In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL) Read online

  “A young woman, eh? I gather you’re not talking about yourself.”

  Mary stiffened but inclined her elaborate black velvet hat in his direction.

  “You intrigue me, Mrs. Evensong. I haven’t fucked a woman since I came home from South Africa. Where is she? I’m more than ready.”

  “If you think you can put me off with your crudeness, you must know nothing of the Evensong Agency,” Mary said, unruffled. “I always accomplish my missions, and you, sir, are one of them.”

  “I’m past being saved, Mrs. Evensong. Do us both a favor and get out.”

  He sounded so weary, and looked worse. Mary tossed a dirty shirt on the floor and sat down on the only chair in the room.

  “I didn’t ask you to sit, woman.”

  “No, you didn’t, and your rudeness will have to be remedied before you meet my client. She is most particular. You’ve been to public school. You’ve been an officer. Surely you have not forgotten how to treat and speak to a lady.” Mary folded her gloved hands primly in her lap.

  “As I just explained, I’ve had very little to do with ladies lately. Does your client like a bit of rough? I can’t imagine why else she would be interested in a factory foreman’s son.”

  “My client is a very discerning young woman who need not know of your early years; though if she were to find out, I doubt you’d shock her too much. She’s very—democratic.”

  “A socialist, eh?”

  “I don’t believe she’s political at all, except when it comes to the rights of woman.”

  Cooper grimaced. “Oh, spare me from a bloody suffragist. Whatever she wants, I am not her man, Mrs. Evensong. I can’t drive her to Mrs. Pankhurst’s meetings and rallies—I’m half blind, remember?”

  “Miss St—that is, the young lady drives herself, Captain Cooper.” Mary had also read the police reports from several European nations detailing Louisa Stratton’s driving skills. They left a little something to be desired. What the young woman needed was a good chauffeur, and Mary knew there was one at Rosemont, a steady young Scotsman she’d placed there herself.

  “Does she now? Well, I suppose you’d better go on and tell me what she wants before my landlady gets suspicious about why I am entertaining an old trout like you in my room.”

  Mary Evensong hoped her gray wig was on straight. But why wouldn’t it be? She always paid attention to every detail of her appearance, to show the world what they expected to see.

  “Your landlady will think nothing. She was very handsomely compensated to let me in, and by the way, once she saw the state of the place she requested that you pack your things at the earliest opportunity and vacate the premises.”

  Not quite true, but Charles Cooper didn’t need to know that, did he? It gave him one more incentive to agree to her plan.

  She always had a plan, and several alternates should unfortunate circumstances prevail. Mary rather thought she had Captain Cooper’s full attention now. He glared at her with one bloodshot blue eye.

  “Go on,” he barked, in much the tone he’d probably used to command his troops in the Transvaal.

  “It’s simple, really. My client is in need of a handsome, cultured gentleman to pose as her husband during the Christmas holidays at one of the premiere country houses in England. Rosemont. In Kent. Have you heard of it? It was featured in the December 1900 issue of The English Illustrated Magazine.”

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t in the country at the time to read any society magazines, Mrs. Evensong,” the captain said dryly.

  “Of course you weren’t. I know you were serving honorably in Africa. I simply mention it because it is a very grand property and it will be a privilege to call it home for a month.”

  “Till death do us part, or just thirty days? Why does this girl need a fake husband?”

  “She has had some difficulty with her family. It seemed a good idea to her at the time to invent a husband.” Privately, Mary thought that Louisa Stratton had been just a little too madcap for comfort, but one couldn’t undo the past unless one was very clever. Which Mary was. Over the years, she’d rescued several young ladies from their ill-advised activities and no one was the wiser.

  Cooper rubbed his stubbled chin. “How much?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What’s the pay? I have family, too.”

  Mary Evensong knew. Two older brothers, their wives, and their numerous offspring, most of them working in one of George Alexander’s pottery works. Cooper would likely be employed on the factory floor beside them had not Mr. Alexander plucked him off it when he was a lad of twelve and sent him to school. George Alexander had seen promise in young Charlie Cooper, and Mrs. Evensong squinted at him to try to do the same. Mr. Alexander was a perspicacious gentleman, with a finger in many pies and a fortune that was not to be sneezed at.

  She quoted the price she and Miss Stratton had agreed upon. Captain Cooper turned the color of the dingy shirt on the floor.

  “For a month? Are you serious?”

  Ah, that made him get up and start pacing about the room in an agitated fashion. He must have been quite handsome marching about in his uniform—it was a pity that Maximillian Norwich was an effete art connoisseur and not a soldier.

  “Perfectly. The Evensong Agency has been in business since 1888. We have never broken our word once,” Mary said, lying just the tiniest bit. “There will be a proper wardrobe for you, too. One cannot go to a house like Rosemont in a celluloid collar.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out the business card of a discreet tailor and handed it to the captain when he shuffled by her. Mr. Smythe could give any haberdasher on Jermyn Street a run for their money for quality at less than half the price. “You have an appointment at noon tomorrow. I shall escort you. And I must have your promise. You will give up your drink. Maximillian Norwich would never swill cheap gin.”

  “Who?”

  “Did I not mention that is the name of my client’s imaginary husband? You shall have to answer to it.”

  Charles Cooper’s weathered face broke out into a grin. His teeth were remarkably good for a man of the lower classes. “Mrs. Evensong, for the amount of money your idiot client is paying me, I would answer to Fido. Max it is.”

  Miss Stratton might insist on Maximillian—she’d seemed especially enamored of the name—but Mary did not want to press her luck. There was a great deal to be done in the next few days and a cheerful Charles Cooper was far superior to the morose man she’d first encountered.

  In fact, perhaps she should help him pack his few belongings and offer him the spare room on Mount Street. She and her staff could keep a watchful eye over him to ensure he kept his appointment tomorrow in a sober state. He looked as if he needed a good meal, too, and Mary’s cook was one of the best in London—even if she’d spent her formative years as a whore.

  She made her second proposition of the morning. Captain Cooper made no objection. Yes, the agency’s motto, “Performing the Impossible Before Breakfast Since 1888,” was on its way to being fulfilled.

  Chapter

  3

  Wednesday, December 2, 1903

  They were all cracked, talking about him as if he couldn’t hear. It was his eye that was injured, not his ears. Charles was sick to death of being poked and pinned by the bald little Mr. Smythe and his assistants, who had crawled over him like ants at a picnic for over an hour.

  “I say, are we done?” He sounded posh, a regular Harrow boy, if he did say so himself. No one would suspect he’d been raised in George Alexander’s workers’ village. George was a generous employer, a benevolent man. Some might even say that because he stole young Charlie away from his family and civilized him, grown Charles owed him his life.

  Well, his life wasn’t worth much. George had got a poor bargain.

  “Almost, Captain Cooper. You’ve been very patient,” the tailor said.
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  He’d been very bored. And he was damned thirsty. If he couldn’t have gin, Charles wondered if he could talk the old Evensong biddy into giving him some wine at lunch.

  If they ever ate some. Breakfast was but a distant memory. Good as the meal had been, Charles’s stomach rumbled and the tailor’s assistant gave him a cheeky grin.

  Charles had been lectured at length all morning by Mrs. Evensong as to what his duties and responsibilities would be as Miss Louisa Stratton’s temporary husband. She had even pressed a lavishly illustrated art book in his hand, as this Maximillian fellow—Maximillian!—was supposed to be some sort of expert. As Charles didn’t know a Rembrandt from a Rousseau, he expected he’d have some studying to do.

  It would be just like old times, when, as a scholarship boy, he’d outshone the scions of the best families in England. No one could call Charles stupid, or remain standing very long if they did. He’d been as good with his fists as with his figures.

  School and the army had polished some of his rough edges, but at twenty-seven, there were still a few splinters that poked through. He hoped Miss Stratton wouldn’t be too sorry once she finally met him.

  But really, what did he care? He was to be a well-paid lapdog to a silly society bitch. He could put up with most anything for a month for the exorbitant fee. This Louisa must have several screws loose and way too much money.

  A sheltered little princess like her would have died on the spot if she’d seen what he had in Africa.

  Charles hopped off the box he was standing on and shot his cuffs. He’d worn a uniform for ten years, and he barely recognized his reflection in the triple mirror. The new suit, well, suited him. Mr. Smythe, the tailor, was even going to make him new silk eye patches, which would be a vast improvement over the itchy one he’d been given in the field hospital.

  To look at him without it, you’d never know he’d lost most of his vision. But he’d gotten headaches trying to stare through the blur of broken blood vessels and floating bits. His mates teased him, saying the eye patch gave him a piratical air that would be useful with the ladies. But he hadn’t bothered to find out if they were right.

  Charles had not been able to think of women in a sexual sense after he’d helped bury hundreds of them and their children, their naked bodies blistered by the sun, malnourished, skeletal. Kitchener’s troops had set up a vast network of internment camps to imprison the Boer women, tents springing up like mushrooms in the dry ground. Food and water routinely failed to reach them, the English supply and communication lines to the refugee camps broken by their own South African countrymen. As special cruel punishment, those wives and children whose husbands and fathers were still fighting received smaller rations than the others. If the families didn’t starve to death first, then measles, typhoid, and dysentery finished the job.

  There were times when Charles wished he’d lost vision in both eyes to save witnessing the devastation.

  South Africa was the real world, its heat and blood pulsing up through the cracked earth; England was just a flimsy false stage set, populated by those who had no idea what their heroes were capable of. He’d be in the footlights soon himself, playing a role before his curtain dropped.

  Damn, but he was hungry. Not as hungry as the doomed Boer women must have been, but it was best he not dwell on the past anymore. Maximillian Norwich would not care about slaughter and death—there was no such thing in his elevated existence. His life was all about his silly heiress and her shiny motorcar, champagne, and caviar.

  Charles stumbled on a bolt of cloth. Blast. In Mrs. Evensong’s rush to remove and improve him yesterday, he’d had left his journals under the floorboards of his room at the boarding house. Mrs. Jarvis had probably lined up a new tenant already—the woman would not let an opportunity go by to make more money, even though he’d paid the rent through to the new year. He wouldn’t miss the grime or smells, but he really would miss his journals.

  His family would understand once they read them.

  He turned to Mrs. Evensong, who was examining a figured maroon waistcoat as though she’d discovered the Holy Grail. What an odd woman she was. “I have to go.”

  She looked up, frowning. It was hard to see her eyes beneath the gray-tinted spectacles, but he’d bet they were shrewd. “Why? Where are you going?”

  “I forgot something at my old lodging. Don’t worry. I’m not going to the corner pub. I gave you my word.”

  “Yes, you did, and I expect you to keep it. Very well, Captain. You’ll return to Mount Street once you’re done?”

  “Of course. I don’t suppose that cook of yours can fix me a sandwich?”

  “We can do much better than that,” Mrs. Evensong said smugly. “Don’t be too long. I’m expecting Miss Stratton to stop by this afternoon.”

  Damn. He really wasn’t ready to meet his “wife.” But if clothes made the man, he was presentable enough. Mr. Smythe helped him into a charcoal tweed overcoat to guard against the wind and handed him a top hat. It had already been decided that his bespoke clothes and extra hats would be monogrammed and inscribed with his new name or initials and ready by tomorrow morning. Mrs. Evensong thought of everything.

  Charles hailed a hansom cab with the money she had advanced him—not quite enough to get in trouble with, but certainly adequate to get to a less desirable part of town and back. His ex-landlady, Mrs. Jarvis, pretended at first not to recognize him, and he had to drop a few of his ill-gotten gains in her grubby hand before she let him into his old room, dogging him like a terrier. Did she think he’d steal the broken curtain rod? She watched as he pulled up a warped floorboard and retrieved the marble pasteboard journals.

  “What are them books?” she asked.

  “My history, Mrs. Jarvis—every battle and wound and woman. It will make for fascinating reading on a cold winter’s night.” He imagined his brothers turning the pages once he was gone, forgiving him a little between his words and the money he would leave them. Tom and Fred would understand. They had to.

  Suddenly the old building shook from an explosion below on the street. Without thinking, Charles tackled Mrs. Jarvis and rolled onto the floor with her, shielding her scrawny body with his.

  “Get your paws off me, you looby,” she shrieked, struggling under him.

  His response had been instinctive. Mortars. Grenades. But there could not be shells falling in the middle of the old neighborhood, could there?

  “It may not be safe. What was that noise?”

  “Who knows or cares? Get off me now!”

  Charles could not remember the last time a woman lay beneath him. Mrs. Jarvis was certainly not a candidate of choice, and her screams rang in his ears until he thought they might bleed. Charles put his hand over Mrs. Jarvis’s open mouth, only to be rewarded with a vicious nip. “Shh. I hear someone coming.”

  The stairs creaked ominously and Charles tucked the woman between his body and the wall. He’d keep the damn harpy safe even if she didn’t appreciate it.

  “Hullo? Captain Cooper, are you in there?”

  A woman.

  “I don’t like the looks of this place, miss. It smells dreadful.”

  Another one. Neither one of them sounded like Mrs. Evensong.

  “Hush, Kathleen. You’re such a snob. I’m sure those who are less fortunate are delighted to have a sound roof over their heads. Sir? Are you decent? May I come in?”

  Holy mother of God. Charles unclamped Mrs. Jarvis’s mouth and braced himself for her bloodcurdling yelp. He did not have long to wait.

  “Help me! He’s gone mad!”

  Charles leaped to his feet just as his door pushed open. Mrs. Jarvis remained on the floor, frantically pulling her skirts down.

  The women’s eyes widened in shock as they took in Charles’s little blunder. He brushed the dust from his new coat and tried to fix a smile on his face that would not frighten t
he young ladies. If they’d join Mrs. Jarvis by screaming along with her, he’d be deaf as well as blind for sure.

  “C-Captain Cooper?”

  The blonde was extraordinarily pretty, although she was as white as her ermine coat and matching muff that covered her hands. Charles wished there was a little pistol hidden inside it with which she could shoot him to put him out of his misery.

  “Miss Stratton, I presume.”

  “Oh, Miss Louisa. He can’t be the one. How can Mrs. Evensong have made such a mistake? She’s supposed to be infallible,” the little redhead said.

  “Hush again, Kathleen. I’m sure there’s an explanation. Isn’t there?”

  Her eyes were bright and golden brown and focused on his lips, waiting for him to explain. As if he could.

  She was a golden girl from tip to toe. Miss Louisa Stratton looked like money, honey, and double cream. Charles had never seen anyone like her.

  Mrs. Jarvis grabbed his bad knee as she dragged herself up. “He tried to rape me!”

  Before Charles could protest, the golden goddess spoke. “Don’t be absurd, my good woman. You are old enough to be his mother. You are not that sort, are you, Captain? I’ve always thought Oedipus to be a very repulsive myth. But if you’re afflicted with that complex, I’m sure I can find you a good doctor. They are making all sorts of progress with the study of the human mind in Vienna, you know. We were there last spring, weren’t we, Kathleen? The pastries were wunderbar.”

  Mrs. Jarvis was right. He had gone mad. He needed a glass of white satin. Nay, a bottle.

  “There was a loud noise,” he said lamely.

  “Oh yes. I’m afraid that was me—that is to say, my automobile. Something’s gone wrong. A piston misfiring perhaps. We’ll have to have the car towed to the local garage. There is a local garage, is there not?”