A Wicked Gentleman (4 page)

T
HE IRON WHEELS OF THE CARRIAGE
clattered over cobbles, and the city noise rose in increasing cacophony from outside the dim stuffy confines of the vehicle. Cornelia leaned forward to move aside the leather flap that served as a curtain over the grimy windows. The children's nurse had insisted the curtains be kept in place throughout the journey to protect her charges from the light that might damage their eyes and whatever sights of debauchery that might damage their souls. Not that there had been much of the latter to enliven their tedious journey, Cornelia reflected wearily.

She looked out now with renewed interest. It was early afternoon as the carriage turned into a quiet square, leaving the lively bustle of the streets behind. The garden in the center of the square was winter-bare and had a slightly desolate air, but it would give the children some freedom. The carriage creaked to a halt, and she felt her shoulders tighten in anticipation.

“Are we here, Mama…is this the house…can we get out…?”

“I want to be first, Mama…move, Franny…”

Cornelia closed her eyes for a moment as the childish voices rose around her, joined belatedly by Susannah's as the little girl awoke and realized that things were going on that she was about to miss.

Cornelia opened her eyes and exchanged a glance with Aurelia.
Journey's end.
Whatever they found here it had to be a welcome change from the long jolting journey in the company of three fractious children.

“Courage,” Aurelia said. “We're here.”

“So we are.” Cornelia grabbed Stevie as he was about to plunge out of the just-opened door and set him firmly on the seat. “Wait with Linton,
all
of you.”

Ignoring the rising protests, she stepped down onto the pavement and looked around her. Aurelia and Livia joined her, and the three of them scrutinized the tall substantial house in front of them, long windows on either side of double doors in the center of the facade. Peeling paint, scraped railings, unhoned steps, grimy windows all set it apart from its neighbors.

“I thought we were expected,” Aurelia murmured, as they gazed at the firmly closed front door.

“We are,” Livia announced. “I wrote two days ago. This is
my
house, in case anyone's forgotten.” She stalked up the stairs and raised the tarnished knocker and banged it several times.

“Linton, would you and Daisy take the children into the square garden until we sort things out?” Cornelia spoke to the nurse, who was gathering her charges, all the while shooting slightly disdainful glances at the dilapidated house. “Let them run off some of their energy, they've been cooped up all day.”

“Yes, my lady.” It was said a mite stiffly, but Cornelia decided she didn't have time to worry about Linton's less-than-favorable impressions at this point. Time enough when they were installed. She mounted the steps with Aurelia to stand just behind Livia, who was about to raise the heavy knocker for the third time.

Bolts creaked, and the door opened slowly; a pair of slightly rheumy eyes were at first all that was visible in the crack. “Aye?”

Cornelia hid a smile as she felt Livia stiffen. It was a foolish person who mistook the bubbly, pretty young woman for an easily intimidated featherbrain.

“I am Lady Livia Lacey, and you, I take it, are my employee,” Livia announced. “Kindly send someone to help the coachman unload the coach and bring our luggage inside.” So saying, she swept the door wide open and stepped past the man into the fusty gloom of a large square hall.

Cornelia and Aurelia followed her, and the three of them looked around with ill-concealed dismay. It was cold and damp, the parquet beneath their feet grimy and slightly sticky, the long windows on either side of the front door so covered in grime that very little daylight leached through. A horseshoe staircase, admittedly handsome, rose from the center of the hall, its upper reaches vanishing into impenetrable gloom. A chandelier, again probably a very beautiful piece when it was cleaned, hung from the center of the high-ceilinged hall. There were a few candle stubs in its branches.

“Well, we didn't expect nirvana,” Cornelia said bravely. “We guessed it would need work.”

“But
this
much?” Aurelia murmured. “If these are the public rooms, what is the rest of it like?”

“We shall find out,” Livia stated. She turned to the man who had let them in. “I don't know your name.”

“Morecombe, ma'am,” the man said. He had clearly once been a big man, but the broad shoulders were now hunched, and his legs had a distinct bow to them. His manner, however, was less than conciliatory.

“I worked for Lady Sophia, God rest her soul. I don't know nuthin' about this 'ere Lady Livia,” he declared, digging out a checkered kerchief from a pocket of his calico knee britches, whose original color was a mere memory. He wiped his watery eyes with a degree of vigor.

“Did Lady Sophia's solicitors not talk to you, Morecombe?” Cornelia asked incredulously. “Surely when the will was read some provision was made as to your future.”

He shook his head. “Not as I 'eard, ma'am. Lady Sophia told us, our Ada and our Mavis, to 'ave a care for 'er things, an' that's what we done. She'd 'ave a care fer us, that's what she said.”

“And your Ada…your Mavis…are they here?”

“Aye, where else would they be?”

Obviously the finer points of employer/employee discourse were not going to apply here, Cornelia decided. “I'm sure Lady Livia would like an introduction.”

“Oh, aye, like as not,” he said with a careless nod. He walked to the rear of the hall. “Eh, Ada…our Mavis, come on out…t' new mistress is 'ere.”

The two women who emerged through the shabby baize door were clearly twins. Hair scraped back in vigorous buns, long black gowns, angular faces with a strange greenish tinge to their pallor, crumpled aprons, and identically fierce and suspicious brown eyes.

They regarded the three younger women without expression and offered the sketchiest of curtsies.

“Beggin' yer pardon, m'lady, but we 'ave to unload the carriage. The 'orses need their oats.” The interruption came from the coachman, who now stood, cap in hand, in the doorway.

“Oh, yes, I'm sorry.” Cornelia abandoned the scene in the hall and hurried over to him. “Ask the outriders to help you unload. I'll…” She fumbled in her reticule.

“Not our job really, m'lady.” He twisted his cap.

Cornelia found a shilling piece and drew it out, trying not to think what it would buy the household in terms of general supplies. But clearly the resident retainers were not going to unload the postchaise and she and her companions couldn't.

The coachman crammed his hat on his head and went outside shouting orders. Within fifteen minutes the hall was a sea of bandboxes, hampers, portmanteaux. Sophia Lacey's three retainers stood watching the proceedings with an air of mild indifference.

Cornelia paid off the coachman and the outriders and crossed the square to the garden where the children were playing some form of hide-and-seek with Daisy while Linton watched from a bench.

“Shall we bring them in now, Linton?” she asked, aware of how tentative she sounded. But she knew Linton would be up in arms if the nursery quarters did not come up to expectations, and Cornelia was fairly confident that they wouldn't. Linton had been her own nurse and still had the power on occasion to reduce her confidence to that of a fumbling child.

“It's high time, Lady Nell,” the nurse declared, standing up and smoothing down her black skirts. “Lady Susannah is liable to get a chill in this damp air. London,” she muttered. “Such an unhealthy place for children.”

Thank goodness the earl hadn't consulted Linton, Cornelia reflected. She'd have given him ample ammunition in his fight to keep them at home. They'd all have been sequestered for life among the oaks of the New Forest.

Her courage failed her a little when she and Aurelia, with nurses and children in tow, followed one of the twins, our Ada she thought it was, up the elegant sweep of the main staircase along a drafty corridor and up the narrow nursery stairs at the rear. The children were for once silenced by the gloomy shadows that Ada's candle barely penetrated. The nursery quarters looked as if they hadn't been occupied for several generations. Linton inhaled and did not appear to exhale until she had marched the length and breadth of the four-room suite, examining the bed linen, peering up the chimney, running a gloved finger over tables and chests and finally across the grime-encrusted windowpanes.

Cornelia and Aurelia stood just inside the door, the children clinging to their skirts. Ada stood impassively in the middle of the day nursery waiting. Finally, Linton dusted off her hands and pronounced, “No child in my charge is going to sleep in here, and that's my last word, Lady Nell.”

“If we light a fire, air the bedding, clean up generally, it will be fine, Linton,” Cornelia said. “Ada…it is Ada, isn't it, I'd like you and Mavis to clean up in here before you do anything else. Morecombe must bring up coals, and we'll light fires in all the chimneys, and bring up hot water. You'll see, Linton, in an hour we can work wonders.”

Her tone was cajoling even as she drew off her own gloves. “Lady Aurelia and I will deal with the bed linen. We'll air it out in front of the fires as soon as they're lit…come, Ellie.” She strode energetically into the night nursery, and Aurelia, with a slightly raised eyebrow, followed her.

“Do you think you're going to convince her, Nell?”

“The trick with Linton is to sweep right through her,” Cornelia explained, tearing off coverlets from the four little beds. “She'll huff and puff, but if we don't take any notice, she'll come round in the end.” She shook out blankets in a cloud of dust. “But sweet heaven, Ellie, this is worse than we could ever have imagined.”

“An understatement,” Aurelia said a shade grimly, pummeling pillows. “I dread to think what the rest of the house is like.”

 

Harry frowned down at the sheet of hieroglyphics he'd just transcribed, then he gave a little nod. A nicely devious piece of misdirection if he said so himself. When this code fell into enemy hands, as it was designed to do, it would give them hours of headache until they finally found the clue he'd embedded in the code to enable them to break it, then they'd be off running like headless chickens on a fool's errand while the real agenda unfolded under their very noses.

He reached for the sander, reflecting on the sheer joy of an occupation that so suited his talents and his temperament. Give him a good juicy code to break, and he would forget all about food, drink, or sleep for days on end. And the same applied to encryption. Nothing was as satisfying as coming up with a code that would defeat the cleverest encrypters in the French, Russian, or Austrian secret services.

He dusted the ink on the parchment and shook the sand into the wastepaper basket, then folded the document. He was just warming the stick of red wax in the candle flame when someone scratched at the door.

He'd been locked in his own world of mental gymnastics for longer than he could calculate, and at first he didn't recognize the sound. No one disturbed Viscount Bonham when he shut himself up in the attic chamber of his house on Mount Street.

“Who is it?” he called, slipping the parchment into the top drawer of the desk where he worked.

“Lester, m'lord.”

“Good God, man, come in.” Harry pushed back his chair and got to his feet, aware as he did so of the crick in his neck. “What are you doing up and about, Lester? The sawbones said another four days in bed.”

Lester made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “He's an old woman,” he declared. “And besides, I couldn't stand another minute of Mrs. Henderson flapping around me like a broody hen. Another mouthful of that stuff she calls a tonic would be the death of me.”

Harry laughed and shook Lester's hand heartily before pushing him into a chair. “Well it's good to see you. I don't deny I've missed you.”

The other man nodded and gestured to the desk. “Been working, sir?”

“Aye.” Harry stretched and rolled his shoulders. “What's the time?”

“Just afore noon, sir. Hector said you'd been up here since late yesterday afternoon.”

“Then I suppose I have,” Harry said with indifference. He went over to the narrow attic casement and peered out at a clear blue sky, the vista punctuated with the smoke-spewing chimney pots of London town.

“I brought a message for you, sir. A man came from the Ministry.”

Harry's tired green gaze sharpened. “Don't tell me they got anything out of that thief we apprehended?”

“Not what we're after, sir, not as yet, but I understand he's given 'em a few crumbs about other matters of interest. But the real message is that the new owner of the house has taken up residence…arrived yesterday afternoon, according to the blokes on watch. Quite a party, they said. Several ladies at least. Children too. The Ministry wants to know what you want them to do about it.”