Stephen could not believe his ears. The same girl who had tried to jump from the rolling curricle to avoid listening to his warning, now pleaded with him to show her proof. And how the devil had she learned of the viscount’s investment in brothels?
Stephen observed Lady Maryann closely, her desperate “please” still ringing in his ears. He’d like to help her, but he didn’t see why she must have proof of Tammadge’s activities.
In fact, any nosing around she might do, questions she might ask, would endanger his own mission. Under no circumstances must she be allowed to stir up dust, especially now when Tammadge seemed on the point of discussing business. That, Stephen hoped, was the reason Tammadge wanted him to dine in Grosvenor Square.
But there was that look in Lady Maryann’s eyes—a silent plea. Perhaps even fear.
“Lady Maryann, did Tammadge approach you in an improper manner?” Stephen spoke gently, as he would to a terrified child even while his hands curled as if to close around the viscount’s neck. “Did he force himself on you?”
“No!” Hauteur and anger wiped out the pleading look he had caught. “Do you think I’d need help if that were my problem? Confound it, Farrell! I’d box his ears and draw his cork as well.”
Her language would have amused him if he weren’t exasperated. Perhaps nettled was the better word.
“So you don’t need me to protect you. Very well. Then why the deuce did you come to me?”
“I told you! To help find the brothels.”
“Fustian. If you’ve finally come to your senses and want to end the betrothal, all you need to do is tell Tammadge that you’ve changed your mind. Or tell your father.”
“My father wouldn’t tolerate my crying off,” she said stiffly.
“Indeed. No doubt he’s looking forward to the day he can hand you over to a husband.”
He had spoken sarcastically, wanting to show her that he was not taken in by the implication of a harsh, unyielding father. But to his astonishment, Lady Maryann nodded.
“Yes. For some reason he’s determined that I marry Tammadge.”
Stephen’s keen sense of hearing alerted him to some slight sound in the room next door. There was no time for long, soothing reassurances. He must convince Lady Maryann that it was time to leave. Quickly.
“Ye gads!” He took her by the shoulders, steering her toward the door. “What a to-do you make over a simple matter. After all, your father cannot force you to marry Tammadge, especially if you tell him why you’ve changed your mind.”
She said nothing, but something in the way she looked at him, gave him pause.
He moderated his tone, forcing himself to show patience. “Lady Maryann, I want you to go home now. I shall call on you in a day or so, and we’ll discuss the matter again. If,” he amended, “you still want to.”
She looked at him stonily.
Now, when exasperation would have been of help in propelling her out the door, he could not rekindle that emotion. He turned to the groom instead.
“Ask Fletcher for a pistol before you leave. And do not bring your mistress into Seven Dials again. I need not tell you how unsafe it is. You were lucky you weren’t mobbed in the carriage.”
Responding to the voice of authority, Robert rose. “Aye, sir. Just what I told her, too.”
Robert pushed aside the chair, opened the door, and stood waiting for Lady Maryann to precede him.
At the same moment, the connecting door to the adjoining chamber opened. A young woman, clad only in petticoat and shift, long hair the color of burnished copper rippling down her back, stepped across the threshold. Thrusting naked arms above her head, she stretched with careless abandon while giving Farrell a smile that widened into a yawn.
“Tolly’s come with the message ye was waitin’ for,” she mumbled, yawning again.
She stretched once more, showing off a generous swell of bosom above the low-cut shift, spun on her bare feet, and with graceful, fluid movements returned to the bedchamber. For such it was, confirmed by the tester bed with its mussed sheets just beyond the open doorway.
Stephen tugged at his collar, which was far too tight all of a sudden. Damn the timing of the message! Damn Meg and her uninhibited ways. She ought to know better than to exhibit Drury Lane manners in the presence of a lady.
He directed a covert look at Lady Maryann, then boldly faced her wide-eyed gaze.
They looked at each other, she as determined as he to betray no feeling, to show no reaction to the incident. But Stephen had a reason for pretense. He must protect the secrets of the Fighting Cock, and his own. He wished Lady Maryann would show some emotion, even if it were contempt or disgust. Anything would be easier to bear than her carefully blank face.
Abruptly, she turned and walked away.
“Something is bound to happen before your wedding day,” he felt compelled to assure her.
He stood in the door watching the straight, slender back, the proud carriage of her head—willing her to look at him. But she did not.
Good! said the cold, logical part of his brain that had served him well in the Peninsula. Without her presence cluttering the issue, you’ll work much better.
But some other, more chivalrous part of him had to have the last word.
“Urgent business will take me out of town for a day or so, but I’ll call in Mount Street as soon as I return. Promise me not to go off on your own to look for the brothels.”
She had reached the stairs.
“Lady Maryann! I assure you, by October Tammadge will be in no position to marry anyone.”
Foot poised above the step, she looked at him over her shoulder.
“The wedding, Mr. Farrell, is May the sixth. In three weeks.”
A blow in the gut could not have affected him more powerfully than her words. Three weeks.
He stared after her, feeling winded and sick as on the morning the message of William’s death had reached him in Paris, and watched her disappear down the stairwell. Three weeks … but unless Tolly’s news from the Wapping docks was a whole lot better than he expected, there was nothing he could do to stop Tammadge from claiming her.
Lady Maryann, another victim … as William had been.
Anger and bitterness threatened to choke Stephen as he remembered his arrival at Fant House in Curzon Street on a raw February morning. Tolly had opened the door and led him straight to the study.
“This is where I found him, Master Stephen.” The old butler’s voice had quavered as he pointed to the leather chair behind the desk. “Already cold and stiff, and the blood drying on his face and hair. And on the good Axminster carpet, too.”
Bleary-eyed, his mind reeling with fatigue, for he had not slept since he left Paris, Stephen had looked at the chair where his brother had taken his own life. Blown his brains out.
Why? he wondered numbly.
If anyone but William’s wife had sent the news, he wouldn’t have believed it. William had been timid and retiring, but never too timid to face responsibility and obligations. Of course, he could have changed during his younger brother’s absence. Stephen had been gone nearly nine years—fighting Napoleon Bonaparte.
But now Bonaparte was banished to St. Helena in the South Atlantic, and although Wellington was still in Paris as commander of the joint army of occupation, Maj. Stephen Fant regarded his own usefulness at an end. He had planned to leave Paris on the first day of March, resign his commission, and enjoy the diversions of London until he could decide what to do with his life.
William had expected him. Although he hated London, William had traveled up from Sussex to put the Fant town house in order for Stephen.
And then? What had happened to force William to take the desperate step?
“Why, Tolly?” Stephen’s face showed a grayish hue beneath the Peninsular tan and the shadow of a day-old beard. Weariness and pain twisted his mouth into a thin, crooked line.
“Why did he shoot himself? My sister-in-law wrote that the estate, this house, the money, are gone. But that’s no reason to—Dammit, Tolly! We would have come about. William had a wife and children to think of.”
“I don’t know what the master said in the note to Mrs. Fant.” Tolly fumbled in the pocket of his coat. “But he wrote to you as well, Master Stephen.”
He took the crumpled missive the butler handed him and broke the seal. His brother’s neat, precise pen strokes danced before his eyes. Neat and precise, that’s what William had always been—until death spilled his blood.
Blinking away moisture and travel grit, Stephen concentrated on William’s last words.
Stephen, my dear fellow—
By the time you read this, you’ll have damned me roundly for gambling away everything we owned between us—save for your Cornwall property, which I forgot about. You’ll have damned me for being such a blasted fool as to fall in with Viscount Tammadge, and, mostly, for being a coward.
Stephen’s hand shook. William knew—had known him well. After reading Susan’s message, he had indeed cursed his brother for being a coward.
I was introduced to Tammadge at my club. He is respected and well liked, and while we played at White’s, nothing could have been more correct than his game. But then I was fool enough to accompany him to some private establishment, a gaming hell I suppose you’d call it. And there I found out that Tammadge cheated.
I confronted him. He laughed. I mentioned the matter to members of White’s and Brookes’s clubs. They looked at me as though I were out of my mind. The curst thing is, everybody regards Tammadge as a pattern card of respectability.
You know me, Stephen. I am not an aggressive type of fellow, but I do not like to be led by the nose. I played with Tammadge again, and again. I believed I could expose him as the cheat he is. He won my money, Fant Court, this house, and—you may curse me for a villain, Stephen; I have already done so!—the investments you entrusted to my care and management.
“A fool, yes,” Stephen muttered under his breath. “A villain, never.”
I accused Tammadge again. He had me thrown out of that accursed gaming hell. It was more than flesh and blood could stand! As though I were the Captain Sharp!
I told him to name his seconds lest he wanted to have his name blackballed at every club in town. He set some half-dozen ruffians on me with cudgels. That I might have borne, but Tammadge threatened to abduct Susan and my little girls if I said a word against him or persisted in challenging him.
I’m afraid, Stephen. I’m afraid he’ll harm them whether I say anything against him or not. He is dangerous, and I am not the man to protect my family.
I have foolishly thrust them into danger. I cannot live with that knowledge….
Stephen crushed the letter in his hand. William was right. He had not been the man to protect anyone against anything.
But why the devil did he think he must be dead for his brother to come and offer assistance?
“He was a very sensitive man,” said Tolly, as though reading his mind. And probably he did read it. He had known the Fant boys when they were still in short coats.
“The coroner found he’d been severely beaten. It’s not something the master would have borne lightly.”
Stephen tasted bile. “Damn Viscount Tammadge!”
“I think you’d better leave now, Master Stephen,” the butler said gently. “ ’Twouldn’t do if his lordship were to find out you’ve been here. His man of business gave strict orders not to let anyone into the house until he has taken inventory.”
A nerve twitched in Stephen’s cheek. “Are you the only one of the staff who came to town with my brother? What about his valet?”
“Chance left on the first instanter. The master planned to engage a new man along with the staff you would require.”
“And you have entered Tammadge’s employ?”
A tinge of color rose in the butler’s sunken cheeks. “No, Master Stephen. As soon as his lordship’s man of business has found a caretaker, I shall have to leave.”
“I am sorry, Tolly. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Stephen turned on his heels and marched down the hallway to the front door. His brother’s death—a senseless, unnecessary death—not only touched the immediate family, but servants and tenants as well. Tolly, who must be on the shady side of seventy, would not find a new position waiting for him.
He looked over his shoulder at the frail old man. “I’ll send for you when I’ve found lodgings.”
“Thank you, Master Stephen.” The butler wiped a sleeve across moist eyes. “Are you planning to stay in town, then?”
Staring at the gleaming brass of the front door handle, Stephen willed his mind to function with the cold, emotionless precision that had governed his missions into enemy territory. Pain, bitterness, and anger must be banished. Feelings, as he knew only too well, were dangerous encumbrances when a man set out to do what he must.
“I’ll drive down to Sussex to convey Mrs. Fant and the girls to her parents,” he had said, stepping out into the damp, chill February morning. “Then I’ll come back and go after my lord Tammadge.”
And he had come back to London. But instead of facing Tammadge across twelve paces on some lonely stretch of common, he had pledged himself to Sir Nathaniel Conant, the chief magistrate of the Bow Street court, who wanted to see the viscount convicted and hanged for the crime of white slavery.
He could not go back on his word. He could only do his damnedest to deliver Tammadge to the gallows, thus, at the same time, avenging his brother’s death and saving Lady Maryann.