The Proposition (39 page)

Yes. That was the test. She doubted that Jeremy and Emile would show themselves at her door if they couldn't procure an invitation, which would be fine. Or if they arrived and tried to travel on hers, she wouldn't allow it. In either case, neither she nor Mick would go. That would be the end of it.

And if the Lamonts did bring their own invitation?

In that instance, she told herself, she and Mick needn't worry. All his idle curiosity was pointless. No matter what the young duchess said or what Mick thought, if Xavier put invitations to his ball into the hands of the Lamonts, then the twin gentlemen with Brighton in their voices had the hardest to acquire, most eagerly sought reference that society deigned to give.

Chapter 25

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A
s it happened, Emile and Jeremy Lamont did
not
have an invitation to the Duke of Arles's gala. Yet.

But as they walked up the front walk of his London town house, they were fairly confident that, within the hour, they would be walking down it again, carrying one.

As they tapped up the wide steps of the duke's portico, they were still talking about their Cornish ratcatcher-cum-aristocrat.

"Quite the
gentilhomme,"
said Emile with undisguised gloat. He was so happy with the way Tremore had cleaned up, he had to keep himself from rubbing his hands together. He could feel money coming toward them, buckets of it, dropping into his waiting arms. "I was hoping she could make him halfway presentable, but, by Jove, she's made him bloody royalty." He laughed. "He's perfect. Absolutely perfect." Jeremy joined him in chuckling yet another round over their good management.

At the door, they were greeted by the duke's butler. They'd made an appointment. The butler brought them into an entry hall, a room that was a hall in the sense of
town hall
or
public hall—
a
vast, open space where people might gather. This hall, though, was by no means so paltry as those found in public buildings. It was a simple, splendid arrangement of high, coffered ceilings inlaid with gold, marble floors, and rich Persian carpets. Its furnishings were spare in number and extravagant of design: Over the central medallion of the huge Oriental rug was a gilt Louis Quinze table that held fresh flowers arranged in a crystal ship. The arrangement stood eight feet high and was at least that wide. The only other furniture in the room was a series of matching gilt and velvet benches around its perimeter, broken only by the precise geometric placement of four small, Italian tile fountains. Water burbled in these, the sound a little, liquid symphony that played peacefully in the hush of a very formal house.

The effect of the duke's house in London wasn't pretentious so much as a genuine expression of staggeringly ridiculous wealth. And this house wasn't even the grandest one he owned, merely the most convenient to the amenities of London.

Emile and Jeremy walked along behind the butler, their steps cushioned across thick carpet. He escorted them to the front library, where they waited for the duke among his books and family portraits.

"Here it is," Emile told his brother, the moment the butler left them. He indicated one of more than a dozen dark, oil-on-canvas paintings that broke up the bookcases of the room. "A portrait of the duke's son. He died years ago."

Jeremy stepped back to look at the painting. Then said, "My God." He was suitably impressed. "Tremore looks just like him! The resemblance is uncanny!"

Indeed, it was. Due to careful choosing, some similar clothes—and, more, to the miracle that Edwina Bollash had worked. Six weeks ago, no one would have believed it possible that Tremore was the son of the man in that portrait. The Cornishman had simply been too grimy and coarse. And, similarities or not, Emile knew his mark: The duke would have rejected such a fellow out of hand. Arles was a pompous old bastard. He would have sooner believed he was related to a monkey than consider himself related to an ill-spoken ratcatcher. They wouldn't have been able to get the fellow into the house.

Now, of course, Tremore was suitable to dance across the floor of the duke's ballroom at Uelle Castle. He could have a chat with the duchess—hang it, Emile thought, he could have a nice chat with the Queen herself, if she showed up tonight.

Further contemplation of his triumph, however, was cut short when the butler opened the door and an old, frail man hobbled in with the use of a cane.

Once of a stately stature, the Duke of Arles was now stooped. He moved slowly—with an hauteur, though, that was uncompromised by the indignities of age. Though he was old and infirm, people joked that he had a mind upstairs in his attic slowly becoming senile, while the one that everyone dealt with was as sharp as a bee's quill. Emile had already told his brother: Do not underestimate the old man.

Arles came into the room with the august decrepitude of ageless power. "I don't have time for this," he said.

He knew already what "this" was about. In order to gain the interview, Emile had sent him a note. It had said simply:
Your grandson is alive, and we know where he is.

Jeremy was the one they had decided should begin. He said, ever so pleasantly, "We have found a man whom we believe is your grandson—"

Arles cut him off. "You haven't." His expression didn't change. "Is that all you have to say?"

He'd only come in as far as the chair closest the door, a man who didn't intend to enter further. He grasped the chair's back now for balance, as with his other hand, he leaned heavily onto his cane.

Emile came forward, as planned, the brute again. He asked bluntly, "Is the reward still being offered?"

"Emile," Jeremy said. He smiled his sincere smile—the best part about Jer's deception was that he believed it himself so well that he was utterly convincing. To the duke, "My brother can be so crass. I'm sorry—"

"Shut up, Jeremy. I'm not a rich man, and neither are you." Of Arles, he asked a crucial question. "There was once a reward of a hundred thousand pounds for the return of your grandson to you. Is it still available?"

The old man laughed with a dryness that ended in a slight cough. Then he said, "I haven't offered a reward for my grandson in twenty years. He's dead, you know."

"Is he?" Jeremy said. He furrowed his brow with his usual artless sympathy, and asked, "Do you hold no hope at all then?"

Arles's bony fist contracted around his cane as he pounded the end once with a sharp rap. Then he leaned on it toward them. "I can save you both a great deal of trouble. In the thirty years of my grandson's being missing"—he looked from one to the other—"I've had every swindler this side of the Atlantic try to sell me someone who looked vaguely as they imagined he might." He reached the cane, took a step away from the chair. "I don't know who you think you are, but you aren't going to get anything from me." He waved the cane once, surprisingly able to stand without it, then took a swipe through the air with it. "Except possibly the end of this. Now get out."

It was not precisely the reaction they had been hoping for.

Emile scrambled. "How old was your son in this portrait?" he asked and turned to look up. He needed time to think, time to sniff out a weakness in the old sturdy duke.

Only silence ticked by. Then behind him, he heard, "Thirty."

He turned around slowly, gauging, allowing a faint smile. "That is almost exactly the age of the man we wish to bring to you." He indicated the painting behind him. "And he doesn't look vaguely like anything: He is the spitting image of his father."

Arles's sharp, rheumy eyes narrowed. For a moment, he seemed interested, then his arm raised with a swiftness that surprised. He pointed to the door. "Get out!" he said. "Do you think you are the only ones to try to play on an old man's emotions? Do you imagine I am some sort of fool? Get out! Get out this instant!"

Emile glanced at his brother, who was already taking small sideways steps toward the door. The devil take him. His stupid brother was never any help, always the coward. Emile gnashed his teeth and said with just as much force as the high-handed old duke, "Listen to me, old man. You may have seen a lot of schemes, but this isn't one of them. I was here two months ago with a chap from your club. I saw the portrait. I heard the story. Then, last week, I met the son of the man in it. My brother and I have come to tell you. We'd like the reward, if you agree we're right. We're not rich as you are. But we aren't trying to swindle anyone. We're offering you a chance to see for yourself."

Arles was livid, but he didn't issue his command again. He listened.

Emile continued. "Michael," he said. "They even called him Michael. He is well over six feet, with your eyes and hair the color of jet—"

"Stop it!" The old man came at him. He raised his cane, swinging it this time. "Stop it!" Surprisingly, he was able to get it over his head. He thrashed the air.

It missed Emile, only because he stepped back. It clacked on a chair, splintering a piece from its carved wood.

"Get out!" he repeated. He limped forward, coming at Emile again. "Get out, you thief! You sleazy, venomous snake of a human being. How dare you start this again—"

"And his smile," Emile said, ducking another swift slice of the cane. He played his ace, the one that had taken the most patience as he'd studied men, looking for the right candidate. "It's like the one in the portrait. It's off-center. His smile lifts up on one side more than the other."

The old man hobbled to the side and pulled the bell cord, while through his teeth, he said, "Get. Out. Of my. House." He yanked the cord again, then again, then bellowed with great volume and strength, "Get out! Get out!"

That was it. Emile had played every card that he had and had lost, he thought.

Then something else, something inside the old man made him raise his eyes.

Emile turned. Jeremy looked, too. They all lifted their gazes to the large painting overhead, to its dark colors and moody look that seemed to speak across their silence.

No, Emile thought, the similarities were perhaps not so great as he was making out, though they were profound enough that their ruse was tight. What luck, he thought.

Then, no, of course it wasn't luck. He knew all the facts. Twenty-nine years ago, just before the duke's grandson's third birthday, while everyone was asleep in the house one night, someone crept in and stole the small child from his nursery. The boy disappeared, no explanation; a child kidnapped, never to be seen again—though his family searched and called out every favor that was owed them. They put pressure directly and indirectly on friend and foe alike; everyone felt their furious, hysterical conviction that they could buy or negotiate or dictate their way out of their bereavement. The duke offered a spectacular reward. Yet, still, nothing.

Which, by Emile's standards, meant the child was already long dead. Though the idea of the lost baby, even thirty years later, provided a damn lively game.

When he turned around again, the old man was still holding on to the bellpull. He seemed, for a few seconds, almost to dangle from it. Then he lowered his haughty eyes, drawing himself up again.

Quickly, Emile said, "You can assess the truth of what we're telling you without risk."

The old man raised one contemptuous eyebrow.

"Give us invitations to the ball tonight at Uelle Castle. We'll bring the fellow. We'll dance him right out into the center of your ballroom. You can look him over. If you agree with us that he's your grandson, we get the hundred thousand pounds. If not, he dances out the door, and nothing more is made of the matter." Emile held his hands out and smiled. What could be more simple?

"Pah," the duke said in a burst of air. "If he's not, I'll have you all arrested for fraud and—"

Not if Emile had any say in the matter. He and his brother had train tickets to Southampton and a dinner in Brussels tomorrow.

The old duke scowled, truculent, but he'd stopped arguing.

Jeremy was helpful. At last. Soothingly, he asked, "What do you have to lose?"

* * *

The old man sent for his secretary who brought them invitations. The duke himself, by then, was long gone. There was a hiatus between when the secretary left them, before the butler came to escort them out.

In the interim, Jeremy dallied, staring up at a portrait of a man long dead. A tall man with a deep brow and strikingly black hair.

He murmured, "You know, brother, the likeness is so amazing, it makes me wonder if we might truly have found the old fellow's grandson."

Emile, too, paused for a moment to look up and contemplate, in awe, the possible convolutions of their own chicanery.

Then he sniffed and said, "Yes, but he's not. Jeremy, we've bought him clothes in the same color scheme as those, in the same general style, only undated. We've cut his hair nearly the same, and, happily, Miss Bollash talked him out of his mustache. Then, too, don't forget: He
has
a family. He's from Cornwall, for godssake.

"I picked very well," he said, taking credit where credit was due. "And remember what he was like when we first saw him," he reminded. "A slimy Cornishman who lived among Cockneys and chased ferrets." He tapped his brother on the shoulder. "Let's go, Jeremy. I want to find a servant or someone in this house who knew the child. I want to gather a bit of personal information. We have to
make
this work. We can't expect it to, or it won't."