The Dollar Prince's Wife (6 page)

‘Allow me to thank you, Lady Dinah, for both your compliments, especially since I have been somewhat remiss since you arrived. I did not ask you whether you had been offered tea after your journey, which I believe was a long one. Shall I ring for some?'

‘Yes, and no,' said Dinah merrily. ‘Yes, I have had tea, and, no, I do not wish to drink any more.'

There was something about him which made her want to talk to him. He held himself, she thought, as though he were prepared to listen to her. She wondered for a moment what it would be like to be as beautiful as he was and to possess such perfect manners into the bargain. He even made Violet look a little frantic. What did being such a
nonpareil
do to you? Would she have his effortless calm if she were ever to become his female equivalent?

Later she was to laugh to herself for having such an absurd thought. Of course, she could never be like him. Pigs might fly sooner, her old nurse had once said of a similar piece of nonsense of hers.

‘Well, that disposes of tea as a subject of conversation,' returned Cobie equally merrily. ‘Now, how about the weather? Shall we have a go at meteorology as a topic? It seems to be a favourite one over here. For example: Do you think it will continue fine, Lady Dinah? Or would you rather allow me to ask you a personal question along the lines of: Why are
you
in the library?'

‘That would be a fair one to ask,' answered Dinah gravely, sitting down so that he need no longer stand, ‘seeing that you were kind enough to answer my question about the library earlier. I thought that I might do some work. Faa, that's Professor Fabian, told me that the last Lord Kenilworth but one had accumulated a superb collection of memoirs and papers of all the most important statesmen of the last three centuries. If I'm ever allowed to read history at Oxford, it would give me a flying start to have gone through them carefully, making notes.'

So, Lady Dinah Freville took after her real father and, all in all, she was proving to be a very unlikely cuckoo in the Rainsboroughs' nest. Cobie doubted very much whether Dinah would ever be allowed to go to Oxford. Violet, for one, would never agree to it.

‘A most sensible notion,' he said approvingly. ‘There is nothing like reading those documents which have come down to us from the past to give us a true idea of it. I congratulate you, Lady Dinah: not many scholars have grasped that.'

Goodness, Rainey's Yankee barbarian sounded just like Faa when he was talking to her seriously! Did he treat
Violet and Rainey to such learned and erudite discourse? These were Faa's words for what went on in academic tutorials and the dons' discussions. She rather doubted it.

‘Do many Americans think that, Mr Grant? Are American statesmen like ours, do you know? Have you met many politicians over there? I suppose that New York is not much like Washington.'

‘Indeed not,' he said, turning his amazing eyes on her again, something which, oddly enough, made Dinah feel quite dizzy. To amuse her, for he found her eager interest strangely touching, he began to tell her some comic stories of what politicians got up to in the United States, which set her laughing.

‘I suppose the only real difference between yours and ours,' she volunteered, ‘is that yours are more straightforward and ours are more hypocritical. I was always told that the First Lord Rainsborough—his name was Christopher Freville—was given his title for some grand diplomatic work he did for King Charles II at the time of the Dutch Wars.

‘Only Faa told me one day that that was all a hum, and he also told me where to look in the papers to find the true story. He had discovered it the year he came here to be Rainey's tutor, and had begun to catalogue our archives before he ran off with Mama. So, the last time I came, I found the papers—and Faa was right.

‘Christopher, whose ancestral home was Borough Hall, was a boon companion of King Charles II,' she explained, her eyes alight with amusement. ‘He was a King whose habits we are all supposed to deplore, although he doesn't seem to me to be so very different from the present Prince of Wales.'

She would never have uttered this last piece of heresy in
front of Violet, but the man to whom she was talking seemed to provoke her into making such lively indiscretions.

‘He was just a nobody about the court, you understand, a mere gentleman-in-waiting. One day the King went for a walk—he was a great walker, Faa said—and it began to rain heavily. He was only wearing a light coat and Christopher was wearing a thick one. He saw that the King was wet, and offered him his own in exchange.

‘That night, at court, they all drank too much, and the King told Christopher that he could have any favour he wanted as a gift for having lent him his coat. Christopher told the King that he could keep the coat—provided that he agreed to make him an Earl in exchange for it. Instead of condemning him for his impudence, the King laughed and said, “Since you saved me from the rain I shall call you by its name—you shall be Lord Rainsborough.”

‘Christopher was a pretty frivolous fellow. He was never a diplomat or statesman as his descendants have liked to pretend. Making him an Earl was just one of King Charles II's jokes—he was very fond of them, Faa says. Please don't tell Violet the truth—she wouldn't find it at all amusing.'

To be sure she wouldn't, Cobie thought, while thanking Dinah for telling him of this comic piece of unwanted family history.

 

A little later he was to discover that Violet wouldn't find anything amusing about her half-sister. After a happy hour's conversation the library door was flung open by an imperious hand, and Violet entered, resplendent in an old-rose tea-gown.

She stared at Cobie and Dinah laughing together over
the chess set which stood permanently ready on a marquetry table in front of yet another window. Dinah was finding that Mr Grant played an even better game of chess than Faa. Violet, however, approved of neither the game, Mr Grant, nor Dinah.

She particularly didn't approve of Dinah.

‘So there you are, Cobie,' she said unoriginally, sailing over to them like some galleon strayed from the high seas, ‘in the library. Of all odd places to find you! Have you had tea?'

She stared down at the chess game where Cobie's Black Queen and Knight were pinning Dinah's White Queen. She drawled mockingly, ‘What a hole you are in, darling,' and, throwing out a careless hand to wave at Dinah's pieces, she knocked them all flying.

‘Oh, sorry,' she exclaimed, still mocking, ‘but really, Dinah, no need for you to carry on with
that
. Now, why don't you go upstairs and find something suitable to wear—that thing you have on looks more fitting for the nursery than the dining room. Oh, and thank Mr Grant prettily for taking the trouble to entertain you.'

She spoke as though Dinah were a fractious three-year-old, and Cobie was her elderly uncle.

Cobie, caught between red rage at Violet's casual cruelty, and wry amusement at the way in which she was expressing it, was unhappily aware that anything he might say to comfort the poor child would only give Violet the opportunity to cut her up even more savagely, said nothing.

Dinah, her face flaming scarlet, rose and prepared to retreat upstairs to change—although into what she did not know. She was well aware that she possessed nothing of which Violet would approve. Violet had always had the
power to make her feel ugly, clumsy and stupid—particularly stupid.

The happiness which she had been experiencing over the last hour had flown away quite. She now felt that Mr Grant must have been concealing his boredom skilfully, whereas until Violet had arrived she had thought him to be enjoying their impromptu tête-à-tête as much as she had been doing.

‘Y…y…yes,' she began to stammer miserably. She bent down to rescue the White Queen which had rolled under the table and, when she rose with it, found that Mr Grant was gently taking it from her to replace it on the board.

‘We must resume our game another day,' he told her gravely, his amazing blue eyes hard on her. For her sake, he dare not say any more than that. He would offer Violet no ammunition to use against her.

Violet's eyes were boring holes in her for some reason which Dinah couldn't understand.

She said disjointedly, ‘No need, thank you…Mr Grant… I'm not really a very good player…mustn't bore you.'

Cobie was quite still: a danger sign with him if either of the two women had known it. ‘Oh, you didn't bore me, Lady Dinah. I enjoyed my hour with you.'

Violet tapped her foot on the ground peremptorily until Dinah, blushing furiously and unable to answer Mr Grant coherently, left them.

The door had barely had time to shut behind her before Violet said nastily, ‘
I enjoyed my hour with you!
Really, Cobie, there was no need for you to go quite so far to keep the child in countenance—a quiet “thank you” would have been more than enough.'

Could she conceivably be jealous of Dinah? And why? Until Violet had walked in, Dinah had been a happy and interesting companion, but it had become immediately ap
parent by Dinah's subsequent behaviour that this was not the first time Violet had treated her with such cold cruelty. All her charming composure had been destroyed in an instant.

Cobie's dislike of Violet was growing at the same speed. He made an immediate resolution to try to protect the unloved child. She reminded him strongly of another whom, long ago, he had also tried to protect but had failed to do so through no fault of his own. The memory of her death would haunt him all his life. Pray God he could do more for Dinah, if only while he was at Moorings.

Nothing of this showed. He was charm itself to Violet, but she was shrewd enough to notice that he never mentioned Dinah to her. She could not have said why seeing Dinah laughing with Cobie had flicked her on the raw. Perhaps it was because, at nearly forty, she was approaching the time when no one would think of her as ‘that great beauty, Violet Kenilworth' but instead she would be spoken of as ‘Violet Kenilworth—who had once been a great beauty'.

And Cobie was only twenty-nine to Dinah's eighteen.

T
hat part of London society which had been invited to the Kenilworths' house party and a large number of the more important folk in the county of Warwick were assembled in the Great Hall at Moorings for a reception being given by the new Lord Lieutenant of the county, Lord Kenilworth, to mark his accession to that honour.

South Africa had been looted of diamonds to hang around beautiful necks and to depend from beautiful ears. It would not be exaggerating to say that the women present were wearing a king's ransom between them—except for Lady Dinah Freville, of course. She hid herself in a corner and watched them walk to and fro, waving their fans like the lovely peacocks they were.

Among the guests who made up the house party was one who had only recently been introduced to the Kenilworths by the American Envoy and his wife, who were also present. They were, indeed, apart from his hosts, the only persons in the whole vast Hall whom he knew.

He was, as the saying had it, yet another rich Yankee robber baron, Mr Hendrick Van Deusen, who had made himself a fortune in Chicago, having appeared there from
nowhere some years ago. He was a heavy-set man in his early forties, resplendent in his new English evening dress from Savile Row.

Violet had flung an invitation at him on hearing of his immense wealth and that he liked to play cards for money. Her poverty-stricken brother, Rainsborough, must be given the chance to win some of his loot from him at Moorings.

Like Lady Dinah, whom he had not yet met, he had hidden himself away in a small ante-room which opened off the Hall where he could both see and hear the passing show, but could not be seen himself. A wise man ought to know more than other people wished him to. He soon gained his reward for his cunning.

A pair of society women, resplendent, but flimsy, butterflies, both came and stood near him, gossiping loudly about their hostess.

‘I see that Violet Kenilworth's Apollo is one of the party,' drawled the prettier of the two, amusement on her face and in her voice. ‘I hear that she granted him the privilege of arriving before the rest of us.'

‘Now, now, Emily, don't be jealous—there's no point in it, none at all. There's only one at a time for him, they say, and at the moment it's Violet. And she's got her hooks into him well and truly.'

‘I can't say that I blame her. I'd have had my hooks in him well and truly if I'd had the good luck to meet him first. Tell me, is it true that he's the American Envoy's brother-in-law?'

‘By proxy,' chuckled her friend, ‘only by proxy. Her half-brother, so they say. Not much alike, are they? Apollo is as blond as she's brunette.'

This conversation intrigued its unknown listener who decided to go and find Apollo. Anyone who could entrance
two such hard-bitten beauties must surely be worth looking at.

Mr Van Deusen strolled forward, looking around him for a tall, blond man: he had decided that Apollo must be tall—and there was a tall, blond man standing with his back to him, talking to his hostess. He suddenly turned his golden head and Van Deusen caught his breath at the sight of him. It wasn't Apollo's perfect profile, nor his athletic body which intrigued him, but something quite different.

It couldn't be! Surely not! Not here, not the US Envoy's brother-in-law! Not the darling of London society! For Mr Van Deusen had last seen this man, or one very like him, nearly eight years ago in Arizona Territory, America's Southwest. He had been a man you could not forget and Van Deusen had never forgotten him—but he had never thought to see him again, and particularly not as an honoured guest at an aristocrat's house party.

He was older now, but, as always, every feminine head turned to look at him when he walked away from his hostess, holding himself with the arrogance which Mr Van Deusen remembered only too well—and which had infuriated everyone who met him.

Could it really be the man he had known? If he were, under what name was he now going? And did the effete fools here know what sort of tiger was living in their midst? No one present could conceivably guess at the life which respectable Mr Van Deusen and Apollo had once shared.

Mr Van Deusen gave a long, slow grin. Well, he would soon find out if he were mistaken, and if he were, he would apologise. After all, he had never seen his man spotlessly clean, perfectly groomed, and the current lover of the Prince of Wales's mistress!

He was behind Apollo now. Hendrick Van Deusen
grinned again, showing strong yellow teeth. He bunched his right hand into a fist with two of his fingers sticking out from it. He jabbed them into the small of Apollo's back, as though it were a revolver he was thrusting there, and said in a thick Texas drawl, ‘Hi, there, Jumpin' Jake, fly at once. All is discovered.'

Mr Van Deusen felt Apollo stiffen, every muscle tensing before he turned to face his accuser. That face was an impassive mask, showing none of the emotions which one might expect, given the abrupt shock he must have felt on hearing a voice sounding from out of his disreputable past when he had been an outlaw in the Territory.

Yes, his man was Apollo, by damn, and no doubt about it, and Apollo was speaking to him, his voice beautiful, with no hint of an American accent, let alone the thick Texas drawl which Jumpin' Jake had affected.

‘Do I know you, sir?'

‘You should. Because I know you, and I owe you—and that is enough for me to know you.'

Cobie's smile was one which no one in English society had ever seen. It was deadly—and proved to Mr Van Deusen how little he had changed.

‘I only ever knew one man who owed me anything—but that debt was cancelled long ago—which you should know.'

It was a tacit admission of who he was—or who he had been, and Cobie saw that the man opposite to him knew that.

‘I didn't accept that cancellation,' growled Mr Van Deusen. ‘No man saves my life and goes unthanked, unrewarded. You saved my life twice. I paid you back only once. That second debt still stands.'

Cobie's smile at this was so charming that Mr Van Deu
sen could see why the women about him were watching them with such hungry eyes. He took Mr Van Deusen by the arm, led him, in silence, out of the ballroom, through the small drawing room along a corridor and into the library where he shut the door behind them.

‘Now,' he said, ‘we may talk in peace. Where were we? Ah, you were reminding me that I saved your worthless life, and that you wanted to recompense me for doing so. Well, you are hardly likely to be able to return that last favour here. We are a long way from San Miguel—or Bratt's Crossing.'

‘So you
do
know me.'

‘But do you know my name?'

‘You were Jake Coburn in San Miguel, and Cobie Grant in Bratt's Crossing. I would bet that you are Cobie Grant here.'

‘Jacobus Grant—and you would win your bet.'

Cobie looked at Mr Van Deusen, at the beautifully cut suit which clad the thickly powerful body, at the cared-for hands and massive head and face. ‘I doubt that I could guess your name—Professor—or, in Western slang—Perfesser.'

‘Nor you could. I now use my own. I am Hendrick Van Deusen, a respectable financier, if that is not a contradiction in terms.'

Cobie threw back his head and laughed.

‘Ever the old Perfessor! Even if I would wager you are not now known as Schultz. Can you stand this effete life?'

‘The question is, can you?'

Cobie thought that he couldn't, but he didn't think that he wished to return to Arizona Territory and be a boy of twenty again, either.

‘Life is what you make of it,' he said at last.

‘A truism—but looking at you, I don't think that you have changed much…other than that you are now clean.'

Cobie's smile was sweet. ‘Yes, I hardly think that I looked like this eight years ago.'

‘No, indeed. But the man inside is the same, I'll be bound. Is London safe while you live in it?'

Cobie thought of the night on which he had rescued Lizzie Steele—and began to laugh.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. But I don't pack a pair of six-shooters on my hip whilst walking down Piccadilly, more's the pity.'

‘What exactly are you doing to stir up the assembled nobility and gentry? I would wager that there are easier pickings here than at San Miguel.'

Cobie offered him his most winning smile.

‘Nothing.'

‘You're doing nothing? Now that I don't believe.'

‘Ever the sceptic. Believe what you like.'

Mr Van Deusen also smiled. Cobie knew that smile. He had seen it on the face before him in more than one tight corner. He decided to provoke in return.

‘And what exactly are you doing here, Mr Van Deusen? It's odd, you know, but I find it hard to think of you as other than Schultz, the Perfesser who packed a mean gun.'

‘The Perfesser and Jumpin' Jake are long gone,' remarked Mr Van Deusen smoothly, ‘and no resurrection awaits them, I think.'

Cobie remembered the boy he had been, laughed and added, ‘You hope, rather. You remember the old saying, “Truth will arise, though all the world will hide it from men's eyes.”'

‘By God, I hope not,' said Mr Van Deusen fervently. ‘I
am a most respectable and wealthy citizen of Chicago, thinking of running for the US Senate in the next elections.'

‘The Perfesser in the Senate would only be matched by Jumpin' Jake marrying into the British aristocracy.'

Cobie paused, and then, as though some ghost, some premonition, had walked through his head, asked himself, Now, why did I say that?

‘I thought that Lady Kenilworth was already married,' remarked Mr Van Deusen slyly.

‘So she is, but I have English cousins. Best to tell you, knowing you, you'll soon find out. Sir Alan Dilhorne, the noted statesman, now retired, is by way of being a relative. He is the elder brother of my foster-father, Jack Dilhorne.'

Van Deusen whistled. ‘Dilhorne of Dilhorne and Rutherfurd's and Dilhorne of Temple Hatton, Yorkshire?'

When Cobie, his mouth twisted derisively, nodded assent, he exclaimed, ‘By God, young sir, what were you doing wandering around the West, stealing peanuts when all you had to do—?'

Cobie cut in, his voice quite different from the one he had been using. Instead he was speaking in the harsh Western drawl which had driven the respectable and the unrespectable mad in Arizona Territory.

‘Ah, yes, when all I had to do was take foster-Daddy's handouts, get him to destroy Greer and all my enemies for me. Say pretty please, Uncle Jack and Uncle Alan, and let them run my life for me.

‘Oh, Perfesser, I thought you knew me better than that! Besides, the peanuts I stole from Bratt's Crossing and San Miguel became the wealth of the Indies when I lit out from the West and arrived on Wall Street and began to trade with it. What did you do with your pile, Perfesser, sir?'

‘The same as you. Made myself richer. Returned to the
bosom of my remaining family, began a career in politics for the hell of it—no illusions there—Republican infighting is merely San Miguel writ large.'

‘Oh, the whole world is merely San Miguel writ large,' remarked Cobie dismissively, ‘my father and Sir Alan notwithstanding.'

‘Then that being so, shall we pillage it separately—or together?'

Cobie's crack of laughter was spontaneous.

‘Neither, I'm resting. I'm having a holiday which I haven't done since I last saw you. My foster-sister wishes me to marry, hence my earlier comment. My foster-father wants me to settle down. Sir Alan, I suspect, wants me to think of a future in England—the Dilhorne branch here has become too respectable. He believes I may be a buccaneer and wants to have the pleasure of watching one of the family live up to its somewhat dubious past. My foster-father's father was transported to New South Wales and made his pile there. You may judge how legitimately if I tell you that I am supposed to resemble him somewhat.'

Mr Van Deusen thought that the resemblance might be stronger than that.

‘Your grandfather?' he ventured.

Cobie's grin was nasty. It came all the way from San Miguel, and belonged to the boy gunman who had terrorised that outlaw township.

‘Oh, that would be telling. Now give me your address, both here and in the States, and after that we had better return to the reception. My brother-in-law suspects me of wanting to escape my responsibilities to him and his wife, and he is determined that for once I shall conform.'

‘That would be a small miracle in itself,' remarked Van Deusen thoughtfully. ‘Though outwardly you are a model
of the perfect English gentleman, no transatlantic odour stains your person.'

‘Aren't I just,' agreed Cobie cheerfully. ‘The original chameleon, that's me. Now, let us go back, and I will introduce you not only to the ineffable Violet, who is temporarily bound to me with hoops of steel, but to several of her friends who are as accommodating as Kate's girls in the Silver Dollar, if a little cleaner. We mustn't let your stay in London be disappointing in any respect.'

Oh, I'm sure it won't be that, thought Mr Van Deusen, following Apollo back into the ballroom, not with Jumpin' Jake to entertain me!

 

Perhaps, ironically, the first person whom they met when they were about to leave the library was innocent young Lady Dinah Freville. Dinah, bored by the whole wretched business of pretending she was enjoying an event where everyone's eyes passed over her unseeingly, was just entering it in search of more agreeable entertainment.

She stared at Cobie and the man to whom he was speaking, or rather, with whom he was laughing. A man whom she had heard Violet describing as ‘yet another Yankee vulgarian to whom Kenilworth wishes me to be polite'.

Well, he couldn't be all that vulgar if Mr Grant was enjoying his company so much. She smiled at him, and said, a trifle breathlessly, ‘Were you bored, too, Mr Grant? Won't you introduce me to your friend?'