The duchess sat heavily on a stone bench.
Angelique remained standing.
For a moment they studied each other in silence.
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” the duchess tried. It lacked conviction. She looked weary.
“Oh, but I do. And you won’t be able to dumpmeinto the Thames. I seldom take walks by the river. And I never frequent gaming hells. And you shouldseethe men who live in The Grand Palace on the Thames. I’d wager all of us against you, any day. And even if something were to become of me... the damage done to your reputation will ripple on for ages. The whole of London will be enthralled. And your son’s future would be quite tainted.”
Angelique said all of these appalling things in an entirely reasonable tone.
The duchess’s bodice rose and fell, rose and fell with her breathing.
“Or... I suppose there’s another way we can address this...” Angelique tipped her head, as though she’d had a sudden inspiration.
The duchess’s head shot up. No fool and no stranger to negotiation, she was ready to bargain.
“What the devil do you want?” she said resignedly.
“I’msoglad you asked.”
And she told her.
A few days later...
Lucien had ensconced himself at a desk in Exeter’s office to review a satisfying stack of bills of lading—wealth was a lovely thing—when Exeter’s voice interrupted.
“A package has arrived for you, sir.”
Lucien didn’t look up. “What is it?”
“The nature of packages is that they are often inscrutable, sir.”
“Ha, Exeter. You ought to go on stage. You entertain me endlessly.” He did look up, then.
“It is wrapped in brown paper and tied in string. And it is addressed to you, but the sender is not noted anywhere on the package.”
He slid it over to Lucien, who produced a knife and cut the string, which he handed over to Exeter, because Exeter never wasted a damn thing.
He made short work of the paper, tearing it and tossing it aside.
Exeter scooped it up.
Inside he found a little wooden crate, not much bigger than a loaf of bread. Exeter handed him a hammer and Lucien, with a grunt, prised up the lid and found a great quantity of straw, and quite ironically, an equally great quantity of wadded scraps of old broadsheets.
He dug through all of that, feeling a bit like Beacham’s spaniel, and finally was able to peer at what was inside. He went still. It couldn’t be.
His heart pounding, he reached in.
And lifted out his mother’s ormolu music box.
He stared at it.
His father didn’t know a thing about Exeter. He couldn’t have possibly known where Lucien was staying.
That left only one possibility.
He ran gentle hands over the surface of it, the amber and the carnelians that had fascinated him as a boy, that had made both him and his mother feel rich indeed, and found the hidden indentation. He pressed and tugged, and the false bottom, a little tray, slid free.