A Stolen Heart (14 page)

Her aunt hesitated. “There was one thing, though….”

“What?” Alexandra turned on her eagerly.

Aunt Hortense sighed, holding back for a moment, then went on. “Well, it always seemed odd that Rhea never sent home word about you. One day we got a letter from her, from England, saying she was sailing home, that Hiram had died of a fever, and she was returning with their baby. That was the first she ever wrote us about you.”

Alexandra looked at her, dumbstruck. Finally she recovered her voice enough to ask, “Ever? She did not write you the news when I was born?”

Aunt Hortense shrugged. “I never received it. She said she sent me a letter at the time and that the mails must have lost it. Obviously, that can happen. But the odd thing is that even if that one letter had been lost, why wouldn’t she have mentioned you in other letters? Baby’s got two new teeth this week. That sort of thing. It seemed decidedly peculiar, considering the fact that she and Hiram had wanted a baby for so long and had never been able to have one. I would have thought that when she finally did conceive—ten years after they were married—she would have been so proud she was about to burst. She would have written us all your virtues.” The words seemed to rush out of her aunt’s mouth, as if she held them back all these years, and now, once the dam was broken, she could not stem the flood.

“Perhaps I had too few to mention,” Alexandra teased.

“Not likely. Rhea had wanted that baby for so long, so hard. When she came home, that was all she talked about, Alexandra this and Alexandra that, until, if you hadn’t been such a beautiful angel, I would have wanted to scream at her to shut up.” She smiled, belying her words, then looked away. She bit her lip, then added, “Sometimes I wondered—I thought that there must have been something wrong.”

“Like what? What did you think?”

Aunt Hortense glanced at her, embarrassed. At first Alexandra thought she would not answer, but at last she said, “I wondered if perhaps you were not Hiram’s child, if you were a—a love child that she had conceived with another man. She loved Hiram—I know she did. But she wanted a child so badly I could imagine, if it was Hiram’s fault they couldn’t, that Rhea would have had an affair with someone else so that she could get with child. Or even that Hiram had perhaps had an affair. Men do, you know. And Rhea, wanting a child so badly, might have been willing to raise it as her own if he asked her to. But then I would reject the idea as soon as I thought of it. My brother would not have participated in a deception. He was always honest and straightforward.”

“But he was dead by the time she came home,” Alexandra pointed out. “So he wouldn’t have been participating in it. Perhaps he would not have claimed the child as theirs.”

“That’s true.” Aunt Hortense took her niece’s hands and looked into her eyes. “I am sorry. You must remember that I don’t know any of this. It is just something that I wondered about from time to time. I have no way of knowing. I could not tell you my speculations. Besides, what good would it accomplish? Rhea loved you, she was a good mother to you. Why cast doubt when there might not be any reason to doubt? Only my silly suspicions.”

Alexandra sat back, aware of a curious sense of relief. Her aunt’s guesses made sense. She supposed she should have been horrified at the thought that either her father or mother might have had an affair, that she might not be one or the other’s daughter. But after the strange conversation with the Countess this afternoon, such an explanation seemed almost pleasant. It also made more sense than the idea that a two-year-old child had escaped the mayhem that had killed the rest of her family and somehow wound up with Rhea Ward. It would explain her mother’s secrecy and deception. If her mother had happened on a little lost girl, orphaned by the revolution, she could have openly said what happened and adopted her. But if the child was a by-blow of her husband’s or the product of her own illicit affair, she could hardly have admitted it. The strange resemblance to the Countess’s granddaughter could be because the man or woman in question had been some relative of Simone’s.

“Are you all right?” Aunt Hortense went to Alexandra and took her hand. “Have I upset you? I don’t know any of it to be true. It is only guesswork. It may be that I am a suspicious old biddy, and there was nothing odd about your birth whatsoever. Whatever the truth, it makes no difference—you are still my niece, and I love you dearly.”

“You are very kind. I love you, too. I don’t think I am upset…at least, not very upset. This whole day has been so odd, I scarcely know what I think.”

“Perhaps you ought to have a little lie down before supper,” Aunt Hortense suggested. “Put some lavender on your temples and rest. Then you’ll feel just the thing, I’m sure.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Alexandra had to agree that she was a trifle tired.

She allowed her aunt to shuffle her off to her bedroom and put her to bed, then close all the curtains so that the room was soothingly dark. Alexandra did not really intend to sleep, but she thought that it would be restful to close her eyes and drift for a few minutes. She did not realize that she had fallen asleep until an hour later, when a loud screech brought her fully awake. She sat bolt upright and scrambled off the bed. Her first thought was that something had happened to her mother, and it was toward her room that she ran. The sound of a maid’s frantic voice confirmed her fear.

Alexandra burst into her mother’s bedroom. One of the maids was kneeling on the floor beside a prone body. Icy fear stabbed Alexandra before she realized that the brown head was not her mother’s gray one.

“What happened?” she asked, hurrying forward and dropping down beside the girl.

The woman on the floor was Nancy. There was blood matting her hair. Alexandra drew a sharp breath and leaned closer. Good. At least she was breathing. She turned to the girl beside her and asked again, more sharply, “What happened here?”

“I don’t know, miss!” The girl looked terrified. “I just came in to dust, and I found her like that. I let out a scream, it scared me that bad.”

“I can imagine. Well, obviously something hit her on the head.” Alexandra could hear steps pounding down the hall. No doubt Aunt Hortense and the other servants were running toward the scream, as well. She glanced around the room. “Where is my mother?” Panic began to rise in her. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know, miss. She’s gone.”

“She can’t just be gone,” Alexandra snapped.

“I don’t know, miss. But maybe she, well, ran away. I mean…” She looked at the still figure of Mrs. Ward’s companion. “I reckon Mrs. Ward’s the one who hit her, and now she’s run away.”

A
FEW SERVANTS CAME RUNNING INTO
the room, having heard the maid’s screams. Alexandra sent them in search of her mother, then she had two footmen pick Nancy up and lay her on the bed so that she and Aunt Hortense could tend to her. The servants soon reported that they could find no trace of Rhea in the house or around it.

“Where could she have gone?” Alexandra asked, worried. “Why would she have left?”

Aunt Hortense, busy washing the blood from Nancy’s head, did not answer. When she washed the blood away, they saw with relief that the wound was not as serious as it had first looked, only a small tear that had bled copiously. Beneath it a large knot was forming.

“Thank God. With luck she’ll have nothing worse than a bad headache.”

Nancy groaned and moved her head on the pillow, and a moment later her eyes fluttered open. She glanced around blankly, then closed them again. “Ow. My head.”

“Nan? This is Hortense. Do you remember what happened?”

Nancy frowned, then her eyes flew open and she shot to a sitting position. “Miz Rhea!” She let out a groan and sank back.

“It’s all right. Don’t try to sit up, you’ll only make yourself feel worse,” Aunt Hortense advised her.

Nan nodded weakly. It was obvious from the pallor of her face that she already felt worse.

“Just tell us what happened,” Alexandra urged. “Where is Mother?”

“I don’t know, miss. She was acting so strange. She kept wanting to leave, said she had somewhere to go, that she had to see ‘them.’ I kept asking who, but she wouldn’t say, only ‘them.’ She was fair discombobbled. Ooh, I feel sick.”

“Janey, fetch her a pan,” Aunt Hortense ordered one of the maids who was hanging at the foot of the bed, watching. Aunt Hortense fixed them with a gimlet eye. “After that, you may leave.”

Reluctantly the servants obeyed her. Alexandra held the pan for Nancy, but after a moment of hanging over it, Nancy shook her head and sank onto the pillow. “I’m all right now, miss. I’m sorry.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “I didn’t watch her close enough.” Her voice rose in dismay. “I never thought she’d
hit
me.”

Alexandra’s stomach tightened. Even though it had been obvious that must have been what happened, it was horrible to hear it. “I’m sorry, Nan. I never would have thought so, either. Why did she do it?”

“Because I wouldn’t let her go. She grew more and more agitated. I should have fetched you or Miss Hortense, but I was scared to leave her. I figured she’d slip away by herself if I left the room. And I didn’t want to ring for one of the servants and have her see Miz Rhea that way. I should have.”

“Did she say where she wanted to go?”

“No. I asked her, and she just looked at me as if I was trying to trick her or something. She acted like she didn’t know me—at least, after she got all agitated like. At first she was just lying there on her bed, staring at the wall, and then she got out of bed and started going around the room, putting on her cloak and bonnet and gloves, muttering about things. I couldn’t understand her, and it was that scary, I’ll tell you. Then she headed toward the door, and I stopped her, and that’s when she told me she had to see ‘them.’ She said something like, ‘I have to put it right.’”

“Put what right?”

“I don’t know, miss, she wouldn’t say. She wasn’t making sense. I stood in front of the door so she couldn’t get out, and she got more and more frantic acting. I was worried she was going to start screaming or something, and then she picked up that bookend there and hit me with it.”

Aunt Hortense eyed the carved marble bookend. “It’s a fortunate thing for you that Rhea doesn’t have much strength. It could have caved in your skull.”

“She didn’t want to hurt me. She just wanted me out of the way.”

Alexandra hurried to the kitchen and sent all the servants out to comb the area for her mother. She was sick with worry. She could not imagine where her mother had gone or what she thought she was doing. Rhea knew nothing about London; she would soon be horribly lost. It was dark, and that made it even worse. London was a dangerous place, and her mother would have no idea whether she was wandering into a bad neighborhood. Alexandra remembered the man who had jumped out at her. Obviously, even a good neighborhood was not exempt from violent events.

Alexandra went out and walked for almost an hour, searching the streets for any sign of her mother. She passed one couple, a man and woman who looked at her askance when she questioned them about seeing a middle-aged American and merely shook their heads and hurried on, as if to distance themselves from her oddity. Finally, discouraged, she turned her steps toward her house. She had almost reached it when she saw one of the footmen running from the other direction. She stopped and waited for him, her hope rising.

“Miss!” The man skidded to a stop a few feet from her and paused to catch his breath.

“What is it? Did you find her?”

He shook his head and gasped. “No, but I found…someone…who did.”

“Who? Where is she?”

He nodded toward a house down the street. “Footman…at the Andersons’. He was coming home from the park, walking their dog, he was, and I asked him. He said as he’d seen a woman what sounded like Mrs. Ward. She was confused like, and he asked her if he could help her, and she told him she wanted to go to Exmoor House. So he hailed a hackney and put her in it and told him to take her to Exmoor House.”

“Exmoor House!” Alexandra stared at him, stunned. Exmoor was the Countess’s name. Had her mother gone to see the Countess? She wracked her brain, trying to remember if she had said anything about the Countess when she was asking her mother questions. She did not think so; it had been Aunt Hortense whom she had told about the Countess. She had asked her mother only about her birth. How could her mother know about the Countess? Could she have been listening outside the door when Alexandra was talking to Aunt Hortense?

The thought made Alexandra’s blood run cold. If her mother had heard her doubts about being her daughter, perhaps it had completely unhinged her. Why else would she have run off to see the Countess?

“Where can I get a hackney?” she asked the footman. “I have to go get her.”

“Yes, miss. I’ll hail you one.” He took off, hurrying in the direction from which he had come, and Alexandra followed him.

By the time she had caught up with him at the cross street, he had hailed a hackney and was holding open the door for her. He helped her inside, saying, “I told the driver Exmoor House, miss.”

“Thank you, Deavers.” Alexandra reached into her pocket and brought out a coin, which she pressed into his palm. “I’m very grateful to you. Now go home and tell my aunt where I have gone. I will be home as soon as possible.”

“Yes, miss.”

He closed the door, and the carriage started forward. It moved at a dignified pace, and Alexandra felt like screaming at the man to go faster. She thought of her mother talking to the Countess, and her hands clenched. The Countess would think her mother quite mad. She could not bear to think of the expression that would come over the Countess’s aristocratic face, a look of revulsion and even fear as she realized that Rhea was not right in the head. It did not matter that the Countess seemed like a nice woman; everyone was frightened by the insane. Alexandra burned with empathetic humiliation for her mother. Rhea felt it when people withdrew from her or looked at her with apprehension. She obviously knew that the servants were scared of her. That was why Alexandra was careful to keep strangers away from Rhea.

The hackney came to a stop after a time, and Alexandra started to get out. Then she saw that they were not in front of the Countess’s house. The home where they had stopped was larger and more imposing, almost a full block long, with a black iron fence running down the length of it.

“This isn’t right!” she said sharply.

“’Exmoor ‘Ouse,’ the lad said. This is Exmoor ‘Ouse.”

Alexandra frowned, looking around. Then she saw the dark figure standing forlornly at the fence, looking in. The woman wore a shawl over her head and shoulders, but it had slipped back, revealing her face and part of her head. It was Rhea. Alexandra let out a sigh of relief.

“Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry. Wait here. I won’t be a minute.”

The driver let out a gusty sigh but did as she told him. Alexandra ran along the street to where her mother stood, leaning against the fence, her hands clenched around the metal rails.

“Mother?” She called softly to Rhea from a few feet away; she didn’t want to startle her.

Rhea barely glanced at her. “I don’t understand! They won’t let me in! I don’t know what to do. I promised her. I promised. Oh, I’ve been wicked. So wicked.”

“Mama.” Alexandra’s heart twisted within her at the sight of her mother’s distress, and the old childhood name slipped out. “Come home with me. You cannot stand out here all night. We’ll see what we can do in the morning.”

She took her mother’s arm gently. Rhea turned toward her. Alexandra saw that her mother’s face was streaked with tears.

Rhea looked straight at her and said, “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, Simone.”

L
ORD
T
HORPE LOOKED UP
,
SURPRISED
,
when his butler announced softly that Lady Castlereigh was here to see him. “Ursula?” he exclaimed in astonishment. “What the devil is she doing here?”

“I am here to ask for your help,” Lady Ursula said, sweeping in past the butler. “And I must tell you, I don’t expect to be told to cool my heels in the entry by one of your heathen servants.”

“Punwati has his orders, Ursula,” Thorpe said pointedly, rising to his feet. “And you might remember that, to Punwati,
you
are the heathen.”

Lady Ursula sniffed to show her disdain for what Thorpe’s butler might think of her. “Really, Thorpe, this is no time for any of your absurdities. I’d like some tea.”

Thorpe nodded toward Punwati, who backed silently out of the room and closed the door. Thorpe watched as Ursula planted herself in the chair across from his desk, then, with a sigh, sat behind his desk.

“All right, Ursula. Now tell me what is so urgent that you must disturb me in my study when you saw me only hours ago.”

“I came to see what you intend to do about that girl.”

“What girl?”

“Don’t act the innocent with me, Thorpe. It doesn’t become you. You know exactly who I mean—that American adventuress you brought to see my mother.”

Thorpe’s features settled into a cold mask. “Lady Ursula, you are older than I, and a woman, and I would dislike to show you disrespect. But if you again misname Miss Ward, I am afraid that I shall have to ask you to leave.”

Ursula snorted. “Men are such fools. How could you have taken her there?”

“I am sorry it upset the Countess. I took her to the Countess’s because the Countess asked me to. She wanted to apologize to her. But of course I would not have introduced her to the Countess to begin with if I had had any idea how it would upset her. I didn’t know what Lady Chilton looked like. I had no idea that Miss Ward resembled her.”

“I suppose you could not know,” Ursula admitted grudgingly. “But now that you’ve done it, you must help me.”

“Help you what?”

“Keep that girl from defrauding my mother, of course!” Lady Ursula looked amazed at his ignorance.

“What the devil are you talking about? Miss Ward is not trying to defraud the Countess. How could she?”

“Come, Thorpe. I would have thought that at least
you
are not so naïve. It’s one thing for my mother or Penelope to think that Miss Ward is a sweet girl. But you have had some experience with the world. With women, too, I might add. I wouldn’t have thought that you were so easily bamboozled.”

“Indeed, I don’t believe I am,” he replied curtly. “Exactly what, pray, are you talking about? How is Miss Ward going to defraud the Countess?”

“By hoodwinking her into thinking that she is Chilton’s daughter, of course! Why can no one see this but me?”

“I would guess that no one else’s mind has the same bent,” Thorpe responded dryly.

“I shall ignore your tone because Mother needs your help,” Ursula told him magnanimously.

“The Countess is upset because Miss Ward looks like her dead daughter-in-law. It’s understandable that she would like to believe that Alexandra is her long-lost granddaughter, but she will soon see that it’s a false hope.”

“Oh, really? Not with that girl pretending that she is. She’s out to deceive Mother. She’ll convince her that she is
our
Alexandra, and then Mother will lavish her with gifts and money. She’ll take her in to live with her and treat her like—like—”

“A beloved granddaughter?” Thorpe suggested. “Now, Ursula, don’t fire up at me.”

“You act as if you don’t care if someone pulls the wool over Mother’s eyes! I always said you were a selfish, cynical man, but I wouldn’t have thought that you would stand idly by and watch someone swindle Mother.”

“Of course I wouldn’t, but no one is swindling the Countess.”

“She will. Why else would she pretend to be Alexandra?”