Prince of Secrets
Autorzy
Paula Marshall
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17,2K
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13
HarlequinChapter One
August 1892, Sandringham
Afterwards, Lady Dinah Grant was to think—no, to be sure—that all of the events of that eventful autumn and winter were set in motion during the week that she and her husband, Cobie, spent at the Prince of Wales’s Norfolk home of Sandringham. After that, nothing was ever going to be the same.
At the time, though, they—or perhaps it might be more true to say that only of herself rather than of Cobie—were simply under the impression that they were going to take part in an ordinary country-house party. If, of course, any house party at the home of a member of the Royal Family could ever be called ordinary!
‘We are going there to enjoy ourselves,’ Cobie told her in the train on their way there.
‘Really?’ said Dinah, in her best teasing mode. ‘Really, Cobie, just to enjoy ourselves? From all that I have experienced so far, pleasure seems to be something one has to work at. It could scarcely have been more difficult to have gone to Oxford and studied under my father than to survive the London Season successfully!’
‘True,’ he conceded. ‘But better to succeed than to fail, do admit.’
‘Oh,’ she told him airily, in exactly the manner in which he usually spoke to her, ‘I certainly intend to succeed—for your sake, if for no one else’s. It would hardly do for our marriage to be seen as a failure since you went to such pains to get me to the altar.’
This sly reference to the way in which he had tricked her half-brother, Rainey, into allowing him to marry her, amused, rather than annoyed, her husband. It was proof, if proof were needed, of how far she had travelled since she had married him. The shy, defeated child he had rescued no longer existed. Instead he was the husband of a charming young woman with a delicate wit, which she exercised on him as well as others.
He might have been proud of his handiwork in transforming her, if he didn’t also think that a lot of the credit was due to her own sterling character.
‘I noticed that Giles packed your guitar,’ she said, looking at him over her cup of tea—they were travelling in luxury in the special coach provided by the Prince for his guests. ‘Was that done for me—or for HRH?’
‘Both,’ said Cobie, giving her his best smile. ‘Someone apparently told the Prince that I am a reasonably proficient player on it, so I am to give a Royal Command performance—whenever, or if, he cares to command, that is. I gather from Beauchamp, who was the go-between in all the arrangements for this visit, that the Prince does not like to see any of his guests being idle. If they are, he thinks up occupations for them.’
‘Well, I dare say he won’t need to do that for you, Cobie. A less idle man I have never seen. Rainey told me recently that your industry made him feel quite faint.’
‘Oh,’ said Cobie, giving his wife his best grin, ‘anyone’s industry would make Rainey feel faint.’ He had no illusions about his brother-in-law, even if Rainey had been trying to live a more sensible life since the setting up of the Trust to run what had been his estate before he lost it to Cobie at cards.
Dinah nodded amused agreement to this, settled back in her seat and decided to admire her husband rather than the scenery which seemed to grow flatter with each succeeding mile.
He was eminently worth admiring. His nickname in society was Apollo, and he certainly lived up to it. From the crown of his golden head to the tips of his well-polished shoes he was the model of a Greek god come down to earth, dressed in everything which the taste of the times dictated for a man who wished to be seen as a leading member of London society in the 1890s.
Like his looks, his athleticism was extraordinary—but not to Dinah, who had had the privilege of seeing him naked, and therefore of learning that he was a double of the nude Greek heroes whose statues filled the sculpture galleries of the British Museum.
Violet, Dinah’s half-sister, once her tormentor but now her grudging admirer, was seated opposite to her. Her husband, Lord Kenilworth, had wandered up the coach to take his tea with Rainey, whose first visit this was. She was remarking acidly, ‘I heard that Cobie’s hanger-on, Mr Van Deusen, is also a guest—he doesn’t seem to be on this train.’
‘No,’ said Cobie, ignoring Violet’s slighting comment on his friend. ‘I understand that he had some urgent business to take care of today and will be arriving after tea.’
‘Hmm!’ said Violet: a remark which Dinah thought could mean anything—or nothing.
Cobie smiled to himself and wondered what Violet would think if she knew the truth about his friendship with Hendrick Van Deusen: that, ten years ago, under other names, they had been outlaws and gunmen in the American South West. Each of them owed their life to the other.
Now they were respectable businessmen, those days long behind them. Except that recently their old outlaw relationship had been renewed in London, Mr Van Deusen successfully playing back-up once more to his younger, wilder, friend.
Wolferton Station, when they reached it, was rather larger than most, and, instead of the dogcart which had greeted Dinah there, a fleet of horse-drawn carriages was waiting to take the Prince’s guests to Sandringham House, which stood some little distance away. Behind the carriages was another fleet of carts and carriages, there to transport the servants and the possessions of their masters.
Dinah wondered—with some amusement—what Cobie thought of the House itself—it was such a mixture of architectural styles both inside and out. She was to wonder even more when they were shown into an oak-panelled entrance hall where they found a stuffed baboon waiting for them, holding out a silver salver for the cards of visitors. She thought of the perfect taste of the Marquise’s Paris mansion which was reflected in her own Park Lane home where every piece of furniture, every ornament and every picture had been chosen by its owner for its beauty.
On the other hand, there was a charming informality in the very clutter which filled each room. Sandringham was a home, not a museum, and its owner’s cheerful enjoyment of some of the more simple pleasures of his world meant that his guests found it easy to relax.
Their suite of rooms was cosy rather than grand, and Dinah began to think that this visit might not be an ordeal after all—except that, as she later discovered, she had to change her clothes several times each day. If she found this a bore she discovered that Hortense and Pearson, her two maids, were absolutely delighted.
Her first change was into a lilac and pale green crêpe de chine tea gown with matching green and lilac slippers; when she was ready, and Cobie reverently outfitted in a tweed suit useful for the country, they made their way down to the drawing room for five o’clock tea.
To her dismay, the first person she saw was Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, who was busy complaining to all and sundry that his wife, as usual, was late coming down. The sundry included Susanna Winthrop, his current mistress and Cobie’s foster sister, who gave only a slightly defiant nod in the Grants’ direction to acknowledge their arrival. She was looking particularly beautiful, Cobie noted, but had a strange wild air about her, quite different from her usual serene calm: Sir Ratcliffe’s influence, he thought dismally.
Sir Ratcliffe, who was bending over her hand, appeared to be happy to see them. Perhaps it was pleasing him to demonstrate to that damned Yankee his hold over Susanna.
‘Heard you were coming, Grant. Pity it’s too early for shooting—you could have engaged in some useful practice.’
Cobie remembered with some amusement that he had, wrongly, disclaimed any ability as a shot, and adopted a suitably mournful expression.
‘Tum Tum’ll probably invite you when the closed season’s over, eh, Lady Dinah? You’re one of his favourites these days, I hear.’ Sir Ratcliffe’s smile for Dinah was an unctuous one, something which did not please Susanna.
She said to Cobie, ‘You are looking well, I see. Marriage suits you, I suppose.’
Then in a voice which Cobie had never heard from her before, the kind of voice which Violet constantly used to cut down her rivals, she added, ‘It certainly seems to suit you, Lady Dinah!’
The tone prevented the words from being the compliment which they superficially sounded. Cobie remembered something which his mother had once said to him when he had been speaking of a friend whom he had lost for good after he had the beating of him at chess—or any other game he cared to play with him—‘Jealousy is as cruel as the grave, Cobie.’
After that he had always hidden his powers, so much so that he had almost come to forget that he possessed them, until he had need of them in Arizona Territory. He was aware that Dinah was speaking, telling Susanna and Sir Ratcliffe how kind her husband was, and how strange it seemed that she was the mistress of the house.
‘It is almost as though I were still playing with dolls,’ she added, ‘which is naïve of me, I know.’
Sir Ratcliffe jammed his monocle in his eye, and stared at her. She was looking radiantly young in her beautiful tea gown which was cut with the utmost simplicity. Her hair was dressed simply, too, and he felt a dreadful spasm of desire—for Grant’s wife, of all people!
Well, he had taken Susanna Winthrop away from the Yankee brute, and now the sight of Dinah’s youthful beauty had him wishing that he had been the one to initiate her, to enjoy her, to teach her to please him…
Cobie, visited by the intuition which had plagued him—and blessed him—all his life, read the man before him. Something in his stance, the set of his mouth, in the answer he made to Dinah, innocent in itself, ‘You hardly look old enough to have left dolls behind, Lady Dinah, so not surprising, hey?’ told him that he had been right to believe that the murdering swine was lusting after his innocent young wife.
He knew, which few did, that Sir Ratcliffe’s taste for young girls had led him into perversion and murder, and he also knew that for some reason the authorities were protecting him, which was why he had made it his business to try to trap him and see that he was punished for what he had done.
He controlled himself with difficulty, and took Dinah’s arm gently, saying, ‘We must move on, my dear,’ and led her away. He could hardly keep his hands off the man who had raped and killed poor Lizzie Steele and who was now laughing and talking with Susanna. He must try to warn her against him again, although he didn’t think that the man was fool enough to treat her as he had treated his child-victims.
‘You don’t like him, do you?’ asked Dinah, smiling and bowing at those whom she knew as they moved through the press of people.
‘Who?’ he asked, although he knew whom she meant, and was surprised by her acute understanding. He thought that, like himself, she probably possessed the uncomfortable gift of reading people accurately.
‘Sir Ratcliffe. I don’t like him. I didn’t like the way he looked at me.’
‘I didn’t like the way he looked at you, either,’ he told her frankly. ‘A man to avoid, my dear.’
Dinah was equally frank. ‘He gives me goose-pimples. Oh, hello, Violet. How odd and time-wasting that we have to go through all this polite palaver with people with whom we have already spent the day, just as though we were meeting them for the first time after years apart.’
Violet said briskly and nastily, ‘Don’t waste your clever remarks on me, Dinah. Save them for others. Not the Prince, he doesn’t like clever women.’
‘Fortunately I like clever women,’ Cobie murmured in Dinah’s ear, in case she was overset, which she wasn’t. He was bowing to Violet now, and saying all the right things. Reluctantly, Violet approved of him. He seemed to have an instinct which allowed him to be as exactly proper as the occasion demanded.
Kenilworth had once said that Grant was almost too good to be true. No one, and particularly no American, ought to be so civilised, so well seen, so athletic, so exactly everything a man ought to be. It was perhaps as well, Violet thought, that he couldn’t know what a tiger Cobie Grant was in bed—and now Dinah was getting the benefit of that. But she didn’t look particularly mauled, so perhaps she wasn’t.
Then, as they moved away from her, to do their duty to the other guests, before sitting down before one of the tea trolleys, Violet saw Cobie bend his head to say something to his wife. She saw Dinah turn to look up at him and give him such a smile that sexual jealousy had Violet in its thrall. Oh, yes, Dinah was getting the benefit, all right—and the parlour maid’s language which Violet used to herself was symbolic of the shock she was feeling.
Cobie had earlier told Dinah that she would have few rivals among the women present. She had teased him gently, saying that he thought so because she was his wife, and must therefore automatically be a nonpareil—as he was. Had she known of both Susanna’s and Violet’s reaction to her appearance and her manner, she would have known that he was speaking the truth.
They had barely sat down before the Prince and his wife arrived, and they all jumped to their feet to acknowledge the Royal presence.
Dinah was to discover that this strange mixture of Royal protocol and informality was typical of their Sandringham visit.
Later, after they had spent a leisurely hour over tea, she and Cobie retired to their rooms.
‘Now what do we do?’ she asked him comically, once they were alone together.
‘Well,’ he told her gravely, ‘I understand that if you are to be absolutely comme il faut in the drawing room by half past eight, you must immediately send for Hortense and Pearson and set them to dressing you. Whilst Giles and I must attend to the business of making me look suitable to honour the Prince’s dinner table.’
Dinah stared at him in disbelief. ‘Who told you that? It can’t possibly take us the next two hours—that must be nonsense.’
‘Violet did me the honour of putting me in the know, as she called it. She and Kenilworth come to Sandringham at least twice each autumn and winter for the shooting. We are a little early for that, so we must find other means of entertainment. The Prince, as you know, occasionally takes his with Violet. At the court of eighteenth-century France she would probably have been known as “la maitresse en titre”.’
Dinah smiled. ‘I suppose that translates as the King’s Prime Mistress, rather along the lines of a female Prime Minister. Do you really wish to live this idle life, Cobie?’
Her question was a serious one this time, and he answered her equally seriously. ‘Not really as a permanent thing, but, for the moment, it is a new experience. I have other major interests, and in time you will share them with me. But, for the moment, we are engaged in experiencing high society and Royal favour. Oh, and by the by, I ought to warn you that the Prince’s dinner-party usually consists of twelve courses, so don’t eat too much of the earlier ones.’
‘Violet being your informant again, I suppose. I must say, she does have her uses.’
‘True, and the dining table is arranged strictly according to precedence so I am hoping that you and I don’t end up having to eat our meal in the kitchen, seeing that we are an American peasant and his wife.’
He said this gravely, but, as usual, she took his comic meaning.
Later he came into her room where Hortense and Pearson had just finished dressing her. He was already immaculately turned out—a tribute to Giles’s art. He had difficulty in not laughing out aloud when he saw her evening gown. It was a dream of a thing in white, cut with artful simplicity to improve her figure and decorated only—in a saucy reference to her nickname as The English Snowdrop—with tiny silk flowers. The largest bunch of them was on the green sash which circled her narrow waist.
She had ordered it in secret and Cobie had not seen it until he had walked in a few minutes ago. Her reward was to be favoured with one of his wicked grins, rarely offered to anyone.
‘If you are trying to make Violet jealous, you could hardly have done better,’ was his comment. This, plus a careful kiss on the cheek, designed not to disturb her fashionable splendour, was sufficient reward for her. After that, once she had entered the drawing room, the admiration on the faces of the men, and the annoyance on the women’s, were merely icing on her cake. To have pleased and surprised her unflappable husband was, she considered, an achievement in itself!
They sat apart at dinner, but he could see her down the table smiling and talking to her companions, and thought what a long way she had come in such a short time. She was obviously enjoying herself, and had taken his hint about not eating too much to begin with.
He watched her again, when she left with the ladies, and then his attention was drawn by the Prince, who, having lighted his cigar, was demanding that when they returned to the ladies, Cobie would play for them on his guitar.
‘You have brought it with you, eh, Grant?’
It was remarkable how charming this fat and middle-aged man could be when he chose. He was neither clever, nor learned, but he understood men and women. He knew what motivated them, he liked the things they liked, and his popularity stemmed from that. The crowds who gathered round his carriage shouting ‘Good old Teddy’ did so because they could see that he shared a common humanity with them. Cobie felt himself responding to it.
‘Sir, you commanded, and I had but to obey.’
The Prince’s glance at him was sharp and shrewd. ‘I should make you one of my courtiers, Grant. You are so much the master of the done thing.’
Cobie smiled, ‘My pleasure, sir.’
He could see his unacknowledged uncle, Sir Alan Dilhorne, smiling at him, and Van Deusen, well fed and rubicund, was winking at him over his cigar.
‘Don’t smoke, do you, Grant? These cigars are excellent. You should try one.’
‘Smoking spoils the voice, sir. I wish to do you—and myself—justice, later, so you will excuse me, I hope.’
Later turned out to be some time later. By the time they joined the women, who were sitting like so many swans, their arms so long and lovely, their heads so proud, many of the men had already over-indulged, Sir Ratcliffe among them.
Cobie called to him the hovering footman who was holding his guitar and retrieved it. The Prince was standing, so everyone else stood. He waved a hand, said, ‘Sit, sit,’ and then sat himself, so that everyone else could.
‘Mr Grant is to entertain us,’ he announced. ‘A Royal Command Performance, you understand. No gossiping.’
Violet made a moue, and Sir Ratcliffe looked displeased as the damned mountebank opened the case in which his guitar was kept and began to tune it.
‘Do you have any particular piece in mind, sir?’ Cobie asked, playing a series of quiet chords.
The Prince shook his head. ‘Nothing dismal, that’s all. I’m in no mind to be bored.’
‘Mmm.’
He thought a moment, then began to play, gently at first as his total recall brought back both words and music, the Lord High Executioner’s song from The Mikado.
I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed—who never would be missed!
The bored expressions on everyone’s faces vanished as his pleasant baritone wound its way to the end of the song. He finished with a flourish, bowing his head over his guitar. The Prince immediately began to applaud his virtuosity.
‘Oh, bravo, Grant, bravo. Better than all that stuff I have to endure with a straight face at the opera. Where did you learn to play and sing like that?’
Cobie bowed, amused that his talent with the guitar, although quite differently expressed, was entertaining the massed ranks of the British aristocracy and gentry as it had amused the outlaws at San Miguel so long ago.
‘At the Yale Glee Club, sir.’
‘It is to be congratulated—as are you. More, please.’
Cobie decided to offer something different.
He said, ‘This has to be done standing up,’ and began to play a Mexican love song, ‘La Paloma’, his guitar high on his shoulder. It was full of wild riffs, and he sang it first in Spanish, rolling the vowels liquidly on his tongue, and then in English.
The applause which followed was genuine. The Prince led it, then spoke to his wife, before turning to Cobie to say, ‘The Princess asks if you have a love song you would care to sing.’
He considered and, moved by something—perhaps it was Susanna’s face, sad in repose, reproaching him for having deserted her—said, ‘Yes, I think you would like this.’
So saying he sat down again and began to sing ‘Plaisir d’amour’, one of the most haunting and sad of ballads telling of love’s pleasures being short, but its pains, alas, being long and lasting a lifetime. His voice had changed again to match the music, and he sang it with all the feeling he could muster. It was almost as though he could feel Susanna’s pain, as though she had laid it on his back as a burden to be carried.
Perhaps, also, he thought, he was trying to tell Dinah something. He looked up once, to see her face, rapt, her eyes only for him. Slowly, slowly, as the song reached its sad end, he was suddenly in another room, far away in space and time, a room which knew nothing of kings and princes and nobility. In that room he had thought that in playing yet another elegiac tune he had finally said farewell to Susanna, but he might have known that their star-crossed love was not so easily renounced, and that Susanna’s pain still being with her, he was to be compelled to share it, even to the end.
The last notes died on the air. There was silence for a brief moment, before the Princess said, ‘Thank you, Mr Grant, that was beautiful,’ and began to clap, the rest of the audience following suit.
‘And that,’ said the Prince, ‘must be that. We thank the singer for his song,’
Only, a little later, he came up to Cobie, winked and smiled, murmuring, ‘When we go to the smoking room, shortly, bring your guitar with you. I have a bet that you have other songs to sing, even more entertaining.’
Which was a royal command. Sir Ratcliffe came up, flushed with drink, Susanna by him, and a few of his boon companions at his elbow.
‘Eh, well, Grant,’ he said, winking at his friends, ‘if all else fails, and the Stock Market falls through the floor, you can always earn a living on the pier at Brighton, what!’
‘I can think of worse ways of earning one,’ said Cobie coolly, refusing to return the insult, although Susanna’s mocking smile of pleasure at it cut him to the heart. He thought that drink was making Sir Ratcliffe unwary, besides ruining his complexion.
Susanna stayed behind for a moment, to whisper reproachfully, “‘Plaisir d’amour” was a most suitable song for you to sing, Cobie—except for one thing. You are highly qualified to speak of the shortness of love’s pleasure. The pains, however, you hardly seem to be acquainted with. You should leave singing of them to others.’
Cobie had a brief flash of total recall. He saw a lovely face, the face of a girl long dead, half-Yankee, half-Mexican, and thought that the pains of that lost love might be with him always. He said, quickly and urgently, ‘Susanna, I would like to speak to you about a serious matter.’
She looked at him, her face stone. ‘If it is about Sir Ratcliffe and me, you may spare yourself. Once and for all, we have done with one another. Let that be it. I want no sermons from the cheat and womaniser which you have become.’
It was useless. He bowed to her before she swept away. He saw Dinah coming, and thought bitterly, What damage am I doing to her, that she will end up by either reproaching me or hating me? I never thought that Susanna and I would come to this.
Dinah, her intuition working again, knew at once that, although his face was impassive, he was distressed. She said, ‘You sang beautifully, Cobie, but are you sure you wouldn’t like to leave early?’
He replied, almost roughly for him, ‘No, Dinah. And I have yet another royal command to obey. I am not ill.’
‘No,’ she answered him quietly. ‘And you don’t look ill. But remember what you once told me, “Appearances often deceive.” I think yours deceive me and everyone else tonight.’
‘Not you,’ he said, still rough. ‘You are learning from the book of life so rapidly, Dinah, that you will shortly be leaving me behind. For tonight accept that however I feel, I must do what I have to do, and that is obey the Prince’s orders. Something tells me that I have not finished this night’s work yet.’
Nor had he.
Some time later, walking into the smoking room, full of tobacco fumes, where the Prince, seated among his little court, was drawing gratefully on his cigar, after half an evening’s abstinence, he was greeted by men who were demanding to be entertained without the restraining presence of women.
Sir Ratcliffe, by now almost unbuttoned—Susanna and her husband had already retired—sprawled in a great armchair, a tot of whiskey in his hand while he watched Cobie play and sing ‘The Old Chisholm Trail’—in the half-expurgated version.
‘Bravo,’ he said languidly. ‘It seems I underrated you. The Music Hall in Brixton is your proper métier, my friend. Why not take yourself there?’
Before anyone could expostulate at such gross discourtesy, the red rage had Cobie by the throat. Not the complete thing, but something near. Regardless of whether Sir Ratcliffe might know of his secret plans to bring him to justice, he said rapidly, ‘I don’t underrate you, sir, and it occurs to me that I could sing a song about your spiritual home, your métier, which the company might enjoy.’
Without a pause he segued into ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, that notable folk ballad of a very young girl ruined in a brothel.
He sang it in the throaty, broken voice of the black American singer which he had heard on his one visit to the South, and which Dinah would have recognized because he had often used it when singing to her before or after lovemaking.
There was dead silence when he ended. Everyone present, including the Prince, knew of Sir Ratcliffe’s reputation with women; some even knew of his relationship with Madame Louise and Hoskyns, and his proclivity for girl children.
His face black with rage, he rose and, regardless of the presence of the Prince, exclaimed, ‘Damn you, Grant, I’ll not be insulted by upstart Yankees who have only their money to recommend them…’
His voice ran out as the man he was threatening, for he had raised his fist, remained impassive, eyes hooded, staring coldly at him.
Worse, he saw the expression of disapproval on the face of his master, his social arbiter, who ruled the world in which he lived and breathed, and which to be banished from meant in his present position not only social, but financial, ruin, for only Sir Ratcliffe’s friendship with the Prince kept the moneylenders at bay. If that went…if he strained the hold he had on him too far…everything would go…
The Prince was saying, in a freezing voice, ‘Be quiet, sir. You put an insult on Mr Grant. It is true that he returned the favour, but you were the provoker, he the provoked. We all thank Mr Grant for his playing tonight, and regret the discourtesy offered to him. Sir Ratcliffe, you will join me in this, I trust, and you, Mr Grant, we will forgive. We cannot rebuke the provider of such innocent pleasure.’
Sir Ratcliffe said sullenly—in the face of ruin he could do no else—‘I had not meant to annoy, a joke merely, sir.’
The Prince was severe. ‘In poor taste, your joke. You accept the apology, Mr Grant?’
Cobie said lightly, bowing his head. ‘Oh, I always accept apologies, sir. One of my few good habits.’ Which drew, as he had hoped and intended, a relieved general laugh.
The Prince spoke to him for a few moments about his singing and playing. Cobie told him, truthfully, that his best instrument was the piano. The Prince, his prominent blue eyes hard on him, said, ‘It seems that you are a man of many talents, Grant. Lady Kenilworth tells me that you sketch well. I know for myself that you are superb on a horse and, to cap it all, you have a gift for making money. You should come and instruct some of my subjects—we seem to be losing the talent.’
Cobie saw jealousy written plain on some of the faces around the Prince. He bowed, and murmured in his best and most innocent manner, ‘You know what they say, sir, Jack of all trades, master of none.’
The Prince’s gaze on him remained hard and shrewd, ‘Oh, I doubt that, Grant, I really doubt that. No matter. You have provided enough entertainment for one night. When we are at Markendale you must play the piano for us, and Lady Kenilworth will sing—her voice is lovely.’
It was his dismissal for the evening; pondering on the number of times Violet had walked into the conversation, he decided that the Prince probably knew of their brief liaison—and did not resent it.
His guitar in his hand, he wandered out of the smoking room and down a long corridor lined with the portraits of the great and mighty from a forgotten past. For some reason he did not want company—something which came over him at times. He wished to be alone, even if only for a little while, but his wish was not to be granted.
A voice behind him said in the drawl of the upper-class Englishman, ‘Your performance tonight was a polished one on both occasions, Mr Grant. I am not surprised that the Prince praised you for it. A man of many talents, he called you. I don’t think that he is aware of them all, do you?’
The speaker was the grey man, Hervey Beauchamp, who always stood at the Prince’s elbow. His tone to Cobie had a subtle ring of familiarity in it, as though he were speaking of things which they knew, and no one else did.
Cobie put on his most charmingly innocent face, and said, with no double meaning in his voice, ‘I thank you for the compliment, sir—but for the rest…’ and he raised his eyebrows slightly ‘…you have the better of me. I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced…although you once waited on my wife…’ He let his voice trail off.
‘Masterly, sir, masterly,’ said the other approvingly—but did not say what was masterly. They were standing before a portrait of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, painted by some unknown artist.
‘My name—not that it is of the slightest importance—is, as you know, Beauchamp. One of my ancestors came over with the Conqueror and ever since we like to think that we serve our sovereign as faithfully as he did.’
He waved a hand at the portrait so that Cobie wasn’t sure whether he meant Prince Rupert, the loyal supporter of two Stuart Kings, or his own distant progenitor.
Since something seemed expected of him, he offered, again with all the naïve charm he could muster, ‘I cannot repay you by offering a similar remarkable ancestry—my own being remarkable only in that, like many Americans, I have none. I am newly invented.’
The grey man laughed. ‘Well said, and I should have expected such an answer. Come, Mr Jacobus Grant, who possesses the face of the Hattons, but denies any connection with them, what moves a man like yourself to action? The philosophers whom I read tell me that newly invented men make their own laws since those which already exist mean nothing to them, being the work of men invented long ago. Do you make your own laws, Mr Grant, and in consequence carry out trial and sentence according to them—even in London?’
Cobie lifted his guitar. San Miguel and its outlaws would have recognised his expression. He began to play the song from The Mikado again. He let the words run out softly, keeping his guitar at the ready.
‘Like that?’ he queried sweetly. ‘What a romantic notion, Mr Beauchamp, sir. You should write novels.’
The grey man smiled. ‘Instead of living them,’ he said. ‘I must inform you that the Prince likes you, Mr Grant, genuinely likes you. Not just because you’re an American—he likes them all, you know. They do things. He was formed to do things, but was never allowed to. He will be an old man before he reaches the throne, which is a pity. The old woman who sits on it now has had her day but will not acknowledge it. Since he is a man who likes action, and is denied it, he becomes bored, and bored people make mistakes… It would be a pity if because of one of them he were to be passed over, reviled by a too-powerful Press.’
Cobie said nothing, played a few soft chords on the guitar. The tune was one he thought Mr Beauchamp might not know. It sang of passion and death—but in a frontier society, not this civilised one.
The grey man said, ‘As I am sure you are aware, His Royal Highness is quite unlike Sir Ratcliffe and his kind. His pleasures hurt no one. He takes them where he knows they will not offend. For him to have been indiscreet for once, does not mean that he deserves to be pilloried—only pitied because he may not act as other men do.’
Cobie’s hands were busy on the guitar. His brain was busier. Where was all this double-talk leading? What did this faceless man want with Cobie Grant? How much did the man know of Sir Ratcliffe and himself? He could not believe that the mention of Sir Ratcliffe’s name was innocent, after Beauchamp’s earlier hints of his possible lawless acts in London.
‘Come to the point,’ he said negligently. ‘I’m sure there is a point. Americans like to get to it quickly. We are blunt, sir, blunt.’
‘I have never seen anyone less blunt than your good self,’ answered the grey man, his voice dry.
‘That is because you don’t know me,’ and Cobie played a few bars of a Negro spiritual.
‘Oh, I know you, Mr Grant, and of your doings—both here and in the States. No matter, I will be plain. The Prince wrote some letters to a lady, whose husband suddenly became jealous, and took her from London, and into the country. Being a fool, he thought that might keep her chaste. She, also being a fool, kept the Prince’s letters, and took another lover—and showed him the Prince’s letters for him to laugh at.
‘He did more than laugh at them. He stole them, and now he blackmails the Prince with them, to keep himself in society, save himself from ruin. His Royal Highness has been generous…you understand me? But the thief grows careless, and behaves after a fashion which would have caused the Prince to—banish him, as it were. But he may not, because of the letters…
‘Now the man has become so indiscreet that he grows dangerous. Were his secret activities known he, being a friend of the Prince, would prove dangerous to the Prince, might even shake the throne. Cornered, he might try to use the letters to save himself—or even publish them, out of spite.’ He paused.
Cobie played a few slow bars of ‘God Save the Queen’, and said, as drily and anonymously as the man before him, ‘What has all this to do with me, sir?’
But he knew, he knew.
‘Why, I think you know the thief very well, Mr Grant. You have already dealt with one of his minions—and have plans for him, too.’ He began to hum the song from The Mikado which Cobie had treated him to earlier.
‘Need I say,’ he continued smoothly when he had finished humming, ‘that not only would you be satisfying yourself, and saving yourself from trouble, but you would also be doing the state some service if the Prince’s letters were…somehow…to be recovered…’
Cobie thought rapidly again. No one had disturbed them. He swung his head and looked down the corridor. Since the grey man had appeared the double doors at the far end had been closed—were probably locked, he thought. He had been tracked as carefully as though he were in the desert in Arizona, being followed by the law. He was, in effect, a kind of prisoner.
He laughed.
He murmured, his voice reproving, ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same. That’s the most delicate attempt to blackmail me into doing something that I have ever suffered. Tell me, does your master know of this—or of Sir Ratcliffe’s vicious life?’
The grey man smiled ironically. ‘It all depends which master you mean. If you are referring to the Prince, then my answer is, No.’
‘I thought not.’ Cobie shook his head. ‘You have read Francis Bacon, sir? I am sure you have. He said a number of things worthy of remembrance. He is particularly good on revenge, Mr Beauchamp, sir…’ The last phrase came out in his most insolent Western drawl.
‘He said that revenge is a kind of wild justice, and also that it is a dish best eaten cold. When I was very young, I agreed with him… When I was a little older—I was not so sure. Sometimes the best revenge is no revenge at all. What we do, Mr Beauchamp, sir, has consequences for us, as well as those to whom we do it. I will think your proposition over.’
The grey man hesitated. ‘That is your considered answer?’
‘I have no master but myself,’ replied Cobie negligently, ‘and therefore the only duty I owe is to myself, and to none other. No fear of demotion, no hope of promotion can move me, you understand, no threat to blast my reputation, either. I think that what you have found out about me is hearsay.
‘If I do what you want me to do, it will be because I want to do it, not because you are trying to blackmail me into stealing back the Prince of Wales’s letters—as Sir Ratcliffe is blackmailing the Prince. I don’t like blackmailers, Mr Beauchamp, sir, not even in a just cause. You must live in hope.
‘Now had you asked me, pat, as the Bard says, you might have gained a different answer.’
His smile was as provoking as he could make it.
The grey man said slowly. ‘I see that I have underestimated you.’ He paused, before asking, ‘Tell me one thing—out of curiosity, you understand, not to use against you. Is it true that you possess total recall? I have heard of such a talent, but I have never met anyone who genuinely possessed it.’
Cobie began to laugh. ‘Of course, if I told you the truth you would use it against me after some fashion. I know that because were the situation reversed I would use such a thing against you! Live in hope, Mr Beauchamp, sir, that you might one day find out. I have no intention of satisfying your curiosity at present.’
The grey man laughed with him, and for once his mirth was real. ‘I shall leave you now, Mr Grant. I hope that you will give me the answer I want, but I see that I must wait. Give me a few moments before you follow me.’
He turned away without waiting for a reply—and then turned back again.
‘By the by,’ he said, his smile shark-like, ‘I believe that we are cousins—distant, it’s true, but cousins. The Sir Beauchamp Hatton whom you and your uncle, Sir Alan Dilhorne, so greatly resemble, was named after my great-great-grandfather, his first cousin. Interesting, Mr Grant, sir, interesting?’
He was gone, leaving Cobie to reflect that Machiavelli’s Chance had been brought along, once again, like a horse ready for him to ride.
