Jo Beverley (18 page)

Damaris blushed for no reason at all. “Left in the hall.” It wasn’t actually a lie. “I’ll collect it when I go down.”

A little while later, however, a maid brought it up. “With Mr. Fitzroger’s compliments, miss.”

Damaris couldn’t help a thrill that he’d thought of it, even that he’d recently touched it, but Maisie was scowling and muttering something about “that man.”

As she put on her red cloak and took the muff, Damaris asked, “Why are you so set against Mr. Fitzroger?”

Maisie reddened. “He’s trying to marry you, that’s why.”

“No, he isn’t. And if he were I wouldn’t. But if I did, how does it concern you?”

“Because he’ll break your heart for sure.” But Maisie looked away and was fiddling with her skirt.

“There’s more to it than that.”

Maisie worked her mouth, but then burst out, “I want to be a ladyship’s maid, miss! Down below, we take our rank from our employer. With you as a marchioness I’d have been one of the highest. It would have been ever so lovely. If you marry that one, I’ll be no better off than I am now.”

Damaris shook her head. “I had no idea. How extraordinary.” She’d better not tell Maisie there was a chance of her becoming a duchess in the servants’ hierarchy or there’d be no living with her. “I can’t marry to suit you, Maisie. And besides, wouldn’t you rather marry, yourself, than be even a duchess in the servant’s hall?”

Maisie blushed. “I might, Miss Damaris. But only to the right man.”

“Then we think alike on these things.”

“Then you won’t fall into trouble with that one?” Maisie asked.

“I intend to make the right decision,” Damaris said, and left the room.

She found Fitzroger outside her door.

“I have a room here,” he said, pointing to the next door. “It was to have been Lady Thalia’s, but, of course, she’s with Genova. My usual room is on the other side of the Little Library, but Ash wanted to be close, so I agreed to let him use it.”

“Oh,” Damaris said, fighting laughter. She’d never heard him rattle on before. Was he as flustered as she? And for the same reason?

He must be. He’d not have kissed her earlier if he’d been in control of himself. Her mind was a mess, and she felt half-mad, but at least he might be in the same state. He offered an arm and she linked hers with it, feeling as if bubbles floated in her brain, bubbles of wicked possibilities that made it impossible to make sensible decisions.

She’d read stories of people hurtling to disaster this way—Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bothwell—and never understood it. Now she did, and it was just as well that she had his arm as they went downstairs, for she could easily have missed a step in her distracted, light-headed state.

The dowager awaited them amid the faded elegance of a small dining room. She was frosty, but the room was warm. They all took their places—Ashart and Genova on one side of the table, Damaris and Fitzroger on the other, with the dowager and Lady Thalia at head and foot.

Lady Ashart rang a bell, and servants came in to place the first course of dishes on the table. The food was plain but tolerable. Damaris ate, trying to distract herself from Fitzroger by looking for ways to turn the conversation to Betty Prease. Instead it wandered from the weather to books to minor matters of public affairs.

By the time the second course was placed on the table, she was ready to raise the subject out of nowhere. But at last Ashart said, “We’ve been going through the old Prease papers, Grandy. I hope you don’t mind.”

“A bit late if I do,” the dowager said, but without an increase in ice. “I can’t imagine why.”

“We thought it would be amusing to look for evidence of the liaison between Betty Crowley and the king.”

Damaris ate pear tart but watched the dowager. She thought the plump face stilled, but it could be simple annoyance.

“I assure you,” the dowager said, “royal blood does run in your veins, Ashart. It is written in your features, if nowhere else.”

“I thought so, too,” Genova said.

Lady Ashart ignored her.

Fitzroger said, “I thought the resemblance closer to Charles the First than to Charles the Second. And perhaps,” he added, “to Prince Henry.”

Damaris had automatically turned to him as he spoke, so when she looked back at the dowager any immediate reaction had passed. She sensed something in the air, however, and Lady Ashart seemed changed—lips tighter, eyes fixed.

Prince Henry?

The discussion seemed in danger of dying, so she asked at random, “What sort of woman was your famous ancestor, Lady Ashart? A fascinating beauty, I’m sure.”

The dowager raised her double chins. “She was a lady much admired by all who knew her, and for more than her appearance. A lady of quiet dignity and pious goodness, free of all interest in worldly pleasures.”

Damaris stared, almost choking on the obvious question. How, then, did she become lover of Old Rowley, the most decadent king of England?

“I always supposed her virtues arose from penitence,” said Lady Thalia.

“If she had anything to repent!” The dowager rose to her feet, managing to make it look majestic, even though the elevation from sitting to standing was not very great. “I’m sure you would all prefer to remove upstairs.”

With that she marched out of the room and closed the door with an eloquent click.

Eyes met eyes around the table.

“Sharing the king’s bed is a holy duty?” Ashart offered.

Damaris expected Fitzroger to make the suggestion, but when he didn’t she said, “Or it never happened. It’s all a tale.”

“Oh, it happened,” Lady Thalia said. “Everyone knew that Randolph Prease was quite incapable of…Well”—she waved a vague hand—“his war wounds, you know.”

Damaris realized then that Lady Thalia might know a great deal about these events. She’d still been a girl at the turn of the century, but she must have known people who’d been part of King Charles’s court. She might even have known men who fought in the Civil War.

Ashart drained the last of his wine. “Grandy can’t have it both ways. Either Betty was the king’s whore, or we don’t have royal blood.”

Again, no one said the obvious. “Or,” said Damaris, “there was a secret marriage.”

It created a startling ripple of silence.

Lady Thalia said, “How very intriguing.”

“But impossible.” Ashart rose and assisted Genova from her seat. “Betty conceived my great-grandfather in 1660 at the time of the Restoration. The newly restored king would wench with anyone, but he’d never have married a commoner. He needed money, power, and a bride who created royal alliances abroad. That’s why he married Catherine of Braganza. Come. I’ll order tea served upstairs.”

Fitzroger assisted Lady Thalia, so Damaris managed for herself, thinking furiously.

When they left the room, Thalia had one of Fitzroger’s arms, and Damaris should have taken his other. Instead she walked on Thalia’s other side. “What do you think, Lady Thalia? Was Mistress Betty the king’s mistress?”

“You’re tempting me to be naughty,” the old lady said with a twinkle, “but let us say her child was not fathered by Randolph Prease.”

Damaris understood. Randolph Prease had been incapable of fathering a child because of his war wounds that had damaged that part of his body. That, however, was irrelevant. No one thought him the father. Charles II was accepted as the father of Betty’s son, but now there were the conflicting details.

As Ashart said, King Charles would never have married a commoner. But the dowager insisted Betty Crowley was virtuous.

Fitzroger had introduced the name of Henry Stuart, the forgotten prince, the one who’d died tragically young, surely at about the time Betty Crowley was conceiving her child. Once thought of, it was fascinating, but with alarming implications.

When they entered the Hunt Room, Damaris was wondering what to say, what to ask, but Ashart spoke first. “Was Betty Prease pious and good all her life, Thalia? Or was she a fatal siren in her youth?”

Lady Thalia sat in a chair near the fire, putting her feet on a footstool. “I met her only twice, dear, and in her later years. Once was when I was staying in Cambridgeshire with the Wallboroughs. We all went to Storton House for a ball. That was where my brother met the dowager—Sophia Prease in those days—which might have been better avoided. Then she was at the wedding. In her widowhood she lived in a private suite of rooms at Storton and rarely emerged except to engage in good works. The area is plentifully provided with almshouses and charity hospitals.”

“Not a bad thing,” Genova said.

“But evidence of a guilty conscience,” Ashart pointed out. “Conundrum solved. Betty Crowley let virtue slip as a girl, perhaps just once, and did penance all her days. I have royal blood in my veins, safely from a bastard line, but Grandy doesn’t care to admit her grandmother’s frailty.”

Two maids came in bearing the tea trays. Thalia waved to Genova. “You tend to it all, dear. You’ll soon be mistress here.”

As Genova did so, Damaris thought that Lady Thalia was not one fraction as silly as she appeared. That had been a pointed reminder for the maids to take back to the servants’ hall.

She had to admit that Ashart’s summary made sense. She could feel in herself how easy it would be to let wisdom and virtue slip under the attraction of a certain sort of man. It didn’t matter whether Betty had sinned with wicked, worldly King Charles, or with his youngest brother, who had been much closer to her age.

It mattered only if there had been a marriage.

Because if Prince Henry had fathered Charles Prease, and if he’d also married Betty Crowley, the line that came down to Ashart was
legitimate
. She didn’t fully understand the royal succession, but she thought it might mean that Ashart had a claim to the throne of England.

Now
there
was a state secret to shrivel the skin.

There’d been so much bloodshed over the throne. First the Duke of Monmouth, then the uprising in 1715 to try to install James II’s son instead of the Hanoverian, George I. Most recently the one in 1745 that had led to so many deaths, including the bloody slaughter at Culloden.

Damaris was too young to remember the events of 1745, but stories about it had been vivid during her childhood, for the rebel army had come close to Worksop during its march on London. For a little while it had seemed the Jacobites would make it there and succeed.

She looked to Fitzroger, who stood by a window, lost in thought. She’d give much more than a penny to read his mind.

Lady Thalia proposed an evening of whist.

Perhaps Fitz read her reaction, for he said, “Why don’t we play games of another sort? After all, once she’s at court we don’t want Damaris to lose her fortune at loo or faro.”

“As if I would!”

He looked at her. “A passion for gaming can be as unexpected and irresistible as any other sort.”

She hoped she wasn’t as pink as she was hot.

Lady Thalia wasn’t thrilled at the idea, but even she probably realized that they couldn’t play whist all the time.

As far as Damaris was concerned, the card games they played that evening were easier and more fun than whist. They all seemed a silly way to risk money, but as they played with counters in the form of pearl fish, she didn’t mind.

The light died, and candlelight took over. As they explored from dangerous faro to frivolous speculation, Damaris soon realized that Fitz’s warning might have been valid. She thrilled to scoop up a theoretical fortune in guineas and when she lost, it inspired her to play again and try to win them back. She was always so sure her luck would turn. At one point Ashart ordered claret and biscuits, and the wine didn’t improve her self-control.

She pointed that out, and Fitz said, “Another lesson. Card playing is generally accompanied by wine. Learn to keep a steady head. Or at least to know when it’s wobbling.”

It was good advice, applied to love as well as cards. If the passion for winning burned in her, so did passion of another sort. As evening became night this candlelit circle of five wove a dangerous charm, and for her, Fitz burned at the heart of it.

At first he had kept himself slightly apart, but in time the gaiety had caught him. He’d relaxed, and his quick wit and ready smile reached her, touched her, dazzled her. There was that glow again, and now it seemed to her to be the glow of honest joy, as with the fencing.

Why did he find it so hard to be joyful? What was the darkness that surrounded him? It had to be that scandal, and she should cease avoiding it and ask Lady Thalia. After all, money could work miracles. It might wipe the shadows away.

Tomorrow, she vowed. She would ask Lady Thalia tomorrow. She staked and won, praying she wouldn’t uncover too dark a sin. She wanted to weave this magical circle tight and hold Fitz safe within it. Wind him in golden streamers of joy and keep him forever in the light.

L
ate that night Fitz walked the grounds of Cheynings, his breath puffing silver, and icy remnants of snow crunching beneath his boots. He needed to check the area before he slept, but he also needed to escape the too-close proximity to Damaris. He’d hoped the winter night air would blow away the nonsense filling his mind.

It wasn’t working.

He’d been aware all day of her attention on him. He’d tried to keep his distance, but she would not be warned away. Not surprising when he kept responding, dammit.

Devil take it, he was thinking about her again, and it was like opening a pot of jam near a wasps’ nest. Now there was nothing else in his mind but buzz. A villain could probably creep up behind him and garotte him with ease.

He’d vastly overestimated his control. That kiss in the Little Library should never have happened; nor should he have invited her to call him Fitz. An evening of lighthearted gambling games had been disastrous. He was besotted with her and impassioned by her—by her quick wits, her forthright manner, her idiotic courage, and her piratical determination to get what she wanted.

If the world were different, he’d kneel at her feet and beg to be hers, but the world was as it was. He was as he was, rightly burdened by his sin.

He looked up at the unhelpful moon in a sky full of mysterious stars. Ash was fascinated by the reality of the planets and stars—where they were, what they were. Fitz preferred them to be a mystery, up who knew how high, a constant reminder that there was indeed more in heaven and earth than the obvious.

They helped clear his mind. For his own sake and Damaris’s, he must go far away. To be free to do that, he must first ensure Ash’s safety, which meant finding any documents relating to Betty Crowley and her child.

All the clues pointed to there having been a secret marriage, and that spelled disaster. No wonder the king was distressed. No wonder some people wanted Ashart dead.

It would be impossible to prove that such a marriage hadn’t happened, so the best solution would be to find the proof that it had. Once found, it could be destroyed, preferably in the king’s presence. It was the only way to end all danger.

He thought Damaris might be putting together the pieces. What keen wits she had….

He blocked that, but not before he remembered her pointing out that anything of importance would be in the dowager’s keeping. She was right.

He smiled at the memory of her suggesting he steal the papers. Piracy must run in the blood.

He sucked in a breath. He mustn’t think of her!

He walked a circuit of the house, making sure his guards were in place. He finally entered the house by a side door, which he locked after himself. The corridor he stood in was pitch-dark, but he knew the house well enough to make his way to the service stairs and back to his room. There he took out his lantern and assembled it.

It was a variation on a smuggler’s lantern, designed to provide light when necessary, but to show little when closed. Fitz had ordered this one made half-size and hinged so that it collapsed flat when not in use. In a pinch, he could carry it in his pocket.

He quickly transformed the lantern into the familiar peaked-roof shape and opened the door to set a candle in place. Once it was lit, he closed the door so that only a hint of light showed through the smoke holes at the top.

Putting the lantern aside, he took off his boots, replacing them with soft leather slippers that were perfect for silence in the night. He substituted fine-grain leather gloves for the sturdier ones he’d worn outside. The house was cold, and he couldn’t risk clumsiness. A muff, he thought with a wry smile, might be a useful accessory for a thief.

He made his way down to the hall with the help of only the thin moonlight. The air was cold enough to prickle his skin, but all was silent.

Too silent. He realized that the long-case clock on the wall had wound down. Cheynings often made him think of a mausoleum. Perhaps that was why he had a strange feeling of being watched. He sensed movement and glanced up the stairs, but nothing disturbed the moonlit shadows.

Ghosts. That was all Cheynings needed.

He shook his head. It was more likely mice. Cheynings needed cats, but the dowager detested them.

He turned to the left, where two doors led into her suite of five rooms. The right-hand door led to the dining room, and the left to the adjacent drawing room. There was a door from the drawing room into her bedchamber, with a dressing room beyond. That room had a door into a back corridor, but he shouldn’t need it.

The most likely place for papers was the office, which lay beyond the dining room, but it would be damnable to search. Moreover, he couldn’t believe that the dowager would leave explosive documents there, even in a locked drawer. She’d want to keep such documents safe, but also treat them with reverence and be able to take them out in privacy to cherish.

That meant that the likeliest spot was the bedchamber, the most dangerous place to invade. He considered leaving the search until daytime, but that wouldn’t help. Servants and the dowager herself could be in and out all day.

He had to do it now. She’d often boasted of sleeping well. A result of a virtuous life and hard work, she would say. Fitz had heard that a bit of opium helped. He hoped so.

He’d made note earlier that the dining room door was in good condition and opened silently, so he hoped the drawing room one would be the same. It was, and he was in without noise. The curtains were up, so faint moonlight allowed him to navigate to the bedchamber door.

It, too, opened without a squeak, allowing him into the pitch-dark room. He stepped inside, feeling thick carpet beneath his shoes. Good. He should be able to move around quietly.

A noise froze him. After a breathless moment he relaxed. It was a kind of snuffling snore. He waited, and after a count of three he heard it again. The noise was in front of him, so that must be where the bed was. A clock ticked to his right, probably on the mantelpiece. He closed the door with slow care….

A tinkling noise almost made him jump out of his skin.

The clock had begun to chime midnight. When it finally settled to silence, Fitz listened, one hand still on the handle so he could make a lightning escape. The light snore ruffled on. The dowager was too accustomed to her clock to be wakened by it, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be roused by an unusual noise. The mind was very clever in that way.

He waited several minutes to be sure she was asleep, then walked forward until he encountered the heavy curtains around the bed. He followed them around the three sides, confirming that the hangings were completely drawn. Only then did he open one door of the lantern.

His nerves were still jumping, which was strange, since this was considerably less dangerous than most other searches he’d made. He doubted the dowager kept a pistol beneath her pillow, and if she did she’d be unlikely to shoot him if she woke. She couldn’t summon guards to haul him off to prison and torture. His discovery here couldn’t cause a diplomatic disaster.

But it would be disastrous enough.

She’d order him from the house, and Ash would find it hard to prevent it. He might not want to unless Fitz could explain his behavior, which, by his promise of silence, he could not easily do.

If Ash stood by him, the situation would be worse. Ash would leave for London, which would be hazardous, and would also mean abandoning the most likely location of the papers.

Fitz steadied himself and began the search. The room was sparsely furnished, and his attention went immediately to a lady’s writing desk, which was of a type that surprised him. The dowager’s office desk was massive and plain, but this one was a delicate piece with slender legs, decorated panels, and carvings. A secret taste for frivolity? He doubted it. All the decoration would serve to hide secret compartments and catches, however. He surveyed it, keeping track of the regular soft snores.

The key was obligingly in the lock, so he turned it, making only the slightest click, and raised the top. Paper, ink, sand, sealing wax. Pigeonholes with folded letters. Secret papers would not be in the open, not even here.

He eyed the writing surface and the dimensions of the desk, seeing a number of places where there might be a little extra space. He put the lantern on the floor, took off his gloves, and ran his fingers beneath the carved front edge. He pressed, pulled, pushed, gently at first, then more firmly.

This time the click was loud and a snuffle broke off with a snort. “What…”

The voice behind the bedcurtains sounded half-asleep, but Fitz took no risks. He closed the desktop, picked up his lantern, and moved silently to hunch down at the foot of the bed, shutting the lantern door as he settled there. Whichever side of the hangings she opened, she wouldn’t see him. If she climbed out of bed he could creep around to the opposite side.

But damn it all to Hades, in the blackness the tiny glimmer from the top of the lantern might give him away. He couldn’t extinguish it without opening the thing, and if he squeezed out the flame, there was always a smell from the dying smoke. She’d cry for help, servants would come running, and he would be trapped here.

“Who’s there!” the dowager demanded. Curtains rattled apart—to his right. “Jane? Is that you? What are you doing, you stupid woman?”

He was already easing left. Time to slip out through the drawing room door. Even if she heard him, she’d not see him. He was pushing to his feet when the curtains on the side closest to him rattled. He whipped back down at the foot.

“Who’s there? Come out. Reveal yourself!”

Plague take the old dragon, though he had to admire her courage. Perhaps she did have a pistol under the pillow. Perhaps it was even now primed and pointed.

“Come out, I say!”

At any moment she was going to cry for help, and if servants hadn’t already been disturbed they’d come then. And here he was, pinned like a ferret in a trap. All he could do was wait to see which way she went, and hope to dash out before she could identify him.

Just how many six-foot-tall men with blond hair were there in this house? After surviving years of this sort of thing against far more skillful foes, he was about to be done in by an old lady in a freezing, rundown house because of a damn stupid saga of royal sin and folly….

A thump somewhere startled him.

Then a shriek.

Thump, thump, thump…

It sounded as if someone had fallen down stairs. He rose to help, then realized he couldn’t.

Deathly silence.

Literally.

A chill swept over him. Had that scream sounded like Damaris?

The dowager was muttering and moving, and he could hardly concentrate enough to track what she was doing. Climbing out of bed on his left.

Move to the right.

Vague sounds of her finding and putting on a robe. His head was pounding with the need to dash out through the dressing room to see if that had been Damaris, and if she was safe.

A door slammed somewhere far away.

The drawing room door opened and stumping footsteps moved away. “What’s going on?” the dowager demanded from a distance.

Fitz was already sprinting into the dressing room, searching desperately for the service door that had to be there.
Open the lantern, you dolt! There.

As he ran into the corridor he heard the dowager exclaim, “Lord save us!” All sense of direction fled his mind, and he ran the wrong way before correcting and catapulting into the hall.

“Servants! Ashart! Someone!” the dowager was bellowing. All around, Fitz heard slamming doors, hurrying feet, voices.

He raced to the body sprawled from the lowest step of the grand staircase to the checkered floor. White nightgown. Dark robe. Long dark hair in a plait.

Damaris!

He slid to his knees, checking for breath. “She’s breathing. Thank God.”

“Of course she’s breathing,” the dowager snapped. “I saw that. What’s wrong with her?”

“Presumably she fell down the stairs.” He was feeling for bumps on Damaris’s small, delicate head.

“You are insolent, sir. I always thought so. And so is she. What’s she doing wandering the house at night? I should never have had anything to do with such a creature. She was never worthy….”

He ignored her ranting as he felt for damage, aware of other people gathering, exclaiming, and chattering. He knew now what Ash had felt like when Genova had seemed close to death. He wanted to gather Damaris into his arms and plead with her to talk to him, to come to her senses, to live. Wanted to shower her with healing kisses.

“Damaris,” he said, stroking tendrils off her pale face. “Come on. Speak to me. Where does it hurt?”

She moaned and her eyelids fluttered. She looked up at him.

Her moan wasn’t very convincing, and her eyes revealed hidden laughter.

He just managed to stifle a groan of his own. He was going to throttle her. For the moment he turned her face toward his chest. “Hush, I don’t think there’s any serious damage.”

Genova was there then, kneeling by their side. “Can you move your arms and legs, Damaris?”