Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

"I am convinced my mother lived through Yuletide," Hyperia said, "and into February just so our holidays in subsequent years wouldn't carry a shadow of grief."

I thought of Harry, who'd loved the revelry and foolishness of Christmas. "The shadow lingers nonetheless, doesn't it?"

"Not as darkly as it might, but you tell me that in Lady Ophelia's case, the grief is further weighted with a mother's guilt. That must be awful."

We'd chosen to hack out in the midafternoon, when many of the guests were resting, and no particular diversions had been scheduled. No groom attended us, and the sheer pleasure of having Hyperia to myself compensated for many frustrations.

"If Arthur comes to any harm on the Continent," I said, turning Atlas onto the bridle path that led to the village, "I will blame myself. I all but told him to gather up Banter and take ship, to travel now, while they both enjoy good health and Europe is mostly at peace."

"And he's off like a bolt from a crossbow, for him," Hyperia observed. "You did not convince him to go, Jules. You merely gave him permission to do as he longed to do, and that permission couldn't have come from anybody else."

"A consolation, but I also worry he and Banter will find the Continent too agreeable. Many a titled family dwells abroad and lives far more economically than they could at home." I needed my surviving brother to come back to me, though I'd yet to tell him that.

"What has Her Grace said about Arthur's prospective travels?"

We were ambling along at the walk, having mounted less than ten minutes earlier. Atlas stopped in the middle of the path at no particular cue from me.

"I haven't asked the duchess for her opinion of Arthur's plans. She's not seeing him off, and she certainly didn't fly to the Hall when he announced he'd be sailing away." Still… Lady Ophelia had buried her Patrick nearly two decades ago, and the loss yet haunted her.

Her Grace had not even buried Harry, she'd mourned him without the comfort of any funerary obsequies, and now her firstborn was away to lark about the country where Harry had died.

"She has to be a bit uneasy," I said, urging Atlas forward. "The line of succession is not exactly overflowing with security. She hasn't said a thing to me about her views."

"And you haven't brought up your own misgivings. Jules, was there ever a time when you and your mother simply talked?"

"Of course. When I was a small boy, I thought nothing of intruding on either parent's peace with my myriad brilliant discoveries. A four-leaf clover, a late rose… If the kittens in the stable had opened their eyes or the oak had lost a limb in the previous night's storm. My parents heard the lot of it from me." The town crier.

I felt a pang of sadness for that little boy, always looking to impress his parents, always hoping to be the bearer of interesting news. I'd kept a keen eye out for anything that might impress Mama or Papa.

Had my reconnaissance instincts been born out of nothing more than a youngest son's fear of being ignored by his parents? Heaven defend me from such a charge, and yet…

"Her Grace always listened," I said. "Papa would make time for me if his schedule allowed, but he could also let it be known that my interruptions were inconvenient."

"Your mother listened to you." Hyperia let the words waft about on the crisp autumn air. "Not every lady of her station would have, Jules."

Her Grace had listened to Harry better, but then, Harry had excelled at commandeering adult attention. Harry had had charm . Once I'd understood that he also had the status of the legitimate spare, I realized he had assets in the struggle for notice and consequence that I would always lack.

Though I was now the heir , not merely the spare, and a fat lot of good my expectations were doing me, as Lady Ophelia would say.

"Marchant and I spoke about the letters and Lady Jessamine's gossip," I said as we emerged from the double row of stately conifers that shaded the bridle path. "He excels at viewing his fellow humans with suspicion and even presented a motive for himself."

"Say on."

"He'll slander Her Grace, using his vast social connections to smear her reputation, and then for a tidy sum, he will offer to repair the damage. Said sum will help finance his political ambitions."

Hyperia snorted. "He's backed by Lord Westerboro and quite possibly running unopposed. His political ambitions are already well financed."

"What of his personal ambitions? Nobody seems to know much about his origins or his means. He rides a pretty horse whom he claims has a naughty streak, he brought one somewhat cheeky manservant with him to this gathering, and he doesn't in any way present himself as well-heeled."

"Suggesting he is exactly that. Do you suspect him of malicious behavior toward your mother?"

"Yes, but without any evidence to support my conclusions. I simply don't care for him, and yet, he is some sort of Society darling, a favorite with hostesses throughout the Home Counties."

Was I envious of his social éclat? Lowering thought. Very lowering thought.

"I don't care for Lady Canderport," Hyperia said. "I have every reason to be sympathetic to her situation, with not one but two mutually reinforcing hellions on her hands, but she has done nothing that I can see to mitigate her own miseries."

"Aren't all those hidden flasks intended as mitigation?" Many a soldier refilled his flask twice before he even noticed he was out of biscuits. "What else would you have her do?"

"Separate the twins," Hyperia said. "Each is a bad influence on the other. They conspire and compete in equal measures, and because they hold to each other so closely, neither one has any friends to speak of."

I had my mother to thank for not allowing me to become Harry's familiar. He and I had not gone off to public school together, despite my father's preference for that plan, and we'd had different tutors and separate quarters.

Had Mama done that for me? For both of her younger sons? Had she meant to put us on equal sibling footing with Arthur, who'd had his own chambers from the moment he'd been breeched?

The village green came into view, a sparkling expanse of autumn grass flanked by Tudor shops, a smithy, and a lovely little whitewashed church. The steeple was a modest gesture in the nature of a cupola putting on airs, while the bell tower was a handsome square feature that would command a view of the whole surrounds.

"I could use some lemonade," Hyperia said. "The punch Lady Barrington serves is too sweet and too strong."

"Part of its charm, I suppose. What do you make of Mrs. Whittington?" Hyperia's opinions tended to be more balanced than my own. She had the knack of assessing a situation from a few steps back compared to my own nose-to-the-ground approach.

"I like her," Hyperia said as the horses clip-clopped onto the lane encircling the green. "She doesn't put on airs. She's not stuffy or sly. Her widowhood sits on her lightly. She strikes me as the sort who was born with common sense and a kind nature, and she has maintained a firm grip on both gifts."

Much like my dear Perry, though her fortitude also deserved a good deal of credit. "Marchant claims the Whittington marriage was affectionate, that the husband was the quintessential portly, bald, gouty old soldier, and she yet doted on him."

"You believed him?"

"Any reason why I shouldn't?" Though I also suspected Marchant would be a facile liar—again, without any basis in fact.

"Jules, you described Mrs. Whittington's missing jewelry as containing a lock of brown hair, but Marchant told you the late Lieutenant General Whittington was bald. If nothing else, the old fellow was too much his wife's senior to have much brown hair, unless he'd kept that lock tucked away since his youth."

Possible. Highly unlikely. My, my, my . Hyperia's insight was exactly the sort of development that could lead to further revelations, and revelations could lead to real answers—or simply to awkwardness.

"Perry, I do believe you have caught out somebody in a lie, but that somebody is not Marchant, alas for my prejudices. The somebody is Saint Carola Whittington. Shall you question her further, or shall I?"

Hyperia looked about us at the ineffable sweetness of an English village on a pretty autumn afternoon. The oak at the center of the green still had about half its leaves, their golden hue bathing the scene in mellow light and leaving a mantle of yellow over half the expanse of grass. Too fine a day not to enjoy at least an hour with my darling Perry and too fine a day to sully with intrigue and interrogation.

"You talk to her," Hyperia said. "You have the military connection with her, and she met you in Portugal. If that lock of hair belonged to a lover, she'll find it easier to confess her peccadillo to you rather than to an unmarried woman who is all but a stranger."

"I don't want to pry."

Hyperia laughed, a hearty sound that had a boy holding a plow horse outside the smithy smiling.

"You excel at prying, Jules. Even as I speak, your mind is turning over possibilities: Is Mrs. Whittington's falsehood relevant? Does she have an amatory secret that could jeopardize her standing in Society? Is this the connection between her and the duchess—they both frolicked imprudently—and where does that leave Lady Barrington and her gloves? Am I right?"

"You have hit the bull's eye, of course." Her recitation had marched nearly word for word with my thoughts. "I can't make Drayson's stolen sketches conform to any pattern, but who knows what items will turn up missing by the time we return to Tweed House?"

"Let's have a lemonade rather than find out any sooner than we must," Hyperia said, drawing her mare to a halt before the Lynnwood Arms. "Making small talk the livelong day leaves me parched. Have you asked your mama to serve as my chaperone yet?"

I delayed my answer by assisting Hyperia to dismount and handing the horses off to a groom, with instructions to loosen girths and remove bridles, but offer only water and grass.

"I will speak to the duchess before supper," I said. "Or to Lady Barrington."

Hyperia took my arm but did not let me escort her up the steps. "Julian Caldicott, talk to your mother . Request her aid in this one small particular. You are asking on my behalf, after all, and it's not as if she'll have to exert any effort simply to be at the same gathering we're already both attending."

"True." My commanding officer had given me a direct order, and I would obey it, eventually.

We were honored with the use of the snug, and the lemonade was quite good, as were the cheese tarts accompanying it. When we returned to Tweed House, we learned that we'd missed a practice round of caber tossing—an occasion for hilarity, apparently—and that all gentlemen who weren't blessed to own proper Highland finery would be measured for borrowed kilts before supper.

I'd brought my plaid kilt with me, though it probably fit more loosely than it should, and thus I had plenty of time to seek out Mrs. Whittington. I anticipated that discussion with reluctance, almost as much reluctance as I anticipated asking my own mother for a simple favor.

"No sign of your locket, I'm afraid," I said as Mrs. Whittington accepted a glass of punch from me. "If you have a moment, I'd like to put a few more questions to you."

"You are avoiding the punch, my lord?"

"I am prone to headaches. Prudence suggests I keep my distance from the punchbowl."

We strolled along the balustrade of the back terrace, though numbers were thin for the evening buffet. Too much whacking wooden balls and tossing tree trunks, or the house party had hit the lull between opening flourishes and the farewell crescendo, and guests were fatigued from too much socializing.

Then too, the evening was brisk. The slightest breeze would feel downright chilly.

Mrs. Whittington paused at the end of the terrace, her gaze on the dull, bare squares of the garden and the footmen lighting torches along the walkways. Off to the west, a red and orange sunset suggested inclement weather on the way. She wore her purple shawl, and most of the other ladies were similarly wearing wraps.

"I keep thinking I will open a drawer," she said, "and there my locket will be. It's smaller than most of its kind, small even for a miniature. Perhaps I was meant to lose it."

"And yet, you told me that memories must be allowed their due, however painful. That locket holds memories for you, doesn't it?"

She nodded. "Good memories, for the most part. But even good memories can be sad in hindsight."

I gestured to a bench that faced the garden. At another time of year, the view would be pleasant, though it struck me as melancholy now.

"And with whom do you share those memories, Mrs. Whittington?"

She set her glass on the flagstones and remained silent for a moment. "Explain yourself, my lord."

"Mourning jewelry is seldom gold, but you said the locket came into your possession early in your bereavement and that it held a curl of dark brown hair. I assumed that you described a mourning locket, but you did not. That lock of hair belonged to somebody other than your late spouse."

She smiled faintly. "Somebody whom I loved, or thought I did at the time."

Saint Carola, whatever her faults, was no liar, nor was she a coward. "Everybody I have consulted describes your marriage as genuinely affectionate on the part of both spouses."

"We were devoted, in our way. Freddie was such a good, dear man. He wasn't handsome, wasn't young, but he was kind and sweet and faithful. I knew his life had been challenging and that his health was suffering—he'd served in India for years—and we made the best of the time we had."

"You missed him," I suggested. God knew, I missed Harry, and Papa, and I was in a near frenzy to contemplate missing Arthur for months on end.

"I missed the closeness, not just of the body. We were friends. We had the sort of jokes that a couple share with a look and a sense of being united against a silly and vexing world. Freddie said we were a regiment of two, and when he was alive, I felt that."

The usual infantry square was composed of about five hundred men, four ranks deep, packed into a fighting machine of about sixty feet on a side. The result was an impenetrable wall of weaponry, provided the soldiers did not break ranks.

"Your husband broke ranks by expiring."

She nodded. "He wasn't that old, you know. Fifty-three. I begged him to ease up on the port, to try to get through breakfast without a tankard of porter, but he was too much the military man and had been so for too long. He was never drunk, but he was never without a glass of something either."

She'd married a man more doomed than she'd understood as a bride. Ill, in a sense, and more devoted to his illness even than he'd been to her.

"I'm sorry." What else could I say? She'd given her heart to a walking ghost. "Grief under such circumstances becomes complicated."

She picked up her glass, drank, and set it back down. "Your brother Lord Harry?"

Well… yes. "My brother Lord Harry. He left camp of his own volition by dark of night and was intercepted by a French patrol, to whom he offered no resistance. He loved the risk, the daring, the near misses, and tall tales. I loved him."

"He loved you too. Depend upon that, my lord." Spoken like a woman who'd had years to consider her short marriage.

"While in mourning for your husband, did you offer your heart to another?"

"Not exactly. More like a thief came along and stole it. I was so sad, and he was so understanding. He was everything Freddie had not been. Handsome, well-spoken, unpretentious, unmilitary, young, and exuberantly healthy. He was the younger son waiting for a diplomatic post, his habits refined and his manners impeccable. He didn't even drink much. I don't regret the liaison, but it took me a long time to understand why I could be tempted."

Fate had put a nigh irresistible consolation smack in Mrs. Whittington's path, the ideal distraction from her grief.

"I loathe the thought of returning to France," I said. "Southern France especially, but I suspect I will not lay Harry's ghost to rest until I do. You must not tell anybody I've said that." Why confide that fear—it was a fear—in her? Because she'd taken bold measures to exorcise her husband's ghost, apparently, and that had required courage.

"You might be right, my lord. I was discreetly foolish, and thank heavens, my temptation turned out to be completely unlike Freddie in another regard. Freddie was constant, faithful, devoted, and reliable. This other fellow…"

"Made you feel like the center of his universe when you were with him, and then he'd turn his regard elsewhere, and it was as if you ceased to exist. I had a brother like that. He learned not to attempt his Lord Beguiling routine with me, but I watched him work his wiles on any number of unsuspecting victims." Often to the excellent advantage of king and country and always to the advantage of one Lord Harry Caldicott.

"You have Ian to the life. I was completely unprepared for that behavior, and having watched Mayfair from the fringes for years now, I can say he was more beguiling even than the typical handsome, fortune-hunting bounder. A class apart and well suited to the diplomatic ranks. I grow wary every time I encounter the scent of roses, thanks to him. He was always sending me bouquets, and damasks were his favorites. I gave away the fans he sent me and have long since parted with his monogrammed handkerchief. The locket was my personal talisman against further occasions of masculine magic."

"How did you and he part?" This Ian fellow struck me as having a certain roguishness in common with John Pickering.

"Ian said he had to go away for a time, and because his aspirations were with the diplomatic corps, that made sense. He promised to write and intimated that were his prospects more secure, he'd be promising more than that. He'd gone on short trips previously, and we weren't in each other's pockets. I was in mourning, after all.

"Three months went by without a word," she went on, "and I concluded I'd had my first lesson in how not to conduct a widowhood. Freddie left me comfortable, though far from wealthy, and I've remained determinedly unmerry ever since."

"You have a devoted admirer in Gideon Marchant."

She pulled her shawl more tightly around her. "Gideon has been most kind. It was he who suggested I travel to Portugal, and he was right. A change of scene, a winter away from London's coal smoke, did improve my spirits. So what does any of this have to do with my missing locket?"

In all likelihood, not one thing. "Who at this gathering knows of your liaison with this Ian fellow?"

"Her Grace, though she said nothing to me at the time. She did see me and Ian hacking in the park, enjoying an ice, that sort of thing. Ian was not my only escort. Gideon knew, of course. I've said enough that Hellie doubtless suspects, and that means Lord Barrington will have heard of it. I was discreet, not secretive."

Like any good spy when conducting business in plain sight. "I have little reason to hope your locket will turn up in the usual course, but I am still searching diligently for Her Grace's misplaced letters. I might yet come across your memento."

She retrieved her glass of punch and rose. "I don't need that locket, my lord, but I do occasionally need the reminder of what I learned from Ian. Fairy tales come true at a cost, and the cost can be more than we thought to pay."

I stood as well. The conversation had been interesting, but struck me mostly as ancient history. "Marchant truly does admire you, madam."

She took my arm, and we made a progress toward the house as the fiery sky began to dim to indigo behind us.

"Miss West admires you, my lord. One gathers the sentiments are mutual?"

"Emphatically and blessedly so."

"Then get on with it, sir. Life is short, and love is all we have that matters. My husband did not expect to die when he did, despite his failing health, and I did not expect to lose him so soon."

She also hadn't expected her Ian to disappear in a puff of allegedly diplomatic smoke.

She patted my arm and left me holding her empty glass as she went to greet Lord Drayson, who looked resplendent and impossibly young in his evening finery.