The Dollar Prince's Wife

The Captain went to the door, and called to one of the women, who presently came in with a bowl of soup and a buttered bread roll.

‘What’s your name, little girl?’ she asked the child, who took the bowl from her and began drinking greedily from it without using the spoon.

‘Lizzie,’ she said, ‘Lizzie Steele,’ and then, to Cobie, ‘What’s yours, mister?’

Cobie began to laugh, stopped, and asked her gravely, bending his bright head a little, ‘What would you like it to be?’

He felt, rather than saw, the Captain look sharply at him. Lizzie, slurping the last drops of the soup, said through them, ‘Ain’t yer got a name, then?’

‘Not really,’ Cobie told her, which was, in a way, the truth. He had no intention of letting anyone at the shelter know who he really was. Caution was his middle name, although many who knew him would have been surprised to learn that.

Now that the child was safe the rage had begun to ebb. It was leaving him empty—except for his head, which was beginning to hurt. Soon, he knew, his sight would be affected. But he could not leave until Lizzie’s immediate future was assured.

She was still watching him, a little puzzled.

‘Everyone has a name, mister,’ she finally offered him.

‘Of sorts,’ Cobie agreed gravely.

The Captain took a hand. Lizzie, starting on her roll and butter, continued to watch them, or rather to watch Cobie, who seemed to be the magnet which controlled her small universe.

‘I think,’ the Captain said, ‘that we ought to ask my aide, Miss Merrick, to find Lizzie something more suitable for her to wear. You and I must talk while she does so.’

To Cobie’s amusement Lizzie, pointing at Cobie, chirped, ‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere wivout ’im, and that’s flat.’

Again the Captain was surprised by his manner towards Lizzie. Cobie spoke to her pleasantly and politely after the fashion in which he would address Violet Kenilworth, Susanna, or the Queen.

‘You’re quite safe here, Miss Steele. You will be well looked after, I’m sure. Nothing bad will happen to you whether I am present or not. You have my word.’ He took her grubby hand and bowed over it.

Her eyes were still watchful. She had been betrayed too often to believe that he would necessarily keep his word.

‘You promise?’ was all she said.

‘I promise.’ He was still as grave as a hanging judge.

He was aware that the Captain’s shrewd eyes were on him, trying to fathom him. His whole interest centred on Cobie, not on the child. He had doubtless seen many like her—but few like him, someone apparently unharmed by the world’s wickedness.

The rage revived for a moment, to die back again. God knew, if no one else did, how near Cobie Grant had once been to dereliction, violation, and death!

The woman who had brought Lizzie the soup was called in once more, to take away both the empty bowl and the child, with orders to find something respectable for her to wear—after she had been washed.

Lizzie demurred a little at the notion of being washed, until Cobie said, his voice confidential, ‘Oh, do let them wash you, Miss Steele. I like washing, I assure you, and do it a lot.’

She stared at his golden splendour for a moment, before saying, ‘Yus, I can see yer do.’ To the woman leading her from the room she said, ungraciously, ‘I’ll let yer wash me so long as yer don’t get soap in me eyes!’

‘To be brief,’ Cobie said to the Captain, ‘I stole her from Madame Louise’s and then brought her here because I had heard that you were in the business of saving such lost souls. By good chance she had succeeded in escaping from the man who would have violated her. She owes her safety, if not her life, to her own wits.’

‘And to you.’ The Captain’s face was as impassive as he said this as that of the strange young man to whom he was talking. He was taking nothing on trust, not even the child’s rescuer. He was also showing little of the humble subservience usually offered in England by those of the lower classes to their superiors.

‘I was an instrument, merely,’ drawled Cobie, ‘there to see that she was not caught again.’

‘You were one of Madame’s clients?’

‘After a fashion, yes.’

Cobie was languid, unapologetic. ‘Now let us speak of her disposition. She told me that her stepfather had sold her to the house.’

Since he was a good Salvation Army man, the Captain could neither curse nor blaspheme, but the sound which escaped from him could have been construed as either.

‘Exactly,’ agreed Cobie. ‘The vile business is run from the top floors of Madame Louise’s sumptuous house—I’m sure you know that without me telling you.’

‘Yes—and I can do nothing. Evidence which would stand up in court is impossible to find. I cannot even do as much as you did tonight.’

‘Which is little enough. So many sparrows fall. I was privileged to save one—not more. Now, what shall we do with this one poor sparrow?’ Cobie was pleased to see by his expression that the Captain took the Biblical allusion.

‘Whom God has permitted you to rescue.’

The Captain was rebuking him, no doubt of that.

‘God.’ Cobie raised his beautiful eyebrows. ‘Ah, yes, the All Powerful. Who allows so many to fall into the pit…so many sparrows to fall…and who put Lizzie in the way of her captors. No matter, I will not refine on theological points with you—only ask what may be done for her.’

Cobie’s smile was cold, not really a smile at all. ‘Money is not a problem, sir.’

He put his hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out his purse, and opened it. A cascade of golden sovereigns fell onto the dirty deal table which stood between him and the Captain.

‘This is merely the beginning, a token of good intent.’

The Captain said, ‘Who, and what, are you buying? God, salvation, me or the child?’

Cobie answered him in his most sardonic mode. ‘All of them, sir, all of them. Everything is for sale, including salvation, and may be bought either by money—or by love. If your conscience will not allow you to help such a sinner as I am, then I shall take the child elsewhere to find those who are not so particular, but who will offer us assistance.’

The money was back in his purse and he was striding to the door. Oh, the damnable, monstrous arrogance of him, thought the Captain—but Lizzie’s rescuer had said ‘us’, associating himself with the child, and he would be failing in his Christian duty to refuse her succour because of the nature of the man who was asking for it on her behalf.

He thought that the stranger had a contempt for the whole world—himself included. He must not allow that to sway him. There were two souls to save here—not one. In some fashion it was not the child who had the greater need.

He said to Cobie’s back, ‘Wait one moment. There is a home where I may place her temporarily, where she will be safe. We have a shortage of permanent accommodation.’

‘More fallen sparrows than you can deal with?’

‘If you like.’

‘Then I will make you a proposition. Take Lizzie Steele into your permanent care, and I will give you enough money to buy, equip and maintain a house large enough to give shelter for up to twenty such, where they may be schooled and cared for until they are old enough to make their own way in the world.’

‘Dare I believe that you mean what you say, sir?’

‘No one,’ Cobie told him, and his voice was deadly, ‘has ever had reason to doubt my word, whether what I promise be good or ill.’

‘I must know your name, sir.’

Cobie considered. He had no wish to tell the Captain the one by which high society knew him, but he had never hesitated to use another when it seemed more profitable, or safer, to do so. He did so now.

‘I told Lizzie that I have no name. I was born without one. You and she may call me Mr…’

He hesitated; some freakish whim was urging him to give his true father’s name, Dilhorne. He compromised, finished with a grin, ‘…Mr Dilley. John Dilley.’

The Captain thought that he knew that he was being lied to. He watched Cobie fling the purse back on the table and pull his sketchbook from the poacher’s pocket in his cape.

Cobie began to write in it. He looked up and said, ‘Your name is…?’

The Captain said stiffly, ‘Bristow, Ebenezer Bristow.’

‘Well, Captain Ebenezer Bristow, my man of business will call on you tomorrow. At what time?’

‘I am here from four in the afternoon.’

‘At four-thirty, then. Have some of your financial advisers present. My man will arrange with you whatever needs to be done. The money will come through him. Should you wish to contact me, you will do so through him. You will not attempt to trace me—if you do, you will forfeit what I am offering you. You understand me? I have a mind to be an unknown benefactor.’

He laughed the most mirthless laugh the Captain had ever heard. ‘That is what you will tell your superiors—the money comes from an unknown benefactor.’

He tore out another sheet, wrote on that and thrust it at the Captain.

‘That is for you to keep. You will give it to my man when he calls tomorrow. Now you may tell me where you propose to place Lizzie for the time being—so that I may call on her, and satisfy myself that she is being well treated.’

Stunned by this unexpected bounty, the Captain picked up the paper.

‘Why are you doing this, Mr Dilley?’

‘A whim. Nothing more.’ Cobie was short.

‘And the others? What of them?’

‘What others?’

‘The others mistreated at Madame Louise’s house. Those not so fortunate as Lizzie.’

Cobie’s smile was wolfish. ‘Oh, you must see that I cannot rescue all of them. But those who run the trade there, and those for whom they run it, will I assure you, pay, in one way or another.’

The Captain could not quite believe him. In his world golden young men did not arrive from nowhere, playing at being Nemesis on behalf of stricken children.

‘You must be rich,’ he said at last.

‘Oh, I am,’ Cobie was affable. ‘Most enormously so. Far more than you, or most people, can conceive. Neither Midas nor Croesus could compete with me. And all my own work, too!’

‘Does it not frighten you? Make you unable to fear God, since you can dispose so easily of his creatures?’

‘Oh, no one does that, Captain. No one is disposed of easily. No, I never dispose…I simply give events a push, or a shove. Avalanches start that way. As for fearing God, I gave that up eight years ago when I began to prefer people to fear me… Now I will say goodnight to Lizzie, after you inform me of her destination.’

‘She will be going to a man and wife I know in Bermondsey who care for homeless children. At 21 Sea Coal Street.’

He hesitated. ‘You will be careful with her, I trust. It would be unkind of you to give her expectations beyond the station in life to which it has pleased God to call her.’

‘Believe me, I wouldn’t do that, Captain Bristow, sir,’ Cobie told him, ‘even if God was pleased to place her in a pervert’s power, you may trust me not to do so!’

‘But He sent you to save her.’

The Captain was determined to have the last word, but Mr Dilley was of a different mind.

‘Oh, but think of all those whom He does not save!’

Ebenezer Bristow gave up. Whatever his private thoughts about the man before him, he must not forget that he was offering the Salvation Army a splendid prize.

Cobie saw that Bristow was struggling with his principles. Self-disgust overwhelmed him. It was brutally unfair to taunt a man who had dedicated his life to serving others, particularly when he, Cobie, was dedicated to serving no one but himself.

For the life of him he could not explain the impulse which had led him to snatch from the feral clutches of Sir Ratcliffe Heneage the child who was now being cared for in the other room. Once he had done so, could he live with the knowledge of what was happening in the upper rooms of Madame Louise’s splendid house?

For no reason at all he shivered, shook himself, pulled out his magnificent gold watch, and snapped it open.

‘The hour grows late, I must leave you. Remember, my man will be here tomorrow, so be ready for him. Goodnight to you, sir.’

He turned on his heel and prepared to take his arrogant splendours away with him.

Captain Bristow, possessed by he knew not what, said to Cobie’s retreating back. ‘I bid you have a care, Mr Dilley. Those who fly too near the sun may have their wings burned away. God is not mocked.’

Cobie swung his head round, showed the Captain his splendid teeth, and said softly, ‘Oh, no, Captain, I never thought he was.’

Moorings Halt was exactly as Dinah remembered it: warm in the early afternoon sun, its flower-beds flaming below the enamel notices advertising Mazawattee tea and Swan Ink. The station cat was curled up on one of the green-painted benches. Sanders, the porter, sat in his little sentry-box.

He rose and helped Dinah and her maid, Pearson, to lift her luggage on to the station platform.

‘I’m sorry, Lady Dinah, but we didn’t know that you were coming and the Big House hasn’t sent the dog-cart for you.’

‘Oh, I’ll wait here, Sanders. It’s a splendid afternoon for sitting in the sun, isn’t it. I’m sure that it will be along soon.’

She wasn’t sure at all, but some twenty minutes later, thank goodness, the dog-cart arrived with one of the grooms driving it.

‘So sorry, Lady Dinah, but m’lady forgot to tell the stables that you were arriving this afternoon. We have an American gentleman with us, though, and it seems that he found out that you might be stranded at The Halt, so he arranged for me to come.’

It was just like Violet to have forgotten her—and how strange to be rescued by an American gentleman! Dinah wondered who in the world he might be. She knew that a number of rich Americans had been taken up by society. They were usually middle-aged or elderly. Perhaps he had been feeling fatherly enough to make up for Violet’s carelessness in leaving her eighteen-year-old sister stranded in the middle of nowhere. She must be sure to thank him prettily when she met him.

Not surprisingly, there was no Violet to greet her when she finally reached Moorings. Mrs Greaves, the housekeeper, informed her that Lady Kenilworth had been called away suddenly, and in the rush had forgotten to notify anyone that Lady Dinah was due to arrive that afternoon.

Fortunately, she had told the American gentleman, Mr Grant, who had arrived before the rest of the house-party, that Dinah was expected and he had immediately arranged for her to be collected when he had discovered m’lady’s oversight.

There had been something odd in Mrs Greaves’s expression when she had spoken of Mr Grant. Could he be one of Violet’s admirers? Surely not—she preferred young and handsome men.

Chesterman, the butler, arrived to say, ‘You would like some tea after your journey, I am sure, Lady Dinah, before you change out of your travelling costume. May I express my regret for the oversight. Mr Grant was most…exercised by it.’

Yes, Lady Dinah would like tea. And why were Chesterman and Greaves being so mysterious about the American? It was bad enough working out what to say to a house full of Violet’s cronies without wondering how she ought to address an odd, old American, who had arrived early. Why?

Later, after she had drunk her tea, she allowed Pearson to dress her in a little girl’s frock of white-dotted Swiss with a blue sash, her long dark hair tied back by a blue velvet ribbon. It was an outfit which Dinah glumly decided made her look about fifteen, but which would certainly protect her from unwanted masculine attentions!

What to do now in this great empty barracks? She decided to visit the library and spend a happy hour there, forgetting Violet and at the same time avoiding elderly American gentlemen who would not be likely to find the library at all attractive.

Her notebook and her pencil-case in her hand, she made her way towards it down the main staircase. On the way she walked past the portraits of Lord Kenilworth’s predatory-looking ancestors—he must be a great disappointment to them, she decided. Her mother always spoke of him as a pussy cat who allowed Violet far too much of her own way.

Finally she reached the library’s double doors—to discover that she was mistaken. Someone was already there. A someone who, improbably, was playing the guitar. Equally improbably what was being played superbly was a piece written for it by Vivaldi, which she had once heard at a concert in Oxford she had attended with Faa.

For a moment Dinah hesitated, thought of retreating, and then, clutching her notebook and pencil-case to her, she made a decision which was to alter her life forever. She opened the door and walked into the library in order to discover who the unknown musician was…

He was seated on a long, low bench in a huge bay window facing the door, his head bent over his guitar. He lifted it to look at her whilst continuing to play…and Dinah stopped dead at the sight of him.

He was, quite simply, the most beautiful man she had ever seen. So beautiful that she swallowed unbelievingly. He was like the statue of the Apollo Belvedere, a copy of which she had seen at Oxford. He possessed the same classic perfection of both face and figure. His eyes were blue and the hyacinthine curls of his hair were of the palest gold.

His clothes were perfect, too. He made Dinah feel untidy. It wasn’t fair that he should look like that—and to be able to play so well—she thought in anguish. No one person should possess so much when so many possessed so little.

His amazing eyes were steady on her while the music began to wind in on itself to reach its ending, which it did in a cluster of phrases of the utmost purity. What was more amazing was, that although the complex series of notes flowed from Apollo’s fingers with such divine accuracy, there was no music before him.

It was over. He rose, placed the guitar on the bench, and walked across to where she stood, mesmerised, registering his height and his compelling presence.

He said, bowing, ‘You must be Lady Dinah Freville, Violet’s sister. You will forgive me for remaining seated and continuing to play when you entered, but the music demanded my homage, and yours, too, I hope.’

He took her unresisting hand, kissed the back of it, and relinquished it gently. He retreated a little but still continued to speak, since he appeared to realise that she had been struck dumb by shock.

The moment that he had taken her hand in his, Dinah had suddenly been transported out of the library and into a vast open space, with a multicoloured sky above it, banners of light weaving in the warm air. He was there beside her—how?

Then, when her hand became her own again, they were back in the library, and she was listening to his beautiful voice.

‘Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jacobus—Cobie— Grant from New York. Lord and Lady Kenilworth have kindly invited me to Moorings. We meet unconventionally, but I hope that you won’t hold that against me.’

So this was her Yankee rescuer whom she had supposed to be middle-aged and odd!

So strongly did his mere presence affect her that Dinah felt as though she were under a spell, or had been hypnotised. She suddenly knew why the servants had spoken of him as they did. He was an enigma…yes, that was it. An enigma—and Violet’s latest lover: she was sure of that, too.

She almost croaked at him. ‘Indeed, I don’t, seeing that you did me the kindness of making sure that the dog-cart was sent to rescue me at Moorings Halt. Besides, I don’t mind unconventionality, and oh, how beautifully you play!’

Unable to stop herself, she added, ‘But why in the library, Mr Grant?’

Her reply amused Cobie. She was so unlike Violet, so unlike anything which he had expected after listening to Violet’s cruel descriptions of her. She reminded him of the young Susanna. There was the same quality of vulnerability about her, something in the defensive way in which she held herself. But Susanna had always known that she was valued—and this girl knew that she wasn’t.

Besides, Susanna had always been beautiful, and Dinah plainly thought that she wasn’t. She was still unformed, half a child, but Cobie judged that the promise of beauty was there.

He answered her gravely in order that she might think that what she had just said was important enough to deserve a reasoned reply. ‘It seemed a convenient place, Lady Dinah. Few appear to use it—or so the butler told me—which meant that I was unlikely to be disturbed.’

‘You were playing Vivaldi, weren’t you? I like Vivaldi. I always think…’

Dinah hesitated, not sure whether to continue. He might laugh at her behind her back: she knew that Violet often did when she was foolish enough to reveal her inward thoughts to her…but…but…she decided to go on…

‘His music always reminds me of a fountain playing. The water is rising and falling, spreading and narrowing, until finally, just before it ceases altogether, there comes a great burst when the last drops fall into the basin… Only…only…those last notes still remain with you—unlike the water drops.’

She must have been mad to offer her secret imaginings to a Yankee barbarian—which was what her brother Rainey always called them—and one of Violet’s confidants into the bargain. Only he had played the Vivaldi concerto so beautifully that he must have had some real feeling for it.

If Cobie was surprised by what she had just said to him, he didn’t allow it to show. Instead he picked up the guitar—it was Violet’s—and still standing, holding it high and upright against his left shoulder, he began to play the concerto’s coda again.

This time with even more feeling so that the last few notes seemed to hang in the air even longer—like the drops of water of which she had spoken, slowly falling into the basin of which she had spoken.

He said nothing, simply raised his beautiful eyebrows questioningly.

Dinah shivered.

‘Yes, like that,’ she finally achieved. ‘I wish that Faa could hear you play.’

Cobie inclined his head. He didn’t ask who Faa was, but he could guess. Violet had told him her half-sister’s sorry story earlier that day as though it were something of a joke. He was more than ever relieved that he had discovered Violet’s careless treatment of the poor child. She had allowed her half-sister to be abandoned at Moorings railway station as though she were an unconsidered package.

Well, be damned to that. He had not gone to rescue her himself, but had caused her to be rescued by others because Violet had always spoken of her so dismissively that he had feared that it might not be tactful for him to do any such thing.

For the same reason, he did not see fit to tell Dinah that her sister’s neglect of her had been deliberate. Violet’s behaviour towards her sister was making him regret his decision to have an affair with her. Cobie liked his women to be honest, and he tried to be honest with them—or as honest as he ever was with anyone.

Now that he had met Lady Dinah, he wished that he had gone to Moorings to collect her. Her shy and drab exterior concealed a lively and original mind—a present from her unknown father, no doubt.

‘It is kind of you to praise my playing,’ he said. ‘I fear that I am somewhat of an amateur, unlike my foster-sister Susanna who could have had a career as a concert pianist. If women were encouraged to have them, that is.’

Once again Dinah was to surprise him—and not for the last time. ‘You didn’t sound like an amateur, Mr Grant, nor do you sound very much like an American—if you will allow me to be impertinent—even if you did say that you come from New York.’

‘No, I don’t consider you impertinent,’ he said, smiling at her eager face and her transparent pleasure at being allowed to speak freely.

‘Allow me to thank you, Lady Dinah, for both your compliments, especially since I have been somewhat remiss since you arrived. I did not ask you whether you had been offered tea after your journey, which I believe was a long one. Shall I ring for some?’