Somerville Farce (24 page)

He turned to Trixy, his own thoughts of
revenging himself on Somerville erased without regret by the sheer
genius of Trixy’s brilliant stroke. “Did you tell Oglesby it was
Somerville who robbed his paramour? Does he have his men out now,
scouring the streets for him? By God, if I know Oglesby, there’ll
be at least one more quiet beheading in the Tower for the ravens to
witness. Come on, Trixy, tell us!”

Trixy opened her mouth to speak, but was
forestalled by Andy, who pointed out that Myles Somerville had
swooned dead away at the duke’s mention of the Tower, and suggested
they wait until someone roused the fellow before finishing the
story, an idea that suited Trixy quite well, as it had been a very
trying day and Harry was standing much too close for comfort. She
needed time alone to recover her composure.

Leaving Willie and Andy behind as guards,
and with Lady Amelia retiring to her room to begin planning
Eugenie’s wedding, now that she was assured that Myles Somerville’s
reappearance wasn’t going to make a mess of things, Trixy allowed
Harry to guide her out onto the wrought-iron balcony that
overlooked the gardens.

“You can tell me the rest, Trixy,” the duke
said as they walked. “Did you make Oglesby a gift of Somerville’s
name so that he could dispose of him discreetly, or are you
planning to simply blackmail Somerville into disappearing from his
daughters’ lives forever?”

Trixy looked up at him, her face white and
pinched. “What do you think I did, Harry?”

“That scene back there wasn’t easy for you,
was it?” Harry questioned soothingly as she pulled herself free of
his light hold to lean both hands on the railing. “Were you shaking
that much when you first confronted me that night at Glyndevaron?
Your voice and expression certainly didn’t give you away, but
tonight I could feel you trembling through your clothes. I don’t
think you’re really made for a life of crime, even if you do have
the wit for it. No, I don’t think you’re up to another round of
blackmail. I imagine Oglesby’s agents are already scouring the city
for Somerville, with orders to dump him in the Thames.”

Trixy’s knuckles turned white as she gripped
the rail with all her might, not knowing whether to throw herself
into Harry’s arms for recognizing that she wasn’t a hardened
blackmailer or to slap his face for suggesting she could blithely
hand over a man, even a man so corrupt as Somerville, to be
murdered.

In the end her pride won out, for she had
already planned her departure from the Glynde mansion and couldn’t
bear to leave with the one true love of her life once more
believing an untruth about her. She turned away from the rail,
looked up into the duke’s eyes, and said softly, “I didn’t go to
see Oglesby this afternoon, Harry, although I had taken great pains
over the past year to discover Oglesby’s probable identity, just in
case I should ever need to use it to save the twins, for I knew
almost immediately that their father was an evil man.

“I was only bluffing, Harry, making what I
hoped was a lucky guess. I couldn’t turn any man over to be
murdered, even him. If Somerville hadn’t believed me, I don’t know
what I would have done. As it happened, I had guessed right and my
bluff worked, so when he wakes up, I imagine Somerville will be
more than happy to leave England forever.”

Harry was quiet for some moments, digesting
the realization that Trixy would have made a good general—or a
fantastically successful gamester—then asked, “If you weren’t with
Oglesby, then where were you? You did go out this afternoon.”

Trixy allowed her chin to drop toward her
breast. “I was driving about in a smelly hackney with Lacy moaning
and groaning and loudly calling on all the angels and saints in
alphabetical order the whole while—looking for you, trying to stop
you from calling Somerville out and ruining your life.”

Harry’s smile beamed at her through the gray
light of dusk that was descending over the city. “I knew it! You do
love me. You love me and I love you, no matter how we seem to
scream at each other. Trixy, we have to put an end to this once and
for all. Tell me, if I promise to write a thousand times ‘I will
never get angry and accuse Trixy of being a blackmailer, so help me
God,’ will you marry me?”

A single tear made its way down Trixy’s
cheek. “It would never work, Harry. I love you, I really do, but I
can never forget that I tried to use you, that I tried to blackmail
you.”

Harry hadn’t expected any other answer, for
if he had learned one thing about Trixy, it was that she could be
extremely pigheaded, bless her darling heart, so that he
immediately reverted to the plan he had formulated during the long
hours he had spent fruitlessly combing the city for Somerville.

“All right, Trixy, if you want to be
stubborn,” he said, his voice deliberately low and gruff, “I guess
I have nothing else to do but point out to you that I could have
thrown you into jail for what you tried to do to me. Do they still
make the women beat hemp in Bridewell, or has that gone by the
boards?”

Of all the arguments Trixy had heard and was
prepared to hear again, she was taken completely by surprise by
Harry’s sudden attack. Her head snapped back as she glared
openmouthed into his face. “Harry!” she said in shock. “You
wouldn’t!”

His hands clasped her upper arms as his left
foot snaked out to push the door to the drawing room closed. “Are
you asking me or telling me, Trixy? But no, of course I wouldn’t do
any such thing. For a price, that is.”

“A price?” she asked, not sure if she liked
the smile that was nipping at the corners of the duke’s mouth.
“What sort of price?”

Harry’s head came down as he began nibbling
delicately at the tip of Trixy’s ear. “Mmmm, you taste good. My
price, you ask? Why, I think marriage to me would serve to keep me
silent. After all, I would never have my own wife thrown in
jail.”

Trixy bit her bottom lip as delicious
shivers ran down the side of her throat. “Jail or marriage to you?
That... that’s blackmail, Harry,” she told him, trying for but
failing to inject censure into her tone as her arms came up to
encircle his neck.

Harry pulled his head slightly away from
hers. “Yes, it is rather like blackmail, isn’t it? I must have
learned it from you,” he remarked, lightly flicking at the tip of
her nose with his finger. “How nice of you to recognize my plan so
quickly.”

“You call that a plan?” Trixy questioned,
scoffing. “You’d never drag your brother’s name through the mire to
hurt me. That’s no plan, Harry. I bluffed Somerville, and now you
are trying out a bluff of your own. But I’m wise to you, Harry.
Your threat to blackmail me is nothing but a farce.”

“Exactly,” he agreed amicably, sensing that
his victory was at hand. “It’s a farce. Your plan to blackmail me,
although vaguely brilliant, was a farce. My ridiculous offer to set
you up as my mistress was a farce, although not very laughable at
the time. Why, now that I think on it, every encounter we have had,
Miss Stourbridge, has been little more than farcical—except perhaps
for a few isolated moments reminiscent of the one we are having
now.”

His smile faded and a resolute expression
crept into his eyes. “But, be that as it may, my love, your staunch
resolve to deny us both what the two of us know we want, simply
because you made one small mistake, has forced me to stoop, as it
were, to your level. If you are to go through life as a
blackmailer, then so shall I. Happily, I might add, since I will be
going through that life by your side.

“And so, sweetings, if this plan of mine is
a farce, it is the final farce, for my mind is quite made up. Now,
which is it to be, Beatrice—jail or marriage to a blackmailer?”

O
nce upon a time in
Mayfair, a small, strange land snuggled neatly within the general
confines of London, where marriage is most often considered to be
either convenient or financially astute, “loyalty” and “fidelity”
are words gentlemen usually reserve for their horses and their
clubs, and a firstborn son is likely to be the only offspring to
resemble its mother’s husband, there resided—only during the
Season, as they much preferred the quiet of the country or long,
leisurely weeks spent aboard their yacht—the Duke and Duchess of
Glynde, a couple so disgustingly in harmony with each other that at
least one disgruntled peer was overheard to whisper
sotto
voce
as the happy pair waltzed by at a ball that, “the man’s
giving matrimony a bad name.”

The duke and duchess had not traveled to
London alone, for, no matter what their wishes in the matter might
be, they had already learned to their peril that to leave the
duke’s brother, Lord William, behind at Glyndevaron was courting,
if not actually begging for, disaster, since adding another year to
his not very considerable age had done nothing to convince Willie
that he had any other mission in life save to enjoy it to the top
of his bent, and damn the consequences.

Because Willie could not bear to be
separated overlong from his closest friend, Andrew Carlisle, the
duke and duchess were likewise blessed with that rascally fellow’s
presence, which greatly explained not only Harry’s sometimes
eagle-alert expression when the boys were anywhere about but also
the raw wood coffin that had been found propped against the front
door of the lord high mayor himself one morning after the boys had
spent a particularly frisky night on the town.

The very first week Harry and his Trixy were
in town, they hosted a small party in honor of Grover Saltaire and
his wife, Eugenie, Harry having decided that the best way to get
over rough ground was to do it as quickly as possible, as they were
bound to run into each other eventually.

In attendance at the dinner party, besides
Salty and his bride—and his mother and three particularly ugly pug
dogs, of course—was Miss Helena Somerville, still unmarried, as she
had returned to Portman Square the same night her father sailed for
China, complaining to all who would listen that she had decided
against marrying any high-and-mighty Frenchman who thought she
should carry his baggage from the stagecoach to the inn at Watford
just because he used to be Somebody.

All in all, Helena had been gone from the
Glynde mansion for less than twenty-four hours, with most of those
hours passing in the company of one Agatha Twitter, who had
providentially come along to tap M. Sauveur on the head with her
umbrella before taking Helena under her wing. With her
reputation—and her stunning good luck—intact, she had suffered no
lasting damage from the adventure.

Not that Helena was entering her second
Season totally without prospects, for Sir Roderick Hilliard had
become her near-constant companion, his appreciation for beauty
without the added encumbrances of either intelligence or wit having
grown sevenfold over the past year. As a matter of fact, Trixy had
already learned that Roddy was planning to propose to Helena before
the king’s birthday in June, believing that a full twelve months
should pass between proposals, just for luck, of course.

Lady Amelia had not made the trip from
Glyndevaron this year, much preferring to remain at home to await
the arrival of the son of her third cousin, Henrietta, from
America. Lady Amelia had every intention of summing up the lad
before deciding whether to take on the project of finding him a
suitable wife, believing that, having settled Harry so nicely, she
had become an expert in the arena of matrimony.

All in all, it must be said that Henry Lyle
Augustus Townsend, in the third week of the Season, was the picture
of a happy man as he bade Pinch a good night and guided his yawning
wife upstairs upon returning from a party that had been graced by
none other than Prinny himself.

Trixy, who until a year ago had never
dreamed that she and the heir to the throne of England should ever
inhabit the same house, let alone sit at the same dinner table, was
blissfully happy, as well as in the very best of looks in a new
gown of softest yellow that, unbeknownst to her, Harry was already
planning to divest her of the moment the door to their chamber
closed behind them.

“Did you see Salty this evening, darling?”
Trixy asked as she reached behind her to unclasp the Glynde family
diamonds that still served to make her nervous each time she wore
them. “He took me aside to tell me that Eugenie is expecting their
first child this fall. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Harry quickly offered to help her with the
clasp, placing a kiss on her bared nape when he was done.
“Wonderful indeed, my love. Just what this island needs—another
beautiful ninny out to save the world from itself. Salty told me
Eugenie and his mother have just set up a haven for repentant
pickpockets somewhere in Piccadilly. A school for pickpockets, more
likely. Good God, Trixy—what if it’s twins? Salty’s mother most
probably would adore a litter. Why, if Eugenie proves prolific, in
twenty years one of them might just be setting up a haven for
depraved dukes!”