Somewhat Scandalous (Brambridge Novel 1) (30 page)

“Of course.”

Henry nodded. “Go round the back and enter through the terrace. See if there is anyone trying to get in that we have not invited.”

With a tip of his cap, Ames moved silently through the shadows and disappeared around the corner of the house.

The hall was empty when Henry re-entered the house. All the guests had now arrived, and Victoria was presiding over the affair in the ballroom.

Henry opened the ballroom door slightly and stepped in quietly. The dancing had already begun with locals and house party guests mingling good-naturedly. As soon as he had stepped in, his body sensed where Agatha was standing. She was surrounded by a sea of males who were listening attentively to her every word. Miss Guthrie too was also similarly accompanied. Fashington stood frustratedly at the edge of her circle, Miss Guthrie angled away from him as if on purpose.

As he strode towards Agatha, she glanced at him and then said something to the man next to her, Earl Harding. Henry gritted his teeth and strode forward more quickly. But he was too late. The earl was already leading Agatha out onto the dance floor. The earl met his eyes briefly and smiled wolfishly.

Henry clenched his hands by his side.

“I say Anglethorpe. Jolly good gathering.” Granwich tapped at his shoulder and handed him a glass of champagne. “Haven’t been to a ball with such interesting guests since your parents’ gatherings. Too bad your mother died of consumption. She was an excellent hostess here, even without your father.”

Henry gripped at the champagne glass tightly. “Consumption?” What in the hell?

Granwich stared at him. “Yes of course. She contracted it several months before your father died.”

“She did? I…”

“She never wanted to make a fuss, your mother. She was a very special lady. Always understood the pressure your father was under and the risks that he took.”

“She didn’t die of a broken heart?”

Granwich frowned at him. “Good god man, where did you get that idea? No, she and your father were very much in love, and of course Helen was grief stricken when she died, but she always said she was lucky to have had even the time that she had had with your father, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way. He knew she was going of course. It was the cough that gave it away.”

His mother coughing with laughter outside the carriage.

“Why didn’t she tell me… us?”

“I don’t think she wanted to burden you with it. Consumption is rumored to be highly infectious. Also plays havoc with the body… most patients end up looking like skeletons at the end.”

So that was why she refused had refused to see Victoria or Henry. Not because she was languishing with a broken heart.

Henry balled his hands into a fist. “If only Father hadn’t died… if I could just find what my father was looking
for
.”

Granwich stared at him. “That won’t bring her back.” He grasped Henry roughly by the shoulder. “Henry, you’ve been looking for seven years. Searching for something that you believe will bring back those halcyon days of your family. Your mother and father are dead and you can’t bring them back. You’ve been concentrating on the wrong thing—you should be creating your own family, your own happiness. Then in time, a strand of information will surface and you will be able to continue again looking for whatever it is.” Stepping away, Granwich picked up his cane and turned back. “Imagine dying without having ever loved or been loved?” he said in a low voice. “What use would all your searching have been then?”

Granwich strode away into the crowds, his hand white on his cane.

Henry gasped, a sharp pain seizing his shoulders. He should have known. His father had tried to tell him that day in the Cheshire Cheese.
Look after her if I go.
He’d known already that his mother was dying, that only his sister would be left to look after.

From the terrace, a roar rippled across the crowds. Henry started, running a hand through his hair.

“Why, you little bitch!” Charles pushed open the terraced door and staggered through it, pursued by the small dark form of a woman.

“And whilst we are here, Lord Charles Fashington, I never want to see you again in my life.” A disheveled Miss Guthrie appeared behind the lurching Charles. She lifted her reticule and thumped him on the head.

“No wonder no man wants you, you washed up prude.” Charles seemed unaware of his audience and appeared incandescent with rage. “You can’t break our marriage off. Your father won’t allow it. Especially when I tell him what you have been up to.”

Miss Guthrie drew herself to her full height. “What I have been up to!” She laughed hysterically. “I think that everyone—” She gestured to the shocked ballroom in front of them—“will be interested in the fact that you have spent your entire inheritance on courtesans, gambling and my stepmother!”

“Who told you that?” Charles straightened, his hands still covering the sensitive area between his legs. “It’s not true!” he cried wildly to the ballroom. “She’s a wild fantasist and a liar. She’s just jealous of Lady Guthrie.”

He looked around himself, eyes bulging as the guests turned their back on him. “What are you doing?” he burst out as voices here and there echoed ‘inheritance’, ‘gambling’, and even more worryingly, ‘depraved sexual tastes’. “What have you done?”

“I’m not sorry, Charles.” Miss Guthrie collapsed onto the supporting arm of Victoria. “I asked you out onto the terrace to break the news to you in person and discreetly.”

“Oh, come on. Everybody knows that if a lady asks you onto the terrace then she only wants one thing.”

“Really, Charles, I would have thought you had learnt your lesson on that front by now.” Striding across the ballroom, Henry bent to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen out of Miss Guthrie’s hand. “Hmm. I promise the bearer five thousand guineas.”

“I thought I could buy him off.” Miss Guthrie bit the words out. “He could give it to his lover, my stepmother.”

“I’ll still take it.” Charles looked hopeful. “Consider it a parting present.”

“I don’t think she needs to do anything like that, Charles.” Victoria ripped up the waiver. “In fact I think you can collect your things now and a coach will take you to the local inn, and then you can leave from there.” She signaled to two waiting footmen.

“Look, we don’t need to do anything hastily. Anglethorpe? Henry,” Charles pleaded. “Goddamnit, you can’t do this to me! I’m a peer of the realm and my work is important!”

Henry watched immovably as the footmen led a hunched and shaking Charles away. He looked at the guests who had gathered around, the initial excitement of the new gossip wearing off.

“I think, Victoria, that more dancing is needed.” He checked his pocket watch and stilled. “And this time we should play a waltz.” Henry walked over to the string quartet. After a murmured conversation, the players enthusiastically picked up their instruments and started a lively melody.

He clapped his hands together. “Ladies and gentlemen! Please find your partners for the first waltz of the evening!”

A shimmer of gold distracted him. Agatha slipped through the open terrace door that Charles had staggered through. He strode quickly after her, but on the dimly-lit patio, however, there was no sign of a golden siren. A few gentlemen stood smoking, discussing shooting and estates. He strode into the gardens beyond. The grass was long and wet underfoot and bent where footsteps had already crossed it.

He found her at last in the center of a dark, box hedge enclosure, seated on a semi-circular marble seat, the strains of quartet floating through the air. She gazed unblinking at a hollow sphere-shaped sundial.

With a slender finger she traced the edges of the marble seat. “Why didn’t I have the courage to deal with Charles Fashington in the same way?” she asked in a low voice.

“Because you were younger and because you had received those threats, Agatha.” He stood in front of her and stared down at the auburn highlights in her hair. “And you had no one to advise you as Miss Guthrie did.” Henry plucked at his cravat and unbuttoned his coat. Despite the cool air, he was rather hot. “And besides, I had forced you into it. I was meant to be your guardian. I was just…” Henry strove for control in his voice “…so angry at what you had done.”

“He wasn’t meant to be there. In that room, I mean.”

Henry sighed. “Charles is an opportunist. You were young and inexperienced, your head too full of ideals.”
      Agatha looked up at him, and then away quickly, small strands of her hair falling delicately against her neck. “There you go again, telling me about who I am and what I should be. And yet you… you
kiss
me as if nothing else matters.”

Henry shook his head and pulled at his coat. “Agatha, will you, could you dance with me please?”

Agatha turned back to stare at him, the golden dress rustling as she moved. Slowly she put out her hand.

Despite everything she still liked him. With a gasp, Henry tentatively put out his own hand, knocking at the side of his coat. In horror, he watched as the pocket watch he had thrust in with little care earlier fell out and crashed to the hard floor with a dull thunk, the casement opening to lie flat on the stone.

Agatha stared open mouthed at the dented watch, her hand dropping back to her side. “Where did you get that?”

Henry stared at her disappearing hand. “It was my father’s.” He bent down and cradled the watch in his palm, the old metal warming in his hands.

“Not the watch, the paper with the Greek letters. I’ve seen it before.” She looked away. “It’s not very funny, is it?”

“Pardon?”

Without looking at him, Agatha pointed at the charred scrap of paper tucked into the lid of the watch casement.

“It says
‘ihn’
,” Henry said dully. “It’s part of the
Monsieur Herr
affair. It means ‘him’ in German.”

“No, it doesn’t.”
      “I beg to differ, Agatha.”

“It doesn’t say ‘him’.”

“You would argue with the German ambassador?”

“German’s do not capitalize within words. At least, none of the famous German scientists I know did. But they certainly knew the universal language of mathematics. Greek letters. Like the ones in that book of verse you have.”

“
Greek letters
?” So she had taken
Conversations on Science
with her. He couldn’t help the burst of hope that bloomed further in his chest. “My book of verse is in translation.”

“Oh. That would explain it. Yes. It says I H Π, Iota Eta Pi in Greek to be precise.”

“Iota Eta Pi.” Good god, so it did. “That’s not a joke, Agatha.” He held out his hand again.

Agatha stared at his hand, her arms straight by her side. “If you say it quickly, it sounds like
I ought to eat a pie
.”

“I ought to eat a pie. I ought to eat a pie.” Henry slammed his fist down on the bench. “It still makes no sense. We’re no further forward in finding this man.” He thrust his arm out again. “Come, dance with me.”

“It’s not a man—you’ve said that yourself.”

“Hell and damnation.” She was right. “We’ll dance in the ballroom, tell everyone…”

“No.” Agatha put out one hand and slid further away on the marble seat. She wrapped her arms around herself, clasping her dress to her. “I’ve remembered where I saw that paper before, in the grate at Lady Foxtone’s ball. Good god, you didn’t even ask me about it.” She paused, rubbing at the exposed underside of her arm. “That’s why they all thought I was the spy. Why didn’t you just ask me? My brother asked you to look after
me
.” She looked up at him, her eyes glassy, searching his. Slowly her features hardened. “It’s all just a game to you, isn’t it, Henry? The half truths, the unanswered questions. You don’t really care for anyone at all. It is all about you and your work.”

He couldn’t answer, could only stare at her, clenching his fists so tightly his nails dug into his hands. With just a few words she had revealed the real truth. How could he tell the woman he loved that while he had told himself he was protecting her, in truth it was because he had been protecting himself? He, the famed Hawk, was in reality a selfish, gutless
chicken
. And she, rightly, wanted nothing to do with him.

CHAPTER 37

The string quartet playing in the large recital chamber in Hanover Square Rooms sawed their bows valiantly on across their instruments despite the chattering from the third row of seats.

“I heard that she actually kicked him
there
!”

“You mean as in…?”

“Yes, precisely! And then she told him that she never wanted to see him again.”

“I heard that he had been having an affair with her stepmother.”

“Lady Guthrie? How awful. I did wonder why she married that old man. Charles Fashington used to be rather dashing.”

“Yes, but the
stepmother.
”

“Do you think he meant to carry it on when they were married?”

Agatha turned away from listening. The gossip was vaguely sickening. And the turbans an even more putrid shade of violet than ever. On a positive note, at least the gossip wasn’t about her.

The two rather strident voices carried above the mediocre musical recital that she was attending that afternoon at Hanover Square Rooms. The last time she had been at here she had become engaged to Fashington herself. She shuddered.

The gossips sat fanning themselves with their programs as a young lady sang an operetta at the front. Despite the disapproving looks being levelled at the matrons, no one had yet dared a direct confrontation. Most of the audience were too interested in hearing what they were saying.

“I’m not sure. You know, I’ve also heard that he is penniless.”

“
Really
?”

“Hmmm. Not a bean to his name.”

“Bang go his chances of finding another lady to marry him. It would have been alright if not for the nasty public nature of the break-up.”

“And the stepmother.”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t this his second broken engagement too?”