Читать книгу The Dollar Prince's Wife - Paula Marshall - Страница 11

T hat part of London society which had been invited to the Kenilworths’ house party and a large number of the more important folk in the county of Warwick were assembled in the Great Hall at Moorings for a reception being given by the new Lord Lieutenant of the county, Lord Kenilworth, to mark his accession to that honour.

South Africa had been looted of diamonds to hang around beautiful necks and to depend from beautiful ears. It would not be exaggerating to say that the women present were wearing a king’s ransom between them—except for Lady Dinah Freville, of course. She hid herself in a corner and watched them walk to and fro, waving their fans like the lovely peacocks they were.

Among the guests who made up the house party was one who had only recently been introduced to the Kenilworths by the American Envoy and his wife, who were also present. They were, indeed, apart from his hosts, the only persons in the whole vast Hall whom he knew.

He was, as the saying had it, yet another rich Yankee robber baron, Mr Hendrick Van Deusen, who had made himself a fortune in Chicago, having appeared there from nowhere some years ago. He was a heavy-set man in his early forties, resplendent in his new English evening dress from Savile Row.

Violet had flung an invitation at him on hearing of his immense wealth and that he liked to play cards for money. Her poverty-stricken brother, Rainsborough, must be given the chance to win some of his loot from him at Moorings.

Like Lady Dinah, whom he had not yet met, he had hidden himself away in a small ante-room which opened off the Hall where he could both see and hear the passing show, but could not be seen himself. A wise man ought to know more than other people wished him to. He soon gained his reward for his cunning.

A pair of society women, resplendent, but flimsy, butterflies, both came and stood near him, gossiping loudly about their hostess.

‘I see that Violet Kenilworth’s Apollo is one of the party,’ drawled the prettier of the two, amusement on her face and in her voice. ‘I hear that she granted him the privilege of arriving before the rest of us.’

‘Now, now, Emily, don’t be jealous—there’s no point in it, none at all. There’s only one at a time for him, they say, and at the moment it’s Violet. And she’s got her hooks into him well and truly.’

‘I can’t say that I blame her. I’d have had my hooks in him well and truly if I’d had the good luck to meet him first. Tell me, is it true that he’s the American Envoy’s brother-in-law?’

‘By proxy,’ chuckled her friend, ‘only by proxy. Her half-brother, so they say. Not much alike, are they? Apollo is as blond as she’s brunette.’

This conversation intrigued its unknown listener who decided to go and find Apollo. Anyone who could entrance two such hard-bitten beauties must surely be worth looking at.

Mr Van Deusen strolled forward, looking around him for a tall, blond man: he had decided that Apollo must be tall—and there was a tall, blond man standing with his back to him, talking to his hostess. He suddenly turned his golden head and Van Deusen caught his breath at the sight of him. It wasn’t Apollo’s perfect profile, nor his athletic body which intrigued him, but something quite different.

It couldn’t be! Surely not! Not here, not the US Envoy’s brother-in-law! Not the darling of London society! For Mr Van Deusen had last seen this man, or one very like him, nearly eight years ago in Arizona Territory, America’s Southwest. He had been a man you could not forget and Van Deusen had never forgotten him—but he had never thought to see him again, and particularly not as an honoured guest at an aristocrat’s house party.

He was older now, but, as always, every feminine head turned to look at him when he walked away from his hostess, holding himself with the arrogance which Mr Van Deusen remembered only too well—and which had infuriated everyone who met him.

Could it really be the man he had known? If he were, under what name was he now going? And did the effete fools here know what sort of tiger was living in their midst? No one present could conceivably guess at the life which respectable Mr Van Deusen and Apollo had once shared.

Mr Van Deusen gave a long, slow grin. Well, he would soon find out if he were mistaken, and if he were, he would apologise. After all, he had never seen his man spotlessly clean, perfectly groomed, and the current lover of the Prince of Wales’s mistress!

He was behind Apollo now. Hendrick Van Deusen grinned again, showing strong yellow teeth. He bunched his right hand into a fist with two of his fingers sticking out from it. He jabbed them into the small of Apollo’s back, as though it were a revolver he was thrusting there, and said in a thick Texas drawl, ‘Hi, there, Jumpin’ Jake, fly at once. All is discovered.’

Mr Van Deusen felt Apollo stiffen, every muscle tensing before he turned to face his accuser. That face was an impassive mask, showing none of the emotions which one might expect, given the abrupt shock he must have felt on hearing a voice sounding from out of his disreputable past when he had been an outlaw in the Territory.

Yes, his man was Apollo, by damn, and no doubt about it, and Apollo was speaking to him, his voice beautiful, with no hint of an American accent, let alone the thick Texas drawl which Jumpin’ Jake had affected.

‘Do I know you, sir?’

‘You should. Because I know you, and I owe you—and that is enough for me to know you.’

Cobie’s smile was one which no one in English society had ever seen. It was deadly—and proved to Mr Van Deusen how little he had changed.

‘I only ever knew one man who owed me anything—but that debt was cancelled long ago—which you should know.’

It was a tacit admission of who he was—or who he had been, and Cobie saw that the man opposite to him knew that.

‘I didn’t accept that cancellation,’ growled Mr Van Deusen. ‘No man saves my life and goes unthanked, unrewarded. You saved my life twice. I paid you back only once. That second debt still stands.’

Cobie’s smile at this was so charming that Mr Van Deusen could see why the women about him were watching them with such hungry eyes. He took Mr Van Deusen by the arm, led him, in silence, out of the ballroom, through the small drawing room along a corridor and into the library where he shut the door behind them.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘we may talk in peace. Where were we? Ah, you were reminding me that I saved your worthless life, and that you wanted to recompense me for doing so. Well, you are hardly likely to be able to return that last favour here. We are a long way from San Miguel—or Bratt’s Crossing.’

‘So you do know me.’

‘But do you know my name?’

‘You were Jake Coburn in San Miguel, and Cobie Grant in Bratt’s Crossing. I would bet that you are Cobie Grant here.’

‘Jacobus Grant—and you would win your bet.’

Cobie looked at Mr Van Deusen, at the beautifully cut suit which clad the thickly powerful body, at the cared-for hands and massive head and face. ‘I doubt that I could guess your name—Professor—or, in Western slang—Perfesser.’

‘Nor you could. I now use my own. I am Hendrick Van Deusen, a respectable financier, if that is not a contradiction in terms.’

Cobie threw back his head and laughed.

‘Ever the old Perfessor! Even if I would wager you are not now known as Schultz. Can you stand this effete life?’

‘The question is, can you?’

Cobie thought that he couldn’t, but he didn’t think that he wished to return to Arizona Territory and be a boy of twenty again, either.

‘Life is what you make of it,’ he said at last.

‘A truism—but looking at you, I don’t think that you have changed much…other than that you are now clean.’

Cobie’s smile was sweet. ‘Yes, I hardly think that I looked like this eight years ago.’

‘No, indeed. But the man inside is the same, I’ll be bound. Is London safe while you live in it?’

Cobie thought of the night on which he had rescued Lizzie Steele—and began to laugh.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. But I don’t pack a pair of six-shooters on my hip whilst walking down Piccadilly, more’s the pity.’

‘What exactly are you doing to stir up the assembled nobility and gentry? I would wager that there are easier pickings here than at San Miguel.’

Cobie offered him his most winning smile.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re doing nothing? Now that I don’t believe.’

‘Ever the sceptic. Believe what you like.’

Mr Van Deusen also smiled. Cobie knew that smile. He had seen it on the face before him in more than one tight corner. He decided to provoke in return.

‘And what exactly are you doing here, Mr Van Deusen? It’s odd, you know, but I find it hard to think of you as other than Schultz, the Perfesser who packed a mean gun.’

‘The Perfesser and Jumpin’ Jake are long gone,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen smoothly, ‘and no resurrection awaits them, I think.’

Cobie remembered the boy he had been, laughed and added, ‘You hope, rather. You remember the old saying, “Truth will arise, though all the world will hide it from men’s eyes.”’

‘By God, I hope not,’ said Mr Van Deusen fervently. ‘I am a most respectable and wealthy citizen of Chicago, thinking of running for the US Senate in the next elections.’

‘The Perfesser in the Senate would only be matched by Jumpin’ Jake marrying into the British aristocracy.’

Cobie paused, and then, as though some ghost, some premonition, had walked through his head, asked himself, Now, why did I say that?

‘I thought that Lady Kenilworth was already married,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen slyly.

‘So she is, but I have English cousins. Best to tell you, knowing you, you’ll soon find out. Sir Alan Dilhorne, the noted statesman, now retired, is by way of being a relative. He is the elder brother of my foster-father, Jack Dilhorne.’

Van Deusen whistled. ‘Dilhorne of Dilhorne and Rutherfurd’s and Dilhorne of Temple Hatton, Yorkshire?’

When Cobie, his mouth twisted derisively, nodded assent, he exclaimed, ‘By God, young sir, what were you doing wandering around the West, stealing peanuts when all you had to do—?’

Cobie cut in, his voice quite different from the one he had been using. Instead he was speaking in the harsh Western drawl which had driven the respectable and the unrespectable mad in Arizona Territory.

‘Ah, yes, when all I had to do was take foster-Daddy’s handouts, get him to destroy Greer and all my enemies for me. Say pretty please, Uncle Jack and Uncle Alan, and let them run my life for me.

‘Oh, Perfesser, I thought you knew me better than that! Besides, the peanuts I stole from Bratt’s Crossing and San Miguel became the wealth of the Indies when I lit out from the West and arrived on Wall Street and began to trade with it. What did you do with your pile, Perfesser, sir?’

‘The same as you. Made myself richer. Returned to the bosom of my remaining family, began a career in politics for the hell of it—no illusions there—Republican infighting is merely San Miguel writ large.’

‘Oh, the whole world is merely San Miguel writ large,’ remarked Cobie dismissively, ‘my father and Sir Alan notwithstanding.’

‘Then that being so, shall we pillage it separately—or together?’

Cobie’s crack of laughter was spontaneous.

‘Neither, I’m resting. I’m having a holiday which I haven’t done since I last saw you. My foster-sister wishes me to marry, hence my earlier comment. My foster-father wants me to settle down. Sir Alan, I suspect, wants me to think of a future in England—the Dilhorne branch here has become too respectable. He believes I may be a buccaneer and wants to have the pleasure of watching one of the family live up to its somewhat dubious past. My foster-father’s father was transported to New South Wales and made his pile there. You may judge how legitimately if I tell you that I am supposed to resemble him somewhat.’

Mr Van Deusen thought that the resemblance might be stronger than that.

‘Your grandfather?’ he ventured.

Cobie’s grin was nasty. It came all the way from San Miguel, and belonged to the boy gunman who had terrorised that outlaw township.

‘Oh, that would be telling. Now give me your address, both here and in the States, and after that we had better return to the reception. My brother-in-law suspects me of wanting to escape my responsibilities to him and his wife, and he is determined that for once I shall conform.’

‘That would be a small miracle in itself,’ remarked Van Deusen thoughtfully. ‘Though outwardly you are a model of the perfect English gentleman, no transatlantic odour stains your person.’

‘Aren’t I just,’ agreed Cobie cheerfully. ‘The original chameleon, that’s me. Now, let us go back, and I will introduce you not only to the ineffable Violet, who is temporarily bound to me with hoops of steel, but to several of her friends who are as accommodating as Kate’s girls in the Silver Dollar, if a little cleaner. We mustn’t let your stay in London be disappointing in any respect.’

Oh, I’m sure it won’t be that, thought Mr Van Deusen, following Apollo back into the ballroom, not with Jumpin’ Jake to entertain me!

Perhaps, ironically, the first person whom they met when they were about to leave the library was innocent young Lady Dinah Freville. Dinah, bored by the whole wretched business of pretending she was enjoying an event where everyone’s eyes passed over her unseeingly, was just entering it in search of more agreeable entertainment.

She stared at Cobie and the man to whom he was speaking, or rather, with whom he was laughing. A man whom she had heard Violet describing as ‘yet another Yankee vulgarian to whom Kenilworth wishes me to be polite’.

Well, he couldn’t be all that vulgar if Mr Grant was enjoying his company so much. She smiled at him, and said, a trifle breathlessly, ‘Were you bored, too, Mr Grant? Won’t you introduce me to your friend?’

It was true that he was a rather unlikely friend for Mr Grant. He was middle-aged with the hard face which Dinah had come to recognise as belonging to those visiting Americans who had, in society’s words, ‘made their pile’. Although Mr Grant, reputed to be immensely rich by his own efforts, was not like any of them.

Mr Grant was smiling at her now, and saying, ‘Lady Dinah, I should be delighted to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Mr Hendrick Van Deusen. His nickname is the Professor because he is immensely learned. I first met him nearly ten years ago when I took a long painting holiday in the American Southwest, and he was kind enough to look after me—I was such a tenderfoot as they say over there. It was rather dangerous territory, you see.

‘We lost touch with one another once my holiday was over, and I am delighted to meet him again in an English country house, and introduce him to my hostess’s sister.’

His smile was even more saintly than usual when he came out with this preposterous and lying description of his violent Western odyssey.

Mr Van Deusen bowed to Dinah, registering that she was totally unlike most of the other society women whom he had met in England. He wondered why Apollo was interested in her, something which Cobie explained when all introductions were over.

‘Lady Dinah,’ Cobie told him, ‘is by way of being an amateur historian who hopes to be a professional one. She has been showing me the old letters and papers collected by her ancestors, many of whom, if she will forgive me for saying so, resemble our own wilder politicians more than they might like to think. I should perhaps inform you, Lady Dinah, that Mr Van Deusen is hoping to run for the Senate as a Republican candidate.’

As usual when she was with him Dinah forgot her usual shyness and found herself discussing politics with Mr Van Deusen as though she had been doing such an unlikely thing all her life. Cobie also noticed that when she was away from Violet and her friends she came to glowing life: not only did her face and manner change, but she displayed a light and elegant wit—with which she was now charming Van Deusen.

‘But I must not keep you,’ she said at last. ‘Violet has been looking for you, Mr Grant. She has been trying to make up a whist table for Rainey now that the reception is over, and she gathers that you like to play an occasional hand at cards. She also mentioned the possibility of poker—do you play poker, Mr Grant?’

‘A little,’ he told her gravely, which had Mr Van Deusen giving him an odd look when Mr Grant said that, but she did not allow it to worry her, particularly since Mr Grant immediately added, ‘If Lady Kenilworth summons me, then I must instantly obey. You will forgive me if I leave you.’

They both did, and Dinah spent a further happy ten minutes with Mr Grant’s unlikely friend—who proved to be as learned as he had told her.

It was all much more fun than being a wallflower in the drawing room.

A week later Cobie was trying not to win at poker. He was part of a group of men playing in one corner of the green drawing room at Moorings. A few women, Violet among them, occasionally wandered over to watch them. It was already half-past three in the morning, and most of the house party had gone to bed hours ago.

‘Thought you Yankees were masters of this game,’ grunted Sir Ratcliffe at him, as he raked in his winnings. Cobie had not lost very heavily, but he hadn’t won either, not on that night nor any preceding.

The sixth sense which often told him things that he sometimes didn’t want to know—but more often did—informed him that to appear a bit of an ass at the game might be no bad thing.

Some of those who knew that he had accumulated a fortune in dealings on Wall Street had already begun to believe that his fortune had been made for him by other men, and that what he was most possessed of was idle, easy charm rather than the usual Yankee know-how. He had no objection at all to appearing far less shrewd and dangerous than he actually was.

On the contrary he had frequently found that it was an advantage to be underrated. People became unwary, and now everyone in society was unwary about Jacobus Grant who had made such a hit with the ladies, was a pleasant fellow to spend an hour with, a bit of a fool, quite unlike most of the hard-headed Yankees who invaded London society and whose one idea was to chase after the almighty dollar.

Not winning, Cobie had often found, was harder work than winning. He had to restrain himself, and when the ass opposite to him, for that was where Sir Ratcliffe sat, made a particularly bad play, it took Cobie all his considerable strength of will not to fleece a black sheep who was so determined to be shorn. Worse than that, though, was his suspicion that every now and then Sir Ratcliffe indulged in some clumsy and obvious cheating—which no one but Cobie appeared to notice.

‘Thought Tum Tum was coming to stay, Lady K.,’ Sir Ratcliffe drawled at Violet in a pause during the game when the men rose, stretched, refreshed their drinks, and lit new cigars. Violet’s brother, Rainey, was leaning against the wall. He was a handsome enough fellow but Cobie had yet to see him sober after seven at night. He was a poor poker player, too. Another piece of knowledge Cobie filed away for possible future use.

‘Met Tum Tum, have you?’ Sir Ratcliffe asked Cobie in his most condescending manner, offering him a cigar, which he refused.

Yes, Cobie had met the Prince of Wales, but left Violet to tell the Rat—as Cobie privately thought of him since saving Lizzie Steele from him—that the Prince had had to remain in London on official business.

‘Don’t have much luck, do you, Grant?’ Now he was more condescending than ever. ‘Cards not runnin’ your way?’

Cobie was all ineffable boyish charm, saying, ‘No, never do, you know. Can’t think why I play the game. Passes the time, though.’

He offered the Rat his most winning smile. ‘You seem to be doing well. Perhaps I ought to take lessons from you.’

He looked up to see Violet’s eyes hard on him. No one else, apart from Mr Van Deusen, had taken his words at other than face value, but Violet, he was discovering, was also no fool—it wouldn’t do to underrate her. Particularly since he was beginning to annoy her by avoiding her bed ever since Dinah had arrived at Moorings. He thought that she was beginning to see a little of what lay below the mask of innocence which he had worn since he had arrived in England.

He decided to cut the whole pointless business short. He rose, and said, ‘Leave my money in the pot, I think I’m ready for bed.’

Sir Ratcliffe said disagreeably, ‘Don’t like losing, Grant? You Yankees never do.’

‘Strictly speaking,’ and this came out so languidly that no one could be offended by it, ‘I’m not a Yankee. Born in the South, you see. Live in New York, I do admit. Sometimes wonder why.’

He thought he heard a snort from Mr Van Deusen but ignored it, and took his leave. He had hardly gone a yard down the corridor before the door opened again and Violet was with him.

‘Cobie!’ she shrilled.

‘Violet,’ he said, and bowed, like the old-world Southern gentleman he had pretended to be, and then, monstrously, he couldn’t resist it. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘You know very well what you can do for me,’ she told him, the light of battle on her lovely face. ‘What you haven’t been doing since Dinah walked into Moorings.’

So, his worst forebodings had come true. Since Dinah had arrived, a fortnight ago, he had watched Violet humiliate her daily, along the lines of that first afternoon in the library. In the last few days he had taken to avoiding the girl to save her from Violet’s tongue, where in the beginning he had sought to amuse her.

She touches my hard heart, he thought, wryly. She didn’t touch Violet’s. Neither did he wish to touch Violet, and again, he regretted ever having become involved with her.

Desolately he knew that Violet’s public ill treatment of the child was to punish him, as well as her. Violet brooked no rivals, and ridiculously, improbably, she saw poor Dinah as a rival.

As usual he thought quickly, then offered her, ‘I could hardly be your cavaliere servente while Kenilworth was hovering, Violet. Not seemly.’

‘Kenilworth is not hovering, Cobie. He knows perfectly well why I asked you, as he asked Daisy Masham.’ She put out a hand to him. ‘You may escort me upstairs. Our rooms are quite near.’

There was nothing for it. He had meant to try to leave Moorings early without offending her—but she was now determined to be offended unless he did what she asked.

Every fibre of his body revolted at the notion. And when, having taken her arm, and he had begun to walk her up to her room for her poor sister’s sake, if for nothing else, she said, in a poisonously sweet voice, ‘Oh, and by the way, Cobie, there is one more favour you can do me—do the both of us.’

He took her hand and put it to his lying lips. ‘Of course, Violet, my darling, and what is that?’

She shook her head, ‘Oh, it’s Dinah again. Too ridiculous, the poor child obviously thinks that you have a tendre for her. All that attention you’ve given her—playing to her on the guitar…chess games…talking to her in the library…walking with her in the gardens…encouraging her to think of going to Oxford—has quite turned her head. I think that you ought to disabuse her of the notion that you are interested in her—very firmly. I warn you, if you don’t, I will. She really ought to have nothing to do with such as you,’ and her eyes were on him, hard and cruel.

He knew immediately what she meant, and the kind of blackmail she was subjecting him to. Somehow, she had read him, seen the pity he felt for her unloved sister, and was threatening that, if he failed to do as she asked, Dinah’s public humiliations would continue—might even grow worse. Jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and Violet, astonishingly, was jealous.

For a moment the world reeled about him. Violet had touched some memory in him which she could not know existed. Long ago he had been kind to a waif even more abused than poor Dinah, more even than Lizzie Steele—and his heedless kindness had led directly to her death. Dinah was in no danger of physical death, but she could not, he thought, stand very much more of the treatment which Violet was meting out to her without her inner self being in serious danger.

He had gone quite still again. He stood motionless. He was fighting the red berserker rage which Violet, by her cruelty, had roused in him. He was helpless before her, and she knew it. Sleep with me, humiliate Dinah—and I will leave her alone. All he could do was control himself and offer her what she wanted. At the same time his busy brain was working—after a fashion which would have astonished Violet.

‘You ask a lot of me,’ he said at last.

‘Really, Cobie, really? You surprise me. I had not thought that you favoured children. I thought that you left that to others,’ and she laughed.

Like Sir Ratcliffe, Cobie thought, and Arthur Winthrop—and who else?

‘She is lonely,’ he told Violet gently, ‘and not very happy.’

‘And you make her so? You take a lot upon yourself. After all, it is my sister of whom we speak, not yours. It is I who am concerned about her welfare. It demands that you disillusion her. And be sure that you do it in such a way that I will know that you have done so.

‘Otherwise, my dear, otherwise, I shall immediately send her to my deaf, strict and bad-tempered old aunt in the country to be her permanent companion.’

‘Pax,’ he said, with the sweetest smile he could summon, throwing up his hands like a schoolboy. ‘I think that this is all a great pother about nothing, but have it your way, Violet.’

‘Oh, I intend to do so,’ she told him, mockingly, ‘and now we are here, Cobie. Here is the door to my room. Choose, like the man in the story—the lady—or the tiger?’

‘Oh, no choice,’ he told her carelessly. ‘The lady every time.’ He pushed her through the door, rather ungently, and told himself, that if one must sacrifice one’s principles—not that I possess any—this is as pleasant a way to do it as any. The unpleasant part will come tomorrow, with Dinah.

He was particularly good value that night, Violet thought, unaware that in his mind Cobie was treating her like the whore she was.