His At Night

Chapter Six

Lady Avery was a Gossip.

Elissande was not entirely unfamiliar with the idea of a gossip: Mrs. Webster in the village had been one, carrying on about the butcher’s wife or the vicar’s new gardener. But Lady Avery regarded herself quite above such provincial rumormongers as Mrs. Webster: She was a woman of the world with entrée to the very best Society.

With her arrival, Lord Frederick promptly disappeared. To Elissande’s mounting despair.

To be sure, she had begun to despair even before Lady Avery’s unannounced arrival: Lord Frederick was in no rush to appropriate her hand, while her time, already as limited as Lord Vere’s intelligence, shrank second by rapid second.

Lady Avery did not help matters by immediately setting out to grill Elissande on the provenance of the Douglases, and refusing to believe that Elissande in truth knew nothing of her uncle’s origins and only a little more of her aunt’s.

“The West Cheshire Douglases?” Lady Avery asked. “Surely you must be related to the West Cheshire Douglases.”

Was Lady Avery a student of Lord Vere’s particular school of genealogical exploration?

“No, ma’am. I’ve never heard of them.”

Lady Avery harrumphed. “Most irregular. Who are your family then? The Edgertons of Derbyshire?”

Well, at least this she did know. “The Edgertons of Cumberland, ma’am.”

Lady Avery’s brows knitted. “The Edgertons of Cumberland. The Edgertons of Cumberland,” she mumbled. Then, triumphantly, she cried, “You are the late Sir Cecil Edgerton’s granddaughter, aren’t you? By his youngest son?”

Elissande stared at her in shock. She’d believed Lady Avery’s expertise in gossip to be about as valid as Lord Vere’s knowledge of animal husbandry. “Sir Cecil was my grandfather, yes.”

“Ah, I thought so,” said Lady Avery, satisfied. “Quite the scandal when your father ran off with your mother. And such an unhappy end, both of them dead within three years.”

Lady Kingsley, Miss Kingsley, and Miss Beauchamp entered the drawing room. Elissande was suddenly as alarmed as Lord Frederick must have been. Her parents’ story had not only been tragic, but also not fit for polite company, as her uncle had repeatedly impressed upon her. What if Lady Avery decided to disclose the less savory details to everyone present?

“Lord Vere says you frightened his brother away, Lady Avery,” Miss Kingsley called out cheerfully.

“Nonsense. I’ve already extracted everything out of Lord Frederick during the Season. He has nothing to fear from me at the present.”

Miss Beauchamp sat down next to Lady Avery. “Oh, do tell, dear lady. What did you extract from Lord Frederick?”

“Well…” Lady Avery drew out that syllable for a good three seconds, obviously relishing her role as the dispenser of juicy tidbits. “He did see her in June, when she was in town to marry off that American heiress, Miss Van der Waals. And you would not believe this, but they have also met in Paris, in Nice, and in New York.”

Everyone looked shocked, including, Elissande imagined, herself. Who was this “she”?

“They have?” Lady Kingsley exclaimed. “What does Lord Tremaine think of it?”

“Well, apparently he approves. The two men have dined together.”

Lady Kingsley shook her head. “My goodness, will wonders never cease?”

“No indeed. I asked Lord Frederick if she looked well and he asked me when had she ever not looked well.”

“Oh, my!” Miss Beauchamp squealed.

Please let it not be. “Does Lord Frederick have an understanding with someone?” Elissande ventured to ask.

“My apologies, I forgot you do not know, Miss Edgerton. Lord Frederick did have an understanding with the Marchioness of Tremaine. And in the spring of ’ninety-three, she was prepared to divorce her husband for him. It was going to be quite the scandal, but the divorce never took place. She reconciled with her husband and withdrew her petition.”

“Poor Lord Frederick.” Miss Kingsley sighed.

“No, lucky Lord Frederick,” Lady Avery corrected her. “Now he can marry a nice young lady like Miss Edgerton here, instead of someone who would forever be referred to as ‘that divorced woman.’ Don’t you agree, Miss Edgerton?”

“I don’t think Lord Frederick has any plans to marry me,” Elissande answered with, alas, no false modesty whatsoever. “But I do, on the whole, believe that it is more…convenient not to have a divorce in one’s spouse’s past.”

“Excellent,” said Lady Avery. “My dear Miss Edgerton, you understand the essence of the issue. One must not be a romantic in this life. Look at the cynics; they were all once romantics.”

“Is—is Lord Frederick now a cynic?”

“No, bless him, he is still a romantic, would you believe it. I suppose not every disappointed romantic turns into a cynic.”

Such a good man, Lord Frederick. If only Elissande could entice him to ask for her hand, she’d love him so much better than that faithless Lady Tremaine.

In fact, she would be the best wife in the history of matrimony.

Vere needed to be at the house. But when Freddie came to him, wanting some company, he could not refuse. They walked for miles in the country, rowed on one of the meres that dotted the very northern tip of Shropshire, and took their luncheon at the village inn.

“I’m going back,” Vere said at the end of the luncheon, rising from the table and yawning. He must know what instructions Holbrook had sent and coordinate with Lady Kingsley on getting Nye into and out of the house. “I need a nap. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Nightmares?” Freddie rose too and fell in step beside Vere.

“No, I don’t get them so often anymore.” In his last year at Eton, Freddie had to come into Vere’s room almost every night to shake him awake. “Anyway, you stay here if you’d like. I’ll hire the inn’s carriage to take me back.”

“I’ll come with you,” Freddie said quietly.

Vere experienced another stab of guilt. Freddie no doubt wished to stay away for the rest of the day—Lady Tremaine was ancient history, yet Lady Avery still pounced upon him as if he’d freshly waltzed with Scandal. But Freddie had also made it a point always to accompany Vere whenever they were out somewhere unfamiliar.

Vere briefly clasped his hand on Freddie’s shoulder. “Come along then.”

Back at the house, Vere found Lady Kingsley waiting impatiently for him. Nye would be arriving shortly before the start of dinner. They agreed that Vere would let him in through the doors that led from the library to a terrace on the east side of the house—the side away from the kitchen, and therefore less likely to be seen by the servants.

“And what do we do after I must relinquish Miss Edgerton at night, if Nye is still not finished?” asked Lady Kingsley.

“I’ll think of something.”

“Make sure it’s not something you’ll regret,” said Lady Kingsley.

Twenty-four hours had yet to pass since he first laid eyes on Miss Edgerton. Little wonder then the memory of his infatuation was fresh in Lady Kingsley’s mind. Yet it already seemed impossibly distant to Vere, a time of long-ago innocence.

“I’ll be mindful,” he said coolly.

Knowing Miss Edgerton’s aim, as soon as he concluded his tête-à-tête with Lady Kingsley, he looked for his brother. He found Freddie—and Miss Edgerton—in the otherwise empty dining room, Freddie gazing into his No. 4 Kodak camera, Miss Edgerton, in a most becoming day dress of pale apricot, gazing adoringly at Freddie.

The ardor in her eyes cooled considerably as she noted Vere’s presence. “Lord Vere.”

Vere ignored the caustic sensation in his heart. “Miss Edgerton. Freddie.”

Freddie pulled up the brass button on top of the box camera to cock the shutter. “Hullo, Penny. How was your nap? It’s only been”—he glanced at the clock—“three quarters of an hour.”

“My nap was superb. What are you doing?”

“Taking some photographs of this painting. Miss Edgerton was kind enough to grant me permission.”

“Be churlish for Miss Edgerton to refuse you, wouldn’t it?” Vere smiled at her.

She smiled back at him, her expression as sunny as his. “It most certainly would be. Besides, I’ve never seen a camera before.”

“I’ve seen tons of them. And they all do exactly the same thing,” he said dismissively. “By the way, Miss Edgerton, Miss Kingsley said the ladies would like you to join them for a turn in the garden.”

“Oh,” she said. “Are you sure, Lord Vere?”

“Of course. I saw her not three minutes ago in the rose parlor.”

He had seen Miss Kingsley less than three minutes ago in the rose parlor. Miss Kingsley, however, had been engaged in a game of backgammon with Conrad, her admirer—and had no intention of going anywhere. But by the time Miss Edgerton realized this, it would be too late; Vere would have whisked Freddie someplace safe—safer, at least—from her calculating grasp.

“And she was quite keen on your company,” Vere added.

“I suppose I’d best go see her then,” said Miss Edgerton reluctantly. “Thank you, Lord Vere. Excuse me, Lord Frederick.”

Vere watched her. At the door she looked back. But Freddie was already busy with his next snapshot. Instead her eyes met Vere’s. He made sure his gaze shifted obviously to her breasts. She left quickly after that.

He turned his attention back to Freddie. “Fancy a game of snooker, old chap?”

Of course Lord Vere was wrong. Of course.

Miss Kingsley and Mr. Conrad, both chortling, told Elissande not to worry. Perhaps it was someone else who had asked Lord Vere to convey a message, and Lord Vere, with his slightly inaccurate memory—a most charitable turn of phrase—had made mistakes concerning both the originator and the recipient of the message.

Miss Kingsley even kindly rose and offered to take a turn in the garden with Elissande, if she was still in the mood for it. Elissande, who had never been in the mood for it, thanked Miss Kingsley profusely and begged that she and Mr. Conrad forgive her interruption and continue to enjoy their game.

By the time Elissande returned to the dining room, Lord Frederick was gone. She did locate him in the billiard room fifteen minutes later, but the room was full of men—everyone except Mr. Conrad, it seemed.

“Miss Edgerton, would you like to join the game?” Lord Vere asked cheerfully.

The other gentlemen chuckled softly. Even without any experience to guide her in the matter, Elissande understood that she could not possibly accept the invitation. It would give Lord Frederick quite the wrong impression of her character—an accurate one, that was, and that would not do.

“Thank you, sir,” she said with what she hoped was a lighthearted tone. “But no, thank you. I was only passing through.”

She still had dinner, during which she would have Lord Frederick next to her.

Alas, the next blow came precisely then. Lady Kingsley had prepared the seating chart the evening before, since Elissande had never dealt with rules of precedence. Elissande fully expected the seating to remain the same. To her dismay, however, Lady Kingsley produced a new seating chart for the evening, a chart that placed Lord Frederick three seats away from Elissande.

She hardly ate. The squeeze in her throat prevented any kind of meaningful swallowing—a whole day gone by, and she’d made no progress at all. Her uncle’s return, edging closer by the hour, was a chill between her shoulder blades, a chill no coat or fire could dispel.

The only silver lining was that Lord Vere had also been seated away from her. A very fortunate thing for him. If she caught him staring at her bosom one more time, she might just brain him with the epergne.

After dinner, the company played charades until quarter to ten. When her uncle was at home, this was usually the time when Elissande would gratefully bid him a good night and escape to the sanctuary of her own room. Last night, the ladies, after the ordeal of the rats, had retired at about the same time. Lord Vere, however, was determined to change things.

“The night is yet young,” he said. “Let us play something else.”

Miss Kingsley immediately took up his cause. “Oh, yes, do let us. May we, Auntie dearest?”

Lady Kingsley appeared hesitant.

“Oh come, Lady Kingsley,” wheedled Lord Vere. “There is no rule written in stone dictating that ladies must be in bed when the clock strikes ten.”

Elissande ground her teeth. She seemed to do that whenever Lord Vere made his presence known.

“Quite so. I say we play something else.” Miss Beauchamp joined the campaign.

“Well, the decision is not up to me,” said Lady Kingsley. “We are here at Miss Edgerton’s gracious hospitality.”

A chorus of pleas came at Elissande. There was not much she could say, other than, “Of course we can play something else. But what shall we play?”

“How about Pass the Parcel?” asked Miss Melbourne.

“We don’t have a parcel prepared,” said Miss Duvall. “I say La Vache Qui Tache.”

“La Vache Qui Tache makes my head hurt,” complained Lord Vere. “I can never remember who has how many spots. Something simpler, please.”

“Sardines,” Mr. Kingsley suggested.

“No, Richard,” said his aunt. “Absolutely not. No one is to run about the house disturbing Mrs. Douglas.”

“I know. Let’s play Squeak Piggy Squeak,” said Miss Kingsley.

Mr. Conrad quickly seconded the idea, followed by Lord Vere. The rest of the guests also voiced their consent.

“Well,” said Lady Kingsley, “it’s not something I truly approve of, but I suppose with both myself and Lady Avery present, you can’t get into too much trouble.”

The young ladies clapped to be allowed to stay up late. The gentlemen rearranged chairs. Elissande, who was unfamiliar with parlor games in general, asked Miss Beauchamp, “I’m sorry, but how does one play Squeak Piggy Squeak?”

“Oh, it’s quite simple,” said Miss Beauchamp. “We sit in a circle. One person is blindfolded and placed in the center of the circle. He is the farmer, and the rest of us are pigs. Someone spins the farmer three times around, then the farmer has to make his way to a pig and sit on the pig’s lap. The pig squeaks and the farmer guesses the identity of the pig. If he succeeds, the pig becomes the farmer. If not, the farmer goes on for another turn.”

“I see,” said Elissande. No wonder Lady Kingsley required two chaperones. For so many unmarried young men and women to be taking turns sitting on one another’s laps was, if not outright unseemly, at least a great deal less than decorous.

Mr. Wessex volunteered to be the first farmer. Mr. Kingsley blindfolded him and turned him about not three times but at least six. Mr. Wessex, who’d had a good few glasses of wine at dinner, wobbled dangerously. He stumbled toward Miss Kingsley. Miss Kingsley squealed and put out her arms to stop him from crashing directly into her person.

Mr. Wessex deliberately leaned his weight into her hands. Miss Kingsley squealed again. The other young ladies giggled. Mr. Wessex, suddenly not quite as unsteady, turned and sat down on Miss Kingsley’s lap.

“All right, my dear piggy, oink for me.”

Everyone laughed, except Elissande. It was one thing to hear the game described, quite another to see it in action. The extent of the contact between Miss Kingsley and Mr. Wessex dumbfounded her. The suddenly risqué atmosphere in the drawing room made her both unhappy and strangely curious.

Miss Kingsley squealed one more time.

“Hmm, yes, I know this little piggy. But a part of me wants to be the farmer for a bit longer yet.” Mr. Wessex crossed his legs and mused. “Dilemma, dilemma.”

Miss Kingsley laughed silently into her hands. Mr. Conrad forcefully opined that others deserved a turn to be the farmer. Mr. Wessex gave in to the pressure and identified Miss Kingsley, who, as the new farmer, promptly fell into Mr. Conrad’s lap and there stayed what seemed endless minutes, pondering her choices.

Good gracious, it was indecent.

And Lady Kingsley and Lady Avery allowed it? They did. The two of them sat a little behind Elissande, away from the game circle, Lady Avery talking animatedly, as she always did.

“…years ago, in a game of Sardines, she was hiding and he found her first and squeezed into the cupboard with her. They must have either thought her hiding place impenetrable or entirely forgot themselves. You should have seen her state of undress—and his!—when I went into the cupboard myself. So of course they had to marry.” Lady Avery sighed. “I do love a good game of Sardines.”

Elissande nearly screamed when somebody suddenly sat down on her lap. It was Miss Beauchamp, who tittered as if she’d been given an unhealthy dose of laughing gas.

“I can already tell it’s not a gentleman,” she said between bursts of mirth.

“How do you know?” asked Lord Vere, in all sincerity.

Behind Miss Beauchamp’s head, Elissande rolled her eyes.

“Silly, sir. Of course I know. My back is cushioned magnificently. I’m quite certain I don’t even need this piggy to make a noise to identify her. Such a marvelous bosom could only belong to our hostess. Miss Edgerton it is. Am I right?”

Elissande had to answer. “Yes, you are right, Miss Beauchamp.”

Miss Beauchamp leaped off Elissande’s lap and ripped off her blindfold. “I knew it.”

Now the blindfold went over Elissande’s eyes. She was spun, or so it felt, four and a half times to the left and then two and a half times to the right. So she should be facing more or less the same direction as she had when she first stood up from her chair.

Directly across from her was Lord Vere. She most certainly did not want to head that way. She turned tentatively to her right. A little more. Yet again a little more, perhaps? Would that be where Lord Frederick was?

What good sitting on his lap would do, she had no idea. But she’d rather land in his lap, if she must land in somebody’s lap.

Gingerly she set out in her chosen direction, her hands stretched out before her. But after a few steps, she stopped. The fireplace had crackled. The sound came from directly behind her, which meant that she was not headed for Lord Frederick.

She made a quarter turn to her left. In front of her someone whistled and to her right a woman chuckled. Did that sound like Miss Kingsley? If she were headed toward Lord Frederick, shouldn’t Miss Kingsley be more to her left than her right?

She scooted back a step or two. Was she returning to the center of the circle? She took another two steps—and stumbled backward over someone’s foot.

She gasped. And gasped again as a pair of strong hands caught her lightly by her waist. Deftly he righted her—it was a he; of that much she was sure. She was not built like a bird; none of the ladies present would be able to handle her weight so easily.

“Thank you,” she said.

There was no reply, but from somewhere Lady Avery said, “Now, now, Miss Edgerton, you can’t simply walk away like that. You were headed for his lap. And no disputes, sir. She was headed for your lap. You cannot redirect her.”

Lady Avery was in motion, walking about. Elissande could not decide where her voice was coming from. She stood in place, uncertain what she should do next.

“Oh, come, sir. You know what you ought to do,” urged Lady Avery.

He apparently did, for he lifted her bodily, as if she weighed no more than a kitten, and set her down not on his lap, but on the chair itself, between his legs.

She swallowed with the alarming sensation of being so close to a man, her thighs pressed against his. There was a physicality to him, a quality that went beyond the mere amount of space he occupied, as if his body would effortlessly engulf hers if she did not take care to preserve herself.

She spread out her hands, looking for the armrests of the chair. But she touched only his hands, bare and warm and already occupying the armrests. She yanked hers away. That motion jerked her body backward against his chest.

She was wrong; it was not that his body would engulf her, but that it already did. She was surrounded by him, by his silent, still presence, while she fidgeted and fumbled, unable to treat their contact with the flirty lightheartedness expected of her.

He touched her again, his hands on her upper arms, steadying her. Steering her torso away from him, in fact.

Perhaps she had stumbled upon Lord Frederick after all. He could, she felt, be depended upon to maintain his sense of dignity and propriety amidst such pointless ribaldry. To help him in that effort, she scooted her bottom forward.

Only to almost fall off the chair. She hurriedly scooted back—directly into him.

She could not even gasp this time. Behind her bum he was, dear God, he was…

Hard.

Her cheeks scalded. Further understanding failed her. She froze in place: She could not think, could not speak, could not move a single muscle to extract herself.

Again, it was he who took charge of the situation, lifting her up, and this time, when she came down, she came down on his lap, somewhat away from the part of him that gave her fits.

But not nearly far enough, not with the sensation of his strong thighs so vivid upon her posterior. Really, whose idea had it been to get rid of bustles?

“What…what am I supposed to do now?” she beseeched.

“Say, ‘Squeak, piggy, squeak,’” said someone.

She could say nothing of the sort to the man behind her. It was ridiculous enough under normal circumstances. In this instance it would be just dreadfully wrong. She would have to guess his identity without any other clues.

He seemed rather on the taller side, which would eliminate Mr. Kingsley. And most likely he was not Mr. Wessex, who used a highly aromatic cologne that preceded him. The man behind her smelled only of a whiff of cigar smoke and, beneath that, shaving powder.

“I think Miss Edgerton likes being on this piggy’s lap,” said Miss Beauchamp, chuckling.

Miss Beauchamp’s voice was very close, to Elissande’s immediate left, in fact. And to Miss Beauchamp’s right had been—

“Lord Vere,” she mumbled.

And rose immediately. He started to clap before she even reached for her blindfold.

“How did you know it was me?” he said, still clapping, with a smile so densely guileless that it might very well have been one of hers. “I haven’t even squeaked yet.”

“A good guess,” she answered.

Miss Beauchamp had been correct: She had liked the startling, alien, mortifying, but not entirely un-pleasurable sensation of being practically in his embrace. But now she was repulsed—by him, by herself, by the blind sensuality of her body.

Revulsion, however, did not stop her renewed awareness of him. Of the softness of his hair when she tied the blindfold for him, the width of his shoulders as she spun him about, the tightness and muscularity of his arms as she stopped him from falling back onto her, so hard did he wobble from her spins.

The game went on, reaching its loud and boisterous conclusion at eleven o’clock, with Miss Beauchamp seated firmly on Lord Vere’s lap and both of them laughing as if they’d never had such a good time.

At half an hour past midnight Elissande finally left Lady Kingsley’s room. Lady Kingsley had stumbled a step as they’d ascended the grand staircase together and Elissande had caught her. She had not complained of anything, but Miss Kingsley had whispered anxiously to Elissande that Lady Kingsley suffered terrible migraines from time to time and perhaps the jollity of the evening had been too much for her.

So Elissande and Miss Kingsley had sat with Lady Kingsley until the latter at last fell asleep. Then Elissande escorted a continuously yawning Miss Kingsley to her room. She herself yawned too, as she walked toward Aunt Rachel’s room at the opposite end of the house.

She stopped mid-yawn. Someone was singing, heartily slurring the rousing chorus of a ludicrous song.

“‘Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow! bow wow! Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow! bow wow! I’ve got a little cat. And I’m very fond of that. But I’d rather have a bow-wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow.’”

She turned the corner. Lord Vere. Of course. He bobbed and weaved and caught himself against the wall just outside Aunt Rachel’s door.

“‘We used to have two tiny dogs,’” he sang, “‘such pretty little dears. But Daddy sold ’em ’cause they used to bite each other’s ears.’”

She fought to unclench her teeth. “Lord Vere, please. You’ll wake everyone.”

“Ah, Miss Edgerton. How lovely to see you, as always.”

“It’s late, sir. You should retire.”

“Retire? No, Miss Edgerton. It’s a night for song. Don’t I sing wonderfully?”

“You sing splendidly. But you can’t sing here.” And where was Lord Frederick to bail her out this time?

“Where may I sing then?”

“You should go outside if you must sing.”

“Fair enough.”

He stumbled forward some distance and reached for her uncle’s door. She sprinted after him and yanked his hand off the door handle. “What are you doing, Lord Vere?”

“But that’s the door for going outside.”

“That most certainly is not, sir. That is my uncle’s room.”

“Is it? Beg pardon. I don’t usually make such mistakes, I assure you, Miss Edgerton; I normally have the most impeccable sense of direction.”

Oh, he did, did he?

“Perhaps you could show me the way out?” he asked.

She inhaled deeply. “Of course. Follow me. And please be quiet until we clear the house.”

He did not break out into song, but he did not really remain quiet. He talked as he zigzagged beside her. “Was it not the most wondrous fun playing Squeak Piggy Squeak tonight?”

“I’ve never had a better time.”

“And I shall always treasure the sensational memory of your bottom on my lap.”

She did not treasure the memory of his hardness against her bottom; in fact, she disgusted herself with the flash of heat the remembrance brought to her face. How could she have felt even the remotest quiver for him? Such stupidity as his should have been obvious via touch, unmistakable like a fever. Or leprosy.

She walked faster. Somehow he kept up. “Why do you suppose the memory of your bottom on my lap is more sensational than that of Miss Melbourne’s, for instance?”

If she had the least indication that he spoke with deliberate vulgarity, she’d have turned and punched him. Perhaps even kicked him. But he was steeped in that grating obliviousness so particular to him, and it would be like hitting a baby or thrashing a dog.

“No doubt because my bottom is twice the size of Miss Melbourne’s,” she said tightly.

“Is it? Marvelous. Now why did I never think of that?”

They reached the front door of the house. She unlocked it and led him outside some distance. The moment they stopped, he began to sing. She turned to leave.

“No, no, Miss Edgerton. You can’t go. Let me perform for you, I insist.”

“But I’m tired.”

“Then I shall perform for you under your window. Is that not romantic?”

She’d rather stick sharp objects into her ears. “In that case, I’ll stay here and listen.”

He sang interminably. Long enough for a Hindu wedding. Long enough for a snail to scale Mont Blanc. Long enough for Atlantis to rise and sink again.

It was windy and chill—the temperature was in the forties. She shivered in her inadequate dinner gown, her bare shoulders and arms prickled with cold. He was loud and drunkenly off-key. And even the night sky conspired against her: no rain to force him back inside into his bed, and too much cloud haze to offer any stargazing.

Suddenly he stopped. She regarded him, astonished: She’d already accepted the possibility that he’d never stop. He bowed—nearly falling over in the act—and then looked at her expectantly. Apparently she was to clap. She did. Anything to get rid of him.

Her applause made him happy and he did not hesitate to tell her so. “I’m so glad to be a source of enjoyment to you, Miss Edgerton. I shall sleep better knowing your life is richer and more beautiful for my voice.”

She did not hit him. That was certainly to be the basis for her beatification someday, because anyone less than a saint would have done him terrible injury by this point.

She accompanied him to his door, going so far as to open it for him.

“‘Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow.’” He bowed again and tipped sideways, banging into the doorjamb. “Who wrote that, do you remember?”

“Someone quite dead, sir.”

“I suspect you are right. Thank you, Miss Edgerton. You’ve made this an unforgettable night.”

She pushed him into the room and closed the door.

Aunt Rachel was asleep, of course—laudanum let her escape life. Sometimes—a great deal of times lately—Elissande was tempted herself. But she feared the grip of laudanum. Freedom was her only goal. It was no freedom to be wretchedly dependent on a tincture, even without her uncle about to withhold the bottle at his whim.

A night and a day remained to her. Her freedom was no closer now than it had been two days ago. In fact, it was infinitely farther away than it had been during those giddy hours when she’d seen Lord Vere but not yet heard him speak at length. And Lord Frederick, kind, good, amicable Lord Frederick, was in his own way as unobtainable as the moon.

Her risk-it-all gamble appeared doomed to failure. She simply did not know what to do anymore.

“Go,” Aunt Rachel suddenly whispered.

Elissande approached the bed. “Did you say something, ma’am?”

Aunt Rachel’s eyelids fluttered but did not open. She was mumbling in her sleep. “Go, Ellie. And do not come back!”

When she was fifteen, Elissande had left once. And those had been the precise words her aunt had whispered into her ear before she walked the five miles to Ellesmere. The branch line at Ellesmere took her to Whitchurch. The regional line at Whitchurch took her to Crewe. From Crewe, she had been only three hours from London.

At Crewe, however, she had broken down.

By the end of the day she had returned home, walking the same five miles to reach Highgate Court a half hour before her uncle came back. Aunt Rachel had said nothing. She’d only wept. They’d wept together.

“Go,” Aunt Rachel said again, more faintly this time.

Elissande pressed her hands into her face. She must think harder. She must not let a little obstacle such as her inability to attract a proposal stand in the way. Surely God had not let loose a plague of rats on Lady Kingsley for nothing.

Her head came up. What had Lady Avery said this evening? She had caught a man and a woman in a cupboard in a state of undress and they’d had to marry.

Lady Avery could catch Elissande and Lord Frederick together, in a state of undress. And then they would have to marry.

But how could she do this to Lord Frederick? How could she deliberately entrap him? Her uncle was the one with all the subtlety, all the cruelty, and all the manipulativeness. She never wanted to be like him.

“Ellie,” her aunt mumbled in her troubled sleep. “Ellie. Go. Do not come back.”

Elissande’s heart clenched. Apparently a lifetime spent under her uncle’s thumb had not left her untainted. Because she could. She could do this to Lord Frederick. She was capable of using him to save herself and Aunt Rachel.

And she would.

From his room Vere monitored Miss Edgerton’s return to hers. After the light under her door disappeared, he waited five minutes before venturing into the corridor, tapping once at Lady Kingsley’s door as he passed.

Mrs. Douglas slept. He unlatched the painting and swung it out of his way. Lady Kingsley arrived in time to hold the light for him while he re-picked the lock of the outer safe door—he’d instructed Nye to lock the safe before he left, or the painting wouldn’t latch properly.

This time, the lock took him only one minute to pick. Lady Kingsley, who’d stood guard for Nye while Vere kept Miss Edgerton away, had the numbers for the combination lock. She turned the dial and pulled open the inner door.

And it was well worth the effort.

The contents of the safe documented Edmund Douglas’s history of failure. The diamond mine was legitimate. But after his one remarkable find in South Africa, his subsequent business ventures—seeking to capitalize on his new fortune—had achieved nothing but massive losses.

“My goodness, he’s a glutton for punishment, isn’t he?” Lady Kingsley marveled.

He was and it did not make any sense to Vere. Why did Douglas persist in these investments? Ought not a man learn after five or seven times that he had been simply a lucky bastard where the diamond mine was concerned and stop trying to recapture the lightning?

“If you tally everything together, he might be in debt,” Lady Kingsley whispered excitedly. “See, he does need money. There’s our motive.”

What excited Lady Kingsley even more was a dossier written in code, a far more complicated code than the mere shifting around of letters.

If one assumed that Edmund Douglas himself had committed his secrets in code, then he possessed a very fine penmanship indeed. The more Vere learned of Douglas, the more unlikely the man became. Understated home, refined appearance, elegant handwriting, not to mention educated speech—his niece’s speech contained nothing of the Liverpool docks. Could a fortune in South Africa truly alter a man so much?

“A hundred quid says all the evidence we need is in here,” said Lady Kingsley.

Vere nodded. He felt around in the interior of the safe. Ah, they had not exhausted its secrets yet. There was a false bottom.

The compartment beneath the false bottom contained only a drawstring pouch. Vere expected to find it full of diamonds; instead he found finished jewels.

“Rather ordinary, aren’t they?” said Lady Kingsley, fingering a ruby necklace. “I would say a thousand pounds for everything inside, at most.”

An image of Miss Edgerton suddenly came to him, Miss Edgerton with her bare throat, bare wrists, bare fingers. He’d never realized it before, but she wore not a single piece of jewelry, not even a cameo brooch. A singularly odd thing for the niece of a man who mined diamonds.

As he returned the pouch to the safe, however, he noted that he was mistaken. There was something else in the hidden compartment, a tiny key, less than an inch in length, with a great many notches along a spine as slender as a toothpick.

Lady Kingsley held the key up to the light. “If this is meant for a lock, then it’s a lock I can snap in two with my bare hands.”

They replaced everything except the coded dossier, which Lady Kingsley wanted to keep.

“Are you taking it to London in the morning?” Vere whispered, bypassing his exhausted vocal cords.

“I can’t leave all my guests and go away for eight hours. And you’d best not either. Or Douglas’s suspicion will fall squarely on you should he find it missing before we can get it back to the safe.”

She left first with the dossier. Vere closed and locked the safe. When he’d pushed the painting back into place and latched it, he turned around—and froze.

Miss Edgerton, when she’d come to check on her aunt, must have added coal to the grate. In the firelight, Mrs. Douglas lay with her eyes wide open, staring at him.

Any other woman would have screamed. But she remained eerily quiet, even as her eyes bulged with terror.

Vere moved carefully, inch by inch toward the door. She closed her eyes, her whole person shaking.

He took a deep breath, slipped out the door, and listened. If Mrs. Douglas was going to recover her voice and scream, she would do so now. The service stairs were near, he’d escape that way to avoid the guests her bloodcurdling shrieks were sure to bring.

But no sounds came from Mrs. Douglas, not a gasp, not a wheeze, not even a whimper.

He walked back to his room, completely unsettled.

The longcase clock gonged the hour, three brassy chimes that quavered in the dark, still air.

It was always three o’clock.

The ormolu banister was cold. The tall palm trees that his father was so proud of were now ghosts with long, swaying arms. One frond scratched against the back of his hand. He shook with fright.

Still, he kept descending, feeling his way down one step at a time. There was a faint light at the foot of the stairs. He was drawn to it, like a toddler to a deep well.

He saw her feet first, delicate feet in blue dancing slippers. Her gown shimmered, faintly iridescent in the light that came from nowhere. An arm, with its long white glove that reached past her elbow, lay across her torso.

Her white shawl curled slack about her shoulders. Her coiffure was ruined, feathers and combs embedded pell-mell in a tangle of dark knots. Her much-envied five-strand sapphire necklace had flipped itself and now draped her mouth and chin—a bejeweled muzzle.

Then, and only then, did he notice the impossible angle of her neck.

He was sick to his stomach. But she was his mother. He reached out to touch her. Her eyes suddenly opened, eyes empty yet petrified with fear. He reared back, his heel caught against the first rise of the staircase, and down he went.

Down, down, down—

Vere bolted upright in his bed, gasping. The dream recurred periodically, but never quite like this. He had somehow juxtaposed Mrs. Douglas’s terrified eyes onto his old nightmare.

His door opened. “Are you all right, Lord Vere? I heard noises.”

Miss Edgerton, a shadowed silhouette on the threshold.

For a moment he was seized with the mad desire to have her next to him, her hand caressing his cheek, telling him that it was only a dream. She would coax him to lie down, tuck him in, and smile—

“Oh, no, gosh, no, I’m not all right!” he said forcefully. “How I hate that dream. You know the one, where you are searching for a water closet high and low and there isn’t one anywhere in the house—and no chamber pots and not even a proper bucket. And there are crowds in every room, and out in the gardens, on the lawn, and—Oh, good gracious, I hope I haven’t—”

She made a choked sound.

“Oh, thank God,” he continued. “Your beddings are safe. But if you will excuse me, I must—”

The door closed decisively.

In the morning everyone drove over to Woodley Manor for a look at the disgusting mountain of dead rats. The rat catcher, with his exhausted rat dogs, a triumphant ferret, and an incomprehensible accent, proudly twirled his dark, luxuriant mustache as he posed for Lord Frederick’s camera, commemorating the occasion.

“My staff is already hard at work,” said Lady Kingsley to Elissande. “There is much to do, but they assure me the house will be fit for habitation by tomorrow. I promise you we shall remove ourselves the moment it is the case.”

Elissande saw the handwriting on the wall. There was no more time left. Something must happen.

She must make something happen.

God helped those who helped themselves.