Lady Windermere's Lover (2 page)

Chapter 2

Seven years later

London, December 1800

A
ttending the theater with the Duke of Denford was not the wisest way for Cynthia to spend her first evening back in London. He’d escorted her before, to plays, the opera, and less decorous events like masked balls at the Pantheon. But this was the first time she’d been out with him when she, Denford, and her husband were in the same country.

Receiving word from the Foreign Office of Windermere’s imminent arrival from Persia, she’d pressed the horses over winter roads from Wiltshire, thinking she’d find him already at home in Hanover Square.

Her stomach fluttering, she had climbed down from her chaise and up the steps into the marble hall. She found all serene: no excitement at the presence of the master of the house, no evidence of luggage from abroad. The Earl of Windermere wasn’t at Windermere House. The servants hadn’t seen him or even heard of their master’s return. The surge of optimism that she’d maintained for two days on the road dissipated like heat through a leaking roof. There and then, Cynthia determined to deny that foolish hope had ever existed.

There was no reason to be disappointed, she told herself firmly. Disappointment suggested the existence of expectations. Cynthia would be a fool to expect anything from Windermere. He hadn’t disappointed her, merely let her down. During just over a year of marriage, most of it spent apart, Damian Lewis, Earl of Windermere, had been consistent in that regard.

Lord Windermere might not have been present to greet his faithful wife, but the devil next door was. Not half an hour after her arrival from the country, the Duke of Denford stepped along the pavement from his house and welcomed her home as Windermere had failed to do. Despite at least two very good reasons why she should refuse, Cynthia was now dressed in her favorite evening gown, sitting in a box at Drury Lane with temptation incarnate.

“I didn’t expect to see so many people in town just before Christmas.” She leaned over the rail, peering at the sweep of seats opposite, five tiers of them, thronged with increasingly well-dressed patrons, ranging from clerks and servants in the highest gallery under the roof, down to the expensive and fashionable boxes nearest the pit. She and Denford occupied one of the latter, the sidewalls of which offered an illusion of privacy, despite being open to the gaze of the world.

“What an excellent box, Julian. You know I like being near the stage.”

“You also like being invisible to most of the gossiping tabbies.” He knew as well as she that her flouting of convention was largely bravado. Fewer than half the occupants of the vast horseshoe-shaped theater could see the inhabitants of the front boxes.

“I don’t even know why I worry about being discreet. I’m not well-known in town.” She waved her hand to indicate the opposite seats. “It’s quite possible that not a soul in the place knows who I am.”

“They know me.”

“That’s because you are notorious and therefore interesting to everyone.”

“The world is filled with fools.”

She turned to look at her companion, whose low voice dropped to an impossibly deep bass when he was particularly amused or especially cynical. His appearance alone was enough to make him stand out. His tall, lean figure was habitually clad in unrelieved black—this evening in satin breeches and an evening coat and waistcoat of velvet embroidered in black silk. Even his neckcloth was black. The gloom of his costume enhanced the satanic effect of dead-straight black hair, which he wore long and tied back in a queue with a silk bow. He sat upright beside her with arms extended, hands resting on the silver-chased knob of the ebony walking stick he rarely left at home. His dependence on the elegant staff was an affectation for a man under thirty in perfect health. Some people, including Cynthia, found it amusing. Others found it just one more reason to detest him. The Duke of Denford had plenty of enemies.

“I believe you enjoy shocking people, Julian.”

Denford’s mouth curled unpleasantly, then the thin face with the hawkish nose made one of the mercurial transformations that fascinated Cynthia, and had sent her scuttling out of town a few weeks earlier, terrified she would succumb to the heady seduction of the duke’s brilliant blue eyes.

“I enjoy shocking
you
,” he said. A man shouldn’t be allowed such devastating features, especially when he had the ability to change them from ice to fire beneath her gaze.

“I’m not as easy to shock as I was when we first met.”

“No,” he said. “Thank God for that. You have become a fascinating challenge.”

It didn’t seem possible for pure sky blue to exude heat, but Denford’s eyes made every inch of her skin flush warm. How did he manage it? Without moving a muscle, he examined her face with concentrated intensity for some seconds, then his gaze dropped to the white expanse of her bosom, the bodice cut so low that the blue silk and lace barely concealed her nipples. She felt them hardening, and a curl of fire kindled in her belly. A familiar sick panic gripped her chest at the clash of attraction and repulsion, longing and fear.

She jerked her head toward the stage and stared at the obstinately closed curtain. Surely it was time for the play to begin.

“Why did you leave London?” The question was almost a whisper, close enough to caress her ear.

“Anne wanted to go to Wiltshire,” she said with determined nonchalance. “As her temporary chaperone, naturally I had to go with her.”

“Was that the only reason?”

“Why else?”

It was true, in as far as it went. Her houseguest Anne Brotherton had a reason to visit Hinton Manor, where she’d remained. But Cynthia had seized on the excuse it offered to escape Denford’s dangerous attentions. And Denford knew it.

“You like to accommodate your friends,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Am I your friend?”

She laughed nervously. “Of course you are.”

“I look forward to being accommodated.”

Her laugh degenerated to a titter. She grew warmer and more panicked, torn between the competing urges of flight and surrender. Desperate to break out of the sensual net he wove about her, she resorted to frankness. “I’m not like this, Julian,” she said, staring with dogged, unfocused eyes at the mass of humanity in the crowded pit. “I am the daughter of a clergyman. I am married. I would never break my marriage vows.”

“Would you not?”

“I
will
not.”

She sensed him retreat, lean back in his chair. Julian had always been clever that way. He would press her so far, then withdraw before she became alarmed and ran away. Except that one time. The one kiss. Which had resulted in her fleeing London and the temptation to sin.

Because she was, despite everything, a married woman and she would not betray her husband, however much he might deserve it. Besides, she wasn’t sure of Denford’s motives.

He desired her. She did not believe that his carnal interest was feigned. But he had also once been her husband’s best friend.

Earlier that day

A
cold afternoon wind off the Thames blew up Craven Street. Damian slouched into the tall collar of his topcoat as he approached his rendezvous, ignoring the Cockney imprecations of a costermonger selling apples. He missed the sound of alien languages and the exotic splendors of the Persian court. After sailing past Gibraltar, he missed the particular Mediterranean blue that warmed the body and enlivened the spirits. His escape from England and his unwanted bride had been brought to a premature conclusion.

It didn’t matter. He had to return sooner or later and a year’s reflection had made him acknowledge what he’d always known: He had behaved badly to his wife. No one had held a knife to his throat and made him marry her. While she might indeed possess the combination of ignorance, bad taste, and blind ambition that he’d ascribed to her, he’d never given her a chance to prove otherwise. It had been months since he’d received a letter from her, and while it was possible some communication had gone astray, he couldn’t really blame her if she’d ceased to write to him.

He knocked on the door of the featureless house, and an equally nondescript servant directed him to the second floor, where Mr. John Ryland awaited him. Ryland was a creature of the British Foreign Office. He might work for Grenville and the Pitt government, but his allegiance went beyond party. There had always been men like him, and always would be: quiet, discreet, ruthless behind a judicious veneer. While Ryland undoubtedly knew where all the skeletons were hidden, Damian had no intention of asking. Neither would Ryland tell him.

Damian accepted a glass of sherry and sat down, knees crossed, waiting to be informed why he had been summoned home to chilly London and an anonymous set of rooms, convenient for Whitehall but obviously not regularly occupied.

“Tell me, Lord Windermere, how did you find Futteh Aly Khan?” Ryland asked, and listened respectfully to a report that was quite irrelevant to his current errand. If the state of negotiations with the Shah of Persia interested Ryland, he would have read the detailed and secret dispatches from the head of the mission. “You enjoyed the place,” he remarked.

“I did,” Damian said. This was all very well, but only small talk. He wondered when Ryland would get to the point.

“What a pity we had to curtail your exploration. I am sorry for it.”

Fighting back a wave of irritation at the prevarications of his chosen profession, Damian waved aside the apology. “I confess to being surprised by the demand. I cannot imagine what diplomatic situation requires my modest skills and experience.”

Ryland refilled their glasses. “I assume you are familiar with the Alt-Brandenburg question.”

Damian nodded. Alt-Brandenburg was a strategically placed German princedom with a notoriously stubborn ruler. “Familiar, yes, but not
au courant
. Has the prince agreed to the British alliance or does he continue to dally with the French?”

“We had almost brought His Highness around to our way of thinking when he discovered a sticking point. He demands a pledge of our friendship.”

“A greater sum than can be found in the secret fund?”

Ryland smiled thinly. “Life and diplomacy would be so easy if it were only a question of money. The prince has got hold of a rumor that the art collection of the late Marquis de Falleron is in English hands and he wants it.”

“Good Lord.”

“I thought you would be aware of the significance.”

“I attended a rout at the Hôtel Falleron when I was a mere youth. It must have been just before the fall of the Bastille.” Even among the many splendors of Paris, that evening stood out in Damian’s memory as a particularly dazzling one. Julian had been there, of course. Robert and Marcus too. He shied away from the memory of a time and companions he had put behind him long ago.

“You must have enjoyed that, my lord, with your appreciation for the arts.”

Better to think of what he had seen rather than whom he’d been with. “The Falleron collection was legendary and, judging even by the small portion I saw, legend did not lie. I seem to recall hearing that the pictures disappeared after the marquis and his family went to the guillotine. If they were to be sold, the event would rival the dispersal of the Duke of Orleans’s collection.”

Ryland looked at him with an expression so bland it must presage a blow. Damian was about to find out why he’d been ordered to sail the French-infested waters of the Mediterranean with such haste and lack of concern for his safety.

“It’s said that the Duke of Denford possesses the Falleron pictures.”

A lump in his throat threatened to choke him at the name. Surely it couldn’t be. “I don’t know the duke,” he said, firmly. “I believe he is quite an old man.”

“The fifth duke died almost a year ago, followed quickly to the grave by his nephew and heir, the father of three daughters.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Male members of the Fortescue family have been haunted by misfortune recently. Illness, accident, and the failure to sire boys. The new duke is a third cousin, Julian Fortescue.”

There was no point denying the acquaintance. Ryland obviously knew that he and Julian had roomed together at Oxford, and, having been expelled from that august establishment, explored Europe in the early days of the Revolution, before things got ugly. It wouldn’t surprise him if he knew Julian had been at the Marquis de Falleron’s soirée. “You are doubtless aware that Julian Fortescue and I have not spoken in years. I have no influence there. If he is in possession of the paintings, approach him. But if he has come into a fortune, he may be hard to persuade. His love of the Masters is genuine and he wouldn’t wish to part with them unless he needs the money.”

“You know him well. How would he react if he had inherited the Denford title but not the fortune?”

Sometimes the serpentine methods of diplomacy tried Damian’s patience. “Has he inherited the fortune?”

“As it happens, the inheritance is in dispute. According to our information the new duke is both short of ready monies and beset by lawyers.”

“I don’t know whether to feel sorrier for him or the lawyers. In that case, he’ll accept an offer, as long as it’s generous enough.”

“We have made an offer, through discreet channels. He denies that he has the collection.”

Damian shrugged. “I find it thoroughly improbable that he owns these paintings. If he bought them during the Revolution he never mentioned it, and we were still intimate then. And why would he not have sold them? He has made his living as a dealer in works of art since he was eighteen years old.”

“We have reasons to believe otherwise, and Lord Grenville thinks you are the only one in a position to make Denford admit the truth, and sell the pictures for the sake of the country.”

“I am to appeal to his sense of duty?” For the first time Damian found the situation amusing. “Julian has never given a damn about duty, or anyone but himself.”

“Will you try?”

Unlike his former best friend, the Earl of Windermere possessed a sense of duty, and a strong one at that. For the sake of his country he would try to revive a friendship that had dissolved in bitterness.