Читать книгу Regency Scoundrels And Scandals - Louise Allen - Страница 25

‘Mama!’ The pressure of his arms around her almost took her breath away. This was not the little boy she had last seen—he was so grown she could glimpse the young man he would become. And they would not be separated like that again, never, that she vowed. Disentangling herself with an effort, Eva sat back on her heels and stared happily at her son.

‘You’ve grown,’ she managed to say. ‘How you have grown!’

‘Well, the food’s pretty grim,’ he confided, startling her with his perfect English accent. ‘But I stock up in the shops in the High—Uncle Bruin keeps me well supplied with the readies, you know.’ He stared at her, his eyes solemn. ‘You look just as I remember, Mama.’

‘Good,’ Eva said, fighting to keep the shake out of her voice. ‘You have been very good at answering all my letters.’

‘I missed you.’ He was biting his lower lip, the desperate need to maintain his grown-up dignity fighting with the urge to hug his mother and never let her go. ‘Are you going away again soon?’

‘We are both going back to Maubourg together, just as soon as the situation in France is calm and we can travel safely.’ She hesitated. ‘You know Uncle Philippe has been ill?’ He nodded. ‘I don’t know if he is better yet, or worse. And I am afraid that Uncle Antoine might have been…hurt in all the confusion with Bonaparte invading.’

Too much information. She was pouring it out, kneeling here on the hard floor, her hands tight around his upper arms, terrified of letting him go in case he proved to be a dream after all.

Awkwardly Eva made herself loosen her grip and tried to stand. Her legs felt shaky. Two hands reached for her and she placed her own, one in each. ‘Thank you, Freddie, Ja…Mr Ryder.’ For a long moment they stood there, linked. Like a family group, she thought wildly, releasing Jack’s hand as though it were hot. Then Freddie let go, as well, and held out his hand to Jack.

‘Mr Ryder. Welcome back. Thank you for looking after my mama.’

Jack shook hands solemnly. ‘Your Serene Highness. It was a pleasure. I am glad to see you so well. You were a trifle green when we last met.’

‘Mushrooms, Mama,’ Freddie explained.

‘I know. Mr Ryder kindly told me all the horrid details.’

Her son chuckled. ‘I was very sick. Did you know this is Mr Ryder’s house?’

‘Yes. It is very kind of him to lend it to us.’ She looked around. The pugilistic butler was still standing, statue-like, in the corner. A pair of equally large footmen were at attention at the foot of the stairs and a small covey of female domestics were gathered behind them. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘Long enough to know everyone; I arrived yesterday morning,’ Freddie said importantly. ‘This is Grimstone, our butler.’ It suits him, Eva thought. ‘And Wellings and O’Toole, the footmen. And Mrs Cutler is a spiffingly good cook. And Fettersham is your dresser.’

A tall woman dressed in impeccable black came forward and curtsied. ‘Shall I show you to your room, your Serene Highness?’

‘Ma’am will do nicely,’ Eva said automatically. ‘Yes, I will just take off my bonnet and mantle and I’ll be right back down, Freddie. Then we’ll have tea.’ And talk and talk and talk… ‘You will look after Mr Ryder, won’t you?’

She almost tripped over the stairs because she keep looking back to make sure he was still there, her son. Just as the turn of the stairs took them out of sight, she saw Freddie slip a hand into Jack’s and tug him towards what she assumed must be the salon. They looked so right together, the tall, lean man and the eager boy.

‘Are you quite well, ma’am?’ Her new dresser was regarding her anxiously. ‘You went quite pale a moment ago.’

‘Quite well, thank you, Fettersham. It was a wearing journey.’

In the event it took her longer to return downstairs than she had intended. Her gown proved sadly salt-stained, her hair was tangled, Fettersham found it hard to locate a full change of linen in her limited baggage and a mix-up in the scullery resulted in cold water being sent up, not hot.

Half an hour later, leaving a wrathful dresser descending upon the kitchen quarters to complain, Eva went downstairs to find Freddie sitting alone on one side of a tea table laden with cakes and biscuits, which he was eyeing greedily. He stood up punctiliously.

‘I am ready for the tea now, thank you, Grimstone.’ The butler bowed himself off. ‘Where is Mr Ryder?’ Eva sat down opposite her son.

‘Gone. May I have a scone, Mama?’ She nodded absently, shifting slightly to give the footmen room to deposit the teapot and cream jug on the table beside her.

‘Gone where? Thank you, that will be all.’ She did not want to discuss Jack in front of the domestic staff.

‘I don’t know, Mama. Oh, and he said would I please make his excuses to you, and…’ Freddie frowned in concentration ‘…he said I must take care to get this right—he said to say goodbye, and that it was better that he went now, as his job was done and he did not want to make complications. And that you were to remember him if you ever have a bad dream.’ A mammoth mouthful of scone vanished and Freddie chewed valiantly. ‘Mama, do you think that means he isn’t coming back at all? I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but—’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ Eva said automatically. ‘Yes. I think that means Mr Ryder is not coming back.’ He had walked away, without a word, without a kiss. There was just the memory of the pressure of his hand when the three of them had stood together in the hall and the knowledge that she would love him and miss him and want him for the rest of her days.

‘That’s a pity.’ Freddie picked up a slice of cake, looked at it and put it down. When his eyes met Eva’s, they glistened with a shimmer of tears. ‘I like him. I’ll miss him.’

‘You hardly know him,’ Eva said bracingly. What was upsetting Freddie so much?

‘Yes, I do. He came to see me three times at Eton, and we had long talks. He wanted to know all about the castle and my uncles and you. I said I didn’t remember very much, but he said I was intelligent, so if I put my mind to it, I would recall lots—and I did. It was really exciting. He said I was briefing him for his mission, and he would send me coded dispatches, and he did.’

‘He did? How?’ And why hadn’t Jack told her so she could have sent messages, too?

‘They went through his agents to the Foreign Office. And when the first one arrived, they sent Grimstone with it to stay with me. They said he was just a butler, but I think he’s a bodyguard, don’t you, Mama? Because the first message from Mr Ryder said there was danger and I had to take great care and Grimstone started going everywhere with me. I got ragged a bit, but then the chaps shut up, because Grimstone showed everyone how to box.’

‘How dare he worry you like that?’ Eva banged down the teapot, disregarding the splash of hot liquid from the spout. ‘And if I’d known he was writing to you, I would have sent a message.’

‘Mr Ryder said the messages had to be short and you wouldn’t like me to be worried, so you’d fuss. But Mr Ryder said I was old enough to understand and start taking care of myself. Are you growling, Mama?’

‘Yes, I am!’

‘But he was right, wasn’t he? Things were dangerous. I don’t expect Uncle Bruin’s really just ill, I expect someone’s tried to poison him, like they did me with those mushrooms.’

‘Freddie!’

‘It’s Uncle Rat, isn’t it? He’s a Bonapartist.’ Freddie’s clear hazel eyes regarded her solemnly over yet another piece of cake.

‘Yes. Freddie, I wasn’t going to tell you all this, all at once. But I’m afraid Antoine has been very…foolish. He may be…hurt.’

‘Mr Ryder said he was trying to develop rockets for the Emperor, and he was trying to kill both of us and he took Maubourg troops into France—so I expect I’m going to have to write to King Louis and say sorry, aren’t I?—and he may have been killed, but we can’t be certain.’

Eva picked up her cup with a hand that shook and took a gulp of tea. It did not help much. ‘When did he tell you all this?’

‘Just now, before he left. He said it’s called a de-brief and he had to tell me because you probably wouldn’t, because of mothers worrying. May I have a macaroon?’

‘You’ll make yourself sick,’ Eva said distractedly.

‘And he said you were a heroine, and found out about the rockets and helped him raid the factory, and fought off Uncle Rat’s agents and probably saved his life.’ The macaroon vanished and Freddie sank back with a happy sigh of repletion. ‘And he said I wasn’t to worry if you seemed a bit upset about things, because you had had a very difficult time, and finding I was all right would actually make you more upset, because that’s the way shock and relief work.’

‘Did he?’ Eva took a macaroon and ate it rather desperately. Sugar was supposed to be good for shock, was it not?

‘I like him a lot,’ Freddie said again. ‘And I think he likes me. And I thought perhaps, when I saw him looking at you, that he likes you, too. And now he has gone away.’ He scuffed a toe in the Aubusson carpet. ‘He’s just the sort of person a chap would like for a friend, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. He would be a very good friend,’ Eva agreed, filling up her son’s teacup. Jack appeared to have handled breaking the news of all this to Freddie much better than she would have. She was angry with him, of course she was…but it was all part of the role he had assumed when he undertook to bring her back to England. Do as I say, when I say it. When Jack was with her, she knew he would look after her. Totally.

She would have resisted him telling Freddie about the danger, but her son was so much more grown up and perceptive than she had realised. He would have spotted the new bodyguard for what he was, and, in the absence of information, would have worried. Jack had involved him in the adventure, treated him like an intelligent young man so it became understandable and exciting. What a wonderful father he would make for Freddie.

‘Mama! You are spilling your tea.’

‘So I am.’ Eva put down her cup, and dabbed at her skirt. A father for Freddie. I am thinking of marrying him, she realised. And that’s impossible, of course, Dowager Grand Duchesses do not marry King’s Messengers. Only he’s a duke’s son…

‘What are you thinking about, Mama?’

‘I am having a very silly daydream about something that cannot possibly happen,’ Eva said briskly. ‘Now, let’s go and sit down, kick off our shoes, and we can talk until we are hoarse.’

It took three days before the invitations began to arrive. Three days during which Eva and Freddie did indeed talk themselves hoarse, she shopped exhaustively for a new wardrobe and they explored the house until it became like a second home and the staff familiar faces.

It was not just Grimstone who was a bodyguard, she soon realised. The pair of large footmen were never far from the door of any room she and her son were in. They stuck to her like burrs whenever she went outside the house, politely refusing to wait in the carriage whenever she entered a shop. Eventually she tackled the butler. ‘We are here and safe, Grimstone. Surely there is no risk now? Prince A…The source of danger may not even be alive.’

‘But his agents will be, ma’am,’ the butler pointed out in his gravelly voice. ‘This has just come for you from the guv’nor, ma’am.’

‘Mr Ryder?’ Eva snatched the letter off the silver salver before she could school herself into an appearance of indifference. She broke the seal and read the three lines it contained. The handwriting was black, sprawling, undisciplined, a complete contrast to Jack’s methods of operation. Or was this Lord Sebastian writing? she wondered.

The absent troops returned home with the body of A. It has a bullet wound in the back. From very close range. P. improves daily. Show this to Grimstone and assume A.’s agents are still at large and may not yet know of his death. It was signed with a J., a slashing flourish across the bottom of the page.

Wordlessly Eva handed the letter to the butler, who read it through with pursed lips, then gave it back. ‘Own men shot him by all accounts,’ he commented. ‘Didn’t like being made traitors of, especially in view of what happened. P. will be the Regent, ma’am?’

‘Yes, my brother-in-law, Prince Philippe.’ Eva folded the paper and slipped it into her reticule. It was the only thing of Jack’s she had. ‘I will go and tell Master Freddie the good news.’

Master Freddie, as the entire staff called him, was in his favourite place, the kitchen, charming sweetmeats out of Cook. Eva tried to imagine him back in the castle. It was not hard—within the week he would have even the tyrant of the kitchens his devoted servant, the footmen would all be polishing armour for him to play with and he would no doubt be attempting to introduce cricket to the bemused inhabitants.

‘Freddie, good news from Maubourg. Uncle Philippe is on the mend.’

‘Can we go back soon, then?’ He scrambled off the table, eyes wide, mouth ringed with raspberry jam.

‘As soon as the Foreign Office tells me it is safe to travel. Shall we go and write to Uncle?’

She followed that letter up with one to the Foreign Office, asking about travel and received, not a response on that subject, but the first, and most imposing, of a flood of invitations. The Prince Regent, Freddie’s godfather, begged the honour of her company at a reception in her honour at Carlton House in two days’ time.

‘Oh, Lord,’ she lamented to Fettersham. ‘I suppose that means feathers?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The dresser was agog with the thought of court dress. ‘Hoops are no longer worn, though,’ she added with a tinge of disappointment. ‘The full-dress ensemble you ordered yesterday will be most appropriate.’

‘Well, thank goodness for that. It is difficult enough walking about with those wretched feathers in one’s coiffure without worrying about hoops flattening every small table in sight every time one moves!’

The gown arrived from the modiste on the morning of the reception along with the hastily purchased set of ostrich plumes. ‘My goodness, waistlines are up,’ Eva complained as Fettersham fastened the gown. ‘There is very little room for my bosom in this!’

‘I think that’s the point, ma’am,’ the dresser observed, tweaking the narrow shoulders so they sat securely. ‘It’s a very good thing you have such excellent shoulders, ma’am, otherwise I don’t know how this style is expected to stay decent.’

They regarded the effect in the long mirror. The gown, in palest almond green, fell from under Eva’s bosom to exactly the ankle bone. She was not convinced about the decency of showing so much ankle, either, although she was prepared to admit the fuller skirts were charming. The hem was banded with satin ribbon, of exactly the same shade, the texture making it show up subtly against the silk, and the whole lower half of the skirt was heavily embroidered in wreaths of flowers. The pattern was repeated on the puffed sleeves and the deep vee of the neckline was dressed in lace, which went some way to preserving the decencies.

‘Very striking, ma’am,’ Fettersham pronounced.

‘Very dashing,’ Eva amended. ‘I do not recall it seeming so at the fitting!’

Long kid gloves with lace at the top to match the bodice, simple slippers, a gauze scarf at the elbows and the nodding weight of the feathers completed the ensemble. It was certainly striking enough for the occasion, Eva decided, wondering wistfully what Jack would make of it. She was managing very well, she congratulated herself. She thought of him only a dozen times an hour during the day. It was the nights that were so hard, when all she could do was toss and turn, aching for the sound of his voice, the caress of his hands, the heat of his mouth.

Fettersham produced the diamond eardrops, necklace and cuffs borrowed from Rundell and Bridges, the jewellers who had proved only too willing to oblige the Grand Duchess, in return for her tacit agreement to them making as much capital out of the fact as they wished.

‘Mama?’ It was Freddie, knocking at the door. ‘May I see?’

‘Wow!’ he said as the dresser let him in. ‘How do you dance in those feathers, Mama?’

‘I do not have to,’ she explained, stooping to kiss him. She was loving rediscovering her son, getting to know him again, not as the little boy she had left, but this new, much more independent and lively nine-year-old. ‘Now, you will be good and go to bed when Hoffmeister tells you?’

‘Yes, Mama.’ She gave him high marks for refraining from rolling his eyes. The arrival of his private secretary-cum-tutor from the Eton lodgings had restarted the rivalry between the German and the butler. Freddie played one off against the other with what Eva tried to tell herself was precocious statesmanship, but she had to uphold Hoffmeister’s authority when it came to bedtime and study periods.

Carlton House was just as she had seen in pictures, and even more stiflingly hot, crowded and elaborately ornate than she could ever have imagined. The Regent was gracious, over-familiar to the point of discomfort and determined she would enjoy herself. He insisted on escorting Eva around the crowded reception rooms, introducing her to one person after another until her head spun. She searched the rooms as they went, but there were no tall, elegant, dangerous men with grey eyes and a wicked smile.

‘I am quite out of practice with this sort of thing,’ she confessed to Lord Alveney. ‘My brother-in-law Prince Philippe has been unwell for several months, so our court has been extremely quiet. Please, sir…’ she turned and smiled prettily at the Regent ‘…I beg you not to neglect your other guests for me, I have so much enjoyed seeing these wonderful rooms in your company, but I can see I will be very unpopular if I monopolise you.’

The Regent beamed, blustered a little, then took himself off with a pat on her arm and a promise to show her the Conservatory later.

‘Nicely done, ma’am,’ Alveney said with a lazy smile. Eva was spared from replying to this sally by the arrival of a tall young woman who bumped into her and knocked her feathers all askew.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ I am so sorry! And you are the Grand Duchess and I haven’t even been presented to you and I do this! Oh, dear! Oh, look, there is a retiring room, please, your Serene Highness, if we just go in there I am sure they can be pinned back…’

Eva sent Alveney an apologetic smile and allowed herself to be swept off into the retiring room, which was empty save for a maidservant with a sewing basket, smelling salts and a bottle of cordial. Every eventuality covered. Eva was thinking with amusement when the young woman snapped, ‘Out, now,’ to the maid. The key turned in the lock and the stranger was standing with her back to the door, eyeing Eva with angry grey eyes.

Antoine’s agent? Here, in the Regent’s own house? Eva edged towards the dressing table, hoping to find scissors or a long nail file. ‘What do you want?’ She spoke calmly, as though to someone mentally disturbed. The words she had spoken the last time she had been in this predicament—So, you have not come to kill me?—did not seem appropriate now. This young woman looked as if she intended to do just that, for all her lack of an obvious weapon, and asking the question seemed likely to inflame her further.

But even if her defiant words to Jack when he had appeared like magic in her room were not the ones to use now, she could not help but feel a strong sense of déjà vu. Why? Because she was cornered and in fear for her life? Or because…

Eva stared at the other woman. She was like a feminine, younger version of Jack. The tall, elegant figure, the dark hair, the clear, intelligent grey eyes with their flecks of black. She found her voice.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know what you are doing to my brother—and I want you to stop it. Now.’