Chapter 29

A day or so earlier, a most curious and – if anyone concerned had known of it – excessively disturbing scene had taken place in a rented house on the edge of fashionable London.

A lady in her thirties was sitting over breakfast, wrapped in a lace peignoir of scandalous design. The vision of her ample charms thus revealed was, however, wasted on the gentleman opposite her at the table, or one would hope so, for he was quite plainly her brother, half-brother, or some other close male relative: they were both handsome, if a little dissolute in appearance, with glossy chestnut-brown hair and wicked dark eyes. She looked clever, though he perhaps did not; they neither of them looked kind. The boudoir in which they sat was sadly disordered, with piles of feminine clothing intermixed with trinkets and what appeared to be a large number of unpaid bills. The pair seemed inured to the chaos around them, and the gentleman addressed himself in silence to a large tankard, while the lady flicked through her correspondence in a desultory fashion. But presently she chanced upon something that interested her enormously, and as she read on, she sat up straighter, her fine black eyes flashing with concentration, her dark brows furrowed. Her companion was oblivious to her change in attitude, until she said, in a voice rich with triumph, ‘Adolphus, put down your ale and listen to me. I believe I have discovered something that may change our fortunes at last!'

‘Well, I'd like to hear it, though I can't imagine what it might be. I think we're at point non plus, myself, and it'll be the sponging house for us next,' he said, without any noticeable signs of excitement.

‘You're wrong! Only listen to this from Fanny Trent… No, it is too long to read to you, for she is such a rattlepate it is a wonder nobody has throttled her yet. In any event, shorn of all her nonsense, she tells me that she met Selina Debenham and that sour-faced daughter of hers at a posting house somewhere or other on the Great North Road – it does not signify where…'

‘Really?' he replied in accents heavy with sarcasm. ‘Selina Debenham, you say? At a posting house? How fascinating! And you call your blasted friend, whatever her name is, a rattlepate!'

‘Only listen! Selina was in a towering rage, Fanny says, because she'd dragged the whole family up to Northriding Castle in the hopes of snaring the Duke for the girl.' She saw he was about to interrupt again, and held up her hand. ‘You will understand all presently if you will only be patient and listen for a moment. Selina failed in her scheme, and that is what made her mad as fire. She could not help but tell Fanny that Northriding has this very week announced his engagement, at some dreary provincial ball he held and she attended. And the woman he is marrying, my dear brother, is someone you know very well indeed. It is Lady Georgiana Pendlebury! What do you think of that?'

Captain Hart had been swigging his ale as she spoke, and now he choked on it, and his sister was obliged to pound him on the back, which she did in an impatient and ungentle fashion. It was a while before he recovered himself enough to speak. ‘Georgie!' he croaked. ‘Dammit, Caro, you should know not to spring her name on me like that! A fellow has feelings, you know.'

‘Feelings!' she scoffed. ‘It's her eighty thousand pounds you had feelings for, Adolphus Hart!'

He acknowledged that there was some truth in this, but added wistfully, ‘She was a fine piece, though, sis! Marriage to her would have been no kind of hardship, setting aside the fortune. I was always sorry I never managed to persuade the minx to…'

‘Never mind that now. I presume you still have a score to settle with her, after the atrocious way she treated you?'

Hart's fingers went unconsciously to his right temple, where he still bore the scar which Lady Georgiana had inflicted on him with a poker the last time they met. That she had been protecting herself from crude and unwelcome advances on his part was, naturally, not something that was very likely to occur to him. And he had been humiliated, too – knocked down in the dirt by a slip of a girl. It was not to be thought of, but he found that he did quite often think of it, and the memory, along with the wound, had festered. He swore now at the recollection. ‘I'll damned well say I do!' he replied with some heat.

‘Well, there is no denying that my last scheme to pay her back and put her in your power again did not work as well as I hoped,' said Mrs Aubrey, ‘and you must take the blame for that, for I lured her to that house just as I promised, and it is not my fault you failed to take advantage of it!'

‘I've told you a hundred times,' her fond sibling replied between gritted teeth, ‘I could not see hide nor hair of the chit when I got inside. I searched the whole place from top to bottom, opened every door I could, and saw some damned interesting sights, including you, my dear sister, in a situation I could have well done without laying eyes on, but her I could not find.'

‘We know why now, don't we?' Caroline said, with barely concealed impatience. ‘You may not have been attending – perhaps you were drunk – but my dear friend Lucienne told me not a sennight ago that she saw the Pendlebury girl, who I had previously pointed out to her, going into a private room with some man who must have approached her, and emerging from it with him some considerable time later. Lucienne said it was quite plain from her demeanour just exactly what they had been about – and you must admit she would know if anyone would.'

Captain Hart did not quibble with this; he was too well acquainted with the lady in question. ‘But you don't know who the fellow was, do you? You'd think your Lucienne could describe a man she saw twice, but apparently not. Perhaps she was drunk! I shouldn't wonder at it.'

His sister brushed this aside. ‘She saw him only for a moment on each occasion, she did not get a good look at his face, and was in any case not particularly attending, as why should she be? She noticed only that he was tall, dark-haired, and well-dressed, and held the girl very firmly by the hand.'

‘I dare say!' said the Captain coarsely. ‘Don't suppose it's all he held her by, if your precious friend is right. Lucky devil.'

‘And that is very much to the point. I could do nothing before – the chit thought she had me at an impasse, and she did, damn her, when she threatened to expose my role in her going there, as well as what I carelessly let her see of my activities. I admit that was a mistake on my part. But now, now things are different, thanks to Lucienne and also to today's news.'

‘How so?' said her brother.

Mrs Aubrey sighed. She was, of course, fond of her only half-brother – was she not exerting herself even now to right the wrong that had been done him last year by the Pendlebury family? – but she admitted privately that he was often a trial to her, as there could be no doubt that he had not been handed his fair share of the family's brains at birth. If she had been present and directing matters in Brighton last summer when he had been in pursuit of his little heiress, he would not have made such a mull of the affair, and now would be wed to her and in happy possession of her extremely desirable fortune. No doubt Mrs Aubrey too would have had a share of that great bounty, as would have been only fair. It was regrettable, all that they had lost, but she was a gamester with a reckless streak, not a woman to dwell on the past, and it seemed to her that the future held new promise now. So she stifled her exasperation, and explained, ‘We know that the girl visited a house of most dubious reputation…'

‘You engineered that,' the Captain put in. No doubt he thought he was being helpful.

‘That doesn't matter any more, Adolphus,' she said, with exaggerated patience. ‘Because we now also know that, instead of leaving immediately, as any innocent should if she found herself in such a place because of another's trickery, she stayed, and went apart with some stranger, and stayed a long while with him in a private room. While we do not know what occurred there, I think we can imagine.'

‘Damn right we can!' said her brother, his eyes bulging slightly. ‘I suppose he might have forced himself on her,' he added thoughtfully, with no particular appearance of concern for one who had once been the woman he intended to spend his life with.

‘That doesn't matter either.' Indeed, to Mrs Aubrey, it did not. ‘Whether she was forced or went willingly, she is irrevocably compromised. And now that she is betrothed to the Duke, we can make use of it.'

‘Terrible reputation, Northriding,' said Hart sapiently.

‘I dare say. But who cares for that, when a man is as wealthy as he is? Such a great prize – I am sure she thinks she has done very well in snaring him, and is excessively glad she did not throw herself away on a penniless nobody like you! No, she is to be a duchess! The whole pack of them must be delighted, especially after the dance she led them last year. They were almost forced to welcome Captain Hart into the fold with an appearance of complaisance, but now they will be allied with one of the oldest and richest families in England.'

‘When you put it like that, it does seem damned unfair.'

‘Of course it is. But however much of a rake Northriding might be, I am sure he would not take a woman with a past as his bride, and such a past. An affair of the heart he might forgive perhaps, if he is taken with her, but to marry a woman so reckless that she went to that house, and met a stranger there, and… Well, I need not say more, need I? Men are such hypocrites where a woman's reputation is concerned,' said Mrs Aubrey. She had a great deal of bitter experience to back up her words, and they rang with conviction. ‘He would worry that she might foist any passing stranger's brats upon him and swear they were his. These old families are terribly proud, it is well known, and obsessed with the purity of their lineage. So I expect that Lady Georgiana would pay a great deal, a very great deal – and not only in gold, Adolphus, I am sure – to have us keep her secret, so that she may still marry her precious Duke and take her position at his side.'

‘Not only in gold…' said Hart slowly. She perceived that he understood her at last. To give him his credit, he was slow, but sure. ‘She is damaged goods already, so it cannot matter to her in the least what she gives me. I care for the money, naturally – I feel we have a right to it – but much more than that I will be very glad to have the opportunity of paying her back, the little vixen. You see if I do not make her suffer for what she did to me. You may rely on me for that. And if I can foist a brat of mine on Northriding as his precious heir, why, so much the better. That would be a pretty revenge indeed. Caro, you're a genius!'

‘I know I am,' said Mrs Aubrey. ‘I never had the least doubt of it.'