Anne Barbour (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

“Well you may say ‘Oh, mercy!” cried Zoe. “I mean, look at me. Have you ever seen such a fright?”

Mina sank down on a sofa. At seventeen, Zoe had been a beautiful spoiled minx with a host of admirers and a willful nature that earned her such sobriquets as ‘limb of Satan’, and an excited expectation that she would be swept off her feet at any moment by her own true love. Now, ten years later, she was unrecognizable in an unflattering gown of a singularly ugly grey. The wig — those spectacles — her mottled complexion must be due to a copious application of theatrical paint.

Did Mina want to discover why Zoe wore a disguise? Most definitely she did not. “You are not at your best, I think,” she murmured, diplomatically. “I am of course delighted to see you, but what brings you here?”

Zoe clasped her hands to her bosom. “Oh, Cousin Wilhelmina! I am quite undone.” She still clutched the pistol. Mina experienced a brief fear — or hope — that the firearm might discharge.

The firearm did not. “Are you mad?” Mina inquired. “Give me that at once! Waving guns around – you could have killed someone!”

“Did you think I meant to shoot you?” Barrel first, Zoe handed her the weapon. “How absurd! If I was going to shoot anyone it would be Paolo, and I’m not certain I won’t yet.”

Mina grasped the pistol gingerly. Where to put the blasted thing? She tucked it behind a sofa cushion. Time enough later to decide where the handgun was best hid.

“I have been betrayed!” Zoe dropped gracelessly into a chair. “You look shocked, and so you should be. I shall tell you all — but first, may I have something to eat? I have not eaten for a prodigious long time.”

Mina rang a bell. The summons was answered by a footman. Mina issued orders. The footman bowed himself out of the room.

 Zoe took off her dark spectacles, revealing bright blue eyes. “So you inherited a gaming hell. How
bold
you are to manage it yourself.”

“Hardly,” said Mina drily. “I require some means of support, jointures and widow’s portions not being something with which, in the excitement of the moment, I concerned myself.”

“We have all done absurd things,” sighed Zoe. “It comes from being a Loversall.”

The footman returned, placed his tray on a table, then silently departed. Zoe fell upon the food as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

“It is astonishing,” said she, whilst nibbling on a chicken leg, “how
quickly
one can come down in the world. A mere fortnight ago I had never ridden — under a load of cabbages, mind you – in a farmer’s cart; nor crossed the Channel in a sea so rough that I cast up my accounts over the side of the packet boat; nor travelled on a common stage. It was a horridly dirty stage, and as a result I am none too clean myself, which is something else I am not accustomed to, and everything is Paolo’s fault.” She discarded the remnants of the chicken leg, licked her fingers, and picked up a wing. “I didn’t believe Beau when he said I was too young to wed. I realize now he may have been correct. Paolo was so bold and brave and dashing. I was overset with passion. My heart overcame my head.”

She had not been alone in that reaction. The extravagantly handsome young Conte de Borghini had sent all the damsels into a romantic twitter and their mamas to devising diabolical matrimonial snares. “You fled your husband?” inquired Mina. “All the way from Milan?”

“It was not Milan but Paris,” said Zoe. Cousin Wilhelmina gave much less the appearance of a lady smote by sympathy than one wishing her unexpected guest to Hades, but surely that could not be. “And I did not ‘flee’, I
left
.”

From beneath the sofa crept a plump grey feline with white chest and paws and whiskers. Mina lifted the cat into her lap. It curled up with its nose beneath its tail and promptly went to sleep. “Grace is growing old,” Zoe ungenerously observed.

Grace wasn’t the only one. Mina felt herself growing more decrepit with each moment passed in Zoe’s company.

Zoe pushed away her plate and chair, rose and began to pace.
“If I learned anything from my father, it is that before one purchases a new pair of shoes, one should first try them on to make sure they
fit.
But I paid no heed. And I am well served for it, because my true love has turned out to be a toad.”

Mina was taken aback by this comparison of paramours with footwear. “The path of true love is often set with difficulties,” she soothed.

Platitudes, from a woman who had put five husbands in the ground thus far? “You should know!” snapped Zoe.

“What I know,” retorted Mina stiffly, “is that hearts do not truly break, and one does not die of the dumps. You have fled to London. Now what do you mean to do?”

Zoe paused to grimace at her image in the gilt-framed looking-glass. “I shall go to the Opera, and have an ice at Gunther’s, and ride in the Park.”

 “Oh?” Mina felt her right eyelid twitch. “I assumed from your disguise that you didn’t want your husband to know you are in Town.”

Zoe swung away from her reflection. “I don’t! By the time Paolo realizes I have left him I shall be safely hid away. Like Grandmother Sophie after she got caught with that foreign dignitary lacing up her stays.”

“In a nunnery? You can’t be serious.” Mina’s own stays, alas, were being unlaced by no one but her maid.

 “Why not? Paolo will never think to search for me there.”

Pity the poor nuns
. “You haven’t explained why you came to me.”

“You might be more sympathetic!” cried Zoe. “My heart has been broke. I can’t go to Beau, because Paolo will expect me to do just that. He’d never
expect me to take up residence in a gaming hell. And if he
should
discover I have taken up residence in a gaming hell, he won’t like it above half.”

Mina’s own heart had been first bruised by a fickle Frenchman. Many years had passed since she recalled the perfidious Pierre. Since she was recalling him now, it took a moment for her companion’s words to sink in.

Zoe, here at Moxley House? Heaven forfend! “What about the nunnery? I thought—”

“You
haven’t
thought!” Zoe said sternly. “Or you wouldn’t expect me to turn my back on the world without first understanding what I’m giving up. You may find this difficult to believe, but I haven’t had a single
affaire de coeur
.”

Mina’s eyelid twitch was fast developing into a throb. “You had Paolo.”

“I was married to Paolo! Paolo doesn’t count.”

“You can’t remain here!” Mina protested. “Your reputation would be ruined. The polite world considers it scandalous that I run a gaming house.”

“The polite world considers you scandalous altogether.” It occurred to Zoe that she might be a bit more conciliatory toward the lady beneath whose roof she wished to dwell. “They would consider you scandalous whatever you did, because you are a Loversall. I will be even further beyond the pale than you, once I am divorced.”

Divorced? Despite their various misadventures, no Loversall had ever been divorced. “Was your marriage so bad?”

 “It was worse than bad.” Zoe plucked at the fabric of her gown. “I am no more to Paolo than a pretty trinket who is supposed to provide him heirs. Well, there are no heirs, and it serves him right! I spent ten miserable years being chaste — and as you are well aware, Loversalls are not noted for being chaste — and I’m sure I needn’t have been, because men flock to me like bees to the honeypot. Paolo was not equally devoted. He was not even discrete! I cannot count the hours I passed tormenting myself with visions of what he might be doing, and who it might be doing it with.”

Inside all this drama was — surely — a kernel of genuine distress. “One doesn’t expect a husband to be faithful,” Mina pointed out.

“
I
did! And you needn’t say I should have known better, because of course I should. I daresay your husbands weren’t faithful, either. And you had five of them, poor thing!” Zoe dropped to her knees in front of the sofa. “Do say I may stay. I can help you in the gaming rooms.”

Mina gazed down into the vivid little face turned so pleadingly up to hers. It was an enchantingly heart-shaped face, with big blue eyes and a perfect little nose, lush lips, and a dimple in each cheek. “You are obviously a Loversall, even wearing that horrid wig.”

Zoe pulled off the wig and flung it over her shoulder, revealing a matted mop of red-gold curls. “We can say I am a distant relative. I will call myself Prudence, since prudent is what I have been. Oh, Mina! You cannot be so cruel as to turn me away.”

Alas, Mina could not. “Very well. But there is to be no flirting with the customers.”

Zoe enveloped Mina’s knees in a bone-crushing hug. “
Best
of all my cousins! I promise I shan’t cause you a moment’s unease.”

Mina laid a wager with herself as to how long this resolution would last. Grace took exception to the interruption of her slumbers, and batted at the interloper’s cheek.

“Ouch!” cried Zoe, springing to her feet.

 Mina stroked a soothing hand over Grace’s soft fur. “You have not told me what the conte did that was so bad. Perhaps this is merely a misunderstanding and—”

“
Col cazzo!
” interrupted Zoe, cheeks flushed with temper. “Paolo wagered me at play.”

CHAPTER THREE

 “Wagered
you?” Beau stared at his daughter, whose appearance had been greatly improved by a bath and a good night’s sleep. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Yes you have,” said Devon Kincaid. “There was that high-flyer Montcrief had in his keeping not so long ago.”

Beau turned an irate eye on his friend. “I’ll thank you not to be so busy about my affairs.”

“The point is, I think, that it
was
your affair,” remarked Mina. “Dev, come sit by me.”

Mr. Kincaid left the window where he’d been lounging. He was tall, with hazel eyes and sun-darkened skin and thick auburn hair, a rebellious lock of which had tumbled forward on his brow; an athletic physique that showed to advantage in excellently fitting unmentionables and bottle green coat; and the easy assurance of a man who had charmed his way into — and out of — more boudoirs than he could count.

Zoe watched as he joined Mina on the sofa. If one was
going to explore one’s baser nature, there would be no better guide than a notorious rakehell.

Currently she was more concerned with the rakehell who had sired her, who was looking as appalled as it was possible for a profligate to be. Beau possessed the unmistakable Loversall features, the red-gold curls and sapphire eyes. His hair was tousled, as if he’d but recently risen from his – or someone’s – bed, which was no doubt the case: it had taken Cousin Wilhelmina’s footman half the day to track him down. “
Did
you wager a high-flyer, Beau?”

“I didn’t wager her, I won her,” Beau protested.

Mina turned to Devon. “And to think I was recently feeling so dull I almost walked across the street to inspect the mechanical figures at Week’s Museum.”

He smiled his careless smile. “Come to me the next time you feel dull. I can recommend a great many more interesting activities.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do those activities involve you?”

“They do.”

A dalliance with Dev,
mused Mina; unthinkable, but still a pleasant thought. Mr. Kincaid must by this time be an expert in the amatory arts. He was an easy, entertaining companion, and possessed a comfortable inheritance that allowed him to do as he pleased.

He was also a long-time friend of Beau’s, and cut from the same faithless cloth.

Grace was curled up on Mina’s lap. Devon reached out to tickle her chin. The cat opened one eye, contemplated him, then rolled over on her back.

He rubbed her belly. Grace curled around his hand and nipped his wrist, as if to say ‘more’. “Hussy,” Mina remarked.

Devon raised an eyebrow. “I assume you refer to the cat.”

She smiled. “Ah no, I shan’t rise to that
bait.”

“Is there bait you
will
rise to?” inquired Mr. Kincaid. “Shall I try and find out what it is?”

Mina laughed.

Beau glanced at the sofa, where Mina and Dev were having a pleasant coze.
He
had been having a pleasant coze — or, more specifically, a tryst — when interrupted by a footman who insisted Beau accompany him posthaste. Beau had been unable to imagine what might be so urgent, but was fond of Mina, and so had obliged. Now he wished he’d stayed in bed.

He adored his daughter; she was the apple of his eye; but life had been more peaceful when she dwelt a couple continents away. Or as peaceful as life could be for a man with as many mistresses as Beau.

Zoe hadn’t fallen silent. “You are as bad as Paolo. I was prepared to give my all for love. I was
not
prepared for my love to give me away as if I were of no more importance than an old boot. Although I
should
have been prepared, now that I think on our wedding night. Don’t look so disapproving!
No daughter of yours could go to her marriage bed without an excellent notion of what to expect there.”

“How glad I am that I encountered Beau in St. James’s,” murmured Devon. “When did she arrive?”

“Last night,” confided Mina, in equally low tones. “She hasn’t stopped complaining yet. Zoe has realized she married not the figure of her fantasies but a young gentleman as spoiled as she, and it has put her out of sorts. It makes
me
think of divine justice and the Hand of Fate.”

Beau studied his daughter. “You swore de Borghini was your true love.”

 “One’s true love doesn’t put one up as stakes at chemin de fer,” retorted Zoe. “Especially when he has no luck with the cards.”

Devon left off rubbing Grace’s belly to instead tickle her chin. “Speaking of ill-luck, is it true young Abercorn went down last night to the tune of five thousand pounds?”

Mina was intent on the drama playing out before her. “Hush!”

Beau wore an expression of extreme discomfort. “You didn’t— That is, ah!”

Zoe’s pretty features puckered. “I most definitely did not! Oh, how can you be so
heartless
?” She flung herself, weeping, at her papa.

“Good God!” muttered Dev.

Mina regarded Grace, sprawled now across Devon’s lap. “We are to call her Prudence. She is posing as a distant relative. I’m told Mme. Villiers induced you to drink champagne from her slipper. She probably thinks she’s brought you to heel, poor thing.”

 “You of all people should know better than to believe all you hear.” Devon leaned closer and added, “It wasn’t her slipper — but it was indeed champagne.”

Mina wondered from what article — or orifice — Mr. Kincaid had sipped the beverage. She flushed. He grinned.

“As Paolo’s wife, you are his property. He can do anything he wishes with and to you.” Beau grasped Zoe’s shoulders and gave her a little shake. In Italy, where divorce was impossible, murder was a time-honored way of ridding oneself of an unwanted spouse. Not that shedding a spouse was much easier in England, where an act of Parliament was required. “Mark my words, this will turn out to be a tempest in a teapot. Your toad will come to fetch you home.”

 “Not right away he won’t. I have laid a false trail.” A perfect tear trickled down Zoe’s cheek. “And though I may call the rat a toad,
you
may not!”

Beau offered her his handkerchief. “What a clever puss you are.’”

 “Aren’t I just?” Zoe snatched the handkerchief from him, and briskly blew her nose.

Mr. Kincaid looked revolted. Mina said, “I had thought five-and-forty a good age for a man: you are no longer wet behind the ears, but don’t yet have one foot in the grave. Now I begin to wonder. You do not seem to admire our Zoe.”

Devon eyed her lazily. “I prefer a female I can embrace without worrying about breaking her bones.”

“Piqued and repiqued,” acknowledged Mina, who was no longer as slender as once she had been.

Zoe wadded up the handkerchief. “By the time Paolo locates me, I shall have determined how to secure my revenge. Shooting him doesn’t seem a viable solution, tempting as it is. I would prefer not to hang.”

Beau also preferred that his daughter didn’t hang. Cautiously, he suggested Zoe stay out of sight. In response, she flopped into a nearby chair.

The door opened, admitting Samson, who brought Mina a note. She broke the wafer and scanned the crossed and re-crossed lines. The recent loser of five thousand pounds regretted to inform her that he had unexpectedly been called from town. Additionally, to his regret, his hitherto-indulgent father refused to pay his debt. Mr. Abercorn promised to redeem his vowels immediately he returned, and in the interim was leaving his most precious possession in her care.

 “His ‘most precious possession’,” said Mr. Kincaid, reading over Mina’s shoulder. “The words have an oddly familiar ring.”

Mina folded the letter. She had, since Moxley’s came into her possession, allowed more than one unlucky gambler to turn her up sweet. As a result, in lieu of monies owed, she was in temporary possession of watches and rings; a fine umbrella, little used; and a goat named Romeo who was busily eating his way through the kitchen garden while the cook threatened to turn him into a stew. “I may be too softhearted for this business, as my late spouse more than once pointed out, but no gamester will depart Moxley’s and put a bullet in his brain.”

“No, but you may put a bullet in yours,” said Samson. “Figg!”

The footman approached. By one hand, he led a fair-haired urchin. The child looked around, opened her mouth, and let out a horrific howl.