Prince Of Secrets

He shook his head sadly. ‘Alas, no.’

He did not tell her that it was not the name he had originally known Cobie by, and which it was difficult for him not to use. ‘A family name, I believe.’

‘Ah, but what family?’ retorted Dinah naughtily, and then relented. ‘I mustn’t tease you, must I. Besides, Sir Ratcliffe is coming, and I must put on my best face for him, and do nothing to encourage him in any way.’

Which was difficult, for he had taken to pursuing Dinah Grant, and she could see his wife, old before her time, standing before the tall windows, the late afternoon light cruel on her face. She had not worn as well as her husband and the twenty years of her unhappy married life were written harshly on her features.

Pity for her made Dinah a little abrupt with her husband. Mr Van Deusen had melted away on his arrival, leaving her to cope with him alone. He was sure that she could.

‘And who the devil’s he that he should be here?’ uttered Sir Ratcliffe peremptorily, staring after him. ‘Any idea, Lady Di?’

She disliked her name being shortened, and said a little frostily, ‘He’s a friend of my husband, and beside that he is known to the American Envoy and, I believe, to Lord Kenilworth. Something to do with a trade mission to the United States a few years ago. Lord Kenilworth met him then.’

‘Pity we have to deal with such upstarts,’ sighed Sir Ratcliffe, forgetting that Dinah was married to one of them.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ agreed Dinah smartly. ‘And what a pity that they’re so rich that we’re happy to marry them—for their dollars, of course.’

Sir Ratcliffe, remembering that Dinah was reputed to have done just that, said kindly, ‘Much better if we could have their dollars without their presence, haw, haw!’

‘One must pay something for benefits received,’ Dinah sighed back at him. ‘After all, I doubt whether I should be here at all if I hadn’t married my husband. Think what I should have missed.’

Now this was all as two-faced as any of her husband’s conversations, seeing that she wasn’t at all sure that taking part in the social round was any kind of benefit at all. The real benefits of her marriage could hardly be discussed with Sir Ratcliffe.

‘Oh, indeed,’ he drawled back at her, thinking that she was wittier than Violet, and much less of a shrew into the bargain. Susanna was beginning to pall: she was too clinging, and an affaire with Grant’s wife would be one in the eye for Grant and no mistake. He was reputed to make free with other men’s wives rather than provide his own for their use.

‘I see that you take after your sister, Lady Dinah—in more ways than one, I hope,’ and he looked at her with the light of hopeful conquest in his eye.

Fortunately, Cobie, not liking to see his wife so much as speak to Sir Ratcliffe, came over to them, excused them both and led her out of the Hall down yet another long corridor. His conversation, apparently aimless, was far from being so.

‘Markendale is an architectural monstrosity,’ he said idly. ‘I have been talking to Lord Kenilworth’s land agent, and he has been showing me the plans of the building. It is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The wing we are all housed in is comparatively new, built during the last fifty years to accommodate the last Lord Kenilworth’s guests. Like the present one he had the reputation of being a great host, and his wife a great hostess. The present pair are trying to outdo them. They would be hard put to build such a puzzle as the new wing where stairs lead anywhere but where you might expect.’

Dinah nodded. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that one might get lost, and be found years later as a skeleton on some landing no one has thought to visit. Ought I to carry a cord with me, like Theseus in the Labyrinth, do you think, to keep me from such a sad fate?’

He nodded lazily, handed her through a glass door and walked with her into the gardens, turning at the end of a long alley to look back at the Hall.

He pointed to a window on the first floor. ‘I calculate that we are housed over there.’

A balcony ran the full length of the house, saved only from spoiling its lines by the presence of a flat roof below it where an orangery had been built on to its side by the present Lord Kenilworth.

‘Should you like to live here?’ Dinah queried

Cobie shook his head. ‘Not my style,’ he said decisively.

Dinah wondered what his style was. Presently they turned away to stroll down to the lake where a folly in the form of a Grecian temple stood, and where Cobie had ordered his sketch-book, pencils and water-colours, and Dinah’s canvas-work, to be left.

‘I thought that you might appreciate a little time on your own,’ he told her, beginning to draw the idyllic scene before them. ‘The next few days promise to be hectic, what with the races in the day, ceremonial dinners and equally ceremonial card-playing at night. We shall all be expected to join in.’

Dinah did appreciate a little time to herself. She took out her tapestry and began to stitch. Presently Cobie rose and picked up his sketch-book. ‘You will excuse me, I know. I have a mind to draw the house in the background,’ he said, and walked away.

She watched him until he disappeared from sight before resuming her work. He was aware of her gaze on him, but it was to escape it that he had left her. He stopped when the house lay plain before him, and he began to draw it carefully…but not because of its aesthetic interest. He took from his pocket the internal plan of the wing where all the guests were accommodated, and which he had drawn from memory after Kenilworth’s land agent had shown it to him earlier.

Sir Ratcliffe’s bedroom was there, three windows away from his own, accessible both from the ground by way of the orangery roof and the balcony, and by the balcony from his own bedroom.

Cobie began to turn plans over in his mind.

He was still turning them over that evening when, to escape from everyone, he left the vast drawing room where tables had been set out for baccarat to be played when the Prince so ordered. He wandered into a dimly lit octagonal room, known as The Cabinet which had one window looking out on the gardens. The other walls were covered with cases of dead butterflies, pinned down in all their fragile glory.

Another guest was inspecting them desultorily through her lorgnette: she was Lady Heneage.

Cobie bowed, and began to retire. ‘I had not meant to interrupt you.’

‘No matter,’ she said, almost curtly. ‘I would value your opinion on these,’ and she waved her hand at the cases.

She was beautifully dressed, and was wearing the famous Heneage diamonds, a necklace, ear rings, two rings, and a brooch. Far from enhancing her, they added in some odd way to her insignificance—the most important thing about her being them, and them only.

‘Oh, I can have no opinion on such things,’ he said coolly. ‘I am not qualified to judge.’

Her sad face broke into a watery smile, ‘Which means, I think, that you do not like them.’

Because Cobie thought that, like him, she didn’t, he murmured, truthfully for once, ‘Admiring scenes of carnage is not one of my favourite occupations, Lady Heneage.’

She took his point, and nodded slowly, saying, ‘You have a way with words, Mr Grant. I have been listening to you. Do you admire my diamonds more? I hear that you have been investing in them.’

Neither was she a fool, although many thought her so.

‘A Heneage heirloom, I understand. Always owned and worn by the current Lady Heneage. They are extremely beautiful, without a flaw. If they were to come upon the market I think that the price they would fetch would be little less than astronomical.’

She made a savage gesture with her hand. ‘That is nothing to me. They are a brand I wear, nothing more. A millstone around my neck, Mr Grant. I wish them at the bottom of the sea. Do I shock you?’

He pitied her.

There was something so forlorn and lost about her. Her husband was busy chasing someone else’s wife—perhaps his own—whilst his wife, whose fortune gossip said that he had thrown away on the gaming tables, walked alone and unhappy.

‘No,’ he said gently. ‘But I should tell you that very little does.’

‘I thought not. Look after your wife, Mr Grant. Protect her from the wolves—which you are well able to do, being one yourself. You see I am being frank with you. I was once like her, until I married. Leave me, please. I grow maudlin. I know that you will say nothing of this to my husband. He dislikes you intensely. Perhaps that is why I like you. What he dislikes must be worth knowing.’

Cobie took the hand which lay lax at her side, lifted it and kissed it. ‘To say that you have my deepest sympathy would be presumptuous, Lady Heneage. I thank you for your interest in my wife. If there is ever anything I can do for you…’

She interrupted him. ‘No one can do anything for me. I married him with, as I then thought, my eyes open. But a young woman’s knowledge of life is limited. One pays for that, Mr Grant, more bitterly than one deserves.’

Oh, yes, he knew that to be true, none better. He thought of the dreadful price which he had once paid for innocence, and pitied her the more. He said nothing further, merely bowed again, and left her staring at the holocaust of damaged beauty which gathered dust upon the walls of a little-visited room.

The Prince was one of the bankers at baccarat, Cobie found when he returned to the drawing room. He was using his own cards and counters fashioned from red leather with his Prince of Wales feathers on one side and the denomination on the other. The counters were worth from five shillings to ten pounds. The game was played as solemnly as though they were at a casino—to the shock of some of the party who were strait-laced.

Sir Ratcliffe was winning consistently. His luck was in these days, he proclaimed jovially. He had backed the favourite that afternoon and it had romped home. He helped Susanna, who sat beside him, and who had never played before. She won quite a large sum, too.

Cobie, watching him carefully, was not sure how much luck had to do with it, but never mind, he thought that Sir Ratcliffe’s luck was soon going to change for the worse in other areas of his life.