Sheri Cobb South (18 page)

“Do not try to gammon me, Waverly,” advised Lady Helen, unimpressed with the earl’s show of remorse. “Where else, pray, would he have got such a sum? You know my father well enough to know that he could expect no help from that quarter.”

“Indeed, it appears I was not thinking clearly,” Waverly confessed. “I do hope Mr. Brundy didn’t cut up too stiff?”

“Mr. Brundy need not concern you,” replied Lady Helen in arctic tones.

“Oh, but he does,” protested the earl, taking her chin in his hand and tipping her face up to meet his. “So long as he is married to you, my dear, he concerns me very much.”

Lady Helen’s eyes narrowed to glittering green slits. “Unhand me, Waverly.”

“I think not,” said the earl, and pulled her roughly into his embrace. “Admit it, Helen, I am the one you want! Why else would you have arranged this little
tête-à-tête
when your brother could have delivered the money just as easily, and without arousing the suspicions of a jealous husband?”

“Good God! You must be mad!” she accused, struggling in vain to free herself.

“And how can I be otherwise, when I see the woman who might have been my countess wedded to a misbegotten workhouse brat?”

Before she could avert her face, his lips claimed hers in a brutal kiss. Lady Helen fought with every ounce of strength she possessed, but her efforts only seemed to enflame him the more. She was able to free one hand, however, and when her efforts to pummel him into releasing her had no effect, she seized a handful of his carefully styled hair and pulled with all her might.

She found herself freed on the instant, and ran back into the ballroom before Waverly could renew his advances. Losing herself in the crowd, she made her way to the ladies’ powder room where she might repair the damage to her person and recover her poise before seeking the security of her husband’s presence. Having reached this sanctum, she scrubbed furiously at her bruised lips with the back of her hand, filled with irrational anger that Mr. Brundy’s kiss was no longer the last to reside there.

She tucked a loose hairpin more securely in place and straightened the bodice of her gown, and was just about to return to the ballroom when the door opened to admit Mrs. Pickering, muttering over a rip in her flounced hem.

They exchanged polite greetings, and then Mrs. Pickering exclaimed, “Why, Lady Helen, whatever has happened to your lovely necklace?”

Lady Helen’s horrified gaze flew to her reflection in the looking glass. The expanse of white flesh over the décolletage of her gown was bare. The necklace was gone.

“It—the clasp broke,” she improvised rapidly. “It will have to be repaired.”

“ ‘Twould be a great pity to possess such a splendid piece and be unable to wear it,” the colonel’s wife clucked sympathetically.

Lady Helen vouchsafed a polite but meaningless reply and then returned to the ballroom, all the while hastily revising her plans. First she retraced her steps to the now-deserted balcony, where her suspicions were confirmed. Lord Waverly was long gone, and there was no sign of the necklace. She went back inside, but instead of seeking out her husband, she charted a direct course for her brother and practically ordered him to partner her in the waltz just beginning.

“I’m in the suds, Teddy,” she confided under cover of the music. “I’ve lost the necklace Mr. Brundy gave me as a wedding gift, and I’m certain Lord Waverly has it. You must help me get it back!”

The viscount had been casting admiring eyes over the person of young Miss Pickering, and was understandably annoyed at being intercepted on his way to ask her to dance. “Confound it, Nell, it’s not like you to be so careless! Why can’t you just ask Lord Waverly to give it back?”

“I seriously doubt he would admit to having it in his possession.”

“Why should he not?”

“Because I was fighting off his advances when I lost it!” was Lady Helen’s indignant reply. “Depend upon it, he has it and he will find a way to make trouble unless I get it back.”

“So how do you plan to do that?”

Lady Helen drew a deep breath. “I have a plan.”

When she informed her sibling of this plan, however, he missed a step and trod heavily upon the train of a dashing young matron in indigo sarcenet, who shot him a dagger glance.

“Dash it, Nell,” objected the viscount, “it ain’t at all the thing, sneaking into a man’s house in the dead of night!”

“I can hardly sneak into his house in broad daylight,” retorted his sister.

“Mr. Brundy won’t like it.”

This, in fact, was the only part of the plan which troubled Lady Helen. Suddenly it seemed that lie was piling on lie, and deception on deception. “No, he would not like it,” she agreed, “and that is why he must know nothing about it. Please, Teddy, I need you to help me! After all, I wouldn’t be in this fix if it hadn’t been for you and your five hundred pounds!”

“All right, all right! I’ll go with you to Waverly’s house, Nell, but you’ll wait in the carriage while I go inside and get the necklace.”

“You wouldn’t recognize my necklace if you saw it!” scoffed Lady Helen.

“Well, how many of the things do you think he’s got in there?” retorted the viscount, stung.

At last the dance ended, and young Tisdale surrendered his sister to her partner for the following set. As the night progressed, one partner gave way to another, each recognizable only in that they were not her husband, until at last she felt a firm but gentle pressure on her arm, and heard her name spoken in a voice which could only belong to one person.

“I believe the next dance is mine, ‘elen.”

She allowed him to lead her back onto the floor, but the waltz had scarcely begun before Mr. Brundy deduced that all was not well with his wife. She hardly spoke, for one thing, and although they had conversed little enough during their last dance, she had at least looked at him. Now her gaze remained focused somewhere in the vicinity of the earring she had fastened into his cravat.

“Is aught the matter, me dear?” he asked her at length.

Startled, she looked up, and the hunted expression in her eyes only served to strengthen his suspicions.

“Why, no!” she protested a bit too quickly. “What could possibly be the matter?”

“I was ‘oping you would tell me,” he confessed with a smile.

For just a moment, Lady Helen was sorely tempted. Every instinct urged her to make a full confession to this man who had proven himself eminently capable of handling anything life might choose to throw at him. Still, her tongue was kept tightly reined by the fear of seeing the concern in his eyes turn to—what? Disgust? Contempt? She could not bear the thought.

“Why, nothing is wrong,” she insisted. “ ‘Tis only the heat, and the crowd.”

“Per’aps it will be less crowded in Brighton,” suggested Mr. Brundy.

“Perhaps,” she replied, but her answering smile was forced. Brighton had never seemed so far away.

Chapter 13

If your descent is from heroic sires,

Show in your life a remnant of their fires.

NICOLAS BOILEAU-DESPREAUX,
Satire 5

It was after two o’clock in the morning by the time the Brundys returned from the ball. Lady Helen held her breath as they crossed the silent hall to the stairs, for the recently completed portrait which Mr. Brundy had commissioned upon their marriage now hung in the drawing room, and was clearly visible through the open doorway. Mr. Brundy had not noticed the absence of the necklace—or had not commented on it, in any case—and she did not want the painting to recall it to his attention. When they drew even with the door and he wheeled abruptly to face her, Lady Helen knew a moment’s panic.

“Are you ‘ungry, ‘elen?” His expression, she was relieved to discover, was more like that of a truant schoolboy than a betrayed husband. “We might sneak down to the kitchen and raid the larder for a bite to eat.”

The cozy image of eating cold meat and cheese before the dying embers of the kitchen fire was almost too tempting to resist, but Lady Helen dared not yield. Her brother would be calling for her shortly, and she must be ready. Feigning weariness, she raised one gloved hand to her mouth to hide a contrived yawn.

“I vow, I can scarcely hold my eyes open,” she protested. “Perhaps another time.”

He shrugged. “As you wish.”

Side by side, they climbed the stairs in silence, then Lady Helen paused before her bedchamber door.

“Good night, Mr. Brundy.”

“Good night, ‘elen. Sleep well, me dear.” He brushed her cheek lightly with his lips, and it required the greatest effort on Lady Helen’s part not to fling her arms around his neck and sob the whole sordid story onto his broad shoulder.

Once inside her room, Lady Helen sent her weary maid to bed and listened to the sounds emitting from the adjoining room. They were not difficult to discern, for Jennings, her husband’s new valet, was bursting with conversation, and several minutes elapsed before the sounds ceased, indicating that the valet had been dismissed and Mr. Brundy had sought his bed. She glanced wistfully at the key lying on the bedside table and wished she possessed the fortitude to insert it into the lock, then snuffed out the candles in her own room so that he might not see the light under the door. After allowing sufficient time for her husband to fall asleep, she crept back down the stairs to await her brother.

Her patience was soon rewarded, for it was not long before the viscount’s curricle drew up before the house. Wrapping her dark cloak more tightly about her person, Lady Helen opened the door and slipped out to meet her brother.

They said little on the short drive to the earl’s Park Street house. Lady Helen, for her part, was beginning to have doubts as to the wisdom of her plan. What had seemed simple enough in a brightly lit ballroom surrounded by hundreds of people was quite another matter when undertaken alone in the dark hours before dawn.

What if all the doors and windows were locked? One could hardly summon the butler to gain admittance for the purpose of searching his master’s house. What if Lord Waverly had not even come home at all, but had spent the rest of the evening at his club? All too soon they reached the earl’s house, and the viscount drew his curricle to a halt before a wide, pilastered facade.

“Now remember, Teddy,” admonished his sister as she clambered down from the vehicle, “if I don’t return in a reasonable period of time, you are to come in after me!”

The viscount nodding his assent, Lady Helen gamely mounted the steps to the earl’s front door and tried the knob. To her surprise, it turned easily in her hand. It was, she reflected, almost as if Lord Waverly expected her. The thought was not a reassuring one. Opening the door a crack, she turned back to her brother, shrugged expressively at the unexpected boon, and entered the dark house.

Now, she thought as she carefully picked her way past artfully arranged bric-a-brac, if I wished to hide a diamond necklace, where would I put it? The first door opened onto a formal drawing room which Lady Helen immediately dismissed as too public; the second revealed a music room which, she suspected, was little used, Lord Waverly not being musically inclined. She cautiously climbed the stairs to search the more private rooms on the first floor, but as she reached the landing, cold fingers brushed her arm, and she uttered a tiny shriek in spite of her best efforts to stifle it. A closer look revealed a marble statue in the Greek style. Lady Helen gave a shaky laugh before continuing to the upper floor.

She inched her way along the passage until she felt a door, and here her hopes rose. Even in the dark, the room was decidedly masculine, as evidenced by the faint scent of brandy and tobacco which lingered in the air. Her groping fingers soon located a large desk on which sat a lamp. This she lit, and found herself in a study hung with dark green silk and decorated with framed hunting prints. It was the desk, however, that claimed her full attention. She pulled open the first drawer and rifled quickly through it. Finding nothing of interest, she was about to start on the second when a slight sound behind her made her breath catch in her throat. She turned and beheld the earl framed in the open doorway, still immaculately dressed in his evening attire.

“Welcome, Mrs. Brundy,” he drawled.

They were the same words he had uttered in her dream, and spoken in the same world-weary tone.  If, by screaming, she could have awakened to find herself safe in her husband’s arms, Lady Helen would have shrieked the rafters down. But this was no dream, and Mr. Brundy was asleep in his bed in Grosvenor Square. The very thought conjured up an image so poignant it made her knees weak with longing. Still, her voice was remarkably composed as she said, “Good evening, my lord. Tonight at Lady Randall’s ball I lost something which I believe to be in your possession. I would like to have it back, if you please.”

She was prepared for protestations of ignorance, but to her surprise, Lord Waverly reached into the breast pocket of his coat and withdrew the necklace at once. “I trust it is this bauble to which you refer?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She reached out to claim the prize, but Waverly moved it out of reach. “A moment, please. As it happens, I have need of this piece myself. I confess, it was a welcome instance of serendipity. I was at a loss as to how to rectify my, er, embarrassments without a protracted visit to the Continent.”

“You have my sympathy, Waverly, but there is one thing you seem to have overlooked. The necklace is mine.”

“Correction, my dear: it
was
yours. But in the immortal words of the playwright, possession is eleven points in the law. Since the necklace is now in my possession, it remains only for me to decide how best to use it.”

“You would not dare to break it up!” protested Lady Helen.

“Nothing so grossly mercenary, my dear,” the earl assured her as he turned up the lamp, then moved to light the wall sconces. “There! So much cozier this way, is it not? As it happens, I made a quite unexpected discovery tonight, the ramifications of which I have yet to explore.”

“And what, pray, might that be?” asked Lady Helen impatiently.