The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

‘Mama! You are spilling your tea.’

‘So I am.’ Eva put down her cup, and dabbed at her skirt. A father for Freddie. I am thinking of marrying him, she realised. And that’s impossible, of course, Dowager Grand Duchesses do not marry King’s Messengers. Only he’s a duke’s son…

‘What are you thinking about, Mama?’

‘I am having a very silly daydream about something that cannot possibly happen,’ Eva said briskly. ‘Now, let’s go and sit down, kick off our shoes, and we can talk until we are hoarse.’

It took three days before the invitations began to arrive. Three days during which Eva and Freddie did indeed talk themselves hoarse, she shopped exhaustively for a new wardrobe and they explored the house until it became like a second home and the staff familiar faces.

It was not just Grimstone who was a bodyguard, she soon realised. The pair of large footmen were never far from the door of any room she and her son were in. They stuck to her like burrs whenever she went outside the house, politely refusing to wait in the carriage whenever she entered a shop. Eventually she tackled the butler. ‘We are here and safe, Grimstone. Surely there is no risk now? Prince A…The source of danger may not even be alive.’

‘But his agents will be, ma’am,’ the butler pointed out in his gravelly voice. ‘This has just come for you from the guv’nor, ma’am.’

‘Mr Ryder?’ Eva snatched the letter off the silver salver before she could school herself into an appearance of indifference. She broke the seal and read the three lines it contained. The handwriting was black, sprawling, undisciplined, a complete contrast to Jack’s methods of operation. Or was this Lord Sebastian writing? she wondered.

The absent troops returned home with the body of A. It has a bullet wound in the back. From very close range. P. improves daily. Show this to Grimstone and assume A.’s agents are still at large and may not yet know of his death. It was signed with a J., a slashing flourish across the bottom of the page.

Wordlessly Eva handed the letter to the butler, who read it through with pursed lips, then gave it back. ‘Own men shot him by all accounts,’ he commented. ‘Didn’t like being made traitors of, especially in view of what happened. P. will be the Regent, ma’am?’

‘Yes, my brother-in-law, Prince Philippe.’ Eva folded the paper and slipped it into her reticule. It was the only thing of Jack’s she had. ‘I will go and tell Master Freddie the good news.’

Master Freddie, as the entire staff called him, was in his favourite place, the kitchen, charming sweetmeats out of Cook. Eva tried to imagine him back in the castle. It was not hard—within the week he would have even the tyrant of the kitchens his devoted servant, the footmen would all be polishing armour for him to play with and he would no doubt be attempting to introduce cricket to the bemused inhabitants.

‘Freddie, good news from Maubourg. Uncle Philippe is on the mend.’

‘Can we go back soon, then?’ He scrambled off the table, eyes wide, mouth ringed with raspberry jam.

‘As soon as the Foreign Office tells me it is safe to travel. Shall we go and write to Uncle?’

She followed that letter up with one to the Foreign Office, asking about travel and received, not a response on that subject, but the first, and most imposing, of a flood of invitations. The Prince Regent, Freddie’s godfather, begged the honour of her company at a reception in her honour at Carlton House in two days’ time.

‘Oh, Lord,’ she lamented to Fettersham. ‘I suppose that means feathers?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The dresser was agog with the thought of court dress. ‘Hoops are no longer worn, though,’ she added with a tinge of disappointment. ‘The full-dress ensemble you ordered yesterday will be most appropriate.’

‘Well, thank goodness for that. It is difficult enough walking about with those wretched feathers in one’s coiffure without worrying about hoops flattening every small table in sight every time one moves!’

The gown arrived from the modiste on the morning of the reception along with the hastily purchased set of ostrich plumes. ‘My goodness, waistlines are up,’ Eva complained as Fettersham fastened the gown. ‘There is very little room for my bosom in this!’

‘I think that’s the point, ma’am,’ the dresser observed, tweaking the narrow shoulders so they sat securely. ‘It’s a very good thing you have such excellent shoulders, ma’am, otherwise I don’t know how this style is expected to stay decent.’

They regarded the effect in the long mirror. The gown, in palest almond green, fell from under Eva’s bosom to exactly the ankle bone. She was not convinced about the decency of showing so much ankle, either, although she was prepared to admit the fuller skirts were charming. The hem was banded with satin ribbon, of exactly the same shade, the texture making it show up subtly against the silk, and the whole lower half of the skirt was heavily embroidered in wreaths of flowers. The pattern was repeated on the puffed sleeves and the deep vee of the neckline was dressed in lace, which went some way to preserving the decencies.

‘Very striking, ma’am,’ Fettersham pronounced.

‘Very dashing,’ Eva amended. ‘I do not recall it seeming so at the fitting!’

Long kid gloves with lace at the top to match the bodice, simple slippers, a gauze scarf at the elbows and the nodding weight of the feathers completed the ensemble. It was certainly striking enough for the occasion, Eva decided, wondering wistfully what Jack would make of it. She was managing very well, she congratulated herself. She thought of him only a dozen times an hour during the day. It was the nights that were so hard, when all she could do was toss and turn, aching for the sound of his voice, the caress of his hands, the heat of his mouth.

Fettersham produced the diamond eardrops, necklace and cuffs borrowed from Rundell and Bridges, the jewellers who had proved only too willing to oblige the Grand Duchess, in return for her tacit agreement to them making as much capital out of the fact as they wished.

‘Mama?’ It was Freddie, knocking at the door. ‘May I see?’

‘Wow!’ he said as the dresser let him in. ‘How do you dance in those feathers, Mama?’

‘I do not have to,’ she explained, stooping to kiss him. She was loving rediscovering her son, getting to know him again, not as the little boy she had left, but this new, much more independent and lively nine-year-old. ‘Now, you will be good and go to bed when Hoffmeister tells you?’

‘Yes, Mama.’ She gave him high marks for refraining from rolling his eyes. The arrival of his private secretary-cum-tutor from the Eton lodgings had restarted the rivalry between the German and the butler. Freddie played one off against the other with what Eva tried to tell herself was precocious statesmanship, but she had to uphold Hoffmeister’s authority when it came to bedtime and study periods.