With a nervous glance down the empty street, Dudley dropped his voice to a normal tone. “Sorry, my lord. No time to prepare one. Lord Ventnor didn’t know you would be back in town and he sent for me in a hurry.”
“He pays you well, I hope?”
“Beware the witch! Bears he the mark of the Devil!” Dudley screamed, then, after another furtive glance, whispered, “’Tis good work, my lord. ’Tis hard for an actor these days. Especially in summer, when everyone’s out of town.”
“Everyone” being the upper classes, who escaped the city’s heat and stench for the seaside, a fashionable spa, or their country estates. Unfortunate, then, that Ventnor still skulked about town.
“If the neighbors were here, they would have tossed you in jail,” Rafe said. “Quiet it down, would you? Ventnor won’t know.”
The actor scanned the pristine street, as though the viscount lurked in a drainpipe. “Lord Ventnor knows everything. What he’d do to me if…”
“Yes, I know,” Rafe sighed, and went inside to wash off the London grime.
Rafe emerged from his bath to learn that the Bishop of Dartford was taking tea in the front parlor.
Furthermore, the butler informed him nervously, a pile of bills was growing on his lordship’s desk, which matched the pile of parcels growing in the countess’s sitting room. In the time it took the butler to explain what the countess had got up to that day, three more deliveries arrived from smart Bond Street shops: parcels for the countess, bills for him.
Clutching the bills, Rafe wandered into the front parlor, where Nicholas was seated before a plate of cakes, pouring himself tea from a floral-painted teapot, the voluminous sleeves of his bishop’s shirt billowing at his sides. He looked up, eyes twinkling over the fragrant steam, thinning gray hair a mess.
“Rafe, my boy, lovely to see you,” Nicholas said.
“You too,” Rafe replied, full of fondness for the old rascal. “What mischief are you up to now?”
The bishop beamed, the picture of pink-cheeked innocence—if innocence was a ten-year-old boy who had just put a frog in his governess’s bed.
“I don’t know why you put up with that.” Nicholas gestured with his teacup at the window, through which came the faint strains of Dudley doing his job. “Accusing people of witchcraft is against the law.”
“It’s Ventnor’s doing. If I had Dudley put in jail, Ventnor would simply replace him with someone else.”
“Dudley? Oh, that’s William Dudley, of course.” He put down his cup and crossed to peer out the window. “That’s where I recognize him from. The theatre. I saw him playing opposite Sarah Holloway. Marvelous actress. Shame she disappeared. Such splendid red hair and a wonderful pair of—”
“Nicholas.”
“—lungs.” Nicholas grinned. “You used to enjoy the theatre. Come sometime with Judith and me.”
“Maybe I will.”
“A miracle! Rafe Landcross has agreed to be sociable!”
“I agreed to go to the theatre,” Rafe corrected irritably. “Where I shall be exceedingly unsociable. I’ll not talk to a single person, and I’ll scowl so hard the actors fall off the stage.”
Chuckling, the bishop returned to his tea. Rafe lounged against the window and perused the bills, to see what Thea had bought on his account. Silver buttons. Lace handkerchiefs. Snuff boxes. All small items, very easy to resell. No, indeed, he would never make the mistake of thinking Thea Knight a fool. She would have a tidy sum when she resold this lot.
She must really need money, though, to have jeopardized her scheme like this, with the risk of anyone discovering she was not Helen. If only he could tell her that she would receive her own dowry.
“The smoky flavor of this tea is heavenly,” Nicholas said. “Judith would adore this.”
“You can have it. It was a gift from my new father-in-law, Mr. Knight.”
Nicholas lowered his cup with a clatter. “You talked to him? I thought you intended to keep your mischievous scheme quiet. Or does he know the truth?”
“No. He believes I married his perfect Helen. I got Thea her dowry. They just cast her out, and did not believe her side of the story. She deserves better, for all that she is a royal pain in the neck.”
“Is she, Rafe? Is she a pain in the neck? Because that look on your face when you say her name…”
Rafe waved the bundle of bills in his hand. “She took the Luxborough carriage and a servant in Luxborough livery, told everyone she is the Countess of Luxborough, and has bought up half of Bond Street.”
“I like her already.” The bishop smiled like the angel he wasn’t. “What about you? Do you like her, Rafe? Do you?”