How To School Your Scoundrel, page 17
The growing strength of her legs as she strode through the meadow toward the millpond, while Quincy trotted along gamely at her heels.
At first, she had rebelled against that growing strength, as if her body were betraying her by thriving, when everything else had been flattened. But her limbs persisted. They twitched with returned energy, they yearned for the outdoors and the greening meadows. They wanted to live. So she had followed them, and had taken a reluctant pleasure in the return of pleasure. A virtuous circle in which she hadn’t wished to participate.
At the edge of the millpond, a massive oak tree waited for her. For weeks now, she had sat in its shade and stared out at the rippling water, as the spring breezes chased themselves across the surface. On the other side, where the stream entered the pond, the mill wheel turned tranquilly, making a gentle continuous splash into the country stillness.
Another small pleasure, the comforting wash of the water mill.
How long would it last, this healing routine of sleep and work and sunshine? Not long, around Somerton. The earl was not made for resting. He would be back into action again, back into his schemes. Telegrams arrived almost hourly from the village, some of which she was privileged to read and answer, and others that he dealt with on his own. “Any word on her ladyship?” Luisa would ask, eyebrows up, and he would shake his head, scribble a reply, call for the footman, and burn the original with a few quick strikes of a safety match (the fireplace had remained unlit, coals stacked expectantly, since early May).
Why hadn’t he returned to London yet? Why hadn’t he found Lady Somerton?
Why hadn’t he discovered Luisa’s own identity? It couldn’t be hard.
If he actually tried.
She reached the edge of the shade, removed her jacket, and spread it out on the damp morning grass. A month ago, this walk would have exhausted her, and she would lie down and watch the chasing clouds until the strength returned to her body, while Quincy curled confidingly into her waist.
Now, she merely settled herself on her jacket, drew her knees to her chest, and—
“My dear Luisa.”
Luisa shot to her feet, stumbled, recovered. “What the devil?” she called out.
A branch rustled, somewhere inside the canopy of shade. Up flew a startled bird, in a flurry of feathers and leaves. Quincy barked twice and made a rattling growl, ears cocked forward at an almost impossible pitch.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you looking well,” said a familiar voice.
Luisa breathed out slowly. “Good God,” she whispered.
A shape emerged from behind the thick trunk of the oak tree. It was tall, and commanding, and it wore a magnificent straw hat.
“M-Mrs. Duke?” said Luisa.
• • •
The woman who stood before the Earl of Somerton looked vaguely familiar, though he could not quite place her face. Her shape, however, was unmistakable: rounded with a pregnancy of perhaps seven months’ gestation, in Somerton’s expert estimation.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I don’t believe I know your name.”
“It’s Yarrow, your lordship.” She bobbed an awkward curtsy. “Mrs. Yarrow. Lord Kildrake’s nurse.”
Outside, a cloud slipped past the sun, and the windows flooded with a rush of light, illuminating the drowsy motes of dust in the air between them.
Somerton rose slowly to his feet. “What did you say?”
“Lord Kildrake’s nurse, sir.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but I’ve nowhere left to turn. Her ladyship, she turned me away in Milan when she found me increasing, and then John . . .”
“Milan!” Somerton’s gaze shot to the map on the wall.
“Yes, sir. And I stayed there until there was no more money, because she told me you would have me beaten if I returned in this state, but I have nowhere left to go, sir, no one at all, and John insists it isn’t his . . .”
“John the footman? John put you in this condition?”
“Yes, sir.”
Somerton’s brain was reeling, sending off sparks of conjecture. Where was Markham? He needed Markham.
Mrs. Yarrow was wavering on her feet. He came around the edge of the desk and led her to the chair. A faint scent of wet wool drifted from her clothes, the sourness of neglect.
“Milan, you say. Did you travel there by train?”
“By steamship, my lord, through the Bay of Biscay and the Strait of Messina into the Mediterranean. A worse voyage I’ve never had.” She fished a damp handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her eyes.
Somerton walked to the bell cord and gave it a single tug. “Did her ladyship say where she was headed after Milan?”
“No, she didn’t, sir. But I heard her tell Miss Harewood to buy tickets for Florence.”
Miss Harewood. That would be Elizabeth’s cousin Abigail. If young Miss Harewood had traveled with Elizabeth, so must her guardian, Elizabeth’s other cousin, the beautiful widow Lady Morley. A managing sort, Lady Morley, and singularly cunning. She had probably arranged everything herself, the entire disappearance. No wonder he hadn’t been able to trace them.
“Florence.” He paced across the room to the map and drew out a single red pin from the jar. His heart jumped so hard, it jolted his hand as he hovered above the crown of Italy’s boot. “Did she perhaps have any gentlemen traveling with her? Other than my son, of course.”
“Why, no, sir.”
Never mind. Penhallow was undoubtedly waiting for her, at whatever little Continental nest they’d arranged for themselves. Wherever Elizabeth was, he would find Penhallow.
Of that, he was certain.
A knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said.
A footman walked in. “You rang, sir?”
“I did, Thomas. Bring in a tray of tea for Mrs. Yarrow, with plenty of food.” With a triumphant strike of his hand, Somerton jabbed the red pin into the dot marked FIRENZE. He turned and folded his arms. “And tell Mr. Markham I want him in my study at once.”
• • •
My dear niece,” drawled the Duke of Olympia, “you look confounded. Do sit, I implore you. I understand you have been ill.”
“I am quite recovered now,” Luisa said stupidly, unable to think of anything else. Was that a genuine stuffed sparrow in the duke’s hat, or merely a lifelike imitation? “Where the devil have you been?”
“Tut-tut.” Olympia walked toward her and held out his hands. Quincy, at her feet, let out a disapproving growl. “Such language. And still in your male costume. I’m surprised his lordship didn’t plumb your disguise during your illness. Give me a kiss, now.”
Luisa took his hands in a daze and kissed each powdered cheek. “What are you doing here? Where have you been? I thought you were dead.”
“Thought I was dead? Good God. Where did you come by such a notion?”
“From Miss Dingleby. She said . . . I don’t remember exactly . . .” Luisa rubbed her forehead, and all at once, the wonder of it burst over her like a firework. She flung her arms around his tall, silk-shouldered figure. “You’re alive. My God, you’re alive!”
“Yes, yes. Quite alive. Mind the lace.”
“But my sisters.” She drew away. “What’s happened? All this time . . . my God . . . I thought she’d caught us all, that everyone was dead, that I would be dead if it hadn’t been for Somerton . . .”
“Who caught us all?”
“Miss Dingleby! The night of the ball!”
“Ah.” He disengaged gingerly from her embrace and set her down in the grass, lowering himself with only a faint creak of his long limbs. A light scent of sandalwood drifted from his clothes, not at all feminine. Luisa wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him.
“Uncle, what’s happened? Where is everyone? Emilie and Stefanie. Are they . . . ?” She couldn’t say the word. Her hands were shaking, her heart had been captured between the wings of a butterfly.
“Your sisters are safe,” he said gently.
At the word safe, Luisa buried her face between her knees and burst into tears.
“There, now.” His hand rested on her back. “Poor lamb. Did you really think, all this time . . . ? Ah, poor lamb.”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t say, I thought I was alone, I thought everyone was dead, I wanted to die. She turned instead into her uncle’s chest and gripped the material around his magnificent false bosom.
“Now, now. Mind the lace, I said.”
“Where are they?” she whispered. “Where are they?”
“They’re . . . well, they’re safe. You needn’t worry.”
“But Miss Dingleby . . .”
The chest beneath her face heaved with a sigh. “Miss Dingleby. What an immense disappointment.”
Luisa looked up. “She betrayed us, didn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But what’s happened? Where is she?”
“I don’t know, my dear. I’ve spent the last two months trying to discover the answer to that question.”
“Two months? But . . . but the ball was in February.”
“Like you, my dear, I was stricken with an unfortunate episode of typhoid fever, shortly after that tumultuous evening.” He held up his hand at her exclamation of dismay. “I had it as a child, so my case was not so severe as yours. I had my valet convey me to a rather remote house in the country, quite unknown to even my most trusted friends, so no one would suspect my condition. When the fever abated and my senses had returned, I had my agents investigate. Miss Dingleby had disappeared, but in the kitchen in Battersea, inside one of the cupboards, my men found a laboratory culture that, when tested, was found to contain the causative organism for typhoid fever.”
Luisa put her hand to her mouth.
“Which, as you may be aware,” Olympia went on calmly, “is a disease communicated primarily by oral transmission of infected matter. Those engaged in the preparation of food are particularly effective at spreading the agent.”
Luisa’s stomach made a little heave. “The tea.”
“Or the cake. Let us hope, for dear little Quincy’s sake, that it was not the ham sandwiches.”
Luisa couldn’t speak. She shook her head, blinking, trying to quell the nausea in her belly.
“In any case, Dingleby appears to have left the country shortly after the events of that evening, and hasn’t been seen since. The agents of the Revolutionary Brigade appear to have departed England as well, according to my sources, or at the very least they have not made the slightest stir.”
“And you’re trying to find them?”
The duke fingered the brim of his hat and stared toward the waterwheel on the other side of the millpond. “My most recent intelligence suggests that she has returned to Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof. To the conspirators there, who are trying to quell popular unrest on your behalf.”
Luisa straightened her posture. “Quell? What do you mean by quell? What are they doing?”
Olympia waved his hand. “Summary arrests and interrogations by the secret police. Random midnight raids of suspected royalists. Terrorizing of women and children. That sort of thing.”
She jumped to her feet. “How dare they! By God, they’ll pay for that!”
“Calm down, my dear. We shall take care of the matter, never fear. Besides, all this works to our favor. The people shall be clamoring for your return. In any case, I’m off to the Continent tomorrow—I have other business there, so it’s all quite convenient—and I shall investigate the state of things personally.”
Luisa lifted one eyebrow and razed him, from the top of his extravagant hat to the tips of his enormous heeled shoes, constructed of pink kid leather. “I daresay you shall slip in quite unnoticed.”
Olympia picked at his dress and sighed. “Yes, that’s the trouble, rather. Dingleby is intimately familiar with my methods and disguises, blast her.”
Luisa put her hands on her hips. “Intimately, Uncle?”
Another wave of the ducal hand. “But I shall confound her, never fear. I’ve already had a pair of lederhosen constructed for me by an authentic Tyrolean tailor. The effect is exactly what one might wish.”
Luisa shook her head. “Let me do it.”
“What’s that, my dear? I don’t believe I heard you correctly. These old ears.”
She sank to her knees and looked at him earnestly. “Let me do it.”
“You do it? Ha-ha. My dear, how you amuse.”
“I’m quite serious. Dingleby will smoke you out in an instant, but I . . .”
“Have been raised and educated by her since childhood.” He took her hand gently. “It won’t do, my dear. We both know it.”
“But it’s my duty . . .”
“Listen to me, Luisa. I came here not to acquaint you with all this, because I assure you I have it all well in hand, and will shortly be presenting you with your little kingdom . . .”
“Principality.”
“Principality. Yes. On a silver platter, tied with a bow, everything neat and tidy, and only a husband missing. Though I believe enough time has passed, I can confide to you that I was never quite satisfied with your father’s choice of such a . . .”
“Don’t say a word against poor Peter.”
“There you have it, in a nutshell. Poor Peter. Hardly the epithet of an admiring wife.”
She bowed her head.
Olympia continued, “He was not unworthy, of course. But a princess needs a consort with a little more vim. A man strong enough to support her by day, to get fine, healthy sons on her by night. The sort of chap who will confound her enemies and do her dirty work, behind the scenes, so she may appear as an unsullied angel to her subjects.” He coughed. “Where will such a man be found, I wonder?”
Luisa rose to her feet. “How subtle of you. I fear the man in question, however, is already married.”
“Not for long.” Olympia opened up the bodice of his gown and rummaged inside. “There we have it. A copy of a certain legal document, which will shortly mean the liberation of both Lord Somerton and his long-suffering wife.” He held a folded paper aloft.
Luisa snatched it. “What’s this?”
“A decree nisi for the dissolution of the marriage between the Earl and Countess of Somerton, et cetera, et cetera, following a suit for divorce initiated by the wife this spring for various matrimonial causes, including adultery and brutality. Not yet issued, mind you, so keep your knowledge sub rosa. In any case, the marriage is not officially ended until the decree absolute is issued after the probationary period . . .”
“Good God.” The blood thudded in Luisa’s temples as she read the intricate lines of legal black ink. “Where did you get this?”
“Oh, the old school tie.” He shrugged and rose to his own feet in an astonishingly agile movement for a man of sixty-five years and seventy-five inches, clothed in a silk dress and crinoline. “If you must know, the judge was my fag at Eton.”
“How convenient for you.”
“In any case, I have come to ask a favor of you. Or rather, to renew a favor already granted.”
Luisa sighed, folded up the paper, and handed it back to him. “You want me to spy for you again.”
“Spy is such a vulgar word.”
“I will not carry tales to you. He saved my life.”
“For which I am forever grateful.”
“Except that you mean to use him for your own purposes.”
Olympia shook his head, and his lined face lost all trace of levity beneath its rouge and powder. “I mean to right a certain wrong I committed nearly seven years ago, which has imparted such irreparable grief to the parties concerned.”
Quincy lifted his head, shook his ears, and rose to his paw tips. He looked up at Olympia with an anxious whine.
Luisa bent and caressed his head, without moving her gaze an inch from Olympia’s face. “Uncle, what have you done?” she whispered.
“My dear . . .” His expression changed, lifting into jollity before her eyes. He said, in a carrying falsetto, “I am delighted, delighted to see you so well. The country air! How it heals. I was saying to my old chum Martha, I said . . .”
“Mr. Markham!”
Luisa turned her bewildered face in the direction of the voice that carried across the meadow grass. A footman was pacing toward her, every swing of his arms communicating profound irritation.
“Mr. Markham! What the devil are you doing down here?”
“Thomas. Good morning. Have you met my dear aunt, Mrs. Duke of Battersea?”
Thomas pounded to a stop a few feet away and nodded at Olympia with a granite face, as if the duke’s sparrow-topped hat and rose silk skirts were the most commonplace sight in Northamptonshire. “Madam,” he said acidly.
“Charmed,” said Mrs. Duke.
Thomas turned to Luisa. “The master wants you in his study on the double, Mr. Markham.” He placed a slight sneering emphasis on the Mister, because while Somerton’s gold could buy discretion among his servants, it could not buy forgiveness for a woman masquerading as a man for no good reason.
Olympia raised a mild eyebrow, missing nothing. “You had better get on, then, my dear nephew.” He took Luisa by the shoulders and gave her a smacking kiss on each cheek. “There you are! Run back to your earl, there’s a good fellow. Punctuality is godly. I’m off on my holiday. Do look out for a postcard or two, for I shall be sure to write.” He turned to Thomas’s sour gaze and waggled his fingers. “Good-bye, Mr. Thomas. Mind you take good care of my favorite nephew, or I shall be quite, quite angry with you.” A step forward, a hint of menace. “Quite angry, Mr. Thomas.” A step backward, all bright and cheery once more. “Off you go! Good-bye!”
Thomas turned and walked back across the grass.
“Follow him, my dear,” said Olympia quietly. He slipped something into her hand. “If you need to reach me.”
