His at Night (13 page)

His door opened. “Are you all right, Lord Vere? I heard noises.”

Miss Edgerton, a shadowed silhouette on the threshold.

For a moment he was seized with the mad desire to have her next to him, her hand caressing his cheek, telling him that it was only a dream. She would coax him to lie down, tuck him in, and smile—

“Oh, no, gosh, no, I’m not all right!” he said forcefully. “How I hate that dream. You know the one, where you are searching for a water closet high and low and there isn’t one anywhere in the house—and no chamber pots and not even a proper bucket. And there are crowds in every room, and out in the gardens, on the lawn, and—Oh, good gracious, I hope I haven’t—”

She made a choked sound.

“Oh, thank God,” he continued. “Your beddings are safe. But if you will excuse me, I must—”

The door closed decisively.

In the morning everyone drove over to Woodley Manor for a look at the disgusting mountain of dead rats. The rat catcher, with his exhausted rat dogs, a triumphant ferret, and an incomprehensible accent, proudly twirled his dark, luxuriant mustache as he posed for Lord Frederick’s camera, commemorating the occasion.

“My staff is already hard at work,” said Lady Kingsley to Elissande. “There is much to do, but they assure me the house will be fit for habitation by tomorrow. I promise you we shall remove ourselves the moment it is the case.”

Elissande saw the handwriting on the wall. There was no more time left. Something must happen.

She
must make something happen.

God helped those who helped themselves.

E
lissande had inherited a few things from her parents: a set of her mother’s silver combs, a bottle of perfume blended especially for Charlotte Edgerton by Parfumerie Guerlain, her father’s shaving brush, a bundle of letters tied in lilac ribbon, and a small oil painting of a female nude.

She was sure Lord Frederick would appreciate seeing the painting. She hadn’t shown it to him for one very significant reason: She was afraid that the subject might be her mother, and one simply did not go around letting gentlemen look at one’s mother in such a state of exposure.

But now she was throwing all scruples to the wind.

“My goodness, but it’s a Delacroix!” exclaimed Lord Frederick.

She was unfamiliar with the name; the books on art that the library had once housed had concentrated on the art of classical antiquity and that of the Renaissance. But judging by Lord Frederick’s expression of
delight and reverence, a Delacroix was nothing to sneer at.

“Do you really think so, Lord Frederick, that it is a Delacroix?”

“I am almost one hundred percent sure.” He brought the small painting even closer to his eyes. “The signature, the style, the use of color—I would be shocked if it weren’t a Delacroix.”

His enthusiasm quite infected her. It must be a sign from above. How else could her treasure chest, which contained nothing of value—except the sentimental kind—prove so startlingly helpful on this very day?

“It is exquisite,” Lord Frederick murmured, enraptured.

She stared at him, similarly enraptured by her sudden stroke of good fortune.

“How did you come to have a Delacroix?” Lord Frederick asked.

“I haven’t the remotest idea. I suppose my father must have purchased it. He lived in Paris during the early seventies.”

“I don’t think so,” scoffed Lord Vere.

Lady Kingsley had letters to write. Lady Avery and the young ladies had gone to Ellesmere. Most of the gentlemen had departed to shoot what grouse there was to be had at Woodley Manor. Lord Frederick had declined, citing a lack of interest in badgering the poor birds. Lord Vere, who had originally declared his intention to go, had, to Elissande’s simmering
exasperation, subsequently changed his mind to keep his brother company.

As a result, he sat at the other end of the morning parlor, playing solitaire. Elissande had done her best to ignore his presence, but now she had no choice but to turn her head his way. He did not look up from the cards he’d laid out—and they were
not
for a game of solitaire, but simply one long line from which he was now turning random cards faceup.

“I beg your pardon, sir? You don’t think my father lived in Paris?”

“Oh, I’m sure he did, but I’m not so sure he came by his Delacroix honestly,” said Lord Vere nonchalantly. “Lady Avery was chewing on my ears at dinner last night. She told me that your grandfather was a great lover of art and that your father stole some pieces from him before he ran away with your mother.”

Elissande was overcome for a moment. Her uncle had said plenty of unpleasant things about her parents, but at least he had never accused her father of thievery.

“Please do not speak ill of the dead, my lord,” she said, her voice tight with fury.

“Telling what happened in truth isn’t speaking ill of someone. Besides, it’s a fascinating story, what with your mother having been a kept woman and all. Did you know she was your great-uncle’s mistress before she married your father?”

Of course she knew that. Her uncle had made sure she understood well the ignominy of her parentage.
But it was the worst breach of manners for Lord Vere to speak of it publicly, with such carelessness for the ramifications.

For the very first time Lord Frederick, red at the ears, spoke in censure of his brother. “Penny, that’s enough.”

Lord Vere shrugged and gathered his cards to reshuffle them.

There was a long, awkward silence. Lord Frederick broke it—lovely, lovely Lord Frederick. “I do apologize,” he said softly. “Sometimes my brother gets his stories confused. I’m sure he’s quite mistaken about your family.”

“Thank you,” she murmured gratefully.

“No, it is I who should thank you, for the chance to admire a Delacroix when I least expected it.” He handed the painting back to her. “What joy such beauty brings.”

“I found this among my father’s things last night. We have trunks and trunks of my father’s possessions. Perhaps I can unearth some more.”

“I would
dearly
love to see what else you can find, Miss Edgerton.”

“She’s not wearing anything,” said Lord Vere, suddenly next to her. She had not heard him get up from his chair at all.

“It’s a nude, Penny,” Lord Frederick explained.

“Well, yes, I can see that: She’s not wearing anything.” Lord Vere leaned in farther. “Except a pair of white stockings, that is.”

His arm practically brushed her hair. She would
have expected his clothes to reek of tomato sauce—he’d had quite an incident with the sweetbread at luncheon. But he only smelled brisk and clean.

“It’s a study of the female form. It’s not prurient,” said Lord Frederick. “It’s not supposed to be prurient.”

Oddly enough, Lord Frederick flushed. But he quickly gathered himself. “And thank you again, Miss Edgerton, for the privilege. I hope you find more hidden treasures. I cannot wait to see them.”

“I will be sure to show you anything I find that very instant,” she said, smiling and rising. There was still much, much to do.

Lord Vere called after her, “I’d like to see them too if they look like this, wearing only stockings!”

She did
not
throw a vase at his head. Her canonization was now assured.

Miss Edgerton’s movements and gestures intrigued Vere. The way she sometimes played with the ruches on her sleeves. The way she touched her hair, as if deliberately drawing attention to the soft, shining mass of it. The way she listened to Freddie, with one index finger along her jaw, her torso slanted at a slight angle, so that it gave a clear but still discreet impression that she wished to be closer.

But nothing incited Vere—and repelled him—quite as much as her smiles. When she smiled, despite everything, his heart skittered.

There was a science and an art to manufactured
smiles. He, too, was fairly accomplished at smiling, no matter what he truly felt. But she…she was the ceiling at the Sistine Chapel, the glorious, eternal, unsurpassable standard.

Where had she come by the ingénue charm and the virtuoso radiance? How did she manage to retain the honest naïveté in her eyes and the relaxed set to her jaw? Her smiles dazzled so much that sometimes he could not remember what she looked like otherwise.

But she had
not
smiled when she’d discovered that she’d sat on
his
lap. She had not smiled at any point during the ninety minutes his drunken antics had kept her away from her aunt’s room. She had not smiled at him just now, as he reveled in her less-than-desirable parentage. And for her, not smiling was akin to another woman leaving the house without her petticoats.

It was what he wanted, wasn’t it, to grate on her nerves enough to send her screaming to bedlam? Then why did it incense him so? He was even irked by Freddie, the object of her obvious affection, because Freddie didn’t care about it one way or the other—and Freddie almost never rankled him.

“I’m going upstairs for a minute, Penny,” said Freddie, rising from the desk where he’d been writing a letter since Miss Edgerton left. “I need my card case.”

“I’ll come with you,” Vere answered. “I’ve nothing better to do.”

He’d been working for hours on deciphering the
code used in Douglas’s dossier, with letters marked at the corners of the cards he’d been arranging and rearranging, sifting for patterns. Or at least such had been his aim. He’d accomplished nothing on that front, his concentration flaccid the entire day.

Besides, Miss Edgerton still lurked somewhere in the house.

“Why do you want your card case? Are we calling on somebody?” he asked as they made their way up the stairs.

“No,” said Freddie. “I’m writing a letter to Leo Marsden. He’s on his way back from India.”

“Who?”

“You remember him—we were all in the same house at Eton. I have his address in my card case.”

Inside Freddie’s room, Freddie opened the drawer of his nightstand and scratched his chin. “That’s strange. My card case is not here.”

“When was the last time you saw it?”

“This morning.” Freddie frowned. “Perhaps I’m not remembering correctly.”

Freddie was highly charitable: Most gentlemen would suspect the servants. Vere helped Freddie search around the room to no avail.

“You should tell Miss Edgerton that it’s missing.”

“I suppose I should.”

They did not see Miss Edgerton again, however, until everyone had returned to the house for tea and chitchat on the day’s events. Miss Edgerton expressed the appropriate mix of shock and dismay that such
a thing should have occurred in her house and promised to do everything in her power to locate the card case and return it to Lord Frederick.

But as she gave her concerned reassurances, new lamb–pure and kitten-sweet, Vere suddenly suspected
her
. What she could possibly want with Freddie’s card case he did not know. He knew only that when she didn’t smile, there was a hardness to her eyes—a grimness, almost.

And that his instincts were almost always correct.