Dangerous Lover, page 11
When they returned to the house, Alexandra itched to know if Sir Nicholas had come home. No one volunteered the information, and she didn’t want to ask in front of Evelina, since she definitely didn’t want the child present at the interview. If he showed his face in the dining room, she would ask calmly to speak to him later.
But, of course, whether or not he was at home, he did not join them for dinner. During dessert, Lady Nora’s maid, Spencer, appeared and asked if Evelina would be able to join her ladyship for a few minutes before bed. Alexandra agreed, although she made Evelina, who immediately jumped down from the table, jump back up again and finish eating, and then wash her hands and face before they went to call on Lady Nora.
To Alexandra’s surprise, they found Sir Nicholas there, sitting on the edge of her bed and holding the invalid’s hand while she talked in a low, intense voice. When he heard them approach, he turned quickly but did not change his posture, merely turned back with a word to Lady Nora that made her smile.
Evelina bounced over to him to be hugged and to kiss Lady Nora’s papery cheek.
Only then did he stand and make space for them. “Five minutes, squib. Lady Nora is tired.” He nodded curtly to Alexandra, smiled at the sick woman, and walked away. At the far end of the room, she could hear him talking with the maid, Spencer, in low, serious voices.
“You are like your Papa,” Lady Nora told Evelina, “now that I see you together. I always thought before that you resembled your mother.”
“Did you know Mama?” Evelina asked, surprised.
“I saw her,” Lady Nora said, “once or twice. I hear you went to see your Uncle Ralph today.”
“I met my cousins,” Evelina said proudly. “Eleanor and Roger…”
As before, Lady Nora’s eyes closed while Evelina was chattering, and after exchanging glances with Spencer, Alexandra took Evelina’s hand, and they crept quietly out of the room and along to the child’s bedchamber.
After saying goodnight and delivering her to Anna’s ministrations, Alexandra took a deep breath and set forth purposefully for the library.
“Enter!” called his familiar voice as soon as she knocked.
She walked in, very conscious of the thumping of her heart and the courage necessary to say what had to be said.
And if I lose my post?
There will be another.
Not like this…
He rose from his desk, where he had been writing in his shirt sleeves, and reached for his coat. “Miss Battle. Thank you for coming.”
“Did you send for me?” she asked, surprised.
“No, but you saved me the trouble. Please, sit.”
Dash it, why did he have to choose this moment to be so wretchedly polite? Since it seemed unnecessarily pompous to announce that she would rather stand, she sat in the chair on the other side of the desk.
With his coat on, though not fastened, he stood still. She raised her gaze from his chest to his face and found him regarding her with somewhat sardonic amusement.
“Go on then,” he said resignedly, casting himself back into his chair. “Rake me over the coals.”
Did he think she would not? Did he imagine his invitation would take the wind out of her sails? It did, somewhat, but she refused to back down.
“You cannot use Evelina as a weapon in your fraternal wars,” she declared. “It is not—”
“I didn’t,” he interrupted. “I know what you think, but I took her there to meet her cousins.”
“At a time when you knew Mr. and Mrs. Swan were likely to have company? When you could take them and their gossip-hungry guests by surprise? You took her there to discompose them! Did you even consider how it would have affected Evelina if they had denounced her as your illegitimate offspring and sent her away?”
“I know my brother,” he said mildly, “and he is not that bad.”
“With respect, sir, you do not know your brother. You cannot have laid eyes on him since he was a boy. And even if he hadn’t changed, you certainly did not know his wife, let alone who else you would find there.”
His brows lowered in a dark scowl. “You are blaming me for things that did not happen. With what purpose?”
“Can you not see?” Alexandra demanded. “You should not even be thinking of her in such a way. Even were there no danger to her whatsoever, she is your daughter, not a weapon in your arsenal.”
Abruptly, he stood, his expression suddenly frightening. But at least, he turned away from her and strode to the window, where he stood looking out, his back to her. She wondered if it was dismissal, if she was supposed to go now. Pack her bags, no doubt, for departure in the morning. If she had kept her opinions to herself, she could have stayed, provided some kind of stability for Evelina, as she had promised so recently…
“You are right,” he snapped and drew in a breath without turning back to her. “I have no idea how to be a parent, how to separate fatherhood from the rest of me. I will protect her, you know. If you protect her from me.”
“I?” she said in astonishment, and at last, he turned with an odd, deprecating twist of his lips.
“You have designated yourself my conscience, Miss Battle. There are consequences to that, too.”
“I would not presume—”
A bark of laughter interrupted her. “Yes, you would. Let us call a truce.” He walked back and threw himself into his chair. It wasn’t clear which of them his eyes mocked, until the expression faded, and he said, “I suppose I was killing two birds with one stone. Taking her to meet children who should be friends as well as family, and in disconcerting my brother, giving myself an advantage in our confrontation. It is a hard habit to break.”
“Why do you need to confront him?” she asked curiously, then flushed, dragging her eyes free. “Forgive me. That is none of my business.”
“Oh, it is, if you are to be my conscience. Since my father died, my brother has lived in my houses and spent my money, without any permission.”
“But you know about it. You could, surely, have stopped it at any time.”
“I could,” he agreed, with a shrug. “I chose not to. I suppose I wanted to see how far he would go, how long it would take before he wrote to me. He never did. Even when I came home, and I know word reached him I was here.”
“Why did you not write to him?”
He pushed contemptuously at the papers on the desk. “Pride. I left home in a welter of scandal when I was just nineteen years old. Ralph was not quite sixteen. I spent the next seven years writing to him and to my father. Neither replied. So, I stopped.”
“But you did not stop your brother taking your money?”
“He was already married by then. And, frankly, I don’t need it.” His eyes dipped. “I suppose I still hoped that one day he would actually contact me and at least ask if I minded. I thought it would be a beginning. It was never about the money.”
It was about a family who had rejected him because of the sins of his youth. It wasn’t even pride. It was hurt.
“You took Evelina there to be blatant,” she guessed. “To show him you apologized for nothing, to throw your sins in his face and prove you thrived without him.” And to remind Ralph he had nothing to be self-righteous about.
“All of that,” he allowed. “Though I confess also to curiosity and a need to open doors between us. Almost losing Evelina brought many things home to me, including the awareness that this is not, perhaps, the safest environment in which to bring her up.”
“And you have a house in Mayfair that might be better.”
He inclined his head.
“Did you broach this subject with your brother?”
“In the end, no, I didn’t. He was too on edge. They both were.”
Her breath caught. “And there were only two children in the house when there should have been three. Do you really think theirs is one of the children kidnapped for ransom?”
“It’s possible. Of course, the oldest boy could have been anywhere, with family or friends for a few hours or a few days. But when I told them about Evelina, Ralph said, How did you get her back so quickly? As though he had to wait for a ransom note, as Inspector Harris warned us, we might have to do.”
“Did you offer to help?” she asked carefully.
“We are not in such a relationship of trust that he would tell me anything. If Harris and Tizsa are right, he will have been instructed to tell no one. I sent him Tizsa’s card, vouching for his discretion.”
During her brief observations, Alexandra had not taken to Mr. or Mrs. Swan, but this possibility changed everything. “They are trying to go on with their lives as normal until they can ransom their son back. Dear God. And we lost Evelina only for a few hours. I cannot begin to imagine…”
“Don’t,” Sir Nicholas said, “it will not help him.”
“But you could,” she blurted. She squeezed her fingers together in her lap, then forced them to relax. If this meeting was to be truthful, she had to speak. “The man in here the night of Evelina’s kidnapping. He has something to do with it, has he not? And you must know where to find him.”
He did not look angry, nor even like a man found out in sin. He looked more…thoughtful. “Would you be satisfied if I told you he has nothing to do with my nephew’s disappearance or any of the ransom kidnappings?”
“No, because you blamed him for Evelina’s. I heard you before you let him walk out.”
Sir Nicholas sighed. “I thought you probably had. Very well, here it is. That man is a smuggler. He runs a particularly large gang, sneaking goods on which the duty hasn’t been paid, up the Thames. I believe they have several safe storage places scattered along both banks, including the cellar we found in the garden, which have been used for the best part of fifty years from all I can gather. It was ideal. The house wasn’t lived in, was used only as an office during the day.”
He sighed. “My father apparently blocked off access to the house cellars from the garden one, but according to the ruffian you saw, they had an agreement. The smugglers left my father ‘presents’—presumably brandy and wine—and he let them use the garden cellar. When I moved in here, he contacted me with the same proposal.”
“And you agreed?”
He grimaced. “Smugglers can be a great source of useful information and a useful means of passing it on. I agreed under slightly different terms from my father. I didn’t want their goods, but they would keep me informed on certain matters, carry messages when I asked. Most of all, they were only to visit the cellar at night, whether to bring or remove items. I didn’t want Evelina running into them, or them into her.”
“But that’s exactly what happened,” Alexandra said hoarsely. Another understanding was fighting for recognition.
He nodded grimly. “They disobeyed their leader’s orders for reasons best known to them. And they found Evelina, who was then about to raise the devil of a racket, so they snatched her, probably only to shut her up, and scarpered. I don’t know what they meant to do with her, for she could obviously identify them by then.”
He swallowed convulsively. “So I ended our agreement.”
“And let him go,” she whispered, “because you knew he would punish his men.”
He stared down at his hands. “They had lost him a hiding place and disobeyed him. They kidnapped the child of a wealthy, well-connected man and nearly brought the law down on him and his operation in massive force. Yes, I knew he would punish them.”
“He killed them,” Alexandra said hoarsely. “The men in the river.” She raised her eyes to his. “You killed them, as surely as if you had shot them yourself.”
His lips curved, but his eyes, hard and implacable, chilled her to the bone. “I like to think so.”
She closed her eyes, more to blot out his. She could not work out what she actually thought of this, whether she was glad he had not let Evelina’s kidnappers go free or was outraged by the cold calculation of what he had done, leaving his own hands clean. There was a frightening ruthlessness about his actions, about him.
“I told Griz about the man,” she confessed, opening her eyes to meet his gaze.
He looked almost…anxious. Certainly, there was no anger at her admission. “It doesn’t matter. Tizsa already suspects. It does not much interest him because the men who took Evelina are not the organized kidnappers he is truly looking for.”
She nodded slowly, still trying to think. “Thank you for your honesty. I think.”
“Thank you for yours. I hope I haven’t appalled you to the extent of leaving us.”
She smiled faintly. “I thought you would dismiss me.”
“Were you hoping for it?”
She shook her head. “I like Evelina.”
“And you can put up with me?”
The half-rueful, half-teasing twinkle in his eyes caused a sudden dive in her stomach. And the realization that whatever he was, whatever he had done, she liked him, too. It was more than the way he looked, all hard, rugged, carelessly attractive male. All the complicated layers beneath his cynicism and sardonic humor, and the conflicting traits of his character that compelled him to care for his daughter and for the sick woman who lived in his house. And yet enabled him to contrive the execution of the errant smugglers who had dared lay a finger on his daughter.
And whatever lay behind the exciting warmth she occasionally read in his eyes when he looked at her, she liked that, too. It was there now, melting, arousing.
She sprang to her feet. “Of course,” she said hurriedly. “I should go and write my letters to catch the morning post.”
He rose with her, as was only polite. Even though she was only the governess. He even walked to the door at her side and, her heart drumming, she watched his long fingers close around the handle. For a shocking moment, she imagined them touching her skin, caressing, and desperately blinked the fantasy away.
He stood very still, not immediately opening the door. Almost afraid to breathe, she raised her eyes to his face. The oddest fancy struck her that he was all she had ever wanted without even realizing what that was.
But that was foolish, idiotic, plain wrong. Without the light from the window, his face was half-hidden in gloom, reminding her he was little more than a stranger. And yet there was an insidious illusion of closeness in that corner of the room, of an isolated, cozy bubble containing only her and him and whatever this feeling was…
“Do you ever have fun, Alexandra Battle?” he asked abruptly. “Apart from making music occasionally with your friends?”
“I am quite capable of enjoying my life,” she retorted, and wished she didn’t sound quite so defensive.
“Of course you are.” At last, he turned the handle. “Would it interfere with your plans to take Evelina to the Exhibition tomorrow afternoon?”
“Not at all. I believe she would enjoy it, and I would like to go.”
“Then I shall accompany you.”
She could hardly object. God knew she didn’t want to.
Somehow, she got past him and out the door to safety, for he did not follow. And she did not go back, though she could not help wondering what would happen if she did.
Chapter Twelve
The morning saw an early visit from Griz. Alexandra had not even left her bedchamber for the schoolroom when a knock sounded on the door. For some reason, her mind, which had been dwelling too much on Sir Nicholas, immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was him.
However, when she opened the door, Griz brushed past her into the room, looking rather fetching in a sky-blue gown and matching bonnet, with a paisley shawl picked out in exactly the same shade.
“You look very smart,” Alexandra remarked, closing the door.
“Yes, I’ve been visiting my family.”
“Does Sir Nicholas know you are here?”
“Probably. Dragan is with him, so I thought I would step up and see you.” Griz sat on the bed while Alexandra finished pinning up her hair. “Did you ask Anna about this murder he is meant to have committed?”
“She seems to think it is true,” Alexandra said reluctantly. “Though she would not talk about it. She said something about it being Evelina’s mother’s fault, but I’m not clear why.”
Perhaps it was one of the things she should have asked him last night while they were being honest with each other, but in truth, it had not entered her mind. What was wrong with her that she could forget the possibility of a murder? Especially when he had just confessed to that of the dead smugglers. To all intents and purposes.
“I wonder if he killed someone in a quarrel over her,” Griz speculated. Her frown cleared. “It’s possible. Anyway, I did discover some other things about his past, mostly from my parents, who remember the original scandal of him going abroad. And my brother and sister-in-law, who met him in Venice during their wedding trip.”
“He didn’t kill the smugglers,” Alexandra blurted. “But he had an agreement with their leader that let them hide things in the garden cellar. They were only meant to come at night, but when they saw Evelina, they grabbed her. Sir Nicholas…told the leader what they’d done. I think he knew they would be killed. Certainly, he is not sorry, but neither did he do it.”
“In the eyes of the law,” Griz murmured. She did not seem particularly surprised, and Alexandra suspected she and Dragan had already worked out as much. “Do you want to know what I’ve found out about him?”
“Do I?” Alexandra wondered.
“There’s nothing very terrible,” Griz said cheerfully. “Mostly wild youth stuff. He caused a huge scandal in 1833 by running away with one Lady Chivers, wife of Viscount Chivers, daughter of the Earl of Selpool. Their affair had been pretty much an open secret until then, to the extent that his parents quarreled with him over it. Anyway, Nicholas and Lady Chivers eloped to France, where, apparently, within a week or two, he abandoned her.”
