How To School Your Scoundrel, page 4
“There, now,” she said again. She walked around the tea table and picked up the chair behind him. “Go on back to your lovely old house, sir, and talk to her. By all accounts she’s a dear lady, and true. She’ll love you again, if you let her.”
Somerton walked to the door and opened it. “She never loved me,” he said, and he strode out into Hannah’s crimson hallway and the dank London November beyond.
• • •
The painful electric lights of the Aerated Bread Company tea shop forced Luisa to pause and blink as she stepped through the doorway, earning her a hard shove to the backside.
“Oy, move along, ye bleedin’ half-wit!” someone snarled in her ear.
She stumbled aside. Her nerves were already jangling from the cramped Tube ride, from the unwholesome, greasy air of the Mansion House station, from the pushes and shoves of her fellow cheap-suited humanity. A man rushed past her, the Daily Telegraph fluttering impatiently beneath his elbow, to join the queue at the counter. Luisa wrinkled her nose at the inescapable steam-thickened scent of warm bread and cheap tea; it enveloped her like a hood.
A chair scraped loudly against the tiled floor. “My dear Mr. Markham. Come, have some tea. You look shattered.”
Luisa swiveled her head in the direction of the voice. A slight-boned man stood expectantly at a nearby table; to his right sat a large-boned dowager under an extraordinary hat, bearing at least three different types of papier-mâché fruit. The man wore a large smile. The woman appeared disgruntled.
Luisa drew in a deep sigh, clutched her umbrella to her side, and approached the table. “Mr. Dingleby,” she said, removing her hat and placing it upon the table. “And Mrs. . . . Mrs. . . .” She coughed. “I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
“Mrs. Duke,” the woman announced, in a high-pitched strangle of a voice. Her lips were painted a startling shade of mulberry red.
“Mrs. Duke. Of course.” Luisa made a little bow to disguise the smile that would insist on curling its way to the corner of her mouth, despite her dark mood.
She’d been against this plan from the start. She simply couldn’t imagine her uncle could pull it off. She hadn’t quite believed it could be done, that the august Duke of Olympia, that grand puppeteer of human affairs, that towering figure with his glowering ducal face, had actually transformed himself into a woman. A large-hatted, large-figured, large-featured woman who’d layered her face in enough paint to supply a Gilbert and Sullivan troupe for an entire summer’s tour, and embalmed her hair in enough red dye to color a warehouse full of Christmas mittens.
The effect was rather amusing, she had to admit.
“I see we are not above attracting attention to ourselves,” Luisa observed, as she took her seat next to the Duke of Olympia, and immediately found herself asphyxiated by a mouthful of immense purple-feathered boa.
“Hide in plain sight, that’s what I’ve always said.” Mrs. Duke settled her boa and lifted her teacup with one gloved pinkie delicately outstretched.
“The tea looks marvelous,” Luisa said placidly.
Mr. Dingleby delivered a firm elbow to Mrs. Duke’s corseted middle. “Madam?”
“Oh!” Mrs. Duke set down her cup and reached for the pot. “Dear me. Where are my manners? Cream or sugar, Mr. Markham?”
“Both, if you please.”
Where on earth had Olympia found a pair of ladies’ gloves to fit those enormous hands? Luisa watched in fascination as the tea fell into the cup, as the splash of cream and the dash of sugar bravely followed.
Mr. Dingleby coughed. “So, my dear fellow. I am given to understand that your recent interview was successful, and you will shortly begin service in a certain Belgravia household?”
“Yes, indeed.” Luisa accepted the cup from Mrs. Duke’s thick gloved fingers and stirred briskly. “So good of you to refer me to such a friendly and kind-hearted employer. I’m in your debt.”
“Now, Mr. Markham,” said Mrs. Duke, in a splendid hushed falsetto, tinged with East End. “Remember a powerful employer is always the best employer. You’re certain to get ahead with his lordship.”
“Get ahead?” Luisa pursed her lips. “I beg your pardon. Get ahead? What sort of phrase is that? American?” She suppressed a shudder.
“It’s a business term,” said Mr. Dingleby. “The sort of phrase that an ambitious young man—a man like yourself, for example—might take to heart.”
“I see.” Luisa cast a deadly gaze at her former governess, whose neat black suit and thin shoulders contrasted with Mrs. Duke’s extravagance like a sheet of newspaper next to one of those impossible new French paintings. “Speaking of which, have you had any news of my brothers? Are they getting on well? Getting ahead—am I using the phrase correctly, Mr. Dingleby?”
“Oh, quite.” Mr. Dingleby picked up his bread and buttered it thoroughly. “Our studious Tobias has taken to tutoring his spoiled young charge with aplomb, and our sprightly young Stephen, if you can possibly believe, has settled down to the gray old practice of British law like a prodigy. I couldn’t be more pleased.”
“And their employers? What sort of men are they?” The words slid out a little more sharply than Luisa had intended.
Mr. Dingleby smiled a secret smile, a cat’s smile. “Oh, I daresay your brothers are well looked after. Well indeed. You needn’t worry yourself a bit.”
“Mr. Dingleby. I’m the eldest, the . . . the head of the household. Of course I worry. I’ve always worried. I can hardly stop now, can I?” Luisa stared at her shirt cuffs, white and starched, studded by unremarkable pewter cuff links that absorbed rather than reflected the light from the multitude of gas lamps along the walls. The old weight sank down about her shoulders again: the responsibility for her sisters, the responsibility for her people. And she was powerless now. Powerless to help them, powerless to do anything except grieve. Grieve, and bide her time, while the duke of Olympia and Miss Dingleby—her onetime governess, now a trained agent under her uncle’s command—tracked down her father’s murderers. Her husband’s murderers.
She swallowed her tea and ground the cup back into its saucer.
It was intolerable. The entire situation, intolerable. She, Princess Luisa, biding her time as a common clerk. Paddling about aimlessly in her makeshift life belt, while Olympia and Dingleby manned the helm and righted the ship.
“You are too valuable,” said Mr. Dingleby, very low.
Luisa looked up. “What’s that?”
“The three of you, but you especially, my dear Mr. Markham. It’s why we’ve hidden you like this, as young men, where no one would think to look for you.” Dingleby’s eyes were soft with compassion. Luisa shifted her gaze to the tranquility of tea before her.
“We are trained professionals, my dear boy,” said Mrs. Duke, in a comforting falsetto undertone. “Trained professionals. You must trust us.”
“Trained professionals?” Luisa allowed her gaze to travel over the papier-mâché fruit, the abundance of mulberry lip rouge. “Trust you?”
Mrs. Duke’s voice shifted a fraction lower. “Since before you were born, my dear. I do know my hacks from my handsaws.”
“When the wind is north by northeast,” added Mr. Dingleby, with a cryptic pop of buttered bread into rosy mouth.
Luisa shook her head, drained her tea, and stood. “I don’t know what the devil”—how surprisingly liberating it was, to use such words!—“what the devil you’re talking about, but I do know this: I shan’t be able to endure his lordship’s company for longer than a month. One of us is certain to murder the other by Christmas, so whatever it is you do, the two of you . . .”
Mr. Dingleby shot to his feet. “Excellent, excellent! I see we are all quite in accord, Mr. Markham. Glad to hear your prospects are looking up at last.” He popped a brown felt bowler hat upon his head. “And now, if you’ll be so good as to escort your dear old aunt . . .”
“Old?” screeched Mrs. Duke. She patted the stray red curls at the nape of her neck. “Old? Not a day over forty, you insolent wretch.”
“Aunt?” said Luisa, rather faintly.
“. . . Your charming aunt back to her lodgings,” went on Mr. Dingleby, quite placidly, patting his pockets, “I should be very much obliged. Various business appointments. Must be off.”
Luisa looked at Mrs. Duke in some alarm. “Your lodgings, ma’am?”
“Battersea, my dear boy. That nice, snug little house I bought with your dear uncle’s insurance, God rest him.” Mrs. Duke hoisted her magnificent frame from the chair and held out her boa-constricted arm to Luisa. “The very latest in hygienic plumbing. An entire water closet, all to oneself, and a genuine porcelain Crapper for . . .”
“My dear Mrs. Duke.” Mr. Dingleby snatched one large gloved paw and pumped it vigorously. “A pleasure to see you again, ma’am. Mr. Markham?” He turned to Luisa and repeated the snatch, pump with equal vigor. “Good day.”
“Good day,” Luisa began, but Mr. Dingleby was already bumping his way outward among the close-packed tables, black umbrella hooked over black forearm, setting teacups to rattle cheaply in their saucers.
Mrs. Duke looped her arm around Luisa’s elbow. “Well, then, dear boy! Don’t just stand there, catching flies. Find us a hackney. I’ve a few matters to discuss with you.” She bent her fruit-bedecked head toward Luisa’s ear. “In private.”
• • •
You want me to spy for you?”
Luisa spoke in a hushed voice, mindful of the hackney driver hovering above the roof, but with all the necessary intensity.
Mrs. Duke—the Duke of Olympia—reached underneath the brim of her hat and scratched vigorously. “Damned wigs. Itch like the devil. Impossible nuisance, but there it . . .”
“Uncle.” They were flying down the Embankment in a hackney, dank November wind whistling across their ears, and Luisa was happy to let the disguise drop.
Olympia sighed heavily and replied in the same low tones. “Spy is such a common word, my dear. A word for vulgar minds and sensational newspapers. Altogether lacking in nuance. I say, I should sincerely appreciate a glass of brandy at the moment, wouldn’t you?”
“Whatever you want to call it,” said Luisa. “I can’t possibly go searching through Somerton’s papers in the dead of night, and peeping through the keyhole, and whatever it is. For one thing, I haven’t the smallest amount of training in such matters . . .”
“All the better,” said Olympia. “No one smokes out an amateur. It’s the professionals who get kil . . . that is to say, caught.”
“. . . And for another thing, unless Somerton has something to do with the band of vile assassins who have taken over my country, I refuse to waste my time on your affairs. I want to find out who murdered Father and Peter, I want to deliver the most thunderous justice upon them, not to idle my days away in some Belgravia town house, sneaking about in search of . . . of whatever it is . . .” She slammed her fist into the hard leather seat between them.
“Such an outburst, my dear,” said Olympia. “And so very much out of character for you.”
She rubbed her aching knuckles. “I’m angry. I’m frustrated. You won’t tell me a thing, and I know you know more about all this . . .”
“I know very little. When your mother died in childbed all those years ago, God rest her dear soul, I thought it best to send someone I trusted to watch over your interests. I sent Miss Dingleby—one of my best agents, mind you—to guide the three of you . . .”
“Yes, yes. You told me all this when we reached England.”
“Indeed. And it was she who soon detected the presence of a group of anarchists, members of the Revolutionary Brigade of the Free Blood, a damned filthy pan-European organization, quite sophisticated in its structure and methods, and which as you know is responsible for countless attempts at coup and regicide, not to mention that dreadful ferry bombing in the North Sea last year, and . . .”
“And I say to you now, just as I said to you in your study when you first explained: If we know all this, why aren’t we back in Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, bringing them to justice?” A sharp pain dug into her palms. Luisa looked down. The fingers were curled into angry black balls of leather.
Olympia spoke calmly. “Because you would be assassinated within the day. They have already set up a puppet government, for which Free Blood’s members act as a secret police. They’re led by a ruthless chap, a local Holstein chap with some sort of chip on his shoulder, probably slighted by your father at one time or another, and even Dingleby couldn’t discover his identity. There are agents here in England, looking for you. It’s quite impossible. No, you’re much better off here. Somerton has his faults, the old devil, but he looks after his own. Dingleby and I have a plan, never fear. When the time comes, we’ll bring you in. But not before, my dear. You are the prize queen in this most valuable game, and we can’t risk you.” His breath struck out in a large cloud of white. “Yet.”
“Oh, indeed. I’ll be much safer as I poke about the Earl of Somerton’s private affairs.” The hackney lurched around the corner of Westminster Bridge, and Luisa grabbed for the leather strap an instant too late. She crashed into Mrs. Duke’s immense false bosom, cushioned in purple feathers, and imagined Somerton’s hard black gaze penetrating her skull, to seek out the guilty thoughts within.
“Mind yourself.” Olympia plucked her free with an affectionate pat. His silk-skirted bulk had hardly shifted an inch; he was like the Dover cliffs, impervious to time and tide and lurching hackneys. “In any case, you won’t be poking. Nothing of the kind. Simply keep your ears open and your wits about you, as you go about your . . . er . . . secretarial duties. Report anything of particular interest to me.”
“Report to you? When? How?”
The hackney crested the gentle rise of Westminster Bridge, and for an instant all London spread out around them, coated in gray: the winding rows of houses, the steeples thrusting heavenward, the milky Thames below, speckled with shipping. The bright-colored air of a German October seemed like another world. Another life.
And it was only a month ago.
“My dear boy.” Olympia adjusted his gloves with a frightful wiggle of thick fingers. “You’re in London now. A member of the professional classes, an ambitious and upstanding young chap. And every dutiful nephew goes to visit his dear auntie in Battersea on his weekly half day, doesn’t he?”
THREE
The Earl of Somerton’s butler was aghast.
“A dog, sir?” he gasped, eyebrows straining toward the ceiling. An ambitious goal, for the entrance hall of Somerton House soared upward some twenty feet to meet a trompe l’oeil sky trimmed in intricate creamy plasterwork.
Quincy wiggled himself more deeply into the crook of Luisa’s elbow and voiced a single disapproving bark. “A corgi,” Luisa said. “His name is Quincy. I shall care for him myself, of course, but I will require the assistance of the kitchen for his meals. He’s rather particular.”
“The kitchen!” sputtered the butler.
“Yes. The staff at the Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof consulate were quite up to the challenge. I hope your establishment is equally efficient?” She raised her voice doubtfully on the last syllable.
“I assure you, my staff are more than capable of . . .”
“Good, then. I believe my portmanteau and my books were delivered this morning, according to his lordship’s instruction. You may show me to my room, which I believe is directly adjacent to that of his lordship. We will be in close fellowship, you understand.” She swept toward the stairs, leaving her valise behind her on the gleaming marble floor.
Confidence. From her earliest days, she could remember her father reminding her of its importance. Whatever your chosen action, act with decision, Prince Rudolf would tell her. People follow the confident. Doubt is the arsenic of leadership.
Well, she wasn’t leading anything now, except perhaps Quincy. But the principle applied to theater as well, and she was acting the part of her life.
The butler hastened past to lead her up the stairs. She lifted her finger and stroked the silken crown of Quincy’s head as they climbed upward, past the first-floor landing and the fleeting glimpse of silk-papered drawing room and book-lined library, and on to the second floor where the principal bedrooms would be found.
Luisa had understood English married couples to subscribe to the quaint custom of interconnecting rooms, so she was mildly surprised to find that the Earl of Somerton, when he had pronounced the suite next to mine, had really meant it. Surely this was intended as the countess’s room, grandly proportioned, sumptuously upholstered in blues and cheerful yellows, overlooking the back garden, fitted with a dressing room and its own modern bathroom en suite, to say nothing of a pair of paneled doors leading suggestively to the other bedchamber. But her portmanteau and her trunk of books sat unmistakably in the center of the rug near the fire. The butler made way and watched her as she prowled about, inspecting the weave of the silken bed hangings and the polish of the Chippendale highboy, and didn’t say a word.
“It will do,” she pronounced. “Though the colors are not so much to my taste as those in my chamber at the embassy. Have you hot water taps?” She nodded to the bathroom door.
“Of course,” said the butler indignantly. What was his name? She used to be good at remembering servants’ names, but now she couldn’t find the word. Round syllables. Something solid and commonplace. Roberts?
A footman strode through the door, bearing her valise. She smiled at him, and then at the butler.
Johnson. That was it.
“Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. No, no, my good man.” She waved the footman away. “I’ll unpack myself. I have some particularly delicate objects I should not wish to hazard.”
“Very good, Mr. Markham.” The footman straightened and backed away.
Mr. Johnson was still glowering near the door. “Will that be all, sir?”
“Quite. Thank you terribly.”
He bowed, as stiffly and slightly as possible, and turned to pass through the doorway. “Your ladyship!” he said, from the hall.
