Lord of the Beasts Read online

  Cordelia stepped between the men with the subtlest of motions. “Dr. Fleming has been very ably looking after my menagerie,” she said.

  “Of course,” Inglesham said. He walked around Cordelia to Boreas, stopping just out of reach of the stallion’s teeth. “Yet I’m told that he has also done remarkable work with this fine fellow…isn’t that so, Gallagher?”

  The groom, who stood nearby with Cordelia’s mare, cast an uneasy glance at Fleming. “Aye, your lordship.”

  “It was only a matter of simple kindness and respect,” Fleming said. “Even so, any stallion is somewhat unpredictable. You might wish to move away, sir.”

  Inglesham barked a laugh. “I know horses, Fleming. They merely require a firm hand and a clear understanding of their place in the world.”

  Fleming’s eyes darkened. Boreas arched his neck and lunged at Inglesham, teeth bared to bite. The stallion’s muzzle passed within an inch of Inglesham’s shoulder.

  “Spirited indeed,” he said, brushing at his sleeve. “But if the brute ever offers harm to Mrs. Hardcastle—”

  “Boreas was a perfect gentleman with me, Lord Inglesham,” Cordelia cut in. She looked toward the lane that curved away into the park, where a cloud of dust heralded the arrival of a horse and carriage. “Ah, I believe Miss Shipp is returned.” She signaled to Gallagher, who edged closer to the stallion as if he were approaching a venomous serpent. “If you gentlemen will go ahead to the house, we shall follow presently.”

  “With your permission, Mrs. Hardcastle,” Fleming said, “I’ll stay to look after Boreas.”

  Cordelia hesitated, and Inglesham waited to see if she would insist that this ill-mannered provincial accompany his betters. Her common sense reasserted itself, however, and she merely nodded. “As you wish, Doctor,” she said formally. “Thank you for your escort.”

  “It was my honor to be of assistance,” he said, and led Boreas away without another word. Cordelia gazed after him a little too long and then faced Inglesham with an uncharacteristically bright smile.

  “I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, starting in the direction of the house. “If only I had known you were returning so soon…”

  Inglesham offered his arm. “Think no more of it, my dear. I did not expect you to pine away in my absence, after all…though I do wonder what Fleming has done to stand so high in your favor.”

  She stopped abruptly. “You refer to our ride? It was all quite proper, I assure you.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it.”

  She searched his eyes, frowning faintly. “I told you before Dr. Fleming’s arrival that I had employed him for an extended consultation and treatment of my menagerie.”

  “I remember.”

  “I can see that you do not approve—”

  “Not approve?” He patted her hand. “My dear, I know how fond you are of your animals. I would not begrudge you anything that adds to your happiness.” He resumed walking, tucking her arm more closely in the crook of his arm. “I am nonetheless surprised that you would choose a common veterinarian, your employee, as a companion for your leisure hours. Surely you can find company more appropriate to your position as a baronet’s daughter. Lady Margaret is a most amiable neighbor, and Mrs. Kenworthy has indicated to me that she would enjoy more frequent visits to Edgecott. Julia Whitehurst sets the fashion in London, and she would be glad to advise you….”

  “Lady Margaret,” Cordelia said with a touch of scorn, “is much too hard on her horses. I always feel as if Mrs. Kenworthy is hoping to find that I have acquired some barbaric native customs during my travels, and as for Julia Whitehurst…she would rather spend all her time before a mirror than with any other woman!”

  Inglesham held up his hand. “Pax,” he said. “If none of those ladies suit you, I can introduce you to a dozen more. You really should involve yourself in society’s pleasures, my dear. There is no reason why you couldn’t make a success of it. Nothing prevents you but your own stubbornness.”

  Cordelia fell silent for several moments. “I surmise by your speech that you deem my success in society more important than the charitable work in which I am currently engaged.”

  He swung her about so that she was halfway in his arms. “How many times have we discussed this, Cordelia? You know that is not so.” He took her chin in his hand. “I admire your work tremendously, as I admire your intelligence and fortitude. Why else should I be so impatient to marry you?”

  He saw uncertainty in her eyes, the passage of thoughts she refused to consider because they were unworthy. No, Cordelia was no fool, but he knew how much she longed to be ordinary, accepted, safe in a life of domestic contentment that would erase the irregularities of her youth once and for all.

  “We will be happy, Cordelia,” he said. “We are perfectly suited. You will go on with your charitable ventures in complete freedom, and I will finally have the anchor I have lacked all these years.”

  She gazed up at him. Her lips parted. He bent to kiss her, and for a moment he thought she responded. But then her body grew rigid and she pushed him away gently, grasping his coat sleeves with her gloved hands.

  “You know that I care for you, Bennet,” she said. “But I’ve been in England less than a year. When I am settled—”

  “You will never be settled until you accept the life and position you were meant to have,” he said, suppressing his impatience. “And what of this girl you have taken in? You wrote that she came from a disadvantaged background but showed great potential for reformation with the appropriate training and influence. Would such an unfortunate not benefit from the example of a suitable marriage set before her?”

  Cordelia bit her lip. “Of course.” She sighed. “I have not been entirely honest with you about Ivy. You have not seen her since her arrival…”

  “No.” He studied her face. “What is it, Delia? What is this talk of dishonesty?”

  “I did not intend it,” she said. “I simply thought it would be easier to explain if you saw her as she is now, not as you remember her.”

  “You speak in riddles, my dear.”

  She met his gaze. “Very well. To put it bluntly, the girl I have taken in is the one who attempted to steal your purse in Covent Garden.”

  He stared at her, genuinely startled for the space of a heartbeat. “That street urchin?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “The tale is rather complicated. You see, the girl was in Covent Garden because Dr. Fleming had just rescued her from Seven Dials and brought her to his hotel beside the market.”

  “Seven Dials?” He shook his head. “You are saying that the girl and Fleming are connected?”

  “As peculiar as it seems, yes. Dr. Fleming came upon her in the rookeries while he was returning to his hotel from the Zoological Gardens.” She continued with an outlandish tale about Fleming taking the girl back to Yorkshire, where Cordelia had met her again when she’d gone to seek Fleming’s advice about her menagerie.

  “The girl was living with him?” Inglesham asked.

  She gave him a wary glance. “He tried to settle her with a local family, but she had run away from them on the day I arrived. That was when I discovered that Ivy was not at all what she had appeared to be in London. Dr. Fleming had been equally deceived. We had assumed her to be a child of no more than twelve years, but it soon became clear that she was a young woman…one who, at some time in her earlier life, had enjoyed a happier existence than the one she knew in Seven Dials.”

  “What sort of existence?”

  “Ivy professed no certain memories of her past save for a few scattered images, but her speech changed dramatically when I questioned her.” Cordelia’s eyes lit with enthusiasm. “She is of good breeding, Bennet. She must have been born to parents who saw to her early education and taught her decent behavior before some tragedy compelled her to live on the streets.”

  “Remarkable,” Inglesham murmured. “So naturally you saw it as your duty to restore the poor girl to something
of her former privilege.”

  “Yes. It is not as if I do not possess ample resources for such an undertaking. When you see her…” She smiled. “She is extraordinary…graceful and charming when she puts her mind to it. She will truly blossom with care and discipline.”

  Inglesham almost felt sorry for the girl. “You know nothing of her parents?”

  “Not yet, but I hope to conduct further inquiries in the near future.” She touched his arm. “As promising as she is, Ivy is still a bit wild. That is why Dr. Fleming’s presence is helpful. He was the first to win her trust, and she regards him as a friend.”

  “And you, Cordelia?” he said. “Do you also consider him a ‘friend,’ even though you pay his wages?”

  She stumbled a little, clearly taken aback by his abrupt change of subject. “I respect his skills, as I respect those of Croome or Priday or any one of our farmers. They are no less worthy simply because they must earn their livings.”

  They walked for a while without speaking, and Inglesham spent the time enumerating all the things that would change once they were married. Edgecott and its lands would come under his control, though Sir Geoffrey would continue to live in the house. The excess of servants Cordelia kept on out of her excessive beneficence would be pared down to a minimum so that their wages could be more suitably employed in paying off Inglesham’s gambling debts and financing future bets. Her menagerie would be sold to wealthy collectors, and improvements to the village and farms would be sharply curtailed.

  But none of that could occur until Cordelia accepted his proposal, which she had put off yet again. As ridiculous as it seemed, a country veterinarian had become a rival for Cordelia’s attention, and he must be got rid of as quickly as possible.

  As for the girl…

  “Ivy!” Cordelia said. Inglesham looked up to find that they had reached the house, and an apparition in pale blue satin was coming toward them on invisible feet that seemed to skim weightlessly over the ground.

  The girl stopped short when she saw Inglesham, and he had ample time to study her face. For a moment he couldn’t believe that this was the filthy urchin from Covent Garden. Cordelia’s warnings hadn’t been nearly sufficient to prepare him for the transformation.

  Ivy was a rare beauty, with creamy skin and silky black hair eminently suitable as a subject for poetry. Her figure, even hidden beneath corsets and voluminous skirts, was exquisite. Her blue eyes actually deserved the old saws about bottomless pools and azure skies.

  “Lord Inglesham,” Cordelia said, oblivious to his fascination, “this is Ivy. Ivy, Viscount Inglesham.”

  Inglesham strode forward and bowed with a theatrical flourish. “Miss Ivy,” he said. “I am delighted to meet you.”

  The girl’s brows drew together, and she clutched at something hung from a chain about her neck. “You…you are the man who wanted to send me to the rozzers,” she said.

  He laughed. “You were right, Cordelia. She is charming.” He gifted Ivy with his most persuasive smile. “You need have no fear of me, my dear,” he said. “I can see I made a mistake.”

  “Because I’m wearing pretty clothes and speak like a lady?”

  “Ivy!” Cordelia reproved.

  “No, don’t scold her,” Inglesham said. “She has every right to dislike me.” He dropped to one knee before Ivy. “My lady,” he said solemnly, “will you not forgive this foolish knight, and accept his service?”

  Ivy stared into his face. Her lips flirted with a smile. “Perhaps I will,” she said. She held out one hand and he took it in his, kissing the dainty fingers. He got to his feet.

  “Now that we are friends,” he said, “you must tell me all about your adventures and how you came to be at Edgecott,” he said.

  She glanced at Cordelia. “Cor…Mrs. Hardcastle must have told you,” she said.

  “Only a very small part of the story,” he said. “What is that you hold in your hand?”

  She looked down distractedly and opened the fingers that still clutched the end of the chain. An intricate, knotted design made of polished silver gleamed against her bodice. Inglesham had never seen its like before.

  But he had heard of it….

  “Cursed bitch had black hair—what you could see of it—and blue eyes.” Kemsley smacked his lips, swollen as they were, and his voice thickened with rage and thwarted lust. “B’God, she was an armful. Never thought she’d fight back…” He coughed and wiped blood from his mouth.

  “If you want her caught,” Inglesham said, “you’d better give me a better description. She probably lives close to the tavern where you found her.”

  “Aye.” Kemsley tried to sit up and moaned, falling back again. “Thought she was young when I first saw her…maybe fourteen. Up close I could see she was nearer eighteen. But still fresh enough.”

  Fresh enough, Inglesham thought, to suit a man who preferred his conquests barely out of childhood. “Were there any other distinguishing characteristics?”

  Kemsley cursed. “After I offered a generous sum to tup her, her voice changed. She spoke just like a lady, as if she’d been raised in Grosvenor Square. Can you credit it? She said ‘I’d rather share my bed with a hog.’”

  Inglesham doubted that the girl’s peculiarities of speech would lead him to her. “What did she wear?”

  “What do any of them wear? A dress. Mostly rags, but it fit in the right places. And she had a thing around her neck.”

  “What thing?”

  “A silver locket. No…a pendant. Shaped like one of them twisted Irish designs that has no beginning or end. It had a blue gem right in the middle of it.” His face paled, and his breath came short. “Not something a common drab would be wearing, but she defended it the way an abbess guards an untouched virgin in a bawdyhouse.”

  Inglesham rose from the bedside. “I’ll send for a physician, Kemsley. You stay in bed, and leave this female to me.”

  “See that you find her,” Kemsley said, breaking into another fit of coughing. “I’ll make her pay.”

  Inglesham snapped back to the present, knowing that only seconds had passed while he remembered his last conversation with his old friend and crony. He smiled at Ivy, murmured some compliment and moved away, still trying to make sense of the bizarre coincidence.

  He had never found the girl who had inexplicably done Kemsley so much damage, and Kemsley had never made her pay. He had died the next day of apoplexy…brought on, the physician claimed, as a result of injuries he had received in a brawl with opponents who had obviously been much larger and stronger than himself.

  Inglesham had accepted Kemsley’s death with mild regret and thought no more about the irregular circumstances of his demise. He certainly hadn’t connected the child in Covent Garden with Kemsley’s vague description of his assailant. If she’d been wearing the pendant, it hadn’t been visible.

  Now it was. And while it seemed possible that there were other black haired, blue-eyed girls of indeterminate age in London who had mastered both a rookery drawl and the refined accents of the educated and privileged, Inglesham doubted that any of them possessed jewelry of the precise type Kemsley had described on his deathbed.

  There was no proof, of course. The victim was dead, and even if he had lived, he would never have admitted to the authorities that a slip of a girl had hurt him so badly while he was engaged in less than respectable activities. Inglesham himself couldn’t imagine how Ivy, fine-boned and ethereal, could possibly have overcome so large and portly gentleman.

  Nevertheless, incredible as it all appeared, Inglesham had a strong suspicion that he might find Kemsley’s tale extremely useful in the very near future.

  He turned back to Ivy and Cordelia, who were conversing with a certain stiff formality as they waited for him to rejoin them.

  “I apologize, ladies,” he said. “I was momentarily distracted by thoughts of unfinished business.” He smiled at Ivy, who returned his smile with a subtly flirtatious lowering of dark lashes. He offered one arm
to her and the other to Cordelia, and together they went into the house.

  The evening meal was simple and hearty in the manner Cordelia generally preferred, lacking the finer touches Inglesham enjoyed at his own estate. Fleming failed to put in an appearance, so Inglesham amused himself by lavishing attention on Ivy under the pretext of offering recompense for his former poor judgment of her character.

  She responded with increasing interest, preening at his flattery like a sleek and self-satisfied cat. If she was as vicious as Kemsley claimed, she was certainly capable of wildly contradictory behavior. And though she plainly could adapt herself to any circumstance and had been clever enough to survive where many would not, she was also prey to a very common female weakness: her head could easily be turned by a resourceful gentleman’s charms.

  Not long after dinner Inglesham excused himself and strolled out to the stables. He found Gallagher smoking in the stable yard, chatting with the other grooms. Gallagher straightened and tossed the cigarette away when he saw Inglesham. The other men scattered.

  “We never did finish our conversation today, Gallagher,” Inglesham said, pulling a pair of cigars from a silver case tucked in his coat. “You were about to tell me something about Fleming.”

  Gallagher scratched his ill-shaven chin. “I don’t seem to recall, your lordship.”

  Inglesham offered a cigar to the groom, who took it quickly enough. “Allow me to remind you. You said that what he’d done with Boreas wasn’t normal. You said you’d been watching him, and that you knew ‘his kind’ in Ireland.” He struck a match and lit Gallagher’s cigar. “You never told me exactly what ‘kind’ he is.”

  Gallagher took a long pull on the cigar and shuffled his feet. “I…it’s somethin’ only an Irishman could understand, your lordship.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  “Well…” Gallagher looked right and left and hunched his head between his shoulders. “I’ve seen him talkin’ to the horses, me lord, as if they was people. They do things for him they won’t for anyone else, not even me.”