To Wed a Wicked Prince (12 page)

“Haven’t seen ’em go out,” he observed. “Reckon they’re in t’ parlor.”

“Thank you, Morecombe.” She moved towards the parlor door.

“You want tea, m’lady? Our Ada’s made some of ’em spice cakes what you like,” the butler said.

Cornelia stopped and turned back. “That would be lovely, Morecombe. I’ve been dreaming about Ada’s spice cakes ever since I left.”

He nodded. “Thought as ’ow they might go down a treat, mum.” He shuffled off towards the door to the kitchen regions.

Cornelia smiled. It was good to be back. She opened the parlor door and peered around it. “Guess who?”

“Nell.”
Livia and Aurelia jumped up and rushed to embrace her. “Oh, it’s lovely to see you. We’ve been waiting in all afternoon,” Livia said.

“Yes, you can’t imagine how many visitors we’ve had to turn away so that we’d be alone when you came,” Aurelia said, laughing, drawing her into the room. “I’ll go and ask Morecombe for tea.”

“He’s bringing it already,” Cornelia said, shrugging out of her pelisse. “And some of our Ada’s spice cakes.”

“They must have known you were coming,” Livia said. “We haven’t had spice cakes since you left.”

“Well, we’ve always known the twins have special powers,” Aurelia said. “Sit…sit, Nell…how was the journey? How are the children?”

“How’s Harry?” put in Livia, taking her friend’s gloves and hat.

“They’re all well. Susannah managed the journey without throwing up once and Linton is examining the refurbished nursery quarters in Harry’s house on Mount Street with something like approbation, and Stevie’s in the mews making the acquaintance of his new pony.” Cornelia sank onto the sofa and threw her arms above her head. “Oh, it’s just like old times.”

“Not quite,” Aurelia pointed out quietly.

“No,” Cornelia agreed, sitting up straight. “I don’t live here anymore, but that doesn’t change our friendship.” She looked at Livia and Aurelia. “So, tell me what’s been happening?”

“You know perfectly well,” Livia said. “Ellie told you all about the Russian prince.”

“I haven’t told her about the latest development,” Aurelia said. “About what happened yesterday.”

“Ah.” Cornelia put her head on one side, looking between them. “So tell me.” Morecombe came in with the tea tray at that point and they fell silent. When he’d left Livia explained.

“It would be simple if it was someone we could understand,” Cornelia said when Livia had finished her recitation. “Someone who played by the same rules, fitted the same molds as we do, but this Prince Prokov is an exotic. With someone you understood you could say, well, I know what he wants, what he expects, and it either suits me or it doesn’t.”

“Precisely,” Aurelia said.

“But that’s what I find irresistible,” Livia said slowly. “I don’t understand him, I can’t predict his next move, and I love it.”

“Then I suggest we stop trying to make sense of this and let Liv follow her instincts,” Cornelia declared.

“Well, you certainly followed yours,” Aurelia said.

“And it’s brought me only happiness,” Cornelia said softly. She leaned over and touched Livia’s hand. “Liv, you know what’s right for you. And we’ll stand behind you every step of the way.”

“Absolutely,” Aurelia said, her hand joining Cornelia’s. “But let Harry make sure he’s unknown to his network.”

“It’s a simple precaution, Liv,” Cornelia said. “We’re at war with Russia.”

Reluctantly Livia nodded. She hated the whole business of distrusting someone so much that you had to dig into corners looking for bad things. But a thread of common sense told her that she knew so little of this man, it was only common sense to use the tools at her disposal to eliminate at least some of the uncertainties.

Harry found very little. Prince Alexander Prokov was certainly known to Harry’s contacts. But he appeared to present no threat. He had no political history, no reason that they could unearth to have fled the Court of St. Petersburg. He was simply a dilettante visitor. A wealthy Russian aristocrat who’d been a protégé of the Empress Catherine. He had known the czar well as a youth, had been an officer in the prestigious Preobrazhensky regiment, but like so many Russian noblemen appeared to have little interest in anything but entertainment.

“I don’t know,” he said to Cornelia as they lay in bed two days later. “There are no indications that he’s anything but what he appears to be. Russians of his social standing spend more time visiting European capitals than they do in St. Petersburg. They’re an educated, wealthy, cosmopolitan lot and always have been. He seems uninterested in politics, and I’m told he’s well liked among the loose circle of Russian émigrés and equally well liked in the clubs. An affable, easygoing, perfectly gentlemanly member of society. And to all intents and purposes a more than suitable suitor for Livia…in fact, a highly desirable one, I would have said.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “I can keep digging if you wish.”

Cornelia shook her head. “No, Liv doesn’t want that.” She turned into his embrace. “She has to make up her own mind.” A few minutes later, she said abruptly as if the idea had just come to her, “But if she does marry him, he might take her away, back to Russia.”

Harry sighed and stopped what he was doing. “I don’t seem to be able to hold your attention tonight,” he complained. “Am I boring you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, reaching up a hand to stroke his face as he gazed down at her, an expression of mild irritation in his green eyes. “It was just that the thought came to me and I didn’t like it…please go on…
please,
Harry.”

“That’s better,” he said, and his wife swiftly rediscovered her concentration as she lost interest in anything but the activity at hand.

Two days later, Harry drew up in his curricle outside White’s, tossed the reins to his groom, and strolled into his club intent on a game of Macau. He’d been closeted in his dingy office at the War Ministry for nearly two days, deciphering a particularly troublesome Russian code, and was relishing the prospect of putting his agile brain to work on calculating the odds at cards, an activity that he knew would relax him and clear his head.

“Ah, Harry…there you are.” A cheerful voice hailed him from a chair in the bow window, and Lord David Foster waved a hand in greeting. “Come and join us. Nick, here, was regaling us with some tall tale about a boar he shot in Bavaria.”

“Nick’s never been to Bavaria,” Harry declared, laughing as he made his way across the elegant salon, taking a glass of madeira from a waiter’s tray as he passed. He paused at the table, one hand resting casually on Nicholas Petersham’s buckram shoulder. “Have you, Nick?”

“I went in the long vacation once…” the other declared with a touch of feigned indignation. “And I’ll thank you, Bonham, not to call me a liar.”

“Call him out, I should,” David said with a lazy grin. “Can’t let the insult lie, you know.”

“Call Harry out? I’m not mad enough for that,” Nick stated. “I’d rather face the boar again.”

“No need for that.” Harry deposited his long frame in a deep armchair opposite his friends. “I apologize for the calumny, Nick. I had forgotten about that visit. As I recall now, you came back to school with a scar on your calf that you insisted had been caused by the boar’s tusk.” He shook his head sadly. “Not sure anyone believed you then. You always did have a talent for exaggeration.”

Nick laughed. “It’s always a mistake to spend time with people who’ve known you since you were in short coats. And,” he added with mock menace, “I could tell some tales of you, Harry, that I’ll lay odds you’d not want broadcast.”

“I’m sure you could, Nick,” Harry said nonchalantly. He uncoiled himself from the depths of his chair. “I’ve a mind to play Macau, anyone care to join me?”

“No…no, I’ve lost a hundred guineas already today,” David said, shaking his head. “I’m intent on drowning my sorrows.”

“Nick?”

Nicholas Petersham set down his glass and stood up. “I’ll probably regret it, but a hand or two perhaps.”

They went off to an inner room, one where the candlelight gave the impression of perpetual night accentuated by the hushed voices of the groom porters calling the odds, the slap of cards on baize, the rattle of dice, the intense silence around the tables as the players made their bets.

A group at a corner table attracted Harry’s attention. He’d met two of them briefly, Russian émigrés both. Duke Nicolai Sperskov and Count Constantine Fedorovsky. They had attracted the attention of the English secret service when they’d first arrived in London, as did all foreign visitors who seemed set to stay in the country for some length of time, and Harry had seen their files. They contained nothing of any particular interest. Like other Russian aristocrats, they had no shortage of funds, moved within a wide international social circle, and seemed intent for the most part on the pursuit of pleasure. No different in that respect from their English counterparts moving between the idle entertainments of the London season and the country house circuit.

Duke Nicolai was said to be something of a high-living roué. He enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and entertained a string of mistresses, all sophisticated married ladies with impeccable social connections. There was no hint that he used them for anything more devious than bed sport. No hint of intelligence activity anywhere. Fedorovsky was a rather less expansive character, a good conversationalist with wide-ranging interests, but again the usual investigations had revealed no indications of devious activities.

“D’you know the man playing with Sperskov and Fedorovsky, Nick?” Harry asked, pausing before taking his seat at a Macau table.

Nick raised his quizzing glass and peered across the room. “Oh, what’s his name…? I met him at Brooke’s and then I came upon him riding with Livia…a week or so ago…begins with a P…” He snapped his fingers. “Prokov, Prince Alexander Prokov, that’s it.”

“Ah,” Harry murmured. “I’ve seen him around, but I’ve never been introduced. D’you care to do the honors, Nick?”

Nick, who was about to seat himself at the table, gave his friend a rather pained look of inquiry. “Now?”

“No, when they leave the club…I’ve a mind to bump into them, as it were. Let’s go back and talk to David about boar hunting…forgive us, gentlemen, I’ve just remembered a previous engagement.” He offered an apologetic smile to the card table’s present occupants, who’d been waiting for them to take their seats.

“Whatever you say,” Nick agreed amiably, turning away from the table. “What’s your interest in the man…he’s just another Russian aristocrat.”

“He seems to have a certain interest in Livia,” Harry said. “I’m commissioned by my wife to look him over.”

“I thought there was something smoky going on there,” Nick declared with an air of triumph. “When I came upon them in the park, Liv was as taut as a drawn bow. And our Russian friend had a damned proprietorial air about him too. If he’s making a nuisance of himself to Liv—”

“No…no, quite the opposite, I gather,” Harry said, waving a soothing hand at his friend.

“Livia returns his interest?” Nick paused in his progress towards the salon.

Harry shrugged. “I’m not in her confidence at this point, Nick. I only obey my wife’s instructions.”

Nick gave him a disbelieving look, then continued on his way into the next room.

“We’ve decided to return to the subject of boar hunting,” Harry declared to David as he deposited himself in a deep armchair opposite.

“Oh, I thought you were for Macau.” David hailed a waiter with a tray of glasses.

“Not any more; Harry decided for his own inscrutable reasons to wait for an opportunity to accost Prince Prokov…d’you know him, David?”

“Only to bow to,” the other man said. “Seems a pleasant enough fellow.”

“So I thought,” Nick said darkly, “but it seems he has designs on Livia Lacey.”

David sat up abruptly. “Does he indeed? Can we permit that?”

“You don’t know the ladies of Cavendish Square very well, David, if you think it has anything to do with you,” Harry observed with a chuckle, taking a glass from the waiter’s tray. “Or indeed with me, except that Nell demands I make inquiries and what the lady wants the lady gets.”

His friends chuckled knowingly and raised their glasses in a silent toast.

It was half an hour later when Alex with his two friends emerged from the card room, all of them blinking a little at the bright daylight after the gentle candlelight in the inner room.

Nick rose from his chair and hailed the three of them. “Come and join us for a glass, Prokov…I would make you known to an old friend who’s just returned to town from an extended honeymoon in Scotland.”

The three Russians approached the group in the bow window; smiles and bows and murmured courtesies were exchanged. Alex was a little puzzled at Petersham’s friendliness—it seemed to imply a depth of friendship that didn’t exist between them—but he was confident the answer would reveal itself at some point, as indeed it did.

“Been riding again with Lady Livia?” Nick inquired casually. “I’ve looked out for you in the park, but haven’t seen you.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of another ride in the park with Lady Livia,” Alex said, his eyes narrowing in speculation. He took one of the extra chairs that a watchful waiter had brought over when it was clear the party in the window was going to expand.

“Bring us a bottle of the ’97 burgundy, there’s a good fellow,” Nick instructed the waiter before confiding merrily to Alex, “Harry, here, is married to Livia Lacey’s best friend.”

“Indeed,” Alex said, inclining his head towards Harry. “I thought Lady Farnham filled that position.”

Harry smiled. “Lady Farnham and my wife, her sister-in-law, share the honor.”

“Ah, I see,” Alex said, seeing perfectly. Clearly he was being vetted. Well, he had no objections. After all, he had nothing to hide from these three carefree members of the Upper Ten Thousand, and they were precisely the company he wished to cultivate. He settled down to make himself thoroughly agreeable.

Duke Nicolai, always happy simply to be in good company, particularly when the wine was flowing, sank into an armchair with a sigh of pleasure. Constantine, whose interests ran along rather more intellectual and scientific lines, took a seat a little reluctantly, but was soon diverted by a comment Harry made about Joseph Priestley and the chemical experiments that had led to the discovery of oxygen.