Affair Page 4

  Baxter St. Ives was far and away the most interesting man she had ever met, Charlotte admitted to herself. But the same qualities that made him intriguing could also make a man dangerous. At the very least, they made him less than pliable.

  She required a man-of-affairs who would take instructions without argument, not one who would demand constant explanations and justifications. She did not think that Baxter would be easily ordered about. At best, he was likely to prove difficult.

  “Perhaps now that Mr. St. Ives has a new post, he will be able to afford a new tailor.” Ariel chuckled as she carried her plate back to the table. “His coat certainly did not fit him very well and his waistcoat was quite plain. Did you notice that he was wearing breeches instead of trousers?”

  “I noticed.”

  She would have been blind had she failed to observe the manner in which the snug breeches had revealed the sleekly muscled outline of his thighs, she thought. She summoned up the memory of Baxter as he sat across from her attired in a rumpled blue coat, unpleated linen shirt, and the conservative breeches and unpolished boots. She frowned slightly. “His clothes were of excellent quality.”

  “Yes, but sadly unfashionable, even for a gentleman in his position.” Ariel took a bite of sausage. “And his neckcloth was tied in a very mundane manner. I fear our Mr. St. Ives has no sense of style at all.”

  “One does not look for style in a man-of-affairs.”

  “Precisely.” Ariel winked. “Which only goes to prove that he is just what he appears to be, a gentleman badly in need of a position. Probably a second son from the country. You know how that is.”

  Charlotte fiddled with her coffee cup. “I suppose so.” It was common knowledge that many second and third sons of the country gentry who were not in line for the family farm were obliged to make their livings as men-of-affairs.

  “Cheer up,” Ariel said. “I’m quite sure stodgy old Marcle would not have sent St. Ives to you unless he was suitably qualified.”

  Charlotte watched as her sister attacked the eggs and sausages on her plate. Her own appetite was normally quite sharp in the mornings but today she was barely able to contemplate the cup of coffee in front of her.

  “I don’t know, Ariel. I just don’t know.”

  “Really, Charlotte, this mood of gloom is quite unlike you. You are usually so much more enthusiastic in the mornings.”

  “I did not sleep well last night.”

  That was not the half of it, Charlotte thought. In truth she had barely slept at all. She had tossed and turned for hours, caught in the grip of a deeply troubling sense of unease. Ariel was right, her mood was indeed dark this morning.

  “Have you told Mr. St. Ives precisely why you are in need of a bodyguard?” Ariel asked.

  “Not yet. I instructed him to return this afternoon so that I could explain the exact nature of his duties.”

  Ariel’s eyes widened. “You mean he has no notion of why you have employed him?”

  “No.”

  The truth was, she had needed time to think about the situation. Time to be certain that taking on the enigmatic St. Ives was the right course of action. There was a great deal at stake. But the more contemplation she gave to the matter, the fewer alternatives Charlotte perceived.

  She was, in fact, quite desperate.

  Ariel put down her fork and gave Charlotte a direct look. “Perhaps he will not want the position once he learns the details.”

  Charlotte pondered that. She did not know whether to be cheered or alarmed by the prospect. “Things might be a good deal simpler if Mr. St. Ives takes to his heels when he learns the true nature of his responsibilities.”

  Mrs. Witty hove to in the doorway of the morning room, a fresh pot of coffee in one broad, work-worn fist. “You’d best hope he doesn’t run off when he learns what ye want him to do for ye, Miss Charlotte. It’s not as if there’s any number of gentlemen running about London who would be willing to help ye investigate a murder.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Charlotte scowled. “I’ve agreed to hire St. Ives, have I not?”

  “Aye, and thank the good Lord. I don’t mind tellin ye, I don’t much like this situation. Making inquiries into a bloody murder ain’t in our usual line around here.”

  “I’m aware of that as well.” Charlotte watched Mrs. Witty pour fresh coffee.

  The housekeeper was an imposing woman whose monumental proportions would have done credit to an ancient goddess. In the three years since she had joined the household, Charlotte had had cause to be grateful for her steady nerves. Not many housekeepers would have tolerated an employer engaged in a career such as the one Charlotte had carved out for herself. Fewer still would have been willing to provide valuable assistance.

  Then again, there were not many housekeepers as well dressed as Mrs. Witty, Charlotte thought. When one required unusual services from one’s staff, one naturally paid very well.

  “She’s right.” Ariel’s expression grew more serious. “What you are proposing to do could prove dangerous, Charlotte.”

  “I have no choice,” Charlotte said quietly. “I must discover who killed Drusilla Heskett.”

  Baxter was in his laboratory unpacking a new shipment of glassware that had been designed to his exacting specifications when the knock came on the door.

  “What is it, Lambert?” He removed a gleaming new retort from the box and held it up to the light to admire it. “I am occupied at the moment.”

  The door opened.

  “Lady Trengloss, sir,” Lambert announced in his tomblike accents.

  Baxter reluctantly put down the retort and looked at Lambert. His butler had a pained expression on his pinched face but that was nothing new. Lambert always looked pained. He was sixty-six years of age, well past the time when most men in his position retired with their pensions.

  The years had taken their toll. He suffered greatly from painful joints. His hands were gnarled and swollen and his movements had grown noticeably slower in the past year.

  “I suppose my aunt wants a full report on my new career as a man-of-affairs,” Baxter said, resigned to the inevitable interview.

  “Lady Trengloss appears to be somewhat agitated, sir.”

  “Show her in here, Lambert.”

  “Aye, sir.” Lambert made to remove himself and then paused. “There is something else I should mention, sir. The new housekeeper departed an hour ago.”

  “Bloody hell.” Baxter scowled at a small flaw in a glass flask. “Not another one. That makes three in the past five months.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “What did this one have to complain of? There have been no explosions of any significance in the laboratory in weeks and I have taken care to make certain that noxious odors did not permeate the hall.”

  “Mrs. Hardy apparently concluded that you were attempting to poison her, sir,” Lambert said.

  “Poison her?” Baxter was outraged. “Why in God’s name would she think that? Bloody damn difficult to keep housekeepers as it is. The last thing I would do is poison one.”

  Lambert cleared his throat. “Something about the bottles of chemicals that she found in the kitchen last evening, I believe.”

  “Devil take it, I only put them in there because I was preparing an experiment that required a very large pneumatic trough. You know I always use the kitchen sink for that purpose.”

  “Apparently the sight of the bottles disturbed her, sir.”

  “Damnation. Well, there is nothing for it. Take yourself off to the agency and find us another housekeeper. God only knows what we’ll have to pay this time. Each one seems to be more expensive than the last.”

  “Aye, sir.” Lambert shuffled backward a pace and winced. He pressed his hand to his lower back.

  Baxter frowned. “Rheumatism bad today, I take it?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Any luck with those new treatments you’re undergoing?”

  “I believe I do feel some i
mprovement for a time after each session with Dr. Flatt but unfortunately the relief is quite temporary. The doctor assures me that with more treatments, the pains will steadily decrease in severity, however.”

  “Hmm.” Baxter did not ask any more questions.

  He had absolutely no faith in Dr. Flatt’s treatments, which involved the use of animal magnetism or mesmerism, as it was often called. It was all quackery, so far as scientists such as himself were concerned. Distinguished authorities such as Benjamin Franklin from America and the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier had denounced Mesmer’s work several years ago. Their opinions, however, had done nothing to stem the rising tide of practitioners who claimed to achieve amazing results using variations on Dr. Mesmer’s methods.

  “Lady Trengloss, sir,” Lambert reminded him.

  “Yes, yes, send her in. I may as well get this over with as quickly as possible.” Baxter glanced at the tall clock. “I have an appointment with my new employer in an hour.”

  “Employer? Is that what you call her?” Rosalind, Lady Trengloss, swept past Lambert and sailed into Baxter’s laboratory. “What an odd description of the creature.”

  “But, unfortunately, an accurate one.” Baxter nodded brusquely at his aunt. “Thanks to you, madam, I seem to have secured gainful employment at last, whether I like it or not.”

  “Do not blame me for your scheme.” Rosalind removed her black and white silk bonnet and sank into a chair with theatrical grace. Her striking black and silver hair was elegantly styled to enhance her noble features. Her dark eyes glittered with determination.

  Baxter eyed her with a combination of gruff affection and acute impatience. Rosalind was his late mother’s younger sister. He had known her all of his life. She was sixty now but she retained the innate sense of elegance and dashing style that had graced both women from the cradle.

  Emma and Rosalind Claremont had taken London by storm in their younger days. Both had made brilliant matches. Both had found themselves widowed in their early twenties. Neither had ever remarried. They had reveled instead in the enormous power they had wielded as wealthy, beautiful, titled widows. Their status and charm had enabled them to survive scandals and gossip that would have ruined other women.

  Baxter smiled grimly as Lambert removed himself soundlessly from the laboratory. “You must admit that I am uniquely qualified to be a man-of-affairs.”

  Rosalind tipped her head slightly and considered that. “In an odd way, you may be right. You have had a great deal of experience managing finances, have you not?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Tell me what you discovered when you went to see Charlotte Arkendale yesterday.”

  “Actually, I learned very little. I am to be told the details of my new position this afternoon. In less than an hour’s time, as a matter of fact.”

  Baxter sat down at the writing table he used to record his notes. Something crunched under his thigh. He saw that he had just crumpled a page of observations that he had made on a recent experiment.

  “Bloody hell.” He picked up the foolscap and smoothed it carefully.

  Rosalind glanced dismissively at the mangled notes and then peered intently at Baxter. “Do not keep me in suspense. What are your first impressions of Miss Arkendale?”

  “I found her to be …” Baxter hesitated, searching for the correct word. “Formidable.”

  “Fiendishly clever, would you say?”

  “Possibly.”

  “A deceiving, coldhearted villainess?”

  Baxter hesitated. “I must point out, madam, that you really do not have any proof of your accusations.”

  “Bah. You will find the evidence we need soon enough.”

  “Do not be too certain of that. I can envision Miss Arkendale in many roles.” Including that of a paramour. The images came out of nowhere, searing and intense. His body reacted as though he had been plunged into a recently tumbled bed that smelled of passion and desire. Perhaps it had been a bit too long since his last liaison, he thought glumly. “But it’s difficult to see her as a blackmailing murderess.”

  Rosalind glared at him. “Are you entertaining doubts about this project we have embarked upon?”

  “We? I seem to find myself alone in this endeavor.”

  “Do not mince words with me. You know very well what I mean.”

  “I have told you from the start that I have doubts,” Baxter said. “Grave doubts. For starters, you have absolutely no proof that Charlotte Arkendale was blackmailing Drusilla Heskett, let alone that she murdered her.”

  “Drusilla herself confided to me one night after we had gone through a bottle of port, that she had paid Miss Arkendale a considerable sum. When I inquired as to why she had done such a thing, she suddenly changed the topic. I did not think much about it until after she was killed. Then I recalled how mysterious she had been about the matter. It is all too much of a coincidence, Baxter.”

  “Mrs. Heskett was a close friend of yours. Surely she would have told you if she was being blackmailed,” Baxter said.

  “Not necessarily. By its very nature, blackmail must touch on some extremely intimate and personal secret. It must threaten to reveal something the victim would not want anyone, perhaps most especially her closest friends, to know.”

  “If Mrs. Heskett was willing to pay, why would the blackmailer murder her? Rather defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”

  “Who knows how a blackmailer thinks?” Rosalind got to her feet with regal grace and started toward the door. “Perhaps Drusilla stopped the payments. I expect you to discover the truth about her death, Baxter. I have made it my goal to see that justice is done. Keep me informed.”

  “Hmm.”

  “By the bye.” Rosalind paused in the doorway and lowered her voice. “I really do think that you are going to have to pension off poor old Lambert. It takes him forever to answer the door these days. I vow, I waited on your front step for nearly ten minutes.”

  “I consider his slowness in opening the door to be one of his greatest assets. Most people who come to call give up and go away without ever discovering that I am at home. Saves me a great deal of trouble.”

  He waited until Rosalind had left the laboratory. Then he walked slowly to the window and examined the three pots that sat on the sill.

  The pots were part of an ongoing experiment in agricultural chemistry. Each contained some sweet pea seeds buried in barren soil that had been laced with his most recent blend of minerals and chemicals.

  So far there was no sign of life.

  The ticking of the study clock seemed inordinately loud. Charlotte composed herself and gazed across her desk at Baxter with what she hoped was an air of professional competence. She had been dreading this meeting all day.

  Dreading it and yet anticipating it with an inexplicable sense of what could only be termed morbid excitement.

  “Before I give you instructions regarding your initial duties, Mr. St. Ives, I shall have to tell you something that I never found it necessary to reveal to Mr. Marcle.”

  Baxter studied her with an expression of polite inquiry. “Indeed.”

  “I must tell you precisely how I make my living.”

  Baxter took off his spectacles and began to polish the lenses with a large white handkerchief. “That would certainly be of some interest to your man-of-affairs, Miss Arkendale.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. But it is a little difficult to explain.”

  “I see.”

  “Some would say my career borders on the scandalous but I feel it is more in the nature of a calling.”

  “Rather like becoming a nun, would you say?” Baxter held his eyeglasses up to the light, apparently checking for smudges.

  “Yes.” Charlotte cheered slightly. “That is an excellent analogy. You see, Mr. St. Ives, I operate a very exclusive service. I cater solely to women who have come into a bit of money. An inheritance, perhaps, or an unusually large pension from a grateful employer.”

  “I see.�
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  “Respectable ladies of a certain age who find themselves alone in the world, possessed of an income and who are considering marriage.”

  Baxter placed his spectacles on his nose with grave precision. His alchemist’s eyes gleamed. “And just what sort of services do you provide for these ladies?”

  “I conduct inquiries for them. Very discreet inquiries.”

  “Inquiries into what?”

  She cleared her throat. “Into the backgrounds of the gentlemen who wish to marry them.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment. “Their backgrounds?”

  “It is my task, sir, indeed, my calling, to assist such ladies in ascertaining that the men who express a desire to marry them are not fortune hunters, opportunists, or rakehells. I help them avoid the perils and pitfalls such women inevitably face.”

  An acute silence fell on the study. Baxter stared at her.

  “Good God,” he said eventually.

  Charlotte bristled. So much for hoping that he would be favorably impressed by her unique career. “I perform a valuable service, sir.”

  “What on earth are you playing at? Surely you do not imagine yourself to be some sort of female Bow Street Runner.”

  “Not at all. I make the sort of extremely delicate inquiries that no Runner could possibly conduct. And I am proud to say that I have been personally responsible for saving several ladies from forming disastrous connections with men who would have ruined their finances.”

  “Bloody hell. I begin to see why you might require the services of a bodyguard, Miss Arkendale. You must have acquired any number of enemies in your time.”

  “Nonsense. I conduct my business affairs with complete confidentiality. My clients are cautioned to discuss my services only with other ladies who might be in need of them.”

  “This is astounding, Miss Arkendale. How the devil do you proceed with your work?”

  “In addition to dispatching my man-of-affairs to collect certain types of information, I also have the assistance of my sister and my housekeeper.”