The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (2 page)

“My abject apologies, sir. The footstool—I will have this cleaned off the carpet in a thrice. I will be gone faster than you can say Phippen is a fool.”

“Phippen is a fool. I'll be damned, you are still here.”

Noise. Sounds both audible and spiritual. Desperation amid clinks and sighs. The dark center shrinking, shrinking.…

Christian, Marquess of Easterbrook, opened his eyes to view the servant whose intrusion had destroyed his meditation. Phippen, his new valet, tried to pick up the tray's contents without making any noise. Im possible, of course. A person's mere existence made noise.

Flushed and on his hands and knees, Phippen gingerly placed the cup on the tray, cringing at its tiny sound. He took out his handkerchief to mop up the puddle of coffee threatening to stain the carpet.

Fear. Worry. Anger too. Pique at himself as well as the new master whose habits made his job too hard.

Phippen would not be staying long. Valets never did.

Christian rose from his chair and walked over to Phippen. “Give me the tray. I will hold it while you gather the pieces.”

“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir. That is too kind of you, my lord.”

You are an ass, sir. An eccentric, erratic, incomprehensible—
Another disturbance. An odd shaking within the remnants of the fading center.

Christian closed his eyes and focused on that tremble. Distant but distinct, it had interfered with his meditations too often of late. Today it had taken forever to overcome its effects.

He walked to the north windows. No one was in the garden. He paced down the length of his bedchamber to look out the south windows. The kneeling Phippen waved a saucer as he neared. Christian took it, put it on the tray, shoved the tray into Phippen's empty hand, and strode on. The sound of china tumbling again reached him just as he neared the window.

In the street below a carriage waited outside the door of his house. A figure swept toward it, dodging the drizzle that so often accompanied spring weather in London. A woman of middling height and quick step, wearing a deep green dress, hopped into the carriage's twilight.

A delicate nose. An elegant jaw.

A melodic sigh from the past. He was sure that he heard it despite the distance and the closed window.

His mind shed the last mists of his meditation. His blood reacted, violently. A different pulse now. Hard. Aggressive. He peered with total focus at that carriage.

The woman's face was hidden by the angle of his high view and by her bonnet and the dim light. Her footman closed the door and her fingers reached to pull the curtain.

A hand.
Her
hand. Impossible.…

The footman moved toward the back of the carriage, to take his position in the rain. Only then did Christian
notice the man. His attention had been so intent on the woman that he had not even seen the footman's eastern garments and long queue.

“A coat, Phippen. Boots.”

His valet rose with painful care, balancing the pile of china on the tray. “Very good, sir. I'll just set this outside the door and—”

Christian grabbed the tray and slammed it down on a table so hard that the cup jumped.
“Boots,
man.
Now.”

Even getting barely dressed took too long. Christian admitted that by the time he descended to the house's public rooms.

Common sense caught up with him at the top of the last flight of stairs. That carriage would be long gone, even with the crush around Grosvenor Square. Whether on foot or horse, he would never be able to follow it.

He pivoted, strode to the drawing room, and entered.

His aunt Henrietta and his young cousin Caroline sat together on a settee near one of the tall windows. Blond head to blond head, they gossiped about something. The progress of Caroline's second season most likely. Anxiety about Caroline's social life soaked the public rooms with its unceasing rain. It pattered down on him as soon as he opened the chamber's door.

Henrietta greeted him with glistening, vague eyes and an artificial, blank smile. She sought to hide her irritation with his intrusion, which he knew as clearly as if she spoke it. Henrietta and her daughter lived here
only because he had agreed to allow it in a rare fit of generosity a year ago. Now Hen wanted everyone to accept her as the mistress of the house, not a guest. Since he accepted nothing of the kind, his company was never welcomed.

“Easterbrook, you are up and about early today.” Henrietta's gaze noted his boots with relief, but her eyes reflected her eternal vexation at the lack of a cravat and his unruly hair.

“Is that inconvenient for you, Aunt Hen?”

“Far be it for me to presume inconvenience. It is your home.”

“I thought that perhaps you were still receiving callers. I noticed a carriage from my window, and hesitated to come down until your visitor had left.”

“You should have joined us,” Caroline said. “You might have enjoyed her company more than Mama did. Our visitor is quite an original. I am surprised Mama did not send her away.”

“I almost did,” Hen said. “However, one can never know how it will go with such people. She has both questionable fortune and background, but there is the chance that hostesses will overlook that because she is entertaining. Then where would I be if I had cut her when she made overtures?” She shook her head with perplexed exasperation. “It is always difficult to judge the odd ones. Nor is she truly odd. Not like Phaedra. More exotic than truly odd. There is a difference, Caroline, and one must be alert and careful to—”

“What is her name?” Christian asked.

His aunt blinked, startled. He never cared to know anything about her callers.

“Her name is Miss Montgomery,” Caroline said. “Mama and I met her at a party last week. Her father was a merchant trader in the Far East but she claims a connection to Portuguese nobility through her mother. Miss Montgomery is visiting London for the first time in her life. She journeyed all the way from Macao.”

“What did she want?”

His aunt peered his way curiously. “It was a social call, Easterbrook. She only hoped to form a friendship that would help her make her way in town this season.”

“I think that she is very interesting,” Caroline added.

“Too interesting for a young girl to befriend,” Henrietta said. “She is too worldly for your association, Caroline. I suspect that she is an adventuress. Quite likely a charlatan too, in her story about her mother's blood.”

“I do not think so,” Caroline said. “I also found her far more stimulating than most of the people who call.”

Christian left the drawing room while his aunt and cousin bickered about Miss Montgomery. He sent for the butler, to learn the address that the recent visitor's calling card had borne.

Leona Montgomery stepped around Tong Wei and angled her head toward the looking glass. She gave her reflection a critical gaze while she tied on her bonnet.

Young, but not really young. Pretty, but not really pretty. English, but not really English.

She sensed people itemizing the qualifications of her countenance and identity when they met her here in

London. It had been different in Macao. Everyone there was “not really” something.

Tong Wei finally rose from his knees. Leona glanced to the statue of Buddha that had occupied his attention. She was a Christian, but she understood her guard's devotion very well. Asian religious views affected everything in China, even among the European community.

“I should come with you,” Tong Wei said. His expression remained impassive but she knew that he worried about her safety in this noisy, crowded city of so many strangers. “Your brother would expect me to.”

“I want to be inconspicuous.” She gazed down at her gray promenade dress. Very English, it had been retrieved from a modiste yesterday. “Since you refuse to dress as a proper English footman, you cannot accompany me.”

They both knew that even English garments would not make Tong Wei into a proper-looking footman. His shaved brow and long queue, his round face and distinctive eyes, marked him as Chinese even more than the beautifully embroidered shafts of garnet-toned cloth that composed his exotic clothing today.

“Take Isabella with you,” he said. “It is not common to see women alone. Not ones of a high station.”

Isabella looked up. Her brush froze, poised over the paper on which she drew elegant images from her adventures. “I do not mind wearing my English clothes,” she said. “Tong Wei may think them barbaric, but I am not so pure.”

Isabella referred not only to her opinions. Half Chinese and half Portuguese, she was a hybrid of East
and West. If Isabella now wore a loose
qipao,
it was for comfort as much as preference.

“I will only be at the Royal Exchange for a short while. I am merely going to see how this big trading house is organized, so that I can walk in with confidence another time. If it is similar to the factories in Canton, it will be so busy that no one will notice me.” Leona trusted it would happen that way. Her ensemble had been chosen to be subdued. There were times when she did not want to turn heads for any reason.

“What if you see Edmund there?” Isabella asked.

A little shiver of foreboding and excitement intruded on Leona's composure. The ambivalent reaction happened whenever Edmund was mentioned during this journey.

“I will not see him there. He was a gentleman, and they do not engage in trade.” She had realized, since coming to London, that Edmund had been a gentleman in the true English meaning of the word. She now comprehended fully what that meant in this world of her father.

Of course, a man could be a gentleman and still be what Edmund had claimed, a naturalist and adventurer. A gentleman could even still be a thief.

“Then maybe you will eventually see him again in one of the drawing rooms that you visit,” Isabella said.

It would be useful if she did. She suspected that one of her missions in London might be accomplished much more quickly if she and Edmund faced each other again.
By the by, Edmund, just how big a scoundrel are you?

She checked her reflection again. Not really English, but English enough for today's purpose. The
not-really-young and not-really-pretty parts should help her be invisible.

“I doubt that I will be gone more than two hours,” she said. “While I am away, Isabella, please see if you can encourage that cook that I hired to make a dinner that is not so bland.”

Bury Street was quieter than nearby St. James's Square. Much less expensive too. Leona still fretted that she had not chosen a good enough address, but she could afford nothing better.

The view in front of her door caught her up short when she stepped out of her house. She frowned and looked right and left.

Where was the carriage? It had been waiting here just a few minutes ago, before she put on her bonnet.

An impressive coach blocked her view of the southern end of the street. She rose on her toes and angled her head to see past it. Down near the next crossroad she spied her own carriage. She recognized Mr. Hubson, the coachman who had been supplied by the establishment where she had hired this conveyance for her stay.

Perhaps the arrival of this much richer equipage had required her own to move. She was not yet familiar with all the nuances of rank and protocol in this city.

She waved to Mr. Hubson and walked toward him. As she came abreast of the big coach, a man stepped into her path.

“Miss Montgomery?”

His address startled her. Young and blond-haired, he wore an expression of deference even as he interfered
with her. A footman, she guessed, but he did not wear the livery of the other footmen accompanying this large vehicle. Those other two sidled away, taking stances out of view and far behind her back.

“Yes, I am Miss Montgomery. Who are you and what do you want?”

He gestured toward the coach's door. It bore an insignia. A crest. This presumptuous young man was in the employ of one of the lords of the realm.

“My lord requests your attendance,” he said. “We will bring you to his house, and return you here afterward.”

“Would not a written invitation have been more polite than having you accost me on the street?”

“Lord Easterbrook is somewhat unusual in his habits and impulsive in his invitations. No offense is intended, I assure you.”

Leona absorbed this revelation of the coach's owner. She had visited Easterbrook's house two days ago to call on his widowed aunt, Lady Wallingford. Most likely the marquess intended to remind the trader's daughter that she was not fit for his aunt's company. He could have communicated that in a letter, too, and not staged this little drama of power.

She would regret losing Lady Wallingford's connection before harvesting what fruit it might bear. That likelihood did not endear her to this Easterbrook any more than being summoned like a slave.

“I know the location of Lord Easterbrook's house. I will go in my own carriage, thank you. Please return to your master and inform him that I will call in due time.”

She tried to walk around the young man. He prevented that with a smooth side step.

“My lord commanded me to bring you, Miss Montgomery. I dare not disobey him. Please—” He held out his arm toward the carriage door, blocking her path all the more.

She looked past him, down the street. Her own coachman had disappeared, abandoning his equipage and her. She judged how far back her house was, and whether Tong Wei would hear if she called out.

She tried to hide her growing wariness. “Please give the marquess my regrets, but I have another invitation that will occupy me this afternoon. I will call on him tomorrow. Please move aside now.”

The young man glanced past her, to the two footmen. His expression caused the hairs on her nape to prickle.

A vise suddenly closed on her waist.

Alarm flashed through her. A shout rushed into her throat but panic stole her breath away. The street and houses spun and blurred.

She shook the confusion out of her head. She sat inside the coach now, with the young blond man. They sped down the street.