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The colour drained from Lord Streetham’s face. Still, he managed to collect himself sufficiently to answer coolly that he hadn’t the least idea what his host was talking about.
“Not until the newspaper announcement appeared,” the Devil went on, unheeding, “did I suspect otherwise. I had been quite certain you had not even looked at the work before consigning it to the fire. But you did. Were you surprised?”
The earl only glared at him.
“Not a word about your fanatical pursuit of Miss Angelica Ornesby, who had declined your offers some half dozen times. Not a word about the abduction you’d planned, bribing her friends in the theatre company to help you. No mention of the actress who took her place that night, while Angelica and I were in Bristol, being wed.”
Mr. Desmond appeared to gaze off into some great distance. “Now I wonder why I left that fascinating story out?” he asked thoughtfully. “Something to do with not kicking a fellow when he’s down, I expect. I had won the angel. It seemed base to rub your nose in your failure—especially after all these years.”
Lord Streetham drew back ever so slightly as the glittering green gaze flickered to his face.
“But you have not forgotten, have you, Marcus? Your failure still gnaws at you. I suppose that is why you chose to enhance my tales with your own bits of filth. Quite a coup, you must have thought: Confound and humiliate your political rivals, destroy the Devil, break his wife’s heart, and ruin his daughter, all at once. Your son, of course, would see to the last. You were certain you could count on him for that, if nothing else.”
“This is monstrous,” the earl gasped, rising from his chair. “I will not remain to hear another word. You will regret this, Desmond—”
“You will remain, My Lord, and I will regret nothing, because I hold the tainted manuscript. Or actually, Lady Potterby’s solicitor has it,” Desmond corrected. “In a carefully sealed package. A letter is enclosed, addressed to Lord Games, to whom the material is to be delivered in the event of my untimely demise.”
Lord Streetham sat down. “Gaines?” he croaked.
“That rings a bell, perhaps? Let me refresh your memory, for you must have somehow forgotten when you were hard at work on your revisions. Perhaps because you were so drunk on that evening long ago, you forgot that I and the others had already retired to our entertainments while you and Gaines continued to dicker with the bawd.”
“You—and the others—gone?”
Desmond nodded. “The tale was a revelation to me. I suppose Gaines swore you to secrecy. Certain he disposed of the bawd. She was taken up next day, tried speedily, and transported. She did not survive the voyage to New South Wales, I’m afraid. But then few persons ever do survive Gaines’s displeasure.”
The earl drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. His hands trembled slightly.
“You know,” his host continued, “were Lord Gaines to read those pages, I suspect he would have no difficulty believing you had written them. Perhaps, after so long a time, he would see the humour in the episode, perhaps not. What is your opinion?”
A strangled sound escaped Lord Streetham’s throat, but for a moment or so, nothing else. Then he put away the handkerchief, and with visible effort, drew himself up. “I should have known,” he said. “You made it too easy. You were waiting.”
The Devil smiled. “My wife tells me I am patient to a fault. I rather think it is sheer laziness. Once I learned for certain you had the work, I was most curious what you were about. Still, I could not produce one good reason for exerting myself to steal it from you when I might have it from Atkins with no exertion at all. From Atkins’s printer, actually. Even then it was Mr. Langdon who did all the planning and all the work. But I suppose your son has told you about that.”
“Yes, and I was scarcely surprised,” the earl grumbled. “You bend everyone to your will. Why not that poor, muddled boy?”
Mr. Desmond rose to ring for a servant. When he returned to his chair he answered, “I really do not understand why everyone insists Mr. Langdon is muddled. From the moment I met him, I was struck by his sagacity. My most terrifying grimaces were utterly wasted on him. He would neither cower nor be distracted. Quite remarkable. Of course, he could hardly see me for Delilah, but that—Ah, Mr. Bantwell,” he said as that personage entered. “You are a miracle of promptness, indeed. Will you be kind enough to send in one of your minions with a sample of the smuggled spirits her ladyship keeps in the cellar?”
“That is not necessary,” Lord Streetham said hastily as the butler was leaving.
“Oh, but it is,” said Mr. Desmond.
Bantwell left, closing the door behind him.
“We have not yet discussed your fervent desire to make amends,” the Devil explained.
“I knew it was too easy.”
“Certainly. You have not yet spoken with Angelica.
The earl turned startled eyes upon his host.
“I thought it best,” said Mr. Desmond, “that the brandy be near at hand when you did.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Mr. langdon’s mama, with her youngest daughter in tow, burst upon London a few days after the earl’s conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Desmond. She made direct for Melgrave House, where she launched into a fit of hysterical grief that would have done Mrs. Siddons proud.
Lord Streetham, however, knew he had far greater reason for hysterical grief. Her only son was merely getting married, not going off to some filthy battlefield to be killed by barbarous Frenchmen. This made an extremely distasteful task somewhat less offensive than it might have been, and he was able to call her to order with a respectable show of his usual imperiousness.
“My dear Edith,” he said coldly, “you are quite absurd. The young lady is—” He paused to clear his throat of some obstruction. “She is utterly charming, beautiful, and intelligent. She will be”—there was another moment of difficulty—”one of the foremost hostesses of the Ton.”
“A hostess!” Mrs. Langdon screamed. “The daughter of an actress. Devil Desmond’s daughter. The mortification will kill me. Oh, how could my son—but I cannot blame Jack,” she added with a sob. “What does he know of women—of anything but his stupid books? The minx has tricked him. You must put a stop to it, Marcus.”
“Certainly not,” said the earl. “I have already given them my blessing.”
Mrs. Langdon promptly fainted dead away. When she revived, the world still had not got to the rightabout, for Lord Streetham only told her to take herself in hand and be sensible.
Thus began the making of amends. In the two months preceding the wedding, Lord Streetham found the amends he was obliged to make not unlike the labours of Hercules, though he was certain that cleaning the Augean stables was nothing to what he had to do.
When Mrs. Langdon’s attitudes had been satisfactorily rearranged, the earl proceeded to those of Lord Stivling. This was a more formidable task, but Lord Streetham was formidable himself. Within a week, Lord Stivling had not only condescended to acknowledge his young relative, but agreed to provide her an extravagant betrothal celebration. By the day of this ball, the Baron Desmond had likewise been seized by a fit of Christian forgiveness. By the time the ball concluded, Miss Desmond’s position, not only in her family but in Society as well, was as secure as she could have wished.
More important, both a comfortable annuity for her parents and a generous dowry for herself had very recently been arranged by the two families—and miraculously enough, without any prodding from Lord Streetham. Not only need she not ask her prospective spouse to support her parents, but she need not go to that spouse empty-handed. Though Mr. Langdon did not care two straws what she might cost him or what she brought him besides herself, Delilah was half Ornesby and half Desmond, after all, and had all their combined pride.
As it turned out, she also had Gwendolyn Langdon, with whom, to Jack’s great amazement, she had become fast friends. Gwendolyn had even agreed to be Delilah’s bridesmaid—primarily,
the young lady told her brother, to assist Delilah should she come to her senses at the last minute and need to make a speedy getaway from the church.
A few days before the wedding, the two women were sitting together in Lady Potterby’s parlour, inspecting a deck of cards.
“Now, run your hand along the back of the card,” Miss Desmond was saying. “Do you feel the tiny pin pricks? It’s a stupid trick, not subtle at all, but I promise you Lady Wells had such a deck—and everyone believes her such a high stickler.”
Gwendolyn laughed. “Good heavens, no wonder Mama came away so cross from that party. And I had thought you refused to play because you wanted only to gaze at Jack in that perfectly revolting way. You really should not, you know. It makes him conceited, and so high-handed with Mama that I scarcely know him anymore.”
“So,” said Mr. Langdon, who had noiselessly entered the room. “You are teaching my sister to cheat at cards. That is very bad of you, Delilah. How will you face the minister in two days?”
“With resignation, I daresay,” his sister answered. “I have been trying to open her eyes to her error, but she will not attend. She’ll learn her mistake soon enough, when she tries to get your attention—for instance, if the house takes fire—and you will not look up from your book. Then it will be too late.”
She turned to Delilah. “He’ll never notice your new bonnets, you know. And he will not sympathise if the parlour maid is saucy, not to mention—”
“Go away, Gwendolyn,” said Jack. “I have something particular to say to my affianced wife.”
Gwendolyn eyed the package in her brother’s hand. “A present—and you will not let me stay to see her open it. That is very bad of you,” she said, though she did rise to leave. “But of course it can only be another book. Really, Jack,” she added as she moved towards the door, “you are so unromantic.”
When she was gone, Delilah reached out to take her husband-to-be by the hand and draw him to the sofa beside her.
“You had better kiss me,” she said coaxingly, “or I shall be forced to believe your sister.”
“I had better not,” he answered, moving primly several inches away. “It always starts as but a kiss and ends by my having to put my head under the pump. Don’t pout,” he added, as her lower lip began to protrude. “Open your present. Perhaps I shall kiss you after.”
Delilah dutifully untied the wrapping, though she declared herself far more interested in the person who had brought it. Then her eyes widened in amazement as she stared at the book in her lap.
“Papa’s memoirs,” she said, baffled. She looked up at Jack. “How can this be? I gave them to Papa that night when we returned.”
“You gave him the manuscript Lord Streetham had ‘amended,’” Jack corrected.
“Yes—and Papa gave it to the lawyer, so Lord Streetham could not give us any more trouble. That’s why I don’t understand—”
“We had to give Atkins something,” Jack interrupted. “We might have given him a parcel of blank paper, but we’d have been found out too soon. I thought he might as well get memoirs, since that’s what he wanted so badly. So, we rewrote them.”
