Kasey Michaels (20 page)

“There were a pair of them here today, you know,” Sophie told Lady Gwendolyn as the two lounged in that lady’s bedchamber before dinner. They were sitting at their ease, clad in their dressing gowns, their bare toes wiggling against the carpet, both of them sipping wine Bobbit had sneaked upstairs to them and enjoying a few peaceful moments together out of the sight of the bound to be disapproving but now thankfully departed Isadora Waverley.

“Only two of them? Oh, pooh. There were three yesterday. But never say Sir Wilford was one of them, because I don’t want to hear that, Sophie. Truly I don’t.”

Sophie shook her head in the negative, then watched as Lady Gwendolyn breathed a sigh of deep relief. She’d noticed her ladyship eyeing Sir Wilford as that man departed the drawing room. There had been a certain spring in his step that hadn’t been in it as he’d entered looking much like a man come to see an oddity he’d been told not to miss, but not sure he wasn’t about to be brought into the presence of some fascinating Medusa, snakes waving in her hair. “Never Sir Wilford, Aunt Gwen,” she assured the woman. “He’s not to be found anywhere in
Maman’
s journals.”

Her ladyship’s aristocratic nose actually seemed to quiver as she sat up very straight, gaping at Sophie. “Journals? Did you say
journals
? Good God, Sophie—the woman took
notes
?”

Sophie became busy with pleating the skirt of her dressing gown as it lay over her knees. “Did I say that?” she asked sweetly, then giggled. “My goodness, Aunt Gwen, you look ready to fly up to the chandelier, like Giuseppe. And that’s exactly what I meant.
Maman
did keep a journal. Several of them, as a matter of fact. She had a full life, yes?”

“Yes. Fair to bursting, I’d say,” Lady Gwendolyn murmured in some distraction, hopping to her bare feet and beginning to pace. “If those journals were to fall into the wrong hands...” She stopped, a finger stuck between her teeth, and turned to Sophie. “You wouldn’t think to
publish
them, would you, Sophie? Harriette Wilson has thoughts along those lines, or so I’ve heard it said, charging her former paramours to keep them
out
of her memoirs. But, no. You don’t need the money, for one thing. And you would never be so tasteless.” Her eyes began to twinkle. “But that doesn’t mean that you and
I
—”

“You don’t really mean to beg me to allow you to read them, do you, Aunt Gwen?” Sophie asked quickly, to save the old woman embarrassment. “Oh, no, of course not! How silly of me to even think such a thing. You’d never ask such a question, not my dear Aunt Gwendolyn.”

Lady Gwendolyn cleared her tight throat, gave herself a shake, and sat down once more. “Me? La, of course not, my dear. I shouldn’t think any lady would wish to read another lady’s private journals. Oh, no. Not a lady. Not me. Oh, no. Never.” She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, wistfully, almost painfully. “Never... never... never... nev—”

“The two were Colonel Blythe, and his lordship, the earl of Strood,” Sophie supplied quickly, as it appeared Her Ladyship might go into a sad decline, caught between a nearly overpowering curiosity and the need to set a good example to her young charge. “I don’t remember either of them, of course, any more than the gentlemen who came to call before them,” she went on as Lady Gwendolyn’s expression cleared. “I was still in the baby nursery, as
Maman
termed it, and not allowed into the drawing room until I had become a very precocious ten-year-old.”

“And that’s when you began meeting the
uncles
?”

Sophie nodded. “Yes. And
Maman
began keeping the journals only a few years before that. I met Uncle Tye first, just as another gentleman was departing—I barely saw him at all. He’s dead now, so that doesn’t matter. Then came Uncle Dickie, Uncle Willy, and, lastly, and for nearly four years, Uncle Cesse.”

She became quiet for a moment, reflective. “I liked them all, but I adored Uncle Cesse. He was so lively, so full of fun and mischief. I cried for weeks and weeks when he and
Maman
died. At times, Aunt Gwendolyn,” she said, blinking back tears that stung her eyes, “I was hard-pressed to say which of them I missed most.”

Lady Gwendolyn had already pulled her handkerchief from the pocket of her dressing gown, and was dabbing at her own watery eyes. “Cecil
was
wonderful, wasn’t he? Always up for any rig, ripe for any adventure. I tend to forget sometimes, when I’m angry at what he did. But he was a good brother. A terrible father, but a good brother.”

Sophie eyed her companion in purposeful confusion. “A terrible father? But how could that be? He was all that was good to me.” She bit at her bottom lip, remembering how Bramwell had reacted when she had praised his late father, remembering her mother’s journal concerning the ninth duke. It was all so sad. “They didn’t get on—Bramwell and Uncle Cesse?”

Lady Gwendolyn shrugged. “Who could tell if they ever would have been friends? Cecil and his wife were social animals. Lord knows my sister-in-law didn’t want any babies hanging on her skirts, spoiling her fun. The only thing she cared about was producing an heir on the first go, which she did. After that? Well, my nephew was pretty much on his own then, especially when Cecil was off playing at war. Yes, Bramwell was stuck in the country until he could be shoveled off to school, while Cecil was always running about somewhere, warring, hunting, fishing, dancing, drinking—wenching. I think he was waiting for Bramwell to grow up, so that they could meet each other man to man. But Bramwell took it upon himself to go into the Royal Navy, just to spite his father, I’m sure, and the two were never more than civil to each other after that the few times they did meet.”

She sighed, downing the last of her wine. “And then Cecil died and—well, that was that, then, wasn’t it?”

“So they never did get together, get to know each other? I think I understand now,” Sophie said, her mind full of memories of her Uncle Cesse, of the times she’d spent sitting on the floor at his feet, her chin propped on her folded hands as they rested on his knee. For hours on end she had listened to him talk about his life, his happiness, his regrets, his hopes for the future. And, she bad read the journals. “I suppose I should have understood. Bramwell did seem to dislike his father, the one time I spoke of him. Oh, dear. He doesn’t know. Poor Uncle Cesse. Poor Bram. Well, I’ll just have to fix that somehow, won’t I? But how?”

“Fix what, my dear?” Lady Gwendolyn asked, blowing her nose.

“Oh, never mind,” Sophie said quickly, jumping up from her chair and going over to Lady Gwendolyn’s large jewelry chest, pulling open the top drawer before turning to look at her dear friend. “Shall I help select your jewelry for this evening, Aunt Gwendolyn? We’re to go to the theater, remember. I can barely contain myself, having never been to the theater. Pearls, I think, as you’re to wear the burgundy taffeta, yes?”

Lady Gwendolyn, fully occupied in trying to rein in her tender, slightly wine-befogged emotions, merely nodded her agreement. Sophie happily turned back to the jewelry box, intending to locate the triple strand of pearls she remembered her ladyship wearing the other evening to Almack’s.

And there it was.

Not the necklace, although it was in the drawer, pushed to the back in the haphazard way Lady Gwendolyn had about her jewelry.

Sophie put out her hand and lifted Isadora Waverley’s garnet brooch from the deep blue velvet, turning toward the windows while presenting her back to Lady Gwendolyn, the better to inspect the piece of jewelry, the better to think.

She’d seen other strange things in Lady Gwendolyn’s chamber over the past days. A paperweight fashioned of thick glass, with a gold coin suspended inside. A lovely thing. Odd that it had been stuck in Aunt Gwen’s shoe cupboard rather than displayed on a table.

There had also been that small, carved, jade elephant she’d seen in the curio cabinet in the drawing room her first day in Portland Square, seen the next day on Lady Gwendolyn’s night table, and the third day back downstairs, on display inside the curio cabinet once more.

And then there was the snuffbox, the one with the initials Q.R.T. engraved on its lid. Sophie had passed that off as a gift from a long-ago admirer, or something her ladyship had admired and picked up in some secondhand shop.

Which didn’t explain the snuffbox’s disappearance the very next day, or the fact that Peggy, her ladyship’s maid, seemed to make a fairly thorough inspection of her mistress’s chamber each morning, as if looking to locate something that had been mislaid and needed to be found.

“Oh, dear,” Sophie breathed quietly, recognizing the signs. After all, she had Giuseppe, who also had a way of seeing things that caught his fancy, and then picking them up.

She turned the brooch in her fingers, the stone hot and all but throbbing brightly, guiltily against her skin. How had Her Ladyship said it the other day, when they’d all gone for their drive in the Park? Oh, yes, she remembered now.
That’s a lovely brooch you’re wearing, Miss Waverley. I do so adore garnets. May I have it?

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Sophie whispered again, tucking the brooch into the pocket of her dressing gown, then turning about to smile brightly at the darling old lady she’d already come to adore. Quickly snatching up the pearls, she made a great business of opening and closing the many drawers of the jewelry cabinet. She pretended to be having trouble locating the earbobs that went with the necklace, but all the time she was hoping against hope she wouldn’t discover other bits of admired property.

At the same time, she was already planning just how she would return the brooch to Bramwell’s fiancée without Isadora, not a stupid woman, taking it into her head that the duke of Selbourne’s aunt was a common thief.

Or worse.

After all, Isadora could, and without censure, believe that Lady Gwendolyn was mad. Dotty. Insane. She could prevail on her husband to have the woman sent to the country, away from the London Society she so loved. Perhaps even have her incarcerated in one of those asylums people found to house inconvenient, embarrassing relations.

Because, obviously, Lady Gwendolyn’s penchant for admiring, then taking things, did not begin and end with rearranging the contents of Portland Square. There was the snuffbox, for one. And now Isadora’s garnet brooch. Lord only knew what else was secreted here, in the lady’s bedchamber, cached where Peggy’s daily inspections failed to find all that had been hidden.

Should she tell Bramwell?

No. What was the sense of that? He probably already knew. After all, who else would have commissioned Peggy to do her daily searches? What a good man Bramwell was, to be so kind to his aunt, who doubtless had no idea her nephew had discovered her admiring tendencies.

Sophie’s gentle heart swelled at the thought of the duke of Selbourne’s affection for his aunt, the difficulties he must endure finding ways to replace the snuffboxes and other trinkets his aunt must surely pilfer wherever she went. For Lady Gwendolyn probably indulged herself whenever something took her fancy, just as Giuseppe often fancied shiny things, crackly things (like the paper upon which the infamous wager had been penned), pretty little things that made the palms itch to hold them.

Well, at least Bramwell didn’t have to know about Isadora’s brooch. She’d save him that embarrassment. It would be easy enough for Sophie to return the thing herself, saying she’d found it lying on the carpet in the drawing room, or stuffed down a cushion somewhere. Isadora wouldn’t question her. Why should she? The clasp on the brooch might very easily have slipped open, allowing the piece to fall and become temporarily misplaced.

Yes, that’s what she’d do. And then she’d have a little talk with Peggy about Lady Gwendolyn’s shoe cupboard, and the paperweight stuffed behind a pair of half boots. She didn’t know where it belonged, but its owner must miss it.

“Did you find the earbobs, Sophie?” Lady Gwendolyn asked, having poured and then drunk a second glass of wine while Sophie was arguing with herself.

“Indeed I did find them, Aunt Gwendolyn,” Sophie said, returning to her chair and placing the jewelry on the table that sat between them. “But do you know what? We never did look through that mass of jewelry I brought with me, did we? We’ll have to do that tomorrow, yes? I think I owe you a garnet brooch.”

Lady Gwendolyn frowned. “A garnet brooch? Do you know, Sophie, I think I might just have gotten one of those.” She sighed, obviously content, her belly warm with wine. “But a woman can never have too much jewelry, can she, Sophie?”

“Never, Aunt Gwendolyn,” Sophie agreed, pouring herself a second glass of wine, for her own nerves were still a bit unsteady. “Especially when a woman is preparing to dazzle a man such as the estimable Sir Wilford, yes?”

“Pshaw!” Lady Gwendolyn said, blushing to the roots of her gray hair even as she fought a yawn, so that Sophie began to think the lady would be snoring in her bed long before the curtain rose at the theater that night. “Oh, Sophie, how glad I am you’re here. Don’t go away, please. Don’t ever go away. Because you’re so right. We’re here to be happy, aren’t we? Ah,” she ended, closing her eyes as Sophie bent to push a footstool close, for her ladyship’s feet, “there is nothing more to desire of the world than to be happy.”

Sophie located a shawl at the bottom of Lady Gwendolyn’s bed and gently tucked it across the woman’s shoulders before tiptoeing out into the hallway, leaving the lady to her nap—and herself with Isadora’s garnet brooch tucked up in the pocket of her dressing gown.