“Pray do not overset yourself, sir,” said Lord Berne reassuringly. “My father is a man of influence, which he is bound to exert on your behalf.”
“Heaven help me, I wish he would not. The thing is cursed, I tell you, bringing nothing but trouble from the start. But Lord Streetham says we must go forward, and so we must—though I know it is to ruin.” Atkins wiped away a tear. “At any rate, I have persuaded him to take it back until the work can begin. I would not have that wretched manuscript in my keeping an instant longer than I can help it.”
Lord Berne’s heart sank. His father had the damned thing yet. Forcing heartiness into his voice, he said, “You must not be cast down, Atkins. My father is a careful man. All will be well, I promise you. You must banish these dark thoughts, and think of your golden future. You will make ten times what Murray has on Byron’s Giaour.”
Mr. Atkins only groaned in reply and dropped his head to his desk.
Lord Berne politely took his leave.
“Naturally they speak of sedition,” Lord Streetham impatiently told the son who trailed him into his study. “All the Hunts did was call the Regent names. Desmond has told unflattering tales of half the peerage. He’s certain to be tried.”
“But if such a matter goes to the courts, will not your connexion be revealed?”
“You know nothing of these matters, Tony, and I wish you would tax neither your brain nor my patience by quizzing me about them.”
“You are my parent. I cannot help but be concerned,” said Lord Berne piously.
“I had rather,” said the parent, glaring, “you concerned yourself with Lady Jane. She is arrived in Town and it would behove you to call on her. Atkins and I can manage our business well enough.”
“I don’t see how I’m ever to learn anything if you persist in treating me like an ignorant schoolboy,” the son complained. “I am trying to understand how you expect to proceed safely in this, when the world is in such an uproar.”
Lord Streetham sighed and sat down at his writing desk. While he son watched with suppressed eagerness, the earl took out a key from his pocket and unlocked the desk. “I have a great deal of neglected correspondence to attend to,” said Lord Streetham. “But if you must know, it is a question of ownership. We took pains to ensure that the manuscript remained, legally, Desmond’s property. It is only his word against Atkins’s that the book is published against the Devil’s will, and Atkins’s solicitor will make short work of that claim, should Desmond dare to make it. If he does, there is not a solicitor in London, reputable or not, who will agree to take up his case.”
“I see,” said the viscount, not in the least taken aback by this arrogant abuse of power. “But how is Atkins to publish when no one will trade with him?”
“A temporary setback. I’ll settle that in short order,” said the earl ominously.
“And the manuscript? You have it yet? Are you not concerned Desmond will trace it to you?”
“Do you take me for an idiot?” the earl exploded. “The dratted thing is safely locked up with our solicitor. Now will you go and let me do my work? The nation has some claim on my attention, I think.”
Much perturbed, Lord Berne went, cursing his recklessness in making so impossible a promise to Miss Desmond. He could not face her now. He could not possibly go to her and admit he was helpless to assist her.
Therefore he did not go to the theatre that evening, because she would be there. Instead he took himself to a gaming hell and, after signing a year’s allowance worth of vowels, proceeded to York Place, to a late night gathering at the cramped house of Mrs. Sydenham, Harriette Wilson’s ill-natured sister, Amy.
Restored, no doubt, by a friendly interlude with one of Amy’s attractive rivals, Lord Berne awoke the next day with new resolution. If he did not wish to alienate his adored Delilah entirely, it were best to be at least partially honest. He would admit to being delayed—but only temporarily. If he chose his story carefully, she must in all fairness agree to be patient. After all, no one could get the manuscript now, not even her father.
Which meant that no one else could aid her. Surely, as the days passed, she must come to understand that only the Viscount Berne could protect and care for her properly.
He’d scarcely entered Lady Potterby’s parlour when her ladyship was summoned out of the room by an agitated servant. Lady Potterby, whose nerves had over a week ago received a jolt from which they had not entirely recovered, was sufficiently distracted by the servant’s panic to hurry out of the room with no thought for her grand-niece’s lack of chaperonage, though she did have sense enough to leave the door ajar.
The grand-niece was quick to seize the opportunity.
“You have news of the memoirs, My Lord?” she asked, her grey-green eyes bright with hope.
That brightness, the low, throbbing eagerness in her voice, the sweet vulnerability of her entire mien, was Lord Berne’s undoing. How sweet, how unspeakably delicious to have her so, lying in his arms! When Paradise seemed so close, how could he wait days, weeks, and in the end perhaps lose her after all—because of some ridiculous book and a lot of stubborn, greedy men.
He had not only word, he lied, but a plan. “It will be difficult, Miss Desmond, and I hesitate to impose upon you after promising to see to it myself.”
“Impose?” she whispered, glancing towards the door. “What do you mean?”
The whisper finished him. He could almost feel her warm breath at his ear as he pictured her, snuggled close to him, murmuring shyly in those same soft tones.
“I need your help,” he said. “The matter must be handled discreetly and with dispatch, but it will require two people. I have friends I can trust, but –”
“No! I will do it, whatever it is,” she interrupted excitedly. “You cannot know how vexatious it is to be a woman, always forced to wait, being told nothing—except that one’s help is not wanted. I’m no empty-headed, helpless miss, My Lord, and I’m not afraid.”
“I’ve seen enough of your courage to know that,”
he answered. “You’ve been splendid all this time, when another woman would have been weeping and fainting and making a pitiful spectacle of herself. But there’s nothing of the helpless victim in you. You ought to have been born in another age, when womanly bravery and intelligence were better appreciated.”
Delilah flushed with pleasure. Everyone else had called her foolish and obstinate because she would not run away. He understood. Rake he may be, but he treated her as an equal. He asked her to help, to be a partner in this, while everyone else had only told her endlessly to keep out of men’s affairs.
“What must I do?” she asked.
“Can you come away? My carriage is waiting.”
“Now?”
“There is no time like the present. Surely you will not wish to remain on tenterhooks another day.”
Delilah jumped up from her chair. “Not another minute,” she answered, shrugging off a chill of apprehension as excitement. “Only wait while I get my bonnet and shawl.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when she heard voices approaching. In the next moment, an elegant figure in blue satin sailed through the door.
“Mama!” Delilah cried.
“My love,” said Mrs. Desmond, taking her daughter in her arms for a brief embrace. Then she drew back to examine Delilah critically. “Your hair is inexcusable,” she said. “What on earth was Joan thinking of?”
In the next instant Lord Berne felt the same critical scrutiny, and was oddly unnerved. One might have taken the two for portraits of the same woman, but in different tints. Mrs. Desmond’s dark hair partook more of mahogany, while her daughter’s was nearly blue-black, yet the mother’s skin was the same clear alabaster, scarcely lined.
It was her eyes, though, that most disconcerted Lord Berne. More grey than green, though also with that exotic slant, Mrs. Desmond’s eyes were “hypnotic, fixing him as a pin fixes a moth, and piercing straight through his brain. He immediately felt guilty, and to his chagrin, found himself stammering as he introduced himself.