The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (24 page)

Miller truly blanched this time. “It will not happen again, sir.”

“Good. I expect that you will be up and about in a day or so. I will have some matters for you to address then. I will leave instructions on your desk in the study for when you are ready.”

He left Miller and went down to his apartments. He told Phippen to send for coffee, then made his way to the dressing room off the fencing chamber. He threw open the trunk, retrieved the leather half folio at its bottom, and carried it back to his chambers.

He settled in his favorite chair. It was time to read this, much as he would rather not. Despite last night, Leona had indicated that she was still determined to expose whoever could be exposed.

If there were any whoevers, and the evidence now suggested there really were, something might be found in these notes that would identify them, even if Leona's father had not realized it.

Three hours later he closed the folio. The anger of the night returned, only now it aimed in new directions, including those far into the past.

Reginald Montgomery had amassed an impressive amount of evidence to support his accusation that a secret company, based in London and owned by men of
power, contracted ships for smuggling opium into China. By interviewing captains and bribing sailors, by obtaining records of ships’ movements, he had created a chain to support his theory that lacked only the final links.

Worse, his investigations indicated that this company did not only operate in the East and transport opium, but also smuggled goods that avoided tariffs in the West Indies and around Europe and even into England itself.

That explained these bald threats against Leona. Her persecutors thought she knew more than she did. It was not only the exposure of opium smuggling into China that they feared, but the revelations of crimes closer to home, revelations that would cost them more than a few stained reputations.

Montgomery had been methodical and thorough. He provided lists of names, of captains who conspired for certain and others he only suspected, of customs officials being bribed, of merchants who accepted the goods.

Regarding the owners of the company, however, Leona's father only posited one name with any secure belief that he was correct. Indeed, he speculated that this man was the founder of the whole enterprise.

The Marquess of Easterbrook.

Leona kept eyeing Isabella. Isabella kept avoiding looking back. That alone made Leona think that Easterbrook's allusion to Mr. Miller's distraction might have been correct.

She said nothing about it the whole of their first day in the carriage. The coachman made a very leisurely pace, and they stayed the night at an inn outside the county border of Oxfordshire. When they resumed their journey the next day, she debated whether she should quiz Isabella about Mr. Miller.

It did not help that she was in no position to scold. Isabella knew what happened the night that Easterbrook stayed in their house. If the mistress dallied with a lord, the maid might think it fine to dally with a manservant. Yet the costs were different for the maid, and higher in the game of survival.

“Isabella, Lord Easterbrook said something that worries me. About you and Mr. Miller.”

Isabella turned her gaze from the passing countryside. She looked over with an expression as bold as she had ever shown.

“Has Mr. Miller importuned you?”

“No.”

That did not answer the bigger question. Isabella's eyes dared her mistress to be a hypocrite.

“I think that Mr. Miller is a very handsome man,” Leona offered. “Perhaps not an especially kind one, though. I sense that he is somewhat ruthless, and too inclined to just take what he wants and not consider the consequences to others.”

“He is kind when he wants to be, I believe. As for the rest, you describe most men. You describe my father. And the marquess, for example. At least Mr. Miller does not frighten me the way the marquess does.”

“Perhaps you should be frightened. It is different here. You need to remember that. There are no concubines in
Europe. There are no rights for a woman who gives herself to a man outside of marriage, and a man can have only one wife. Her children have no rights either. Your father was European and that is why your mother had no security.”

“Tong Wei reminded me of all of that already.”

Leona frowned. “He did? When?”

“When I was excited that Edmund had visited you that day. He told me that you were not suitable to be such a man's wife, and that there was no other place for you that was respectable.” She looked out the window again. “It is better in China. A woman can still have a place even if she is not suitable to be an important man's first wife.”

Leona did not know what to say. This conversation had begun as a warning for Isabella, but was turning around and aiming elsewhere.

“Isabella—”

“He is kind to me. He speaks gently,” she whispered. “He is a servant too.” She blinked hard and licked her lips. “He notices me. I am not the scorned girl of impure blood to him.”

The coach entered a little town just then. Leona joined Isabella at the window. Shoulder to shoulder, they peered out at the cottages and the lane of shops.

There was no use in warning Isabella to be wise. No matter what had happened between her and Mr. Miller in the past or what would happen in the future, no matter whether his motives were affectionate or ruthless, that handsome blond man was going to break Isabella's heart. It was already too late to stop that.

“Oh, my goodness.”

Leona muttered her astonishment while she watched Aylesbury Abbey come into view.

“I do not think I have ever seen a house so big. I have heard of such palaces in China,” Isabella said.

The house was massive. Nor did it look at all like an abbey. A fine-boned classicism governed its style, giving its extended height and wings an unexpected lightness and elegance.

Nothing thus far, not Easterbrook's huge house at Grosvenor Square, not the army of footmen in their antiquated livery, had prepared her for this.

Amidst her wonder, her conversation with Isabella echoed inside her.
Not suitable for such a man.

She already knew that. She was not ignorant of status and what it meant in the world. It was just that this estate, and this “house” that loomed larger the closer they got, encapsulated and explained so much.

I am Easterbrook.

A little ritual attended their arrival. More footmen emerged from the house. One who accompanied her handed over a letter that was rushed inside. A man appeared. His air of authority marked him as someone of importance. He introduced himself as the house steward, Mr. Thurston, welcomed her, and escorted her inside.

A housekeeper waited to take her in hand. Isabella was herded away. After a gentle flurry of activity and commands, Leona found herself in an apartment with three rooms overlooking an extensive garden. The
furnishings dazzled her so much that she barely heard the housekeeper explain the household routine.

The woman seemed to surmise the dismay underneath the amazement. “I would be happy to show you the property if you like. I find that visitors are more comfortable once the house is familiar to them.”

Leona quickly refreshed herself, then joined the housekeeper for the tour. Her trader's mind calculated costs for the appointments and fabrics, only to reach sums so high that she entered a state of disbelief. The rooms themselves possessed perfect proportions that helped create an effect of calm grandeur.

She especially liked the library. Despite its large size and its soaring ceiling, it managed to appear an intimate, warm space. The warmth of the jewel-toned fabrics probably helped, as did the many mahogany cases filled with books. A variety of upholstered sofas and chairs and reading tables kept it from appearing as vast as it truly was. Handsome landscape paintings decorated the walls.

“The marquess prefers this room,” the housekeeper confided. “When he visits he will sit here of an evening. His mother was a writer. She used to spend her days at the writing table over there. Lost to the world, she was, as she wrote those poems.”

Leona pictured Easterbrook in dishabille, by the fire, oblivious to the way his appearance spoke of his indifference to his wealth and position, and also his utter security in both.

“Does he visit often?”

The housekeeper shook her head. “He did come down for a wedding last January. The cousin of Lord

Hayden's wife was married in Watlington nearby. A real country wedding it was, and the marquess condescended to attend, which was all the talk in the county. Not like him to accept such invitations. A very private man, the master is.”

When the tour ended, Leona asked to return to the library. “How do I have a letter posted?”

“Give it to the butler and it will be done. There is paper in all the writing tables and secretaires. Will you be taking supper in your chambers or the dining room?”

Leona pictured herself alone at the banquet table that seated forty, sipping soup with six footmen in attendance. “My chambers, thank you.”

The housekeeper left her and she sat down at the writing desk to compose a letter to Lady Lynsworth. She needed to find out if Tong Wei would return to London soon. Aylesbury Abbey was a palace with every comfort and luxury to be imagined, but she did not want to visit longer than she had to.

Isabella arrived to prepare Leona for the evening. She reported that she had been given a fine room up above, on the same level as the most important servants.

“The housekeeper told me to inform her if anyone treats me with disrespect,” she said with wonder. “She said the marquess specifically instructed her to help me.”

Leona thought that remarkable. Despite the danger still coiling out of him when he sent them off in his coach, he had taken the time to add instructions about Isabella in his letter to the steward and the housekeeper.
He had been sensitive to the ways Isabella's mixed race might make her an outcast in the other servants’ eyes.

It was the kind of act that made Easterbrook impossible to understand. He could cut society right and left, he could be ruthless in his pursuits and arrogant in his assumptions, he could be self-absorbed to the point of rudeness, but he had these unexpected impulses of endearing thoughtfulness.

A fine meal arrived. The servants set a little table in the apartment's sitting room, near the window overlooking the garden.

“You may join me if you like, Isabella.”

“There is a large table for us below. I will go there if I may. One of the maids is going to show me some of this palace's many chambers and buildings. You do not think that is wrong, do you? It is permitted, I hope.”

“I suspect that none of the servants here enters places that are forbidden. You do not have to come back tonight. I will manage myself, or call for help if I need it.”

She sent Isabella off to explore the servants’ world. She imagined the extensive staff sitting at that table below, and all the talk and laughter. Isabella would have many new experiences here and meet many new people.

Her mistress, however, would take her meals alone, while she gazed out at a spectacular but empty garden.

By the time the servant cleared away the remains of the supper, dark had fallen. Leona had also made a few decisions.

She would write to Easterbrook and explain that being
sequestered at this house did not suit her. In the least she would demand to know how long he expected her to remain here. The latter point had never been discussed. In his haste to send her away, and with her emotions still jumbled from the night's events, she had never even asked about it.

Now, however, she concluded this flight had been too precipitous, and a mistake. She might as well have published a notice, telling these men that they had won.

She went down to the library. She would write a firm letter to the marquess, give it to the butler, and lay plans for an escape should her demands be ignored. It might be wise to choose a few books to occupy her useless hours until she learned which course she would be taking.

On her way down, she passed an upstairs sitting room. No one occupied it, but a low fire burned and three lamps had been lit. She imagined the servants going around every evening, year in and year out, preparing the home for a family that never came.

It was the same in the library. She opened the door to the glow from the fireplace. High-backed upholstered chairs angled toward it, creating an appealing but empty domestic vignette. A lamp sat on one of the writing tables, as if anticipating her intentions.

She walked toward it, then stopped when a movement caught her eye. A long leg encased in a tall black boot stretched out from one of the chairs near the fireplace. She walked around the chair to investigate.

Easterbrook sat there in a lazy, relaxed sprawl. If he had appeared a pirate at their reunion, he looked like a highwayman now. A black riding coat matched the rest
of his garments, except the white shirt open at the neck. His hair still showed the effects of fast riding, and tumbled around his face in reckless waves.