* * * *
How the devil had he come to kiss Lady Torrie? Damn, Wynn was still thinking the next day, how the devil had he waited so long? Now he was going to want to do it again—and he’d be hanged before he did. He might be hanged if he did, if Lord Duchamp got wind of it. He was no uncivilized beast, though, acting on his every urge, despite the incident in the park. He’d had provocation then: another man kissing her. So he had hurled Boyce to the ground, dragged the woman behind a bush, and proceeded to have his way with her. Now that was civilized.
Bah!
Well, he swore, it would not happen again. To be certain, he would simply stay away from her. That ball of Mrs. Reese’s was looming nearer, but that would be the end of it. He never had to see the earl’s daughter afterward. He never had to be so tempted again.
To be sure, he refused the invitations that had arrived in force after the dinner at Duchamp House. Oddly, no new ones had arrived in the days since. According to Barrogi, who spent his free time, which Wynn suspected was most of his time, at various pubs frequented by the serving class, the
ton
did not know what to make of Viscount Ingall. On the one hand, he was rich and titled and Lady Torrie’s hero. On the other, he was suspected of killing a fellow peer.
The young bucks and blades were trying to tie his Bundler neckcloth, but the biddy hens were clacking their beaks. Someone, and neither Barrogi nor Wynn doubted it was Lord Boyce, was raking up the coals of the old scandal. Now there were added whispers that Wynn had shot early at the duel. No one had witnessed the fatal event except the combatants, one of whom was dead, and the seconds, one of whom was dead, and the surgeon, who had disappeared. No one, therefore, could—or would—refute the murmured charges.
Wynn’s second had been his boyhood friend, Troy, the one who had given Wynn his life’s savings before going off to the army, never to return. Lynbrook’s second had been his younger brother Francis, who had been all too eager to step into the baron’s boots.
“There is more gossip making the rounds,
padrone,”
Barrogi reported, “about how that fire was suspicious,
si,
and you just happened to be passing by.”
“Deuce take it, hundreds of people must have passed by that shop that day!”
“Sí, padrone,
but most have not been battening on Duchamp’s gratitude.”
“Battening? I have never battened on anyone in my life!”
Barrogi hunched his shoulders. “Who is to say, when the
signore,
he is putting your name up for a government post and membership in his clubs? And when you accosted the emerald in the park?”
‘The Diamond. They call Lady Torrie the Keyes Diamond because she is so priceless and she wears that little charm around her neck, a diamond key. And I would never—” Well, he had, but only after Boyce had. “Boyce.” He spoke the name like a foul epithet. “This is just like that maggot, to fight a man with innuendo instead of with his fists, to tell lies behind his back. I should have broken his scrawny neck while I had the chance.”
The stiletto suddenly appeared in Barrogi’s gnarled hand. “You want I should stop him? A man with no tongue cannot sing.”
“Good heavens, man, put that thing away. Just find the dastard who set the fire. He should lead us back to Boyce, with a little convincing. With money, not your knife! We are in England now, not the Barbary Coast.”
They were in England, all right, where the rich and powerful had nothing to do except slander each other. It was just like last time, when they were so ready to condemn him on a few hints of wrongdoing. But it was not precisely like six years ago.
Now Wynn was rich and powerful.
Now he did not care what anyone thought of him.
And now he was not going to run.
Let them think the worst and let them close their doors. He did not want to step over their thresholds anyway. What, to drink watered wine and stale cakes? He would not mind if Mrs. Reese rescinded her invitation, for then he would not have to suffer through a blasted ball with its simpering misses and avaricious mamas. So let the high sticklers turn him away. He had plenty of other places where he’d be welcomed.
Not his own home, of course. Not with his sister-in-law Marissa in residence at Ingram House.
Not Duchamp House, perhaps, not after his astounding breach of etiquette in the park yesterday.
Not at Rosie’s flat, not until he found her a husband.
Which left calling on Bette, Lady Lynbrook. He could not visit the woman whose husband he was purported to have killed looking like a buccaneer, though. He had sticking plaster on his chin from shaving, a torn sleeve on his new coat from tossing Boyce, and no tassels on his boots, from Homer having acquired a new hobby. He needed a valet.
Barrogi found a handful of likely candidates at Shay’s Tavern, a pub where returned soldiers gathered, when they could afford the price of a pint. Too many were too foxed to be considered, but three came for interviews. The first man had only one hand.
Barrogi shrugged. “You have only one neck,
padrone.”
The second fellow wore a string of small bones, perhaps human knuckle bones, atop his frayed uniform collar. Wynn did not want to count the number of dead, fingerless Frenchmen. Nor did he want to consider sleeping in the next room to a man who collected such trophies.
The third man looked like he had not shaved in years. With whiskers, mustache, and sideburns, he looked like a veritable orangutan Wynn had seen once. Lud, the man was so out of practice Wynn was like to have his throat cut.
None would do. He did send the first two on to his Hertfordshire estate steward, where old Bimm could find work for any number of willing hands, even if they were a hand short. The bone-collector might find a position with the butcher. The hirsute man he hired to help keep watch over Lady Torrie, when Barrogi was busy.
Then he had Barrogi buy a round for the other veterans at Shay’s. A round of cheese, that is, and around a dozen steak and kidney pasties from the pieman at the corner. Heaven knew the government was not going to feed these poor sots who had fought so hard for their country.
He still needed a valet.
“You want I should find the arsonist,
padrone,
or find you
un servitore
to powder your arse?”
“I can’t do any worse than you at finding a gentleman’s gentleman.” Wynn spoke in scathing tones, resenting his hired man’s inference that he could not dress himself. Of course he could, and had for years, just not up to Lady Torrie’s—to London’s—standards. “You work on the fire starter. Oh, and look in on Rosie. Make sure she does not need anything. She could use the company.”
Barrogi nodded, “The
signora
is lonely.”
Wynn sighed. “She is a
signorina,
I am afraid. That is the problem.” And she’d had one too many companions.
The older man shook his head and insisted on
signora.
“For respect, even though she cheats at cards.”
Wynn was not surprised Rosie had invited Barrogi up to her rooms after their ices at Gunter’s, she was that bored. Neither was he surprised she had cheated. “Of course she knows every crooked trick in the game. That’s how she got so far. The house always wins, you know.”
Barrogi flashed his gap-toothed grin and his own deck of shaved and marked cards. “Not today. Today the house has lice.”
“Loses?”
“But of course.”
“You came! Oh, Wynn, you came!” Bette, Lady Lynbrook threw herself into Wynn’s arms and proceeded to rumple his last decent shirt. Her face was buried so deeply in his chest he could not even get a good look at her, to see if his old playmate had changed much in the six years since he had been gone. She sure as Hades had not changed from the overwrought and overemotional little baggage she had always been.
“Give over, Bette. I wrote and said I would come.”
She sniffled into his striped waistcoat. “That was weeks ago.”
“It was days. And I am here now, so stop crying and tell me how you have been. Your letters were so tear-stained I could barely make out the words.” He had given up at the third mention of the word “marriage.”
“Oh, Wynn, things have been so awful here. You cannot imagine.”
He looked around at the elegant luxury of Lynbrook House, glad he had left Homer in Kensington, and no, he could not imagine what had her so agitated, not after the places he had been forced to call home. From the cushiony softness in his arms, he knew she had been getting enough to eat. Ample food and shelter would have seemed like paradise to him, some days of his travels. “Why don’t you sit and tell me.”
She finally released him, leading the way to a sunny breakfast parlor, where she called for tea and cakes.
While they waited for the servants to finish laying out the light repast, Wynn had time for a good look at Bette, who was the younger dowager Lady Lynbrook, since her deceased husband’s mother still lived, and the current baron had a Lady Lynbrook of his own.
Bette used to be Bette Dodge when he spent his summer holidays at his friend Troy’s home in the Lake District, the eldest daughter of a prosperous family. Her parents had the neighboring estate, and the three youngsters spent many hours together. Bette was not permitted to accompany the boys when they went shooting or fishing or swimming, of course, but there were long hikes and sketching expeditions, and merry games in her family’s parlor, all things Wynn had not known at his own house. He took every invitation offered to vacation at Troy Campe’s, and his own parents never cared enough to miss him.
Bette and Troy had known each other since the cradle, and both they and Wynn assumed the two would wed one day. But Bette’s parents had higher ambitions than the squire’s second son, who was meant for a career in the army. They promised her to Frederick, Lord Lynbrook, a rum go, but a baron. Bette acquired a title. Troy acquired his colors, and Wynn set out to acquire town bronze.
Then came Lynbrook’s drunken rages, the duel, and Ciudad Rodrigo. All of their lives had changed.
Some few years away from her thirtieth birthday—but more years past her twentieth—Bette was still a fetching little buttercup, although Wynn suspected some of the blond color came from a bottle. She had put on more than a few pounds since her widowhood, but they, and the scrap of a lace cap she wore, were the only signs of a fleeting youth. She still had her dimpled chin, and she still pouted when tears did not work to get her way. She was pouting now.
“I told you how it was, how Frederick’s brother Francis keeps me in near penury. I cannot afford to travel, not even to Bath or Brighton. I could not entertain here, if I had any friends, for the place has grown so shabby, but Francis will not release the funds to refurbish it since he spends most of his time in the country. He says he needs the money for Three Brooks, but I know he maintains a cottage nearby for his mistresses. I’d wager that cottage is in better condition than this old pile.”
The house looked fine to Wynn, especially after his lodgings in Kensington, but he admitted he knew little of current decorating trends. Bette was going on with her list of woes anyway: her wardrobe was threadbare and dated; her jewels were claimed by Francis for his own wife, Angela; and all of the family vehicles and most of the servants were gone north to Three Brooks with the family for Angela’s latest lying-in.
“Then why did you not go with them?” Wynn asked, thinking it was a reasonable question, not a call for more tears. “You would be more comfortable without spending your own funds, and have more companionship.”
Her handkerchief was already sodden, so he handed over his. “Francis refuses to allow me my own household, so my only company would be Frederick’s mother in the Dower House, and she hates me! She blames me—and you, of course—for Frederick’s death. I cannot go there! No, nor to my family home, either. My parents say I would be a bad influence on my younger sisters, what with the scandal and all. Two of them remain to be wed, you understand.”
“Surely you have friends in town, young women who made their come-outs with you who never married. Or another widow living in somewhat straitened circumstances also. If you pool your resources ...”
“I have no friends!” she cried, only muffled somewhat by his handkerchief. “No one receives me except the fast crowd, and I cannot afford their company. Francis refuses to pay my gambling debts.”
“Well, I cannot say as I blame him there, Bette. With a growing family—”
“He is a miser, I tell you. A lick-penny, a cheese-parer, and a cheat. I swear my marriage settlements should have yielded more income, but he says the monies were invested in the Funds, and lost value. I know he spends lavishly on his high flyers, because the bills sometimes come here in error.”
“And you open them, of course.”
“How else am I supposed to know how he is spending my money?”
Wynn never had trusted Lynbrook’s younger brother. Now he had more reasons. “I will have my man of business look into it.”
“What good will that do me? I will still be old and ugly and all alone in the world. Oh, what is to become of me?” She raised one hand to her brow and sobbed.
“Well, you could take up a career on the stage, for all your histrionics. Now, blow your nose like a good girl and tell me what you really want from me.”
“I do not want to be a dowager, Wynn.”
“That is easy. Get remarried.”
“Which is precisely the solution I arrived at. The only problem is, I have no dowry, I never conceived in the years of my marriage so I might be barren, and”—here a note of accusation mingled with the whine—”my reputation was destroyed by that duel.”
Not as much as Wynn’s reputation was ruined, he’d wager. “But you are still an incomparable, Bette. Surely there is some man who would be happy to have you gracing his be—that is, his dinner table.”
“Would you?”
The room was suddenly five degrees warmer. Wynn wished for his handkerchief back so he could wipe his brow. “I, um, I ...”
“You helped me before.”