The Duke's Stolen Heart (London Scandals Book 4) Read online

  “No! I promised you I would never do that again and I meant it.” Antonia grasped Margaret’s gloved hands. “You are the only true friend I have ever had, Maggie. I am not leaving. I need a few hours of my own time. That’s all.”

  Margaret’s watery eyes cleared in the span of a single breath. “I know you and Havencrest are plotting something. Whatever I can do to help you, I will.”

  Touched, Antonia smiled. “When the time comes, I promise to ask. I hope to give you the full story one day.”

  It was audacious. Havencrest would storm and rage before capitulating. Because if there was one thing she knew how to do, it was clean houses and disappear into the woodwork like the proper servant she’d been raised to be.

  And steal, then run, before she was caught.

  Chapter 12

  The bell tolled nine-thirty before Antonia slipped through the door of the studio the next morning. Havencrest had had plenty of time to practice his sketches. None ever looked quite right. His mother’s face never quite matched the image from his memory. Warm lips puffing soft words against his forehead. He hadn’t understood them at the tender age of six.

  I love you, Malcolm, no matter what they say when I am gone.

  “To the theatre?” he had asked in his innocence as he played with the big red gem nestled at the base of her throat. Its scrolled gold setting intrigued him like an endless maze. She was dressed in a midnight-figured silk gown. The bodice was embroidered with gold thread to match the earrings and heavy necklaces custom-made for her upon her wedding. The duchess only wore the set on special occasions.

  “Yes.” She had the dreamy, half-awake look on her face again. The one that made his father so angry, when he sharpened the blades of his wit at his wife’s expense. “I may not come home tonight,” she said as though she was already a million miles away. “I love you. Be a good boy for your father. He loves you, even if he doesn’t…” The duchess trailed off. Or, perhaps Malcolm had imagined it.

  He scratched his pencil across the paper trying to capture her expression. Loving. Wistful. Calm. Fathomlessly sad. Every time he returned to this memory, it looked more like the miniature of her face, cracked and faded. If he was to have his mother’s image restored it must be a true likeness. Not pieced together from the thirty-year-old memories of a child who hadn’t known he was about to lose his mother.

  “Will you tell me a story?” A simple request, routine for a child of six. His mother had smiled again and bussed his cheek with lips as red as the stone.

  “The story about this necklace is a sad one. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  He had nodded. He remembered feeling there was more to ask, more to know, but his words had been inadequate to the task. Malcolm listened intently as his mother had told him the story of the Heart’s Cry, why it had been cut and set into two halves of a necklace. He’d unclipped the gold necklaces and refastened them while she talked. When she was done, his mother had kissed his forehead.

  “Your father and I are under this diamond’s spell. We cannot break it. We tried. We failed.”

  Malcolm’s hand scribbled furiously over the paper. Her expression eluded him. No matter how soft he made her lashes or the precise angle of her eyebrows, he could not recreate his mother’s expression to his satisfaction. Nor could he recall the exact whorls and stacks of gold filigree that bound the diamonds in their eternal dance of grief. If he had the jewel before him, it would dredge up memories of his mother’s expression like clearing muck from the bottom of the river—

  “Who is she?”

  Malcolm’s hand jerked, marring his drawing with a fat slash of graphite. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “You were absorbed in your work.” She hovered over his shoulder. Her sumptuous fur-trimmed wool mantle framed her face and body, as exquisite as any artwork.

  She spoke truth, but not the whole truth. Antonia moved on cat’s paws. Silent, like his servants had been trained to be.

  “I was engrossed in my memories.” He tapped the pages into place and covered the top one with a blank sheet of paper to protect it from smudging. Malcolm sighed. “She wore the parure on her last night with him. They had agreed to try and reconcile.”

  “What had gone wrong in their marriage?” Antonia asked, softly. The intimacy of her presence sent sparks shooting through his chest. Malcolm felt exposed and uncertain with his guard down.

  He was silent for a moment. But after a minute he took the leap to trust her.

  “Nothing unusual. After she birthed me, my mother fell into a deep melancholy. He wasn’t much comfort to her. My father was widely considered a wit, but the greater the tension, the more he used words to slice her to shreds. I remember the harsh things he used to say. I am ashamed to admit that there was a time when I was less than careful with my words. It took a long time for me to learn how not to be so callous.”

  “What did your mother do?” Antonia asked briskly. She unfastened her cloak and draped it over the second empty chair.

  Malcolm pushed up out of his seat. “She tried to forgive him for as long as she could, but my father did what any self-respecting duke does in the face of wifely dereliction of marital duties. He took a mistress.”

  “I imagine that helped matters immensely.”

  Antonia’s sarcasm squeezed a wry smile out of him. The pressure in his chest tightened as he recalled the tense silences he had been too young to understand. “Fidelity is not expected of dukes. My mother knew this, but theirs was a love match. They had to fight for permission to marry.”

  “Oh? Duchesses and dukes don’t naturally intermarry?”

  Havencrest chuckled grimly. “Of course they do, but there was bad blood between Summervale and Havencrest, my grandfather. It was rather a Romeo-and-Juliet situation. Everyone had such high hopes for their marriage. My grandmother was the one who worked to form an agreement in support of their union, and she was bitterly disappointed when her son-in-law sought comfort outside his wife’s bed.”

  “And you, a little boy, were caught in the midst of it all.”

  Her sympathy brought back the hot, tight pain in the center of his chest. “Yes, though I was too young to understand it all. My mother decided that to prevent the Heart’s Cry diamond from destroying any other lives, she would break up the parure. She doled out the pieces. One to my father’s mistress. The heart to her mother. This red stickpin was a part of the set.” Malcolm gestured to his cravat.

  As though sensing they had veered too far into tender territory, Antonia changed subjects. “How did you figure out I was the thief?”

  He felt his mouth quirk up at the corners. “It was entirely a coincidence. I had decided to try and obtain my mother’s personal effects, and I had hoped to negotiate a sale by approaching her. But as I was watching the woman in her box at the theater that night, I spied a pretty stranger with dark hair—you—fiddling with something at the back of my father’s former mistress’s neck. When I looked down for the necklace again, it was gone. I didn’t know who you were, but I knew you had taken it.”

  Antonia smirked at his compliment.

  Malcolm’s pulse picked up. He clapped his hands. “This interlude has taken long enough. Shall we begin with the reel today?”

  He hoped she would not ask to practice the waltz. The dance was too intimate to come hard on the heels of his personal revelations. Malcolm’s father would have been horrified at his revelations to a woman. Intelligent women were difficult. They saw through a man’s lies. They were not as biddable as women like Margaret, as daft and flighty as hummingbirds flitting from one subject to another.

  But there was nothing as gratifying as winning the trust of a beautiful, intelligent woman like Antonia Lowry. Perhaps if he had not challenged her from the first moment they had met, they could be allies now. Lovers, even. Malcolm hadn’t learned from his father’s mistakes after all. He had only made new ones. Perhaps there was something essential about money and power that precluded happiness. Insul
ation from introspection until it was too late to recover.

  Antonia took her place. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Yes?”

  “I need to borrow a maid’s outfit on Sunday.”

  “Why Sunday? Many servants are off on Sunday afternoons.” Perplexed, they let the dance steps slow to a halt.

  “I know.” Antonia sighed heavily. “The problem is, Malcolm, I have resolved not to disappoint you in your mission to acquire the necklace. But I am beginning to think stealing it isn’t the simplest way to go about this. What if instead, we win it in a wager?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Your grandmother hosts a card game on Sundays, and someone must be on duty to attend her and her friends. I intend to be that person.”

  “It won’t work. You’ll be recognized.”

  Antonia laughed. “If I were to dress your best footman in an embroidered waistcoat and buff trousers, and tie a cravat around his neck, you would not recognize him if he passed you in the street. You lot never pay attention to the people who make your lives easier.”

  “We lot?” he repeated skeptically.

  “Aristocrats. Wealthy people. The only reason you pay us any mind is to reprimand us.”

  “Something I expect you can say as a person who has been on the receiving end of a few rebukes.”

  Antonia bounced jauntily out of the way. “I admit nothing.”

  “You, I would remember, Antonia. I think anyone would.”

  “I can speak from experience when I say no. I did spend several years in New York infiltrating houses and making off with the silver. Once, I took an entire silver coffee set.” She grinned with unrepentant self-satisfaction. “It necessitated a great deal of practice before I learned to distinguish real jewels from paste. Learning to be quick and sure in choosing my moment similarly required a great deal of time and energy.”

  “Imagine if you had devoted yourself to reading and instruction.”

  “That presumes I was permitted to learn to read. I can, you know, but it was a Promethean endeavor.”

  “How so?”

  “I stole the knowledge, the same way I have stolen everything I have, even my name.” She said this unrepentantly and despite his better judgment Malcolm smiled.

  Chapter 13

  “Who might you be?”

  The under-butler at Lady Summervale’s capacious townhouse peered down the sharp slant of his nose at Antonia. It had been broken at least once and mended poorly. In the center was a knob below which the nostrils flared at uneven latitudes. The man must be self-conscious about his proboscis, for his mouth twisted up during the brief second Antonia failed to reply.

  “Jenny. Th’ agency sent me. Are you the butler?” she asked in her best imitation of a maid. The deep calmness of full concentration settled over her. Antonia loved the moments when she sank into a new identity. In another life, she might have found success on the stage. But that was not the life she was living.

  “Under-butler. Sundays is Pearson’s day off.”

  Antonia nodded and opened her eyes wide in her best imitation of innocence and eagerness to please. “I’m supposed to fill in for Jane Willis.”

  Under-Butler Proboscis waved her inside. “Fine. You’ll work alongside Sally. She’ll show you the house. We pay through the agency, not to you direct.”

  “Yes, sir,” Antonia mumbled with as much shy reserve as she could muster. The few shillings she might have earned were a side note to the sunk expense of bribing Jane Willis a year of pay to take a day for herself. Whatever agency the Summervale household used to fill gaps in employment was about to be nicely surprised. It didn’t matter. All she needed was today. With a little luck and a lot of curiosity, this afternoon would reveal everything she needed to know about where the duchess kept her valuables.

  Under-Butler Proboscis introduced her to a long-faced gray-haired woman, the housekeeper, who in turn handed her off to a pale girl with a pinch at the corners of her eyes named Sally. Antonia couldn’t see the color of her hair beneath the white cap she wore, but she would have guessed a limp shade of brown. Her own dark curls were tucked away under a similar covering. Antonia had gone to the trouble of using a fine paintbrush dipped in a mixture of coal ash from the cold grate mixed with a few drops of oil to thicken her eyebrows and add a small mole next to her nose. The tiny dot would draw the casual observer’s eye away from her distinctively full mouth, and her enhanced eyebrows made her large eyes look smaller in proportion. If she hadn’t achieved downright ugliness, she had subtly marred her beauty to the point of unrecognition.

  “This here is the kitchen. We’re short-staffed on account of a flu going around. Lady Summervale hosts a cards game on Sundays. It’s mostly old ladies fleecing one another out of their dower portions over tea, but sometimes the gossip is juicy.”

  “Mind your tongue, Sally,” the housekeeper chided. She appeared out of nowhere, a silent shadow of disapproval. Judging from the way Sally’s face smoothed into impassive compliance this had not been her first bid to tattle in exchange for friendship.

  Antonia spotted an opportunity to exploit. She raised one eyebrow. “Bet she’s a charmer,” she confided in a near whisper.

  Sally bit her lip. “Mrs. Klopp is a good mistress. Runs this place like clockwork.” Her voice dropped to a barely-audible whisper. “Mr. James, the butler, drinks in the pantry. He thinks the duchess don’t notice, but I think she looks the other way. Her dower’s portion isn’t what it used to be.”

  “Oh?” Interesting. Antonia followed Sally into the kitchen where they set to washing up the morning’s china. A scullery maid bent over a tub of hot water and scrubbed a pot.

  “She likes to play cards,” Sally mumbled. “The other ladies fleece her something fierce, but she won’t give it up. Lady Summervale says no one comes to visit her for her conversation, and she must offer them some inducement.”

  So, the duchess was lonely. Just like her grandson, she had walled herself away in a great pile of fancy bricks. What a sad turn of events with everyone isolated and alone. Antonia’s heart ached uncomfortably. A prime example of how caring about people was nothing but a recipe for pain.

  After all, hadn’t she loved being Mrs. Beckwith’s pet as a child? Her mother had known in a way she could not that once she was old enough, Antonia wouldn’t have a choice in whether to give in to Mr. Beckwith. Her mother had cared enough to save Antonia from history’s rhyme of powerful men exploiting young, vulnerable women in their employ—not that Antonia had shown a shred of appreciation. Work, her mother liked to declare, was the path to freedom. Then and now, Antonia did not find scullery work freeing. It reddened the skin and made her joints ache. Her mother’s decision to engage in prostitution for a time, rather than let the family starve, had been a defensible choice, in hindsight. One Antonia could never quite bring herself to follow.

  These were the thoughts that haunted Antonia when she engaged in mundane busywork, like now, as she and Sally set about folding dry linens into neat square folds. Sally showed her where to stack them in a cupboard on the second floor. They set about putting fresh linens on guest beds which Antonia knew full well went unoccupied. According to Malcolm no one visited his caustic grandmother.

  Sally had taken the housekeeper’s admonishment to heart. The hours passed mostly in silence. Antonia gave up trying to draw the girl out of her shell. The monotony of laundry, the labor of dusting and sweeping of invisible specks of dirt, all of it reminded her how much she appreciated the comforts of her life with Margaret. It wasn’t until her duster had made it halfway around the carved gilt edging of yet another portrait that Antonia noticed a significant detail. She had seen the woman’s white cuffs and graceful pose before. But where?

  “The miniature,” she whispered beneath her breath. Antonia stepped backward to get a better view. A beautiful woman with pale features delineated in precise brushstrokes. Her cheeks were tinted pink, and her luminous blue eyes danced with mischief. At the base of
her throat lay a large red gem in a gold setting. “Sally. Who is this woman?”

  “Lady Summervale’s late daughter. It’s the only portrait of Lady Havencrest left. She died tragically.” Sally leaned close to whisper, “Some say it was by her own hand.”

  “How awful,” Antonia muttered. Did Malcolm know about its existence? Undoubtedly, he would like to see it. “Is that why it’s hidden here in the side hall?”

  Sally shrugged. “I suppose. I know her ladyship doesn’t like to look at it, but she won’t part with the picture, either.”

  “If I had as nice a portrait of my mother, I wouldn’t part with it either,” Antonia said. “No matter how she passed.”

  “Is your mother alive?” Sally asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So’s mine, but she has eleven other children to care for. I suspect she’d forget all about me if I didn’t send half my wages every quarter.” Sally didn’t sound resentful, only resigned.

  “My mum pretends she doesn’t want my money, but she always keeps most of it,” Antonia confided truthfully.

  “That's better than my mum. She thinks I ought to send her every penny I earn. But a girl’s got to look to her own future, doesn't she? I don’t fancy being a housemaid for the of the rest of my life. I want a family. Babies of my own. I quite fancy Johnny.”

  “Who is Johnny?” Based on Sally’s slim hips, Antonia thought babies unlikely, but then, Sally’s mother had twelve. Perhaps her slim hips weren’t indicative of an inability to bear children.

  “The under-butler,” Sally whispered with a sidelong look. Right. Antonia ought to have known who she was reporting to if she were a real maid and not an interloping spy. Proboscis had a name, and a sweetheart. Antonia gave one last flick of her wrist over a sconce mounted on the silk wallpaper and resolved to do better at keeping in character. “Come on,” Sally said. “It’s almost time for the ladies to arrive.”

  They returned to the kitchen and set about assembling trays of finger sandwiches, biscuits, puddings and other treats. When they carried them into the parlor, Antonia kept her gaze downcast. From the corners of her eyes she spotted Lady Woolryte and Lady Jersey amongst the twelve women assembled to play at cards. Not ideal, but with luck she wouldn't do anything to attract their notice and therefore scrutiny. She had no opportunity to check whether her makeshift disguise had melted or smudged. The collective grime of a full day of labor lay on her skin in a familiar but unwanted blanket. Antonia had become very fond of her regular baths at the Evendaws.