Dangerous Deceptions (24 page)

To my surprise, it was Olivia who put an end to this final danger.

“I told you, Mother.” My cousin’s muffled but desperately annoyed voice sounded from beyond the drapes. “There is no one here.”

Mother?

I heard movement. I shrank back a fraction of an inch, groping for the window behind me. But before I could get a decent grip on the sash, the velveteen flew back and I found myself face-to-face with nervous, foolish Aunt Pierpont.

I looked at her, and she looked at me, appreciating, no doubt, the full dramatic effect of my being frozen in shock with my mouth hanging open. Her lip quivered, and I could not in truth blame her. Finding that one’s permanently exiled niece had clandestinely returned by means of an open window might reasonably induce quivering. Unfortunately, Aunt Pierpont did not confine herself to a quiver. As I searched for an appropriate explanation, my aunt burst into tears and ran from the room.

I turned on Olivia, who put up both her hands as if she might need to defend herself, which, I confess, was not outside the realm of possibility.

“I said nothing, I swear. She guessed.”

“Well, now she’s going to raise the house.” I hiked up my skirts and pushed past her. Fortunately, I knew exactly where my sobbing aunt had gone. With Olivia on my heels, I hurried up the steep stairs. By the time I reached the second floor, I was puffing, coughing, and seeing stars from shortness of breath. The sound of weeping drifted from the doorway at the end of the hall. Together, we ran toward it.

My aunt’s rooms perfectly reflected her personality. Every item of furniture was adorned with quantities of enameled panels, painted flowers, or gilt curlicues. When Olivia and I pushed our way inside, it was to find Aunt Pierpont collapsed on the sofa, weeping noisily into her hands. Mortimer, my aunt’s tired-eyed maid, was just emerging from the dressing room carrying a bottle of smelling salts and a pile of fresh handkerchiefs. I stepped into the woman’s path and held out my hands for both. At the same time I jerked my chin toward the door, indicating she should leave. Mortimer’s gaze shifted from me to Olivia. Olivia nodded, which caused the maid to shrug, hand me salts and kerchiefs, and take herself away. Olivia closed the door and shot home the bolt.

Aunt Pierpont saw none of this, as she was still covering her streaming eyes with one hand. But like her maid, she was clearly aware of the routine requirements for such a moment, because she held out her free hand and gestured impatiently. I pressed a handkerchief into her palm. She looked up in what I’m sure was meant to be a brief acknowledgment of her servant. When she saw me, her tears abruptly ceased to flow and her face twisted, wound tight by a new emotion so surprising, I took a step backwards.

“You
stupid
girls!” cried Aunt Pierpont. “How could you be so thoughtless!”

Olivia opened her mouth to protest, but I shot her my best glower. For once, it hit its mark, and Olivia said nothing.

“You’re right, ma’am,” I told my aunt, and I meant it. “We have been very stupid, and it’s entirely my fault. I thought if I could recover my betrothal contract, I could . . . put an end to things.” Olivia looked impressed at this reasoning. I tried not to care. I was finding Aunt Pierpont’s anger strangely difficult to bear. Perhaps it was because, unlike my uncle’s fury, this was much newer, and far more justified.

“And
of course
you didn’t think to come to me!”
Not even once,
I admitted silently as my aunt knotted her kerchief around her knuckles and dabbed furiously at her eyes. “I only spent eight years looking after you!”

“It’s not at all her fault,” said Olivia, attempting to rally us both. “I—”

“Oh, I know very well this was not her idea,” Aunt Pierpont snapped. “This has all the hallmarks of one of your schemes, Olivia. I knew you to be reckless and cool, but I always believed you must have
some
kind of sense. He is your father, and if you cannot give him your love as a daughter should, you still owe him obedience!”

Olivia lifted her chin, the picture of stubborn defiance. “But no harm’s been done, Mother. Nothing’s been taken after all.”

“Exactly how are you planning to keep the fact that the pair of you broke into his private room a secret? Would you have me let all the servants go at once?” The force of Aunt Pierpont’s words lifted her to her feet. “Do you honestly think
none
of them will talk?”

Neither my aunt nor my cousin was looking at me. I suspected they’d forgotten I was even there. Mother and daughter faced each other, unblinking.

“Of course he’ll find out,” Olivia told her. “And he’ll be angry. What of it? He’s been angry at me before.”

“Olivia, you’re so proud of your intelligence. Will you come out of the clouds and use it? Your father is a
banker.
You just helped someone get into his private room to
steal
from him. Do you honestly think this is going to end with him shutting you in your room for a week?”

Aunt Pierpont plopped back down on her sofa. I’d seen her in the many expressions of her nerves—from agitated, to uncertain, to fraught, to hysterical. I’d seen her merry, and I’d seen her worried. Until now, however, I’d never seen her defeated.

“I tried,” Aunt Pierpont murmured. “After your mother died, Peggy, I wanted to raise you to be as good and true as she had always been . . . but I failed. I failed.”

“You aren’t to blame for this, Aunt.”

“Then who?” Aunt Pierpont unwound the kerchief, seeking some dry spot she could ply against her streaming eyes. I handed her a fresh one from the pile I still held. “Oh, if you only knew how bitterly they quarreled, how difficult it was for me to convince him to take you in at all.”

It was not much work to guess that “they” were my uncle and my mother. Impulse seized me, and I, in turn, knelt down to seize Aunt Pierpont’s hand. “Tell me,” I urged her. “Why did they quarrel? Why does he hate her so?”

Aunt Pierpont shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together to actively forbid her mouth from speaking.

“Mother, surely Peggy deserves to know,” said Olivia quietly. “It concerns her most nearly, after all.”

“After this exhibition, I don’t see how either of you can claim to deserve anything,” she announced bitterly. But then, because she was still Aunt Pierpont, she relented.

“We were friends, you know, Lizzie and I. That was why I was so glad to see you and Olivia become so close.” My aunt smiled at her kerchief and her memories.

“I did not know.” I certainly had never heard her refer to my mother, Elizabeth, as “Lizzie.”

“Oh, yes. When I married your uncle, Lizzie was still at home and keeping his house. Once I moved in, we went everywhere together—all the best houses, and we were frequently at court. She sparkled at every gathering. It was so different then.” Aunt Pierpont sighed and touched the corner of each eye. “Everything was gay and wonderful, even in that stuffy court when the old queen’s health began to fail. Everyone was glad to welcome us wherever we went, even though Oliver was merely a banker. It became even better after he was knighted.”

I sat back on my heels. My nervous aunt and my bold, beautiful mother had been the best of friends? It was too much effort to both picture this and keep myself balanced forward at the same time. Just as difficult was picturing Aunt and Uncle Pierpont being welcome in society or welcoming society into their home. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen them entertain at home. When Aunt Pierpont went out, it was mostly to chaperone Olivia. I had always assumed her habit of seclusion was another manifestation of her nerves. It seemed that, once again, I was utterly mistaken.

“We met Jonathan Fitzroy at Marlborough house,” Aunt Pierpont was saying. “He was a great friend of the duke and duchess in those days. Oh, I remember your mother’s face, Peggy, when she first saw him. It was like the sun had come out.”

Olivia had moved behind me. She laid her hand on my shoulder in comfort and reassurance, and I was glad to have her there.

“What was he . . . my father . . . like?”

“He was very handsome.” Aunt Pierpont gazed into the distance. “Not tall, but broad in the shoulder, with curling locks and a fine beard . . .” She smiled a little. “When we first saw him, we were sure he must be a Frenchman. He certainly looked the part. The truth of it is, I was in awe of him. We all were. He was so witty, so gallant. And older, of course. What girl wouldn’t fall madly in love with him?”

She was talking about my father. My absent, hated, beloved father. My father was a gallant who could be taken for a Frenchman, and all the women had fallen madly in love with him. I tried to remember him. I tried until my head began to ache.

“Lizzie made a great show of being indifferent to him, but she was the one he always talked to. It wasn’t long before they were spending hours together. I could barely follow half their conversation. I swear they spoke as much Latin and Greek as English and French.

“I knew it was going to be a match. There was nothing against it. Fitzroy’s rank and fortune were as good as Lizzie’s, if not better. He was extremely well placed. At first, Oliver was well pleased. Everything seemed to be going perfectly.”

“But it did not end perfectly,” I murmured. The bells of the timepiece on the mantel were chiming. It was four of the clock. Soon the princess would be dismissing her maids to dress for dinner. Sophy might take it into her head to stop at my room for a bit of personal taunting, or spying. Mrs. Titchbourne might stop in with another note from Her Royal Highness. Anyone at all might enter my door, and they would find me gone. I had to get back to the palace, immediately.

I did not move.

“The first I knew of the trouble was when the men came to our house,” Aunt Pierpont said. “They stayed closeted with Oliver for hours and left with piles of papers. When Oliver finally came out . . . I had never seen him so shaken. He wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but later that day, he and Lizzie had an absolute screaming fight. He . . . he struck her, across the face. He called her a whore. He called her a traitor. He . . .” She paused to blot her eyes again. “I think he would have killed her if Fitzroy hadn’t arrived to take her away.”

I was standing. I was turning away, moving away. Olivia caught me, holding me in place. She knew we were not done. There was more I had to hear, about how my father had rescued my mother from Uncle Pierpont, about why. But she also knew I had gone past speech. My uncle had hit my mother. He’d struck her across the face. For this, there was no understanding, and no forgiveness.

“But what caused it?” Olivia asked for me. “What did Aunt Fitzroy do?”

“I only heard bits and pieces of it,” said Aunt Pierpont. “I was too frightened to go in the room when they were arguing. It was something to do with the business and its papers. Lizzie spoke of them to the wrong person or said the wrong thing.

“But whatever she did, it was serious. We lost all the money and the house. We had to move in with some distant cousins of mine.” Her words drifted away into the current of memory, and for a long silent moment, my aunt looked old and exhausted. “You wouldn’t remember this, Olivia. You were too young. But we were quite poor for several years. That was when I lost the twins. And little Michael. He was so ill for such a long time.”

“I do remember,” said Olivia. “I remember the coffin.”

I did not remember, and I felt cold and hard and horrible for not being able to share this pain. I knew Olivia’d had brothers, of course, and that they’d all died young. There was nothing unusual about that. Most families lost one or more children in their cradles. It was the way of the world. But I hadn’t seen before how badly this way of the world could hurt.

“That was what broke him, you see,” Aunt Pierpont whispered. “The loss of three children, three sons, in so short a time. Oliver blamed their deaths on our poverty, and he blamed our poverty on your mother, Peggy. Even though she’d offered to help. She did help, in fact. But, of course, I couldn’t tell Oliver it was Lizzie who gave me money.” She drew in a great, shuddering breath, seeking to pull herself out of those dark memories. “That time didn’t last so very long. It felt that way, but it was only three or four years before Oliver reestablished the bank and began to make money again. But he never forgave Lizzie. When we received word she had died, he only said one word. Just one.”

“What was it?”

Aunt Pierpont’s lips moved for a moment, and then she whispered, “Good.”

I should go now. I knew it. I should take what I’d learned and get out of the way. The sooner I left, the sooner Olivia and Aunt Pierpont could reconcile. If this wasn’t motivation enough, then I had only to consider that I was not just in immediate danger of having my unauthorized absence discovered, but that my uncle must by now be on his way home. And then there was Matthew, who had promised to come to visit me tonight. If I wasn’t there, he’d be very much worried.

But I couldn’t go yet. I had a terrible, selfish curiosity that would not rest. I had not come here only to learn why I was hated. I meant to uncover the secrets lurking in my uncle’s background, preferably before Sophy and Sebastian were able to find them. If Aunt Pierpont did not know exactly what her husband and my mother had quarreled over, she’d as much as told me there were others who did.

“Aunt, the men who came to take the papers when Uncle’s business collapsed, who were they?”

“I don’t know. I doubt I’d recognize any of them if I saw them again.” She paused. “Except the one, of course. He was so fat, and so overdecorated . . .”

All the blood in me froze. Mind and thought were forced outside, and I had the unaccountable sensation of being a witness to my own actions as my body turned itself more fully toward my aunt. My mouth moved. I listened intently to the questions I asked.

“A short man? In a full-bottomed wig? He repeated himself constantly?”

“Why yes, Peggy. That’s the man.”

I nodded. Who else could it be—this fat, overdecorated man who had come to pick over the bones of my uncle’s ruin years before he came to my rescue? He was my patron, Mr. Tinderflint.