Chapter 8

I set a snare for Ardath Deloitte, and she stepped right into it.

The mechanism was simple: I sent a note begging for the favor of her hospitality at eleven o’clock and citing Mrs. Semple’s kind suggestion that I pay such a call. I wanted to interview Evelyn’s youngest sister free of possible interruptions from other visitors, hence the unsociably early hour.

Thirty minutes before the appointed time, I stationed myself in the alley behind the capacious Deloitte domicile. The air was nippy, the breeze pushing dead leaves about on the blond cobbles. Autumn had arrived in London, and the scent of coal smoke was everywhere.

A boy came running through the garden gate to confer with a groom. The groom sent the boy back to the house and disappeared into the stable.

The team was apparently being put to harness. I loitered discreetly twenty yards off, waiting to see for whom the carriage was being prepared. The pair of grays backed into the traces were spotless and elegant—grays were a vanity, always more work to keep clean—and calm. My money was on the lady taking flight, and I would have won that bet.

Mrs. Deloitte did not enjoy quite the grand dimensions of her oldest sister, but she was majestic enough, particularly when sweeping along in a red merino cloak with a fur collar and an enormous fur muff about her hands. More vanity—the morning wasn’t that cold. She reminded me of somebody, probably Mrs. Semple, though a difference in age and individual features obscured the likeness.

A footman trotted along beside her, opening the garden gate in time for her to gain the alley without breaking stride.

I slapped on a smile and marched forth smartly. “Mrs. Deloitte? Lord Julian Caldicott, at your service. I hope you received my note?” On crested stationery and sealed with my signet ring pressed into the signature Caldicott lavender-scented purple wax.

Consternation flashed through blue eyes, but the lady recovered quickly. “Note? My lord, you have me at a loss.” Her tone was puzzled rather than disdainful, which boded well for my mission.

“I do apologize. I’m sure my footman said he’d delivered it into the hands of your underbutler, but notes go astray all too often. I will presume, then, on the good offices of your sister Mrs. Margery Semple, who promised she’d write to you on my behalf.”

Mrs. Semple had made no such promise, but I’d read Evelyn’s diaries, and the sisters were loyal and frequent correspondents. Mrs. Semple held the rank of senior general. If Mrs. Semple advised Evelyn to go up to Town for some shopping in retaliation for Tait’s flirtations, Evelyn had packed her bags accordingly.

“You’re acquainted with my sister?” Mrs. Deloitte unbent so far as to remove a gloved hand from the muff and offer it to me. She had Evelyn’s coloring—fair complexion, blond hair—but her features were more delicate, and the result was more attractive.

I bowed, she curtseyed, and the footman found it expedient to make a great production out of crossing the alley to ensure the gate was properly latched.

Good Lord, was the lady given to assignations in alleys? “I have had the pleasure of a lengthy visit with Mrs. Semple and invited her to call at Caldicott Hall if she was of a mind to. I believe she will favor us with a visit before His Grace takes ship for the Continent.”

I was flaunting my consequence shamelessly—Arthur’s consequence, rather—because I was dealing with gentry married into the merchant classes. Consequence often mattered more in such circles than it did in the peerage itself, though, by rights, I ought to have had a mutual acquaintance provide an introduction in person.

I hadn’t time for such niceties, and besides, Mrs. Deloitte had attempted to avoid me when my stated mission was to find her missing sister.

An encouraging blunder on the lady’s part.

“I do recall Margery mentioning something about a call from you,” Mrs. Deloitte said. “Unfortunately, my lord, this is not an opportune—”

“I need only a moment of your time. Perhaps I might escort you to your destination? In the alternative, I can come back this afternoon when you’ve completed your errands.” I was not, in other words, somebody she could put off, short of resorting to rudeness. If she showed me a bit of patience, by contrast, she could boast of a ducal connection.

“If you promise to be brief,” she said, “we can chat in the conservatory. John Coachman, if you’d walk the team, I’ll be back shortly.”

The coachy nodded from his perch and gave the grays leave to walk on.

The conservatory was relatively warm, also private, and the location spared Mrs. Deloitte from offering me tea or any other excuse to linger. One might call the choice of venue rude. She took off the figurative gloves as soon as the door had closed behind us.

“If I recall Margery’s letter, she said you were poking about in search of Evelyn. Has John Tait finally recalled that he has a wife?”

And this was the sister whom Tait believed was least set against him? “I am searching for Evelyn, but I made it plain to Mrs. Semple that my intention is primarily to pass along a message to her: Tait is willing to pursue an annulment if that’s what Evelyn wants. I will not reveal your sister’s whereabouts if she’s determined on her privacy. Tait, for his part, would like to know that Evelyn is well and happy rather than moldering in a pauper’s grave.”

His life hasn’t been easy.I left that startling sentiment unvoiced because I doubted it would aid Tait’s cause. Perhaps I was sensing what Hyperia perceived more clearly: John Tait was neither widower, nor husband, nor bachelor, nor youth. He was a masculine anomaly, and for him, that status had become unbearable.

Not knowing if he’d precipitated his wife’s death had become worse than unbearable.

“John has waited years to suffer this attack of conscience where Evelyn is concerned,” Mrs. Deloitte said, pacing away from me. “He’s probably spent all of Evelyn’s money, and now he needs to remarry.”

Possible.“The house is in good repair, considering it lacks a lady’s hand, and his acres appear to be thriving. Besides, I was given to understand that Evelyn’s sisters will benefit from her death to a greater degree than Tait would.”

Mrs. Deloitte smiled, and I understood why Evelyn had felt so plain in comparison. “My lord, do my circumstances suggest I am in want of funds?”

“Circumstances can be deceiving, but were you in want of funds, you’d be hastening me to complete my investigation, to find a record of Evelyn’s death. So far, you’ve offered insults to Tait—deserved, very likely—and nothing that would help me to find your sister.”

Mrs. Deloitte began picking off dead leaves from a struggling potted rose. “I know nothing that would assist you to find Evvie. I pray for her nightly, and if John is in misery, perhaps that’s divine retribution. He was a thoughtless husband to my sister. Evvie is no great beauty, but she was smitten with Tait and with all his charming ways.”

Ardath’s tone suggested she had been a little smitten, too, hence her bitterness now.

“You were jealous of her,” I said gently, “once upon a time, and when Tait paid attention to you, you were flattered. That must have been confusing to a young woman barely out of the schoolroom, and Tait should be pilloried for his cavalier behavior. It occurs to me, though, that Evelyn could negotiate favorable terms from him, if he pursues an annulment. If he simply waits another year or two to petition the courts to have her declared dead, she gets nothing.”

Sometime between nightmares, I’d realized that Evelyn might have given her pearls to her sisters for safekeeping, and the sisters had slowly run through Evelyn’s treasure chest because Evelyn was no longer extant to need the funds.

Ardath Deloitte, as the sibling dwelling in London, was the most likely beneficiary of the pearl hoard, if so.

“The courts take forever to declare anybody dead,” Mrs. Deloitte said, giving up on the rose and moving on to an anemic fern. “Years, sometimes.”

She was making more of a mess rather than tidying anything up.

“That’s not always the case. The courts require that one wait seven years to petition to have somebody declared dead, but in the absence of any evidence supporting Evelyn’s continued existence—I’ve found none worthy of a judge’s notice—the petition could be granted quickly. Evelyn would be left with nothing.”

I wasn’t quite lying. I believed Evelyn was alive and soon to run out of funds. Tait’s timing had been better than he’d known in that regard.

Or Evelyn might have expired of bad eel pie at a lesser coaching inn and been buried in some obscure churchyard. I hadn’t found a single soul who’d laid eyes on her after she’d left the marital home, after all.

“We always felt sorry for Evelyn,” Mrs. Deloitte said, brushing pieces of dead plant from her gloves. “She was very much in Margery’s shadow, and Margery was slow to attract an offer. Mama was growing desperate. Evelyn was so… so robust and always willing to ride out with Papa, or go shooting with him. Evvie was the son he’d always wanted, but she wasn’t a son, and she wasn’t pretty, and she had a temper… She got all the pearls because we felt sorry for her.”

“The pearls were to be a shared legacy?”

“The will was vague, but Margery said the pearls flattered Evelyn, and pearls are boring, so my sisters and I agreed. I don’t regret it.”

“Would it surprise you to know those pearls have gradually been resold over the past few years?”

She ceased fussing with her gloves and stared at me. “How can you possibly know that?”

“I did not know it—I only suspected—but you confirmed my theory. Evelyn left behind five years’ worth of diaries, she left behind poetry Tait had written to her, she took none of his love letters. She took mostly coin and jewels. In her shoes, I’d have gone through the money first, and when that was gone, I’d start selling my jewels. I’d sell them in London, where the best prices could be fetched and where I had trusted allies.”

A maid came in, carrying a full watering can. She saw us, set the can down, curtseyed, and hastily withdrew.

“My lord, I love my sisters, all of them, and I even have some sympathy for John. He was young, spoiled, and had nobody to tell him how to deal with a wife, or so my husband claims. I nonetheless know nothing of Evelyn’s whereabouts, and that is the God’s honest truth. I wish you the best of luck in your search, not for John’s sake, but for Evelyn’s. Now, if you’ll excuse me…?”

She wouldn’t risk abandoning me in the conservatory, but neither would she be home to me if I called again. That’s how much luck she wished me as I sought to find her sister.

I picked up her enormous muff. “I’ll see you to your coach,” I said, gesturing to the door that led to the garden.

We returned to the alley as the carriage turned in from the street and the horses plodded up the cobblestone way.

“Is John paying you?”

The question surprised me and should have offended me. “What does that matter?”

“If he can afford to pay you, he can afford to support a new wife, can’t he?”

“Not necessarily, but as it happens, I do not accept coin when doing favors for my friends.”

The coach came to a halt, and a footman hopped down from the boot to tend to the steps. He opened the door, but stepped back when I offered my hand to Mrs. Deloitte.

She accepted my courtesy—she had little choice—but I did not immediately aid her to enter the coach.

“My brother died under uncertain circumstances, behind enemy lines, possibly from natural causes, possibly in unspeakable agony. I don’t understand what he was doing in enemy territory, why he surrendered without a fight, or whether he was acting under orders or on his own initiative. The questions never leave me for long.”

She snatched the muff from my free hand and put a foot on the step. “I’m sorry to hear that, my lord. If you wouldn’t mind, I must be on my way.”

“If you are haunted by a similar uncertainty regarding Evelyn, you hide it well.”

She climbed into the coach. “Perhaps I do. Best of luck, my lord.”

I fired my last shot. “Do you know anything of the whereabouts of Mrs. Evangeline Hanscomb?”

“Lina Hanscomb? Lord, no, I haven’t heard that name for years. You’d best ask Margery what’s become of Lina. She will know if anybody does. She might also know who John’s flirts were here in Town and what has become of them. Good day, my lord.”

I closed the door under the disapproving gaze of the footman, and John Coachman sent the horses on at a brisk, noisy trot.

I left Mrs. Deloitte’s alley and wandered quiet streets and lanes rather than major thoroughfares. I needed time to think. Mrs. Deloitte had been lying some of the time, telling the truth some of the time.

Lina Hanscomb, for example, lived one street over.

Any bride new to London, as Mrs. Deloitte had once been, firstly and above all else used preexisting acquaintances to gain a toehold on the social whirl. Mrs. Hanscomb had married well, considering her antecedents. Ardath Deloitte had been more than passingly familiar with her sister’s best friend from school, and thus, her professed ignorance of Mrs. Hanscomb’s whereabouts had been a blatant lie.

I’d call on Mrs. Hanscomb directly, before the two women had a chance to confer.

As I retraced my steps and rehearsed opening lines, I was plagued by the sense that when Mrs. Deloitte claimed not to know where Evelyn was at present, she’d been telling the truth.

What on earth was I to make of that when the maid who’d interrupted us in the conservatory had been very plainly attired, neither young nor old, and very plain of face indeed?

* * *

“My lord.” Lina Hanscomb curtseyed and came up smiling. “We have a mutual friend in Miss Hyperia West, though she and I have been out of touch in recent years. She was a great admirer of yours at one time.”

Mrs. Hanscomb’s opening salvo put her in a class above Ardath Deloitte as a verbal sparring partner. She’d troubled to educate herself about my reputation and my past, which the Hasborough sisters apparently had not.

“I continue to count Miss West among my dearest friends,” I replied, bowing over the lady’s hand. “She’s recently returned to Town, in fact, if you are of a mind to renew your acquaintance.”

“Perhaps I shall. London is so dreary as winter closes in, and all the talk is of bills, votes, and budgets. Do have a seat, my lord.”

She’d received me in a formal parlor remarkable for the quality of the furniture. The sideboard, tables, mantel, picture frames, and mirror frame were all of mahogany, and in every case, the dark wood was relieved with intricate walnut inlay. A pattern of vines, leaves, and roses unified the whole and perfectly balanced the aesthetic between heavy and refined.

The carpet, curtains, and upholstery established a palette of cream, forest green, and burgundy, a departure from the pastels common in the typical peerage parlor. Red roses on the sideboard added a graceful accent and further underscored that somebody had good taste. Whereas another woman might have demanded a bouquet of two dozen blooms, Mrs. Hanscomb’s posies numbered seven.

“Your note mentioned that you’re searching for Evelyn Tait,” my hostess said as a footman set a silver tea service before her. “How can I be of assistance?”

“I’m not sure you can help me, but I’m in the no-stone-unturned phase of the inquiry. Plain tea will do for me. You and Evelyn Tait were close. What sort of person is she?”

Mrs. Hanscomb made a pretty picture navigating the tea tray. She was of medium height, sable-haired, and going pleasingly matronly about the middle and the bosom. Her green eyes were shrewd and her bronze afternoon attire the epitome of understated fashion. Even her dress blended well with the room’s appointments.

“Evelyn was a good friend,” Mrs. Hanscomb said, an interesting place to start. “She could be moody, cross, and low-spirited, but she was also loyal, funny, and refreshingly bold, by schoolgirl standards. She taught us all how to smoke cigars—she’d learned from her father, apparently—and she talked me into taking a trouser role at one of our spring theatricals. I hadn’t even that much daring in me at the time. She knew all the songbirds by their tunes and could imitate most of them, though ladies aren’t supposed to whistle, are they?”

“She sounds like an original.” The term was invariably a compliment—when applied to pretty women.

“She should have been, but those sisters of hers…” Mrs. Hanscomb passed over my tea, two iced cakes tucked onto the saucer. “They made Evelyn’s life a purgatory.”

Well, well, well.“I thought the Hasborough siblings were a close-knit and devoted quartet.”

Mrs. Hanscomb fixed her own tea—also plain—and took a tea cake for herself as well. “To the rest of the world, they were, but the family had no son, and thus the property was destined to go to a cousin. Evvie was supposed to marry him, but he had other plans and, being five years her senior, was in a position to act upon them. He’s an absentee landlord who rents out his manor house and lives very affordably in the South of France.”

“Thus marrying well became imperative for all four sisters.”

“Isn’t marrying well always imperative?” She sipped her tea, and I did likewise. “Evelyn was the plainest of the sisters, and like the lowest hen in the pecking order, she suffered for it. They were always pinching her cheeks and ordering her about. ‘Must you stand so tall, Evelyn?’ ‘The curling tongs are your friend, Evelyn.’ ‘Get back upstairs until you’ve fashioned a proper coiffure.’ ‘Evelyn, why can’t you at least attempt to move with some grace?’ Her father died two years before her come out, and a good deal of Evelyn’s joie de vivre went with him.”

Had Evelyn Tait been a man, her height, strength, and boldness would have been admired. “Did she care for Tait at all, or was he merely the choice her family insisted she accept?”

The tea was hot, strong, and smooth. The cake delicately flavored with cinnamon, a lovely combination. I also found the conversation interesting. I’d concluded that Evelyn was spoiled and headstrong and that she’d expected too much of her spoiled, headstrong husband.

The tale wasn’t that simple, and shame upon me for thinking it so.

“That’s the odd thing,” Mrs. Hanscomb said, munching her tea cake. “John and Evelyn were well suited. He thought her slightly ribald humor was wonderful, and she liked his determination to do well by his acres. They could talk endlessly of plow designs and pig breeds. She didn’t mind that he lacked a substantial fortune. He didn’t care that Evelyn was no great beauty. She was roaringly healthy, didn’t put on airs, and rode like a dragoon.”

A hoyden, except that hoydens were supposed to be pert, saucy, little pocket Venuses whose great fortunes won them Society’s fond indulgence.

“Would her sisters have done away with her for the money they’d inherit?”

Mrs. Hanscomb put down her tea cup. “Gracious. When I speculate in such directions, Mr. Hanscomb tells me that I’ve been reading too many Gothic novels.”

“But you have speculated?”

She finished her tea cake and selected another. “Evelyn was initially so happy to be a wife. Her letters positively gushed with joy. For the first six months, she was rhapsodic. John was the perfect husband, a brilliant farmer, and beloved by his neighbors and retainers alike.”

“A fairy tale.”

She held out the plate of cakes to me, and I realized I’d eaten both of mine. I took one more.

“What you call a fairy tale is the ironclad promise made to every girl on her way out of the schoolroom. She will find a wonderful man. He will esteem her greatly. She will delight in managing his household and bearing his lovely, healthy children. She will pass blissfully through the remaining portion of her seven ages and depart life with a heart full of gratitude for all the contentment and affection she’s known.”

“I hope that fairy tale is coming true for my sisters.” And, in some way, for Arthur too. What sort of future did Hyperia hope for, if not one with a husband and children?

“The fairy tale hasn’t come true for you, has it?” Mrs. Hanscomb spoke gently, kindly even.

While I wrestled with the urge to smash my tea cup against the elegant mantel, I admitted that Hyperia and Mrs. Hanscomb would get on swimmingly. Both ladies looked life straight in the eye.

I took refuge in the stated purpose for my call. “Evelyn’s marital joy apparently dimmed, did it not?”

“Precipitously. John developed a wandering eye, or Evelyn did, and simply keeping his house was no challenge at all for her. She grew stout—she was never a sylph—and the nursery remained empty. Her letters became shorter and fewer and often consisted of little more than some recipe for a decadent sweet that she’d come across. She never invited me to visit, though we’d promised each other we wouldn’t drift apart.”

“She pushed you away?”

“Or she couldn’t bear to admit that I was happy and content while she grew bitter. I don’t know as that development pleased her sisters, but it certainly gave them something to gossip about.”

“You stayed in touch with her sisters?”

“Ardath is a neighbor, and Barbara and Margery both come up to Town from time to time. Our paths cross.”

Never an occasion for wild rejoicing, apparently. “Ardath Deloitte claimed not to know what had become of you. I was to inquire of Mrs. Semple as to your whereabouts.”

Mrs. Hanscomb frowned at her tea. “Ardath regularly borrows from my staff when she’s entertaining formally, and I am free to borrow from hers.”

“But you don’t?”

“The need has not arisen. I suspect Evelyn’s sisters are part of the reason that matters between Evelyn and John grew so troubled. Margery, in particular, dispenses advice as if she were the oracle of Sussex. She tried to tell me that flirting with my husband’s friends would ensure I wasn’t taken for granted by my spouse.”

I could see the matronly, serene Mrs. Semple handing out just such a nostrum, and in a few instances, her guidance might even have been sound.

“If Evelyn flirted with John’s friends, and John was busily flirting in retaliation with everything in skirts, I can see where the marriage went into the ditch.”

“The question,” Mrs. Hanscomb said, “is whether Margery sent it there on purpose. John and Evelyn were happy. Margery and her husband are cordial at best, and Ardath’s spouse is too fond of his imported brandy. I can’t speak for Babs’s situation, but sibling rivalry can become diabolically complicated.”

So… it… could. “I have reason to hope that Evelyn is still alive,” I said. “Tait is willing to pursue an annulment, and he’s willing to leave Evelyn in peace wherever she is. He’s spent the past five years alternately hoping she’d return and fearing that he inadvertently caused her demise. I can’t see that the status quo is serving either party optimally, hence my willingness to search for the lady.”

Mrs. Hanscomb rose and used a pitcher on the sideboard to top up the water in the vase of roses. “If Evelyn had one quality that outshone all the others, it was determination. She was determined to prove her sisters wrong—she would find a husband who appreciated her. She would be happy. She would get back to the life in the shires that she loved. To blazes with turning down the room with gouty widowers who saw her as an unpaid governess for their children and a robust nurse for their dotage.”

I stood as well, manners demanding that courtesy. “You miss her.” The realization came as a relief. The Hasborough sisters might have ulterior motives regarding Evelyn, but Lina Hanscomb, secure in her place in the world, had the luxury of honest feelings.

“I miss Evvie sorely, and I worry about her, though she warned me that she might do something drastic. She was in Town visiting Ardath, five years ago nearly to the day. Evvie told me that matters with John had reached an impasse, and it was time for bold measures. I had no idea what she alluded to. She disappeared shortly thereafter—supposedly returning to Sussex, though she didn’t—and the conversation made more sense in hindsight.”

“Tait was never told that she’d made it as far as London.”

“Perhaps he never asked. Evelyn was determined, as I said, but her determination was often driven by pride. John could be just as stubborn, and one shudders to think of the children they’d have had.”

Except they’d never been so blessed, as the platitude went.

“Where should I seek her?” Mrs. Hanscomb would have given that topic considerable thought.

“I don’t know. Evelyn was a creature of the shire, but strangers stand out in small villages and even in market towns. A port city always has a lot of new faces coming and going, but I can’t see Evelyn ever being very far from good old English agriculture.”

“Did she have any other close friends?”

“Not to speak of. We were a twosome at school, and while we were friendly with other girls, Evelyn did not exert herself to be likable, and I was of the same bent. One good friend is sometimes all one needs.”

I had learned much about my quarry in the course of our discussion and about those with a motive to make Evelyn’s life difficult. My belief that Evelyn would turn to her sisters for aid was shaken, but not destroyed.

Other than her own means and native wit, how else would she establish a new life in a new venue, except with the support of her siblings?

“How did Evelyn spend her idle time?” I asked, simply because this was another blank spot in my understanding of her.

“When she couldn’t be in the saddle, she liked to read. Her father had been inclined to literature, the sort of fellow with a handy quote for any occasion. She and he would read the same books and write to each other about them. Evelyn was something of an herbalist and could sketch plants, animals, and landscapes with superior competence. She had a good singing voice—contralto—and had a vigorous command of the pianoforte.”

Evelyn had had her own approach to ladylike accomplishments, in other words, but no outstanding passions that would shed light on a preferred place of escape. No yearning for the sea, no longing for the romance of the Highlands, no pleasant memories of summers spent on the Dales.

“Please find her, my lord. Even if all you do is tell her I’ve missed her, and I’d keep her confidences, please find her.”

Hyperia would appreciate such a forthright plea, while I found it burdensome. Searching for Tait’s embittered, flighty wife had been a chore undertaken at Hyperia’s request. Finding a woman treated ill by her siblings and spouse, one with a loyal friend who yet worried about her, put the inquiry on a different and more personal footing.

“I will give the investigation my best effort,” I said, “but searching the whole of England for a trail that went cold five years ago is a daunting prospect.”

My hostess saw me to the door and asked to be remembered to Miss West, and then I was back out in the elements, no closer to discovering Evelyn Tait’s whereabouts than when I’d started my day. I was, though, closer to Evelyn herself, and thus I next turned my steps in the direction of Hatchards bookshop.