“About your plants?” he murmured. “I am no more a gardener than a carpenter, I am afraid.”
“About a friend. I received a letter from Audrianna late yesterday,” she said. “She requested that I call on her today. However, she left out the instructions about arriving discreetly. Surely she can’t mean for me to call on her as if I were like her other friends.”
“It sounds as if she does.”
“I do not want to cause trouble for her, with either her husband or his mother.”
“Perhaps you should allow her to decide if you would cause trouble, and how much she wants.”
She went quiet for a spell. He sensed her fretting about this invitation.
“She found out about my mother by accident, soon after she was married,” she said. “I remember the day she came to The Rarest Blooms and told me that she could no longer be my friend in a public way. She cried terribly, but I expected no less, of course. I thought it generous that Sebastian would even allow her to know me at all.”
“If she obeyed him then, she would not stop now. Sebastian appears to have had new thoughts on the matter.”
“Or she has convinced him to.” She giggled. “I wonder how she managed that.”
“Perhaps she was unusually generous.” He kissed her shoulder. “I was thinking of calling on Sebastian today. Why don’t I escort you there?”
She turned in his arms and looked at him. “Would you? I admit that approaching that door alone—I picture what might happen if I misunderstood and . . .”
“You are as worthy of approaching that door as any of the other women she knows. She is saying so, and it is true. We will take your carriage and go this afternoon.”
“That will be too visible. If you are seen too much with me, your name will be linked to mine.”
“No one will notice two obscure bastards riding in a cabriolet, Celia. Nor, at your age, will it compromise your reputation if they do.”
“It is not my reputation that concerns me, Jonathan. Your expectations are better than mine will ever be. You are the one who must be careful.”
He moved so that he lay atop her and could stare down at her face. “My reputation will not be damaged by being seen with you. That is absurd.”
She began to speak, then stopped. She turned her head, and avoided his gaze. The dying fire gave little light, and her expression was not clear, but he thought she appeared more sad than angry.
“Nevertheless we will go in a hired, closed carriage. Perhaps that way the world will not even know how foolish you and she are both being.”
“H
ow kind of your tenant Mr. Albrighton to accom pany you,” Audrianna said that afternoon, after she had received Celia and Jonathan.
They were alone in her private sitting room. Jonathan had asked for Sebastian, and both men had left at once for the library.
“He has become more than my tenant . . .” Celia said.
Audrianna smiled. “Well, as lovers go, he probably is not a bad one, I would think.”
“You are supposed to be shocked.”
“Yet I am not. Imagine that.”
“Because of my mother?”
Audrianna’s face fell. “What a stupid question, Celia. The reason I am not shocked is because you are a woman and he is a fine figure of a man, and because for as long as I have known you, your views on sensual intimacy have carried a certain . . . how should I put it . . . irony?”
“Forgive me. You are correct; it was a stupid question. Ever since it became public knowledge that I am the daughter of Alessandra Northrope, I have been too quick to see insult, sometimes when none exists.”
Now Audrianna’s sweet face showed concern. “And sometimes it does exist?”
“Of course. I am grateful that you received me openly today, but I am afraid you may pay the price.” She looked to the door. “Is your husband’s mother aware that I am here?”
Audrianna’s hand went to her chestnut hair and dabbed and poked at a few curls while she tilted her head. “As it happens, she left this morning for the country. I doubt she will return until the season starts.”
“Then you are spared the costs of receiving me.”
“Oh, she knows. We had a big row yesterday, before I wrote that letter to you. I had been asking her questions about your mother and the old gossip, and she finally realized my interest meant that you are still my friend, and, well—” She shrugged.
“That is what I mean! Our friendship has been causing you trouble even while we have been discreet. How much worse if we are not—”
“No, quite the opposite! Let me tell you what happened. She drew Sebastian into that row, which was very foolish of her, as she should know by now. He sided with me and said that I would be receiving you in the future and she should either accept that or leave the household.” Audrianna decided her hair was in sufficient order. Her hands went to her lap and she gazed over innocently. “So, in a manner of speaking, Sebastian commanded that I receive you, and all but ensured his mother would leave the house by doing so.”
“I see. How convenient.”
“Yes, wasn’t it? I believe Sebastian has been congratulating himself on his stroke of brilliance.”
“Speaking of your mother-in-law—before her departure, did she happen to remember any gossip about my mother?”
“She remembered more than I expected, but then, the men were of high interest, weren’t they? She mentioned in passing that Hartlefield had neither heir nor daughter, despite having had three wives by the time he died.”
“Although it is possible that he had the bad luck of marrying three barren women, it would appear . . .”
“There are some who think it can be the man’s problem, due to such evidence as this. If so, it appears, if you are correct about those drawings, that the man you seek is either Barrowleigh or Enderby.”
“Did she say anything interesting about those two?”
“She said that Enderby’s liaison with Alessandra was intense but brief, due to his falling in love with another woman, whom he subsequently married. As for Barrowleigh, the
on dit
was that he wanted to marry Alessandra and the world be damned, but she would not have him as a husband. Perhaps he proposed because he knew she carried his child?”
“Perhaps.” Not necessarily, however. It was not the only proposal Alessandra had received over the years. Pleasure could induce men to impulsive declarations.
Barrowleigh or Enderby. She would have to learn what she could about each one of them. It excited her to be so close now. Perhaps she would not even need Jonathan’s help.
“She knew other things too, Celia. Other rumors.” Audrianna’s tone had lost its lightness.
“What other things?”
She sighed. “It was said that one of your mother’s earliest lovers was French. An émigré. It was thought by some that he kept his ears open for the French during the war.” She reached over and placed her hand on Celia’s and gave a gentle squeeze. “It was also whispered that her ears listened for him too.”
Celia looked at her friend’s troubled expression, then at the hand grasping hers in reassurance and comfort.
She could not help herself, and started laughing. “Alessandra a spy? Audrianna, that is ludicrous. Why would she do that? She was from Yorkshire, for heaven’s sake. You could still hear it in her voice, much as she tried to mask it. Why would she do such a thing?”
“Money. Love.”
“I don’t believe it. This is just the harpies spinning wool out of nothing. The very notion is beyond ridiculous.”
“I thought so as well. I am sure it is all wrong. I was not even going to tell you. However, I thought that you should know this, as you seek out your father’s name.”
“You think that his silence on his paternity may have nothing to do with me, but this other business?”
“Consider it, at least. Perhaps he also heard these rumors, and does not want his name linked to hers in any way. Men of good reputation would not want to be explaining that she heard nothing from them to pass along to her French friend, would they?”
Most likely not. This explanation carried some logic, no matter how outraged she was that her mother’s name had been slandered with whispers like this.
If Audrianna was correct, if this was the reason her father’s identity had become a secret, he might not mind so much if she discreetly made herself known to him.
“Y
ou are notgoing totellme whatyouare doing, are you?” Sebastian asked the question from where he read a book on the library sofa. He did not even look up when he spoke.
“I am researching some heraldry, out of idle curiosity,” Jonathan said while he turned a page. There were hundreds of crests, many very similar. A single color could indicate a different person, and he had no colors for certain, only crude sketches that he had copied off Alessandra’s drawings.
Celia had seen him copying the colored ones the afternoon she revealed her theory, then left him alone. She had no longer been in the library when he turned to the others and sorted them by those numbers into a chronology of the lovers Alessandra had seen fit to document.
“It is a good thing Castleford is not here. He would tell you that you are being boring.”
“And rude too. You are too good to make either scold, however. That is why I am using your library and not his.”
“I am also too good to point out that if you have questions on heraldry, there is a place to learn the answers more quickly than in any library.”
“I doubt the College of Heralds would receive me and give those answers, least of all on matters of idle curiosity.”
“What else do they have to do?” He looked up from his book. “Unless you cannot share your curiosity for some reason, that is. Unless it is not as idle as you claim.”
Now, that was pointed. And informative. “Do you have reason to think it is not idle?”
“None at all, other than it not being a subject that a man interested in scientific investigations would normally dabble in.”
“I dabble in many things.”
Sebastian laughed. “You do indeed. I am normally aware of what, in a vague way. Not this time. Someone is being extremely discreet.”
Apparently so, if neither Castleford nor Summerhays could learn the truth, even vaguely. It was time to ask good Uncle Edward just who that very discreet person was.
“It was kind of you to allow your wife to receive Miss Pennifold,” he said, thinking a change of topic, away from himself, was in order.
Sebastian gestured lazily with his hand. “I doubt she is the first person with her background to walk through the front door.”
“Decidedly not. I have been here before, for example.”
Sebastian smiled ruefully. “It is not really the same.”
“Why? Because my mother attached herself to one man and remained invisible and hidden?”
“Because there is no suggestion that you will take up a profession that will irredeemably mark you. That unlikelihood of permanent blemish is not a confirmed fact with Miss Pennifold. That year she spent with Mrs. Northrope has not been forgotten.”
“I have killed in my profession, Summerhays. If that does not mark a person, I do not know what does.”
“If your point is that the world is harder in its assumptions regarding the Miss Pennifolds than the Mr. Albrightons, I can only agree. However, rumors surround both your and her histories and future prospects. Hers are of the worst kind, while yours are the best. That does factor into the difference, I expect.”
Jonathan could ask why Summerhays assumed better prospects for him, but he did not have to. Castleford must have been indiscreet about the scheme to meet with Thornridge.
Just then the ladies entered the library. They had tied on their bonnets and wore their pelisses. Jonathan rose to greet them along with his host.
“The sun is fully on the terrace, and I told Cook to send up some tea,” Lady Sebastian announced. “Would you gentlemen like to join us?”
Jonathan gave Lady Sebastian his attention, but he watched Celia too. Her attention shifted all around the library, while she took in its size and appointments, its books and tall windows. Just as Sebastian was accepting his wife’s invitation, Celia’s gaze passed over the books near where he and Sebastian had been sitting.
He sensed an alertness pass through her. As they strolled out to the terrace, he was sure she had noticed that the book near his chair concerned heraldry.
J
onathan went out that night, as he usually did. For the first time Celia wondered where he was going.
There had not been nearly enough curiosity about him on her part, she decided.
She sat in her room after dinner, trying to write to Daphne, but a jumble of impressions from the day distracted her. Audrianna’s information was the most troubling. Sebastian’s mother’s memories of social gossip from more than twenty years ago could not be discounted. That woman might be a trial for her son and his wife, but no one could fault her expertise in such matters.
Had Alessandra done it? Collected indiscretions from the important men who sought out her favors, and given them over to her French lover? Or to someone else, another man? If so, did she do it out of love, or for money? Perhaps there was a very good reason the account books had gone missing.
Celia pondered the matter at length, far longer than needed, she knew. She finally accepted that she was avoiding other memories of the day. In particular she did not want to contemplate that book on heraldry that Jonathan had been consulting in Summerhays’s library.
He did not need it to identify the colored crests in her mother’s folio. She had handed him those names. He might have been confirming the accuracy of those identities, of course, before doing whatever he did when he investigated. She wished she could believe that. She wanted to very much.
She went to her writing table and opened the folio. The watercolors still rested atop the other drawings. She worked her way down to the crests, the ones not colored, and began turning them. Perhaps there was something in these that he thought would be useful in helping her too. She wondered what it might be.