Queen of Diamonds (21 page)

Never in her entire life, not with Molly and not since—unless one counted the orphanage she could not recall, where she assumed they had crowded communal meals—had Queenie been part of a large family gathering. Unlike the opera or the Cyprian's Ball, everyone here knew everyone else, or was related.

Harry fit in, talking of farming concerns to the brothers and Mr. Browne, eating as if he had not had a meal in days, to Mrs. Browne's joy. Hellen was the center of attraction and glorying in it. Charlie was almost too excited to eat, elated at the plans to show him his very first piglets and chicks, alive and loose, that was. Parfait was stationed beneath the thin lady's chair, eating green beans and orange carrots and red meat.

Even Rourke seemed at home, from all the times he had visited.

Queenie was the outsider. She had no family, none of the sense of belonging the Brownes and their resident guests shared, no easy camaraderie with strangers. She was jealous of the warmth and caring she had never known and might never—but she was also in a near panic, the same as when she had to sit beside Harry on the high seat of his curricle, behind the prancing horses.

There were so many people laughing and talking at once, so many people who had lives without secrets, that Queenie turned cold again, despite the tiny beads of perspiration forming on her forehead. She was nothing but the pale, shy little girl she once was, cowering if she had to leave her house, hiding behind Molly and her books. How could she be comfortable now, when half her life had been spent listening to—and believing—Molly's lectures about never speaking to strangers, never telling anything about her personal life, never trusting anyone?

They wanted to know about her, these nice, decent people, and she could barely speak the lies. If not for Harry sitting beside her she would have fled. She would walk back to London if she had to, to her own little nest above the shop where she could hide until she had to be Madame Denise Lescartes again.

She could not ruin the others' enjoyment, though, and she could not disappoint Harry. He thought she was brave, which was perhaps the biggest lie she was living.

She trusted Harry, Queenie kept telling herself. She might not trust him with all of her secrets, for his own protection, but she knew he would not let her drown in this sea of strangers.

He kept looking at her and smiling. He touched her hand once, passing a platter. He frowned in concern at how her knuckles were white on the fork and knife she used to cut her meal into little, barely eaten pieces. She took another swallow and smiled back, for him. Under cover of the table he patted her thigh, which almost succeeded in taking her mind off the others.

Besides, she had to smile and laugh and look happy. Rourke was watching her.

The Runner appeared to be concentrating on his meal and the woman sitting beside him, one of the Browne cousins, Queenie thought. Yet his eyes kept coming back to her, not Harry beside her, or the man he had come to see. Rourke's gaze was piercing, looking behind the modest gown she had donned for the Brownes, beyond her use of less face paint. Queenie feared he could see right to her quaking knees, her trembling toes, the sawdust in her throat and the butterflies in her stomach. He knew she was a fake.

She laughed and flirted with the bearded patriarch, Mr. Joseph Jacob Browne, at her other side.

He blushed. Harry dropped his fork. Rourke looked away.

She was a good fake, at least.

Chapter Twenty-One

One person at the tables did not bother pretending to be enjoying himself. A slender, middle-aged man spoke to no one but the woman at his side, John George's sister, Mary Jane. He ate and he drank, but he did not laugh and he did not seem to be aware of the cheerful conversations around him. Queenie had not met him before dinner, but his identity was obvious, even from the distance between his place and hers, across the large room. He was dressed finer than any of the other men, including Harry, who was talking to the woman on his other side, a very obviously enceinte Browne relation.

The thin man had light colored, receding hair, amid the sandy-haired Brownes. She could not tell the color of his eyes from here, nor if they had a madman's glitter to them. From her seat, the man did not seem demonic, only aloof and somewhat arrogant. “Phelan Sloane.”

John George's father heard the name she had not meant to utter aloud. He looked toward where she was gazing.

“Aye, that's our Mr. Sloane. You might have heard he is some kind of ogre. Everyone has, no matter that the earl tried to keep that ugliness quiet. But he does fine here. Polite, soft-spoken, never gave us a bit of trouble, until now.”

Sloane did not appear to be in a rant or a rage. Queenie doubted they would let him sit to dinner with the family if he was wont to throw food…or carving knives. “Now?”

“It's our Mary Jane.” Joseph Browne raised his glass of ale toward his youngest daughter, who was leaning closer to Sloane, as if they were alone in the room. “Our gal is good for him, no matter what my wife says.”

“She does not think Mary Jane should be assisting him?”

Mr. Browne's brow was furrowed as he watched Mary Jane and Sloane. “Mrs. Browne is afraid.”

“He is dangerous, then?” Queenie could not decide if she should call for her dog, Charlie, Hellen or Harry. All of them, to get them to safety, she decided. The man who would hire a highwayman to waylay a coach was capable of anything. She was halfway out of her chair when the elder Mr. Browne guffawed.

“Not that kind of dangerous, not anymore. And not with the soothing tisanes my wife brews him or the careful eye my boys keep on him. He's more a threat to our girl's reputation than anything,” he confided in Queenie. He might have spoken of family matters because Queenie was a woman of the world and he wanted her opinion, or because the entire family, and the neighborhood, was already giving their own opinions. The older man might simply have been afraid Queenie would throw out lures to him if he did not make conversation with the dashing Frenchwoman. “He only wants Mary Jane on his walks, only wants Mary Jane to read to him at night when he can't sleep and has bad dreams.”

“So Mrs. Browne does not think he will hurt Mary Jane.”

“Nary a bit. She's afraid of what the neighbors will say, them together so much, away from the others. I stopped asking where they go on their walks, I did. Better that way. But the boys don't like it much. Their little sister, you know.”

Queenie had never known a brother's protectiveness. “What does Mary Jane think?”

“Oh, she comes back from the strolls smiling. She always did say he was better'n the cream what rises on the fresh milk, only a touch confused. She gave up being Lady Carde's maid to tend him, don't you know, and she was a fancy London abigail afore that. Turned down the blacksmith's boy, too, onct she came home.”

“Perhaps she feels sorry for Sloane?” Queenie could not, knowing what he had done, but she was not a forgiving soul, and her life had been too deeply affected by the man's actions to forget.

“Mebbe. Mebbe. Still, there's no saying but that our girl does keep Mr. Sloane on an even keel. The doctors the earl sends all agree to that. We had to dose him with laudanum the time she went off to visit my sister in Bath. And he frets if she goes into the village on calls with my wife.”

“How fortunate he is to have her to look after him.”

Mr. Browne nodded his head in agreement. He leaned closer. “I mean to speak to Lord Carde about that very thing, when he comes next to visit. No reason they cannot get hitched, I say. Fix my gal's reputation, a ring would.”

“But is he…That is, would such a marriage be quite legal if the groom is not in his right head?”

“Who is going to care if it makes the both of them happy? Asides, he's as sane as you or me and the Earl of Carde combined most of the time. And it's not as if we'd be asking any settlements or such over what the earl already pays to keep Mr. Sloane with us. All we'd want is that scrap of paper that makes our Mary Jane a wife, not a nursemaid what takes care of a gentleman's needs, if you get my drift.” He took another swallow of his ale. “Not that a gal of mine is fast, don't you know, but people will talk.”

Queenie well knew all about gossip and rumor and scandal. She was presumed to be Harry's fancy piece, after all. She doubted Mr. Browne would be speaking of such matters otherwise, and unless he had swallowed more than his share of the potent brew. Queenie felt uncomfortable again, but Harry was debating children's names with the pregnant woman. She was going to need a name for her infant any instant, it seemed, so Queenie could not interrupt.

Mr. Browne was still watching his daughter and Phelan Sloane, a worried look still on his bearded face, despite the ale. “If the earl gives his blessings, we'll all be happier, I swear. My wife, my girl, and Mr. Sloane, too.”

Queenie knew too much about the man's past to trust him with anything sharper than a butter knife, or more valuable than a hair pin, much less a beloved daughter. “You truly do not worry for your daughter's safety?”

Mr. Browne passed her a slice of apple he had peeled. “He loves her.”

“He loved the former countess too, they say. Loved her to death.” The woman's coach had fallen of the road, killing her and her servants, all because Phelan Sloane had hired a thug to stop it. Everyone knew that, so Queenie was not speaking out of turn.

“He never meant to hurt the woman, though. She was his own cousin.”

“She was also married to the previous Lord Carde. Sloane might have felt that the earl should not have her, if he, himself, could not.”

Browne shook his head. “No. I never could believe that, not and have the man under my roof, no matter how much Lord Carde pays me. Asides, if he'd set out to do Lady Carde harm, he wouldn't be so torn up he'd try to kill hisself, would he?”

Queenie had not heard that, about any suicide attempts. The Endicotts must have closed ranks to kept it from the
on dits
columns. “I do not know what is in the mind of one such as he.”

“No one does, ma'am. No one does. He did tell us that he only wanted the lady to stay with him a bit longer, that was all. And that's another reason he and our Mary Jane should get buckled. If he's married to the girl he won't worry that she'll find another beau. One less worry for his troubled mind, don't you know.”

Mary Jane did seem attentive to the gentleman, leaning close to him, passing him this choice cut of meat, that favorite dish. The former ladies' maid did not have to stay here, not with her references and experience, so she must like the man, Queenie reasoned. Maybe she really did want to marry him, even knowing what he had done. “Love is strange.”

Mr. Browne brought his glass to his lips again. “I'll drink to that.”

After the meal the tables were pushed back. Most of the invalids—“We call them infirm,” Mr. Browne told Queenie—were taken up to their rooms or outside for some air. Some of the younger men went into the tap room for a game of darts, and many of the children went off to show Charlie and Parfait the farm animals. John George and Hellen were going to visit the vicar while Harry went with Mr. Browne to look at a prize ram. Harry looked toward Queenie, as if seeking her permission to leave her alone, but both he and the older man seemed eager to step through fields of manure, so Queenie said she would be fine in the house. So would her new half-boots.

The women cleaned up.

Queenie would have helped, but Mrs. Browne refused. “You are company, ma'am. And work hard enough, John George tells us. You sit.”

Queenie did for awhile, listening to the soon-to-be mother waver between Jason Henry and Julian Robert, Joyce Ann and Elizabeth Jo while a pair of moppets played with their dolls nearby. Queenie decided to sew up some clothes for the toys when she got back to town, and a gown for the new infant, as a thank you for the hospitality shown to her. The children ran off to another game and the breeding Mrs. Browne—Queenie never did catch her first name, or names—fell asleep.

For all practical purposes, she was left alone, except for Mr. Phelan Sloane, sitting in the corner where Mary Jane Browne had left him. He kept watching the door to the kitchens, one hand twitching slightly.

Up close she could see that his hair was darker than that of the woman in the portrait at The Red and the Black and the colored reward notices, and very straight where it was not gone altogether. His complexion was pale, his physique thin and narrow, like the murdered countess's. His eyes were blue like hers, but a faded, watered blue, not the vibrant blue Lady Carde was said to have passed on to her daughter.

His eyes were nothing like Queenie's own, either.

She curtsied in front of him. He nodded politely, but looked past her.

“Sir,” she said softly, lest she wake the sleeping woman, and because this was why she had come. If she still harbored the least infinitesimal doubt, the last niggling suspicion, now was the chance to put them all to rest. “Mr. Sloane, do you know me?”

He shook his head and went back to watching for Mary Jane's return.

Queenie could not say she was disappointed. How could he recognize a female he had never met? And how could he connect a grown woman with curly black hair to his dead cousin's missing blond child?

And yet.

And yet he would be kin to Lady Charlotte Endicott. He was a blood relative, along with the half-sibling Endicott brothers and Charlotte's other cousin, Sloane's sister Eleanor, who was now the current Countess of Carde. Surely some chord would resonate between them?

If not that, which Queenie did not believe anyway, even before Ize told her otherwise, Phelan Sloane had paid blood money for Queenie's life. He'd stolen from Lord Carde so that Molly Dennis's fosterling might be fed and housed and clothed and educated…and used for more blackmail. Yet Phelan Sloane did not know her at all.

No chime of discovery rang in Queenie's mind either. She did not know this man. He was not any generous benefactor, not a relation, but neither was he evil incarnate. He was pitiful, in fact, waiting for the innkeepers' daughter like Parfait waited for a walk or a bone. Queenie realized she had been chasing smoke and fog, hoping someone could point to her, name her, give her back her identity. All she had captured was a handful of nothing.

She went outdoors, breathing in fresh country air, looking into the distance and looking into her own heart. She saw sheep, and no surprises.

Mrs. Browne came out to join Queenie in the front of the inn where a circle of chairs had been placed to catch the sun on clear days. The matriarch had taken off her apron and tidied her hair under a clean lace cap. She apologized for leaving their guest alone.

“No, I should apologize for not insisting on helping. I do know my way around a kitchen.”

Mrs. Browne laughed. “One more pair of hands and it would have taken twice as long to clean up.”

Queenie had to agree, knowing that sometimes she could accomplish as much in one hour as two of her helpers could in three.

After that the two women spoke of the inn and Mrs. Browne's large and growing family and how females were treated in the world of men. Queenie found the older woman to be wise and witty, not the country drudge Hellen had described, knowing nothing but cabbages and cows and chores.

The Brownes were a well-read family, with two sons university educated. They traveled occasionally to London for the theater and the opera—not on the night of Harry's debacle, thank goodness—and read the city newspapers. Queenie thought Lady Jennifer might enjoy having a farmer's wife as her guest.

Then, as she knew it would, the conversation turned to their mutual acquaintance, Hellen Pettigrew. Mrs. Browne approved, thank goodness, Queenie thought, seeing Hellen's good qualities instead of just her background. Hellen was sweet and sunny and adored John George, which mattered far more to his mother than any fancy pedigree. If the matriarch had not noticed that Hellen had not half the brains as young Mr. Browne, well, Queenie was not going to inform her. Besides, John George did not have half Hellen's good looks. Now Mrs. Browne could expect more grandchildren who were bright and beautiful.

“Speaking of what a babe is born with,” the older woman declared, “I say you cannot blame a child for its parents. But you can surely blame the parents for the child, illegitimacy aside. Mrs. Pettigrew seems to have done a fine job rearing her chick, and on her own for the most part.”

“She is an excellent woman.”

“Oh, I did not know you had met her. I thought your association with the young miss was too recent.”

Drat. Stupid mistakes like that were just what would bring Rourke down on Queenie's head. She had to keep her stories straight and forget about trying not to deceive decent folk. “I have heard Mrs. Pettigrew is a good person, that is, from Hellen and others. As you say, one can tell much of a mother by the quality of her offspring. You are to be congratulated on yours.”

Mrs. Browne was so pleased, she forgot about finding discrepancies in Queenie's conversation, like the lack of a French accent now that the young woman was speaking in private.

“What of you?” Mrs. Browne asked. “Your first husband did not provide you with any children, but do you hope for babies of your own?”