A Sister's Secret (23 page)

Her shaking hand set down the large mug. ‘Don’t talk like that, sir,’ she begged, ‘it fair gives me the shivers.’

‘Upon my soul,’ said the captain. He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, looking into luminous eyes. ‘Is this the brave Betsy who has shared perils with me as my confederate? Quakings and shiverings before we’ve scarcely begun to discuss our next endeavour?’

‘But, sir,’ said Betsy through trembling lips, ‘you be so flummoxing with your talk of embarrassments and heads on spikes, and saying I must let you in by day.’

‘Oh, I’m as much flummoxed as you are by all we’re required to do for the sake of the duke, but it ain’t for us to question it, pretty puss. There.’ He gave her a comforting kiss. Her trembling lips sprang into eager life. With so fascinating and exciting a gentleman, kissing
was delicious. ‘Now, courage, Betsy,’ he said, and caressed her soft chin.

‘Oh, some kisses be almost better than guineas, sir,’ she said.

‘You shall have a guinea or two more, and a kiss or two more. Yes, why not, since you own such warm lips?’

‘Nor I won’t say no to being fondled, sir, only can’t I let you in at night and not day? By day, sir, the house be full of comings and goings.’

‘The side door is always locked, Betsy?’

‘Bolted, sir, and opened only for people coming with goods and eatables and suchlike.’

‘Well, Betsy, contrive to draw the bolts as near to noon on the twenty-ninth of July as you can. You need not wait. Merely slip the bolts, then make yourself scarce, though with such a sweet shape as you have your noticeability ain’t ever going to reduce you to invisibility. A small point, but a delicious one.’

‘Oh, maybe I could do that, sir. Maybe I could draw the bolts as quiet as a mouse. Just that, sir. I daresn’t linger, I always be so busy. It be different of an evening, when I’m not so busy and can say there’s a gentleman friend coming to see me.’

‘There, that’s capital. I’ll be delivering a cheese, Betsy.’

‘A cheese?’ Betsy looked visibly flummoxed.

‘Or a small cask of wine. So that if I’m seen I’ve an excuse, d’you see, and also an apology ready for being at the wrong address.’

‘Oh, you be a rare thinking gentleman, sir. And all for the good of His Highness, who be a stern and fearful duke and not afraid of the devil hisself. Sir, what will you be up to in the house?’

‘Looking out for the devil, puss. As our Lord Chancellor says, the devil appears in various guises. Have no
fears, my quaking partridge, you have no more to do than draw the bolts. You shall meet with no unhappy fate on the gibbet or the block. Unless you blow the gaff. So, not a word, as before.’

‘Lord, no, sir, not a whisper. Oh, you be a kind and caring gentleman, looking after me not being hanged and pleasuring me with guineas. There be one or two coming to me now?’

‘For now, some silver shillings, puss.’ Captain Burnside slipped several into her receptive hand. She glowed, swivelled in her chair, drew up her servant’s gown and slipped the coins into a pocket of her white linen pantaloons. ‘H’m,’ said the captain, ‘I ain’t sure the Lord Chancellor would approve that. He ain’t a gentleman given to allowing sauciness in young ladies.’

‘Oh, I be in shameful forgetfulness of where I be,’ said Betsy, trying to blush. She regarded her pantaloons accusingly. She glanced to see if her gentleman was looking. Her gentleman gave her a kind and forgiving smile. ‘Well, ’tisn’t as if I be wearing them I keep for my Sundays off, sir. They be rare pretty things, not the kind to be forgetful about.’

‘Very well. We’ll excuse these. Now, finish your coffee, saucy kitten, and then you and I will go.’

‘But there’s been no kissing,’ protested Betsy, ‘and it aren’t right I shouldn’t let you, though it always puts me in a rare tizzy. Still, seeing you’re such a kind and giving gentleman, sir, kissing’s only fair, and I won’t scream the place down.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ said Captain Burnside, and gave her a kind kiss. Betsy closed her eyes and parted her lips. Her pink tongue flicked and foraged. She took his hands and placed them on her bodice. Kindly, in his professionalism, he caressed her. Betsy gave a sighing moan
and buried her face in his shoulder. ‘Come, come, minx, you’ll not be feeling this is a fate worse than death, will you?’ he suggested.

‘Oh, I be feeling terrible shy and embarrassed, sir.’

‘Then I shan’t press my attentions, Betsy, for it won’t do to have you shy and embarrassed. That’s a poor reward for the brave service you’ve given me.’

‘Oh, I aren’t saying this kind of embarrassment aren’t bearable, sir, nor that I won’t let you unlace me …’

‘Unlace you? Heavens, puss, unlacing a loyal accomplice is most strictly forbidden.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t breathe a word, that I wouldn’t,’ said Betsy.

‘No, no, there are the rules, Betsy, as well as your blushes. Come, it’s time we left.’

Betsy sighed. On the way back to her duties, her gentleman escorting her part of the way, she suggested he might be wishful to set her up. At which he drew her hastily into the shelter of a columned portico.

‘Damn me,’ he whispered, ‘if that ain’t my dearly beloved wife.’ Betsy saw a lady daintily tripping along on the other side of the street. ‘There, d’you see how the quirks of fate can catch one out? If I hadn’t clapped my peepers on her first, she’d have spotted us. Dear as she is to me, one look at you and your prettiness, and I’d have been hard put to explain you away. Praise the Lord, she’s gone now, out of sight, but no more talk of setting you up, my tempting puss.’

‘Oh, I be downright disappointed,’ sighed Betsy, ‘for I’m gone on you something cruel. Yet it’s sweet knowing you’re wishful to be true to her. That be nice. Still,’ she added hopefully, ‘there’s always kissing, which aren’t as unfaithful as setting me up. Sir, if something happens and I be unable to draw them bolts that day, for I’m
sometimes sent out on errands and suchlike, where can I send a message to you?’

He mused. Betsy had perception. She had seen ahead, in a thinking way.

‘Well, let’s pray something like that won’t happen, but if it does, you can send the message. You’ve a boy in the household you can trust?’

‘Yes, there be Isaac the bootboy, sir. I be a favourite with Isaac.’

‘Good.’ He gave her Lady Caroline’s address, without mentioning his hostess, and he merely gave his own name as Mr Burnside.

He took tea later that afternoon with Caroline and Annabelle. Caroline had paid him out a little during the morning. She had insisted he go shopping with her and Annabelle, and in the coolest and most audacious fashion had made him carry all the parcels. Annabelle had had fits of giggles, for of all joyous things Caroline had purchased silk stockings and garters under his waiting eyes, and then planted the daintily wrapped box in his arms, where rested other packages. The captain had gazed fixedly at the shop ceiling. And then Caroline had said, ‘Come, there are other things, Captain, so please don’t dawdle.’

How, Annabelle wondered, could her sister be so deliciously wicked to him?

Over tea, Caroline was a little more mellow. And the captain’s conversation was engaging. He had been out to call on a friend, he had said, and his outing seemed to have left him pleased with himself. Caroline, when asked if she would permit him to make his call, replied out of earshot of her sister that it was wholly gratifying to be asked, and that he could go providing the friend in
question was not one of his more dubious acquaintances. He assured her his friend was a worthy citizen.

Watching him now, as he exchanged quips with her sister, Caroline thought the two of them extraordinarily compatible. Annabelle was entirely alive, her laughter quick to come, her blue eyes dancing. Was she falling in love with him? Or, wait, was her vivacious mood due to the fact that Cumberland would be present this evening? She had confessed it was indeed true that Captain Burnside had driven her to the duke’s residence, but that she went only to talk to him, to try to discover if his intentions were serious. She frankly confessed that she left in a distressed state because she felt it so unfair that he should be in love with her, yet give her only upsetting and unsatisfactory answers. In her distress she left her parasol behind. Caroline told her she was making a grievous mistake if she thought Cumberland was actually in love with her. He was in love with no one. He was capable of only loving himself. Annabelle said that was being very hard on him.

Either she was still infatuated with him and in animated anticipation of seeing him this evening, or she was falling in love with Captain Burnside, which was what had been planned and which the captain had said would be accomplished. Dear heaven, thought Caroline, how could I have considered this ploy acceptable? It was an outrageous thing from the beginning, a desperately amoral alternative to Annabelle’s dangerous relationship with Cumberland. In pushing her sister into the arms of a professional blackguard, she was no less reprehensible than he was.

Annabelle laughed and leaned, and Caroline saw her lay a light, playful hand on the captain’s knee.

‘Fie, Charles,’ she said, ‘I declare that remark out of all order.’

‘I remarked only, in so many words, that eventually the gentleman of your romantic choice would find a tease on his hands,’ smiled the captain.

‘To the eventual gentleman of my choice, I shall be as sweet as he could wish,’ said Annabelle. ‘That is, as long as he is sweet to me.’

‘Such a gentleman will be a fellow countryman, young lady?’

Annabelle fluttered her lashes and looked at him demurely. ‘But, Charles,’ she said, ‘like Caroline, I have become devoted to the gentlemen of England.’

‘I am alarmed,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘for I see in that the dire prospect of you and Caroline becoming a tease to all of us, and we will be wrecked.’

‘I am sure, Captain Burnside, that in knowing me for as long as you have, you are aware I do not indulge in teasing men,’ said Caroline.

‘Ah, but your warm beauty, that is teasing enough,’ said the captain with a smile, ‘and in your younger days, as a newly arrived magnolia bloom, your eyes held the most bewitching tease. Along with other gentlemen, I groaned in acute suffering when you chose Lord Percival for husband.’

Delightedly, Annabelle clapped her hands. ‘Caroline, there, Charles has declared he had a passion for you,’ she cried.

Caroline vibrated. What a specious serpent he was, with his devious tongue and his smiling familiarities, and the advantage he took of their contrived relationship.

‘I do not remember hearing his groans,’ she said, ‘I only remember his single passion was for cards. Let us see where that will lead him with Cumberland this evening.’

Both chandeliers shed light over the card room. Every candle burned with a tall, steady flame, and every flame was variously reflected by the facets of the crystal glass. Around the card table sat Cumberland, Mr Robert Humphreys, the duke’s most cordial and obliging friend, Captain Burnside and Mr Gerald Wingrove, currently closest, so it was said, to Caroline’s reserved affections.

Very obligingly, Robert had agreed to a suggestion made by Cumberland before they reached Lady Caroline’s residence. That to down the Burnside fellow he should stand on all hands when the drawing of another card would risk running him over the top. He should stand, therefore, on any score from twelve to twenty-one. The Burnside fellow was patently an egoistic show-off who, when holding the bank, would always elect for a risky draw. That was when to stand consistently, when Burnside had the bank.

The ploy was working. Robert was collecting steadily each time the captain held the bank. Cumberland’s play was of his usual impassive kind, but his stakes were heavier when he was confronted by the captain. He had much to make up if he were to reduce the burden of the IOU.

On the other side of the room, Caroline was playing backgammon with Annabelle and Cecilia Humphreys. Cecilia was in placid concentration, but neither Caroline nor Annabelle showed total interest. Annabelle was sensitive to the presence of Cumberland and his muscular magnificence. Caroline, with many a casual gesture – a touch to her curling ringlets, a fingertip caress of an eyebrow, a light change of posture or a hand at her throat – cast brief glances at Captain Burnside. It was of all things the most vexing to find her eye-wandering so compulsive. Naturally, there was the money factor to be
concerned about. Her money. She had spoken to him about it before Cumberland arrived.

‘It is purely Cumberland’s pocket now that you have secured the letter,’ she said.

‘Well, it’s a ravaged pocket at the moment, Caroline, to the extent of nine hundred and eighty guineas.’

She passed over his use of her name, which she only permitted normally when Annabelle was present.

‘He’ll not pay such a sum,’ she said. ‘He won’t precisely disown the debt, for he can’t, not a card debt, as you know. He’ll declare, should you press him, that a remittance will be forthcoming. They are all forever in debt, the King’s sons, and it would never do to sue Cumberland, for if you do you’ll be arrested on a trumped-up charge and you’ll be convicted and transported. He’ll do his best tonight to win back the better part of the IOU, and he may, perhaps, put you in debt to him. I have agreed with you that I shall discharge such a debt. By the same reckoning, you shall hand to me such winnings that he does settle. He will settle, I think, if he can reduce the IOU to, say, two hundred guineas.’

‘Ah,’ said the captain wryly, ‘that’s a wounding blow, marm. I thought perhaps you’d allow me to line my threadbare pockets.’

‘Sir, you have earned yourself half your fee so far, and that should line them richly.’

‘I ain’t quite able to recall if I’ve had the remittance from you, marm.’

‘You will receive it, sir, when the whole venture is over. I am sure that if you were to receive it now, you would vanish.’

‘It don’t do, marm, to upset a patron, for if I did I’d earn a reputation for dishonesty, and no patron would recommend me to another.’

She could not help herself. The coolness she had shown him since last night slipped away and the compulsive laughter danced in her eyes. ‘Captain Burnside, you take my breath. A reputation for dishonesty? But the principles of dishonesty are what make you what you are, do they not? A professional scoundrel?’