Judith Ivory (29 page)

Stuart pressed his mouth tight, holding back a retort. That Emma should pretend a partiality for Leonard was part of the plan, yet it was more difficult to bear—and far too easy to play the fool—than he’d imagined.

His uncle continued, “Let her do her job without annoying her, will you? We are dependent on her good graces.” He eyed Stuart, earnest.

Which meant the man was taking the hoax all very seriously.

Stuart nodded curtly, which was the best he could do for a second. Then he got out, “You’re right,” all but choking on the words—they came out through his teeth.

All the better. It confirmed the status quo. Leonard chuckled at him, making a rare avuncular shake of his head. He was still grinning over the business all the way through the foyer and out onto the street.

And, thus, Stuart’s uncle was successfully put “on the send” for the most valuable of the desired items. Neither Stuart nor Emma was sure how to approach the lost earrings, though Emma, if all went well, would get closer to Leonard while Stuart was “gone.” An unsettling prospect. Yet the one most likely to yield information on the subject.

Yorkshire Rarebit

S
TUART
circled the block in his carriage, thinking to be sure Leonard was gone before returning to the Carlyle. He was in the mood to celebrate a little with Emma. Plus he had in his carriage two different packets of papers, one of which made him rather pleased with himself. A kind of present, he hoped. Never mind that she wouldn’t approve of seeing him turn up at the hotel. Leonard had things to do; it was perfectly safe.

Moreover, Stuart was getting to the point where he didn’t care if it was safe. If Leonard caught him returning to Emma, he’d only think his nephew more the fool.

A fool.
There it was. He was becoming a fool over Emma Hotchkiss, with or without his uncle knowing it.
He
knew it. Stuart felt half in love with the woman.

No. He was completely in love with her. That must be what the feeling was, though it worried him. And buoyed. He’d thought love, if it ever came to him, would be a cleaner, purer emotion, that the object of his affection would be more…angelic. He smiled to himself. Emma only looked like an angel. Thank goodness. Nothing felt so fine as stand
ing beside the devilish woman, looking at her, talking to her, touching her.

Ah, yes, touching Emma. Wouldn’t that be lovely after days of hardly doing more than bumping against her, if he were lucky, if he connived right.

How to tell her what he felt? He wasn’t even clear himself, so words suitable for her hearing were scarce. He had to think about it, word it to himself for a while. God help him, if he tried right now to get it all out to her, he would be nothing but a stuttering mess. Then he smiled to himself and patted the papers beside him. They were a beginning.

At Eaton Square, he watched Leonard’s carriage, ahead of him by several vehicles turn. Good riddance. Stuart signaled his own driver to take King’s Road, circling through the square, and return to the Carlyle. Thus, he was happily jostling along, enjoying the cool of early midday in what he considered his own neighborhood, the very civilized Belgravia, watching the gardens and boulevards pass, the usual traffic, only half what it was on a weekday—it being Sunday—all to the sound of his familiar troika bell jangling faintly against the clop of hooves on an English boulevard.

By the time he had the Carlyle in view again, however, he was cursing under his breath. His damned uncle had done the same thing in the other direction. Stuart gave the ceiling of his coach a quick rap. His footman’s face appeared in the rear service window. “Have the driver turn quickly. Circle wide, around the Palace Gardens, then let me off. I’ll take to foot.” His own carriage was too conspicuous to wait in it. “Wait on Halkin Street.”

Emma opened her door, then had to hide a mild start. It was a little soon for Leonard Aysgarth to seek her out, yet there he stood in the corridor outside her suite at the Carlyle. He didn’t have any genuine grievance against his nephew—yet.
So why was he here? She was never comfortable with winning a mark’s confidence too quickly; it meant it could be lost just as easily, a fragile thing.

“Why, Mr. Aysgarth,” she said in a tone of pleasant surprise. “What brings you back this morning?”

He stood there a moment, a well-tailored, nonplussed Englishman, turning his hat, running its brim through his gloved fingers. Then he said, “I know how busy you are.” He made a short nervous laugh. “But even such a very busy lady as yourself surely has time for a bit of refreshment.” He made what she was sure was supposed to be a suave smile, then asked, “Elevenses?” The traditional hour of English morning tea, if one had the leisure to enjoy it.

She glanced behind her, at the “mounds” of work such a “busy lady” as herself must surely have. She closed the door a little, so he couldn’t see there was nothing anywhere for her to “work” on. She smiled back hesitantly. “Is it business—”

“No, no, no,” he said immediately.

How curious.

“We are set there. No, I simply would like your company while I had a sweet with a pot of good tea. The Carlyle is known for their morning and afternoon tea services, the best in the city. Won’t you join me?”

She blinked, hesitated another moment, then said, “Oh, why not? I’m hungry. Let me get my shawl.”

The tea parlor was on the ground floor overlooking a small courtyard garden. Leonard pulled out her chair, then stood, removing his overcoat, gloves, and hat.

“A fine day,” he said, indicating the window by the table where the maître d’had seated them. It was the first day since she’d arrived in London that she’d seen the sun. It was a nice day, in fact.

She nodded, smiled some more, then touched her throat, tracing her collarbone with her finger, and fluttered her lashes, touched her curls, then accepted the vellum page that
outlined their choices for tea. Why had Leonard brought her here? she kept wondering.

Ah, to slander Stuart:
“My nephew has been a handful since the day he was born. I know what he got up to last night with you, and I want you to know I am here for you, should you need any assistance. His father—” Leonard shook his head, implying great similarity between the two men.

The waiter came, and they ordered two cream teas. With Emma wondering what exactly Stuart had “got up to” last night. He was improvising somewhere, and she didn’t know why.

Leonard dropped his voice as the man withdrew. “His father, and I suspect the son, could not be trusted around women. I simply wish to put you on your guard. A bad nut, that one. Which falls close to the tree, if you get my drift.”

Emma lifted her head, half a nod. The other half of her wanted to laugh. Was he serious? “I thank you for your concern,” she said.

He waved his hand. Then expanded his slander to include Stuart’s mother as well. “My brother didn’t want the marriage, you know. And Stuart himself was a great surprise. Donovan wrote to me the night before his wedding. He said, and I quote, ‘I beseech you, use any influence you have with our mother and father. I do not want to marry this woman. She is quite the homeliest creature I have ever set eyes upon and bland and timid as a mouse. How I might be civil to her for an entire wedding day, let alone a lifetime, is beyond me. Please help me, Leo. Don’t let our family ruin my life, sacrificing me on the altar of their greed.’”

Tea arrived, a white china pot of steaming darjeeling, along with three tiers of pastries, scones included, and bowls of clotted cream and raspberry jam.

He continued, “I don’t know how Stuart was conceived at all. Oh, those many years ago now, I took one look at my brother’s wealthy bride-to-be and was sure I would be the next Viscount Mount Villiars, that my brother would live
richly but without heirs. Then, lo, almost immediately, the little toad was pregnant.”

Emma drank a sip of tea, having to swallow to keep an unpleasant expression on her face.
Toad.
The poor woman.

Onward Leo went, regaling her with the unfairness of Stuart’s having been born, the wretchedness of all concerned in his family, the suffering he himself had gone through, feeling superior to it all at every moment, while remaining annoyed—thirty years after the fact—that he was unable to claim what he thought more his due than anyone else’s.

Emma left him to the pastries, while she fiddled with her earlobe, trying to figure out what his ramble was supposed to gain him.

Then he smiled across at her, conspiratorially, and she realized that Uncle Leonard was making a play for her. How…nice? Absurd? Was any woman ever flattered by the attention of a man so nauseatingly blind and self-serving?

Emma smiled at him nonetheless, and made a play for him right back, of sorts. Her knuckle grazed her very nice faux pearl at her left earlobe, as large as a small marble. As she fiddled with her earlob, she dug her thumbnail between the pearl and its mount, to see if it could be popped off. Then, “Oh, dear,” she said with a jerk and looked down into her palm.

Yes, it could be. Her pinkish mock-pearl sat in the cup of her hand. She made a tsk of dismay. “Oh, my. Another trip to my jeweler.” She smiled across the table at Leonard. “I so love beautiful earrings. What a shame.”

“Pearls?” he inquired, glancing into her hand.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. She clenched her fist before he could inspect too closely; she didn’t know if he’d recognize a genuine pearl from a fake. She laid the pearl in her skirt, then, turning her head to remove the back and mount, said, “Pretty ones. Lately, I’ve been eyeing some dangling ones at Garrard’s.” She laughed coyly as she dropped the parts of her earring into her drawstring bag, then flashed him a smile. “The gypsy in me, I suppose.”

He looked at her absolutely blankly. Earrings, Leonard. Where are Stuart’s mother’s earrings that you stole? And why? What would you do with them?

But then the conniving fellow reached across and patted Emma’s hand. He smiled a knowing look. “Earrings,” he stated.

She nodded, mildly ill at her stomach to understand that he thought she was bartering God-knew-what, some intimacy, for a pair of earrings.

He lifted an eyebrow—a gesture so like his nephew’s without having a whit of the same elan—and said, “I shall have money enough soon to buy a great many pretty things for a lady I like.” Then he sighed and held out his hands. “But now is…” He let the thought trail off.

Yes, Leonard. That’s the idea. Can you think of a pair of earrings you already own? What use could you possibly put them to? What could they possibly matter? Do you wear lady’s earrings when you are dancing about alone?

A blank wall. All he said was, “So, you see, Stuart is less the English gentleman than he might first seem. I just wanted you to know that. Of course”—he cleared his throat, a harrumph—“he hasn’t lived here very much. He couldn’t stand to live in the same town, same country—not on the same continent—as his father.” He made a philosophical, world-weary shake of his head. “Though a son can’t truly flee a father, can he? I mean, the man is swimming in his veins.”

An idea, she suspected, that some days frightened Stuart out of his wits.

“In any regard, he went to Turkey and lived among the barbarians for a time.” He gave a self-righteous grunt. “I’m not sure whether to call him immoral or”—assuming a grim mouth of self-righteousness—“merely adolescent: He went there so he could have a harem.”

Emma blinked, leaned forward. She couldn’t have heard correctly.

Leonard laughed heartily at the surprise on her face. “A
harem,” he repeated. “My nephew had a harem in Istanbul for several years. Upwards of half a dozen women, I think. How rich is that?” He chuckled some more. “Hardly the civilized sort of thing a gentleman might want to do.”

Emma wasn’t too sure of that. Half the gentlemen with whom she’d been acquainted seemed to think a harem of sorts was exactly what they needed. It was more than a little disappointing, however, to realize that Stuart was one of these gentlemen.

His uncle continued smugly, “Quite the barbarian himself.” He leaned toward her, adding all but covertly, “I worry about him, truth be known. I’m sure he’s a clear-thinking man, but then—” He paused, she was sure, for dramatic effect. “He’s decidedly odd, isn’t he?”

Yes, he was. In a decidedly interesting way. Emma suffered another ten minutes of tea with the most bombastic, obliviously narcissistic blowhard she’d ever had the misfortune to need for the time being. She said, rising at last, “Well, thank you, Leonard”—smiling across to him as he stood as well—“I may call you Leonard, yes?”

“Leo.”

“Leo, then. Lovely.” She drew her shawl up. “I must get back to work.”

“Oh, yes. Work, work, work. You are a busy little woman. I admire that,” he said sincerely. “I admire you most heartily, Lady Hart-i-ley.” He added the extra syllable, a bad pun.

Emma managed a half smile.

“My dear,” he told her, “I take my responsibility toward you very seriously. I worry”—he drew himself—“that Stuart could get cold feet or say the wrong thing to the wrong people. He even suggested briefly he might discuss our business with other MPs at his club.” As if it were headline news, he said, “You know, he actually goes to the House of Lords? Regularly. He cultivates associations there. For political reasons.” Oh, the mess and dirt of that game, he implied. “Why,
placing his confidence in the wrong person could damage us irreparably.”

Indeed. Confidence was not the problem that morning; Emma had almost more of confidence than she wanted. Forbearance was her problem. Besides being as slimy as a worm, Leonard Aysgarth was a crashing bore.

A morning that Emma had expected to be fairly uneventful, even restful, was full of surprises. In her room, when she returned, a silver tray sat on the table by the bay window. There, on the tray, lay a small envelope, hand-delivered while she was out. She didn’t recognize the handwriting, which made her laugh when she opened it. It was unfamiliar and unsigned, but there was little doubt whom it was from. It read:

She took the lift down as far as the restaurant, borrowed a long cloak with a hood from the cloakroom there—a good enough disguise that she should have returned to its hook in less than ten minutes—then bundled herself up. She cursed Stuart for the entire walk to Halkin Street, telling herself she should ignore him.

As she turned the corner of Belgrave Place, though, she could not deny the small lift in her chest at the sight: His carriage faced her, pulled to the side behind six shining horses. The vehicle waited restlessly, all its privacy shades down, shrouded. The footman startled as she came up to him, but he was quick enough to get her inside the coach.

The door closed on the daylight. The inside of the vehicle was as dark as a cave.

“Would you like me to light a lamp?” said the low, even
voice she easily recognized. Did Stuart plan this sort of melodrama or did it come naturally? A bat’s cave, she thought. Count Dracula.

“Yes, please.”