“Some of these girls are devilish pretty,” Chizzlewit observed mildly, “and High Flyers too. I wonder you aren’t susceptible. Has no lady ever touched your heart?”
“Lady?” Malverley returned contemptuously. “There is not a lady among the lot, thank Heaven! I have had my fill of your ladies. Give me a Barque any day, and I’ll sail her straight into harbour! The Muslin Company! Long may they prosper, and empty men’s purses!” He raised his glass in a mocking toast.
I wondered whether Chizzlewit had divined what he must do — whether my terse missive of the morning had been explicit enough. But I should not have doubted him; he was ever his grandfather’s heir. “Not all of these women are lowborn,” he said reasonably. “Miss Radcliffe, for example. Family’s devilish high in the instep. Some sort of relation of yours, is she not?”
For an instant, I feared Malverley might strike his friend. He stood rigid, his hands clenching about his wine glass so that the frail crystal stem snapped.
“I ought to draw your cork,” he said evenly as he tossed the shards of glass into the fire, “or demand satisfaction for such an insult, Sylvester — but we’ll agree that you’re foxed, and have no idea what you’re saying. Don’t ever mention that jade’s name in my presence, damn you.”
Chizzlewit reached behind him, and thrust open the door into the passage. Julia Radcliffe was outlined in candlelight, divinely fair and effortlessly tempting.
“Why should he not mention my name, Charles?” she enquired, her voice low. “Why should it be my name that distresses you so, when it was you who sullied it?”
“I!” he retorted, his countenance flaming. “Look at yourself, Julia! Always desperate to excite admiration — tormenting decent men with your looks, your bearing, your refusal to submit — but now the whole world knows you for what you are — what you always were: a whore. You may cut me direct in the middle of Hyde Park — you may refuse me admittance to Russell Square — you may flaunt your wares before every rogue in London — but the world should never reproach me for serving you a lesson. The world knows me to be right — for disciplining you, for teaching you conduct — for breaking you to bridle—”
The nastiness of the words was like a lash. I found that I had closed my eyes tight, so as to avoid the spectre of Malverley’s face, unmanned by passion, violent with hatred. But a sound brought my eyes flying open again. Julien, Comte d’Entraigues, stood between Julia Radcliffe and Charles Malverley with his hereditary sword unsheathed — and the point was at Malverley’s throat.
“Put it away, my son,” said a lazy voice behind him.
Chizzlewit moved to one side of the door, and Emmanuel d’Entraigues entered the room. Eliza was with him, her mask discarded.
“Mon dieu, ”Julien whispered. “These Austens!”
“I have nothing more to say to you,” Julia Radcliffe told Malverley. “You have insulted me in every possible way, from the first moment of our acquaintance. I say nothing of the outrage you visited upon my person; of the deplorable want of feeling and all decency you then exhibited, and forever after. In my infancy I knew you for a man to be feared— one whose honour is as hollow as his title. The world shall soon know you for a blackguard.”
“Fine words, Julia,” Malverley said, “but my world does not regard the calumnies of a doxy! You can do nothing to me!”
“I might accuse you of murder,” she returned quietly.
Malverley threw back his head and laughed.
“When that poor creature came to me last Monday night, and begged me to listen to her, I could not turn her away,” the Barque continued. “I knew your violence of old. She told me how you had made love to her — charming her in Paris, squiring and cajoling her — from a belief that her husband might be persuaded to pay you off. When you returned to England and discovered your mistake, you cut her utterly from your life.”
“A moving story,” Malverley said. “Would that I knew to whom you referred!”
“Princess Tscholikova. She showed me your letters.” Julia moved towards her cousin, her eyes fixed unflinchingly on his face, and Julien d’Entraigues let his sword fall to his side.
“She begged me to have nothing to do with you. She claimed that I was first in your heart — that you had abandoned her love for pursuit of me — and I laughed in her face. I knew, as Tscholikova could not, why you were in Paris — where no proper Englishman should be in these days, paying court to Buonaparte. I knew why you were banished from Oxford in your final year — why your father the Earl nearly cut you off without a cent. Because you had tampered with me. Because you had got me with child.”
“I was sent off in disgrace, my cunning jade, because you refused to marry as your father bid,” Malverley shot back through bitten lips.
“I should sooner have died — and very nearly did die, rather than accept Tanborough charity. Thank God I may still command my own fortune; it is a preservative against torture.”
Malverley moved, swift as an adder, and struck her a vicious blow across the cheek. Her head snapped sideways with such violence I thought her neck must have been broken, but she did not utter a sound.
“Is that how you served your mistress?” she asked steadily, her palm nursing her cheek. “Is that how you killed Tscholikova?”
“Julia,” said the old Comte d’Entraigues warningly.
“I will not be silenced — and never by you,” she exclaimed, rounding on the Frenchman. “You promised to escort her, drunk with sorrow and self-pity as she was, back to Hans Town — and you carried her instead to Berkeley Square!”
D’Entraigues smiled faintly. “That was a matter of politics,” he said. “I have never loved Lord Castlereagh — he would see me ruined if he could— and my loyalties are wholly Mr. Canning’s. Somewhere between Russell Square and Hans Town I saw my way clear to rendering George Canning a service — a way to ensure Castlereagh should never enter the Regent’s Cabinet. And so, yes, I gave way to politics. I left her on his doorstep, with her precious box of letters by her side. I thought it might amuse the oh-so-respectable Viscount to learn that he was betrayed to the Post by his own secretary — by that godlike young man for whom Lord Castlereagh has conceived, shall we say, a less than decent passion—”
“That is a lie,” Malverley choked. “By God, sir, if I could get near you—”
“But my son has a sword, voyez-vous,” d’Entraigues observed, “and this is not yet the night when my throat shall be slit. As no doubt you slit the poor Princess’s.”
Malverley’s eyes widened. “Upon my honour, I did not!”
D’Entraigues shrugged. “Your honour is not worth a sou in this room, monsieur. The Princess yet breathed when I left her at your door. She was found, perhaps a quarter-hour later, her ragged throat wet with blood. You alone were awake, of all the household. What is one to think, mon vieux? That she killed herself?”
Malverley looked wildly around the room. “Sylvester!” he cried. “Youknow I should never — that I am innocent! For the love of Christ, man — tell them how it was!”
Sylvester Chizzlewit did not reply, but put his back to the doors.
Quite near me, behind the protective shield of the drape, Bill Skroggs shifted restlessly in hiding, on the point, as I guessed, of springing his trap — and taking Malverley in bonds.
I thrust aside the drapery, and looked out at the astonished faces before me.