He had no idea where she lived. He had no idea of her last name. Tracking her down would prove nigh impossible. Hell, she’d kept him completely at a distance. He, blockhead that he was, had let her.
He’d heard her leave Perry’s house, but some vestige of pride prevented his protesting. Since that afternoon, he’d consigned his pride to the deepest circle of hell. He’d been reduced to asking the servants if they noticed where she’d gone. According to Robert, she’d left by the back gate and taken a hackney cab at the corner. Now Ashcroft’s only chance of finding his elusive mistress was endlessly walking the streets of London.
By now he was just desperate enough to consider the crack-brained idea.
He told himself there were plenty of other candidates for his attentions. He’d trawled his usual haunts last night to prove that any woman would scratch his itch.
He’d trudged home an hour later, aware that for once, only one woman would do. And that woman had disappeared into thin air.
It was bloody frustrating.
His mood wasn’t improved by the niggling awareness that it was usually he who treated his lovers in this casual fashion. It was usually he who played elusive, who refused to make firm arrangements.
His mind plagued by the wench, he glanced around the empty British Museum. Empty of all but fusty Egyptian relics and his annoying Aunt Mary and his even more annoying cousin Charlotte. The museum generally swarmed with people, but the sweltering summer chased the patrons as it chased people from London as a whole.
He wished to God it would shift his relatives, who hadn’t yet returned home. His aunt was still set on using his house for Charlotte’s ball, and it seemed she wasn’t abandoning the capital until she gained his agreement.
Which was a pity, both for him and for her, because he had no intention of granting her request.
“Tarquin, I don’t know how you can look at those horrid dusty things,” she complained, when he paused before a mummy in a glass case.
As if to prove his aunt right about the dust, Charlotte released a violent sneeze. His cousin suffered a virulent summer cold. “They’re old and dirty,” the girl said in a whiny voice not improved by blocked sinuses. “I want to go home.”
“We’ll go home soon, Charlotte,” his aunt said reprovingly.
“I mean home to Roselands,” she said sulkily, tugging at her handkerchief. “Nobody comes to Town at this time of year.”
Ashcroft quashed a sigh and tried to concentrate on his relatives rather than on where the hell Diana had run off to. “Your mother believes you’ll benefit from educational excursions.”
Her mother was misguided, Ashcroft suspected. Charlotte was a bloodless nonentity, interested only in escaping notice. Not that he blamed her. He knew from harsh experience how smothering the countess’s personality was. The prospect of his aunt taking over his house for the Season made him break out in a cold sweat.
“Charlotte, stop fidgeting,” the countess snapped. “You have no consideration for my nerves.”
Charlotte ignored the command. Instead, she spoke to Ashcroft with a rare show of spirit. “Cousin, I believe Bond Street is educational.”
Ashcroft gave a short laugh. “It is at that.”
“Don’t encourage the child.” Aunt Mary still treated him as though he were twelve. It was a sign of her remarkable stupidity that she didn’t register how, these days, the power was all his.
“She’s not interested in Ancient Egypt, Aunt,” he said wearily. At this rate, soon he wouldn’t be either.
He owned a famous collection of antiquities, mostly amassed when he was young and eager to escape England. He’d returned home to the realization that no exotic setting altered his essential solitude. The travel he’d done since only confirmed that bleak fact.
“Very well. Let us pass by these foul cadavers,” his aunt said in a voice that would shred leather. “There must be heathen jewelry somewhere.”
“What about Lord Elgin’s marbles?” Charlotte asked with sudden interest, then sneezed again.
Ashcroft smothered another sardonic laugh as his aunt reddened. “Absolutely not, Charlotte Jane Alice Goudge.”
The girl sighed with disappointment and subsided into her usual obedience. “Yes, Mama.”
The two women drifted off, his aunt still haranguing his unfortunate cousin. Ashcroft hung back until they entered the next room.
His male relations had decamped to Kent for a wrestling match. Stultifying as the masculine half of his family was, he heartily wished he’d gone with them instead of agreeing to escort his aunt and cousin.
For the thousandth time, he told himself he should break with the Vales. All were leeches and parasites. Or ciphers like Charlotte. Not one would have a feather to fly with if he hadn’t taken control of the family finances upon his majority. That was after he’d discovered what chaos his uncle, the Earl of Birchgrove, had made of the Ashcroft fortune while he’d been guardian both of the estates and the heir.
So many times Ashcroft had been on the verge of cutting ties with his unappealing family. He didn’t pretend the link continued because of affection. They’d resented being saddled with him when he was a child—even though the money they’d wrung from his estate had kept them afloat. Now they resented his hold on the purse strings and the way he curtailed their worst excesses.