The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (20 page)

“Please, do not frighten her so,” Leona said. “Isabella, have you heard anyone in the house or garden this morning? After Lord Easterbrook's servants departed?”

“No. No one.”

“Where have you been during these hours?” “In your chamber. There were some tears in your chemise and dress and I.…” Her expression fell in distress. “Should I have remained here? Or near the door? I did not know. Normally Tong Wei—”

“You did nothing wrong. No one thinks that you did. Isn't that correct, Lord Easterbrook? We only wanted to know if you heard anything.”

“I did not mean to suggest you had erred. You can leave now,” Easterbrook said.

Isabella scurried away. Leona turned to the drawer, to see if anything was missing.

“It was bold of them, to enter this house,” Easterbrook said. “Too bold.”

“I could be wrong. Nothing appears to be gone. Perhaps I only thought it. I have nothing more than a feeling as proof.”

“Feelings can often tell you more than sights and sounds. So can a memory of this chamber and that desk when you last were here. I do not doubt that your suspicions are accurate, even if there is no proof.”

“I
do
doubt it, however. More with every minute. Already this library appears very normal to me. I am feeling silly to have raised an alarm over nothing.”

He pulled her into his arms. “Leona, in the natural world most creatures, if their environment is threatened, if they are disturbed, will protect themselves. Some will flee. Others will attack. They will react. You have disturbed someone's environment. You must stop probing. You do not even know the nature of the beast you may be wakening with your prods.”

“Do not try to command me. And do not try to say I am in danger just because of the strangeness I felt on entering here. The entire world appears a little different to me today. Maybe this chamber did not change at all. Perhaps I did.”

He did not try to command, although she saw that he wanted to. Her allusion to her perceptions, and to the other reason for their changing, checked him. He took her face in his hands, much as he had yesterday at the beginning of it all, and kissed her.

“I will go now, so we do not argue about this on today of all days.” He released her. “Tong Wei's absence has left you without protection. I will send men here, so
that you and Isabella are not alone. Expect a footman by day and my secretary, Mr. Miller, by night. Do not think to object, Leona. And do not leave this house without one of them by your side.”

He took her hand, bowed, and kissed it. “As for last night and future nights, I will wait for a sign from you.”

Leona alighted from her carriage. She glanced askance at Mr. Owens, the footman who held the door. She had come to think of him as a gaoler the last two days.

Lord Easterbrook must have given stern commands about this duty. Owens never left her side when she departed the house, even if she only planned to stroll around St. James's Square with Isabella.

Right now his relentless attendance would be useful. As it happened, she had need of a man.

He shadowed her across the street and along the store fronts to the entrance of the Three Bells tavern.

She opened her reticule and retrieved five pounds. “Please go inside and ask for Mr. Charles Nichols. If he is there, say this note is his if he comes out here to speak with me.”

“I cannot do that, Miss Montgomery. It would mean leaving you out here alone.”

“Do you fear I will be abducted in the brief time you are gone, with my coachman less than thirty yards away? I remind you that the only time I was ever attacked on a London street, you were one of the men responsible.”

He flushed a deep red.

“You will be able to see me through the window so I
will not be out of your sight at all. There will be five pounds for you too if you are successful. If you refuse to help me, I will march in there and seek Mr. Nichols on my own.”

He knew he had been cornered. The chance to be five pounds richer made the view from that spot a fairly pleasant prospect, but she knew he saw a big shadow too.

“Lord Easterbrook will never know, I am sure.”

Resigned more than swayed, he entered the tavern. Leona stood on her toes to get a good view through the window. Discussion ensued with the proprietor, then her footman approached a corner. It appeared that Phaedra's information, that scribes for the press collected here, had borne fruit.

Owens led a man to the door. Mr. Nichols had what she considered a country type of English appearance, pale and sandy-haired, with a blunt thickness to his features. His eyes revealed the liquid, red-rimmed evidence that he enjoyed the Three Bells tavern more than was healthy.

He gave her a good examination. “You want something from me for that five pounds, I assume.”

“Only information. The answer to a question, to satisfy my curiosity about one of your paragraphs in
The Times.”

“The answer is yours if I have it. You are paying more than they ever will for so few words.”

“Let us take a turn, then.” She glared at the footman, to warn him not to walk too closely.

Mr. Nichols sauntered beside her with a loose, casual gait. She slowed her own pace so they could converse.

“Are you employed by the newspaper?”

He chuckled at that. “I sit in the trials and scribble the drama. I am a playwright, so I have a knack for it. If I make a trial funny enough, one of the papers gives me a few shillings.”

“I am familiar with your colorful reports of the trials.”

“Are you now?” He beamed, very pleased by that.

“I am interested in some scribbling of a different nature, however.” She removed the death notice from her reticule and handed it to him.

He frowned as if he had never seen the words before. “Did a few of these over time. M.P.'s and such.”

“This one was written six years ago, and the man lived on the other side of the world. Why did you believe his death would be of interest in London, and where did you find the facts on his life?”

Mr. Nichols truly seemed perplexed. Then enlightenment struck. “I remember now. Goodness, that was long ago. I was commissioned to write this. Families often pay for death notices, and that was how this was done.”

“That man's family did not pay you. Someone else did. I know this for certain, because that man whose good name you impugned was my father.”

Her accusation made him flush. “I was only given the information, that is all. Told to write it up proper and I'd be paid and my name would be in
The Times.
I was told straight out it was opium, but I thought it better not to be so pointed.” He held the page to his eyes and read it again. “Thought I was very clever in how I phrased it, I remember. He thought so too.”

“Who is this he? Who paid you to do this?”

“I am sorry if you were hurt, or if secrets were let out. I cannot tell you who hired me, though. He was not an ordinary man. He was the sort you don't say no to easy, if you know what I mean.” He walked a few more steps, then added. “The sort you know it's best not to cross, if you understand me.”

He described a man like Easterbrook.

“Mr. Nichols, I do not want to compel you to speak. However, that death notice leaves me no choice. It is a lie, you see. He died of a bad heart. You have committed libel. If you do not reveal who hired you, I will have a brief filed to that effect.”

The threat alarmed him. “Hardly fair to try to ruin me when it wasn't really my doing.”

“I will direct my anger more fairly if you permit it.”

Mr. Nichols plodded along, his face screwed in thought. Pained by the decision, he held out his hand for the five pounds. “Viscount Guilford, he was then. Now he is the Earl of Denningham.”

It was the first evidence that her father had been right all the time. The man who paid for that death notice was indeed a peer, just as her father claimed some of his unseen oppressors were. Unfortunately, that meant this was not someone she could confront easily.

The problem absorbed her while she walked back to her carriage. She needed to find a way to meet this man. The obvious path was through Easterbrook. He could probably arrange to have her received.

It would mean asking him for a favor. Which meant seeing him before she had decided what to do about him.

For two days her good sense had warred with her
instincts. The latter wanted to throw caution and reputation to the winds. They lined up many arguments for grabbing whatever excitement and passion were waiting, no matter how hopeless and brief it might be. Hadn't she regretted not doing so before?

The problem was she no longer was nineteen, and continued capitulation had implications for many things, including the reason she wanted this introduction so badly.

She worked it over in her mind. It distracted her so much that she barely felt the stones beneath her feet.

Suddenly the world crashed into her daze. Sounds thundered. Views of buildings and sky and street flashed in quick succession while her body was yanked to one side so hard that she flew.

The world righted itself. She saw her coachman standing, waving his whip at a man cantering down the street on a brown horse.

The danger had passed but its echo made her shake. This brush with serious injury, or worse, chilled her.

“My apologies, Miss Montgomery.” Owens's breath came hard and his face was flushed from excitement and alarm. “The fellow almost rode right over us. He did not even look when he came around the crossroad.”

He still grasped her by her arm. They both noticed and he quickly removed his hand. “Are you hurt? Per haps we should return to your house so your maid can—”

Alert now, too alert, she cobbled together her composure. “I am not hurt. Thank you for being more careful than I was. We will return to my house soon. First, however, I have a visit to make.”

C
hristian sat in his favorite chair in his chamber. The drapes had been pulled to the day's sun. His eyes were closed too. He was not meditating, much as he would like to be. Instead he debated what to do about Leona.

The conundrum had occupied his mind since parting from her two days ago. It even intruded on his sleep. Worse, until he settled an ill ease that had entered him in Hayden's house, he did not trust himself to see her again.

It was one thing to plan the seduction of a woman, and another matter to succeed in seducing
the
woman. And she had always been that,
the
woman, against whom he judged all others and measured even his levels of desire.

Seduction was driven by impulses and needs that have no logic, no concern for consequences. Normally there were no implications for him other than a temporary affair of mutual erotic satisfaction with an experienced
woman like Mrs. Napier. Which meant that he had no recent experience with his current situation.

He could not deny that despite his indifference to notions of sin, guilt, and propriety, despite his firm belief that social rules strangled more than civilized, a night in Leona's bed had led to some unexpected moral considerations once the sated bliss passed. Her own hesitation to repeat the sin had only pricked at his conscience all the more.

He had been ruthless with her. That was all there was to it. He had been determined to have her, and he had succeeded. He had used pleasure to conquer her own good sense and her own care for her reputation.

The primitive man did not mind at all, and even preened with contentment. The civilized man knew it was time to make an accounting of the damage.

He was supposed to offer marriage now. That the notion did not send him into the depths of melancholy was a wonder in itself.

It probably had something to do with seeing that baby. The visit to Alexia had reminded him of nature's cycle, of time passing, of the life unlived. Alexia and Hayden's joy had been almost painful to see, and his own soul felt like a void in comparison. With his desire at low tide, his seduction of Leona had appeared selfish while he was in that house on Hill Street.

Then there was the baby herself. A perfectly normal child, from what he could tell. If the heightened sensibility had been in the child, his own sensibility should have felt it. Surely he would have sensed
something.
Maybe it did not have to be inherited by the next generation. Perhaps.…

If he proposed, would Leona accept? She had all but warned him off that notion when she said in Pennington's garden that he was not her true destiny. Hayden's reports of her fame among Eastern traders indicated that the destiny she anticipated was not one of growing old sitting in a Mayfair drawing room.

The horrible truth was that marrying her would be even more selfish than seducing her. He had accommodated his affliction. He could overcome it for brief periods of time. He doubted any woman could constantly live with its effects without eventually hating how it affected her life and how it ruled him, however. Marriage to a madman would be preferable. She could lock a madman away, or petition to be freed of him.

He opened his eyes to the shadows. He got up and walked into an anteroom to his bedchamber. He lifted a half-written note lying on his writing desk. Addressed to Daniel St. John, it had been a noble but halfhearted attempt to procure Leona the connection she wanted.