CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Charles looked up when he heard steps in the hallway and then the door opened and Kate was in Bradford ’s drawing room, throwing off her shawl and looking eagerly around.

“Where is he?” she demanded, breathless. “Charles, where’s Patrick?”

“Not here yet, my dear,” Charles said, folding the Sporting Times and putting it aside. “I’m glad you could get away tonight. I was afraid it might not be convenient for you to-”

“He is coming, isn’t he?” Kate interrupted, almost frantic. “You said he would be here, Charles! But it’s so late for a child to be out on the streets. Anything might happen to him out there! He might be hurt! He might-”

“Sit down, Kate.” Charles stood with a smile and gestured to his wing chair before the fire. “I’ll get you a brandy.”

Charles watched his wife as she sank into the chair, thinking how lovely she was when she was passionate-and she was certainly passionate about Patrick, who had taken the place in her heart of the child she had lost, of the children she would never have. But Charles knew boys, and he feared that her passion might frighten Patrick and send him hurtling away again.

He cleared his throat. “Patrick is hardly a child,” he said quietly. “He’s very much a young man. He’s working in the stable at the Grange House, apprenticing as a jockey. As it turns out, he was Gladiator’s traveling lad at the Derby. He-”

“A jockey!” Kate took the brandy Bradford offered her. “But what about school, for goodness sake?” Her voice rose. “What about our plans for him?”

“It would seem that Patrick has made his own plans for himself,” Charles said. “He looks fit and in excellent health. But I very much fear,” he added, hoping she would understand, “that any pressure on our part to return him to school will be met with resistance.”

“But he needs an education!” Kate cried. “He needs-”

“Rather,” Charles interrupted firmly, “I propose that we encourage him to make his own choices and stay in touch with him so that we can support him, whatever he chooses to do with his life.” He paused. “I hope you can agree to that, my dear. Otherwise, I’m afraid we will lose him again.”

“But I did so want-” She turned the brandy snifter in her fingers. “I’m afraid he won’t-” After a moment she gave a small sigh. “Perhaps you’re right, Charles. Perhaps I’m holding too hard, hoping too much.” She studied him for a moment, her head tilted, her hair catching the firelight. “The problem is that I’ve never been a boy, so I don’t understand all their ways. But I know how often I do just the opposite thing, when someone gives me what sounds like an order.” She smiled a little, and her voice took on a tone of light irony. “I shall try not to smother the poor child-the young man-with an overabundance of motherly love.”

“Thank you, my dear.” Charles sat back, grateful, as he often was, for his wife’s intuitive understanding. He had the feeling, too, that when Kate saw Patrick and realized how he had grown in the months since they’d been apart, she would realize that he was right. To stay connected to Patrick, they had to let him go.

The door opened again, and Bradford came in. “Hello, Kate,” he said warmly. “I hope that Mrs. Langtry did not think it rude that we took you away this evening.”

“Not at all, as it turned out,” Kate replied. “At teatime, she received a message from the Prince. It seems that he has come to visit his horses and is staying with Mr. Rothschild at the Palace House. Mrs. Langtry was invited to a late supper, so I was left to my own devices.” She leaned forward, her gray eyes intent. “I am so glad I decided to visit Mrs. Langtry. She is utterly fascinating-but frightening, too!”

“Oh?” Bradford asked, amused. “The celebrated Gilded Lily, frightening? What’s she done to you, Kate?”

“Well, see what you think,” Kate said. Then, speaking slowly and carefully, as if she were trying to recall every detail, she told them what she had overheard in the garden outside Mrs. Langtry’s drawing room, and what Amelia had told her afterward.

“Wait a minute,” Charles said. “Do I understand that this man claims to have taken her jewels and disposed of them for her? And that he got rid of Edward Langtry as well?”

“That’s the gist of it,” Kate replied. “And what is equally interesting, she didn’t attempt to dispute him. In fact, she begged him not to speak of it, for fear they might be overheard by the servants.”

Bradford frowned. “The jewels-I was out of the country at the time. How was it that they were stolen?”

“It was quite an interesting story,” Charles said. “According to the newspaper reports, she kept her jewels-forty thousand pounds worth-in a black enameled tin box, which was reported to be fireproof. She carried the box with her when she toured with her plays, and when she was in London, left it in the Union Bank, quite close to her home. Several summers ago, ’95, I think it was, she went to the Continent for a few weeks, and when she came back to London, sent her butler to the bank for the jewel box. He returned, distraught, with word that the bank had delivered the box to her some three weeks before. He was accompanied by an equally distraught bank officer, who showed Mrs. Langtry the handwritten order for the box. She immediately pointed out that the signature wasn’t hers. It was forged from the Pear’s Soap advertisement which bears her name.”

“But they were her own jewels,” Kate pointed out. “If she connived in their theft, she was only stealing from herself.”

“But there’s more,” Charles said. “Shortly after the theft, she sued the bank for negligence, for the full amount of the loss. George Lewis represented her, I think. She settled for something like ten thousand pounds. I remember being surprised that Lewis didn’t press for more.”

“So it’s possible that she had the bank’s settlement,” Bradford remarked, “and the jewels as well.”

“Or the money they fetched,” Charles said. “They were probably fenced immediately.”

“Not a bad little coup, especially when the value of the publicity is counted into it,” Bradford said. “I’m sure that once people learned of the loss, attendance at her plays shot up immediately.” He frowned. “But what’s this about a conspiracy to get rid of Edward Langtry, Kate? And who the devil was this man she was talking to?”

“Lillie never called him anything but that nickname,” Kate said, “and I didn’t catch more than a glimpse of him as he left. I cannot say for certain that there was a conspiracy, or how deeply Lillie was involved. She didn’t contradict him, though, only pleaded with him not to talk about it for fear of being overheard. Before they parted, they were openly quarreling. They actually traded blows.” She shook her head, as if not quite believing what she had heard. “I don’t suppose he was injured, but she had to go to supper at the Rothschilds with a badly bruised cheek. She excused it to me by saying that she had run into an open door in the hallway.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Bradford said dryly. “When she was involved with that fellow Baird-the man people called the Squire-she sported black eyes and bruises quite regularly. When someone asked her why she put up with it, she said that for every black eye the Squire gave her, she got five thousand pounds worth of apology-or so Punch claimed.”

“An apology?” Charles murmured, “or blackmail?”

“Both, perhaps,” Bradford replied in an ironic tone. “She went for a weekend in Paris with Bobby Peel, who had promised to buy her some new Worth gowns. When the Squire caught up with her, he beat the both of them. She was in hospital for a fortnight, and it was said that she suffered a broken nose. But she came out the richer by fifty thousand pounds and the title to his yacht. She called it the White Lady. Everybody else called it ‘The Black Eye.’ ”