Louise Allen – The Officer and the Proper Lady (страница 11)

‘M’sieu?’ The waiter flung the door back with his usual enthusiasm.

‘Silence!’ Hal started to shout, then dropped his voice to a hiss. ‘Coffee. Strong, black. Lots of it. Toast. Dry. And is Captain Grey in his room?’ The man nodded nervously. ‘Then ask him if he will come here, will you? Quietly.’

‘Headache?’ Grey asked with a cheerful lack of sympathy five minutes later, picking his way through discarded bottles and clothing.

‘You might say that.’ Hal sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the room to stop moving.

‘I thought you had the hardest head of any man I know,’ Grey observed with a grin. ‘How gratifying to find you are human after all.’

‘I do have the hardest head. And just now, the most painful. Will, did I challenge anyone last night?’

‘What? To a duel? No.’

‘Thank God for small mercies.’ So, he had ridden away, not challenged Fordyce for whatever quarrel he and Julia had been having. Such restraint surprised him.

It was not until he had drunk three cups of coffee, forced down two rolls and stuck his head into cold water that he remembered that Julia had told him to go away in a voice icy with anger, and he had gone, because, much though he wanted to quarrel with her companion, he wanted her to forgive him. And she was angry with him, not just with Fordyce.

‘There’s post.’ Will Grey strolled back in and poured himself some coffee from the second pot that Hal was working his way through. He tossed the heap onto the table, ignored Hal’s wince, and sorted through it.

‘Who’s that?’ Hal pulled the top one in his pile towards him. ‘Don’t recognize the writing.’

‘Open it,’ Grey suggested as he broke the seal on one of his, scattering wax shards all over the table. A waft of heavy perfume filled the air, revolting Hal’s stomach. ‘Ah, the divine Susannah.’

Hal opened it and glanced at the signature. Your obedient servant, Mildenhall, the strong black signature said. What the devil was Monty, Viscount Mildenhall, doing writing to him? He’d been at Monty’s wedding to Midge Hebden, back in February, but they were hardly regular correspondents, despite having both served together before Monty left the Army.

Despite his aching head, he grinned at the memory of the most chaotic wedding he had ever attended. The groom had dragged his bride up the aisle of St George’s, Hanover Square, and demanded that the vicar marry them, the vicar had protested that the bride was obviously unwilling, her relatives were swooning from mortification or glowering like thunderclouds, depending on their sex, and the bride was arguing with almost everyone. At this point Hal had been forced to stuff his handkerchief into his mouth and duck under cover of the pew in order to stifle his laughter.

Monty, a man of quiet determination, had not been an effective officer for nothing. He overcame both bride and cleric, and the couple were duly wed. It was not until Hal and his brother Marcus were back at the wedding breakfast that Rick Bredon, Midge’s stepbrother, drew them to one side to explain the chaos.

Hal’s reminiscent grin faded. Midge had been stopped on the steps of the church by a man claiming to be her half-brother, Stephen Hebden. Midge, affectionate and impulsive as ever, had wanted him to come into the church, only for him to be violently rejected by her uncle until Monty, marching out to find his bride, had stopped the argument. By which time the man had gone.

Rick, whose father had tried to find Midge’s half-brother for years and believed him dead, was adamant that the man was an impostor, but Hal had known better. Stephen Hebden, also known as Stephano Beshaley, was the illegitimate son of Midge’s father and his Gypsy lover and a sworn enemy of the Carlow family, and of the family of Marcus Carlow’s wife, Nell Wardale.

The reason for his hatred was a mystery that they were only slowly unravelling. All they really knew was that it reached back twenty years to the days when Hal’s father, the Earl of Narborough; Nell’s father, William Wardale, the Earl of Leybourne and Midge and Stephan’s father, Kit Hebden, Baron Framlingham, had worked together to unmask a French spy at the heart of government.

Hebden, the code breaker, had been murdered, apparently by Wardale, who went to the gallows for the crime while his best friend George Carlow, Lord Narborough, stood by, convinced of his culpability. His father, Hal knew, had never recovered from his sense of guilt over that. With their title and their lands attaindered, the Wardale family had slipped into poverty and lost contact with each other. Midge’s mother had remarried.

And then, for some reason no-one could fathom, the old scandal had resurfaced last year in a series of attacks on the three families that all seemed to centre on Stephen Hebden. Hal felt the cold anger sweep over him again as he recalled the nightmare.

But the more they had discovered, the more people who were drawn into the mess, the less they understood, even with the assistance of old family friend Robert Veryan, Lord Keddinton. Although Veryan was high in government circles, even he could not explain it.

When Hal was last home on leave, Marcus had said that he suspected someone else must be involved, that it could not just be Stephano Beshaley, ruthlessly fulfilling his mother’s dying curse on the three families.

Hal shook his head, winced and focused on the letter.

My dear Carlow,

I have been in some trouble to decide what best to do in this matter, but, given that I know you better than your brother, I have decided to write to you.

You will recall the events that disturbed my wedding in February. Despite my best efforts, my wife continues to associate with her half-brother, Beshaley. Midge, bless her, would believe the best of Beelzebub.

Damn it, this was what he feared. Had another of Beshaley’s calling cards—silken ropes that recalled the execution of a peer—been found? If it had, danger at worst, scandal and ruined reputations at best, were to be expected.

You will forgive me, I hope, for referring to the gossip that arose when your sister-in-law resumed her place in Society. That, and the other incidents affecting the three families, have been well-managed by those concerned. But now murmurings have come to my ears from busybodies who delight in telling me gossip affecting Midge. Speculation is resurfacing about the old scandal.

To be frank, there is doubt thrown on Wardale’s guilt as the murderer. Hebden died in your father’s arms, outside your father’s own study. I will tell you this bluntly, as in your shoes I would prefer to be told—there are whispers at the highest level that it is suspicious that Lord Narborough did nothing to help clear Wardale’s name, despite the fact that they were close friends.

I have tried, discreetly, to find the source of these rumours, for the respect I have for you from our days fighting together, and for the friendship Midge has for your sister Verity. But it is like chasing a wisp of smoke.

Nothing is spoken of that links your father’s name with the spy’s treachery—that aspect of the original murder is still not common knowledge. But whispers about Wardale’s liaison with Midge’s mother are circulating, along with comments that your father is known to hold the strongest of views on marital infidelity. Without an understanding of the work the three men were engaged on, a puritanical aversion to adultery is no motive to be taken seriously for murder. But once spying is added to the mix, at this time when the whole country is in uproar over the renewed French menace, God knows what stories will be spun.

I hope this warning will suffice to put you on your guard to protect your father and your family. I imagine you could well do without this news, just when the great confrontation with Napoleon is looming. I envy you the opportunity to take part in that fight.

For myself, with a happy event expected in the autumn, I only want to keep Midge safe from the poisonous webs her half-brother weaves.

Believe me, my dear Carlow,

Your obedient servant,

Mildenhall

‘Hell and damnation.’ Hal tossed the letter onto the table and tried to think. He had two conflicting duties, but the priority was clear. He must not follow his immediate instinct and go home: Napoleon could make his move at any moment, this was no time to take leave. All he could do was to write to warn Marcus.

‘Problems?’ Grey raised a languid eyebrow. ‘I’ll swap you for my mail; it is all bills—and Susannah wanting a new gown. Could I have spent so much at my snyder when I was last in town? Hard to believe.’

‘You don’t want this,’ Hal said casually. ‘Legal problems with some tiresome old family legacy. And yes, I can believe your tailor’s bill is astronomical.’ He stood up, letter in hand. ‘I’d better write to my brother, I suppose.’

‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Grey ambled out, coffee cup in hand. ‘See you at luncheon?’

Hal shuddered at the thought of food, although he knew he was going to have to eat. ‘Yes.’ As the door shut, he flipped open his writing desk and unscrewed the top of the ink pot. Best to send Monty’s letter as an enclosure, save rewriting the lot.