The Deception

by Joan Wolf

  * * * *

  The following day, Caroline arrived. Looking at her, I had no further doubts that my uncle had been in love with her. She was twenty-six, a year younger than Adrian and six years older than Harry. She gave me a charming smile as she turned from greeting her brothers. “At last,” she said, “I have a sister!”

  I had been nervous of meeting her, but her words disarmed me completely. I grinned and held out my hand. She ignored it and came to give me a kiss and a hug. She had Harry’s fine-boned, angelic face and was not very much taller than I. She turned to her elder brother and said, “I’m glad to see you have upheld the family tradition for good looks.”

  “You have not yet greeted Miss Cranbourne, Caro,” Adrian said pleasantly, and as Caroline turned to speak to Louisa, Adrian introduced his brother-in-law to me.

  Lord Ashley was in his mid-thirties, a pleasant-looking man with a humorous mouth and intelligent hazel eyes. He shook my hand and said, “I hope you will not be too put out by my family, Lady Greystone. We are a noisy lot, I’m afraid.”

  He had to raise his voice to be heard, since the baby in the nurse’s arms was wailing and the toddler whom a nanny had in charge was announcing loudly that he was hungry. I said to Adrian’s brother-in-law, “Please call me Kate.” Then I beckoned to Mrs. Richards and said to the harried-looking nurse and nanny, “If you will go with Mrs. Richards, she will show you to the nursery and make sure you have all that you need.”

  Both women gave me a grateful look and followed Mrs. Richards to the staircase.

  “Thank you, Kate,” Caroline said. “They are tired.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with their lungs, that’s for sure,” Harry said.

  Lord Ashley said fervently, “I could use a glass of port, Adrian.”

  “Did you all travel in the same chaise?” Adrian asked with amusement.

  “Edward rode the entire way,” Caroline announced. “I cannot imagine why he should be in need of a glass of port. It is I who need sustenance.”

  “Come into the drawing room,” I said, “and we will all have some refreshment.”

  A bottle of port was brought for the gentlemen, and I ordered tea for the ladies. While the men ranged themselves in front of the fire, Caroline, Louisa, and I retired to the striped satin sofa.

  “Tell me,” Caroline demanded as soon as she was seated, “what are you wearing to the Presentation?”

  I described my dress to her as I poured the tea.

  “Of course, you will wear the Greystone diamonds,” Caroline pronounced when I had finished.

  Adrian had said nothing to me about the Greystone diamonds, but before I could stop her Caroline had called to her brother, “Adrian, don’t tell me you have not yet given Kate the diamonds?”

  He was listening intently to something his brother-in-law was saying, and did not hear her. I thought that perhaps he did not want to hear her, and said firmly that I would rather not discuss the diamonds. Caroline ignored me, raised her voice, and repeated her question. His head finally swung in our direction and he answered, “The diamonds? They are at Rundle and Bridge’s being cleaned. Don’t worry, Caro. Kate will have them in time for her Presentation.”

  “Good.” Caroline turned back to me. “You won’t be able to wear the tiara, because of the ostrich plumes, but the necklace and earrings and bracelets will look well.”

  “It sounds like a great deal of jewelry,” I managed to say faintly.

  “Every woman at the drawing room will be simply hung with jewelry, Kate,” Caroline assured me. “The idea is to look as laden as is humanly possible.” She thought for a moment. “Perhaps we can get the tiara on you, after all. We can fix the ostrich plumes around it.”

  “Do you know, I am rather nervous about this Presentation,” I confessed to Adrian’s sister. “I have nightmares that I will trip on my dress or do something else that is horridly gauche.”

  Caroline’s slate-blue eyes lit with laughter. “I felt the same way,” she confided. “Everyone does, I think.”

  “Yes, but if I make a cake of myself it will reflect upon Greystone,” I said gloomily.

  “I keep telling you that you have nothing to worry about, Kate,” Louisa said. She turned to Caroline. “Her curtsy is perfect. She could hold it for an hour if she had to. She will do beautifully.”

  “I wish that it was over with!” I said.

  “In a few days it will be.” Caroline smiled at me. “I have been looking forward to this season ever since Adrian wrote to ask me to present you,” she said. “We are going to have such fun, Kate. Wait and see!”

  I looked at her lovely, sparkling face and thought once more about my uncle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  My presentation went off as smoothly as everyone had promised it would. Adrian and I, along with Caroline and Lord Ashley, were taken to St. James Palace in the Greystone carriage, which was decked with three footmen garbed in elaborate livery. I wore the obligatory ostrich-plume headdress along with the Greystone diamond tiara, three different kinds of skirts draped over a huge hoop, diamonds at my throat, in my ears, and on my wrists and fingers. The cost of the dress alone would probably have fed a village for an entire year. The diamonds would have fed all of Ireland.

  Caroline and I left the men in the huge reception room and crammed ourselves into the presentation chamber anteroom along with about twenty other girls and matrons, all of whom were encased in hoops and hung with diamonds. Actually making my curtsy to the queen was almost an anticlimax. She was old and wrinkled and most unprepossessing. Caroline and I curtsied, she beckoned us forward, and for the next ten minutes she proceeded to ask us questions about Adrian!

  The reception room was packed when we returned, but Adrian’s head topped even that sea of tall men and ostrich plumes. We had almost reached him when I saw that he was talking to a slender girl whose honey-colored hair was piled elegantly high under her waving plumes. My heart plunged. It was Lady Mary Weston.

  Caroline must have felt me hesitate, because she turned to look at me. Then her eyes went back to her brother. “Who is that talking to Adrian?” she asked.

  ‘That is Lady Mary Weston,” I answered in what I hoped was an unemotional voice.

  Caroline didn’t reply, but I saw that she recognized the name. We squeezed our hoops through the remaining crush until we reached Adrian. He greeted us with a smile. “The deed is done?” he asked.

  “Kate was magnificent,” Caroline assured him.

  “Kate is always magnificent,” he replied. I shot him a suspicious look, but his face was unreadable. He proceeded to introduce Lady Mary to us both.

  Caroline smiled and made a polite reply.

  I said soberly, “Lady Mary and I have met.”

  “But not since you became Lady Greystone,” said the girl who had expected to achieve that title herself. “I have just been wishing Greystone happy; allow me to offer the same sentiments to you.”

  Her expression was as serenely lovely as always, but she had paled a little when she saw me. “Thank you, Lady Mary,” I said.

  “Where is Edward?” Caroline asked her brother.

  “He was talking to someone about breeding cattle, I believe,” Adrian said.

  Caroline groaned. “If Edward has found someone to talk to about breeding cattle, we will never get him out of here.”

  “Are you ready to leave?” Adrian asked. “If you are, I’ll find him for you.”

  “If we can leave without being rude, I’d like to,” I said. “The smell of all these different perfumes mingling together is not particularly appetizing.”

  “Mmm,” my husband said. His eyes were scanning the room. “There he is.” He looked down at Lady Mary, excused himself, and pushed off into the crowd, which parted before him as it always did.

  I saw the expression in Lady Mary’s eyes as she looked after him. If I had ever had any doubts about her feelings for Adrian, that one, naked look laid them to rest.

  Damn, I thought.
Damn. Damn. Damn.

  A distinctly chilly, feminine voice said, “Mary, my dear, I have been looking for you.”

  Lady Mary turned. “I am sorry, Mama,” she replied quietly. “Allow me to present Lady Ashley and Lady Greystone.”

  If looks could kill, the Duchess of Wareham’s glare would have struck me through the heart. I looked back into her haughty, aquiline face and I grew a little pale. I am not accustomed to people looking at me like that.

  As the duchess and her daughter moved off, Caroline murmured in my ear, “If I were you I wouldn’t stand in front of any open windows when the duchess is nearby.”

  I tried to produce the smile she expected. Then Adrian returned with Edward, and we made our escape.

  * * * *

  The Presentation over, my second London Season officially began. It was very different from my first. Doors were opened to the Countess of Greystone that had remained firmly shut to Miss Cathleen Fitzgerald. I went from being a satellite on the outer reaches of the ton to being one of its stars.

  I won’t deny that it was far more pleasant being part of the inner circle, but what I enjoyed the most about this time in London was being part of a family. Caroline was so kind to me that I soon began to feel that she really was my sister, and I adored her children. For an only child to find herself suddenly blessed with a brother, a sister, two nephews, and a cousin is a wonderful thing.

  Of course, I also had a husband. Ironically, I would have been a happier wife if I had loved him less. I would not have felt such anguish that he did not love me back.

  Sometimes I pretended. At night, lying in his arms, feeling his passion, I would pretend to myself that he loved me. He wanted me, that was certainly clear enough, and it wasn’t hard to make the leap in my mind from wanting to loving.

  But the morning inevitably came, when the sun rose and the passion was spent. I wasn’t a green girl; I knew that men could want where they did not love. He was always beautifully courteous to me, always thoughtful and kind. But he kept me at a distance. I hated it, but there was nothing I could do to change it. The circumstances of our marriage were always vividly present to my mind. I had no right to ask for his love; I had no right to burden him with mine.

  Hiding my feelings from him was the hardest thing I have ever done. Just seeing him walk into a room was enough to make me dizzy. It was easiest just to avoid him if I could, and I soon discovered that the intense social whirl of the Season made avoiding him fairly easy. In the ton, married women were not expected to make a couple with their husbands. Those times that Adrian actually escorted me, he was also escorting Caroline and Louisa, and often it was Edward, or even Harry, who accompanied us on our round of social engagements.

  The only time Adrian and I were alone together outside the bedroom was on the mornings that we took the horses to the park. Adrian had sent to Greystone for Euclide, because he did not want to leave him unworked for weeks, and on these mornings we would leave the house at six o’clock to ride through the slowly wakening London streets to Hyde Park.

  The park was always deserted at this hour, and the air smelled as fresh and sweet as it did in the country. The grass and the flower beds glistened with dew and the thrushes sang as if they were in Berkshire, not in London. The air had a nip to it, and we would let the horses warm up their muscles in a long, stretching, side-by-side canter.

  I loved these mornings. It was the only time we were really easy together—two people who were happy in each other’s company because we were intent on a common goal. We had found a fairly flat grassy spot near the lake and we would work the horses there, me on Elsa and Adrian on Euclide.

  To ride classical dressage requires total concentration by both horse and rider, and we worked quietly, only aware of the other so that we would not get in the way. It was a perfectly happy time. The warmth of the early-morning sun on my bare head, the peace that perfect communication with an animal can always bring, the steady rhythm of Elsa’s trot as she extended it, snapping out her forelegs with wonderful brilliance—I wanted to hold on to that time, to stretch it out and make it last forever.

  On the way home we would discuss the session, how each horse had gone, what the problems were, how to correct them the next time we rode. At these times there was no distance between us, no sexual tension to muddy the clarity of our relationship. We passed ideas back and forth, feeding off the other’s insights, perfectly comfortable, perfectly in tune.

  Then the house would loom before us, and grooms would take away the horses, and we would go back to being Lord and Lady Greystone. It was unutterably depressing.

  Such was the situation in the Greystone household when Paddy returned from Ireland.

  I had coaxed Harry into taking me to see Madame Tussaud’s wax-figure museum that morning, not because I was so anxious to see it but because I thought he had been unusually quiet recently and I wanted to see if there was anything wrong. I gave him plenty of opportunity to talk to me, but he was not forthcoming, and when we reached home again Walters informed me that Paddy had arrived. Caroline and Edward had taken little Ned to the Tower to see the royal menagerie, Louisa had gone to return a book to Hookham’s library, and Adrian was meeting with some government official or other, so Harry and I had Paddy to ourselves.

  I ordered some refreshment, ushered everyone into the morning room, sat on the edge of a yellow silk chair, stared at Paddy, and said expectantly, “Well?”

  Paddy took a long drink of beer. His pale blue eyes were very sober. “I think I have found out why Mr. Daniel was killed,” he said.

  Harry gave a sharp exclamation of surprise and excitement. I leaned even farther forward on my chair and said nothing. Paddy looked at me and began his tale.

  “You were right to think that it began with the hunters, Miss Cathleen, although it was not the hunters themselves that set Mr. Daniel off.” Paddy took a sip of beer. “I talked to Farrell, the man who was after selling the horses to your da, but I learned nothing from him. I was a wee bit discouraged, but I decided to stay in the area for a while—to see if I could pick up on anything—and that is how I came to be there for the Galway races.”

  My eyes narrowed as my thoughts turned inward. “We saw racing in Galway that time we bought the hunters,” I said slowly.

  Paddy nodded emphatically. “So we did, girl. And this time I saw what Mr. Daniel must have seen two and a half years ago.”

  He paused to take another drink of beer. The Irish all have a great sense of drama.

  Harry hissed impatiently. Paddy ignored him, took another swallow, and picked up his story.

  “Do you remember the horse that won the Galway Cup at those races?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I rarely forget a horse, and this one had been particularly memorable. “He was a bay, with an amazingly powerful stride.”

  Paddy smiled, obviously pleased with me. “God bless you, Miss Cathleen, you’re just like your da,” he said.

  I smiled back at him.

  “What does this bay have to do with Kate’s father’s death?” Harry demanded. He had all the English impatience with storytelling; they always want to go straight to the point.

  Paddy gave him a fatherly look. “I saw him again a few weeks ago, Mr. Harry. That was when I noticed that he runs just like the bay colt that Stade won the Guineas with.” Paddy turned back to me. “As you noticed yourself, girl, it’s a very distinctive stride. You cannot mistake it. The three-year-old Stade is running this year has it as well.”

  I was puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Paddy. What is the connection?”

  “I did not see that myself until I started asking around.” Paddy set his empty glass down on a side table, stared for a long, thoughtful moment at his scarred old boots, then lifted his pale blue eyes to mine. “It was then that I made an interesting discovery,” he said. “I looked up the Stud Book and found that the Irish colt’s sire was a stallion named Finn MacCool. Now this Finn MacCool had been a grand runner in Ireland,
but he was hurt as a four-year-old and retired to stud. It was then that his true brilliance began to come out.”

  Harry and I were staring at Paddy the way the sultan in the Arabian Nights must have stared at Scheherazade. Paddy went on, “It seemed obvious to me that Stade’s colts must have the same bloodlines as the horse that had won the Galway Cup, so I paid a visit to the horse’s owner, Frank O’Toole, and I learned a very interesting thing.”

  Paddy paused. Harry looked as if he wanted to scream, but he managed to restrain himself.

  “Five years ago there was a fire in Finn MacCool’s barn,” Paddy said. “O’Toole said he and his men got all the horses out and safely turned into a paddock—or so they thought. They were too busy trying to keep the fire from spreading to check the horses for the rest of the night, and when they finally got back to the paddock the following morning they found that a part of the fence was down and the horses had gotten out. They rounded up all of the others, but Finn MacCool had disappeared.”

  He paused. Significantly.

  My mouth opened. “Oh my God,” I said.

  Paddy nodded. “They never got him back. The general feeling in Galway is that he got trapped in a bog and sank.”

  “Was Finn MacCool a dark bay?” I demanded.

  Paddy nodded. “Unmarked.”

  I inhaled, then said flatly, “Alcazar.”

  “That is what I am thinking, Miss Cathleen. And I would wager all my earthly goods that that is what Mr. Daniel thought as well.”

  Harry said in an injured voice, “I would very much appreciate it if someone would tell me what you are talking about. I realize I must be stupid, but I haven’t tumbled to it yet.”

  I turned to him and said, “The Marquis of Stade has a stud named Alcazar.”

  No matter what he might claim, Harry wasn’t stupid. His breath sucked in audibly as he realized what we suspected. “Good God, Kate,” he said. “Are you saying that Stade’s horse, Alcazar, is really Finn MacCool?”