Radiance (Diamonds of the First Water #3)

Chapter Thirteen

A knock sounded as Edward drank coffee in his parlor. Setting down the newspaper, he wandered into the front hall, looking along the passageway and up the staircase, but his housekeeper wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Again!

With a shrug, he opened the door.

“Lady Radiance!” He wished his tone hadn’t been so welcoming. He also would have preferred Mrs. McSabby had answered the door in his place.

“If you ever decide to stop being a geologist,” the lady said, “you will make an exceptional butler. So very prompt. Although I’ve never had a butler, nor anyone for that matter, come to the door with a cup in hand.”

Edward nearly sloshed his coffee over the rim. He had forgotten entirely about it. Even as he backed up a step to allow her entrance, he couldn’t help admonishing her.

“Where is your useless, book-reading maid? And why have you come uninvited? Again!”

“I wish to go with you to meet the man in jail. Why wouldn’t I? It’s not often one meets a master forger. And Sarah is in my carriage.”

“I thought he was ‘poor Mr. Minton,’ the scapegoat.” Edward let her follow him into his parlor, where he refilled his cup from a silver coffee pot. Then belatedly recalled how one treated a guest.

“Would you like a cup of coffee? Or tea?” If he found Mrs. McSabby, she could brew a good pot of tea, couldn’t she? He had no idea since he never drank it.

“No, thank you. I am simply glad I caught you before you left.”

“Hm.” Edward supposed there was no harm in her going. “I did tell you I would let you know if I learned anything.”

“Indeed, but that is not nearly as efficient as using my own ears and eyes.”

Monty appeared and ambled over to brush around her legs. To Edward’s surprise, Lady Radiance stripped off one glove. When she bent low to stroke him, her bare hand running through his cat’s fur, Edward had a visceral reaction that caught him by surprise.

With his groin pulsing and his blood coursing swiftly enough to make him perspire, he was ready to forbid her to accompany him. Yet his words came out as acquiescence.

“Very well. You may come, and yes, before you ask, I suppose we can take your carriage.” He set down his cup, still shocked by his body’s sudden awakening.

Lady Radiance nodded. “Thank you. But you must put on a coat, or we shall look an odd pair. I imagine my father wouldn’t be pleased to know I accompanied a man in such a state of undress.”

Edward glanced down. “Good God!” He had conversed with her in only his shirt-sleeves, as if they were lovers. “Give me five minutes.”

With that, he sprinted from the room and up the stairs. If he was going to start entertaining callers, he had better get entirely dressed in the mornings before he left his bedroom. He was letting himself become a little too slovenly in his own home.

Lady Radiance had seen him in such a casual state without need of smelling salts. He smiled to himself, imagining what it would be like if they were a couple. So far, he had thoroughly enjoyed their interactions, and each time he saw her, he felt his interest growing.

But the physical part of him that had also grown in her proximity gave him pause until he considered how long it had been since he’d paid for an evening with Miss Maura. Normally, if he was in London, no more than a fortnight at the longest went by between visits with his favorite courtesan. By the second week, she kept popping into his thoughts until he hailed a cab and headed over to where she kept an expensive suite at Brown’s Hotel on Dover Street.

In truth, he was slaking his lust above his means, for she counted the Duke of Argyll among her admirers. But Maura charged him the knave’s rate. As she explained it, she enjoyed Edward’s company both in and out of bed. Due to all that was going on in his life, he hadn’t even missed the pleasure of his paramour.

With Lady Radiance below, Edward shrugged into the first jacket that he pulled from his armoire. Realizing it was an evening tailcoat, he yanked it off and threw it onto the bed before finding a more suitable replacement. A worsted-wool, gray frock coat.

As he descended the stairs, he hoped his appearance met with her approval. He could easily picture her on his arm, promenading around Hyde Park — or under him on his white sheets, her hair like a shower of rubies around her. He shook his head.

“Steady, man,” he muttered.

“Perfect,” Lady Radiance pronounced when he reentered his parlor, still trying not to think of her naked in his bed. Blinking up at him, she asked, “Is it time to go?”

Again, he felt the sensation of being on a swing as a child. He would swear his stomach flipped.

“I am expected any time before noon,” he told her.

“That’s grand. I am so very glad I caught you.”

He nearly said, “As am I.” In truth, he would have been as content to go by himself, merely for the reason he could maintain more focus without the distraction that a beautiful woman caused, particularly one who smelled like sunshine.

Where had that stupidly fanciful notion come from?

“Shall we go, my lady?” And feeling a little foolish, he opened his front door precisely like a butler and gestured for her to lead the way to her father’s carriage.

When they entered, her maid didn’t even look up. Didn’t Lady Radiance’s parents know how inadequate the maid Sarah was as a protector of their daughter’s innocence?

“How is it that you are allowed such freedom?” he asked.

“Freedom, sir?” Lady Radiance parroted, looking bemused. “What can you mean?”

“To be out and about with merely a maid, who is not considered an adequate defender of your virtue in the best of cases. And this one ...” Edward didn’t finish his sentence despite thinking he could say anything concerning the young woman in question without her even noticing he was speaking about her.

“What are you reading?” he asked, feeling irritated on Lady Radiance’s behalf.

The maid didn’t answer but simply turned another page.

Lady Radiance sighed. “Sarah is blazing her way through Mr. Reynold’s The Mysteries of London . Thus, I’m sure you can understand why she is so absorbed.”

“I haven’t read it,” he confessed.

“Not even when it was serialized?” Lady Radiance asked.

“Not even then.”

When the maid gasped, Edward felt as if he’d committed a sin. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

At this, the previously silent Sarah finally uttered a few choice words. “Because it’s bloody wonderful!”

As Lady Radiance began to laugh, the maid hunched over the book once again and returned to ignoring the outside world. Perhaps if his lot in life were to follow around someone without participating in anything that person did, then he would lose himself in a novel, too.

Fortunately, he usually found his life stimulating enough that a fictional world held no interest.

“Sarah is correct,” Lady Radiance said, “albeit a little crudely expressed. It is an intriguing collection of stories.”

“I shall get to it one day.” When he was old and gray and no longer had vision enough to see deep inside the crystalline structure of a stone, then he would have Reynolds read to him to keep his mind active.

For a moment or two, he imagined Lady Radiance in that position, seated beside him on a comfortable sofa, reading to him while he watched her lovely mouth form the words and listened to her lilting tones tell him a story.

Yes, that was a nice old age to which he wouldn’t mind looking forward.

“Did you, sir?”

Edward realized she had asked him something. Should he pretend he’d been listening and not fantasizing about her as his mate, or should he admit to not knowing the question?

“I beg your pardon, but I was thinking about our errand and missed your last query.”

“That’s quite all right,” she said. “I confess I, too, have been preoccupied by the notion of a skillful counterfeiter stealing the Queen’s jewels. What I asked before was whether you knew Mr. Minton beforehand or ever had dealings with him. After all, everyone keeps saying the jewelers’ community is a small one.”

“His name is unfamiliar to me.”

Lady Radiance was so full of surprises that Edward half expected her to say she knew the man. However, she simply gave a ladylike lift to one shoulder and a tilt of her head.

And then the earl’s comfortable carriage came to a halt.

“I guess we shall meet the man together,” he said and exited the carriage. Yet when he turned to offer his hand, she paused and looked up. The forbidding granite edifice stretched in either direction from the corner of Newgate and Old Bailey Streets and rose over their heads with three stories of heavy stonework.

“I confess this is not a place I ever thought to come,” she said softly. “While I understand the deterrence factor of a public execution, personally, I do not need such spectacle in order to maintain an honest life.”

Edward was glad Lady Radiance was with him after all when the chief warder treated them civilly upon finding out he was in the presence of Lord Diamond’s daughter. Moreover, instead of having to meet Minton in the common room where most of the male prisoners lived and ate together, they were told they could await him in a room near the prison’s entrance.

“Does everything go smoothly for you?” Edward couldn’t help asking her while they waited.

“I have no idea what you mean,” she responded, but her small, satisfied smile indicated she did know.

And then the door opened, and a most unlikely perpetrator entered. Older than Edward had expected, James Minton was escorted by a guard, who after a look around the room, stepped back outside.

“You’ve come from the Palace,” the man said.

Edward shook his head. “Why, no. What makes you think so?”

Mr. Minton shrugged. “’Tis always the Palace. Cajoling or bribing or threatening me. But they’ve never sent a woman before.”

“Good day, Mr. Minton. I am Lady Radiance.”

“Are you, now?” But Minton’s tone was flat.

Edward hoped the man wasn’t going to be rude. But the jeweler cocked his head and said, “A fitting name for a radiant young lady. What can I do for you? If I had my work bench and tools, I would make you a pretty necklace, indeed.”

Then Mr. Minton started to cough and looked longingly at the chairs.

“Please, sit,” Lady Radiance invited and took a seat, so the older man could, too. Edward remained standing where he was.

“Are you ill?” she asked.

Mr. Minton shrugged. “I have felt better.”

Edward didn’t want Lady Radiance to start feeling pity for the man who may have ruined the royal brooch and still had in his possession a precious sapphire, squirreled away somewhere.

“Do you still maintain you are innocent?” Edward demanded.

“I knew you were from the Palace,” Mr. Minton grumbled. “I maintain I am innocent and shall do so until Kingdom-come because I am! I would scold you both for wasting my time, but it is better to be in here than out there. I don’t suppose you could ask the guard for a pint of ale.” He folded his hands on the table and looked hopeful.

Edward sighed. “I think that is highly unlikely.” Wanting to return the conversation to the matter at hand, he asked, “What was your defense in court?”

“Young man, it is extremely difficult to prove one did not do a thing. I could only say that I cleaned the brooch, which I did. No one disputes that fact. They said the sapphire was no longer a sapphire. I wasn’t allowed to examine it. Again, all I know is that I cleaned Her Majesty’s brooch. For doing so, I was convicted of falsifying a gemstone. How does one prove the absence of an action?”

“May I ask a question?” Lady Radiance began.

Edward liked her polite yet firm way of speaking and nodded to her to begin.