The Peculiar Pink Toes of Lady Flora Page 26

  The solicitor had been about to enjoy his boiled egg and some toast soldiers, when the dowager descended on his house. She did not go to his office, probably not wanting to be seen making a formal visit. If anybody should recognize her going into his house, on the other hand, the lady could always pretend she was visiting his wife or making some other harmless charity visit to the "less fortunate."

  Plumm knew exactly how her mind worked. He also knew she hated him with a passion, so lowering herself to ask for his help must have cost her dearly.

  Excellent. He could barely restrain himself from rubbing his hands together.

  "I was surprised to see you still in town, madam," he said, making her wait for his reply. "This time of year do you not go into the country, to Castle Malgrave? I think I—"

  "Shut up, you horrid little man. I did not come here for polite chit-chat. Don't waste my time. What are you going to do about this matter?"

  "Madam, the duke wants a divorce and it is my job to get for him whatever he wants."

  "But it is not necessary for him to remarry. He need not take matters that far. Why is a separation not good enough? Many couples manage with lives discretely spent apart in private. If he goes through with this act of Parliament all his dirty linen will be dragged out in public."

  "It is what his grace wants, your ladyship. He is adamant. And he is aware of the consequences."

  Her eyes shot flames through the veil of her outrageous bonnet. "Well, perhaps the fool will not be in such haste when he discovers the truth about that red-headed seductress."

  "The truth, madam?" He felt another sigh ready to ooze out of him.

  "Bigamy, Plumm. The woman committed bigamy when she married Sir Benjamin Hartnell and furthermore her first husband is still living, so she can never marry the Duke of Malgrave."

  "Madam, I really think—"

  "His name is Edward Godfrey, and she married him when she was barely seventeen. Eloped to Scotland. That was all a lie, no doubt, about Lady Flora being sent to relatives up north. No, no, she was never sent anywhere. She ran away with that groom and married him there."

  "Might I inquire, your grace, where you came by this information?"

  "No, you may not."

  "Then I cannot treat it as fact, madam. A person bearing the truth has no cause to hide it in their pocket."

  "Ha! That is indeed a sweet morsel coming from your lips."

  "Will that be all, madam?"

  "Oh, no, indeed. There is more still to come." She waited, eyes flaring, lips poised as if to deliver a Shakespearean soliloquy. As Lady Macbeth, perhaps. "The story does not end with elopement. Lady Flora abandoned her new husband six months later. And she left him holding a baby." After a moment, during which he merely looked at her, she snapped, "Edward Godfrey has been seeking his wife ever since. Much the same as the duke looking for his own runaway wife. I'm sure they would have much in common to discuss."

  Plumm gazed out of his window.

  "Well, what are you doing now, man?"

  "Oh, I was just lost in thought, madam. Wondering why you only take an interest in the duke, when you have a chance to thwart his happiness. Yet again."

  She went stiff with anger, pale even without her face powder. "My concern is always for the estate. I imagined yours was the same, but I see now you have some other purpose."

  "Yes, madam. I intend to see his grace marry the woman he wanted in the first place. That is my purpose. My last, if it must be."

  "Then you're an imbecile. You have long since ceased to be of any use to the estate. It's time you were replaced, and I shall see to it that you are."

  Plumm smiled politely. "As you wish, madam. I have been considering retirement of late."

  "Retirement? You should be swinging from a gibbet. Once a villain, always a villain. If you refuse to help me stop this divorce I shall see to it that the duke knows not only about Flora Chelmsworth's past, but about yours too, as a naval deserter, a fugitive traitor who consorted with murderers and pirates."

  "I was eleven, madam."

  "That makes no difference. How you escaped justice and came to serve this family for so many years, I have no inkling. But to be sure there was subterfuge and the greatest deceit involved. It is time the duke knew the character of the man in whom he places such trust." Apparently she'd been saving this piece, this move, for the most desperate of causes, because she could have told long before this. But after saving it up all these years, she finally had to use it.

  He said nothing more to defend himself; she would not hear it, in any case. A woman who cared nothing for anybody but herself, would never try to imagine the path walked in anybody else's shoes, not even for a moment.

  "And don't think I have forgot how you stole away my lady's maid. A petty and personal strike against me, for which you shall pay dearly."

  "It was love, madam," he replied, grave as an undertaker. "I was quite swept away by my passions."

  "Love? Of all the stupidest excuses."

  "It would not be gainsaid. Perhaps you do not know the unbendable force of that emotion. One has to have a heart, to feel it."

  Sheer fury must have lifted her to her feet. "So we have ourselves a war. Which of us shall strike first? Which of us has the greatest power and the strongest will? We shall see."

  "Good day, madam. My breakfast gets cold."

  With one further gasp of exasperation, she made her exit with the exaggerated disgust of a very bad actress.

  A moment later his wife entered from stage left, bringing more toast and the tea urn. "Her ladyship would not stay then for some tea?"

  "I doubt she would put her noble lips to any cup in our house, my dear."

  Now he would enjoy his damned egg, before he dealt with this matter. Could not go into battle on an empty stomach, could he?

  Plumm sat once again, wafting out his napkin with a stern flick of the wrist, rattled by the dowager's visit, despite his calm, unperturbed tone. The past was not a place to which he often returned for many reasons, but her words had dragged him back to it so that he could almost smell the stench.

  * * * *

  The Marshalsea Prison

  London, 1732

  "Well, boy, what have you to say for yourself?"

  It was a grim, rainy day. The sort of day that made the filth and squalor that surrounded him seem even more never-ending than usual. The last sort of day in which anybody in his predicament might clutch at hope.

  But here it came.

  The gentleman was very finely dressed, tall and imposing. For some reason he had noticed Plumm among the grimy, smelly crowd of prisoners and advanced toward him with a confident step and a booming voice.

  "What is this boy's crime?" he demanded of the guard.

  "Desertion, your grace, mutiny and piracy. Will hang, no doubt."

  "He is so small. Can it be true that he has had time to commit so much villainy in his life?" the man sounded incredulous, even a little amused. "I have a son not much older than this boy and trying as he might be, even he could not find time to accomplish so much wrong-doing."

  Plumm looked up at him, wiped his nose on his sleeve and squinted against the sun. "Who are you then, mister?"

  "I am the Duke of Malgrave, and I seek a likely boy deserving of an education. Who, young lad, are you?"

  "Plumm. Ha'penny Plumm."

  "'Tis a curious name."

  "My ma gave it me."

  "How old?"

  "Don't know, sir."

  "Where were you born?"

  "Putney."

  "And where is your father?"

  "Never knew 'im, sir."

  "Your mother?"

  "Don't know, sir. With her gin bottle, no doubt." It seemed unlikely she would remember him now, one of many children born to her when she was not paying attention.

  "Then you are all alone in the world?"

  He supposed it was true. The only soul who had ever taken care of him was now, apparently, dead. Or so he was told. Cap
tain Rosie Jackanapes had disappeared when their ship sailed into the fog and some thought she must have taken her chance and dived overboard, rather than face capture. But Plumm could not believe that. The woman he knew would have stood bravely and fought beside her men.

  When she first found him hiding inside a barrel on her ship and learned that he had been forced into the navy and then used as a "powder monkey" before he ran away, she never once talked of turning him in or leaving him behind.

  "As long as you work hard there will always be a place for you here," she'd said.

  Now she was gone.

  The Duke of Malgrave had used his kerchief to make a clean space on Plumm's face, as if he polished the tarnish from a forgotten teapot. "Yes. This boy will do. He comes with me today. I shall pay for his liberty and his education."

  "But he sailed with the murderous pirate Jackanapes, your grace. Can he be trusted?"

  "Rosie Jackanapes?" the duke gave an odd smile, almost sad. "And I always thought she was a product of fiction."

  "No, sir. She's a wanted woman."

  "Still not found?"

  "We'll get her one day," said the prison guard, swinging his birch rod. "She can't hide forever."

  "Yes she can," Halfpenny Plumm had shouted. "She's the cleverest, fastest, bravest pirate on the seas. You'll never catch her."

  "See what I mean, sir?" The guard reached for his ear, pinching it hard between meaty, dirt-blacked fingers. "The boy's a lost cause."

  But as he readied his birch rod, the duke intervened, taking it swiftly from him and ordering that the boy be released. "No soul is beyond redemption," he said firmly. "The boy shows loyalty, and there is nothing amiss with that."

  Just like so he was rescued. Of course, it was not all smooth sailing, for as a charity case at school he was often teased and bullied, but Halfpenny Plumm was very much aware of his good fortune in catching the duke's eye that day. He had seen and lived the other side of fortune and could appreciate every moment of his new life. When the time came to repay his benefactor, he was glad to devote his working life to the next duke, and then the next. He would do anything for the dukes of Malgrave.

  The discontented dowager, striking at him with the birch rod of her fury, would not change his purpose.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "Plumm relates to me another interesting rumor." Maxim had the letter from Plumm in his hand. He must have received it some hours earlier that day and spent a while mulling over the contents, before he came outside to find her. "That you married that groom when you were seventeen."

  Flora felt her pulse jump, her skin prickle. Everything had been so strange lately, ever since she found that portrait hidden in his watch-case and started to remember another world. It had made her doubt so many things in her life. She began to wonder exactly what was the truth. Which life really was hers? Who was she really?

  So when Maxim came to her with this information and she hesitated to respond, his face grew tight. "That you did commit bigamy to marry Hartnell and get his money. That your family covered up the first marriage to encourage the second, more profitable union."

  She busied herself with the laundry, throwing a wet shift over the rope that she had strung up across the yard. "I may have done some questionable things in my day, but that would be quite beyond even me."

  "Yes. I assumed this...this," he referred to the letter again, "Edward Godfrey is a mountebank of some kind, looking for money."

  "I do not know an Edward Godfrey. I've never heard that name before." But she knew about a groom, of course. The real Lady Flora had run off with him and caused Rosie Jackanapes to be brought into this world as a replacement.

  At least, that was how she remembered it. So many things about her life seemed wrong, disjointed and confused now. Occasionally Flora thought she saw odd movements in her peripheral vision, shadowy ghosts moving about in their own world, unaware of hers. But when she turned her head to stare directly at them, they were gone.

  "Tarleton," he said suddenly, one hand to his brow.

  "George? What about him?"

  "He mentioned a Ned Godfrey. The night he was here, when I confronted him. Something about Ned Godfrey having you first."

  She shook her head and reached for the next damp shirt. "Then this is more gossip, started by George Tarleton and probably embellished by Harriet Seton," she said. "I knew George would take the first opportunity to get his vengeance. He may not be the sharpest knife in the block, but it would not take him long to put two and two together and realize it was you who chased him away from Darnley that night. As for Harriet, she would do anything to bring me down. I've known some miserable people before, but she really is quite in a class of her own."

  He was reading his letter again, grinding his teeth.

  "Whoever this man Godfrey is, he is looking for money I expect," she added. "As you said."

  "According to Plumm, he's been looking for you. Ever since you ran off and left him with a babe twenty years ago."

  She stood among the breeze-blown linens, hands on her waist, fear touching her spine with icy fingertips. "So now I am a woman who would run away, leave a husband and child, to marry another man for money."

  Finally he looked up from the letter again, his face unusually pale, in stark contrast to his eyes black with anger.

  "It is all nonsense," she assured him, snatching the letter from his hand. "That is not me."

  "No, of course. Plumm merely wanted us to know what was being said. To be prepared."

  "Prepared for what?"

  "My mother is on her way."

  He announced it as if she was the Grim Reaper.

  Flora's heart beat tripped forward, like a careless child grazing its knees. She should have expected it, seen it coming. They could not remain together like this forever, not without somebody else invading her brave little republic. Persey had warned her about upsetting the neighboring countries and the threat of war.

  People did not like their comfortable lives disturbed and threatened. If they saw somebody trying to be different they joined forces against the threat and reacted with weapons drawn.

  He went back indoors, steps firm, pausing only to shout at two farm-hands he saw sitting by the water-pump, taking out his anxiety on them.

  With a curse, she crumpled the letter and threw it, let the wind carry it to dance across the yard, chased by Captain Fartleberries.

  Now it was all too far. The last straws at which to grasp were blown out of her hands, beyond her reach. Her last chance to get out of this with dignity was gone. She was too deeply entangled in her dreadful deceit, desperate not to lose the life she'd lived all these years and the man she'd grown to love. Her heart thumped frantically, wildly.

  She knew that the game, the lie, was finally over.

  But Rosie Jackanapes never ran away. She would stand and fight. She would meet her enemy head on.

  * * * *

  "Such terrible things they are saying," his mother exclaimed, hands fluttering as if she did not know what to do with them first. "It is appalling."

  "Yes," he replied. "Plumm apprised me of the rumors. If you came here to spread them further, madam, I must warn you that you waste your time."

  She had arrived in a coach and four with a full contingent of liveried footmen, making up some story of paying visits in the county and deciding to "drop in". It was some years since he'd sat face to face with his mother and even longer since they had spoken directly to each other. She did not appear to have aged. Perhaps she was preserved in vinegar.

  "That is not why I came here," she said. Her gaze shifted over his shoulder, went misty, and then returned.

  Good god. She was not trying to make tears, was she? He felt sick at the prospect.

  "I know you have been advised in this divorce matter by Plumm, the solicitor. He has, it seems, encouraged you in the whole, wretched affair."

  "I make my own choices, madam. Plumm acts on my wishes. Why, precisely, are you here? I'm rather b
usy and have no time to waste." He knew she would relish her moment, take her time getting around to the subject, and he was in no mood to let her.

  She winced, as if she'd swallowed some of that vinegar. "Firstly, it is time you knew what sort of man you trust so completely and above all others. Halfpenny Plumm is a convict who should have met his end on the gallows. He is a deserter from his majesty's navy, a mutineer who turned his back on duty and loyal service to sail in the company of murderous pirates. He is a criminal. A common criminal."

  "And why do you bring this to me?"

  "You rely upon his judgment. The judgment of a delinquent."

  "Whatever his past, his judgment was sound enough for my father."

  "Who was as big a fool as you. If not greater." Then she must have seen the rage in his face and knew she'd said too much.

  He stood. "Is that all you wanted today, madam?"

  His mother hesitated, mouth open, clearly dissatisfied and puzzled by his calm demeanor in the face of this information about Plumm. "No. No, there is more. I endured this two-day expedition for greater reason." She licked her lips, smoothed a hand over her burgundy coat buttons, and said, "Plumm assures me that you mean to go through with the divorce," she said. "For her."

  "For many reasons, madam. None that are any business of yours."

  "But it is my business, since I am affected by it." For that moment she had become shrill, but now she curbed her temper again, trying to match his coolness. "In any case, since you are resolved upon your course, I see we must make the best of it. Perhaps, if we put on a brave face, hold our heads high, we can manage this together. We are, after all, family. I offer you an olive branch."

  He stared, incredulous.

  "I am at Castle Malgrave for the summer, naturally. I thought a small dinner party there, for our intimate friends would be just the thing to show a united face." Her neck seemed to extend another inch as she exhaled a hard sigh, squeezed out of her as if it stung. She shivered, fingers rearranging the lace stole around her neck, her gaze searching slyly for the cause of a draft on that warm day. "If we are seen to be getting on with our lives, the spiteful seeds of the gossip-mongers shall fall on unfertile ground. We must rise above it. At least in appearance. The rest will follow. In time there will be other society scandals to take away from this one."