Anne Barbour Read online

  Her father entered the room, then. “What the devil?” inquired Beau.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Weak morning sunlight filtered through leafy branches to illuminate the private walled garden behind Moxley House – or those leafy branches that lay beyond the reach of Romeo the goat, who had a taste for woody items (not to mention the occasional broad-leafed plant) and also an amazing ability to climb trees and any other impediment placed in his path.

  At the moment Romeo was happily stripping foliage from a honeysuckle bush. He had already ingested morning glories and camellias and various shrubs; had consumed rambling roses and wisteria with equal enthusiasm, despite the presence of thorns; had knocked down a wooden fence to devour the contents of the vegetable patch, during which endeavor he displayed a marked fondness for runner beans.

  Mina had not realized there were so many things that could be sniffed and nibbled and munched, including on one memorable occasion Cook’s wooden shoes.

  Romeo was not her primary concern at the moment, however, though to turn one’s back on the goat was to invite being butted at the worst, and at the best having one’s hair chewed. Mina’s attention was all for Samson, who had just informed her that one of the customers had pocketed a two hundred pound banknote from the hazard table. “What did you do?”

  Samson shrugged. “Invited him to leave. Told him I’d give him his bastings if he showed his face here again.”

  Mina sank down on a shell-shaped bench. The thief would have been permitted to keep his pilfered note as a gesture of good will, disgruntled patrons being all-too-easily persuaded to lay information against the proprietor of a gambling house.

  Moxley had spent a few hundred pounds, maybe even a few thousand, to smother actions and prosecutions, which was how Mina had met Mr. Eames, who had in his employ a lawyer who alternately prosecuted and defended keepers of gaming hells.

  If an information was laid, and Mina prosecuted and fined, the cost would be less than Moxley’s could bring in during a good night.

  Unfortunately, all nights weren’t good. A large staff was required to keep the rooms operating smoothly: dealers and croupiers and waiters; quietly unobtrusive guards; the porter who manned the strong iron-sheeted door; the link boys and chairmen who kept watch for approaching law officers.

  Then there was the expense of maintaining the bank.

  Plus the cost of wax candles and coal.

  Romeo wearied of the honeysuckle and drifted closer, as Samson was explaining that one of the croupiers had been caught exercising a talent for cutting or turning whatever card she pleased. This practice was discouraged at Moxley’s, where the customers were allowed some chance to win, unlike certain other establishments whose patrons periodically flung themselves into the Thames.

  He had already found a replacement. Gentlewomen fallen on hard times could make a better living at Moxley’s than by governessing, while keeping their self-respect (if not their reputations) intact.

  Romeo expressed an interest in Samson’s waistcoat buttons. In much the manner he dealt with recalcitrant footmen, Samson thumped the goat on the brow. Romeo curled his upper lip then withdrew to inspect the remnants of an orange tree planted in a neoclassical urn.

  “The guv would be melancholy as a gib cat,” said Samson, “was he to see his garden now.”

  The guv, reflected Mina, would have never accepted a goat as surety on a debt. Samson must think she had more hair than wit — hair that was tumbling down her back, Romeo having removed her pins.

  Samson returned to the house. Romeo grew bored with the orange tree and wandered to the bench. He was a handsome fellow, as goats went, short and sturdy, his brown coat striped dark along the back, his eyes yellow with horizontal slit-shaped pupils. He possessed a plump, prehensile upper lip and tongue and a tuft of hair on his chin; a fine set of backward slanting horns and dark ears that pointed out horizontally from his head; cloven hoofs and a short upturned tail; and a very pungent scent.

  “I’m told goat meat tastes similar to mutton,” Mina informed him. “You had best behave yourself.”

  Romeo leaned against her shoulder. Mina rubbed his chest.

  Grace the cat came down the path, peering warily about to make sure no enfant terrible lurked behind a bush — or the remnants of a bush — to pounce on her and pull her tail. She arrived safely at the bench, leapt up, and settled in Mina’s lap. Romeo knelt so Mina could scratch the top of his head.

  She surveyed the ruined garden and added the cost of fodder to her calculations. Romeo’s appetite was greater than his current surroundings could sustain.

  Additionally, she had Zoe to consider, and Nell. Mr. Eames had discovered that the elder Abercorn had taken himself off to Bath, but for what reason he couldn’t say.

  Mina had ceased scratching. Romeo nudged her knee. She frowned at him. He fluttered his sparse eyelashes in a manner absurdly reminiscent of Zoe.

  Mina’s smile faded. She had practically served up Devon on a platter to Zoe, who would wrap him around her finger like she did all men, having learned the trick at her father’s knee, and then cast him heartlessly aside. Or perhaps she would keep him, and Mina would be invited to attend their wedding, and so what if Zoe already had a husband, because Mina had had five.

  By the time footsteps crunched again on the gravel path, Mina’s spirits were as flattened as her wooden fence. She glanced up. Beau was looking like a thundercloud.

  Romeo clambered upright, uttering a high-pitched “Neahh!” Mina grasped the leash and collar that some overly optimistic person had placed around the goat’s neck. “Hush! You must not butt or bite or nibble Beau. He is not half as handsome as you are, and you would not care for his taste.”

  Beau wrinkled his nose. "Since when do you have a goat?”

  “That is a long story,” Mina replied.

  “Then I don’t care to hear it. Tell me, as you would not last night, why the devil you think it acceptable for Dev to canoodle with Zoe.”

  Had there been canoodling? Mina hadn’t noticed. Which, considering the already dejected condition of her spirits, was probably a good thing. “Devon is paying Zoe his attentions at my request.”

  Beau gaped at her. “You asked that profligate to seduce Zoe?”

  Mina hadn’t asked Devon to seduce Zoe. Had she? Seduction was the usual end result of canoodling, was it not? “Profligate, indeed. Listen to yourself. Our own family has turned profligacy into a fine art.”

  “I don’t deny that I’m a profligate,” responded Beau with dignity. “That doesn’t mean I will stand idly by while my daughter is defiled.”

  Zoe defiled by Devon. Mina wondered how long it would take to banish that horrific vision from her mind. “I didn’t ask Devon to seduce her, just to distract her,” she protested.

  Pushing Romeo aside — or attempting to; goats do not respond well to pushing, being much more amenable to a good pull — Beau sat down beside Mina. “You are a greenhead.”

  Mina was still caught up in horrific visions. “I suppose if Zoe was going to have an intrigue, there would be no one better to have it with than Devon Kincaid.”

  Beau eyed her suspiciously. “You sound as if you want to have an intrigue with him yourself.”

  Mina draped an arm around Romeo’s neck and, ignoring his gamy odor, gave the goat a hug. “Don’t be absurd.”

  Beau might in the general way of things focus his mind on selfish matters, but he was no slow-top. “Do you want to have an intrigue with Dev?”

  “That is none of your affair.” Mina’s lap had grown crowded. Grace roused from her slumbers and batted the goat’s nose.

  Romeo bared his teeth. Beau snatched up the cat. “By God, you truly are a greenhead.”

  Mina’s cheeks bloomed as scarlet as the roses that until lately had climbed the garden wall. “You haven’t inquired why I asked Devon to distract Zoe. She has developed an attraction I cannot like.”

  Beau was much more interested in the attraction Mina had deve
loped. “Zoe has been developing unsuitable attractions since she was in the cradle,” he said dismissively. “Most memorably with the butcher’s boy.”

  “You will not be so sanguine when I tell you Zoe has set her cap at Quin.”

  “Quin?” Beau sat up straighter on the bench.

  Lord Quinton was a close acquaintance. Their paths, in the pursuit of profligacy, frequently crossed. Beau wondered if the fact that Zoe was his daughter would make the Black Baron more or less inclined to corrupt her — or to allow her to corrupt him.

  He gazed around the decimated garden. “Where is Zoe?”

  “At the park. I sent her there with Meg and Nell.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mina was mistaken. Zoe was no longer in the park. She had abandoned her companions and was instead loitering on the southern side of Piccadilly, nearly opposite Bond Street, specifically outside the Egyptian Hall. On one side of this impressive example of Egyptian style architecture, complete with hieroglyphs, stood a bookseller; on the other, an apothecary’s shop.

  Zoe was interested in none of these structures. Her attention was fixed on a three-story building across the street, separated from Piccadilly by a courtyard. The Albany — a mansion seven bays wide, with a pair of service wings — contained sixty sets of apartments let out exclusively to bachelors and widowers. Females were denied entrance, save for the mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts of the occupants, none of which Zoe had been able to convince the porter that she was, and even if she had convinced him it would not have mattered, because Lord Quinton had issued strict instructions that though half the females in London might claim to be related to him, he’d be damned if he’d have any of them invading his rooms.

  That same porter (after being subjected to a barrage of sighs and eyelash flutters and maidenly blushes) finally admitted that the Black Baron hadn’t yet returned from the prior evening’s carousal. Zoe settled in to wait.

  It hadn’t been difficult to discover where Lord Quinton resided. A man so beloved of the gossips could keep few details of his life secret from the press.

  Vendors and tradesmen, shoppers and cits crowded the pavement. Street sellers shouted, cart and carriage wheels clattered, horses and donkeys neighed. A coster brushed past Zoe carrying gutted rabbits, their feet lashed together, dangling from a long pole.

  She turned her head away and stiffened, much like a pointer scenting game. There in the distance was the Black Baron at last, looking devilish and disheveled and if only she could secure his interest— Well, she would have been wasted in a nunnery, after all.

  Lord Quinton, staggering down Piccadilly, wanted nothing more than his bed. In furtherance of his ambition to die done up, he’d spent the previous several hours drinking hard and plunging deep.

  Early in the evening, he’d told the younger Loversall she reminded him of a carp. It had been one of his better moments. The memory almost made him smile.

  He glimpsed her then, as she darted out into the street, narrowly avoiding collision with a dustman and his cart — impossible not to glimpse her, dressed as she was in a white muslin pelisse worn over a white walking dress; a bonnet of woven straw with a ruching of lilac silk ribbon tied quite fetchingly under her left ear. The dustman cursed, his donkey brayed. The little Loversall waved a dismissive hand and continued on her way.

  Quin discovered he was not as bosky as he had been mere seconds past. He looked down at the female who once more barred his path. “You are the most abominable annoyance,” he said.

  Zoe recalled a recent herd of cows so terrorized they wouldn’t be providing milk any time soon. “You haven’t met Nell.”

  Had he the energy to pursue the manner, which he hadn’t, Quin could have called to mind any number of Nells, and Molls, and Sues. “You waste your time, and mine. I have no intention of ridding you of your virtue.”

  “Why not?” Zoe had recovered nicely from her near-collision. “You’ve rid everyone else of theirs. I should not say so, I suppose, but I don’t see any reason why we should stand on ceremony.”

  “Being old friends, as we are?” inquired the Black Baron. “Then I shall also speak plain, and tell you I wish you would go away.”

  Did he truly wish her to leave him? Zoe decided he did not. Lord Quinton was attempting to hide his true feelings. Probably he considered her above his touch. And so she was, or would be in the normal way of things, but these circumstances were not normal, and she meant to be despoiled.

  “You fail to grasp the situation,” Zoe gently chided. “Which is not surprising because you are in your cups every time we speak. If you were to try and concentrate your mind you would realize I have not even begun to explore my potential. Great-Aunt Amelia eloped with her groom to Bavaria, where she attracted the attention of a prince, and inspired a duel between that gentleman and a Greek. Third-Cousin Ermyntrude escaped an unhappy marriage by dressing as a man and fighting Red Indians in the Colonies. Gwyneth ran off with Gypsies and dwelt among them in their encampments in the woods.” And Fenella had shot her faithless lover and then herself, but Zoe didn’t mention that.

  Lord Quinton was rapidly becoming more sober than he liked. The sun had grown damned bright. Since he didn’t care to continue this conversation in the middle of the street, he grasped Whatever-her-name-was by her elbow and ushered her into a nearby coffee house. Odd in him, admittedly, but no one could predict what Quin would or would not do, including Quin himself.

  They entered a large room, the front window filled with coffee cups and pots and strainers of a dozen different designs, the wooden floor worn with use, the ceiling low-beamed. Wainscoted walls were plastered with advertisements: Dr. Belloste’s pills for rheumatism, Parke’s pills for the stone, Daffy’s Elixir, Godfrey’s Cordial, Velno’s vegetable syrup for the alleviation of venereal disease. Coffee-pots waited ready by the well-filled antique grate.

  Lord Quinton dropped coins into a brass box, then sat down at a small round table placed near the back wall. A waiter brought two cups of hot steaming coffee in shallow delftware bowls. Quin pushed his aside and requested a brandy and water. Zoe announced that she would like a piece of almond cake.

  The waiter came back quickly with their order. Quin raised his glass. Zoe took a bite of cake and considered her attack.

  She and the Black Baron were going to have an amour, whether he liked it or not. Of course he would like it— how could any man not like making love to her?

  True, Paolo hadn’t approached the business with noticeable enthusiasm. Could he be one of those odd men who preferred the company of his own sex?

  Maybe he would have rather made love to Cesare. Maybe Paolo was making love to Cesare even then. Maybe she would shoot them both.

  “You don’t, do you?” Zoe inquired. “Prefer your own sex?”

  At least in this moment, Quin preferred no sex at all. “Man, woman or goat, it’s the same to me.”

  Strange that he should mention goats. “You have met Romeo?”

  Quin’s brow began to throb. “I thought you wanted me to be Romeo.”

  “Romeo is a goat.”

  “I mentioned goats only because my mouth tastes as if a goat had defecated in it. Have we conversed long enough to suit you yet?” Quin beckoned the waiter to refill his glass.

  Zoe said, severely, “You drink too much. People will soon start calling you a fuddle-cap.”

  Quin couldn’t have cared less what people called him. “I’m awake, aren’t I? If I’m awake, I haven’t drunk too much.”

  “Tsk!” responded Zoe, and took another bite of cake.

  She was so small Quin could have picked her up and tossed her out the window. He was briefly tempted, but too much energy would be required. “What do you wish to say to me? I want to go to bed.”

  “That is precisely my point!” For emphasis, Zoe waved her fork. “I want you to take me to your bed.”

  Quin had no more desire to bed Zoe Loversall than to swim naked in the Serpentine, though rumor claimed he
’d done the latter, an event he happily did not recall. “Too little too late. I’ve just come from an orgy,” he replied.

  “But you said you only tumbled virgins!” Zoe protested.

  “They were virgins,” Quin informed her, and so the darlings had been: virgin sacrifices at the temple of Venus, skillfully enacted by seasoned whores.

  Moreover, he doubted he’d said any such thing.

  Zoe was growing tired of all this talk of virgins. She was also tired of trying to be virtuous, which didn’t seem to be gaining her much ground.

  Quin interrupted her reflections. “Does your cousin know where you are?”

  “Don’t tell me you are interested in Cousin Wilhelmina also!” Zoe cried.

  “Also?”

  “Mr. Kincaid admires her. I’m sure I don’t see why.”

  “You fail to surprise me,” murmured Quin.

  Did the Black Baron not realize that, in comparison with Zoe, Mina was as old as Methuselah, if Methuselah had been female? “Cousin Wilhelmina is positively antediluvian, unlike myself. Moreover, I can be as virginal as you like, which I’ll warrant Mina cannot! I should think you’d sympathize with my desire to experience passion. The wild racing of the heart. The sweet singing of the blood.”

  By this time, Quin’s head ached so badly that his vision blurred. He saw before him not one Zoe but two. Both of them were chattering. It was almost enough to make a man swear off the grape.

  He pushed his chair back from the table. “Your antediluvian cousin Mina is a mere six years older than I am.”

  Lord Quinton couldn’t leave her! Zoe grasped his sleeve. “I can hardly make a scandal by myself! That is— You of all people should understand the world well lost for love.”

  Quin shook her off. “What I understand is lust. It’s like an insect bite that itches briefly and intensely, and is as soon forgot.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mina walked through the gaming rooms, regal in her gown of blue silk taffeta, cool and aloof; smiling, nodding, pausing to commiserate with a player so plucked his possessions were going to be brought to the hammer. She patted his arm, a coveted mark of favor; Moxley’s patrons knew they could look but couldn’t touch. Such knowledge naturally made them think about touching all the more. Gamblers who were thinking about touching weren’t concentrating on their game, which was a primary objective of the attractive young women present in these rooms.