A Worthy Wife (11 page)

“She was French. Perhaps she looked at it differently.”

“She was a traitor to her lawful husband and to the country that had sheltered her. And it was all for naught. D’Journet quickly realized that his cause was hopeless,
that Napoleon would never reinstate the dukedom, that France could never return to the old ways. At least when he recognized that his very life was in danger, he sent my son back.”

“With Genevieve?”

“She chose to stay with
le duc.
She would have been ostracized in England, perhaps even charged with treason. But she would not sacrifice her son. Or D’Journet’s.”

“She sent both boys?”

“Yes, those were her terms. My heir would be returned, if her lover’s son was also brought to safety. I can’t begin to explain the dealings with smugglers and spies, all the bribes I had to pay merely to send a message, but I agreed. I swore to be father to both children.”

“And?”

“And it was a rough passage. The smugglers’ ship was shot at by a British man of war. The boat capsized in the storm and only a handful of the brigands managed to cling to the hull until they were rescued. Knowing how much I was willing to pay, one of the smugglers saved a boy.”

Aurora stifled a sob. “Andrew?”

“Or Henri. There was no way of knowing. The child was too young to understand the question. He answered to both names, having been raised in the same cradle. And he was distraught over the separation from the only parents he’d known, his brother and his nursemaid, in addition to the horrors of the journey. He did nothing but cry, then he took sick. He would have died but for my old nanny. I tried to pray for his recovery, I swear. Then word came that the duke and his mistress had perished of typhus before their castle was stormed. I would never find out the truth.”

“So you claimed the boy.” Tears were rolling down Aurora’s cheeks by now, but Kenyon was looking inward and did not see.

He nodded. “I claimed the boy as Viscount Windslow. He has Genevieve’s look, her dark eyes and pointed chin. That’s all I could judge by. But I will never know,
will I? Just as we will never know what child came home from India.”

Kenyon turned and saw that Aurora was crying, and he wished more than anything to take her in his arms and soothe her, but she was not his to hold, to comfort. Until this mess ended, he did not dare. He was going to be a laughingstock, she was going to be a social pariah, and neither was going to find the happiness that had seemed so close. “Don’t cry, my dear,” he told her, wanting to weep himself. “We’ll go to Bath and straighten this hobble out. We can always get married again, when we know the answers.”

Jumping to her feet, she stamped her foot. “I am not crying because I am not the real Aurora Halle McPhee, you dolt. I am crying because I am married to an autocratic, overbearing, unfeeling brute who didn’t even think to tell me that we have a son. I am crying because the man I thought was almost perfect is actually a pompous prig who doesn’t trust me enough to know who I am.” She pounded her fist on the top of his nearby lap desk. Then she flipped the lid back, knowing what she would find. She reached in and pulled out the proof. “You don’t believe me, you don’t approve of me, and you don’t even like me enough to admit that you wear spectacles!”

Chapter Eleven

Monkeys were like men, appealing, amusing, and often impossible to live with. Sweety wanted out of his cage; Windham wanted out of his marriage. The monkey was unintentionally destructive; Windham was well nigh to breaking her heart. Aurora had Ned find a collar and lead for the monkey. She did not know what to do about the earl.

If she claimed to be someone else, some magnate’s mischance, he would be free. But what about Aurora’s honor, her mother’s memory? She could not do it, not even for Kenyon. She had to prove his theory wrong, that was all. So, while her maid, Judith, was packing for the Bath trip, again, and Windham was making a call at the War Office about his brother, again, she and Ned started looking for the truth.

A great many of Ned’s acquaintances knew someone who had a friend whose cousin had been in India two decades ago. The ragged, toothless, vacant-eyed individuals were not, necessarily, the type of clientele the Grand Hotel wished to welcome through its elegant front portals. A loose box in the livery stable out back was set aside for Lady Windham’s use, therefore, with a barrel for a desk and a bale of hay for a seat. The one-legged soldier stood guard, and Sweety checked the callers’ pockets for concealed weapons, pilfered goods, or treats. Those with seemingly valid information, or sad stories, went away with one of Windham’s coins. Others were sent off by Ned with a flea in their ear for bothering his lady.

No one knew anything of Elizabeth Halle or her child. That would have been too much to hope for. Two of
the men had heard of Avisson Halle, though. Another had actually been a clerk at John Company before being charged with embezzlement, which he swore was a false charge. The picture of her father that emerged was even blacker than Lady Anstruther-Jones had painted. Not only was Halle lazy and incompetent, a gambler and a womanizer, but he grew violent when in his cups. Aurora was beginning to understand what her mother had done, the sacrifice Elizabeth had made to keep her daughter safe, knowing she would not be around to protect her in the future. She could not simply send a man’s child back to England, but a dead child was mourned and forgotten. Aurora’s mother had loved her enough to give her up when she had so little time remaining, like Andrew’s mother.

Aurora could not prove any of her suppositions, of course, but she felt better in her own heart and that, she felt, was a great accomplishment for one morning. Oh, and she hired the embezzler as Windham’s secretary.

*

The worst part of wearing his detested spectacles, the earl decided, was having to see the injured look in Aurora’s blue eyes. Might as well mow down a field of bluebells. The worst part of having a bride of uncertain antecedents was that none of it was her fault. Kenyon could not blame her for being born on the wrong side of the blanket, nor for being so innocent she tossed her cap over the windmill for Podell. Even the monkey was not her fault. Lady Anstruther-Jones’s Indian butler had confided that the shrewd old stick had been looking for a way to get rid of the plaguesome beast. Why clutter up the Thames when she could cause chaos in Windham’s household? Kenyon wondered what he could present the witch with in return. Perhaps Needles could find a viper for the viscountess.

The earl was having no luck finding anything. Whitehall still had no word of his brother’s release from the French prison hospital, so he went on to the Home Secretary and the Registrar of Records. The blasted government ran on paper, with everything recorded, filed,
dated and initialed three times at least. Why, then, could no one find a death notice for Aurora Halle?

Perhaps because the child was not born in England and did not die there, a harried clerk complained. But Windham handed over another coin and told the lackey to keep looking.

The East India Company clerks worked for higher bribes.
Baksheesh,
they called it. He called it extortion. He could travel to India himself for half the cost of finding the information he wanted. Eventually one of the ink-stained underlings found the records of Avisson Halle’s brief employment.

“‘Dismissed for dereliction of duty,’” the clerk read. “That usually meant he never showed up for work.”

The other notations were dates of birth and death for Halle and his wife, Elizabeth Balcombe Halle. No other dependents were listed. If they had a child, the clerk supposed, the records would be kept with the parish priest of the Anglican Church in India.

Shipping lines and merchantmen kept excellent records, he was assured by an oily orderly in the Office of the Navy. They kept all bills of lading, passenger lists, and customs receipts. The British Navy insisted upon that. Unfortunately, all such documents would be kept in warehouses near the docks, which, as everyone knew, were subject to frequent fires.

Damn, it would take weeks to scour the wharves for the records he wanted, if they still existed. Kenyon thought about hiring Bow Street to help—or a secretary.

Lady Anstruther-Jones sent a note saying that her assistant had unearthed the letter from Elizabeth Halle, and there was something they might find of interest. Could they call on the morrow? So Kenyon canceled the trip to Bath, again, and had their bags unpacked. He sent the embezzler to the shipping offices, Ned to find a gift for Lady Anstruther-Jones, and another check to the hotel’s owners. The monkey, it seemed, could unknot its dog collar. Dinner would be delayed until a new chef could be hired.

Aurora was so upset, so remorse ridden, that Kenyon
just had to think of some way to please her. Here she was in London for the first time in her life, and cooped in a second-rate hotel that could not even keep a decent chef. Windham had been thinking of spending the evening at his clubs, but he’d have to listen to congratulations and the usual ribald teasing on the nuptials, which was not a topic in which he could find much humor. He decided to escort his problematical partner to the theater. They could sit in relative privacy in his box, insulated from chitchat, although unavoidably on view. Let the
ton
see her, he decided. The announcement notices were out; they were already sunk. When the truth came to light, they’d just have to move to the Colonies. Aurora might as well enjoy herself until then, and he might as well enjoy having such a pretty woman on his arm. They’d have a pleasant evening out, not thinking of the muddle they were in. That was how Lord Windham planned it, at any rate. He did not, however, plan on one of his ex-mistresses being in the cast that evening.

The night began well enough. Aurora was stunning in a new creation from one of Ned’s struggling seamstress friends. The modiste’s days of obscure stitching were over, unless Kenyon missed his guess, as soon as Society discovered who had the dressing of Lady Windham. And the
enciente
maid Judith knew her craft, too, for instead of the usual braided bun, Aurora’s hair was all tumbled curls, threaded through with ribbons and pink silk roses to match the gown. She was stunning. How could he have thought her passably pretty at first glance? And how was he going to keep his hands off her? Dash it, when she was his wife and he had all the time in the world, he burned like a callow youth. Now that he did not have her, could not have her,
must
not have her, the fire was a conflagration. He didn’t need the hot bricks at his feet in the carriage. He needed another cold bath.

She was entranced by the spectacle of the theater, the ornate architecture, the myriad lights, the haughty majesty of those in the tiered boxes, the raucous jollity of those in the pit. And Kenyon was entranced with her. He could look his fill, too, for once, for opera glasses were nearly universal here, and his were specially
ground lenses. One lens brought the stage closer; the other let him read the program—or the tiny freckles on Aurora’s nearly bare shoulders. Tearing his eyes away before he was tempted to tear the pink silk and lace gown away altogether, Kenyon noted that nearly every other pair of opera glasses in the place was also trained on his wife. He didn’t doubt they’d be overrun with curious callers during the intervals, so he made sure Needles, in his own new finery, was stationed by the door of the box to deny them to visitors. Kenyon didn’t want any questions, and he didn’t want any interruption of what time they had left.

The first act was a blur for both of them. Kenyon was swinging his opera glasses between the actors and Aurora so frequently that he could hardly get his eyes to focus together anymore. And Aurora was all too conscious of the attention she was drawing from the other theatergoers, making her feel like one of Uncle Ptolemy’s specimens, stuffed and put on display at the Bath Amateur Naturalists Society meetings. Kenyon was staring also, she knew, although he tried to hide his bad manners behind the binoculars. She wanted to pat her hair back into place, or pull up the neckline of her gown—or go home and finish what they’d begun on their wedding night.

Ned must have turned away thirty callers between acts, proudly declaring that his lord and lady were not wishing to be disturbed. During the second act, however, he entered the box carrying a screwed paper. “One of the stage hands brung this. Said it was important-like.”

Kenyon untwisted the page, then turned it over, then upside down. “Bad light in here, don’t you know,” he said, reaching for his reliable quizzing glass on its ribbon.

“Oh, just let me have it, you clunch. I swear you are as vain as a swan.” She took the page and held it closer to the one candle left burning in its sconce at the rear of the box. “It’s written lightly in pencil; that’s why you had a problem.”

He had a problem because he couldn’t see a blasted thing. “But what does it say, my dear?”

“It says, ‘Things are desperate. Come to the Green
Room after the performance. It’s a matter of death or death. Lola.’”

“Lola’s in the cast? She must be the only soul in London who hasn’t read about the marriage.” Kenyon fixed his opera glasses on the stage, scanning the actresses. “Yes, she’s the one in—”

“She’s the one in blue who has been gazing forlornly up at this box for two acts,” Aurora noted dryly. “The one who is waving to you, now that she has your attention.”

He moved the fingers of his right hand in return. “It’s not what it seems. We had dinner a few times, that was all.”