The Rake's Bargain Page 8

  ‘I have good reason to,’ Beau replied levelly. ‘Paulette Palfreyman seduced my brother into marriage. And it’s because of her that he’s dead.’

  Deborah O’Hara gazed up at him with wide, shocked eyes, as he spelled out to her in a clear, cold voice how his only brother, Simon—two years younger than he was—had married Paulette last autumn. ‘They lived in London,’ he told her without emotion, ‘where Paulette began almost immediately to take other lovers. She retreated to Norfolk in January this year, supposedly on grounds of ill health. Early in March, she ran off to Venice—to live with her latest lover, an Italian count. I believe she’s now married to him.’

  He guessed the girl was about to say something. If so, she thought better of it as Beau pressed on relentlessly with his tale.

  ‘Both my brother and Paulette’s parents,’ he went on, ‘worked hard to maintain the story that she was still convalescing in the country, being looked after by an old nurse of hers. Rumours of a possible miscarriage were deliberately whispered around the ton. But I knew the truth. And then, two months ago, my brother died in a riding accident.’

  She was gazing steadily up at him. ‘I’m sorry. Truly sorry. I had no idea that Paulette...’ She spread out her hands. ‘But what has all this got to do with me?’

  ‘Paulette betrayed my brother,’ he said in a lethal voice. ‘She lured him into marriage, then left him, and I cannot forget it. And there’s something else.’ He walked across the room to point to a portrait on the wall. ‘Who do you think this is, Miss O’Hara?’

  Deb came slowly over to join him. ‘Paulette,’ she breathed.

  ‘Indeed. Do you see the jewels she’s wearing?’ He pointed in turn at the earrings and necklace she wore, of diamonds and rubies. ‘They’re known as the Brandon jewels, and Simon gave them to her. I want them back.’

  ‘From—Venice?’

  ‘No. I have men of discretion, who work for me quietly and well. They suspect that Paulette left those jewels in a place of safekeeping in London, before her flight. And I want you to retrieve them for me.’

  Her eyes turned slowly from the portrait to him. She said, ‘I’m sorry that your brother died, Mr Beaumaris. But I’m not sure that I quite understand. You’re telling me that it’s only two months since your brother’s death—yet now you’re spending your time in trying to obtain some jewels that were a gift from your brother to his wife?’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Most men would still be in mourning. Most men would be more concerned about honouring their brother’s memory, rather than going to what I can only describe as quite extraordinary lengths to recover some—possessions.’

  ‘The jewels,’ he said, ‘have not only got a monetary value. They represent my family’s honour.’

  ‘Well, Mr Beaumaris, you said you have men working for you. So why not get them to retrieve these jewels?’ She said the words almost with scorn. ‘Get your minions to do your work. I am not one of them.’

  There was a moment’s silence before Beau said, ‘I need you, Miss O’Hara. You must know that you bear an extremely strong resemblance to Paulette—’

  ‘But that is ridiculous!’ She shook her head. ‘When I saw Paulette in London last year, she was dressed to perfection. I was raised to wear patched-up cast-offs; I have no idea how to look like a lady...’

  Her voice trailed away as Beau put his hands on her shoulders and adjusted her stance. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look properly at that picture of Paulette.’

  He felt her tremble a little in his grasp, but she said steadily, ‘I’m looking. And I can see that everything about her speaks of money and privilege.’

  ‘Listen to me.’ Beau turned her to face him and shivers tingled down her spine. At the same time she felt a sharp jolt of awareness implode quietly yet disturbingly deep inside her. Again. Again. She wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She’d sworn no man would make her feel like this...

  ‘There’s nothing,’ he was saying, ‘absolutely nothing about your appearance that can’t be dealt with. You both have the same colour of hair. The fact that hers was carefully coiffured and yours has been allowed to run wild can soon be remedied. You both have unusual gold eyes with dark lashes. You’re around the same height and build...’

  Remedied. She wouldn’t forget that in a hurry. Remedied. Steadily she replied, ‘But our faces aren’t the same. My nose is shorter, my chin is more pointed. I’m not as plump as Paulette...’

  ‘Once your hair is cut, and you’re dressed and veiled in black, no one will think to suspect that you aren’t who we say you are. People see what they expect to see, Miss O’Hara. No one has seen Paulette for months—’

  ‘That’s just it! People must know that she’s gone!’

  ‘No. She cut herself off deliberately from her friends when she retreated to Norfolk in January. If there have been any whispers about her flight abroad, then your reappearance in London as a grieving widow will convince the ton that those stories were completely wrong.’

  She made herself meet his gaze steadily. ‘So you’re going to force me into all this?’

  ‘If necessary, yes.’

  She was shaking her head dazedly. ‘But my uncle and aunt hate me—they will never agree to this plan! And I’m not one of your minions!’

  ‘Your uncle and aunt will do whatever I say. Because unless Palfreyman does exactly as I command, I’ll make sure all of England knows the story of his daughter’s scandalous behaviour during her marriage to my brother. As for you not being one of my minions—’ and his voice was suddenly, lethally soft ‘—I’ve got news for you. You are now.’

  All the colour suddenly seemed to leave her face. She walked slowly over to the window and gazed out at the late afternoon sun shining on Palfreyman’s gardens.

  She would agree to his proposition, Beau was completely sure of that. He certainly wasn’t going to have his plan thwarted by yet another member of this tainted and treacherous family. But as she turned back to him, Beau felt a sudden tightness in his lungs. She looked young. She looked vulnerable. She said, ‘Your plan is absurd.’

  ‘It’s no more absurd than the fact that Palfreyman has managed to keep the whole of society from guessing the truth of Paulette’s disappearance,’ he answered. ‘I believe we can convince London that you are her. But we have to proceed with this matter—now.’

  She was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘And you’re prepared to go to all this trouble—this risk—merely to get some jewels back?’

  ‘I’ve told you, the jewels are only a part of it. My brother has been grievously wronged by Paulette’s behaviour—and I want all of London to see, if only for a short while, Paulette as she should have been—a grieving widow.’

  She tilted her chin. ‘So you want revenge.’

  ‘You could call it revenge, Miss O’Hara. I prefer to call it paying my dead brother the honour that should be his due. And I need your answer. Your consent.’ He looked meaningfully over at the door. ‘We haven’t long before Palfreyman comes back.’

  She closed her eyes briefly. Then: ‘Tell me this, Mr Beaumaris. What was your original plan? Before I turned up? Why, exactly, were you on your way here?’

  ‘To make sure Palfreyman knows that Paulette can never lay claim to anything of my brother’s. In other words, I was coming here to warn Palfreyman that I won’t tolerate his connivance with his absent daughter, in any way whatsoever.’

  ‘But then—I appeared.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘And presented you with an entirely new strategy.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you presented me, Miss O’Hara, with a whole new range of possibilities.’ He walked over to that bag of hers and picked it up. ‘I take it you have those books of yours in here?’

  She said nothing. Clearly he didn’t need to spell out that he could have her prosecuted for kidnap and assault, as well as possibly selling herself.
He put the bag down again. ‘Your answer?’ he prompted with lethal softness.

  For one wild moment, Deb thought of telling him the truth about the books. But then—then she would have to confess she was a burglar, and the punishment for breaking into a house like Palfreyman’s was hanging. Besides, would he even believe her story? And wasn’t it safer anyway to let him go on despising her as a whore, since this lethal man only had to touch her and all her self-control fled to the four winds?

  ‘I will do what you say,’ she whispered.

  ‘Good,’ replied Beau. ‘Then let’s get on with it. Shall we?’

  Chapter Seven

  At that very moment the door swung open and Palfreyman stood there, his arms laden with sheaves of paper which he deposited on a nearby table. After taking one scornful look at his niece, he began talking in a low voice to Mr Beaumaris, and Deb backed slowly away from them, her mind reeling. A few hours ago, she’d been full of quiet triumph at her apparent victory over Palfreyman. She’d outmanoeuvred her devious uncle by getting hold of those books, and she’d negotiated freedom from prosecution for her fellow actors.

  Now, a whole new nightmare faced her. Sitting down carefully in a chair by the window, she heard Palfreyman talking to Mr Beaumaris in a voice that was a mixture of resentment, petulance and downright fear.

  Unless Palfreyman does exactly as I command, she remembered Mr Beaumaris saying, I’ll make sure all of England knows the story of his daughter’s scandalous behaviour during her marriage to my brother.

  Now she heard Palfreyman muttering as he leafed through the various items he’d put on the table. ‘My wife —hoards things. Everything and anything to do with Paulette. Here are some party invitations and dance programmes. And there are newspaper cuttings too, all relating to Paulette’s Season last spring.’

  ‘Do you have the details of the place where she’s supposed to be staying now?’

  Palfreyman’s expression was still grim as he searched. ‘Yes.’ He pulled out a printed card. ‘Here is the address of the Norfolk house where she is still, supposedly, in residence.’

  Deb saw Mr Beaumaris inspect it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘now you’ll be able to start spreading the word, Palfreyman, that your daughter has decided to leave her rural retreat and return to London—with me. Won’t you?’

  Palfreyman glanced furiously at Deb. ‘But people will wonder why—?’

  ‘People have never stopped wondering why your daughter didn’t even attend my brother’s funeral,’ Mr Beaumaris cut in. ‘You informed everyone that Paulette was prostrate with grief. Now you can say that at last your daughter feels sufficiently strong to visit her husband’s grave and to pay her last respects. I’ve played along with all your subterfuge, Palfreyman, but now I’ve had enough. I want due honour given to my dead brother’s memory.’

  ‘But I still don’t see how this girl can...’

  Mr Beaumaris—tall, powerful and impossibly autocratic—had already turned his attention to Deb. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered.

  She hesitated, and instantly he eased back his cuff, so slightly that it might have been unintentional. But she glimpsed the scorched lace at his wrist and knew that it was a reminder of the bandage there. Look what you did to me. She rose very slowly, putting as much defiance as she could into her stance.

  ‘Turn around, Miss O’Hara,’ said Mr Beaumaris. She did so, cheeks aflame.

  Mr Beaumaris transferred his gaze to Palfreyman. ‘I take it, Palfreyman, that your family and all your acquaintances here and in London will have long forgotten that your niece exists?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ began Palfreyman, glancing at Deb with mingled anger and contempt. ‘Since this girl’s foolish mother chose to disgrace herself by running off and getting herself pregnant by some ne’er-do-well. But you’ll never get away with this—’

  ‘Won’t I? Even you must be aware,’ Mr Beaumaris cut in softly, ‘that the servants are already saying that the girl who arrived here today is your daughter. Your wife thought she was your daughter.’

  ‘Yes. But...’

  ‘The girl will be Paulette,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘but not the Paulette that you and the fashionable world know. She will instead appear as a devastated young widow who is only reluctantly beginning to appear in society again, under the protection of her brother-in-law. Me. And if you breathe one word of the pretence, Palfreyman, you’ll regret it deeply.’

  ‘What about her?’ Again Palfreyman pointed at Deb. ‘The little tramp could blackmail you for the rest of her life over this, and no doubt she’s already planning it—’

  ‘Stop it,’ Deb breathed. ‘Stop it, both of you.’

  She was making for the door, and Beau was charging after her. ‘You cannot run,’ he said. ‘Are you forgetting we have an agreement?’

  She gave him a look of pure scorn. ‘I’ll keep to our agreement, don’t worry. But I warn you now—there is a limit to what I will tolerate.’ She pointed to a narrow room leading off the corridor. ‘I’ll wait for you in here, Mr Beaumaris—but I won’t be subject to my uncle’s insults a moment longer.’

  She walked, head high, into the neighbouring room, leaving Beau standing there.

  Most men would still be in mourning, she’d said. Most men would be more concerned about honouring their brother’s memory.

  His brother’s memory was in fact what all this was about—but since her opinion of him was clearly at rock bottom, perhaps it was better to keep it that way. Safer to keep it that way, especially as he kept remembering only too vividly the way her slender body had felt when he’d kissed her in the forest.

  And thoughts like that had no place whatsoever in his plans.

  * * *

  Deb found herself in a narrow room that was sparsely furnished with a sofa, a low table and some chairs pushed into various dark corners. She put her hands to her cheeks, feeling agitated and cold. How could she possibly be Paulette?

  Then she remembered how the servants had backed away in shock as she’d emerged from the coach, veiled and swathed in black. Even her aunt had thought that she was Paulette, and her rage when she’d discovered she wasn’t had been vicious—Deb’s temple still throbbed from where she’d hit the corner of the table after Vera Palfreyman struck her.

  Mr Beaumaris had planned it all so carefully. She hadn’t realised how safe she felt with the Lambeth Players. Now, she suspected that she would never feel safe again.

  This room was dark and airless—unlike the other room, the window was too high up for her to be able to look out. The walls were lined with paintings that were of little value, she guessed, since they were hung carelessly and without any order or neatness.

  She walked to and fro for ten minutes or more, thinking, I am trapped, like an animal in a cage. At last—to distract herself from her agonising thoughts, if nothing else—she began to look at the various pictures. And suddenly, amongst some small portraits that were almost lost in the shadows of a deep alcove, she saw one that made her hold her breath as she stooped to look at it.

  It was an old and faded portrait of a young girl with chestnut hair, perhaps ten or eleven years old, looking sad and unbearably alone. Deb felt her chest tighten as she lifted it carefully from its hook and carried it over to the meagre light. That hair. The sadness in those eyes...

  She spun round with a gasp as the door opened, and Mr Beaumaris entered.

  * * *

  When Beau saw her there, with the light from the small window slanting across her slender figure, he thought that he glimpsed in her unguarded expression some terrible unspoken grief, and it pierced him with unexpected force. But he needn’t have worried. As soon as she realised he was there she faced him squarely, with defiance etched in every line of her stance. In every lock of her unruly hair.

  She’d been holding a small picture, he’d noticed. He also not
iced that she swiftly put it face down on a nearby table the minute he came in. Beau made a mental note to take a closer look at that picture just as soon as he could. He said, ‘I’m sorry that you were subjected to—certain of Palfreyman’s phrases.’

  ‘Are you?’ she answered softly. ‘I warned you that Palfreyman long ago banished my mother from this house. How, exactly, did you expect him to react to my arrival here?’

  Beau exhaled sharply. ‘Palfreyman accepts,’ he said, ‘that he had no right to speak to you like that. I extracted an apology from him, which I told him I would convey to you. Palfreyman won’t make any trouble, you may rest assured—’

  ‘Stop,’ she breathed, interrupting him. ‘Stop.’ She was gazing up at him almost desperately. ‘Tell me the truth. From the moment you first saw me, in the forest, you planned all of this, didn’t you? You came to me at the Angel with the black cloak and gown and bonnet. You knew that I would accept.’

  ‘I knew that, like Palfreyman, you had little choice,’ he answered. ‘As we’ve already discussed. And I don’t see how you can even think of making judgements on the morality of my tactics.’

  He was thinking of the kidnap. And those books—again. She drew a deep, shuddering breath, then suddenly looked up at him with her clear, bright gaze. ‘What about my friends, Mr Beaumaris? They are a company of actors, as you’ve surely realised, and I look after all their bookings and the money. I keep the records of which plays we’ve put on and where. I’m also the one who decides on our programme for the coming season—’

  ‘You sound invaluable,’ he cut in drily. ‘But I’m afraid they’ll have to manage without you for a short while.’

  ‘You’re not—making me stay here? At Hardgate Hall?’

  ‘For tonight, yes. There’s no alternative. Write to them in Gloucester—that’s where they’ve travelled to, isn’t it? You can make up some excuse and I’ll see that your letter is delivered.’