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“Lady Armiger!” A man’s delighted voice came from the left of them. Phoebe and Julia turned to see a man and woman walking toward them. The man was smiling delightedly. The woman looked frozen in stone. “Miss Armiger,” the man continued. “How wonderful to see you. I had no idea that you were in town.”
“Varian.” Phoebe smiled, holding out her hand. “How good it is to see you. But how can it be that we have become Lady Armiger and Miss Armiger, when before we were Phoebe and Julia with you?”
Varian St. Leger had been a good friend of her husband’s, and he had visited many times at their home. At the time of the scandal, Varian had been one of the few who had not been immediately convinced of Selby’s guilt. “I cannot believe it of Sel,” he had often said. “I know the evidence looks black, but, damme, it just seems impossible.” They had seen little of Varian the past three years, though he had stopped in once or twice when he had been by to see young Thomas. Being Thomas’s cousin, he had taken on the responsibility of visiting with Thomas and his mother as Selby had formerly done.
“Phoebe, then.” Varian took her hand, smiling down warmly at her. “I did not wish to presume. And Julia.” He took her proffered hand next, smiling. “I have been lax this year, I am afraid. I haven’t visited Thomas even once. It is fortunate that he and his mother are in London this summer.”
“Yes, of course.” Phoebe cast a rather timid glance at the woman who was standing stiffly beside Varian, not saying a word. “How do you do, Mrs. St. Leger?”
Pamela St. Leger did not speak, merely gave Phoebe a short nod, her face not softening even slightly. Pamela, Thomas’s mother, had been long and loud in her condemnations of Selby. Julia had heard that she had wanted to sue Selby’s estate for the monies that had been removed from the trust. However, the decision had not been up to her, of course, but to the trustees, and they had not done so—due primarily, Julia felt sure, to Varian St. Leger’s influence. All Pamela had been able to do was cut them socially, and that she had proceeded to do with a vengeance. She had refused to attend any gathering where Phoebe or Julia were in attendance, and had been heard to declare at the slightest provocation that she was sure she did not know how either woman dared to show her face anywhere. She had even gone so far as to move her patronage each Sunday from St. Michael’s in Whitley, the local village, to St. Edward’s in Marsh-burrow, on the other side of the St. Leger estate. Julia suspected that her move had been at least in part influenced by the fact that the vicar’s wife, Mrs. Fairmont, had refused to knuckle under to Pamela’s social edict to shun the Armigers.
“Good morning, Mrs. St. Leger,” Julia spoke up, favoring Pamela with a blazing smile.
Pamela turned and nodded briefly toward her, as well, her nostrils flaring slightly. Julia knew that Pamela had disliked her long before the scandal, and Julia thought that she had seized the opportunity of the scandal to avoid being in Julia’s company. A raven-haired woman who had been considered a beauty in her day, Pamela did not like to be in the same room with Julia. She could perhaps fool herself into thinking that she was more attractive than the quiet Phoebe, but she could not compete against Julia’s vivid looks. Personally, Julia found life much more pleasant without Pamela’s presence, and she and Phoebe had not wanted to socialize the past few years, anyway, but she did resent the fact that Pamela had forbidden her son Thomas ever to fraternize with them. Thomas was quite fond of all the Armigers and had frequently visited Selby. Julia had come to regard him as something of a younger brother. Thomas was the only other person besides Phoebe and Julia and their servants who was convinced that Selby had not stolen the money from the trust. Julia found it cruel that Thomas’s mother had denied him the company of the other people who shared his love and his mourning for Selby.
Of course, Thomas disobeyed his mother, sneaking over to visit Julia and Phoebe whenever he got the chance. He had joined with them in deciding that Lord Stonehaven must have been the real thief and the engineer of Selby’s downfall. Stonehaven had visited him the least of his trustees and was, in Thomas’s opinion, a “cold fish.” It was Thomas who had first suggested that they capture Stonehaven and force him to reveal his criminal behavior, and he had wanted badly to play a part in the seizure. It had seemed a stroke of good luck when his mother had decided to go to London for the Season, and he had begged and pleaded and cajoled until finally Pamela had broken down and agreed to let him accompany her.
He had thought he would be easily able to join Julia in the escapade, but he had found out, much to his chagrin, that he was far more imprisoned in the house in London than he had been in the country. He was under the constant careful eye of the London tutor his mother had hired, and there were no afternoon rides, since he had had to leave his horse in the country. As a result, Julia had seen him only twice since they had come to London. Of course, she was glad now, considering the turn her plans had taken. Thomas, though only fourteen, would probably have gotten terribly male and disapproving about it all.
Her eyes twinkling devilishly, Julia went on speaking to the stony Mrs. St. Leger. “Odd, isn’t it, that we should run into one another here in London, when we never see each other in Kent, even though we live only miles apart?” When Pamela said nothing, merely raised her eyebrows, Julia pressed, “Don’t you think so, Mrs. St. Leger?”
Pamela stirred uneasily, glancing at Varian, who was watching her. “Indeed,” she said through tight lips.
“Phoebe and I were remarking only the other day that we rarely see you anymore. We hoped that you were not eschewing social life, as some matrons do in widowhood. Phoebe thought it was probably that you, as she is, are still in mourning for your husband, but I told her I thought that could not be the reason, for you were frequently at parties after he died, and I was sure that you had put off mourning—oh, within a few months after Walter’s funeral.”
Bright spots of color leaped into Pamela’s cheeks at Julia’s words, delivered with a wide-eyed innocence that did not fool the other woman for a minute. She knew as well as Julia that there had been a great deal of talk about the brevity of her mourning for Walter St. Leger, which Phoebe’s presence in her black widow’s weeds three years after Selby’s death seemed to underscore.
“Yes. Walter never liked black on a woman,” she said in a clipped voice, driven out of her disdainful silence by the need to justify herself.
“Ah, of course.” Julia smiled with understanding. “I’m sure Walter would have been very pleased to see you. I told Phoebe I did not think it was mourning that kept you away from the small social pleasures of Whitley. I was sure it was probably some physical infirmity. I hope not lumbago—that can be a terribly painful thing, I understand.”
Pamela’s eyes shot fire. “No, I assure you it was not ‘physical infirmity’ that kept me away. Indeed, I attend many soirees and balls, Miss Armiger.”
“Indeed? Why is it that we never see you, then?” Julia wrinkled her brow in puzzlement.
“Are you determined, then, to hear it?” Pamela snapped. Julia wondered if she realized how unattractive she looked like this, her features sharp and hawklike, her eyes narrowed, and her lips, never full, reduced to a mere line. “I do not go where you are received, as you no doubt know. No woman of any standing would.”
Varian’s expression of shock and distaste as he looked at Pamela was precisely what Julia would have wished for. But all her satisfaction was wiped out when she heard Phoebe’s sharp intake of breath and turned to see the hurt on her face at Pamela’s verbal slap.
“Phoebe, I’m sorry,” Julia said softly, curling her arm around her sister-in-law’s waist.
“Mrs. St. Leger!” Varian snapped. “Really! I am quite sure you did not mean that.” He glared at her significantly.
“Everyone knows it!” Pamela retorted defiantly, still too caught up in her anger to care that she looked mean and spiteful in front of her son’s trustee.
“Phoebe, please, accept my apology,” Varian went on, turning abruptly from Pamela toward Phoebe. “I assure you that most people do not feel that way.”
Phoebe smiled at him. “You are most kind, Varian. I know that you do not.”
“Indeed not. I hope you will allow me the honor of calling upon you while you are in London.”
“Of course.”
He turned to Julia and made his apologies and goodbyes, adding that he trusted her to “take care of Lady Armiger.” Then he hustled Pamela away.
Julia turned to Phoebe. “Oh, Fee, I’m sorry. I should never have goaded her like that. I was so intent on forcing her to admit what a witch she is that I didn’t even think about you. I should have known it would hurt you. It is simply that I am so thick-skinned, you see. No, please, don’t cry.”
Phoebe shook her head, giving Julia a shaky little smile. Her eyes sparkled with sudden unshed tears. “No. It isn’t that. It was your calling me ‘Fee.’ Selby always used to call me that. Remember? He was so fond of pet names.”
“Yes, I remember.” Julia felt tears clogging up her own throat at the memory. Even Julia he had shortened to Julie, and he had almost never called Phoebe by her full name. “He called you ‘Fee’ and ‘Delight.”’
A little noise escaped Phoebe at her words. “Oh, Julia! How can it still hurt after all this time?”
“I don’t know.” Julia hugged the other woman tightly. “Sometimes I think that it will always hurt, at least a little.”
“I want to prove that Selby didn’t do it,” Phoebe said in a fiercer voice than Julia had ever heard from her. “I want to prove that it was all Stonehaven’s doing and make that dreadful woman eat every nasty word she’s ever said about Selby or you or me!”
“We will,” Julia promised, setting her jaw. “We will.”
Julia was in the sitting room the next day, her fingers busy letting down the hem on another one of Phoebe’s dresses so that she could wear it. Her mind was occupied with her plan to manipulate Lord Stonehaven into confessing to his crime. She knew that she could not allow herself to be distracted again, as she had been last time by his kiss. She had to be firm and in control, and she had decided that the best way to do that was to plan the things she would say and do to lead him to talk, down to every last word and gesture.
The housekeeper, a fussy, plump woman in a white mob cap and an equally snowy apron, was standing beside Phoebe while Phoebe went over the menus for the rest of the week. Phoebe was engaged in another of a seemingly unending series of struggles over what should be served.
“You see, Mrs. Willett,” Phoebe was saying now, “I don’t really like duck.”
“But, my lady, duck was always one of the master’s favorites.” Mrs. Willett had been used to ruling the London house largely unchecked for over thirty years. The butler might go back and forth from the country house in Kent to London with the family, but the housekeeper stayed in charge in London over the long months—and even years, lately—when the family was not there, running a skeleton staff to keep the house in shape. Her guiding rule in any situation was to do exactly as she had always done.
Julia glanced over at Phoebe, who was biting her lip and looking worried, and Julia knew that Phoebe was, as Mrs. Willett had intended, feeling like an unloving, ungrieving widow for not wanting to eat one of her dead husband’s favorite dishes.
“Nonsense, Mrs. Willett,” Julia stuck in crisply. “You and I both know that duck was our father’s favorite dish, and that is why you served it all Selby’s life. Besides, it doesn’t really matter whether Selby liked it or not. The point is that Lady Armiger does not like it. She does not want it on the menu, and I see no reason why it should be there, when your employer does not wish it. Do you?”
A look of hurt that would have crumpled Phoebe’s opposition settled on the older woman’s face. She pushed her spectacles back up her nose and said in a resigned voice, “Very well, Miss Julia—if you want it that way. I do work for your family, have done so for over thirty years.”
“Yes, I know, and an excellent housekeeper you are,” Julia agreed to soothe the woman’s wounded feelings.
“My, yes,” Phoebe agreed eagerly, a tiny frown of concern creasing her forehead. “I did not mean to imply that there was anything wrong with the way you perform your duties.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Julia jumped in before Phoebe could get carried away with her assurances and wind up telling the woman to leave the duck on the list. “I am sure Mrs. Willett understands that you merely want a change in the menu. It is the sort of problem at which she is quite adept, isn’t it, Mrs. Willett?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Willett agreed, smiling. Julia knew that in a few more minutes the menu change would have become her own idea, and woe to any of the kitchen staff who objected to it.
At that moment, there was the rumble of carriage wheels coming to a stop in front of the house. Julia and Phoebe glanced at each other in surprise. A visitor to their house was a rare occurrence—they had had no callers since they came to London three weeks ago, except for young Thomas every now and then when he could sneak away from his tutor. Julia stood up and crossed over to the windows. A sporty curricle had stopped on the pavement, and as she watched, a lad in livery hopped down from the back and hurried forward to take the horse’s head. A man, dressed elegantly and severely in black and white, was climbing down from the open vehicle. Julia’s mouth opened in horror.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, her hand flying to her throat. She stepped back quickly.
Phoebe was on her feet in an instant, hurrying toward her in concern. “What’s wrong? Who is it?”
“Lord Stonehaven,” Julia croaked. “He’s found out.”
“What?” Phoebe whirled and looked out the window, then turned back to Julia. “Oh, no! What shall we do?”
The sound of the front door knocker resounded through the house. Julia started toward the sitting room door, the only thought on her mind to tell the footman not to answer the door. But that efficient servant was already swinging open the front door, and Julia ducked back inside the room.
“Miss Julia, what is it?” the housekeeper asked, concerned by the look of fear on Julia’s face.
“A visitor. Tell him we aren’t home, Mrs. Willett,” Phoebe suggested, her face pleading.
How could he have found out who she was? There had been no one at Madame Beauclaire’s who knew her, except Geoffrey, and Geoffrey would never have told Stonehaven who she really was.
“He must—he must be coming to pay a call,” Julia stated, reason overcoming her initial spurt of fear. “Somehow he’s found out that we are here. That’s all, I’m sure.” But it would still be disaster if he saw her here!
She could hear the footman walking toward the door, Stonehaven’s steps right behind him. In another few seconds he would be here. She glanced around wildly. There was no other way out of the room. Aside from slamming the door in his face, there was no way to avoid his seeing her. Julia’s mind raced.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Willett,” she murmured as she reached over and pulled the woman’s spectacles from her face, followed by her large mob cap. Grabbing her own shawl from the back of her chair, Julia dived behind the chair just as the footman stepped into the room.
“Lord Stonehaven, my lady,” he droned.
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Phoebe numbly turned toward the door, where Lord Stonehaven stood right behind the footman.
“My lord,” she said through bloodless lips, struggling not to look toward the chair where Julia had disappeared nor at her astonished housekeeper, who stood clutching at her disarranged hair and blinking.
At that moment Julia popped up from behind the chair like a jack-in-the-box. Phoebe let out a gasp, quickly smothered. Julia had wrapped the long shawl loosely around her, effectively hiding her figure. Atop her head she wore the housekeeper’s outmoded mob cap, covering up every last strand of her distinctive red hair. The older woman’s glasses were perched on her nose, turning her lovely blue eyes strangely large and swimming. To add to the disguise, she was frowning, her jaw set and her mouth narrowed into a thin line.
Stonehaven’s brows rose slightly at the sudden appearance of this apparition, and he faltered in the midst of saying Phoebe’s name. He added tentatively, “And, uh, Miss Armiger?”
“Yes!” Julia barked in a hoarse voice. “That is who I am—not that it’s any concern of yours.”
“Julia…” Phoebe protested weakly. She disliked the man fully as much as Julia, but she could no more bring herself to be rude than she could jump off the top of the house.
“Well, ’tis true,” Julia snapped. Her heart was thundering inside her chest so loudly that she thought the others must hear it. She wished she could see Stonehaven’s face, so that she could tell whether he recognized her in her disguise or not. But with Mrs. Willett’s spectacles on, the entire room was a blur. Lord Stonehaven looked like nothing except a large smudge of black and white.
“Mrs. Willett, you may go now,” Julia said, turning in the woman’s general direction. It was not really her place, but Phoebe’s, to dismiss the servant, but Julia suspected that Phoebe was too stunned at the moment to remember to do so, and she wanted the housekeeper out of the room before she could make any remarks about her cap and glasses.
“Yes, miss.” The housekeeper, looking confused, sidled past Lord Stonehaven, feeling her way along the wall and out the door.
Julia, equally blind, edged around the chair, thinking that if she could just get around it and sit down, she would be all right despite the sorry state of her eyesight. However, she had forgotten the footstool sitting beside the chair, and she stumbled over it, sending the stool flying. She let out a cry as pain shot up her foot, and she staggered, bumping into the arm of a chair. That was all it took: the bump, combined with her swimming vision and the fact that she instinctively hopped off her hurt foot, made her lose her balance, and she tumbled ungracefully into the chair.
Phoebe let out a gasp, and both she and Lord Stonehaven started toward her. Julia quickly waved them away, blushing a fiery red.
“No!” She swung her legs down off the arm of the chair and sat up straight. In her embarrassment, her voice had slipped back into its normal register, but now she brought it back down to a gravelly growl. “I’m fine. Just fine. Sit down.”
Phoebe turned toward their visitor and tried to smile. It was not a successful effort. “Why—why don’t you sit there on the sofa, my lord?” she said, her voice quavering a little, and gestured toward the low velvet sofa, which lay at some distance from where Julia sat.
Julia glared in the general direction of Stonehaven. Disconcertingly, her gaze lit somewhere in the general vicinity of his shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” Julia asked abruptly.
Stonehaven raised his eyebrows slightly at her rudeness, but said only, “I met St. Leger at my club yesterday evening, and he told me that you were in town. I came to pay a call.”
“I realize that,” Julia retorted, increasing her scowl. She wanted to get rid of this man before he could see past her disguise and realize who she was. Otherwise, their whole plan was ruined. She could think of no better way to do that than to drive him off with rudeness. Besides, she thought, it was quite refreshing to be rude to him, especially after having to hide her true feelings toward him the other night. “What I meant was, why would you come to call on us? We cannot benefit you in any way. I think that you have done the worst that you can do to my family. Surely you cannot think that we would wish to see you. So what purpose does your visit serve?”
“You are certainly a forthright young woman, Miss Armiger.”
“Yes, unlike some people.”
“Julia…” Phoebe blushed at her sister-in-law’s bluntness.
“Why try to hide how we feel, Phoebe?” Julia asked. “I am sure that Lord Stonehaven must not be surprised to learn that we dislike him.”
“It does not surprise me, no,” he said, “though I must tell you that it does distress me. I hope you realize that I never meant either of you any ill.”
Anger blazed across Julia’s face as she said acidly, “You certainly did us ill enough by accident, then.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Finally Lord Stonehaven said, “Miss Armiger, I am not the one who brought dishonor to your family. Selby did that. I know that you loved your brother, but—”
“You’re right. I did. I still do. And I don’t know how you can have the nerve to come here today and force Phoebe and me to look at you, the man who ruined him!” She realized that the growl was slipping again in her agitation, and she stopped, clearing her throat.
“Please, Miss Armiger, do not distress yourself so much.”
“It is not I who is causing my distress!”
Lord Stonehaven sighed. “I am sorry. Obviously I should not have come. Please believe me when I say that I have no desire to cause either you or Lady Armiger pain. I—I had hoped to heal some of the rift that lies between us.”
“That will never happen.” Julia shot to her feet, glaring at him, her arms stiff at her sides. “Do you think that you can ruin my brother and then be forgiven?”
Stonehaven sighed, rising to his feet also. “No. I can see that that is too much to expect.” He turned toward Phoebe. “Lady Armiger, please accept my regards. I want you to know that if I can be of service to you in any way, you have only to call on me.”
Julia let out an inelegant snort. “She would as soon call on a snake for help.”
“I’m sorry, Lord Stonehaven.” Phoebe cast a nervous glance toward Julia. “But I think it would be best if you left now.”
“Yes, of course.” He bowed over Phoebe’s hand formally, but, after a wary glance in Julia’s direction, was wise enough not to approach her. “Good day, ladies.”
He turned and left the room. Phoebe and Julia stood frozen, listening to his receding footsteps upon the Carrera marble floor. There came the sound of the footman opening the massive front door, and a moment later it closed.
Julia ripped the mob cap off her head and slammed it down on the chair, following it with the spectacles. “Oh! I cannot believe the nerve of that man! How could he come here? How did he dare! Did he think that we would welcome him? That he could just waltz in and charm us into forgetting that he is the man responsible for Selby’s—”
Phoebe let out a little inarticulate noise of distress, and Julia was instantly contrite, “I’m sorry, Phoebe. I should not have said that. It was upsetting enough for you to have to meet that man. I should not have added to your distress. It just makes me so angry.” She slammed one fist into the other hand. “Lord Stonehaven is utterly without feeling.”
Timidly Phoebe offered, “It was rather nice of him, I suppose, to call on us. No one else does. Most people just snub us. It would have been far easier for him not to come, and no one would have thought badly of him.”
“Nice!” Julia sneered. “There was nothing nice about it. Trust me. He merely came here to gloat. Or perhaps it suited him to appear to be magnanimous. No doubt he thought we would grovel in gratitude at his being so kind as to notice us. Well! He’d better think again!”
“I am sure he has—now,” Phoebe replied dryly.
Julia glanced at her sister-in-law in some surprise, then chuckled, much of her anger draining out. Julia let out an explosive gust of air and sank back into the chair, picking up the cap and spectacles and holding them in her lap. Now that it was all over and she was no longer consumed with rage, her legs were suddenly trembling, unable to hold her up any longer.
