Candace Camp - Promise Me Tomorrow

Richard did not answer except to give him a thin, tight smile that conveyed the opposite of amusement. His visitor looked at him for a moment, trying for an air of unconcern, but the tapping of his fingers against his thigh gave him away.

Finally, when the Earl said nothing else, he burst out, “What the devil does it have to do with me? She is your cousin, not mine.”

“Ah, but your past is intertwined….”

“Not with hers! I never saw the child. You said she was dead.”

“So I believed.” Exmoor’s hazel eyes hardened in his thin, almost ascetic face. “The damned woman lied to me!”

“I don’t know why you care. You had nothing to do with her disappearance. From what I heard it was her mother—her supposed mother—who pretended that she died.”

“Yes, but Alexandra’s return alerted them to the fact that the other two children did not die in Paris, either. The Countess knows that this Ward woman brought them to Exmoor House.”

“But you were not implicated, surely. I thought their disappearance was blamed on this woman who confessed, the Countess’s companion, and she is dead.”

“The Countess suspects me. She knows that I am the only person who would benefit from the boy’s death. For all I know, that fool Miss Everhart told her I was involved.”

“But she cannot prove it, or surely she would have by now.”

“Yes, and I don’t want her to be able to prove anything in the future. She won’t drag the Exmoor name through the mud for no reason, but if she were able to prove that I was involved, even the fear of scandal would not hold her back.”

“How could she possibly prove it? The Everhart woman is dead, and I certainly am not going to say anything. I have as much to lose as you.”

Again the Earl’s lips curled up in a cruel smile. “I know. That is why I sent for you. The Countess is looking for the girl, Marie Anne.”

The other man stiffened, his fidgeting hand going still. After a long moment, he cleared his throat nervously. “She cannot find her.”

“They’ve put a Bow Street Runner on it. I understand that he has tracked her down to the orphanage.”

“St. Anselm’s?” Sweat dotted the man’s lip.

“I’m surprised you remember.”

“How could I forget?” His mouth twisted bitterly. “Not all of us are blessed with your lack of conscience.”

Richard raised one eyebrow. “It wasn’t your boringly pedestrian morality I questioned. Frankly, I’m surprised you remember anything from that time.”

The other man pressed his lips together. “It was a sobering experience.”

“That was what caused you to give up your old life?” Richard’s voice was tinged with amusement.

“Yes. When I found myself standing in my room holding a pistol to my head.”

“How very dramatic.”

“I am sure the scene would have afforded you a great deal of amusement. But I realized then that I had to die or I had to change. I could not go on as I was. I chose to give up my vices. God knows, there were moments in the weeks that followed when I wished that I had pulled the trigger.”

“I, for one, am glad that you did not. I have a task for you.”

“A task?” He looked astonished. “You think that I am going to do something for you? I paid my debt to you when I took those children for you. I wouldn’t lift a finger for you again.”

“Ah, but what about for yourself?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am not the only one who would suffer if certain details from the past came to light.”

“How could it? The older one, the boy, didn’t even live, did he? He was at death’s door when I left him.”

“The boy is dead,” Richard replied curtly. “That is not the problem. It is the girl.”

“She can’t have been more than five or six. She couldn’t remember.”

“Perhaps not. But if she saw a face—the face of the man who had ripped her from her brother, say, who had taken her to an orphanage and placed her in that hellhole—who is to say that she might not remember then?”

“Surely—you’re not telling me that they have found her.”

Richard shrugged. “I doubt it. Not yet. But I sent a man to St. Anselm’s, too, when I heard that the Countess was looking for the chit. They told me where she went when she left there.”

“Where was that?” The words seemed pulled from him, as if he did not really want to know, yet could not stop himself from asking.

“She went into service with one of the local gentry. Family named Quartermaine.”

“Good God!” He paled a trifle. “The daughter of generations of earls, a maid.”

“Mmm. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Tragic, I would say.”

“She was cast out of the Quartermaine house—pregnant.”

The other man closed his eyes. “God forgive me.”

“God may, but I doubt the polite world would.”

“I did not want to!” he lashed out, goaded. “You know I tried to argue you out of it. Sweet Jesus, when I handed the little thing over to that dragon of a matron, and she was kicking and screaming and crying….” His hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Yet you did it.”

“You made me! It was the only way I could wipe clean my debt to you. You kept giving me the money, urging me to take it, and I couldn’t stop myself. I had to have that sweet oblivion.”

“I hardly forced it on you. You begged me for the money, shaking and sweating, the color of a corpse. What else could a friend have done? As I remember, at the time you praised me for my generosity.”

“I did not know then why you did it! How you got people in your debt and made them do wicked things! How you twisted and crushed them into monsters scarcely recognizable as themselves.”

“Really. Dear fellow…do you think you would have done it if you hadn’t had it in you already? You could have refused, you know.”

“I know.” Self-disgust filled his voice. “I was weak.”

Richard did not comment. He could have pointed out that the man was still weak or he would not have come in answer to his summons. But there wasn’t any point in antagonizing him unduly. It might put his back up enough to give him some spine.

“Do you think that will help you any? If people know that you took Chilton’s daughter from her family and put her in an orphanage because you had to have money for opium? For gambling and drinking and whoring? Do you think they will feel any sympathy for you?” Richard asked. When the other man glared at him, he went on, “Quite so. You and I both know what would happen to this exemplary little life that you have built up if the ton knew what you had done. Oh, no doubt some people with long memories still can recall that you were wild in your youth—so many men are, and then sober up and become responsible citizens. But none of them know about this.”

“What are you threatening? To tell everyone what I did? It will only implicate you!”

“Oh, no, I shan’t tell…not unless I am forced to. But if the Countess’s man finds the girl…if she tells everyone what happened, and I am brought down because of it, I promise you, I shan’t go down alone. I will take you with me.”

“You are disgusting.”

“What has that to do with the matter at hand? And just think, what if this girl identifies you? You are the one who took her there, you know, the last face she saw. It is you she will remember best.”

“I tell you, she won’t remember! You forget the things that happened to you when you were a child.”

“Even something that changed your life forever? I don’t know. It seems to me to be something she might remember. Or say she chanced to meet you and at the sight of your face those long forgotten memories came back? But if you are willing to risk it…” He shrugged eloquently.