Clandestine Passion (The Lovelocks of London Book 2)

Catherine gazed out the window of the carriage. She thought she had managed it all as well as she possibly could. She had enough clothes, enough money. She had even sewn coins into her cloak to prevent pickpocketing if there was a crush getting on the boat. She would write to Mary, Harry, and Arabella once she had settled somewhere on the Continent. Likely deep in the countryside in Brittany, far from Paris, where she would be unlikely to see anyone she knew.

She would be in Dover tonight and Calais tomorrow.

She would have the child in the next four months and leave it in France with a wet nurse, a woman who would take money for caring for the baby. She would return to London and make sure Arabella had a good match. Once Arabella had wed, then and only then, she would return to France for the child. There would be whispers, of course, about the origin of her newly “adopted” offspring, but if Arabella were safely married, she could withstand that.

And she would leave James a clean and unhampered future. She owed him that. He would never know, and there would be no bastard to haunt him.

Or to make a future bride turn away from him.

She shuddered. She could not think on that hypothetical bride, that future Duchess of Middlewich, that virgin of the ton. That beauty unmarked by age, that innocence unstained by evil. How jealous she was already of that imaginary girl. That girl who would only know one lover in her life and it would be James. Jamie.

But no, she would not think on that girl. Or on James. Or on Roger and how she had killed him.

Despite her circumstances, a smile twitched at her lips. There were so many things she could not allow her mind to dwell on, she was surprised she had anything left she could think about without collapsing.

But she was Kate Cooksey, Catherine Cooke, Mrs. Edward Lovelock, and she was made of strong stuff. She would find new things to ponder.

As Kentish villages and meadows rolled by outside her carriage window, she conjured up the thoughts that she could use to occupy her mind. A future love-match for Arabella. Harry’s improving health and her mathematical ambition. Mary’s ongoing wish for children with her husband. And this child growing within her, this child that could not help but be beautiful since it was James’ child, too. She would surround this child with so much love that he or she would never miss a father.

She would think on these good things and she would close the door on that part of herself that had always been so intemperate, so difficult to control, so maddening. So prone to fornication and violence. So weak, so unable to make decisions that weren’t influenced by her desire. Yes, there had only been two men in her life who had brought that part of herself to the fore. But two was two too many.

And one was dead now. At her own hand.

She had lied to herself for so long, casting it as something apart from herself. It was her. Wholly her. But she had to believe she could still excise it.

From this time on, she would live as a nun, at least in respect to her desire. It was the only solution.

Besides Ophelia’s solution. And she would never undertake that. Never.

There would be no cold, dark water covering her over, smothering her breath, snatching her life away. She would die in bed of old-age, her hair silver, her face lined, her daughters and her future grandchildren around her.

James galloped up to Ffoulkes Manor. Something looked different but he couldn’t quite place it. He dismounted and ran up the steps to the front door. He pounded on it. No answer. He tried it. Locked.

He looked back at his horse, foamy with sweat, nibbling on some long grass on the side of the drive. That was what was changed. The grass was long, likely uncut the entire spring. Weeds were springing up through the gravel of the drive.

He went down the front steps and around the side of the house. Down a few steps, he found a door and forced it open. It was the servants’ entrance that led into a warren of rooms and passages, including a kitchen. There was a foul odor here—yes, the damp Enfield had mentioned last autumn but also something rotting. There was no one about.

He found stairs and climbed them.

“Catherine?” he called out.

He found the main front hall where he had carried her in, with her sprained ankle. The large main staircase where he had helped her both down and up.

“Catherine?”

He heard a noise. A plinking noise.

He went into the drawing room where he had drunk Madeira before dinner and played cards after dinner. It all seemed so long ago.

The room was desolate. The rugs were gone, as were the drapes. The sofas, the chairs, the mahogany tables for the cards—all gone.

Mysteriously, the pianoforte was still here. And Sir Francis Ffoulkes was sitting on the bench, head resting on the music shelf, playing the same note over and over again.

“Sir Francis!” James strode across the empty room to him.

Sir Francis raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot. His Titus curls were flat and greasy. He had aged perhaps ten years since James had last seen him.

“Good day.” He stayed seated and bowed from the waist. “I would stand but I would likely fall.” Indeed, he was visibly drunk. And James could smell alcohol from where he stood.

“Is Mrs. Lovelock here?”

“Mrs. Lovelock?” Sir Francis gazed at something invisible across the room.

“Yes.”

“There’s no one here. Except me.”

Thank God. But where else would Catherine go in Kent?

Sir Francis focused on James.

“You!” He tried to stand. “You. You killed Roger. My friend.” He collapsed back onto the pianoforte bench.

“He broke into my rooms and held a pistol on me, Sir Francis. I am surprised you would call such a man your friend.”

“Well, he was. I told him to go get the painting. I gave him the key and he went. And now he’s dead.”

Sir Francis had been behind Siddons’ invasion of James’ rooms. Why would Sir Francis care about the painting? Except that, of course, it was a painting of Catherine.

“How did you get a key to my rooms, Sir Francis?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Sir Francis waved his hand. “I got it from René, if you must know. He was going to pay me a lot of money for the plans. But you took the picture away and we had to get the plans back. I mean, I wanted the painting, too. Badly.”

René Dubois? The conversation he had heard at the modiste’s shop between the Marquis Dubois and Madame Beauchamp came flooding back to James. The bribing of the lady’s maids to get letters. Catherine’s lady’s maid must have been one of those being bribed. That is why so many of his letters had gone astray. Including his proposal of marriage. And, of course, one letter had contained a key to his rooms. And he had sent a letter to Catherine saying the painting was in his dressing room so that was why Siddons had known where to search. But why Catherine?

“What plans are these, Sir Francis?”

Sir Francis was silent.

“You said it didn’t matter, Sir Francis. Why don’t you tell me?”

Sir Francis leaned over and vomited on the floor. When he had finished and sat up again, James stepped forward.

“What were the plans for?”

Sir Francis raised a bottle to his lips and swigged. Swallowed. “An underwater ship. Madness. René has been after me for a year to get him the plans out of the Navy Board archive. I got the plans but . . .”

“But what?”

Sir Francis looked down at the pianoforte keyboard. “I saw all the marines in the courtyard, and I thought I might be searched when I tried to leave the courtyard. I went into the Royal Academy. It was the first Varnishing Day and there were artists everywhere . . .”

But not Roger Siddons. He had finished his painting twenty-seven years ago. No finishing touches for him.

Sir Francis went on. “And then I saw it, Roger’s painting. I knew he didn’t intend to sell it, so I thought I would put the plans behind the picture and when he took the picture home at the end of the Exhibition, I could get the plans back. And I wouldn’t get caught.”

“And so when I bought the painting, I took these plans.”

“Yes.”

James thought hard. When he and Catherine had taken the picture apart, they had found no plans.

“What did they look like, Sir Francis, the plans?”

“Oh, I folded them. They looked like folded papers. White papers. Long and thin.”

He had seen no papers.

“Sir Francis, Mrs. Lovelock has come into Kent today. Do you know why she would do that?”

“Kent is a beautiful place, Your Grace, as I am sure you are aware. Indeed, I will miss it.”

“I’m leaving, Sir Francis. Is there anyone here looking after you?”

“Just me, Your Grace. But you go on.”

James did. He unlocked the front door and came out and found his horse still nibbling at the grass. He took the horse around to the well outside the stable and pulled up several buckets of water for the horse that he put in a trough. He himself had several dippers of water as well. He was about to lead the horse back out to the front and let the horse graze again when he heard riders and a coach come up the drive. He tied his horse to the well and walked back to the front of the manse.

There were six riders. All armed with pistols. A coach. The riders dismounted and the coach door opened and a man came out. It was Mr. Bulverton. Just as he was about to go up the steps, he saw James and paused and waited.

“Your Grace.” Mr. Bulverton inclined his head as James came up to him.

The sound of a gunshot punctured the air. The dismounted riders who had been standing on the steps, waiting for Mr. Bulverton, immediately ran through the unlocked front door of the house. Mr. Bulverton and James followed.

Sir Francis Ffoulkes was found on the floor next to the pianoforte. A pistol was on the floor next to him. A bullet was in his brain. He was dead.

James sat on the grass in front of Ffoulkes Manor, hunched forward with his legs in front of him, knees up, elbows resting on his knees, forehead resting on his thumbs. His horse grazed nearby.

Mr. Bulverton came over and stood next to him. One of the riders brought over a small stool and Mr. Bulverton took a seat.

James said nothing.

“It’s been an odd business all along the way,” Mr. Bulverton said. “I set you onto Sir Francis Ffoulkes because of his association with the Marquis Dubois. And because I knew that he had overextended himself and was in debt and hence vulnerable.”

James squinted and looked up at Bulverton on his stool.

“Not because of Mrs. Lovelock?”

“Mrs. Lovelock? No, she is entirely incidental. And you’ll remember I asked you to watch Ffoulkes before you ever met Mrs. Lovelock.”

James thought. “That’s true.” But Mrs. Lovelock is not incidental to me.

“Indeed, if Ffoulkes had married Mrs. Lovelock, I might have halted surveillance of him because he would have had the money he needed. He would have been unlikely to do Dubois’ bidding.”

“But why would Dubois steal Cather—Mrs. Lovelock’s letters? Why would he want to know what I wrote to her?”

“He didn’t, Your Grace. He wanted to know what Ffoulkes wrote to her. The maid in question simply pilfered every letter she could get her hands on before it got to Mrs. Lovelock.”

“I don’t understand why Dubois would go to all this trouble for a set of plans for a ship.”

A rider brought a hamper basket over to Mr. Bulverton and set it down. Mr. Bulverton opened it and took out two glasses.

“Here.” He handed the two glasses to James. Mr. Bulverton took out a bottle of ale and uncorked it. He poured two foaming glasses and took one back from James and drank deeply. He wiped the foam from his lip. “Go on and drink, Your Grace.”

James drank.

“In fact, the strangest thing about all this is that the man who drew up the plans had been a painter when he was younger and actually shared a studio with Roger Siddons around the time he was painting Mrs. Lovelock’s, uh, portrait.” Mr. Bulverton drank more. “It seems that is, however unlikely, completely coincidental to this story. The man’s name was Robert Fulton. Have you heard of him?”

James shrugged. “No.” Mr. Bulverton poured them both more ale.

“An interesting man. American. Miniature painter who got interested in steam ships and canals. Was painting here but then went to Paris and built an underwater ship for Napoleon in eighteen hundred that worked. But Napoleon didn’t pay him so he took the ship apart for scrap. That was the Nautilus. Then he came over here to England in oh-four and the navy hired him to design another underwater ship. But when Nelson won Trafalgar, it was clear that the British Navy was so dominant, an underwater ship was deemed unnecessary and it was all given up and Fulton went home to America. He died there three years ago. The plans Fulton had drawn up for the British underwater ship were put into the archive at the Navy Board.”

“Why would Dubois want the plans for an underwater ship?”

“It is called a sub-marine. Quite clever, that.” Mr. Bulverton drank. “Why do you think, Your Grace?

“The war is over.”

“Yes.”

“So . . . ?”

“A ship that can be under water and invisible for a day or more at a time. A ship like that might be ideal to approach a heavily guarded yet isolated island that has four ships at all times patrolling it.”

“St. Helena’s?”

Mr. Bulverton said nothing but took a deep swig of ale.

“Dubois is a Bonapartist?”

Mr. Bulverton raised his eyebrows.

“Dubois means to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena’s?”

“Yes, Your Grace. That is my theory. I first got an inkling of what Dubois might be conniving at based on what you overheard at the modiste’s. Le veuf, you heard, correct?”

“Yes.”

“At first, I thought le veuf or ‘the widower’ referred to Sir Francis Ffoulkes. After all he had been recently widowed. But some more recent work on coded messages passed among Bonapartists taught us that the le veuf is a code name for Bonaparte.”

“But his wife still lives. Bonaparte’s, that is.”

“Yes, but his first wife, Josephine, the older woman he divorced because she could not provide heirs, the one he truly loved, she died while he was in exile on Elba. He would not come out of his room for two days after he heard the news. That is when the Bonapartists started calling him le veuf.”

An older woman he loved but whom he had abandoned because she couldn’t give him sons. No wonder Catherine had thought their love affair doomed from the start.

James cleared his throat. “You know that I burnt the painting, and I saw no plans.”

“I’m not surprised by that. It was an impromptu plan, and like most impromptu schemes, it failed. The sub-marine plans were just wedged into the frame at the back. They could have fallen out anytime. On the floor of the Great Hall, on the Strand as you carried the painting to your coach, in your coach itself, or—’

“—in my dressing room.”

“Yes, after learning this morning from you that you had bought a painting from the Royal Academy, an institution that shares a building with the Navy Board, and that the painting had been Siddons’ target, I sent someone to search your rooms before I set out for Kent. But I felt I could not wait to question Sir Francis. As you see, I had already waited too long.” Mr. Bulverton shrugged and poured more beer.

As he did that, James noted a ring on his left hand that had never been there before. “I feel badly about Sir Francis.”

“Yes, money is a devil of a thing, isn’t it?” Mr. Bulverton drank.

James lay back on the grass and watched some small white clouds scudding across the sky.

“I just wonder where Catherine has gone to.”

“Ah, Mrs. Lovelock. You don’t know?”

James sat up. “You know, Bulverton?”

“I know a great deal, of course. And yes, I know that.”

James got on his knees and grabbed the lapels of Mr. Bulverton’s well-patched coat.

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone to Dover, Your Grace. She plans to cross the channel to France.”