Susan Carroll (27 page)

Phaedra had never been given cause to feel
vain before, but as she regarded her reflection in the mirror, she
could nearly believe Armande's words of endearment when he had
called her beautiful. What fairy spell had he worked upon her in
the pond's hidden glade? Never had her eyes shone so bright and
luminous, her skin tinted with such a soft pink glow. Her lips
quivered as though harboring the sweetest of secrets only a woman
could know. How she-

Phaedra dropped her hairbrush, a frightened
cry escaping her. Another face flashed beside hers, like some
hobgoblin appearing within the depths of the mirror, the features
contorted into an ugly mask. It took Phaedra a moment to realize it
was only Hester hovering behind her. She placed her hand across her
bosom in an effort to steady her jumping heart.

She retrieved the fallen hairbrush, unwilling
to let Hester see how much she had startled her. She glared at the
woman.

“Was there something else you wanted Mrs.
Searle?” The woman’s eyes met hers in the mirror and in their
depths, Phaedra read a degree of hatred and jealousy that unnerved
her.

Phaedra shivered. She had never been afraid
of Hester before, but in that instant, she felt terrified. The
woman's blue-veined lids slowly lowered, her eyes assuming their
customary sly expression. Once more she was nothing but the prying
housekeeper, a source more of irritation than terror. Phaedra let
out her breath.

"No, milady. There was naught else." Still,
Hester did not leave. She lingered by the dressing table, daring to
finger Phaedra's fan and her dainty kid gloves. Although she was no
longer afraid, the woman was making Phaedra decidedly uneasy.

When Hester picked up the porcelain
shepherdess Phaedra had found in the garret, she commanded, "Put
that down."

Mrs. Searle's clawlike fingers tightened
around the delicate figurine until Phaedra feared she meant to
crush it. "Where'd ye come by this?"

"That is none of your concern." She moved to
take the shepherdess from the woman, but to Phaedra's outrage,
Hester whisked it out of her reach.

"Miss Lethington meant this geegaw for Master
Ewan, so she did. How did you come to have it all this time?"

Lethington. That was the name the shopkeeper
had mentioned just yesterday. But how strange to hear it fall from
Hester's lips. Although she had a strong urge to box Hester's ears
and send her packing, Phaedra's curiosity got the better of
her.

"Miss Lethington? You don't mean Miss
Julianna Lethington?"

"Certainly I do. This here statue was meant
for the Emperor of Austria, but Miss Julianna, she vowed to give it
to my Master Ewan instead. Only he never got it. He always believed
as how someone stole it."

Despite her anger with Hester, Phaedra felt a
tingle of excitement. Was it possible after all that her
shepherdess was part of the famous Lethington set? Or was this only
more of Hester's odious tale-spinning?

As she snatched the shepherdess back from
Hester, Phaedra said loftily, "I found this in the attic, so I
consider it mine now. And if it is the treasure you claim, why on
earth would Julianna Lethington have wanted to give it to my
husband?"

Greatly to Phaedra's astonishment, Hester
broke out laughing. She could never remember having heard the
housekeeper give way to mirth before. It was an unpleasant sound,
like the strident cry of a raven.

"I don't see what is so amusing about my
question."

"Don't you?" Hester rubbed the back of her
hand against her watering eyes. Phaedra marveled that such a
mirth-filled gaze could at the same time harbor so much malice.

"I only be surprised, that's all, what with
you not being able to bear having the woman's cloak about, that ye
should so cherish her china."

Cloak? China? What the devil was the woman
talking about? Phaedra stared at Hester.

"Lord bless us, ye really don't know, do
yer?”

Phaedra did not know, but as she glanced
uneasily from the housekeeper's malicious face to the "figurine,
she wasn't sure she wanted to.

"The gray cloak, my dear Lady Grantham,"
Hester purred. "Ye recall it. The one that belonged to-"

"I know full well whom the cloak belonged to.
What of it?"

Phaedra no longer felt disturbed by the
memory of Ewan's precious lost love, Anne, but she loathed
discussing her former humiliation with Hester all the same.

"We-e-ell," Hester drew the word out,
obviously determined to savor every moment of the revelation to
come. "The lady who owned that cloak is the same who fashioned the
china." She crooked one finger toward the statuette Phaedra cradled
so protectively in her hands. "Miss Julianna Lethington was Master
Ewan's lost love."

Julianna Lethington had been Ewan's Anne?
Dear Lord, no wonder Hester nearly wept from laughing. It was
indeed an irony that the figurine that Phaedra so loved should turn
out to be but another memento of her husband's lover.

Phaedra turned the golden-haired shepherdess
carefully in her hands, almost able to picture the graceful fingers
that had wrought the statue's beauty. For years, fear, hurt, and
jealousy had stifled her curiosity about the mysterious Anne. But
she felt far differently now. That likely had much to do with
Armande's whispered words of love. She no longer need feel any envy
of a phantom woman whose memory her husband had cherished in her
stead.

"So Anne was the daughter of china makers,"
she mused. "No wonder Ewan never wed her." The proud Grantham
family would never have suffered one of their members to marry a
girl of such low birth and no fortune. Indeed they had been
reluctant to accept Phaedra, despite the lure of her grandfather's
money. and the fact that her mother, Siobhan, had been a lady.

"Such a great tragedy it all was." Hester
fetched a deep sigh. "Master Ewan, he loved Julianna Lethington
so."

Did Hester think to wound her still with that
sort of spiteful reminder? Phaedra gave her a scornful glance. "And
what would you know about it? You were not even employed here at
the time."

"Lord Ewan didn't treat me with the contempt
as some in this house do. Oft his lordship would confide in
me."

"I doubt that. I knew my husband well. He was
never the sort to pass his time of day with the housekeeper."
Phaedra placed the shepherdess back on the table and started to
stroke the brush through her hair again. She broke off with a gasp
as Hester's hand hooked over her shoulder, the woman's nails biting
through the gossamer fabric of Phaedra's gown.

"Ye never knew him, nor me, neither," Searle
snarled."I was more than just the housekeeper when Master Ewan
lived. The same blood flows in my veins as any Grantham. Aye, the
Searles be just as good, though we fell upon harder times."

Phaedra struck the woman's hand from her
shoulder. Her flashing green eyes met Hester's malevolent black
ones in the depths of the mirror. "You'd best go now," Phaedra said
through clenched teeth.

"He loved her, he did, not you." Hester
stabbed the words at Phaedra as though she wielded a knife. "Loved
his beautiful Julianna. She was as fair and delicate as that there
china. He never stopped loving her-no, not even after what her
murdering brother did to my poor Master Ewan's papa, Lord
Carleton."

Phaedra twisted around in her chair.
preparing to thrust Hester from her room if she had to. But she
blinked as though she had been dazzled by the light of a hundred
chandeliers. A light that suddenly made all crystal-clear.

"Lethington ... old Lethe," she said
wonderingly. "The old Lethe who killed Carleton Grantham was Anne's
brother."

Hester regarded her with the contemptuous
patience usually reserved for the village idiot. "That's right.
James Lethington. He be the one. The same tale as I've tried to
tell you many a day, but ye've always been too high-minded to hear
it-or perhaps too afraid."

"I've just never had any interest in a past
that does not concern me.”

She turned her back on Hester once more and
tried to resume brushing her hair, annoyed to see that her hand
trembled. Perhaps Hester's sneering suggestion was correct. Perhaps
she had been a little afraid, as suggestible as any of the children
Hester loved to terrify. Phaedra was oft haunted enough by her own
past. She didn't want to add anyone else's grim story to the
collection.

But Hester's voice dropped to its low,
sinister pitch, and Phaedra could not seem to stop her. The crone
peered over her shoulder again, her haggard image hovering, nigh
mesmerizing Phaedra with her witch-black eyes.

"It was in a springtime of long ago, it was,"
Hester droned. "That my handsome Master Ewan declared his love for
his Miss Anne. Fair she was, a maiden all gold and roses, so dainty
she scarce reached the master's shoulder. He could neither eat nor
sleep for thinking of her, and he vowed to make her his bride
despite the difference in their stations.

"That pleased neither the Granthams nor the
Lethingtons. Oh, yes, they were proud as Lucifer, too, Miss Anne’s
mama and them brothers of hers who were no more than street rabble.
James and Jason. But it would have taken more than the likes of
them to have stopped Master Ewan getting what he wanted. It was his
father Lord Carleton as done that. And all because of you."

Hester fairly spat at Phaedra. Phaedra
lowered the hairbrush, the bristles digging into her palms as she
held it clenched tight in her lap.

"By then your grandfather was dangling
prospects of fortunes afore Lord Carleton's greedy eyes, offering
to pay off the family debts. The Granthams, they were always in
debt. And then, of course, you were the daughter of an Irish lady."
The term might well have been an insult the way Hester pronounced
it.

"The match was clapped up without consulting
Master Ewan. He'd never been strong about opposing his
father--Carleton Grantham was the very devil of a man. But for the
sake of his sweet Anne, Master'd have defied them all. Lord
Carleton, he figured he'd find a way to buy Julianna Lethington
off-or maybe frighten her away. And the devil succeeded.

“He got his way, all right. There came a
night-the girl had a tryst planned with Master Ewan. She was
supposed to be coming and to bring him that little statue as a
pledge of her love. But she vanished from the face of the
earth."

Phaedra's gaze traveled to the fragile
porcelain figurine, which would be so easily crushed-just as the
delicate girl who made it could have been.

"Master Ewan was brokenhearted," Hester
continued. "But that brother of hers, that James, fetched after
Lord Carleton in a perfect fury."

"I well imagine that he might," Phaedra said
warmly. "And if Ewan so loved the girl, he should have done the
same."

Hester's mouth pinched, but she otherwise
ignored the slur upon her beloved Master Ewan. "Mr. Weylin and Lord
Carleton were below in the study going over the details of the
marriage contract, not knowing James Lethington had followed Lord
Carleton here. All the servants were gone that eve. They'd been
given a holiday. So it was an easy matter for old Lethe to creep
into the hall unseen and take his choice of weapons. He took the
mace down from where it had hung on the wall and waited-"

"Aye, so he did," Phaedra interrupted
impatiently. “James Lethington killed Lord Carleton and was hanged
for it. But what of Julianna? Was she never found?”

"Only a few of her belongings, her shoes and
her purse left laying upon the river bank not far from the spot
where they say she chose to end her life."

Phaedra frowned. She sensed there was more
than one detail missing from this tale that Hester spun for her
with such wicked delight. It seemed far too convenient that
Julianna would have obliged Lord Carleton by committing
suicide-unless Ewan's father had terrified her into doing so. If
Julianna had killed herself, how did the missing shepherdess come
to be abandoned in her grandfather's attic?

"What became of Julianna's mother and the
other brother?" Phaedra asked.

Hester shrugged. Apparently, having committed
no gruesome murders, Jason Lethington held little interest for her.
The housekeeper tried to resume her grisly detailing of the death
of Lord Carleton.

"A most wicked heavy weapon that mace was.
Capable of crushing a man's skull with but a light blow-"

"That will be all, Mrs. Searle," Phaedra said
sharply.

Hester's eyes snapped to hers in a
hate-filled glare. "Oh, aye, aren't you the one for dismissing' me
after ye've heard all ye care to hear. The great lady with yer fine
peach silks and cream satin bed."

Phaedra jerked to her feet and stalked over,
pointedly opening the bedchamber door. She must have been mad to
have listened to Hester even this long.

"For all yer airs," Hester said. "Yer naught
but a poor relation, same as me. Only I grub and truckle fer a
living' on the pittance yer grandfather flings me. Ah, but he's too
kind, letting me have the used tea leaves to sell fer a little
extra. Since I be lacking other things to peddle, such as ye
bear."

Phaedra flushed a deep red. "Get out of
here!"

"First flinging' yerself at that drunkard
Danby and now at the marquess with my poor Master Ewan not buried a
year.”

At the mention of Danby, Phaedra stiffened at
the realization. “You! You were the one who locked me into the Gold
room with Lord Danby.”

Hester did not even bother to deny it. She
merely laughed.

“By God, this is the final straw,” Phaedra
cried. “I will have you dismissed without a character-“

But Hester interrupted her angry threat with
another cackle. “And how will ye accomplish that, milady? By
carrying tales of what happened to your grandpapa? Ye wouldn’t
dare.”