Kathryn Caskie - [Royle Sisters 02] (18 page)

Two weeks later

B
ored and impatient, Elizabeth paced Anne’s bedchamber, having naught else to do but admire the swish and flutter of her own emerald-hued silk ball gown.

Lady Upperton’s carriage was due to collect them both in less than half an hour. Cherie was attending to Anne’s long golden tresses, but her sister had yet to even choose which of the two gowns lying on her tester bed she would wear. They were going to be late to her sister’s own betrothal ball at Almack’s.

“I do not know why you are fretting so, Anne. Lud, it is your second betrothal ball in as many
weeks. No matter what you wear, you will look beautiful. There is no reason to give in to your nerves.”

“You are well aware why I worry, and that it has nothing to do with my choice of gowns. You know what I must do, though God in heaven, I wish that I did not.” Anne held a jewel-tipped hairpin up to Cherie, who plucked it from her fingers and sank it into a coil of flaxen curls. Anne reached for another pin from the tiny silver bowl atop her dressing table, but Elizabeth stilled her hand.

“You are going to cry-off this night?”

“I have tried to go to him for a fortnight, but I do not have the strength to break his heart. I must do it tonight before he announces our betrothal to all.” Anne sucked in a staggered breath.

“We’ll lock the register away and will never speak of it. You do not have to tell him…or anyone about its existence. You do not have to withdraw from the engagement!”

“Someday you will have a change of heart, Elizabeth.” Though she tried to conceal it, Anne’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Someday more evidence about our parents will be found and together the pieces will complete the puzzle of our heritage. The register will surface. I will
not allow Laird to be implicated in a treasonable offense because of me.”

“But, Anne, if you love him, do not do this. Do not cry off.”

A single tear trickled down Anne’s cheek. “I do this because I love him, Elizabeth. Because I love him so very much.” She sniffled, and Cherie handed her a handkerchief. “Please, Elizabeth, wait for me in the drawing room. I promise I shan’t be long. I just need a few moments to gather my wits.”

Elizabeth nodded and descended the staircase for the drawing room.

Aunt Prudence slept in the chair beside the hearth. A low fire burned in the grate, and Elizabeth could see the perspiration beading her great-aunt’s brow.

Taking care not to wake the old woman, Elizabeth lifted an empty goblet from Aunt Prudence’s hand, then slipped the woolen shawl from her shoulders.

Elizabeth dutifully folded the shawl and placed it on the settee, then carefully, so as not to wrinkle her gown, sat down to wait.

Several minutes passed, and Aunt Prudence’s heavy breathing was making Elizabeth sleepy. She
rose and walked to the mantelpiece. Lifting her father’s keeping box from the shelf, she unlocked it. Quietly Elizabeth withdrew her father’s
Book of Maladies and Remedies
and removed from it the marriage register signed by the Prince of Wales and Maria Fitzherbert. Might they truly be her parents?

How amazing it was that the register had been hidden inside this very book for nearly their whole lives, and they had never known it.

She set the register on the tea table and ran her fingertip along the edge Lotharian had cut.
How utterly amazing
. With the tip of her tongue poised on the center of her top lip, she dug her fingers inside the pocket the glued pages had created. She glanced across at the damnable register again.

She wished she had been the one to pull the register from the book—rather than Anne. She knew her sister felt a special guilt for being the one to free the register from its hiding place.

If she could reverse time, Elizabeth decided that she would have claimed the right, and the guilt, to discover the register inside the book.

Just then, an unopened edge broke open from the press of her absently probing fingers. “Oh, perdition!” She gasped at the volume of own expletive and looked at once at Aunt Prudence
to be sure she had not heard her. The elderly woman stirred momentarily, but then her slow, steady breathing resumed.

Elizabeth released her own breath and looked down at the half-opened page. There was writing, not printed text inside the created pocket. She glanced up at Aunt Prudence. Still asleep.

Carefully she eased opened the last glued edge of the two pages and separated them. There, pasted on the inner front page, was a small, square missive, written on paper almost as thin as gossamer.

Elizabeth held the book closer to her eyes.
No, it cannot be.
But the missive was hidden along with the register. Lady Jersey?

She snatched up the vellum from the table and stared at the missive and the folded page from the marriage register. Lady Jersey wanted this.

A shiver spread over Elizabeth’s skin. She needed no other proof of the validity of her bloodline than this knowledge.

She heard a mournful sob and the sound of footfalls on the stair treads. She set the book and the register on the tea table and started for the doorway, intent on telling Anne what she’d found. When Elizabeth heard her sister crying softly, she stopped short.

She turned back around, to hide the book away again, when she saw Aunt Prudence swaying unsteadily before the fire hearth, the register in her hand.

Her heart pounded in her chest. Aunt Prudence looked up at her, appearing confused. Elizabeth nodded. “Do it,” she whispered. “
Now
.”

Almack’s

It was only eight of the clock, and already the
on-dit
columnists were calling Lady MacLaren’s betrothal ball for her son a rousing success despite the fact that so many young men of Quality were still at the Continent. It mattered not to the columnists, it seemed, that fully half the guests
had not managed to set slipper inside Almack’s yet.

Already carriages stood three deep outside the assembly room doors, with a mile behind those waiting to decant their passengers at the most anticipated event of the season.

Anne and Elizabeth, who rode with Lady Upperton in her carriage, were about a mile away in the carriage line. It was just as well. Any time spent waiting outside Almack’s was another clutch of minutes during which Anne could convince herself that she would not have to cry off before all of London society.

She hadn’t even seen Laird, thanks to interference by the Old Rakes and Lady Upperton, who had vowed to make this night as painless as possible for Anne.

But she knew that they could not protect Laird from what was coming. No doubt he expected the night of his life, dancing with Anne, without a care in his world.

And only two weeks before, that blissful life might have been theirs. But no longer.

Much to Lady MacLaren’s dismay, Anne politely declined a ride to the ball in Lord MacLaren’s carriage. Lady Upperton tried to explain her
reasoning to the countess, blaming it on Anne’s nerves, for now that the couple had returned to London, stories of Lord MacLaren’s heroism had swept through Town like a wild fire.

Everyone wished to glimpse the simple Cornwall miss who’d fallen off a bridge—and then a cliff, and caught the heart of a newly belted earl.

Anne and Elizabeth could not walk to the Bond Street shops without being followed by debutantes asking for secrets on how to engage an earl.

It had gotten so the two never went outside without costuming themselves as scullery maids, but that didn’t last very long, either. Merchants in the ribbon and millinery shops they most enjoyed frequenting were not always willing to wait on customers who didn’t appear to have enough money to spend.

The
Times
was littered with stories of young misses leaping from the bridge over the Serpentine, hoping a hero would appear, pluck her from the watery depths, and then marry her.

There had even been a report about a matron pushing her daughter into the water when a certain Viscount Apsley was out riding in Hyde Park.

So far, however, there had been no reports of injuries, rescues or…marriages, for that matter.

Anne only hoped that after she did what she must to protect Laird, even if that meant breaking his heart tonight, the ridiculous Serpentine-jumping craze might cease for good.

Then perhaps Anne, the invisible, could return to her blissfully dull life once more.

“Have you seen Miss Anne yet?” Apsley studied the tailoring of Laird’s coat for indications of superiority. He claimed he was still slightly miffed that they were both wearing a bottle-green cutaway coat, Laird’s of kerseymere and Arthur’s of camlet. But he was pleased, at least, that they shared the same excellent taste in clothing.

Laird shifted from one foot to the other, at the top of the grand staircase, as he surveyed the herd of patrons filing into Almack’s for the betrothal ball. “Haven’t seen her.”

“You know who I did see, though only from a distance, so I could be entirely wrong—Lady Henceforth!”

Laird grabbed Apsley’s shoulders.

“Have a care, man; don’t want to wrinkle the
coat before the ladies have had a chance to see it.”

“Are you certain it was Constance you saw?” Laird gave Apsley a little shake.

“No, no, I told you I
wasn’t
sure. Why would she come here anyway? I sincerely doubt your mother included Lady Henceforth on her guest list.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that before I left St. Albans, Anne found an old letter that had never been delivered to me.”

“Old love letter, from Lady Henceforth, was it?”

“Actually it was from Graham. I don’t know why he never sent it to me.” Laird took Apsley’s arm and drew him in an alcove so they could speak more privately. “The letter explained his reason for joining the military when a war was raging.”

“I always thought he was a heroic sort, the dutiful son, that sort of thing.”

“As did I, so when my father announced that Graham had run off to fight for England, something he claimed I was too cowardly to do, I believed just that. And then, when my brother was killed…”

“You believed you were to blame.”

Laird nodded his head. “And brandy became my best mate—no offense, Apsley.”

“None taken. She’s good a friend of mine as well.” Apsley grinned good-naturedly. “So what did the bleedin’ letter say?”

“Not at all what I expected. It seems that Graham and Constance, Lady Henceforth, were deeply in love. But when he offered for her, nearly three years ago, her parents turned him away. He was the spare, not the heir, and they had already had a more promising offer from Lord Henceforth.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Did they just prop Henceforth up for the wedding ceremony, or was he still alive?” Apsley grinned, but his smile fell away when Laird did not join in his amusement. “All I am saying is that the man must have been eighty years if he was a day.”

“Yes, he was old. But he was married to Constance. From the letter, I have gathered that this pained Graham so greatly that he purchased a commission to put as much distance as he could between the new Lady Henceforth and himself.”

“Graham’s death was not your fault.” Apsley
clapped Laird on the back. “You know that for certain now, don’t you?”

Laird bit his lower lip as he nodded his head. “I do. Gads, you can imagine my relief. The guilt had been almost too much to bear. Graham was not only my brother, he was my friend.”

“Old Henceforth died right after the wedding, didn’t he?” Apsley asked, his gaze flitting around for a wine-bearing footman.

“Yes. And after her mourning, Constance leaned on my shoulder. I leaned on hers, too—Graham had been missing for two months, but I still held out weak hope that he lived. And Christ, she was vulnerable and beautiful…”

“I suppose a marriage between the two of you might have worked.”

Laird huffed at that comment. “If she hadn’t been so repulsed by me when she heard about my black reputation. Sickened enough to cry off—or so she claimed.” Laird shook his head. “Turns out, the truth of the matter was that when Graham’s division reappeared from their mission, he sent her a letter asking her to marry him when he returned home.”

“And so Lady Henceforth cried off. But Graham never did come home.”

“No, he didn’t,” Laird intoned softly.

Apsley wrinkled his brow, and the two did not speak a word for several long moments. “This night belongs to you and to Anne. Not the past. It is time to celebrate your future!”

“You’ve got it exactly right.” Laird felt his entire being lighten. “Come on, maybe Anne is in the ballroom with the countess.”

Anne and Elizabeth stood with Lady Upperton and the Old Rakes near the orchestra dais in the grand ballroom.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Elizabeth asked her.

“I am sure I do
not
want to do this. I love him, and want nothing more than to spend my life together with Laird, but I will not involve him in possible treason.” Anne’s eyes began to sting. “Oh, drat. I am going to cry again.”

“But Anne, I must tell you something—” Elizabeth began.

“Dear, you do not have to cry off just to protect him,” Lady Upperton interrupted. Plucking her own lace handkerchief from inside her sleeve, she dabbed the tears from Anne’s face. “You just have to hold the secret to your heart…forever.”

“What secret is that, Miss Royle?” a feminine voice asked in dulcet tones.

Anne whirled around to see Lady Henceforth, a swatch of lace affixed somehow to her thin nose bandage for the occasion. “How did you…I mean, I had not expected to see you here this evening, Lady Henceforth.”

“Really?” Lady Henceforth smiled coolly. “I wanted to see it for myself.”

“See what? Anne’s first dance with Lord MacLaren?” Elizabeth sniped. She turned back to her sister.” Please, Anne, come with me. I must tell you something
important
.”