How to Romance a Rake (16 page)

If Frampton read more into the situation than was warranted, Alec was not going to disabuse him of the notion. He was perfectly content to let the man, and anyone else who might happen by, know Juliet was not without friends.

Turning his attention to Juliet, he asked, “Do you wish to purchase those?”

She looked up, pain evident in her eyes, but she quickly shuttered the emotion. “Yes, Mr. Frampton, please wrap these and any others by the same composer.” Giving him her card, she continued, “If you should get any others in please contact me as soon as you can.”

At her speaking glance, Alec swallowed the question on his tongue, and stood silently with Juliet as they waited for Frampton to prepare her package.

They were haggling over who would be paying for the purchases when a blowsy young woman whom Alec took to be Juliet’s maid entered the shop.

At the sight of Alec, the maid’s eyes grew round. “Miss,” she said quickly, “I asked if they had any more of the green ribbon but they did not. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting for too long.”

Juliet’s lips twitched, though whether it was from her maid’s poor acting skills, or for another reason Alec couldn’t say. “It’s all right, Weston,” she said, “Lord Deveril is a friend.”

At that, Weston nodded. “Shall I have John bring the coach around?”

Before she could respond, Alec intervened. “That won’t be necessary, Weston. I shall take Miss Shelby up in my curricle with me.”

He met Juliet’s gasp of protest with a quelling look, and apparently reading the message there, she remained silent. After bidding Mr. Frampton good day, they made their way out into the street, where Alec handed her into the curricle.

It was some few minutes, while he navigated the narrow lane and they set off for Mayfair, before he spoke.

“I realize that you are accustomed to a certain degree of latitude given your mother’s lack of propriety herself,” he said. “But you must promise me that until we figure out what happened to Mrs. Turner you will not go anywhere unescorted.”

“Don’t you wish to know why I was there?” Juliet asked, skirting his question.

Really, the woman was maddening, Alec thought, staring out over the horses’ heads.

“I’m listening.”

Quickly she explained how she and Anna had used Mr. Frampton’s shop as a means of exchanging letters.

“So, what did you discover?” Alec asked, admitting to a grudging respect for her ingenuity, if only to himself.

“I discovered,” Juliet said with a hard edge to her voice, “that my friend—or rather the woman I thought was my friend—has been taking compositions that I wrote for myself and no one else, and selling them to Mr. Frampton for publication.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been that.

“Are you sure?” he asked, hoping for her sake that there had been a mistake of some sort.

Her laugh was far too cynical for one so young. “I’m quite sure. Though I suppose I can take some comfort in the knowledge that she didn’t attach her own name to them, but instead invented a pseudonym for Mr. Frampton to attach to them.”

He was silent as he negotiated the curricle past an erratically driven apple cart. Finally, when they were nearing a less congested stretch of road, he spoke. “Can there have been some reason for Mrs. Turner to do something like this? Perhaps she needed more funds than she was able to earn on her own?” Thinking to Winterson and his lady’s use of codes to unravel a mystery earlier that season, Alec said, “Could she have been sending some sort of message through them? Something only you could understand?”

Sighing, Juliet allowed her shoulders to bow in weariness. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible. I hadn’t time to read through all of them. Just a cursory glance to assure myself that they were indeed my compositions.”

“And they were?”

Again the bitter laugh. “Yes, they’re mine. I didn’t even know that my own copies were missing. I suppose Anna must have taken them by mistake after a lesson and then simply saw a means to earn some money. I only wish she’d come to me if she needed more funds. Didn’t she know I’d give her more if I could?”

For Juliet’s sake, he said, “Perhaps she knew you were dealing with your own problems and didn’t wish to ask for more. It cannot have been easy for her to take your charity after her child was born.”

“No,” she said, sighing, “it wasn’t. I had to appeal to her love of the babe to get her to take as much as she did.” She straightened in her seat. “So why would she stoop to outright theft now? It makes no logical sense. She must have had another reason to do it. She needed funds for something she couldn’t tell me about.”

Alec considered this. “What would she be unable to tell you about?”

“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “Her expenses were minimal. And Alice wasn’t ill so it can’t have been a physician.”

“What about blackmail?”

Juliet gripped his arm, and he felt the touch straight through his coat.

“That’s it!” She nearly vibrated with excitement. “It has to be. Nothing else makes sense. She was an unwed mother with a need for discretion because if parents of her pupils were to learn the true circumstances of Alice’s birth they’d turn her into a social pariah at once. Someone must have figured out that there was no Mr. Turner and decided to earn some extra money.”

Her relief at finding a plausible reason for her friend’s betrayal was palpable. Alec only hoped that her theory was right and that they weren’t expending all this energy to find a woman who might be better left unfound.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that her landlady was attempting to extort some extra funds from Mrs. Turner,” he said aloud. “Perhaps she overheard you and Mrs. Turner discussing her situation?”

She thought about it. “A definite possibility. I shouldn’t think her above that sort of thing. Especially after what you told me of her treatment of little Alice. Anyone who would mistreat a child wouldn’t balk at blackmail.”

“There is also another possibility,” Alec said. “What if someone with knowledge of the happenings at Squire Ramsey’s has decided to blackmail her?”

“To what end?” Juliet asked. “I should think what happened in Little Wittington would have long since ceased to be of interest.”

“But knowledge of either scandal could ruin her reputation with the wealthy cits whose children she teaches.”

They fell silent for a moment as they entered the traffic of more fashionable London streets.

Finally, Alec spoke. “I must ask you to make me a promise, Miss Shelby.”

He could feel her gaze on him. Saw her raised brows from the corner of his eye.

“I had thought we’d dispensed with titles last evening,” she said quietly. It was a bold statement for her, and he liked to think that her comfort in his presence made her able to speak her mind.

Glancing around to ensure they were not under scrutiny, he pulled the curricle down a relatively quiet street, and drew the horses to a halt. Keeping the reins firmly in his left hand, he turned to her, dipping his head a little to see beneath her bonnet brim.

“Juliet,” he said seriously, meeting her frank gaze with one of his own. “I will not endanger your reputation by addressing you by your given name in public. And I won’t apologize for what happened last night. Though I suppose I should if I were a true gentleman.”

“I can think of no one who is more qualified to call himself a gentleman than you,” she said. “And if you apologized for last night I would draw your cork.”

Her use of the cant phrase startled from him a laugh.

“So, what is this promise you wish to coax from me?” she asked, her expression impish. Really, if the rest of the
ton
were aware of this side of her personality Amelia Snowe would find herself with serious competition for her position as reigning toast.

“You cannot go out searching for clues to Mrs. Turner’s disappearance on your own. It is too dangerous. At this point we have no way of knowing whether your friend left of her own volition or was spirited off by someone up to no good. I won’t allow you to risk your safety.”

At the mention of Mrs. Turner, Juliet’s expression fell, and she grew serious. Alec despised himself for breaking her good mood, but he could not stand by while she put herself in harm’s way.

“If you must go out in search of your friend,” he said seriously, “then at least take Cecily or Madeline with you. I won’t suggest that you contact me, because that would endanger your reputation. But I will be sure to seek you out at social occasions so that we can compare notes and determine what our safest course of action might be.”

“Then you won’t call on me yourself?” Her question was offhand, as if she were wondering aloud whether it would rain later, but he was not fooled by her studied indifference.

He reached out a gloved finger and tipped her chin back so that he could look into her eyes. “Juliet,” he said softly, “I am the last man you wish to become involved with. The men in my family … my father…”

A quick nod told him that she was not unaware of his father’s and uncle’s reputations. “Last night was…” He searched for a way to describe their encounter in the darkness of the garden. “It was sweeter than anything I’ve known in a long while,” he said finally. “But it cannot happen again. For your sake. You deserve a man who can give you a lifetime of happiness. And I’m afraid I am incapable of doing that.”

“If you don’t mind, my lord,” she said curtly, “I would like to return home now. I have an engagement this evening and Mama will be looking for me.”

He supposed he was asking too much for her to acknowledge his clumsy attempt to warn her off. Perhaps she hadn’t been as affected by their kiss as he’d been. And besides, what sort of self-important bastard demanded to be forgiven for protecting a woman from an entanglement?

Their drive was silent until they reached Shelby House. A footman stepped forward to assist Juliet from the carriage, and Alec accepted her cool thanks and farewell with good grace.

“If you wish to visit Alice,” he said, unable to stop himself, before she turned away, “I am gone most mornings. I will leave word with my staff that you are to be allowed in whether I or my sisters are there or not.”

She nodded her acknowledgment, then turned, and for a woman with such a severe leg injury she managed to mount the steps in a remarkably speedy fashion.

Cursing himself for a ham-handed fool, Alec turned his attention to his horses and drove away.

*   *   *

Still clutching her compositions, Juliet navigated the steps to the door of Shelby House with Weston close behind her. As she divested herself of her pelisse, the butler informed her that her cousin Madeline was waiting for her in her sitting room. Her sitting room that had an excellent view of the front entrance.

Cursing her ill luck, and feeling perilously close to tears, Juliet made her way upstairs and prepared herself for an interrogation. Ah well, at least it was Maddie and not her mama who awaited her.

“Never say you’ve been out driving with Lord Deveril, Juliet!” her cousin greeted her without preamble. “He has shown a marked partiality for you ever since our dance lessons.”

“Well, I do not think anything will come of it,” Juliet said, gratefully accepting a cup of tea as she lowered herself to the settee. “Even if Mama wasn’t determined to see me marry Turlington, Alec … that is, Lord Deveril, just informed me that he is incapable of giving me the ‘lifetime of happiness’ I deserve.”

Madeline’s mouth dropped open. “Incapable? You don’t suppose he means that he cannot…”

Juliet gave a startled laugh despite herself. “No, I don’t think that’s what he meant. He was speaking about the men in his family in general.”

“Oh, that.” Maddie waved away the notion. “He is just being noble, then. This happens all the time in novels. The hero is drawn to the heroine despite himself, and then ruins everything by pushing her away.”

“Yes, well, this isn’t a novel. It’s my very real life and I do think he has some serious concerns. His father was Devil Deveril, after all. Perhaps the sins of the father—”

“Except that Lord Deveril has never shown the least propensity to behave like his father. Indeed, quite the opposite. He does have a bit of a rakish reputation, but nothing so troubling as his father, or his uncle for that matter.”

Juliet knew Maddie was right. Alec was as far from his father’s type of man as a son could be. He was a gentleman through and through, and would no more seduce and abandon her than he would leave little Alice in the care of an abusive woman.

“I fear you are right,” she said aloud. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll change his mind. So, I will put him from my mind and concentrate on finding Anna. I doubt Mama would approve Lord Deveril’s suit if he were to ask anyway, so the whole matter is moot.”

Maddie looked as if she’d like to argue, but refrained from doing so. Instead she asked, “What are those pages? New sheet music?”

Remembering the reason she’d been in Deveril’s company in the first place, Juliet told Maddie what she’d learned at Mr. Frampton’s shop.

“So, Anna has been stealing your compositions?” Maddie whole being trembled with outrage at the teacher’s betrayal. “After all you’ve done for her! What a wicked thing for her to do.”

“I must admit that I was shocked,” Juliet said. “But after I thought of it a bit, I wondered if she needed funds for some reason she couldn’t tell me about.”

“You think she was being blackmailed?” the other girl asked. That they’d both leaped to the same conclusion said something about how their minds worked, but Juliet wasn’t overly concerned about that. Between Juliet’s dealings with her mother, and Maddie’s extensive reading they were both acquainted with the darker side of human nature. Even if Maddie’s was fictional, that didn’t mean she was incorrect.

“I do,” Juliet said. “After all, she was in an even more precarious social position than she was in as a member of our household. At least here she was somewhat protected by my father. Out on her own, her reputation was her life. One blemish could mean ostracism. And therefore a loss of the only means she had to make a living.”

“Who knew the real circumstances of little Alice’s birth?” Maddie asked.”You don’t suppose your mama told anyone, do you?”