Three Heroes (24 page)

“Nepotism,” said Miss Hurstman, but that twinkle told Clarissa that there was more to the word than there seemed to be. “And you come into your money at twenty-one,” Miss Hurstman carried on. “

Unusual situation all around. Unusual that Deveril leave you anything. Even more unusual that he arrange for you to be free of control at such a tender age.”

“I know, and sometimes I wish he hadn’t.” After a moment, Clarissa admitted something she’d never told anyone before. “It frightens me. I’ve tried to learn something about management, but I don’t feel able to deal with such wealth.”

Miss Hurstman nodded. “You can hire Euston, Layton, and Keele to manage your affairs, but it will still be a tricky road. It’s not just a matter of management. A woman is not supposed to live without male supervision, especially a young unmarried lady of fortune. The world will watch every move you make, and scoundrels will hover with a thousand clever ways to filch your money from you.”

Major Hawkinville, she thought, though she couldn’t see him as a scoundrel. “Fortune hunters. I know.”

“At the end of a few weeks with me,” Miss Hurstman stated, “you’ll be more ready, and in ways other than administrative. But don’t put the thought of a husband out of your mind entirely. There are good men in the world, and one of them would make your life a great deal easier. I don’t see you as content with celibate living.”

Put like that, Clarissa wasn’t sure she would be content, either, and she knew part of that feeling was because of the heroic major, even though he hadn’t touched her in any meaningful way. She wasn’t ready to expose such sensitive uncertainties to Miss Hurstman’s astringent eye, however.

Her companion rose in a sharp, smooth motion. “There’s a lot about you that I don’t understand. I won’t pry. As long as it doesn’t affect what we’re doing here, it’s no business of mine. But I’ll listen if you want to talk, and I can keep secrets. You probably won’t believe it, but I can be trusted, too.”

Clarissa did believe it. She was tempted to lay all her burdens on the older woman’s shoulders—Lord Deveril and his death; Lord Arden’s cruelty to Beth; even the Company of Rogues, Lord Arden’s friends, who had helped her, whose burden of secrets she carried, who frightened her in vague, elusive ways.

That the idea tempted her was alarming in itself.

Hawk rode into Brighton at half past eight, before the fashionable part of town was stirring. He turned into the Red Lion Inn and arranged to stable Centaur there. He had a standing invitation to stay with Van and his wife, who’d taken a house on the Marine Parade, but he wouldn’t disturb them at this hour.

He wasn’t sure why he was here so uselessly early except that he’d wanted to get on with his pursuit of Miss Greystone. Time was shortening before Slade’s deadline, but more than that, like a novice before battle, he feared losing his nerve.

Miss Greystone might seem innocent, but he couldn’t imagine how she could not have been involved in Deveril’s death and that forged will. She was, as far as he could see, the sole beneficiary. Anything he discovered was likely to lead to her destruction, and quite simply, he balked at that. He’d spent the past weeks seeking some other way of claiming the Deveril money.

He’d failed.

If he’d failed, he doubted it was possible. He’d used every angle and connection to try to find the forger, or a hint of the killer. Nothing, which meant he was up against a clever mind and that line of inquiry was dead, especially given his shortage of time. One day, however, he hoped to know who had constructed the deceit, and how.

And why. That in particular puzzled him. The heiress had the money. Why had a clever mind gone to such illegal lengths for no obvious profit?

A lover? He didn’t want to think he’d been as deeply fooled by her as that.

From servants and gossips, he’d compiled a list of people Clarissa had been seen with during her time in London, but it was short and unhelpful. The Greystones and Deveril had only been tolerated, so her social circle had not been wide. The highest-born connection was Lady Gorgros, a vastly stupid woman who couldn’t be the genius behind anything.

Viscount Starke had hung around Deveril, but he’d shake hands with anyone for another bottle of brandy, and his hands perpetually shook on their own, anyway. There’d been others of his sort, and a couple of upstart families who had wined and dined the Greystones under the illusion that it was a step toward the haut ton.

After Deveril’s death, however, she’d been taken up by the Marchioness of Arden. That had struck him as strange enough to be interesting until he’d discovered that Lady Arden had been a teacher at Miss Mallory’s School. Obviously, in time of need Clarissa had turned to her. Hawk would have spoken to the marchioness to see if she had anything to tell, but the lady was living in the country, expecting to be confined with her first child at any moment.

It was perhaps as well. Poking in such high-flowing waters was likely to be dangerous. That explained, however, why the heiress’s guardian was the Duke of Belcraven, Arden’s father. Her own father had been persuaded to sign away all his rights for five thousand pounds. With the Greystones, it would appear, everything was for sale.

So, after weeks of work, he had facts but no clue about Clarissa Greystone’s mysterious partner in crime. Thus his only key was Clarissa herself. Perhaps her honesty and innocence were a deep disguise, and she was a thorough villain. Perhaps she was the puppet of some undiscovered manipulator.

Whatever the truth, Hawk was going to uncover it, and he would do whatever it took.

As soon as the post office opened he went to speak to his obliging informant there. Since Hawk was from a well-known local family, Mr. Crawford had made no difficulty over accepting a crown to send word when Miss Clarissa Greystone arrived in town.

“Came to register with me yesterday, Major Hawkinville,” the rotund man said with a wink. “Miss Greystone, a pretty friend, and their chaperone.”

“Any other notable arrivals?” Hawk asked, attempting to mask his interest a little.

Crawford consulted his book. “The Earl and Countess of Gresham, sir. Mrs. and Miss Nutworth-Hulme

…”

When the man had run down the list, Hawk thanked him again and left, pausing to allow a couple to enter the room. An arresting couple.

The woman was a silver-haired beauty in pure white, from the plumes on her bonnet to her kid slippers.

Somehow she tweaked at his memory, though he didn’t know her. Certainly no man would forget her.

Her companion was a tall, darkly handsome man with an empty sleeve tucked between the buttons of his jacket. Military, Hawk guessed, but again, no one he knew.

“Mrs. Hardcastle!” Mr. Crawford exclaimed, coming around his counter to bow to the lady.

Ah, he remembered her now. She was the actress they called the White Dove of Drury Lane. She’d been playing Titania when he’d tracked Van down in the theater a while ago. His mind had been entirely on Van’s danger, but even so, her grace and charm had made an impression.

She was irrelevant to his current concerns, however.

As he continued on his way he heard Crawford greet the man as Major Beaumont, confirming that he was military and a stranger. All the same, that irrelevant name would now have slotted into his mind.

He found it tiresome to have nearly every detail stick, even something like a chance-met actress and her escort, but he’d learned to live with it, and it was the basis of his skill. He still had time to kill, so he walked over to the seafront, hoping the brisk breeze would clear his mind.

He wasn’t used to having a tangled mind, but Clarissa Greystone had achieved it. Looked at from the angle of the evidence, she could not be an innocent. Hell, she was a Greystone, and even if she had spent most of the recent years at Miss Mallory’s School, that had to carry a taint.

As well, he knew better than most that appearances could be completely deceptive. He remembered a wide-eyed child in Lisbon who had mutilated the soldiers he had murdered and robbed.

The ethereal White Dove was probably a foulmouthed wanton, and wholesome Clarissa Greystone was neck-deep in slime. He need have no qualms about pleasing her and wooing her until she let something slip that would open the puzzle-box of Deveril’s affairs.

If only he felt that way.

He watched the dippers lead their horses down to the beach and harness them to the bathing machines, getting ready for the first bathers of the day. Business might be light, given the clouds graying the sky.

Even so, perhaps he should sea-bathe despite the weather, and try to be washed clean of the stink he felt creeping over him.

Maudlin thought, but he’d never used lovemaking as a weapon before.

He suddenly remembered recruiting someone to do just that, however—if coupling with a notorious whore could be called lovemaking. It had been two years ago, just after the taking of Paris. Napoleon had abdicated, and Richard Anstable, an inoffensive British diplomat, had been found stabbed to death.

The man who’d found him had been Nicholas Delaney, and Hawk had recognized the name. Delaney had been the creator and leader of the Company of Rogues, Con’s group of friends at Harrow School.

Hawk, curious about a person he’d heard so much about, had immediately wondered what Delaney was doing at the liberation of Paris. He’d sought Delaney out, and there’d been an instant liking, though Hawk had instinctively blocked the man’s charisma.

That charisma, however, had landed Delaney with the very devil of a job, and because of their acquaintance, Hawk had been given the task of putting it to him.

The Foreign Office, the Horse Guards, and the military command all had files on a woman called Therese Bellaire. A daughter of the minor nobility, she had risen in wealth and power as mistress and procuress to Napoleon’s most important men. In 1814, with Napoleon abdicating, she had turned to Colonel Coldstrop of the Guards, and begged his help in fleeing to England. No one thought her purpose innocent.

It had been decided to support her plan so as to find out what she was up to and whom she contacted.

The files showed that a few years before, Delaney had been her resident lover for months. The files also said that he’d left her, not the other way around, and that she still cared.

Hawk’s orders had been blunt. “She’s up to something,” General Featheringham had said, “and we need to know what. Only idiots think Boney’s going to sit on Elba growing violets, and there are Bonapartist sympathizers everywhere, including Britain. Tell Delaney to get back into the woman’s good graces and rut the truth out of her.”

Hawk had put it more politely, but Nicholas Delaney’s eyes had turned steady and cool. All he’d said, however, was, “And to think I felt guilty about not fighting in the Peninsula.”

Hawk had tried to sugar the pill. “I hear she’s a very beautiful woman, and skilled at the erotic arts.”

Delaney had stood up at that. “Then you do it,” he’d said, and left.

It hadn’t been a rejection. Hawk had known that, and within days he’d heard that Delaney was part of a wild circle including Therese Bellaire. Soon after that, he’d left for England with the woman, presumably doing his noble service.

Hawk had heard no more of it, and hadn’t cared to, but when Napoleon, as predicted, had returned to France and power, the Bellaire woman had reappeared in the inner circle. She’d disappeared around the time of Waterloo, and now, surely, her goose must be cooked.

It had all come back to him because he’d met Delaney again recently—in Devon, at Con’s place there.

Delaney’s country estate lay not far away, and he’d come to look over the strange collection left by Con’

s predecessor and to help Con with a dilemma to do with Susan.

Delaney and Hawk had both pretended not to have met before, and it hadn’t seemed that Delaney held a grudge. All the same, Hawk wondered how many thorns from his past would turn up to jab him.

Thorns from his present, as well.

He returned to the Red Lion and ate a mediocre breakfast, waiting for fashionable Brighton to emerge.

Waiting for Clarissa Greystone to become vulnerable to his Hawk’s eye and talons.

The fashionable throng kept earlier hours at Brighton, so by eleven he could go out to stroll among them.

He circled the open grassy area called the Steyne, chatting to the occasional acquaintance, many of them military, casually keeping an eye out for his quarry.

He recognized Miss Trist first. Or rather, he was alerted by a swirl of attention around a lovely lady in a white dress trimmed with periwinkle blue, and then saw who it was. It took him a moment to recognize the lively creature beside her as Clarissa Greystone.

No sign of the unsophisticated schoolgirl now. What an excellent actress she was.

She wasn’t wearing a bonnet. Instead, a daringly elegant hat with a small curved brim revealed all of her face and quite a lot of her stylishly dressed curls. It didn’t make her a beauty, but it gave a vibrancy to her features. To protect her complexion, she carried the latest thing, a pagoda-style parasol. Or, to be precise, she twirled it. Even at a distance she looked confident, full of the zest of life—and dangerous.

Her gown was an off-white color strongly trimmed with rust-colored braid and edged around the hem with a deep fringe. As she walked, that fringe swung, giving tantalizing glimpses of shapely ankles emphasized by cream-and-rust-striped stockings.

Every man on the Steyne was doubtless looking at those ankles.

He jerked his own eyes up, steadied himself, and planned his intercept. He saw others making a direct line, including a number of military men. The last thing he wanted was the heiress in the protection of another man. Disguising his urgency, he moved in swiftly for the kill.

“I say, Aunt Arabella, fancy seeing you here! And in such charming company!”

Clarissa started. She’d been so intent on looking carefree and confident despite feeling sick with nerves that she hadn’t noticed the dark-haired, dark-eyed young officer until he was upon them.