Read The School for Brides Online
Authors: Cheryl Ann Smith
The School for Brides (5 page)
“I will not forget what you’ve done, Miss Black.”
In the dim room Eva watched, transfixed, while he retrieved his cloak and jerked it around his shoulders. He said not another word as he stalked past her, nor when he gained the hall and then the stairs, heavy footfalls marking his passage to the lower floor. She flinched when the oak panel door slammed closed behind him.
Harold found her rooted to the same spot moments later when he returned to her side and placed his comforting hand on her arm. His mouth screwed up with concern.
“Miss Eva,” he said, and bent to peer into her face. “Are you ill? Did he hurt you?”
“Oh, Harold,” she said softly when she finally found her tongue. She rubbed the chill flesh of her exposed upper arms and felt the same strange brush of cold air she’d felt earlier. “I think I have made a powerful enemy.”
Chapter Three
N
icholas swore under his breath as he climbed into the coach and pulled the door closed with a bang. He reached to rap on the ceiling, and the driver urged the horses on.
icholas swore under his breath as he climbed into the coach and pulled the door closed with a bang. He reached to rap on the ceiling, and the driver urged the horses on.
Blind fury filled his mind. Arabella was lost to him forever. Sweet, beautiful Arabella. Two years of wooing and seducing her away from the Earl of Seabrook. Hardly a year spent in her bed. All wasted. It took years of searching for a perfect mistress, and she was yanked away by a pinched-faced spinster unable to mind her business and stay out of his.
“Miss Black will regret crossing me,” he vowed.
Leaning back, he pictured Arabella and remembered the moment he’d first laid eyes on her beautiful face. She was in a private theater box, watching some forgettable play, shadowed by a pair of heavy drapes so as not to ruffle the sensibilities of the Ton by being seen publicly on the arm of her lover.
She’d laughed at some witty comment from Seabrook, her blue eyes dancing, when she turned her head slightly and caught his eye. The connection lasted only a moment before she turned back to her companion, pointedly dismissing him.
But the hook was set.
At first he’d limited his pursuit to casual public meetings and mild flirtation, out of respect for the earl. Eventually, he’d chased her with a single-minded purpose, uncaring of Seabrook’s anger. When he finally made her his, she’d proved to be everything he’d dreamed. Lovely, loving, and eager to please; in bed and out.
They’d laughed and played, and for most of their time together she’d seemed content. He was sure of it. Only over the last few months had he sensed restlessness in her that she’d tried to mask with good humor and passion. She’d been distracted and rushed when he visited, and several times she’d been late to arrive when he’d called. When he’d queried her about it, she’d shrugged her perfect shoulders and pulled him down on the bed with a passionate kiss.
Then one morning he’d arrived on their one-year anniversary, with flowers and a ruby necklace in hand, and she was gone.
Vanished.
The servants were as puzzled as he. At first he worried she’d come to harm, and sent a footman for a Bow Street Runner. Then he’d found her note, penned in her delicate scroll on vellum. She thanked him politely for their time together and left his gifts piled up in the center of their bed.
All of his gifts down to the last ruby. She’d left with only the clothing on her back.
It had taken months to hunt her down to the last place she’d been seen. A shabby town house in Cheapside with a door guarded by a bear of a man and occupied by a woman of mystery who was as secretive as she was plain.
Eva Black. Medium height, hair an uninteresting brown, eyes the color of deep amber behind a pair of oversized spectacles. A mouse of a woman so much beneath his notice, and without Arabella’s sparkle, she might well be a piece of dusty, faded furniture forgotten in an attic. Her dress was drab gray muslin and shapeless, hiding any hint of the body beneath.
Compared to Arabella, this woman was a dried-up crone, a spinster, and not worthy of his interest. Had she not stolen Arabella away from him, he’d be satisfied to go to his dotage without ever having crossed her path.
What infuriated him most was her outright defiance of his wishes and the look of satisfaction on her face, and in her eyes, when she’d dropped a figurative anvil on his head with the news Arabella was wed, bedded, and with child.
For a flash, he’d wondered if the infant could be his, then dismissed the notion. He was careful with all his lovers, and certainly with Arabella. The last thing he wanted was his perfect mistress burdened with his bastard.
It wasn’t as if he did not want children someday to carry on his legacy. Just not with his beautiful courtesan. He wanted children with a carefully chosen wife of impeccable pedigree and high social standing.
Under his breath, he cursed the damned Black woman again and felt rage well in his stomach to sour the hopes he’d had to reclaim Arabella this afternoon. What good were money and a fine name when he couldn’t keep a beggarly little nobody from sneaking into his life like a thief and stealing away someone he treasured most deeply?
Now Miss Black was staring down the barrel of his pistol, and he intended to pull the trigger. Not literally, of course, but she had to pay for her interference. He wouldn’t be satisfied until she was destitute and begging on the streets for moldy bread crusts, and hiking up her skirts for any man with the jangle of coin in his pocket.
A slow grin passed over his face. Such an unseemly fate would certainly wipe the pinched line off her spinster’s mouth and knock the haughty and disrespectful glint out of her eyes.
The coach slowed. “Collingwood House, Your Grace.” Pulling his mind from thoughts of revenge, he looked out the window at his home, a monolith of gray stone and red brick, a pair of columns bordering the entrance of the mansion. The home had been his family’s residence for two hundred years, ever since his great-great-grandfather won it over a hand of cards.
Nicholas always wondered if the old man had cheated. It wasn’t common knowledge among the Ton that his ancestor sometimes donned a highwayman’s mask to recoup his gambling losses, but rather a carefully guarded family secret. Any whispers of such a scandal had been only that, whispers.
The Drake name was one of the oldest in England and highly revered. Any ancestor who might have veered slightly off the proper ducal path to engage in nefarious behavior did so under the cover of darkness so as not to soil the family title.
Yet, with the money and power Nicholas had at his disposal, and Collingwood House, he still couldn’t keep one mistress content under his care.
Perhaps she would still be happy had she not crossed paths with Miss Black. The woman clearly put thoughts in her head that had no place being there. Arabella
had been
satisfied with their arrangement. He was as sure of it as he was of his own name. And he’d been content.
had been
satisfied with their arrangement. He was as sure of it as he was of his own name. And he’d been content.
Sighing, Nicholas climbed out of the coach and walked up the stone steps, the slightest of nods his only acknowledgment to his butler, Alfred.
Alfred nodded. “Your Grace.”
All sorts of wicked possibilities for extracting his pound of flesh from Miss Black tumbled in Nicolas’s head, each worse than the previous one. Most ended with her chained hand and foot for a year or two in a dank dungeon.
However, he knew he’d do her no physical harm. He couldn’t go that far. No, she had to suffer in other ways; deep, dark, devious ways that showed no scars. His father had taught him the art of subtle torment, and for a second he recognized the old man in himself. He quickly brushed off the association. Miss Black was not his mother. The woman deserved her comeuppance.
But he needed help with his plans, for a man of privilege did not soil his hands doing nefarious deeds.
He paused outside the library and turned back to Alfred. “I need you to fetch Mister Crawford. Tell him I have another job that requires his special talents.”
Alfred nodded his graying head. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Nicholas slipped into the library and poured himself a brandy. The high-backed leather chair conformed to his body as he tugged his cravat loose and let the heat of the fire ease some of the chill in his bones. This space was his favorite when he had troublesome thoughts on his mind. The smell of dusty old books, a painting of his mother over the fireplace, boyhood memories of her laughter as she pulled some treasured book off the shelf always filled him with warmth and contentment.
Not today. Nothing could ease his sour stomach and take away his anger. With Arabella in place, he’d begun to seek a future bride from the pack of freshly minted debutantes tossed into the marriage mart this Season. Collingwood House needed a duchess and children. It was entirely too long since laughter had filled these cavernous halls and children’s footsteps had clattered across these marble floors. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had laughed with unabashed joy in this house.
He’d chosen Lucy Banes-Dodd as the best of the batch of beauties and had begun making preliminary overtures to her father. Though she was a bit flighty for his taste, she was an attractive chit with an impeccable bloodline. With Arabella in place to warm his bed and Lucy to keep his home and bear his children, he could have found himself quite satisfied that all was as it should be, with his plans perfectly organized and executed the way he ran every aspect of his life. Neat and tidy.
It had all tumbled to ruins with Arabella’s disappearance.
“Damn that meddling woman,” he muttered under his breath.
The door to the library opened and Mister Crawford walked in unannounced. Tall and stout, the shabbily dressed investigator loped across the room, his ungainly gait the result of an old injury to his left leg.
Though not the sort of man one would invite for afternoon tea, Crawford was very good at his job. He traveled on the fringes of society, dabbled in some disreputable dealings, and was loyal as long as gold continued to flow into his pockets.
“You called for me, Your Grace?”
“You arrived faster than I expected.” Nicholas indicated a chair opposite him. The man dropped into it and stretched out his damaged knee. “Were you seated on my stoop?”
Crawford grinned and waved a thin hand. “I was coming to see you, Your Grace. I crossed paths with your footman at the corner. I wanted to see if your confrontation with Miss Black was successful.”
Nicholas frowned and lifted his glass. Crawford had found the missing Arabella for him, but that was where their connection with the matter ended. He’d not gossip about his relationship with her, nor relive today’s disastrous meeting with Miss Black with the investigator. His private life was just that, private.
“Arabella is no longer my concern,” he said dismissively. He leveled a frown on the other man to make his point clear. “Her name will not be mentioned again between us.”
The man shrugged. “Aye, Your Grace.”
Satisfied, Nicholas knitted his fingers and brought them to his lips. “I have another job for you. I need you to find out as much as you can about Miss Black. Where she goes when she leaves that dreadful town house, who she spends time with, if she has outstanding debts. I want to know every time she blinks or visits the privy. Everything.”
“Do you mind me asking why, Your Grace?” Crawford leaned back in his chair. Leather creaked. “She isn’t the sort of woman who would attract the likes of you, Your Grace.”
“No, she isn’t.” His lips turned downward. Not in the least. If he and Miss Black were the last two people alive on this Earth, he’d take up celibacy, or leap from the Tower of London headfirst before giving her a second look. “My interest in her is not personal. She stole from me, and I intend to return the favor.”
A slow grin crossed Crawford’s lined face. “I see.”
Somewhere near age forty, the investigator had lived long enough to know London inside and out, and where to dig to find all sorts of salacious information about anyone. He dressed as a man without means, invisible, as it were. If Miss Black had dead bodies hidden in her wardrobe, Crawford would flush them out.
“This might cost you plenty,” Crawford said, tapping a finger on his temple. “Miss Black was nearly impossible to find in the first place. The woman holds her secrets close.”
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