Читать книгу Regency Rogues and Rakes - Anna Campbell - Страница 23

The rank which English Ladies hold, requires they should neglect no honourable means of distinction, no becoming Ornament in the Costume.

La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Advertisements for June 1807

Sunday 3 May

Clevedon House seemed oppressively quiet, even for a Sunday. The corridors were silent, the servants having reverted to their usual invisibility, blending in with the furnishings or disappearing through a backstairs door. No one hurried from one room to the next. No Noirot women appeared abruptly in the doorway of the library.

Clevedon stood at the library table, which was heaped with ladies’ magazines and the latest scandal sheets. Of the latter, Foxe’s Morning Spectacle was the most prominent, its front page bearing a large advertisement for “Madame Noirot’s newly-invented VENETIAN CORSETS.”

He felt a spasm of sorrow and another of anger, and wondered when it would stop.

He told himself he ought to throw the magazines in the fire, and Foxe’s rag along with them. Instead, he went on studying them, making notes, forming ideas.

It staved off boredom, he supposed.

It was more entertaining than attending to the stacks of invitations.

It was a waste of time.

He rang for a footman and told him to send Halliday in.

Three minutes later, Halliday entered the library.

Clevedon pushed to one side the provoking Spectacle. “Ah, there you are. I want you to send the dollhouse to Miss Noirot.”

There was an infinitesimal pause before Halliday said, “Yes, your grace.”

Clevedon looked up. “Is there a problem? The thing can sustain a twenty-minute journey to St. James’s Street, can it not? It’s old, certainly, but I thought it was in good repair.”

“I do beg your pardon, your grace,” Halliday said. “Naturally there is no problem whatsoever. I shall see to it immediately.”

“But?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I hear a but,” Clevedon said. “I distinctly hear an unsaid but.”

“Not precisely a but, your grace,” Halliday said. “It is more of an impertinence, for which I do beg your pardon.”

When Clevedon only looked at him expectantly, Halliday said, “We had been under the impression that Miss Erroll—that is, Miss Noirot—would be visiting us again.”

Clevedon straightened away from the table. “What the devil gave you that impression?”

“Perhaps it was not so much an impression as a hope, sir,” Halliday said. “We find her charming.”

We meant the staff. Clevedon was surprised. “I should like to know what it is about them. They seem to charm everybody.” The housemaid Sarah had gone happily enough to live above a shop and act as interim nursemaid until the Noirots had time to hire a suitable person. Miss Sophia had even disarmed Longmore.

“Indeed, they possess considerable charm,” Halliday said. “But Mrs. Michaels and I both remarked their manner. We agreed that it was nothing like what one expected of milliners. Mrs. Michaels believes the women are ladies.”

“Ladies!”

“She is persuaded that they are gentlewomen in reduced circumstances.”

Clevedon remembered his first impression of Marcelline—his confusion. She’d sounded and behaved like the ladies of his acquaintance. But she wasn’t a lady. She’d told him so.

Hadn’t she?

“That’s romantic,” Clevedon said. “Mrs. Michaels is fond of novels, I know.”

“I daresay that is the case,” Halliday said. “In any event, they were not what one would be led to expect. Mrs. Michaels was greatly shocked when I informed her we had milliners to wait upon. But she told me that she was entirely taken aback when she met them. They did not strike her as milliners at all.”

Servants were more sensitive to rank than their employers. They could smell trade at fifty paces. They could detect an imposter a minute after he opened his mouth.

Yet his servants, keenly aware of their position in the employment of a duke, had believed the Noirots were gentlewomen.

Well, it only showed how clever those women were. Charming. Enticing. Three versions of Eve, luring men to…

Gad, what the devil was wrong with him? It was reading all the damned magazines, with their serialized sentimental tales.

“You saw them at work,” Clevedon said. “They know their trade.”

“That is undoubtedly why Mrs. Michaels imagined they were women of rank who’d fallen on hard times,” Halliday said. “I must confess that at first I thought it was one of your jokes. I beg you will forgive me, sir, but it did cross my mind that these were some cousins from abroad, and you were testing us. Only for an instant, sir. Naturally, it was obvious there had been a fire, and it was no joke.”

The footman Thomas appeared in the doorway. “I beg your pardon, your grace, but Lord Longmore is here to see you, and—”

Longmore pushed past Thomas, strode past Halliday, and marched up to Clevedon.

“You cur!” Longmore said. He drew back his arm, and his fist shot straight at Clevedon’s jaw.

Meanwhile, at Maison Noirot

Lucie sat in the window, gazing down into St. James’s Street.

She’d been sitting there for hours.

Marcelline knew what she was watching for, and she was dreading what was to come. “It’s time for your tea,” she said. “Sarah has laid out the tea things on your handsome tea table, and your dolls are in their places, waiting.”

Lucie didn’t answer.

“Afterward, Sarah will take you to the Green Park. You can see the fine ladies and gentlemen.”

“I can’t go out,” Lucie said. “What if he comes, and I’m not here? He’ll be very disappointed.”

Marcelline’s heart sank.

She moved to sit next to Lucie on the window seat. “My love, his grace is not coming here. He looked after us for a time, but he’s very busy—”

“He’s not too busy for me.”

“We’re not his family, sweet.”

Lucie’s eyes narrowed and her mouth set.

“He made a beautiful home for us,” Marcelline said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “Only look at all the fine things he bought for you. Your own tea set and tea table. Your own little chair and the prettiest bed in the world. But there are others in his life—”

“No!” Lucie jumped down from the window seat. “No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”

“Lucie Cordelia.”

“I’m not Lucie. I’m Erroll. I’ll never be Lucie again. He’s coming back! He loves me! He loves Erroll!”

She threw herself on the rug. She shrieked and sobbed and kicked her feet.

Sophy and Leonie ran into the nursery. Sarah raced in, and stopped short, her expression horrified. This was her first experience of Lucie in a tantrum.

She started toward the raging child.

Marcelline put up a hand, and the maid backed away. “Lucie Cordelia, that is quite enough,” she said, keeping her voice calm and firm. “You know ladies do not throw themselves on the floor and scream.”

“I’m not a lady! I hate you!”

Sarah gasped.

“Come, Erroll,” Sophy said. “You’ll only make yourself sick.”

“He’s coming back!” Lucie shrieked. “He loves me!”

Marcelline squared her shoulders. She moved to Lucie and scooped the child into her arms, in spite of flailing arms and feet and deafening shrieks. She held Lucie tight against her and rocked her, as though she were still the tiny infant she’d been once.

“Stop it,” Marcelline said. “Stop it, love. You need to be a big girl.”

The kicking and punching stopped, and the screaming softened into weeping. “Why c-can’t we st-stay th-there? Why d-doesn’t he k-keep me?”

Marcelline carried her to the window seat and held her, rocking her and stroking her back. “If everyone who loved you kept you, where would you live?” she said. “Then where should Mama be? Don’t you want to live with Mama and Aunt Sophy and Aunt Leonie? Have you grown too fine for us? Do you want to go away and live in a castle? Is that it? What do you think, Aunt Sophy? Shall we dress Erroll in a princess gown and send her away to live in a castle?”

It was nonsense, most of it, but it quieted Lucie. She tightened her hold of her mother’s neck. “I can live here,” she said. “Why can’t he come?”

“He’s a great man, sweetheart,” Marcelline said. “He has his own family. Very soon he’ll be married and have his own children. You can’t have every handsome gentleman who takes your fancy, you know.”

Erroll quieted. The motion of her eyes told Marcelline the child was thinking. She was only six, and children had difficulties with logic, but the prospect of being a princess might suffice to distract her.

The tempest over, Sarah said, “I’ll tell you what, Miss Erroll. Let’s have our tea with the dolls, then we’ll take a walk in the Green Park. Perhaps we’ll see the Princess Victoria. Do you know who she is, miss? She’s the king’s niece, and one day she’ll be the Queen of England.”

“If you do see her,” Marceline said, “you must take special note of what she’s wearing, and tell us all about it.”

While a little girl threw a tantrum on St. James’s Street, the Earl of Longmore was throwing his own in the library of Clevedon House.

Clevedon caught hold of his friend’s arm. There was some pushing, and a brief scuffle. Then the shouting started.

Halliday had tactfully taken himself out of the room and closed the door. Having failed to break Clevedon’s jaw or provoke him into a duel, Longmore was drinking the duke’s brandy to sustain him while he paced the room and raged in his usual hotheaded fashion.

Clevedon knew he deserved a dressing down. All the same, it was very hard to bear. It was not as though he was enjoying himself. His life, at the moment, seemed to be utter excrement.

“You don’t deserve my sister,” Longmore said. “I should never have come to Paris. She raked me over the coals for doing it. She was right. I should have left you there to rot. I should have encouraged her to look elsewhere. I should have told her the leopard doesn’t change his spots. But no, I was completely taken in. I wondered why you came back so soon—but I told myself it was because you’d realized how much you missed Clara. Gad, I was a naïve as she is!”

“I don’t recall appointing a particular time to return,” Clevedon said.

“I told you the end of the month was soon enough,” Longmore said. “I knew you weren’t done. I only wanted to be able to tell my mother you were coming back. I wish now I’d told her to mark you down in the column under dead losses. I’ve half a mind to tell her so now.”

“If this is about the dressmakers—”

“Who else would it be about?” Longmore snapped. “Who else has been so thoroughly lost to propriety—”

“‘Lost to propriety,’” Clevedon echoed. “I can’t believe those words are issuing from your mouth. When did you ever care for propriety? As I recall, your father was happy enough to pack you off to the Continent.”

“I’ve never pretended to be a saint—”

“Good thing, too. No one would believe you.”

“But I don’t invite milliners to sleep in the ancestral home!”

“They were burnt out of their lodgings,” Clevedon said. “It was in all the papers. Do you think that was a fabrication? But why the devil do I ask? If you were rational, you wouldn’t be here, guzzling my brandy as though it was Almack’s lemonade—”

“I never drink the filthy stuff.”

“You’re not rational. I don’t know what’s got into you, and I’m not sure I care. But the women are gone. I took them in for only a few days—”

“You couldn’t put them up at a hotel?”

“You don’t understand a damned thing,” Clevedon said. “They have a business to run. They can’t afford to lose time. They needed a place to work. They needed help. Bringing them here was the simplest plan. They drove themselves to distraction to finish a dress for Clara—”

“Don’t speak of her and them in the same breath, you philandering swine.”

“They’re gone, you idiot! I had them packed up and out of here in seventy-two hours. They were gone on Saturday morning.”

“And you were in bed with the brunette on Friday night,” Longmore said.

It was completely unexpected. It was like one of Long-more’s lightning blows, coming from the one angle one wasn’t prepared for.

For a moment Clevedon saw red, literally: flames danced before his eyes. He clenched his fists, and when he spoke, his voice was deadly calm. “The temptation to knock you down is nearly overwhelming,” he said.

“Don’t act all nobly outraged with me, as though I’ve compromised her virtue.”

“Only a blackguard would speak of any woman in that way.”

“You were with her,” Longmore said. “You weren’t even discreet. I was at White’s when one of the fellows told me he’d seen your carriage in Bennet Street. They started speculating about what you were doing there. I slapped my head and pretended suddenly to remember that you and I had appointed to meet there, and you were waiting for me. I went out of the club and down to Bennet Street. I stood in a doorway and waited for you to come out. And waited. And waited.”

“How bored you must have been,” Clevedon said, his heart pounding. Not with guilt, the more shame to him. It beat against the turmoil within. It beat with remembering those few miraculous hours.

Longmore tossed back the last of his brandy, stalked to the tray and refilled his glass from the decanter there. He took a long swallow. “You’re making yourself a laughingstock,” he said. “I’ve never seen you behave in this way over any woman. The creature has her hooks in you, that’s plain enough. If this were the usual thing, I’d merely warn you in no uncertain terms to show a little damned discretion. Plague take it, Clevedon, you might have had the sense to tell the coachman to wait where all of bloody St. James’s Street couldn’t see him!”

“It didn’t occur to me,” Clevedon said. “I didn’t plan to stay above a quarter hour. I’m sorry you were obliged to wait for so long.”

“It was boring,” Longmore said. “And damned aggravating. What the devil am I to do? Is this fair to Clara? Should her brother tell her that the man she’s been waiting for has well and truly lost his head over a milliner? It’ll hurt her, you know. She’s always been so tolerant of your foibles. She has a soft spot in her head, I daresay. But this—You know this isn’t the usual thing for you.”

“It was goodbye,” Clevedon said tightly. “It was longer than I’d intended, but it was goodbye. Do you understand? All Mrs. Noirot ever wanted was to dress my duchess. I’ve never been more than a means to that end. She doesn’t care who the duchess is, but I think she prefers Clara because Clara’s beauty is up to the beauty of her bedamned brilliant designs. I was infatuated—and you know how I am: Once I set my sights on a woman, I’ve got to have her. But that’s done. It was goodbye, Longmore. And I must ask you, out of regard for Clara, to keep it to yourself. Telling her will only cause her needless pain, and why should she suffer over an episode of stupidity?”

“You swear it’s over?” Longmore said.

“I—”

Clevedon broke off as the door opened. Halliday appeared on the threshold. He was holding a small silver tray. This was not a good sign. Halliday never stooped to carrying notes. That was a footman’s job.

“I do beg your pardon for disturbing your grace, but I was told that the message could not wait,” the house steward said.

Clevedon didn’t wait for him but crossed the room in a few quick strides, snatched the note from the tray, and tore it open.

There was no salutation. Merely six words: “We need your help. Lucie’s run away.” It was signed M.

Clevedon and Longmore reached the shop not twenty minutes later. The child had disappeared sometime after returning home with the nursemaid from the Green Park. Sarah had readied a bath for Lucie, but when she came back into the nursery, where the child had been playing, she was gone. They’d searched the house, every inch of it, Marcelline told him.

“She got out,” she said. “She climbed out of an open window at the back of the house. I should never have left a window open if I’d any idea she’d do such a thing.”

She must have learned the trick from Clevedon. That was how he’d got her out of the burning house. She’d kept her eyes closed, but she might easily have heard others talk of the rescue. He hadn’t talked about it, but anybody might have worked it out, once they saw the broken window.

“Any idea what set her off?” he said. “That might offer a clue—”

“She had a prodigious temper fit,” Marcelline said. “But she seemed to calm down afterward. Sarah said she was cheerful enough when they went to the park.”

Sarah clapped her hand over her mouth.

“What?” Clevedon said. “If you know something, say it. We haven’t a moment to lose.”

Sarah began to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was me, madam. I wasn’t thinking.”

“What, drat you?” Clevedon said.

Sarah hastily wiped her eyes. Her face went a bright red. “When we were in the Green Park. Miss Erroll was asking where your family was. She wanted to know why they didn’t live at Clevedon House. I said you didn’t have your own family yet. I pointed out Warford House there, overlooking the park. I said a lady lived in the house and everyone said you were going to marry her. She got such a look on her face. I knew I shouldn’t have said it. She was that wrought up, before, when she was told you weren’t coming.”

Clevedon looked at Marcelline.

“She was waiting for you,” she said wearily. “I told her you weren’t coming. She threw a fit.”

The child had been waiting for him. And he wasn’t to come, ever again.

This was his fault. He’d given her a doll and she’d cherished it, and it had nearly cost her life. She’d stayed in his house. She’d been petted by the servants and she’d played with the dollhouse. What else was she to think but that he was part of her life now, part of her family?

He’d acted so unthinkingly and selfishly and carelessly. He’d thought only of himself and what pleased him, not of the child and how she might be hurt.

This was how Father had killed Mother and Alice. No thought but for himself.

He was sick, heartsick.

He said, “That simplifies matters. one can assume she decided to hunt me down. That would mean she’s headed toward Clevedon House.”

“I doubt she knows the way,” Marcelline said. “We drove here, recollect. How would she know one street from the next?”

It was easy enough for adults unfamiliar with the area to get lost. She could easily turn into the wrong street.

A six-year-old child, alone in the London streets. In a short time the sun would set. And she might be in any of a hundred places.

“We’ll alert the police,” he said. “They may have found her already. They would certainly take notice of a well-dressed child alone on the street.” He hoped so. Predators would take notice, assuredly.

His fault again. She’d escaped by a method she’d learned from him. She’d run away because of him.

He turned to Longmore. “Send one of the footmen who came with us to the police. But they haven’t nearly enough men. I must ask you to muster your servants and mine, and form a search party. We’ll comb the streets.”

“She’s afraid of the dark,” Marcelline said. Her voice shook and her eyes were red, but she didn’t weep. “She’s afraid of the dark.” Her sisters went to her and put their arms about her, the way they’d done the night of the fire.

He couldn’t pull her into his arms. He couldn’t comfort her.

The pain of not doing that was almost as sharp as the fear for Lucie.

“We’ll find her before dark,” Clevedon said. “I should be a good deal more worried if she’d bolted from your old shop on Fleet Street.”

St. James’s was safer, he told himself. Much safer. A royal palace was mere steps away. The clubs were there as well. While it wasn’t completely respectable, it wasn’t the back-slums. And she was a child, on foot. She couldn’t go far.

But she could be taken. And then…

No. No one would take her. He knew where she was going. And he’d find her.

Half past three o’clock, Monday morning

Nothing.

No sign of her.

Police. Private detectives. Clevedon and Longmore’s servants. They’d all searched. They’d knocked on doors and accosted passersby. They’d stopped carriages and hackneys.

No one had seen Lucie.

Clevedon, Longmore, and Marcelline had walked Bennet Street and St. James’s Street, parting company to enter clubs and shops, and rejoining to traverse the alleys and courts in the vicinity. They’d combed St. James’s Square.

He’d tried to send her home to wait when darkness fell, but she said she couldn’t bear to stay home and wait. She walked until she was shivering with fatigue. Even then he had the devil’s own time persuading her to get into the carriage, though it was an open one, and she might spot Lucie as easily—perhaps more easily—from its height than from the pavement.

At three o’clock he’d taken her home. “You’ll be no good to anybody if you don’t get some rest,” he told her.

“How can I rest?”

“Lie down. Put your feet up. Take some brandy. I’m going home to do the same thing. The search hasn’t stopped. It won’t stop. Longmore and I will come back for you in a few hours. When it’s light.”

“She’s afraid of the dark.” Her voice wobbled.

“I know,” he said.

“What shall I do?” she said.

What shall I do if she’s dead?

The unspoken question.

“We’ll find her,” he said.

The conversation played through his mind again and again while he lay on the library sofa. He closed his eyes but they wouldn’t stay closed.

He rose and paced.

He had to think the unthinkable. He had to allow for the possibility she’d been taken. Very well. But all was not lost. A ransom would be sought. Who’d keep a well-dressed child, who spoke with the accents of the gently bred, when money might be made?

Had the police thought of that? He rose and went to his desk. He started making notes and planning strategies while he waited for the sun to rise.

A loud cough woke him.

Clevedon opened his eyes. His mouth tasted gritty and his head ached and he thought at first he’d been on a prime binge. Then he realized his head wasn’t on a pillow but on his desk. Then he remembered what had happened.

He jerked his head up from the desk.

Halliday stood on the other side.

“What?” Clevedon said. “What? What time is it?” He looked toward the window. Dawn had broken, but not long ago. Good.

“A quarter past seven, your grace.”

“Good. Thank you for waking me. I did not want to oversleep.”

“There’s someone to see you, sir,” said Halliday.

“From the police?” Clevedon said. “Have they found her?”

He saw that Halliday was having difficulty maintaining his composure.

Clevedon leapt up from his chair. There was a great rushing noise in his head. His heart pounded. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“If I may, sir.”

“May what?”

But Halliday went out.

“Halliday!”

The house steward came back in. He was carrying a very dirty, very wet little girl.

“His majesty presents his compliments, your grace, and requests to know whether this article belongs to you,” Halliday said.

The Duke of Clevedon’s carriage arrived later than promised. The sun was climbing upward, and Marcelline had already tried and failed to eat the tea and toast her sisters made for her. She hadn’t slept a wink. She’d been afraid to.

She was ready and waiting, pacing the closed shop, when the carriage stopped at the front door. She ran out, and nearly collided with Joseph hurrying toward her. “It’s all right, Mrs. Noirot,” he said. “We’ve got her safe and sound and his grace sends his compliments and apologizes for not bringing Miss Erroll straightaway, but she wouldn’t come. And so I was to come and ask would the mountain please come to Mahomet? That is to say, those were his words exactly, madam.”

Marcelline found them in the drawing room—one of the drawing rooms. They were on the rug. Strewn about them were tin soldiers, horses, miniature cannons, and all the other artifacts of war.

Lucie was wearing what appeared to be page’s livery, a coat and breeches made for a boy some inches taller. She had on red stockings and no shoes. Her hair had been tied up behind with what seemed to be a man’s handkerchief. She was watching Clevedon line up some cavalrymen. He looked up toward the door first, and hastily rose.

Lucie looked up then. “Mama!” she cried.

Marcelline crouched down and opened her arms. Lucie jumped up and ran into them.

“My love, my love,” Marcelline said. She nuzzled Lucie’s warm neck, and inhaled her familiar scent, mixed with something flowery. Perfumed soap. Her hair was damp.

She held her tight for a long time, until Lucie grew impatient and pulled away. “We’re playing soldiers,” she said.

Marcelline grasped her shoulders and looked into her vivid blue eyes, her grandmother DeLucey’s eyes.

“You ran away,” Marcelline said. “You frightened Mama and your aunts to death.”

Lucie’s lower lip jutted out. “I know,” she said. “His grace says I am not to do it again, and ladies do not climb out of windows. But I was desperate, Mama.”

“And then you wouldn’t come home,” Marcelline said. “I had to come for you. What next, Miss Lucie Cordelia?”

“I’m Erroll. I had to have a bath. I was very dirty. I hid in the stables when they tried to take me home. I fell in a trough.”

Marcelline looked to Clevedon. He’d risen when her daughter ran toward her. He still had a cavalryman in his hand and he was turning it this way and that.

“As near as we can ascertain, she made very good progress toward Clevedon House until she reached Pall Mall East,” he said. “It would appear she turned into that street instead of Cockspur Street and wandered in the new construction until she ended up in the Queen’s Mews. Naturally, she was soon noticed: Solitary children aren’t thick on the ground thereabouts. But by this time, she’d found out where she was, and so, when they kindly asked whether she was lost, and where she lived, she said she was the Princess Erroll of Albania, and she wanted to speak to the Princess Victoria.”

“Mon dieu,” Marcelline said. “You asked to speak to the princess? You claimed to be a princess?”

“I am Princess Erroll, Mama. You know that.”

“Lucie, you know that isn’t your proper name,” Marcelline said. “That’s your play name, your make-believe name.”

“Yes, Mama. But her highness wouldn’t come to talk to Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot, would she?”

Marcelline met Clevedon’s gaze.

“I wish I could have seen their faces,” he said. “They were vastly puzzled what to do. She insisted on speaking to the Princess Victoria. When they told her that her royal highness wasn’t at liberty at present, she offered to wait. What could they do? They’d never heard of the Princess Erroll of Albania, but they could see she was quality.”

Marcelline rose, her heart skittering. Matters were complicated enough. The last thing she needed was for the world to have any inkling of her background. People would shun her—and her shop—as though she were the cholera itself. “She’s no such thing,” she said. “It’s acting.”

He gave her an odd look. “In any event, they couldn’t let her wander about London on her own.”

“It never occurred to them to contact the police?”

“I’m sure it did, but one doesn’t, you know,” he said. “For all they knew it was a delicate royal matter, and the police would not be welcome.”

She understood what he meant. The Royal Family had not been renowned for chastity. The king had ten children by a former mistress, an actress.

“They tried to sort matters themselves,” Clevedon was saying. “Various forms of bribery were tried. But her highness the Princess Erroll of Albania accepted all tribute as her due. Then she fell asleep in one of the royal carriages. They didn’t get news of our missing child until early this morning, after they’d sent to the palace for instructions. They had the devil’s own time catching her, I understand, once she realized they meant to take her home. A truce was effected when they promised to take her here. She was presented to me some hours after dawn, with royal compliments.”

Marcelline didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She feared she’d do both, and fall into hysterics.

The whole absurd story was so typical. It was the sort of thing her parents did all the time: brazenly pretend to be something they weren’t. The Countess of This and the Prince of That.

“Well, I’m sorry His Majesty had to be bothered about it,” she said as coolly as she could.

“Lucie, your mother and I need to talk privately,” Clevedon said. “While we’re gone, I recommend you form squares as I explained before, if you hope to repel the French as effectively as the Duke of Wellington did.”