Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (33 page)

“Are you Mrs. Bourdon’s maid?”

The girl nodded vigorously.

“Yes, sir. Janie. M’name’s Janie. Janie Rumble. I be Mrs. Bourdon’s maid these past few years.” She bobbed another curtsey and let go of her scrunched up petticoats, looking from Plantagenet Halsey to Tam. “You will come, won’t ye?”

Plantagenet Halsey slowly rose to his feet and Tam passed him his Malacca headed cane. “I’ll come,” he said firmly.

Janie bobbed another curtsey.

“That’s very kind of ye, sir. But it’s him she wants,” she said with a nod at Tam. When Plantagenet Halsey and Tam exchanged a startled look, adding, “She was
very
particular about it.”

“She asked for
Thomas Fisher
?”

“No, sir. She didn’a say a name.” Janie looked at Tam. “Is that your name: Thomas Fisher?”

Tam nodded but was still too surprised to speak.

“Are you certain, girl?” the old man asked without heat.

“Yes, sir. She said I was to fetch the red haired boy who was with Mr. Plant—with you, sir.” She looked anxiously at Tam. “You will go to her won’t ye, Master Fisher? She needs you. She says only you can help her at a time like this.”

Tam found his voice. “Needs me, miss? Time? What time is that?”

Janie stared at him as if it was self-evident.

“The babe. The babe’s on his way.”

An hour earlier, Sir Charles had the hotel porter rap on the door to the Arch apartment. There was a moment’s hesitation when the hotel porter let it be known to the maid who came in answer to his short sharp rap that Sir Charles Weir had come to call on Mrs. Bourdon. Miranda had told Janie that she would be dining with a Mr. Plantagenet Halsey and a Sir Charles Weir later that evening and to have a couple of the hotel servants set the table at the far end of the sitting room, as well see if two could be engaged to wait on the table for the evening. She had then disappeared into her bedchamber to rest. She was still asleep when the unexpected visitor was shown into the parlor and was offered to sit on the silk striped sofa while Janie went to rouse her mistress; Sir Charles apologizing but saying it was necessary for him to speak with Mrs. Bourdon now rather than later. Janie bobbed a curtsey and did as she was told, Sir Charles’s commanding tone alerting her to the fact that it was pointless to try and put him off with the genuine excuse her mistress needed her rest at such a time.

Sir Charles continued to wait, holding the bouquet of flowers and feeling awkward and when five minutes came and went he started to wonder if his ruse was necessary after all. And then Miranda appeared in the doorway, hair mussed and cheeks apple red from sleep, a heavy silk embroidered open robe over her nightgown that did little to hide she was heavily pregnant. For all that she looked heavenly, reminding Sir Charles of a medieval painting of a pregnant Madonna. All that was missing was the halo. He felt a stab of nostalgia. At that moment he had never hated his association with the illustrious House of Cleveley more, Lord George Stanton in particular. He wished the nobleman had choked on his own vomit years ago; five years ago to be precise.

Miranda recoiled seeing the parliamentarian but quickly masked any feelings of uneasiness by coming across the room with a smile and hand outstretched. He bowed politely and gingerly offered the flowers, Janie quickly coming forward and taking the bouquet.

“What lovely autumn colors, Sir Charles,” Miranda said, taking a tentative sniff of the floral arrangement when Janie presented them to her, but drew back at the overpowering smell of sage. “The kitchens will have a vase, Janie. You can find one when you fetch the tea. Tea, Sir Charles?” She offered Sir Charles to sit on the sofa, saying with apology, “I fear if I sit now I shall never get up. Janie? The tea...” she reminded the girl when Janie hovered in indecision by the servant door that opened onto the back stairwell that led down to the kitchen, the flowers propped on the window seat with its view along the length of Trim street.

Sir Charles did not sit and he did not speak until Janie, who reluctantly bobbed a curtsey and departed, had closed over the servant door. He then turned to Miranda with an expression she found difficult to interpret. It was as if he was trying to penetrate her skin, at some other layer beneath that was only known to her and no other. His scrutiny made her blush and slowly back toward the window seat, trying her best to make it a natural action and not one that showed she wished to put as much space as possible between her and her uninvited guest, a hand to her rounded belly, as if her child required protection. Her action made him smile crookedly, confident again that he had the upper hand; any feelings of remorse had departed with the maid. He spoke to her in an altogether different voice to the one he had used when Janie was present.

“I shall not take up your time, and neither shall you mine,” he said flatly, a step toward her. “You know why I am here and you can no doubt guess who sent me.”

Miranda baulked at his tone and pretended an interest in the bouquet, lifting it up and then leaning it against the window ledge as Janie had done, then taking a deep breath, hoping her features did not communicate her sense of uneasiness, she turned to him with an enigmatic smile,

“As to the former, I have no notion, Sir Charles. And as I must guess the latter perhaps you would do me the kindness by telling me?”

“
Kindness
?” He spat out the word. “How can you speak of kindness when it is surely your
unkindness
that has brought us to this pretty impasse?”

“May I know what unkindness I have done you—done anyone?”

“Madam. We could argue that point all day. You have had years to ruminate on the folly of your wanton actions. Indeed, such wantonness produced the worst possible fruit and now you stand before me heavy with shame and pretend you do not know what you have done? That you had the barefaced audacity to show yourself in decent company in this shameful state; to enter a house of God as if you had the right! It is no small wonder Lady Rutherglen collapsed.”

Again Miranda paused and drew a deep breath, the politician’s words making little sense; his anger baffling. She did not doubt his sincerity. Yet mention of Lady Rutherglen did elicit a response from her.

“I am sorry Lady Rutherglen suffered distress, but as her ladyship has not given me an ounce of consideration since the day of my birth, indeed would not know me if she stared me in the face, I am under no obligation whatsoever to offer you any words that may be a comfort to her.”

“
Obligation
? Dear God, madam, the woman reared you, put food in your mouth and a decent cloth to your back and you repaid her how? By forgetting your carefully nurtured upbringing, an upbringing afforded you because her ladyship was forced to own to the connection by blood against her better judgment but did so because of a sense of Christian charity. And how did you repay her? By fornicating with the first fool who offered you a posy of flowers and a wink of consideration!”

They stared at each other across the carpet: Miranda’s face bleached white, Sir Charles’s cheeks diffuse with blood. One willing the other to own to the accusations; the other wondering how best to refute them without exposing herself and everything she held dear. The only sounds in the room, those coming up off the street below the arch and in through the sash windows over the window seat that had been pushed up to allow fresh air into the parlor: carriage wheels and the clip-clop of horses hooves over cobbles, the sing-song shouts of a fruit seller, and the low buzzing of a bee...

“By fool, Sir Charles, are you referring to Lord George—”

“You know perfectly well it is to Lord George Stanton I refer, Madam!” he hissed. “As if you can pretend ignorance! As if you care a
fig
if he is a fool or not! Your motives were patently clear from the off. You may have been able to use your malversations on a wantwit like George, that’s no great feat, but you were never going to succeed with your designs living under the watchful eye of Lady Rutherglen and her Grace of Cleveley. And nor shall you now!”

“What designs were those, Sir Charles?”

Weir stared at her as if she had sprouted a second head, such was his incredulity. She was either incredibly naïve or as wafer-headed as George Stanton; perhaps they had been made for each other after all. He scoffed.

“Come now! Like the rest of your kind, you used all the tricks available in a whore’s armory: you ensnared him, opened your legs to him and got yourself with child by him, all in the hopes he would marry you!”

Miranda winced at such crude speech but she did not retreat from the accusation.

“Why must you make a sordid tale of it, Sir Charles? It is just as plausible that Lord George was in love—”

“In love?
In love? George
?”

Sir Charles took a step closer, as if he needed to bring Miranda into sharp relief to digest her words. He was now only a stride away from her.

“Why do you find the notion so astonishing, Sir Charles?” she asked steadily, forcing herself to sound calm though she felt anything but. She took a step away, not liking his closeness. “Lord George is capable of such an emotion; I have seen it. He—”

Weir waved his hand about, as if swatting away an insect.

“No. No. No, Madam. What you saw is what you wanted to believe you saw. Are you truly so witless that you could not make the distinction between lust and love? And if that is true, then I am truly sorry for you, but it does not alter the fact that once you found yourself with child by him you did your upmost to ensnare him into marriage.”

“Perhaps I am not the one who has it topsy-turvy?” Miranda countered, a glance at the servant door and then over Weir’s shoulder at the door that led out onto the landing where a hotel servant sat at his post in the passageway waiting and ready to do the bidding of a hotel guest. If she could just get to the door the servant would surely hear her calls? “Perhaps Lady Rutherglen has persuaded you that there was no love, as she herself is surely devoid of such an emotion and therefore would not know love if it was offered to her on a silver salve? I truly believe Lord George was in love and if not for the inconsiderate actions of others many years before, tragedy may have been averted, which surely makes it a pitiable state of affairs...”

Sir Charles saw her furtive glance to the servant door and while she was speaking he stepped across and locked it and slipped the key into the deep embroidered pocket of his frockcoat. At his action, Miranda let out a little sigh of defeat but she did not move from the window seat. The sun was on her back, a breeze coming in through the window tickled her wrist and the hum of the bumblebee nestled in the bouquet of flowers was growing louder as it was awakened by the warmth of the sun. She hoped Janie would return very soon. But with the servant door now locked what was she to do? A twinge of discomfort made her put a hand to her belly; the other she stole behind her, fingers feeling for the bouquet of flowers. If she could just reach the flowers; throw the bouquet at him; distract him enough to make for the door... But the idea died almost as soon as it entered her consciousness; the flowers just out of reach.

“Madam, I did not come here to argue with you,” Sir Charles said confidently, in control now that he had locked the door and had the key. Besides, the woman was in no state to run from him. “Nor do I care particularly one way or the other about Lord George’s pathetic emotions. What I do know is that in the here and now he wants nothing to do with you or your bastard offspring. That you thought you could blackmail him into owning to being your bastard’s father—”

“Blackmail? George? To make him own to being Sophie’s papa?”

Miranda looked so confused that Sir Charles almost believed her and for a moment he was tongue-tied. She saw his momentary confusion and had a spark of hope that he might be persuaded from whatever threatening course of action he proposed in coming to her rooms alone and locking the servant door. Her only hope was to remain calm and try to dissuade him with good sense for she had heard he was not an unreasonable man. At one time he had been loyal functionary to the Cleveley household; was he not now a politician? Did he not covert his reputation and his standing amongst society? There was only one way to find out.

“What possible reason could I have for exposing George as Sophie’s father, Sir Charles? I have not seen or heard from him in five years, which is what I most desired in all the world. I have no wish for George to be known as Sophie’s father, for surely in doing so I expose the ignominy of her lineage, and that is something I mean to keep secret, from her and from the world, until the last breath leaves my body.”

Miranda grimaced and sat on the window seat, both hands to her round belly, for the twinge had turned into sharp cramp. She took a deep breath and forced herself not to panic and looked up at Sir Charles. His deepening frown and the confusion registering in his pale eyes were oddly comforting.

“Surely, you can see that it would be my last wish on God’s earth to want to expose that little girl to the world’s ridicule. She should never know her true parentage. She is the innocent party in all this. I cannot imagine that Lord George wishes it either.”