Drury Lane Darling (8 page)

“I think I should,” she said, and went down the hall. Her insides were shaking, but the marquise was so very lively it was impossible to think of her being dead. In his confusion, Nigel had left the door ajar. Pamela tapped, and when there was no answer, she pushed the door inward.

By the dim light of the dresser lamp she could see there was no body on the bed, and a tide of relief washed over her.

“Lady Chamaude,” she called toward the connecting room. “Are you all right?” There was no answer. Pamela advanced to the drawing room, where a lamp flickered in a gush of cold air. The door to the outdoors was open six inches, blowing lightly in the wind. The drawing room was empty. The folder of hand-written memoirs sat unopened on a desk, the pen sat in its holder.

Perhaps she’d felt faint and went out for a breath of air? Pamela hurried to the open doorway and looked all around, calling into the darkness. A fine curtain of rain fell, turning to soft ice as it landed. The sky was a moonless ceiling of silver. Obviously Fleur hadn’t gone out on such a night.

Her suite was situated at the back of the house. The door opened on the west side to a stoned and hedged garden. Stripped of its summer flowers, it resembled a small, dark cell, furnished with a stone bench and three large tubs holding black bushes.

As she turned to close the door, Pamela noticed a blot of white in one of the bushes. It looked like snow, but there had been no snow. She made a quick dart into the freezing rain, grabbed up the white thing and returned to the room to examine it. It was a lace-edged handkerchief. No obliging monogram decorated the corner, but a light, musky scent still hung about it.

She closed the door and turned to go back to the saloon. Impatient at the delay, the others had come to join her. She heard Breslau’s confident voice in the next room. “Probably sound asleep at her desk,” he said.

“You’d best come in here,” she called. Walking to the next room seemed beyond her powers.

The faces that soon appeared at the door were alive with curiosity. Nigel’s was still bone-white.

“She’s not here,” Pamela said, and explained her findings. “She must have left, but it’s pouring rain. I hope she wore her pelisse at least.”

Breslau strode to the study door and disappeared beyond it, into the night.

“Do you recognize this handkerchief?” Pamela asked, and handed the wet cloth to Nigel.

He fingered it forlornly and nodded. “A French needlewoman makes them for her. She always carries one.”

“At least she’s not dead, Nigel,” Pamela comforted him. “I expect she felt weak and went out for air. She must have tripped. You’d best go and help Breslau bring her back.”

Nigel went out, and Pamela looked around the room for evidence of Fleur’s recent activities. Nothing in the austere room had been disarranged. The window hangings were deep blue, the carpet a tired, old blue-flowered affair. A desk and chair, an uncompromising wooden bench that did not encourage lounging, a table holding dried flowers, and an assortment of undistinguished bibelots were the furnishings. She wandered to the desk and noticed that the pen was dry. Of course, if Fleur had felt weak, she couldn’t work. She’d decided to lie down a moment first, and had fainted or fallen asleep.

Pamela went into the bedchamber and took a peep about her. This room was more comfortable than the drawing room. The hangings had been replaced within the last decade in a pretty royal blue. The carved and canopied bed was ornate without being elegant. Its covering was undisturbed except for the dent where Fleur had lain down, and her night things laid out at the bottom of the bed. On the mahogany toilette table, a battery of silver and crystal toilet articles were ranged. Pam went to examine them. Brush, comb, hand mirror, nail clippers, nail file, a suede nail polisher, a miniature sewing set, powder, rouge, perfume. She unscrewed the cap and sniffed—yes, it smelled like the wet handkerchief. What was keeping Nigel and Breslau?

Next she cast a covetous eye on the nightgown and peignoir laid out on the bed. All shiny pink satin and blond lace. The familiar musky scent rose from them. Fleur would wish she’d brought a flannelette nightie with her. The room was freezing, though a sluggish fire smoldered in the grate. On the floor, a pair of high-heeled satin slippers awaited Fleur’s dainty toes.

So this was how an actress lived. Pam thought of the comfortable mules and flannelette nightie in her own room. On her dresser rested no battery of crystal and silver but a plain horn-backed brush and comb. No wonder Fleur looked so beautiful. Any woman would if she used all that stuff. What could be keeping them?

Finally becoming bored, she went to the clothespress and peeked in. The only clothing was the green suit Fleur had arrived in. The feathered bonnet rested on the top shelf. She thought Fleur was the sort of woman who would have half a dozen changes of clothes in two days and nights. The sable cape was gone. Fleur must have thrown it over her shoulders before going out for air. Naturally she wouldn’t go out in her evening gown.

At last the sound of footfalls and subdued voices was heard in the next room. Pam waited for the men to join her, fully expecting to see Fleur with them. She carefully closed the clothespress door and stood innocently in the middle of the room. When the men came in, she looked from one to the other, bewildered.

“Where is she?” she demanded.

“We couldn’t find her,” Nigel said.

“You have to find her, Nigel. She’s fainted, out in that cold rain. She’ll catch pneumonia.”

At this point, Pamela noticed that Breslau looked—not quite guilty, but somehow
knowing.
“What’s going on? What haven’t you told me?” she demanded.

“It will be best if we continue our discussion in the saloon,” he answered, and took Pamela’s elbow to lead her to the door.

She shook him off impatiently. “If she’s missing, we should notify someone. Did you find any trace of her? I don’t understand.”

“Pam’s right,” Nigel said. “There’s no saying Fleur—”

Breslau gave him a warning glance.

“If you don’t tell me this instant, I shall notify your father, Nigel,” Pamela stated firmly. It was the likeliest threat to bring him to heel.

“We might as well tell her,” Nigel said. “She’s like a dog with a bone, Wes. We’ll not get a moment’s peace till she knows everything. We certainly don’t want Papa making a fuss. And Mama! Lord, she’d have me filleted and fed to the vultures. I hope Fleur has the sense to get back before dawn.”

“Where has she gone?” Pamela demanded, her voice rising.

“You tell her, Wes. I have to run up to my room for a moment.”

Nigel vanished, and Pamela allowed herself to be returned to the saloon on the understanding that she would be told all. Breslau, that mountain of confidence, appeared decidedly ill at ease.

“There’s nothing for you to worry about. Fleur has gone to visit a—a friend,” he said.

She pinned him with a disbelieving stare. “The vicar?” she enquired in a tone of heavy irony.

“Hardly.”

“I didn’t come down in the last rain, Breslau. Ladies don’t go slipping out in the dead of night in the freezing rain to pay a social call. Now what is really going on?”

Breslau was unaccustomed to such brash behavior from young ladies, and pokered up. “If you insist on knowing, she’s gone to visit a gentleman,” he said curtly.

Pamela’s eyes opened wide. For a moment she was speechless, then she asked, in a squeaky voice, “A love tryst, do you mean?”

“That’s a somewhat Elizabethan turn of phrase, but you’ve got the general idea.”

“Who?”

“She didn’t leave a note.”

“Then you don’t know for sure. How could she be having a rendezvous? She doesn’t know anyone here.”

“Fleur has a broad circle of acquaintances throughout the country.”

“A woman wouldn’t go to such uncomfortable rounds for a mere acquaintance. I wonder if it’s that handsome young stranger she was talking to at the assembly.”

“Very likely.”

“But he doesn’t live around here or Nigel would have recognized him. She wouldn’t meet him at the public inn, surely. She’s not that rackety, is she, Breslau?”

“We had achieved a first-name basis a while back,” he pointed out with an arch look designed to divert her thoughts.

It failed miserably. Pamela was scrambling through her mind and hit unerringly on the culprit. “General Max!” she exclaimed. “I knew there was something havey-cavey going on.”

“The slander is in your dish, madam. I didn’t mention names. And it would be better if you not air your suspicions to your hostess.”

She glared. “I’m not a complete Johnnie Trot.”

“If you’d care to have a seat, Miss Comstock, then you would permit me to do likewise. I’m tired, at the end of a long day.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, sit down. I think better when I pace.”

She began pacing up and down in front of the grate, while Breslau followed her silently with his eyes. The light from the grate struck her curls, burnishing them with copper highlights. Divested of her shawl, Pamela’s slender figure made a pretty sight as she paced back and forth, like a preacher preparing his sermon. After a few turns, she drew to a stop in front of Breslau’s chair.

“That can’t be right,” she said. “General Max wouldn’t dare invite her to his house, nor take her to a local inn. His mother is as bad as Lady Raleigh. As good, I mean,” she said hastily when Breslau’s thin lips lifted in a smile.

“Then we must assume he had his carriage waiting nearby and carried her a little further afield.”

“I doubt very much if she’d oblige him after the cool way he treated her tonight. She’s no doormat, Breslau, and she was furious.”

“I’m aware of that. Apparently he sent her a billet-doux sometime during the assembly to patch up the rift and arrange the, er—love tryst.”

Pamela considered this for feasibility, and was still unconvinced. “It is all exceedingly odd. Can they possibly be that eager to—to see each other,” she said primly, “that they couldn’t wait till she returns to London?”

A sardonic gleam lit his pale eyes. “You will find, as you succumb to some suitor’s charms, Miss Comstock, that ‘seeing each other’ can be inconveniently urgent.”

“Inconvenience must have reached its apogee tonight. Mrs. Maxwell was fully alert and on the warpath. She keeps the general on a two-inch leash when he’s home, you must know.”

“Which no doubt accounts for his spending so much time in London.”

“The inconvenience wasn’t all on his side. It was no easy matter for Fleur to get to him in this pelting rain.” She paused a moment, then emitted a squeak. “Breslau, that’s why she wanted the downstairs suite!” she exclaimed.

It was Fleur’s insistence on wanting that particular set of rooms that pretty well convinced Pamela. Nigel returned, frowning into his collar.

“You didn’t tell your father?” Pamela asked.

“Of course not! Do you take me for an idiot? Anyway, he’s sound asleep.” He turned to Breslau, who was regarding him oddly. “Did you tell her?”

“She knows,” Breslau answered noncommittally.

Lord Breslau pulled out his watch and glanced at it. “It’s one o’clock,” he said. “Time we all retire.”

Pamela chose that moment to take a seat. She sat with her chin resting on her hands. The puckering of her brow indicated deep thought. “It’s odd Fleur didn’t extinguish the lamps before she left.”

“We’ve already discussed the urgency of the tryst,” Breslau reminded her.

She gave him an angry look. “And she left the door open, too.”

“She has to get back in before dawn, numbskull,” Nigel retorted. “Did you leave the door on the latch, Breslau?”

“Certainly I did.”

“But she didn’t just leave it on the latch. She left it hanging open,” Pamela told them. “A great gust of wind hit me when I went into the drawing room. Now that is odd, don’t you think?”

“You’re trying to make bricks without straw here, Miss Comstock,” Breslau said dismissingly.

A frown pinched Nigel’s brow. “She
did
look very dead, Wes,” he said uncertainly. “She was cold as ice.”

“Two lumps of coal don’t give off much heat. The room was like an icehouse.”

“Yes, but she was colder than that,” Nigel insisted. “If she wasn’t dead, she was unconscious. She didn’t bat an eyelash when I jiggled her arm and tried to waken her. How did she wake up and sneak out so quickly?”

“You forget, Nigel, the lady’s an actress. She didn’t want to waste time talking to you, and pretended she was sleeping to be rid of you.”

“Why didn’t she lock her door to keep anyone from the house going in?” Pamela asked.

Nigel was only half-listening. He appeared very worried, but after a moment he said, “There isn’t any lock on that door.”

“Was she wearing her sable cape when you saw her, Nigel?” Pamela asked.

“No, she was just lying on top of the counterpane. Why do you ask?”

“Because I checked her room, and her cape’s missing. Since the room’s so cold, you’d think she would have thrown it over herself. And another thing, her night things are still on the bed.”

Pamela had very little idea what degree of formality existed during a love tryst, but thought the peignoir at least might have been required. “That’s rather odd, isn’t it?” she asked, directing her question to Nigel.

“Don’t look at me! Ask Wes.”

“They aren’t required, though…” Breslau stopped in midspeech and turned to Pamela. “What else was left behind?”

“All her toilet articles—brush, comb, powder, rouge—they were on the toilette table. She’d need them. Her hair would be all mussed after—after she got up,” she finished, with a rebukeful glance at Breslau, who was watching her with a smile.

“Was her reticule gone?” he asked.

“I didn’t notice.”

Without further conversation they all returned to Fleur’s suite. They lit the lamps and made a cursory search of the room. Fleur’s beaded evening bag was found on a chair, and the larger leather reticule she’d brought with her was on the shelf of the clothespress, along with her bonnet.

“That’s the bonnet she wore this afternoon,” Nigel exclaimed. “She didn’t bring any other hatbox with her. Dash it, Wes, she wouldn’t have gone jauntering off without her bonnet or reticule.”