No Marriage of Convenience (26 page)

“Do you play?” she asked, as Riley drew near.

She shook her head.

“Too bad. It is an intelligent game—one of wits and skill. I would guess that you would be quite adept at it.” The Countess stared at her this way and that, as if she were measuring her against some unseen composition. “Hmmm,” the lady mused. “Well, don’t just stand there, child. Sit. I don’t bite, though it is a tale told to recalcitrant children to make them behave.”

Laughing at this, Riley sat in the chair the Countess bade her to take.

As the lady began to pour the tea, she launched into a dissertation about the prior night’s events, commenting quite frankly on the poor choice of costumes, the odd pairings, and the obvious affairs that made the
ton
so diverting. Then out of the blue, she asked, “I’m still quite
puzzled about you. I know you aren’t a St. Clair, so I must ask, who are you?”

“I fear you would find it quite boring,” Riley said. She found her gaze caught by a portrait over the mantel. There, immortalized in oil, was a gentleman, standing beside a pedestal, a hound lounging at his feet. In his hand, he held a sword much as one would a cane, the tip pointed into the ground, the hilt tipped at a jaunty angle. His face smiled out at his audience, a kindly but mischievous tilt to his lips. His eyes, crinkled around the corners, sparkled with a friendly air. In the background rose a great house with a wide lawn before it and graceful trees encircling it in a protective embrace. Across the lawn, swans and other birds dotted the greenery.

Riley could have sworn she’d seen the man before—but where and when she couldn’t say. And the house—it was like something out of a dream. “My lady, who is that?” she asked, pointing at the painting.

The Countess glanced over her shoulder. “My late husband. Why do you ask?”

“He seems familiar,” Riley mused. “But perhaps it is because he looks so content, so happy there.”

“He was. My husband was never happier than when he was in the countryside. That was our estate—Marlowe Manor. He spent nearly all his time there.”

Riley glanced over at her. “Was? Isn’t it still your home?”

She shook her head. “When my husband died, his title and Marlowe House passed to a cousin.”

“I’m sorry,” Riley said, not sure why she was, but it seemed sad that such a happy moment should be lost in time.

“Don’t be,” the Countess said with a wave of her hand.
“Now you evaded my question, and quite well, but I will have an answer. Who are you?”

“No one of consequence, my lady,” Riley told her. “Lord Ashlin needed someone to help him with his nieces, and I offered my assistance. That is all there is to it.”

The lady reached for Riley’s empty cup and began to refill it. “I hear there was a death at Lord Ashlin’s this morning,” the lady commented, as one might ask about the weather or a visiting relation.

Even with her years of theatrical training, the question stunned Riley, leaving her stuttering and shocked. “Um, yes,” she managed to gulp out. “An accident.”

“How unfortunate,” the lady said, handing her back her cup. “Who was it?”

“A servant,” Riley told her, reciting the tale Mason had sworn the house to tell. “Cleaning a window when he accidentally tumbled out it.”

“Really.” The Countess said the statement more as a question than a comment, and Riley refused to offer any further explanation.

Lady Marlowe shook her head. “I find the entire situation especially odd, considering this servant had a pistol stuck in his waistband. Are all of Lord Ashlin’s servants armed?”

A feeling of unease drove Riley to her feet. “I fear I have taken up too much of your time, my lady. Good day to you.”

The Countess stopped her. “I haven’t finished with you yet. I will know who you are! Who was your mother? Your father, girl? Tell me!” The woman’s eyes held a wildness, a desperation.

Riley shook her head and turned to leave, facing the doorway through which she’d entered, seeing now the por
trait which had been hidden behind the open door when she’d been announced.

Unlike the man in the bucolic painting on the other side of the room, the figure in this one was more than just vaguely familiar.

She spun around and faced the Countess. “Where is she? Where is Elise?”

“O
h, aye, my lord, he was Daniel Nutley all right,” Mr. McElliott, the Bow Street Runner Mason had hired, said. The man doffed his hat and took the seat Mason motioned to. “I verified it not an hour ago. There isn’t a Runner in town who isn’t celebrating that rotter’s demise—bad to the core, that one was.”

“That still doesn’t answer the one remaining question,” Mason said. “Why was he after Riley?”

McElliott rubbed his stubbled chin. “’Twould have to be for gold, milord. Daniel Nutley didn’t lift a finger for anything unless he got paid.” McElliott wiped his ruddy brow with a less than clean handkerchief. “There’s them that say he demanded a farthing from his own mother when she whelped him for the inconvenience it caused him.”

“Then you’re positive he was paid to carry out these acts.”

“Aye,” McElliott nodded. “He was paid. Nutley had a reputation for doing a gentleman’s less savory business—no questions asked. Heard tell he was braggin’ down at the Iron Pig that a toff who was up the River Tick owed him quite a bit for a big job he’d been working for the
last year. Claimed he was going to introduce the poor bugger to Mr. Crusher, since it didn’t look like the fellow was gunna pay. I’d guess that job must have been your miss.”

“Mr. Crusher?” Mason inquired.

McElliott snorted. “Yea, Mr. Crusher.” He held up his right hand. “It was what he liked to call his best hand—because he could snap a man’s neck with it. Was his trademark, you could say.”

Mason shuddered, the memory of arriving in Riley’s room and seeing Nutley’s hand around her throat leaving him feeling cold. If Bea hadn’t heard the noise…if he’d been a few moments later…

“Then we need to determine who Nutley’s employer was,” Mason said.

Nodding, McElliott said, “Nutley wasn’t one to drop names—part of why he always had work. Had a strict code of discretion—about the only thing he had any morals about.”

“And one would assume, since we haven’t heard of any member of the
ton
having had their neck cracked,” Mason said, “that Nutley was still holding out to collect his bounty.”

“That, and he was still working,” McElliott pointed out. “He wouldn’t have tried to put your miss’s light out if he didn’t think he was going to get paid.”

“Ah, yes. A day’s pay for a day’s work,” Mason said.

“That was Nutley,” the Runner said.

“So whoever wanted Riley dead is still out there.”

“Must be. Odd, though,” McElliott commented. “Nutley had almost a year to kill her, but you said up until she came to you, there were nothing but accidents—only mishaps to drive her out of business and out of England.”

“Yes,” Mason agreed.

“So,” McElliott said, continuing his hypothesis, “why did her moving in with you escalate Nutley’s actions? Why did it suddenly become so important for her to die?”

They sat silently, each considering his own theories, when McElliott finally said, “One thing’s for sure, Nutley’s death won’t stop this fellow. In my experience it only makes them more unpredictable. Your miss is still in danger.”

Mason got to his feet immediately. He reached over and rang the bell for Belton. Moments later, the butler arrived. “Belton, where is Miss Riley?”

“She is still calling on Lady Marlowe, milord,” Belton said.

Mason glanced over at McElliott. “She thinks she’s safe. I have to warn her. Get her back here.”

“Bringin’ her here may not be the best idea, milord,” the man pointed out.

“You’re right,” Mason agreed. “I’ll send her away.” And this time she wouldn’t so easily slip out of his grasp.

He rose and extended his hand to the Runner. “If you’ll pardon me, I have a lady to rescue.”

“Where is this woman?” Riley repeated. “The one in this painting?”

“So you do remember her,” the Countess replied. “Remember my daughter?”

Her daughter?
Riley’s throat constricted. If Elise was the Countess’s daughter, then that would make Riley her…

The room started to spin, and she reached out and steadied herself on the back of a nearby chair.

The Countess rushed to her side. “’Tis quite a bit to take in. I know I felt rather unsteady last night after we met.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Riley stammered, still unwilling to admit what was happening.

“I think you do,” the Countess said. “Everton was right—you have her mannerisms, her way about you, her eyes.”

Riley shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean, my lady.”

“Quit being coy with me, girl. You know exactly what I mean and what I am talking about. Is it so difficult to admit you are my granddaughter?”

Riley continued to shake her head. “How can you be so sure?”

“I wasn’t when Everton came here last week to tell me about you.”

“The Duke? What has he to do with any of this?”

“If anyone would be able to spot Elise’s child, it would be him. Probably easier than his own issue.” The Countess paused and glanced at her daughter’s portrait. “He loved her very much. I didn’t realize how much until after she was gone. He would have protected her…and you, if only I hadn’t been so stubborn.” The Countess laughed. “A trait common on the Fontaine side of the family—one apparently all three of us share.”

“
Fontaine
?” Riley whispered, chills tingling down her arms.

“Yes, my maiden name. Elise used it after she went to France. ’Twas how I eventually found her.”

“You sent the letter,” Riley said, the memory of the liveried servant with the message in hand rising forth in her memory. She glanced back at the portrait of the Marquis—the servant in the background holding the horse—he wore the same colors—the same uniform. “You sent the money and carriage to bring her back here.”

The Countess nodded.

Riley took a deep breath and asked the question she’d wanted answered all these years. “Where is she?”

This seemed to take the Countess aback.

“Where is Elise?” Riley persisted, backing away from the Countess and into the middle of the room. “Where is my mother? In Scotland on a hunting trip? Upstairs still sleeping away a late night? Or is she off in Brighton, enjoying the sea air?”

The Countess just stared at her.

“I am not supposed to ask where my mother is?” Riley said. “If you brought me here, surely you knew I would ask where she is.”

“You don’t know?” Her grandmother’s words were but a whisper.

“Know what?”

“Child, your mother isn’t here,” the Countess said, reaching out her hand to take Riley’s.

She shook off the lady’s attempt at familiarity. She would have her answers. Now.

“All these years and you didn’t know,” the Countess whispered, a sad sense of wonder in her voice.

“What is there to know?” Riley asked. “My mother abandoned me.”

“No, Riley, she didn’t.”

Riley shook her head. “You weren’t there. Ask her yourself. Ask Elise why she left me behind. Why she abandoned her only child to be sold on the streets of Paris.”

“I can’t.” The Countess’s shoulders shook with emotion.

Obviously the lady didn’t like to admit that her daughter was capable of such a heartless act.

“You can’t, or you won’t?” Riley prodded.

The lady turned around, tears shining in her eyes. “I
can’t, my dearest girl, because your mother never made it home all those years ago. She died in a carriage accident not an hour after she set foot in England.”

It took Riley and the Countess over an hour to put their disparate stories together…and make their peace with each other.

“How can you be so sure I’m your granddaughter?”

“Beyond the obvious—your mother’s mannerisms and the Fontaine green eyes—your name rather confirms the matter. When you finally introduced yourself last night, it was as if Elise were laughing at me from her grave.”

“My name?”

“Yes,
Riley
. ’Twas the name I proposed for her fatherless child. I offered it in spite, and apparently she took it.”

Riley still wasn’t too clear how her name could be such a clue as to her identity. “Is Riley a family name?”

The Countess laughed. “In a sense.” She pointed at the portrait of the Earl. “Do you see that beast there to my husband’s left?”

Riley nodded.

“’Twas his favorite hound…and your namesake.”

“I was named after a dog?” Riley had never really questioned where her odd name had come from—for it was the only thing she’d ever recalled with any certainty from her childhood.

“Yes, I suppose that is rather odd, but thank your mother she didn’t name you after me.”

“And that would be worse because…?” Riley asked. The lady leaned over and whispered her name into her ear. “I see. Now I feel much better about my canine namesake.”

They both laughed, and for the first time in her life,
Riley felt the warm connection of family. This woman was her grandmother—a link to a past she’d never known.

But the moment of levity was soon replaced by a bittersweet silence.

“I blame myself for all this,” the Countess said, shaking her head. “If only I’d acknowledged Elise’s marriage—”

“—My mother was married?” Riley sat back from her grandmother.

“Yes,” the Countess said. “You didn’t know that either, I can see it from your expression. Here you’ve spent all these years thinking that you were born on the wrong side of the blanket and that your mother left you, and none of it is true.”

Her parents had been married. So that meant she was a lady—not just a pretend one on the stage, but a lady as much as Cousin Felicity, the girls, and even more so than the illustrious and oh-so-mercantile Dahlia Pindar.

“I was wrong about your father and his family. I admit that now, though it pains me to say it.”

Her father.
She tested the word to herself silently. “Who was he? Is he still alive? Does he have other relatives?” Riley asked in a rush.

The Countess held up her hand. “Slow down. The issue of your parents’ marriage is a complicated one.”

“How can a marriage be complicated?” Riley asked.

“Having never been married, you would ask that,” the Countess joked. “Now, back to your questions. Your father’s name was Geoffrey Stoppard.”

Geoffroi, my dearest Geoffroi
…

The line whispered through her mind—yet it wasn’t from the play, but from her childhood. Her mother had often said those very words in her sleep, and they had stuck in the darkest reaches of Riley’s memory until they’d come to life in
The Envious Moon
.

“Why are you smiling?” her grandmother asked.

Riley shook her head. “’Tis nothing, Grandmother. Pray continue.”

The Countess looked unconvinced but went on anyway. “After your parents’ elopement to Scotland, they were returning to London when their carriage was attacked by brigands. Your father tried to stop them and was killed for his efforts.”

Her father had died protecting her mother—it was more romantic and tragic than one of her plays. Still, that didn’t answer a very important question. “But why should that have ruined my mother? They were married, after all.”

“Not without proof. The marriage documents were stolen, along with their money and Elise’s jewelry.”

“There must have been a record somewhere,” she insisted. “The church, a clergyman, a witness.”

“No, none,” the Countess said. “The blacksmith who’d married them was killed in a tavern fight a fortnight after your father’s death. With no one to vouch for them and no proof without those documents, only your mother’s word that she’d been married to Geoffrey Stoppard remained.”

“So my mother was ruined,” Riley said.

The Countess nodded. “Utterly. She was already pregnant with you, and with no proof of a marriage, there was nothing to be done but to send her away.”

“What about my father’s family? Wouldn’t they have helped?”

The Countess blanched. “That is where I made my mistake. I believed the Stoppards too far beneath us to consider an alliance with them. I couldn’t stomach the idea of Stoppard’s father taking control of your mother’s inheritance.” The lady glanced up at Riley’s mother’s portrait, as if casting up an apology for the umpteenth time.

“And?”

“And I was wrong. Despite their purchased elevation, the Stoppards are now thought of quite highly. Your grandfather is very much admired in government circles for his economies and reform efforts, while your uncle is an admiral in the Navy. From the accounts I’ve read of him in the paper, one would think him second only to Nelson in his daring.” She paused. “Your relations would have protected your mother and you—whereas I, in my pride and anger, cast you both out to the fates.”

Riley glanced up at her mother’s portrait. “Where is she buried?” She had wronged her mother all these years—when in truth her mother had loved her and protected her, and had left her life behind to have her child. Perhaps she could make a small atonement to her memory by honoring her grave.

“At Marlowe Manor. We can go there tomorrow. I doubt Stephen will mind, especially since the house is rightfully yours.”

“Mine?” Riley asked. “How can it be mine? You said earlier that the title and everything had passed to a cousin.”

“Yes, upon Elise’s death.” The Countess nodded. “But only because I couldn’t prove you were her lawful issue or even find you.”

“Still, I don’t see how it could have passed to my mother or me.”

“Because the original Lord Marlowe was a crafty devil—he had helped Good Queen Bess with a number of sticky diplomatic situations and when it came time for him to retire, the Queen granted him a boon: the title of the Earl of Marlowe, the manor, and all the lands surrounding it, as a reward for all his years of unstinting devotion. But the new Lord Marlowe hadn’t been a diplomat all those
years not to know a thing or two about negotiations. When the Letters Patent were being drafted, he begged Her Majesty to allow the title to pass not only through the paternal line, but also to a daughter.” Her grandmother grinned. “He flattered the old girl that she would be a worthy example to his descendants that a daughter could carry on a family’s legacy as well as any son.” Riley’s grandmother laughed. “Besides, his only remaining issue was a daughter, and he wasn’t about to see his hard-earned reward revert back to the Crown any time soon.”