“Because I’m not allowed to go anywhere without her,” she said, with just enough asperity to show him that she thought him very dull witted indeed.
“Not allowed to. . . .” He digested this. “Good God. Are you under some sort of arrest?”
“No,” she said, and though she didn’t utter them out loud, he was quite certain he read the words
You stupid man
in those translucent eyes. “I am not allowed to go anywhere without a chaperon. Young women in this city are often preyed upon by nefarious evildoers, and Violet is supposed to protect me from them.”
“Well,” Braden said, a bit taken aback by this information. “I must say, she’s built for it.”
Caroline looked down at him angrily. “It isn’t right. What you did to her. You made her think . . . you made her think things that weren’t true.”
“According to whom?” he countered. “That’s a matter of opinion, don’t you think? I might just as well ask you if it’s right to cause a scene at someone’s place of business. I could easily have lost a customer, you know, due to that woman’s hysterics. That’s money out of my pocket, you know. Out of Wea—Mr. Ambrose’s, as well. All my employees, as a matter of fact. How am I to pay their salaries if your maid drives away all my customers with her hysterical behavior?”
That got her. The reproachfulness left, and was replaced, in those brown eyes, by a flood of guilt.
“Oh,” she said. “I
am
sorry. Only I had to see you, and I went to your home, and they told me you were here, and I thought. . . . Well, in a way, what I need to discuss with you
is
business-related. So I thought I’d just slip in and. . . . Of course I didn’t realize Violet would be so very insistent on coming in with me. I meant it to be private, you see, our interview. I
do
apologize.”
He was a bit disturbed to discover that he’d missed another one of her charms that night at Dame Ashforth’s: her voice. It was a pleasing voice, very low-pitched and rather more boyish than girlish, which was a relief. Girls had, Braden had noticed over the years, a rather unnerving tendency toward shrillness.
“Well,” he said. “I suppose I can find it in my heart to forgive you. Now, why don’t you have a seat, and tell me what it is that your Violet could not be privy to.”
She looked behind her, and saw the chair he’d indicated. She lowered herself into it, and sat for a minute, pulling at the buttons on her gloves, but not unfastening them. She was, he saw with approval, very simply dressed in a white morning gown, covered with a blue pelisse. She carried a matching white parasol, and her blue bonnet was tied beneath her chin in a large white satin bow. She looked quite presentable, even becoming, though she was without any of the feathers or similar fripperies Jacquelyn seemed to think necessary for the well-dressed woman of fashion.
“I suppose,” Lady Caroline began, in her pleasing voice, as she continued to pull at the button on the back of her wrist. Braden could not help noticing that between the glove and the cuff of Lady Caroline’s sleeve was the exposed skin of her wrist. That skin was awfully golden in color for someone who bore the title of lady. It suggested a good deal more time spent out of doors than was commonly considered proper. Lady Jacquelyn Seldon, by contrast, spent almost no time out of doors, and had the milk-white skin—all over, as he could well attest—to prove it.
“I suppose you remember, um, speaking to me the other evening at Dame Ashforth’s,” the girl said.
“I do.” Braden watched as she fingered the button. In a little while, it would fall off, from her worrying it so much. “I hope you haven’t had a recurrence of the malady that struck you that night.”
“Oh.” She released the button, and focused the full of her attention on his face. It was rather like having a white-hot spotlight suddenly fastened upon one—or so he imagined, not having ever spent any time on a stage.
“Oh, no, no,” she said. “No, I’m much, much better. Only that night, if you’ll recall, you asked me whether or not I had seen Lady Jacquelyn, and if she had been with anyone.”
Quite suddenly, he found himself leaning forward in his chair.
“Yes,” he said, trying not to sound as eager as he felt. “Yes, I remember.”
“Well, as you know, I did see her, and she was with someone. And the two of them were engaged in what you might call . . . a compromising embrace.”
He raised a questioning brow.
Calm,
he told himself.
Mustn’t seem too eager.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks, he noted, had turned a little pink.
“Highly
compromising.”
“I see,” he said, trying to keep his tone neutral. “Do go on.”
“You mentioned something when I last saw you,” Lady Caroline said, “that led me to believe that the identity of the gentleman with whom your fiancée was . . . engaged in this embrace might be important to you.”
Braden stared at her. No. It wasn’t possible. After months of frustration, he was finally going to have an answer to the question that a half dozen of his best men had been unable to provide him—and from this girl! This quite unprepossessing girl!
Really, this was just too good to be true. It took all the self-control he possessed to keep from leaping about the room with joy. Instead, Braden rifled through a few of the papers on his desk, as if what she’d said was not of the least consequence.
“Yes, actually,” he said, with what he fancied sounded like supreme indifference. “Good of you to go to all the trouble of seeking me out. I’d have asked you myself that night, only you seemed out of sorts, and I didn’t think . . . well, I didn’t think you’d have known him.”
“Oh,” Caroline said. “But of course I did.”
“Well, then,” Braden said. He stopped messing about with his papers and smiled. Then, worried that perhaps his smile might contain a little too much of the self-congratulatory glee he was feeling, he tried to control it, turning it instead into a businesslike frown. “With whom did you see her, Lady Caroline?”
Caroline looked up then. This time her expressive dark eyes were filled with something he could not put a name to. “Oh, I can’t tell you that,” she said, looking shocked.
It was Braden’s turn to stare at her, and he did so admirably, quite certain his own eyes, which were every bit as dark as hers, did not reveal half as much emotion. “You can’t—” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I thought you said you knew him.”
“Oh, I do. Only I can’t tell you his name, you see.” Once more, she gave him an apologetic smile. “I know you managed to mesmerize Violet with that little speech about how she mustn’t believe the things people say about you, but I’m afraid it didn’t work with me. You see, I
completely
believe the things people say about you. And one of those things is that you are rather quick to settle your personal difficulties with a pistol. If I told you the name of the man I saw with your fiancée, you’d doubtlessly try to kill him. Well, I won’t have a man’s death on my conscience, thank you very much.”
Braden, struck dumb by this admission, could only stare at her.
“But if you think about it,” Caroline went on, blithely, “it doesn’t really matter who the gentleman is. You believe your fiancée is involved with another man, and you would like to break off your engagement with her, but you fear that she will bring a breach of promise against you. Isn’t that correct?”
Braden had been staring so fixedly at her, he’d quite forgotten to blink. “Yes,” he said, slowly, wondering whether or not she was a lunatic, and if she was, how he was going to get rid of her. It was a pity, really, because she was turning out to be quite a pretty little thing. But mad, clearly. Stark raving mad.
“And in order to have any hope of winning this breach of promise suit,” Caroline said, “you need proof of your fiancée’s faithlessness.”
“Yes,” he said, again. “That’s right. Which is why—”
“Wouldn’t the testimony of a witness who saw your fiancée in the arms of another be enough proof?”
Braden said, reluctantly, “It would depend on the credibility of the witness, of course—”
“Do you think
I
would be considered a credible witness?” she asked.
He hesitated. A lunatic would not, of course, make a good impression on any judge. But despite her behavior, Lady Caroline certainly didn’t
look
like a lunatic. In fact, she looked quite respectable. Fetching, even.
Fetching. Good Lord, what was he thinking? She was a
child.
Well, relatively speaking.
“I believe,” Braden said, slowly, “that with adequate coaching, you might pass. But—”
“I thought as much,” Caroline said. “So it doesn’t really matter, in the end, if I put a name to the man in question. I mean, the simple fact that I saw her with anyone—” She flung him a significant glance. “—and I do mean
with
in the intimate sense—ought to be enough proof, don’t you think?”
“Lady Caroline.” He could no longer maintain his facade of indifference. He’d given it up some minutes ago, but only now sagged against the back of his chair, utterly drained with disappointment. “Please don’t take offense, but I don’t believe you’ve familiarized yourself adequately about the law. Lying in court—which is what you’re telling me you intend to do—is called perjury, a crime that is punishable—”
She interrupted him. “I know what perjury is, Mr. Granville.”
“Well,” he said, testily. “If you know what it is, then I don’t see how you think you can get away with—”
“Mr. Granville.” Her gaze was perfectly steady. In her luminous brown eyes, he could not detect a trace of insanity. But he was perfectly convinced it was there. Because only a madwoman would suggest something so ludicrous. “If I know Lady Jacquelyn—and I do, from school—she is going to deny that she had a lover, whether or not I put a name to the man. So it hardly matters if I say I didn’t recognize him—except that it will matter a good deal to the man involved, as it will keep him from getting a bullet through his hide.”
“Lady Caroline,” Braden said. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. Lady Jacquelyn will undoubtedly secure very competent lawyers, who will question you very closely—”
“Yes,” Lady Caroline said. “I’m aware of that. But I feel confident that I will be able to answer their questions truthfully, up to a point. When it comes down to the man’s identity, I shall simply say I did not get a good enough look at him to say for certain who he was. But I think I shall give him a French accent.” She smiled to herself. “I think that’s quite a believable little detail, don’t you? I could quite see Lady Jacquelyn with a Frenchman.”
Braden stared at her. He knew he was being rude, but he couldn’t help himself. He could not, for the life of him, figure out what she was about. What kind of woman, he wondered, would so cheerfully volunteer to perjure herself for a man she hardly knew? No woman he knew—not from Mayfair, and not from the Dials, either.
“Of course,” Lady Caroline said, “before I agree to act as your witness, Mr. Granville, there is the question of my compensation.”
Braden shook himself. Good Lord! There it was! There it was at last, the reason the girl had come to him. He felt a curious relief wash over him. So she wasn’t mad. Not mad at all. She wanted something.
Why this should be a relief to him, he could not imagine. What did he care whether or not the girl was in full possession of her wits? She was nothing to him.
He told himself it was merely the relief any man would feel at finding out that he was not, after all, in the company of a lunatic, then wondered what Caroline Linford—who, from what Braden knew about her, which was admittedly not much, had everything any Mayfair society miss could wish for, including a generous inheritance, a pretty face, and a handsome husband-to-be— could possibly want from him.
“Your compensation?” he asked, curiously.
“Well, yes.” She gave him a look which suggested she thought him rather dense for asking. “If I am going to perjure myself—not to mention engender the outrage of my entire family by agreeing to participate in anything so scandalous as a breach of promise suit—I am going to have to be compensated.”
He stared at her, feeling oddly disappointed. This time, he didn’t have to ask himself why he felt as he did. He knew perfectly well why he was disappointed: Because there she sat, looking so young and lovely and innocent, when the truth was, she was no different from any of the other women of his acquaintance. She was like the candied flowers he’d admired as a boy from outside the baker’s window—they’d looked succulent enough, but once he’d finally scraped up the money to buy a few, he’d discovered they were not actually very good at all. Like so many of the things in Mayfair Braden had once admired, Caroline Linford, upon closer inspection, turned out not to be quite the tasty morsel she’d first appeared.
Which was a shame, though why he should feel it so deeply, he could not imagine. Again, she was nothing to him.
He wondered, cynically, what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into. Gambled away her fortune, perhaps? He’d heard her younger brother, the earl, was fond of cards—and quite good at them, too—but he’d never have guessed that the Lady Caroline was particularly keen at loo. But he’d known a few women who’d possessed faces as equally innocent as Lady Caroline’s, and who’d squandered tens of thousands of pounds at the gaming table, so he supposed it was certainly possible.