Chapter One #2
“Such intrigue,” Rollo mused. “And what a delightfully uncouth way to express one’s displeasure.” He grinned up at Fitzsimmons, his stern lover. “If you cease stroking my hair, I may adopt it.”
“Will this be Talybridge’s second or third wife?” Rossingley directed this to Ashington and Fitzsimmons. “One quite loses track.”
Mickey cleared his throat. Once the three of them began gossiping, it could go on for some time.
He would not be side tracked by the Marquess of Talybridge’s betrothal to a wealthy young American.
“Now, our final suspect is far more interesting,” he declared.
“The Honourable Valentin Beauregard, Vicomte de Verdille. There’s very little in White’s records, except that he was last sighted in London five or six years ago.
Allegedly, he has been living the high life in various European cities since. ”
“Never heard of him,” Tommy stated. “Slippery?”
“As coal tar soap,” conceded Mickey.
“He’s a French vicomte,” Rossingley drawled. “Slipperiness will have been his principal source of nourishment since suckling at his nursemaid’s tit.”
Mickey waited for the titters to stop before continuing.
“Considering the information I’ve gleaned on White’s three new members—a respected mineralogist, a wealthy American, and a French vicomte—it’s my humble conclusion that a slippery gentleman thief, if he exists, is, indeed, most likely to be the French vicomte, Valentin Beauregard. ”
“Valentin Beauregard,” Tommy repeated, no doubt storing up the name. “Ring any bells with anyone? Crossed paths with him at any ton gatherings? Rossingley perhaps? Benedict?”
“Don’t bother asking me,” huffed Ashington. “Scarcely used to attend anything back then, if I could help it.”
“Surely, you must know him, Papa?” Rollo asked. “You know everything and everybody!”
Rossingley shook his head. “’Fraid I shall disappoint you on this occasion. Beauregard must have been in town during my…ah…fallow years.”
So far during this exchange, Kit Angel had remained quiet, which was often the way. But now he spoke up. “I believe you’re asking the wrong person, Rollo.” His lip curled. “Isn’t he, Fitzsimmons?”
All the gentlemen in this group fascinated Mickey, but Fitzsimmons intrigued him the most. How had the brother of an esteemed duke switched from being banished as a ferocious rake, gambler, and scoundrel, only to emerge triumphantly from his hidey-hole with Rossingley’s youngest boy swinging from his arm?
“Possibly,” Fitzsimmons conceded. “Valentin Beauregard, Vicomte de Verdille.”
As the soft French syllables rolled over Fitzsimmons’s tongue, Rollo looked fit to swoon. Mickey, himself, wasn’t far off. Having never travelled farther than Epsom, even the Frenchman’s title sounded like one of the mysterious lands he forever dreamed of visiting.
“There’s a name I never thought I’d hear again,” Fitzsimmons said. “Very interesting chap.”
“Pray tell, darling,” murmured Rossingley, clearly intrigued. “And be sure to make the tale salacious. November is such a melancholy, skeletal sort of month, don’t you find? It would benefit from a sprinkling of spice.”
“And be sure to repeat this French chap’s name many times over in the telling,” Rollo chipped in. “Using that accent.”
Fitzsimmons’s hooded eyes flashed with amusement.
“I first encountered Valentin Beauregard in Paris during the long, hot summer of 1819. We shared a mutual acquaintance, thus frequently attended the same soirées. From what I recall, wherever he went, Beauregard was beset by rumours; it would not surprise me if he had sowed many of them himself. Regardless, they certainly served to distort and twist any hard facts about the man. One could spend a whole evening in his charming company and leave with nothing but the vaguest feeling of having been hoodwinked, conned, and enchanted. Yet, unsure precisely how.”
“And with a lighter purse too? Did he frequent the hells?”
Fitzsimmons’s brow furrowed. “As I recall, Beauregard wasn’t much for the tables.
Neither did he dance nor ever return an invitation.
My acquaintance had a theory the man wasn’t a vicomte at all.
No one had heard of the canton of Verdille until Beauregard appeared out of the blue and claimed it to be the most beautiful, unsullied place on earth.
Mind you, his manners were impeccable; if he hadn’t been born with his own silver spoon, he’d licked several belonging to other people since. ”
“Stolen them, perhaps,” observed Ashington from his seat by the fire.
“Quite,” agreed his brother. “The ladies tattled that he’d served as a soldier; some spoke of a love lost. Others whispered—out of his earshot—that he’d spent several years as a highwayman.
And so on. Even more rumours were unleashed when he vanished one night, never to reappear.
People wagered he’d drunkenly fallen into the Seine or stolen the Devil’s Diamonds and legged it across the continent. ”
“And what did you think?” Ashington enquired.
Fitzsimmons regarded his brother thoughtfully.
“I concluded that he possessed a moral compass even more detachable than my own. Beauregard was a chameleon. He wore an endless array of masks, each as carefully crafted as the next. His masks eventually became part of him, until he could no longer remember who he was without them.”
“What on earth are the Devil’s Diamonds?” Rollo butted in.
“Ah.” His father smiled across at him. “The blissful ignorance of youth. The story of the Devil’s Diamonds was the talk of the summer, even back here in England.”
Briefly, Fitzsimmons squeezed Rollo’s hand. “The Devil’s Diamonds, my sweet, were the centrepiece of a priceless tiara, a birthday gift from old Boney to his darling Joséphine. Five huge flawless gemstones, set in a sort of flower arrangement around an even bigger rare red one.”
“A red diamond? I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“That’s because only a handful have ever been dug up.
Anyhow, after her death, much of Joséphine’s jewellery ended up in the hands of the Norwegian royal family, the tiara along with it.
One night, during a costume ball held at the palace of Versailles, the Devil’s Diamonds were snatched from atop a comely Norwegian princess’s fair head.
The tiara was later discovered decorating a stone gargoyle in the palace gardens.
The central diamonds, as big as hazelnuts, were never recovered. ”
“And it is pure coincidence that Valentin Beauregard fell into a fast-flowing cut the following day, never to be seen again,” Tommy surmised wryly.
“Regardless, as amusing as speculation on their whereabouts is, we must return to the present. We have three men recently reacquainting themselves with White’s, one of whom may, or may not, be a gentleman thief.
One is an elderly, respected mineralogist, here to deliver a series of lectures.
The second, an American, is determined to see his daughter wed to the wealthy but unpleasant Marquess of Talybridge.
And the third is a somewhat shady French vicomte who strangely disappeared from Society at the same time as the Devil’s Diamonds.
” He threw everyone a pointed look. “With all of this in mind, I shall permit the American, Chesterton, to join Squire’s if he requests.
But if Beauregard demands entry, I may have to find an excuse to disallow it. ”
Rollo pulled a face. “He’d brighten a lacklustre November. Far more than a boring American industrialist.”
Kit sauntered over from the window. “If Beauregard truly was behind the theft of the Devil’s Diamonds, then pilfering ladies’ reticules at dinner parties is quite the comedown, is it not?”
“Fabulous gossip though.” Rollo beamed. “If this chap stays around, perhaps November won’t be quite so dreary after all.”
“He’ll have a field day dipping his hand inside reticules at Lady Butterworth’s upcoming masked ball.” Fitzsimmons smiled grimly. “Assuming he’s on the guest list.”
“Of course he’ll be on the guest list. He bears a title, albeit French,” pointed out Rossingley. “Mind you, old Boney used to dish them out like chocolate drops.”
“Even I have been persuaded to attend.” Ashington didn’t sound terribly pleased, but then, the duke wasn’t one for large social gatherings.
“My informants tell me the vicomte is expected at the masked ball,” Mickey clarified.
“What fun!” exclaimed Rollo. He gazed up at Fitzsimmons. “Shall we befriend him? He sounds fascinating.”
“I daresay I can renew our acquaintance.” The corner of Fitzsimmons’s mouth ticked up. “I recall several amusing evenings in his company. For some reason, he used to find the whole Ashington history fascinating.”
“Probably scoping you out for diamonds worth pilfering,” said Ashington gloomily. “But how on earth will we spot him at a masked ball?”
Rossingley’s silvery eyes gleamed. Mickey wasn’t sure how he achieved it, but no matter the company, the man effortlessly commanded the room. “That’s very simple, my dear. Fitzsimmons said it himself. He’ll be the one hiding behind more than one mask.”