‘I cannot believe that I have changed so much in a month,’ Dinah exclaimed.

‘Yes, you have changed, more than I could have hoped,’ Cobie replied. ‘Because you were loved and cared for.’

‘You have not loved or cared for me.’ There was almost accusation in her voice.

‘No?’ he queried. So much of what Madame had done, had been done because of his instructions.

The new savoir faire which Dinah had learned—and was still learning—informed her that, if she wished, she could make him hers at any time, whenever she pleased.

At the top of the stairs she saw the pair of them in a large gilt-framed mirror—and gasped. She was prepared for her husband’s splendor. Evening dress became him as nothing else did. But she was not prepared for the sight of herself.

She was his complement in every way. The girl who had hunched her shoulders and bent her head, lest the world look her in the face, had gone.

‘Yes,’ Cobie said in her ear. ‘We go well together, do we not?’

Dear Reader

Some years ago I did a great deal of research on the lives of those men and women who, for a variety of reasons, lived on the frontiers. Re-reading recently about life in Australia in the early nineteenth century, it struck me that an interesting story about them was only waiting to be told. Having written HESTER WARING’S MARRIAGE, it was a short step for me to wonder what happened to the children and the grandchildren.

Hence The Dilhorne Dynasty, each book of which deals with a member of the family who sets out to conquer the new world in which he finds himself. The Dilhornes, men and women, are at home wherever they settle, be it Australia, England or the United States of America, and because of their zest for life become involved in interesting adventures.

The Dollar Prince’s Wife
Paula Marshall

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

PAULA MARSHALL,

married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic. She has traveled widely and has been a swimming coach. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Prologue

‘What I tell you three times is true.’ Lewis Carroll

Early March, 1892, Somerset

L ady Dinah Freville, the unconsidered half-sister of Violet, Lady Kenilworth, who always spoke of her in the most cavalier manner possible, was being equally cavalier in referring to her.

‘I really don’t want to leave you, Mama. You know how much I dislike staying with Violet—and how much she dislikes having me.’

She was staring through the window of the small dining room in her mother’s cottage in Somerset. Her mother, the widow of the late Lord Rainsborough, elegantly dressed in a loose silk Liberty gown of many colours, was busy with her canvas work.

She eyed the flowers she was stitching, yawned, and said gently, ‘I know, I know, but you can’t stay with me, my love. By my husband’s will, now that you’re eighteen, your guardianship will pass from me to your brother, and since he is still unmarried he has decreed that Violet will take you over and arrange for you to be presented at court. With luck, she will also arrange a suitable marriage for you. I can’t keep you here with me, however much I might wish to do so.’

Dinah’s frown grew. ‘I don’t want to live with Violet, I don’t want to be presented at court. I dislike the idea of the whole wretched business. I would much rather live with Faa if I can’t stay with you.’

‘Oh, that wouldn’t do at all!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘And I do wish that you wouldn’t call Professor Fabian Faa. You’re not supposed to know that he’s your father.’

‘I object to that too,’ returned Dinah mutinously. ‘Such hypocrisy! At least now that Lord Rainsborough is dead I don’t have to pretend that he’s my father any more.’

‘Violet,’ observed her mother, ‘thinks that you are a docile, spiritless child. I sometimes wish that she knew what you’re like when she’s absent. Does she really have such a dampening effect on you, my darling?’

Dinah spun round, turning to face her mother at last. ‘You don’t mind being in exile because you once weren’t, because once you had a name and a place, but I’m nobody—no, worse than nobody. I haven’t even a proper name, and every time I look at Violet—or anyone else from her world—I always know what they’re thinking. “That’s the one, the child whose existence ruined Charlotte Rainsborough who bolted with Louis Fabian—and didn’t even stay bolted with him once her child was born.”’

She suddenly fell silent, half-ashamed of her own vehemence. She looked at her mother’s placid face. ‘Why don’t you stop me when I’m being wicked, Mama?’

‘Oh, no, dear, much better to get it out of your system, as Nursie used to say.’

Genuine laughter shook Dinah. ‘Why didn’t you, Mama? Stay with him, Faa, I mean?’

‘Oh, no, once Rainsborough refused to divorce me it would have ruined poor Louis if I had stayed with him. I had no money of my own to keep him. No, Louis and I had our fun, one splendid summer, and then he could go back to being an Oxford don, and I was only too happy to be Rainsborough’s exiled wife—much better than having to live with him.’

She fell silent, contemplating that long-ago year when she had had a passionate affair with the young man who had been brought to Borough Hall to tutor her indolent son before he went to Oxford.

No, she told herself firmly, no, I won’t think of the life Dinah and I might have had if Rainsborough hadn’t played dog in the manger, roaring at me that dreadful day, ‘By God, Charlotte, if I can’t have you, neither shall he. I’ll be damned if I divorce you, and if you still run to him I’ll see him ruined, and he shan’t have the child, either. He, she, it, will be mine, will take my name, and be damned to the pair of you!’

No, she couldn’t ruin Louis, so she had accepted her husband’s terms, and her daughter Dinah was now Lady Dinah, who might have been a nameless bastard otherwise. But Rainsborough had taken good care that everyone knew the child’s sad history. Both her half-brother, who was always called Rainey, and her half-sister Violet, now married to Lord Kenilworth, but also the latest mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales, were hardly subtle in their constant, unkind reminders that she was only one of them by grace and favour…

Dinah plumped down on her knees and gently took her mother’s hand in order to stroke it lovingly. ‘The grand passion which only lasted six months. Is that how long all grand passions last, Mama?’

‘Yes, if you like, Dinah.’ What else could she say?

‘But I lasted longer.’

‘To my pleasure, yes. And now I must give you up. And do forget all this nonsense about having no name. Too middle class! My husband acknowledged you. You are Lady Dinah Freville, and the world accepts you as that. You aren’t the only one, you know.’

‘Yes, I do know that, Mama. And it doesn’t comfort me. What would comfort me would be to go to Oxford, to live with Faa and be an undergraduate at Somerville College. But I can’t have that, can I?’

‘No, my darling, we’ve had this out again and again. It’s imperative that you go to live with Violet, make a good match and be settled in the world. You haven’t time to play at being a scholar.’

‘Faa says that I could do more than play at it, Mama. He says that I have a good mind.’

‘Don’t think about that, my dear. You know very well how little money Rainsborough has left—my late husband spent it all on high living—and so your brother can’t afford to let me have more than a pittance. You won’t even have much of a dowry, and without a reasonable marriage you will be penniless. Just thank God that you’re not like some—thrown out to starve—and me, too.’

Dinah began to prowl restlessly around the room, avoiding her own image in the mirror facing the windows. She was ready at last to say the unsayable, the stark truth which her mother always avoided, but which Violet was constantly throwing in her face.

‘Who in the world is ever going to offer for me, Mama? I’m not like you or Violet. I have no looks and no light conversation.’

She was only too well aware of her own limitations. She was neither blonde, nor pretty. She was dark and slender, with no bust, she told herself despairingly, and precious little in the way of hips. Nothing about her was at all like the voluptuous women pictured in fashion plates and in the picture postcards of society beauties sold in every newsagent’s shop.

‘The fashionable clothes of the day aren’t meant for me, either. They stifle me. They’re meant for buxom, blue-eyed girls with ringlets, not a thin brown girl with raven hair and dark eyes.

‘And since I shan’t have a decent dowry, either,’ she ended ruefully, ‘there’s no fear, at least, that anyone will want to marry me for my money!’

‘Dear, dear,’ yawned her mother. ‘We have had this conversation so many times before. Sing another song, darling.’

‘Oh, I know I never sing the right one—and certainly I shall never be able to sing one which will please Violet. Please God that now that she’s taken up with the Prince of Wales she won’t have any time for me.’

‘Naughty thing,’ said her mother, laughing.

She looked thoughtfully at her daughter. For a moment there when she had spoken of Violet and the Prince her face had become animated, had glowed, had suddenly revealed quite a different person, a person of character and passion. It was as though the Dinah of the future had been superimposed on the Dinah of the present before disappearing again.

If she could look like that more often, then perhaps the child might attract someone who could see beyond the obvious, beyond the fashion plates and the picture postcards of society beauties, might even recognise her bright spirit, free it, and allow it to soar into the heavens.

Charlotte Rainsborough shook herself. Goodness, what brought that on? She said prosaically to her daughter, ‘One last thing, my dear, you will be careful when Violet takes you into society. There are those who prey on young things like yourself.’

‘Oh, no need to worry about that,’ replied Dinah, her face alight with amusement. ‘I’m sure that I’m most unlikely to attract either predators or pussy cats. As well imagine I could seduce the Prince himself—or any other of her lovers—away from Violet, or attract any of the men around them. Besides, you’re always telling me that men don’t like women who argue with them, so I shall know how to put off anyone whom I dislike.’

That last statement ended their discussion. Her mother shook her head at her, tea came in, and visitors, and for a time Dinah was able to forget her future. A future in which she would be sent off, like a parcel, to Violet’s grand home, Moorings, to be groomed for the Season where she would be inspected, and almost certainly passed over, before she could retreat into private life again.

Chapter One

‘N o, really, Cobie, no one should look like you, it isn’t decent,’ exclaimed Susanna Winthrop, wife of the American Envoy in London, to her foster-brother Jacobus Grant, always called Cobie.

In reply he offered her his lazy smile over the breakfast table—which was sufficient to exasperate her all over again.

It wasn’t just the classical perfection of his handsome face, nor his athletic body, nor even the way in which he wore his clothes, or his arrogant air of be damned to everybody which all combined not only to fascinate and to charm, but also to arouse a certain fear, even in those who met him briefly, which was enraging her. No, it was the whole tout ensemble which did the damage, so many remarkable things combined together in one human male.

She was so fierce that he could not resist teasing her. He said provokingly, ‘Well, nor am I decent. So what of that?’

For a brief moment the sexual attraction between them, long dormant on Cobie’s part, had been revived.

‘That’s what I mean,’ she retorted, still fierce. ‘To answer me like you do! You’ve neither shame nor modesty—and you only believe in yourself.’

His brows lifted, and like Susanna he felt regret for the love which had once existed between them, but was now lost. Alas, that river had long flowed under the bridge, and would not return again.

‘Who better to believe in?’ he asked, and his grin was almost a child’s, pure in its apparent innocence.

‘Oh, you’re impossible!’

‘That, too,’ he agreed.

Susanna began to laugh. She could never be angry with Cobie for long. She had loved him ever since she had first met him when he was a fat baby and she was nearly ten years old. He was the supposed adopted son of Jack and Marietta Dilhorne—in actuality their own son, made illegitimate by the machinations of Marietta’s jealous cousin Sophie. Susanna was the daughter of Marietta’s first husband and, as such, no blood relation of Cobie’s.

Ten years ago their affection had blossomed into passionate love, but Susanna had refused to marry him, seeing the years between them as a fatal barrier. His calf-love for her had inevitably died, but she was still agonisingly aware that her passion for him was still burning strongly beneath her apparent serenity. Susanna had thought she knew him, but ever since he had arrived in London she had begun to realise exactly how much Cobie had changed—and how little she had.

Eight years ago he had returned from two years spent in the American Southwest and the man he had become was someone whom she hardly knew: a man quite unlike the innocent and carefree boy whom she had refused. She had married in his absence, and had spent her life alternately trying to forget him, or wishing that she had married him, and not her unexciting husband.

Her annoyance with Cobie this time was the consequence of what had happened the night before at a reception which she and her husband had given and which the cream of London society had attended.

Inevitably—and unwillingly—Susanna had been compelled to introduce Cobie to that society’s most notorious beauty, Violet, Lady Kenilworth, the Prince of Wales’s current mistress. She had known only too desolately well what would follow when such a pair of sexual predators met for the first time.

Belle amie of the heir to the throne Violet might be, but she could not resist the challenge which Apollo—as she had instantly named Cobie—presented to her.

‘Half-sister?’ she queried after Susanna had left them.

‘You might call her that,’ Cobie replied in his society drawl, which was neither English nor American but something carefully pitched between the two.

‘Might you?’ Violet was all cool charm. ‘You’re not a bit like her, you know.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Cobie replied to this impertinent remark which broke all society’s rules—but Violet, like Cobie, always made up her own. Then, with a touch of charming impudence, ‘And are you like your sister, Lady Kenilworth?’

Violet threw her lovely head back to show the long line of her throat, her blue eyes alight beneath the gold crown of her hair. ‘God forbid!’ she exclaimed. ‘We are quite unlike in every way—to my great relief, she’s the world’s greatest bore—and call me Violet, do.’

Despite himself Cobie was intrigued. What in the world could the sister be like who inspired Violet to be so cuttingly cruel? Nevertheless he merely bowed and said, ‘Violet, since you wish it. For my part I wish that I were more like Susanna.’

‘I don’t,’ said Violet, full of provocation. ‘Not if it involved you turning into a dark young woman. I much prefer tall, handsome, blond men.’

Seeing that the Prince of Wales was neither tall nor blond and was certainly not handsome, this riposte amused Cobie—as it was intended to. Before he could reply, Violet was busy verbally seducing him again.

‘You are over from the States, I gather. Is it your first visit? I do hope that you will make it a long one.’

‘It will be my first long visit,’ he replied, his mouth curling a little in amusement at her naked sexual aggression barely hidden beneath the nothings of polite conversation. ‘I have made several short ones before—on business.’

‘Business!’ It was the turn of Violet’s mouth to curl. ‘Forgive me, but you seem made for pleasure.’

The buttons were off the foils with a vengeance, were they not!

‘A useful impression to give if one wishes to succeed in business—’ he began.

‘But not this visit—’ she said sweetly, interrupting him—so for quid pro quo he decided to interrupt her with,

‘No, not this visit. I have been overworking and I need a holiday.’

‘The overwork is truly American,’ pronounced Violet. ‘The holiday part is not. I thought that Americans never rested, were always full of—what is it?—get up and go!’

‘Ah, another illusion shattered.’ Cobie was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘The first of many, I hope. It all depends on what kind of get up and go we are speaking of.’

‘All kinds, I hope,’ murmured Violet, lowering her eyes, only to raise them again, saying, ‘Now we must part—to entertain others. Before we do so, may I invite you to visit us at Moorings, our place in the country. We go there in ten days’ time to spend a few weeks before the Season proper starts.

‘In the meantime, allow me to inform you that I am always at home to my true friends from two o’clock. Pray don’t wait until four-fifteen—only the bores visit then.’

Cobie bowed, and she moved away. He was aware that he had become the centre of interest. He was, Susanna told him later, socially made now that Violet Kenilworth had taken him up. Not all the eyes on him were kind, among them those of Sir Ratcliffe Heneage to whom Arthur Winthrop introduced him later.

Sir Ratcliffe’s eyes raked him dismissively. He was everything which an American thought of as a typical English aristocrat. He was tall, dark, impeccably dressed, authoritative, well built with a hawk-like face. He was a junior Cabinet Minister, a noted bon viveur, was part of the Prince of Wales’s circle, and had once been an officer in the Guards.

The assessing part of Cobie, however, which never left him, even when he was amusing himself, told him that, disguise it as he might, Sir Ratcliffe was on the verge of running to seed. His face was already showing the early signs of over-indulgence.

‘Related to Sir Alan Dilhorne, I hear,’ Sir Ratcliffe drawled condescendingly to this damned American upstart, only able to enter good society because of his immense wealth—made by dubious means, no doubt.

‘Distantly.’ Cobie’s drawl matched Sir Ratcliffe’s—he made it more English than usual. ‘Only distantly.’

‘Getting old, Sir Alan—giving up politics, I hear. That’s a dog’s life, you know. Can’t think why I went in for it. Who wants to sit around listening for division bells and all that? Gives one a certain cachet, though. You in politics back home?’

‘Not my line,’ said Cobie cheerfully. ‘Too busy earning a living.’ He wondered what had caused the waves of dislike emanating from the man opposite. ‘Takes me all my time to survive on Wall Street.’

And, oh, what a lie that was!

Sir Ratcliffe’s lip curled a little. ‘In business, are you?’ he asked, his tone showing what he thought of those who worked for a living rather than played for it. ‘Sooner you than me, old fellow. Miss it while you’re over here, will you?’

‘I’ve come to enjoy myself,’ was Cobie’s reply to that. The man’s patronising air was enough to set your teeth on edge, he thought.

‘Plenty of that on offer—if you know where to look for it. Shoot, do you?’

‘A little,’ lied Cobie, who was a crack shot with every kind of weapon, but for some reason decided not to confess to that. There were times when he wondered whether he would ever be permitted the luxury of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

‘A little, eh? Don’t suppose you get much chance to shoot anything in Wall Street, hey! hey! Or anywhere else for that matter.’

‘Exactly,’ drawled Cobie, suppressing a dreadful urge to tell the languid fool opposite to him that there had been a time when Cobie Grant, then known as Jake Coburn, a six-shooter in his hand, had been a man to fear and to avoid.

On the other hand, if Sir Ratcliffe chose to think him a soft townie, then it was all to the good. It usually paid to be underestimated.

At breakfast that morning, Susanna explained why Sir Ratcliffe disliked him so much.

‘He saw Violet was taken with you, didn’t he? She was looking at you as though you were a rather delicious meal laid out for her to enjoy. He’s been after her for months—with no luck. He’s made an ass of himself over the Prince’s favouring her. On top of that, the rumour is that he’s in Queer Street financially, and there’s you, an enormously rich Yankee, fascinating Violet without even trying.’

Of course, Sir Ratcliffe had been right to be jealous—and so had Susanna, which was why she was reproaching Cobie for being the man he was and not the man he had been.

Susanna had been only too well aware that Cobie would take up Violet’s two o’clock invitation at the earliest opportunity—which he promptly did, that very afternoon. At the Kenilworths’ town house in Piccadilly he enjoyed, for what it was worth, what a famous actress and beauty had once called the hurly burly of the chaise-longue rather than the deep peace of the marriage bed. One disadvantage being that one remained virtually fully clothed.

He also, a little reluctantly, agreed to visit Moorings several days before the rest of the guests arrived. Violet had smiled at him confidentially, and drawled, ‘As early as you like so that we can enjoy ourselves in comfort.’

Cobie was not sure that he wished his affair with her to be more than a passing thing. Violet had not improved on further acquaintance, and to some extent he was regretting having pursued her at all—but he could not refuse to visit Moorings without offending her—and he had no wish to do that. It was plain that she saw him as a trophy, and was determined to flaunt him before the rest of society. He wondered a little what the Prince of Wales would think of Violet taking a second lover, but she made nothing of that.

‘I understand that your nickname in the States is The Dollar Prince,’ were her final words to him, ‘which means that I now have two of such name.’

He was tempted to say, ‘No, Violet, you certainly don’t have me,’ but he was well aware that it would be unwise to make an enemy of her, so he merely bowed in acknowledgement of her mild witticism when taking his leave before the bores arrived at four o’clock.

Well, at least he would be able to enjoy living for a few weeks in one of the most spectacularly beautiful country houses in England, even if he did have to pay for it by pleasuring Violet!

It was for that reason, but not for that reason alone, that two evenings later he left the ball which she and her husband were giving at Kenilworth House long before Violet wished him to. He had bidden her ‘goodnight’ with all the charm which he could muster, but it was not enough to mollify her.

‘Leaving already!’ she had exclaimed, her beautiful brows arching high. ‘The night is yet young, and many who are years older than you are will not be giving up until dawn.’

‘Alas,’ he told her untruthfully, ‘I have been busy in the City all day, and such a concentration of effort carries its own penalties—I am sure that Kenilworth will have told you that.’

Cobie had always wondered at the workings of chance, and that it might be unwise to ignore them. Chance had led him to overhear something odd that night, something which had stayed in his memory. It was for that reason only that after leaving Kenilworth House, he did not go straight home to the Winthrops’. Instead he dismissed his carriage and walked down the Haymarket, which was so brilliantly lit that it might as well have been day.

The usual stares at his splendid self from both men and women followed him: he ignored them all and carried on his solitary way until he came to an alley about a hundred yards beyond the Haymarket Theatre. Looking down it, he could see a group of top-hatted men of fashion standing and smoking under a swinging lantern over an eighteenth-century doorway.

It must be Madame Louise’s: the brothel where the quality went, where discretion and high prices reigned. The conversation which he had overheard at the Kenilworths’ ball had him intrigued enough to consider going in. He had been leaning against a pillar, half-hidden, tired of the nothingness of the whole business, when he had heard two men approach and, quite unaware of his presence nearby, begin a muffled conversation.

‘Deadly boring tonight, eh, Heneage? Not that these pre-Season dos are ever anything else.’

Heneage—it must be the pompous dandy whom Cobie had met at Susanna’s equally boring thrash.

He was answering his companion in an amused knowing voice. ‘I know a better way of entertaining one’s self, Darrell, and it’s not far from here. Madame Louise’s place, in short. You can only visit there if you have the entrée—and I have. We could move on when I’ve done the pretty with dear Violet.’

Darrell—that would be Hubert Darrell, one of the hangers-on to the coat-tails of the great. They were rather like those extras in a play who are always shouting ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb’ at the appropriate moment. From the turn the conversation had taken Darrell was about to be introduced to some vicious inner circle.

‘Bit dull, though, isn’t it, Heneage? Just the usual, I take it.’

Heneage laughed patronisingly. ‘Oh, you can always find variety at Madame’s if you’re in the know, are discreet and have plenty of tin. You can have anything you fancy—anything—no holds barred. But mum’s the world, old fellow. Are you game?’

‘Game for anything—you know me.’

‘Then we’ll do the rounds here first, and sample the goods afterwards. I heard, don’t ask me how, that Madame has some new stuff on show tonight, very prime.’ Sir Ratcliffe’s voice was full of hateful promise.

They moved out of Cobie’s hearing, leaving him to wonder what exactly was meant by ‘no holds barred’ and ‘good new stuff’—and not liking the answer he came up with.

Curiosity now led him to enter Madame’s gilded entrance hall and to bribe his way past the giants on guard there since he came alone and unrecommended. This took him some little time. He thought, amusedly, that he might have been trying to enter a palace, not a brothel, so complicated was the ritual.

He agreed to hand over his top hat and scarf to a female dragon at the cloakroom, but insisted on carrying in his all-enveloping cape—which cost him another tip for a sweetener. There were reasons why he wanted to retain it. He then made his way into an exquisitely appointed drawing room.

Everything in it was in the best of taste. There was even a minor Gainsborough hanging over the hearth. Men and women sat about chatting discreetly. Among them he saw Sir Ratcliffe Heneage. He had a brief glimpse of a man being led through some swathed curtains at the far end of the room and could have sworn it was his brother-in-law, Arthur Winthrop, who had also left the Kenilworths’ ball early, pleading a migraine.

Madame Louise was tall, had been a beauty in her youth and, like her room, was elegantly turned out. Her eyes on him were cold.

‘I do not know you, sir. Since you have arrived without a sponsor or a friend, who allowed you, an unknown, to enter?’

‘Oh, money oils all locks and bars,’ he told her with his most winning smile, ‘but should I require a friend I have one here—Sir Ratcliffe Heneage. I am sure that he will confirm that I am Jacobus Grant, the brother-in-law of the American Envoy, and a distant relative of Sir Alan Dilhorne, late of the British Cabinet. Does that make me…respectable?’

Sir Ratcliffe, who had been watching them, was smiling with pleasure at the sight of the Madame of a night-house putting down the Yankee barbarian who had succeeded with Violet Kenilworth.

‘Yes, Mr Grant is who he says he is. We have been introduced.’

‘There!’ said Cobie sweetly. ‘What better recommendation could I have than one given me by Sir Ratcliffe? I may stay?’

‘Indeed. It is my custom to give a new guest a glass of champagne and ask him, discreetly, of course, what his preferences are. You will join me?’

Cobie bowed his agreement, secretly amused at her using the word guest instead of customer. A footman handed him his champagne and Madame asked him, discreetly again, ‘Are your tastes as unorthodox as your mode of entry, Mr Grant?’

‘Alas, no. I am distressingly orthodox in all I do, if not to say uninventive.’

He looked as pious as a male angel in a Renaissance painting when he came out with this lie, invention being the name of every game he played. He was not yet sure what game he was playing at Madame Louise’s, but he hoped to find out soon.

‘A beauty, then, and young.’

Cobie bowed again, ‘Quite so—and with the appearance of innocence. I am tired and do not wish to exert myself overmuch.’

He was taken at his word, and after he had handed over to Madame a fistful of sovereigns he was allowed to go upstairs—through the swathed curtains—with a young girl dressed in the latest fashion. She was lovely enough to have graced a Mayfair drawing room.

‘Her name is Marie,’ Madame had told him carelessly.

The bedroom she led him to was as exquisite as the room downstairs. She hesitated a moment before she stripped herself after he had sat on the big bed and thrown down the cape he had been carrying. Even then he made no attempt to touch her.

When she was finally naked, and Cobie had still said and done nothing, but continued to sit there, fully dressed, she walked towards him, her pretty face puzzled. She had not quite reached him when he lifted his hand.

‘Stay where you are, Miss Marie, just like that. On second thoughts, unpin your hair, and then begin to restore it to what it was.’

Her look of puzzlement grew, but she did his bidding—as she had been taught. When she finally stood before him, quite still, her shapely arms above her head, he murmured, ‘Now, don’t move, remain exactly as you are.’

‘You’re sure?’ she blurted at him. ‘Is this really what you want me to do?’

He nodded agreement while fetching from an inner pocket of his cape a sketchbook and pencil. He began, rapidly, to draw her, his full attention on every line of her beautiful body. For all the emotion he showed he might have been drawing a still life, not a glowing and vibrant human being.

A moment later, the sketch finished, Cobie showed it to her—to hear her say in her true voice, the cockney in it plain, ‘Garn, you’re a painter, then. That’s me all right!’

He shook his head, ‘An amateur, merely. Now, sit down and let me draw you again in a different position.’

‘You’ve only an hour,’ she told him, as sharp as he had been.

‘I know.’ He nodded back at her, his hand moving rapidly over the paper.

‘And is this all you want me to do—or do with me? A fine upstanding feller like you. One of them, are you? Don’t want no one to know, is that it?’

Cobie, unoffended, laughed. ‘No, not at all. Idle curiosity brought me to Madame Louise’s but I could hardly visit her, and not appear to sample the girls. Keep quiet about your modelling session—no need for Madame to know of it—and I’ll see you well rewarded. Let her think that we pushed the boat out together, eh?’

Mischief shone on her pretty face. The mere idea of tricking Madame pleased her, even if it were a shame not to have a tumble with such a handsome fellow.

‘If you say so,’ and then, anxiously, ‘It’s not that I don’t please you?’

‘No, I find you very pretty, Miss Marie. Look over your left shoulder at me, now.’

She obeyed him, only to look over his left shoulder after he had finished drawing her, and exclaim, ‘That’s good, but you’re an odd one, and no mistake.’

‘Yes, that’s what most people who really know me think,’ he replied gravely, handing her the sketches he had made. ‘There, you may have them. Best not show them to Madame, eh?’

‘What the eye don’t see, the heart can’t grieve,’ she told him impudently, rolling the papers into a cylinder and thrusting it into a drawer in a Louis Quinze dressing table.

‘This is your, room, then, Miss Marie?’ he asked, apparently idly, to have her reply,

‘Yes, but only when I entertain customers. I live, like the other girls, in one of the attics.’

The anger and the pity which Cobie felt for all exploited men and women was strong in him when he contemplated the minimal state of the world in which Marie lived.

Hypocrite! he told himself fiercely, since you exploit the corrupt world in which you live and do nothing for such poor lost souls as these. He wondered how long she had been on the game, and how long it would be before she lost her apparently virginal freshness and Madame turned her out onto the streets to replace her with someone younger.

‘And the other entertainments,’ he asked, still idly, ‘Where are they, Miss Marie?’

Her face became shuttered. She stared at him and said, ‘You told me you weren’t like that. Were you lying?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Then you don’t want to know where they are, do you? But if you are lying, then ask Madame.’

She was done with him: the brief and strange moment of rapport which they had shared was over. Cobie sighed—he might have known that he would learn nothing from her.

Suddenly and strangely, she leaned forward and said, in a fierce whisper, a whisper which was almost wrenched from her, ‘You called me Miss Marie several times—to most men I’m a body, not a name. If you don’t want to go out through the salon, you can leave by going down the backstairs—through the far door on the landing outside.

‘At the bottom of them there’s a hall which opens on to a courtyard and an alley which leads to the Haymarket. At the other end of the hall there’s another flight of stairs which leads to the attics—and nowhere else. That’s all.’

Cobie rose and said, ‘I’m for the backstairs, then. Goodnight, Miss Marie. You made a good artist’s model. Here’s your reward for that—for keeping quiet—and for helping me.’

She took the money he offered her, her face lighting up for a moment—and then she shrugged her shoulders at him and turned away, before making herself ready to go downstairs again. The odd little interlude was over.

Cobie found the backstairs at the end of a corridor. He had replaced his cloak—then remembered that he had left his hat and scarf with the dragon in the entrance hall. No matter, he had others, and he did not particularly wish to return to claim them.

Running lightly down the uncarpeted stairs, he found himself in another world, where soft luxury did not exist, where the light flared from unshielded gas jets, and where the floor of the corridor which led to the back door and to the Haymarket was bare boards, no rugs or mats to soften it.

At the bottom of the staircase was the small hall, from which another set of stairs rose—Marie had directed him correctly. A large free-standing mahogany wardrobe stood beside the back door, which was tightly shut. Cobie had just wrestled it open when he heard rapid footsteps running down the stairs.

He turned at the sound, to be struck amidships by a small body. High above them he could hear male voices, shouting in anger, and then footsteps thundering down.

The owner of the body was a little girl, no older than ten by the look of her. Scarlet in the face, she was panting hard. When she saw Cobie, looking like a golden angel sent to rescue her, she fell on her knees before him, to clasp his, wailing, ‘Oh, Gawd, mister. Save me. I don’t want to be hurt like poor Clara was. Don’t let him have me.’

Her face was filthy, and streaked with tears. Her dress, a garish pink thing, trimmed with silver tinsel, like a circus performer’s tutu, had been ripped from the neck to the waist. The marks of a man’s fingers were plain upon her throat and thin shoulders.

Inside Cobie something shrieked incontinent. The red rage with which he had lived since childhood was on him. It came unbidden when he was faced with cruelty or injustice, particularly to the helpless. In it he could kill; to control it took all the strength of his iron will. Its passing left him feeling empty and ill.

He controlled it now with difficulty even though his face remained impassive. The child heard the footsteps, shrieked, ‘Oh, Gawd, he’ll catch me for sure. Oh, mister, don’t let him hurt me. Please, don’t let him.’

As was usual when he was in a tight corner Cobie acted with lightning speed. He picked up the child, hissed at her, ‘Not a sound, mind,’ and, whirling around, he half-threw her onto the flat top of the wardrobe, where she lay concealed by its elaborate wooden and gilt rail. That done, he leaned against the wall, blinking owlishly at the world as though he had drunk too much of Madame’s indifferent champagne, and spent himself too much with Marie.

By now the owner of the footsteps, a hard-faced man in workman’s clothing—one of Madame’s bouncers, no doubt—had arrived in the small hall, to stare at all that was to be seen. A half-cut toff and no girl-child in sight.

‘Have you seen a little girl running away from here? Which way did she go…sir?’

This last came out in belated recognition of Cobie’s undoubted wealth and superior station.

Cobie decided to be more owlish than ever. ‘A small…girl,’ he enunciated with great difficulty. ‘What…? What…?’ He had no time to finish the sentence before another actor arrived on the scene.

‘You’re taking a devilish long time to catch the little bitch up, Hoskyns,’ exclaimed a voice which Cobie immediately recognised. ‘Damme, she nearly bit my finger off.’

It was Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, in a state which might have surprised those who only knew him in the salons of Mayfair. He was barefooted and wearing trousers and a shirt open to the waist. Unbuttoned, was perhaps the best description of him, Cobie thought. He decided to run a little interference.

‘Oh, Sir Ratcliffe, there y’are. Wondered where you’d got to.’ His hiccup at the end of this was particularly artistic.

‘Damn that, man,’ exclaimed Sir Ratcliffe, ‘Did anyone leave while you were here?’

Cobie swayed, thought for a moment, leaned forward and grabbed Sir Ratcliffe by the collar of his shirt, stifling the desire to strangle the beast before him. He had no doubts at all about what had been going on in one of Madame’s discreet attic rooms, and wondered how much the bankrupt swine before him had paid for the use of the girl-child cowering on top of the wardrobe above the three of them.

‘Just saw a girl go by, old fellow, through the door there, running like a hare. I got lost in the backstairs, don’t you know.’

He finished with Sir Ratcliffe, and turned his drunken gaze on Hoskyns. ‘Help me to find my way out. Left m’hat with the doorkeeper. Don’ want to catch cold.’

He knew that he was risking having Hoskyns take him at his word, and that he might show him out through the main entrance—which would mean leaving the abused child behind on top of the wardrobe.

The risk had been worth taking, however, for Sir Ratcliffe roared, ‘Find your own way out, Grant. Hoskyns, go after the little bitch. She can’t have got very far. And you, Grant, get Madame to call you a cab.’

He turned on his heel to make his way back up the stairs to whatever hell-hole he had come from, where the special and curious tastes of depraved gentlemen were catered for. Hoskyns, shrugging his shoulders and mentally damning the demanding nature of the powerful in his world, did what Sir Ratcliffe bid him.

Cobie heaved a great sigh and straightened up when he found himself alone again. He turned towards the wardrobe, called up softly to the waiting child, ‘Little ’un, put out a hand, and I’ll try to get you down and away from here.’

It took some manoeuvring before she was beside him in the hall again; it was much harder to get her safely to the ground than it had been to throw her up.

Once down, the child seized his hand and covered it with kisses. ‘Oh, thankee, mister, thankee, for saving me.’

‘Not saved yet,’ said Cobie shortly. ‘Thank me when you are. We can’t leave by the easiest way, we might meet Hoskyns coming back. Now, how strong are you?’

‘As strong as you want me to be, mister,’ she said fervently. ‘Only, I ain’t got nowhere to go, that’s all. It were me stepdad what sold me to this place.’

Cobie, wondering what further disgraceful revelations the night held for him, threw back his cape, and asked, ‘If I lifted you up, and sat you with your legs around my waist and your arms around my chest and your head on it, and I arranged my cape around us like so, could you stay there, quiet like a mouse, while I walk us both out of this miserable pigsty?’

She nodded vigorously, and as speedily as he could, he hid her beneath the voluminous folds of his cape. She clutched him in a grip as strong as death. He was grateful that he wasn’t wearing his usual overcoat, but had decided to play the dandy on his first night alone, out on the town.

Finding the way back to the entrance wasn’t difficult. He made idle chat with the gorgon, and left her a large tip so that she might contemptuously think him yet one more American visitor with more money than sense.

He used his good left hand to take his top hat and scarf, keeping his right hand and arm inside the cloak to steady the girl, once again grateful to the fate which had made him ambidextrous. This time his unusual skill was not going to save his own life, but might save that of the child he was carrying.

Cobie could feel her breathing, and she had been right when she had told him that she would be as strong as he wanted. Her grip continued vice-like, and he walked indolently along, apparently unencumbered. He was grateful that Madame’s doorkeepers were tired and incurious, only too glad to get rid of him now that he had finished spending his money with them.

Once outside and walking along the Haymarket, still a sea of light although it was now well past midnight, he continued to carry the girl beneath his cloak. He dare not let her down, for a man of fashion walking along with an oddly-dressed girl-child at one in the morning would be sure to attract unwanted attention, even in the Haymarket.

Particularly in the Haymarket, where he knew that all the vices in a vicious city were available for those who had the money to pay for them.

He paused and thought for a moment. The Salvation Army, of course. Susanna was one of a group of society women who were involved in helping the poor and unfortunate. She had once told him that the Salvation Army had shelters where the wretched might find succour, even in central London.

He had been mildly interested, he remembered. Susanna had mentioned that there was one not far from Piccadilly. He made sure that the child was still firmly gripping him and set off to find it.

Chapter Two

A t the shelter, which had originally been a small church hall, the Salvation Army was giving tea and comfort to a group of derelicts. They included a battered tramp, and a prostitute who had been brutally beaten by one of her clients and had staggered in to the Sally Ann’s Haymarket refuge for help just before Cobie walked in.

He was so unlike their usual customer that everyone stared at him and his physical and sartorial splendours. The man who was busy bandaging the tart’s wounds, and the two young women who were looking after the tea were as bemused by him as the down and outs whom they were tending.

For the moment he kept the child hidden beneath his cloak.

‘I am told that you save souls—and bodies—here,’ he drawled, looking around him. ‘I need your help and I see that I was told aright.’

‘That is true,’ said the Captain, walking forward. A middle-aged man of undistinguished face and figure, he had been seated at a desk at the back of the hall, writing in a ledger. ‘What may we do for you? We are always ready to help a soul in need.’

‘Oh, your help is not required for me, sir. At least, not this time. In fact I fear that I may be unsaveable at any time. But I do need advice of the most delicate nature, and if there is a room where we may speak privately, I should be grateful if we might retire there.’

The Captain looked at Cobie, at his easy air of authority, his aura of wealth and power. What advice could he possibly be in need of?

‘Very well. Come this way, please.’ So saying, he led the way into a small room off the main hall.

‘Now, what may I do for you?’

Cobie smiled—and unfurled his cloak.

‘I repeat, not for me, sir. It is this poor child for whom I need your assistance. You understand that there are few places where I may take her without suspicion falling on me.’

By now the little girl in her tawdry and unsuitable finery was fully revealed. She slid gratefully down Cobie’s long length to sit on the floor.

‘Coo-er, mister, that were hard work, that were.’

‘You see now why I asked for somewhere a little more private, Captain,’ Cobie said. ‘This is not a pretty story, and neither of us would welcome publicity—even though it is a mission of mercy on which we are engaged.’

The Captain nodded. He offered the little girl a chair, but he and Cobie remained standing.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘Tell me your story—although I think that I can imagine the gist of it.’

‘The trade in children being neither new nor rare, I am sure that you can. I believe that some years ago the Salvation Army found itself in trouble when it tried to reveal the facts to a disbelieving world.’

‘That is so,’ agreed the Captain, surprised a little by the knowledge of the arrogant and handsome young man before him—even more surprised to find that he had seen fit to rescue a child from the slums. ‘You are referring to the Stead case, I take it, sir, when those who were trying to save exploited children were sent to prison and those who exploited them escaped punishment. You are saying that you have knowledge of something similar?’

‘Oh, come.’ Cobie’s voice was as satiric as he could make it. ‘You are not about to pretend that, living and working where you do, near to the Haymarket, you are unaware of what goes on—’

He was rudely interrupted by the little girl standing up and tugging at his hand, ‘I’m hungry, mister.’

To the Captain’s further surprise the young dandy before him went down on one knee, took a large handkerchief from an inner pocket of his immaculately cut jacket, and carefully began to clean the child’s face.

‘So you must be,’ he told her gently. ‘Do you think we could ask this gentleman to find you something to eat while he and I talk about what to do with you?’

She nodded, and then suddenly grasped his hand again. She kissed it, gasping, ‘Oh, Gawd, mister, you won’t send me back, will you? Let me eat in here. I feel safe wiv you.’

‘No, I won’t send you back, I promise. I’ll find somewhere safe for you to go.’

He stood up again, and thought, My God, and now the rage is making me rescue slum children, when all I want is a night’s sleep!

He said brusquely to the Captain, ‘You can feed her?’

The Captain went to the door, and called to one of the women, who presently came in with a bowl of soup and a buttered bread roll.

‘What’s your name, little girl?’ she asked the child, who took the bowl from her and began drinking greedily from it without using the spoon.

‘Lizzie,’ she said, ‘Lizzie Steele,’ and then, to Cobie, ‘What’s yours, mister?’

Cobie began to laugh, stopped, and asked her gravely, bending his bright head a little, ‘What would you like it to be?’

He felt, rather than saw, the Captain look sharply at him. Lizzie, slurping the last drops of the soup, said through them, ‘Ain’t yer got a name, then?’

‘Not really,’ Cobie told her, which was, in a way, the truth. He had no intention of letting anyone at the shelter know who he really was. Caution was his middle name, although many who knew him would have been surprised to learn that.

Now that the child was safe the rage had begun to ebb. It was leaving him empty—except for his head, which was beginning to hurt. Soon, he knew, his sight would be affected. But he could not leave until Lizzie’s immediate future was assured.

She was still watching him, a little puzzled.

‘Everyone has a name, mister,’ she finally offered him.

‘Of sorts,’ Cobie agreed gravely.

The Captain took a hand. Lizzie, starting on her roll and butter, continued to watch them, or rather to watch Cobie, who seemed to be the magnet which controlled her small universe.

‘I think,’ the Captain said, ‘that we ought to ask my aide, Miss Merrick, to find Lizzie something more suitable for her to wear. You and I must talk while she does so.’

To Cobie’s amusement Lizzie, pointing at Cobie, chirped, ‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere wivout ’im, and that’s flat.’

Again the Captain was surprised by his manner towards Lizzie. Cobie spoke to her pleasantly and politely after the fashion in which he would address Violet Kenilworth, Susanna, or the Queen.

‘You’re quite safe here, Miss Steele. You will be well looked after, I’m sure. Nothing bad will happen to you whether I am present or not. You have my word.’ He took her grubby hand and bowed over it.

Her eyes were still watchful. She had been betrayed too often to believe that he would necessarily keep his word.

‘You promise?’ was all she said.

‘I promise.’ He was still as grave as a hanging judge.

He was aware that the Captain’s shrewd eyes were on him, trying to fathom him. His whole interest centred on Cobie, not on the child. He had doubtless seen many like her—but few like him, someone apparently unharmed by the world’s wickedness.

The rage revived for a moment, to die back again. God knew, if no one else did, how near Cobie Grant had once been to dereliction, violation, and death!

The woman who had brought Lizzie the soup was called in once more, to take away both the empty bowl and the child, with orders to find something respectable for her to wear—after she had been washed.

Lizzie demurred a little at the notion of being washed, until Cobie said, his voice confidential, ‘Oh, do let them wash you, Miss Steele. I like washing, I assure you, and do it a lot.’

She stared at his golden splendour for a moment, before saying, ‘Yus, I can see yer do.’ To the woman leading her from the room she said, ungraciously, ‘I’ll let yer wash me so long as yer don’t get soap in me eyes!’

‘To be brief,’ Cobie said to the Captain, ‘I stole her from Madame Louise’s and then brought her here because I had heard that you were in the business of saving such lost souls. By good chance she had succeeded in escaping from the man who would have violated her. She owes her safety, if not her life, to her own wits.’

‘And to you.’ The Captain’s face was as impassive as he said this as that of the strange young man to whom he was talking. He was taking nothing on trust, not even the child’s rescuer. He was also showing little of the humble subservience usually offered in England by those of the lower classes to their superiors.

‘I was an instrument, merely,’ drawled Cobie, ‘there to see that she was not caught again.’

‘You were one of Madame’s clients?’

‘After a fashion, yes.’

Cobie was languid, unapologetic. ‘Now let us speak of her disposition. She told me that her stepfather had sold her to the house.’

Since he was a good Salvation Army man, the Captain could neither curse nor blaspheme, but the sound which escaped from him could have been construed as either.

‘Exactly,’ agreed Cobie. ‘The vile business is run from the top floors of Madame Louise’s sumptuous house—I’m sure you know that without me telling you.’

‘Yes—and I can do nothing. Evidence which would stand up in court is impossible to find. I cannot even do as much as you did tonight.’

‘Which is little enough. So many sparrows fall. I was privileged to save one—not more. Now, what shall we do with this one poor sparrow?’ Cobie was pleased to see by his expression that the Captain took the Biblical allusion.

‘Whom God has permitted you to rescue.’

The Captain was rebuking him, no doubt of that.

‘God.’ Cobie raised his beautiful eyebrows. ‘Ah, yes, the All Powerful. Who allows so many to fall into the pit…so many sparrows to fall…and who put Lizzie in the way of her captors. No matter, I will not refine on theological points with you—only ask what may be done for her.’

Cobie’s smile was cold, not really a smile at all. ‘Money is not a problem, sir.’

He put his hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out his purse, and opened it. A cascade of golden sovereigns fell onto the dirty deal table which stood between him and the Captain.

‘This is merely the beginning, a token of good intent.’

The Captain said, ‘Who, and what, are you buying? God, salvation, me or the child?’

Cobie answered him in his most sardonic mode. ‘All of them, sir, all of them. Everything is for sale, including salvation, and may be bought either by money—or by love. If your conscience will not allow you to help such a sinner as I am, then I shall take the child elsewhere to find those who are not so particular, but who will offer us assistance.’

The money was back in his purse and he was striding to the door. Oh, the damnable, monstrous arrogance of him, thought the Captain—but Lizzie’s rescuer had said ‘us’, associating himself with the child, and he would be failing in his Christian duty to refuse her succour because of the nature of the man who was asking for it on her behalf.

He thought that the stranger had a contempt for the whole world—himself included. He must not allow that to sway him. There were two souls to save here—not one. In some fashion it was not the child who had the greater need.

He said to Cobie’s back, ‘Wait one moment. There is a home where I may place her temporarily, where she will be safe. We have a shortage of permanent accommodation.’

‘More fallen sparrows than you can deal with?’

‘If you like.’

‘Then I will make you a proposition. Take Lizzie Steele into your permanent care, and I will give you enough money to buy, equip and maintain a house large enough to give shelter for up to twenty such, where they may be schooled and cared for until they are old enough to make their own way in the world.’

‘Dare I believe that you mean what you say, sir?’

‘No one,’ Cobie told him, and his voice was deadly, ‘has ever had reason to doubt my word, whether what I promise be good or ill.’

‘I must know your name, sir.’

Cobie considered. He had no wish to tell the Captain the one by which high society knew him, but he had never hesitated to use another when it seemed more profitable, or safer, to do so. He did so now.

‘I told Lizzie that I have no name. I was born without one. You and she may call me Mr…’

He hesitated; some freakish whim was urging him to give his true father’s name, Dilhorne. He compromised, finished with a grin, ‘…Mr Dilley. John Dilley.’

The Captain thought that he knew that he was being lied to. He watched Cobie fling the purse back on the table and pull his sketchbook from the poacher’s pocket in his cape.

Cobie began to write in it. He looked up and said, ‘Your name is…?’

The Captain said stiffly, ‘Bristow, Ebenezer Bristow.’

‘Well, Captain Ebenezer Bristow, my man of business will call on you tomorrow. At what time?’

‘I am here from four in the afternoon.’

‘At four-thirty, then. Have some of your financial advisers present. My man will arrange with you whatever needs to be done. The money will come through him. Should you wish to contact me, you will do so through him. You will not attempt to trace me—if you do, you will forfeit what I am offering you. You understand me? I have a mind to be an unknown benefactor.’

He laughed the most mirthless laugh the Captain had ever heard. ‘That is what you will tell your superiors—the money comes from an unknown benefactor.’

He tore out another sheet, wrote on that and thrust it at the Captain.

‘That is for you to keep. You will give it to my man when he calls tomorrow. Now you may tell me where you propose to place Lizzie for the time being—so that I may call on her, and satisfy myself that she is being well treated.’

Stunned by this unexpected bounty, the Captain picked up the paper.

‘Why are you doing this, Mr Dilley?’

‘A whim. Nothing more.’ Cobie was short.

‘And the others? What of them?’

‘What others?’

‘The others mistreated at Madame Louise’s house. Those not so fortunate as Lizzie.’

Cobie’s smile was wolfish. ‘Oh, you must see that I cannot rescue all of them. But those who run the trade there, and those for whom they run it, will I assure you, pay, in one way or another.’

The Captain could not quite believe him. In his world golden young men did not arrive from nowhere, playing at being Nemesis on behalf of stricken children.

‘You must be rich,’ he said at last.

‘Oh, I am,’ Cobie was affable. ‘Most enormously so. Far more than you, or most people, can conceive. Neither Midas nor Croesus could compete with me. And all my own work, too!’

‘Does it not frighten you? Make you unable to fear God, since you can dispose so easily of his creatures?’

‘Oh, no one does that, Captain. No one is disposed of easily. No, I never dispose…I simply give events a push, or a shove. Avalanches start that way. As for fearing God, I gave that up eight years ago when I began to prefer people to fear me… Now I will say goodnight to Lizzie, after you inform me of her destination.’

‘She will be going to a man and wife I know in Bermondsey who care for homeless children. At 21 Sea Coal Street.’

He hesitated. ‘You will be careful with her, I trust. It would be unkind of you to give her expectations beyond the station in life to which it has pleased God to call her.’

‘Believe me, I wouldn’t do that, Captain Bristow, sir,’ Cobie told him, ‘even if God was pleased to place her in a pervert’s power, you may trust me not to do so!’

‘But He sent you to save her.’

The Captain was determined to have the last word, but Mr Dilley was of a different mind.

‘Oh, but think of all those whom He does not save!’

Ebenezer Bristow gave up. Whatever his private thoughts about the man before him, he must not forget that he was offering the Salvation Army a splendid prize.

Cobie saw that Bristow was struggling with his principles. Self-disgust overwhelmed him. It was brutally unfair to taunt a man who had dedicated his life to serving others, particularly when he, Cobie, was dedicated to serving no one but himself.

For the life of him he could not explain the impulse which had led him to snatch from the feral clutches of Sir Ratcliffe Heneage the child who was now being cared for in the other room. Once he had done so, could he live with the knowledge of what was happening in the upper rooms of Madame Louise’s splendid house?

For no reason at all he shivered, shook himself, pulled out his magnificent gold watch, and snapped it open.

‘The hour grows late, I must leave you. Remember, my man will be here tomorrow, so be ready for him. Goodnight to you, sir.’

He turned on his heel and prepared to take his arrogant splendours away with him.

Captain Bristow, possessed by he knew not what, said to Cobie’s retreating back. ‘I bid you have a care, Mr Dilley. Those who fly too near the sun may have their wings burned away. God is not mocked.’

Cobie swung his head round, showed the Captain his splendid teeth, and said softly, ‘Oh, no, Captain, I never thought he was.’

Moorings Halt was exactly as Dinah remembered it: warm in the early afternoon sun, its flower-beds flaming below the enamel notices advertising Mazawattee tea and Swan Ink. The station cat was curled up on one of the green-painted benches. Sanders, the porter, sat in his little sentry-box.

He rose and helped Dinah and her maid, Pearson, to lift her luggage on to the station platform.

‘I’m sorry, Lady Dinah, but we didn’t know that you were coming and the Big House hasn’t sent the dog-cart for you.’

‘Oh, I’ll wait here, Sanders. It’s a splendid afternoon for sitting in the sun, isn’t it. I’m sure that it will be along soon.’

She wasn’t sure at all, but some twenty minutes later, thank goodness, the dog-cart arrived with one of the grooms driving it.

‘So sorry, Lady Dinah, but m’lady forgot to tell the stables that you were arriving this afternoon. We have an American gentleman with us, though, and it seems that he found out that you might be stranded at The Halt, so he arranged for me to come.’

It was just like Violet to have forgotten her—and how strange to be rescued by an American gentleman! Dinah wondered who in the world he might be. She knew that a number of rich Americans had been taken up by society. They were usually middle-aged or elderly. Perhaps he had been feeling fatherly enough to make up for Violet’s carelessness in leaving her eighteen-year-old sister stranded in the middle of nowhere. She must be sure to thank him prettily when she met him.

Not surprisingly, there was no Violet to greet her when she finally reached Moorings. Mrs Greaves, the housekeeper, informed her that Lady Kenilworth had been called away suddenly, and in the rush had forgotten to notify anyone that Lady Dinah was due to arrive that afternoon.

Fortunately, she had told the American gentleman, Mr Grant, who had arrived before the rest of the house-party, that Dinah was expected and he had immediately arranged for her to be collected when he had discovered m’lady’s oversight.

There had been something odd in Mrs Greaves’s expression when she had spoken of Mr Grant. Could he be one of Violet’s admirers? Surely not—she preferred young and handsome men.

Chesterman, the butler, arrived to say, ‘You would like some tea after your journey, I am sure, Lady Dinah, before you change out of your travelling costume. May I express my regret for the oversight. Mr Grant was most…exercised by it.’

Yes, Lady Dinah would like tea. And why were Chesterman and Greaves being so mysterious about the American? It was bad enough working out what to say to a house full of Violet’s cronies without wondering how she ought to address an odd, old American, who had arrived early. Why?

Later, after she had drunk her tea, she allowed Pearson to dress her in a little girl’s frock of white-dotted Swiss with a blue sash, her long dark hair tied back by a blue velvet ribbon. It was an outfit which Dinah glumly decided made her look about fifteen, but which would certainly protect her from unwanted masculine attentions!

What to do now in this great empty barracks? She decided to visit the library and spend a happy hour there, forgetting Violet and at the same time avoiding elderly American gentlemen who would not be likely to find the library at all attractive.

Her notebook and her pencil-case in her hand, she made her way towards it down the main staircase. On the way she walked past the portraits of Lord Kenilworth’s predatory-looking ancestors—he must be a great disappointment to them, she decided. Her mother always spoke of him as a pussy cat who allowed Violet far too much of her own way.

Finally she reached the library’s double doors—to discover that she was mistaken. Someone was already there. A someone who, improbably, was playing the guitar. Equally improbably what was being played superbly was a piece written for it by Vivaldi, which she had once heard at a concert in Oxford she had attended with Faa.

For a moment Dinah hesitated, thought of retreating, and then, clutching her notebook and pencil-case to her, she made a decision which was to alter her life forever. She opened the door and walked into the library in order to discover who the unknown musician was…

He was seated on a long, low bench in a huge bay window facing the door, his head bent over his guitar. He lifted it to look at her whilst continuing to play…and Dinah stopped dead at the sight of him.

He was, quite simply, the most beautiful man she had ever seen. So beautiful that she swallowed unbelievingly. He was like the statue of the Apollo Belvedere, a copy of which she had seen at Oxford. He possessed the same classic perfection of both face and figure. His eyes were blue and the hyacinthine curls of his hair were of the palest gold.

His clothes were perfect, too. He made Dinah feel untidy. It wasn’t fair that he should look like that—and to be able to play so well—she thought in anguish. No one person should possess so much when so many possessed so little.

His amazing eyes were steady on her while the music began to wind in on itself to reach its ending, which it did in a cluster of phrases of the utmost purity. What was more amazing was, that although the complex series of notes flowed from Apollo’s fingers with such divine accuracy, there was no music before him.

It was over. He rose, placed the guitar on the bench, and walked across to where she stood, mesmerised, registering his height and his compelling presence.

He said, bowing, ‘You must be Lady Dinah Freville, Violet’s sister. You will forgive me for remaining seated and continuing to play when you entered, but the music demanded my homage, and yours, too, I hope.’

He took her unresisting hand, kissed the back of it, and relinquished it gently. He retreated a little but still continued to speak, since he appeared to realise that she had been struck dumb by shock.

The moment that he had taken her hand in his, Dinah had suddenly been transported out of the library and into a vast open space, with a multicoloured sky above it, banners of light weaving in the warm air. He was there beside her—how?

Then, when her hand became her own again, they were back in the library, and she was listening to his beautiful voice.

‘Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jacobus—Cobie— Grant from New York. Lord and Lady Kenilworth have kindly invited me to Moorings. We meet unconventionally, but I hope that you won’t hold that against me.’

So this was her Yankee rescuer whom she had supposed to be middle-aged and odd!

So strongly did his mere presence affect her that Dinah felt as though she were under a spell, or had been hypnotised. She suddenly knew why the servants had spoken of him as they did. He was an enigma…yes, that was it. An enigma—and Violet’s latest lover: she was sure of that, too.

She almost croaked at him. ‘Indeed, I don’t, seeing that you did me the kindness of making sure that the dog-cart was sent to rescue me at Moorings Halt. Besides, I don’t mind unconventionality, and oh, how beautifully you play!’

Unable to stop herself, she added, ‘But why in the library, Mr Grant?’

Her reply amused Cobie. She was so unlike Violet, so unlike anything which he had expected after listening to Violet’s cruel descriptions of her. She reminded him of the young Susanna. There was the same quality of vulnerability about her, something in the defensive way in which she held herself. But Susanna had always known that she was valued—and this girl knew that she wasn’t.

Besides, Susanna had always been beautiful, and Dinah plainly thought that she wasn’t. She was still unformed, half a child, but Cobie judged that the promise of beauty was there.

He answered her gravely in order that she might think that what she had just said was important enough to deserve a reasoned reply. ‘It seemed a convenient place, Lady Dinah. Few appear to use it—or so the butler told me—which meant that I was unlikely to be disturbed.’

‘You were playing Vivaldi, weren’t you? I like Vivaldi. I always think…’

Dinah hesitated, not sure whether to continue. He might laugh at her behind her back: she knew that Violet often did when she was foolish enough to reveal her inward thoughts to her…but…but…she decided to go on…

‘His music always reminds me of a fountain playing. The water is rising and falling, spreading and narrowing, until finally, just before it ceases altogether, there comes a great burst when the last drops fall into the basin… Only…only…those last notes still remain with you—unlike the water drops.’

She must have been mad to offer her secret imaginings to a Yankee barbarian—which was what her brother Rainey always called them—and one of Violet’s confidants into the bargain. Only he had played the Vivaldi concerto so beautifully that he must have had some real feeling for it.

If Cobie was surprised by what she had just said to him, he didn’t allow it to show. Instead he picked up the guitar—it was Violet’s—and still standing, holding it high and upright against his left shoulder, he began to play the concerto’s coda again.

This time with even more feeling so that the last few notes seemed to hang in the air even longer—like the drops of water of which she had spoken, slowly falling into the basin of which she had spoken.

He said nothing, simply raised his beautiful eyebrows questioningly.

Dinah shivered.

‘Yes, like that,’ she finally achieved. ‘I wish that Faa could hear you play.’

Cobie inclined his head. He didn’t ask who Faa was, but he could guess. Violet had told him her half-sister’s sorry story earlier that day as though it were something of a joke. He was more than ever relieved that he had discovered Violet’s careless treatment of the poor child. She had allowed her half-sister to be abandoned at Moorings railway station as though she were an unconsidered package.

Well, be damned to that. He had not gone to rescue her himself, but had caused her to be rescued by others because Violet had always spoken of her so dismissively that he had feared that it might not be tactful for him to do any such thing.

For the same reason, he did not see fit to tell Dinah that her sister’s neglect of her had been deliberate. Violet’s behaviour towards her sister was making him regret his decision to have an affair with her. Cobie liked his women to be honest, and he tried to be honest with them—or as honest as he ever was with anyone.

Now that he had met Lady Dinah, he wished that he had gone to Moorings to collect her. Her shy and drab exterior concealed a lively and original mind—a present from her unknown father, no doubt.

‘It is kind of you to praise my playing,’ he said. ‘I fear that I am somewhat of an amateur, unlike my foster-sister Susanna who could have had a career as a concert pianist. If women were encouraged to have them, that is.’

Once again Dinah was to surprise him—and not for the last time. ‘You didn’t sound like an amateur, Mr Grant, nor do you sound very much like an American—if you will allow me to be impertinent—even if you did say that you come from New York.’

‘No, I don’t consider you impertinent,’ he said, smiling at her eager face and her transparent pleasure at being allowed to speak freely.

‘Allow me to thank you, Lady Dinah, for both your compliments, especially since I have been somewhat remiss since you arrived. I did not ask you whether you had been offered tea after your journey, which I believe was a long one. Shall I ring for some?’

‘Yes, and no,’ said Dinah merrily. ‘Yes, I have had tea, and, no, I do not wish to drink any more.’

There was something about him which made her want to talk to him. He held himself, she thought, as though he were prepared to listen to her. She wondered for a moment what it would be like to be as beautiful as he was and to possess such perfect manners into the bargain. He even made Violet look a little frantic. What did being such a nonpareil do to you? Would she have his effortless calm if she were ever to become his female equivalent?

Later she was to laugh to herself for having such an absurd thought. Of course, she could never be like him. Pigs might fly sooner, her old nurse had once said of a similar piece of nonsense of hers.

‘Well, that disposes of tea as a subject of conversation,’ returned Cobie equally merrily. ‘Now, how about the weather? Shall we have a go at meteorology as a topic? It seems to be a favourite one over here. For example: Do you think it will continue fine, Lady Dinah? Or would you rather allow me to ask you a personal question along the lines of: Why are you in the library?’

‘That would be a fair one to ask,’ answered Dinah gravely, sitting down so that he need no longer stand, ‘seeing that you were kind enough to answer my question about the library earlier. I thought that I might do some work. Faa, that’s Professor Fabian, told me that the last Lord Kenilworth but one had accumulated a superb collection of memoirs and papers of all the most important statesmen of the last three centuries. If I’m ever allowed to read history at Oxford, it would give me a flying start to have gone through them carefully, making notes.’

So, Lady Dinah Freville took after her real father and, all in all, she was proving to be a very unlikely cuckoo in the Rainsboroughs’ nest. Cobie doubted very much whether Dinah would ever be allowed to go to Oxford. Violet, for one, would never agree to it.

‘A most sensible notion,’ he said approvingly. ‘There is nothing like reading those documents which have come down to us from the past to give us a true idea of it. I congratulate you, Lady Dinah: not many scholars have grasped that.’

Goodness, Rainey’s Yankee barbarian sounded just like Faa when he was talking to her seriously! Did he treat Violet and Rainey to such learned and erudite discourse? These were Faa’s words for what went on in academic tutorials and the dons’ discussions. She rather doubted it.

‘Do many Americans think that, Mr Grant? Are American statesmen like ours, do you know? Have you met many politicians over there? I suppose that New York is not much like Washington.’

‘Indeed not,’ he said, turning his amazing eyes on her again, something which, oddly enough, made Dinah feel quite dizzy. To amuse her, for he found her eager interest strangely touching, he began to tell her some comic stories of what politicians got up to in the United States, which set her laughing.

‘I suppose the only real difference between yours and ours,’ she volunteered, ‘is that yours are more straightforward and ours are more hypocritical. I was always told that the First Lord Rainsborough—his name was Christopher Freville—was given his title for some grand diplomatic work he did for King Charles II at the time of the Dutch Wars.

‘Only Faa told me one day that that was all a hum, and he also told me where to look in the papers to find the true story. He had discovered it the year he came here to be Rainey’s tutor, and had begun to catalogue our archives before he ran off with Mama. So, the last time I came, I found the papers—and Faa was right.

‘Christopher, whose ancestral home was Borough Hall, was a boon companion of King Charles II,’ she explained, her eyes alight with amusement. ‘He was a King whose habits we are all supposed to deplore, although he doesn’t seem to me to be so very different from the present Prince of Wales.’

She would never have uttered this last piece of heresy in front of Violet, but the man to whom she was talking seemed to provoke her into making such lively indiscretions.

‘He was just a nobody about the court, you understand, a mere gentleman-in-waiting. One day the King went for a walk—he was a great walker, Faa said—and it began to rain heavily. He was only wearing a light coat and Christopher was wearing a thick one. He saw that the King was wet, and offered him his own in exchange.

‘That night, at court, they all drank too much, and the King told Christopher that he could have any favour he wanted as a gift for having lent him his coat. Christopher told the King that he could keep the coat—provided that he agreed to make him an Earl in exchange for it. Instead of condemning him for his impudence, the King laughed and said, “Since you saved me from the rain I shall call you by its name—you shall be Lord Rainsborough.”

‘Christopher was a pretty frivolous fellow. He was never a diplomat or statesman as his descendants have liked to pretend. Making him an Earl was just one of King Charles II’s jokes—he was very fond of them, Faa says. Please don’t tell Violet the truth—she wouldn’t find it at all amusing.’

To be sure she wouldn’t, Cobie thought, while thanking Dinah for telling him of this comic piece of unwanted family history.

A little later he was to discover that Violet wouldn’t find anything amusing about her half-sister. After a happy hour’s conversation the library door was flung open by an imperious hand, and Violet entered, resplendent in an old-rose tea-gown.

She stared at Cobie and Dinah laughing together over the chess set which stood permanently ready on a marquetry table in front of yet another window. Dinah was finding that Mr Grant played an even better game of chess than Faa. Violet, however, approved of neither the game, Mr Grant, nor Dinah.

She particularly didn’t approve of Dinah.

‘So there you are, Cobie,’ she said unoriginally, sailing over to them like some galleon strayed from the high seas, ‘in the library. Of all odd places to find you! Have you had tea?’

She stared down at the chess game where Cobie’s Black Queen and Knight were pinning Dinah’s White Queen. She drawled mockingly, ‘What a hole you are in, darling,’ and, throwing out a careless hand to wave at Dinah’s pieces, she knocked them all flying.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she exclaimed, still mocking, ‘but really, Dinah, no need for you to carry on with that. Now, why don’t you go upstairs and find something suitable to wear—that thing you have on looks more fitting for the nursery than the dining room. Oh, and thank Mr Grant prettily for taking the trouble to entertain you.’

She spoke as though Dinah were a fractious three-year-old, and Cobie was her elderly uncle.

Cobie, caught between red rage at Violet’s casual cruelty, and wry amusement at the way in which she was expressing it, was unhappily aware that anything he might say to comfort the poor child would only give Violet the opportunity to cut her up even more savagely, said nothing.

Dinah, her face flaming scarlet, rose and prepared to retreat upstairs to change—although into what she did not know. She was well aware that she possessed nothing of which Violet would approve. Violet had always had the power to make her feel ugly, clumsy and stupid—particularly stupid.

The happiness which she had been experiencing over the last hour had flown away quite. She now felt that Mr Grant must have been concealing his boredom skilfully, whereas until Violet had arrived she had thought him to be enjoying their impromptu tête-à-tête as much as she had been doing.

‘Y…y…yes,’ she began to stammer miserably. She bent down to rescue the White Queen which had rolled under the table and, when she rose with it, found that Mr Grant was gently taking it from her to replace it on the board.

‘We must resume our game another day,’ he told her gravely, his amazing blue eyes hard on her. For her sake, he dare not say any more than that. He would offer Violet no ammunition to use against her.

Violet’s eyes were boring holes in her for some reason which Dinah couldn’t understand.

She said disjointedly, ‘No need, thank you…Mr Grant… I’m not really a very good player…mustn’t bore you.’

Cobie was quite still: a danger sign with him if either of the two women had known it. ‘Oh, you didn’t bore me, Lady Dinah. I enjoyed my hour with you.’

Violet tapped her foot on the ground peremptorily until Dinah, blushing furiously and unable to answer Mr Grant coherently, left them.

The door had barely had time to shut behind her before Violet said nastily, ‘I enjoyed my hour with you! Really, Cobie, there was no need for you to go quite so far to keep the child in countenance—a quiet “thank you” would have been more than enough.’

Could she conceivably be jealous of Dinah? And why? Until Violet had walked in, Dinah had been a happy and interesting companion, but it had become immediately apparent by Dinah’s subsequent behaviour that this was not the first time Violet had treated her with such cold cruelty. All her charming composure had been destroyed in an instant.

Cobie’s dislike of Violet was growing at the same speed. He made an immediate resolution to try to protect the unloved child. She reminded him strongly of another whom, long ago, he had also tried to protect but had failed to do so through no fault of his own. The memory of her death would haunt him all his life. Pray God he could do more for Dinah, if only while he was at Moorings.

Nothing of this showed. He was charm itself to Violet, but she was shrewd enough to notice that he never mentioned Dinah to her. She could not have said why seeing Dinah laughing with Cobie had flicked her on the raw. Perhaps it was because, at nearly forty, she was approaching the time when no one would think of her as ‘that great beauty, Violet Kenilworth’ but instead she would be spoken of as ‘Violet Kenilworth—who had once been a great beauty’.

And Cobie was only twenty-nine to Dinah’s eighteen.

Chapter Three

T hat part of London society which had been invited to the Kenilworths’ house party and a large number of the more important folk in the county of Warwick were assembled in the Great Hall at Moorings for a reception being given by the new Lord Lieutenant of the county, Lord Kenilworth, to mark his accession to that honour.

South Africa had been looted of diamonds to hang around beautiful necks and to depend from beautiful ears. It would not be exaggerating to say that the women present were wearing a king’s ransom between them—except for Lady Dinah Freville, of course. She hid herself in a corner and watched them walk to and fro, waving their fans like the lovely peacocks they were.

Among the guests who made up the house party was one who had only recently been introduced to the Kenilworths by the American Envoy and his wife, who were also present. They were, indeed, apart from his hosts, the only persons in the whole vast Hall whom he knew.

He was, as the saying had it, yet another rich Yankee robber baron, Mr Hendrick Van Deusen, who had made himself a fortune in Chicago, having appeared there from nowhere some years ago. He was a heavy-set man in his early forties, resplendent in his new English evening dress from Savile Row.

Violet had flung an invitation at him on hearing of his immense wealth and that he liked to play cards for money. Her poverty-stricken brother, Rainsborough, must be given the chance to win some of his loot from him at Moorings.

Like Lady Dinah, whom he had not yet met, he had hidden himself away in a small ante-room which opened off the Hall where he could both see and hear the passing show, but could not be seen himself. A wise man ought to know more than other people wished him to. He soon gained his reward for his cunning.

A pair of society women, resplendent, but flimsy, butterflies, both came and stood near him, gossiping loudly about their hostess.

‘I see that Violet Kenilworth’s Apollo is one of the party,’ drawled the prettier of the two, amusement on her face and in her voice. ‘I hear that she granted him the privilege of arriving before the rest of us.’

‘Now, now, Emily, don’t be jealous—there’s no point in it, none at all. There’s only one at a time for him, they say, and at the moment it’s Violet. And she’s got her hooks into him well and truly.’

‘I can’t say that I blame her. I’d have had my hooks in him well and truly if I’d had the good luck to meet him first. Tell me, is it true that he’s the American Envoy’s brother-in-law?’

‘By proxy,’ chuckled her friend, ‘only by proxy. Her half-brother, so they say. Not much alike, are they? Apollo is as blond as she’s brunette.’

This conversation intrigued its unknown listener who decided to go and find Apollo. Anyone who could entrance two such hard-bitten beauties must surely be worth looking at.

Mr Van Deusen strolled forward, looking around him for a tall, blond man: he had decided that Apollo must be tall—and there was a tall, blond man standing with his back to him, talking to his hostess. He suddenly turned his golden head and Van Deusen caught his breath at the sight of him. It wasn’t Apollo’s perfect profile, nor his athletic body which intrigued him, but something quite different.

It couldn’t be! Surely not! Not here, not the US Envoy’s brother-in-law! Not the darling of London society! For Mr Van Deusen had last seen this man, or one very like him, nearly eight years ago in Arizona Territory, America’s Southwest. He had been a man you could not forget and Van Deusen had never forgotten him—but he had never thought to see him again, and particularly not as an honoured guest at an aristocrat’s house party.

He was older now, but, as always, every feminine head turned to look at him when he walked away from his hostess, holding himself with the arrogance which Mr Van Deusen remembered only too well—and which had infuriated everyone who met him.

Could it really be the man he had known? If he were, under what name was he now going? And did the effete fools here know what sort of tiger was living in their midst? No one present could conceivably guess at the life which respectable Mr Van Deusen and Apollo had once shared.

Mr Van Deusen gave a long, slow grin. Well, he would soon find out if he were mistaken, and if he were, he would apologise. After all, he had never seen his man spotlessly clean, perfectly groomed, and the current lover of the Prince of Wales’s mistress!

He was behind Apollo now. Hendrick Van Deusen grinned again, showing strong yellow teeth. He bunched his right hand into a fist with two of his fingers sticking out from it. He jabbed them into the small of Apollo’s back, as though it were a revolver he was thrusting there, and said in a thick Texas drawl, ‘Hi, there, Jumpin’ Jake, fly at once. All is discovered.’

Mr Van Deusen felt Apollo stiffen, every muscle tensing before he turned to face his accuser. That face was an impassive mask, showing none of the emotions which one might expect, given the abrupt shock he must have felt on hearing a voice sounding from out of his disreputable past when he had been an outlaw in the Territory.

Yes, his man was Apollo, by damn, and no doubt about it, and Apollo was speaking to him, his voice beautiful, with no hint of an American accent, let alone the thick Texas drawl which Jumpin’ Jake had affected.

‘Do I know you, sir?’

‘You should. Because I know you, and I owe you—and that is enough for me to know you.’

Cobie’s smile was one which no one in English society had ever seen. It was deadly—and proved to Mr Van Deusen how little he had changed.

‘I only ever knew one man who owed me anything—but that debt was cancelled long ago—which you should know.’

It was a tacit admission of who he was—or who he had been, and Cobie saw that the man opposite to him knew that.

‘I didn’t accept that cancellation,’ growled Mr Van Deusen. ‘No man saves my life and goes unthanked, unrewarded. You saved my life twice. I paid you back only once. That second debt still stands.’

Cobie’s smile at this was so charming that Mr Van Deusen could see why the women about him were watching them with such hungry eyes. He took Mr Van Deusen by the arm, led him, in silence, out of the ballroom, through the small drawing room along a corridor and into the library where he shut the door behind them.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘we may talk in peace. Where were we? Ah, you were reminding me that I saved your worthless life, and that you wanted to recompense me for doing so. Well, you are hardly likely to be able to return that last favour here. We are a long way from San Miguel—or Bratt’s Crossing.’

‘So you do know me.’

‘But do you know my name?’

‘You were Jake Coburn in San Miguel, and Cobie Grant in Bratt’s Crossing. I would bet that you are Cobie Grant here.’

‘Jacobus Grant—and you would win your bet.’

Cobie looked at Mr Van Deusen, at the beautifully cut suit which clad the thickly powerful body, at the cared-for hands and massive head and face. ‘I doubt that I could guess your name—Professor—or, in Western slang—Perfesser.’

‘Nor you could. I now use my own. I am Hendrick Van Deusen, a respectable financier, if that is not a contradiction in terms.’

Cobie threw back his head and laughed.

‘Ever the old Perfessor! Even if I would wager you are not now known as Schultz. Can you stand this effete life?’

‘The question is, can you?’

Cobie thought that he couldn’t, but he didn’t think that he wished to return to Arizona Territory and be a boy of twenty again, either.

‘Life is what you make of it,’ he said at last.

‘A truism—but looking at you, I don’t think that you have changed much…other than that you are now clean.’

Cobie’s smile was sweet. ‘Yes, I hardly think that I looked like this eight years ago.’

‘No, indeed. But the man inside is the same, I’ll be bound. Is London safe while you live in it?’

Cobie thought of the night on which he had rescued Lizzie Steele—and began to laugh.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. But I don’t pack a pair of six-shooters on my hip whilst walking down Piccadilly, more’s the pity.’

‘What exactly are you doing to stir up the assembled nobility and gentry? I would wager that there are easier pickings here than at San Miguel.’

Cobie offered him his most winning smile.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re doing nothing? Now that I don’t believe.’

‘Ever the sceptic. Believe what you like.’

Mr Van Deusen also smiled. Cobie knew that smile. He had seen it on the face before him in more than one tight corner. He decided to provoke in return.

‘And what exactly are you doing here, Mr Van Deusen? It’s odd, you know, but I find it hard to think of you as other than Schultz, the Perfesser who packed a mean gun.’

‘The Perfesser and Jumpin’ Jake are long gone,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen smoothly, ‘and no resurrection awaits them, I think.’

Cobie remembered the boy he had been, laughed and added, ‘You hope, rather. You remember the old saying, “Truth will arise, though all the world will hide it from men’s eyes.”’

‘By God, I hope not,’ said Mr Van Deusen fervently. ‘I am a most respectable and wealthy citizen of Chicago, thinking of running for the US Senate in the next elections.’

‘The Perfesser in the Senate would only be matched by Jumpin’ Jake marrying into the British aristocracy.’

Cobie paused, and then, as though some ghost, some premonition, had walked through his head, asked himself, Now, why did I say that?

‘I thought that Lady Kenilworth was already married,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen slyly.

‘So she is, but I have English cousins. Best to tell you, knowing you, you’ll soon find out. Sir Alan Dilhorne, the noted statesman, now retired, is by way of being a relative. He is the elder brother of my foster-father, Jack Dilhorne.’

Van Deusen whistled. ‘Dilhorne of Dilhorne and Rutherfurd’s and Dilhorne of Temple Hatton, Yorkshire?’

When Cobie, his mouth twisted derisively, nodded assent, he exclaimed, ‘By God, young sir, what were you doing wandering around the West, stealing peanuts when all you had to do—?’

Cobie cut in, his voice quite different from the one he had been using. Instead he was speaking in the harsh Western drawl which had driven the respectable and the unrespectable mad in Arizona Territory.

‘Ah, yes, when all I had to do was take foster-Daddy’s handouts, get him to destroy Greer and all my enemies for me. Say pretty please, Uncle Jack and Uncle Alan, and let them run my life for me.

‘Oh, Perfesser, I thought you knew me better than that! Besides, the peanuts I stole from Bratt’s Crossing and San Miguel became the wealth of the Indies when I lit out from the West and arrived on Wall Street and began to trade with it. What did you do with your pile, Perfesser, sir?’

‘The same as you. Made myself richer. Returned to the bosom of my remaining family, began a career in politics for the hell of it—no illusions there—Republican infighting is merely San Miguel writ large.’

‘Oh, the whole world is merely San Miguel writ large,’ remarked Cobie dismissively, ‘my father and Sir Alan notwithstanding.’

‘Then that being so, shall we pillage it separately—or together?’

Cobie’s crack of laughter was spontaneous.

‘Neither, I’m resting. I’m having a holiday which I haven’t done since I last saw you. My foster-sister wishes me to marry, hence my earlier comment. My foster-father wants me to settle down. Sir Alan, I suspect, wants me to think of a future in England—the Dilhorne branch here has become too respectable. He believes I may be a buccaneer and wants to have the pleasure of watching one of the family live up to its somewhat dubious past. My foster-father’s father was transported to New South Wales and made his pile there. You may judge how legitimately if I tell you that I am supposed to resemble him somewhat.’

Mr Van Deusen thought that the resemblance might be stronger than that.

‘Your grandfather?’ he ventured.

Cobie’s grin was nasty. It came all the way from San Miguel, and belonged to the boy gunman who had terrorised that outlaw township.

‘Oh, that would be telling. Now give me your address, both here and in the States, and after that we had better return to the reception. My brother-in-law suspects me of wanting to escape my responsibilities to him and his wife, and he is determined that for once I shall conform.’

‘That would be a small miracle in itself,’ remarked Van Deusen thoughtfully. ‘Though outwardly you are a model of the perfect English gentleman, no transatlantic odour stains your person.’

‘Aren’t I just,’ agreed Cobie cheerfully. ‘The original chameleon, that’s me. Now, let us go back, and I will introduce you not only to the ineffable Violet, who is temporarily bound to me with hoops of steel, but to several of her friends who are as accommodating as Kate’s girls in the Silver Dollar, if a little cleaner. We mustn’t let your stay in London be disappointing in any respect.’

Oh, I’m sure it won’t be that, thought Mr Van Deusen, following Apollo back into the ballroom, not with Jumpin’ Jake to entertain me!

Perhaps, ironically, the first person whom they met when they were about to leave the library was innocent young Lady Dinah Freville. Dinah, bored by the whole wretched business of pretending she was enjoying an event where everyone’s eyes passed over her unseeingly, was just entering it in search of more agreeable entertainment.

She stared at Cobie and the man to whom he was speaking, or rather, with whom he was laughing. A man whom she had heard Violet describing as ‘yet another Yankee vulgarian to whom Kenilworth wishes me to be polite’.

Well, he couldn’t be all that vulgar if Mr Grant was enjoying his company so much. She smiled at him, and said, a trifle breathlessly, ‘Were you bored, too, Mr Grant? Won’t you introduce me to your friend?’

It was true that he was a rather unlikely friend for Mr Grant. He was middle-aged with the hard face which Dinah had come to recognise as belonging to those visiting Americans who had, in society’s words, ‘made their pile’. Although Mr Grant, reputed to be immensely rich by his own efforts, was not like any of them.

Mr Grant was smiling at her now, and saying, ‘Lady Dinah, I should be delighted to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Mr Hendrick Van Deusen. His nickname is the Professor because he is immensely learned. I first met him nearly ten years ago when I took a long painting holiday in the American Southwest, and he was kind enough to look after me—I was such a tenderfoot as they say over there. It was rather dangerous territory, you see.

‘We lost touch with one another once my holiday was over, and I am delighted to meet him again in an English country house, and introduce him to my hostess’s sister.’

His smile was even more saintly than usual when he came out with this preposterous and lying description of his violent Western odyssey.

Mr Van Deusen bowed to Dinah, registering that she was totally unlike most of the other society women whom he had met in England. He wondered why Apollo was interested in her, something which Cobie explained when all introductions were over.

‘Lady Dinah,’ Cobie told him, ‘is by way of being an amateur historian who hopes to be a professional one. She has been showing me the old letters and papers collected by her ancestors, many of whom, if she will forgive me for saying so, resemble our own wilder politicians more than they might like to think. I should perhaps inform you, Lady Dinah, that Mr Van Deusen is hoping to run for the Senate as a Republican candidate.’

As usual when she was with him Dinah forgot her usual shyness and found herself discussing politics with Mr Van Deusen as though she had been doing such an unlikely thing all her life. Cobie also noticed that when she was away from Violet and her friends she came to glowing life: not only did her face and manner change, but she displayed a light and elegant wit—with which she was now charming Van Deusen.

‘But I must not keep you,’ she said at last. ‘Violet has been looking for you, Mr Grant. She has been trying to make up a whist table for Rainey now that the reception is over, and she gathers that you like to play an occasional hand at cards. She also mentioned the possibility of poker—do you play poker, Mr Grant?’

‘A little,’ he told her gravely, which had Mr Van Deusen giving him an odd look when Mr Grant said that, but she did not allow it to worry her, particularly since Mr Grant immediately added, ‘If Lady Kenilworth summons me, then I must instantly obey. You will forgive me if I leave you.’

They both did, and Dinah spent a further happy ten minutes with Mr Grant’s unlikely friend—who proved to be as learned as he had told her.

It was all much more fun than being a wallflower in the drawing room.

A week later Cobie was trying not to win at poker. He was part of a group of men playing in one corner of the green drawing room at Moorings. A few women, Violet among them, occasionally wandered over to watch them. It was already half-past three in the morning, and most of the house party had gone to bed hours ago.

‘Thought you Yankees were masters of this game,’ grunted Sir Ratcliffe at him, as he raked in his winnings. Cobie had not lost very heavily, but he hadn’t won either, not on that night nor any preceding.

The sixth sense which often told him things that he sometimes didn’t want to know—but more often did—informed him that to appear a bit of an ass at the game might be no bad thing.

Some of those who knew that he had accumulated a fortune in dealings on Wall Street had already begun to believe that his fortune had been made for him by other men, and that what he was most possessed of was idle, easy charm rather than the usual Yankee know-how. He had no objection at all to appearing far less shrewd and dangerous than he actually was.

On the contrary he had frequently found that it was an advantage to be underrated. People became unwary, and now everyone in society was unwary about Jacobus Grant who had made such a hit with the ladies, was a pleasant fellow to spend an hour with, a bit of a fool, quite unlike most of the hard-headed Yankees who invaded London society and whose one idea was to chase after the almighty dollar.

Not winning, Cobie had often found, was harder work than winning. He had to restrain himself, and when the ass opposite to him, for that was where Sir Ratcliffe sat, made a particularly bad play, it took Cobie all his considerable strength of will not to fleece a black sheep who was so determined to be shorn. Worse than that, though, was his suspicion that every now and then Sir Ratcliffe indulged in some clumsy and obvious cheating—which no one but Cobie appeared to notice.

‘Thought Tum Tum was coming to stay, Lady K.,’ Sir Ratcliffe drawled at Violet in a pause during the game when the men rose, stretched, refreshed their drinks, and lit new cigars. Violet’s brother, Rainey, was leaning against the wall. He was a handsome enough fellow but Cobie had yet to see him sober after seven at night. He was a poor poker player, too. Another piece of knowledge Cobie filed away for possible future use.

‘Met Tum Tum, have you?’ Sir Ratcliffe asked Cobie in his most condescending manner, offering him a cigar, which he refused.

Yes, Cobie had met the Prince of Wales, but left Violet to tell the Rat—as Cobie privately thought of him since saving Lizzie Steele from him—that the Prince had had to remain in London on official business.

‘Don’t have much luck, do you, Grant?’ Now he was more condescending than ever. ‘Cards not runnin’ your way?’

Cobie was all ineffable boyish charm, saying, ‘No, never do, you know. Can’t think why I play the game. Passes the time, though.’

He offered the Rat his most winning smile. ‘You seem to be doing well. Perhaps I ought to take lessons from you.’

He looked up to see Violet’s eyes hard on him. No one else, apart from Mr Van Deusen, had taken his words at other than face value, but Violet, he was discovering, was also no fool—it wouldn’t do to underrate her. Particularly since he was beginning to annoy her by avoiding her bed ever since Dinah had arrived at Moorings. He thought that she was beginning to see a little of what lay below the mask of innocence which he had worn since he had arrived in England.

He decided to cut the whole pointless business short. He rose, and said, ‘Leave my money in the pot, I think I’m ready for bed.’

Sir Ratcliffe said disagreeably, ‘Don’t like losing, Grant? You Yankees never do.’

‘Strictly speaking,’ and this came out so languidly that no one could be offended by it, ‘I’m not a Yankee. Born in the South, you see. Live in New York, I do admit. Sometimes wonder why.’

He thought he heard a snort from Mr Van Deusen but ignored it, and took his leave. He had hardly gone a yard down the corridor before the door opened again and Violet was with him.

‘Cobie!’ she shrilled.

‘Violet,’ he said, and bowed, like the old-world Southern gentleman he had pretended to be, and then, monstrously, he couldn’t resist it. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘You know very well what you can do for me,’ she told him, the light of battle on her lovely face. ‘What you haven’t been doing since Dinah walked into Moorings.’

So, his worst forebodings had come true. Since Dinah had arrived, a fortnight ago, he had watched Violet humiliate her daily, along the lines of that first afternoon in the library. In the last few days he had taken to avoiding the girl to save her from Violet’s tongue, where in the beginning he had sought to amuse her.

She touches my hard heart, he thought, wryly. She didn’t touch Violet’s. Neither did he wish to touch Violet, and again, he regretted ever having become involved with her.

Desolately he knew that Violet’s public ill treatment of the child was to punish him, as well as her. Violet brooked no rivals, and ridiculously, improbably, she saw poor Dinah as a rival.

As usual he thought quickly, then offered her, ‘I could hardly be your cavaliere servente while Kenilworth was hovering, Violet. Not seemly.’

‘Kenilworth is not hovering, Cobie. He knows perfectly well why I asked you, as he asked Daisy Masham.’ She put out a hand to him. ‘You may escort me upstairs. Our rooms are quite near.’

There was nothing for it. He had meant to try to leave Moorings early without offending her—but she was now determined to be offended unless he did what she asked.

Every fibre of his body revolted at the notion. And when, having taken her arm, and he had begun to walk her up to her room for her poor sister’s sake, if for nothing else, she said, in a poisonously sweet voice, ‘Oh, and by the way, Cobie, there is one more favour you can do me—do the both of us.’

He took her hand and put it to his lying lips. ‘Of course, Violet, my darling, and what is that?’

She shook her head, ‘Oh, it’s Dinah again. Too ridiculous, the poor child obviously thinks that you have a tendre for her. All that attention you’ve given her—playing to her on the guitar…chess games…talking to her in the library…walking with her in the gardens…encouraging her to think of going to Oxford—has quite turned her head. I think that you ought to disabuse her of the notion that you are interested in her—very firmly. I warn you, if you don’t, I will. She really ought to have nothing to do with such as you,’ and her eyes were on him, hard and cruel.

He knew immediately what she meant, and the kind of blackmail she was subjecting him to. Somehow, she had read him, seen the pity he felt for her unloved sister, and was threatening that, if he failed to do as she asked, Dinah’s public humiliations would continue—might even grow worse. Jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and Violet, astonishingly, was jealous.

For a moment the world reeled about him. Violet had touched some memory in him which she could not know existed. Long ago he had been kind to a waif even more abused than poor Dinah, more even than Lizzie Steele—and his heedless kindness had led directly to her death. Dinah was in no danger of physical death, but she could not, he thought, stand very much more of the treatment which Violet was meting out to her without her inner self being in serious danger.

He had gone quite still again. He stood motionless. He was fighting the red berserker rage which Violet, by her cruelty, had roused in him. He was helpless before her, and she knew it. Sleep with me, humiliate Dinah—and I will leave her alone. All he could do was control himself and offer her what she wanted. At the same time his busy brain was working—after a fashion which would have astonished Violet.

‘You ask a lot of me,’ he said at last.

‘Really, Cobie, really? You surprise me. I had not thought that you favoured children. I thought that you left that to others,’ and she laughed.

Like Sir Ratcliffe, Cobie thought, and Arthur Winthrop—and who else?

‘She is lonely,’ he told Violet gently, ‘and not very happy.’

‘And you make her so? You take a lot upon yourself. After all, it is my sister of whom we speak, not yours. It is I who am concerned about her welfare. It demands that you disillusion her. And be sure that you do it in such a way that I will know that you have done so.

‘Otherwise, my dear, otherwise, I shall immediately send her to my deaf, strict and bad-tempered old aunt in the country to be her permanent companion.’

‘Pax,’ he said, with the sweetest smile he could summon, throwing up his hands like a schoolboy. ‘I think that this is all a great pother about nothing, but have it your way, Violet.’

‘Oh, I intend to do so,’ she told him, mockingly, ‘and now we are here, Cobie. Here is the door to my room. Choose, like the man in the story—the lady—or the tiger?’

‘Oh, no choice,’ he told her carelessly. ‘The lady every time.’ He pushed her through the door, rather ungently, and told himself, that if one must sacrifice one’s principles—not that I possess any—this is as pleasant a way to do it as any. The unpleasant part will come tomorrow, with Dinah.

He was particularly good value that night, Violet thought, unaware that in his mind Cobie was treating her like the whore she was.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.