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“I daresay you can ferret out his deep, dark secrets,” Longmore went on.
Her sisters entered before she could answer.
Fenwick stared at them.
Longmore couldn’t blame him. One Noirot woman was stunning enough, with all the lace and the great ballooning sleeves and skirts, and ruffles and ribbons. Three of them, in all the colors of the rainbow, all rustling as they moved, made for a hallucinatory experience.
“This is Fenwick,” Sophy said.
All three women regarded the boy with the same expression of polite interest.
Longmore wondered what was going on in their heads. No, the truth was, he only wondered what was going on in her head.
Fenwick said, “I had a bath.”
“With soap,” Longmore said. “Well, do you mean to keep him or not?”
The Duchess of Clevedon smiled. “I think he’ll do very well.”
Miss Leonie said, in her usual brisk way, “Yes, come along, Fenwick. Our maidservant Mary will take charge of you for now. We’re rather busy today. But we’ll talk later, after closing time.” She put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and steered him through the interior door.
“How very good of you to have him cleaned and re-upholstered,” said the duchess, still smiling.
“I thought it would be easier to simply take him to the baths and let them do a thorough job with him,” he said. “But now he’s yours, and I shan’t keep you any longer from your customers.”
He bowed, and was turning to leave when he heard the noise. The room wasn’t far from the back door, which someone seemed to be trying to batter down.
He remembered Dowdy’s hired ruffians.
He remembered Fenwick talking about his friends. Young thieves usually traveled in packs led by an older criminal.
He blocked Sophy from going out ahead of him, strode quickly down the short passage, and flung open the door.
His brother Valentine stood with fist upraised, about to thump on the door again.
“What the devil?” said Longmore. “Does everybody know about this door?”
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Valentine said. “I tried your house, then White’s, then I went to Clevedon House—but they hadn’t seen you and he wasn’t in and nobody knew where he’d gone. Then I thought maybe you’d made a long night of it, and so I came back, to look in at Crockford’s, and someone there told me he’d seen you turn into Bennet Street a while ago. I came here and saw your carriage. I tried five doors in this curst court. What is this place?”
“Never mind what it is. What the devil do you want?”
Valentine glanced past him.
Longmore turned and discovered that Sophy had followed him into the passage.
“I’d rather talk to you outside,” Valentine said. “Something’s happened.”
“It’s Lady Clara,” Sophy said.
Valentine’s eyes widened. “How the devil—”
“What’s she done now?” Longmore demanded. “Has she killed her fiancé? Our mother?”
“Does she know everything?” Valentine said, his glance flicking to Sophy.
“This is Clevedon’s sister-in-law, you nitwit. She’s practically family.”
“Not our family,” said Valentine.
“Don’t be pompous,” Longmore said. “Makes you look constipated. What’s Clara done now?”
“Will you not come outside? I’d rather the world didn’t know.”
“This world,” Longmore said with a nod at Sophy, “finds out everything anyway.”
Valentine muttered under his breath, let out a sigh, then stepped into the passage, closing the door behind him.
“Clara’s bolted,” he said.
Chapter Six
Some persons think the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean: but give me, for my private satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land’s-End!
—William Hazlitt, Sketches and essays, 1839
“Don’t be an idiot,” Longmore said. “Clara would never—”
“My lords,” Sophy cut in. “This isn’t the best place to discuss the matter. People coming and going. Doors opening and closing.”
“What the devil is there to discuss?” Longmore said. “You can’t possibly take this seriously.”
Her expression was all too serious. “I recommend you do so,” she said. “But a quieter place would be better.”
She walked away, back to the room Longmore had just left. She didn’t wait to see whether they followed. For a moment he watched her hips sway. Then he noticed that his brother was watching the same thing.
“Don’t stand there like a lump,” Longmore said. “You’re the one who wants to make a great secret of this.”
They followed her into the room. She closed both doors.
“This is a typical Fairfax family tempest in a teapot,” Longmore said. “Clara’s incapable of running away. She can’t dress herself. She barely knows how to feed herself. She has no money. Where could she go?”
“She took Davis,” Valentine said.
“You can’t be serious.”
“What sort of joke do you imagine I’m playing?”
“A lady can’t keep secrets from her personal maid,” Sophy said. “She’d have to tell Davis. Though Davis must have been extremely unhappy about it, she’d never tattle or let Lady Clara go alone.”
True enough. Davis was a bulldog of a maid, ferociously loyal and protective. As well, she had—or so Longmore had always assumed—both feet planted firmly on the ground.
“Clara drove out in her cabriolet near midday,” Valentine said. “She had a lot of parcels she said were old clothes she was taking to one of her charities. Then she was going to visit Great-Aunt Dora in Kensington and spend the night. She’s done that before. No one gave it a second thought. We might not have known the truth until tomorrow, if Great-Aunt Dora hadn’t come to see Mother today. Then we had a to-do, as you can imagine.”
Longmore was amazed he couldn’t hear the screaming from here. Warford House was only a few streets away, overlooking the Green Park.
“Did Lady Clara leave any message?” Sophy said.
Valentine got all stiff. He took off his hat and made an extremely correct bow. “I don’t believe I’ve had the honor,” he said.
Pompous ass.
Longmore said, “Miss Noirot, will you allow me to present my brother, Valentine Fairfax.”
Another excruciatingly polite bow from the nitwit, who said, “Miss Noirot, perhaps you’d be so good as to allow me to speak to my brother in private.”
She curtseyed. It wasn’t remotely correct. Down she went in a great flurry of bows and lace and muslin whispering like scandalized playgoers when a notorious tart appeared in her theater box. And up she came again, graceful as a ballet dancer. Then she looked up at Valentine, all wide blue eyes. “I’m not good at all,” she said. “Ask Lord Longmore.”
“I’m still undecided in that regard,” Longmore said. “I will say it’s no good trying to keep secrets from her.”
Valentine, now gazing raptly into the great blue eyes, didn’t hear a word.
“A message, Valentine,” Longmore prompted. “Did our sister leave a message?”
Valentine shook himself out of his trance and dug out from the recesses of his waistcoat a piece of notepaper. He gave it to his brother.
The message was short enough:
I will not marry that man. I’d rather be disgraced for the rest of my life and live as a beggar.
C.
“Oh, good,” Longmore said. “That’s what we need: drama.”
Yet he remembered the way Clara’s face had crumpled last week, when he’d brought her here. She’d said . . . What had she said?
Something about their mother harassing her. Something about the marriage. The hasty marriage.
The marriage she wouldn’t have had to f
ace had he done the one simple task even he’d understood was necessary: keep Adderley away from her.
