Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
W ell, well, well. Lord Alford was an even greater fool than Wilkes had realized. There had to be several hundred people here. Whatever the young lord had spent to host this evening, Wilkes knew that he couldn’t afford it.
The house seemed even larger from the inside than it did from the outside. Even so, it was uncomfortably crowded. And that had made it a simple matter to stroll in through the front door without any of the overwhelmed servants so much as glancing his way.
He paused, getting his bearings. Enormous floral arrangements perfumed the air with their heady scent. Within a few hours, all of these blossoms would fade and wilt in the heat of hundreds of bodies and thousands of candles. All the money that they represented would be taken away in the back of the dustman’s cart tomorrow.
Celia had had her head turned by a man so stupid that he’d borrowed money for flowers.
Rage made the blood pound in his ears. Until Lord Alford had happened along, Wilkes’ only serious problem with Celia had been finding her—and bringing her to heel. Perhaps one day, he’d overcome her dislike for him—not that it mattered. She couldn’t survive on her own. She’d have to marry him.
But now—because this idle, overbred fool had meddled in his affairs—the dreams that he’d once cherished lay in ruins. No matter what he did now, Celia had been tarnished. She probably fancied herself in love with the viscount. Well, he’d settle accounts with Lord Alford tonight—fatally. But he could never think of Celia in the same way again.
A few feet away was a long table laden with silver platters full of sweets—raspberry tarts, petit fours topped with tiny wild strawberries and candied violets, pyramids of sugared cherries and nectarines, crisp rolled wafers and shortbread biscuits stamped with the emblem of the three ostrich plumes of the Prince of Wales. He popped a petit four into his mouth and looked about. What his father would have given simply to walk in the door of this house! How quickly he would have made the silverware disappear into his pockets!
But then, his father had been content to make a living stealing chickens and horses. He’d lacked ambition. He’d lacked… vision . Wilkes had always known that he was meant for bigger things.
He rejoined the throng. The press of people carried him into the ballroom. Rich men—heavy with scent, loud with liquor, and filled with unearned self-confidence—pushed past him. How he hated them. Like Lord Alford, they’d had everything handed to them—including power.
His covetous eye was caught by a lavishly embroidered silk waistcoat. The man who was wearing it saw him—and froze for a moment. Wilkes nodded. The man’s eyes bulged with fear and his mouth fell open as the elegant lady on his arm prattled on, oblivious.
A surge of confidence filled Wilkes. Perhaps he wasn’t the one who ought to be afraid after all. He wasn’t a member of society… yet. But he pulled the hidden strings that controlled it. The gentleman in the embroidered waistcoat was highly influential. He also owed Wilkes a great deal of money. He’d also been involved in several interesting and very illegal ventures in his efforts to pay it off. If their association were to become known, it would spell the end of his parliamentary career.
So. Would he alert anyone to Wilkes’s presence here tonight? No. He wouldn’t. He’d keep his mouth shut.
The tightness in Wilkes’s chest eased. As he made his way through the crowd he began keeping a running tally of the men present with whom he’d had dealings. Some pretended not to see him, of course. Still, he saw enough eyes widen to know that they found his presence unnerving.
Suddenly, he felt powerful—even invincible. He was a wolf, slipping through a flock of sheep… any number of whom he’d already fleeced. He smiled to himself. This evening was already proving more amusing than he could have anticipated.
It was time to get his plan underway. It was time to send the viscount a message.
All he had to do was find someone stupid enough to carry it.
“Damme, but Alford has pushed the boat out!” Bartlett whistled between his teeth. “Look at this spread.” He downed several raspberry tarts, licking his fingers and smacking his lips. “And these shortbread biscuits are from Gunter, I should say. Very good. Very good indeed! Well, let us find the card room, Townley. It will be a long night.”
He looked about. “Townley?” He waved above the heads of a cluster of ladies. “Townley!”
Townley reappeared, staggering back towards Bartlett. They’d only been separated for a few minutes, but clapped each other’s backs as though they hadn’t met for a year.
“It is as hot as Hades in this ballroom! Damme, but I am parched already.” Bartlett stood on tiptoe and craned his neck. “Ah—here we are.” He lifted two glasses of champagne off a passing tray. After guzzling the liquid, they abandoned the empty glasses on a chair against the wall for some unsuspecting lady to sit upon.
They set off again—stepping on heels and knocking plumed headpieces askew as they went. “The viscount and I are great friends, you know! We spar together at Jackson’s! I am quite a favorite with the family! I have already promised two dances to his sister!” Bartlett’s voice was loud, even considering the hubbub around them. Heads began to turn.
Townley mumbled something incoherent.
“No, no. Certainly not a beauty! Still, a tolerable enough looking girl, for all that. And it is an eligible situation, to be sure! The viscount told me in confidence that the condition of the estate is far better than popular report has it! Ah! Punch!” He lifted two silver cups from a tray and handed one to Townley. “And of course, there is the thirty thousand pounds from Miss Spry’s marriage portion! The engagement is to be announced tonight, of course!”
A gentleman, overhearing this, leaned toward a lady and whispered something in her ear. Her eyes widened. As the oblivious Bartlett and Townley lurched onward, a ripple of gossip spread outward from them, like the wave from a pebble tossed into a pond.
“Give it to me, Townley. No, to me . No, the cup .” Bartlett glanced about and hastily slid the empty cups onto the dirt beneath a potted palm tree. “Now, what do you think of this? ‘Miss Keynsham,’ I shall say to her. ‘Miss Keynsham, I hope that you will not break my heart by saying that you do not remember that we was to dance!’ Eh? Damme, but that will be very pretty! Am I not a very silver-tongued devil? She cannot say no to a speech like that—can she? Townley?”
He paused to wait for Townley, who’d stumbled into a lady and become entangled in her reticule. When they were both fully vertical again—Townley taking a few well-deserved blows in the process—the men resumed their progress.
Townley slurred something. Bartlett frowned. “Well, I expect that it is because they are waiting for the prince to arrive to begin the dancing. And he is late, of course! And that is if he is coming at all. He is always a deuced awkward sort of fellow to invite to anything!” He looked around. “Townley? Townley! Damme, you must try to keep up!”
Townley wove toward him. His face was ashen. He mumbled something.
“Note? What note? What are you talking about?”
Townley mumbled again.
“What man? Where?” Bartlett looked around, frowning. “Damme, Townley, we are in the middle of a ballroom! There is no one here who could have threatened you. You are hysterical—and it is not the first time, either.”
Townley’s hands were shaking as he produced a slip of paper.
“Well, give it to me, then!” Bartlett snatched it. “No, of course I will not. I am a gentleman! Really, Townley! You must calm yourself.”
Townley began to cry.
“Now, now.” Bartlett patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “You need another drink—that is all. There’s a good fellow.” He glanced around for a footman, but there were none in sight. “You are in no danger. Moneylender ! Do not be ridiculous! No one like that would be present tonight. Here.”
He gave Townley his handkerchief. “Now. Pull yourself together. We shall find Lord Alford and give him this note, and that will be the end of the matter.”
As he crossed the entrance hall with his mother and Pomona, Keynsham couldn’t see Celia anywhere. Had she arrived yet? Where would she and Lady Sophronia have gone? Everywhere he looked, some drunken stranger had his or her head thrown back, braying with laughter. This was his own home—and yet he felt like an unwelcome and all too sober intruder amidst the revelers.
Pomona, clutching his arm, looked about in dismay. “This is simply dreadful! It reminds me of the part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when everyone is lost in the wood. We shall never find grandmama in this crush!”
“Hush, you ungrateful girl!” Lady Alford, on Keynsham’s other arm, glared at her daughter. “It is not dreadful! It is the ball of the season! And you will keep your… your bluestocking remarks to yourself!”
“Ma’am.” Keynsham had to raise his voice over the din. “ Ma’am . My sister may say what she likes, when she likes. Am I clear?”
Pomona shot him a grateful look, but Lady Alford pretended not to hear. “We shall go through to the ballroom. Come, Pomona. Keynsham may stay to greet the prince when he arrives.”
She tugged Pomona away. They vanished into the mob and were gone before he could say anything further.
Keynsham didn’t have the slightest intention of lingering in the entrance hall waiting for the prince, like a majordomo at a Continental hotel anticipating a wealthy guest. Indeed, he doubted that the prince would come at all. Every time the doors opened the fierce downpour outside was visible, the rain streaking down through the lantern light as stragglers continued to arrive.
All he wanted was to find Celia. He’d been counting the minutes until he could see her again. Had she and Lady Sophronia arrived while he’d been upstairs, trying to cajole his mother to attend her own ball?
He began making his way to the ballroom. But everything seemed off kilter somehow. There was no logical reason for him to feel uneasy, he told himself. He was in his own home, for God’s sake! None of the people who surrounded him were threatening. They were simply members of the ton who his mother—anxious to impress strangers at the expense of her own family—had invited in order to make a show of importance and popularity.
“Alford!” Someone touched his arm. He jumped.
“Ha ha ha! You are certainly on edge, sir! Why, you look as though you do not know me! Bartlett, of course! And you know Townley, I am certain.”
It was the gentleman who’d accosted him at the gymnasium. Keynsham shook hands, pretending not to notice that Bartlett’s friend miscalculated where his hand was on the first and second attempts. “How kind of you both to come tonight.”
Bartlett blew out a puff of alcohol-laden breath. “Wouldn’t have missed it! Would we, Townley?”
Townley, who seemed unable to focus his eyes, mumbled something incoherent. Keynsham frowned. “Is your friend, er…? Perhaps some air?”
“Townley?” Bartlett emitted such a loud bark of laughter that even in the din of the ballroom, heads turned. “Oh no! No, sir! Townley is quite at his best! Merely half seas over! No worse than any other night! As long as he don’t start crying again—eh, Townley?”
Townley stared glassy-eyed at Keynsham, apparently unable to formulate a response.
Keynsham tried to see past him. Good God. The house would have been packed with two hundred people—let alone double the number. He couldn’t find his own fiancée, the clamor of the crowd was almost painful, and someone seemed to be bumping into him every other minute. It was not so much a ball as a crush. It was not at all an appropriate event for the come-out of a viscount’s daughter.
And then the prickle of danger raced up his neck again. There ! Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man carrying a tray. It was the big thug who’d nearly killed him in the woods—and who’d tried to grab Celia only yesterday!
He lunged. But a boisterous group pushed between them. He was forced to issue quick apologies before he could dodge past and seize the man’s arm.
The man turned, somehow continuing to balance the tray. And… he wasn’t Wilkes’s thug after all, but a tall footman: Peters. “I—I beg your pardon, your lordship! Have I…?” His face was horror-struck.
“Oh. No.” Keynsham backed away, his heart thudding. “It is I who… that is, I beg your pardon, Peters. I thought…”
He wiped his forehead. Had he gone mad? He would have sworn that… Perhaps he ought to get some air himself.
But of course, Bartlett was right there on his heels, propping up his friend and smiling obsequiously. “Your lordship, I have a?—"
“Please. Excuse me.” He couldn’t listen to this rattle a moment longer. He must find Celia.
“One moment, please. I have been charged with giving you this note.” Bartlett handed him a folded piece of paper.
Keynsham stared at it, frowning. “What is this?”
“A gentleman gave it to Townley, with instructions to give it to you. When I asked Townley which gentleman it was, he could not point him out.”
That didn’t surprise Keynsham. He doubted that Townley could have pointed out the king himself.
“No doubt it is the scheme of some young lady.” Bartlett rocked back on his heels, plainly pleased to have become part of an intrigue. “I advise you, your lordship—do not be taken in! It is the very worst thing to be taken in by a young lady! If this is an attempt to arrange a private meeting, I advise you not to go. Miss Spry would be bound to hear of it!”
Townley mumbled a long incoherent statement.
“Oh, do not mind Townley. He is still in love with Miss Spry himself—ain’t you, Townley? But Lord Lotion is against the match. It seems that the old fellow disapproves of drink, and has got hold of some notion that Townley is a toss pot.”
“Imagine that.” Why Bartlett was babbling about Miss Spry, Keynsham neither knew nor cared to find out. He unfolded the note to find a hasty scrawl: Come alone to the library at eleven o’clock—or you will regret it.
“ Regret it!” Bartlett was craning his neck to read over his shoulder. “Good God! What have you done? The young lady must be in a rare pelt indeed!”
“Sir, this is a private communication.” Keynsham had memorized the note that Celia had left him at the inn, and this was certainly not her handwriting. Besides, she wouldn’t have sent such a ridiculous message.
“Never fear! I am as silent as the grave. I am a positive vault!” Bartlett mimed buttoning his lips together. “I am the soul of discretion!”
Keynsham wasn’t listening. He was trying to think. He’d been unable to find Celia anywhere. He was trapped by these drunk buffoons. And something—he didn’t know what, exactly—was wrong.
A flash of lightning so bright that it cast the packed guests into a frozen tableau was followed almost immediately by a long rumble of thunder. Bartlett shuddered theatrically. “Damme if this storm has not lingered directly overhead since morning! It is most uncanny. I advise you to take it as an omen, your lordship! Do not go to the library! Do not risk the wrath of Miss Spry.”
But Keynsham had had enough of Bartlett and his incoherent friend. “Excuse me,” he said, curtly, and began forcing his way through the crowd.
“Your lordship! Your lordship! Do not go!” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Bartlett frantically waving at him over the heads of other guests.
Keynsham ignored him. He must find Celia. Only then could he be certain that his anxiety was unfounded.