The Duke's Stolen Heart (London Scandals Book 4) Page 11

  “Aren’t you going to ask to see its contents?” he asked.

  “No,” Antonia said firmly. “I intend to let you show me, if you ever wish to do so.”

  He cast her a startled, sidelong glance. Antonia did not meet his gaze, but she let a soft smile creep up to the corners of her lips. “Touché.”

  They took their seats. She shuffled the deck. “Cut,” she ordered, and Havencrest did. “Now, show me how to play.”

  Chapter 11

  “These events would be vastly more fun if I could see anything,” Margaret complained. “I need chopines.”

  “What are those?” Antonia asked as she flapped her fan before her face. In deference to the cold winter weather, their hosts refused to open windows. Fires roared beneath gigantic mantles and the candles above them dripped hot wax as they melted in the excessive heat.

  “Stilt shoes. Another three inches and I might be able to overhear what Lady Woolryte is whispering.”

  Of all the things to be curious about. Antonia suppressed a flash of frustration. “Why would you want to know?”

  “One of the Kilpatrick women was married last week. No one will tell me why because I am an unmarried woman but I am dying to know how that came about so quickly.” Margaret strained on tiptoe.

  “Might we try the cards room? This ballroom is too stuffy to endure.” Antonia urged her companion along, but Margaret resisted. “Come on. The old men are more likely to gossip openly than a lady.”

  “Men? Gossip?”

  Antonia winked. “Think about your brother and his friends when they come back from the club, or when they rejoin us after their post-supper cognac and cigar. Do you not think they were sharing secrets?”

  Margaret frowned. “I know they do. That was, after all, how my brother tried to tie me to Lord Darby last fall. All it took was one confidential conversation.”

  “This is why reputations are so easily damaged,” Antonia nodded sagely, as if she had been raised in this rarefied world. Being an outsider gave her a certain distance from these elegant proceedings and exposed the underbelly of society. “Everyone is talking about one another behind their backs. It’s only necessary to be polite face-t0-face. Can you imagine how refreshing it would be if we spoke directly?”

  “More like terrifying.” Margaret jostled her way past a lady in a fine double strand of pearls from the center of which dangled an emerald ringed with diamonds. It would have made a fine addition to her collection, but tonight, Antonia had worn gloves without the slits in the fingertips to let her snip and steal pretty baubles. Her kit of tiny shears and deep padded pocket lay in a hidden compartment of her trunk back at the Evendaws’ home. Tonight, she was on a mission.

  Find the Dowager Duchess of Summervale and challenge her to a card match.

  “How are your dancing lessons coming along?” Margaret asked once they had crashed through the wall of people into the less-populated card room. Every table was occupied.

  Antonia scanned the room for her quarry. “Well enough.”

  “Do you think you can secure a voucher to Almack’s for next Wednesday?” Margaret asked fretfully. “Lady Jersey and Princess Esterhazy granted you one last week on my brother and sister-in-law’s word, but the waltz with Havencrest was such a faux pas. I would have warned you not to if I had realized you didn’t know the rules. Sometimes, I forget that you aren’t from here. You blend in so easily. Even your American accent is disappearing, Toni.”

  Which meant that either Antonia had done a more than passable job of memorizing her hosts’ mannerisms and speech patterns, or that Margaret was easily fooled. She’d put her money on the latter. Not a single other person had commented once upon how well Antonia had adopted the English lifestyle. Least of all Havencrest. If she could convince him, she could convince the duchess—and be one step further to collecting the few belongings from her bolt-hole and being on her way. Anthony Lowe had a bright future, just as soon as she figured out what he ought to do with his life.

  “Lady Evendaw,” came a male voice from beside her. Antonia jolted and inhaled, willing her body not to reveal any outward sign of awareness even though her entire being was focused on not looking at the man who stood at the periphery of her vision. Malcolm.

  Havencrest.

  Lord Havencrest.

  Their secret early-morning meetings meetings warmed her icy heart like a bright coal on a cold, clear night. Margaret didn’t know about them. Antonia hadn’t told her and had no intention of doing so. Those precious hours were hers alone. When Antonia was gone and Margaret married to Havencrest—and there seemed a fair chance they might agree to such an outcome, considering her brother’s keen interest in marrying her off and Malcolm’s disinterest in the subject—she resolved to be content with the idea of her two almost-friends living long, happy lives together. Anthony Lowe, after all, had things to do. A business, probably. Havencrest’s funds had set her up nicely to be able to purchase a shop. Perhaps a jeweler’s workshop.

  The prospect tugged her mouth into a smile.

  “My grandmother has an opening at her table,” Havencrest said softly. “I leave you to it. Margaret wishes to join the cotillion.”

  “Must keep up appearances,” Antonia responded snidely to cover the twist of jealousy that took her off guard. Five seconds ago, she had been happy for them. She was happy. Or would be, eventually, when she had moved on from this place. “I’ll bet Margaret’s smile blinds the room when she dances with you.”

  Havencrest shot her a speaking glance. “It does.” He sketched a bow, then inclined his head to indicate the game table dominated by a white-haired lady in a silver-and-blue turban. “You had best go before Lady Woolryte fleeces my grandmother. She’s rumored to be a card cheat.”

  Antonia glanced at the empty chair. Havencrest was gone when she looked up. She folded her fan and pointed it to the open seat as she moved closer to the table, marking it as hers. “Might I join you for a round?”

  Lady Summervale and Lady Woolryte scanned her up and down. Their third, Lady Palmer, recognized her at once. “By all means. I would love to hear all about your progress at learning to dance. I don’t believe Almack’s Assembly Rooms have ever been disgraced by quite such a display as the one you and Havencrest put on last week.”

  Despite the lilt of her voice, Antonia heard more threat than friendly invitation. “Well, as you know, I am but a renegade American. We aren’t accustomed to such niceties as dancing.”

  “What a wretched way to live,” Lady Woolryte commented. Her gaze dropped down and up Antonia’s new-made pink gown. Her thin lips pursed into a pucker of disapproval. “No dancing?” She turned to Lady Summervale. “Are we bidding this game?”

  “Bidding is for Fridays, if you wish to play.”

  Antonia’s ears pricked up like a spaniel’s. Her hunch had been correct. The duchess liked to gamble. “Oh, we have dancing.” She scooped her cards up and fanned them out. “I wouldn’t have dared to venture out on the floor if I hadn’t believed I understood the rudiments. Our style is a bit more boisterous. My sincerest apologies for failing to understand the rules, Lady Jersey.”

  She had no idea whether this was true. In New York, she had witnessed plenty of dances as a maid scurrying to and fro to ensure the party guests had sufficient food and drink. There had never been a single moment to watch the dancers’ footwork. A convenient fib to fit these fine ladies’ preconceived notions was all Antonia could offer. Fortunately, she was a practiced and accomplished liar.

  Those gatherings had provided her first opportunities to pluck gems from a rich woman’s neck. They had given her a glimpse at a life she aspired to live. A decade later, here she was. Seated at a card table playing as an equal to women. It ought to be enough. She should feel satisfied. Instead, Antonia’s heart remained as cold and lonely as ever.

  The woman called Lady Jersey, who appeared to be around Antonia’s age or perhaps a few years older, wore a velvet turban with a large feather sticking up fr
om the center. She scooped up a trick and tapped it together.

  “Don’t be such a cursed sourpuss, Sarah.” The Dowager Duchess of Summervale tossed out another card. “It isn’t like you to be so judgmental.”

  Paper cards again covered the table. Quick as a shark, Lady Summervale scooped up the next three tricks. Antonia began to see the strategy behind her discards. It didn’t matter whether Antonia won a single hand. Tonight was about getting the woman to talk.

  “I will recommend you receive a voucher for next Wednesday if your instructor approves of your progress,” Lady Jersey offered. “How do you find Mr. Bendetti?”

  Mr. Bendetti? Right, Malcolm had mentioned something about paying the owner to use his dance space. “Delightful,” Antonia lied glibly. She placed a card down. Lady Summervale scooped up the trick with a triumphant stretch of her lips over bared teeth. “He says I am making great progress in such short time.”

  With the right partner, anyway. Antonia held no delusions that she could perform the same steps as capably as she was learning to with Havencrest. They had spent hours learning how one another’s bodies moved. Now, he remembered to shorten his stride just enough to prevent her from leaping after him like a hare spotting a fox. How she had begun to associate his features, memorized from staring into his eyes, with smiling.

  Add a stranger to the mix, and Antonia’s innate iciness would freeze over again. He would be nothing but a mark, someone who could be used to get her further along her path to freedom or trampled in the process.

  “‘Delightful,’” repeated Lady Jersey in disbelief. “Tis a miracle. If Mr. Bendetti has ever delighted a woman in his entire life, I should be most astounded.”

  The three women tittered as though she had told a great joke.

  Antonia tried again. “He is a harsh task master. But I confess I needed that degree of instruction. I don’t resent him for teaching me a useful skill.”

  This only made Lady Jersey roll her eyes. Antonia tried not to mind. This was not going as planned, but for now, it served her purposes for them to believe she was a naïve ninny. If only it didn’t flay her pride to be mocked in this manner. She laid down a card. The trick fell to her. Antonia scooped up the stack. She laid down her best card and took the next trick as well.

  The ladies lost interest in teasing her as they zeroed in on the remaining hands. Lady Summervale held four, Lady Jersey three, and Lady Woolryte and Antonia two each. With thirteen tricks at play, either one person would win easily or there would be a draw. Antonia claimed the next hand as well.

  “Your rose gown is lovely, Miss Lowry,” commented Lady Woolryte idly as she tossed out a card. “It bears a remarkable similarity to the dress a corpse was found in when she was fished out of the Thames this morning.”

  Antonia’s hand froze mid-flick of her wrist. “I was going to say thank you. But now I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  Lady Woolryte’s chin lifted and her wrist snapped. “The description of the dead girl bears several similarities to you. Height. Coloring. Approximate age.”

  Antonia had chosen Edith Webber’s body her for each of those reasons. It had required a great deal of coin to convince the resurrectionist to part with his freshest specimen—coin that, until Malcolm’s five thousand pounds had hit Anthony Lowe’s bank account, had been badly needed.

  There you go, naming people again.

  “I still don’t know what you’re implying,” Antonia smiled with her teeth. “As you can see, I am very much alive, and my dress is very much intact. I do feel great sorrow for the woman who ended up in the river, of course,” she added. More than these women could know. “However, I cannot claim to know anything about the incident.”

  Lady Summervale’s gnarled hands scraped the cards together over the green baize. “I cannot see the point of your questioning, either, Jane. We are proving ourselves atrocious hosts. Worse, you are distracted, and we have lost the rubber. I expect you to do better when see you on Sunday. Excuse me.” The duchess unceremoniously levered herself out her chair with the aid of an ebony cane.

  “What is this about Sunday?” Antonia asked.

  “Lady Summervale hosts a ladies’ whist game every Sunday afternoon. High stakes. You need at least a hundred pounds in funds to gain entry.”

  Interesting. Havencrest must be estranged from his grandmother indeed if he didn’t know this detail. “I have that much.” Thanks to Havencrest, it was truth.

  “Do you, now.” Lady Woolryte signaled to another player to take the duchess’s place. “If that’s the case, you might join us.”

  “I am afraid I have plans.” A lie, of course.

  “Of course you do,” Lady Woolryte replied condescendingly. A vise tightened around Antonia’s temples. She would give almost anything to beat these snobbish women at their own game. Cards or social schemes, Antonia didn’t mind which.

  “Let her come the Sunday after, if she wishes,” interjected Lady Jersey. “Pay me a call on Wednesday afternoon. If your dancing has sufficiently progressed, I shall give you a voucher for the evening. If not, I am afraid Lady Evendaw will have get along without you for the evening.”

  “Little Margaret seems quite well cared for under her new beau. Whoever would have thought it?” commented Lady Woolryte.

  “Don’t mind her.” Lady Jersey leaned forward. “Eliza’s daughter is out in a year, and there are only so many dukes to go around. She had hoped Havencrest might take to her eldest.”

  The idea stabbed through her gut, but all Antonia said was, “Thank you for the game.”

  She made her excuses and filtered away through the crush. Her mind whirled with schemes. When it settled, a daring idea had taken shape.

  It was reckless. Foolish. Downright dangerous if she was caught.

  Antonia was instantly enamored.

  The ladies were playing cards on Sunday. She had less than forty-eight hours to prepare for the sort of scheme that ought to take a week to pull off properly, but Antonia could do it. Now that her abortive ploy to escape had been discovered a sheen of panic coated her nerves like oil in a puddle. The sooner she got Havencrest his bauble and herself out of the country, the better.

  Even if that left Margaret to fend for herself. Antonia pushed away the sting of hollow sadness. She had a plan. It was simply a matter of disappearing for an afternoon—and reappearing as someone else.

  She needed help. There one person who could offer it to her was…whirling around the dance floor with a woman Antonia didn’t recognize. The stony tension around Malcolm’s eyes and forehead had softened. He looked almost happy. What would his life have been like if his parents had been loving toward one another instead of fighting to the death? It sent an unwelcome pang thudding through her breast and clashed with the beat of the music. This was who he was.

  Wealthy.

  Powerful.

  Desirable.

  While she was nothing but a fraud who had been born to nothing and would spend the rest of her life running. Even her name was fraudulent. What did it matter that she hated the name she had been given at birth? Taking a stranger’s identity hadn’t changed her own. Antonia was still the girl who had been born to poor woman of mixed heritage, raised as a pet by her natural father’s wife. Antonia had never forgiven her mother for whisking her away from the life of relative comfort and put her work as a servant. She had despised her mother for severing her relationship with Mrs. Beckwith, though now Antonia understood why her mother had done it—to protect her from the same fate.

  Her pride and inflated sense of self-worth had been stoked by that early attention from the lady of the manor. In retrospect, Antonia guessed that Mrs. Beckwith kept her as a companion to needle her husband about the child he’d fathered on an unwilling household maidservant.

  Lady Woolryte correctly suspected her for a fraud. How long did she have before Havencrest turned on her?

  Her betrayal would crush Margaret’s gentle spirit.

  You think
you’re better than us? her mother had yelled in exasperation at Antonia’s adolescent sullenness. Just because you’re named Princess doesn’t make you one. Should’ve named you Dirt, ‘cause that’s what you are. Lower than dirt. You’ll spend the rest of your life emptying chamber pots and scrubbing floors no matter how pretty your face.

  Fresh hurt from old wounds at the memory of her mother’s abuse. Unwelcome memories rooted her to the floor until a gentle touch at her elbow awoke Antonia from her trance.

  “Are you all right?” asked Margaret.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Thank you. How is your evening with Havencrest?” Antonia asked, stifling her emotions back into submission. She had no desire to revisit the many bitter fights she’d had with her mother. She had left all of that behind her when she refused to go home after her experience in the pillory. Whatever name she answered to, Antonia had been running ever since she was fifteen years old. Stealing had been a way to break the bond. There was no going back. Her only direction was forward.

  “I rather like him,” Margaret confessed wonderingly. “His humor is gruff, but he is not unsociable once you get to know him. I only worry I look like a fool for not keeping up with his wit.”

  “I don’t expect any of us are capable of it, Maggie,” Antonia commented wryly.

  “You are.”

  Her friend’s simple confidence spoke to yearnings Antonia could not afford to indulge. Not yet. She swallowed and changed the subject. “Maggie, dear friend, do you think you can conceal my absence from your brother and the countess on Sunday afternoon?”

  Margaret glanced up at her. “Of course. But why?”

  “I need to disappear for a few hours.”

  Margaret’s pale pink lips puckered into a sulk. “You aren’t going to tell me why, are you?”

  “Not yet. I’m sorry.”

  “Is this like the night when you left the note? About leaving me?” Margaret asked. Her pout trembled as though she might cry.