A Sister's Secret (3 page)

‘Regrettably, marm,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘ladies do have a weakness for villains. My own devious blandishments have, alas, secured the affections of several sweet innocents. In moments of remorse, I’ve confessed myself unworthy to more than one of them, but without causing any to recoil. Indeed, to be told of my failings only made them declare a loving wish to help me reform.’

Remembering her own weakness for Lord Clarence, and how she had ignored her father’s words of caution, Caroline bit her lip.

‘Innocence, sir, is a tender and susceptible thing,’ she said, ‘and the deviousness of designing men to be held in much contempt. However, pray allow me to continue …’ And she went on to say that her sister Annabelle must be detached from the man who would almost certainly seduce her. She must become infatuated with another, and in such a way that she would be cured of her feelings for Cumberland.

Captain Burnside raised dark eyebrows. ‘Cumberland, marm?’ he enquired.

‘That is the man, sir, the Duke of Cumberland himself.’

‘Your sister, marm, has indeed set her sights dangerously high,’ said the captain. ‘Cumberland will take her in his own time, play with her, toy with her, and leave her to her own devices once she’s with child.’

Caroline stiffened. ‘I would rather you used your tongue less disgracefully, sir,’ she said coldly. ‘I do not care to have
you comment on the consequences of immoral intimacies between Cumberland and my sister.’

‘But the unhappy possibility exists, marm.’

‘Then it is a possibility you must remove, sir, or does the mention of Cumberland intimidate you?’

‘Cumberland is a dark shadow in a thousand corridors, marm, but no, I am not intimidated.’ Captain Burnside smiled. ‘I ain’t as much in his way as his elder brothers are.’

‘His elder brothers?’ Caroline took serious note of that remark. ‘What is this, sir – an imputation that Cumberland wishes himself the only son of the King?’

‘He ain’t said so to me, marm. I merely made an observation. Favour me by continuing with that which is relevant to my commission.’

Caroline, casting from her mind the unbearable image of Annabelle
enceinte
by reason of Cumberland’s lust, said firmly, ‘I am engaging you, Captain Burnside, for the purpose of freeing my sister from her attachment to the duke. His arms have not yet closed about her, but they will, and perhaps as soon as she is twenty-one. In her giddiness at coming of age, she will be at her most foolish. I require you, therefore, to prevent this by inducing her to transfer her affections to you.’

‘Ah,’ said Captain Burnside.

‘Since you are infamously successful as a ladies’ man, you should not find that too difficult, I presume? You have the gifts of a virtuoso, have you not?’ Lady Caroline was ironic but hopeful. ‘Much as I detest the thought of my sister transferring her infatuation from a royal libertine to a conscienceless blackguard, I shall nevertheless endure it for her sake. You are following me, sir?’ Her green eyes searched his musing grey.

‘I am, perhaps, a little ahead of you,’ he said. ‘Ah – is your
sister of independent means? Comfortably possessed?’

Her eyes became a little fiery. ‘Sir?’ she said warningly.

‘I ain’t disposed to fleece her, marm, nor leave her in tears. If she owns sufficient of the ready or has excellent prospects, then once I’ve won her sweet affections I’ll not be averse to marrying her.’

‘Marrying her?’ Caroline flamed. ‘My sister? You?’

‘Well, d’you see, marm,’ said the captain reasonably, ‘I fancy that, in detaching her from Cumberland, I may become so much the object of her affections that she’ll conceive expectations.’

‘Dear Lord of mercy,’ breathed Caroline, ‘I vow I have never known such a scoundrel, nor one with so much love for himself. Under no circumstances, none whatever, are you to entertain the idea of marrying my sister.’

‘Well, there may be tears, marm …’

‘So there may, sir, but sooner tears than shameful disgrace. Attend on me, Captain Burnside, and take note that, if you succeed in this matter, you will at once return to the disreputable environment you no doubt inhabit. I will look to my sister and any tears she may shed concerning your disappearance. You will give Annabelle the attentiveness and consideration of a gentleman throughout, practising your deception as forgivably as you can, and then depart honourably, as I require you to and will pay you to. You will say, perhaps, that your regiment has called on you for active service abroad. That is as honourable as can be contrived, I suggest.’

‘Quite so, marm; all shall be as you wish,’ said Captain Burnside.

‘And now, sir, to the second part of your commission. This also concerns the Duke of Cumberland.’

‘The devil it does,’ murmured the captain. ‘The man’s a pervasive darkness.’

‘He has a letter,’ said Caroline.

‘Damn me, there’s—’

‘Sir?’ she said freezingly.

‘Humble apologies, Your Ladyship. But I was going to say there’s always a letter lurking somewhere or other. Who is the dear and unfortunate lady?’

‘Do not anticipate me, Captain Burnside, or attempt to take the dialogue out of my mouth. The lady in question is my dearest friend, Lady Hester Russell. The letter is of pale blue parchment and the wax seal, although broken by now, is stamped with a crest appertaining to a swan. Cumberland is using it to command Lady Russell’s obedience.’

‘Obedience?’

Caroline showed distaste. ‘Obedience to his demands, Captain Burnside. I am sure you know precisely what I mean. Cumberland has the devil’s own way of bringing the most reluctant woman to a bed. Lady Russell, at a country house party for a week, with her husband and other guests, had the misfortune to see her husband take a tumble that broke his leg. Incapacitated, he was placed in a ground-floor room to rest and recuperate. Lady Russell, alone in her bedroom that night, woke up to find Cumberland beside her.’

‘Say no more, marm,’ said the captain considerately. ‘I quite understand. Ravishment, alas, and yet the sweet weakness of yielding. And so, no doubt, illicit passion was born and indiscreet billets-doux began to spring from the wanton heart. Poor woman.’

‘Pray curb your vivid imagination,’ said Caroline. ‘Lady Russell has no wanton heart. Ravished, yes, but much against her will.’ Her lashes flickered. ‘Cumberland is all of capable of such a thing. She might have cried out, might have called for help, but there was her husband, sick and
suffering with a broken leg in uncomfortable splints. It was not a moment to make her shame known. Further, it was Cumberland she would have had to denounce, and, though he would not have given a fig for it, I vow he would have paid her out in a most unpretty fashion.’

‘And so she yielded,’ said the captain.

‘Only in shame and anguish, sir.’

‘Quite so, marm.’

Caroline frowned. ‘You are cynical, sir?’ she said.

‘Experienced,’ said the captain.

‘In ravishment?’ she enquired coldly.

‘In my observation of human weakness,’ smiled the captain.

Caroline frowned again. The truth was of a shaming kind, according to Hester herself. In desperation and tears she had confessed all to Caroline. Cumberland had indeed ravished her, despite her resistance, a resistance weakened by the circumstances and perhaps, yes, perhaps by the magnetic quality of the man. Hester had blushed vividly in confessing this, in confessing all that had led to her eventual submission, and Caroline remembered all too clearly how Cumberland had attempted to bring her to bed at Great Wivenden. Hester said that after her shameful submission she had begged Cumberland to leave, but he had stayed, he had shared her bed until dawn. Much to her further shame, instead of doing the only obvious thing – slipping from the bed herself and going down to keep her suffering husband company by sleeping in a chair beside him – she had allowed Cumberland to stay and had stayed herself. He took full advantage of this and further ravishment took place during the night, and she was horrified by the extent of her submission. Worse, she conceived a carnal passion for him, a passion that was a quite unspeakable
consequence of her shameful night. She became his mistress, his infatuated mistress.

‘Yes, weakness did exist,’ said Caroline, returning to the subject after her long, reflective pause, ‘and I vow it a despairing thing in such a sweet woman as Lady Russell. She did conceive a passion for Cumberland. Myself, I should have conceived only a desire to strike the man dead.’

‘We are at the point, marm,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘where I may assume Cumberland has a revealing letter of hers and uses it to bring her to his bed from time to time?’

‘You assume correctly,’ said Caroline, ‘and she is in utter distraction, for her ardour died after a few brief months and she is terrified her husband will discover her guilt. If you can procure that letter from Cumberland, you will be gratefully rewarded. Since he is blackmailing her, I trust I can rely on you to see that the biter is bitten. You can accomplish this at the card table, achieving such substantial IOUs as to compel him to give up the letter in exchange for them. Such are the debts of all the royal dukes that they are never in any position to remit payment of heavy gambling losses. Cumberland is an avid, addicted gambler. No sooner will he hear that you are renowned at cards yourself than he will want to set to with you at once. You will ensure he loses very heavily.’

Captain Burnside mused on what was coolly expected of him. ‘I shall need money, marm, and luck.’

‘I will provide you with funds, sir. But luck, do you say? What need do you have of luck when you own so many accomplishments?’ Caroline’s softly drawn vowels were laden with irony. ‘You are a consummate cheat, are you not? That is to say, you can palm a card or cause a dice to fall as you wish without arousing the smallest suspicion?’

‘Well, it’s true I’ve had moments when all has been won by dexterous sleight of hand,’ said the captain, regarding her with much thought. To Caroline, he seemed to be musing on the feminine appeal of her fashionably low décolleté, which did not please her at all. ‘Cumberland,’ he murmured, ‘ain’t known to be a dunderhead, however, and his one sound eye is wickedly keen.’

‘Is one sound eye keener than the sharp talents of a virtuoso? Or have you merely been offering me the conceits of a braggart?’

‘Substantial IOUs,’ said the captain thoughtfully. ‘Very well, marm, consider it done.’

‘I hope, sir,’ said Caroline with asperity, ‘that you don’t think me simple enough to accept that particular conceit. The matter will be accomplished when it has been. It will not be accomplished merely by your saying so.’

‘We shall see, marm, we shall see.’

‘So we shall,’ she said, ‘and I declare myself hopeful. But I should not be true to my honour if I did not warn you that Cumberland is an adversary as dangerous as Satan. One mistake, one wrong move, and I vow you are like to be discovered in the Thames, drowned and very dead.’

‘As a professional hireling, marm, I accept the risks.’

‘I commend you for that,’ she said. ‘Now, sir, what are your present circumstances?’

‘In faith, I’m deucedly short of the ready,’ admitted the captain, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

‘Most men who live by their wits own thin purses,’ said Caroline. ‘Have you never considered honest work?’

Captain Burnside appeared pained. ‘God forbid, marm, I should ever become a porter or a shipping clerk.’

‘Either might keep you from ending up in prison,’ she declared. ‘I find it difficult to believe your father was a bishop.’

‘Well, so he was, marm, and died in a state of peace and beatitude. I had not then disturbed his soul by becoming the family black sheep.’

‘I do declare, you are singularly deplorable, sir,’ she said. ‘Are you not ashamed that, as the son of a gentle mother and a man of God, you are a self-confessed rake and even a thief?’

‘I assure you, marm, I could own finer principles if I weren’t so poor.’

‘Hard, honest work would lift you out of poverty, Captain Burnside. Now, I shall advance you fifty guineas. It will cover such expenses as you entail. You are to come to this house on Friday, bringing a suitable wardrobe with you. You will profess to be an old friend of mine, lately returned to England from service abroad, and my guest for a period. Do you still own a uniform?’

‘I do,’ said the captain. ‘I find on occasions it can induce a young lady to regard me as becoming, valiant and deserving …’

‘Spare me these ridiculous irrelevancies, sir,’ said Caroline. ‘Bring your uniform. Is the rest of your wardrobe as acceptable as that which you are wearing now?’

‘I confess, marm, that part of your advance will sweeten my tailor and persuade him to release to me two new coats, some silk cravats and—’

‘Yes, yes,’ she said in some impatience. ‘Meet the costs out of the advance.’

‘I’m obliged, marm, very,’ he said.

‘So you should be, for in giving you any monies at all I am placing almost foolish trust in you.’ Caroline opened a drawer and took out a soft leather bag of coins. She pushed it across the desk to him. ‘Fifty guineas in gold,’ she said.

‘I’m deeply obliged, marm,’ he said, slipping the bag
into his pocket without opening it, and this at least she appreciated.

‘Am I now faced with the possibility that you’ll decamp?’ she asked.

‘You have my word that I won’t,’ said the captain.

‘I accept the risk that you might.’

‘Be assured, Your Ladyship, that there’s no risk, for you’re now my patron.’ He coughed. ‘Ah – we haven’t discussed the fee. You’ll forgive my mention of it?’

‘I should have been surprised if you had forgotten to,’ she said. ‘Your fee, sir, will be two hundred guineas.’

‘Marm?’ Captain Burnside looked a little put out. ‘That’s part of the whole?’

‘That, sir,
is
the whole, in addition to the fifty guineas for your expenses.’ Caroline was firm. ‘It’s an amount that will keep you very comfortably for more than a year. I consider it very generous, especially as you have implied the venture was no sooner agreed than accomplished.’

‘Quite so,’ said the captain, ‘which is to say that a professional of my class must command a worthier fee than a bungling amateur.’