The Black Cat Read online

  “Please, my dear sir! You can have no notion how odious it is having half the ton turn its back on me whenever I enter a concert chamber or visit Covent Gardens or—”

  “You should have thought of that before you consented to elope with the Marquis of Fotheringham!” My lord’s tone was hard. His hand reached for the bellpull.

  “No!”

  “Yes, my lady! It passes comprehension why you should have chosen to grace my chamber with this sad tale, but believe me, I am not up to it before breakfast. And I assure you, your own credit will not stand for being caught alone in a gentleman’s chamber at this—or indeed any other—hour. Go, I beg you, before it is too late and half of London sees your hackney coach drawn up outside. I would be loath to further besmirch your already impugned reputation!”

  He glanced at the voluptuous curves that spilled artfully from the crest of the low, square-necked bodice. He was certain she’d chosen the dress with care, and that the faint shadows he could detect just beneath the thin muslin were for his benefit exclusively. The lady noted the direction of his glance and moved just a little closer. A faint smile played about her deliciously painted lips. Men found her irresistible. The earl, no doubt, would find her so, too.

  “My lord, you do not understand! If you could vouchsafe for me, my credit would be restored! Only you have that power, for I am sure you are not unaware of your influence on society! Oh do, I beg you, spare me a thought!” She licked her lips entrancingly and his lordship thought with fleeting admiration that the lady was accomplished. Were his heart not solidly bound up elsewhere, he might have found himself tempted. As it was, he did the only gentlemanly thing he could do under such circumstances. He stifled his sardonic amusement at the lady’s pitifully obvious wiles and kissed her hand.

  “You will do it?”

  My lord caught a genuine inflection of despair in the lady’s tone. He dropped the hand and sighed. True, she deserved every bit of censure for allowing herself to be gulled by an old dotard like Fotheringham—no doubt the lure of a title and riches had been too great to resist—but still, she appeared, now, to be genuinely close to tears. My lord’s heart softened infinitesimally, for he was not, by nature, unkind or vindictive.

  He thought of the hours of boredom ahead and decided that it would possibly not be a bad thing to challenge Fotheringham to a duel that might restore the fallen woman’s credit. If marriage was out of the question, he could at least see to it that she was housed respectably and paid a decent annuity. That, as he understood it, had always been the price of virtue among gentleman.

  He nodded curtly at the woman, then bade her dry her tears—for he could not abide watering pots—and present herself to his housekeeper for refreshment. She looked bemused, at first, fully expecting a little licentious interlude as payment for the earl’s trouble. In truth, there was a slight twinge of disappointment as he rang for Sedgewick and she realised that she was not, after all, to sample his renowned—and much whispered of—caresses. Instead, she listened with half an ear as the butler was apprised briefly of the necessity of paying off the hack and otherwise accommodating the unexpected houseguest. Despite a perfunctory nod when Lord Camden shortly took his leave, the lady had the most lowering suspicion that she had just suffered two slights. She had not only been neglected, but she had actually been forgotten.

  A small stop at Whitehall was enough to inform him of Fotheringham’s present whereabouts. Not his country seat or any other of his several palatial residences. The marquis was to be found a mere fifteen miles from London, along a dirt track that was as unused as it was unfamiliar. Rumour had it that he was becoming decidedly quirky in his old age.

  Only the revelation of his latest fling with the lovely Lady Leigh reassured his contemporaries that he was still sane at least. If he could deflower the famous Lavinia, he was not quite in his dotage yet! The very act that had ruined one reputation had been the saving of another. Guy smiled cynically at the irony as he urged his snowy Arabian onwards through the cold, icy wind. The trip would be invigorating for the beast, if not productive for poor, downcast Lavinia. Thank heavens, at least, the sun had chosen to show itself.

  The earl was growing faintly impatient as the stallion skipped over the small pebbles. Ahead of him, there appeared to be nothing more than endless long grass interspersed with heather and clover. He fleetingly noticed the bees and the odd rabbit racing across the footpath, but his mind was more on his destination. Had the directions he’d been given been credible?

  He was fast thinking himself the victim of some practical joke when faint flickers of smoke indicted the presence of a small establishment in the clearing beyond. My lord pat ted the Arabian before easing him expertly into a trot. By the time he’d leaped down from his saddle and walked round to the heavy oak door, he was whistling a merry—if not entirely edifying—tune under his breath. He regarded the rusting iron knocker with quizzical amusement before unrepentantly rapping loudly upon the frame.

  Lord Danvers Fotheringham was within, though the woman at the door denied him. My lord pushed past the person of questionable virtue and strode into the damp, dimly lit parlour.

  “Come out, Lord Danvers, for I shall have my satisfaction!”

  The marquis emerged, pasty faced and wild-eyed for all his years of dissipation.

  “I am an old man, Lord Santana! Leave me be!”

  “As you left poor Lady Leigh? She is disgraced, you know. Though I might endeavour to save her shame, the scandal is not to be denied. I blame you. I demand revenge!”

  “Demand, Lord Santana? Very high-handed of you I am sure, but also rather stupid. You must know that society will look askance at a man prepared to draw his cork with a gentleman twice his age! And whatever you may think, the delicious Lady Leigh went quite willingly, I assure you. It is wonderful what wealth and position can buy these days.”

  “You hardly look rich in these environs!”

  “Fortunately the . . . ah . . . modest style has more to do with convenience than the state of my purse!” The marquis licked his lips assessingly and a cunning smile crossed his fleshy features. He was irritated with the earl’s lofty attitude, but decided, for the moment, to placate him.

  “If you harbour any misgivings on this subject, Santana, you may call upon my bankers Messrs. Barton, Ridgebeck and Co. I trust they will satisfy you on that score. As for my reasons for occupying this particular neighbourhood and in this particular manner, they are entirely my own.”

  Lord Santana curled his lips in scorn. He’d heard rumours of the Marquis’s strange association with the gypsies, but had never bothered overmuch with them. Instead, he allowed his eyes to rove over the bright, tasselled silk shawl that lay negligently across the worn, expensive sofa. For an instant, his eyes met those of the woman’s and he was intrigued to find them watching him avidly, almost with an arrested interest that sent faint, highly involuntary shivers down his immaculately clad spine. Not insolent, exactly, but . . . Bother it! If Fotheringham wanted to bed a gypsy woman it was none of his concern. He gave the woman his back and turned again on the master.

  “As if I cared one way or another! If you are as rich as they say, then we are merely evenly matched. And I repeat again—if you malign Lady Leigh I shall have my revenge.”

  “You show a remarkable interest in the lady. Are you sure that it is not simply a fit of pique that drives you?” Lord Danvers smiled and his yellowing teeth looked particularly disturbing in the half-light.

  Rain dripped from Santana’s greatcoat and rolled onto the floor. His eyes flashed in a manner that his friends knew to be dangerous indeed. “You are perilously close to being milled down right on your own hearth!”

  “Pshaw! Talk, Lord Santana! Idle talk! If you want satisfaction, be a man! Challenge me to a game of wits, not a duel! Then I shall show you who is the better adversary!”

  “I want nothing but your blood, Lord Danvers! Golden guineas do not tempt me and as for your exulted position . . . Well, by
birth, it may be mildly superior to mine, but rank counts little with me.”

  Lord Danvers set down his glass and his eyes sparkled with a certain cunning. There was nothing he liked more than a well-matched challenge and the young hothead before him looked like excellent game.

  “I do not seek to barter riches, Lord Santana! I am far too worldly wise to tempt you with such trifles.”

  “What, then?”

  “If I win, you shall leave me be. You will send me the key to your very fine cellars, and you shall walk out of this cottage, never again darkening my door with your virtuous prosing. If I seek to abduct some other young lady in the future, you shall not intervene. I find I have no taste for the self-righteous ramblings of green young bucks.”

  Santana yawned. “But I am hardly green, Lord Danvers. And the inducement shall have to be incalculable for me to accept your offer.”

  “It is. You shall have two of my greatest treasures: my granddaughter and the last born progeny of Hera, my cat.”

  There was a moment’s stunned silence. Lord Santana raised a pair of angry brows in the gloom, but then his mood, strangely, altered to an amused cynicism.

  “I accept, Lord Danvers.” He offered no explanation for this sudden whimsicality, but his eyes turned toward the table set neatly for one in the corner. “Shall we? I intend to teach you a lesson you shall surely never forget. By the by, is that mangy cat the great treasure of which we speak?” He pointed to the corner, where a pitch-black cat was just putting the finishing touches to her grooming.

  Since she ignored them both with equal disdain, Lord Danvers was forced to point out the excellence of her fur and the singularly luminous lustre of her eyes. “Very unusual, Lord Santana! Very unusual!”

  His lordship refrained from commenting that since he could not actually see her eyes, he was gambling away his cellars and a woman’s honour purely on hearsay. It did cross his rather sardonic mind, however, that if the granddaughter were in as poor a shape as the cat, Lord Danvers would be welcome to her. More a liability than a treasure, he would wryly imagine. He made a mental note not to get saddled with the chit should he win.

  Just as he was smugly congratulating himself on his decision, something tingling at the back of his neck caused him to look at the creature once more. This time, her uninterested air was replaced with something so piercingly familiar that Santana was startled. The eyes were indeed green, and they gleamed from the midnight coat in a way that only one other cat had ever done before. Santana was filled with a slight foreboding, for the cat seemed an omen to him, and for all his pragmatic wit and cynical demeanour, he could neither discern nor decipher what the creature was an omen for.

  He turned his back on it disdainfully, but the cat’s eyes seemed to bore into him as he dealt the first three cards of commerce. Lord Danvers’s luck was in and his lordship knew a moment’s hesitation as the three-card flush was followed by a cunning win on points. A little less jaunty, the earl suggested a change, since his eyes had alighted on an aging faro box on the mantelpiece. The marquis’s yellowing teeth grinned an acquiescence as the younger man fetched the box. It vaguely irritated Santana that the woman remained, seemingly quite intent on the spectacle. He said as much to the marquis, who chuckled throatily and announced that, whilst she was often a dashed nuisance, there was to be no turning his daughter-in-law from her only fixed place of residence.

  “Daughter—in-law? You are funning me!”

  “Laura Rose? Surely, Lord Santana, you have been privy to the gossip and rumour and insatiable speculation. I would have expected Laura Rose to be the most talked-about young bride of the century! Of course, it was all slightly before your time.”

  “What was?”

  Miss Laura Rose, or whoever she was, eyed the earl speculatively, then nodded silently in the earl’s direction. Without so much as a by-your-leave or a simple, honest-to-goodness curtsy, she gathered up the shawl, bright on her shoulders, abundant greying hair spilling wispily from gaudy clips, and was gone—into the howling winds, the earl noted in fleeting astonishment.

  When Santana pursed up his lips and inquired why the marquis did not go after her and closet her in her chamber for a fool, Fotheringham merely guffawed throatily and nastily remarked that Laura Rose would be more able to hold her own with the elements than a cosseted young sprig like himself.

  The Earl of Camden was not used to being treated in this manner. Angrily, he took up the faro box and called the order of the cards. He hardly noticed when he was correct, merely repeating the process like a man possessed, his eyes fixed frostily on Fotheringham.

  Fotheringham, clearly enjoying himself, did not appear to mind the debts mounting up his side of the table. In between calls, he regaled the earl with the story of Laura Rose’s life. Born a gypsy, bred a gypsy, wild, free and unfettered. Until she had been tamed, that is, by Henry, Lord Fotheringham, his youngest and favourite son.

  The marquis’s eyes became moist and surprisingly faraway as he related the tale. Santana found his fingers relaxing as he listened to the age-old saga of star-crossed lovers, the divide of cultures, of a clandestine marriage and the inevitable birth of a baby girl. Fotheringham’s voice was so strangely poignant as the wind whistled through the grates that the earl ceased his fidgeting and gave the man his full attention. The black cat prowled closer, eyeing Santana up and down before leaping with unerring grace upon his lap.

  Startled, he nearly cursed the creature to perdition, but before the words were out his mouth, a strange peace settled over him, and the compelling, luminous green eyes soothed his impatient nerves to the point where he could settle back and allow Danvers to expound at length about the cruelty of society—no news to Santana—and the subsequent death of Lord Henry in a confounded curricle race.

  Laura Rose had simply vanished into the mists, taking with her nothing but the lock of hair Henry had teasingly cut for her one day and the little bundle that was his eternal legacy. Baby girl and mother had disappeared completely, leaving the marquis bereft and inclined to some of the greater vices to which he’d become accustomed and renowned.

  He never defiled young maidens, but the likes of Lady Leigh were a challenge and a distraction to him. Fair game in a world tawdry with iniquity. He did not say as much, but Santana, reading between the lines, was silenced. A piece of dirt hit the windowpane and the cat looked up inquiringly. Sensing nothing more, he allowed his head to sink gently back into the unwilling lap.

  Unconsciously, Camden found himself stroking the animal, and while it did not precisely purr, the action must have found favour, for its claws retracted visibly and the lithe body relaxed, almost imperceptibly, at his touch.

  It did not occur to Santana to ask what had become of the girl. When Fotheringham sank back into companionable silence, broken only by the offering of snuff, the earl roused himself from his unusually sedentary state and took stock of the game. How unlike him to come searching for an adventure and settle for something almost as tame as whist or . . . or . . . yes, dammit, cribbage! Faro was only marginally better than either of these miserable pursuits, and as for allowing himself to be bested at commerce. . .

  The notion galled the young earl. He pushed his chair back and eyed the mountain of paper debts facing them. Clearly, by a quite vast margin, he was the winner. He swallowed in satisfaction. Devil take it! At least that part of the wind-spoiled day had not gone awry.

  “You made the correct choice, my lord.”

  Fotheringham looked at the debts stacked before him and raised a brow.

  “How so, Santana?”

  “If those debts were incurred in the flesh rather than on paper, you would have need of more than just an apothecary .”

  “Very true. I pride myself on being sagacious enough to avoid all such encounters that would redound to my cost.”

  “This one has, however! You owe me a great deal by the looks of those markers.”

  “Pshaw! Not a farthing! My granddaughter and the cat. Mind y
ou, the loss of the prospect of your wine cellars is not insignificant. Lady Leigh may consider her honour avenged.”

  “You seem remarkably sanguine under the circumstances. Do you intend to produce this granddaughter or do I merely take an IOU?” Santana’s lips twitched humorously.

  For an instant, Fotheringham’s old eyes flashed, but only moments later, they were hooded once more.

  “You may take the cat. I shall have the girl delivered to Camden Court on the morrow.”

  “Good gracious, man. You cannot be serious!”

  “Can I not?” Brown eyes met blue.

  “You cannot dispose of your kin as if they were no more than three pieces of silverware or a basket of fruit!”

  “You agreed to the terms, Lord Santana.”

  Santana’s eyes narrowed. “So! This is merely another ploy to foist the marriage state onto me. I might have guessed, Lord Fotheringham! You are a wily old creature, but I tell you, you shan’t cozen me this way.”

  “We had an agreement. . . .”

  “Very true. But nothing, I may say, made mention of nuptials. If your granddaughter comes to me, it will be in the unwedded state or not at all. Ouch! What was that?”

  Blood seeped through the earl’s elegant white kidskin gloves. He looked suspiciously at the cat, but she was stretched innocently across his lap and hardly looked guilty of inflicting such an unexpectedly painful injury.

  “What the devil . . . ?”

  “Do not, I pray you, curse in my home, Lord Santana!”

  “As far as I am aware, Dewhurst Castle is your home, my lord! Besides, I shall curse where I please. No! No! Take the blasted handkerchief away. The blood seems to have staunched itself. I will take the cat, your apologies, and no more.”