A Stolen Heart

by Candace Camp

  “There! You see?” Lady Ursula exclaimed triumphantly. “Very clever, Thorpe. Chilton’s daughter would have been two years old at the time. She was born in the summer of eighty-six.”

  “June eighteenth,” the Countess murmured a little sadly. She looked at Alexandra. “I’m sorry. I suppose there is no way it could be you, could it?” However, the look on the Countess’s face told Alexandra that she still wasn’t entirely convinced.

  Alexandra still felt uneasy. It was odd that she looked so much like this Simone and that she had been in Paris at the same time and was close to the age of the Countess’s granddaughter.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t,” Alexandra said. She went to the Countess and took the woman’s hand in hers. “I’m very sorry. I think it would be lovely to be your granddaughter, but I don’t see how it is possible. I—I hope you will allow me to be your friend, though.”

  The Countess smiled and patted her hand. “Very prettily said, child. Yes, we will indeed be friends.”

  “Mother, I think it’s time you rested, don’t you?” Lady Ursula said, giving Alexandra a glare. “Thorpe will take Miss Ward home.”

  “Yes, I do believe I would like to take a little nap.” The Countess, who had been so full of energy a few minutes before, sounded weary. She gave Alexandra a small smile. “Please excuse me. I find that age makes boring companions of us.” She held out her hand. “Thank you, my dear, for indulging an old woman’s fantasy and coming to see me. I do hope you will call on me again soon. We will talk about America or something else that is more normal.”

  “Of course, my lady. I was very happy to meet you.”

  The Countess started toward the door, and her companion, the self-effacing Miss Everhart, jumped up and hurried over to give the older woman the support of her arm as she walked out the door. Lady Ursula turned toward Alexandra.

  “Thank you for coming, Miss Ward,” she said in the tone of one dismissing a servant or tradesman. “My mother sometimes takes odd fancies, but, as you see, she realizes how unlikely they are soon enough. One cannot fool her long, and she has family to make sure that no one takes advantage of her.”

  Her words sounded vaguely like a threat, Alexandra thought, though she wasn’t sure what the woman could be threatening her about. Lady Ursula explained herself no further, just swung around and marched out the door, leaving Alexandra looking after her in surprise.

  “Ah, Lady Ursula—ever the diplomat,” Thorpe commented dryly.

  “Oh, Miss Ward, I’m so sorry.” Lady Ursula’s daughter rose from her seat and came over to Alexandra. Alexandra had completely forgotten about the girl’s presence until then, so much did she girl fade into the background. “My mother can be quite rude sometimes. She doesn’t even realize it, I’m afraid. Please forgive her. It is just that she worries about Grandmother.”

  “Of course.” Alexandra did not think it was worry over the Countess that made the woman rude and brusque, but she would not add to this obviously domineered girl’s burden by criticizing her mother. “It is only natural that she should be concerned about her mother.” She smiled at the girl, who answered with a shy smile. “I do hope that you and I may be friends, too.”

  “I would like that very much!” Penelope answered, her face lighting up. “I didn’t get to meet you last night, but Nicola told me you were ever so nice. If it’s all right with you, Nicola and I would like to call on you while you’re in London.”

  “That sounds lovely.” They discussed where her leased house was and chatted politely for a few more minutes before Thorpe and Alexandra took their leave.

  “Nice girl,” Thorpe commented as they went down the steps. “Penelope, I mean. Her mother’s a tyrant. I don’t know how the poor girl survives. At least Artie was a boy and could set up his own establishment. Penelope’s stuck with her—for life, I fear. Lady Ursula isn’t bad in her intentions. She simply cannot keep from running everyone’s lives for them.”

  “Poor girl.” Alexandra took his hand and climbed onto the high seat of the curricle.

  Thorpe went around and climbed up on the other side. He took the reins from the servant who had been walking the horses, tossed the lad a coin and slapped the reins. “I hope you weren’t upset by all that.”

  “What the Countess said? No…Well, I must admit it was eerie looking into that woman’s face in the painting. She did look a great deal like me, didn’t she?”

  “It was rather uncanny,” Thorpe admitted. “I could understand why the Countess fainted when she saw you last night. She’s never really gotten over the loss of her son and his family, you know. It’s been twenty some-odd years, and she never talks about them, but there’s always been something a little sad in her eyes.”

  “I feel sorry for her. It must have been awful. I wish I could have said something to help her. I can see how she would want to believe that one of her grandchildren was still alive. But it couldn’t be me!” she added almost defiantly.

  “No doubt there is some explanation. Why, you could be a distant relative of the de Viponts. That would be possible—that some member of the family moved to the United States.”

  “I suppose,” Alexandra agreed a little doubtfully. “I’ve never heard any mention of them—or, indeed, of any Frenchmen, in our family tree.”

  “More likely, though, than that you’re the Countess’s dead granddaughter.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” Alexandra was consumed with a desire to get home and talk to her mother. Rhea was the only one who could shed any light on this. She could tell her the details of her birth, where and when and what the midwife said and—oh, all the things that made something reality. Her mother could convince her there was no possibility Alexandra could be anything but her very own beloved daughter—for that was the thing that set up the awful, cold feeling in her stomach. If by some wild happenstance the Countess was right and Alexandra was somehow her granddaughter, escaped from the ruin of the rest of her family, then that meant her mother was not really her mother. That her whole existence was based on a lie!

  “It couldn’t be true,” she said, more to herself than to her companion. “It just couldn’t.”

  “Of course not,” Thorpe agreed soothingly.

  He pulled the curricle up in front of her house and helped her down. The lad at the end of the street, who earned his pennies sweeping the crossing for the fine ladies and gentlemen to walk on, abandoned his job and came running, eager to hold Thorpe’s horses’ heads as he had earlier this afternoon. Thorpe waited for him to hand over the reins, but Alexandra started up the steps without him.

  She could see that something brown lay on the stoop at the top of the steps, but she could not make out what it was. Curious, she moved closer. Then she saw it clearly, and a little shriek escaped her before she clapped her gloved hand over her mouth.

  A very large, very dead rat lay across her doorstep!

  CHAPTER SIX

  “ALEXANDRA!” THORPE WAS BESIDE HER on the porch in an instant. His eyes, at first on her, went to the doorstep, and he saw the animal. “Good God! What the devil is that doing here?”

  Alexandra shook her head. “I have no idea. Ugh.” She gave a shudder.

  “Your dog or cat brought you a present?” he guessed.

  “We have no dog or cat. Not with us.”

  “The housekeeper might have one—nearly any kitchen has a cat for mousing.”

  “Perhaps. I’m not sure. But it would take a monstrously big cat to bring this thing here.”

  “True.” His hopes of fobbing her off with a pleasant lie died.

  “A person brought it.”

  “It would seem so,” Thorpe agreed reluctantly. He reached across and hammered on the door.

  A moment later a footman opened the door. He looked surprised to see Alexandra knocking at her own door, but then his gaze flickered to the animal on the steps, and he gave a sharp gasp.

  “Blimey! Oh, ‘scuse me, miss. I mean, uh…” He looked in fascinated horror at
the corpse.

  “I assume that you have not seen this before?” Thorpe asked.

  “Cor! No, sir, not likely!” He struggled to regain his usual dignified demeanor. “I beg your pardon, my lord. I cannot imagine how this came to be here.”

  “Get the butler; I want to ask him a few questions. And get rid of that carcass right away.”

  “Let’s go in by the servants’ entrance,” Alexandra suggested. “It’ll be quicker than waiting for them to clean this. And I am not stepping over that thing. We can question the servants there.”

  “Of course.” Thorpe wondered why it had even occurred to him that Alexandra would hand over the task of investigating this incident to him, as any other woman would. He followed her around the corner of the house and along the narrow passageway to the servants’ entrance.

  He did manage to get there before Alexandra and open the door for her. She nodded her thanks and swept inside. Everyone in the kitchen stopped and turned to look at them in astonishment. Thorpe wondered if any of the former occupants of the house had ever casually walked in the servants’ entrance.

  “I need to speak to all of you,” Alexandra began crisply. Thorpe knew that if he had not heard her shriek with his own ears a few minutes earlier, he would not have thought she had been at all discomposed.

  The servants lined up before her, rather like troops about to be inspected. Thorpe watched them for any flicker of expression that might show that one of them already knew about the dead rat on the doorstep. After all, the person who would have easiest and most unnoticed access to the stoop would be someone who worked here.

  “There is a dead rat on the front doorstep,” Alexandra began without preamble.

  Everyone stared at her in astonishment.

  “What, miss?” the butler asked, unsure he had heard correctly.

  “I found a dead rat on the stoop when Lord Thorpe and I returned home just now.” All eyes swung to Thorpe, as if for confirmation. He nodded, and the group turned to Alexandra.

  “What I want to know is whether one of you put it there,” Alexandra went on.

  So she had already figured that out, too, Thorpe thought admiringly. Of course, it would be just like Alexandra to look at a problem head-on, with no attempt to make anything seem better or nicer.

  “Miss Ward!” The butler appeared genuinely shocked, as did most of the servants. None of them looked in the slightest guilty or as if the news was not new to them. “None of us would think of such a thing!” He swung around to look at each and every member of the staff with his piercing gaze. They immediately fell into a chorus of noes, accompanied by a multitude of accounts of their whereabouts the entire afternoon.

  “Did any of you see or hear anything suspicious?” Alexandra asked, cutting into their babble.

  The answer, once again, appeared to be a universal, emphatic no.

  “You needn’t have seen someone putting the rat there,” Thorpe added, glancing from one to another. “It could have been something like seeing someone on the street this afternoon who looked as if he didn’t belong or someone in a hurry.”

  They appeared to take a second to think, but once again, they shook their heads in the negative.

  Alexandra and Thorpe gave up and left the kitchen. Behind them, a buzz of noise broke out among the servants.

  Alexandra sighed as they walked along the hall and into the formal drawing room. “Adding another bit of gossip to their lore about the mad American.”

  Thorpe smiled. “I doubt they think you’re mad.”

  No, it was her mother they thought mad. But she could not say that to him.

  “Near enough,” was all she replied. “They think I am decidedly unusual to begin with. Then last night I came running home screaming, and today I find a dead rat on the doorsill.”

  “Probably not the typical events of this household,” he agreed.

  Alexandra cast him a look. “You probably think I am equally strange. Worse than strange—Countesses faint at the sight of me.”

  Thorpe chuckled. “Being with you is never dull, I must admit.”

  He looked at her, admiring the way she did not break down, did not cry, but straightforwardly faced the problem and sought to find out what had happened. There were some, he knew, who would find her cool-headedness quite unfeminine, but Thorpe found the contrast of her no-nonsense demeanor with her lush figure and beautiful face appealing—indeed, downright erotic. It made a man long to find out exactly what it would take to shake her composure.

  “I can assure you that my life is usually much duller than this,” Alexandra told him. “I’ve never had such things happen to me before. It is only since I came to England. Indeed, it is only since I met you.”

  His eyebrows rose lazily. “Are you saying that I am to blame?”

  Alexandra laughed. “No. All I am saying is that it is the last two days. Since I’ve mingled in London Society.”

  Thorpe stared at her. “Are you suggesting that someone from the Duchess’s party is doing these things to you?”

  Alexandra hesitated. “I’m not sure what I’m saying. It sounds absurd. It is absurd, I’m sure. It is just—well, they seem to have fallen one upon another. Someone wants me to leave England. But I cannot think why—other than Lady Ursula, of course,” she added dryly.

  Thorpe let out a bark of laughter. “Somehow I think we can acquit Ursula of sneaking around leaving dead rats at your door. Or attacking you. After all, I was with her last night when that happened. And we were with her this afternoon, as well. Of course, I guess she could have spurred on the Honorable Augustus to do it, like Lady Macbeth.”

  Alexandra had to giggle at the idea of the Lady Ursula’s portly, blank-faced husband committing either crime. “No, you’re right. I think we have to acquit them both. I suppose it could be one of the servants. Some of them resent me. On the other hand, if I were to leave, they would lose their jobs—and they could simply quit, after all, if they dislike me enough to be willing to lose their income.”

  “We don’t know that the attack last night and this afternoon’s present are related.”

  Alexandra cast him a disbelieving look. “More coincidence? I think it highly unlikely. My attacker told me to leave last night, and now he is giving me a reminder.” She set her jaw. “He obviously doesn’t know me if he thinks a rat on my doorstep will make me turn tail and run. I confess, I’m growing more and more curious by the moment. I may stay here even longer now.”

  “No doubt you would.”

  Alexandra cocked one eyebrow at him. “You would prefer that I left?”

  “No.” He smiled. “I would not prefer that at all.” Heat flooded him as he thought of exactly how much he wanted her to stay. Any other woman he knew would have been in tears, leaning on him and asking him to solve her problem. The fact that she was not somehow made her all the more desirable to him. It also, perversely, made him want to help her. “But I do want you to take precautions.”

  “I will. All the doors and windows are locked at night. And I think that, after today, I may just keep a footman posted outside.”

  “I’ll send you my valet.”

  “Why? What would I do with your valet?”

  “He’s not your ordinary sort of valet,” Thorpe assured her. “He was an officer’s batman earlier in his life. That’s the only reason he has any qualifications as a valet. I hired him in India after he had been cashiered out.”

  “Cashiered! That hardly sounds like a recommendation.”

  “He was insubordinate to an officer, which does not lower him in my opinion. Many of the officers I met in India were idiots. He’s completely loyal to me and a very good fighter. He and Punwati helped me in some tight situations in India. Perhaps you would rather have Punwati. He is a trifle smoother than Murdock.”

  “I need neither of them,” Alexandra said firmly. “My aunt and I are quite capable of handling the situation. Once they see that I cannot be frightened off, whoever they are, I imagine that they
will cease this nonsense. In the meantime, nothing serious has occurred. Just a few annoying things.”

  “I would say that your being attacked goes beyond annoying.”

  “I wasn’t hurt—not really.”

  “Who knows what might have happened if you had not been able to escape him.”

  “But I was. That’s what I mean—I can take care of myself. I don’t need your valet trailing about after me and frightening all the servants.”

  “You’ve heard about Murdock?”

  “Well, Mr. Jones did tell me that he was a trifle unusual.”

  He let out a short bark of laughter. “He looks as if he’s been in a few fights. Not a bad sort of way to look when someone is after you.”

  “Still, it’s quite unnecessary. I wouldn’t dream of taking your valet from you.”

  Thorpe grimaced. “You are an exasperating female. I presume you’ve been told that.”

  “A few times.” Alexandra smiled.

  “Why are you so stubborn?”

  “I’m not stubborn. I simply don’t want or need your valet to protect me.”

  “It’s a very little thing. Why are you so set against him?”

  “Because I am an independent woman. I like to take care of things myself instead of depending on someone else. I am in charge of this household, and I don’t want someone working in it who is working for someone else, not me,” Alexandra told him lightly.

  He looked at her in offended astonishment. “You think that I would have him do anything against you?”

  “I certainly hope not. However, I do not think it is a good policy to have employees who are loyal to someone else.”

  She wasn’t about to tell him that she had another reason—she did not want one of his servants in the house, listening to all the stories of her servants and reporting to Thorpe that Alexandra’s mother was mad. Rhea wasn’t mad, only a trifle…odd. She chose not to examine why it seemed so important that Thorpe not think badly of Rhea.

  Thorpe glowered at her, and Alexandra gazed back imperturbably. He was surprised at the little stab of pain her words had brought. She didn’t trust him! He thought that it would give him a distinct sense of pleasure to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she agreed to his plan. Another part of him wanted equally to grab her and kiss that faintly smug look off her face.