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Authors: Hayley Ann Solomon

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BOOK: Seeking Celeste
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The sharp set of his jaw and the uncommonly reticent manner of his speech confirmed Lord Rutherford's worst fears. Robert, at last, was hooked. He only hoped that this Miss Dernnger-Anne, was it?—lived up to expectation. The name rang a faint but familiar bell in his head. Robert was right. There
was
something... .
 
 
The offices of Messrs. Wiley and Clark were bustling but surprisingly clean given their location just two streets down from the dockyard. The Thames was notoriously murky on this side of town, but none of the grimier aspects of the city were evident in the Spartan but elegantly furnished rooms.
The senior of the two men seated at an oak table almost the length of the second chamber looked up from his books and eyed his partner with interest.
“Any news, yet, Ethan?”
His inquiry was met with a shake of chestnut curls and a grimace at the large, hand-inscribed books in front of him.
“None, I am afraid. I have contacted the other beneficiaries, but the two remaining parties remain elusive. So far, the inquiries have not been exhaustive, but I might say they have been reasonably efficient. Any further search would involve a capital loss to the firm unless the investigation is offset by the sums held in trust.”
Old Mr. Wiley set down his monocle and sighed. “I am not certain I can authorize such a step.”
“But the parties can surely not object—”
“My dear Ethan, when you have been around as long as I have, you will learn not to make such foolish and ingenuous assumptions. Greed is limitless and rears its head in the most unlikely of places. No doubt Lord Featherstone and Miss ... Derringer, was it? ... ought to be grateful for the intelligence we bring. It is a guinea to a groat, however, that if we use some of the capital to
locate
them, one or other will lay a complaint against us to the authorities. It may not be fair, it may not be natural, but by
godfathers,
it is life.”
The younger man still appeared troubled. “What shall I do, then?”
“Reinvest the capital. The money was earned on change; it is reasonable to assume the investors would keep it there. Merchant shipping is a good line; record the details carefully and buy in again.”
“And the interested parties?”
“To
hang
with the interested parties! If they did not respond to the advertisements in the
Morning Post,
it is not our fault. We still have our contacts in place at Whitehall. If they can help, so much the better. If not, well, no one can say that as a company we have not acted in the best interest of all concerned.”
Mr. Clark sighed. Lord Featherstone he knew nothing about, but Miss Derringer ...
she
was a different story. Above his touch, of course, but nevertheless not so stiff as to hold him in contempt.
They had spent a memorable hour together when Miss Derringer had recklessly placed all of her competence on change. He remembered advising her to go with a safer option, but she had smiled, simply shaking her glorious raven head. Her eyes had glowed bright as emeralds and she had had a reckless air about her. The air, Ethan knew, of a gambler.
He was not to know the despair that had driven her to him, or the do or die attitude that had caused her to be so unthrifty. Anne had decided that either way, with the competence or without, she would be doomed to a life of humble servitude. Betting on the
Polaris
was a whimsical way of casting caution to the winds. She had known, he knew, the risks. Unlike most gamblers, she had seemed not to care. When the
Polaris
had been sunk, she had nodded fatalistically and thanked him in quiet tones. It was what she had expected.
Now, it seemed, that communication had been false. It was the sister ship, the
Astor,
that had been caught on the rocky shores of the Eastern Hebrides.
Polaris
was late docking because it had been trading, quite profitably, in spices, tea and silk. Miss Derringer's competence had not grown into a fortune, but it had certainly trebled in the year or so that the
Polaris
had been trading.
Mr. Clark tapped his fingers on the table. He wished Miss Derringer had not been so precipitate in leaving Lady Somerford's, her last known address. Inquiries had led him nowhere. There was nothing, he knew, that he could do about the situation. He ticked a column in his ledger, then shut the book with a sigh.
Mr. Wiley chuckled. “Here's a thought, Ethan! You could locate Miss Derringer, then
marry
the wench!”
Not for the first time, Mr. Clark reflected on the bad taste of his partner. Still, he was a kindly man, so he managed a faint grin and endeavoured to ignore the thrust of the poor humour. Perhaps in his afternoon off he would make some investigations of his own. After all, people could not simply vanish into thin air. Or could they? Interesting thought.
Mr. Wiley held out the basket of delectable-smelling buns from Gunther's. A luxury, but it was his sixtieth birthday. Ethan bit into the sweet delicacy with unfeigned enjoyment. For the moment, the business of locating Lord Featherstone and the mysterious Miss Derringer was entirely set aside.
Seven
The night was adrift with stars. Anne looked out of her window in amazed wonderment. This was the first evening, since her fateful appointment as governess, that she had had the leisure to peer out of the tall lattice windows and thoroughly scrutinise the sky. She was right. The stars of the country seemed brighter and more numerous than those of the city. For an instant, she felt a pang, for the sky that she knew so well, the black velvet that had become her intimate friend, seemed suddenly vaster, a trifle aloof from the easy familiarity with which she had become accustomed.
But then, staring steadily, she located her old friend Polaris ... then the blazing light of Venus, Arcturus, Sirius, Canopus, Rigel, Procyon... . She relaxed and allowed the known to guide her to the myriad unknown. The naked eye could not lead her to the farthest planet known to man, Uranus, nor could it reveal to her its two recently discovered satellites, Ariel and Umbriel. With diligence, however, she could make out Saturn's rings, the red glow of Mars, the constellations and clusters and trails of nebulae... . She felt the heady thrill of the adventurer, the explorer into the unknown, the unchartered. It was waiting for her, this night sky. Sometimes she felt its presence as a living thing. She moved from the window and retrieved her notebook where it was still tucked away at the bottom of her portmanteau. She need have no fear now of being labeled a bluestocking. There could be nothing more fitting, after all, for a governess.
Throwing a serviceable cape over her shoulders, she tiptoed downstairs with a newly lit taper and tried the door of the sewing room. It was locked and looked unlikely ever to open, judging by its age, lack of oiling and dust upon the handle. Annoyed, she walked down to the west wing. There she found a much more promising exit. The door, whilst locked, appeared to be in good repair. It would be a small matter of retrieving the key in the morning. For the moment, however, short of waking the house staff, there appeared to be no way outside.
Unless... . She remembered that Carmichael Crescent lived up to its name in that it was shaped in a semicircle. If it was symmetrical, as she suspected, there would be a balcony on the other side. If she could not stroll through the gardens, then stepping out onto the first-story balcony might serve her purpose just as well.
It was a good ten minutes later that Anne rounded the curve of the east wing and found her way into the room she suspected might serve her purpose. When she did, she blushed, for it had that distinctively masculine smell of leather and apple blossom that was never far from her unmaidenly thoughts. There was no question that this was his room, for the shelves were lined with books of masculine appeal and the far corner harboured the most enormous globe Anne had ever laid eyes on, set in beechwood and highly polished.
When she stepped closer, the corners of her lips tilted upward, for the globe was celestial rather than terrestrial, a further indication that my lord's mind wondered in close synchrony with her own. He had not lied, then. Nor, she realized, had he boasted when he spoke of his two-inch telescope. There it was, enticingly beyond her reach. It was in a glass cabinet crafted, almost certainly, specifically for the purpose.
She wondered if there was a key somewhere at hand. Never in her life had she had the opportunity ... but no! He had promised to show her, and at the earliest opportunity she would tax him with that promise. It would not be fitting to go through his private drawers.
With a sigh, the very proper Miss Derringer realized that if she were not to be plunged into darkness by her flickering candle, she had best return to her chamber. Still, there would be other nights, and yes, the door eased open onto the balcony. She decided to use this wing rather than the more circumspect wing on the other side. Somehow, the room reminded her, touchingly, of Robert, Lord Edgemere.
The heavens seemed limitless. Anne suppressed her growing eagerness. Tomorrow, she would bring several precautionary tapers and resume her study of the firmament. It could only enhance her authority on the subject, and
that,
she reasoned, was the responsibility of an excellent governess.
Smiling a little, she made her stealthy way back to bed. It would have surprised her a little had she known she was not the only one roaming the enormous house that night. Tom and Kitty had been adventuring, too.
 
 
“Yawning your heads off at ten o'clock? I believe you must be sickening for something!”
Tom grinned a little, but Kitty had the grace to look uncomfortable.
“Shall we begin again? Tom, you may read from the top. Kitty, you may correct his pronunciation. That way, I shall know that you are
both
paying attention!”
“Miss Derringer, it is such a dismal thing to do, Latin proverbs at this hour. I am positive Robert would not wish it.”
“Just as you are positive that this, and not that poky little chamber across the passage, is the schoolroom?”
Kitty giggled. “It is much more comfortable!”
“Granted, you little minx! Now read those proverbs before you drive me to an apoplexy.”
Tom made a face that was exactly mirrored by his sister. Despite the grimaces, Anne thought there could not be a pleasanter looking pair of copper-curled scamps in all the world.
“If you get all ten correct, you shall have a reward.”
“Reward?”
It was Miss Derringer's turn to grin. “We shall play truant and fish at Tom's creek. I have ordered up a picnic hamper, so desist, I beg you, from yawning, and get on with the wretched lessons!”
It did not need much more encouragement. The proverbs were dealt with in a satisfyingly short time, an excellent indication that the children had good brains if only they were extended a little. Anne tucked this newly gleaned information away for another day, then jauntily reached for her chip straw and borrowed parasol.
“Thank you, Kitty. The fringes are delightful, and the colour is exactly my favourite shade!”
“They match your eyes perfectly, Miss Derringer! Keep it. I dare swear I have
twenty
such parasols! Robert is forever buying them—to hear him, you would think I had a dozen freckles at the very least!”
“With your skin colouring you have to be careful, Kitty. Lord Edgemere sounds like the best of brothers to care about such trifles. Besides, I can see a good couple of sun spots peeking out from the bridge of your nose. Remind me to make up some of my elder flower water solution. Used with Venice soap, oil of rhodium and half an ounce of lemon juice, it is a truly excellent remedy. I know, for I used to run to the same problem myself.”
“Now you are bamming us! Your skin is creamy smooth.”
Anne smiled. “Perhaps because I am diligent in my use of a bonnet and parasol.”
“Do you
always
have the last word, Miss Derringer?”
“Very nearly! It is satisfying, is it not?”
 
 
The days passed more quickly than Anne could have imagined. The mornings were far fuller than she had anticipated, for Mrs. Tibbet had taken to consulting her on household matters, reasoning that two heads were better than one, especially if the other was another female's.
What Jefferson, the gardener, and Carlson, the head groom, had to say about this state of affairs shall not be discussed here. Suffice it to say that a new regimen was instituted where all servants were required to bathe at least twice a week and were provided with crisp new liveries made up, in the evenings, by both Anne and the faithful Tibbet.
Between horse riding, fishing, star gazing and traditional lessons, the children were generally—but not quite—too tired for any real mischief. Anne had only the occasional frog in a tea cup and apple pie in bed to contend with. Since she was more than capable of dealing with such calamities whilst maintaining her endless good humour, the first month came and went with a remarkable rapidity.
Anne had never known such happiness. Even when she was eligible Miss Derringer of Woodham Place, comfortable in the first circles of society, she had never known such peace. As her fortune had been whittled away by a derelict father and equally spendthrift brother, she had endured two sorry seasons of ignominy, forced to hide her bookishness and her bright interest in the classics, in mathematics, in astronomy. She had been dressed in hideous pink confections cast off from her cousins, the Ladies Somerford and Apperton.
To hide her confusion she had adopted the pose of the ice maiden, making herself unapproachable even to the kindliest of suitors. Being a wallflower, she found, was preferable to the other type of attention she was prone to receive. Even with noble bloodlines—Anne was distant cousin to the Marquis of Gilroy—young men were prone to think dowerless ladies more inclined to certain liberties. She was not, of course. Her virtue earned her disapprobation and censure all round.
Funny to think Lord Edgemere was the man that finally provoked her wanton impulses. He, who had no need to dally with young improvidents. He could have the pick of the ton at his feet if he wished.
Anne thought, rather glumly, that he probably did. Then she caught herself up short. There would be no more of this maudlin daydreaming. She was as far beneath Lord Carmichael's touch as that pleasant gentleman at Wiley and Clark's had been below hers. That had not stopped her being polite to him, just as it had not stopped Robert—she must stop thinking of him as that—being pleasantly attentive to her.
Pleasantly attentive? He had been more than that, surely! Anne felt that strange warmth stealing over her body again. Lord Edgemere had been teasing, incorrigible, deliberately provocative. She could not deny it. He had been attractive despite his reprehensible ways.
And what she was to do with a sensual predilection way out of kilter with her normally stern, puritanical thoughts, she could not imagine. Admiring Lord Edgemere was like throwing a cap at windmills—she was not such a gapseed as to believe his flirtatious manner signified anything but an absurd propensity to levity. No doubt she was an amusing pastime. Certainly, he was curiously amusing—but no. It was dangerous for her thoughts to trail down that all too well worn path.
Anne glanced at the children. For once, they appeared to be concentrating on the lessons she had set them. Tom was musing on the life cycle of a frog and whether toads, like lizards, could endlessly regrow their tails. His study, thanks to some resourceful fishing by his governess, was practical as well as theoretical. He was therefore enjoying himself with unremitting relish. Anne smiled and thanked the heavens she was not born a tadpole.
Kitty was engaged in translating some fairly eyebrow raising French texts. The delectable novels had not previously been introduced into respectable schoolrooms. Again, delectable cherry lips widened in silent laughter. By the end of the week, Miss Carmichael's French would be flawless, even if her hazel eyes were slightly more saucer round than usual. There was nothing, Anne knew, so efficacious as a Gothic horror for bringing on a sudden dose of literacy.
Her gaze moved to the window, and she sighed. Her limbs were unusually mobile, her hands restless as she paced the cosy chamber the young Carmichaels had adopted as their own. She wondered if she might creep stealthily from the “schoolroom” and harness one of the horses the earl had obligingly stabled for their use. A little exercise might eradicate the salacious images that seemed burned into her wandering thoughts.
Images, always, of a blond Adonis. Handsome, strong, golden-haired and impossibly amusing. She thought of his mouth, his muscled arms entangled round her waist... .
“Miss Derringer, you look ill!”
“I am fine, Kitty, just a little out of sorts.”
“You are pale and peakish! Perhaps you will swoon!”
“Stuff and nonsense! It is those ridiculous novels I loaned to you! Swoon, indeed!”
Tom looked up from his dissection. “Kitty's in the right of it, Miss Derringer! You look like a regular porridge brain.”
Anne's lips could not help curving slightly. “I thank you for the compliment, young man!”
“It is not a compliment! It is the truth!”
“I see we shall have to have lessons in etiquette shortly. Tom, one never, never,
never
casts aspersions on a young lady's looks.”
“Oh, I know
that.
But you are not young, Miss Derringer!”
“A flush hit, Tom! I concede it and concur with your wisdom. Perhaps you young varmints can be trusted not to leave your seats until I return?”
“Shall you be sick?” The hopeful tone was unmistakable.
“I am devastated to disappoint you, young man, but no, I shan't. My constitution is distressingly hardy. I shall merely take a brisk walk around the topiary gardens and hope to revive my sagging spirits.”
“Oh! How perfectly tame!
I
should saddle Dartford and—”
“Have me dismissed without a character! Vile boy, Lord Edgemere would be
livid
if you attempted Dartford without permission. He is frisky even for the stable hands.”
BOOK: Seeking Celeste
2.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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