Unmasking the Hero, page 17
“Him!” Boothe exclaimed. “Darblay put you up to this, the filthy coward!”
“Actually, if you listen, you’ll hear he is as furious as you.”
Rollo, through the half-open door of his “cell,” was remonstrating loudly with his jailers, but catching sight of Boothe, he lunged at the door with a cry of fury. It took Campbell, John, and Lance, the clerk, to hold him back.
Boothe was duly wrestled into his own cell but didn’t waste his time screaming obscenities at Rollo. Instead, he turned to Wenning with some desperation.
“Come, my lord, there is no need for this strong-arming. Your point is made, and I shall be good if you let me out now. No harm has been done.”
“Let you out?” Wenning said, amused. “So that you can spread lies about Darblay’s cowardice?”
“No,” Boothe retorted. “So that I don’t spread the word about your wife’s spread legs—ouff!”
No thought went into it. Wenning simply swung his arm and punched Boothe in the stomach. It shut the weasel’s foul mouth for, doubled up, he could only clutch his stomach and gasp for breath. But more than that, it gave Wenning a fierce satisfaction. He strode out of the door and locked it, shaking his stinging knuckles, which had struck some of Boothe’s buttons.
He walked straight across the cellar and into Rollo’s cell.
“Enough, Rollo,” he said without raising his voice. It was a trick he had learned at university—cutting through a rammy by using just the right pitch and imposing his own utter confidence on his fellows. He had refined it in later social situations, dangerous ones and diplomatic ones, and it now seemed to be second nature.
Rollo and those struggling with him fell silent immediately, staring at Wenning.
“Here’s the problem, Rollo,” Oliver said curtly. “I understand you couldn’t let it go, and I commend you for doing your best to keep Grace’s name out of it. But if you and he fight, her name will inevitably be shouted as the true cause of it all. And there’s no way we’ll keep such a delicious scandal quiet. To say nothing of you dying or being taken up for murder.
“So, this is what we’re going to do.”
Rollo listened, his mouth falling open, then snapping into a mulish line before a snort of laughter seemed to take him by surprise, and he thought about it, gazing all the while at Wenning.
“Very well,” he said with a curt nod. “I’ll do it.”
“Good man. Give Campbell and the others a hand if you would. I’m off to Putney.”
“Why?” Rollo asked, baffled.
“Oh, just in case the odd second turns up,” Wenning said vaguely. “I don’t plan to be long, and the room is set up, all but the bodies…”
Chapter Sixteen
Wenning took the hired coach to Putney but stopped it at the local inn before it reached the heath. He walked the rest of the way in order to give anyone watching and waiting less warning of his arrival.
Dawn was breaking at last, casting a pale grey light across the heath. Wenning kept off the paths and the open grassland, striding instead among the trees. Even so, the hairs at the back of his neck stood to attention, and the moment of the shot at Maida Gardens kept repeating in his memory. He kept his eyes peeled, scanning all the surrounding area until at last, he saw two carriages.
An unknown man leaned against one as though chatting idly with the occupant through the window.
Wenning walked on, keeping, still, to the trees. Before he reached the carriages, the fellow standing by the coach took a drink from his flask, pocketed it, and waved a hand in farewell. He looked, Wenning thought, like a doctor, for he carried a small bag as he strode across to the other coach and got in.
As it drove off, Wenning increased his speed, but it seemed whoever was in the other carriage was in no hurry to leave.
Wenning strolled out from behind the tree nearest to the waiting carriage. Inside, he could clearly see his cousin, Phineas, gazing up the heath toward the inn.
“Morning, Phin,” Wenning said cheerfully.
Phineas’s head snapped around in understandable startlement. “Wenning! Good God, what a fright you gave me!” He clutched his heart and wheezed out a laugh. “Have I you to thank for neither duelist turning up?”
“Yes,” Wenning said modestly. “I appreciated the warning and took the matter in hand.”
“How? I could not get a civil word out of Darblay!”
“One has to know how to handle him,” Wenning said. “Come back to Wenning House with me for breakfast, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Jump in,” Phineas invited. “Where is your carriage? Or did you ride?”
“I left it at the inn. They can return from there.”
“Mount Street, if you please,” Wenning said to the driver and joined Phineas inside. On the seat beside his cousin sat a beautifully inlaid case that contained, no doubt, the dueling pistols.
“A very bizarre affair of honor,” Phineas remarked during the journey. He shifted restlessly, causing the folds of his cloak to part and draw Wenning’s gaze. “Nobody turned up at all, except the doctor and me. Not the principles, not Boothe’s other second, nor either of Darblay’s.”
“Bizarre, as you say,” Wenning agreed, lifting his eyes from his cousin’s half-open cloak to his face. Even more bizarre was the fact that his cousin seemed to have found it necessary to bring his own pistol to someone else’s duel.
*
Grace was not sure what woke her. She was not used to early rising in London, but there seemed to some kind of commotion in the house, reaching her as a sort of low hum.
Daylight seeped through the bed curtains, so she didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep. Instead, she rang for Henley, who duly arrived with a tray of coffee, toast, and letters.
“What’s going on, Henley?” she asked, yawning after her first sip of coffee. “Is there some kind of disturbance downstairs?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so, my lady. His lordship has a few visitors, according to Mr. Herries.”
“Ah.” Grace, her mind still very much on her last encounter with his lordship, flipped through the usual array of invitation cards and bills to get to the more interesting letters from friends. Among those, she came upon one in her brother’s scrawling hand and frowned, dropping the others to open Rollo’s first.
She almost choked on her coffee. “Oh dear God! What o’clock is it, Henley? Am I too late?”
Too late to stop a duel? Of course she was. They were fought at dawn, were they not? Rollo could already be dead or taken up for murder.
What an imbecile!” she raged. “My clothes, Henley, anything that comes to hand!”
She scanned the scrawled note again to make sure she had not misunderstood.
Dear Grace,
You should get this in the morning, by which time all should be right and tight. But just in case it isn’t, I want you to know I’m sorry, but that Boothe deserves to die. You really need a more gentlemanly court, for I’m dashed if I can fight them all. Drop Boothe like a hot coal, and pretend you know nothing about this. Which, of course, you don’t. But look after the old parents if anything happens to me. Wenning should help, for despite everything, he doesn’t seem such a bad fellow.
Rollo.
Throwing down this epistle, she thrust the tray aside and leapt out of bed for the speediest wash and dress she had undertaken in years.
She barely waited for the bewildered Henley to pin up her hair before she bolted out of her rooms and ran downstairs.
“James, I need the carriage!” she called to the nearest footman. “Immediately!”
“Hold one moment there, James,” said her husband’s mild voice, just as she became aware of an unpleasant stale-alcohol smell drifting up the stairs, along with a sudden surge of male voices and laughter. As Oliver shut the door of the blue salon behind him, the noise was instantly muffled to some degree, although the stench lingered. “Where are you off to so early, my lady?”
“To see Rollo,” she blurted. “I’m afraid he is in trouble, and it’s all my fault.”
“Rollo is here,” Oliver said, holding out his hand to her. “I’ll give you a peek if you like, though I doubt you will wish to join us.”
The smell and the noise and her husband’s somewhat rumpled state—which was not unattractive, she realized inconveniently—came together in her mind for the first time. As she gave him her hand, she exclaimed, “You’ve been holding a party in there! All night!”
His smile contained more mischief than anything, like a schoolboy discovered breaking rules and regretting nothing. Drawing her with him by the hand, he opened the salon door. A new waft of alcohol and masculinity crashed into her as she entered hand-in-hand with Oliver.
The room was full of men and cards, bottles and glasses. The first person she saw was Rollo, sprawled on a sofa, looking disheveled and handsome as he often did, though not usually with the companionship of Sir Nash Boothe, who slumped beside him, his head on Rollo’s shoulder, clearly sound asleep while Rollo finished a card game with Lord Effers.
“Tell you what, old fellow, you have a very heavy head,” he informed Boothe. “We should take him home, put him to bed.” He nudged Boothe amiably, causing the man to humph in his sleep. “Five minutes, Boothe, and we’re off.”
Rollo, in perfect friendliness, looking after the man who deserved to die, according to the letter he had written to Grace. She let her gaze wander around the rest of the room, finding a rather pale Phineas, Rollo’s friends Meade and Montague, Mr. Campbell, Sir Ernest, and the rakish new Duke of Dearham—previously the Marquis of Fishguard, and therefore still known to his intimates as Fish. Judging by the number of glasses and the disordered state of the room, there had, at one time, been several more attendees who had by now heeded the call of their beds and gone home.
Rollo glanced up. “Evening Grace!” he said cheerfully. “We’ll be gone in two minutes!”
“Not evening, Rolls,” Effers informed him, rising to bow to his hostess. “Been light for hours. So sorry for the intrusion, my lady.”
The Duke of Dearham unfolded himself from an armchair to bow with surprising elegance. “We should go now, thanking you profusely for your hospitality.”
“No, no, finish your games, gentlemen,” she said faintly. “I only wanted a word with my husband.”
“Who is happy to oblige,” Wenning said with the faintest slur. He bowed her out with the exaggeratedly polite gesture of the inebriated, though as he closed the door and they walked across the hall, the slur in his speech seemed to vanish. “Shall we go and have breakfast? In your sitting room, perhaps? We’ll leave the breakfast room for my ravenous guests.”
“Shouldn’t you join your own ravenous guests? Or are they too drunk to notice the absence of their host?” Even as she spoke, she realized that he did not smell of brandy. Nor were his feet on the stairs remotely unsteady.
“Oh, most of them are less drunk than you might think,” he murmured.
“Including you.”
“Including me,” he admitted.
“And Rollo?”
“I’ll tell you about Rollo over breakfast,” he promised, though she picked up the unspoken order, Don’t talk of Rollo where anyone can hear.
When they reached her sitting room, she sent Henley to acquire more coffee and breakfast for his lordship. Then, she brought the remains of her own breakfast through from the bedchamber and set it on the table.
“Sit. Speak,” she commanded her husband. “And I want to know about the duel Rollo carefully didn’t mention in his farewell letter!”
A spark of laughter lit his eyes. “He is far too amiable to go to the devil, you know.” Lifting the coffee cup, he drank the remains and poured more from the pot, which he offered to Grace.
She took it impatiently. “Well?”
“Rollo, being Rollo, frequents a rather low club in St. Giles. A few other more adventurous gentlemen also go there, for the general atmosphere of danger, I suspect. In any case, Rollo tried to sell a cravat pin there. The one you gave him.”
She met his gaze and tilted her chin. “I won it from Sir Nash Boothe in a wager that I would not dare meet him at Maida Gardens.”
“So I understand.” He did not seem angry, but then he already knew this because he had been there. Sometimes it was hard to sort out who knew what and how and whether or not she was supposed to be aware of it.
I hate this, she thought suddenly and thrust it aside for later contemplation. “Go on.”
“Boothe was in the club that night, along with Phineas. I wouldn’t have thought it the kind of place to attract either of them, but then I don’t really know Boothe. At any rate, Phineas seems to have recognized the pin Rollo was trying to sell and remarked upon it. Boothe, apparently without thinking, blabbed that he’d given it to you. Which, naturally, infuriated Rollo.”
Grace groaned and gulped her lukewarm coffee. “God preserve me from protective men!”
“It was not well done,” Oliver agreed. “He should have taken Boothe outside for a friendly word. But at least he knew he couldn’t fight him over you, so he accused Boothe of calling him a thief and a liar and then threw wine in his face so that Boothe had to challenge him.”
“The idiot!”
“Well, it was only ever half a disguise, for the true cause was bound to come out, especially considering who was involved. But one has to allow that Rollo tried.”
“Risking his life!” she fumed, appalled all over again by the tragedy that might have occurred. “And the duel was actually for this morning? What happened? How did you find out?” For somehow, she knew Oliver was responsible for the lack of duel.
“Meade,” he said. “He recognized the disaster the whole thing could turn into and asked for my help.”
She gazed at him. “So now, Rollo and Boothe are bosom friends, cuddling up on our sofa, drunk as lords?”
“Well, Rollo might have had a celebratory glass of brandy, but he isn’t really that drunk. Boothe, on the other hand, imbibed a bit more than he had intended.”
Her eyes widened. “How long have they been here, Oliver?”
“Since around dawn,” he admitted. “We rounded up a few all-night carousers and gossips and brought them here, along with a few good friends, who will all spread the word that not only was there no duel but that Rollo and Boothe are fast friends, playing cards with me, in our house—which proves there was no reason for a duel in the first place.”
“But when Boothe sobers up, surely he won’t play that game anymore!”
“He might gnash his teeth a little, but he’s unlikely to admit being kidnapped by the husband he had hoped to cuckold, had brandy poured down his throat, and been set up like a puppet show. Besides, no one would believe him. Am I not the height of amiability and respectable heroism?”
Her lips twitched. “And you have Phineas and Rollo’s friends and even Fish—I beg your pardon, His Grace of Dearham—to back up your play. I believe I am in awe.”
“I hoped you would be.”
Henley and Oliver’s valet arrived then with fresh coffee, toast, and a large, covered plate, which was set before his lordship. Oliver set to with a will, while Grace poured fresh coffee. In spite of everything, this mundane domestic scene felt comfortable, homely, and curiously right.
And, once the servants were dismissed, it became excitingly intimate. Trying to ignore that, she said, “Thank you for what you did.”
“There is no need of thanks. For better or worse, our families, like our names, are inextricably linked.”
Her heart beat hard, but somehow, she found the courage. “I think you regret that link. And did so almost from the moment it was formed.”
He paused, then laid down his cutlery. “No. There was anger, grief, self-pity, and hurt pride, but never regret. Tell me, if you would, did you ever love a man called Anthony?”
“No,” she replied. She didn’t need to think because she had never loved anyone but Oliver. She frowned. “But I have heard the name before… For the record, I never loved Nash Boothe either. If you want the truth, I have been sailing close to the wind, scandal-wise, and knew it was time to freeze him out. But he held me to the wretched Maida wager, and since then, I have seen a different side of him. I prefer my admirers unentitled and at a distance, although I don’t suppose you believe that.”
“Why would I not?”
“Because I have taught the world I am just a little fast and care for nothing but my own pleasure.”
“A way to survive after I left you with little pride and a great deal of gossip.”
“Something like that. I suppose it is no use asking you why or who you loved?”
“It would only be fair,” he allowed, sitting back in his chair. “Who I loved is easy—only you. The why is a little harder to explain.”
She sipped her coffee and regarded him over the rim. She would not let him off the hook, and yet she was ready for the blows to fall. At least he had loved her, and that would give her strength for whatever came next.
“Try,” she urged.
“The catalyst was a letter,” he said steadily. “I think Leyton already told you that. A letter you had apparently written to a man called Anthony, a love letter longing for him and reviling me.”
“I never wrote it,” she whispered helplessly, though the impossibility of making him accept the truth overwhelmed her.
“No, I don’t believe you did,” he said, causing her mouth to drop open. His lips twisted. “But I accepted it at the time. I don’t know why. Some knowledge nagging at the back of my mind that I did not deserve you, that you were too good to be true. If I had loved you less, I would, perhaps, have thought more clearly, behaved less badly. But those are excuses. Perhaps, somewhere, I still yearned to prove myself in China. But I never wanted that more than I wanted you.”
Distractedly, he reached for his cup and drank. “I should have talked to you, not condemned you, unheard. I should not have bolted and left you alone to face everything. I knew that by the time the ship sailed.”
