The Third Heiress (26 page)
Authors: Brenda Joyce
“These are for you,” Jill said, handing her the bouquet of lilies.
Janet inhaled deeply. When she looked up, tears filled her eyes. “My favorite. Oh, dear. My husband used to surprise me with lilies, you know. That was years ago. He died at such a young age. He was only fifty-two.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jill said softly. “May I sit down?”
“Oh, please do.” Janet patted the bench beside her. “Is that handsome man your boyfriend?”
Jill almost jumped out of the seat she had just taken, and she knew she flushed. “Alex is a friend,” she said very firmly.
He spoke for the first time. “But only because I haven’t had my say in the matter,” he told Janet with a wink.
Jill ignored that.
Alex handed her a box lunch they had picked up at a neighborhood café. “I hope you are hungry, Mrs. Witcombe, because we brought you some lunch. A smoked turkey sandwich with roasted peppers, I think, with puff pastries for dessert.”
“Oh, the two of you are such dears,” Janet cried as Alex laid the box by her on the other side of the bench. She looked at Jill. “He is so adorable, the two of you make a beautiful couple.”
Jill smiled, straightened. Tension settled on her shoulders, weighting them down like a huge dumbbell. She avoided Alex’s laughing eyes. “Mrs. Witcombe, I’m actually an amateur historian and I was hoping to ask you some questions about Anne Sheldon, the late countess of Collinsworth.”
Janet sat up straighter, too. “She was a great patroness,” she said. “I loved working for her at Uxbridge Hall.”
Jill was thrilled. “You knew her.”
Janet smiled. “We met on several occasions, my dear. She was a real lady, the kind of lady one doesn’t see anymore. Did you know that she never left the house without a hat and gloves?”
“No, I didn’t know,” Jill said with a smile. “Did she ever talk to you about the past?” she asked. “She was best friends with one of my ancestors. I mean, when they were girls of sixteen, seventeen, before she married Edward Sheldon.”
Janet turned on the bench so her entire body was facing Jill. She wasn’t smiling. Her eyes were direct. “Are you talking about that tragic young woman, Kate Gallagher?”
Jill inhaled, shot a look at Alex, and stared at Janet. “Yes,” she said huskily. “I am.” Tragic? Did Janet know what had happened to Kate? Jill began to perspire. Her fingers were tightly crossed.
Janet stared unblinkingly back at her.
“Relax,” Alex said low, into her ear.
“Mrs. Witcombe, please, I am trying to find out what happened to Kate. You know that she disappeared in 1908. Without a trace. She was never seen again.”
“Yes, I know, it’s common knowledge,” Janet said.
“It’s common knowledge?” Jill raised both brows, surprised.
“It’s common knowledge at the Hall. You must have seen the locket.” Jill nodded. “Did you see the portrait? Of the three of them?”
“What portrait?” Jill was gripping the bench.
“At the Hall. There was a portrait of Anne and Kate and Edward. The two girls seated on the bench in front of the piano, Edward standing beside it. It was so lovely, the girls in sprigged muslin, Edward in his breeches and a hacking coat. I do think the portrait was painted in the country.”
Jill glanced at Alex, who met her gaze. She turned back to Janet. “At Stainesmore?”
“Why, yes, my dear. Where else would it have been?”
“I don’t recall seeing such a portrait at Uxbridge Hall,” Alex said softly.
Jill wet her lips. “Janet, I have been over every inch of Uxbridge Hall. Lucinda Becke is a friend of mine. There’s no such portrait there.”
“Oh, my dear, there most certainly is, unless someone took it away.”
“Did someone take it away?”
“Not while I was director,” Janet said.
Jill nodded, making a mental note to call Lucinda immediately about the portrait. Maybe it had been sent out to be restored. “What can you tell me about Kate and Anne?”
Janet seemed to hesitate. “Very little, I’m afraid. I know what the whole world knows. The two girls were friends, and when Kate first came to London, she and her mother were Anne’s guests. And Kate disappeared.”
Jill found herself crossing her fingers again. “Mrs. Witcombe.” She clasped the old lady’s shoulder lightly. “Just before Uxbridge Hall was reopened to the public, Anne toured it to give it her stamp of approval. Do you remember?”
Janet looked her in the eye. “I could never forget.” She was grim.
“What is it?” Jill cried.
“What is it that you wish for me to say?” Janet returned.
“Lucinda said Anne became very upset when she entered her old girlhood bedroom. That she wept.”
“She became very distraught,” Janet said, a whisper. “Not at first. At first she was so pleased with the renovations. Then, when we walked into her room, something happened to her. I saw it immediately. Her face changed. It became … dark … heavy. And she sat on the bed. I thought she was ill, but she waved me away, and she pointed to the window and told me how her friend—her best friend—Kate, climbed out of that window night after night to rendezvous with her lover.”
Jill was vaguely aware of Alex having moved to stand very close beside her—as if shielding her from whatever would come next. “Did she tell you who Kate’s lover was? Did she tell you what happened to Kate?”
Janet sighed heavily, and wrapped her shawl more firmly around herself. “She never talked about Kate’s fate. She started to cry. Silently, without a sound. I was very frightened. I did not know what to do. She was so unhappy, my dear. So I left the room, ran downstairs, and came back with a cup of tea.”
“And that is it?!” Jill cried.
Suddenly Janet’s gaze was focused not on Jill, but on some faraway horizon. Her eyes had changed, blurring, losing their brightness. Jill was afraid she had lost her lucidity. She thought the interview was over.
But Janet spoke in a soft, reminiscent, faraway tone of voice. “When I returned to the room, Anne was standing at the window. She did not hear me, even though I coughed. For one moment I was terrified, I thought she was going to jump out. For the window was wide open. She had pushed it wide open.” Janet stopped.
There was a table beside the bench, and on it was a tray with a pitcher of water and several glasses. Alex handed Janet a glass of water. After she had taken a sip, she said hoarsely, “You must understand. Those windows had not been opened in years. I tried to do so once on a very hot day when I had first started my employment there. But I could not open it. And I was a middle-aged woman at the time. Anne was very old. She was close to eighty-five.”
Jill didn’t speak. Her gaze was glued to Janet’s face. It was lined and wrinkled, and her jowls seemed to tremble. “Anne said, her voice very strange, and I will never forget her words, ‘I did not know it at the time, but her lover was Edward, my Edward.’”
Jill stared at her in shock.
“Then she accepted the tea, drank it as if nothing had happened, thanked me for all the labor I had done, and she left. I saw her a few times subsequently, but the topic was never raised again. And that is all I know.” Janet regarded them both. Her gaze had become bright and focused again.
Jill remained in shock.
“Well,” Alex said, breaking the silence, “if Edward was Kate’s lover, that certainly explains a lot.”
Jill just looked at him dumbly, having no idea what he meant.
OCTOBER 1, 1906
Kate and Anne sat together in the backseat of the coach, drawn by six ebony mares, holding hands very tightly, as the vehicle rolled down the cobbled street. It was a beautiful evening, with stars winking in the blue-black sky overhead and pools of light spilling from the electric lamps lining the boulevard. Earlier that day it had rained, and thoroughly, and now the cobblestones glistened like black glass. The liveried coachman turned the team into a circular driveway in front of a vast stone mansion that was ablaze with lights. That drive was already congested with dozens of other coaches and automobiles. The coach halted, queued up now behind a line of coaches and motorcars, each vehicle awaiting its turn to pause before the front steps and let out its passengers.
Kate’s and Anne’s gazes met. “We are about to make our debut,” Kate whispered, her fingers tightening on Anne’s.
“I am so happy,” Anne whispered back. “This is the beginning, dearest Kate, the beginning of the rest of our lives.”
“How romantic you are,” Kate whispered, smiling. “That is exactly how I, too, feel.” And she turned to gaze out of the curtained window, her heart pounding, staring at the many groups of splendidly attired ladies and tuxedo-clad gentlemen ascending the front steps of the Fairchild home.
“Girls! Have you not been told, time and again, that whispering among yourselves is the rudest of behavior?” Lady Bensonhurst intoned from the facing seat. “I will not tolerate such behavior at the ball. I expect the two of you to be perfect ladies, at all times.” And she glared at Kate.
Kate was wearing a silver-blue satin gown with tiny drop sleeves and a flounced hem. She raised her fan and snapped it open, using it in a simpering manner. “I beg your pardon, my lady,” she said far too demurely. “We shall strive to make the most perfect effect on those present at the ball tonight.”
Lady Bensonhurst’s jaw ticked and abruptly she looked out of the window. Her husband, Anne’s father, remained impervious to the conversation, sipping from a sterling silver pocket flask. Kate’s mother, Mary, gave her a worried warning look. “Please,” she mouthed silently. “Please, Kate, please.”
Kate snapped her fan shut with annoyance, then realized it was their turn to disembark. Her gaze met Anne’s again. All day she had been
haunted by the strongest feeling that tonight would be magical—that something very special would soon unfold. She did not have a clue as to what might happen, but she had been on pins and needles ever since she’d awoken, filled with this unnerving sense of expectation.
haunted by the strongest feeling that tonight would be magical—that something very special would soon unfold. She did not have a clue as to what might happen, but she had been on pins and needles ever since she’d awoken, filled with this unnerving sense of expectation.
Their group left the carriage and slowly walked up the many steps of the house. The four ladies handed their wraps to waiting servants, Lord Bensonhurst handed over his hat and walking stick. They made their way to the entrance to the ballroom, Anne moving to stand between her parents. Kate waited with her mother just behind them, and when it was the Bensonhursts’ turn to descend to the ballroom, Anne looked over her shoulder at Kate, her eyes at once frightened and filled with excitement. She had never been prettier, Kate thought, and she gave her a rough thumbs-up.
“Kate,” Mary whispered, gripping her wrist. “Stop that.”
The Bensonhursts were being announced. Kate looked at her small, pallid blond mother with her continuously worried eyes, and she wished, so very much, that her father was there with them that night.
How proud he would be of her, Kate thought, smiling. She had not a doubt. He would have laughed at the crude gesture.
“Mrs. Peter Gallagher from New York City, widow of the late Peter Gallagher, and her daughter, Miss Katherine Adeline Gallagher.”
Kate and her mother descended the stairs into the ballroom. Below, the vast room was filled with guests who were clustered in large and mixed groups, sipping champagne and conversing with friends and acquaintances. Kate held her head high, but as she looked down at the spectacle awaiting her, she was aware of heads turning, of ladies and gentlemen staring up at her, of eyes widening. She felt her smile, which was genuine. The night did feel magical, and right then, there was nowhere she would rather be.
She and her mother were almost at the foot of the stairs. The group behind her was already being announced. Kate’s gaze fell on a tall, dark gentleman and her smile vanished, her eyes went wide. He was staring at her so intensely that his eyes seemed silver.
Kate recognized him immediately. He was the gentleman from Brighton, the one who had watched her from the observation deck while she played tag with the waves. Her pulse was thundering now so swiftly and so loudly she thought her mother had to hear it. Kate could not tear her gaze away from the gentleman, not even to see if her mother had noticed her reaction to a stranger.
Who was he?
Kate could hardly breathe. Her ears were ringing. Her heart was pounding. Was this love at first sight?
He smiled then, slightly, and bowed to her, not slightly at all.
Kate inhaled, managing a smile in return, then wanting to kick herself, certain he could see how flustered she was—as if she were some schoolgirl unused to male attention. That was hardly the case!
They rejoined the Bensonhurst group, several couples Kate had already met at other gatherings. Kate was aware of Lady Bensonhurst placing her ample back toward her, but that did not bother her. She knew Anne’s mother despised her and thought her to be little more than trash. She despised Anne’s mother, who was far worse than a witch. She was an absolute bitch.
She peeked over her shoulder. His gaze was on her, as intent as before. Kate sent him a quick smile. Damn it! She was flirting, but without the finesse she usually had. She must recover her composure before he judged her to be a dimwit.
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