The Mistress Memoirs Page 7

  “Heavens,” Kate murmured.

  “The hell,” Nan said, striding across the room to the windows. “I’ll never drink a drop of wine in this house again.”

  Kate looked down at Griswold. “Did anyone else suspect the viscount had been poisoned?”

  “There were rumors in the village,” Griswold said, blinking as Nan threw open the drapes. “But it wasn’t long before the viscountess remarried, and with her three older boys gone from home, what could she do?”

  Kate frowned through the dust motes that floated in the air. “Why didn’t you explain all this before Mrs. Lawson moved into this house?”

  “It didn’t all come together in my mind until I saw the viscount’s son,” Griswold said. “Who’d take the word of a shuffling old drunk, anyway? I have no proof and I know we’re running low on funds. It seemed to me that the mistress and Mr. Earling care for each other. Perhaps I was afraid she would think me a senile fool who was more a threat to the house than an asset.”

  “I assume you haven’t spoken to her yet, Griswold. Nan?”

  “You’re the only one she ever listens to,” Nan said.

  “Why didn’t anyone else at the table fall ill?” Nan asked.

  “The viscount drank most of the wine himself. Mr. Earling had a goblet, but he knocked it over as his son was filling his glass. I was sent to the pantry for two other bottles, of an inferior but still excellent vintage.”

  “You weren’t tempted to taste this special vintage?” Nan asked, her hands clasped behind her back like a barrister in court.

  “Most certainly not,” he said. “The bottle was empty, even if I had wanted a sample. It must have been strong. I was helping another footman carry the stained carpet outside the next morning when the viscountess’s son galloped into the courtyard begging for Mr. Earling’s help. He said his father had been seized with unbearable pain. Mr. Earling expressed his distress and sent immediately for the surgeon. But it was too late.”

  Nan’s face wrinkled in a frown. “Didn’t the surgeon say his lordship’s heart had given out?”

  “The surgeon who worked for the Earlings,” Griswold said with bitterness.

  Kate stared around the study, picturing Mason playing fetch with his silly little dogs, allowing Etta and Charlie to jump on his best sofa. Was his weakness a masquerade? Was his fear of Colin Boscastle a symptom of his own guilt?

  “Why?” she wondered aloud. “Why would he kill his father’s partner?”

  “Mason was his father’s only heir. Yet there was more than money involved. Even at his young age he considered Sir Colin to be his rival.”

  “Over Madam?” Kate asked, knowing the answer.

  Griswold sighed. “She loved young Boscastle so deeply that I doubt she knew Master Earling was alive.”

  “She has to be told,” Nan said.

  “She isn’t going to take my word,” Griswold said. “Everyone knows I’m off in the head.”

  “I’m too old,” Nan said. “She won’t heed my advice.”

  “Cowards,” Kate whispered.

  “You’re the only person she doesn’t throw things at in a temper,” Griswold said in sympathy.

  “That is not true at all. I simply happen to duck faster than the rest of you.”

  Chapter 13

  Kate steeled her spine, left the room, lost in thought, and walked straight into the tall figure standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Miss Walcott,” he said, nodding his head in deference to her.

  “Sir—Mr. Castle,” she bit out, drawing a deep breath to steady herself. “How is your shoulder?”

  “It bothers me less than a bee sting.”

  “Well, good,” she said, unwillingly admiring how nicely he filled out his riding jacket. “May I congratulate you on the occasion of your self-appointed service to our house?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wasn’t serious! How are we going to explain this to the staff?”

  He shrugged. “I served in the military and I worked in a duke’s stable after the war. I am an old friend of Mrs. Lawson’s, and she is generously helping me earn enough money to set out on my own.”

  “Yes. After you kill her protector.”

  “I don’t have to kill him if he can convince me that I am wrong about him. I am a very reasonable man once you get to know me.”

  She dropped her voice. “You weren’t reasonable last night when I took you to your room.”

  His mouth curved in a thin smile. “Considering the fact that we’ll be working together, I propose that we do our best to get along. Shall we start anew?”

  “Will you promise to behave yourself?”

  “I can try.”

  “Then this conversation is over,” she said, lifting her skirts to mount the stairs.

  He followed her a few steps. “You can’t ignore me forever.”

  That’s what he thinks.

  “We shall have to act like civilized adults in front of the children.”

  The children! As if he cares.

  “After supper tonight I will lay out the new rules the household is to obey.”

  She gripped the staircase railing. She would not respond. Rules, indeed.

  “I am also setting a curfew against any further nocturnal activities in the garden.”

  She pivoted slowly on the landing, provoked to her last nerve. “Excuse me?”

  He shook his head. “All meetings are to be conducted before dusk. This restriction, of course, will not extend to me or to any male servants whom I assign to a nightly patrol.”

  “A patrol?”

  He frowned. “Do not be alarmed if you hear me walking the halls during the wee hours.”

  “You would presume to restrict my freedom? By what right?”

  He held up his hand. “It is only for your protection, Miss Walcott. No one in this house will suffer injury or intimidation under my guard.”

  * * *

  It was the first time that Mason Earling had traveled on business without his solicitor. He was forced to make his own decisions to impress accomplished gentlemen who had become wealthy beyond belief on the riches of foreign lands.

  At first he had hesitated to share his opinions, his suggestions for safer travel, for expanding trade routes. He thought these hardened men would laugh at him; instead, they bought him drinks.

  He didn’t know how it had happened. He’d always needed his solicitor to talk for him. Perhaps it was Georgette who had given him confidence.

  Suddenly his advice was sought, his business courted, his fellow tradesmen the friendliest he had met in months. It confused him. His solicitor had been warning Mason for more than a year that the company would soon go bankrupt.

  He had expected other investors to avoid him. He had expected the usual excuses of uncertain markets and the hazards of putting confidence in a foreign country. But these gentlemen of Southampton encouraged him to grow bolder, to grasp a piece of the wealth they had discovered.

  He was hopeful.

  He would share the news with his solicitor, Hay, of course. But it was Georgette he wanted to impress. Mason had sent her a pearl choker and hadn’t heard a word. Hadn’t she liked it? Had it been stolen from the mail coach? Why hadn’t she written to him?

  “Earling!” A young stockholder in the East India Company wanted to show Mason a sketch of his home in Madras.

  “Come to supper with us, Earling!” That was the director who thought Mason had a talent for reading maps and could be invaluable surveying a new and faster Suez route.

  Mason liked these men, their energy. They appeared to trust him, when all his life his father and their solicitor, Ramsey Hay, had expressed doubts that Mason had a head for business.

  “For whores, yes,” Hay had announced at a party once. “But I am fond of the boy, and I will protect his business from the unscrupulous.”

  With his father on the run, and now dead, Mason had more on his mind than reading the fine print on his agreements or
even spending the time consulting another solicitor for a second opinion.

  He knew it was only a matter of time before Colin Boscastle found him. He did not want to run his entire life as his father had done. He wanted peace; he wanted his mistress to be his wife.

  But one thought chilled him. What if Boscastle wanted Georgette back, just to spite Mason? Would Mason keep running if it meant he would lose her?

  Chapter 14

  Georgette was horrified by what Kate told her of Griswold’s revelation. She also wasn’t quite awake, drowsy from her nightly dose of laudanum. Gradually, as the opiate wore off, Georgette’s sense of self-preservation came through. Her thoughts understandably turned to concerns about how this discovery would threaten her financial and physical well-being.

  “To think Mason insisted on filling my wineglass when we took supper together. And the coffee in bed he brought me each morning. How many times did the deceitful swine lift a cup to my lips? Who knows what potions I might have ingested?”

  Kate could only shake her head as Georgette sat down at her dressing table to enact her morning beauty ritual. “It’s a good thing you’ve never given him reason to be rid of you, I suppose.”

  “Until now,” Georgette said, shuddering as she dabbed a blob of white salve on her chin. “He loathes Colin Boscastle. Oh, Kate, I don’t want to die by poison.”

  Kate picked up the jar of unguent and sniffed it. “You’re more likely to be poisoned by your elixirs of eternal life than by Mr. Earling. Stanley said many of these face-whitening potions contain mercury.”

  “Mercury, Venus, or Mars,” Georgette muttered. “If I make enough money off my memoirs, I won’t have to look for another lover to support us. Have you had breakfast?”

  “No,” Kate said. “The head groom has taken over the table. I might never eat there again.”

  “Head groom?”

  “Well, we didn’t have one. So Sir Colin decided the position should be his.”

  “But Mason had promised that Lovitt would have the position when he came home. Colin will take over the estate, mark my words. Whatever will we do about him, Kate?”

  “You could insist he leave.”

  “Do you believe for one moment that he would?”

  “I don’t know him as well as you, madam.”

  “Should we try to escape?”

  “And go where?” Kate asked. “We can’t abandon the household. Nor can we give up on your memoirs.”

  “I’ll ring for coffee and pastry. I trust Nan can occupy the children for an hour.”

  “They are not with Nan. The last I saw of them, they were vying for ‘Castle’s’ attention at the table.”

  “‘Castle’?”

  “Subtle, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, no.” Georgette turned her salve-smeared face to Kate. “I made him a promise before dawn.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not that kind of promise. I need your help. Please take down this letter before I change my mind.”

  Kate drew out the chair by the drop-front desk. “Go on, madam.”

  “I’m betraying Mason.”

  “How?”

  “Colin has convinced me to set a trap with a letter. Oh, Kate, just write what I say or Colin will never go away.”

  Kate sighed heavily. “All right, madam.”

  Dearest Mason,

  I promised you I would not accept private engagements while you provided for me. However, it appears you forgot to pay my bills before you left. Your solicitor shows me as little respect as he does financial support. You are in arrears for my accounts with numerous merchants.

  You promised to send me presents to remind me of your devotion and letters describing your ventures. I have written you three times and received no reply. I worry that your affections for me have waned.

  I also worry that I might be carrying the child you have wanted.

  Last night our house was vandalized by village ruffians. The children and I no longer feel safe without you here to protect us. You need to return home immediately, Mason, if only for a brief time so that these troubles are amended before it is too late.

  Your languishing mistress,

  Georgette

  Kate put down the quill and looked at the letter Georgette had dictated to her. “Is it true?”

  “Is what true?” Georgette said blankly.

  “Are you pregnant, madam?”

  “I doubt it. My menses have never been the same since I gave birth to Charlie.”

  “Another baby,” Kate said, sighing. “And a troublemaker in the house.”

  “It could be a girl.”

  “I was referring to Sir Colin.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  Kate suppressed another sigh. “I’ll have Lovitt or one of the younger footmen post this, then, unless Sir Colin wishes to see it first.”

  “No. Have it sent before I change my mind—it is odd that I haven’t heard from Mason yet. The three previous letters I sent him can’t all have gotten lost.”

  “A seaport is a busy place.” Although why love letters from a man Georgette now believed to be a murderer mattered, Kate didn’t know. “It’s all been a shock, hasn’t it?”

  “Do you think that this letter will bring Mason home?”

  Kate nodded. “You and Sir Colin have set an effective trap. Whether it works or not, I can’t say, but if Mason takes the bait, I dearly hope that the children and I will not be witness to the end result.”

  “I feel dreadful.”

  “Then let’s work on your memoirs. They always put us in a hopeful mood.”

  Georgette’s dream of publication, of making herself wealthy by revealing the sexual peculiarities of peers and well-known gentlemen, might be a debasing aspiration, but it was not one without chance of success. Moreover, Kate would much rather work for a woman who sold her secrets instead of her body.

  She found the last page that Georgette had dictated to her. It had been written the night before Sir Colin arrived, and if Kate had ever suspected that Georgette exaggerated her amorous exploits, she did not now.

  “Here we go. You were describing the month you spent in the Earl of Woodhaven’s dungeon—”

  “Woodhaven.” Georgette made a face at herself in the mirror. “That Master of Perversion. Refresh my memory. Was I still shackled naked to the wall or had I managed to overpower him and escape?”

  Kate peered down at her notes, her face impassive. One did not agree to collaborate on a memoir by passing judgment on the author. It was Kate’s job to inspire, incite, and prompt the forbidden details of Georgette’s life, many of which, to Kate’s relief, she had not been in service to substantiate.

  Her face cleared. “When last we left off on your escapades, you had bashed the earl on the head with a candlestick and retrieved the keys to your shackles and the dungeon.”

  Georgette smiled. “Oh, right. The widgeon and his whips.”

  “Widgeon?” Kate paused. “You ran through the castle, clad in a tablecloth, and found his wife—”

  “That wasn’t his wife. That was his mother,” Georgette said. “And I could have escaped without informing anyone that I’d locked the earl in the dungeon, but I didn’t want his death on my hands. What was it you read recently about him in the papers?”

  “He is well liked in the House of Lords.”

  “Not after my memoirs publish. What are you frowning about now?”

  “I suspect your readers will crave the details of his depravity.”

  “Well, then, after coffee and a bath, I’ll be in a more talkative frame of mind.”

  They fell into a companionable silence until Kate rose to wipe the salve from Georgette’s face. Her employer was flighty, selfish, generous to a fault. Kate had watched Georgette discard lovers as thoughtlessly as she did a pair of slippers; she had also seen Georgette slip a full purse to a street pauper on more than one occasion when she thought Kate could not see her from the carriage.

  “Who would have guessed I
could still be fooled at my age? I believed Mason when he said that he loved me and would marry me if I agreed to give him children.”

  “The children.” Kate glanced up guiltily at the clock. “I should have brought them in for lessons a half hour ago.” If she could pry them away from their new hero.

  * * *

  The children had followed Colin to the paddock, where Brian was riding the sullen little pony that Mason had given him before he left on business. It had been a touching act of kindness toward Brian, Kate had thought at the time. But Brian thought himself too grown-up for a pony and had asked repeatedly for a horse.

  Kate sensed hostilities mounting before she even reached the paddock. Lovitt stood with his brawny arms thrown over the railing. Scorn in his eyes, he watched Colin instruct Brian on the handling of his pony. The pony took several complacent trots around the ring before she stopped.

  “Use your knees,” Colin said.

  Brian made a bored face.

  “Give her a good tap on the rump,” Lovitt said, ignoring Colin’s look of irritation. He glanced at Kate. “It’s degrading, making a boy that size prance around on a pony.”

  Clearly Brian agreed. He raised his riding quirt and brought it down sharply on the pony’s hindquarters. The pony stood for a few seconds, then reared up and deposited Brian on his buttocks. Colin blew out a sigh of exasperation and made no attempt to rescue Brian from his embarrassment. Etta burst into giggles. Charlie took off his cap and bashed it on the fence, laughing uncontrollably.

  Kate started through the gate. Colin strode up and caught her by the elbow. “Let him feel the sting of shame for a minute. It won’t hurt him.”

  Lovitt glowered at Colin. “First he’s the head groom. Now he’s the boy’s guardian. What next?”

  “Would you let go of my arm, Castle?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “Not if you intend to mollycoddle him. You aren’t doing him any favors by encouraging him to cling to your skirts.”