“Nonsense, sweetheart,” Landis said. “You haven’t aged a day since we met. If anything, you’ve grown only more beautiful.”
“There, you see? That just proves that love is in fact stone blind.” She laughed softly and lifted her wineglass in a silent toast to him. “You turn my head terribly, darling.”
He toasted her in return, a sudden warm softness in his brown eyes. “It is one of the great pleasures of my life, my love.”
She gave him a secretive little smile and then faced Madeline again. “I suppose Drew is just as bad. Worse, I’d guess. He was always such a romantic when I knew him back at Oxford.”
“I trust we’ve all grown up a bit since then,” Drew said.
“Oh no.” Fleur wagged one finger at him. “I know your type, Drew Farthering. Death before dishonor. Utterly devoted. Quietly and deeply passionate. Eighteen or eighty, you’d be just the same.”
Drew ate another spoonful of soup, hoping his face wasn’t turning any uncomfortable shades of red. Madeline, bless her, was quick to shift the conversation to something not so awkward.
She turned to Landis. “I understand you and Mrs. Landis have a little boy.”
“That’s right.” Landis’s eyes lit. “Peter. He turned four this summer, and I tell you, the boy’s smart as a whip.”
He reached in his jacket pocket for his wallet, and Fleur rolled her eyes.
“Oh, dear. Please, Brent, you mustn’t bore everyone with your pictures.”
“Just one, Fleur.”
“I’m so sorry,” Fleur said to Madeline with good-natured regret. “I told him before we arrived—”
“Oh, I’d love to see.” Madeline leaned toward Landis, waiting for him to find what he was looking for. “Four is such a darling age.”
Landis beamed at her and handed her a photograph. “Sorry, my dear, but I can never resist. A bit proud, don’t you know.”
Madeline gave him a warm glance and then looked at the picture. “Oh, how sweet. Look, Nick.”
Nick leaned over to look, too. “Cute kid.”
“Aunt Ruth, you must see.”
Madeline passed the photo to her aunt.
“A lovely child. He favors you, Mrs. Landis,” Aunt Ruth said. “Very much, apart from the blond hair.”
Fleur patted her black chignon and gave Aunt Ruth a pert grin. “You’d never know it to see me now, Miss Jansen, but my hair was just as blond when I was that age. I’m afraid it didn’t last, and yet I’ve never cared for bleaching. It seems so . . . so false.”
Drew looked over at the photograph Madeline’s aunt still held. It showed a fair-haired little boy holding a stuffed rabbit. His expression was solemn for the camera, but there was a brightness to the eyes and a sweetness to the mouth that were altogether appealing.
“You’ve every right to be proud, Landis,” Drew said as Aunt Ruth handed the picture back. “He’s a fine little chap.”
“All right, dear, I’ve put it up.” Landis replaced the photograph in his wallet, a touch of mischief on his face. “Won’t happen again.”
Fleur leaned forward in her chair to get a better view of Madeline around Nick. “You mustn’t misunderstand me, Miss Parker. I’m quite the doting mother myself, but I know how tedious hearing about other people’s children can be.”
“I think Peter is charming,” Madeline assured her. “Anyone would be proud to claim him as his own.”
Fleur simpered as if Madeline were thirty years her junior rather than just seven or eight. “Isn’t she sweet, Drew? Just the sort of girl you were looking for when you were at Oxford.”
“True enough,” Drew told her, keeping his expression bland. “But I’ve found since then that they’re exceedingly rare.”
The creamed chicken, spinach, and new potatoes arrived, and the conversation shifted to food and then to staff. Landis and Aunt Ruth discussed Chicago at length, since Landis had visited there many times on business, and Fleur told several amusing stories about her time onstage. By the time the pears a la conde and then the port were served, Drew let himself relax, at least a little. It seemed the evening would not be a disaster after all. At least it wouldn’t be until he had to talk to Madeline alone, and he was sure from the look in her eyes that she would insist on it.
Once the Landises were gone, Aunt Ruth retired for the night, and Nick, claiming some estate business to attend to, made himself scarce. Madeline sat beside Drew on the sofa in the drawing room, her hand on his arm. She had once teasingly accused him of never believing a woman could do any harm.
“Oh, no,” he had told her then. “I’ve been taught to know better. I have the scars to prove it.”
“I’ll want to know someday,” she’d said to that, her voice tender and sympathetic. She hadn’t pressed to know more, and he had known she would wait until he was ready to tell her about those scars.
He sighed. Now that someday had come.
“Madeline . . .” Why did this have to be so difficult? “Madeline, I—”
“You both handled it extremely well. I think her husband believed her story.”
He shrugged. “It’s true, you know. Everything she said. We met about six years ago when I was at Oxford. I haven’t seen her since.”
“But that’s not the whole story.”
“No.”
She studied his face for a long moment. “I suppose it was exactly what I’m thinking it was.”
He nodded. This was supposed to be behind him. God forgive him, did it have to come up just now? Right before the wedding?
Her mild expression did not change. “Will you tell me about it?”
“There’s not much to it.” He drew a deep breath. “I was eighteen. I’d been away at school before, of course, but I was just beginning to feel as if I were truly on my own. I saw Fleur in a production of Ruddigore at the local theater. I thought she was amazing, but I never expected to see her except on the stage. But when my friends and I went to have dinner afterward, there she was with three or four other girls from the troupe. I just went to tell her how much I had enjoyed the performance, and she asked us all to join them.”
There was a touch of wryness in Madeline’s faint smile. “And you were smitten.”
“I was. I won’t deny it. But I never thought anything would ever come of it. I didn’t think we’d ever even meet after that, but the next day I ran into her in a tea shop near my college, and again she invited me to sit with her. Here she was, an older woman by five years and an actress, God save us, just the sort I’d been warned away from, and she was as sweet and ladylike as any of the girls I’d been told were proper company. I asked if she’d dine with me after her performance the next night, and she said she would. I saw her almost every night after that. We’d go to dinner after the show was over and talk for hours about nothing.”
“Sounds harmless enough.”
“Perhaps. It should have been. It was.” He shrugged again. “It was until a couple of weeks later. I had taken her to dinner at a little French place, and I could tell the whole time that she was upset. She kept saying it was nothing, but when I took her to her door, she started to cry. She held on to me and cried as if her heart were breaking. I couldn’t leave her that way, so I took her inside. I’d never even stepped foot in the place before. It’s . . . well, it was something I was always careful never to do with any of the girls I saw. Call me Victorian if you like, but I’d seen too many of my friends get into trouble too easily. Anyway, that night I told myself it would be all right, that I couldn’t just dump a lady on her doorstep when she was in such a state.”
Madeline nodded. “So you took her inside.”
“I did.” He let the air seep out of his lungs. “At first she wouldn’t tell me why she was so upset. Then she said it was because the troupe were moving on after the Saturday night show and we’d likely not see each other again. I told her if she married me, she wouldn’t have to go with the troupe at all. Then she was kissing me and, well, it wasn’t anything like the good
-night kisses we’d shared before.” He felt his face getting hot. “Do I need to say anything more?”
She shook her head. “Did you love her?”
“I thought I did. I was infatuated with her. I wanted her. But, no, I didn’t love her. There was always something . . . distant about her, as if she were playing a role and not letting me see her true self.”
“And that didn’t bother you?”
His smile turned bitter. “It was a very charming role.”
“When you were with her, why didn’t you just stop?”
“I couldn’t. I . . .” He trailed off, laughing faintly. “Forgive me, darling. I mean to be always and entirely honest with you, and that’s not precisely true. I didn’t stop because I chose not to. Whatever else I’ve told myself since, that’s how it was. I thought we were in love. I thought we were going to be married. I thought that would make it all right. There are a lot of little decisions one makes between good night at the door and good morning under the coverlet, and I made all the wrong ones. Still, that was the last time I saw her.”
She squeezed his arm. “At least that was the end of it.”
“The end of it,” he said, “but not the worst of it.”
There was a touch of wariness in her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Afterward, though I knew it would be a scandal back in Farthering St. John, I proposed to her. I thought surely she would want to marry me then. I thought surely we must be in love. After what we’d just done, what else could it be?” He leaned over, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “The more fool me.”
“Why do you say that?”
He cringed inside, his pride smarting from what he’d already told her, but she deserved to know it all. She shouldn’t, God forbid, hear it from anyone else.
“When I said I would be quite honored if she would consent to be my wife, she only laughed and said her husband wouldn’t think much of the arrangement.”
Madeline’s eyes went wide. “She was already married?”
He nodded, searching her face, trying to read her thoughts.
“To Mr. Landis?”
He shook his head. “Her name was Hargreaves then. I believe her husband was an older chap, MP or something, though they were already living apart. I didn’t much care by then. Whether he died or divorced her at that point, I can’t say.” He gave her a grim little smile. “I got the distinct impression at the time that I wasn’t her only intrigue, so maybe it wasn’t solely because of me that the marriage ended. The divorce ruined his political career too, I’ve heard.”
“Either way, she must have married Mr. Landis not long after.”
“Right.” Drew sat up straight again, forcing his expression into more pleasant lines. “He mentioned they’d been married five years now.”
She didn’t say anything to that, and for a while they just sat there. She studied her engagement ring, the one his grandfather Elliot Farthering had given to his grandmother Amelia. The band was an elegant crisscross design filled with round channel-set diamonds, accented with round pave diamonds all the way around. Crowning it was a brilliant square-cut white diamond, lavish without being gaudy. Over the past three months he had grown accustomed to seeing it there on her hand.
“What are you thinking?” he asked finally.
She shook her head, still staring at her ring.
“Come on, darling.” He pushed a stray lock of her hair back behind her ear. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Nothing really. Nothing important.”
“It must be important to put that look on your face.” He looked at the ring and then into her eyes. “Regrets?”
Again she shook her head, and he bit his lip. What was he to say to her?
“Darling, I have no excuses for you. I was foolish. I hope you can forgive me.”
“She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” Madeline smoothed the cream-colored tulle of her dress. “And very . . . dramatic. It’s no wonder you were taken with her.”
“One always knows when she’s in the room,” he said with an attempt at lightness. “I daresay she was born to be on the stage.”
Madeline looked at him, her gaze piercing. “Are you sorry you couldn’t marry her? I mean, if she hadn’t already been married, would you have truly wanted to marry her?”
“I did at the time, certainly. I’m sure after . . . after that night, I would have. As wrong as it was, I thank God now that she was married already. I can only think it would be torment to be her husband.”
“Mr. Landis seems taken with her.”
“He does, poor chap. Perhaps, and I hope so sincerely, she has changed her ways. Sometimes motherhood has a settling effect.”
Madeline shrugged. “And sometimes people merely grow up.”
He was silent for a long moment, and then he put his arm around her. “Do forgive me, darling. If there were any way I could change the past, I swear I would. I wouldn’t hurt or disappoint you for all the world.”
Her fingers were light and gentle in his hair. “You were still just a boy. You made a mistake.”
He looked away from her. “It was cheap. It was tawdry. Good heavens, I was looking for something grand and glorious and real, and she was only playing.”
She turned his face back to her. “It’s been six years, darling. I think it’s time you forgave her and yourself.”
He searched her eyes. “And will you forgive me, as well? For not being the paragon you were looking for?”
“I was looking for a man, darling. You’re already nearly too perfect anyway. And if you were any better, what would you want with me?”
He chuckled. “Not perfect, my love, as you well know, but perfectly happy and perfectly in love.”
The sparkle came back into her periwinkle eyes. “I don’t suppose I could ask for more than that, could I?”
“Not and reasonably expect to be satisfied, no.”
She looked into his eyes for a moment more. Then her lashes fell to her cheeks. “Will you do something for me, Drew?”
“If I am able, yes. What is it you want? Buckingham Palace? The Taj Mahal?”
She shook her head, completely somber. “I would like it very much, though, if we didn’t have to have the Landises to dinner again.”
He winced. “That would be rather awkward at this point, wouldn’t it? Consider it done. If I need to socialize with Landis, I’ll have him round to my club. How would that be?”
She put her arms around his neck and smiled into his eyes once more. “That would be perfectly perfect.”
Two
Three mornings later, Drew was sitting at the breakfast table. Along with Mr. Padgett, Nick was up in the master suite seeing to the workmen who were remodeling it for Drew and Madeline to occupy once they were Mr. and Mrs. Farthering.
Madeline and her aunt had been staying in his mother’s old suite of rooms in the west wing ever since Madeline had accepted his proposal. Drew had not himself moved into the master suite after his stepfather’s death, but once Madeline had agreed to marry him, he had begun to have the rooms redone to suit them both.
They had agreed to keep the furniture. Old and heavy and steadfast, it had served the Farthering men for decades, and Madeline liked it. But the murky browns and greens of the carpet, curtains, and bedding had to go. They decided instead on a buttery tone of ivory with dark sage, plum, and a bronzy gold. It was rich without being heavy, breezy and fresh but not girlish.
Evidently there had been difficulties today with the wallpaper Madeline had chosen, but Drew and Nick had agreed it would be best to simply see to the matter and not worry Madeline with it. Madeline herself had hurried off to see to the caterer with Aunt Ruth. So with Nick attending to the workmen, Drew was left to linger over his newspaper and the last of his liberally honeyed tea.
“A Mrs. Mallowan to see you, sir.”
Drew looked up at Dennison and chuckled softly. “Mrs. Mallowan or Mrs. Christie?”
Denny’s face was as
impassive as ever. “I was given the name Mallowan, sir. Shall I enquire again?”
“No, no, that’s all right. Did she give you her card?”
“No, sir. Do you wish me to tell her you are not at home to visitors?”
“Nonsense,” Drew said. “Send her in, if you would, please. I think I’m up for an adventure this morning.”
“Very good, sir.”
“But, uh, I say, Denny?”
“Yes, sir?”
“What does this Mrs. Mallowan look like? Anyone we know?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. The lady is wearing a veil and seems rather determined to remain unknown.”
Drew grinned. “Not Miss Parker in disguise, is it?”
“No, sir. Unless I am much mistaken.”
“Well, that’s too bad, I suppose. All right. Ah, please show her into the drawing room on second thought. I’ll be right there. And ask Miss Parker if she would do me the favor of coming down too, eh?”
Denny made a slight bow. “At once, sir.”
He disappeared into the hallway, and Drew folded his newspaper. Agatha Christie’s married name was Mallowan. So unless it truly was the celebrated Mrs. Mallowan herself, surely someone was having him on. Well, that was all right. It was as much tradition to harry the groom-to-be as it was to fête the bride.
He swallowed down the last of his tea and then straightened his tie. “Whoever you are, dear Mrs. Mallowan, I hope to give you as good as you send.”
The lady was sitting on the sofa when Drew came into the drawing room. She was tall and slender and, as Denny had said, draped in a heavy veil. And she was dressed all in black as if she were in mourning. Drew’s expression sobered. Best not treat this as a joke until he was certain it was one.
“Good morning,” he said, making his voice pleasant but not too cheerful, just in case.
She extended one black-gloved hand. “Thank you for seeing me.”
Her voice was a husky whisper, but he was certain he had heard it before.
Murder at the Mikado Page 2
