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“Does it matter?” Leonie said.
“I wish I’d known before she bolted,” Sophy said. “It might be ammunition.”
“You can find out when you find her,” Leonie said. “And you will find her. You have to.”
“Of course Sophy will find her,” Marcelline said. “But my loves, what the devil am I to tell Clevedon? He’ll be frantic. You know how dear Lady Clara is to him.”
He’d lost a sister at an early age. When the Fairfax family had taken him in, Lady Clara had become a sister to him. They’d always been close. Though they’d had some turbulence a short time ago, Lady Clara had attended his wedding to Marcelline, and she seemed to have accepted them as family … as sisters, almost.
“Give him something to do,” Sophy said. “I told Longmore I’d dispose of Adderley. But I can’t be in two places at once. Ask Clevedon to find out quietly all he can about Adderley. I need as much information as I can get.”
“What can Clevedon find out that isn’t public knowledge, such as Adderley’s gaming habits and the state of his finances?” Leonie said.
“That scene on the terrace was not one reckless act of passion,” Sophy said. “I knew something was wrong. I’m positive it was planned. Adderley should have fought desperately for the woman he loved, but he let Longmore hit him, and he let Lady Clara protect him. Let Clevedon get to the bottom of it. He can find out as much over a casual game of cards as I can eavesdropping at parties and talking to demireps.”
She took up the hat she planned to wear, and sat down to attach a veil to it.
“Maybe I can look more deeply into Adderley’s financial affairs,” Leonie said.
“You and Marcelline will have enough to do, running the shop while I’m away,” Sophy said. “I’m sorry to leave everything to you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leonie said. “You have to find her. That’s the priority.”
“Lady Clara’s part of our family now, whether her mother likes it or not,” Marcelline said. She frowned at the hat Sophy was working on. “Speaking of families, love, we need to have a little talk before you go.”
Though he’d made good time crossing London after Fenwick came to summon him, it was nearly half past eight o’clock when Longmore drove his phaeton to the Gloucester Coffee House in Piccadilly. The sun was setting.
As happened every night at this time, an atmosphere of drama and excitement prevailed. The seven western mail coaches were about to depart, and everybody here was either part of the show or part of the audience.
Longmore knew that the commotion had been worse a few years ago. Then, all thirty-five Royal Mail coaches left London at the same time—eight o’clock—along with a number of stagecoaches. While having the western coaches leave half an hour later had reduced the congestion somewhat, it did not make this an ideal time and location for meeting “Cousin Gladys.” Finding a nondescript female wasn’t easy in a crowd, and at this time of night, there was always a large audience watching the mail coaches’ departure.
Then he noticed more than the usual flurry in one group of onlookers. Men were shoving one another out of the way, tripping over their own feet, and coming perilously close to falling under hooves and coach wheels.
In their midst stood the explanation.
Instead of her usual camouflage, Sophy this evening flaunted the latest in insane styles from Maison Noirot. The color of her dress was a muted lilac. Nothing else about it was muted. A wide collar spread out over her shoulders. Under that was another collar or cape sort of thing that reached to her elbows. Beneath it bulged sleeves the size of ale casks. Yards of black lace dripped from the collars of the dress and along the front. Green stuff meant to look like sprouting leaves sprang up from the crown of her white hat. Green bows and white lace lined the brim’s interior front, framing her face—or what you could see of it, past the alluringly draped black veil.
It was completely ridiculous.
It was oddly fetching.
“By gad,” he said. “By gad.”
She spotted him then, and walked unhurriedly toward his carriage, hips swaying more, he thought, than altogether necessary amongst this rowdy crew. An inn servant followed, carrying her portmanteaux.
“That’s her,” Fenwick said from his place in the back.
“So I see,” Longmore said. Before he could get down to help her, a herd of men surged toward the vehicle. One, who’d managed to shove ahead of the others into prime position, held out a hand to help her up, but Longmore leaned out and offered his. She grasped it, and his big, gloved hand nearly swallowed up her smaller one, encased in soft kid. There was the slightest pause before she sprang up into the carriage seat.
The men stood silent during this process, admiring the rear view. A sigh went up when she settled—with a great deal of tantalizing rustling—into the left section of the divided seat, and more or less disappeared under the hood.
Then two men tried to wrestle her bags from the inn servant, but he quickly heaved them up into the back, where Fenwick stowed them alongside Longmore’s.
Since a riot seemed imminent, and Longmore hadn’t time for one, he gave the horses leave to start. He had no choice but to fall in line behind the mail coaches.
“Not the ideal time to depart London,” he said. “All the western mail coaches take the same route at the same time through Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner. We’ll have to follow them until we reach the Brompton Road. The Portsmouth coach turns off there, as we’ll do.”
“I prefer leaving in the middle of a busy throng,” she said. “With so much going on, one set of travelers attracts less attention.”
“And how did you propose not to attract attention in that rig?” he said, nodding at her attire. “Is this supposed to be a disguise?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m your newest light o’ love.”
He wasn’t sure he’d heard aright. They were traveling on granite stones, following a long and noisy parade of vehicles. Scores of hooves clacked against the stones, chains tinkled, and wheels clattered and hummed.
He looked at her. “You’re my what?”
“I’m a demirep,” she said. “My sisters and I agreed that no one who knows you would think twice if they saw you with a female of dubious morals—and I’m much less likely to be recognized than you. Even the women who shop at Maison Noirot don’t take much notice of our faces.”
She was out of her head. No one with working vision could fail to recognize her deceptively angelic face—the very slight uptilt of her shockingly blue eyes—the pert nose—the invitingly full lips.
“We’re not quite as invisible as servants, but nearly so,” the lunatic went on. “Too, people tend not to recognize a person when she’s outside her usual sphere. I chose this dress especially, because it makes me look very expensive—and it’s more dashing than respectable Englishwomen wear. I’m a merry widow, you see.” She touched the alluring veil. “And no one would find it odd if the woman with you chose to veil her face in public.”
“You’ve appointed yourself my mistress,” he said, swallowing a smile. “That’s sporting of you.”
“It’s no sacrifice,” she said. “Most of my other guises are uncomfortable and not at all pretty. Even my usual clothes aren’t terribly exciting.”
“By whose standards, I wonder,” he said. “I recall a hat with some sort of windmill arrangement at the back and ribbons and flowers and feathers and who knew what else exploding from it.”
“One can be more dashing with hats,” she said. “But one can’t wear this sort of ensemble in London. It frightens the customers. Marcelline’s the only one who gets to wear her most daring creations, usually, because she’s the one who goes to Paris. And don’t forget, married women are allowed more leeway, here as well as there.”
He was well aware of this fact. Men were allowed more leeway with them, too.
She wasn’t a married woman, but she was a slightly French milliner. Practically the same thing.
“Even if I went to Paris, I couldn’t wear quite what she does,” she went on. “Unwed women there make even more of being virginal than they do here, you know. Simple frocks. Hair pulled back tight. I’m not sure what the men find appealing about that—but then …” She trailed off and gave a short laugh. “What do you care? What matters is, this way, no one will get over-curious about you or about me and what we’re doing. The added advantage is, people will be so busy staring at my clothes, they won’t pay close attention to my face.”
A virgin?
She could not be a virgin.
It was completely impossible. With that body and that walk and—and she was a milliner!
“Speaking of virgins,” he said, “let’s talk about my sister.”
According to the note she’d sent with Fenwick, Sophy had good reason to believe Clara was traveling the Portsmouth Road. Now she gave him the details. Some of Fenwick’s associates had spotted the cabriolet at Hyde Park Corner. After that, the vehicle had been noticed on the Knightsbridge Road, heading for Kensington. But according to a post boy, some time later, at an inn in Fulham, a woman who looked like a bulldog had asked for the best route to Richmond Park.
“She made it appear that she was traveling to her great-aunt’s house, then turned about and headed, apparently, southwest,” she said. “Does Richmond Park hold any significance for her?”
“None I know of,” he said. “If I’d had to guess, the only place I’d have thought of would be Bath. As a girl, Clara traveled with our paternal grandmother to Bath sometimes. The were very close. Grandmother Warford died some three years ago, and Clara took it hard. She’d always liked the old ladies, my grandmother’s friends.” He shook his head. “I can’t think of anybody she might take refuge with in Richmond Park.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know where she’s going,” Sophy said. “Something happened and she couldn’t bear whatever it was, and so she ran away. Blindly. She simply ran away.”
They’d reached the Hyde Park turnpike. Unlike the mail coaches, their vehicle had to stop, and he had to pay.
He took advantage of the pause to check on Fenwick. The boy sat in the rear seat, arms folded in the approved posture for tigers, looking up at the rapidly darkening sky.
Longmore looked up, too. Thick clouds swarmed overhead. He wasn’t concerned. The hood was up, and if they faced a heavy rain, he could put up the apron. The back seat hadn’t a hood, but Fenwick would be all right. Olney had packed an umbrella, and Reade—deeply unhappy about being left behind—had been made to donate one of his older cloaks.
Longmore drove on, through the turnpike. They passed the White Horse Inn and the Foot Barracks.
“I don’t understand what’s got into my sister,” he said. “She always used to be so sensible.”
“Sensible but ignorant,” Sophy said.
He heard a wobble in her voice. It was very slight, but he was acutely attuned to her voice, in all its changes. Sometimes, in a crowd, he knew her by her voice alone, even when she adopted one of her provincial accents.
He looked at her. She had her hand to her forehead. The veil was in place, making it impossible to read her expression, yet even he could tell she was upset.
“Now what?” he said sharply.
“She doesn’t know anything,” she said. “Even for a girl of one and twenty, she’s lamentably naïve.” She took in a deep breath and let it out.
He watched the rise and fall of her bosom. It was crass in the circumstances, he supposed, but he was a man, and it was nighttime and she was dressed like a fashionable impure.
They passed the Westbourne conduit and approached the Rural Castle Inn. The mail coaches’ horns sounded. They were sending the Portsmouth coach on its separate way, down the Brompton Road. Where he’d soon follow.
“She has three brothers,” he said. “She’s not that innocent. She knows what men are like. She should have known better than to encourage any of that lot of loose screws.”
“A woman might think she knows about men, but until it happens—until a man touches her, she doesn’t know.”
He remembered this woman’s reaction when he’d breathed down her neck.
Was it possible she didn’t know what he’d assumed she knew?
But that was ridiculous. She was no schoolroom miss. She’d grown up in Paris. She was a milliner. And she walked the way she walked.
He passed Sloane Street and turned into Brompton Road. No parade of mail coaches now. Only the lone one, not very far ahead.
“Maybe that’s it,” she said.
“What is?”
“Maybe she’s had even less experience than other girls her age. It’s—what?” She counted on her gloved fingers. “A month since she told my brother-in-law to go to the devil. Only think what it’s been like for her. Imagine spending most of your life assuming you’ll marry one person, and then realizing he or she isn’t what you want. I’m sure she felt liberated and exhilarated after rejecting the Duke of Clevedon—but afterward … She had to find herself. She had to do what other girls do at seventeen or eighteen, in their first Seasons.”
“Yer worship!” Fenwick’s high-pitched voice broke into a very difficult piece of cogitation. “I say, your highness!”
“Your lordship,” Sophy corrected. “I explained that to you. How hard is it to remember?”
“Yer lordship!” Fenwick said more forcefully.
“You better close up the front the best you can. East wind coming about.”
“What is he, a weathercock?” Longmore said.
That was when the rain started pelting down.
“Better hurry, yer majesty,” the boy said. “Weather’s going to turn ugly in a minute.”
Chapter Seven (#ulink_6ec37847-b903-5533-b118-c0942a98dfa1)
On Putney heath, to the south of the village, is an obelisk, erected by the corporation of London, with an inscription commemorating an experiment made, in 1776, by David Hartley, Esq., to prove the efficacy of a method of building houses fire-proof, which he had invented, and for which he obtained a grant from parliament of £2500.
—Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England, 1831
The weather did turn extremely ugly, very quickly. The wind picked up speed, driving the rain sideways at times, so that even the apron couldn’t fully shield them.
Still, any driver could manage a team in rain. This weather wouldn’t slow the Royal Mail, let alone stop it. Mail coach drivers continued through thunderstorms, floods, hailstorms, sleet, and blizzards. At present Longmore had only a bad rainstorm to contend with. No thunder and lightning to agitate the horses.
He drove on.
The storm drove on, too, with increasing intensity, the rain pouring straight down sometimes and at other times pelting sideways at them, depending on the gusting wind.
Though the waxing moon wouldn’t set until the small hours of morning, the storm swallowed its light. Rain poured off the hood, obscuring Longmore’s view of the horses as well as the road ahead. It dimmed what little light the carriage lamps threw on the road. The farther he drove, the darker grew the way ahead. He slowed and slowed again, and finally settled to a walk.
By the time they passed Queen’s Elm he was driving half blind and trusting mainly to the horses to keep to the road. Luckily this was a major coaching route, wide and smooth, which lowered the odds of his driving into a ditch.
Still, he needed to keep his mind on driving. Talking was out of the question. In any case, with the rain thumping on the roof and the wind whistling about their ears, they’d have to shout to make themselves heard.
They drove on through villages distinguishable mainly thanks to the lights in a few windows. Not many lights. It was bedtime in the countryside. The inns and taverns were awake, but not much else.
He glanced to his left. Only Sophy’s gloved hand, clenched on the curved arm of her seat, hinted at fear.
Though he quickly brought his gaze back to the road ahead, a part of his mind marveled at her. He couldn’t think of another woman who wouldn’t be shrieking or weeping right now, and begging him to stop.
He was starting to argue with himself about whether he ought to stop.
Though their creeping pace made it seem they’d been on the road for hours, he knew they hadn’t gone far. They hadn’t yet crossed the Putney Bridge, and that was only four miles from Hyde Park Corner.
Through the lashing rain he made out flickering lights ahead. Gradually, he began to discern the rough outlines of houses—or what seemed to be houses. Finally they reached the quaint old double tollhouse, with its roof spanning the road. The roof diverted some of the downpour while they waited for the gatekeeper to collect his eighteen pence and open the gate. Though he wasn’t inclined to prolong the encounter, he did answer Longmore’s question.
Yes, he remembered the cabriolet. An exceptionally fine vehicle and a prodigy of a horse. Two women tucked under the hood. Couldn’t properly make out their faces. One had asked for directions to Richmond Park.
When pressed for more detail, the gatekeeper said, “I told them to keep on this road up to the crossroads, then watch for the obelisk at the corner of Putney Heath, and go that way, rightish. I told them what to look for. It’s not hard to keep to the main road, but for some reason, there’s them that go astray there, and end up in Wimbledon.” He hurried back into the shelter of his tollhouse.
“Richmond Park,” Longmore said. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the wind and drumming rain. “What the devil’s there?”
“I read that Richmond Park was beautiful,” Sophy said.
