Chapter 11
Isadore stretched and settled more comfortably into bed.
Once she opened her eyes, however, several facts came rushing at her like her father's hounds on the trail of a fox.
She was not lying in her bed at Grosvenor Street.
There was no perfidious French lady's maid drawing the drapes and eyeing her as if she were an interloper in her own home.
She took in strange aches and pains all over her body that brought the most ridiculous smile to her face.
And she was, under the thick counterpane, naked as the day she was born.
"How did I...?" She sat bolt upright in the big luxurious bed and realized this was not where she'd fallen asleep.
She'd fallen asleep in the arms of Ban Dyer just before dawn after having spent most of the night being thoroughly tupped by the notorious criminal.
He'd obviously carried her back to his inner bedchamber.
With the counterpane clutched to her chest, she peered at the clock on the mantel.
Ten o'clock?
She hadn't slept so late since the morning Jeremy was taken from her.
Voices rumbled from the next room, one male and one female.
Time to be up and about the search for her son.
She'd have time to remember last night for the rest of her life.
After a quick use of the basin of water and other amenities the ever-efficient Daisy had likely placed behind an ornate Oriental screen, Isadore donned a blue kerseymere walking dress.
She braided her hair and pinned it ruthlessly atop her head with the tortoise shell combs she'd laid out on the vanity.
"Good morning, Missus Fitz-Wilton." Daisy greeted her brightly as Isadore stepped into the study.
"Would you like some tea with your breakfast?
" The young woman indicated the table where Ban already sat devouring a plate piled high with eggs, steak, and buttered toast slathered with what looked like raspberry jam.
"Yes, Daisy, thank you. That would be lovely." She settled into the chair opposite Ban and filled her own plate with various items from the rather opulent selections on the table.
"More tea." Ban held up his cup which the maid took with a roll of her eyes and a wink at Isadore.
"Good morning, Mister Dyer," Isadore offered as she spread jam with careful deliberation over a slice of toast.
"Morning." He flipped a note across the table at her. "When were you going to tell me about this?" She glanced at the note Whip had sent her, the note that had given her the mad idea to move into a den of thieves.
She murmured her thanks to Daisy as the maid handed her a cup of tea. "I take it you found the note on your desk?'
The maid then plonked the second cup next to Ban's plate. He nodded, his mouth at work chewing a piece of steak.
"I left the note there last night so you might find it this morning. No secrets was our agreement, correct?"
He washed the steak down with a gulp of tea. "Just checking. Who is your brother-in-law's solicitor?"
"The same slippery snake who handled my husband's estate. One Clarence Mason, the very man who produced a will I had never seen before. A will that handed my son and the running of the estates that should be Jeremy's over to George. Why?"
"Is Oxford in the house?" he asked Daisy.
"He's at breakfast downstairs with the rest of the crew," Daisy replied. "You'll be wanting his services?"
"Go down and tell him I'll find him in about an hour or so. I've a job for him. Then ask Jem to come up. I'll want him to take a note to Stephen Forsythe."
"Yes, sir." Daisy didn't bother to curtsy, but she did give Isadore a reassuring smile.
"Stephen Forsythe?" Isadore recognized the name from gossip amongst the ton and newspaper reports. He was considered the finest, and some said the most ruthless barrister in London. "The Stephen Forsythe?"
"Yes. He's our barrister." Ban continued to make short work of his large breakfast. A twinge of something like hurt came over Isadore at the way he treated her as if last night had not happened, but she'd had no expectations. Any she might have had needed to be nipped in the bud at once.
"Your barrister? You have a barrister?"
"I'm a criminal, Isadore. Of course I have a barrister.
I want him and his firm's solicitors to have a look at all of these papers your brother-in-law has had drawn up.
Can I assume you were looking for the location of an earlier will when we were so rudely interrupted in the King Street house?
" He paused to pin her with that enigmatic dark stare of his.
"Yes." She sighed and put her hands in her lap.
"I saw Gregory's original will. There was nothing in there about George.
My husband was not fond of his brother, and he knew I despised the man.
Gregory was not an easy husband, but he was no fool, and he was never deliberately cruel.
I thought I knew him." She shrugged and went to pushing her food around on her plate.
"George Fitz-Wilton had no right to put his hands on you." Ban stabbed another steak from the plate between them and slapped it onto his plate. "I'll address that issue with him at my earliest convenience."
Isadore's heart began to race. She placed her knife and fork carefully across her plate. "There will be no 'addressing' of George Fitz-Wilton in any way, Ban Dyer. Your manner of 'addressing' is dangerous and messy. I don't want you anywhere near my brother-in-law."
"I had no idea you were so fond of the man forcing you to marry and holding your son hostage until you do." He cut viciously into his steak.
She snorted. "I would not empty a chamber pot on George if he were on fire. My concern is for you. As you seem to have no concern for your own person whatsoever, it falls upon me to show at least a little. You're of no use to me dead."
"You are concerned for my person? Why, Missus Fitz-Wilton, I had no idea you considered my person worthy of preserving."
"Well..." she took a sip of her tea. "Parts of your person are quite magnificent. One would hate to see such...parts...go to waste."
He spluttered in his tea and commenced to coughing as if he might never breathe freely again.
Isadore stood and walked around the table to whack him forcefully on the back a few times.
He finally waved her off and drank some water from the pewter pitcher.
By the time she returned to her seat and placed her serviette in her lap, he'd recovered and sat grinning at her like the veriest fool alive.
God help her, when he smiled, he was even more handsome than when he wore his customary cynical scowl.
"Which parts would those be, Isadore?"
She rolled her eyes and took another sip of her tea.
"I have no intention of joining the long line of women who have praised your prowess and made you the arrogant arse with whom I'm forced to cast my lot.
What does this person Oxford have to do with Stephen Forsythe looking over George's papers?
I doubt Mason will hand them over willingly. "
"Oxford was dismissed from university for stealing and forging exams when he was sixteen. In addition to his forgery skills, he has the ability to slip in and out of offices at the Inns of Court without attracting notice. Do you want to know more?"
"I don't want to know what you just told me." How her life had changed since she'd followed Ban Dyer home to rescue those children. "How are the little ones you pulled out of my house?"
"Daisy says they're doing well, but they aren't talking much. They did say they remember being kept in a basement under a tavern."
"Like the boys Carrington-Bowles is caring for?"
"Yes, I'm going to speak with them myself and see what I can discover. If I have to, I'll drag them to every tavern in London." He pushed away his now-empty plate and took up his cup of tea.
"You won't get anything out of them if you frighten them to death."
He cocked his head and actually looked surprised.
"You must realize you are rather frightening, even to grown men. And women." She kicked herself under the table as the heat crept up her neck.
He glanced out the doors still open to his balcony bed and then back at her. His gaze was incendiary and more than a little feral. "Apparently, not to all women," he mused in a low dark tone. The click of a door opening sounded behind her.
"I am experiencing every mother's worst fear. I do not know where my son is. Has he food to eat? A warm bed? Does he think I have abandoned him? Any mother would say the same, Ban. Very little frightens me now." She started when Ban erupted from his chair and dropped his serviette onto the table.
"Not any mother, Isadore. Your son is more fortunate than he knows.
" He marched to his desk, took up his quill and scrawled a note on a piece of parchment.
Once he'd sealed it, he handed the note to Daisy who came around Isadore's chair from the direction of the bedchamber.
"Tell Jem to put this in the barrister's hand only. "
"Guess the boy knows that by now." Daisy took the note.
Ban walked out the front doors of his study without saying another word.
Isadore glanced at the maid who stood clutching the note and staring at the now closed study doors.
"What did I say?" she asked the young woman.
"Doesn't do to talk about mothers with any of the Dyers, especially not Ban," Daisy said with a sigh and a shake of her head.
"His left him at Ma Dyer's baby farm when he was no more than two.
He'd have died there had it not been for his brothers.
Most babies left with Ma never made it to their next birthday.
Then there was that whole thing with him being left in a grave at St. Giles to die. "
"Left in a...I don't understand." Isadore's chest tightened and a wave of sorrow swept over her.