The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (5 page)

“Phippen, send word to Davidson that I want him here this afternoon,” Christian said.

Hayden threw himself into a chair. His attention wandered around the dressing room, but eventually settled on its only other occupant.

His blue eyes narrowed on Christian's hair.
Curious now. Deeply so.

“You seem to be commanding a lot of people to attend on you today, Christian. Tailors. Hairdressers too, unless I am mistaken.
Me
.”

Christian settled into another upholstered chair. The dressing room held five of them, all somewhat worse for wear now that he noticed. “Did my request inconvenience you?”

“See me before noon
is not a request.”

“Is that what I wrote? I intended to pen
Please call before noon if your dear wife can spare you.
How is Alexia?”

“It will be soon. A fortnight at most.”
Pride. Love. Fear too.
The last emotion, so rare in Hayden, could be
understood of a man whose wife was about to give birth.

“What is it you want?”

“I would like to introduce you to someone.”

Hayden again narrowed his eyes on Christian's hair, then glanced to the door as if remembering Phippen's sartorial errand. “Is this someone a woman?”

“Yes.”

“I hope that you are not going to ask us to receive your mistress. I have heard rumors that you have taken up with Mrs. Napier. Under the circumstances, what with Alexia's cousin Rose and the resultant delicate situation regarding society, I would prefer to wait until—”

“Not a mistress. Not Mrs. Napier, to be sure. This is an old friend. She has asked to meet you and I agreed to make the introduction.”

“I assumed that you did not have any friends, old or new, male or female.”

“Then you assumed too much, which you are apt to do sometimes. This friend is visiting from Macao, and seeks an introduction for business purposes.”

Hayden stood. He wandered over to the dressing table. He absently fingered the brushes there, then turned and folded his arms. “Macao?”

“Her father was a Country Trader. That is what they call traders licensed by the East India Company to conduct trade between the Indian ports. Like many others, he expanded into trade between India and some other Asian countries.”

“I know what a Country Trader is, Christian. I do manage our family finances.”

“Forgive me. Well, Montgomery befriended me when
I visited there. He had married into a Portuguese family in Macao. He was able to establish himself through that connection, and participate in Chinese trade via Canton, in addition to his Indian coastal trading. Now his daughter has come to London and—”

“You
were
in Macao?”
Hayden's pique crystallized the atmosphere. “Was this during those years when you disappeared and no one knew where the hell you were?”

“Did I never mention Macao?”

“No, damn it. You have never revealed a single thing about that time when you abandoned us, your duties—
everything.”

“I had no idea I had never discussed it.”

“Hell, you ignored every inquiry. If you are not aware of it, that is because of your overwhelming self-absorption and—”

“It appears that I am satisfying your curiosity at last. I met Miss Montgomery while I was in Macao. Her brother has now inherited the father's business. It had suffered a series of misfortunes under her father, from which I doubt it has completely recovered. She is in London to form associations that might benefit her brother's business, and she specifically asked to meet you.”

“Where else were you? Besides Macao?”

“India. Tibet. China itself for two weeks, although I nearly got caught. Russia—”

“Tibet?”

“All kinds of places, Hayden, but you have diverted this conversation from my intentions.”

“Damn your intentions.”

Hayden's anger crackled out of him. Christian suffered it as he rarely tolerated such intrusions from anyone
except his two brothers. A person cannot live in the dark center all the time, and in the end knowing his brothers’ joys more than balanced knowing their pains.

He waited until Hayden's little storm quieted. His brother was the most reasonable of men. The winds would disperse soon.

“I trust Miss Montgomery will be in town for at least a fortnight or so.” Hayden spoke with a bland ease that matched a renewed but tenuous calm. “My mind is not on finance and trade right now.”

“This introduction can wait until after the birth of your child, if that is what you mean.”

“Then send another of your imperial summons at that time, Christian, and we will arrange it.” He strode to the door. “Russia and Tibet. Hell.”

With Hayden's departure, the memory of Leona's visit returned. Again Christian saw her face before she entered the carriage to go about her afternoon plans.

He wondered what those plans were. He did not question that she was in London to further her brother's business. He just doubted that she had truly forgotten or forgiven the way that business had almost been destroyed seven years ago.

He wandered to the fencing chamber, and into its dressing room. This space served as storage now, a place where he deposited personal items no longer in use. While he moved wooden boxes and trunks, his gaze lit on a wall covered with frames displaying insects, ferns, and seeds.

You waste too much time on that collection, Christian.
Better if you read books or practiced with your pistols. I'll not have a son who turns into one of those peculiar fellows who chases butterflies.

He had read plenty of books and practiced many hours with his pistol. Books and guns, like collecting, could be done privately. Alone.

Nor had he truly been interested in insects and seeds. They had been an excuse to go out in the woods and fields, where he would be spared the awkward and often painful awareness of another person's unhappi-ness. There had been a lot of misery in the home of his youth.

He pulled a trunk forward and threw it open. Full of the flotsam of two years of travel, it offered few memories that mattered. The real goal of that journey had been escape, not discovery. It had been an accident that it resulted in discovery after all.

He shoved aside statuettes and odd weavings. Down at the bottom lay a half-folio-sized journal, thick with pages. He reached for it, then stopped with his hand poised above its brown leather cover.

He had never read the notes inside it. He had reasons not to want to know what they would reveal. He had cause to think these notes might shed light on the darker corners of his father's life. They might expose secrets that still remained buried by place and time.

The last marquess had committed his share of sins, and Christian had long ago decided that he did not want to learn about them. Ignorance had been a path to liberation. He did not want to reenter that morass of inherited guilt and obligations again.

Now, however, it might be wise to open this notebook.
Leona had lied during their reunion. He needed no special sensibility to her emotions to know it.

He was almost certain that she had not come to London merely to help her brother. She had also come to finish her father's crusade. If her father had even been half right in his theories, she could be headed for trouble.

She surely suspected Edmund had taken these notes that her father had made while he worked through his suspicions and conducted his investigations. When a man and an item disappear at the same time, only an idiot would not see the possible connection.

She might have asked Edmund to give the notebook back. She probably would not trust a marquess about anything regarding this second mission, however.

He contemplated the journal for a good while. Then he closed the trunk. He would read it if he had to, but he doubted it would come to that. He intended to keep Leona very close to him. He would divert her from this particular path, if she had ventured down it.

He returned to his dressing room. There was one more chore to complete. He sent for Miller.

“Bring this to Mrs. Napier. Give her my regrets that I will not be calling on her tonight.”

Miller weighed the little box in his hand. Its contents had been purchased from one of the visiting tradesmen this morning. “No note?”

“That necklace is all the explanation that is required.”

Miller eyed the box distastefully. “I hope there will not be a scene. Women can get dramatic when they are thrown over.”

“There will be no drama. Mrs. Napier has only two strong emotions, lust and greed. She is smart enough to know that satisfaction of the first is fleeting, while that of the latter lasts forever.”

“Not to speak out of turn, sir, but she sounds a little ruthless.”

“No more than most people, unfortunately. No more than you and I, that is certain.”

Miller smiled, rather pleased to be included in the same circle as a marquess, even if it was a ruthless one.

Miller wandered off to deliver the parting gift. Christian assumed that a good deal of his recent physical comfort walked out the door too.

Dealing with women was the hardest part of his life. Romance was impossible if one sensed not only the desire and the joys of one's beloved but also her disappointments, her flashing moments of hatred and her grudging accommodations.

The erotic and ruthlessly practical Mrs. Napier had been, he had to admit, the perfect mistress for the cursed Marquess of Easterbrook.

G
riffin Winterside, the manager of the East India Company, charged with coddling and cajoling Parliament, watched Mr. Hubson eye the ten-pound note lying on the mahogany table. It was a lot of money for a coachman hired out like the team of horses he drove.

“Describe the carriage that took her away, Mr. Hubson.”

“Big one. Town coach. Two footmen and another one, young, who wasn't in livery. Secretary perhaps. A lord's coach, I'd say, but I didn't see the door.”

Winterside doubted this opinion. Leona Montgomery was a mere Country Trader's sister. What would a lord want with her?

“Has she often had congress with such elevated society?”

“I took her to two such addresses. Stayed a respectable time at both. She was received that is certain.” Hubson gazed at the note again.

Winterside set the note aside. “All in good time, Mr. Hubson. All in good time. Which two?”

Hubson leaned forward, as if he worried someone might overhear his indiscretion. The pose made his rotund chest threaten the security of the buttons of his waistcoat.

“There was a party at the house of Lady Barraclough a fortnight ago. Quite smug she was at having that invitation. Dressed herself very fine, she did. Then, let me see.…” He cocked his head and thought hard. “Six days ago it was, she had me take her to Grosvenor Square. To Lord Easterbrook's house. She called on his aunt, Lady Wallingford.”

Hubson described a thin social schedule for Miss Montgomery, and not one of much interest. Lady Barraclough was a harmless woman with a stupid husband. Easterbrook was an eccentric recluse and his aunt a vapid harpy.

It sounded as if Miss Montgomery was pounding on the weakest links of the chains that barred society's doors. None of her movements presented any cause for worry.

“Did you see this coach return her to her house?”

Hubson shook his head. “I'd dealt with the carriage and horses, and was settling in for a good nap by then.”

Too bad. This story of the coach nudged at Winterside. It might belong to some man who had developed a
tendre
for Miss Montgomery. He hoped so. A love affair would ensure that Miss Montgomery occupied her time in London on the most ordinary matters.

Winterside was quite sure that ordinary matters
were all she intended here. Others did not agree. It was not so much who Miss Montgomery was that provoked their interest, but who her father had been.

He sighed inwardly. What nonsense over ancient history. As if a woman would know or give a damn about Reginald Montgomery's bizarre accusations. Nonethe less, important men wanted reassurance that she had not picked up her father's standard.

Hubson must have thought the silence reflected displeasure at his answer, because he tried again. “I didn't see her return, but I did see her later that day. She went out again.”

“Did she now?”

“There I was, settling in, and she sent the Chinaman to tell me to bring the carriage around. It did not please me, mind you. I'd made everything ready once, and to start all over again—”

“Where did you take her?”

“To the Royal Exchange.”

“The Royal Exchange? You are quite sure? No doubt she sought a shop nearby.”

“It was the Exchange itself that she wanted. I saw her go in. She did not stay long. No more than a quarter hour. I thought it odd. A woman going to the Exchange.”

Not so odd. She was a trader's daughter and sister. The Royal Exchange was the center of trading in London. She may have just been curious.

“Tell me, Mr. Hubson. Have you taken her anywhere else that you considered odd?”

Hubson thought so hard that his fleshy face creased at brow and mouth. “Not really.”