His chubby face looked grim, and I deduced that he didn’t believe a word that I was saying. It was very frustrating.
Lord Winterdale did not attend the Pomfret ball either.
Really, I thought with annoyance, what did the man do with himself? Surely he couldn’t spend every evening at Brooks’s drinking and gambling.
Sunday afternoon I decided to take Anna to see the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London. Nanny came with us, and Lord Winterdale, whom I actually caught for a moment in the hall as he was on his way out, recommended that we use his curricle for the trip across London.
The day was fine and as we walked across the landing where in the past so many famous prisoners had been brought in by boat, my first impression of the Tower was not that of a gloomy and doom-ridden place but of a picnic grounds filled with a holiday gathering.
It appeared that half of London with its young had decided to spend a delightful Sunday afternoon visiting the Tower of London. The grounds inside the grim stone walls were packed with people, most of them respectable-looking, middle-class citizens dressed in their Sunday finest.
I was disappointed. I had been expecting an atmosphere more appropriate to a place that had seen so much suffering and death.
However, as we toured the different areas of the famous prison that were open to the public, my imagination was able to supersede the pleasant reality of the present and call up what it must have been like several hundred years ago, when the only human presences in this grim place were prisoners and their guards. I could almost see Sir Walter Raleigh, that captive panther of a man, pacing restlessly back and forth along the wall that had been the only place allotted him for exercise during all the many years he had been kept in prison here.
The panther simile immediately brought to my mind the picture of another lithe, dark man, an image which I instantly tried to banish from my thoughts. Instead I dragged Anna and Nanny over to the group of people that were crowded around the small area in front of the chapel where two of Henry VIII’s wives had been beheaded.
Anna was not interested in Henry’s unfortunate wives, however, and she tugged at my hand to indicate that she wanted to move on to look at the menagerie, and this is where we went next.
It was not very impressive. The animals were housed in a deep pit, which must once have been part of a protective ditch for the Tower when it was a royal residence, and the total menagerie consisted of one mangy-looking lion, an elephant, and two grizzly bears.
Truth to tell, I felt sorry for them, they looked so ill kempt and listless.
Even Anna was uncertain. “They don’t look very happy, do they, Georgie?” she asked me.
“No, they don’t,” I said. There was a large crowd of people around the pit, and I edged closer to the low wooden fence that surrounded it and looked down. It was pitiful, really, I thought. I didn’t know what I had expected, but it hadn’t been this.
I was standing above the lion’s part of the pit and all of a sudden he looked up from his melancholy stare into space.
“Hello there, fellow,” I called to it in a friendly voice. “How are you?”
I thought his eyes moved to find me and I leaned out farther. “What a handsome boy you are,” I crooned, although he was not handsome at all, poor thing. He looked as if he had some sort of skin disease.
There was a good-sized crowd behind me as I was leaning over the low wooden rail, and suddenly someone knocked into me. Hard. I lost my balance and began to tip forward. I grabbed for the railing to right myself, and I would have been all right were it not for the hand on the small of my back that shoved me beyond recall. Then I was tumbling down the steep rocky side of the pit in what seemed to be an endless fall. I landed on the bottom, bruised, shaken, and ten feet from the lion.
I scrambled to my feet, my breath coming hard.
From what seemed to be a long way away I could hear screaming, and in a dim part of my mind I recognized that the screams belonged to Anna. But the main part of my mind was focused on the animal in front of me, who appeared to have awakened from his listless stupor now that someone had come to join him in his captivity.
I stopped breathing.
I can’t let him sense how terrified I am
, I thought.
Once animals sense fear they attack. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Be calm, Georgie. Be calm
.
Anna kept screaming.
The lion opened its mouth and roared. The stench of its breath nearly knocked me down.
I must have courage
, I told myself. I was shaking all over.
The lion took a few steps in my direction.
“All right, Miss,” I heard a voice saying. “I’m going to throw him a bit of meat, and then we’ll put the ladder down into the pit. Can you climb up it on your own?”
I nodded. I could have climbed the Matterhorn if it meant getting out of that cage.
A few seconds later a huge haunch of meat came flying down into the pit, in the corner farthest away from me. The lion turned immediately and went to get his meal.
The keeper lowered a long wooden ladder down into the pit and my foot was on the first rung before the lion had taken his first bite of meat. I hiked my skirts up past my ankles and climbed that ladder as if all the devils in hell were after me. When I reached the top, a weeping Anna threw herself into my arms.
Nanny was right behind her. “God Almighty, Miss Georgiana,” she kept saying, “God Almighty.”
The lion’s keeper was extremely annoyed at my stupidity in falling into the pit. “You mighta been kilt, and then what woulda happened to me?” he said. “And what woulda happened to poor Leo?”
I apologized as coherently as I could and managed to get myself, Nanny and a still semihysterical Anna into the barouche. Fortunately it was an open carriage, because I smelt most dreadfully of the lion’s pit.
The carriage deposited us on the doorstep of Grosvenor Square and we went in the front door. The first person I saw as I came into the hall was Lord Winterdale, who appeared to be on his way to the library. He turned when he saw us.
“How was your outing to the Tower?” he asked courteously.
“Oh, Lord Winterdale,” Anna cried, “Georgie fell into the lion’s cage and was almost eaten up!”
That certainly got his attention.
“It’s true,” I said. “Fortunately I was rescued by an intelligent keeper. He threw the beast some meat to distract him while I climbed up the ladder to safety.”
“I think you had better come along to the library with me and tell me all about this,” he said a little grimly.
I gave him a smile that was not quite steady. “I rather think I had better have a wash first and change my clothes.”
He looked me up and down, taking in the stains on my new green pelisse. His blue eyes darkened noticeably.
“All right,” he said tersely. “Come along when you are ready. I will be waiting for you.”
I went upstairs with Nanny and Anna, relieved to know that there was one person at least with whom I could share the whole truth of how I came to be pushed into that cage of death.
CHAPTER
eleven
I
HAD
B
ETTY FILL THE TUB AND SCRUBBED MYSELF IN
front of the fire until my skin was red. Then I dressed in a pale blue afternoon dress and went down to the library to confront Lord Winterdale.
He was seated at his library desk, going over a ledger book. It occurred to me that he appeared to spend a great deal of time on business matters.
He did not stand up when I came into the room, a usual sign of his rudeness, but folded his hands on his papers and gestured me to my usual chair.
“Now,” he said, “tell me precisely what happened.”
“Somebody pushed me,” I said. “I was standing on the edge of the lion’s pit, and perhaps I was leaning out a bit too far, but somebody definitely bumped into me. Then they put a hand on the small of my back and pushed, sending me over the rail and down into the lion’s pit.”
For the first time I felt tears filling my eyes. “I have bruises all over my shoulder and my back,” I said, with a quiver in my voice. “Then the lion roared at me.” The quiver got even more pronounced. “His breath smelled horrible.”
“Don’t cry,” Lord Winterdale said in a tense, angry voice. A muscle twitched in the corner of his jaw. “I shall dislike it intensely if you cry.”
I struggled to hold back my tears, trying to substitute indignation instead. Really, I thought, I had had an extremely frightening experience. I thought I was entitled to a few tears. It wouldn’t have hurt him to spare a compassionate word for me. It wouldn’t have hurt him to give me a comforting hug.
He did neither of these things, however. Instead he sat there, looking at me out of unsympathetic blue eyes and waiting for me to compose myself. There was a white line around his nostrils.
When I was breathing more evenly, he said, “I gather that you have no idea who this person was who pushed you?”
I shook my head. “It was very crowded around the menagerie, and there were a lot of people behind me. At first, when someone bumped me, I thought it was an accident. I grabbed for the rail, and I would have been able to right myself, but then someone put his hand on my back and pushed me right over the fence. It was quite deliberate, my lord. I have no doubt of that.”
He swore softly.
I said in a very small voice, “Do you think it might have been one of those men whom Papa was blackmailing?”
“I think it is very likely,” he returned. “Unless you have enemies of your own you have not told me about, Miss Newbury?”
I shook my head.
He stared at me, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. He looked very tense.
“What is to be done?” I asked in the same small voice as before.
“Get you married off as quickly as possible so that you are under the protection of your husband,” he replied instantly. “Until that desirable goal is accomplished, however, I suppose that I had better keep an eye on you. God knows what you have stirred up with those stupid letters of yours.”
A surge of healthy anger washed through me. I could feel my cheeks grow pink. “I thought I was behaving honorably,” I said. “But then, to you all honorable behavior probably seems stupid.”
“Shall we get this straight once and for all, Miss Newbury?” he replied. “It is you who are blackmailing me, not the other way around.”
I replied grandly, “I am not blackmailing you, Lord Winterdale, and well you know it. It is you who are blackmailing your aunt.” I stood up before he could. “And I’ll have you know that I don’t need your solicitude. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself!”
On this truly stupid note, I swept out of the room.
* * *
We stayed home on Sunday night so I did not have to worry about someone trying to harm me. Lady Winterdale and Anna and I spent the evening listening to Catherine play the piano. The Duchess of Faircastle had quite taken Catherine up, and even Lady Winterdale felt that she could hardly snub a duchess by refusing to allow her daughter to attend her afternoon musicales.
I kept asking Catherine if any interesting young men appeared at these musical afternoons, but she always shook her head and said that the only men present were the duchess’s sons. As I knew Lord Henry was there only because his mother demanded it, I didn’t harbor any false hopes about Catherine’s finding a possible husband at the Faircastles’.
Anna loved listening to Catherine play. I had never before realized that my sister would enjoy music, and it was a great pleasure to watch her lovely face as she listened to the beautiful notes of Mozart come pouring out from beneath Catherine’s talented fingers.
My mother had been musical, I remembered. Anna must have inherited her love of music from Mama.
Lord Winterdale did eat Sunday dinner with us, but he did not participate in much of the conversation. Then, after drinking a glass of port in solitary splendor in the dining room after we ladies had gone upstairs to the drawing room, he disappeared.
Back to Brooks’s no doubt, to drink and gamble some more.
Monday night was the night of the Wrenham ball, the ball where Lord Winterdale had said I was likely to meet the Earl of Marsh. To my great relief, Lord Winterdale appeared at dinner dressed in full evening regalia and announced to his aunt that he would be accompanying us that evening to the Wrenhams’.
Lady Winterdale pronounced herself to be amazed.
“How is this, Philip? You are like a shadow in your own house for weeks on end, and then you appear out of nowhere to escort us to a ball! I am stunned.”
“To succeed in stunning you is a feat indeed, Aunt Agatha,” Lord Winterdale said sarcastically. “You usually are so certain of everything.”
Lady Winterdale glared at him down the width of the dining-room table. The chandelier glinted on her gold turban, which she was wearing to match the gold embroidery in her purple silk gown, “You are not as witty as you think you are, Philip,” she said.
He looked up from his chicken, a look of blatant surprise on his face. “I’m not?”
I looked at his flying black eyebrows and glinting blue eyes, and the first inkling of a very unwelcome knowledge began to insinuate itself into my mind and my heart.
I pushed it away.
“Anna, darling,” I said, “would you care for some of these delicious green beans?”
“Oh yes, thank you, Georgie,” Anna said, and one of the footmen hurried to bring the side dish to her.
The servants loved Anna. How could they not, I thought, resolutely keeping my mind on my sister. She was the sweetest child who ever lived.
* * *
Wrenham House was in Hanover Square and, like most of the town houses in London, it was too narrow to have a ballroom so Lady Wrenham had had the rug taken up in her upstairs drawing room and the dance was held there.
I came into the room with Lady Winterdale, Catherine, and Lord Winterdale, and looked around me.
The same faces that I had seen at every ball since I had come to London looked back.
I sighed.
“Bored already, Miss Newbury?” Lord Winterdale murmured in my ear.
“Not bored precisely,” I returned in a low voice. “It is just that one keeps seeing the same people over and over again.”
“Well, here comes someone who does not appear bored to see you,” Lord Winterdale said, and I saw Lord Borrow lumbering his bearlike way across the dance floor in my direction.
He bowed in front of me, made a civil acknowledgment of my guardian, and asked me to dance. I accepted, of course, and he led me out to the floor for the opening quadrille.
The ball proceeded as most balls had proceeded since I came to London, with the big difference that this time Lord Winterdale was there, and I could feel him watching me. I never once caught him doing it, but I could feel it, and for some reason that made my blood run faster and my nerve endings tingle.
About halfway through the evening a couple I had never before seen came into the drawing room. I saw Lady Wrenham rush to the wide double doors, and she stood in conversation with the newly arrived woman for a few moments while the man stood silently beside them, his eyes roving over the scene in front of him.
We were between dances, and I was standing in front of the crimson-draped windows with Mr. George Stanhope, waiting for the music to start up again. “Who are those people who just came in?” I asked him, trying to sound as if I were merely casually interested.
“That is Marsh,” Mr. Stanhope replied. There was a very cold look in his green eyes and a very disapproving expression on his face. “My advice to you is to stay away from him, Miss Newbury,” he warned me. “He is not a nice man.”
Lord Marsh appeared to have a universally delightful reputation.
“He doesn’t look like a bad man,” I said, and this was true. I had rather expected the Earl of Marsh to be a forbidding-looking fellow, with a swarthy and dissipated face. This man was very fair, and even from my position across the room I could see that his eyes were light.
Mr. Stanhope muttered something about looks not being everything, and I agreed.
It took Lord Marsh precisely fifteen minutes to seek me out. My hostess, Lady Wrenham, presented him to me as an old friend of my father’s, and when he asked me to dance I could scarcely refuse.
It was a waltz.
We went out onto the dance floor, and he put his hand on my waist and took my hand in his and looked down into my face. He was about as tall as Lord Winterdale, and up close I could see the threads of gray that had dimmed the bright gold of his hair. His eyes were almost colorless, a pale gray-green, and there was something about them that did not look right.
I looked around for Lord Winterdale and didn’t see him.
Damn, I thought crossly. Where was he when I needed him?
“And how are you enjoying your Season, Miss Newbury?” Lord Marsh said to me.
“Very well, my lord,” I replied tersely, once more searching the room for Lord Winterdale.
“It was so kind of Lady Winterdale to sponsor your come out, was it not?” he said. “And so strange. One does not usually think of Lady Winterdale as being kind.”
He was smiling a little, the look on his face that of a cat who is playing with a mouse.
I said, “Lord Winterdale is my guardian, Lord Marsh, and Lady Winterdale is sponsoring me to oblige him.”
He laughed.
It was a soundless laugh, and it didn’t reach his eyes. I have to admit that it was frightening. He was indeed an excessively unpleasant man.
He was mercifully silent for the remainder of the dance, however, and as soon as it ended I turned away from him to flee to the shelter of Lady Winterdale’s chaperonage. But Lord Marsh’s fingers closed around my bare arm beneath the puffed sleeve of my pale pink evening frock and held me next to him.
“I wish to speak to you, Miss Newbury,” he said. “Come along with me to a place where we can be private.”
“No!” I said in panic, and tried to pull away. Once more I looked vainly around the room for Lord Winterdale.
Lord Marsh’s fingers bit into the flesh of my arm with cruel pressure. “Don’t cause a scene, you stupid little bitch,” he said in a low and vicious voice. What made his words even more frightening was the fact that he was smiling when he said them.
He urged me forward and I went with him, thinking that he was right, that I did not wish to cause a scene, and that the other drawing room on the floor had been set up as a supper room and so I would surely be protected by the presence of other people.
We didn’t go into the supper room, however. Lord Marsh went directly across the hall, pushed open a closed door, and pulled me into the small anteroom that was disclosed. He shut the door behind him and said in a voice that sent shivers up and down my spine, “Now, then, let us talk about that evidence.”
I thought of that hand pushing me into the lion’s den and my heart began to pound with terror.
Lord Winterdale’s voice said from the darkness of the anteroom’s far corner, “Let us do that, Marsh. And take your hands off my ward.”
Lord Marsh dropped his hands, swung around to face Lord Winterdale, and cursed.
I took the opportunity of being free to run across the room to Lord Winterdale’s side.
A little silence fell as the two men sized each other up. Then Lord Marsh said, “Was Weldon blackmailing you, too, Philip?”
I must confess that his use of Lord Winterdale’s Christian name stunned me.
“Not me, my uncle,” Lord Winterdale replied briefly.
“The saintly Winterdale?” Lord Marsh asked incredulously.
“It appears so. At any rate, our innocent Miss Newbury here found all the blackmailing evidence after her father died. Instead of returning the evidence to the victims, however, she stupidly burned it, thinking she was doing a good deed to all concerned.”
“Or she says she burned it,” Lord Marsh replied in a harsh voice.
“Oh, I don’t think there is any doubt that she burned it, Richard,” Lord Winterdale said amiably. “She wouldn’t have sent those notes out if she hadn’t. She would just have put the screws on you, like her father did.”
Richard
. I felt another jolt as I realized that these men were on far closer terms than Lord Winterdale had ever let on to me.
“She must have put the screws to you,” Lord Marsh was pointing out. “I cannot imagine any other reason for you to be taking up an insipid little schoolroom miss. She is scarcely your type, Philip, you must admit.”
I could feel my hackles go up. Insipid little schoolroom miss, indeed!
“I am doing it to get back at my aunt, of course,” Lord Winterdale replied pleasantly. “You cannot imagine how much pleasure I have derived this Season from watching her squirm as Catherine is continually passed over in favor of my ward.”
Lord Marsh looked skeptical. “If she is not blackmailing you, then how did Miss Newbury come to your attention in the first place?” he demanded.
“Oh, I went to see her,” Lord Winterdale said easily. “My uncle’s books showed a record of payments to Lord Weldon, you see, and I wondered about them. So I sought Miss Newbury out myself and she told me about what she had found among her father’s papers.”