Unmasking the Hero, page 16
There followed the usual crush to get out of the theatre and then the greeting of more acquaintances as everyone awaited their carriages, but finally, the Wenning-crested vehicle pulled up just in front of the Darblay coach.
As Grace kissed her parents, her mother chose that moment to ask, “Is everything well with you and Wenning?”
“As well as one might expect,” Grace replied lightly, although suddenly she wanted to cry. She might have replaced her revenge plan with a reconciliation plan—at least as a possibility—but she still felt empty.
Hastily, she accepted her father’s hand into the carriage. She waved, smiling until the carriage began to move forward, then collapsed back against the luxurious cushions.
“Dull night?” inquired a soft male voice from the opposite corner.
Grace jumped an inch off the bench, her hand flying to her throat in startled alarm as a figure leaned forward. The lamplight from the outside of the carriage played over his masked face.
An unladylike snort escaped her, for she didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him.
“Idiot,” she uttered. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you, of course.”
There were lots of questions she should have asked “Rudolf,” such as how he’d got in without her coachman seeing him or how he had known where to find her. But she was too annoyed to play the game.
“Why?” she demanded.
“I said I would. What has upset you?”
The lamplight flickering over his masked face revealed his steady, concerned eyes. She looked away. “Nothing. I am merely tired.”
“Then why go to Lady Hilsborough’s?”
Something else “Rudolf” should not have known. “I might change my mind and go home.”
“You could,” he agreed. “Or we could talk.”
“About what?”
“Your problems and mine. It might help.”
“In a very limited way, given the few minutes it will take us to get to South Audley Street! Or Mount Street.”
“I’m afraid I bribed your coachman to take a rather more circuitous route. Via the river and the park.”
If he had really done such a thing, would she have been afraid or impressed? In reality, he had given his own coachman orders, though he may have slipped him an extra coin for his trouble.
“You take much upon yourself,” she said haughtily.
“I do, but you haven’t yet stopped the carriage to have me ejected.”
“There is still time.”
His teeth gleamed briefly, then he shifted across the carriage to sit beside her. “Are you unhappy, Grace?”
She thought about her answer for a moment before she replied, “Yes.”
“Because of your husband?”
Habit thrust denial to the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. If they did not talk, they would never resolve anything. “Yes,” she admitted, then added with foolish difficulty, “he courted me with words of love that were clearly lies.”
She felt his gaze burn into her cheek, but she could not look at him, even in the poor light.
“Why clearly?”
“Because he left me on our wedding night with a note so curt as to be insulting. And went off for two years during which I heard not one word from him.” She did not mean to let emotion into her voice, but even to her, the pain and the anger were evident. She wondered if he would notice. Certainly, he did not rush into speech.
“Why?” he asked at last. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“He never told me that either. My only conclusion is that for some reason, he had decided I would do as a bride and discovered on our wedding night that I would not. He suggested I go on our wedding journey alone if I wished or take up residence in whichever of his houses appealed to me.”
“Did he really say that?” There was an odd hoarseness in his voice, and Grace was fiercely glad.
“He wrote it.”
Beside her, her husband stirred. “Before he did so, did you love him?”
Her hands clenched in her lap. “With all my heart. My naïve, gullible heart.”
“Gullible?” he pounced. “Because you think he never loved you?”
“How could he have and still behaved as he did?”
“Perhaps something upset him. Convinced him otherwise.”
“Like the letter?” she said, her heart beating even faster than before. She turned at last to look at him and found his glittering eyes staring at her.
“What letter?” he asked, and the soft, disguised voice sounded almost hoarse again, as if even he could not hide this emotion.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I finally prised it out of a mutual friend that he had found some letter that convinced him I had already played him false.”
“And had you?”
“Of course not! As he would have known if he had even spoken to me on the subject. If he even thought for a moment. For one thing, it must have been glaringly obvious that I had no experience in matters of love! But no, in one sudden moment, I was cut off from affection, respect, consideration. Tried and convicted in absentia, as it were. Is such a man worth my love, Rudolf?”
He tore his gaze free. She hated that the mask hid his expressions from her.
“No,” he said. “He is not.” Unexpectedly, his hand closed over hers on her lap and gripped. Even through her gloves, his fingers were warm, secure. He turned back to her. “And yet you let no other would-be lover near you, do you? Do you love him still?”
Her hand jumped in his, but when he relaxed his grip, she clung, threading her fingers between his.
“It seems to be my nature,” she said carefully. “But I still have my pride.”
“Meaning you will never tell him?”
“I told him once before.”
“Why in God’s name do you still love him?” he demanded with unexpected ferocity.
“I try not to. Then I hear things, see things, that show me he is still the man I believed him to be. And yet I cannot change the fact that he left me, and for what must have been a lie.”
“His, or another’s,” her husband murmured.
The carriage was bowling along Park Lane, giving the momentary illusion of peaceful countryside.
“What of your wife?” she asked. “Why are you here with me instead of at home with her?”
“I believe…we had a misunderstanding. I did not trust her.”
“She hurt your feelings?”
“Profoundly. Unbearably. Irreparably, I thought.”
“You should speak to her honestly.”
“And you should speak to your husband.”
“Should he not speak to me?”
Perhaps he heard the indignation in her voice, for he smiled. “He certainly owes you that and a great deal more.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Do you know what I think, Grace?”
His eyes, profound and curiously enthralling, held her gaze. Wordlessly, she shook her head.
“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part. I think we must end our little adventure and devote ourselves in honesty to our spouses.”
In panic, she pushed her hand onto his shoulder and clung. She could not talk to Oliver yet, not the way she could to his alter ego. It was too soon to leave this masquerade, one-sided as it now was. How could she…?
“Why did you send me that poem?” she whispered.
“Because it seemed the saddest and yet most hopeful words I had ever read. I thought they might help your marriage and mine. How many lovers part because one is simply too proud to say the words that might save them?”
“Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,” she murmured, staring at him in the darkness. “From death to life, thou mightst him yet recover. You believe it is not too late to prevent the death of love in our marriages?”
His breath caught. Something indefinable changed in his posture. He muttered something unintelligible under his breath, and quite suddenly, she was clutched against his chest, his arms wrapped hard around her as his mouth came down on hers. A definite if passionate farewell.
At least, she thought that was what he intended, for it felt like a parting kiss. Only, when she threw her arm around his neck and slid her other hand up to his mask-covered cheek, he groaned, and she opened wide to him. And suddenly, everything changed.
The kiss was no longer hard but openly sensual, tender, devouring, and his hands were under her cloak, caressing her back, her side, the softness of her breast. Desire surged through her, hot and searing and urgent. She was thrust back against the cushions with him half-lying upon her, his distinctive hardness pressing at the junction of her thighs, driving her wild.
He will take me here, she thought with joyous wonder. He really will, and it will be so, so…
Stupid.
He would think she had given in knowingly to a lover, not to her husband. Or it would all be over. Nothing in the world had ever been as difficult as this, but somehow, with an inarticulate sound alarmingly like a sob, she pushed him away, slid free, and threw herself onto the opposite bench.
She had time to see the bewilderment in his eyes, to know with triumph that this had not been yet another test. It had been instinctive, impulsive, and he was at least as frustrated as she. With hands that shook, she drew the hood of her cloak over her disordered hair.
A rueful smile flickered over his lips. His breath was still ragged as he reached up and knocked on the roof. And then the carriage drew to a halt, and she realized they were in Mount Street.
Neither of them said a word as the carriage stopped outside Wenning House, but neither did eye contact break between them.
“Goodbye, Rudolf,” she said and slipped down without waiting for the steps to be lowered. She all but ran up to the front door, which, fortunately, opened to receive her at the last moment, and then she was home and safe.
But as she ran upstairs to her own apartments, she was smiling again from ear to ear.
*
Appalled by how difficult it was not to follow her into the house and confess all before persuading her into his bed—please, God!—Wenning swallowed, bumped his head back against the frustratingly soft cushions, and rapped once more on the ceiling.
The carriage rumbled on around to the mews, from where Wenning made his way through his own back garden, tearing off the silly mask as he went. He entered by the back door, but without going into the kitchen, he turned immediately right and through the door to the wine cellar.
Here, he inspected the recent adjustments, which included two sturdy locks on the two smaller rooms, two stools, and two blankets.
Satisfied that all was prepared, he grabbed a few bottles of brandy and a couple more of wine and moved into the house through the dark, empty kitchen. He made directly for the large ground floor salon where he, and his father before him, had been in the habit of holding gentlemen’s only parties, consisting largely of cards and drunkenness.
Setting down his bottles, Wenning began shoving the furniture into a more haphazard arrangement, found several packs of cards, which he distributed about the tables, some in untidy heaps, some set out as though still in the middle of the game. He threw some coins and pre-prepared, illegible vowels around the tables, too. Then, he quietly collected glasses from various places and prepared to waste his best brandy and some inferior wine, splashing various amounts into each glass and swirling it around. The glasses themselves, he plonked down in all sorts of places—teetering on the edge of tables, on the mantelpiece, and the floor and the windowsill, on top of a picture frame, on chair arms, and one upside down on an alabaster statuette he had never liked. The bottles he left open, scattered across various tables.
Offering up a silent apology to his staff, he spilled brandy on the cushions and the carpets. He paused a moment at the doorway to admire his handiwork. In a couple of hours, it should smell even worse.
It was going to be a long night, he thought ruefully, as he closed the door on the mess. As he crossed the now-dark hall, with only one candle for light, he noticed a note on the silver tray addressed to him. In the handwriting of his cousin Phineas.
Intrigued, he took it up to the library, where he lit the lamps and opened Phin’s note.
Cousin,
I scarcely know what to do for the best and have finally come to the conclusion that I must lay the matter at your feet, in the hope you might be able somehow to stop tomorrow’s foolishness.
The matter, simply, is this. Your brother-in-law, young Darblay, forced a quarrel on Sir Nash Boothe, who happened to be in my company at the time. I was therefore roped into standing as Boothe’s second in the duel that takes place at dawn tomorrow at Putney Heath. Obviously, I cannot be happy about such an event, where your brother-in-law might kill or be killed, and besides, whatever the outcome, the danger remains that your wife’s name may well be dragged into the scandal. But despite my best efforts at reconciliation, both parties remain determined to fight.
Though I was hoping to keep you out of it, my final play is your last-minute intervention to make young Darblay see sense.
Your cousin and friend as always,
Phineas Harlaw.
Wenning read the letter through twice, then slowly, thoughtfully, closed it into his desk drawer. His emotions were bleak. But more than that, he felt profound anger.
Well before first light, he left the house once more via the cellar and crossed the back garden to the mews stables. Here he found the men he expected: his old China colleague, Gordon Campbell; Campbell’s valet, John Coachman; the undercoachman; two of Wenning’s large footmen; and two burly clerks who had accompanied them to China.]
“The hired carriages are waiting,” John reported. “And their drivers sent home with their pockets well lined.”
“In that case, let us be on our way,” Wenning said cheerfully. “Everyone knows what to do.”
They piled into the two hired coaches and made off toward the district of St. James, where both Rollo and Boothe had rooms. Here, the carriages parted, and Wenning’s drew up outside Boothe’s lodgings.
“Watch out for the seconds,” Wenning murmured. “They should have received messages to tell them the duel is off, but it’s still possible we’ll have to deal with them, too. Remember, it’s Boothe we need. Ignore any others as best you can.”
The footman, Graham, and the clerk, Smithers, both in plain, black coats, nodded their understanding and got down from the carriage to loiter on either side of Boothe’s front door. Wenning waited in the carriage so as not to give their quarry advanced warning.
The front door opened, and Wenning and his helpers all straightened, poised for action. But it was only a servant who took off at a run, perhaps to fetch a hackney for his master to take to Putney. Wenning hoped Boothe wouldn’t wait for it before he emerged from the building.
But five minutes later, the door opened once more, and Boothe himself stepped out, impeccably dressed in black, with a smart beaver hat on his head, and a warm cloak wrapped around him against the early morning chill. As he closed the front door behind him, Wenning pushed open the carriage door, and Boothe actually walked toward it, as though he thought it was his hackney.
Graham and Smithers closed in from either side. Boothe glanced idly into the carriage. By the expression of horror on his face, he recognized the shape within. But before he could back off, Wenning seized him by the lapels, the others grabbed his arms, and he was tossed into the coach. Graham and Smithers leapt in after him, and the coachman set off at a spanking pace.
“What in the name of…?” Booth began blustering. “My lord, I must protest!”
“My dear, Boothe, you are in no position, moral or physical, to complain about anything at all. I hear you have been bandying my wife’s name around one of the more deplorable clubs.”
“Then you hear wrong. I am currently on my way to an affair of honor that has nothing to do with your wife.”
“It has nothing to do with my wife only because Darblay threw a glass of wine in your face. Even he would not begin a quarrel with his sister’s name as the prime cause. I take exception in either case.”
“Then your fight with Darblay—who was eavesdropping on a private conversation—must wait upon my own.”
“On the contrary, you will not be fighting Darblay at all.”
Boothe, who seemed to have recovered his confidence, sat back in his seat and dusted off his coat front and sleeves. “I am to go straight to the husband?” he mocked. “That should stop all the talk about your wife and me. And I shall be delighted to shoot you.”
“I’m sure you would, but I’m afraid you won’t get the chance this morning.”
Boothe glanced out of the carriage windows and frowned. “We are going in the wrong direction for Putney.”
“Of course we are. You are coming to a party at my house.”
At once, Boothe looked alarmed again. “I can’t! I have to be at Putney Heath, or I will be accused of cowardice!”
“But you are a coward. The word is you are a crack shot, famous at Manton’s, and yet you picked a fight with a twenty-two-year-old boy.”
Even in the gloom, Boothe’s flush was obvious. “That boy has fought duels before. And it was he who picked a quarrel with me!”
“After you uttered his sister’s name. What did you expect him to do? Shake your hand and invite you to dinner?”
“None of this is any of your business,” Boothe exploded. “Now—”
“You made it my business as soon as you uttered my wife’s name.”
“Stop the vehicle this instant, or I shall have you arrested for abduction!”
“My dear Boothe,” Wenning said amiably, “you must know you can’t have me arrested for anything. Peer of the realm and all that. Anyone would think I was taking you away to torture you or kill you!”
Boothe didn’t look convinced that he wasn’t. “What are you up to?”
“I’m going to show you my wine cellar.”
Graham, the footman, snickered.
*
Wenning could hear Rollo’s voice as soon as he opened the cellar door, swiftly followed by the softer tones of Campbell and John Coachman as they tried to calm him.
