The Secret Pearl (5 page)

Lord Brocklehurst thought. “Hamilton on the father’s side,” he said. “Lenora, I believe. I don’t know about the mother’s side.”

“Your butler?”

“Chapman.”

“I’ll try these, sir,” Mr. Snedburg said finally. “I’ll come up with something. I don’t doubt. Now, I need a description of the young lady.”

“Somewhat above average height,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “Slender. Brown eyes. Red-gold hair.”

“Her crowning glory, would you say, sir?” the Runner asked, eyeing his client closely.

“Yes.” Lord Brocklehurst gazed sightlessly across the room.
“Her crowning glory. Like the sunshine and the sunset all tangled up together.”

Mr. Snedburg coughed. “Exactly, sir,” he said. “A beauty, then, you would say?”

“Oh, yes.” The other looked back to him. “A beauty, indeed. I want her found.”

“As a justice of the peace, I understand, sir,” the Runner said. “Because, despite the fact that she is your cousin, she must stand trial for the murder of your personal servant.”

“Yes, for that reason,” Lord Brocklehurst said, his hands opening and closing at his sides. “Find her.”

Mr. Snedburg executed an inelegant bow and strode from the room without further ado.

“M
ISS
H
AMILTON?”

Fleur turned in some surprise to the young man in smart blue livery who questioned her as she descended from the stage in Wollaston. “Yes,” she said.

“Ned Driscoll, ma’am,” he said, “come to fetch you to the Hall. Which are your trunks, ma’am?”

“Just that one,” Fleur said, pointing.

The young man was dressed very smartly indeed. And he hoisted her trunk to his shoulder as if it weighed no more than a feather and strode across the cobbled yard of the inn where the stage had stopped toward a closed carriage with a coat of arms painted on the side panel.

A cozy manor? A small family group?

“You are Mr. Kent’s servant?” she asked the groom, following him. “This is his carriage?”

He turned to grin at her in some amusement. “Mr. Kent?” he said. “He had better not hear you call him that, ma’am. He’s ‘his grace’ to the likes of you and me.”

“His grace?” Fleur felt rather as if her knees were turning to jelly beneath her.

“His grace, the Duke of Ridgeway,” the groom said, looking at her curiously. “Didn’t you know?” He strapped her trunk securely to the back of the carriage.

“The Duke of Ridgeway? There must be some mistake. I was hired as governess to the daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Kent,” Fleur said.

“Lady Pamela Kent, ma’am,” the groom said, extending a hand to help her into the carriage. “Mr. Houghton was it who hired you? His grace’s personal secretary. He must have been having a joke with you.”

A joke. Fleur sat in the carriage while the groom climbed to the box, and closed her eyes briefly. Her employer was the Duke of Ridgeway? She had heard of him. He was reputed to be one of the wealthiest peers of the land. Matthew had known his half-brother, Lord Thomas Kent. Kent! She had not even noticed that it was the same name.

She should have done. She should have been very much more on her guard. Matthew knew her employer’s brother! But she had never met the man herself. And he would not recognize her or know her name now that she had changed it. She must not start jumping at shadows.

Willoughby Hall. Mr. Houghton had given that name as the home of her employer. But the mind is a strange thing. She had conceived such a strong and early mental impression of the Kent family that she had instantly visualized a modest manor. But she knew of Willoughby. It was one of the largest estates in England and was reputed to have one of the most magnificent mansions and parks in the country, besides.

And then, long before her mind had adjusted itself to the new facts of her existence, the carriage was traveling past a high park wall dotted with mosses and lichens and overhung with ivy, and turning to pass between massive stone gateposts onto a winding avenue lined with lime trees.

She could see rolling lawns dotted with oak and chestnut trees to either side. She even had a momentary glimpse of a
group of grazing deer. Then the carriage rumbled over a bridge and she spotted rushing cascades passing below it. But even as she turned her head to get a better look, her attention was distracted.

The lime trees did not stretch beyond the bridge. Open and rolling lawns did nothing to obstruct the view of a mansion whose magnificence made the breath catch in Fleur’s throat.

The house had a long front, its low wings extending to either side of a high pedimented central section, its columns of exquisite fluted Corinthian design. A great central lantern and dome rose behind the pediment. The parapets were lined with stone statues, busts, vases, and urns.

A great marble fountain before the house played among clipped hedges and terraces of flowers and greenery.

She had thought Heron House, her own home—Matthew’s home—quite splendid. It would seem little more than a rustic cottage if set against this.

So much for her cozy manor and small, close-knit family group, Fleur thought, resting her head briefly against the cushions behind her as the carriage drew up before the marble horseshoe steps leading up to the main doors and the
piano nobile
, the main floor.

But it was the double doors below the steps that opened to admit her, the doors leading to the servants’ quarters. Mrs. Laycock, the housekeeper, would be pleased to receive Miss Hamilton in her private sitting room, a servant informed her with a half-bow before turning to lead the way.

Mrs. Laycock looked rather like a duchess herself, Fleur thought, her slim figure clad simply yet elegantly in black, her silver hair dressed smartly on top of her head. Only the bunch of keys at her waist proclaimed her status as a servant.

“Miss Hamilton?” she said, extending a hand to Fleur. “Welcome to Willoughby Hall. It must have been a long and tedious journey all the way from London. Mr. Houghton informed us that you would be arriving today. I am pleased that
his grace has seen fit to employ a governess for Lady Pamela. It is time she had more stimulation for the mind and more activity than an elderly nurse can provide.”

Fleur set her hand in the housekeeper’s and received a firm handshake. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “I shall do my best to teach the child well.”

“It will not be easy,” Mrs. Laycock said, motioning Fleur to a chair. “May I pour you some tea, Miss Hamilton? I can see you are weary. You will have the duchess to contend with.”

Fleur looked her inquiry.

“Armitage, her grace’s personal maid, has confided to me that the duchess is not pleased with his grace’s sending a governess without even consulting her,” the housekeeper said, pouring a cup of tea and handing it to Fleur.

“Oh, dear,” Fleur said.

“But you are not to worry,” Mrs. Laycock said. “It is the duke who is master here, and his grace has seen fit to look to the future of his daughter. Now, Miss Hamilton, tell me something about yourself. You and I will get along well together, I believe.”

P
ETER HOUGHTON, SORTING THROUGH THE DUKE of Ridgeway’s post and setting aside invitations that he thought his master might wish to accept, knew that the duke was in a bad mood as soon as he entered the house and even before he came into the study. There was a certain tone to his voice, even when one could not hear the exact words, that betrayed his mood.

And his grace was limping slightly, the secretary saw, getting to his feet as the duke entered the room and sinking back into his chair again when the latter waved an impatient hand. Normally his grace went to great pains not to limp.

“Anything of importance?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the pile of mail.

“An invitation to dine with his majesty,” Houghton said.

“Prinny? Make my excuses,” the duke said.

“It is a royal summons to dinner and cards,” the secretary said with a cough.

“Yes, I understand,” the duke said. “Make my excuses. Is there anything from my wife?”

“Nothing, your grace,” Houghton said, looking down at the pile.

“We will be leaving for Willoughby,” his grace said curtly. “Let me see. I have promised to accompany the Denningtons
to the opera tomorrow evening in order to escort their niece. There is nothing else that cannot be canceled, is there? We will leave the day after tomorrow.”

“Yes, your grace.” Peter Houghton smiled to himself as his employer strode from the room. It was two weeks to the day since the ladybird had been sent on her way by the stage. The duke had shown great fortitude in waiting that long before finding an excuse to go in pursuit.

The Duke of Ridgeway took the stairs two at a time, as he usually did, despite the fact that his leg and side were aching. He rubbed absently at his left eye and cheek. It was the damp weather. The old wounds always acted up when the weather turned for the worse.

Confound Sybil! She had consistently refused to accompany him to London since the time four years before when he had been forced to confront her and put an end to the wildest of her indiscretions. And yet it seemed that almost every time he had settled in London alone for a few months of peace, she had decided to organize a large country party, inviting every disreputable member of the
ton
, male and female, who could be persuaded to leave London for Dorsetshire.

Very rarely did she think it necessary to inform him of her plans. He was left to find out—if he found out at all—by accident. On one occasion two years before he had not known until he returned home to find that all the guests had been and left again except for one straggler. And that straggler had been kind enough to do the chambermaids a favor by vacating his own guest bedchamber in order to share that of the duchess.

The duke had sent that particular gentleman on his way within an hour of his return, and the man seemed to have taken to heart the advice not to show his face either at Willoughby or in London for at least the next ten years.

And he had given his duchess a tongue-lashing about propriety before the servants and those dependent upon them that had finally turned her pale and reduced her to tears. Sybil
always looked more beautiful than usual when in tears. And she had accused him of hard-heartedness, neglect, tyranny—all the old charges.

This time his grace had learned of Sybil’s party from Sir Hector Chesterton at White’s. The man had seemed pleased by his invitation as he creaked inside his stays and wheezed for breath.

“There’s nothing much to do in town these days, old chap,” he had said, “except ogle the young things. And their mamas cling to them like leeches so that all one can do is ogle. Decent of Sybil to invite me.”

“Yes.” The duke had smiled arctically. “She likes to surround herself with company.”

And so he must return to Willoughby himself, many weeks before he had planned to do so. He pulled the bell rope in his dressing room and shrugged out of his coat while he waited for his valet to arrive. For the sake of his servants and for Pamela’s sake, he must return. It would not be fair to allow them all to be witnesses to the debaucheries of Sybil and her friends.

God! He pulled at his neckcloth and tossed it aside. He had loved her. Once upon a time, an eternity ago, he had loved her. Sweet, fragile, blond and beautiful Sybil. He had dreamed of her, ached for her all the time he was in Belgium waiting for the battle that had become the Battle of Waterloo. He had lived on the memory of her bright smiles, her sweet protestations of love, her shy acceptance of his marriage proposal, her warm maiden’s kisses.

God! He pulled at the top button of his shirt and watched it sail across the room and tinkle against the china bowl on the washstand.

“Get someone to sew these infernal buttons on firmly,” he barked at his valet, who had the misfortune to come through the door at that moment.

But his valet had been with him from boyhood, and accompanied him to war and been his personal servant in Spain and in Belgium. He was made of stern stuff.

“The leg and side are aching, are they, sir?” he said cheerfully. “I thought they would in this weather. Lie down and let me massage them.”

“How will that keep the buttons on my shirts, confound you?” the duke said.

“It will, sir, take my word on it,” the valet said. “Lie down, now.”

“I want my riding clothes,” the duke said. “I am going for a gallop in the park.”

“After I massage you,” his man said like a nurse talking to a child. “Going back to Willoughby, are we, sir?”

“Houghton has been spreading the glad tidings, has he?” his grace said, stretching out obediently on a couch in the dressing room and allowing his valet to remove his clothing and set to work with his strong and expert hands, which never failed to ease the aching. “Will you be glad to be home, Sidney?”

“That I will,” his man said firmly. “And you too, sir, if you will but admit it. Willoughby was always your favorite place in the whole world.”

Yes. It had been. He had grown up with a conscious awareness that it would all be his one day. And his love for Willoughby was deeply ingrained in him. It had stayed with him during his years at school and university and during his years in the army. He had insisted on buying his commission in an infantry regiment despite the fact that he was the elder son and heir and despite the opposition of his father and just about everyone who knew him.