Murder at the Breakers (25 page)

Still, I smiled and greeted her warmly, letting her enfold me in her sturdy arms and returning her kiss.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Emmaline,” she sang out gaily, her voice bouncing on the cold Sienna marble of the floor and walls. I’d been told the house had been fashioned after the great palace of Versailles, on a smaller but no less grand scale. “I have special company this weekend and I’d love for them to meet you.”

She would? She’d never been that eager to introduce me to her society cronies before. “That would be lovely, Aunt Alva. Is, er . . .” I assumed my most innocent, nonchalant expression. “Is Consuelo here, too?”

“Well, of course she is. Where else would Consuelo be? Surely not with her father out on that ostentatious yacht of his.”

Funny, Alva hadn’t considered the yacht ostentatious when she’d taken Consuelo on an exhausting European tour all last summer and autumn. Her sudden scowl drew me from the memory, and my stomach clenched in anticipation of one of her quick, wildfire tirades outlining the many sins of her newly ex-husband. She surprised me, however, when her smile returned and her voice dipped lower on a conspiratorial note. “Did Grafton tell you she wasn’t at home?”

I cast a glance over my shoulder to discover the man had shuffled quietly away, probably through the grand dining hall and to the servants’ domains. “He did. Why would he lie?”

“Consuelo . . . hasn’t been feeling at all well lately.”

A surge of alarm went through me. “She’s been ill?”

“Oh, not ill exactly . . . Come with me.” She grasped my wrist and whisked me through a doorway into the Gold Room, a sumptuously gilded, Louis XIV–style ballroom whose ornate décor rivaled that of The Breakers’ Great Hall. The Gold Room was situated at the front of the house. Her guests couldn’t glimpse us through the windows here, which essentially belied her reason for overstepping Grafton and admitting me to the house. Here, amid rich carvings and chiseled marble, French silks, Italian brocades, and vibrant porcelain from ancient Chinese dynasties—riches enough to feed several orphanages for several years—she told me of a plan that raised bile to my throat and urged me to rush to Consuelo’s side.

“He should be here in about a week, Emmaline, so you see the urgency.”

I nodded absently, not truly hearing her question as my mind spun with a dozen contrary thoughts. The “he” she spoke of was Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill, recently dubbed ninth Duke of Marlborough—or Sunny, as his friends apparently called him. Even now his transatlantic steamer headed toward New York, where he would turn north for Newport and officially become engaged to the eighteen-year-old Consuelo.

Aunt Alva hadn’t counted on one small problem: Consuelo was having none of it.

“If anyone can convince her, Emmaline,” Alva said, “it’s you.”

I stepped back as though she’d struck me. “Me? I’m sorry, Aunt Alva, but you can’t imagine I’d approve of a forced marriage. Or that I’d ever step into the middle of a family matter. You know me better than that.”

She took an ominous stride closer, forcing me back another step, and then another. Alva followed my backward course until my calves struck a thronelike side chair. She loomed mere inches away. Her features hardened; her eyes turned icy. A lethal finger rose to point squarely at my heart. “Make no mistake, Emmaline. Consuelo
will
marry the Duke of Marlborough. There
is
no other choice in the matter. The only question that remains is, will she do so willingly, or will I have to drag her by her hair to the church?”

The breath froze in my lungs, and chills traveled my spine. Yet this was nothing new. Alva wasn’t acting out of character with her threats or her sudden vehemence, nor with her desire to live vicariously through her daughter. Alva had
always
intended for Consuelo to marry into minor European nobility, landed gentry at the very least; hence last year’s European cruise. But a duke! I could already hear her, announcing to all of society:
Oh, yes, my daughter the duchess . . .
What a triumph: every society mother’s fondest ambition. Here was a prize this bull terrier of a woman had sunk her teeth into and would never, ever,
ever
let go of.

With Alva standing so close, all but threatening to sink her teeth into me as well, I became very afraid, not for myself, but for Consuelo. Because I knew that no matter what I or anyone else did, in the end, her mother would prevail. She always had; she always would.

With or without a handful of her daughter’s hair.

In a perverse way, then, Alva was right. The best thing I could do for my cousin was comfort her and help her face her impending marriage bravely. But to do it I would have to disavow everything I believed in, such as a woman’s right to choose her own fate, as I had chosen to do only that morning. To help Consuelo, I’d have to lie to her and do so with a smile.

How I dreaded the role I must play.

“Is she upstairs?” I asked in quiet resignation.

With a victorious spark in her eye, Alva nodded. Her smile returned, but her chin lifted and her nostrils flared in a way no doubt intended to remind me of my place—my lowly place—in the family. “She respects you, Emmaline. Even has a silly notion that you’re better off than any of the rest of us Vanderbilt women. That’s why if you, of all people, tell her this marriage is in her best interests, she’ll believe you.”

As she spoke those last words she took in my carriage dress, the dark blue one formerly belonging to my Aunt Sadie, but which Nanny had freshened with new velvet trim and shiny jet buttons. Her assessing gaze didn’t stop until it reached my hemline, where Nanny had done a splendid job of concealing the slight fraying of the fabric where it skimmed the floor.

“Remember, Emmaline, as a duchess, Consuelo will never want for anything. And if it’s a bit of independence she’s after, between her new title and her inheritance, no doors will be closed to her. Good grief, think of the good she’ll be able to do, if that’s what she wants. She’ll have the means to fund charities, form scholarships—whatever strikes her fancy, as long as the cause is a suitable one and her husband is agreeable.”

Yes, independence. Aunt Alva’s definition of the word dripped its bitter irony on my already sagging spirits.

She reached out and gave my shoulder a little nudge. “Go on. She’ll be delighted to see you.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t think I’m not aware that she called you earlier. The little sneak. Why, I should have—oh, but we’ll work it to our advantage, won’t we?”

“
Our
advantage?”

She nudged me again. “Just talk to her. She adores you. And make her come downstairs. Tell her I have a surprise for her.”

“What is it?”

Alva rolled her eyes. “A surprise. Now go.”

I turned and began walking, wondering how much Consuelo would adore me—or respect me—once she discerned my part in this debacle. Somehow the task ahead seemed even more difficult than tracking down a murderer, nearly being murdered myself, and clearing my brother of false charges. Gripping the cold, wrought-iron banister until my knuckles whitened, I started up the staircase.

Alva’s parting words drifted from the doorway of the Gold Room. “I’m counting on you, Emmaline. Do not let me down.”

The
or else
hovered in the air between us.