Leslie Lafoy (10 page)

“I’m well aware of that.” Just as he was aware that, under all the hard-edged blustering and interminable lecturing, his father deeply cared and was, in his own way, trying to make things better. As if that were within the realm of possibility.

“Your mother and I discussed the situation,” his father said, intruding on his thoughts. “And we’ve decided that it would be best if you disappeared until this matter is resolved.” From the inner pocket of his suit coat he removed two thick stacks of currency. Laying them on the desk, he added, “We thought Paris might be an appropriate place for you to go. Or perhaps Vienna, if you’d prefer.”

Barrett considered the money and shook his head. “If I were interested in running, I wouldn’t need money from you to do it.”

“This is not the time to put pride before common sense, son. Take the money and buy yourself passage on the next vessel heading across the Channel. Michael can’t arrest you if you’re not here.”

“And I can’t find the real killer if I leave.”

Raking his fingers through his hair again, his father sighed and looked toward the front of the house. After a long moment, he countered, “Take this Isabella woman with you, then. If someone truly wants to kill her, they’ll follow you to the Continent and you can deal with them there.”

“Logistically, it would be much more complicated.”

“It’s not going to be simple here. Not if you’re incarcerated.”

“I’ll think about it,” he promised vaguely, his instincts telling him that bolting across the Channel would be the worst thing he could do. While he didn’t care for meeting social expectations, legal ones were another matter entirely. Innocent men didn’t flee the country.

“Your mother needs to be reassured, Barrett. I want to be able to climb back into our carriage and tell her that her son’s going to do the sensible thing.”

“For a change,” he finished.

“I didn’t say that.”

Because I said it for you,
Barrett silently countered. He polished off his scotch and held up the empty glass, asking, “Another drink?”

“Barrett, I’m your father and I’ve lived considerably more years than you have. I think you’d do well to listen to…”

Barrett poured himself another drink as his mind drifted away on the notes of the too familiar litany. God, he hoped Belle was having an easier time of it with his mother. Not, he suspected, that there was much chance of it. Where his father was predictably persistent and direct, his mother was predictably persistent and oblique. But Belle was intelligent; she’d know an insult when she heard one, no matter how vaguely couched. It remained to be seen just how patient and gracious she could be in the face of it.

*   *   *

There was nothing more to be done, not another single thing with which she could putter in the hope of disguising the absolute absence of conversation. Isabella adjusted the position of the cookie plate one last time, then smoothed her skirts and sat in the seat opposite Barrett Stanbridge’s mother. She was readying the strainer when the other woman finally decided to break the awkward silence.

“If I might ask … Does my son’s staff have the day out?”

A simple “yes” would have sufficed, but Isabella wasn’t willing to risk the consequences of such a terse reply. “They left earlier today for an extended holiday,” she explained, hoping the additional, unnecessary information would prompt her companion to ask another question or offer a comment on which they could build something approximating a cordial exchange.

“I can certainly understand why they’d wish to go.”

Isabella poured the first cup of tea while puzzling the remark. Unless Mrs. Stanbridge had crossed paths with Barrett’s housekeeper and cook on their way out of town, there was no reasonable way she could understand the reason for their departure. So how—

“And I’d be most surprised if Mrs. Wallace chooses to return,” Barrett’s mother elaborated. “Truth be told, I was stunned when she accepted the post in the first place. She’s a good Christian woman and considering the debacle with Mrs. King—”

Barrett’s mother started, seeming to suddenly realize that she’d said too much or perhaps something she shouldn’t have said at all. “Well,” she added too breezily, “there’s no point in going into all of that, now is there? Water under the bridge and all of that.”

Isabella smiled and handed the cup across the cart, asking, “Would you care for cream or sugar?”

“Both, please. Your accent … It’s not British.”

“I’m from Louisiana,” Isabella supplied, placing the sugar shell and the creamer within the woman’s easy reach.

“Oh,” she said dryly, knowingly, as she splashed cream into her cup. “You’re an American.”

Isabella poured herself a cup of tea, pondering the woman’s tone and wondering what assumptions lay beneath it. Clearly Mrs. Stanbridge didn’t think too highly of Americans in general. Would there be any point to sharing the regional distinctions they made among themselves? Would Barrett’s mother care that there was a great deal of difference between Northern Americans, Southern Americans, and those who came from the Western part of the country?

“You’re quite a long way from home,” the other woman observed, effectively putting an end to Isabella’s musing. “Surely you didn’t come all this way just to hire my son.”

Well, she had to give the woman credit for the incredible politeness of the query. “No, I came to London in pursuit of my cousin. Unfortunately, she refused to listen to reason and Barrett and I have become entangled in the consequences.”

The other woman ladled two heaping spoonfuls of sugar into her tea, picked up her spoon and stirred it all together. Only as she lifted her cup and saucer did she ask, “Your cousin is the young woman who … left the theater with my son?”

“Yes. Mignon.”

The woman nodded and took a sip of her tea. Setting down the cup to add a third measure of sugar, she arched a pale brow and casually inquired, “And did your husband accompany you on your jaunt to our side of the pond?”

Oh, she was so very smooth. The Yankee generals could have taken interrogation lessons from Mrs. Cecil Stanbridge. “My husband is deceased,” Isabella provided. “He was a casualty of war.”

Mrs. Stanbridge made a little sound; not exactly a gasp of regret for having inadvertently opened sad memories and not quite a whimper of sympathy, either. No, Isabella decided, it sounded more like a groan of disappointment combined with a half-strangled growl of frustration.

“How very unfortunate,” Mrs. Stanbridge offered blandly. “It must be exceedingly difficult for you to carry on without him.”

“I’m trudging along,” she replied with what she hoped passed for a stoic smile. Then deliberately closing the door on the more personal aspects of their conversation, Isabella picked up the plate of cookies, saying brightly, “Would you care for one? Cook made them this morning before she left. The little butter crisps are especially good.”

Mrs. Stanbridge didn’t even look at the cookies. “Thank you, but no.” Then, just barely pausing to draw a breath, she asked, “May I be frank with you, Mrs. Dandaneau?”

Cursing the requirements of civility and the woman’s deliberate use of the expectation, Isabella set the plate aside and reluctantly smiled her assent.

Mrs. Stanbridge didn’t waste another second. “You seem like a very nice young woman,” she said kindly enough. “And it’s apparent that you were raised with certain expectations of gentility. Barrett is my only child and, while I love him dearly, he is not without his faults. Most are relatively minor ones that a mother learns, over the years, to accept. However, his ability to consistently choose inappropriate female companions isn’t one of them.”

What, Isabella wondered, did her having been raised genteelly have to do with Barrett choosing inappropriate women? “I can understand,” Isabella ventured diplomatically, unable to see how the two ideas connected, “why a mother would find that discouraging.”

“He recently promised his father and me that he’d select a suitable girl and settle down. And we were making some progress in narrowing the selections.”

Why on earth was Barrett’s mother telling her all of this? It wasn’t information she needed to know and she couldn’t see what it had to do with her and Barrett’s association. “But?” she pressed, hoping that traveling just a bit farther down the path might reveal the reason of the journey.

“The consequences of his involvement with your cousin have fairly well dashed any chance that a respectable family would permit a daughter to marry him,” his mother continued. “At least for the next year or so. The Suzanna King scandal took almost three years to fade from memories. This isn’t quite as bad, of course, but one scandal tends to revive memories of the previous ones and…”

Isabella blinked and took another sip of her tea, stunned. As scandals went, being falsely accused of a grisly murder wasn’t as bad? Good God, what had happened to Suzanna King?

In the other woman’s silence, Isabella realized that she was now expected to make some sort of conversational contribution. Since she knew nothing whatsoever about Barrett’s apparently checkered past, the only subject she felt capable of addressing was his future. “I’m rather hoping,” she began, “that we can resolve the problem before Barrett faces any formal charges, Mrs. Stanbridge. He had absolutely nothing to do with Mignon’s death and we intend to prove it. I’m sure that once we accomplish that, any hint of scandal will disappear and he can resume his search for a wife.”

“I do so hope that you’re not falsely raising my hopes.”

It was a request for tangible proof if she’d ever heard one. Isabella wished she had some to lay on the cart between them for no other reason than to end the woman’s exceedingly polite inquisition. And to think that Mrs. Stanbridge looked like everyone’s favorite Aunt Midge. Short and round, with cherubic cheeks, sassy little blond pin curls and blue, blue eyes. But, unlike the Aunt Midges of the world, this woman had considerably more on her mind than dispensing homespun wisdom and pieces of sassafras candy.

“Are you hoping to someday remarry, Mrs. Dandaneau?”

Isabella hid her smile around the rim of her teacup, suddenly seeing how all the disparate points of their conversation came together. Mrs. Stanbridge was worried sick that all of her maternal efforts to find a good and virtuous daughter-in-law were going to be crushed in the swirling scandal Mignon’s murder had created, and that, in the shadows of scandal, her son would fall prey to the matrimonial designs of an American hussy.

“No, ma’am,” Isabella replied honestly. “Once was quite enough for me.”

“Most women prefer to be married.”

“I have very little in common with most women,” she assured her, knowing even as she did that the words were falling on completely deaf ears.

True to form, Barrett’s mother nodded and immediately asked, “How long do you plan to stay in London?”

With a silent prayer for patience, Isabella gave her the truth one more time. “I have business to attend. When it’s completed, I’ll likely return home. I wish I could tell you precisely when that will be, but I can’t. I can assure you, however, that I won’t dally once I’m free to go.”

“In the meantime, you’ll be residing in my son’s home?”

Lord, Isabella silently groaned, her father’s blueticks hadn’t pursued raccoons with as much persistence. “It’s a matter of necessity at this point,” she explained, trying very hard to keep the frustration out of her voice. “But I’ve kept my rented room so that I can move back there at the first opportunity. I don’t like imposing on the kindness and hospitality of others.”

“Appearances are so very important, you know,” the other woman countered. “It has such a direct effect on one’s reputation.” She took a sip of her tea and then added, “At least here in England. I have no idea how you view such matters on your side of the Atlantic.”

Isabella bit her tongue and sternly reminded herself that no protest, assurance, or explanation would make the slightest bit of difference in the woman’s concerns and opinions. Barrett’s mother was going to believe as she wanted to believe. Which, in this particular situation, was obviously the worst. There was nothing to be done about it. Except, she amended, feel a bit sorry for Barrett. And a great deal sorry for the poor woman he eventually talked into marrying him.

“Melanie, dear, it’s time for us to be on our way.”

Isabella couldn’t tell which of them—her or Barrett’s mother—was more relieved to hear the pronouncement from the parlor doorway. Both of them sagged in the same instant and to much the same degree. Isabella, however, managed to recover before the other woman did. Summoning a polite smile, she rose from her seat and turned to face Barrett’s father, saying, “I hope you had a pleasant visit.”

“It was typical,” he replied with the tightest of smiles and without meeting her gaze. “Melanie?”

Melanie Stanbridge rose, said, “Thank you for the refreshments, Mrs. Dandaneau,” and then proceeded across the parlor, past her husband, into the hall and toward the front door.

“Mrs. Dandaneau,” Barrett’s father offered crisply just before turning on his heel and following in his wife’s regal wake.

Isabella stood there staring after them, shaking her head in wonder. It certainly qualified as one of the most interesting afternoons she’d had in quite some time. Being all but formally declared morally bankrupt and socially unacceptable was a decidedly new experience. Although, she admitted, smiling, there was something rather exciting about the notion of being so utterly, irredeemably wicked. Being so wanton left no room for reservations and hesitations, not to mention trepidation and fear. Why, being so bad could make a woman positively bold.

Grinning, she headed down the hallway, intending to find Barrett and thinking that perhaps she might get him to tell her the torrid, horribly scandalous story of his relationship with Suzanna King.

Or perhaps not, she amended from the doorway of his study. He sat in the chair behind his desk, his feet propped up on the blotter, his booted ankles crossed. She might have considered him relaxed were it not for the depth and darkness of his frown and the white-knuckled grip he had on his empty glass.