Never a Duke, page 9
The next night, those same friends would display equal cordiality to the man’s wife when she occupied the same seat the concubine had previously. Other theatergoers observing these interactions ignored some and acknowledged others in a dance as necessary to polite society as it was tacit.
The best brothels enjoyed fine addresses in neighborhoods where crime was unlikely and clientele of means were close at hand. The best modistes were careful to schedule fittings such that wives and mistresses were never inconvenienced by undue proximity to one another.
Ned thus had to travel only two streets from his own lodgings to undertake the next phase of his investigation into the lady’s missing maids. The premises were unremarkable from the outside, and on the inside, the appointments could have graced any well-to-do residence in Mayfair.
The number of wineglasses on a passing footman’s tray and the unrestrained laughter from abovestairs suggested this residence was not quite as respectable as its neighbors. The faint odor of hashish in the air reinforced that suspicion, and nearly had Ned retreating into the chilly spring night.
But no. Get it over with.
“Please tell Mrs. Nimitz that Ned Wentworth requests a moment of her time.” Establishments such as this one eschewed calling cards, though the butler wore an exquisitely tailored evening suit, and his dignity would have been sufficient for a ducal residence.
“Of course, Mr. Wentworth. Would you care to enjoy the refreshments in the blue salon?”
The laughter had come from the direction of the blue salon. “No, thank you.”
“The music room is unoccupied at present, sir. Perhaps you’d like to wait there.”
“The music room will do.”
The music room was elegantly kitted out, the requisite great harp standing in one corner, a pianoforte with its lid raised in another. Closer examination of the painting gracing the open lid of the piano revealed a rendering worthy of old Hieronymus Bosch in a frisky mood.
A scene of cheerful debauchery involving men, women, farm animals, and fairies harmonized curiously well with the cherubs cavorting across the room’s painted ceiling, and the half-naked goddesses depicted in the room’s statuary. The parlor’s unifying theme was gilt. Gilt on the pier glass, gilt on the molding, gilt on the picture frames, and gilt edging the piano’s fantastic art.
“It’s all of a piece, isn’t it?” said a dark-haired lady standing in the doorway. “I want to make that point subtly, that how one views the naked form and what one does with it are mostly a matter of perspective and preference. You’re looking well, Ned.”
She advanced into the room and offered Ned her gloved hand. He bowed politely, though he knew that beneath her gloves, her hands bore scars from picking oakum by the hour. Her refined speech was the result of dogged schooling by a procession of elocution instructors, and she’d scrimped to hire the same modistes preferred by the most influential hostesses in Mayfair.
Mrs. Nimitz was a creation born of hard work and determination, much as Ned himself was. He respected her, as he could not respect many of the lordlings who pranced into the Wentworth bank in search of low-interest loans or easy profits.
He could never entirely trust her, though, any more than he trusted those lordlings. “You are in quite good looks too, ma’am.” Only a few candles had been lit, the better to hide what cosmetics could not. Mrs. Nimitz was nearly ten years Ned’s senior, and in proper lighting that fact would be obvious.
“Shall we sit?” she said. “I can ring for a tray.”
“Thank you, no.” Ned did not want to sit, did not want to observe the civilities. “My purpose here won’t take long.”
The lady smiled and settled into the middle of a blue tufted sofa. “As is the case with many gentlemen who call here. The ladies actually prefer a fellow who goes about the business with some dispatch.”
Because the ladies could entertain more men per evening if their customers didn’t tarry overlong upstairs. The banker in Ned grasped the concept, while the man who’d kissed Rosalind Kinwood suppressed a shudder.
“How is our duke?” Mrs. Nimitz asked, fingering a string of pearls arranged to cascade to just above her cleavage.
“Splendid, as always,” Ned said, sorting the sheets of music stacked on the piano bench. Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven…A few of Burns’s more sentimental pieces. “His Grace is more respectable by the year.”
“Quinn Wentworth was always respectable, even in prison. Give him my regards.”
“Of course.” Ned would do no such thing, lest His Grace confide to his duchess his concerns regarding Ned’s female acquaintances. Her Grace would gently take up the cause, and Ned would be subjected to worried glances for the next three months. “You’re faring well?”
“Business is good,” Mrs. Nimitz said, running her palm over the sofa’s velvet upholstery. “I bribe the requisite upstanding members of the constabulary, and see that others are offered free services. We manage. In another year or two, I can retire to the country, a proper widow of means.”
“You’ve been saying that for five years. Why not give it up?”
Ned ambled along the mantel, which displayed a collection of porcelain figurines, some merely pretty, some lewd, all of them graceful.
Once upon a time, when a certain duke had been freed by royal pardon from a certain pestilential prison, that duke had insisted on taking with him not only Ned—his “tiger”—but also a would-be footman, and several of the imprisoned whores, his “maids.”
In truth, during Walden’s tenure at Newgate, he had paid those women to clean his accommodations—and paid them for only that service, much to their consternation. Upon his release, he’d offered the ladies domestic positions at the ducal residence. Mrs. Nimitz, in an earlier phase of her career, had been among those women.
She’d accepted the duke’s offer long enough to clean up, fill her belly, rest, and don the decent clothing provided by Her Grace, and then piked off back to the Holy Land from whence she’d been taken.
“I have my reasons for staying in business,” she said. “Good reasons, and besides, I excel at what I do. The women are happy and safe here, the customers even happier, and we mind our own business. Why do you stay at the Wentworth bank?”
Her reasons included two children, about whom Ned had never inquired. They were very likely receiving a genteel education at their mother’s expense someplace in the shires, and using any name but Nimitz.
Ned took up a wing chair at an angle to the sofa. “I stay at the Wentworth bank because I am useful there to the man who saved my life.”
Mrs. Nimitz twined a finger among the strand of pearls draped about her neck. “You weren’t scheduled to swing, Ned. You would have been sent off to New South Wales, and being a canny lad, you’d have managed well enough.”
No, he would not. He’d made his own plans in prison, and they had not included enduring months at sea being passed from one ship’s officer to another.
“Transportation for some is worse than a death sentence, but I am not here to discuss our rosy past. I’m looking for a young woman.”
Mrs. Nimitz made a face and left off playing with her pearls. “How young? I don’t deal in children, Ned, not even for you.”
“I am not searching for a child. I’m looking for two young women. Francine Arbuckle and Catherine Campbell. They were both lady’s maids in an earl’s household, and both have gone missing.” He passed over Rosalind’s sketches. “Have you seen or heard of them?”
Mrs. Nimitz studied the drawings. “Of course not. They will be Antigone and Electra if they’ve taken up the trade, or Heloise and Mimi Delacroix. Which earl?”
“Why?”
“Because some of the nobs are right bastards to their help and some aren’t.” A hint of the lady’s native Cockney inflection colored that observation.
“They were maids to Lady Rosalind Kinwood. She’s concerned for them.”
Mrs. Nimitz passed back the sketches. “The earl stopped making the rounds years ago, and Lindhurst can’t afford my rates. He’s enough of a rat to get a maid with child and turn his back on her though, taking for free what he ought to pay for.”
“Her ladyship says he leaves her maids alone.”
Mrs. Nimitz snorted. “What would an earl’s daughter know of her brother’s sporting tastes? Maybe the maids simply did a bunk and are kicking their ’eels back ’ome in the village.”
Ned saw, because he was watching closely, how those dropped haitches had mortified the speaker. She resumed playing with her pearls, but Ned now knew the topic of missing maids made his hostess nervous.
“Why leave an excellent post,” he asked, “earning good pay from a prestigious employer for…ruin?”
The lady folded her arms, which accentuated her natural charms. “Some people—some women, and from what I can see all young men—like to fuck, Ned. Why not get paid for something so pleasurable? But you always were an excessively proper boy.”
She hadn’t known him “always.” She’d known him for a span of weeks at Newgate, and their paths had crossed from time to time since. Ned had never offered to handle her money, and she had never offered him much of anything.
Not that he would have accepted. “If you haven’t heard of these two women, have you noticed an increase in the number of proper ladies abducted into the trade?”
“People exaggerate the dangers decent women face on London streets. Enough country maids, shop girls, and soldiers’ wives sell their wares that nobody need bother the delicate flowers. They are more trouble than they’re worth, truth be told.”
“But a lady’s maid is not a delicate flower. One of them had spent time in a Magdalen house.”
“So Lady Rosalind is a reformer? Ned, you disappoint me. Next you’ll be quoting scripture and closing down the print shops.”
“Never that,” Ned said, rising. “Will you keep your eyes and ears open for me? Her ladyship is very concerned, and neither woman was discontent with her post.”
“Maybe they fell in love,” Mrs. Nimitz said, getting to her feet. “Makes sensible people daft, I’m told. Try closer to the docks, Ned. Dora Hepplewhite likes the navy crowd, and if somebody’s snatching proper misses from the streets, the fastest way to get the goods out of London would be on a boat.”
“Not a cheering thought. I can leave the sketches with you.”
She walked with him to the door. “Don’t bother. I know where to find you. How is Artie doing?”
“Arthur is a work in progress. How did you know he’d come to us?”
“That child has a big mouth. He was bragging on his good fortune at the Pump and Tackle last night. Nebbins heard him.”
Meaning Artie had broken curfew and returned to his old haunts. Like a dog to his vomit, to use a biblical analogy.
“I will have a word with Arthur about his nocturnal excursions,” Ned said. “I’m off to put my questions to Mrs. Hepplewhite.”
“She’d let you put more than your questions to her, if you asked nicely.” Mrs. Nimitz laid a hand on Ned’s arm. “I’ll find Artie work in the stable or kitchen if the bank doesn’t suit him.”
“And he’ll be back on the street, picking pockets before sundown,” Ned said. “The temptations here are too great.”
“You can’t save them all, Ned, and you might be a jollier banker if you let yourself be overcome by temptation from time to time.”
Well, no. He’d been overcome by the temptation to kiss Rosalind Kinwood, and since allowing himself that lapse, he had not been at all jolly.
But then, when had he been happy, much less jolly? A memory rose, of Rosalind smiling up at him, her lips rosy with his kisses, her eyes full of wonder.
At that moment, he’d been not merely happy, but joyous.
He bowed to Mrs. Nimitz and took his leave.
Chapter Six
“Do you play an instrument?” Rosalind asked, as Ned Wentworth handed her down from a sumptuous town coach. His vehicle did not boast the Walden coat of arms, but it didn’t need to. Never had Rosalind traveled in such comfort. Never had she traveled in such quiet. The coach was like a little world, refreshment secreted here, pillows and lap robes piled there, the faint scent of cedar wafting pleasantly about the interior.
“I don’t play with any proficiency,” Mr. Wentworth said. “I pick up the fiddle from time to time.” He saw Rosalind safely to the cobbles and assisted Mrs. Barnstable to alight. “What of you ladies? Do you have preferred instruments?”
Mrs. B chattered on about the flute not being as easy an instrument to play well as most people thought. Mr. Wentworth offered an arm to each lady, and they processed into the Petershams’ impressive residence. Rosalind’s escort continued conversing in pleasantries all the while, giving no indication that the addition of a companion to the outing in any way disappointed him.
Rosalind was disappointed. How was she to learn of Mr. Wentworth’s progress among the houses of ill repute with Mrs. B holding forth so volubly about the Mannheim composers? How was she to convey to Mr. Wentworth that Mrs. Abercrombie’s red-haired companion had left without notice? Calliope Henderson had been pretty, merry, and content with her post.
Bad things come in threes.
“I see Lord and Lady Nathaniel Rothmere are in attendance,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Shall I introduce you? Her Grace of Rothhaven is with them.”
Rosalind shuffled up a few more steps toward the top of the main staircase, where Mrs. Petersham was greeting her guests. A tallish dark-haired fellow was greeting the hostess, two dark-haired women flanking him.
“Those are the Wentworth sisters?” Mrs. Barnstable asked quietly. “Lady Althea and Lady Constance?”
“Lady Althea married Lord Nathaniel Rothmere,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Lady Constance is wed to his brother, Robert, His Grace of Rothhaven. His Grace is not one for socializing, but the ladies never want for an escort.”
Rosalind nearly stuck her tongue out at Mrs. Barnstable: This is the man whose company you cautioned me against. He is on familial terms with not one but two dukes, and even you are impressed with his manners.
Mrs. Barnstable’s gaze said she was all but panting to add ducal siblings to the list of introductions she could brag about to her friends.
“I would not want to impose,” she murmured.
“I would,” Rosalind rejoined. “These people know all the best stories about Mr. Wentworth, and those, I am dying to hear. Besides, Her Grace of Rothhaven is reported to be a fine portraitist, and I do want her opinion regarding the many renderings of Lord Byron.”
About which, Rosalind cared not one fig, but Mrs. B’s demurral must be countered.
“We can sit with them if you like,” Mr. Wentworth said. “The ladies and I haven’t spent much time together since they arrived in London, and I’d like a chance to catch up.”
So apparently would the Wentworth sisters, for they swarmed Mr. Wentworth—How delightful! Our Neddy is here!—and kissed his cheek and fussed over him as if he were the prodigal returned. Lord Nathaniel looked on with smiling patience.
“It’s always like this,” his lordship said quietly. “They embarrass the poor fellow without mercy because their own brothers are too delicate to endure such attentions. I have suggested to my wife that some restraint is in order, but that’s like telling sheep to leave off grazing the Yorkshire hills. Cannot be done.”
His lordship carried the sound of Yorkshire in his accent, and clearly, he carried a profound regard for his wife in his heart. His smile was doting, and he made no move to rescue Mr. Wentworth from the ladies’ enthusiasms.
With Mrs. Barnstable looking as if she’d stepped into a fairy tale, the party found seats. The gentlemen took the outside positions, while Rosalind was tucked between Mr. Wentworth and Her Grace of Rothhaven. Mrs. Barnstable—waving cheerfully to every acquaintance in the room—nestled between Her Grace and Lady Nathaniel.
“You refer to them as Lady Althea and Lady Constance.” Rosalind put the question to Mr. Wentworth quietly. “Is that at their request?”
He passed her a program. “Their insistence. When I met them, they were adjusting to being Miss Wentworth and Miss Constance. Then the titles befell them. The ladies eluded matrimony for years, until the Rothmere fellows came up to scratch. I gather Yorkshire appeals to them in part for its informality and relative peace. London airs are a trial to them both and to their menfolk.”
A duke and his brother could be menfolk. Papa, George, and Lindy would have apoplexies to hear themselves referred to in such casual language.
“You like these ladies.”
“I love them,” Mr. Wentworth said, peering at his program. “I don’t know Lord Nathaniel or His Grace of Rothhaven all that well, but what I do know of them, I find estimable. Althea and Constance have endured much and are entitled to expect much from their spouses.”
“Have you endured much, Mr. Wentworth?”
He folded his program in half. “I suspect the soprano right before the interval will add to my burdens.”
“We need to talk.”
Mr. Wentworth glanced at Her Grace, who was chatting up Mrs. Barnstable on the topic of tisanes for nervous digestion.
“At the interval. Althea and Constance will keep your loyal vassal occupied, and if their good offices fail, Lord Nathaniel will escort her to the buffet.”
“They will throw us together?” How interesting.
“At the first opportunity and as often thereafter as they possibly can. They will report what you say word for word to Her Grace of Walden, and she will discuss the particulars with His Grace. Lord Stephen will stick his oar in, after protracted consultation with his lady wife of course, and they will all—out of sincere concern—give me the benefit of their thinking.”
“They will meddle?”
“It’s what they do. As virtuosically as Walden manages money, the rest of the family manages one another.”
