Aurora (8 page)

Rorie heard this with suspicion. Was there a veiled hint here that he would be generous to those who supported his claim?

“You’re lucky you got back before she spent up your capital.” Malone warned him. “A drunken sailor is what the woman spends like.”

“But there is enough to go around,” Kenelm said with a sardonic smile, “even for two baronesses and a baron. We will do something about fixing this place up for you, Marnie,” he promised. And if this was not a bribe, it came close enough to it to thrill one of the ladies, and heighten the suspicions of the other to a new pitch.

“It does seem rather dingy after Raiker Hall,” Marnie said at once. She was never one to let a reward slip through her fingers. Much as she loved her sister, Rorie acknowledged this self-interest openly. Her support of this man would be stronger with some hope of material reward. Carrot and stick—he was using both very effectively. Charming flirtation and rewards on the one hand, an implied threat of withholding his protection if she did not fall into line. But Marnie was falling into line nicely. No problem there.

“I heard some mention at Dougall’s last night that Rutley has disappeared,” Kenelm said. He was called Kenelm by the others, and for lack of any other name, Rorie called him so mentally.

“That happened ages ago,” Marnie told him.

“He was never heard of since?”

“Not to my knowledge. The Rutleys may have heard of him, may know where he is.”

“I should go and call on them,” he said.

“Why would you do that?” Marnie asked, and her sister too listened to hear his reason.

“Father always took an interest in him, but more important, there have been insinuations made that I am my half brother, and if I could produce him, or at least discover where he is—America was mentioned—then that possibility could be disposed of. That is the only stumbling block I can see. Who else could I be? And it won’t have slipped Mama’s notice either.”

“Why do you call Clare that?” Marnie asked.

“Because she dislikes it so much,” he answered, smiling wickedly. “She is my stepmother, too. As wicked as the worst one ever invented to scare children.” He arose and took a look around at the room, as though seeing a friend again after a long absence. “I see the clock still doesn’t work,” he commented, looking at a head-and-shoulders clock on the mantel piece. “The place hasn’t changed much—just got older. I must be going now. We’ll meet again soon. I look forward to having a nice long talk with you, Marnie, catching up on old times. And to becoming better acquainted with
you,
Miss Falkner,” he added, nodding in her direction. “It isn’t every day I have the pleasure of meeting such a pretty family connection. I feel quite cheated to have been deprived of your friendship all these years. We must make up for lost time.”

Malone sidled forward to hear a few words on coming to know her better too. “Delighted to have met you, Mrs. Malaprop,” he said, with an irrepressible smile.

“Well now if that ain’t a caution!” she squealed. “That’s
exactly
what your Bernard used to call me, Marnie. Where did you get that name from? It’s downright
eerie
is what it is. Malaprop! I haven’t heard that name since dear Bernard stuck his spoon in the wall.”

“There was a strange link between my brother and myself,” he said. “We liked the same names, and people.” There was just a barely noticeable peep in Marnie’s direction at that point. A slight reminder that they both favoured the elder Miss Falkner?

Marnie read that into it at least, and blushed happily. He left, and Malone took up a position, standing between the two seated ladies to deliver her opinion of him. “The man’s a rascal and a rogue. Got an eye in his head that belongs in a panther. But it seems he’s Kenelm right enough.”

“He has convinced me,” Marnie agreed.

“It’s an impalpable story enough, but he knew about the fenugreek and the pippins and Cranky Jangler, and the telepathetic link makes it certain,” Malone said. “Malaprop.”

“I was just thinking—the gypsy told me a tall, dark man was coming into my life, and she was right,” Marnie said.

“She told you he was in trouble too, and that you should help him,” Rorie reminded her.

“So she did. They’re up to anything, those gypsies.”

“They have some occluded powers, in league with the devil likely as not,” Malone told them, and left.

Marnie too went off to speak to Cook, but Rorie sat behind, dissatisfied. She thought the gypsy’s occult powers might rather be explained by Kenelm’s having put the gypsy hag up to reading that particular fortune, to request the lady’s help in this romantic, roundabout way. The phrase “golden lady” had been used by her, and Kenelm too had mentioned Marnie’s golden halo more than once in the showering of his compliments. She had begun the day hoping he was Kenelm. All the evidence presented indicated that he was, yet she felt a nagging doubt. He was too pat with his answers, too liberal with his compliments, too hasty to hint a reward. And if he could now persuade the Rutleys—who might quite possibly he his own grandparents, surely not difficult to persuade—to say their son was in America, to produce maybe a letter from him, his way was clear.

She did not absolutely accuse him of being an impostor, but she did not close her mind to the possibility. Clare descended on them shortly after lunch to cast a few more doubts, though they fell on no fertile ground as far as Marnie and Malone were concerned.

“He has been
living
with that pack of gypsies for a week,” she announced, her fine blue eyes flashing. “Making up to every servant wench in the district. No wonder he knew all about us. Why did he not come to the door as soon as he arrived, if he had nothing to hide? I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

“Do you think he might be Horace Rutley?” Rorie asked, to a pair of scowls from the others present.

“I wouldn’t be in the least surprised, and I shall go to see them this very day. Not that it would do any good. Oh dear—how came we not to think of it?
They
could have been helping him all the while. Giving him any information he didn’t already have. It is very odd the way Horace disappeared without a trace.”

“Odd the way Kenelm disappeared, too, with no reason as far as anyone knows except yourself,” Marnie said.

“The
reason,
my dear Marnie, is too awful to be admitted. Even to
you
I am ashamed to tell the truth.”

“Has it to do with the missing emerald necklace?”

“Oh, if only that were all! But it is worse than that. Much worse. Half the reason I am convinced it is
not
Kenelm is that Ken would
never
have the nerve to show his face at Raiker Hall again after what he did. It was too low, too disgusting, too utterly shameful. You must know his father would not have turned him off for any paltry reason. It was serious in the extreme.”

“You said yesterday he was a sweet boy,” Marnie reminded her.

“He
used
to be. I prefer to remember him that way. One tries to think only good of the dead.”

“Nobody said he was dead,” Rorie said.

“Well, gone—dead to us. Lord Raiker considered him as dead. It grieves me to have to speak of him.”

“We must speak of him, all the same,” Marnie continued. “He says he wrote to his father from India. Was any letter received?”

Clare considered this a moment. “No, there was no letter to my knowledge. No, there could not have been a letter. It is impossible. My husband was unwell from the night Ken left—no need to go into the cause. I took his mail up to him myself. There was no letter from India. No word from Ken at all.”

“The letter could have gone astray. I believe he is telling the truth. He has convinced me he is Kenelm,” Marnie told her, with a defiant tilt to her chin.

“He has buttered you up with flattery and offered you money, probably.”

“He did nothing of the sort!” Marnie retaliated at once. But of course he had, ever so subtly, Rorie remembered.

“Do you not mean to stand my friend, then?” Clare demanded.

“I mean to discover the truth. Indeed, I believe I have done so,” Marnie replied.

“I never took you for such a gullible fool!” Clare flashed out angrily. “You think to marry him and get yourself installed back at Raiker Hall. That’s what it is, and you won’t do it. You don’t fool me. You mistake your man if you think Horace Rutley will ever
marry
you, my girl. It is Dougall’s chit he has in his eye, thirty thousand pounds, and an unexceptionable connection in every way. Besides, you are just a little long in the tooth to appeal to him, I think.”

“I see no point in continuing this discussion,” Marnie said, colouring up angrily at this slur on her youth and beauty.

“What do you think?” Clare asked, turning to Rorie .

“I think whoever the man is, he is very sly.”

“I pity your sister hadn’t a little of our wits. He comes to Raiker Hall tomorrow at ten to meet with my solicitor. His solicitor and mine will discuss the matter; I shan’t say a word to him. I was going to ask you to attend, but there is no point in it now.”

“I will be there,” Marnie said.

“Come if you like, but if you know what’s good for you, you won’t put all your eggs in one basket. He is
not
Kenelm Derwent, and I can prove it, so don’t start packing to remove to my house yet, Lady Raiker.”

Her positive statement that he was
not
Kenelm, when put beside the man’s equally absolute assertion that he
was,
created just a small seed of doubt, but Clare was not in a mood to expand on the matter.

“You’ll see,” she said, and swept from the room, leaving her heavy scent behind her. She cast just one look at the firescreen as she went. She would have liked to snap it up and take it back with her, but she had come on horseback, so it was impossible.

“There’s a riddle then,” Malone said, “A regular Gordian knob it’s growing into, but I’ll put my money on the prodigious son. He’d never of called me Malaprop or known Cranky Jangler if he wasn’t Bernard’s brother.”

“Certainly he is Kenelm,” Marnie stated firmly.

Chapter Six

The meeting the next morning at Raiker Hall had come to a standstill. Both Lady Raiker and the
soi-disant
Lord Raiker came equipped with a solicitor, and to each other they did no more than bow. Mr. Cleary, the gentleman’s counsel, said he had filed a bill staking claim to the title, upon which information Mr. Coons, the lady’s counsel, said he would protest the bill. An arbitrator would likely be chosen to settle the case, a committee of arbitration possibly. It sounded monstrously expensive, and Lady Raiker mentioned the fact. It was virtually the only comment she made throughout the proceedings. She was stiff, formal and hostile the whole time, while her opponent regarded her with malicious amusement. At the meeting’s termination she requested Kenelm to remain behind. Everyone except himself was surprised, most especially the ladies from the Dower House, who were deeply disappointed to be shown out the door with the solicitors.

“What is she up to now?” Marnie wondered.

“Trying to come to terms with the man, I suppose. She is worried about the costs of the case.”

“I wish you would call him Lord Raiker, Rorie . Why have you taken this absurd idea not to do so? You don’t know him at all. I am convinced he is Kenelm, and Malone is convinced he is Kenelm. You never met him in your life till that day in the woods, and it is ridiculous to think you know anything about it.”

“You are overly influenced by his charm. He’s emptied the butter boat on your gold curls, and you have succumbed to him. I don’t say he isn’t Lord Raiker. Likely he is, but as Clare says she can
prove
he is not, I withhold my decision.”

“He’ll drop by and tell me what she is up to,” the widow said complacently.

With this probability in mind, Marnie went to her room to freshen her toilette, to pinch her cheeks, as she hadn’t yet sunk to painting, and to fluff up her blond curls. She was correct in thinking Kenelm would report to her. In less than an hour he was at the door, and soon seated in her saloon with herself and Rorie , who had no thought of being left out of the meeting.

“What did she say?” Marnie asked at once, in the tone of a supporter.

“She says I am Horace Rutley, as I knew she would do. She beat me to Rutley’s place yesterday. She was coming out as I entered, and they told me they hadn’t heard from him since he left. They have no idea where he is or what has become of him. At least they didn’t call me ‘son.’”

“Did she attempt to buy you off?” Marnie enquired.

“Not with cash. I don’t think she has much. She made some extremely cryptic remarks about an emerald necklace. The Raiker emeralds I conclude she referred to. Have they vanished?”

Marnie looked at him in a little embarrassment. “They vanished several years ago, Ken. About the same time as
you
vanished, you see. There was a little doubt as to where they had gone.”

He frowned in perplexity. “It was said that
I
took them? Is that it?”

“That is the general idea. You or the gypsies who were camped nearby at the time. It was said publicly that the gypsies stole them, but the announcement wasn’t actually made till several months later, when her husband died, and as no effort had been made to trace them to the gypsies, the inference—oh, strictly
en famille,
of course—was that you could have run off with them.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “If I as Kenelm am supposed to have stolen them, how can she infer that I as Horace Rutley am to be accused of it? No, she’s boggling around, hasn’t set on her story yet, but wanted to let me know she’ll accuse me—Kenelm, I mean—of theft if I prove I am me. There was never any suggestion that Rutley stole them, was there?”

“I never heard that said,” Marnie replied.

“Maybe he did, though,” Rorie suggested. “It seems, if I have got the dates straight, that Rutley’s disappearance must nearly coincide with your father’s death. Possibly Rutley did take them. Their loss was not announced till then.”

“When exactly
did
Rutley sheer off, Marnie?” Kenelm asked.