Salt Bride (58 page)

Alec Halsey accepted Sir Charles Weir’s dinner invitation on the assumption he was the only guest. Now, standing in the politician’s drawing room surrounded by a dozen unfamiliar faces, he found himself in the midst of a party political dinner. The other guests were all in some way connected to the government, come together to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Sir Charles’s election to Parliament, not a career diplomat in the Foreign Department like Alec. The guest of honor, the Duke of Cleveley, twice First Lord of the Treasury and the present Foreign Secretary, had yet to descend amongst them, and Alec supposed this was why the double doors to the dining room remained closed.

Wine glass in hand, Alec sidled to the window that overlooked Arlington Street, and turned his back on the crowded and noisy room. He disliked gatherings of this sort. Too intimate. In a faceless crowd, one could remain anonymous and still enjoy the evening’s entertainment. Here everyone knew his family’s history, had devoured every scandalous detail in the London newssheets about the macabre circumstances surrounding the murder of his estranged brother. Despite the coroner’s open verdict, it was Alec society blamed for his brother’s death, thus condemning the newly elevated Marquess Halsey to a lifetime of suspicion.

Why had he returned to the city? He should have remained in Kent where he had spent the seven months since his brother’s death resurrecting the family estate. He should be visiting his tenants and seeing to their needs, not time-wasting rubbing shoulders with over-fed, opinionated politicians, and their parasitic hangers-on, all of who avoided his eye. There was so much for him to do and learn about his unwanted inheritance that he hardly knew where to begin.

He sipped at the wine and stared down at a sedan chair come to rest on the steps of Horace Walpole’s townhouse, and ruminated on fate. He had spent most of his adult life on the periphery of Polite Society, a diplomat on the Continent speaking in foreign tongues. His estranged brother’s untimely death changed his well-ordered life forever. Did he want to run an estate and take his seat in the Lords? He knew so little about either that a winter posting to St. Petersburg held more appeal. What was he supposed to do with a Marquessate he did not in the least want and one his peers considered he did not deserve? Yet he had been compelled to accept with good grace the newly created title. As if his elevation from the family earldom of Delvin to the Marquessate Halsey would somehow miraculously expunge from the collective memory of Polite Society his connection to a murdered brother who had hated him with a passion bordering on mania. To Alec’s way of thinking, thrusting a Marquessate on him considerably complicated his life, and merely heightened suspicion.

Perhaps he would request a second posting to Constantinople?

He was roused from these musings at the mention of his name in loud whispered conversation over his left shoulder. Overhearing the rest was unavoidable.

“I don’t know why Weir invited
him
,”
whined a weak male voice. “He’s not one of us. And when one considers what he did to poor Ned—Well!”

“Sir Charles has a motive for everything,” mused his female companion. “I wonder…”

“Obviously Charlie fails to see the matter as we do, my lady.”

“He’s rather handsome in an angular sort of way. Big bony nose and large—”

“
What?
No powder and a scrap of lace makes
him
handsome?”

“—deep blue eyes,” Lady Cobham finished with a crooked smile, appraising Alec from well-muscled calf to coal black curls.

“You’re blind! He could very well be mistaken for an
American savage
.”

“Yes. That old rumor about—”

“
Rumor
?”

“—his real papa being a black lackey who took my lady Delvin’s fancy has stuck, hasn’t it?”

“It’s stuck, Caro, because the swarthy devil’s a-a
half-breed
. One only has to look at him to see that!”

The woman sighed deeply. “Yes, just look at him. Common report says he’s as virile as a savage…”

There was a snort of contempt. “You’re for Bedlam, Caro!
Egad
. The man’s uncouth, uncivilised,
and
disrespectful. The Duke won’t like him being here tonight; not one bit!”

“I dare say your father won’t like it, George, but given the Duke’s continued mourning for the Duchess I doubt Cleveley will care who Sir Charles has invited to dine. Can savages have blue eyes?”

“Be reasonable, Caro,” Lord George Stanton tucked his chins in his stock and said gravely, “Father is thinking of stepping down from the leadership.”

The lady gasped. “You can’t be serious? He said so in jest!”

“The Duke, my dear Lady Cobham, does not
jest
. Neither do I. And don’t think Father’s grief has made him blind to the world. He will certainly have a word with Weir for his lack of moral decency in inviting a man everyone knows but cannot prove murdered his own bro—”

“Oh, look! He’s finally here!” burst out Lady Cobham. She gave a nervous titter behind her fluttering fan when Alec stared straight at her. But when Lord George faced the doorway she lowered the fan of carved ivory to underscore her thrust up breasts before turning to admire the full-length portrait dividing the windows. “I wonder if that’s a Reynolds…?” she mused to no one in particular, a sly sidelong glance of open invitation at Alec.

A commotion in the doorway had everybody looking that way. The Duke of Cleveley had arrived. It said much about the man’s formidable political and social influence that his mere entrance caused the room to hush. He was soon surrounded by the party faithful, all wanting to be noticed, and Alec had the satisfaction of seeing the great man snub his stepson, Lord George Stanton, in favor of a clergyman in tattered collar and cuffs. At least the Duke was not about to allow an arrogant nature to dictate to sense, he thought with a wry smile.

The meal itself was not the ordeal Alec had anticipated. In amongst the twelve courses there was much political discussion and many an impromptu speech praising Sir Charles’s five years as Member of Parliament for the rotten borough seat of Bratton Dean. And as Alec was seated between the scruffy clergyman, who ignored him in favor of conversation with the gentleman to his right, and Sir Charles, who sat at the head of the table, he began to feel more at ease. And with the comings and goings of the two footmen with the various courses on offer, he took the time to glance about at the other guests.

The Duke of Cleveley sat directly opposite, looking supremely bored. His Grace had said little throughout the discussions, ate sparsely from the many dishes put before him, and continued to drink steadily, although this fact did not affect in any way his political acumen. Alec observed that whenever the Duke tired of the conversation he fiddled with his snuffbox and that his fellows took this as a sign that they could lower their guard, but no sooner did they do so than the great man would offer up some scathing criticism guaranteed to send the diners into a spin of counter arguments. Alec would never agree with the Duke’s politics but this did not stop him admiring the great politician at work. Now he knew why his uncle Plantagenet found the Duke such a worthy and infuriating opponent, and it made him smile contemplating what that old gentleman would have to say at breakfast the next morning when he learnt just who had been at Sir Charles Weir’s dinner party.

Sir Charles leaned toward Alec.

“It’s all rather a bore for you, I’m afraid. Don’t worry, with the ladies gone to the drawing room we fellows can have a good port and a rest.” He patted Alec’s upturned velvet cuff. “I’m glad you came up to town.”

“I should’ve remembered. At school you had a way of getting what you wanted by fair means or foul.”

Sir Charles raised his glass. “That’s what makes me such an effective politician, my lord Halsey.”

Alec flinched. Seven months was not time enough to be comfortable being addressed as “my lord”. Annoyed with himself for letting such a social trifle get the better of him, he downed the rest of his wine in one. Looking up he encountered the Duke’s penetrating gaze. He stared back at him and the heat in his face said it all because the Duke put down his glass, took up his snuffbox, and offered it across the table.

Alec shook his head. “Thank you, your Grace, but I don’t dip.”

The Duke inclined his powdered head and put the little gold box back on the table. “One of your uncle’s many eccentricities is a hatred of tobacco. I read his pamphlet on the subject with great interest. You were raised by him, were you not?”

“Yes, your Grace. Raised by him to form my own opinions,” Alec replied, surprised the Duke had bothered to read anything his uncle had written. “I simply don’t find snuff to my liking.”

“Ah,” said the Duke, dismissing the topic with a long sniff, as if suddenly bored by it. Alec found the mannerism annoying. “Tell me your opinion of the Midanich question.”

“Is there a question, your Grace?” asked Alec. He knew the rest of the diners had broken off their conversations and were listening intently. “I presumed that little corner of Europe now put to sleep. After all, the principality’s minor border skirmish with France was ended, in no small part, due to your efforts.”

The Duke tapped the lid of his snuffbox and flicked open the filigree lid with one finger. His gaze remained on Alec, weighing up his remark, deciding if it contained any hostile insinuation. After all, his government’s handling of the English response to Midanich’s dispute with France had not been popular; many said it was an unwanted interference on England’s part to offer Hanoverian troops to the Margrave of Midanich to enable the closing of the principality’s borders to French invasion. “I shall allow that remark to stand, Halsey.”

“As was intended, your Grace,” Alec answered politely.

There was a long silence broken only by the sound of the Duke taking snuff. It was left to Sir Charles to interpret the mood and he pushed back his chair and gave the nod to his butler; a sign for the ladies to take their leave to the drawing room. The rest of the gentlemen stood, still silent, waiting a cue from the Duke who was oblivious to the tension hanging about him.

With the door firmly closed on the ladies’ backs, Lord George Stanton made his way to the far end of the long room where Sir Charles stood at the sideboard refilling his snuffbox from one of a number of ornamental jars kept on the top shelf of an ornate mahogany cabinet. The rest of the gentlemen had undone the top button of their waistcoats and were settling down to the good drop of port the butler had placed on the table in large crystal carafes.

Alec went to stretch his legs by the windows opposite the sideboard, escaping the intense gaze of several gentlemen who were diverted when the scruffy clergyman invited himself to sit beside the Duke. The cleric’s familiar behavior annoyed these men who had waited this opportunity to make themselves better known to the
great man
. Alec noted that it also annoyed the Duke’s stepson, who could not hide his contempt for the old cleric. And two bottles of claret had loosened his tongue.

“Listen to me, Charlie,” Lord George hissed loudly and hiccupped, “I thought you were going to do something about
him
.”

“What do you suggest I do with a cleric, my lord?” Sir Charles answered with heavy sarcasm.

“What’s he doing
here
?” came the arrogant demand.

“It wasn’t my idea to invite him. I thought that obvious, even to you,” Sir Charles answered cuttingly, replacing the stopper to the porcelain snuff jar. He returned this and its companion to the cabinet shelves. “And do, please, lower your voice.”

“I’m not drunk, y’know,” said Lord George, taking a pinch of snuff from the box offered him. “Thanks. The old badger’s come to
stay
. Can you believe it? Father allowing that dirty piece of filth to
stay
at St James’s Square? He’s got his own room, for God’s sake!”

“Perhaps his grief—”

“Oh, come on, Charlie!” scoffed Lord George and hiccupped again. “I miss Mamma just as much but it hasn’t unhinged
me
. It’s been a twelvemonth and I call that long enough to grieve. After all, it’s not as if mamma was a well woman. She’d been confined to her rooms for the better part of a year before her death. So don’t give me that rot about blind grief!”

“My lord, I—”

Lord George leaned a large arm on the sideboard, his round face close up to Sir Charles. “Know what I think, Charlie.”

“No, I don’t th—”

“He’s got something over him.”

“
What
?”

“Blackmail.”

“That’s absurd,” Sir Charles replied with a hollow laugh. “What could that old vicar possibly have over—”

“You think because you were secretary to the
great man
for ten years you know everything there is to know about him? Then tell me why Father gives that caterpillar the time of day. Only yesterday, they were closeted in the library for three hours.
Three hours
, Charlie.”

Sir Charles took Lord George by the elbow and pulled him about so that his back was to the room. “Have you thought that his Grace may merely be carrying out your mother’s dying wish?”

Lord George belched. “Eh?”

Sir Charles smiled thinly. “If you recall, my lord, it was the Duchess who requested to see Mr Blackwell. Just before she went into her final decline she summonsed the cleric to her bedside. It was he who administered the last rites.”

“
What?
That threadbare nobody presided over Mamma’s deathbed?” It was news to Lord George and he turned and looked down the room at the clergyman who was very much at home with the noblemen about him, joining in the laughter at their bon mots. “Why did she do that, I wonder?”

Sir Charles sighed. “We shall never know now, and I suggest you not bother the Duke with it.” He pocketed his snuffbox, closed the sideboard door, and turned the little silver key in the lock. “If his Grace sees fit to rub shoulders with a
threadbare nobody
it’s not for us to question.”