The Heiress In His Bed Read online

  Viola’s eyebrows rose. “You have a file on him?”

  “Yes, my lady,” he replied, handing Viola the bundle tied up with string. “Ever since he broke Child’s Bank, the government has been forced to take an extraordinary interest in that young man’s activities.”

  Viola accepted the file curiously. “I thought these little banks collapsed all the time.”

  “Child’s Bank is not a small bank,” he informed her. “Some very important people lost a great deal of money. It was a terrible scandal. Parliament was obliged to intervene. There is even some fear that Mr Devize may be working for a foreign government.”

  Viola scoffed.

  “Why, just this morning, he created a crash on the Stock Exchange when he sold off all his shares in Australian wool,” Mr Harman told her. “Fortunately, the Bank of England keeps a richly varied portfolio, but, I understand, some people have been ruined.”

  “In life there must be winners and losers, Mr Harman. What cause have you to accuse Mr Devize of working for a foreign government?”

  “It is most alarming, my lady,” said Mr Harman. “But he seems to have a terrible weakness for foreign women!” Encouraged by the lady’s sudden frown, he went on eagerly. “Three that we know of. He kept a Spanish lady during the war, but he was obliged to pass her on to his colonel, owing to the financial strain.”

  “What do you mean pass her on?” Viola demanded, revolted by such an idea.

  “He was then only a lieutenant,” Mr Harman explained. “He could not afford to keep her, so he gave her to his colonel. That’s the sort of man he is, you see. Shortly thereafter, he was elevated to the rank of captain.”

  “Are you implying that Mr—that Captain Devize traded this lady for a promotion?”

  “That I cannot say,” Mr Harman said discreetly.

  “You said there were three,” Viola prompted him.

  “Yes, my lady. After the war, Mr Devize became enamored of a Miss Schwartz, the daughter of a Prussian emigre, a watchmaker. He courted her for some time, but, in the end, she married her father’s apprentice. They have since returned to their native land.”

  “Then she is firmly in his past,” Viola murmured. “And the third lady?”

  “She is not in his past,” Mr Harman said gleefully. “We have not yet established her identity, but she’s obviously foreign. Mr Devize purchased her from a house of disrepute. In fact, my lady, the money he stole from your brother went to the mistress of this house.”

  “Mrs Dean,” Viola exclaimed.

  Mr Harman blinked, startled. “Your ladyship knows of her?”

  “I know a great deal, Mr Harman. What makes you think the lady is foreign?”

  “She made a very noisy scene on the street last night,” replied Mr Harman. “Mr Devize must be besotted with her. Otherwise, he would not risk so much in stealing from the duke. You see the danger, of course?”

  “Danger?”

  “In the throes of lust, there is no telling what he will do to please his bit of stuff. If she is merely a strumpet, we need not worry, perhaps. But if she is a foreign agent…He might be persuaded to betray his country. If you love England, my lady, you will persuade your brother to bring charges against this thief.”

  “You would see him hanged? As you hanged that clerk, Mr…Whitehead, was it?”

  Mr Harman looked uncomfortable. “Mr Devize’s crime is the same as Mr Whitehead’s, if on a grander scale. Why should he not meet the same fate? My lady, a strike against the integrity of the Bank of England is a strike against England itself.”

  “I know that, Mr Harman.”

  “At least persuade your brother to dismiss him. If he no longer has access to the duke’s accounts, he will not find it so easy to make mischief.”

  “I will consider the matter very carefully, I assure you. You may go.”

  Mr Harman jumped to his feet, startled by the abrupt dismissal. “What about…What about me, my lady?” he asked breathlessly.

  “I’m sure you are blameless in this matter,” Viola answered. “I will see that you do not suffer. As far as I am concerned, you do not exist.”

  “Thank you, my lady!” Mr Harman bowed and scraped and fled the room.

  “Well, Lover?” Viola said, as she opened the file. “What do you make of Mr Harman’s assertions? Self-serving twaddle? Or gospel truth?”

  The butler was not accustomed to being asked his opinion. He was flattered. “Both, I would imagine, my lady. Will that be all?”

  “Yes,” said Viola. “Take the letters on your way out, please. And send me a cup of chocolate. I’ve some reading to do.”

  By the time she had finished reading the file on Julian, it was already close to three o’clock. “I’m afraid I won’t have time to go over the whole house with you, Lover,” she said apologetically, when he answered the bell. “But will you show me the guest bedrooms?”

  Of all the many richly appointed rooms he showed her, only one seemed to meet with her approval. “Yes,” she said, walking into the Blue Room. “This will do. This will do very well indeed. I’ll take the bed, all the hangings, too. This small sofa, I think. Those two chairs. The game table. The carpet. The curtains. The clock…” She looked around, frowning in concentration.

  Lover was bewildered. “My lady?”

  “I’m furnishing a home for a friend,” Viola explained. “I shall need a coffee service, as well. Tea service, table linen, china, silver, crystal—but only for two. That should make it easier for you. Would you care to write all this down?” she asked him gently.

  Lover instantly took out a pencil and a tablet of paper.

  “As for dinner,” said Viola. “I won’t tax you with that. I’ll get it myself.”

  “Move your bleeding arse!” Jem roared some time later. The footman was furious as he stood on the running board of Lady Viola’s barouche. Traffic was at a standstill. Viola’s driver had edged the open carriage through the crowd of vehicles almost to the entrance to the Mall. If the landau directly ahead of them would only move a foot or two to the right, Viola’s barouche would be able to squeeze through. Polite appeals had produced no joy, however, and Jem had been forced to turn nasty. His vulgarity was rewarded; Lady Arbogast, the grandam in the landau, turned with an icy stare while the young lady with her, evidently her daughter, cringed under the carriage rug.

  “Madam,” the grandam called to Viola in an awful voice, “your barouche is encroaching upon my landau.”

  Viola, naturally, did not respond; she was far too engrossed in the latest issue of La Belle Assemblee to give anything else her attention.

  “You heard me,” bawled Jem at his colleague on the running board of the landau. “Move your arse. There’s a lady coming through, and you’re blocking the way.”

  Not to be outdone, Lady Arbogast’s footman snarled, “Move yourself! You’ve got to get here early, if you want to see the parade.”

  “Bloody hell!” Jem groaned. “Not another parade! Ram through, Judd! Ram it! Maybe we can dash across the street before the ruddy thing starts.”

  Throughout all this, Viola remained serenely deaf.

  Unable to ram, the coachman crept forward, the wheels of the barouche coming perilously close to the landau. “Desist!” shrieked Lady Arbogast, becoming quite alarmed. “You will scratch my vehicle, madam! If you do so much as an atom of damage to my beautiful landau, I will take you to court! Madam? Madam, I am talking to you!”

  Viola looked up from her magazine. “Jem, is that lady addressing me?” she asked.

  Jem angrily apprised his mistress of the situation. Now it was Viola’s place to interfere. “Madam,” she said, leaning forward and speaking quite conversationally, “my footman informs me that, if you were to move your excellent landau just eighteen inches to the right, we might get through, and avoid the parade altogether. Be an angel and squash over, won’t you?”

  “Avoid the parade?” cried Miss Amelia Arbogast, leaning forward to look incredulously at Viola. �
�Why should anyone want to avoid the parade? We have been waiting here this age so that we can be front and center.”

  “I assure you I have no intention of blocking your view,” Viola answered. “I simply want to get through this crush to visit the shops in Piccadilly.”

  The young lady’s eyes widened. “Oh, but you can’t get to Piccadilly from here! You’ll have to go around! Access to the Mall is strictly prohibited.”

  “Not to us, it ain’t,” Jem sneered. “We’ve got an ivory pass. Ha!”

  It was as if an invisible iron smoothed out all the wrinkles on Lady Arbogast’s face. “An ivory pass?” she repeated in astonishment and awe. “I beg your pardon! Had no idea! Roberts! Roberts!” she called to her driver, snapping her fingers frantically. “Move to the right immediately, and let this lady through. She has an ivory pass!”

  “Thank you, madam,” said Viola, returning with perfect contentment to her magazine.

  Her thanks and, indeed, her contentment, proved to be premature, however, as Roberts, in his eagerness to comply with Lady Arbogast’s command, lurched rather too suddenly to the right and succeeded in locking the back left wheel of the landau with the right front wheel of Lady Viola’s barouche. Jem cursed violently at the landau. Lady Arbogast apologized profusely to the lady with the ivory pass. The wheels of the two vehicles grinded together. By the time the landau and the barouche could be uncoupled, the parade was well under way.

  “I do apologize, madam,” cried Lady Arbogast, mortified. “I don’t know what Roberts could have been thinking.”

  Viola stood up in the barouche and surveyed the crowd of vehicles and pedestrians behind her. There was no going back, and no going forward. She was marooned for the duration, and she had nothing but a few magazines to entertain her. “How long do these ghastly things last?” she inquired entirely without sweetness as she sat down again.

  “Oh, aren’t they splendid?” cried Amelia, bouncing up and down in her seat and waving her miniature Union Jack as ranks of red-coated Life Guards trotted by on matching black chargers, their swords gleaming in the April sunshine, the white plumes on their tall helmets dancing gracefully.

  Viola was not inclined to think them splendid at all. They were between her and good shopping, and there could be nothing splendid about them. She felt decidedly unpatriotic.

  “Let us hope it is a quick march,” she murmured, returning to La Belle Assemblee. The “articles” and the fashion plates were complete rubbish, of course, but the advertisements were informative, beguiling, and, occasionally, brilliant. One particularly clever slogan caught her eye: “After what seems like a century, Fortnum & Mason is one hundred years old.” It went on to promise “a cornucopia of fine food and drink, gifts and luxuries.”

  Viola was intrigued; she determined to go there as soon as the parade was over.

  The red-coated Life Guards passed at last, only to be succeeded by Horse Guards in blue coats, steel cuirasses, and scarlet plumes. At the head of the Blues rode Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Simon Ascot. Viola felt a burst of cold fury as she looked at him.

  Miss Arbogast had rather a different reaction to the spectacle. “Isn’t he splendid?” she breathed. She stood up in her mother’s landau and began calling his name with enthusiasm.

  “Amelia!” cried her mother. “Do sit down! You will embarrass Lord Simon!”

  Lord Simon cut his eyes in the general direction of the unsubtle Amelia and encountered Viola. A grin spread across his harsh features as he recognized her, and he raised his sword in a mocking salute. The gesture was immediately copied by the rest of the Blues.

  Viola rolled her eyes in disgust and picked up her magazine.

  “There, Amelia!” cried Lady Arbogast, catching her daughter’s excitement. “He has saluted you, my dear! He does mean to propose, after all. He must!”

  “Oh, Mama!” Amelia cried, blushing.

  The rest of the household guards plodded by in somber procession, but, Viola noticed, the attention of her neighbors waned considerably after the Horse Guards had passed. Viola herself was most interested in the Grenadiers, who brought up the rear. When it was all over, her barouche shot across the street toward the gates of the Mall, almost mowing down the last man. Behind her, bedlam broke out as everyone began trying to leave at once.

  Within the palings of the Mall, however, all was peaceful. To Viola’s left, St James’s Park looked green and inviting as the barouche rolled southwest toward Buckingham Palace. To her right was Carlton House, the Prince Regent’s residence, and, beyond Carlton House, stood Marlborough House and Clarence House. It was rather like a model village, except that it was composed entirely of palaces.

  “Not a patch on Gambol House,” Jem declared loyally.

  “No, but the smell is much nicer,” Viola replied absently, the greater part of her attention taken up by the not-unpredictable approach of a lone Horse Guard. Viola resigned herself to the unpleasant encounter with a sigh.

  “Miss Andrews!” Lord Simon called.

  “How tiresome it is to see you again, Lord Simon,” she said as the latter drew alongside her barouche on his beautiful black charger. “And what a small place London is, as it turns out. Even in a crowd, one cannot seem to avoid the people one wishes to.”

  Lord Simon laughed easily.

  “If you wished to avoid me, Miss Andrews,” he said, his green eyes twinkling, “I wonder you would come to Horse Guards Parade! I myself am a Horse Guard, you know.”

  “I did not come to see you, my lord,” Viola said coldly. “I did not come to see the parade. I am on a shopping expedition. It was my intention to cut through the Mall and avoid a great deal of traffic. Guess my joy when I found my path obstructed by a gaggle of fools on horseback.”

  Lord Simon smiled incredulously. “Did you not enjoy the parade?”

  “No, I did not,” Viola replied honestly. “I found it to be long, dull, and in my way.”

  “Indeed,” said Lord Simon. “Is that why you were calling my name so urgently?”

  Viola glared at him. “Again, my lord, I did not come to see you, and I certainly did not call your name. That was the young lady in the landau next to me. She had a twee little flag she was waving. Perhaps you noticed her?”

  “I’m afraid I saw nothing but you, Miss Andrews,” he replied gallantly.

  “Ugh! Have you nothing better to do than follow me around?” she asked crossly.

  “You’re very cruel,” he complained. “It is too unkind, when I have been up all night worrying about you. I must say you look well. You seem to have landed on your feet. I trust the duke has not been unkind to you?”

  “I am quite well, Lord Simon,” Viola said shortly.

  “I’m glad. I imagined you were having a very bad time of it at Gambol House. But the duke was to your liking? I’m glad. Surprised, but glad.”

  Viola found his insinuations particularly rude in view of the fact that the duke in question was actually her brother. “For your information, the Duke of Fanshawe is not in London at the moment, but his servants at Gambol House are looking after me quite beautifully, as you see.”

  Jem drew himself up proudly.

  I see,” Simon said gravely. “And the indispensable Mr Devize? I trust he is not making a nuisance of himself?”

  “Unlike yourself, Lord Simon,” Viola said coldly, “Mr Devize knows how to treat a lady. And he can tell a lady from a common strumpet, which helps, I think.”

  “Well, let us hope the Duke of Fanshawe bears the same hallmark!” said Lord Simon, drawing up his mount. “If not, you may find yourself in a very queer street, Miss Andrews. You may find you need a friend. If you do, you can always find me at the Albany, in Piccadilly,” he called after her.

  “I’ll be sure to send assassins,” Viola snapped. “Coachman! Drive on!”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Good evening, Hudson,” Viola greeted the servant.

  Hudson stared. It was well after dark, and the new Mrs Devize was attired
in a Nile green leather coat trimmed with mink. As she entered the hall carrying her white dog, she was pulling the strings of a Nile green bonnet lined in peacock blue satin with her free hand. Hudson was quite certain she had been wearing a white leather coat and matching bonnet when she had left No. 32 Lombard Street much earlier in the day. Her dog looked different, too: whiter and fluffier.

  For a moment, Viola thought he might refuse to admit her into the house, but he gave way to her, saying frostily, “Welcome home, madam.”

  “Is Mr Devize not back yet?” Viola asked anxiously, pausing in the hall as Cork carried the freshly groomed bichon upstairs. The City was flooded with the sound of bells, and she had to shout to be heard.

  “No, madam.”

  “Oh, I do hate these bells,” she added peevishly as she pulled off her gloves. “They make one feel one is late, even when one is not. I asked for some household things to be delivered, Hudson. Did they arrive?”

  “Yes, madam,” he said angrily. “You’ll be the ruin of him,” he muttered under his breath as she started up the stairs.

  “What did you say?” Viola asked.

  “Nothing, madam.”

  This time, Viola refused to let it go. “You did say something,” she insisted. “You shouldn’t bottle up your feelings, you know.”

  “Very well, then, madam,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height. “You’ll be the ruin of him. Running up debts in all the shops! Velvet curtains, eiderdown quilts, cushions, and featherbeds—”

  “There should have been only one featherbed,” Viola interrupted. Running lightly up the steps, she looked in the bedroom. Everything appeared to be in order; all the creature comforts she had appropriated from Gambol House had been placed according to her detailed instructions.

  “China cups!” Hudson railed at her. “Crystal goblets! Silk carpets! Tables and chairs! Champagne and caviar! How’s my poor captain to afford the likes of you? When he’s already pawned everything he owns?”