“Because no one can read my hand. Jason said he could write better with his feet.”
“I have no trouble deciphering. If you want reams of the ugly truth from me, you must provide the same. I shall expect lengthy, detailed epistles from London. You must at least tear yourself away from your flirts long enough to boast of them.”
Frowning, she crept onto the bed. “I did not know I must flirt as well. No one told me. They have taught me to dance and how to eat with twenty different spoons and what to say to this one and that. But no one has taught me to flirt.”
“Not even the all-knowing Percival?” He slipped in beside her and arranged the pillows so they might sit comfortably. “Then it’s a good thing you came to Mount Eden first, my dear. Tonight you shall learn from a master.”
The following day, about the time Lady Brentmor’s carriage left Mount Eden, Sir Gerald Brentmor, sick with anxiety, was pacing his study.
As soon as he’d realized the black queen was under his mother’s roof, he’d offered to go after it. He’d even offered to take the distrustful Ismal with him.
“I beg you not to mistake me for a fool,” Ismal had answered amiably. “It is nearly three days’ journey from London to your mother’s house. You might easily be rid of me on the way, get the queen for yourself, and flee abroad. This would be a stupid and needless risk for me. No, Sir Gerald, you will remain with me in London, and we shall lure the queen to us.”
After a frustrating discussion, Sir Gerald had been obliged to unearth an invitation from Mrs. Stockwell-Hume, his mother’s closest friend. Not only had Ismal imitated her lavish script beautifully, but the forged letter’s contents could not have been better calculated to send the dowager thundering into London forthwith.
It had been futile to remind Ismal there was no assurance the black queen would arrive with her, that for all they knew, Percival or Esme—whichever of them had it—might have buried it in Corfu or in her ladyship’s garden.
“The night of her arrival, we shall have several hours to search thoroughly,” Ismal had replied, “because you will see that all your household lies in drugged slumber. If we do not find the queen, rest assured you will compensate me another way. There are several alternatives, Sir Gerald. All, I regret to say, will prove much more awkward for you than this simple matter of finding the black queen.”
The baronet paused in his pacing to gaze despairingly at the chess set. Rest assured, indeed. He’d blackmailed enough men and women to know extortion never ended. Worse, he feared that even a copy of Bridgeburton’s letter might destroy him. The words alone were damning enough to trigger an investigation...at the end of which he’d hang.
He took out his pocket watch. One o’clock. His mother had written that she’d arrive before nightfall. Time was running out, and he had not yet devised a way to extricate himself from Ismal’s nets. He couldn’t even leave his own house. Every time he’d tried, a huge ugly fellow had promptly appeared in his path. It was no use explaining that one had business appointments. The brute understood no English and spoke only the five words he’d evidently memorized: “You go home now, please.”
The man always appeared, whether it was early morn or the small hours of the night. Sir Gerald had finally given up trying.
With a low moan, he sat down at the chess table. Every night since the first terrifying one, Ismal had slipped into the house when the skeleton staff was in bed. He came for conversation, he’d said. And chess. Every night they’d played, and ever night Ismal had won. He played brilliantly. One could almost believe he could read his opponent’s mind.
Jason had been like that, Sir Gerald remembered. Frighteningly perceptive—except, of course, on one occasion a quarter of a century ago.
But if his ghost was about, he must be laughing now. A fine revenge this would seem to him: six days of purgatory Sir Gerald had endured, and there was hell to come.
Taking up the black queen’s humble substitute, he cursed himself for the moment of panic in which he’d given up the original to Risto. If not for that, the set could have been sold by now, and he’d have at least five thousand pounds to start fresh with abroad.
If he survived this night, he’d have to flee England with next to nothing. His countrymen would soon know him for a criminal, a traitor. The shock would likely kill his mother. Small comfort in that, when he’d never be able to put his hands on her money. The family would be disgraced, and Edenmont as well, having wed into it. Sir Gerald shook his head. Another poor consolation.
Edenmont had been putting on a fine show of saintliness—an obvious ruse to win the dowager over. After denying the modest loan her own son had requested, she’d turned around to throw away a fortune on a mannerless, barbarous little whore of a granddaughter. Oh, Jason in his grave must be delighted. All the trouble Gerald had taken to cut the black sheep out of the family had been for naught. Jason’s offspring—Percival and the little whore, along with her dissolute baron—would get all the dowager’s money.
“Laugh then, you filthy bastard,” Sir Gerald growled. “You always got everything: the looks, the cleverness, the charm. And the women, all of them. You had scores, but you have to have her as well. Even when she was mine, you got to her, and got your bastard on her.”
Low as he’d spoken, the words seemed to echo in the still room. He was talking to himself. Worse, to a dead man.
His hand shaking, Sir Gerald returned the queen to her place. He was not finished yet, he told himself. He’d been a match for his brother when Jason was Ismal’s age. And Jason was burning in hell, where no one laughed but the Devil.
One must be calm, focus on priorities. The highest at present was getting out of this debacle alive.
He sat staring at the chess set, his mind working furiously, until four o’clock when the butler announced that Lady Brentmor’s carriage had arrived.
By five o’clock, the baronet was closeted with his mother in the study.
“Someone will see us,” Percival objected.
Esme glanced about the narrow, walled garden of Sir Gerald’s townhouse. “Not from the outside, unless they can see through walls. And the servants are all busy inside.” She removed her shoes.
“You can’t stand on the ledge. I’ve tried it. You can’t keep your balance. It’s too narrow.”
“I shall keep one foot on your shoulder.”
“You won’t hear any better than we could inside. The window’s closed.”
“Not completely.”
Moving back a few paces, Percival looked up. Though the curtains were drawn, the window was open a very little. With a sigh, he came back to Esme, linked his hands, and bent.
“We will not be caught,” she promised as she accepted the boost up. “You must trust me.”
Ismal had no need to see through walls. He’d only to peer through the narrow slit of the garden gate.
Smiling, he turned to Risto. “She spies upon her uncle and makes his son help her. She entertains me vastly.”
Risto scowled. “It will not be entertaining if she calls attention to the open window. What if she demands the chess set be locked up securely?”
“Then Sir Gerald must un-secure it while she sleeps,” his master answered.
“I don’t like it. The old hag brought too many servants with her.”
“And all will partake of a fea
st as fine as their betters. The greedy ones will sleep very soundly. The others will be too heavy-headed to think or act. We, meanwhile, shall act, quick and silent as death.”
“Second thoughts, indeed,” the dowager said coldly. “You had plenty of chances to be kind to the gel before. But you left ‘em stranded on that godforsaken island and come home and tried to poison my mind against her. Not that I was surprised. You’ve ever resented anything Jason had. You was always jealous of him.”
She had taken over the big chair behind the desk. Sir Gerald stood by the chess table. He’d just raised his wine glass to his mouth. Now he paused. “Jealous, indeed. I wasn’t the one who insisted Papa cut him off. I wasn’t the one who made Diana break off her engagement.”
“I did it for her own good, as the rest was for the good of the family. He’d have dragged us to ruin.”
“You did it to punish him, because your precious baby wanted no part of your plans for him. You thought he’d come crawling back, begging forgiveness, promising to be a good boy. But he didn’t, and now he’s dead. And you’ve learned nothing.”
“I’ve learned dredging up the past don’t mend anything.” Eyeing him with dislike, she took a swallow of wine. “And it won’t win you no favors from me, Gerald.”
He calmly set down his own glass. “I never won a favor from you in my life, though I always did what you wanted. Stayed with the business, while you planned a Parliamentary career and an earl’s daughter for Jason, and stayed with it after he was gone. Stayed with Diana, and had to wed her at last because you didn’t care to do better for me. I even held my tongue through her infidelities—even the most intolerable of all.”
“She was never unfaithful,” the dowager snapped. “You made her wretched, yet she stuck it out, even after I told her she needn’t.”
“She certainly stuck it out, Mama. Presented me with my brother’s bas—”