A Sister's Secret (21 page)

‘I cannot enjoy this kind of conversation, Your Highness. May I know why you’ve come looking for me?’

‘To ask if I’ll be seeing ye at Lady Chesterfield’s ball, for I swear it’ll have no spice for me if ye ain’t there.’

‘I shall be there, sir.’

‘And your sister and the pretty captain?’

‘Lady Chesterfield has invited them both.’ Caroline had received an immediate affirmative from Lady Chesterfield.

‘Ah.’ Cumberland looked satisfied. ‘Ye’re sure I can’t favour ye?’

‘How favour me, sir?’

‘By escorting ye to a flowery alcove and convincing ye of my unchanging affections, for I see no sign of your companions, who I fancy have found their own alcove.’

‘You will allow me to decline, Your Highness?’

‘Not without a sigh for your own lack of affection,’ said Cumberland. ‘But I ain’t impatient where you’re concerned, and though ye may see some imperfections ye’ll come to admire in me that which will tell ye I’m a man above all else.’ And his dark eye searched her, as if looking for a revealing flash of distrust. But he saw only her inveterate coolness.

‘I cannot respond to that,’ she said.

‘Ye might, ye might in time. Ah, yes, something else.’ His smile was that of the devil in jest. He made a gesture, and Erzburger came forward. He handed the parasol to the duke, and retreated. The duke proffered the parasol to Caroline. ‘Your sister’s,’ he said. ‘She forgot to take it with her when she left my house yesterday afternoon. Good day to ye, Lady Clarence.’ He lifted his top hat and walked leisurely away. His henchmen followed. Caroline, the folded parasol in her hand, quivered, and her mouth set in an angry line.

Swiftly, she made her way towards the pavilion, for there she and Annabelle were to have lunch with Captain Burnside. Turning into another walk, she saw them. They had come to a halt on their approach to the pavilion, and were facing each other. Annabelle was laughing up at him, and her closeness to him was positively unseemly. Caroline swept up to them.

‘You have had an excessively long tête-à-tête,’ smiled Annabelle.

‘Go aside,’ said Caroline.

‘Caroline?’ Annabelle looked perplexed.

‘Go aside. I wish to speak to Captain Burnside before I speak to you. And take this. It is yours.’

Annabelle flushed as Caroline thrust the parasol at her. Captain Burnside looked rueful.

‘But, Caroline,’ said Annabelle, taking the parasol, ‘it is so unfair to treat me as if I were a child—’

‘You are a child. Go aside, do you hear?’

Annabelle flushed again, but found the spirit to draw herself up and walk until she was out of earshot, when she stopped and began her enforced wait.

Caroline confronted Captain Burnside, her eyes on fire. ‘Trickster, villain, deceiver, I vow you wholly contemptible,’ she hissed.

‘H’m,’ said Captain Burnside, and allowed a lady and gentleman to pass before he said more. ‘Cumberland has scored a paltry victory at the expense of sweetness.’

‘He is in the Gardens, sir. He spoke to me, returned the parasol to me and scored his victory at my expense too.’ Caroline was so angry that she could have struck her traitorous hireling. His utter lack of principles and his unholy deception created within her the kind of emotional turmoil worse than any she had suffered during the years of her disastrous marriage. ‘I cannot
believe such treachery. You swore, sir, to keep Annabelle apart from Cumberland, to do all you could to turn her aside from him. But yesterday you drove her to his house, you contrived behind my back to help her keep an assignation with him! Do you deny it?’

‘Faith, I might to another patron, marm, but not to one as magnificent as you—’

‘Speak me no honey, sir. If there is any kind of a man in you at all, confess your betrayal!’ There was the fury of almost uncontrollable anger in her expression, and fiery contempt in her eyes. ‘Oh, in South Carolina, sir, make no mistake, I would have you whipped for such unforgivable duplicity.’

‘Understandable, I fancy,’ said the rueful captain, ‘and you’ll not believe, I dare say, that it was all to do with policy.’

‘Policy?
Policy?
’

‘If one brings the lamb to look into the face of the wolf often enough, the lamb will begin to question the sharpness of the wolf’s teeth.’

‘But once too often, sir, and the lamb will be devoured. You have driven out with Annabelle several times. Have there been other betrayals?’

‘Only in pursuance of the policy, marm. Be assured Annabelle is coming to suspect Cumberland is interested only in her appeal as a virgin, and I fancy she ain’t now as disposed as she might have been to surrender herself on account of excitement and pleasure alone.’

‘I declare, sir,’ she breathed, her parasol itself quivering, ‘that the familiarity and indelicacy with which you speak of my sister and her virginity make you no more endearing to me than your general infamy.’

‘Well, marm,’ said Captain Burnside placatingly, ‘I spoke in the frankest terms, d’you see, to Annabelle
herself concerning the possibility that it was her sweet innocence that makes Cumberland keen to bed her. Perceptibly, marm, it raised her guard.’

Caroline felt the frustration of a woman who knew there were a thousand fiery words she could fling at him, but could not lay her tongue to any of them. For all his air of apology, there was not the slightest sign that he was truly perturbed or truly ashamed. He even smiled at her.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘were it not for your acquisition of the letter, I would send you packing here and now. I trusted you. You assured me that, as your patron, I could rely on you to act only as I wished you to. Why did you not confide your tactics to me?’

‘A reasonable question, marm, very reasonable,’ he said, while Annabelle waited and watched. ‘The fact is, I’ve a lamentable tendency to do things my own way, and it don’t always make for harmony to let a patron know precisely what I’m about. Moreover, most patrons are only concerned with results. Beg to point out, marm, that poor Annabelle don’t look too blissful at being out in the cold, as it were. Beg to suggest, marm, you forgive us both and bring her back to the comfort of your merciful bosom.’

Caroline could hardly believe her ears at such speciousness and such highfalutin tush. Her merciful bosom indeed! She eyed him warningly. He coughed and lifted his gaze to the little galaxy of fluffy white clouds sailing through the blue sky. A quiver took hold of her. It travelled, it reached her mouth. She could not control it. Her lips broke apart. She laughed, almost helplessly. Annabelle heard it, richly ringing.

Her sister looked at her and beckoned. ‘Come, Annabelle, take this impossible man off my hands.’

Annabelle rejoined them, though she looked a little hesitant. ‘Caroline?’

‘Oh, yes, you surely need to cast your eyes down, sister.’

‘But I am not,’ protested Annabelle.

‘More shame on you, then,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh, how difficult it is to protect a sister when she won’t obey London’s first rules, which are that no young lady should place herself alone with a man, that a chaperone must always be present. Nor can I rely on Captain Burnside, despite our friendship, to help me, it seems.’

‘Oh, but Charles has been a dear friend to me,’ said Annabelle, ‘and given me such good advice, oh, he surely has. I cannot help my feelings for the Duke of Cumberland, but I know Charles will let me do nothing that will put you in a truly rageful pet.’ And she slipped her arm through the captain’s to show the affectionate confidence she had in him.

If this signified she was becoming very attached to him, and if this meant the desired result was in the offing, it was not something that seemed to please Caroline. She bit her lip. ‘I do not get into rageful pets,’ she said, ‘but I own myself sensitive enough to feel discomfited when I am left to be accosted by the Corinthian element.’

‘Accosted?’ murmured the captain, looking a stylish Corinthian himself in his dark brown coat and light brown pantaloons. ‘Here, in Vauxhall Gardens?’

‘Yes, here, sir, and I’m sure you saw the person in question.’

‘But we thought him a most elegant and aristocratic gentleman, not a person,’ said Annabelle, ‘and we also thought that perhaps you knew him.’

‘It won’t do,’ said Caroline, remembering the embarrassment of being alone when Cumberland saw her. ‘Captain Burnside, I’m sure, is well aware of the subtle
importunities unescorted ladies can suffer here, and I was mortified to find myself deserted by you and by him.’

She did not look mortified, thought Annabelle; she looked full of challenging life.

‘It’s true the atmosphere of the Gardens invites shy glances from unattached ladies,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘and shy glances provoke subtle advances …’

‘Fiddle-de-dee, sir, and tush,’ said Caroline. ‘I am not given to glancing shyly or otherwise at persons I do not know.’

‘True, true,’ said the captain, ‘but then you don’t need to, my dear Caroline. Your beauty alone is enough to provoke a hopeful advance, and I dare say even a blind man might be smitten.’

Again Caroline’s mouth quivered, but she said, straight-faced, ‘Sir, you are above yourself.’

Heavens, this is delicious, thought Annabelle. There is something between these two that has nothing to do with mere friendship.

‘Well, I apologize sincerely, Caroline, for mistaking the situation,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘but we did indeed think you knew the – ah – person. Might I now recommend we go on our way to the pavilion and see what is on offer for lunch? Yes, capital. Now, your hand on my arm, Caroline, and don’t detach it, for there in the distance are two more persons, both already seeming interested in you, and capable, I don’t doubt, of running off with you given only half a chance.’

Annabelle laughed in delight. Caroline gazed at her impossible hireling. He smiled and offered his arm. She took it, worryingly aware of feeling indefinably susceptible. There was no denying he was a thief, an adventurer, a deceiver. He had done with Annabelle what he should not have done. He deserved to be dismissed
and sent on his way. He deserved a thousand fiery words, and each should have left the scar of a burning arrow.

Instead, she and Annabelle were walking to have lunch with the unconscionable rogue in the bright pavilion, and both were arm-in-arm with him.

At a quarter to four, Annabelle, having been persuaded to do so by her sister, was writing a letter to her parents, a letter detailing many of the current excitements of the London season and into which a host of aristocratic names were being dropped. But, with the letter almost finished, she had made no mention of plans to return home.

In the drawing room, rested and refreshed from the outing to Vauxhall Gardens, Caroline asked Helene to serve tea. ‘Let Miss Annabelle know,’ she said, ‘and let Captain Burnside know too. I think he is in his room.’

‘No, milady, he is out,’ said Helene. ‘He left the house ten minutes ago, and took the carriage.’

‘I see.’ Caroline appeared to receive the news calmly. ‘Then tea just for Miss Annabelle and myself, please.’

‘Yes, Your Ladyship,’ said Helene and made her way to the kitchen.

Caroline simmered. The man was an atrocious wretch. He had sneaked himself out of the house and taken the carriage. Positively, his objective was either to fleece some trusting, innocent girl or to meet a trollop. His time was not his own: it belonged to her. But she supposed
he was so addicted to fleecing innocents or pleasuring himself with trollops that either pursuit was compulsive.

Fleecing innocents was bad enough, pleasuring himself with trollops was worse, far worse. The thought actually pained her, dreadfully.

Captain Burnside sat in the carriage, its hood up. Sammy, the young coachman, had harnessed the two sleek horses for him. He liked the captain, and not just for the tips he gave him.

Mr Franz Erzburger left the duke’s residence at five minutes after four. Outside, a diminutive groom had the smartest kind of carriage ready. Erzburger climbed into the seat, nodded curtly, and the groom stepped aside. The pair went off at a fast trot. Captain Burnside followed at a discreet distance. Erzburger took himself neatly through the town traffic and headed north-west. The traffic lightened outside the city environs, and he made brisk progress all the way to the pretty village of Islington, where recent development had taken place to provide city merchants with attractive houses. Older and smaller houses offered modest comfort to clerks and civil servants.

Erzburger pulled up outside a small, cottage-style house on the eastern outskirts. Well behind him, Captain Burnside turned off the dry, rutted road into a lane. He tethered his pair and walked back to the road, from where he saw Erzburger entering the house. The captain waited. It was fifteen minutes before the duke’s secretary came out of the house, in company with a slight, wiry man, a bundle under his arm. They both boarded the carriage, and Erzburger began a turning manoeuvre. Captain Burnside retreated to his own vehicle, positioned himself out of sight in front of his pair and waited again.
Erzburger drove past the lane. The captain jumped back into Caroline’s carriage, turned it quickly with the intelligent aid of the horses, and went once more in pursuit of Erzburger, but always at a distance.

Erzburger drove to Aldgate and to the district a little south of it, into an area somewhat less salubrious than Islington. The evening was fine, fine enough to reveal shabbiness and poverty. Men, rough-hewn and weary from work at the docks, sat outside their doors. A few women stood on doorsteps. Erzburger passed them and turned into a cobbled street where the dwellings showed cleaner windows and the refuse on the cobbles was not an especial eyesore. He stopped. A small urchin darted to offer his service in holding the bridle.

Captain Burnside went past the cobbled street without halting. He cast only a quick glance. He noted the door outside which the duke’s secretary had stopped. He drove out of the area. He was within seeing distance, however, a minute or two later, and remained there, keeping himself inconspicuous. This time he had to wait almost half an hour before he saw the smart carriage re-emerge from the cobbled street and turn back the way it had come. In the carriage was Erzburger alone.