Dark Season (17 page)

There were fresh roses in the vase on the table. The room smelled of roses and of powdered sugar. He couldn’t sit but roamed about. One of the watercolors framed on the wall was Clement’s. Blue borage flowers, petals arrayed like stars. The others—all of birds—were his. The flaws screamed at him.

He checked his watch. It was getting on toward two o’clock. Time had sped up and escaped from him. He needed to get back to Pimlico soon to meet Mr. Chadwick.

He couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed. When he saw the maid at the door, he shook his head.

“No tea, thank you. I’m just leaving.” Then he noticed she held no tea tray. Her hands were working at her sides, and she cast a quick glance around her before she gave a queer little hop that launched her into the room.

“Your lordship.” She curtsied, a dip down that jettisoned her up again. She was a bouncy creature. Round faced, young, and not unattractive. He recognized her, vaguely, from prior visits.

“Miss … ” He nodded at her, bemused.

“Lizzie,” she said. “Lizzie Bradshaw.” Again she shot a look around her. It was almost comical—even her desire for circumspection was brash. She approached another pace.

His eyebrows shot up. He wondered suddenly if she meant to make some kind of advance. She was chewing on her lower lip and blinking at him with a most determined expression.

He did not tryst with servants. Ever. It was a rule with him. Too unfair to the woman and too messy. Lizzie came yet nearer with a twitch of her skirts. He cleared his throat. But at that moment Lizzie burst into speech, and his warning “ahem” was drowned out in the rush of her words.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “Mrs. Hexam’d have my head if she knew, but she didn’t see what I saw, and she’s like Mrs. Trombly, thinking Miss Reed is pure as a dewdrop because she’s pretty and talks in a pretty way and pretends she can hear the spirits, but she can’t. She’s clever with her pretending, but she’s a liar and a thief too. I saw the proof of it, and you being so closely connected to the family, and what with the master away, I had to say it to you when I saw you’d come back. I wanted to say it to you when you came before, but I never had the chance.” She paused after this remarkable outburst, sucking in a breath like a hiccup. “Miss Reed,” she added, “is a
nasty
baggage.”

Isidore gaped. Then he almost laughed at his own shock. He really had been expecting a stream of seduction to issue forth from the maid’s lips. Daphne’s flattery must have swollen his head. Thank God he hadn’t given any sign of his gross misperception.

“You think it’s funny, my lord? That Mrs. Trombly is nursing an ass to her bosom?” Lizzie Bradshaw’s face was screwed up into an expression of intense dislike.

Ass to her bosom? What the devil …
He comprehended her mistake and exploded into a coughing fit, hitting his own chest with his fist until his eyes watered.

“You’re laughing.” Her voice was filled with wondering disgust. “I tell you that night she was carried in and put in bedclothes I took her dress to the laundry room and found a pouch filled with all kinds of valuables sewn inside, and you’re laughing at me.”

He sobered instantly. “What are you talking about? What pouch?”

“A pouch of valuables,” she said. “Jewels and the kind of spoon you’d give a little lord.”

“They might belong to her,” he said, even as his heart sunk.

“Oh, aye,” said Lizzie. “Maybe she talked to Prince Albert’s ghost and he got Queen Victoria to make her a gift of sapphires and pearls. I don’t think so, my lord.”

He didn’t think so either. “Why don’t you tell Mrs. Trombly?”

“I told you.” Lizzie thinned her lips until they went white. “She makes such a fuss over Miss Reed, it’d be like telling her that biscuits ain’t made of flour or that butter ain’t made of milk. She wouldn’t believe me, and I have no proof.”

“You left the pouch in Miss Reed’s dress, then?” The ache above his left eyebrow was starting to stab into his brain.

“Course I did.” She drew herself up so rapidly she had to hop backwards to keep her footing. “
I
am an honest woman. Just because I see something’s been stolen, it doesn’t give me the right to steal it meself, now does it? It’d tell pretty black against
me
if I stole what her stealing tells black against her. If you understand my meaning, your lordship.” She was affronted, but he couldn’t muster an apology. He thumbed his eyebrow, mussing and smoothing the hairs.

Miss Reed … a common criminal. She wasn’t a puzzle that he could linger over. She was a problem that he needed to eliminate. At once. She would have to leave Trombly Place. He could not tolerate a thief. Why did he feel this creeping sensation of disappointment? The thought of driving her out of the house made him sick. She would return to her madam, her pimp, return to whatever den she’d crawled from. What could that mean to him?

Sad story there.
Yes, she must have some sad story. Genteel poverty produced its criminals as surely as squalor. But she couldn’t be allowed to fleece the family who had all but raised him while he pondered what sad circumstances could possibly have led her to this pass.

And so Miss Reed, the truce is over. Nullified as if it never were
. He would show her no mercy, and he would show himself no mercy. No game of cat and mouse. No deluded dalliance. Severance. Swift and final.

“I’ve looked for it since,” said Lizzie when it became apparent he was not going to speak. “In her room, but she’s hidden it good. She’s probably adding to it, too. Building up her little hoard. Not that I’ve noticed anything missing; I keep a look out, your lordship. But you can’t be too careful with a woman like that.”

“No.” He checked his watch. Another few minutes of this, and he’d end up late to his appointment.

“I did right to tell you?” Lizzie was wheedling now. There was a protocol for this kind of exchange. In his ill-humored distraction he’d almost forgotten. He produced a guinea and handed it to her.

“Thank you, Lizzie,” he said through clenched teeth. “It was most proper of you.”

Lizzie smiled, plummeted into a curtsy, and popped up again. The guinea had disappeared like a magic trick.

“You’re going to talk to Mrs. Trombly, then?” Emboldened by the tip, she inched toward him. “And when might that be? You won’t say my name? Not at first? Not until she believes you? Not until she knows how black it all tells against Miss Reed without hearing it’s from me?” She was agitated, eager. He could
smell
her nervous energy, sour and metallic.

His headache made it difficult to think. He nodded curtly at her as he headed for the door.

“I’ll come back this evening to speak with Mrs. Trombly. Your … ” He searched for the phrase.
Vindictive meddling?
“Keen perception will be appreciated, I’m sure.”

“Tonight’s the Tenbys’ dinner party!”

Her shrill reminder made him wince. He muttered something indistinct as he continued down the hall. Back on the street, he hailed a hack. He climbed inside and shut his eyes, rubbing small circles on his throbbing temples. Christ. He’d already sent Tenby his polite excuse. Should he send a polite excuse for failing to keep his polite excuse?

He would be dining out after all. He would corner Miss Reed at the party and hear what she had to say before he went to Louisa. He would give her that much of a chance to explain herself. But he had a feeling Miss Reed would offer him nothing satisfactory. She would offer him her back, most likely, as she turned and fled back into the shadows from whence she came.

It was between the fish course and the entre that Ella took her first easy breath. The party was not an unmitigated disaster. No one was interviewing her about her relationships with the dead. No one was paying the slightest bit of attention to her. Even her dinner partner, Mr. Huntington, had abandoned her. They had suffered through two false starts—he asked what events she was planning on attending this season and who her connections might be in London—before settling on a sufficiently general subject—the weather.

Throughout their painful dialogue, Mr. Huntington had kept his ear pricked to the low tones of a far more interesting tête
-
à
-
tête
taking place across the table. Ella had just made the observation that the fog and the smoke in London shared several qualities and was beginning, after his prolonged silence, to enumerate those qualities, when he jerked his head around and cried, “Why Cliveden never said any such thing! What rubbish. I was
there
. Out with your sources.”

The orbit of the very entertaining conversation about what Cliveden did or did not say, and to whom exactly, widened to include Mr. Huntington. And only Mr. Huntington.

Cliveden could have nothing to do with her.

Seated at the long, candlelit table, wine flowing and conversation sparkling all around her, she might as well have been alone. If she were attending the party not as Miss Reed but as Miss Arlington—a
different
Miss Arlington, healthy and whole, with a brain bright and spotless as new bunting—the situation would have been cause for tears rather than quiet celebration. Slighted by a dinner partner! Ignored by everyone of consequence! The horror.

She smiled faintly, toying with her sherry glass. For her, even “wallflower” had been too lofty an aspiration. A wallflower might at any moment be chosen, picked out from amongst the other languishing maidens. A wallflower might suddenly be led onto the dance floor, swept into a couple in the midst of other couples. A wallflower was
eligible
. A wife in potential.

She was
not
eligible. She had dreamed of being, at best, a fly on the wall. Allowed to remain in her home, in proximity to others, but on the perimeter. Allowed to take vicarious pleasure in other people’s love, other people’s children.

Until Alfred had squashed her meager, stupid dream. She could imagine his riposte.
Let you remain as a fly on the wall? My dear Ella. Flies are the handmaidens of contagion. One does not harbor flies.

She gazed toward the head of the table. Mrs. Tenby presided, an attenuated woman, everything about her long and thin. She wore a gown of lemon silk, which gave her too much the appearance of a yellowed bone. She was talking animatedly, waving a long arm, throwing back her head again and again, overcome with laughter. The gesture exposed a considerable length of thin, white throat.

It would be more charitable to think of her as a swan instead of a bone. Doubtless, swan was the effect she was going for.

Ella tipped her sherry glass against her mouth to hide a smile that must strike anyone who glanced her way as a little too wide for one so neglected. People tended to be suspicious of those who enjoyed their own company. The last thing she wanted was to stir suspicions. She wanted to fade into shadows between the pools of candlelight and watch without being watched herself.

But she couldn’t fade away completely.
He
was looking at her. Isidore Blackwood. She could feel the heat of his gaze the moment he turned his eyes on her. The blood rose to the surface of her skin. He was seated at the other end of the table. She had been trying not to look toward him.

When he’d walked into the parlor, she’d felt his presence too, even before the announcement sent a flurry of consternation through the guests. She was standing beside Mrs. Trombly, looking down into the velvety nap of the Wilton carpet. The air changed, became charged, like the air before a storm. She turned to the doorway. He’d run a comb through his hair; the wild black locks were swept back from his forehead. The grooming only brought out the angles of his face. He looked even bolder. More predatory. His black evening suit seemed painted on his body so perfect was the fit, so easy were his movements. His blue eyes brushed over her as he lazily surveyed the room.

Her stomach dropped.

“Blackwood!” Mr. Tenby, corpulent and ruddy, walked over to him immediately. He was the kind of man whose confidentially lowered voice had the effect of a stage whisper; it whet the audience’s curiosity and was audible to all. “What’s this? Didn’t expect to see you here.” He signaled to his butler. “Another place setting.” The butler did not share Mr. Tenby’s attitude of bemused toleration. The man looked distinctly irritated, almost injured, as he exited the room.

Mr. Tenby shook his head—a massive object—at Lord Blackwood. “You’ll have to walk into the dining room alone, but I suppose you’ll manage. Tooth’s all better, I take it?”

Lord Blackwood answered with a smile. A wide, white, flawless smile. “As though the problem never were.”

Mr. Tenby harrumphed at that. But he seemed pleased at Blackwood’s appearance. Ella noted—and her stomach gave a strange twist as she did—that the ladies assembled in the parlor seemed
doubly
pleased. Mrs. Hatfield, a statuesque widow with a wide, feline mouth, nearly purred her pleasure to Mrs. Trombly.

“A rare sighting,” she murmured, her tone leaving no doubt that it was also a pleasant one. “You don’t suppose he comes with a
particular
purpose?” She cut her eyes at Miss Tenby, who was herself gazing at Lord Blackwood with a wolfish mien.

Or perhaps, Ella thought, frowning, she was hungry. Blackwood’s unexpected arrival had pushed back the dinner by some minutes.

Mrs. Trombly glanced at Miss Tenby. “I haven’t the faintest idea. Does a man require a particular purpose to dine out?”

“No,” said Mrs. Hatfield with a voluptuous smile. “Not when there’s such a wealth of beauty, good sense, and virtue in the company at large. A man should dine out with an open mind.”

To Ella’s satisfaction, Mrs. Hatfield had ended up quite as far down the table from Lord Blackwood as it was possible to get. She was forced to lavish her “beauty, good sense, and virtue” on her dinner partner, Lord St. Aubyn. Not exactly a hardship.

The names and titles of the various dinner guests swirled in her head, but she could definitely remember Lord St. Aubyn. The man was a baron. Unmarried. Tall, blond, classically handsome. He had a chiseled face. Lips finely molded. Nose straight and thin. Never broken. His eyes were pale, a green-blue, and peculiarly inquisitive. When Ella had been introduced to him in the parlor, he’d studied her as though he were shortsighted. There was no judgment in his look but rather a clinical detachment. Then he’d smiled. A warm, frank, lovely smile. He was a
very
attractive specimen.