Eight Hunting Lyons (The Lyon’s Den Connected World)

Chapter Seven

“What she doesn’t know will not killher.”

~ Anon

L ater that night, Lottie tossed and turned, tugging at the counterpane, fatigue and frustration sparring within her. She could not close her eyes without seeing the extortionist’s note, and the threats against Papa were mounting. One after another came in wave after wave of shameful intimidation. She had no idea what the criminal wanted or what would happen next. Her mind labored to quash her doubts and fears and then found respite in Lord Grey’s eyes. When blackmail wasn’t at the forefront of her thoughts, Lord Grey was there. The baron perplexed her, standing in all his wonder, his hand outstretched, looking compassionate, and imploring her to trust him.

Could she? Dare she trust anyone? She had enlisted the Black Widow’s help. But why should she rely on a man who’d won her heart and then proved he was not true to his word? Granted, she had been a girl but no less capable of love.

Blast! Hours had passed since the ball had concluded. Guests had departed, with those who’d over-imbibed being carefully escorted home. She still had no idea who had entered the lady’s retiring room to leave that note. A crippling fear of vulnerability gripped her.

She gazed at the window, rays of light overpowering the edges of the curtains. Dawn had breached the horizon, and from what she could tell, the sun would soon rise to the height of noonday. Papa had said his goodbyes and returned to the museum hours ago. In the meanwhile, she’d joined her cousins and listened to their chatter as they went on and on about the latest gossip they’d heard before retiring to her bedchamber after a long, eventful night.

As scandalous as it sounded, Mrs. Dove-Lyon had a child, but no one had ever seen it. It had been supposed that the child’s father might have attended her uncle’s ball. Outrageous! Although, Thenie had explained she’d overheard their fathers arguing about a private matter, which was so unlike them.

What secret held such sway over the two brothers that they would dare deliberate during a ball?

Exhaustion overwhelmed her, but sleep remained elusive as her mind sought answers to the questions riddling her mind. What was there about Lord Grey that magnetized her? Why did she tremble like a seventeen-year-old girl whenever he was near? His sudden presence fueled her anxiety. And yet, he’d brought her back to life with a look, a touch, the hope of one more kiss. Was it possible to love someone you’d sworn to hate?

She could not deny that he was an incredibly handsome and impressive man. Nevertheless, there was a particular look in his eyes—the knowledge and understanding of a similar soul—that reminded her of someone else, someone she’d met more recently. For the life of her, she could not pinpoint the time or place that meeting had occurred. She scratched her belly, passing off her reaction to the nervousness another blackmail note prompted.

Enough! Casting off the covers, she abandoned the bed and moved to the escritoire, her mind swirling with indecision. There, she wrung her hands. Was it too impulsive to write a note to Mrs. Dove-Lyon requesting information about the investigation into her father’s case? In the sennight since she’d visited the Black Widow of Whitehall, she hadn’t received a single word of reassurance that the madam would keep her end of the bargain. Had she misplaced her trust? Was it possible the woman had no clue as to who they were up against? Had the gaming hell owner pocketed her money, refusing to investigate her case?

Lottie had to do something, anything, to keep from feeling as if Papa’s life and everything she held dear was slipping through her fingers. She raised the flame on the lamp, then opened the escritoire and picked up a piece of foolscap, placing it carefully before her. She snatched up a quill, making sure the tip was sharp enough, and dipped it in the ink well, pausing to gather her thoughts. If she appeared too eager, would that jeopardize her association with Mrs. Dove-Lyon? Was that not better than endlessly waiting for an outcome, her nerves all a twitter?

She dabbed the quill’s tip to paper and began to relay her thoughts.

Dear Mrs. Dove-Lyon,

I am writing to see if you’ve acquired information concerning the subject about which we last spoke. All my hopes are with you.

Yours sincerely,

Miss C. W.

She sat back, fidgeting with the quill feathers. Then, in a dissatisfied huff, she crumpled up the note, rose to her feet, and walked to the fireplace, tossing it into the fire. There was only one way to find out how the investigation was going. She most certainly couldn’t trust such a sensitive matter to an errand boy or a servant. It wasn’t right. Besides, someone could find out she’d delivered a note to the Lyon’s Den. What would that information do to Lord and Lady Steere? Her cousins? Nothing was worth the risk of another scandal. This situation had to be handled as clandestinely as possible, else she might jeopardize more than her father’s life.

Deciding to take control of the matter, she opened the door and called for Clara, her lady’s maid. There was no time like the present to effectually stave off her descent into the poorhouse—and fast it would be if her blackmailer’s demands weren’t met. Clara might be turned out, Thenie, Augusta, and Delphi’s reputations would be ruined by association, and Lord and Lady Steere repulsed by the sight of her.

Oh, how she dearly needed Papa to help her sort her thoughts. His advice, a push or a shove toward the right path always boosted her spirits. Her father had always been dignified and determined, her mainstay in times of trouble.

She wrapped her arms about herself and sighed.

If she were a man like Lord Grey, less emphasis would be put on marriage, a predicament she could not escape, especially if her aunt had anything to do with it. Lady Steere had made it clear that she desired Lottie to be settled and cared for, if not loved—the elusive emotion that continued to baffle her.

The door opened, and Clara shuffled in nervously, a look of bewilderment on her face. “I ’adn’t expected ye to be up and about this early, Miss.”

“I could not sleep.” Lottie stretched her limbs. “I plan to go out.” She hastened to the wardrobe, selecting a plain brown gown. “This will do nicely.”

Clara looked baffled. “That drab rag?”

She grimaced, trying desperately not to give anything away, but Clara knew her too well and had borne the burden of her many attempts to strike out on her own. “It happens to be one of my favorites.” It wasn’t, and she hated the lie that slipped off her tongue as soon as she said it.

“It happens to be the one ye choose when ye’re up to no good, I ken.”

“Clara.” She had to get her attendant to relent. The gown wasn’t old or ill-fitting, so there could be no objection there. Frankly, Clara thought it too plain for city life, though Lottie often wore it while working in the gardens in Cambridge. The simple fabric was perfectly suited to strolling through the archives of the British Museum, especially on a cold day. A bonus—if she intended to go to the Lyon’s Den without being recognized, she’d need a less revealing garment, like the one she’d worn before. Nothing screamed “look at me” more than the bespoke gowns Lady Steere had commissioned for her. “Don’t be crusty, Clara. Indeed, I prefer this drab rag today. It suits my purposes and fits my mood.”

“Don’t take me for bein’ uppish.” Clara stared at her suspiciously. “Ye’re up to somethin’ all right, and I aim to find out what.”

Oh, how she hated deceiving dear, supportive Clara, but it was for her own good. The woman, not five years older than Lottie, had come to her at the recommendation of Lady Steere, who’d provided a glowing recommendation for her housekeeper’s daughter. They’d known each other all their lives, played together outdoors, and for years, Clara had been devoted and keenly observant to her every need, satisfying Lottie’s desire for female companionship in Cambridge when Papa had surrounded himself with the brightest intellectual minds.

Clara’s simple manner and cheerful view of the world were refreshing and comforting. However, Lottie was perfectly aware that Clara’s first duty was to Lady Steere. And she didn’t want to cause trouble for the viscount’s housekeeper. She also couldn’t take the chance that her aunt would forbid her to go out without a chaperone.

“You know very well that I wear this gown on occasion,” she said cleverly.

“It is the occasion that ignites my curiosity.” Clara crossed her arms, daring her to object with raised brows.

“Truthfully, I only intend to visit the museum. The brown blends in with the trunks and boxes in the archives so that I do not feel completely out of place when a worker enters the room.” She felt more relaxed and less devious the more she talked, knowing she would win Clara’s compliance. “Besides, it gives me great pleasure to spend the day looking like your equal, not the niece of a viscount. After all, I am only a professor’s daughter.”

“Ye are more than that, and ye know it—to me. Ye are a gentlewoman.” Clara pursed her lips. Lottie held her breath, instantly caught up in the ruse she was perpetrating. “But it’s no use squabblin’ over the matter. Wherever it is ye’re goin’, and whatever it is ye ’ave planned, I’ll be with ye. Ye’ll be needin’ a proper chaperone. One I trust.”

“Would it reassure you if I asked Miss Parthenia to join us?”

Clara offered a nod. “More witnesses.”

“Thank you, Clara.” Ignoring her grudging reply, she hugged Clara. Lottie exhaled, relief filling her lungs as she stepped away.

“Pshaw. There’s a chill in the air.” Clara approached the wardrobe and retrieved a dark green spencer. “May I suggest a coat instead of a shawl? The museum is always cold, and I don’t want ye catchin’ yer death.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “I can certainly do that.”

“But will ye heed my advice? It’s my job to see ye safe, Miss.”

“And you are good at it.”

Clara wasn’t convinced. “We’ll see about that.” She led Lottie to the vanity and urged her to sit down. Without another word, she began arranging Lottie’s hair in a lovely coiffure with curls cascading at her brow. When her toilette was finished, Lottie smiled and murmured her thanks before shrugging her arms into the spencer and waiting patiently as Clara fastened the matching buttons.

She was doing the right thing, facing her father. It was time to alert him to her ordeal. Broaching the troubling subject of his duplicity in the blackmail notes would help her find a way to get to the bottom of this debacle before all their hopes were dashed against rocks.

An hour later, nestled in a carriage directed to the British Museum, the gossip Lottie had been told after her uncle’s ball came back to haunt her. What had Papa done? The blackmail notes were clear that someone intended to expose it. Were his actions causing a fallout between her uncle and her father? What did her uncle know?

Perhaps she’d been wrong in assuming Papa was incapable of scandalous behavior. Even more so for not confiding in him about the threatening notes she’d received. She was partly to blame for the fix she was in. But if she confronted Papa, and he told her the truth, and it wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear, what then?

One thing was clear. She might be better prepared to handle the wretch who threatened them. In fact, she chastised herself for not simply telling Papa about the first blackmail note when it arrived. Papa had never failed her before, and he’d never walked away from a mystery. But would he forgive her for believing a stranger’s accusations?

Fear and pride gripped her, along with a desire to set everything to rights and to prevent her father from being distracted from his life’s work. What a fool she’d been, in so many ways. She not only had to worry about Papa’s future but seeing Lord Grey at the previous night’s ball had awakened her dormant emotions in such a way that she’d come to doubt her own sanity.

Botheration! How complicated was her life going to get? Now, much more was in jeopardy than their reputations—her heart. What was Lord Grey doing in London? Where was he now? How long did he plan to be in Town? Nonetheless, pondering these matters did little good. How did one think logically when passion was involved?

The carriage turned onto Great Russell Street in the Bloomsbury district toward Montagu House, once the home of Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu. The second duke, preferring to live in Whitehall, had sold the home to the trustees of the British Museum in 1759. Since then, Montagu House had become an abode of mysterious exhibits, taxidermized animals, and all that astounded the known world.

The hand gripping her arm reminded Lottie she wasn’t alone. “It’s magnificent,” Thenie said. “I am so glad you invited me to join you. The museum’s mansard roof and dome never cease to enthrall.”

“They are truly beautiful,” she said. The museum was a symbol of independence and exactly how far the mind, spirit, and body could be pushed. “I heard Horace Walpole was enamored with the design as well.”

“A man of letters, that one,” Clara added, drawing Lottie’s attention back to her primary reason for searching out her father.

She gazed out the window. Before long, they neared the seventeen windows flanking the museum’s three-bayed, staired main entrance. The landscaped garden with its grassy plan and sculpted statues complimented the front of the seventeenth-century building superbly. Montagu House was home to the fruits of curiosity, and her senses ignited at the thought of the scenes and smells contained within. Inside those hallowed walls awaited evidence of adventure, worlds unlike her own, antiquities, and strange phenomena to ponder.

“We have arrived,” Thenie said enthusiastically before flashing a look of concern at Lottie. “In quiet solitude.”

“Forgive me,” she said. “The thought of being inside Montagu House again stirs all manner of pleasure and anxiety.”

“Why so anxious?” Thenie squeezed her hand. “We shall not be turned away by the porter. Those days are gone. And good riddance to them! We have a standing invitation to visit, thanks to your father’s work and Papa’s philanthropy.” Her cousin’s gentle smile was infectious, tugging at Lottie’s heart and making her desire to unload her burdens. If only she could do so without endangering Thenie’s prospects. No. Her blackmailer had been clear. Thenie, Delphi, and Augusta couldn’t know. It was better to keep them in the dark.

Thenie leaned closer, the feathers in their hats brushing against each other. “What has alarmed you so? It is rather distressing, I assure you, not to be aware of your feelings. You have never cut yourself off from me before. Won’t you confide in me? You haven’t been the same since last night. Does it have anything to do with—”

“Mrs. Beaumont’s ball,” Clara interjected, her hearing as sharp as a hawk’s. Thenie glowered, but Lottie chose not to chastise Clara. Her maid always had her best interests at heart. Besides, Clara was right. The first blackmail note had come into her possession the night of the Beaumonts’ ball.

The carriage stopped, and several minutes later, the door was thrust open, and their conversation put to an end, conveniently robbing Lottie of the chance to respond. She accepted the coachman’s hand, allowing him to assist her down the steps, then waited as her two companions were shown the same courtesy.

When they were free to approach the museum’s entrance, Thenie pressed on. “I often wonder if my concern is just a figment of my imagination.”

“You have an admirable imagination, Thenie,” Lottie said, hoping to restore the other girl’s mood while bristling from the hurt she’d caused her cousin. “That is one of your greatest strengths.”

She pointed out an immaculately sculpted shrub to distract Thenie, who saw right through her. “My keen senses always tell me something is afoot when you resort to flattery.”

Lottie swallowed thickly, duly caught in an ever-widening web. Nevertheless, she refused to involve her cousin.

“Very well,” Thenie said, taking her by the arm and winking at Clara. “It is war then. If I were to guess, I’d suspect your mysterious conduct is related to the return of Lord Grey.”

“You needn’t worry. I am immune to his charms.”

“So, you admit he is charming,” Thenie pried.

Lottie arrowed their direction away from the smartly trimmed gardens. “I have confessed no such thing, and I never shall.”

Thenie shot a look at Clara, then pulled Lottie closer. “Haven’t you?”

“Once or twice, I admit to owning a fondness for Lord Grey.” There was no point in lying about it. Thenie already knew. She’d held her in moments of despair. “But I was young and foolhardy then, easily swayed by Lord Grey’s handsome looks.”

“And now?” Thenie asked sincerely.

She bit her lower lip, determined not to reveal too much. Lord Grey’s sudden abandonment made his sentiments quite clear. Time had changed her. She was no longer the insensible girl who worshiped the ground Lord Grey walked on. And she refused to allow herself to hope for anything more, especially now that she was old enough to know better. Lord Grey was a baron, and she was a professor’s daughter. “I know my place,” she said. “We all can’t be men and travel the world.”

“Your place is with Lord Grey, where it always has been.”

“Thenie, that was the fruitless hope of a girl. I am a woman grown, determined, not as easily persuaded as I once was.”

“But he is in Town, and you are quite accomplished. He cannot help but be in awe of the wonderful woman you have become.”

She shook her head. “There is no future with Lord Grey now.” She prayed she’d successfully kept disappointment out of her tone. If things were different. But they weren’t. She and Papa were on the verge of ruin. If she did not have this weight on her shoulders... maybe, then—

Clara clucked her tongue.

“You must know—” Thenie made a sorrowful sound “—I wish you happy, Lottie. With all my heart.”

But how did one find the path to happiness while boiling in a kettle of fear? Was happiness even obtainable to someone in her position? She swallowed back despair, making sure not to tense her body and give herself away. “That is my fondest wish for you, too, Cousin.”

“And mine,” Clara interjected.

“Now.” Tears welled inside her, threatening to breach her lashes. She forced a smile. “Let us take in the spectacle and then search for Papa.”

“Uncle is probably in the Gallery,” Thenie said. The upper floor in the British Museum was where all things Roman and Greek and Egyptian were exhibited. “We should start there.” Thenie’s keen awareness had picked up on Lottie’s need to see her father, no matter the reason, no matter how urgent. “Do you think it possible Lord Elgin has finally produced the Ottoman firman to the Archives?”

There was a great public debate about Lord Elgin’s methods of acquiring relics from the Parthenon. Had the statues and freezes been obtained legally? “I find the idea of looking upon the Marbles extremely intriguing. It will be positively scandalous for them to be shown to the public, and yet, I admit, my curiosity is piqued.”

Drawings of the Elgin Marbles existed. The carvings had been collected from the Parthenon, Propylaea, and Erechtheum by Lord Elgin. In Lottie’s opinion, they were no less shocking to female eyes than several of the unclothed statues she’d seen at Lord Lansdowne’s residence.

They maneuvered through the entry hall and made their way to the wide interior staircase, happily content that the ticket process had been expunged in 1809. There, the intricate wrought-iron railings led the eye to the landing above, where three large doors and a tall set of windows flanked stuffed giraffes and a rhinoceros. One door opened to the upper floor where all manner of fossils, insects, birds, reptiles, and fish could be examined. And from that doorway appeared Lord Grey, the subject of her meandering thoughts, looking entirely too handsome and appealing in Hessians, fawn-colored trousers and matching waistcoat, a high-collared white linen shirt, and a moss-green frock coat. Lottie leaned into Thenie and steeled herself for battle, tempted to turn around and go back the way she’d come. But she wouldn’t. Resolve steadied her backbone, supplying her the grit she needed to approach Papa and discuss the sensitive matter that weighed heavily on her heart.

“Lord Grey has seen us,” Thenie said softly. “I’m afraid there is no way to avoid him without causing a scene.”

Lottie opened her mouth to speak but closed her lips as Lord Grey appeared before them.

“How do you do, Miss Steere.” Lord Grey’s eyes moved slowly to Lottie. “Miss Walcot,” he said, acknowledging her with a nod. “Fancy meeting you here.” He turned to Clara. “Miss Norby.”

They curtsied to his gentlemanly bow, aware they were being observed by onlookers, just as clearly as Lottie considered Lord Grey beneath her lashes. How did he know Clara’s surname? They’d never been introduced. She dared not ask or do anything to provide speculation and fodder for gossips. The British Museum was her father’s territory, and she would rather die than cause Papa strife.

The silence swelled to a deafening pitch, just an occasional footstep sounding on the stairs to break the spell.

Thenie was the first to speak. “We are looking for my uncle, Lord Grey.”

“Well then, you are in luck. I just left him in the Gallery, so I can assure you he is present.” Lord Grey paused as if waiting for Lottie to speak. “I’d be happy to escort you to him if that is your wish.”

“That will not be—”

“Any inconvenience, I pray,” Thenie finished for Lottie. She shot her cousin a look that was quickly ignored. “After all, you appeared to be leaving. But if you do not intend to go, and you happen to know where my uncle is located, then we needn’t worry about not finding him in a timely fashion.” She squeezed Lottie’s arm. “You did say this matter was urgent, did you not?”

“Urgent?” Lord Grey asked, his cunning eyes examining her.

She wanted to speak, but words failed her.

He stepped down to their level and opened his elbows with an inviting smile. “Then I insist on coming to your aid.”

Thenie accepted his generous offer almost immediately, while Lottie tried to dredge up every excuse she could think of to avoid Lord Grey’s nearness. But evading the man who made her heart sing was almost as impractical as excavating Hadrian’s Villa. Several people observed them from the balcony, and it would cause a scene not to accept Grey’s kind offer. With that in mind, she linked her arm through Lord Grey’s, dying just a little inside when he smiled at her—and only her.