Trapped by Scandal (16 page)

“Can you not take her into your confidence, William?” Alec asked as the door closed behind his sister. “You know she would never betray you. Has she not earned your confidence?”

William sipped his sherry reflectively. “Yes, of course she has. But I don't want her involved, Alec, and neither should you. She needs to put such adventuring behind her and start living the life she was born to.”

“I wonder if that's your decision to make for her,” Alec said, looking straight at him. “You have no claim on her; you have always made sure of that.”

“True enough. But I know, as Hero doesn't, as I suspect you don't, what happens to a woman when she becomes a social outcast. I cannot bear the thought of that happening to Hero.”

“But—”

Whatever Alec was about to say was cut off as the door opened and a voice trilled, “Such an exquisite baby, such a dear little thing, Alec, my dear boy. I have just been worshipping at the cradle, oh, and dear, sweet Marie Claire, how well she looks after such a dreadful ordeal . . . Oh, my goodness, why didn't someone tell me we had a visitor? Goodness me, sir, forgive my inattention.”

The speech emerged from a small round figure trailing shawls and scarves and surrounded by the unmistakable aroma of sal volatile and lavender water. She flapped a fan in her obvious consternation as she bobbed a curtsy in William's general direction.

“Aunt Emily, may I present the Viscount St. Aubery,”
Alec said, stepping forward hastily. “William, the Lady Emily Harrington, my sister's companion.”

“I am honored, ma'am.” William swept her a courtly bow. “I was just congratulating Alec on the wonderful news. Lady Bruton is doing well, I trust?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, sir, splendidly.” Emily plied her fan vigorously. “I cannot imagine the torments she must have endured, and I heard not a sound.” Then she blushed as if realizing that the subject of childbirth was not one generally discussed in male company.

“A glass of sherry, Aunt Emily?” Alec offered opportunely.

“Just a small one, just to give me a little strength. I did find myself rather weak this morning.” The lady sank onto a daybed in a silk and cashmere sea of shawls. “A little sal volatile, I think . . . I must have it somewhere . . . oh, where could it be?” Distressed, she fluttered her mittened hands among the scarves until she found a small reticule. “Oh, dear me, how silly of me. I'm always forgetting things.” She lay back on the daybed, dabbed the bottle beneath her nose, and took the glass of sherry Alec brought her. “I do trust I'm not interrupting any business,” she asked after a moment, looking at the two men, her faded blue eyes suddenly wary. “I would not intrude for the world.”

“Indeed, you're not, ma'am,” Alec said swiftly. “But we were about to adjourn to the library as you came in. May I send for Harper?”

“Oh, yes, you may. Thank you, dear boy. I shall ask her to rub my temples with a little lavender water. I feel the headache coming on . . . all this excitement, you know.”

“I will fetch her at once.” Alec pulled the bell rope and went to the door, and when a footman arrived in answer to the summons, he gave instructions to fetch Lady Emily's maid. “William, shall we go down to the library?”

“With pleasure. Your servant, Lady Emily.” William offered another sweeping bow to the lady and followed Alec into the hall. “That lady, estimable in every way, I am sure, considers it her duty to
chaperone
Hero?” He sounded astounded.

Alec laughed. “Yes, absurd, isn't it? But Hero is very fond of her, as am I, and it suits Hero very well not to be chaperoned in any conventional way.”

“Quite,” William said drily. “Which takes us back to our earlier conversation.” He followed Alec downstairs to the hall and along a corridor behind the stairs which led to the library at the rear of the house.

“I think that is a conversation you had best have with my sister,” Alec stated. “I am not her keeper or her guardian. And if you want to set yourself up as either, I wish you luck.”

William shrugged. He'd come to much the same conclusion himself. “Well, I would ask that you keep my confidence in this matter for the moment, Alec.”

“Of course. So what do you need me to do?”

William walked to the fireplace, putting one booted foot on the fender as he looked into the flames. “The Lizard is in town.”

Alec whistled softly. “He cannot threaten you here, surely?”

William gave a short laugh. “Of course he can. Not in
the same way, certainly, and for the last couple of weeks, he hasn't been particularly attentive. But I need someone to watch our contacts, to let me know if the Lizard or, indeed, any Frenchman unfamiliar to them approaches them in any way. I cannot have eyes everywhere. I know Barras has to have other agents operating in the city, and I'm trying to identify them all, while gathering what information I can on those with the resources to aid the Duc d'Enghien and his Army of Condé.”

“What of Marcus?”

“He has his hands full, as I do. We need more help, Alec.”

“Of course,” Alec agreed readily. “I will do what I can, gladly, but . . . well, with the baby and Marie Claire, I am not expecting to be much in company in the next few months.” He regarded William anxiously, unwilling to refuse his help but at the same time certain of his priorities.

William looked at him with a half smile. “No, of course you're not, and neither should you. Marie Claire has been through enough on her own without sacrificing time with you at this juncture.”

“Hero will do it.”

William groaned. “Does neither of you understand anything I've said?”

“Yes, of course we do. But I don't agree with you when it comes to wrapping my sister in cotton wool, quite apart from the fact that you won't be able to do it anyway. Why not accept her for who she is and let her help? She'll be every bit as good as I would be, in fact probably better. She knows more people and makes friends as and where
she chooses. If you ask her to become acquainted with some of the émigré families who don't frequent the usual circles, and there are plenty of them who can't afford to put on the necessary show to participate, she will do so easily. She has a talent for making friends.”

William frowned. Once again, he felt he was choosing between his need for Hero's help and his responsibility to keep her safe. A self-imposed responsibility and one he knew Hero would fight tooth and nail. And once again, he knew which way he would eventually choose, and he would have to live with stress and unease as a result. But there was an inevitability about it.

An inevitability about Hero herself.

FIFTEEN

H
ero stood at her chamber window, looking down onto the street, watching for William's departure. She was ready to go out, wearing a dark green ermine-trimmed cape over her muslin gown and half boots of soft green leather. Her eyes held a mischievous gleam as she gazed intently into the street, and the moment the front door opened and William emerged onto the top step, she was moving swiftly to the chamber door.

William stood for a moment, as always glancing around, assessing his surroundings. He could see nothing out of the ordinary, a footman carrying parcels and hatboxes into one of the houses along the street, a lady's maid walking a small, fat pug dog, a groom holding the heads of a fine pair of grays in the traces of a phaeton outside a house around the square. A perfectly peaceful scene on an autumn day in one of London's most fashionable squares. He trod lightly down the steps to the street and crossed over into the square garden.

He heard the front door of the Bruton mansion open as he stepped onto the gravel path that led beneath the horse chestnut trees to the far side of the garden. He paused,
glancing over his shoulder, his senses instantly alert. Hero came running across the street, waving merrily.

“I said I would challenge you,” she called, holding out her tightly fisted gloved hands towards him. “Which do you choose?”

He stood, hands on his hips, watching her approach. She came up to him, her cheeks delicately flushed, her vivid green eyes shining, her hair coiled in two fat caramel- and honey-colored plaits around her bare head. And as so often in the past, he had the greatest urge to loosen them and run his fingers through the shining multicolored cascade.

“Oh, you look just like some stuffy, disapproving old uncle,” she declared, missing the quick needle of lust that had come and gone in his eyes. “The garden is for playing.”

Opportunely, a pair of small boys emerged onto the path ahead of them, flourishing wooden swords and engaged in a mock fight, which seemed to involve a great deal of shouting and fierce war whoops.

“Come on, William, which hand?”

“You're incorrigible,” he stated. “Why aren't you wearing a hat?” He tapped her extended right hand with an air of resignation.

“You can't play conkers wearing a hat,” she scoffed, opening the chosen hand to reveal a shiny chestnut on the end of a string. “They've both been soaked in vinegar, so they're equally hard.” She opened her left fist and swung her own conker in a purposeful arc. “To the death?”

“To the death,” he agreed, and with a swift twist of his
hand sent his conker flying on the end of its string to make contact with Hero's.

She laughed, but even through her laughter and the sparkle of her eyes, he could see her determined purpose. He should have remembered that Lady Hermione Fanshawe was a deadly serious competitive fighter, whatever her weapon.

And suddenly, he found himself playing in earnest, as determined as she that his would be the winning chestnut, unbroken and still attached to its string.

Hero danced around him, and he matched her speed but realized early on that she had a more practiced wrist action than he did, her conker snapping and jumping against his own. And at the end, when his smashed into pieces, falling from the string to the ground, he was laughingly surprised to find that their little battle had drawn quite a crowd of small children and their nursemaids.

“You win, you outrageous creature,” he said, sweeping her a deep bow of concession. “How on earth did I allow you to engage me in such preposterous childishness? Now, take my arm as if you were a respectable lady, and we'll stroll decorously around the garden in the hopes that we'll cease to be a spectacle more suited to a zoo.”

Hero, still laughing, first curtsied to their audience, then obeyed, tucking her arm into his. He led her away from the little crowd and down a narrow gravel pathway between laurel hedges.

“Are you living in Half Moon Street again?” she asked, her tone now serious, the laughter fading from her eyes.

“Yes.” His voice was wary.

“Can we go there now?”

“No.”

Hero glanced sideways at his set profile and said nothing for a few minutes. Then she slipped her hand from his arm and asked, “Why do you attach so much importance to my reputation, William? I care nothing for it, so why should you?”

“You care nothing for it because you don't know what it means to lose it,” he responded curtly.

She stopped on the pathway, standing slightly in front of him, blocking his way. “And you do? It makes no sense to me that someone who lives the life you live should give a fig for convention and reputation and all the societal silliness that means. I don't understand it.” She spoke fiercely, struggling to convey to him the vital importance of her question. She had to learn why he had felt it necessary to bring their love affair to such a cruelly abrupt ending on the Isle of Wight, when in her heart, she knew he felt, or
had
felt, as deeply attached to her as she was to him.

“I have seen what happens to people when they lose their place in their world,” William stated, his expression darkening. “And you have not. I have lost one person whom I loved more than I can say because of it, and I will not stand aside and let the same thing happen to you.”

“Who was it? Will you tell me about it?”

“No,” he said flatly, his tawny gold eyes shadowed. “That is not something I will share with anyone. It is not all mine to share.”

Slowly, Hero nodded. She had a horror of intruding
on anyone's privacy, just as she had a horror of anyone intruding on her own. She wanted most desperately to know what had happened, because it held the key to any resumption of their own loving liaison, but she knew she had gone as far as she dared for now.

William looked at her bent head, the frown on her usually smooth forehead, and he could feel her hurt. He reached out a finger and lifted her chin, obliging her to meet his eyes. “That subject is closed, Hero. But all is not lost. You may invite me for dinner tomorrow evening.” A smile quirked the corners of his mouth, and the shadows left his eyes.

The old familiar William had returned, and Hero forced down the flicker of resentment that he thought he could so easily move beyond something that still mattered so deeply to her. She had no choice at this point and in this public space but to accept what he would give her. She executed a perfect curtsy, saying sweetly, “Pray, sir, would you do us the honor of dining with my brother and myself tomorrow evening? I fear Lady Bruton will be obliged to excuse herself, but my companion, Lady Emily, will, I'm sure, be more than happy to receive you.”

He bowed solemnly. “Indeed, madam, the honor will be all mine.”

“At seven o'clock, then.” She turned to retrace her steps.

“Allow me to escort you to your door, ma'am.” He took her arm firmly in his again.

“Thank you. I'm sure my reputation would suffer dreadfully from my walking alone in Grosvenor Square in front of my own house,” she murmured.

“Put the claws away, sweetheart. They don't suit you,” he said, laughing at her. “Cry peace.”

“Truce,” she amended.

“As you wish.” He escorted her to her door and waited until she had been admitted before walking away, heading for St. James's Street and White's Club.

The Lizard was sitting beside the fire in the main salon of White's Club. He was alone, a glass of claret at hand, a copy of the
London Gazette
open in front of him. But he was not reading the latest pieces of Society gossip or the latest political news, despite the paper's preoccupation with affairs in Europe and most particularly in Paris. His gaze slipped sideways to survey the salon's occupants, the arrivals and departures. He was not a well-known member. Indeed, his membership had been finagled through discreet diplomatic channels by Chauvelin, the French ambassador to the Court of St. James before the execution of the French king ended diplomatic relations between the two countries. From the point of view of the members of the exclusive club, Chevalier Everard Dubois was simply an unfortunate émigré from the chaos that had destroyed French Society.

He was aware of William Ducasse's presence almost before the Viscount walked into the salon. There was something about the man that commanded instant attention—unless, of course, he had no wish to be noticed, Dubois reflected grimly, his eyes studiously fixed on the newspaper in his hands. When Ducasse had a mind to
be invisible, somehow he achieved it. But clearly, this afternoon was not such an occasion. He strolled through the salon, greeting acquaintances, pausing at a card table to watch a game of whist, laughingly offering a word of advice to a pair playing chess in the bay window looking onto St. James's Street. If he was aware of his nemesis, he gave no sign, until, with a glass of claret in his hand, he crossed the salon to the fireplace and stood with his back to the fire, idly surveying the room before turning his seemingly languid gaze on Everard Dubois.

The Lizard lowered his paper, and for a moment, the two men looked at each other in silence, a look of acknowledgment, of rapiers drawn. Then Ducasse nodded once and strolled away towards double doors at the end of the room, which led into a further card room.

“Ducasse, come and take my place. I've lost enough for one day.” Sir Marcus Gosford hailed him from a card table where they were playing faro.

“Gladly, Marcus.” William walked over to the table. “Are the cards not running for you today?”

“The devil's in 'em,” Marcus declared in disgust, pushing back his chair. “See if you can do any better.”

“A word with you first.” William walked a little to one side, exchanging his empty glass for a full one from the tray of a passing footman.

Marcus followed, his eyes now watchful. He had worked long enough with William in the bloody furnace of revolutionary Paris to know when caution was necessary. He took a glass from the footman and glanced nonchalantly around the card room. It looked the same
to him now as it had done when he'd entered an hour earlier.

“The Lizard is in the next room,” William observed casually, his tone evenly modulated, as if he was imparting a perfectly ordinary piece of gossip.

“Why?” Marcus's tone was equally bland, although his eyes had sharpened like the tips of daggers.

“Your guess is as good as mine. But it bodes nothing good, you can be sure.” He sipped his claret. “He's been around town for a few weeks but never made his presence as obvious as it is now. So just a word to the wise.” He nodded as casually as before and went to take his friend's place at the faro table.

Marcus walked away and took a side door from the card room, which took him out to the hall without having to cross the main salon. He retrieved his cloak, hat, and cane from the porter and went out into the crisp air. There was a game afoot once again, and he felt a little of the old thrill from the Paris days, as well as an almost palpable sharpening of his wits.

Everard Dubois remained in the main salon, his eyes seeing nothing of the printed page in front of him. He had made the first move in the game, and while Ducasse had shown no chink in his impassive demeanor, the Lizard knew that his openly thrown gauntlet would have caught the other man by surprise. They were both so accustomed to working in the shadows that bringing the game into the open was bound to catch the enemy wrong-footed. Of course, Ducasse would be even more watchful now, but Dubois was confident that unless his quarry went com
pletely to ground, which would be out of a character for a man who had never resisted a challenge, something or someone in his life would offer an opening for the poisoned tip of the sword.

Carefully, he folded his newspaper along the fold and laid it aside as he rose to his feet and sauntered out of the club, well satisfied with his afternoon's work.