Beguiling the Beauty

CHAPTER 14

Christian did not give many dinners. And when he did, the dowager duchess usually oversaw the necessary arrangements. But for this particular dinner, he presided over every detail.

Several private dining rooms had been rejected as either too stuffy or too floridly ornate. And when he did finally settle on one, he had the hotel change the staid still life painting on the wall for a seascape reminiscent of the one in the Victoria suite. Instead of flowers, for the centerpiece he commissioned an ice sculpture of frolicking dolphins. He also decreed that there should be no harsh electrical lights, but only candle flame—and not from tallows, either: nothing but the best beeswax tapers for her.

The proposed menu he’d sent back with the direction that it should consist of a clear consommé, a sole poached in broth, a braised duckling, a rack of lamb broiled with herbs, a filet of venison—and nothing else. Which had quite offended the chef, who apparently believed a romantic dinner should be conducted like a state banquet.

L’amour, he declared, wagging his finger at Lexington, must be fortified by plenty of food and plenty of flesh. Milord was already too thin himself. His night with milady might as well be two skeletons rattling in a medical laboratory!

Lexington did not yield—he had no intention of feeding his lady comatose. Finally, the Frenchman gave up on the main courses. But he would not limit himself on the desserts—none of the fresh fruit served à nature nonsense. There would be a charlotte russe, a crème renversée, a vanilla soufflé, a chocolate mousse, a pear tart, and a plum cake.

“We will still be eating at dawn,” said Lexington, not without admiration for the man’s dedication to his ideals.

The Frenchman kissed his fingertips. “Et après, you will be all the better for l’amour, milord.”

Christian arrived half an hour early to the dinner. The table was being set as he walked into the room, crystal finger bowls, silver saltcellars, footed bowls holding grapes, figs, and cherries laid down at careful distances upon the blue damask cloth.

This wait was nothing at all of the pleasurable anticipation on the Rhodesia. He was normally disciplined—a gentleman did not fidget—but several times he had to stop his fingers from tapping on the windowsill. He wanted a stiff drink and a cigarette. He wanted different curtains for the room. He wanted the painting changed again.

If she would only come, all would be well.

But what if she didn’t?

The tapers were lit; the glasses sparkled in the lambent light. The ice sculpture was brought in, the dolphins leaping gracefully out of frozen waves. A sixty-year-old bottle of champagne was reverently laid on the sideboard, ready to be uncorked the moment she swept into sight.

She should already have presented herself. Etiquette dictated that one arrived to dinner at least a quarter hour before the stated time, out of respect for the delicate nature of soufflés, if nothing else.

Were European customs different? He ought to know—he’d spent time on the Continent. But he couldn’t think. He was in a state of mental blankness, one rung above outright panic—but only one rung.

At eight o’clock, a steward of the hotel discreetly inquired whether His Grace wished to begin serving dinner.

“Another quarter hour,” he said.

When another quarter hour had passed, he gave the same instructions.

At half past eight, no one asked him anything. The hotel staff, who had hovered about for the past hour, now made themselves scarce. A bottle of whisky appeared from nowhere. As did cigarettes, matches, and a carved ivory ashtray.

She’d given her word. Was her word of so little worth to her? And if it had been her intention to break her word from the beginning, why not send him a letter and let him know?

Could something unforeseen have befallen her? What if she were lying somewhere ill and uncared for? Again, she could have written, and he’d have been at her side in a heartbeat.

But he presupposed her ability and freedom to communicate. What if she were carefully watched, once she went back to wherever it was she must go?

He gave the possibility several minutes of anguished consideration before it occurred to him how ridiculously melodramatic it was. A woman under such medieval supervision would never have been allowed to cross the Atlantic on her own, let alone conduct an affair in full view of the passengers.

The explanation for her absence had been staring him in the face all the while, but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it: The affair meant nothing to her. He’d been the only one bewitched body and soul. For her, he’d been but a temporary source of entertainment, a way to pass the otherwise tedious hours in the middle of an ocean.

He’d been the one to press for a continuation of their affair beyond the voyage. He’d been the one to offer his heart, his hand, his every last secret. She never even gave her real name.

And, of course, never showed her face.

No, he could not doubt her. If he doubted her, he might as well doubt his ability to judge anything at all. It had to be as he’d feared, that she’d heard about Mrs. Easterbrook. God, what if she’d seen them driving together the day before? The sight of his eyes upon Mrs. Easterbrook would have refuted everything he’d told her about having put this obsession behind him.

And even if she had seen and heard nothing, did he still deserve her, he who came to the dinner with Mrs. Easterbrook’s words—You don’t know my character, sir. The only thing you know is my face—still echoing in his ears?

He’d dreamed of Mrs. Easterbrook again last night, an even more disturbingly domestic tableau of the two of them seated before a roaring fire, he writing letters, she reading a thickish book that looked as if it had come from his library. From time to time, his dream-self would look up from his task and gaze upon her. Except, instead of the hot, unhappy surges of possessiveness that had lately plagued him, he’d felt only a simple contentment at seeing her nearby.

He’d yet to dream of the baroness.

Still he compulsively watched the carriages coming to a stop before the hotel. London’s traffic was notorious at certain times of the day. A logjam, once formed, took a good, long while to clear. Perhaps she was caught in one. Perhaps she was boiling in impatience even as he sank slowly into despair. Perhaps—

Suddenly he became aware that he was no longer alone in the room. He spun around, hopes and fears incoherent in his chest.

But it was not her. It was only a uniformed porter of the hotel.

“Your Grace, a delivery for you.”

For the next three seconds, he still dared to let himself hope. Perhaps she was making a grand entrance. Perhaps she would be carried in like Cleopatra, hidden in a roll of fine carpet. Perhaps—

Three porters, grunting, pulled in a handcart.

A crevasse opened before him and in fell his heart. No need to remove the tarpaulin wrapping. He recognized the stone slab by its size and weight.

She had returned his present. She would have nothing more to do with him.

It was another hour before the duke left the hotel.

This time, Venetia was not waiting in a smelly hansom cab, but in a clean, elegant brougham, with tufted velvet seats, foot braziers, and tulip blossoms in bud vases mounted on brackets between the windows.

The baroness had leased the carriage. She even had her veiled hat, sitting on the seat beside her.

You still can, whispered a reckless voice inside her, as it had been whispering for the past three hours. Go on, intercept him. Just for tonight.

But this time he would not let her leave again. And he would not let the veil remain in place. There was no such thing as just for tonight.

Or rather, there was no such thing as tomorrow: He would throw her out the moment he saw her face and never speak to her again.

She could only watch as her lover, stone-faced, climbed into his carriage and drove away.

Throughout the night, Christian swung from anger to despair and back again. In the morning, however, he summoned his carriage and returned to the hotel.

Perhaps he had been foolish. Most likely he had been beyond stupid. But he had been forthright and honorable, and he deserved better courtesy than this.

An inquiry at the hotel quickly yielded that the stone slab had arrived by courier three days before. A typewritten note had come by post the previous morning, with instructions for its delivery that evening by quarter to eight. The general manager offered his profuse apologies—there had been a change of personnel during the day and the staff of the next shift had forgotten about the stone slab until quarter to nine.

Christian asked to see the original envelope for the note. That, alas, had been discarded. But the clerk who had opened the envelope recalled very clearly that the postmark had been from the city of London—and had been for the same day.

How likely was it that she’d come to London herself just to give him the brush-off? Not very. Still, he left instructions with a private investigator to find out whether any major hotel in London hosted a female guest of Germanic origin, between twenty-seven and thirty-five years of age, traveling alone.

He himself took the train to Southampton to speak to the proprietors of Donaldson & Sons Special Couriers. They could not tell him much: The object they’d delivered to the Savoy in London had been brought in by shipping agents from the harbor. The shipping agents’ records were slightly more helpful, showing that the tablet had been unloaded from the Campania, a ship of the Cunard Line, which had put in at Southampton the day after the Rhodesia.

Christian took himself to the Cunard Line’s Southampton offices and asked to see the passenger list for the Campania on that particular sailing. He did not recognize any names on the list, though he did learn that the Campania had set out from New York two days before the Rhodesia, but had taken nine days to cross the Atlantic due to technical problems at sea.

As he was already in Southampton, he next visited the Great Northern Line’s offices and asked to see the passenger list for the Rhodesia. The baroness would have traveled with a maid. It should not be impossible to find out the identity of said maid.

Quite a few men disembarked at Queenstown, and not many women. Of those, most shared the men’s names—wives, sisters, and daughters. And of the four who were unrelated to any men, besides the baroness herself, two were Catholic sisters and one a young girl entrusted to the sisters to escort back to her family in the old country.

Puzzled, Christian asked whether a mistake could have been made. He was advised to wait overnight: The Rhodesia, returning from Hamburg, was expected in port the next morning.

His night was restless, but his efforts did not go unrewarded. The next morning he spoke to the purser of the Rhodesia himself and learned that the Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg had not purchased tickets for any domestics. Instead, while aboard the Rhodesia, she had engaged the service of one of the ship’s stewardesses as a temporary personal maid, a girl of French origins by name of Yvette Arnaud, who of course would not have any objections to answering a few questions from His Grace the Duke of Lexington.

The stewardess appeared half an hour later, tidy and competent-looking, in the private office Lexington had been shown into. He offered her a seat and slid a guinea across the desk to her. She pocketed the coin discreetly and murmured a thank-you.

“How were you chosen by the baroness and in what capacity did you serve her?” he asked in French.

“Before the Rhodesia left New York City, the chambers steward said that a lady guest traveling by herself wanted the services of a maid. Several of us volunteered—there could be good tips. The steward took down our qualifications and submitted them to the baroness.

“I was a dressmaker’s apprentice at one time and I said that I knew how to care for costly fabrics. But I didn’t think I’d be chosen. I’d never worked as a lady’s maid, and there were those among us who had and could furnish letters of character from former employers in London and Manchester.”

She had been chosen because her qualifications were perfectly adequate under the circumstances—a lady who did not show her face to anyone had no need of a maid with expert coiffing skills.

But he asked the question all the same—it never hurt to hear how another mind analyzed the same data. “Why were you selected in the end?”

The girl hesitated for a few seconds. “Because I’m not English, I think.”

This answer Lexington had not expected. His heart stopped. “How so?”

“Her name is German, she spoke to me in French, but her things were English.”

“What things?”

“Her trunks were made by a London trunkmaker—I saw the lettering on the insides of the lids. Her boots came from a London cordwainer. And her hats—the ones that didn’t have a veil on—came from a Madame Louise’s on Regent Street. I know Regent Street is in London because my old employer the dressmaker hoped to one day have her own shop there.”

Many English goods were acknowledged to be superior in construction and quality. It was not out of the question for a foreigner to have English-made items. But to have a wardrobe composed so overwhelmingly of English things? Wouldn’t a cosmopolitan woman of the Continent spread her purchases among Paris, Vienna, and Berlin?

“What else makes you think she is English?”

“She speaks French like you, sir, with an English accent.”

This was far more compelling evidence. Accents were notoriously difficult to disguise. If a native French speaker identified someone as speaking with an English accent, there wasn’t much he could do but to believe her.

But if the baroness were English, her disappearing act became even more incomprehensible. He had offered marriage, for God’s sake. A foreigner might not grasp the significance of it, but surely an Englishwoman understood the prestige and wealth he brought to the bargain. Even if he’d been only a quick diversion to her before then, the lure of becoming the next Duchess of Lexington should have induced her to stay.

“What else can you tell me about her?”

“She tips well—before she disembarked she gave me a hairpin with opal and seed pearls. And she has a stunning wardrobe, the most beautiful clothes I’ve ever seen—not as beautiful as herself, of course, but still—”

“You thought her beautiful?”

“Well, yes, she is by far the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I told the other stewardesses that no wonder she kept herself covered—if she lifted her veil, there would be riots on the Rhodesia.”

How many women in the world were beautiful enough to cause riots? Not very many. And Lexington knew of only one.

“Did they believe you?”

“No, they thought I exaggerated wildly, since no one else got a look at her face. But you, sir, you know how magnificent she was. You know I do not exaggerate.”

Did he? His mind, with the revulsion of a spinster hurrying past a house of ill repute, refused to contemplate Yvette Arnaud’s revelations—refused to synthesize the disparate pieces of information, as a man of science ought, into one coherent explanation.

He placed one more guinea on the desk and left without another word.

The urgency of the crisis and the thrill of the duke’s nearness—no matter how miserable he’d made her feel at the same time—had blunted the severity of the various physical ills plaguing Venetia. Her nausea became less intense, her fatigue altogether replaced by heart-pounding dread and excitement.

But now, with the crisis averted, Venetia’s body decided to remind her that it had not recovered.

Far from it.

In the morning she had to rush to the water closet twice, first when her breakfast was carried in, again when Helena, out of consideration, brought her a cup of tea with cream and sugar already added.

The first time she was able to conceal it from everyone except her maid, who’d been with her ten years and was exceedingly discreet and trustworthy. The second time, however, she was not so lucky. Helena was already instructing a footman to go fetch the doctor when Venetia overruled her.

Helena reluctantly agreed to wait another day to see whether a physician was truly needed. But they did not quite make it to the next day.

In the middle of the afternoon, upon finishing a batch of invitations, Venetia rose from her desk. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the Turkish carpet, with her maid frantically waving a jar of smelling salts before her.

And the doctor, alas, was already on her way.

Christian dismissed the brougham that was waiting for him at Waterloo Station when he reached London. He didn’t want to go back to his town house. He shouldn’t have detrained from his private rail coach at all. Should have arranged for it to go all the way to Edinburgh, to put all of Britain between himself and the truth that was beginning to claw at him.

So he crossed the Thames and walked, not knowing where he was headed and not caring.

English. Beautiful.

Was it possible to un-hear those words? Damn the scientific method and its demand that no stone be left unturned. Damn his indignant self-righteousness that wouldn’t rest until he’d had his answers.

He tried to scoff at himself: He was making unsupported leaps of logic. English and beautiful did not equate Mrs. Easterbrook. Besides, Mrs. Easterbrook had no purpose in life other than being beautiful. She wouldn’t cover her face any more than the queen would abdicate her throne.

At some point he became aware of his hunger and walked into a tea shop, only to stop in his tracks. One entire wall of the tea shop, which catered largely to ladies, was covered with framed pictures of Society beauties.

Mrs. Easterbrook among them.

In photography, the animation and sheer dominance of her beauty was largely lost. She was but another pretty face in a sea of pretty faces, and he might not have even noticed her upon first glance had it not been for the parasol she held over her shoulder.

Dark concentric octagons upon white lace.

Miss Redmayne, a physician who had trained in Paris, sat down by Venetia’s bed. Millie and Helena hovered on the other side.

“Miss Fitzhugh tells me you lost consciousness approximately an hour ago. And that you’ve been suffering abdominal ills for several days.”

“That is correct.”

Miss Redmayne felt Venetia’s forehead and wrist. “No fever. Your pulse is fine, if a bit listless. Anything that might have precipitated the loss of consciousness?”

“I can’t think of anything. I probably never recovered from the effects of the turbot.”

“Did you have the turbot also, Miss Fitzhugh?”

“I did.”

“Did it cause you any discomforts?”

“No, I can’t say it did.”

Miss Redmayne addressed herself to Millie and Helena. “Lady Fitzhugh, Miss Fitzhugh, would you give us some privacy? I might have to perform a more thorough examination.”

“Of course,” said Millie, sounding a little puzzled.

When she and Helena had vacated the room, Miss Redmayne indicated the bedcover. “May I?”

Without waiting for an answer, she peeled it back and pressed gently upon Venetia’s abdomen.

“Hmm,” she said. “Mrs. Easterbrook, when was the first day of your last menses?”

The question Venetia had been dreading. She bit her lower lip and named a date almost five weeks ago.

Miss Redmayne looked thoughtful.

“But that can’t be the case,” Venetia pleaded. “I can’t conceive.”

“The fault might very well lie with your late spouses, rather than yourself, Mrs. Easterbrook. Now if I may be so blunt, have you taken a lover since your last monthly?”

Venetia swallowed. “Yes.”

“Then, as much as the diagnosis might be unwelcome for you, I’m afraid you are with child.”

She’d known it, hadn’t she, since the first instance of morning sickness? She’d been around other married women enough to have heard of that particular symptom. But as long as she managed to stay away from an official confirmation of her condition, she could continue to ignore what her body was trying to tell her.

No more.

“Are you certain, Miss Redmayne, that I don’t have a tumor or something of the sort?”

“I’m quite sure,” said Miss Redmayne. She was very sympathetic, but the authority of her tone was unmistakable.

Venetia gripped the sheets between her fingers. “How long do I have before my condition becomes visible?”

“Some women manage to conceal their condition far into the gestation with the help of special corsets and such, which we do not recommend for the harm it does to both mother and child.”

A lady withdrew from Society when her pregnancy could no longer be concealed. Venetia had indeed heard of rumors of women keeping a growing belly secret until just weeks before confinement.

“But I assume that is not what you are asking,” continued Miss Redmayne. “Measured from the first day of your last menses, you are considered to be in the second month of gestation. In general, you will have until the fifth or the six month before the condition becomes obvious.”

At least she still had some time. “Thank you, Miss Redmayne. May I rely upon your discretion in this matter?”

Miss Redmayne inclined her head. “You may be assured of it, Mrs. Easterbrook.”

Christian remembered a time when the British Museum of Natural History shut its doors at four o’clock every afternoon. Would that it still did. For it was past five when he found himself before its terra-cotta facade. Had the museum already closed, he’d have come to his senses and taken flight with the speed of an antelope fleeing a lion. But the museum remained open to visitors and his feet moved of their own will past the bones of the blue whale into the east wing.

Several times he almost turned around. One time he even came to a complete standstill, much to the annoyance of a professorial type whose path he blocked. But he could not halt the terrible momentum that eventually pushed him to move again, past the mammals, into the Reptilia gallery.

Without quite being able to articulate why, he headed directly for the Cetiosaurus, before which he and Mrs. Easterbrook had exchanged words—words flippant on her part and hostile on his.

When he hadn’t stared at her face, he’d stared at the reticule she’d set down at the edge of the display case, because her fingers had idly played with its drawstring. The reticule itself had been pale gray brocade, embroidered with doves holding olive branches.

And where it had rested, there was a plaque.

The fossils of the Cetiosaurus courtesy of Miss Fitzhugh of Hampton House, Oxfordshire, who unearthed the skeleton in Lyme Regis, Devon, 1883.