The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

“What have we here?”

They looked up to see Jason Fleming, Baron Crowley, standing right in front of them, lightly tapping his riding crop against his right boot.

Lord Beecham didn’t like Crowley, an older man who knew too much and appeared to make a lot of money off what he knew. He drank too much, gambled too much, and wenched until he should have dropped over dead from the French pox, but he hadn’t yet done so. He habitually wore a sneer that made Lord Beecham want to smash him in the nose.

He gave the man an emotionless look, nodded, and said shortly, “Crowley.”

“Who is the lovely lady, Beecham?”

“No one to interest you, Crowley. Your horse looks restless.”

“I have seen you, my dear. I believe it was just last week at the Sanderling ball. You were with Alexandra Sherbrooke. Everyone remarked upon your rather obvious attributes.”

Helen, who had not entertained a single notion about like or dislike of this intruder, said immediately, “My attributes might be obvious, sir, but your rudeness is even more apparent. Indeed, it is rather transparent.”

Lord Crowley took a step back. His well-formed mouth grew ugly in its sneer. “Is this your first assignation with Lord Beecham, my dear? I beg you to have a care. Beecham is a dangerous man. He won’t treat you as well as I would.” He bowed. “I am Crowley, you know. And you are?”

She smiled up at him, showing lots of white, locked teeth. “I am a lady, sir.”

“Go away, Crowley. The lady and I are busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

Lord Beecham rose slowly. He eyed Lord Crowley for a very long time. The man fidgeted. “Actually I will tell you, Crowley. The lady and I are partners.”

“Partners in what?”

“That is not any of your affair. Go away, Crowley.”

“You begin to interest me, Beecham.” Then he gave a small salute to Helen with his riding crop, turned, and gracefully mounted his horse.

“Stay away from him,” Lord Beecham said, looking after Crowley until he disappeared from view. “I have the reputation of a seducer, surely a harmless pursuit when all is said and done. Lord Crowley has a flair for evil.”

“What sort of evil?”

Lord Beecham said briefly, “He feeds on helplessness. Now, where were we?”

“Robert Burnell and the lamp. He said he’d never seen it do anything save just sit there and let the king and queen rub it endlessly until Eleanor grew violently ill in the fall of 1279. Some sort of fever was raging through London, and the queen, along with three of her ladies, became very ill. All of the ladies died. The king was distraught. He took the lamp—it was a last resort, Burnell wrote, because the physicians had given up—and he put it in Eleanor’s arms.” She shuddered.

“Well, what happened?”

“She survived.”

Lord Beecham said slowly, “As I recall, Queen Eleanor bore more children that I can count. If she could survive all that childbirth, it seems to me that surviving a fever would be nothing to her.”

“She was pregnant nearly every year,” Helen admitted, “but still, the fever was virulent, and it did kill all three of her ladies. Don’t be so cynical, sir.”

“What did Burnell write about that?”

“He claimed that the king wrapped the lamp in a bolt of exquisite crimson velvet from Genoa and set it beneath glass. He proclaimed the lamp magic and set guards around it. Then one morning, the king unwrapped the velvet to look at the lamp.

“It was gone. In its place was a silver lamp, ugly and quite new. The king went on a rampage. The guards were questioned, brutally. No one admitted anything. The

n, the next morning, the gold lamp was back. Everyone believed that the guard who had stolen it had been so frightened that he simply returned it.

“But you see, it happened again the next week. One morning the gold lamp was gone and in its place was the ugly silver lamp. The following morning, the gold one was back.”

“Where did the lamp go?” Lord Beechem asked. “What magic made it disappear only to reappear?”