Lord Langley Is Back in Town (13 page)

She entered the room without an invitation. “All alone? Goodness, your dear betrothed is a trusting soul. But she doesn’t know you like I do.”

Langley turned around, for it never was good to keep one’s back to Wilhelmenia, the Margravine of Ansbach, for too long. He nodded politely to her. No, she wasn’t a woman to be trifled with.

Nor given the least bit of encouragement.

“Where is she?” Helga asked, glancing about the empty place at the table, a slow smile on her lips.

“If you mean my betrothed, she is meeting with a tradesman.”

Helga glanced up, her head tipped as if she hadn’t heard him quite right. “Meeting with a tradesman? How very common.” She paused and ran her finger over the back of the chair. “And how convenient.” Then she moved like an eel around the table toward him.

“Margravine,” he said as formally as he could.

“Helga,” she corrected. “Remember when you called me that?”

“Yes, I do,” he told her, stepping away from her and nudging a chair into her path. “I believe your husband found it rather offensive.” He paused and glanced over his shoulder at her. “By the way, how is the margrave?”

“Deceased,” she said with no sign of remorse, no grief.

“My condolences,” he offered, more for himself. He’d been half counting on the old fellow showing up in all his regalia and hauling his errant wife back to Ansbach where she belonged.

“No condolences are necessary,” she said, glancing down at her nails. “He was a pig.”

True enough. But one who had been able to outmaneuver his manipulative margravine from time to time.

During this exchange, the woman had managed to come closer. “What has happened to you,
schatzi
?”

“Nothing. As you can see I am well.”

She shook her head. “You’ve changed; you’re not the same man.”

“Time has a way of doing that to all of us,” he told her. “Look at me. I am engaged—”

“Bah!” she said, dismissing Lady Standon’s place at his side with an airy wave.

“And I intend to retire to the country—”

Now she began to laugh. Loudly.

Langley cringed, for unfortunately it wasn’t one of her finest qualities.

“Oh,
schatzi
, no! Stop! You cannot mean such a thing!” She reached for the back of a chair and steadied herself. “You? In the country? Such a waste. Such nonsense.”

“Not to me,” he said with a conviction that not even he knew he possessed. For standing here, with the margravine, looking back at what had been amusing and energizing for so many years, suddenly paled in the face of coming home to England. The quiet green meadows. The farmhouses. The stone walls lining the lanes. He had ridden from Dover like a man waking from a dream. “Perhaps I have changed.”

“Hmm,” she mused. “Most decidedly. Whatever happened to you in Paris?”

He turned to her. “I drank too much wine,” he said, making light of the night that had changed his life. Nearly been the death of him. One he barely remembered. No matter how hard he tried. That night was like a candle snuffed out; once the light was gone, it was impossible to remember the world otherwise. “What do you know of Paris?”

“Nothing more than the rest of us. You were there, and then you weren’t. The rumors, darling, were terrible. Three years of whispers I have endured. You were dead. You’d helped Bonaparte.” She spat the man’s name out like an olive pit. “But I never believed any of it. I knew—”

As quickly as her words had come tumbling out, they stopped and her gaze fixed on the side of his head. She reached out her hand and touched the scar that ran from his hairline around his ear and nearly to the back of his head.

Where his head had been bashed in and he’d been left for dead.

“That wasn’t there.” She shivered as she parted his hair and saw how far back it went.

He brushed her hand away and ducked out of her reach. “Perhaps you didn’t notice it before. I fell as a child, you know. While learning to ride.”

She laughed again and retreated toward the window, letting the morning sun frame her blond hair. “You’ve never fallen off a horse in your life. More like you fell into a cudgel. Or it fell into you. Which was it?”

Since he didn’t know, he couldn’t say, but this entire round of questions was growing uncomfortable. Nor did he trust her. “You know, madame, one of the reasons I adore Minerva is that she doesn’t badger me about my past.”

Helga shook her head and glanced out the window as she considered her answer. And when she turned to face him, it was obvious she’d found the perfect answer. “Perhaps it is because she doesn’t want you to pry too deeply into hers.” She nodded down into the garden.

Against his better judgment, he crossed the room and took a glance out the window.

And what he saw answered several of his earlier questions, and left him with a raftload more as yet to be answered.

“L
et go of me, Gerald!” Minerva had tried to flee back into the garden, but he was too quick and caught her in his arms. But not for long. She managed to get her hands on his chest and push him away and close the garden door so they were once again alone in the alley and shielded from prying eyes.

“Hardly the way to greet your husband.”

“I am not your wife.” Never was.

Though once she’d thought she would be. Had been so madly in love with him. Ready to marry him.

Until her father had come home from London with the alarming news that she was to marry Philip Sterling, the Marquis of Standon, the future Duke of Hollindrake.

“Now, now,” he said. “I’ve got a marriage license that says I’m married to one Margaret Owens and we both know who you are.” He eased closer to her again, but this time she slipped away, turning to face him. “Shall we borrow a carriage and ride north to Gilston House? See if any of the old servants remember exactly which of the earl’s daughters you might be? Handy for you it is too far north to venture easily or often.”

“What are you doing here?” Minerva set her jaw. “Does
she
know you are here?” Her sister. The real Lady Minerva Hartley.

He had the good grace to look a bit repentant. But only for a moment. This was Gerald, after all.

“No, she doesn’t. But how could she? She’s gone, if you must know.”

Minerva’s gaze narrowed. “She left you?” That would explain his sudden arrival at her doorstep.

He laughed as if such a thing were unthinkable. Which of course it was. Minnie had been just as head over heels in love with Gerald as her half-sister. But as the earl’s legitimate daughter, the likes of Gerald Adlington was far beneath her. And it had been the first time Minerva had ever been able to aspire to something her lofty, selfish sister couldn’t have.

“Where is my sister?” she pressed.

“She’s dead.”

This simple statement brought Minerva’s gaze wrenching back to his. Her sister? Dead? No, it couldn’t be true. She searched his mocking gaze for some glimmer of deceit.

And when she looked at him, really studied him, she realized something telling. He wasn’t wearing mourning. A cold shudder ran down her spine. “How long, Gerald? How long has Minnie been gone?”

Gerald shuffled his feet under her scrutiny and looked away. “Five . . . maybe six—”

“Months?”

He scoffed at her question. “No, not months. Years. About six years now.”

Minerva staggered back. “But you never told me—”

“And what were you going to do, Maggie? Wear a black armband for her? Confess the truth? That you married that fancy toff in her stead? That you are naught but your father’s bastard?”

Minerva’s insides trembled. Not with grief, for she knew her sister never spared a thought for her, save for the money Minerva sent. No, Minnie would never have shed a tear if it had been Minerva’s fate, except perhaps because it would have stopped the payments coming.

The payments.
If Minnie had been dead all these years . . .

Her gaze narrowed. “How dare you!” she whispered, afraid that if she gave over to the rage, and yes, the grief starting to edge its way into her heart, she would once again be Margaret Owens and give him what he deserved. “My sister was dead and still you took the money?”

“Why shouldn’t I have? It’s because of me you’re top-of-the-trees and worth a plum.”

“Because of you?” she sputtered. “You courted me, then eloped with my sister behind my back. Behind our father’s back.”

“Which is why you’ve got your fancy name—a good one, I might add. I deserve a little something for raising you out of the back halls and below-stairs where your father kept you.”

A little something?
“ ’Tis blackmail.”

Gerald shrugged, a negligent tip of his shoulders. “Rather an ugly way of phrasing it, Maggie, but I suppose there are some who might see it that way. Not me, though.” He had the audacity to wink at her.

“Get out of here,” she said, pointing down the alleyway.

He shoved her hand down. “Not without my money. That’s why I’m here in the first place. When I went to Brighton this week to get the quarterly, that rum-cake solicitor said your account was closed. Emptied. Cavey business, that, Maggie. To leave your own kin high and dry.”

Now she saw all too clearly why he was here. Her accounts! She’d completely forgotten the part of her accounts that she quietly funneled to a solicitor in Brighton, who in turn saw the money turned over to her sister.

Since her banishment to this house on Brook Street, all her accounts had been closed, as had Elinor’s and Lucy’s. There hadn’t been any money to send on. Not anymore. She glanced up at him and smiled.

“I fear I’ve run afoul of the new duke and his wife. They cut me off. There is no more money to be had.”

He cocked his head and eyed her. “Oh, aye, what’s this nonsense? I won’t be bobbed by the likes of you.”

“I am not conning you, Mr. Adlington, if that is what you are saying. Not in the least,” she told him coolly. “I have this house to live in and naught much else.”

He glanced up at the house. “Any silver in there?”

Minerva ran out of patience with him. “Good heavens, I’m in the suds enough with His Grace without adding to my crimes. And have you taken a good look at this house? I can tell you quite honestly there is nothing of value in it.” She put her hands on her hips. “You’ll have to live within your means. Isn’t your army pay—”

Then she realized something else that had been bothering her about him—his arrival in her midst not withholding: He was out of uniform.

“You sold out!” Her words came out like an accusation. For of course he’d sold out. And then squandered every coin.

How had she ever loved him? Fancied him her hero? Again, for whatever reason, her thoughts turned to Lord Langley and how different he was. Oh, Langley was a rake and a seducer, but he wasn’t a complete cad, a man who would live on a woman’s coattails.

“What if I did? Not that it’s anything to you. You still owe me my quarterly, and that’s all that matters.” His jaw worked back and forth. “Got any jewels?”

She sighed in exasperation with him. “No. All the Sterling jewelry belongs to the duchess.”

Including the Sterling diamonds, which Minerva had neglected to turn over. Luckily for her, the Duchess of Hollindrake seemed to be ignorant of her rightful claim to them. And if she hadn’t relinquished them to their true owner, she certainly wasn’t about to give them to the likes of Gerald Adlington.

Not even to keep her secret. She’d rather hand them over to the duchess. Which came in a close second.

“Come now, Maggie,” he coaxed. “You’re still a bit of a looker. There’s no one about you could hook? Another one of those old culls, the sort with a heart ailment and one foot in the grave like the last one you had? I’d say one of those sorts would come in right handy about now.”

What would come in handy right now was Thomas-Williams’s pistol.

Minerva cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner. Especially now that he was pressing her to get married. Why in heavens was everyone in London seemingly bent on seeing her wed?

Good heavens, this snake was as bad as Aunt Bedelia. Worse, perhaps.

“I fear, Mr. Adlington, that our arrangement is over.” She went to step past him, but he caught her by the elbow and held her fast, and to her shock, his other hand rose as if to strike a furious blow.

“You listen here, Lady Toplofty,” he whispered into her ear, his words blustering over her hot and wet. “You’ll get me my money and I’ll hear no more of your tomfoolery, or I’ll march myself over to that duke’s house and tell him who you really are. Then I’ll show him my wedding license—the one that says I’m married to one Margaret Owens—and I’ll demand he hands you over to me.” He shook her for good measure, just to make certain she heard him loud and clear.

Oh, she had. “You wouldn’t dare, Gerald.”

“I would, don’t think that I wouldn’t. Then what, Maggie? Whatever will the Sterlings do when they discover they nearly had themselves a bastard for a duchess? What will they say about the little switch your father made all those years ago? Do you think they’ll let you back in their house?” He shook his head. “You’ll be tossed out with only the clothes on your back, if they leave you those.”