A Woman of Virtue Page 11

  “A new valet?” asked Delacourt sourly. “Really, Jonet! What need have I of a new one, when Pringle has been with me for a dozen years?”

  “And never had a holiday in the whole of it, I do not doubt.” Jonet gave a mocking frown. “How selfish you are! Pringle must go away at once. He must go to Brighton! Or to the Lakes, perhaps?”

  “But I cannot do without him!”

  Jonet shrugged. “As it happens, Lord Rannoch owes me a small favor. Elliot has gone home to Scotland—he was a distant relation of Mother’s, you know. But regrettably, his valet disdains to travel north of Oxford Street.”

  Delacourt looked at her darkly. “Yes, yes! Perhaps Pringle does deserve a holiday. But I am not at all sure I want another man—particularly not the sort of fellow who decides where he will and will not go.”

  “I collect that Elliot’s man is a very clever fellow in all sorts of—er, things,” Jonet vaguely insisted. “I shall have him sent to Curzon Street at once. Just temporarily, of course.”

  His green eyes flashed. “Let be, madam!”

  Jonet drew nearer and brushed one hand down his cheek. “David?”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Just trust me, my dear.”

  But any further protest Lord Delacourt might have made was conveniently forestalled. Agnes, the parlor maid, stuck her head inside the book room to tell Jonet that the trunks had been brought down from the attic and that her dresser awaited packing instructions.

  Abruptly, Jonet scooted forward to put on her shoes. “Now, listen to me, David!” she began in a warning tone. “I must look to you to keep an eye on the boys whilst we’re away. And pay particular attention to Robin!” She slid on the last shoe and looked up at him gravely. “There’s been altogether too much dicing at the Lamb and Flag, and I should prefer his stepfather know nothing of it.”

  Delacourt stood and offered his hand. “Yes, of course.”

  Awkwardly, Jonet managed to stand. “And Stuart! Stuart is to be kept away from his cousin Edmund at all cost! That worthless scoundrel had the effrontery to leave a card yesterday!”

  “Oh, I’ll see to Edmund,” Delacourt assured her with utter confidence—and not a little relish.

  Jonet leaned heavily on her brother’s arm as they walked toward the door. “Oh, and David! You will continue with Stuart’s fencing lessons, will you not? Charlie will give you a key to the ballroom.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Delacourt for the third time as he gently propelled her out the door and down the hall.

  When they reached the stairs, Jonet lightly kissed him. “Now, you must go to Cole. He has a heap of files and correspondence for you.”

  Abandoning her brother, Jonet leaned on Agnes’s arm and made her way up the steps to her sitting room. As soon as the door closed, she turned urgently toward her maidservant. “Agnes, can you carry a message to Lady Delacourt at once?”

  “Over tae Curzon Street?” asked Agnes curiously. “Aye, sure.”

  Jonet flew to her writing table beneath the window and jerked out a piece of foolscap. “Success is within our grasp,” she muttered, reading aloud as she scribbled. “Send your servants on holiday and come to me in Cambridgeshire as soon as you may...”

  ———

  Throughout his two-hour briefing with Cole, Delacourt’s mind kept returning to his sister’s strange remarks. Although Lord Delacourt took orders from virtually no one, he was always reluctant to question his sister’s commands. Sometimes, he inwardly considered, it was as if Jonet had the gift. Certainly, many in the Cameron line had possessed it; the English had even burnt a couple.

  The viscount, however, could not predict the future. Had he been able to, he might have hastened home. But instead, Delacourt dropped by Brooks’s to peruse the Times and partake of a late luncheon with friends, whose company he found unaccountably tedious and whose conversation seemed oddly trivial. Nonetheless, after this deliberate delay, he returned to his town house in Curzon Street with the bizarre intention of putting Pringle on the next mail coach to Brighton.

  But he had strolled no more than halfway toward the blue drawing room to enjoy tea with his mother when he spied Charlotte wheeling her ladyship down the hall toward the stairs. “Mother?” he called sharply. “Charlotte? Are you not having tea?”

  Abruptly, Charlotte stopped and spun her ladyship’s chair about. “David, my dear!” they chorused. Just then, a footman descended the steps behind Charlotte, a heavy trunk braced high on one shoulder.

  “Mother—?” Delacourt stared at the trunk in amazement. “Is that your luggage coming down?”

  “No, no, dear,” Lady Delacourt murmured, craning her head and lifting her lorgnette. “I daresay that would be Pringle’s.”

  “Pringle’s—?” Delacourt stared at her. “Where the deuce does he mean to go?”

  Lady Delacourt looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Why, to Brighton, I believe. Lady Kildermore sent a note...”

  Delacourt darkened his glower. “Did she indeed?”

  His mother looked uncharacteristically penitent. “Why, yes. But if you do not wish him to go—oh, but I forget! The other man has come already.”

  “Other man—?”

  “Oh, yes! A lovely, lovely fellow... Campbell? Kendall?” His mother managed to look frail and befuddled. Delacourt wasn’t fooled. Despite her physical infirmity, the old lady was as keen as a newly stropped razor.

  “In any case,” Charlotte interjected airily, “he went straight up.”

  Delacourt felt a stab of alarm. “Up where? To do what?”

  Lady Delacourt lifted her narrow shoulders elegantly. “Why, to your dressing room, my dear. To—to sort things out, he said.”

  Just then, with another parade of footmen and luggage trailing him, Pringle came gamboling down the stairs, looking ten years younger. Circling around Lady Delacourt’s wheelchair, he paused to press Delacourt’s hand between his own. “Oh, thank you, my lord!” the valet said fervently. “I shall see you on the first of June!”

  And then he was gone. The next two footmen, trunks carefully balanced, stopped at the foot of the stairs to look inquiringly at his mother.

  With another guilty look, Lady Delacourt waved her hand. “Set it down in the foyer, Hanes. My carriage shan’t come ‘round for another hour.”

  Delacourt did not bother discussing the matter further. Clearly, Charlotte and his mother were leaving. Off to their Derbyshire seat, he supposed. But at present, there was a far more urgent issue at hand. Someone—a stranger—was poking through his wardrobe! It simply would not do!

  ———

  Mr. George Jacob Kemble was that most feared of personages, an elegant gentleman’s gentleman of the new school, with unerringly conservative taste and the good sense to know that it was his mission on God’s earth to provide aid and enlightenment to the ignorant. Unfortunately, in Kemble’s considered opinion, the ignorant were all too plentiful.

  Had he known what sheer force of will awaited him, Lord Delacourt might not have hastened up the stairs with such determined alacrity. But he did not know, and so he paced quietly through his bedchamber and peered into his dressing room with grave suspicion.

  Delacourt could have sworn he made not a sound. And yet, the man inside addressed him without so much as lifting his head from his task—which appeared to be a careful accounting of Delacourt’s neck cloths. “You rang—?” he sang out melodiously. Then, the fellow lifted a pair of deep topaz eyes to stare at Delacourt. He was a slight, handsome fellow of an indeterminate age and dressed as flawlessly as any member of Brooks’s might ever have hoped to be.

  “Who the hell are you?” Delacourt demanded.

  “I,” he proclaimed, flicking out his hand, “am Kemble.”

  Delacourt was utterly mystified—and, inexplicably, just a little cowed. “Indeed?” he managed.

  The fellow paused only briefly, laid aside Delacourt’s cravats, and then began to pick through the wardrobe shelves. “I am to have Thurs
day evenings and every Sunday off,” Kemble crisply stated. “Was that explained?”

  “Not precisely, no.” Suppressing a smile, Delacourt let a knowing eye drift down the man’s length. “An active social life, I take it?”

  “Quite.” Kemble paused in his rummaging just long enough to finger—and frown at—the fabric of Delacourt’s favorite riding coat.

  “You’ve taken a dislike to my coat?” asked Delacourt lightly, stepping a little nearer to the door.

  Kemble let the coat slide through his fingers, then moved systematically on to a rack of waistcoats. “I suppose it will do, if paired with a neutral waistcoat,” he said almost absently. “Have you a problem with that?”

  “No, not I,” returned Delacourt smoothly. “But I’m not perfectly sure why you’re rummaging through my dressing room.”

  Kemble flicked him a disdainful look. “I was sent for, my lord. A message came to Strath—my Lord Rannoch’s house—telling me I was required here most urgently.”

  Delacourt felt his eyes widen. “Urgently? Why would Lady Kildermore think I needed help urgently when—”

  Kemble’s horrified gasp cut him short. “Oh—my—God—!” cried the valet, jerking back his hand as if bitten.

  “What?” asked Delacourt.

  The valet’s hand seized upon Delacourt’s newest waistcoat and ripped it unceremoniously from the others. “Perhaps, sir, it is because of just this sort of—of manque de goàt!” he announced, shaking the waistcoat accusingly.

  But Delacourt, who’d slept through most of Harrow’s French lessons, knew only that he’d been insulted. “What do you mean to imply, sir?” he challenged. “That waistcoat is all the rage!”

  “Perhaps. If one is a raging lunatic,” mumbled Kemble, dangling the crimson silk between thumb and forefinger as if it might be lice-infested.

  “But that color is called ‘raven’s blood!’ “ Delacourt grumbled. “And I like it! I shan’t give it up.”

  Kemble shoved the offensive garment deep into the row of waistcoats and turned to face his new employer. “Now, let us understand one another, my lord,” he firmly began, giving another haughty hand toss. “I have a reputation to uphold. I shall agree to work here. But in return, you must agree not to go running about town rigged out like some overdressed Bow Street Runner. I simply cannot abide it!”

  “You cannot?” Delacourt stepped fully into the dressing room and set one hand at his hip. “Now, see here, my fine fellow—”

  Kemble shot him a withering glance. “No, you must see,” he waspishly returned. “There comes a time in a man’s life when he must stop blowing with the winds of every new fashion. An age at which he must recognize that more subdued colors become the—”

  “An age? An age?” Delacourt had never been so horribly insulted. “By God, sir, I am not old!”

  To his acute discomfort, Kemble leaned a little closer. Clinically, he touched a cool fingertip to the corner of Delacourt’s eye, drew the skin toward the temple, then let it snap back into place. “Crow’s feet,” he said smugly. “You’re three-and-thirty if you’re a day.”

  Delacourt was aghast; not at the valet’s words but by the utter lack of malice in them. Good God, he was but thirty-two! For a couple more months, anyway. Still, he hadn’t thought it showed...

  But the doubts crashed in upon him. He had been awfully tired of late. His zest for life had lessened, and he was plagued by a restless ennui. Had a life filled with decadence stricken a few years off his looks? Was he—heaven forfend—no longer attractive? Was he well on his way to becoming nothing more than another aging roué with a bad sense of fashion? And then what? Chronic gout? A pink frock coat?

  “Tobacco?” interjected Kemble.

  Delacourt dropped into the chair at his dressing table. “No, thanks,” he muttered. “But a tot of brandy might hel—”

  Kemble hissed through his teeth. “Do you smoke, my lord?”

  “Oh.” Abjectly, Delacourt looked up. “I have a fondness for a good cheroot, yes.”

  “Then you must stop it at once,” proclaimed the valet with another disdainful toss of his hand. “Your sort of complexion cannot take it. It wrinkles the skin and sallows the tone. But not to worry! I’ll whip up some of my champagne-and-cucumber mask. Twice a day for a fortnight, and you’ll look a new man!”

  “But I don’t wish to be a new man,” insisted Delacourt, struggling to cast off his doubts.

  Kemble merely shrugged his thin shoulders. “Then I must echo your original question, my lord,” he returned, tossing out his hand again. “Why am I here?”

  In frustration, Delacourt lifted his eyebrows and wondered how much strength it would take to fracture Kemble’s wrist. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Well, if it’s not a fashion crisis, then it must be something worse! Not that there is anything much worse.” Suddenly, the valet narrowed his eyes. “Are you being blackmailed, my lord?”

  “Good God, no,” returned Delacourt. At least the fellow was entertaining.

  Kemble crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his toe on the dressing-room floor. “Your mistress—is she unfaithful? Or perhaps you seek revenge on someone who has wronged you?”

  Abruptly, Delacourt stood. “By gad, sir, you are a very strange fellow!”

  “Perhaps,” he lightly admitted. “But I think that you are in some sort of trouble. Perhaps you do not know as yet just what sort—but I daresay we’ll soon find out.”

  Chapter Five

  Scorched by the Lamp of Enlightenment

  Monday morning dawned far too early for the faint of heart. Nonetheless, as he had promised his brother-in-law, Delacourt bestirred himself at cock crow, allowed himself to be dressed as befitted a man of his declining years, then presented himself in Pennington Street at the god awful hour of half-past eight, whereupon he was given over to the work-roughened hands of one Mrs. Mildred Quince.

  This steely-eyed matron looked to be a hard price to pay for just one night of incompetent card playing. But pay he must, and Delacourt did not mean to whine. Certainly, one did not whine to Mrs. Mildred Quince, who was a broad-shouldered, battle-hardened sort of woman. Indeed, she rather resembled his Uncle Nigel when he wore his favorite gray serge gown. But that was another story altogether...

  Still, Mrs. Quince seemed devoted enough, and she gave him a thorough tour of the establishment, commencing with the cellars and ending with the attics. In between, Delacourt reluctantly observed, lay the vast, odiferous kitchens; the huge laundry rooms filled with steaming wooden tubs and nightmarish mangling machines; and the long, wood-planked sewing rooms. Moreover, for the more deft-handed residents, there was a room given over to leatherworking.

  Not once in the whole of his privileged life had Delacourt paused to consider how his gloves were made or his breeches were sewn. Certainly, he’d never given the first thought to how his drawers got laundered, and he’d probably just had his last, but never again would he take his staff for granted. The viscount left the workrooms with a begrudging appreciation for manual labor and a deep sense of gratitude that so little of it was required of him.

  Each room was filled with young women, their heads diligently bent to one task or another. They seemed civil enough, but their every sidelong glance made plain to him his status as an outsider—and worse, as a member of the Quality. Delacourt felt a moment of profound sympathy. No doubt they were accustomed to this, the well-meaning upper crust trotting dutifully in to peer at them, as if they were some sort of social experiment. Which, he supposed, they were.

  Surprisingly, it pained him to admit as much, even to himself. But as he probed the depths of this foreign emotion—guilt, sympathy, or some complicated fusion of both—he received tidings which were even more distressing. Another young woman had gone missing, Mrs. Quince explained.

  This time, it was Margaret McNamara, whom he vaguely recalled from Friday’s funeral service. “Aye, well, a hard case, that ‘un,” the matron added gloomily. “Ther
e’s some you can help, and some as don’t really want it. Not when there’s an easier living to be made upon their backsides. And you’ll learn that quick enough, m’lord.”

  It was on the tip of Delacourt’s tongue to reply that he intended to learn nothing of the sort, that he was stuck in this hellish rabbit warren filled with steaming and clanking and overheated Christian charity because he’d lost a gentlemen’s wager. And because no one else was foolish enough to take on the cursed job, which was beginning to assume the characteristics of a stray dog following a fellow home after a late night.

  Damn it all, he had no wish to feel guilt or sympathy or pain for these people he did not know. But Mrs. Quince, he quickly realized, would scarce be served by his bitter tongue, and so he’d clamped down on it. Just then, the bell rang for morning Bible study. The matron trundled off, flapping her wings and gathering her chicks, leaving Delacourt to his own devices.

  He made his way to the large room which had been given over to office space and pushed open the door. The files and notes Cole had promised him had already been heaped upon the desk farthest from the door. All was bathed in silence, with the morning sun pressing lamely in through windows which were covered in soot.

  The room reeked of boiling cabbage, lye soap, and quiet desperation. Slowly, Delacourt strolled across the floor remembering his last visit to this miserable place. Had it only been three days since he had stared across that desk at the woman who looked like an angel and felt like his nemesis?

  And then Delacourt remembered helplessly watching her fall, seeing that head of flame-gold curls pitch inexorably backward, listening to the horrible crack as she struck the floor, and knowing with a certainty that had she been badly injured, he could not have borne it.

  Delacourt sank into a chair and let his face fall forward into his hands. Thank God Cecilia Markham-Sands had a skull as hard as her flinty little heart.