Becket's Last Stand

“Which, counting to eight on my fingers, leaves Court, and you,” Mariah said, nodding her head. “Oh where or where will you go? I imagine Ainsley assumes you’ll go where he goes. But will Court be equally happy to go there, as well? Especially when offered the opportunity to at last rid himself of his shadow?”

“I’m not his shadow!” Cassandra said, knowing that wasn’t true.

“Ah, Callie,” Julia said, leaning over to kiss Cassandra’s cheek. “You’ve been nowhere but here. You know so little of life, of men. And you’re young, too young to be thinking of marriage to anyone.”

Cassandra looked above the fireplace, at the portrait of her mother. “Mama wasn’t any older than me when she married Papa. He was at least a dozen years her senior. I know, because Court told me.”

“And now we’ll tell you something you already know,” Julia added quietly. “Court sees you as his sister. Perhaps, some day, he’ll change his mind, see what the rest of us see. But not now. There’s too much going on now, with Beales out there somewhere. This isn’t…this isn’t a happy time. Truly the wrong time.”

“But it has to be now, Julia, don’t you see?” Cassandra explained tightly. “Edmund Beales will be gone soon, out of our lives, and everyone will scatter to the four winds, I just know it. We won’t all be held here anymore, in this limbo Odette calls our lives all these years. If Papa leaves—if Court and I end up on opposite sides of the ocean before he admits to himself that he can’t live without me? What will I do? Whatever will I do?”

Morgan’s voice came at them from the doorway. “Oh, alas. Alas and alack! What will I do? Whatever will I do? Poor Court, poor me!” She crossed the room in her usual graceful, long-legged strides, a raven-haired beauty of lush proportions, and then plopped herself down next to Julia. “Callie, I never thought you were such a dolt. You want him, then you go get him, that’s what you do.”

“That’s what you’d do, Morgan. Oh, wait, that’s what you did, isn’t it? Poor Ethan is still trying to figure out what happened,” Julia said, laughing.

“I crossed an ocean to get to Spence,” Mariah said. “Of course, I mostly wanted to box his ears for him, but that’s neither here nor there, is it?”

“The whys don’t matter,” Morgan said, rubbing her hands together, clearly eager to enter into a conspiracy. “It’s the how we’re concerned with, if Callie really wants to bring Court to heel.”

“Yes, how? I’ve tried almost everything, and he still refuses to think of me as anything but a baby,” Cassandra asked, leaning forward on the couch.

“True, true. And you’re all grown-up now, aren’t you? We just need Court to finally accept that delightful change. This might take some serious thinking, although I am already entertaining one possible idea, and it will take our minds off this tense waiting, waiting for Beales to show himself,” Morgan said, reaching for the depleted sugar treats in the candy dish. “Ladies? Can we please entertain suggestions from the floor? You start, Julia. I’ll leave my idea for last.”

“And, knowing you, Morgan, that’s probably a good thing,” Julia said, looking at Mariah and winking. “It will at least delay, if not spare our blushes.”

Cassandra looked to the other women, one by one. “You think I could do that?” she asked, her heart pounding.

“Do what?” Morgan asked innocently, popping a sugar treat into her mouth.

“Seduce him, of course. That is what you’re suggesting, isn’t it?” Cassandra asked, and then waited while Mariah slapped Morgan’s back, to help dislodge the candy stuck in her throat.

“Ah,” Julia said, sighing theatrically. “Our little girl is all grown-up now, isn’t she? This should help divert our minds from worries over Edmund Beales.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOUR PARDON, SIR? Sir Horatio Lewis and Mr. Francis Roberts to see you, sir.”

Edmund Beales did not look up from the papers on his desk, aware that the men were standing just inside the door, but perversely refusing to acknowledge that fact. “Thank you, Walters. Please keep them waiting. A half hour should be sufficient to depress their any remaining pretensions.”

“Uh…um…sir? That is, they’re…here.”

Beales smiled, swiveling on his chair to look at the two men who, although they were not standing there, hats in hand like supplicants, were in fact only minus the hats. Their joint demeanor was that of inferiors come begging…most probably for their miserable, pathetic small lives.

“How utterly tactless of me. Gentlemen, do come in.” Beales did not rise from behind his desk. Nor did he offer his hand other than to wave rather languidly in the direction of the two deliberately placed uncomfortable chairs facing the massive desk that had once graced one of Bonaparte’s many residences. Not that the man had much need of such a glorious piece of furniture now, freezing his skinny shanks on the rocks of Saint Helena.

He’d had the desk shipped to his new mansion in Portland Square, along with other treasures he’d collected over the past two decades, leaving behind in Paris the few pieces “collected” during his privateering days he had deemed impressive enough to keep. He hadn’t been much interested in collecting chairs, or rugs, or other furnishings all those years ago, the way Geoff had been. An oversight, one he regretted now, but there was nothing that couldn’t be corrected with ample infusions of money, of which he had more than a sufficient amount.

Still, the Emperor Napoleon’s desk? That was rather a coup. Perhaps he should have a brass plaque attached to it, so that all could know of his prize. Ah, but that would be the old Edmund Beales, and spoke too much of flash and dash. Today he was a solid citizen, sober and earnest and… “Oh, for the love of heaven, gentlemen, sit down. I’m not going to bite.”

Sir Horatio was the first to speak, but not until he had squirmed uncomfortably in his chair, as if doing his best to avoid a tack someone had placed there to poke at his enormous backside. “We, um, we didn’t know you’d be returning, Mr. Beatty. Your departure two years ago—is it two years now?— well, it was rather precipitous, wasn’t it? And…and so soon after poor Rowley disappeared. His house burning down like that, his dear wife fleeing to the country, seemingly to bury herself there, as yet to return to society.”

“This cheers you?”

“Rowley disappearing?” Mr. Roberts asked rather incredulously, and then winced, as if sorry he had spoken, drawn attention to himself. “Not that we don’t know where he went to, not with Horatio here working at the Admiralty. Died just a few weeks ago, you know. Hanged himself in his cell, poor bastard.”

“Hell of an end for a man with so much ambition,” Sir Horatio said, touching his hand to his neck cloth.

Beales nodded, assuming a woebegone expression. “Yes, yes, shall we all drink a toast to the memory of the dear Earl of Chelfham, who destroyed a most profitable enterprise for us all with his stupidity and greed. Who is to say if the ending of the war wouldn’t have been different if the Red Men Gang had been able to keep up its guinea runs these past years. Not being able to pay his soldiers was not the greatest of our friend Bonaparte’s problems, but it certainly had an impact. Although we’ve all learned a valuable lesson, haven’t we, gentlemen?”

“Not to back the wrong horse,” Mr. Roberts said, and then once again bit his lips together, as if regretting his words.

“Yes, that, as well,” Beales agreed, smiling thinly. “But I was referring to Lord Chelfham’s belief that he could hoodwink me, try to steal from me. From me, gentlemen—can you imagine? I only regret being unable to get to him sooner, ease the pain of his incarceration and his guilt over his betrayal of the rest of us. But when at last the opportunity presented itself, I made certain it was a stout rope. Do you think he was grateful for the time, effort, and considerable expense I incurred having someone insinuated into his lordship’s plush prison? I’ve wondered about that, or if he still thought his pitiful life worth living. And yet, I feel I owe the man something for the services he did render me in the past, which is why you are here. Gentlemen? Some wine?”

“I’ll get us some,” Mr. Roberts volunteered, jumping up from his chair to play at servant. “Over there, yes?” he asked, pointing to the lavish drinks table set up in one corner of the large study.

“Ah, Francis,” Beales purred, placing a few small dark green leaves between his teeth and cheek. “Still the master of the obvious, I see. None for me, thank you. I long ago found my own way to paradise.”

Beales chewed on the coca leaves, releasing their invigorating, mind-expanding juices as he watched Francis Roberts pull the lead crystal stopper from the decanter and then fill two glasses, spilling only a few drops in his nervousness. Once the gentlemen had been served and Roberts was back in his chair, a careful, two- handed grip on the fragile glass, he said, “And so, delighted as I am to see you both again, I’m afraid this meeting of ours is not purely social. There is—”

“Mr. Beatty?” Sir Horatio cut in, raising his hand like some slow-witted student unable to understand the simplicity of two plus two. “You don’t mean to take up where, well, where we left off when our smuggling enterprise was so sadly compromised? With Bonaparte gone for good now, there really is no reason, unless you wish to begin trading in brandy and silks and such, rather than gold guineas.”

“No, no, never return to the same well once it has gone dry, Sir Horatio,” Beales agreed, inwardly wishing to wring the idiot’s fat neck for daring to interrupt him. Ah, well, he wouldn’t need the man much longer. “I am sufficiently well situated, for the moment, monetarily, and can only hope the same for you both. I do, as I’ve already alluded to, have this one small, niggling problem standing between me and a happy existence here in London.”

Francis Roberts must have seen this as his cue, for he sat forward on his chair, his hands gripping the wooden arm rails. “Whatever you need, Mr. Beatty, sir, consider it already done.”

Fools rush in, Beales thought, blessing the gods for peopling the earth with so very many of them ripe for the picking.

“Why, thank you, Francis. That’s so kind in you. I’m quite touched, truly. Almost as if I don’t hold both the rather large mortgages on your estate. And you, Horatio? Are you likewise amenable?”

“Oh, yes, yes indeed. Anything I can do to be of service, as always.”

Beales watched as the man flushed uncomfortably. No need to mention the sword of Damocles he held over Sir Horatio’s head. After all, whose business was it if a man wished to keep his lover in a picturesque cottage near Bath? Even if that lover of such long- standing is one’s own nephew—a young man also in the employ of the so-discreet Edmund Beales?

Knowledge. Power. Knowledge was power. And Edmund Beales did so appreciate both.

“Very well,” Beales said after the silence in the room had grown, at least for his two visitors, decidedly tense. “First, for reasons my own, I am, for the nonce, no longer Nathanial Beatty. Erase, if you please, that name from your memories. In fact, erase me from your memories. Both for only a small space of time, but until I give you permission, you do not know me, have never met me. Understood?”

Francis Roberts actually began to smile, as if just given a gift from above, but quickly covered his mouth and coughed into his fist. Obviously not quite as stupid as he looked, Beales thought. He might keep him.

“Then what will we call you?”

Beales looked at Sir Horatio from beneath heavy eyelids. Him he most definitely would not keep. The man was a stepping stone into the rarefied society of Mayfair, as were all the others, but his usefulness would end soon.

“You will not call me anything, Horatio, for you will not know me,” Beales explained as he would to a child. “You will see me on the street and nod your head in passing as you would to any gentleman you encounter, but that is all. Are we understanding each other now, or shall I write it down for you, have you memorize it and then recite to me tomorrow, so I can be certain you have taken such complex information into your brainbox, hmm?”

“No, sir,” Sir Horatio said, looking into his empty wineglass as if wishing it full again.

“Very well. Now, if we may proceed with my crisis of conscience?” Beales picked up a piece of paper from his desk, turned it about and slid it across the surface toward Roberts, the smarter of the two men, if it was possible to differentiate between Dumb and Obtuse.