A Lady Most Dangerous (Helen Foster) Read online

  A Lady Most Dangerous

  By

  Caroline Hanson

  Copyright © Caroline Hanson 2014

  This is a work of fiction any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Chapter 1

  Every year, the Marwood ball was packed to the rafters with the rich and the richer, the titled and the landed, the people who wanted to move up the social ladder and those who were clinging on by the tips of their fingernails. This year was, of course, no different.

  Edward wondered if there was a certain comfort in that predictability – things didn’t change, events occurred every season and would go on until the day he died. And even then the events wouldn’t stop; he just wouldn’t be expected to attend anymore.

  That was something at least.

  The smell of pomade and starch was strong, the room overheated from all the candles and hot air as the guests prattled on and on about how dreadful the prior night’s musicale had been. Five young women trotted out before the ton so that they could display just how badly they played the pianoforte. It had been excruciating.

  “And that’s the Duke of Somervale,” he heard a girlish voice whisper from somewhere to his left and above. There was a balcony there where people would have punch and look at the dancers.

  And apparently gossip about him.

  He couldn’t say why he just stood there and listened. He should have turned around and given them a glare or moved off and ignored them.... But he didn’t; for some reason he couldn’t define, he stayed and listened.

  “My sister was ever so in love with him when she made her debut.”

  “Which sister?” a female voice asked. Edward suspected he didn’t know her either.

  “Anne.”

  “Ooohh, what happened?”

  Edward wracked his brain, trying to sort through recent debutantes he knew by the name of Anne. No one in particular came to mind.

  “She met him. At the Winchester’s house party in Norfolk. Said she was so nervous she could barely say her own name. She said he’s different; that being next to him and talking to him, it’s terrible.”

  “Terrible?” the other girl said, her tone fascinated.

  Edward frowned. Terrible? He was terrible? The way they spoke, it was as though they were telling a naughty ghost story. Did that make him the ghost?

  “Because he’s so handsome. It was like he was seeing into her soul. She said it was as though he knew she liked him.”

  “Did he?” the other girl asked with a gasp.

  Edward wanted to turn around and say ‘no, he didn’t’. Explain that, in fact, he had no idea who they were talking about. He went to the Winchester’s house party every year, and he couldn’t remember meeting somebody named Anne. And he certainly had not been gazing into her eyes soulfully. Whatever that meant.

  “I doubt it.”

  He was just getting ready to move off, deciding he didn’t need to hear any more gossip about himself and how another debutante thought herself half in love with him when she said, “Anyway, she doesn’t like him anymore. She said he was cold. Came across as unfeeling and that Katherine, that ice princess he’s engaged to could have him. They deserve each other. Now she’s obsessed with that banker, the Swiss one who’s been funding the prince and his escapades.”

  A banker? Some girl had decided she didn’t like him because she liked a banker instead? He sighed and did move away, parts of their conversation still ringing in his ears. He didn’t care. Not really. They deserve each other. It wasn’t a surprise that the girls did not like his fiancée; there was something rather distant about her. As though she were so busy in herself and thinking about how things related to her and her own perfection, that she didn’t have time for anybody else. Not people she met, were related to or perhaps would even marry.

  And this gossiping stranger thought they deserved each other.

  Edward spotted his fiancée on the dance floor dancing with some regimental hero, who’d undoubtedly done something very brave in some far-off land and come back with stories of killing natives armed with sticks. Very heroic, he thought with a scowl.

  It would be his turn soon enough. When she looked at him, lifted her clear blue gaze from the man she was with and sought him out, it wasn’t to see if he disapproved or because she wanted to see him; it wasn’t because she couldn’t keep herself from looking at him because she cared for him. No, that would be…common. Vulgar, even. No, the reason his fiancée kept track of him was because she should.

  When his dance came at the end of the evening, (and it was just one, sometimes two if she really wanted to show how ‘in love’ she was with him) she wanted to ensure he was where he was supposed to be. Not playing cards in the anteroom or drunk in a corner, but ready to squire her around the room for all to see.

  Not that he ever did get drunk in corners or shirk his duty. But just in case. She didn’t trust anyone to do the correct thing except for herself. Just then, she flashed him a look, those arctic blue eyes colliding with his from across the room, ignoring the besotted man she danced with. Her new partner, the Earl of Chester, looked at Katherine as though she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Edward supposed that was true. She was certainly the most graceful and beautiful woman in the room. His bride-to-be. Every doting mama told him how lucky he was; every man thumped him on the back and leered at her unpleasantly. Not only was she beautiful, she was rich as hell, blue-blooded as they came and the perfect choice for a duke.

  And now, here he was, standing in a room full of people, watching them twirl around him and he suddenly felt sick, almost panicked at the idea that he was…here. Lucky enough to be alive when he dreaded today, tomorrow and every day into the future. Lucky enough to be alive when people who were better than him were dead.

  Well, not people, just one—Helen. Was it a sign of just how awful he was that other people lived and died every day, hundreds of them, even thousands of them, and yet all he thought about was one? Just Helen. Who occupied his days with grief, and filled his nights with a desperate and peculiar sense of loneliness that was deeper than misguided lust.

  Helen. She was unlucky. She was....

  Edward looked down into his glass of champagne, watching the bubbles fizz to the surface. Bubbles rose. Dead bodies rose too sometimes. Although her body had never been found. An image of Helen on the last night he’d seen her came to him, replacing the world around him, overriding the noise and scents, the conversations and dancing, the happy people and even those who were here simply because they were expected to be.

  For one pure moment, everything around him disappeared, and all he could see was Helen’s dead body floating to the surface of the water. The way it would move up, as if life and vitality had been holding her dozens of feet under, and when she gave that last breath, when she finally sucked in water and it exploded in her body and killed her, that, in his mind, was the moment she rose to the surface. Weightless, motionless, limbs relaxed, and dark hair spread around her like a cloud.

  Was she still out there, floating in the water? The idea of it was so sharp that it pierced him. He felt the pain of it in his chest and stomach. It made his fingers clench and his breath exhale. The glass in his hand shook as his hand trembled.

  “Edward, are you ready?” He heard it from a long way away, felt the touch on his forearm lightly. He blinked and focused, finding Katherine standing in front of him, a look of concern on her face. Not too much concern in case it created a frown line, but the tilt of
her head indicated she was at least curious about him.

  “I apologize, my dear.” He couldn’t bring himself to smile. “It’s been a busy few days in the House of Lords.” He didn’t speak of Helen. She was his secret. His loss.

  A flash of some expression appeared then vanished from her porcelain face. Irritation? “Please don’t speak of it now, the dance is starting.”

  He rubbed his eyes with two fingers, as though it would dispel the image of Helen’s floating body that was burned into his mind, and returned to the present.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of boring you with the details. The decisions we make, the laws that affect every single person in this country—so tedious,” he said, anger and helpless rage churning inside of him. His tone was sharp, maybe even cruel, but he couldn’t stop himself from speaking, from saying something to his ridiculous fiancée. She didn’t want to hear about his day let alone how he was tortured by his mistakes. And she never would. She didn’t want to know how he worked to change society and tried to improve things. “Should people starve to death in the streets, and if so, how long do we leave them there? If a child’s mother dies and is crying in the street, can we just leave it there or should we do something to help them? Do we owe anything to the people around us? But we discuss other things too. The Germans and the French, for example. Are the Germans going to invade France and start a war? Will we get dragged into yet another ridiculous fight to claim a few more acres of land? Deadly dull stuff,” he said, hearing the leashed fury in his tone. And that wasn’t even all of it. Yes, those things worried him, but they didn’t consume him. They didn’t wake him up in the middle of the night and leave him in a cold sweat.

  It was Helen’s death that did that. And he couldn’t tell anyone about her.

  He took her hand in his, noting how warm it was from being held by her previous dance partner. Her grip was light, dainty, almost weak. They moved together towards the dance floor, the crowd parting for them. He saw Jarvis, a baron who was sponsoring a bill that Edward wanted to squash.

  “Hold this, old man, would you?” he said, and handed his half drunk glass of champagne to the baron who took it with a shocked exclamation, undoubtedly irked at being treated like a servant.

  “Edward! What’s gotten into you,” Katherine exclaimed in a quiet voice. They lined up for the dance, and he settled his hand on her waist ready for the music to start. He moved through the waltz automatically, trained to it without thinking. What a skill.

  “You were rude to him,” Katherine said through a fake smile, not about to let his bad manners slide.

  “Nonsense. Punching him would have been rude. Calling him a bigot who will burn in hell, that would have been rude.”

  Her chin jutted up in the air and her cheeks turned pink in embarrassment. “It’s not like you, Edward.”

  He sighed. “I assure you that being rude is very like me. I simply try to not to be rude to you or to anyone with a higher social rank than I. Happily, that leaves me millions of people, hundreds of which are in this room, that I can slight at will.”

  Her hand convulsed in his. “Mama said….”

  Oh lord, her mother. Someone save him from mothers. Hers, his, all of them. The whole lot of them seemed to exist to natter at him. He could see her working up the courage to mention it. “Mama said you wouldn’t change your mind about a Grand Tour after the wedding. That you didn’t want to go to the Continent.”

  “It must be nice for her to be right once in a while.” He adjusted his step so they didn’t bump into some drunken buffoon who was careening towards them.

  Her lower lip pouted as she puzzled out his meaning. He saw it click that he didn’t want to go to Europe for their honeymoon. “But…everyone goes on a European tour. How can I be a duchess and not go? How can I meet people and have them know that I have not seen what they have? What will people think?” she said, voice trembling in agitation.

  “Will people think about that? Sounds unlikely,” he said, voice low.

  “I know we are at least two years behind what the French are wearing. The best oriental fabrics go to Paris. I’ll be a duchess. It’s my responsibility as your wife to look fashionable.”

  For the love of God, how long is this dance? And yet it occurred to him that this was merely the beginning; that once they were married, she could find him at any hour of the day, and they would get to have other conversations exactly as interesting and important as this one. “I’m sure you’ll acquit yourself well enough with the leftovers we get in London.”

  “You’re joking with me. Not taking me seriously.”

  “My dear, you will be the Duchess of Somervale, the whole world will want your patronage. Maybe we can do a tour in a year or two, see what happens between the French and the Germans. With any luck, war will break out, and all those ships that carry these fabrics and lace to Paris will come here instead.”

  She momentarily faltered and he shifted his weight, smoothing out the misstep as they continued moving around the dance floor. “That had not occurred to me. Do you think so, Edward? Truly?” She couldn’t hide her excitement at the idea.

  “Oh, I’m sure of it. Europe will go to war, and while they’re squabbling and trying to gain an extra mile or two of cow pasture and killing everyone in sight, you’ll be draped in silks and satins.”

  “Oh, Edward! You are so smart,” she said, her feminine voice almost cooing at him.

  Soon the song would come to an end and they could leave, another ball to be marked off his calendar. Smart, she said. Wasn’t he ‘smart’? So smart he’d believed Helen when she’d said she’d stay in the carriage. So smart when it’d taken him twenty minutes to get the boats out into the water to look for her after Colchester’s boat exploded.

  He knew just how ‘smart’ he really was. He was an idiot and a fool. The intelligent things he could have done, the things that would have saved her life, were his constant companions. He’d almost turned back and made her go with him to the harbormaster, as if some part of him knew that she was lying to him. He’d been so sure of himself and that his title and money would fix the situation; that she would listen to him and do what he had told her to do.

  But that wasn’t Helen. Helen was brash and just as willing to use force to get her way instead of talk. She had gone ahead without him; left him behind while she walked into danger. And he’d been too stupid, too convinced of his own grandiosity to realize that she was deceiving him. So no, he wasn’t smart. For if he’d been smart, he would have saved her life.

  Katherine tapped him on the arm, regaining his attention. This was the real world. The moments with Helen – fraught with danger, excitement and passion – those were gone. She was gone. And it was all his fault.

  Chapter 2

  “I don’t like this,” Mary said, her voice muffled because she was breathing through her sleeve.

  “That’s the one thing they don’t tell you before they send you back,” Helen whispered, “history is stinky.”

  “The one thing? They left out everything!” Mary wasn’t whispering anymore.

  “It’s a figure of speech. How about ‘it’s the one thing they left out that bugs me right at this moment?’ Happy?”

  Mary made a strangled sound in her throat. “No. So far from happy I can’t even tell you. Do you know what would make me happy? How about tequila or French Fries. Oh god, do you have any idea what I would do for a pizza? Sick perverted, filthy things, Hel—”

  “Hush!” Helen said, in a loud whisper and they both froze. They waited in silence, listening for the sound of someone walking, talking, or squelching nearby. Yes, squelching. It was the only possible way to describe walking through the dirt, excrement and rotting food they were wading through in the middle of the night. The smell of it was so horrific that it seemed thick; as if it rose from the ground in a heavy mass and coiled around their legs.

  They were walking along the Thames, near the spot that both Mary and Helen had materialized at, looking t
o see if anyone else turned up. They were looking for either men or women since Mary had been told that they were close to being able to send men back in time. Which was long overdue since the Germans had figured it out already. It was easier for women to go back in time; something about their reproductive abilities making their cells easier to tinker with. But even then it was rare for women to survive. Helen was the first person sent back in time to survive. Then Mary. Helen knew there would be more. There had to be. They couldn’t get rid of the Nazis with just the two of them.

  They saw a man coming closer out of the industrial fog, his dirty face weirdly illuminated and then cast in shadow as the lantern he carried swung back and forth with his steps. He carried a stick in one hand, his attention focused on the ground before him. His entire livelihood depended upon what he could find along the riverbank and resell. Cloth, bits of metal, anything that wound up hitting the banks of the River Thames. It wasn’t a profitable profession.

  There was a huge underclass in Victorian England whose livelihoods revolved around excrement. ‘Nightsoil’ men would take out solid waste from people’s homes in the city to the country where it could be used as fertilizer, while others scoured the sewers and the riverbanks looking for anything of monetary value. And it was dangerous to work in the sewers – pockets of gas would spontaneously ignite, or if a man had the misfortune to step into one of those pockets and it was deep enough, the excrement might swallow him whole. It was, quite literally, a shitty way to die.

  Helen and Mary moved into the man’s path, waiting while he came closer. He grumbled something unintelligible which Helen took as a greeting. She explained that she wanted him to keep an eye out for anybody who turned up along the riverbank. “I’ll pay you. Spread the word that we’ll pay whoever finds a person by the river. You come tell us straight away, bring us back here and we’ll pay you.”

  He examined their clothing. After the first night of wandering the riverbank, they had given up on dresses and bought men’s boots and oil skinned trousers, wandering around the sewage-filled riverbanks in men’s clothing.