Aurora (7 page)

“Good morning, Marnie, Miss Falkner,” he said, arising and bowing as they entered the saloon, where he had been put to wait.

Again Rorie was struck by the inconsistency of seeing the gypsy in such elegant attire, at home to a peg in a polite saloon.

“Good morning, Ken—” Marnie stopped in midspeech, her abrupt halt quite obvious.

He quirked a brow at her and laughed. “Your sleep has not brought you wise counsel if you have not yet decided I am me. Shall we settle on some uncompromising name for the interim? The alleged Lord Raiker? Or shall we be less formal, and make it the
soi-distant
Kenelm? Or ‘the party of the first part’ might be more appropriate, as it seems Mama means to drag me into court.”

“You have been to the Hall?” Marnie asked.

“Yes and no. I have been as far as the front door, but Wilkins gave me the heave-ho—reluctantly, though. My servants know me. I was refused admittance; and advised to hire myself a solicitor, so I came on over here while I was so close. I hope I don’t inconvenience you? I was to come in the afternoon.”

“It’s no matter. The sooner the better, I suppose.”

“The customary phrase when people wish to get an unpleasant ordeal over with, and here I have been looking forward so long to seeing you again.” He smiled and looked at Marnie sadly, as though she were breaking his heart. He managed to make his voice sound nostalgic too.

“There will be unpleasantness before it’s over,” she allowed, determined to steel herself against his insidious charms.

He leaned forward in his chair and regarded her with bright, intense eyes. “I’m going to win, Marnie. Align yourself on the side of the angels. Between the two of us, we can convince them I am who I say I am.”

“I want to make it perfectly clear, Kenelm—oh, whoever you are!”

“The party of the first part.”

“I am not trying to discredit you, but neither will I be party to any chicanery on
either
side.”

“Has she been trying to strike a deal with you already? Marvelous!” he crowed.

“Indeed she has not.”

“She will. She’s bound to, but if you are quite determined to be impartial I shan’t try to cajole you. I am Kenelm Derwent, and it is but a matter of time till I prove it. We never had a great deal to do with each other, Marnie, but I have a good memory, and will undertake to answer any questions you care to put to me on our meetings. I met you first at your wedding. I remember it vividly. Ask me anything.”

“Well . . .” She sat back and racked her brains for any little oddity, but he was too impatient to await her questions.

“You wore a white lace gown and carried orange blossoms and lilies of the valley. You looked like an angel, complete with golden halo. I was so jealous of Bernard I nearly wept. We ate lobster patties and drank a great deal of champagne. Bernard let me kiss you once, and when I joined the lineup again, he turned me off. I spent the remainder of the day flirting with the pretty little redhead who was your bridesmaid. Millie something—Kessler, Cotler, something of the sort.”

“Cutter,” she corrected, but though she was flattered at the tone of his recollections, she realized they were unexceptional—might apply to three spring weddings out of four, and a search of the records would reveal the bridesmaid’s name. “Where did we go for a honeymoon?”

“You didn’t. You went straight to London.”

This was true, and she tried for a more difficult question. Suddenly she laughed and asked, “What happened to the brandy chantilly?”

“Ah—somebody dropped the bowl and it landed in a mess on the floor. Your cat got into it and became roaring drunk.” His eyes sparkled brightly; his whole face was beaming. “Don’t you remember—it was a particularly ugly tomcat—I never could abide cats anyway—and he took on the hound out in the yard. Bernie and I had a bet for a guinea, and he won, like the tomcat.”

Rorie looked from one to the other. She had, of course, missed the wedding, to her deepest regret. She saw Marnie’s eyes were shining.

“Oh, are you truly Kenelm?” Marnie asked.

“Ask me more.” He waved his hands about in excitement. “Ask me anything.”

It became a game. “What did I wear the
second
time you called on us?”

“An
extremely
elegant gown of white crepe. You had your hair done up on top of your head and looked totally ravishing.”

“And what did we do after dinner?”

“Bernard stretched himself out on the sofa and snored—dull dog—while I tried to flirt with you, but you made me play chess instead, and beat me. Later you played for me on the pianoforte. You had resumed your lessons, and played better than the first time. Or maybe it was the new hairdress that made me think so. I remember the lamplight falling on it.”

There was a little more of this, and as Rorie sat watching, she realized the man was manipulating her sister as easily as if she were a loaf of dough. Her eyes glowed, and she smiled like a young girl half in love. It occurred to Rorie that he slid in a compliment at every opportunity, implied he had been rapturously in love with his brother’s bride, and it went down very well. She doubted Marnie could remember what gown she had worn on each occasion, and how she had dressed her hair, but it was flattering that
he
appeared to do so. If Horace Rutley had systematically questioned Kenelm over a period of time, he might have discovered the rest.

After a longish interval, Marnie sat back with flushed cheeks and declared, “I must say, you have convinced
me
you are Kenelm, and I shall call you so from now on.”

The man relaxed with a satisfied expression, then remembered Rorie in the corner and turned to her. “And are you convinced, Miss Falkner?”

“I never knew you before—before I met you in the forest. I am in no position to judge.”

“Surely you can rely on your sister’s judgement.”

She hesitated a moment, for the fact was, she
didn’t
rely on it at all. Marnie’s judgement had been impaired by the charm of the man. “I suppose so,” she said reluctantly.

“Oh what a hard woman you are to convince!” he declared in chagrin. “Did I not meet you at the wedding? Odd I don’t remember it.”

“Your excellent memory might tell you why I wasn’t at the wedding.”

He looked at her, frowning. “No, I don’t recall. Is it that you were too young?”

“She had the measles, but I doubt you would have heard about it,” Marnie said, and had again garnered his attention. “Now, how will you proceed, Ken? With Clare, I mean.”

Rorie felt a little twinge of anger, or jealousy, to see how easily Marnie diverted his interest to herself. But she had some suspicion that the interest was spurious, the admiration too assumed to win Marnie’s important support. No small point, that Bernard’s widow accept his credentials. A few compliments on her “ravishing” appearance, his jealousy of Bernard, and the thing was done. He’d won Alice McBain even more easily. She began to feel that if the man was an impostor, there wasn’t a woman in the county who would stand up and say so except Clare.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Malone, who stood in the doorway, arms akimbo, her red hair blowing around her ears, staring hard at the visitor. “Is this the fellow that
says
he’s Bernard’s brother?” she demanded, subjecting him to penetrating appraisal.

“Yes, that’s what he says,” Rorie told her.

At the edge in her voice, Kenelm glanced up at her quickly. He was undismayed at the servant’s impertinence, but unhappy that the young lady was not convinced.

“Ken, this is Malone. Don’t be afraid of her in the least. Her bark is much worse than her bite. She is Mimi’s nursemaid. And mine too, I’m afraid,” Marnie explained.

Malone strode in with a swagger, planted herself foursquare before him and announced, “We’ll soon see who you are. What did they give you when you had the hives at the age of eight, and what happened?”

He blinked his surprise at the question, or the apparition, and thought a moment. “They gave me some ground-up seeds of some sort. I became violently sick—was on my back for two days. I reacted peculiarly to the treatment.”

“What seeds?” Malone persisted.

“Greek something I think it was,” he said, frowning to try to remember.

Malone waited, but he could not come closer than that. “It was something-Greek,” she prodded at last.

“Fenugreek! That’s what it was—fenugreek!” he declared. “How the devil did you know that, Mrs. Malone?”

“I know plenty,” she warned, narrowing her eyes at him, and having a hard time to resist the “Mrs.” and the handsome face. “Now, let’s see if
you
know what you should if you’re really Bernard’s brother, and not an
ulterior ego.”

A little twinkle in the man’s eyes was his only overt sign of appreciation of this barbarous Latin phrase. “What kind of apples did you and Bernard used to steal and hide in the schoolroom?” Malone demanded next.

“Pippins,” he answered instantly. “And I don’t even like them. We used to keep them in the cupboard and throw them out the window at the chickens.

Malone nodded in approval. “Now for number three,” she threatened.

“Anything! Ask me anything,” the man said, completely confident.

Rorie scrutinized him closely trying to come to a decision. Surely he knew a great lot of detail, but his confidence seemed almost greater than a reliance on fallible memory would warrant. Almost as though he had studied up very well for an important exam, and knew all the answers. The fenugreek—there was nothing in that. Lots of people used it for hives—but then it was unusual to have a violent reaction to it. The pippins—he could easily know they were the most common apple in the Raiker orchard—but the extra detail about throwing them at the chickens seemed unrehearsed. But then, did Malone actually know to what use they were put? If he wasn’t really Kenelm, he was a dangerously clever impersonator.

“Who is Cranky Jangler?” Malone asked, and stood with her shoulders back to glare at him.

Kenelm shook his head and laughed. “Mrs. Malone, how the
devil
did you discover Cranky Jangler? I can’t believe Bernard would remember him after so many years. Lord, I had forgotten all about him myself.”

“Who is he?” Malone repeated.

The man threw up his hands, and for an instant Rorie thought he was beaten. She was aware of a sharp feeling of disappointment, but soon he was talking on. “He isn’t anyone, I hope. You might call him myself, or my conscience or my—er,
ulterior ego,
if I may borrow your phrase. He was a figment of my imagination, a little dark fellow I used to imagine followed me around when I was four or five. Sometimes he urged me to behave, and sometimes he suggested the greatest mischief, as on the day he talked me into letting loose the foxes Papa had locked up for the hunt.”

“You’ll do,” Malone decreed, and reached out to shake his hand. “You might have found out somehow about the fenugreek and the pippins, but I can’t believe you’d know about a mere pigment of the imagination unless you was really Kenelm.”

“Now I think I have convinced everyone here except Miss Falkner,” Kenelm said, turning to Aurora. “No questions to put to me, ma’am?”

 “How did you come to be travelling with the gypsies?” she asked.

“I only travelled a mile with them. I was uncertain how to proceed when I arrived home. I happened to see the gypsy caravan wending its way toward this area. I knew they made a regular stop in the family forest. It served my purposes well to be close but unknown for a few days to discover what was going forth. I told them I was a scholar from India studying their customs. It is believed now, you know, that they came originally from India, and not Egypt, as the name would indicate. I recognized some Indian idioms in their speech, and their folklore, though they have no written literature, is largely Indo-European. So I joined them.”

“Why did you feel it necessary to scout the area, as you might say?” Marnie asked. “Why not just go right to the Hall?”

“I had some little doubts what my stepmama might be up to. A precaution merely,” he answered blandly.

“I don’t mean to pry, Ken,” Marnie went on, “but that sounds a somewhat inadequate reason.”

“I left under a little cloud, as you may have heard. I was curious to discover whether it had dissipated, as I hoped, or grown into something more serious. Besides, my hair was too long and I hadn’t the proper wardrobe. I
was
curious about the gypsies, too. Anyway, I did it.”

This sounded like humbug to Aurora. It sounded like spying. Meeting servants in the woods and asking prying questions, making his grand dramatic entrance at Clare’s party—really, that was extremely malicious, and she gave a hint that she thought so.

“It was not at all nice,” he agreed readily. “Spite, in fact. It was
you,
Miss Falkner, who gave me the idea to dash to London and discover how things stood legally when you told me Clare had taken control of the estate. But she has got a nisi decree only, so there is no problem there. By the time I returned, the party was only a day away, and it seemed so opportune a time to make my return, at a coming-out party for myself, that I couldn’t resist it. My whole time, you see, was not spent spying out things I already knew very well, which is no doubt what I shall be accused of. It was ill-considered of me to have done it. I realize that now, now that it’s too late.”

“What is the next step in staking your claim?” Marnie asked, satisfied with his explanation.

“I’ve filed in London. Lord Wiggins is the one who handed down the nisi decree, and he will be trying the case. The next step is up to her. There will be some sort of investigation. I will be required to present witnesses who recognize me, perhaps be posed questions in front of a judge—much the sort of thing we have been through here today, but more formally, and with a variety of questioners, I imagine. Some family members, some old schoolmates or masters. There is no way she can prove I am not me. It is all nonsense, her making such a to-do about it, and unwise of her. If I know Clare, she will be requiring some augmentation of her widow’s income. She always spent like a nabob, and her jointure cannot be so very large.”