Chapter Four

“Wonderful party, Benedick. Another triumph under your belt,” Nora said as she closed the door to Lord Albemarle’s bedchamber behind her. His lordship was seated in one of the leather wing chairs before his banked fireplace. A letter dangled from his fingertips, and his chin rested in his other hand. Usually a man of carefully composed features, he was frowning as intently as Lord Westfall had been earlier that evening.

The only difference was that Benedick’s scowl was directed toward the fire instead of her. In fact, Lord Albemarle seemed not to be aware of her presence.

“Lord Farraday and his new light-o-love seemed to enjoy themselves in the card room,” Nora said. “Of course, it helped that you arranged for him to win.”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. And next time I’ll arrange for him to lose an amount he can’t afford. After that, he’ll be in my pocket. Useful in the future when I want something done in the House of Lords, I shouldn’t wonder.” His voice was usually a deep rumbling purr that sounded more ominous the softer he spoke. It had a ragged edge now.

“What’s troubling you?”

Without a word, he raised the letter to her. Nora recognized the seal.

“Another one?” She took it from him and wandered closer to the wall sconce for better light as she read:

My dear Lord Albemarle,

Your reticence in this pressing matter puzzles us. You have everything to gain by assisting us in swaying His Royal Highness to support our position at the Concert of Europe in Aix-la-Chapelle in the fall. Our operative tells us he has not changed his views.

Use the Fides Pulvis and get it done.

Otherwise you have everything to lose.

The missive was unsigned, but it was stamped with an enigmatic seal in red wax. The design was a convoluted one, a pair of snakes twisted together in such a way that they devoured their own tails. It was a Gordian knot for deviousness. Nora feared that, unlike Alexander the Great who was first presented with the conundrum, her patron would not be able to unravel it in one stroke.

This was not the first letter Benedick had received from this entity, but it was the first one he’d let her read. She folded it back up and put it on the top of his bureau. Then she went behind his chair and reached around to massage his shoulders. His muscles clenched so hard it was like trying to soften iron.

Benedick had no compunction about ordering the lives of others. He regularly compelled them to his will, but he deeply resisted someone trying to do the same to him.

“Are you going to do as they ask?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t see that I have a choice.”

“What are they threatening you with?”

“The usual.” Every few years or so, the same rumor about Lord Albemarle resurfaced, but he always managed to laugh it off.

Benedick was not laughing now.

“No one will believe them,” she leaned down to whisper in his ear. “You have me, after all.”

“Yes, my dear, I have you,” he said wearily. “But they have some letters I was unwise enough to write to someone of whom I was enamored back when I was younger and very much more foolish. We met in Italy and, though the affair burned itself out in a few months, we continued a rather lusty correspondence for years.”

“Still, letters would be difficult to use as proof.”

“Not if they are in my hand. I do tend to write with a recognizable flair. And I made the mistake of sealing the letters with my signet.” He glared accusingly at the cabochon topaz on his forefinger that was carved intaglio-style with the Albemarle crest. “I wrote a number of things to my dear Italian that were…quite unwise.”

“Then you and I were made for each other. Being unwise is one thing at which I excel.” She settled a hip on one of the arms of his chair, and he put a companionable arm around her waist. “No doubt you were in love, and that makes a fool of the wisest soul.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Love. If ever I tell you I’ve been reduced to that sorry state again, you have permission to use the derringer in my cupboard and put a bullet between my eyes. I would consider it a mercy.”

She leaned down and planted a kiss on his forehead. “None of that. I won’t have it. Not only would the world be a less cheerful place without you, it would be terribly unfair to me!”

“To you. How so?” he asked, an amused smile tugging at his lips.

“My reputation would suffer irreparably if it were known I’d killed my protector. Imagine how hard it would be for me to find another patron after that.”

He laughed again, this time with something approaching real amusement. “Sometimes, my dear, I wish I…but no matter. Perhaps a strawberry may yet be gleaned from this situation.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and drew out an intricate silver snuffbox.

“That’s it? The substance your blackmailers meant?”

“Mmm-hmm. Fides Pulvis.” He opened the top gingerly, taking care not to jostle the contents. “Trust Powder. One pinch and whoever takes it from me will believe whatever I tell them is gospel. Damned handy thing in the right hands.”

“If it works, you could do some mischief with it right enough.”

“Oh, it works,” he said with a wry grin. “I tried it out on Smedley. Of course, it may just have been that my footman was delirious over taking snuff with his lord.”

“What did you convince him was true?”

“I’m afraid I cast a bit of a love spell on the lad. Our upstairs maid, Jane, has been mooning around after the boy for months. She’s a good girl and a willing worker, but she has a smile like a muddy picket fence.” He closed the snuffbox with a snap and returned it to his waistcoat pocket. “However, after a snootful of Fides Pulvis and a few choice words from me, our Smedley is convinced she’s a goddess.”

Nora covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a giggle. “Perhaps she is a goddess on the inside and you’ve only helped Smedley see the real Jane more clearly.”

“Perhaps.”

“If they find happiness with each other, you did a good deed with the Trust Powder.” She shifted from the arm of the chair to his lap and crossed her legs. “Perhaps you could influence His Royal Highness for good as well.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Well, you might convince the Prince Regent to restore his wife to court.” Everyone was in sympathy with Prinny’s estranged princess. Even Nora’s favorite author, Jane Austen, wrote that she would support Princess Caroline’s cause as long as she could, “because she is a Woman and because I hate her Husband.”

“Ha! Why stop there?” Benedick said. “I should persuade him to take her back to his bed.”

Nora gave up and giggled uncontrollably. “Lud, what a lark. That would set the ton on its ear. They’d think he’d gone as daft as the king. Do you remember what he said to Lord Malmsbury the first time he saw her?”

Benedick raised the pitch of his voice half an octave to ape the Prince Regent’s higher tones. “Harris, I am not well. Pray, get me a glass of brandy.”

“Now he’d ask for a double portion!” Nora chuckled and was pleased that Benedick joined her, laughing so hard he was forced to swipe at his eyes. He’d been so depressed when she’d first entered his chamber. If she could lift the man’s spirits when he faced such a daunting problem, she’d done her job.

“But you know, while I suspect Princess Caroline would very much appreciate being restored to court, I highly doubt she pines to be reconciled to her husband,” she said. “Not after the way he treated her after Princess Charlotte died.”

“You’re right, my dear. No one should read in the press that their only child has died in childbed.”

“And His Royal Highness kept her from their daughter for years before that.” Nora’s face burned. She didn’t have to imagine the Princess of Wales’s pain at being separated from her daughter.

“True, then perhaps I should do something constructive instead of devious. Just a reinstatement, so she can be crowned queen when the time comes. You know, that’s not a bad idea at all,” he said, massaging his forehead in thought. “A grateful queen would be a wonderful asset.”

Benedick had innumerable “assets”—people who were beholden to him for one reason or another—scattered across the British Isles.

“Oh! And while you’re influencing our future king, you might want to convince him to recall Beau Brummell and settle his debts,” Nora suggested. “No one has had the courage to dress His Royal Highness properly since that charming man fled the country.”

“That would be a good deed, wouldn’t it? We might actually have a prince who looks the part.” He chuckled again. Now that Brummell was gone from London, Benedick was the ruling epitome of sartorial splendor. His dark good looks turned heads wherever he went, and his signature sense of style was copied, without much success, by would-be dandies all over town. Then his levity faded, and he sank back into the worried frown he’d sported when she first entered the room.

“We’re being a bit silly about it, but Fides Pulvis is obviously dangerous as well,” Nora said. “How did they ever discover you possessed such a thing?”

“How do you think? They sent it to me. I never should have opened the package.” Benedick shook his head. “Why did I not remember the Trojan Horse?”

“You haven’t told me. What is it they want you to convince the Prince Regent to support exactly?”

“They want him to reject the withdrawal of the Allies’ troops from France. If that happens, it will stir up French sentiment against a settlement of any kind. In short, my blackmailers want a return to war.”

Nora squeezed her eyes shut. Not more war. Hadn’t enough young men been sacrificed on that altar?

Men like her husband.

When she had first been widowed, Lewis’s image would come to her fresh-faced and clear, but lately, he’d been harder to picture in her mind. His features wouldn’t come into focus, no matter how hard she tried. She no longer thought she heard him say her name in the dark watches of the night. She’d lost him entirely on that one horrific day. Every day since then, she lost a bit more of him as the memory grew more shadowy.

She shoved away her husband’s shade. Benedick wouldn’t like it if he knew she was pining.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked.

“What can I do? If I’m exposed, it means the gallows.”

Bringing a lord before the bar on capital charges, let alone hanging one if convicted, was as rare as hens’ teeth. “Surely they haven’t enough proof for that.”

“I’ve made it my business to cultivate well-placed friends, but every man also has well-placed enemies. If those letters make it into court, I’ll swing.” As if his cravat was suddenly too tight, Benedick tugged at one end of his waterfall and the starched cloth unraveled to drape on either side of his neck. “There’s nothing the bon ton loves so much as a good example being made so long as it happens to someone else. And hanging a baron for this offense is one they’d take right to their hearts.”

“But if you’re caught trying to use the Fides Pulvis on the Prince Regent, might you not also be accused of treason?”

Benedick nodded. “Yes, but amazingly enough, treason wouldn’t taint my nephew as much as the other.” His sad smile pricked at her heart. Benedick’s heir apparent was nearly of age and hadn’t much use for his doting uncle other than as a source of unlimited banknotes. Nora thought the next Lord Albemarle was a pimply-faced wretch who didn’t deserve the current lord’s favor. “If I’m destined to hang, I’d rather pick my own offense.”

The ormolu clock on his mantel chimed. Nora stifled a yawn.

“Do you think it’s been long enough?” she asked as she rose from his lap.

“Considering how late it is, an hour with the incomparable La Nora speaks well of my manhood.”

Servants watched everything that happened in the great house, including how often and how long a time their master spent with his mistress. Of course, Benedick paid them well enough to instill loyalty, but one could never be too careful.

Those rumors came from somewhere.

Benedick kissed the air at the sides of each of her cheeks. “You looked lovely this evening, Nora. I could not have wished for a more gracious hostess for such generally unworthy company. However, into each life a little riffraff must fall.”

“Many of them are highly useful riffraff.”

“Quite so.”

But how many of those who hung on Lord Albemarle’s arm now would turn on him like a pack of wolves if the rumors swirling about him were proven true?

She let him walk her to the door. “Shall I send Mr. Rivers to you?”

Benedick shook his head. “No need. He’ll come. Good night, my dear. Remember we’ve an opera to attend later this week.”

Being seen at all the right places with his glamorous mistress on his arm was part of maintaining Benedick’s reputation as a man about town. While Nora might be shunned by the ladies at these entertainments, their titled husbands would send surreptitious glances toward Lord Albemarle’s box all evening, ill-concealed envy in their eyes. And Benedick’s stature would rise on account of his beautiful paramour.

Nora stepped into the darkened corridor as the door closed behind her and started toward the stairs. Before she reached the corner she almost stumbled into Desmond Rivers. The handsome young valet had been watching his master’s door like a tabby before a mousehole, waiting for her to emerge.

“Oh, there you are,” she said. “He’s ready for you.”

“Very good, my lady.” Then as she swept past she could have sworn she heard Rivers mutter, “About bloody time.”

She left the baron’s residence and rode in the Albemarle coach back to her gem of a town house. Benedick had chosen it for her, but she’d have picked it for herself if she’d had the coin. Elegantly appointed with slender columns on either side of the bottle-green door, it was located on a quiet street in fashionable St. James Park. As her devoted footman, Glover, met her coach and saw her safely inside, her mind was awash in thoughts of secrets and rumors and servants.

And she wondered if Benedick was right to put so much trust in his Mr. Rivers.