The Stanforth Secrets (27 page)

“Never.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” It was a cry of betrayal.

He took her in his arms. “Oh, my love. Believe me, I never doubted you for a moment. But I’m a soldier, or was. I obey orders.” He tilted her chin up and saw the tears in her eyes. He kissed one away. “It’s a habit I’ll try to lose,” he said softly.

Chloe hid her face against his warm, firm chest, fighting tears. “Oh Justin. I want to be respectable. I want to be respected!”

His hand was in the curls at her nape, fingers working away the tension. “You will be. You are. Don’t think of those doddering old men.”

She looked up with an attempt at a smile. “Hardly that.”

“They must be,” he said with a twinkling smile. “Their wits are going. They’re no better than Aunt Sophronia.”

“They’re ruling the country,” she protested, genuine humor beginning to chase away her fit of the dismals.

“God help us all.”

“God helps those who help themselves, they say.”

His hand moved around to cradle her cheek. His thumb tantalized the corner of her mouth. “Back to religion again, are we? Well, I take it as my godly duty to help myself, then.”

He lowered his lips to hers. Chloe sighed as she drank in the taste of him. The soft spicy scent of his skin swam into her brain like brandy, and the feel of him beneath her fingertips spread through her body until she ached.

Desperately resolute, she ended the kiss. “The search,” she said, staring up at his shining, warm dark eyes.

He grinned. “Bedrooms. Yes.”

“Justin!”

He flicked out his tongue and licked her upper lip. “You have beautiful lips.”

“The search.”

He ignored her words, his hands cradling her face. His fingers threaded into her curls and raised them, then let them drift softly back onto her neck. She shivered. “The problem, my treasure, my diamond, my heart, is you are too beautiful. I’m tempted to waste time telling you that.”

Eye to eye, a suspended moment passed. He sighed, long and soft.

“The search,” he said, and let his hands slip away.

“Yes,” whispered Chloe, thinking, Bedrooms.

Oh dear Lord.

C
HAPERONED BY MARGARET, the middle-aged upstairs maid, their search was completely proper.

They started with the most likely place, Belinda’s rooms. She had a bedroom, a
boudoir
, and a nursery in the south wing over the kitchen area. Rosie let them in, then retreated to the nursery.

Chloe saw Justin experience the same moment of panic she had felt when first faced with making a search.

“If we work around the room in opposite directions,” she said, “it is not so bad. Perhaps, Margaret, you can feel the chairs for lumps and look under and behind them. Then check around the windows, and remember the pelmets.”

The woman gave her a disbelieving look, but set to her tasks. Chloe and Justin turned to theirs.

Belinda was a tidy person and had few knickknacks, so the going was easy. Chloe looked in all the
potpourri
jars, empty and full, feeling through the dried petals carefully. She even remembered to check the basket of limp herbs cut the day before. She looked at the dying plants. Was this the way to handle them? She would have thought they should be hung up to dry or something.

Justin searched quickly through Belinda’s small desk. Was he tempted to look at her letters, Chloe wondered, in search of treason? How distasteful this all was.

“Justin,” Chloe asked. “Shall I do the bedroom?”

“Yes, why not,” he replied.

“Don’t forget the coal scuttle,” she called back, as she went through the door, smiling at his groan.

Belinda’s bedroom was simply furnished. These rooms had been little used until she moved into them. She would have been within her rights to bring in more elegant furniture from elsewhere in the house, and perhaps some ornaments. Chloe wondered if Belinda had been reluctant to ask. Chloe felt rather guilty. She would never have hesitated to ask for improvements, even if she were only a guest. It had not occurred to her that Belinda might feel less sure of herself.

At least the simplicity of the decor made the search easy. The plain bed had only light hangings and concealed nothing. An oak washstand offered no hiding place. The old-fashioned armoire held a sparse selection of gowns—a few new and fashionable ones bought at the beginning of Belinda’s marriage, and a number of black ones. Chloe felt through them all and checked the slippers.

There were three hatboxes, containing only hats. One, following fashion, was decorated with a bunch of cherries. Chloe looked at it. There was absolutely nothing to indicate the message had been sent as cherries, though one part of the information had been. Still, she carefully investigated one of the glossy red fruits. It was lacquered plaster and contained nothing strange.

The drawers held beautiful underclothes. Chloe had seen Belinda doing elegant needlework on clothes for her child. She had obviously been assembling a
trousseau
for years before her marriage—but not for her marriage to George. The cutwork on the linen chemise, the lace on the stays, all this had been for Frank.

Feeling to the back of the drawers, she came upon a tissue-wrapped package. It was obviously not the package they sought. Vulgar curiosity and perhaps a more worthy need to understand her relative-by-marriage made Chloe pull it out and glance at it anyway.

Inside were six handkerchiefs, beautifully made of the best Madras cotton, each monogrammed, white on white—FH. Chloe carefully restored the wrapping and replaced the package where she’d found it.

She went into the baby’s room. Dorinda was awake and Rosie had the child on her knee. A rack in front of the fire held clothes warming for the next change. Chloe glanced quickly through the piles of snowy napkins, the stacks of pressed, white dresses, and tiny camisoles. There were lavender bags in the drawers and a
potpourri
bowl open on the windowsill. The room was warm and sweet. Dorinda made gurgling noises as Rosie bounced her.

Determined not to let maternal longings keep her from her duty, Chloe felt under the cradle mattress, and even did a thorough check of Rosie’s narrow bed, conscious of the maid’s surprised gaze.

“That bed only came there, ma’am,” said the maid, “after Mr. George died.”

“Of course,” said Chloe. “How silly.”

She looked around, then went over to check in the
potpourri.
Just petals. She looked in the jug of water keeping warm by the fire, ignoring the maid’s wondering gaze.

Satisfied at last, Chloe relaxed and touched the perfect skin of the baby’s cheek.

“Dear child,” she murmured. “Is she a good baby, Rosie?”

“Oh yes, ma’am. She’s no trouble. And she’s going to be a beauty one day.”

Chloe took the child for a moment. Dorinda swatted a hand toward the locket hanging around Chloe’s neck. “She already is a beauty,” said Chloe with a smile.

At that moment, Justin came in. He stopped at the sight. They gazed at each other over the baby’s head, and Chloe trembled. She couldn’t help imagining an infant with brown eyes and darker curls.

She handed the baby back to Rosie. “There is nothing here,” she said.

“On the contrary,” Justin said softly. “Everything of importance is here.” Then added more briskly, “Except that damned—except the will.” He smiled. “Dare I hope you checked the coal scuttle?”

Chloe looked down at her white muslin and raised a brow. He sighed and tipped out the shiny black lumps onto the hearth. Satisfied, he used the tongs to put them back again.

“There, finished,” he said. “On to Mr. Macy’s room.”

As she followed him out, Chloe glanced back. Rosie was looking with dismay at the coal dust scattered all over the tiles of the hearth.

“Men,” Chloe said softly to the maid. Rosie bit her lip on a smile.

Margaret, finishing the cleaning of the hearth in the
boudoir
, did not look amused at all. She was muttering to herself.

“Justin,” said Chloe softly, “everyone will think us run mad if we go through the house checking the coal scuttles. They are filled every day.”

“What else can we do?” he asked. “It would be a good place to hide the damned thing.”

“Well, try at least to be a little tidier,” she said, “or there is likely to be a mutiny.”

He looked in surprise at the grumbling maid and grinned. “I see what you mean.”

They went on to the next likely place, Humphrey Macy’s room. It was difficult, to be sure, to imagine a top-of-the-trees dandy like Macy in French pay, and he hadn’t even been in Lancashire when the package first went missing, but it was possible he had attacked Busdworth and taken the potato this morning. Chloe tried to visualize him, corsets squeaking, running through the house.

His corner room looked out over the carriage drive and the front of the house. It was smartly decorated in straw-colored
chinoiserie.
Randal had been offered this room but had claimed an aversion to dragons, and taken the simpler room next door.

Mr. Macy’s stick-thin valet watched them like a hawk. He ventured an objection when Justin opened one of the drawers. “With respect, My Lord, Mr. Macy said you were looking for a box hidden in the house nearly a year ago. All the drawers and presses were empty when we arrived, I can assure you.”

Chloe wondered how Justin would handle that.

“They have to be searched, however, for the legal men to be satisfied,” he said in a crisp, authoritative voice.

The valet did not raise any further objection in the face of the power of command.

Chloe left the inspection of the intimate items to Justin. She checked such places as inside vases and clocks, while the maid looked under the bed and felt down the sides of the upholstered chair.

This coal scuttle was half-full. Justin carefully removed some top pieces so as to be able to check without creating a mess. When he was finished he looked quizzically at Chloe, and she gave him a smile of approval.

Next, they moved on into Randal’s room. They had exhausted their likely suspects but went through the motions. Randal had traveled light, without a valet, so it was an easy search.

The Duchess’s two rooms were a direct contrast. She never traveled without a coachload of possessions. Still, after going through dozens of gowns and pairs of shoes, ten hatboxes and all the room fixtures, they had, as expected, found nothing. Looking at the cluttered dressing table, Chloe was relieved the Duchess’s expensive lotions and cosmetics all came in tiny or narrow-necked containers.

There were two small empty bedrooms and they were quickly finished. Chloe, Justin, and Margaret stood in the corridor.

“Do we search our own rooms?” asked Chloe.

“Of course,” he said with a grin. Chloe realized, with a flicker of embarrassment, that he had never been inside a bedroom of hers. How silly to be so conscious of such a thing.

Justin surveyed Chloe’s room like a man studying a work of art, a beauty of nature. It was a large room with two windows looking out over the bay. The corner by the windows was given over to a sitting area, with a writing desk, a small table and chair, and a chaise. He could imagine her spending many hours here, reading or writing letters, as she watched the water come and go. Surely it should work to his advantage that she loved this place.

The pink and gold arabesques of the carpet were matched in the pink brocade hangings and bedcover. Now, when he dreamt of her lying in her bed, he could imagine the exact surroundings. On her bedside table sat two dolls. One was a rag doll with an unpleasant kind of leer. The other was an exquisite French bisque doll in fine, lacy clothes. He remembered them. She had taken them in her scanty baggage on that elopement journey.

God, they must all have been out of their minds.

“Margaret,” he said roughly. “Check the furnishings. Chloe, help me to search the drawers. It must be done.”

 

 

Chloe wondered why he had suddenly become so brusque. Had it been the sight of Jenny and Lisbet? She supposed it was silly to still have dolls at her age, but she had taken so little from her home and never cared to ask her parents for more.

She opened the doors of her matching japanned armoires, and almost giggled at his expression when he saw the masses of gowns and spencers, pelisses and cloaks.

“I sent for all my belongings from London when Stephen died,” she explained. “I expected George to be living in Clarges Street, of course. There are some boxes in the attics as well, which, incidentally, we should hunt through too.”

“Not,” he muttered, “unless there is any evidence someone has been there this morning. I don’t have to look through this. I know you didn’t hide anything here.”

Chloe looked at him. Despite obstacles and incredulous servants, he had been resolutely thorough in the search thus far. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Justin, but think. Belinda, if it is she who hid it, was not under observation for every second. She would have to be a fool to hide the thing in her own quarters. There’s nothing to say she didn’t slip in here.”