Elizabeth Kidd (18 page)

Cloris imagined the possibilities. “I wonder what the Beau would think to see me carried back to Cavendish Square in the arms of a handsome young man.”

“Baggage! Why do you tease him so?”

“Because I can—without fearing that he will tear his hair out in despair or fall into a jealous rage.”

“I expect you had quite enough of that sort of behavior from your swains before you were married.”

“Yes, it became tiresome rather quickly. The good thing about the Beau—one of many, I hasten to say—is that his feathers are never ruffled by trivialities. He reserves his feelings for more important matters.”

Antonia wondered what matters might be important enough to disturb Edmund Beaumont’s seemingly imperturbable calm. She supposed he must have displayed warm feelings when he was courting Cloris—and afterward too, of course, for Cloris did not appear unhappy in her marriage. Indeed, she had benefitted from the union in subtle ways which she might not recognize herself. She no longer spoke in breathless italics designed to draw attention to herself, her taste in clothes had softened, and she no longer cared to be called Clory, her universal nickname since her schooldays.

“Have you received a letter from Isabel this week?” Antonia asked, following this line of thought.

“Only yesterday,” Cloris told her. “I must say, I am glad she has not let our friendship fade, as it did after we left school and before we met again during our Season. I am not nearly so prolific a letter-writer as she is, but happily she does not expect an answer to every letter.”

“She cannot be so active as she was, given her delicate condition. I daresay she enjoys being able to sit at home and read and write letters.” Antonia smiled at the mental picture she conjured up of her niece ensconced in the library window at Wyckham, where she herself once dreamily contemplated the gentle Leicestershire hills beyond it.

“She always was bookish,” Cloris observed, putting up her parasol as they passed from under the trees into the sunlit walkway. “It is as well that the Beau is not so. He plays chess with his cronies, however, which is almost as bad, for I am not allowed to disturb him during a match. Still—our occupations do not conflict, for when he is thus engaged, I may go out and buy bonnets!”

Antonia only half listened to this speech, her mind being still on her niece and her coming confinement. Would it be a boy or a girl? Antonia rather hoped for a girl, but Isabel had never expressed a preference.

They passed a bench occupied by two nannies who gossiped while their charges playing together on the grass. A boy and a girl. Which would Duncan prefer? One of each would be best, of course, and she supposed there must be an heir before she could indulge in a little girl. But what if there could be only one…? Or even….

“Let us go back, shall we?” she said abruptly. “I find I am more tired than I thought.”

“Of course,” Cloris agreed readily. If she sensed her companion’s change of mood, she did not reveal it. She did, however, continue talking until they reached the gate, in such a way that Antonia was not obliged to say more than yes or no.

It was just as they passed through the gate that Antonia saw someone in the distance who succeeded in turning her mind in another direction.

“Elena!”

“Where?” Clory said. “Do you mean Carey’s Elena? Do introduce me. I have not met her, you know, since she did not appear at your dinner party.”

Antonia took William aside to instruct him to detain Miss Mellville. He crossed the street and, stepping in front of Elena, said something that made her stop and turn to look in the direction he indicated. Antonia thought she saw a fleeting look of panic cross Elena’s face, but the clever footman had positioned himself in such a way that she could not flee without knocking him down and causing a scene. She apparently realized this, and finally smiled and waved in Antonia’s direction. William then escorted her across the street, and by the time she reached Antonia and Cloris, she seemed to have let down her guard.

“Elena, dear, what a happy accident!” Antonia said quickly, but in the normal cordial tones of ladies well acquainted with one another. “I should like to introduce you to another friend, Mrs. Beaumont. She was at school with my niece, as I may not have mentioned to you.”

“How do you do?” Elena said, holding out her hand. Cloris, accustomed to embracing other ladies, even those she did not know intimately, hesitated for a moment, and then took Elena’s hand, smiling warmly.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Cloris said primly, and Antonia let out her breath. She was not going to mention Carey’s name, bless her. Cloris did say, inevitably, “Antonia has told me
so
much about you.”

Elena blushed slightly and murmured something about Lady Kedrington’s extreme kindness.

“We were just going to Gunter’s for ices,” Antonia announced, raising Cloris’s brows enquiringly, as nothing had been said about this before this moment. “Won’t you join us? I find the air is warmer today than I had anticipated, despite the breeze, and walking has quite sapped my strength. I should like something cool.”

Elena hesitated, but Cloris leapt in to add her urgings, and before Miss Melville was aware of it, she had been helped up into Lady Kedrington’s carriage, which had magically appeared in the street, and was soon seeing Piccadilly from a different vantage point.

“I suppose we must think about removing to the country shortly,” Antonia said, for the sake of saying something, as they made their way through the traffic. “Summer will soon be on us, and as uncaring as we are for convention, there
is
good reason for not remaining in town during the hottest part of the year.”

“I rather enjoy the heat,” Elena said. “But perhaps I am constitutionally more adapted to it.”

“You were born in Greece, were you not?” Clory enquired. “I expect it is very hot there in the summer.”

The conversation continued along these insipid lines up Berkeley Street to the square, and while Antonia—and certainly Cloris—would have screamed in frustration at it in the normal way, it did serve to put Elena more at ease, so that when their carriage stopped in front of the confectioner’s shop, she was almost animated.

Even the appearance just then of Hester Coverley did not seem to dismay her. Indeed, Elena smiled—more at Hester’s feathered bonnet than delight at seeing her, no doubt—when Hester said how glad she was that she happened to be on her way home just at that moment, and was Antonia coming to call?

That made Antonia glance toward the other side of the square, wondering if Julia could see them. Hester interpreted her look, saying, “If you were not coming to visit, Antonia dear, do not be concerned. Julia cannot see across the square from her window in summer—although I vow she would cut down the trees in order to do so if she were allowed, but even Julia could not gain permission for that!”

Antonia laughed and, disclaiming any reason to hide from Julia Wilmot, invited Hester to join them in the carriage, which Hester did, plumping herself down beside Elena and continuing the steam of gossip and small talk in which she customarily indulged when not restrained by Julia Wilmot’s dampening presence.

It was the custom for ladies to remain in their carriages under the leafy shade of Berkeley Square while Gunter’s waiters came out to them to take their orders. Their party, however, was honored by the proprietor himself, who recognized an aristocratic patron when he saw one and hurried eagerly to do her bidding. Cloris and Antonia had fruit ices, and Hester a lemonade, but Elena selected only a single apricot tart from a tray presented to her.

“You are fortunate, my lady,” their host said, addressing Antonia, “that we have only yesterday received a cargo of ice from the Greenland seas and are able to offer you the best summer fruit made into delectable cooling delicacies. You will find your raspberry and pineapple ices particularly delicious—an excellent choice indeed.”

He hovered, extolling his wares, for just a shade under the time when he might have become a nuisance, and then left the ladies to their treats. When he had disappeared inside his shop again, Elena whispered, “Where do they keep the ice so it does not melt?”

“In the cellars,” Hester told her. “I was once given a tour of the premises, and I can tell you it is very cold in that cellar—like winter in July.”

“You really should have had a sorbet, Elena,” Antonia said. “Mr. Gunter takes pride in his recipe, which is as much a secret as any state document.”

“Another time, perhaps,” she said, which pleased Antonia, who interpreted this as a promise that Elena would not disdain her friendship after all, despite the present delicate situation between them. She decided that she could wait to question Elena on sensitive subjects, despite her strong inclination to do so while she had the bird in hand; if she fled to the bush, the opportunity might be lost.

She was rewarded for her patience later when, after bidding farewell to Hester and dropping Cloris at Cavendish Square, the carriage proceeded to Marylebone to convey Elena to her home.

Antonia did not descend from the carriage, as Elena had not invited her inside. As they said their farewells on the pavement, Elena suddenly clutched Antonia’s hand and said, “Do you forgive me, then, dear Lady Kedrington?”

“Of course,” Antonia began, flustered. “That is, there is nothing to forgive!”

“There is,” Elena said. “There are reasons….”

She looked up at the house as if fearful of being spied upon, and Antonia almost lost her patience with all these hints and intimations and demanded to know what those reasons were that made them so important that her brother’s heart might be broken because of them.

But then Elena said, “May I call on you?”

Antonia breathed a quick sigh of relief, smiled, and kissed her on the cheek. “Whenever you wish, Elena, dear.”

“Thank you,” Elena whispered, then turned her back to hurry up the steps to her door. She reached it as it was being opened to her and did not look back.

It was only when Elena had disappeared inside the house that Antonia remembered that she had entirely forgotten to ask about the subject she had been burning with curiosity about—the mysterious Dimitri.

She leaned out the window and called up, “Albemarle Street, please.”

She would surprise her quarry in his own lair.

Chapter 16

Robin Campbell sat in the sturdiest of the two chairs in his office with his bad leg up on the table that served him as a desk. Lord Kedrington had abandoned the chair when his friend entered, his limp markedly more pronounced, and had insisted that he rest the leg by making it do no more work.

“I can give it a rub, if you like,” Kedrington said, sitting on the edge of the desk and laying his hand experimentally on Robin’s knee. “I’m quite accomplished at getting the kinks out of sore limbs, having suffered milder forms of your complaint myself. Did I tell you I got a knife in the thigh once?”

“Carey told me that one,” Robin said, making no protest at Kedrington’s ministrations, which the viscount interpreted as a sure sign that Robin was in severe pain.

“And what have you been doing to aggravate your injury?” Kedrington asked, feeling gently above Robin’s boot. Robin finally opened his mouth to protest, but Kedrington gave him a look that stayed his words in his throat. He then proceeded to pull off the boot and began gently massaging the tight muscles in calf and knee until Robin visibly relaxed.

“Well?”

“Chasing villains.”

Kedrington raised his brows. “How intrepid of you! Which villains?”

Robin smiled. “Actually, only one. And we cannot be certain as yet that he is a villain—Dimitri Metaxis.”

“Tell me.”

“I was assigned to place an order with a certain packing firm in Long Acre for the manufacture of the special cases that the marbles will eventually be moved in. Incidentally, I tried to give the business to Hollister, but it was not my decision to make. Anyway, it occurred to me after I had left the place that I should have asked if anyone had brought in a similar order recently—to establish how the fakes were put in place—and just before I reached the shop for the second time, I saw Metaxis come out of it. As you may imagine, I was surprised to see him.”

Kedrington smiled at the understatement. “Did he see you?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I came to a dead halt in the middle of the street, where there was no place to hide. He ran off, and I tried to follow him, but he easily outdistanced me.”

“He recognized you, then?”

“I can’t be sure of that. But it must have been obvious that I recognized
him
. I don’t suppose he was eager to wait to be properly introduced.”

“Did you find out what he wanted in the shop?”

“That was my next move, having failed to intercept Metaxis to question him directly. I went back to the shop, and the proprietor told me that a gentleman had just been in to inquire about the same cases I had just ordered—or not precisely. The proprietor checked the records again, and it transpired that his clerk had taken a similar order just that morning. It was that order which Metaxis had inquired about.”

Kedrington frowned. “So Dimitri did not
place
the order?”

“Apparently not. But there was no name or address on the order form, only a signature that was merely a scrawl—impossible to read.”

“Deliberately so, I imagine.”

“So I supposed. The clerk had been sent on an errand, so I could not question him directly as to what the person who placed the order looked like. He paid ahead—in gold—so the clerk apparently did not ask any pertinent questions. The goods were to be picked up when they were ready.”

“It appears we shall have to put a watch on the shop as well, although I dislike spreading the men so thinly.”

“I doubt it will yield any information. Metaxis knows he has been spotted there.”

“True, but if he did not place the order, the person who did would come back to collect the goods. I believe we can—er, persuade the proprietor to keep an eye out for us. Further, if what I am beginning to suspect is true, Dimitri is not in league with the thieves—at least not directly—so he would not tell them he had been spotted, and they would come back unsuspecting.”