Marriage is the goal of all illustrious women, but widowhood, a well-endowed one, is to be the most coveted of all.
Advice to Felicity Langley from her Nanny Helga
London
One week earlier
“I won’t. I will not. I will never,” Minerva Sterling, the dowager Marchioness of Standon, declared. “Aunt Bedelia, you can save your breath and your time—and your shoe leather as well—for there is no need to trot over here every day and try to cajole me into seeking another husband. I have no interest in marriage. None. So you can just forget any notion of me attending Lady Veare’s soiree with you.”
That should have been enough to deter anyone, but this was Aunt Bedelia. And as such, Minerva’s adamant assertion did nothing to deter the lady.
“My dear girl, never worry about my shoes. Chudley is as rich as Midas. I can have as many pairs as it takes to make you gain some sense. That is the advantage of having a husband,” Lady Chudley, the aforementioned Aunt Bedelia, said, waving off her niece’s protests as one might the stale cakes at Almack’s. “Just look at what I did for Lucy and Elinor! Imagine, Lucy Sterling a countess—that alone should make me the most successful matchmaker in London. But now! Why, not even a month later, and here is our dear, dear Elinor married to the Duke of Parkerton, just as I planned. How could I fail to do anything less for my own niece?”
Minerva pressed her fingers to her forehead, feigning the beginnings of a megrim, while she resisted the urge to point out that for her to do better in marriage, her aunt would have to find her a prince.
Not that she was looking. For she wasn’t.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t slightly envious of her friends’ happy situations.
Friends! With Lucy and Elinor, no less. Why, a month ago Minerva would have scoffed at such a thing.
Having summoned them to London, the Duchess of Hollindrake had banished the lot of them to this house and given them a choice—live together under the same roof or get married.
Oh, the first few days had been a horror, but then something amazing happened: Minerva, Elinor, and Lucy established an uneasy truce. Then, unbelievable as it was, discovered they could be friends. And finally, had joined forces to help each other.
Now, best of all for Minerva, with Lucy and Elinor’s marriages, she could live in the house on Brook Street to the end of her days in relative comfort. Alone. Without a husband. Doing exactly as she saw fit.
That thought, while a welcome notion a month ago, now yawned before her. Like this evening, which Aunt Bedelia had interrupted by arriving and announcing that she was taking her to Lady Veare’s soiree. Not that her planned entertainment of attempting the latest embroidery pattern from the new issue of the Lady’s Magazine had been all that inviting.
For if she was inclined to be honest, life with Lucy and Elinor—though initially repugnant—had turned out to be full of adventure, especially when her two fellow dowagers had discovered love and their own perfect happy endings.
Minerva’s heart skipped a beat as she considered her own hand in both matches . . . and just as quickly she stopped herself.
Oh, gammon! She was turning into Aunt Bedelia if she was taking credit for such things. Heavens, what would she be like in a few years, if after only a few days alone she was already making such assumptions?
Minerva stole a glance at her aunt, who was pouring herself another glass of wine from the decanter—never a good sign, for it meant the old girl was deep into a plot. Most likely how to foist some unsuspecting lord into her niece’s path. And as it turned out, she wasn’t too far off on that suspicion.
“Dear girl, there is nothing wrong with seeking a husband,” the lady began, settling deeper into the settee, which was as bad a sign as the wineglass filled nearly to the brim. “I would be delighted even if you were able to secure a mere baron. I was married to one once. Lord Taunton.” She sighed dreamily, as if she were once again a debutante of seventeen. “Taunton was a wicked man if ever there was one. Barons do seem to be inclined toward a wildness that is unmatched. Why I remember once, we were at the Grassby ball, and he suggested we go upstairs in the middle of a cotillion and—”
“Aunt Bedelia!” Minerva protested. She should never have brought out that bottle of Madeira. “Honestly! Are such details necessary?”
“Apparently so,” the lady insisted. “There are advantages to having a man in your life—advantages you seem to have forgotten.”
“Might I remind you I was married to Philip Sterling?” Minerva shuddered, as she usually did when she remembered her short and very unhappy marriage to the Marquess of Standon. He’d lived a long, ruinous life before she’d been hauled to the altar and forced to marry him—the third such unhappy bride to pledge her troth to the spoiled, drunken Hollindrake heir.
Aunt Bedelia took a long sip from her wineglass. “I doubt Standon could even do his duty, given the dissolute life he led. Why no wonder you are so averse to marriage, dear girl. You haven’t been properly tupped, have you?”
Minerva opened her mouth to protest, but what could she say? First of all, she was mortified beyond words to be having this discussion with her elderly relation, and secondly, her aunt was utterly correct.
Philip Sterling’s licentious life had left his manhood as flaccid as his protruding belly.
So there it was, she’d never been properly “tupped.” Not even close.
“Never mind, my dear,” Aunt Bedelia said. “That is what your collection of French novels are for. At least for the time being. We just need to find the right man for you so you can put your reading days behind you. Then you can forget all about that loathsome Standon. He certainly wasn’t a fit example of matrimony.”
“Truly?” Minerva remarked with every bit of sarcasm she possessed.
A note her aunt did not miss. “I will say it again, my dear, if I had known what your father intended back then, I would have come to your defense. I would never have stood for—”
“Yes, I know,” Minerva said hastily, for she didn’t like dwelling on her father’s deception. His machinations back then haunted her still. And for a few moments an awkward silence sat between them.
Not that this uncomfortable pause would give her indomitable aunt a moment’s hesitation at continuing to press her suit. Especially fortified as she was with not one, but two glasses of Madeira.
“Shall we just agree that you were married to the wrong man?” her aunt offered. “However, Minerva, I tell you as one who knows, the right husband will put a spark in your eyes and a spring in your step.”
Now it could be argued that Bedelia knew more on the subject of marriage than anyone else could profess to, for the lady had managed to walk down the aisle no less than five times. And as further proof, there was no disputing that her aunt had been blushing like a schoolgirl ever since she’d married Lord Chudley.
Good heavens, her aunt and Chudley . . . together? Minerva shuddered again. For certainly they were too old for such antics . . . weren’t they?
She glanced over at her aunt, only to spy the telltale hint of pink on her aunt’s cheeks and a sly grin that suggested a secret satisfaction with life—not unlike the expressions Lucy and Elinor had been sporting of late. Why, Elinor had positively glowed yesterday when she’d come by to fetch her sister Tia, as well as her dogs and the litter of pups that had taken up residence in the second floor linen closet.
With all of them gone, the house had been uncharacteristically quiet last night—something Minerva hadn’t considered. Without the dogs, Tia’s youthful chatter, Lucy’s nephew Mickey bounding up and down the stairs, why it was rather like a mausoleum around here.
“Minerva—” her aunt began, and as if she could read minds, picked up that very thread and marched forward with it. “You cannot tell me that you will be happy living alone in this drafty, wretched house for the rest of your days?”
Minerva ruffled a bit. For indeed the house on Brook Street was hardly a fine mansion, but now that it was hers, she took offense to having its deficiencies pointed out. “Whatever is wrong with this house? The address is most sought after”—which was the truth, for it sat only a few steps away from Grosvenor Square, one of Mayfair’s finest—“and I have already been given permission by His Grace to make the necessary repairs—at his expense.”
Since the house was the property of the current Duke of Hollindrake, Philip’s nephew, Minerva had applied to him for the funds for her renovations. And to her surprise and delight, he’d written back in his usual direct and informal manner: Do whatever you want to make that wreck a home. Just don’t tell Her Grace.
For there it was, for all his military accolades and lofty title, the Duke of Hollindrake was a good man at heart. And he knew his wife’s shortcomings as well as her virtues.
Aunt Bedelia let out a sniff at this news—most likely in disapproval, for if Minerva was back in the duke’s good graces, that would make all her arguments about her niece finding a new husband utterly moot.
“I’ve had the house scrubbed from top to bottom,” Minerva pointed out—having borrowed a legion of scullery maids from the duke’s London residence. Unfortunately, the cleaning had only served to reveal all the more that needed to be fixed, not that she was going to tell her aunt this. “The painter, the plasterer, and a man recommended by Lady Geneva for the wallpapers have all called on me and are scheduled to begin in a fortnight. With the house nearly empty, save for me, Agnes, and—”
“The rest of your riffraff!” her aunt rushed to add. “However can you live in this house with such a collection of servants? Why you might wake up to find your throat slit and the silver missing.”
Minerva wasn’t about to ask which was the worse scenario. Still . . . “Yes, yes, the staff is hardly up to snuff,” she agreed. For they too had come with the house. Mrs. Hutchinson, a rather drunken surly housekeeper/cook; the lady’s dim daughter, Mary; Mr. Mudgett, their nearly nonexistent butler; and Thomas-William, Lucy’s father’s former servant.
None of them were proper, respectable employees, but the household was hers, and that counted for something.
Minerva sat up straight and gazed directly at her aunt. “In a few months this house will be as comfortable and fashionable as any on the block. And I will be happily situated. You should be pleased for me, not trying to drag me off to Lady Veare’s soiree—which will boast nothing more than a collection of mushrooms and cits, given her poor connections. Now leave me in peace, Auntie, or I will set Thomas-William after you.”
“Well, perhaps you are correct about Lady Veare’s, but my darling girl, you cannot prefer to remain alone—”
“But I do!” she said, cutting her aunt off. “The quiet and solitude suits me perfectly. In no time I shall be the envy of all.”
Or so the last remaining Standon dowager claimed. That is, until the doorbell jangled and she made the mistake of opening it.
Sir Basil Brownett got into his carriage in front of Whitehall and tapped on the roof once he was settled into his seat. In twenty minutes he’d be home, and he hoped his wife was ready and waiting to leave for their evening at the Prime Minister’s.
Dining with the Prime Minister.
He straightened a bit. Yes, his career was on the rise. Quite the accomplishment for an ordinary fellow from Buxton. In an hour or so he’d be offering advice on the French reconstruction using information he’d gleaned from recent reports, adding a few suggestions for new (and profitable) trading partners along the African coast, and ending the evening with a few on dits about one of the PM’s rivals.
Yes, yes, the perfect evening, he mused, silently practicing his delivery of a particularly interesting bit as his carriage rolled right on schedule past the government buildings lining Whitehall, and then into the darkening streets of London.
Sir Basil only hoped Anthea would be dressed and ready to leave on time. Good heavens, whatever took the woman so long to get ready? Anthea did love to have every detail perfect, but this was the Prime Minister, as he’d admonished her this morning—it wouldn’t do to keep the man’s meal waiting all because she couldn’t decide which ear bobs to wear.
But his wife’s jewels became the least of his worries when, as his carriage slowed to round a corner, the door suddenly opened and a masked man slipped inside. Before the baronet could even utter a peep, raise his cane to pound the roof in alarm, the intruder had a pistol thrust at his forehead and had issued a single warning.
“Don’t say a word or it will be your last, Brownie.”
Sir Basil hadn’t made it up through the steep ranks of the Foreign Office for nothing. “Do you realize who I am? This is treason, you blackguard! I’ll see you hanged!”
The fellow took the seat opposite him and laughed, his amusement belied by the fact that the pistol in his steady grasp remained pointed determinedly at Sir Basil. “Still blustering your way through life, I see. Never were one for fieldwork, or you would know not to take the same route home every night. Such regularity will get you killed.”
“Get out of my carriage,” Sir Basil ordered, determined not to show the fear that was even now wriggling its way down his spine. For one didn’t get to the top of the Foreign Office without making a few enemies. Passing along a few scurrilous and damaging morsels at one dinner party or another . . . and he had no idea who this man was—though his voice . . . well, it was utterly familiar, and yet . . .
“Take my wallet and be gone, if that is all you want,” he said, starting to reach inside his coat.
The pistol wagged in warning, like a nanny’s finger. “Tsk tsk tsk. Keep your hands where I can see them, so I don’t have to put a hole in that jacket. It looks well cut—which suggests you’ve discovered a better tailor in my absence . . . and the means to pay him.”
“Who the devil are you?” Sir Basil blustered anew, keeping his hands fisted at his sides. For this blackguard was right, it was a very expensive jacket. One he could have ill-afforded a few years back, but now . . .
“If you must know, I’m the one with your life in my hands. So cease your bombastic posturing, for I am not one of your minions to be browbeaten and frightened by your meaningless threats.” He paused and leaned back into the cushions. “For I remember when you were merely Basil Brownett, the Brownie from Buxton. Though I must say, for all your finery, you’ve managed to still cling to most of your old manners—always were a bit of a rat—knowing when to jump ship and how to find the richest pickings, weren’t you?”
A shiver ran down the baronet’s spine. For no one had spoken to him thusly, called him by that hideous nickname in some time. Not since he’d been naught but a lad at Eton, and the other boys—those with loftier connections and noble relations—had teased him over his humble origins and country clothes.
And it was more than this whisper from the past, but the voice. The deep, steely voice pierced him. For it couldn’t be . . .
No, it was too ridiculous to consider.
For it meant he was in far more danger than he’d suspected.
“How dare you address me so. You’ll hang for this effrontery,” the baronet said with far more bravado than he actually possessed, for he wasn’t about to believe that this man before him, this shadow from his past could really, truly be . . .
“Hang the dead often, Brownie? You arranged for my death once before, so what makes you think this time you’ll actually manage to get the deed done?”
If there was ever a moment in a man’s life where he looks back upon his actions and sees the long, rippling line of consequences with all the clarity of a Cassandra, this was Sir Basil’s. His heart stilled as if it was going to stop, and he tried to breathe, but the air rushed from his lungs.
“Dear God, no,” he wheezed. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
His adversary leaned closer, the nose of his pistol sitting a hairsbreadth from Sir Basil’s temple, a pair of blue eyes glittering dangerously above the scarf that masked the rest of his features. “Sorry to disappoint you, you double-dealing upstart bastard. It’s me. I’m back in Town.”
“Where is he?”
“I know he is here! Show me to him at once!”
“To you? Whyever would my liebling want one such as you?”
“Your liebling?” This derisive snort was followed by a catty laugh. “I doubt as much.”
This let loose a cacophony of insults and taunts in no less than four languages—German, Russian, French, and Italian. Slurs, retorts, and what Minerva Sterling suspected was outright profanity, flew about the room without any hint of decorum.
In all four directions of her previously quiet parlor stood a lady who had arrived at the house on Brook Street in the past half hour all demanding one thing: to know the whereabouts of Lord Langley, the Duchess of Hollindrake’s infamous father. And in between this collection of Continental nobility was a landscape littered with luggage, trunks, hat boxes, valises, cases, and even a traveling desk. An equal number of colorful servants and maids stood at attention in the foyer.
“Who did you say they are?” Aunt Bedelia asked over the continuing argument.
“The nannies,” she replied, diplomatically. “The duchess’s former nannies.”
Truly, Minerva would have confessed it was impossible to think of these ladies by any other title than “Nanny,” for that was how the duchess had always referred to them.
“Nannies, my old reticule!” Aunt Bedelia snorted. “They are Lord Langley’s Continential collection of doxies.”
Yes, they were that as well. For the Duchess of Hollindrake, for all her airs, had been raised—alongside her twin sister Thalia—by her widowed father’s mistresses. Felicity constantly quoted her beloved “nannies” as if their outrageous and often questionably moral advice had been engraved in gold, and now they were here . . . in Minerva’s salon.
The lady who sought her “liebling,” the Contessa von Frisch, or rather Nanny Brigid, stood at attention with a small black dog seated at her feet. The black, monkey-faced little devil, which she called her “Knuddels,” looked alarmingly like Thalia Langley’s wretched dog Brutus—the one who had chewed nearly every shoe and footman’s ankle at Hollindrake House. No less than three of the duke’s underfootmen and half a dozen maids had quit rather than continue with that “French devil of a dog” nipping at their heels.
And now there was another of these vermin masquerading as a hound in England.
“Whoever are you to question me?” Nanny Brigid was saying, directing her scathing tone at the far corner, where the Princess Natasha, late of St. Petersburg, and known as Nanny Tasha, stood in regal elegance, though she had just referred to the Austrian noblewoman as a “mewling heifer,” if Minerva’s French was correct.
“When my liebling arrives,” the contessa declared, “he will send the lot of you back to the gutters from whence you came.”
This only inflamed her rivals, who flung back equally insulting comments about Nanny Brigid’s apparently infamous reputation in diplomatic circles.
Minerva heaved a sigh and sent an imploring glance at Aunt Bedelia. Do something!
Aunt Bedelia glanced around the room and just shrugged. Whyever would I? The old girl sat happily ensconced on the settee, having stayed for the proceedings like an eager theatergoer.
For certainly not even a Haymarket playwright could have envisioned such a scene.
“Ladies, please!” Minerva said, pushing her way into the middle of the room. “I will not stand for such behavior in my house!”
There was a sniff from one of the corners.
Apparently being designated as merely a lady was not enough for her highbrowed company. So Minerva tried a more diplomatic approach. “Your Grace, Your Highness, Contessa, Margravine, please, all of you, I implore you to listen to me. Lord Langley is not here. You have made a terrible mistake, and I would ask for you to leave my—”
“Not here! Impossible!”
“Of course he is here! I had it from a very reliable source—” the Duchessa di Oristano, the onetime Nanny Lucia, said, waving a letter she’d plucked from inside her pelisse at Minerva.
“You think you can keep him to yourself? You? What could you be to such as him?” This remark came from the formidable Wilhelmenia Charlotte Louise, Margravine of Ansbach, or simply, Nanny Helga, the fourth and last lady of this unwelcome party. The margravine and her rivals all cast scathing glances that ran from the top of Minerva’s head down to her shoes.
Good heavens, what an insufferable woman! And while Minerva hadn’t even the slightest idea how one properly addressed a margravine, right now she thought it more preferable to discover how to get rid of one.
Nanny Lucia chimed in right behind the margravine. “Yes, Lady Standon, if you think you can satisfy my Langley—”
“Cease this instant!” Minerva said, adding a stamp of her foot as an exclamation point to her annoyance. “I will call the watch and have all of you arrested if you are not silent.”
There followed some general sniffs of displeasure and a few muttered complaints about English hospitality, but the nannies came to an uneasy peace accord, their hostilities held in check.
At least for the moment.
“Now once again, Lord Langley is not here—” Minerva began.
“Of course he is!”
“I have conclusive information that says he has been seen—”
“Why do you keep insisting that he is not here, when the evidence—”
“Enough!” Minerva bellowed, forgetting every bit of decorum she possessed. “If, and that is a very big if, he were here—”
“But he is, and I insist—” Nanny Helga started to say, but as quickly stopped when Minerva turned her most quelling look on the lady.
She might not have these ladies’ flair for fashion, she may not have their natural beauty, but she was an Englishwoman through and through, and that, in Minerva’s estimation, counted for much.
And as a marchioness she had to guess she outranked a mere margravine. At least she hoped she did.
It was at this point that Aunt Bedelia finally decided to wade into the fray.
About demmed time, Minerva would have said aloud if she were inclined. Another half an hour in this company and she’d probably be inclined to say much more.
“Please, ladies, my niece is a respectable widow,” Aunt Bedelia told them. “She lives here only with her servants. Alone. Unmarried. Without even a suitor or any hope of—”
“Auntie!” Minerva blurted out. “Your point?”
Aunt Bedelia blinked and then shook her head. “Oh, yes, my point is that your search for any gentleman—here of all places—is for naught.” Minerva groaned, but her aunt continued, undeterred. “As for Lord Langley, he is not here for one simple reason: He is not alive. I myself know that the man was lost in the war. My former husband—God rest his soul—was with the Foreign Office when the baron was lost. He’s been dead for some time, so I fear your travels here have been in vain. Lord Langley is lost.”
“Bah!” Nanny Tasha snorted. “You do not know the man. He could never be, how did you say, ‘lost’! Why, it is a preposterous suggestion. Langley has simply been indisposed. And now he has come home.”
The others nodded emphatically.
“It is how she said,” Nanny Brigid agreed, gathering her dog to her ample bosom. “Langley is in London and I have it on the best authority.”
Another round of agreement circled the room, and Minerva was at a loss as to how to argue with them in the face of their conviction that the Duchess of Hollindrake’s father was not only alive, but here in London.
In her house.
It was all so ridiculous. Too fabulous to believe. For if indeed Lord Langley was alive, wouldn’t his daughter, Felicity, be the best person to answer their questions?
And more to the point, house them?
“I would suggest,” Minerva began, waving a gracious hand toward the door, “that if you do indeed think Lord Langley is here in London, you seek him in the most likely of places, his daughter’s house. I am certain the Duchess of Hollindrake would be more than happy to accommodate your needs as well as discover the truth to this most vexing mystery.” She managed to say all this with a concerned air and a placid smile on her face, as if coaxing four madwomen off London Bridge. “I can even call a carriage to take you all—”
“I will not be tossed out again just because you want to keep him to yourself!”
“This is an outrage! I am cousin to the tsar! I will not be sent begging like some peasant!”
“Nor I! This is an affront to my country!” Nanny Helga stomped her boot to the floor with a sharp resounding thud. Apparently the margrave hadn’t the lofty relations to fling about, but Minerva knew she didn’t want to be the catalyst of some foreign debacle that drew England into a war with a minor principality that most likely could only muster a single regiment.
Then again, war could hardly be imminent. It would probably take the English army some time and effort to find Nanny Helga’s outraged populace.
Minerva stole a glance over at her aunt. Really, now would be the time to help.
Bedelia’s gaze rolled upward and her hands went up in defeat. There is no talking sense with these sorts.
But Minerva wasn’t about to give in so easily. “I am simply asking you to go to Hollindrake House and—”
“Whyever would we go back there?” Nanny Brigid asked.
Nanny Tasha shook her head with an imperious air. “I will not be so insulted again. That awful man at the door”—Staines, the duke’s imperious butler, Minerva guessed—“refused me entrance. He said that the little duchess had gone into the country and would not return for a fortnight.”
Minerva tamped down the desire to go over and strangle Staines. Wretched man!
“But of course, Langley would come here,” Nanny Helga added.
“Whyever would he come here?” Minerva dared to ask. For if she had been feigning a megrim before, one was really coming on now.
Nanny Lucia snapped her fingers and one of her servants who had been hovering in the foyer came bustling in. The duchessa issued her order in brisk Italian, and the young man reached inside his coat and produced a packet of letters for his mistress. Nanny Tasha and Nanny Brigid did much the same, bringing out packets of letters, some tied with ribbons, others just a loose collection of missives. Each lady sorted through her papers and came up with a single letter, which they handed to their servants, who passed them on to Minerva.
“You will find your answer there on the second page,” Nanny Lucia instructed, wiggling her fingers at the document.
Minerva glanced down at the letters in her hand, all composed in the Duchess of Hollindrake’s familiar hand and written about a year earlier. She scanned the lines—bits of gossip, questions about fashions, and finally came to the one that stood out.
That answered that very important question.
Why this address?
I would be ever so grateful that if you hear word of my father, to direct him to return to London. And when he does, to take refuge in my house on Brook Street. Number 7. Despite rumors to the contrary, I am most assured he is alive .
Minerva glanced up at the ladies, who all smiled like cats who’d discovered the cream uncovered. And then she sank into her seat. Alive? The man was alive?
But still, this was hardly proof that the missing baron was in her house. Certainly she would know if she had an uninvited guest living under her roof.
That is, if her house was run like most houses in London. By regular servants. Not the hodgepodge collection of Seven Dials thieves and miscreants that Felicity Langley had hired when she hadn’t two shillings to rub together and, if rumors were true, had moved into this house without actually renting it.
“I shall not leave without him!” Nanny Lucia declared. “I will not.” She then took over the corner of the sofa opposite Aunt Bedelia.
“Nor I,” Nanny Helga said, boot heels clicking together and her hand coming to rest on the desk beside her as if she were claiming that corner for her homeland of Ansbach.
Not to be outdone, Nanny Tasha flounced down on the sole remaining chair, planting herself in Minerva’s parlor with the same stubborn (and unwanted) presence of a deeply rooted dandelion in a rose garden.
That left only the Contessa von Frisch, Nanny Brigid, who glanced around the room like a general might with the battlefield before him. But instead of taking a firm stance, she set her dog down and marched to the door, Knuddles following at her heels like an anxious sergeant-at-arms.
For a moment Minerva held a small hope that the lady, having taken the lay of the land, was going to beat a hasty retreat rather than stay and fight.
Little did she understand the lure of Lord Langley.
Instead, the lady spoke quickly in her own language, ordering her servants—a maid and a rather large footman—to gather her bags. While Minerva and Aunt Bedelia might not have a command of what the lady was saying, apparently the margravine did. Nanny Helga bounded to her feet and began hastily ordering her own servants to gather up her belongings, and then the two ladies began a race to the stairs.
That was enough to translate what had just transpired for not only Minerva, but for the nannies Lucia and Tasha. For in a matter of moments Minerva’s empty house, the one she’d been extolling to her aunt not an hour or so earlier, was filled to overflowing with four unwanted guests as they jostled and vied to claim the empty rooms.
Minerva followed mutely, only to find herself routed and defeated in her own foyer as the cacophony of languages and insults echoed through the house, sharply punctuated by the tromping footfall of servants as they hurried bags and valises up the stairs—servants who, much to her chagrin, ignored her protests that Lord Langley was not to be found in her house and instead followed their mistress’s exacting bidding as if this was their home.
“Do something,” she sputtered to her aunt as the lady came to stand by her side.
But Aunt Bedelia only smiled. “Well, you did say you wanted to be the envy of all.” She adjusted her pelisse and leaned over to peck her niece affectionately on the cheek. “You’ll certainly be the talk of the Town with this collection in your house.” The heavy thump of a trunk as it was dropped overhead rattled the walls. She glanced upward and shook her head. “Best get up there and make sure one of those Continental Cyprians hasn’t laid claim to your bedchamber.” With that, she sauntered over to the door, where she paused once again. “Oh, yes, and Minerva, I daresay that Nanny Helga looks as if her ancestors came across the continent with Attila the Hun. I’ve no doubt the margravine can ransack and pillage with the best of them. So if Lord Langley does arrive—best not get in the middle of it.”
Ellis, Baron Langley, pulled down the scarf that had concealed his identity and looked his old schoolmate dead in the eye.
So his checkered career with the Foreign Office had come to this. With his pistol shoved into Basil Brownett’s quivering brow. How demmed lowering. But since no one other than Sir Basil had the authority to order him killed, it seemed the most logical place to start . . .
“How the devil . . . I mean to say . . .” Sir Basil stammered. “Egads, you’re supposed to be dead!”
“Not from a lack of effort on your part,” Langley pointed out.
“My part? I have no idea what you are talking about,” Sir Basil said, but he colored slightly.
“Save your demmed speeches for your dinner tonight with the Prime Minister and his sycophants.”
Sir Basil’s eyes widened. “How did you know—”
“Brownie, I was the best agent Ellyson ever trained. I know everything about your dull life.”
This time the baronet paled. Deadly so. “My good man, this is no time to be threatening me. I am unarmed. I would never have ordered—”
“Me killed? By having me bludgeoned from behind? Wouldn’t you?”
The fellow across the carriage shook his head vehemently. “Demmit man, we all thought you’d gone over. Turned traitor.”
“Traitor?”
“Yes, though it was never made official,” Sir Basil said, looking all too disappointed over the fact.
“If you’d ever had the courage to venture out from behind that demmed desk of yours, you would have known that those reports were lies. That I was no—”
“We had it from the best sources,” Sir Basil pressed, as if that made it all true. “You’d turned and could no longer be trusted.” His brow furrowed to a hard line. “You of all people know procedure in these cases. The only difference is that your frog friends beat us to you—”
The French? Could this be true? Langley wondered. He’d turned and then been turned on? No. It couldn’t have happened that way.
“Lies. You believed a pack of lies.” Langley set his jaw, the pistol wavering in his grasp. He was tired and cold and hadn’t eaten in some time, so he was ill-disposed to be patient with the likes of Basil Brownett.
“Apparently I also believed the lie that you were no longer living.” Sir Basil sat back and looked overly disgusted at the entire ordeal, though his gaze remained fixed on the pistol still pointed at him.
Langley knew exactly what had Sir Basil in a fettle. Since he, Lord Langley, was indeed alive, there would most likely be an investigation, statements to be taken, records reviewed, and finally, dispatches to higher-ups . . . the sort of examination that could stall a promising career. The sort of thing that worried bothersome little toadies like Sir Basil, but were more akin to a gnat’s bite to men like himself.
Then again, the baron had never held much concern for the niceties of procedure and paperwork. His unconventional methods, notorious goings-on, and disregard for protocol had made him from time to time—nay, most of the time—a giant headache for Whitehall bureaucrats like Sir Basil.
“My good man, do you mind?” Sir Basil nodded at the pistol.
Drawing it back, Langley slid the hammer slowly into place and set it down on the seat next to him. “Who sent in those reports, Brownie?”
The man cringed to be so addressed, for it probably stung to be reminded that his elevation had been so very recent. And that someone remembered where he had come from. “I don’t recall.”
“Don’t or won’t?” Langley asked smoothly, letting his hand rest on the butt of the pistol.
The man surprised him with his answer. “Won’t.”
“I have a right to know who wanted me dead, a chance to clear my name.”
“Why someone wanted you dead?” Sir Basil laughed. “Good God, man! You weaseled secrets out of nearly every crowned head on the Continent, and if not from them, from their wives and mistresses. Not to mention left a rather wide swath of unhappy paramours in your wake, and now you have the impertinence to wonder why someone wanted you dead?”
Leave it to a plain fellow like Brownie to cut through the bluff and blunder of a matter. It was a sobering notion. Owning up to one’s past. Something Langley really didn’t want to do. Not until he got to the bottom of all this. Made up for his mistakes. Discovered the truth.
Most of all, cleared his name. He wasn’t a traitor. He wasn’t. That much he knew. That much he could trust.
Meanwhile, Sir Basil continued on, “Lord Langley, the war is over. Best you realize that.”
“War is never over.”
“Perhaps,” the other man acknowledged. “But my advice—”
“Yes?”
“Stay dead.”
“Stay dead?” Langley shook his head. “No. I’ve given the last twenty-five years of my life in the king’s service and I want to come home. I want my name cleared.” He picked up the pistol and looked Sir Basil directly in the eye. “All of it, sir. That is what I want.”
“I don’t see how you expect me to—”
He cocked the pistol. “I do. And you’ll grant me access to the dispatches from Constantinople, Naples, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Paris for the six months before I was struck down, and you’ll—”
Sir Basil burst out laughing. “You’re joking, surely?”
Langley raised the pistol.
“No, apparently not,” the baronet muttered. “But you must see how completely out of the question such a request is. Those reports are confidential. I certainly cannot turn them over to a known—”
To the man’s credit he stopped short of saying “traitor,” which was probably why he had risen through the ranks.
“—to just anyone,” he finished smoothly. Eyeing the pistol once again, he added slowly, “But, perhaps, I can assign an agent to look into this. See if there are any discrepancies that might have been missed then.”
Hardly acceptable, but given that he was running out of time, Langley was forced to ask, “Who?”
Scratching his brow, Sir Basil considered his options. “Hedges, perhaps.”
“Hedges? That demmed fool? Surprised he continues to find his way to Whitehall on a daily basis.”
From the wry tip of the baronet’s lips, it appeared he agreed with Langley’s estimation of the fellow. “I suppose I could find someone else . . .”
They both paused as the carriage started to slow. Langley glanced out the window to gauge where they were—about to make the final turn onto the street where Sir Basil’s house sat—which meant he was out of time.
At least for now.
“I want my life back,” Langley repeated, pulling the scarf back up to mask his features. Dressed in black from head to toe, he was instantly a shadow, save for his distinctive blue eyes, which shone menacingly even in the darkness.
Shaking his head, Sir Basil heaved a sigh. “Impossible, my good man. You can’t get back what you gave away. And besides, the entire office thinks you’re a traitor. You’ll have a devil of a time proving otherwise.”
Slipping from the carriage as it moved through a dark spot between the gaslights, Lord Langley glanced over his shoulder and said, “We’ll see about that.”