Love's Harbinger Read online

  “Where is it?” Lady Lynne asked eagerly.

  Delamar turned his attention to the older lady. His expression stiffened to uncompromising firmness. “There’s no free ride, ladies. My business isn’t giving information away—I sell or barter it. What can you tell me in exchange for my news?”

  “We haven’t an idea where he is,” Lady Lynne admitted. “He didn’t keep an appointment with Lady Faith this afternoon. He’s missed a few of them lately. I sent my butler over to his flat and learned that he’s flown the coop.”

  Lady Faith was stirred to defend her fiancé. “He’s gone home to his father’s estate. He wasn’t feeling well,” she invented.

  “Can I quote you on that?” Delamar asked.

  “No!”

  Lady Lynne shook her head. “It is all a hum, Mr. Delamar. She has no more idea where he is than you have. It’s true, then; I’ve been swindled.”

  “How much did you subscribe?” Delamar asked.

  “Don’t tell him,” Lady Faith warned her aunt. “He’ll print it in that scurrilous paper! I thought we came here to object to the story.” Looking at her aunt, she missed the sneer that alit on Delamar’s face.

  “Object?” Lady Lynne asked, astonished. “I came to find out if it was true. It obviously is, goose. We must break off the engagement at once.”

  “No!” Faith gasped. “No, it—it cannot be true. Mr. Delamar is mistaken. Mr. Delamar, I think you might, just this once, divulge your source. I am very closely involved in this affair.”

  “As I said, tit for tat. You give me an exclusive on Lord Thomas, the sort of intimate thing only a fiancé would know, and I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered to date.”

  She stared at him as though he were a snake. “You actually expect me to divulge intimate secrets about Lord Thomas? You must be mad!”

  “I’m not talking about how he makes love, though it would charm Mam’selle Ondit’s readers. I only want to know if you have anything concrete to offer in his defense—or to substantiate his guilt,” he added maliciously.

  “He is not guilty!”

  Delamar rose and began to pace the room. “Before you go naming a church after him, consider the evidence.” As he walked, he ticked off points on his long, tanned fingers. “He did not register the Anglo-Gold Company, he took in over two hundred thousand pounds, he’s tipped his investors the double, he’s failed to show up for appointments with his fiancée, he’s even gulled your aunt. If that does not at least raise a doubt, you are dangerously unsuspicious. I wonder if you will be as lenient when he doesn’t show up at St. George’s in Hanover Square for the wedding. ‘Lady Faith Jilted by Faithless Lover.’ That should make good reading.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” She gasped.

  “I will! But only if it happens, of course. I print nothing but facts. And I’ve never printed a retraction in my life, so if that was your only business, ladies . . . I am rather busy.” He rose and looked impatiently at the door.

  Lady Faith glared harder than before, then turned to her aunt. “Come along, Auntie. We’re wasting our time. We will want to stop at our solicitor’s office before going home.”

  A slow smile crept across Mr. Delamar’s face, lifting his scar and crinkling the corners of his eyes. He came forward and offered Faith his hand to help her up from the sofa. She pointedly ignored it. “If that is meant to intimidate me, you’re wasting your time. Save your blunt. You have no case. I suggest you follow your aunt’s advice and write up a notice cancelling the engagement. Shall I do it for you?”

  Faith pulled away. “If you print that lie, then I will sue, I promise you. I shall marry Lord Thomas Vane, and he is not a thief.”

  “I didn’t say he was.”

  “You implied it! And you believe it.”

  “True, but then what do you care what I believe?”

  “I don’t! Come along, Auntie. We cannot expect Mr. Delamar to understand that a gentleman does not steal.” On this cutting phrase, she allowed her eyes to rove around his cramped and ugly saloon. They still wore an expression of deep disgust when she allowed them to flicker over Mr. Delamar. “Good day.” She carefully lifted her skirts and stalked out.

  It was extremely disobliging of her aunt not to follow her. She felt a perfect fool, waiting for her in the hall.

  Before leaving, Lady Lynne gave Delamar her hand. “Please keep in touch if you learn anything further about Lord Thomas. About that exchange of information . . . I am Lady Faith’s chaperone. I know as much as she does. What is it you want to know?”

  “Where he is.”

  “I can’t help you there. He wouldn’t dare to go home to his father and, of course, he was not feeling ill at all. Do you plan to go after him?”

  “Of course, and Mr. Elwood, too. This is the juiciest story I’ve come across in an age. And it happens I have other business at—in the same direction.”

  “When will you leave?”

  “The only reason I’m still here is that I’ve been scurrying around, trying to get a lead on Elwood. There are rumors he’s still in town, though he’s not at his flat. I want to find out if Lord Thomas ran off with the whole lot or split it with Elwood. I don’t see why Elwood would be hiding if he were totally innocent, but still it’s Lord Thomas who has flown, and flight is usually taken as prima facie evidence of guilt. I’ll be leaving around nine. The girl must know something, don’t you think? She could help us, if she would.”

  “She’s as stubborn as a mule, but I’ll try my hand at pumping her for news. Why don’t you drop around my place before you leave London? I might have something for you by then. She might have an idea where we could find Elwood at least. He was out with her and Thomas a few times.”

  “I was wondering if she plans to give you the slip and follow her Thomas. It’s possible, I suppose. Is it a love match?”

  Lady Lynne drew a thoughtful breath and settled on uncompromising vagueness. “They’re fond of each other. Love will grow in time.”

  “You must be alluding to the old cliché that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I shouldn’t think a vacuum the likeliest ambience for the sprouting of love. But then he won’t really leave a vacuum behind, will he? He’ll leave a trail of pain and mortification.”

  “And empty bank balances!” Lady Lynne added tartly.

  “There are several that will be emptier than yours, Lady Lynne, though to steal from a friend carries a special sort of odium even for a nobleman,” he said with a bold sneer that sent shivers of delight up her spine. “I’ll drop by Berkeley Square some time before nine.”

  “Oh, you know where I live.” She smiled.

  “Knowing things is my business. I never did find out why such a charming young lady as yourself hasn’t remarried—yet. Two years since you were widowed. London bachelors are slow-tops.”

  “Oh, you really are wicked!” she crooned, and tapped his fingers playfully, then darted off to meet her niece.

  Mr. Delamar strolled to the window to watch them enter their carriage. There was a glow in his topaz eyes, but it was not a glow of admiration for Lady Lynne, who felt she had engaged his interest. He thought her a fat, silly old fool who might easily be led into revealing anything she knew, only he feared she knew even less than himself.

  It was a glow of suspicion directed at Lady Faith Mordain. Why was she so insistent that Lord Thomas was innocent? She didn’t look like a fool. There was intelligence in those large gray eyes. Intelligence and anger and pride. The lady was stung at her public humiliation. A woman scorned might be led to help him, if he handled her properly. But he had always found the proud aristocracy difficult to handle. They stuck together like burrs, spreading their noble mantle over their own.

  He’d probably never get to the bottom of this Lord Thomas affair, but he’d give it his best effort. It was a personal crusade, almost a vendetta, that he bring Lord Thomas to justice. Even if he hadn’t been the proprietor and editor of the Harbinger, he would have hounded Lord Thomas to the
grave. He was sorry Lady Faith must be spattered in the fray, it she were innocent, but it wouldn’t deter him.

  Lord Thomas had chosen some of his victims poorly. He wouldn’t get away with the life savings of Buck and Eddie. The Lady Lynnes of the world were of less interest to him, though of course they enhanced the interest of the story. But that his own buddies, who had risked their lives for England, should be duped by a Lord Thomas was not to be borne.

  He was interrupted by the appearance of a printer’s devil behind him. “What’s up then, Guy?” the fellow asked.

  “My dander. Call for my rig, Joey. If anything important comes up, I’ll be at my house before I leave town.”

  “The new place?”

  “That’s right, in Piccadilly.”

  “Setting up as a regular nabob, eh, Guy?”

  “Why not? I’m as good as the rest of them.”

  “Better.”

  “Toadeater.” Guy laughed, and tossed him a golden boy.

  Chapter Two

  “It was a waste of time going there,” Lady Faith said when they were back in the carriage, returning to Berkeley Square. “I, for one, place no credence in the story of that impertinent scandalmonger, Delamar.” She might as well have been talking to herself for all the attention her aunt paid her.

  Lady Lynne drew a deep sigh and asked in a soupy voice, “Did you notice his eyes? And that scar—from a duel, I daresay.”

  “More likely he got his head caught in a dustbin when he was rooting for a story.” Again she was ignored.

  “And his shoulders—they dwarf an ordinary man’s.” Then the dame reluctantly turned her mind to business. If her niece knew anything at all about Thomas’s movements, it was necessary to squeeze the information out of her. “This Elwood fellow, Faith, you met him, I think?”

  “Yes, a few times in the park, with Thomas. I didn’t much care for him. I have no idea where he lived, but we met him once at his office on Tottenham Court Road just north of Great Russell. Thomas despised him. Of course it is Elwood who took the money.”

  “You should have told Mr. Delamar so!”

  “I’m sorry we ever went to see him. He won’t listen to reason. Let the bloodhound do his own sniffing.”

  “You forget I have five thousand pounds in that nonexistent company, my dear. You owe it to me, if not to Thomas’s erstwhile reputation, to do what you can to find him. Perhaps when I tell you Thomas tried to get his hands on your dowry as well, it will open up your eyes. Fortunately, your papa would not hear of it. I only wonder he didn’t wait till he had married you, then run off with your pittance as well as mine.”

  “This gives me the megrims. I hope we don’t have to attend that rout party this evening?”

  “I am not up to it,” her aunt said, though it was not the megrims that would keep her away. She was on thorns for Mr. Delamar’s visit and planned to entertain him without Lady Faith to chaperone them. She wished the girl farther away than upstairs in her bed and proceeded to convince her of her duty. “Of course you must attend the rout, Faith. It is as good as an indictment of Thomas if you shab off.”

  “How can I go? Everyone will be staring and talking. It will be horrid.”

  “That is precisely why you must go, to give the lie to the rumors in case Mr. Delamar finds the money and we can wrap the whole affair up in clean linen. Tell everyone what you told Mr. Delamar, that Thomas was feeling poorly and went home for a rest. I cannot go, but I shall write a note to Mrs. Coates and send you off to her early, before she gets away. She will be happy to take you and save her own horses. You need do no more than put in an appearance. Come home as early as you like—any time after ten.”

  Lady Faith’s first instinct was to object, but a second thought showed her the possibility of helping Thomas. It was an excellent chance to get away from her chaperone for an hour to do a little investigating of her own. There was no point in going to Thomas’s flat or to Mr. Elwood’s, but that office on Tottenham Court Road . . . Mr. Delamar didn’t know about it. She was sure she would find some evidence there to exonerate Thomas. He would be revealed as a flat, of course, taken in by Elwood, but better an honest dupe than a criminal. She gave a resigned sigh and said, “Oh, very well, if you think I should.”

  The ladies went through the farce of sitting down to dinner. When Lady Lynne’s appetite was up, she was an excellent trencherman, but that evening she was able to manage no more than half a pheasant and a dish of peas, though she was tempted back into appetite by the fresh strawberries and clotted cream served for dessert. Lady Faith’s appetite was quenched by foreboding and her chaperone's ranting praise of Mr. Delamar. He was by turns a tiger, a noble savage, and once “an extraordinary specimen of virility.”

  “He certainly lives like a savage in that dismal hut above his shop,” Faith pointed out for her aunt’s edification.

  “Not shop, my dear! A newspaper proprietor is head and shoulders above a merchant. Why, Fleet Street is a famous breeding ground for titles. I daresay he will be Lord Delamar before too long if he keeps his nose clean and learns to support the Tories. Then he will move into a respectable establishment. A man has to cut a few corners when he is getting started on his career.”

  Lady Lynne realized that Lord Thomas was lost as a husband for Faith and, with a mind to her duty, took the girl upstairs to enliven her toilette on the off chance that she might yet, in the two weeks of the Season that remained to her, make another catch. Faith, while not aspiring to the title of Incomparable, was by no means an antidote. She possessed that element rarer and more prized than ordinary beauty: she had countenance. Indeed, she had so much of it that it almost amounted to a flaw. Composure was all very well, but it ought to be ruffled at times; for instance, when a particularly eligible parti approached. Not Lady Faith; she would remain calm if her petticoats caught fire.

  It never occurred to Lady Lynne that this monumental calm might be caused by shyness, for Faith tried very hard to conceal it. She forced herself to speak up, but getting much liveliness into her expression was beyond her.

  Her worry about Thomas, however, was nearly enough to unsettle her sangfroid that evening. Her gray eyes sparkled and a blush of color stained her cheeks. The provincial hairdo she had worn to London had long since been revised to a more stylish Méduse coiffure, and her gown, though not much embellished with lace or ribbons, was exquisitely cut. The jonquil shade of Italian crepe, which had seemed at first too pale, looked very well this evening.

  “That Fraser lad who used to dangle after you, Faith—if he makes a rapprochement this evening, don’t cut him. He is only a junior member of the diplomatic corps, but he’s young. He may go somewhere yet.”

  “At least he won’t be going to Mordain Hall, where I’ll end up if—” Faith began, then stopped in midspeech. She must not even think such things.

  Lady Lynne laughed gaily and tried to reassure her. “Don’t you believe it. I nabbed a viscount for your cousin Emily the last week of the Season, and I’ll do as well for you yet. I won’t have my record spoiled by that demmed Thomas Vane.”

  The niece was ushered out the door, and Lady Lynne bolted upstairs to add a touch of rouge to her cheeks and to put a very pretty, very long mohair shawl on her shoulders, for there was no denying that her waist had achieved such proportions that it was best concealed.

  While Lady Lynne awaited the arrival of Mr. Delamar, Faith invented a tale to satisfy the groom that she must make a short stop on Tottenham Court Road before going to the rout. Her haughty mien and unexceptionable behavior to date gave John Groom no grounds for suspicion, though he did find it odd. But then the servants all knew that odd things were afoot vis-à-vis Lord Thomas and Lady Faith.

  She hardly knew what she might find in Mr. Elwood’s office, but her hope was that the money would be there. She had to accept that Thomas had left town—freely, too—for he had packed his trunk and had been alone. No pistol or knife had been at his back. But if she could at least prove that he had n
ot run off with the money, the marriage would go forth. What worried her considerably was her aunt’s belief that Thomas had taken it. How could she believe such a thing? Thomas was carefree and sometimes a trifle unreliable about keeping appointments, but it was a long jump from there to call him a thief. Of course he was always short of money—what younger son was not? He owed his tailor and probably a few gambling debts, but his father planned to take care of all that when they married.

  Tottenham Court Road was not in the elegant part of London familiar to debutantes. Faith felt a twinge of fear when she was let down into an unkempt shadowy street and approached the building where she and Thomas had once met Mr. Elwood. He had only one room in a corner of it. The front door was locked, of course. That was the first obstacle, and naturally the office door inside would also be locked. Mr. Elwood’s office window looked out on the south side, so she ventured to the side of the building to try for access there. The groom came after her, warning her away from the dark alley.

  “I must get inside. It is a matter of—of life and death,” she asserted. “Can you pry that window open for me?”

  “Let me call in Bow Street,” John Groom suggested.

  “That wouldn’t do, Nubbins,” she answered simply, but he understood that secrecy was vital and helped her. He also got the lantern from the carriage to aid in her search and suggested that she draw the curtains for privacy’s sake.

  “I’ll keep an eye peeled here and come to your rescue if you have company,” he offered.

  “Thank you, Nubbins,” she said as calmly and politely as though he were a footman handing her a glass of ratafia. Then Nubbins gave her a boost to allow her to scramble through the window into Mr. Elwood’s office.