The Bargain (8 page)

“Thank you, William,” put in a cultivated female voice. The footman's broad shoulders moved aside, and Ariel found herself facing a tall, red-haired woman. “I am Adele Gresham. How do you do?”

Instinctively, Ariel dropped a small curtsy. The woman's manner reminded her all too vividly of her school's headmistress, Miss Ames. Then she registered the name. “Gresham?” she repeated.

“May we come in?”

Too surprised to do anything else, Ariel stepped back, and what seemed like a whole troop of people entered the small entryway of her house.

“A fine old place,” commented the duchess, surveying the carved panels and banister. “I suppose the drawing room is on this floor, rather than upstairs?”

Ariel indicated the door on the left. Her house was indeed too old to have been designed with a large withdrawing room on an upper floor. The biggest chamber, and the one her mother had used for receiving guests, was right next to the entryway.

Adele Gresham swept into it. Ariel didn't see her give any sort of signal, but none of the others followed. Feeling a bit apprehensive, she joined the older woman.

“A pleasant room,” said the duchess. She sank gracefully into one of the satin-covered armchairs that flanked the fireplace. “You haven't overwhelmed it with modern furnishings. It's best to let the old lines show, isn't it?” She nodded at the modest curtains on the small mullioned windows and the trestle table against the far wall.

“My mother chose everything,” replied Ariel. She remained standing in the middle of the room.

“Ah.” The girl was not precisely what she had expected, the duchess thought. Robert had described a sophisticated beauty in jewels and silk. Instead, she found a schoolgirl who looked braced for a reprimand. The discrepancy made the duchess impatient. She disliked puzzles. “I've brought you some servants,” she stated. “A housemaid and a sort of cook/housekeeper.”

Ariel stared at her.

“I say that because Hannah is rather more than a cook. If you have errands and that sort of thing, be sure to ask Ellen.”

“Why?” blurted Ariel.

“It is just more fitting. Hannah is actually—”

“No, I mean, why have you brought me servants?”

The duchess's natural forthrightness surfaced once more. “Alan asked me to,” she answered.

“Lord Alan told you… he asked you…”

“He said you had no staff for the house. He was concerned.” Observing the younger woman very closely, Adele remained undecided. She was the daughter of an actress, of course, and so she might be putting on a very good semblance of surprise and innocence. But if so, it was really remarkable. “Are you going on the stage yourself?” she couldn't help asking.

“What?” Ariel struggled to get her bearings. “No. I… I never had any talent for acting.”

“Ah. That must have disappointed your mother.”

“No, she was very glad.” This conversation was absurd, she thought, making another effort to take control of it. “Who…?”

“Glad?” The duchess raised her arching brows even farther. “Why, glad?”

Ariel pressed her lips together, letting silence interrupt their headlong exchange. “She didn't want me associated with the theater in any way,” she answered finally. “If I had had her gift, it would have been too tempting. Who are you?”

“Adele Gresham,” her visitor repeated. “Alan's mother.”

Ariel continued to stand in the center of the room. “And he asked you to bring me servants?”

“To find you two women to help,” was the reply.

“How dare he do such a thing!” exploded Ariel. “It was none of his business.”

The duchess blinked and sat back slightly.

“I am not some sort of… of charity case to be discussed and passed along for good works! I'm not a child or an idiot, to have arrangements made behind my back as if I was not capable of taking care of things myself.”

The duchess observed her with greater interest.

“Thank you very much for coming,” finished Ariel. “It was kind of you. But I shan't be needing your help. I hope you didn't take much trouble over it.” She moved toward the door of the room, signaling that the visit was over.

Adele didn't move. “Do sit down,” she said.

Ariel looked at her.

“You need some staff,” continued the older woman. With an almost imperceptible motion of her head, she indicated the film of dust on the table and the polished wood floor.

Ariel flushed. “I shall hire some servants,” she said.

“Where?”

“I… there are agencies.” She paused. “Aren't there?”

The duchess nodded. “I must warn you, however, that the best ones may be somewhat dubious. They are not accustomed to dealing with a girl of your age.”

“They will deal with me if I can pay fair wages,” retorted Ariel.

“Yes. But they may try to palm off untrained or unsatisfactory servants on you. You will need to watch for that.”

She considered this.

“It would be much easier simply to take Hannah and Ellen, for a while at least.”

“Why should you want to help me?” Ariel demanded.

“I didn't, when I came,” was the surprisingly straightforward reply. “But you aren't what I expected.”

Ariel stood straighter. “Your other sons told you about me,” she concluded.

“They told me something,” Adele agreed.

“They don't know anything about it!”

“No?”

“Lord Alan is helping me look into my mother's death. That is all.”

“Ah.” The duchess's keen gaze had scarcely wavered. “Won't you sit down? It's wearisome looking up this way.”

Flushing a bit again, Ariel hesitated, then went to sit opposite her visitor.

“It was terrible, what happened to your mother. Please accept my sympathy.”

Confused, Ariel glanced at her, then away.

“You were away at school?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Ariel threw her another quick glance. “Ames's Academy for Young Ladies. In the north.”

“I've heard of it. Quite a distance for you to travel. I would have thought a school nearer London…”

“Why are you here?” But even as she asked, the answer came to Ariel. “You wanted to see what I was like. You think I am an adventuress out to trap Lord Alan.”

The duchess merely raised her brows.

“Well, I'm not!”

It was the truth, Adele thought, as far as this girl could see it.

“So you can go. You don't have to worry.”

She wasn't worried, or not in the way she had been. The duchess thought a moment. Perhaps she was more worried than ever.

Ariel stood again.

“Why not let Hannah and Ellen help you until you can hire your own staff?” Adele suggested. “That way, you can take as long as you like and find really good servants.”

“Have you brought them here to spy on me?” asked Ariel.

The child was far too intelligent, thought the duchess. This really was an unfortunate situation.

“All right. Let them,” declared Ariel defiantly. “There is nothing wrong for them to see. I'll show you. But I shall pay their wages!”

“Of course,” replied Adele much more quietly.

Ariel bit her bottom lip.

“Come, I'll introduce you,” added the duchess, rising.

Ariel stepped to the door of the room and opened it. In her entryway, she found two footmen, an older woman, and a dark-haired girl who was sitting on the steps of the central staircase and scratching the stomach of Prospero, who sprawled beside her in wanton feline contentment.

At her appearance, the girl jumped up, causing the cat to leap to his feet and race upstairs. The footmen stood a bit straighter. The older woman simply looked at her.

“Hannah and Ellen, come in,” said the duchess's voice from behind her.

They complied, leaving the door open.

“Miss Harding, this is Hannah Enderby. She has been with me for a number of years and will make you a superior housekeeper.”

Not certain what to do, Ariel nodded. Hannah didn't curtsy, for which she was rather grateful.

“This is Ellen Jones, who has been well trained as a housemaid.”

The dark-haired girl did curtsy, saying, “Hello, miss,” in a soft Welsh accent.

“I think you'll find them completely satisfactory,” concluded the duchess.

“Yes, thank you.” Hannah had a watchful air, noted Ariel. She wondered how much the duchess had told her.

“I must be going.” Adele began to pull on her gloves and moved into the entryway. One of the footmen opened the front door, while the other went out to the waiting carriage.

Ariel stood looking up at the older woman. “Thank you,” she said, somewhat grudgingly.

“We shall see,” replied the duchess with a small smile. Giving Ariel a nod, she went out.

An awkward silence fell in the front parlor.

“Perhaps you'll show us the house, miss,” Hannah suggested.

“Of course.” She wasn't going to be intimidated, Ariel thought. Let her watch; there was nothing to be seen. She squared her shoulders. “We'll start in the kitchen,” she said.

When Lord Alan Gresham called at Ariel's house a few days later, he was pleased to be admitted by a neat housemaid and made to wait while she inquired whether Ariel would receive him. This was better, he thought as he was ushered into the reception room. Ariel must be far more comfortable. And it would be much easier to keep their interactions commonplace and correct now that the normal amenities of existence were back in place.

Alan liked order. He appreciated routine. They gave one the space to theorize and experiment; they left the mind free to soar. Nothing was more distracting to the higher mental processes than… A sound from the hall broke this train of thought, and in the next moment Ariel entered the room.

She looked a bit flustered. Tendrils of her glossy brown hair had escaped a knot at the back and framed her face in wisps. Her skin glowed even more vibrantly than usual, and there was a smudge of ink on her left forefinger. She wore one of her schoolgirl dresses again, a little creased. Looking conscious of his scrutiny, she smoothed it and said, “We were inventorying the linen.”

Alan felt his mood of calm satisfaction waver and shift. Like light hitting water, he mused, and refracting, diffusing from its straight, focused path. The very air in the room seemed to shimmer and settle into a new configuration. The color spectrum moved a point up the scale.

He shook his head and blinked. What was this twaddle? How had it gotten into his brain? He didn't think such things. He frowned at Ariel. She was doing it again. Somehow, her mere presence in a room could disrupt the atmosphere. Something about the nature of her personality, he supposed, and its scattered energies. Nothing was more distracting to the higher mental processes than this young woman.

“Your mother's dresser, Clarisse Duchamps, has been found,” he told her a bit curtly. “She is staying with an émigré family in Kensington.”

Ariel's expression sharpened and her hazel eyes lit. “We must go and see her at once,” she said.

“I have made arrangements to call there later this morning.”

“Did you tell her we were coming?” Dismay tinged Ariel's voice.

“She won't run away again,” Alan assured her. “She has no reason to, and in any case, the house is being watched.”

“You shouldn't have given her time,” she said.

“Time for what?” he asked, puzzled.

“To make up something.”

“Make up? What do you mean? If she tries to lie, I shall—”

Ariel brushed this aside impatiently. “She'll be sitting there concocting a marvelous story in which she is the most important character,” she said. “Clarisse always wanted to be an actress herself, but she is only good offstage.”

“Whatever theatrics she indulges in—”

“It just would have been better to catch her unawares,” Ariel interrupted. “But it can't be helped now.”

Was she actually offering to forgive him for a lapse in judgment, as her tone implied? Alan wondered. Did she still imagine that she could conduct an investigation better than he? “Miss Duchamps is not some sort of criminal that we are taking in charge,” he pointed out, rather mildly.

She looked surprised.

“To give her time to order her thoughts—”

A spurt of laughter escaped Ariel.

Alan merely raised his brows and waited.

“I don't think Clarisse has ever made an attempt to order her thoughts,” she told him.

“Indeed? A typical female, then.”

She looked at him.

He had expected a heated reply, but none was forthcoming. Ariel Harding was not a typical female, he conceded.

“Shall we go?”

Deliberately, he slipped his pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket. He was in control of this outing. “It is approximately twenty minutes by coach, allowing for some congestion in the streets. We should leave here in fourteen minutes in order to be on time for our appointment.”

Ariel raised her eyes from the watch, then bit her lower lip.

“Ample time,” he finished, snapping the watch shut. “Perhaps you should tell your maid to get ready.”

“For what?”

“To accompany you,” he said.

“Oh.” She appeared to contemplate the idea.

“The whole point of getting you servants was to—”

“Without consulting me,” she broke in as if reminded of a grievance. “Giving me no warning. Simply a duchess on my doorstep all of a sudden. How would you like to be treated in such a way?”

“Duchess,” he echoed.

“She wanted a look at me,” accused Ariel. “To see if I am a scheming creature who intends to—” She stopped abruptly and flushed.

“My mother brought the servants herself,” said Lord Alan, to confirm what she had implied. He hadn't expected this.

Ariel nodded. “Of course they are very good ones,” she added stiffly. “Better than I could have hired myself, I suppose. Ellen is a most superior housemaid. But Hannah doesn't really belong in a kitchen. She is far too—”

“Hannah?” interjected Lord Alan rather loudly. He experienced a sliding sensation, as if he had stepped onto what looked like solid ground, and found loose gravel under his feet, carrying him in a direction he did not at all want to go.

Ariel gazed at him.

This was all getting much more complicated than he had expected. It was always this way with people, he thought. They couldn't be predicted; they couldn't be counted upon to remain where they were put or to act as one planned they would. He strongly preferred the reliable elements in his laboratory. If one put an experiment in train, it followed logical, observable steps. The outcome might not be precisely set, but the variables were all under one's control. Pieces of equipment did not go careening off on their own to begin some entirely different operation. Beams of light did not suddenly turn right around and dazzle one's vision. “Perhaps we should be on our way,” he said, still a bit loudly, he realized.

Ariel's eyes had remained on his face. “It hasn't been fourteen minutes,” she pointed out.

“Nonetheless.” He rose.

“Won't we be too early?” wondered Ariel, curiosity clear in her face.

“I'll wait for you outside,” he responded, starting for the door.

“Hannah,” she murmured to his retreating back. “What is it about Hannah?”

***

Half an hour later, with Ellen occupying the forward seat of the carriage, they pulled up before a plain cottage on the edge of Kensington. It was surrounded by a white picket fence over which sprawled the branches of a climbing rose. “Clarisse is staying
here
?” wondered Ariel.

Lord Alan nodded. “The house is owned by one Armand Delon, who tutors young people in French and deportment. He lives here with his wife and three children.”

Ariel shook her head.

“What?” he asked.

“I can't imagine Clarisse in such a household,” she said.

“I suppose she found it a refuge.”

“Umm.”

They passed through the low gate and walked up to the front door, which was painted a cheerful light blue. It opened before Lord Alan could knock, revealing a slender woman of medium height with very black hair and very white skin. “Come in,” she said, her voice a Gallic lilt. “How glad I am to see you.”

Clarisse's brilliant black eyes remained fixed on Lord Alan, Ariel noticed. She herself might not have been there at all, not to mention Ellen. Her mother's dresser hadn't changed, she thought. Indeed, Clarisse never changed, despite the years. She had come to the Harding household more than a decade ago, and she still looked the same—lithe, vivacious, self-absorbed. She was also a genius with clothes and ornaments and hair, as her present ensemble clearly showed. And that was what had kept her with Bess Harding through the years, despite clashes and tears and shouting and innumerable fits of pique.

“Hello, Clarisse,” she said pointedly.

This forced the other woman to look at her.

“It's been a long time,” she added.

“You haven't grown very tall,” Clarisse replied, holding herself straighter to emphasize her own greater inches.

“No,” Ariel conceded. She was about to add that Clarisse hadn't grown any more amiable, but she decided it was foolish to antagonize her just now.

Leaving Ellen on a chair in the hall, they went into a small reception room, blandly furnished except for a magnificent gilded clock on the mantelshelf, and empty. Ariel heard children's voices from the back of the house, but saw no sign of them.

“Please,” said Clarisse, indicating the sofa and armchair with a sweeping gesture as she sank onto the former in a rustle of silk. Ariel had to suppress a smile at her expression when Lord Alan chose the chair, leaving her to sit beside Clarisse.

“We've come to speak to you about Bess Harding's death,” said Lord Alan without preamble.

Clarisse clasped her hands at her bosom. “Ah,
quelle
horreur
. I cannot bear to think of it.”

He leaned forward a little. “I know it's difficult.”

Ariel watched Clarisse's large, expressive eyes fill and the tears spill exquisitely onto her cheeks. She was reining in her own questions with great difficulty. It was obviously best to let Lord Alan conduct this interview.

He was holding out a linen handkerchief. Clarisse took it and gently wiped her eyes, never taking them from his face. “
Merci
,” she said. “You are kind.”

“Take all the time you need,” he said.

“That terrible night.” She shuddered.

“Yes?”

“All was as usual. We had no guests.”

We? thought Ariel.

“It was late. I had gone up to my room. To undress for bed.” Clarisse flashed Lord Alan a flirtatious glance. She somehow managed to give a vivid impression of disrobing without moving on the sofa, Ariel thought.

“Bess was in one of her moods,” the woman continued. “She had locked herself in her bedchamber.”

Ariel tensed and leaned forward. “Why?” she asked.

Clarisse glanced at her, then gave an eloquent shrug. “Why did she ever?” she answered, spreading her hands. “One never knew when Bess would despair or rage… or laugh.”

“There must have been some reason,” urged Lord Alan.

Clarisse turned her full attention back to him. “She was an artist,” she declared. “We artists, we are at the mercy of our feelings, because they are so strong, you see.” She put her hands to her bosom once again, directing his attention to the rounded curves of her breasts above the low bodice of her gown. “It is a burden we bear.” Her dark eyes were wide and glowing.

“So the household retired for the night?” asked Lord Alan. “Was there no sound, no sign?”

“None,” responded Clarisse dramatically. “Only silence.”

“And in the morning?”

The dresser looked a bit disappointed at the way her narrative was being received. “We rose as usual,” she said. “When Bess did not come out of her room, we were very quiet, thinking she slept. But by the afternoon, we began to worry, eh? So we knocked, and when there was still no sound, John the coachman broke the door.” Her hands fluttered again. “And there she was, on the floor. Ah, the blood—blood soaking her blue dress. It was the one with the embroidery.”

The shock of the words pulsed along Ariel's nerves. She could see it far too vividly.

“It was so strange,” Clarisse went on in a distant voice. “Everything seemed very slow. I saw the lace on her dress. I saw the little curls I had made in her hair. There were pieces of a broken brandy glass on the floor. I saw all these things.” She turned and stared at them, but not as if she saw.

Ariel swallowed.

“And then my eyes fixed on the razor, half-hidden by her skirts, and all clotted…” Clarisse choked. Raising her head, she took a gasping breath, then pointed dramatically to a decanter and glasses sitting on a small side table. Lord Alan went to pour her a little wine. She drank it off in one gulp. “I fainted then,” she told them. “When I woke, the other servants were shouting and wailing. We called for the watch, and then we packed up our things and departed. Who could stay in such a house?” She held out the glass for more wine.

Lord Alan looked at Ariel, his expression concerned. She folded her trembling hands together in her lap. “What do you remember about that day?” she asked shakily. “Something must have happened.”

Lord Alan blinked, seeming surprised at her ability to question after what she had heard.

“It is all a blur,” protested Clarisse.

“No, it isn't. You remembered the broken glass and the lace.”

The Frenchwoman held up a protesting hand. “Do not press me.”

“Clarisse, Bess is dead. I must find out why.”

Lord Alan was staring as if he couldn't take his eyes off her.

“I do not know!” exclaimed the other woman. “It was horrible, what she did. Her soul will never—”

“She was often blue-deviled,” insisted Ariel. “But she always recovered. What was it that made her…?”

“I do not know, I tell you! My lord, don't let her bully me.” She laid a hand on Lord Alan's arm and gazed up at him imploringly.

Clarisse was recovering nicely, thought Ariel, and used the irritation she felt to deflect other emotions. “I am not bullying you,” she began. “Surely you can see how important—”

“I can bear no more,” declared Clarisse. She lay back on the sofa cushions, closing her eyes, one corner of her mouth jerking a bit.

Ariel sat back. The impact of the story she had heard was threatening to overwhelm her. Clarisse never noticed anything but herself anyway, she thought. It was useless trying to make her remember things about other people. Ariel listened to Lord Alan asking about the other servants and where they might be found and whether she knew anything about the haunting of Carlton House. Clarisse disavowed any knowledge, and probably she was telling the truth, Ariel thought. Her mother's dresser would have been thinking only of herself.