations, you need to know that I’ve yet to speak with parties whose business puts them in frequent contact with naval officers and merchant captains.”
Now of all times, Rosalind could not summon the rational capabilities she usually wielded with such ease. She had confessed her greatest transgressions to Mr. Wentworth, and could not tell if he was shocked, amused, impressed, or bored.
“You refer to another madam?” she asked.
“Her nom de guerre is Mrs. Dora Hepplewhite, though her given name is Tryphena, and her place of business is not far from the Pool. If somebody has been smuggling women out of London, she might know, but I suspect she’s been avoiding me.”
“Why would you suspect that?” And why would any woman avoid Ned Wentworth?
“I call upon her from time to time, and yet, she has twice not been home to me, as it were. That is unprecedented in all the years of our acquaintance.”
“And thus your suspicion is reinforced that something dangerous is afoot.” Rosalind did not allow herself to wonder why Ned Wentworth would have a long-standing relationship with a madam, because the answer was obvious. Lucky Mrs. Hepplewhite.
Mr. Wentworth switched seats. “It’s not what you think.”
“None of my business, Mr. Wentworth.”
“I want it to be your business, and that…” He scrubbed a gloved hand over his face. “My father was an exquisitely skilled tailor, as was his brother. They could not tolerate each other as business partners, though they were devoted siblings. Uncle Amos set up shop in Portsmouth, while Papa kept to London. Papa was off in Portsmouth visiting Uncle Amos when the press gang took him up.”
“Your father was impressed?” The practice had been so unpopular, the navy had abandoned it several years past. Then too, conditions were so awful on the merchantmen that a berth on a naval vessel was considered a step up by most sailors. “Why take a tailor out to sea?”
“The navy suffered a shortage of sailmakers, according to Amos, and would not hear of a wife and children in London needing Papa’s support. One day he was a free man enjoying a pint with his brother, a week later he was at sea. I keep in touch with Mrs. Hepplewhite in hopes that I might hear something of the ship he sailed on.”
“How long ago was this?”
The horses clip-clopped along, and bells tolled in the distance. “I don’t know. Uncle Amos expired shortly thereafter. My mother was in poor health and could not manage the shop without Papa. I was at large for a time. I’m not sure how long, because there are no calendars on the street. What does a date matter or a day of the week when all a boy wants to know is where his next meal will come from?”
Mr. Wentworth spoke quietly, but Rosalind could hear the bewildered echo of that small boy in his voice.
“You don’t know how old you were when your father was impressed?”
“I was probably eight. I could read a bit, though I was better at ciphering. I had been working in Papa’s shop for some years by then. I might have been nine, and my brother was several years older than me. I was small for my age. We managed for a time, thanks to my brother, but my memories have gaps. I will turn a corner in some neighborhood I don’t recognize and think, I have been here before…but have no recollection of when. Matters, which were dire to begin with, deteriorated apace after my brother’s demise.”
