Folly's Reward (18 page)

Prudence gazed at her hands. Had she done the right thing with that coded message that Harry had brought from France? Had Admiral Rafter deciphered it?

Whatever it turned out to be, she could never tell Helena what her husband’s brother might have been involved in, because Helena so very plainly wouldn’t be able to face it.

* * *

Harry checked with Mrs. Hood that Prudence and Bobby were secure in their bedroom, before striding off to his own chamber. He paced for some time, thinking over the encounter in Richard’s study.

Acton Mead had proved to be as safe as the lion’s den. There was a certain grim irony in it. If Prudence had gone off to Wiltshire as she had planned, he could have arrived here alone and perhaps thrown the marquess off the scent. Now what the devil was he going to do?

Harry turned at the knock on his door. Richard stepped into the room. A faint crease of anxiety lay between his winged eyebrows.

“All right, Harry,” he said, leaning back against the door and folding his arms across his chest. “What the devil is going on?”

Harry faced him perfectly seriously. “What is going on, dear brother, is that your eminent guest stands to inherit a sizable estate upon the unhappy demise of the small Lord Dunraven. His grandmother, whom one would think had no motives at all except love for the child, was concerned enough to attempt to send Bobby into hiding.”

“Yes, I gathered all that. So the child was rushed away from Dunraven Castle with his governess, who then tried to flee with him into England. Belham told me all about it. But you must have been more than your usual lunatic self to take part in such a hare-brained scheme. The child is just five, I understand. How the devil do you justify keeping him from his legal guardian?”

“I thought I had just explained.”

Richard ran one hand back through his blond hair.

“You expect me to believe that the Marquess of Belham is prepared to commit infanticide in order to secure title to a damp keep in the Highlands and its paltry income? For God’s sake, Belham is one of the wealthiest men in the realm.”

Harry flung himself back onto his bed and gestured Richard into a chair opposite.

“Is he? Does that preclude him from wickedness or greed?”

Richard walked to the chair and dropped into it. He met Harry’s gaze without flinching.

“No, of course not. But that he is respected and trusted in both society and government would seem to weigh heavily in his favor. And I believe that he has no interest at all in Scotland, apart from his mother’s relatives. All of his concerns are based in London. Lord Belham does secret work that is vital in the struggle against Napoleon. Among other things, he has a talent for codes.”

“Well, good for him!”

“He also wants to talk privately to you about something. I suspect it’s not only concern for little Bobby that brings him to Acton Mead. Belham has been tracking you for weeks. Are you in possession of vital information of some kind?”

“Not that I know of!” Harry’s surprise turned to laughter.

“So what the devil were you doing in Scotland?”

“I have no idea. ‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead, / Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land!’ Of course, Scotland is Walter Scott’s native land, not mine. I have about as much interest in Argyle as you claim Lord Belham does.”

“You mean you won’t tell me?”

Harry sat up and stared at his brother. “I’m keeping nothing from you, Richard, I give you my solemn word. I truly have no idea. It would seem that I was shipwrecked in a storm—even though no ship was reported missing—and that I received a blow on the head in the disaster. I suffered a complete and grotesque amnesia. I didn’t even know my own name, damn it all, until I arrived in Oxford. I have no memories of France. I don’t even know why I went there in the first place.”

“Oh, dear God!” Richard seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment. “All right. One thing at a time. Lord Belham tells me you were found on a beach, half-drowned. Is that right?”

“The puissant marquess does have excellent information, doesn’t he? Yes, I was discovered as limp as sun-bleached seaweed by Miss Prudence Drake on a beach in Argyleshire. I was wearing a sailor’s jacket and trousers with my own boots and underwear, and was as vacant and sunny as a babe.”

“Do you think someone could have knocked you over the head somewhere else and dumped you there deliberately?”

“I thought of that, but Prudence heard me muttering in French, something about all being lost and abandoning ship. How would this hypothesis explain that?”

“It doesn’t, of course. Very well, forget that part for a moment. Let’s tackle what happened in France. You truly remember nothing?”

“All is as blank as a good footman’s face, dear Richard. It’s been damned unpleasant.”

“Then listen! You left England for Paris in January. I had reports that Madame Relet’s brothel burned to the ground about a month later. Do you think you had a hand in that?”

“A brothel?” Harry closed his eyes for a moment, searching for answers.

Richard grimaced. “Oh, for God’s sake! It’s why you went to France in the first place.” Quickly he gave Harry an account of the scheme involving the young English girls, which they had interrupted the previous autumn. “After Helena and I were reconciled, and our enemy met his death, you went to Paris to rescue some of the English girls still imprisoned in the
maison
. You must have had success, since one of them wrote to me in February and gave me a lurid and complete account of her adventures.”

“Someone wrote to you about me?”

“Little Penny from Cornwall was happily restored to her parents, thanks to the efforts of a dark-haired gentleman, who had managed to gain the trust of Madame Relet. He had very fine blue eyes and a way with him—or that’s how Penny was pleased to put it. The girls escaped during a planned diversion when said gentleman set fire to the place. He had carriages waiting, and passage was already arranged to England for those who wanted it. By some miracle no one was killed in the fire, but Madame Relet was ruined and has retired to Lyons. The story had your outrageous stamp on it from beginning to end. You truly don’t remember?”

Harry dropped his head onto his folded hands. He had dreamed of it. That confused jumble of scenes, echoing with broken snatches of rhyme and a far-off sound of screaming.
There was a young fellow who kissed / Madame in her shift, but he missed
. . . A blur of gaming tables, and empty wine bottles, and men shouting; a building burning fiercely, its timbers crashing down in sheets of flame; the shadowy faces of women.

He remembered the flames! The flames engulfing Madame Relet’s brothel in Paris as he hustled the young girls, some barely more than children, into the waiting carriages.

And with a dreadful, unwelcome lucidity, everything that had happened up to that moment came back—memories crisp, unwavering, and horrific to face, as each of the disjointed images fell into place. Heavy-handed dalliance in a room hung with red velvet. The grasping hands of a woman. Flirtation which sank rapidly into carnality. Black silk sheets on a huge bed reflected in a multitude of gilt-framed mirrors.

But it had been worth it for their sake—little Penny and the other girls, victims of a system as depraved and abhorrent as slavery. But, dear God, at what a price to himself!

“I am beginning to remember,” Harry said dryly to Richard at last. “There was tremendous confusion. I hadn’t intended the fire to get out of hand so quickly—all that cheap scent and drapery was splendidly flammable. I had been living there for a couple of weeks, laying out the escape plot for the girls.”

“For God’s sake, you lived there? How the devil did you manage to get the trust of Madame Relet? She had a deep suspicion of interfering Englishmen. She certainly saw right through me, even when I went there disguised with my hair dyed to pitch. I wasn’t allowed near her
maison
after that. It’s why I was so bloody ineffective in shutting the place down.”

Harry kept his head down, resting his forehead on both balled fists, amazed that his voice was quite clear and steady.

“I managed to get inside to start with by gambling and drinking deeply enough with some other men that I met—they knew me as a Mr. Grey. I expressed a suitably prurient interest in their nasty personal habits. So they took me with them to Madame Relet’s, where the innocent goods were displayed for our delectation.”

“Dear God, Harry!” Richard said.

Harry pressed his palms over his eyes. “Indeed! It was bad enough to know about in theory. But to see those children paraded before us like cattle! I wanted to be sick. Some of those poor little whores were younger than our own sisters. Yet unless I fornicated with one of the girls that night, Madame Relet would have become instantly suspicious and driven me from the place without a backward glance.”

Richard’s voice was very gentle. “I do understand, my dear fellow. That’s why I was never able to gain admittance again myself. So I came home to England, and did what I could with money and influence from this side of the Channel.”

“And for the girls that you saved you bought freedom from a fate worse than any of us can ever know, Richard.”

“But you lived there for long enough to put your entire scheme into action.” Dread was apparent in every word Richard spoke, but the gentleness did not leave his voice. “So how did you manage to allay Madame Relet’s suspicions? Can you tell me?”

Harry lifted his head. His very soul felt bleak, as drained of color as a winter sky. Richard, apparently unaware that he was holding his breath, looked haggard.

“Oh, that part was easy,” Harry replied. “I slept with her.”

Richard’s tension exploded as he leapt to his feet. “Oh, my God! You damned arrogant boy!”

Harry looked away from the open horror on his brother’s face.

“I am twenty-four, Richard. Since I don’t find cowering twelve-year-old virgins to my taste, there was no other choice, was there? Madame Relet likes pretty young men and she prefers them dark. It wasn’t too revolting. In fact, you could say it was educational. She had some extremely interesting tastes, though I could just have easily have done without some of them, and she is old enough to be my mother. Let’s just say I did my duty like an Englishman.”

“Harry, I don’t know what to say. Dear God! If I had known that you would do this, I’m damned if I would have let you go.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me. But the irony—” Harry’s voice caught and broke for a moment. He recovered with an effort. “The wild, bitter irony of it all is that, even as I was gaining those little girls their freedom by rutting with the madam, not all of them wanted to go. Some of them cursed me very soundly as the brothel burned, and told me that life as a harlot was a great improvement over life as a farm worker or factory hand. It doesn’t say much for social justice in England, does it? I felt like coming home and burning down the House of Lords, and all those damned stuffy laisser-faire peers with it.”

Richard reached out a hand, but then let it drop to his side.

“Helena and I have dedicated ourselves ever since you left to trying to change the worst of those working conditions, Harry. You know that. And little Penny was grateful, believe me. I’ll show you her letter. It will break your heart.”

Harry stood up and shook himself. He turned to his brother with deliberate bravado.

“Oh, God, forgive me, Richard! I’ve let myself get maudlin. It was the grandest adventure of my life. Madame Relet was no worse than any other strumpet. Thank God I at last remember it! Those dreams were driving me crazy.”

Richard wisely decided not to press the issue.

Instead, he said softly, “So what did you do in France after that, if you didn’t turn up in Scotland until March? Why didn’t you come home to burn down Parliament, as you intended?”

Harry shrugged. “God knows! Does it matter?”

He forced himself to try to look into the abyss. Yet after the fire there seemed to be another of those dire gaps in his memory. He could recall the flames and the girls, and the carriages carrying them safely away into the night.

He had not gone with them.

What the devil had he done once the brothel was gone? Why on earth would he have stayed in Paris? Furthermore, there was nothing in that appalling descent into depravity with Madame Relet that should have sent him to Scotland.

Though he knew, of course, why he had not returned to England right away. It was the other set of images that had haunted his dreams: the rose-covered trellis here at Acton Mead, the lovely face of a woman who was oblivious to him—and when they had first met, often downright hostile.

It was why he had fled England in the first place as if a bear were chasing his tail.

To Harry’s astonishment, Richard put the thought, quite gently, into words.

“Was the reason Helena?”

“Dear God, how did you guess?”

“I’m not entirely blind, you know.” Richard leaned forward and clasped Harry’s fingers for a moment with his own. “She has no idea, and I will never tell her, but I saw it when you came here for Christmas. I had no idea that by asking you to keep an eye on my wife, I would impose an almost intolerable burden on you. My dear Harry, I have loved you since the day you were born and Mother showed me your puce little face screaming from a lace-trimmed bonnet that had been our father’s. You did your best to hide it, but it wasn’t hard to see that your concern for Helena had become something a little deeper than was strictly appropriate in the circumstances. Am I right?”

“As usual!” Harry grinned. “But don’t worry! I swear on my honor that I’m over it. You threw us together when she was vulnerable and in need of some chivalry. But she never had eyes for anyone but you, curse your bright blond head! Of course, I love her dearly and always will, but what I felt when she kissed me today in the hallway was nothing but a sweet and very appropriate brotherly affection. Helena dazzled me for a bit, that’s all, and I was afraid of how I might feel if I didn’t get away for a while.”

“So it’s something completely in the past now?”