A Brazen Curiosity, page 15
part #1 of Beatrice Hyde-Clare Series
Aunt Vera rose to her feet and announced that the day’s exertions had fatigued her as well. She cheerfully bid the company good night and followed her niece out of the room. As they approached the staircase, she linked her arm through her niece’s and said with sympathy she had never expressed before, not even on the death of Bea’s parents, “You poor, poor dear. How you must have suffered. Come, you will tell me all about it and we will devise a solution that ensures a happy ending for all.”
Although Aunt Vera’s sudden interest in her long-term happiness intrigued Bea, she knew better than to ask questions, for that would only extend the conversation. The best way to handle the situation was to remain silent and let her aunt chatter herself out. No matter where the topic started, she was confident it would end with concern for Flora and Russell, as their happiness, followed by Aunt Vera’s comfort, was the longstanding priority.
“I don’t blame you for not confiding in me,” her aunt said as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. “Based on our expectations for Flora, you naturally assumed your uncle and I would not have supported you. Please know that is not true. You are our niece, we hold you in some esteem, but our expectations for you are not the same as our expectations for our daughter. Naturally, it would never do for Flora to form an unsuitable alliance, but we would not object if you were satisfied.”
As Aunt Vera found an opportunity to confirm her niece’s secondary status in the household on a weekly or biweekly basis, Bea took no offense at her statement, which was, by all accounts, insulting and possibly hurtful. Rather, she thanked her aunt for her gracious concern. “You are far too kind to me.”
“What can I do? You are my husband’s brother’s child,” she said.
Bea bit her lip to keep from smiling at the confusion in her aunt’s tone. Clearly, she’d intended the remark to stand as an earnest testament to the benevolence of the family bond, but she couldn’t help injecting a note of curiosity—as if she would be delighted to take suggestions as to what else she could possibly do.
After they entered her niece’s room, Aunt Vera beckoned to the chairs by the fireplace. “Come, let’s sit and you can tell me all about your clerk. I understand he works in an office on Chancery Lane, which is…charming, I suppose. I’m sure he aspires to be a barrister, which your uncle can help him with as soon as he finds him and settles the arrangements. We’ll have you married by the end of the month,” she said matter-of-factly, then shook her head as if saddened by the circumstance. “Oh, you poor, poor dear. Tell me, how long ago was this affair? Was it last Michaelmas? It must have been last Michaelmas, for I did notice you looking inordinately wan in late September. Naturally, I just assumed the off-putting paleness was your normal complexion, but I realize now you must have been pining for your lost love. Honestly, Bea, it’s so difficult to tell with you. I’ve never met anyone before who looks as if she’s in a decline all the time.”
The plaintive whine in Aunt Vera’s voice, as if the ambiguity of her niece’s appearance was her personal cross to bear, was too much for Bea, who had held on to her amusement with admirable control for the whole of this remarkable speech. Now, however, she broke into gales of unrestrained laughter, for it only seemed fitting that a lie calculated to elicit information from a grieving young lady would return to her tenfold. Unused to the demands of dishonesty and deceit, Bea hadn’t thought to impress upon Miss Otley the importance of keeping her confidence. She suspected it wouldn’t have mattered if she had, as the tale had been too salacious not to share far and wide.
Aunt Vera, fearful that the painful subject had unhinged her niece entirely, regarded Bea with anxious concern and accused her of being hysterical.
Bea hugged her belly, for it hurt from the effort of laughing, and said, “Yes, yes, aunt, I think am.”
“Oh, you poor, poor dear,” she said sympathetically, lifting her hand as if to touch the girl consolingly but unsure where to place it. It hovered over her head for several seconds before landing on her shoulder. “It’s all right. You get it all out, all the emotion you’ve kept contained for so long, and when you are calm again, we will come up with a plan. What is his name?”
This practical question was the very thing to quiet the gales, for it made Bea aware that she had a rather large problem on her hands. Her aunt was determined to marry her to a fictional law clerk. “He’s dead,” she said abruptly.
If Bea thought death could kill her aunt’s ambitions, she was sadly mistaken. “Not necessarily. Consider, my dear, that it might have been a hoax perpetrated by his parents. Did they not use that very trick on their own son, devastating him with a report of your death while you were very much alive?”
Although Bea had forgotten that she’d already used that ruse in her original story, she was shocked to discover that Emily had recalled the detail. She’d assumed the other girl’s egotism was so engrossing that she heard wind in her ears if the words being spoken did not specifically pertain to her.
“He’s married,” she amended quickly. “To a ginger-haired woman with rosy cheeks.”
Aunt Vera stared at her. “But you just said he was dead.”
“I did, yes, that was me,” she muttered with a hint at annoyance—at herself, at her aunt, at Emily for having the unexpected ability to retain information. “I meant, dead to me. The moment he got married, he was dead to me. I cut him out of my heart as if he never existed, for I refuse to wear the willow for a man who found it so easy to throw me over.”
“He thought you were dead,” her aunt said logically, somehow sounding aggrieved on the imaginary suitor’s behalf.
“But I wasn’t. And yet he believed it. You didn’t believe it,” she pointed out. “A moment ago, when I said he was dead, you questioned it and advised me to allow for the possibility he might be alive. All this for a man you’ve never met. Do I not deserve the same courtesy you extended to a complete stranger?”
“Of course, my dear,” her aunt said, her brow furrowed as she attempted to unravel the topsy-turvy reasoning at the heart of the statement. “I’m just not sure…”
“He has two children,” Bea offered as a distraction. “Twins. One boy, one girl, both ginger like their mother. They live in Cheapside now, next to a printshop.”
Her aunt considered her silently for a moment and then said with a sad shake of her head, “I think you rather are wearing the willow. How else would you know so much about his life if you hadn’t made a particular study of it?”
Bea opened her mouth to issue another impromptu explanation, but nothing came out. Her well of clever answers had run dry, and all she could do was stare stupidly at her aunt, trying to decide if there was any harm in agreeing with her statement. What ill could come from admitting she had spent days or weeks of her life observing a former lover who believed she was dead? It seemed a simple enough concession, and yet she couldn’t quite smother the fissure of alarm. The bigger the lie, the greater possibility for fatal entanglement.
With no other option available to her, Bea took refuge in the tactic of cowards and changed the subject. The day had had so many startling revelations. Surely, she could come up with one to marvel about now.
And then she had it.
“Shall we talk about something truly shocking?” Bea asked in a conspiratorial tone. “How about the way Mrs. Otley stole Lady Skeffington’s beau from right under her nose? Now that’s a scandalous tale of love and betrayal. I cannot believe you did not mention this to me or Flora.”
The brusque shift in conversation disconcerted Aunt Vera, who undoubtedly had more to the say about her niece’s thwarted love affair, but the opportunity to gossip about her dear school friends was too much of a temptation to resist and she happily launched into a breezy retelling. “It was indeed scandalous, for Otley and Amelia eloped the night before he and Helen were to make the announcement. Her mother had already sent the notice into the Times and had to go to the office herself in order to make sure the item didn’t run, which was no small feat, as the type had already been laid. Frankly, it was awful the way Helen found out. She saw them kissing on the terrace during the Erskine ball. Quite the passionate clinch, if the story is to be believed,” she added with a sly smile. “Helen ran to the cloak room to cry and stayed there for the rest of the party, drenching the Duchess of Tetbury’s spencer. Otley and Amelia, knowing it was only a matter of time before their parents found out, left for Scotland immediately. It sounds so dramatic and yet in the end it was but a tempest in a teacup. By the time the newly married couple returned from their wedding trip six months later, Helen was besotted with Skeffington and unable to remember what she had seen in Thomas Otley to begin with. She wished her friend well, and they’ve remained close ever since.”
“Yes, that’s very similar to what her ladyship said,” Beatrice observed, wondering how far the acquisition of a title went in salving an ego—and immediately felt irritated with herself. Lady Skeffington did not deserve such an unkind thought, as she had been nothing but gracious to her. Bea had used exhaustion as a pretext to leave the drawing room, but her petulance made her realize she was more tired than she’d supposed.
“Would you mind excusing me, aunt? It’s been a long day and I suddenly find that I’m eager to turn in.”
At the mention of sleep, her aunt yawned hugely and professed to being quite weary herself. The day had been long indeed, but it was the intense disclosures of the past hour—the dizzying high of discovering Bea had a beau, the shattering low of learning he was unattainable—that had genuinely wiped her out. “I feel as though I could sleep for days.”
Bea thought that was an excellent plan and urged her aunt to get as much rest as she needed.
“I will,” she promised, then kissed her niece softly on the cheek. “Never fear. We will talk about this again.”
Nothing the other woman could have said could strike more terror into Bea’s heart than the assurance that they would discuss the matter further, as she at once imagined her aunt orchestrating divorce proceedings for a man who did not exist.
For God’s sake, he had two children!
They were fictional, of course, but Aunt Vera didn’t know that.
Another woman might have been offended that her relative was so desperate to get rid of her she would resort to breaking up a happy family, but Bea took no affront at all. Indeed, it made her laugh.
And giggling lightly, she rang for Annie to help her change.
CHAPTER TEN
As Beatrice had had little interest in reading The Vicar of Wakefield in the first place, her patience had run dry by the time poor but kindly Mr. Burchell revealed himself to be rich and kindly Sir William Thornhill. The unmasking was a cheap and easy plot contrivance to save the Primroses from the excesses of misfortune the author had heaped upon their head. The fire that had burned down the family’s home and destroyed all their possessions had already been one too many calamities for her, but for the wicked squire to then send the vicar to debtors’ prison because he couldn’t pay the rent on a house that no longer stood—’twas a caricature of immorality.
Annoyed as always by a novel that told her how she was supposed to feel rather than allow her the pleasure of deciding for herself, she tossed the heavy tome onto the floor unfinished. This propensity in fiction was precisely why she preferred biographies, histories and travelogues.
The book landed with a thud that was shockingly loud for midnight in a country home, and as she worried about the clamor waking Flora, whose bedchamber was next door to hers, she heard a knock on the window.
Her heart almost leaped out of her chest at the unexpected sound, for it was late and she was alone and a murderer still wandered the floors of Lakeview Hall.
It could be anything, she told herself, such as a harmless branch blowing against the pane in the wind. It didn’t have to be the killer himself conspiring to end her life while she slept.
Most likely, it wasn’t.
The knock sounded again.
Persistent tree, she thought, annoyed that she’d been denied the luxury of pretending it had merely been her imagination.
Taking several deep, calming breaths, she climbed out of bed, picked up a candle and crept toward the window. Only an hour before she had been rolling her eyes at how easily the empty-headed Olivia had fallen in line with the squire’s trick to ruin her, as if there hadn’t been clear indications of his true intentions, and now here she was investigating a suspicious noise at her window with all the obtuseness of a Gothic heroine. She deserved whatever gruesome end came her way.
And yet what were her alternatives? Blowing out the candle and hiding under the covers hardly seemed like the optimal way to repel an intruder bent on her destruction, and running out of her room in a panic would only expose her to public condemnation. How would she explain her terror to her family? By telling them she was investigating the murder of a man who had committed suicide? Aunt Vera would cart her off to Bedlam at the first opportunity and consider herself lucky to have finally found a solution to her spinster niece problem. No need to break up a happy family when false imprisonment would do.
No, going to the window to confirm the source of the knock was the only reasonable response, and as she drew closer she could perceive the outline of a human form in the tree. Her heart racing, she stretched her arm to bring the candle near to the window, but the glass reflected the light, further obscuring the figure. She had no resource but to lower the candle and press her nose against the glass.
Reminding herself that the running and panicking option still remained, she stepped up to the window and peered through it. Blond curls glowed in the faint moonlight. Heaving a sigh that was equal parts relieved and impatient, she raised the sash and said, “I suppose tomorrow your valet will present a seminar to the young men on how to scale a tree with dexterity and grace.”
Kesgrave climbed easily over the windowsill—additional fodder for his tutorial—and replied, “I continue to be confounded by your churlishness in the face of competence, Miss Hyde-Clare. As you appear to be quite capable yourself, I’d think you’d appreciate proficiency in others.”
“That’s because you’ve never sat across from you at the dinner table,” she explained reasonably.
The duke chuckled and shook his head as if admitting to a great personal flaw. “No, for all my talents, I have yet to accomplish that feat, but I remain optimistic.”
“And I look forward to the twenty-point lesson on how one masters the logistical challenges of being in two places at one time,” she said, smiling as she closed the window. She gestured to the armchairs by the fireplace and asked if he was staying. “Or is this to be a brief visit? Leave your calling card on the salver and carry on to the next tree?”
“That is for you to decide,” he said politely, “as I can only request a meeting. You have to grant it. We are, after all, in your bedchamber.”
Beatrice required no reminder of the impropriety of the moment, for she was keenly aware of the hour and the silence of the house and her state of dishabille. She knew she was supposed to blush at the unseemliness of the situation—being discovered in her night rail by an unmarried gentleman with whom she had no familial connection—but she couldn’t quite muster the embarrassment. Her dress was plain, the material was sturdy, and its cut was so modest a widow could wear it to church on Sunday without raising an eyebrow. Thick cotton ruffles extended all the way to her chin, as if in anticipation of one day having to rebuff the advances of an amorous suitor.
What did embarrass her was the impression that a display of modesty would make, as if she thought he thought she was young and attractive. At her age, she had no illusions or expectations, which the duke very well knew, for if he’d considered her an eligible female, he would never have invaded her bedchamber at midnight.
Kesgrave considered her a colleague, and acting missish now would undermine the entire project.
“Then do let us sit,” Bea said in answer to his question. The fire, which had gentled to embers, glowed faintly, and she lit a pair of candles on the mantelpiece so she could see his face better. “Your visit is fortuitous, as I made a discovery today that will interest you.”
“I know,” he said with a confident grin as he took a seat.
She marveled how he could speak with such smug self-assurance and still wonder why anyone would take issue with his arrogance. “You know?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m here,” he explained. “Despite what you think of my climbing skills—and I appreciate the compliment, of course—I don’t make a practice of scaling trees. The seminar, should Harris consent to host it, would last no more than five minutes.”
Although Bea didn’t want to give him yet another opportunity to show off, she couldn’t resist asking how he knew she had something to tell him.
“Your performance during dinner. All that vigorous eye fluttering aimed at my end of the table. Naturally, I did not assume you were flirting with me,” he said, a spark of humor lighting his eyes as he added, “You will note, I hope, the display of humility on my part. I don’t think you credit me with enough modesty.”
Beatrice raised an eyebrow as she considered him with amused skepticism. “Am I right in understanding, your grace, that you are now boasting about not boasting?”
He shrugged, displaying no hint of self-consciousness or unease. “It’s the depth to which you’ve driven me, Miss Hyde-Clare.”
“I must apologize if my attempt to find a decent human being under the preening lord has somehow forced you to preen more,” she said quickly. “I do assure you that was never my intention.”
Kesgrave laughed and claimed the moral high ground by insisting he would not debate the matter further. “I know how you love to distract me with trivialities, but the hour is late and we have much to discuss. Tell me, then, what you discovered.”
At this unfair charge, a protest rose to Bea’s lips, but she had to smother it, as countering with the fact that it was he who distracted her with trivial things would only prove his point. “We have the wrong Otley,” she said.
