The Governess Heiress. Elizabeth Beacon
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In a faded corner of the great city of London another member of the nobility was finding it impossible to sleep. ‘Thought I’d never get away from the jackals, Lexie,’ Lord Derneley told his wife as he settled into a grim corner of a wine cellar in this rotten old house on the Strand with a sigh of relief. It might not be much for a man born to splendour and great wealth, but at least it wasn’t the Fleet Prison.
‘So did I, my love,’ she whispered back, as if their creditors might manage to hear them even down here if she wasn’t very careful. ‘Lucky for us that my Aunt Horseforth is such a misery nobody will believe you’re here. I think she expects me to be an unpaid companion and skivvy for the rest of my life,’ she added gloomily.
‘She’s a dour old trout, but it’s the only port we have in a storm. At least everyone knows she can’t abide me and wouldn’t have me in her house if she knew I was here. I could always come out of hiding and scare her into an apoplexy.’
‘No, no, Derneley, don’t do that. Her grandson will come down from Scotland and put me out on the street before she’s cold if you do and you’ll starve to death down here without me. There’s nowhere else for us to go now the creditors are after you as if you murdered someone instead of taking their horrid loans when we ran out of things to sell. Heaven knows I got nothing but snubs and refusals to acknowledge they even knew me for my pains when I tried to visit my friends,’ she said mournfully and even her selfish, careless lord looked humble and almost defeated for a moment, before his true nature reasserted itself.
‘Have you found anything worth selling yet?’
‘No, her grandson’s man of business has everything locked up that isn’t already in the bank. He doesn’t trust me,’ she said, sounding very put out.
‘If we could only lay hands on a few hundred guineas we can slope off to Italy and at least be warm while we think what we’re going to do next. Right now I can’t even afford a decent bottle of wine, for if there were ever any in here someone drank it years ago.’
‘If only Lord Chris hadn’t deceived poor Pamela so badly we’d have all the Lambury Jewels in our possession now and none of this would have happened.’
‘Except if he wasn’t dead she wouldn’t be either and if you think we’d have got a single jewel out of her, you’re more of a fool than I thought. Chris was a lot more cunning than we gave him credit for being once she’d got him under her spell though, wasn’t he?’ Lord Derneley sounded almost admiring for a moment. ‘Who would have thought he’d be able to palm her off with paste versions of the emerald and sapphire sets after she had the rubies tested to make sure they were real the moment he handed them over.’
‘Everyone said the rubies were cursed and it turned out to be true, didn’t it? My poor sister was dead within six months of wheedling the wretched things out of him. And he never even pretended to hand over his wife’s diamonds to her, so he must have put them somewhere for that horrid little girl to find.’
‘We could make far better use of them,’ her lord said thoughtfully, ‘but nobody said a word about the Lambury Jewels turning up when young Hancourt came into that blind trust thing, did they? You could be on to something, Lex,’ he added and his wife stared at him in wonder.
‘You mean we could find them?’ she said.
‘I daren’t show my face, but that tough your sister used to play with when Chris wasn’t looking might track them down for you if we promise to share.’
‘No, he’s dead and I was too frightened of him to go anywhere near him if he wasn’t. I might be stuck upstairs waiting on my nip-cheese aunt most of the time, but I suppose I could find out when they were last seen if I get her talking about the old days long enough, but are you sure we’ll be able to find them, my love?’
‘Why not? And we have nothing to lose, do we?’
‘No, we’ve already lost it,’ her ladyship said gloomily, the fabulous wealth her lord inherited the day he came of age seeming to haunt her for a moment. ‘They only let me leave Derneley House in what I stood up in and they searched me for anything valuable before they even let me do that,’ she remembered mournfully.
‘You can keep a ring and one of the small necklets when we sell the rest,’ her lord said almost generously.
‘Thank you, my love,’ she said meekly.
‘Hmm, it might work, but Hancourt’s too tough a customer for us to get anything out of him and he knows us too well.’
‘Yes, and he must be dangerous with all those scars and fighting in all the battles he survived when Gus Hancourt sent him off to be killed in the army,’ her ladyship said matter of factly, as if she saw nothing very wrong in the late Duke of Linaire’s heartless scheming to gain his nephew’s fortune.
‘Cunning as well—think how he deceived us. He was only a secretary when he came to Derneley House to take my father’s books away. He must be hiding that sister of his somewhere though, because she certainly ain’t doing the Season, is she?’
‘No, I would have heard. Aunt Horseforth may not go out much, but she corresponds with half the old dowagers of the ton.’
‘I dare say the Hancourt wench is as plain as her mother was then, or he’d have insisted she came to town by now.’
‘I wish Pamela never met their father, but she and Chris would have had far more beautiful children together if he’d been able to marry her.’
‘You’re the aunt of the wench Hancourt married though, ain’t you? You must call at Linaire House when she and Hancourt get back from the north and make sure he feels a pressing need to write to his sister. That way we’ll be able to find out her address and somehow get her to lead us to the jewels. Chris must have realised how plain she would turn out to be and he knew a man needs a good reason to wed an antidote. Lady Chris could never have hooked the son of a duke without the Lambury Jewels and the old man Lambury’s fortune as bait. The diamonds would set us up nicely and the old man gave them to Chris’s wife after the marriage, so they weren’t part of the settlements and he could leave them to his daughter if he wanted to.’
‘You’re so clever, Derneley,’ his wife said with an admiring sigh. ‘I can’t imagine how I’m to make that horrid boy of Chris’s so worried he’ll give her address away by writing to her, though.’
‘Oh, really, Lex, do I have to think of everything?’ her lord said sleepily and waved her away so he could sleep after a strenuous day of escaping his creditors and looking for new money to waste.
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