Swear by Moonlight

by Shirlee Busbee

  A rueful smile on his face, Patrick had said, "Well, I have to confess to a bit of admiration for her tactics. Few people would dare to show their faces in polite society after the sort of scandal she endured—and she not only shows it, but doesn't seem to give a damn what people think. And as for her seeming to relish the discomfort of some shameless libertine, who can blame her after what happened? I certainly do not."

  Bending a sharp eye on Patrick, Nigel had added, "You best be careful—she has slipped under the guard of some of the most marriage-wary fellows that I know. Take care you ain't among 'em."

  Patrick had looked startled. "Good God, you don't think that I would fall under her spell, do you?"

  Nigel had smiled and looked wise. "One never knows, my friend, one never knows."

  Recalling Nigel's words, Patrick's frown grew blacker, and, tearing his thoughts away from Thea Garrett, he considered consider just what he was going to tell his mother in the morning. That subject kept his mind occupied until he was in bed. Then, as if determined to ruin what was left of the night, Thea's fairy features loomed up in front of him. To his disgust, he found himself making excuses for her and wanting fiercely to believe that she was precisely what she appeared to be; a charming damsel he very much wanted to know more intimately. Extremely intimately.

  The visit with Lady Caldecott went well the next morning. She was disappointed that he had little to report and thought it strange that the blackmailer had failed to appear.

  Seated across from her, nattily attired in a dark blue coat of superfine and yellow nankeen breeches, Patrick murmured, "As I mentioned, it could have been simply a ploy on his part to see precisely what you would do. While I did not see him, I am sure he knows that I came in your stead. That has, no doubt, given him food for thought."

  "Well, yes," his mother said uncertainly, looking anxious. "I'm sure that it has. You don't think that your presence might have annoyed him?"

  Patrick shrugged. "Anything is possible. I only know that there was no one at the house besides myself—and I waited for nearly an hour after the appointed time and no one appeared." Inwardly Patrick winced; lying to one's mother, even as an adult and for her own good, wasn't easy. He soothed his conscience by telling himself that while it was an outright lie that no one else had been at the house, he had waited for over an hour. What he hadn't mentioned was that he had been unconscious for most of that time. He stood up. "Until you hear from him again, there is little I can do about your blackmailer but follow up on the information I learned from Nigel. Nigel said that his aunt Levina died in January and that it was her family, the Ellsworths, who took most of her private papers and belongings away. I shall start with them."

  "Ellsworth?" murmured a new voice. "Do we actually know someone by that name, dear?"

  Alice stiffened. Flashing a glance at her son, she turned and smiled warmly at the tall, slender gentleman who had quietly entered the room. Lord Caldecott sent a benign smile at his stepson, and, settling himself down languidly on the sofa beside his wife, remarked, "I thought that I knew all of your friends, my love, but I don't recall their name being among them. Surely it is not that encroaching family that poor Lord Talbot married into? The eldest daughter as I recall." He frowned slightly. "If it is the same family, I think one of the sons married the daughter of Lord Bettison—gaming debts you know."

  Lord Caldecott had, in his youth, been undisputed leader of the fashionable set, and signs of this could still be seen in the exquisite arrangement of the Brussels lace at his throat and wrists and the impeccable cut of his pale blue jacket and elegant fit of his dove gray breeches. Unlike many of his friends, at the age of sixty-two, he owed his full head of silver locks to no artifice—every carefully arranged hair on his head was his own. He was, even at his age, a handsome man.

  Beneath slim brows, his eyes were an icy blue and his features patrician. Lord Caldecott professed to be a brainless fop, but those who knew him well knew he was precisely the opposite.

  Patrick knew him to possess a sharp intellect, and he was uneasy at Lord Caldecott's entrance into the scene. Smiling, Patrick bowed, and murmured, "Good morning, my lord. It is a pleasure to see you."

  Lord Caldecott looked abstracted. "Yes, but didn't we just see you earlier this week, my dear boy?"

  "Surely, you cannot object if my son comes frequently to call upon me?" Alice queried.

  Lord Caldecott smiled sweetly and patted her hand. "Why of course not, my love—you know I would deny you nothing that would make you happy. I was merely trying to remember if it had been earlier this week that I had seen your son."

  Lord Caldecott lifted the quizzing glass that hung around his neck by a white-silk ribbon. Looking sleepily at Patrick, he asked, "Were you leaving, dear boy? Going to find those, ah, Ellsworth people, weren't you? Some family friends, perhaps?"

  "Not exactly," Alice said hastily, and went on to babble about Levina Ellsworth, who had married into the Embry family, having been an acquaintance of hers. "I only recently heard that she died, and Patrick was telling me that her nieces and nephews, the Ellsworths, were her heirs." She glanced helplessly at Patrick. "Wasn't that it, my dear?"

  "Yes, precisely," Patrick drawled, wondering just how much his esteemed stepfather had overheard and what he knew about the blackmailing of Lady Caldecott. He met Lord Caldecott's limpid blue stare and felt a stirring of unease. Despite his vague air, the man never missed a trick. So did he know about the blackmailing? And if he did, why hadn't he said something to his wife? Secrets of his own? Secrets that had a bearing on the blackmailing of his wife? Patrick's eyes hardened. Was it conceivable that Caldecott was brazen and desperate enough to blackmail his own wife?

  Taking his leave a few minutes later, Patrick decided that before he did anything else, he was going to institute a discreet inquiry into the finances of Lord Caldecott. His face grew grim. The last thing he would want to do was destroy his mother's marriage. So what was he going to do if suspicion pointed at her husband?

  Chapter 5

  Thea spent a restless night. She woke Thursday morning tired and listless. The previous night's events didn't engender any desire to leap from bed and greet the day. Eventually she did rouse herself and, after a light breakfast of coffee and toast in her room, she descended the stairs as the tall clock in the foyer rang out the half hour. She glanced at it, startled to see that it was already eleven-thirty.

  It took Thea only a few minutes to find Modesty. She was standing before an arrangement of late-blooming lilies and roses, staring at the flowers. She glanced over her shoulder at Thea's entrance, and said, "Well, this is probably the last of them until next year. I shall miss having their sweet scent in the air."

  Thea sent her a perfunctory smile and walked around the handsome room before stopping to stare out of one of the long narrow windows that faced the street. She stood there for several minutes, not really seeing the horses and carriages that clattered past the house.

  Wandering over to one of the sofas upholstered in a fine straw silk, she sank down. She looked at Modesty, who had seated herself a moment before in a dainty channel-backed chair near the sofa.

  "What are we going to do?" Thea asked, her expression troubled.

  "There is nothing that we can do for the moment," Modesty replied. "Until we receive word of his death, there is nothing that we can do but wait."

  Thea jumped up and took several strides around the room. "I have never been very good at waiting—especially not for something like this! It is like waiting for the sky to fall."

  "Surely not that dramatic, my dear."

  Thea sighed. "Probably not. I feel so helpless. I cannot even go to Edwina and be there to offer her comfort when she learns that he is dead." She glanced back at Modesty. "She will come to us, won't she? You don't think she will think that I would turn my back on her at a time like this? Perhaps I should have a note delivered indicating that I wish to end this silly estrangement between us?"

  "Absolutely not!
" At Thea's mulish expression, Modesty said, "Don't you see how suspicious that would look? After months of estrangement, you suddenly write her on the very day she receives the news that her husband has been murdered. It simply will not do."

  "Oh, I know you are right, it is just that I cannot bear doing nothing!"

  "If you had done nothing in the first place," Modesty said dryly, "you wouldn't be in this position."

  Thea made a face. "You're right about that, too, and believe me, that thought has crossed my mind."

  "So," Modesty said, deliberately bright, "are we going to Lady Hilliard's ball tonight? We did send our acceptances."

  Thea looked aghast. "Modesty! We cannot go to a ball with Edwina's husband newly dead."

  "But we don't know that he is, dear," Modesty said gently. "And until we do, we must go on as we would normally. Which means attending a ball for which we have already written our acceptance."

  "Must you always be right?" Thea asked, half-exasperated, half-mocking.

  Modesty smiled. "Well, I do try, my dear, I do try."

  Thea laughed reluctantly and made an effort to talk of something else. She succeeded fairly well, and on the surface no one would have guessed that anything more than the Hilliard ball was on her mind. But inwardly, she was braced for a blow. As the day went on, she started at every sound, and whenever Tillman entered the room she turned an anxious face his way, convinced that he came to tell her that Edwina had arrived with the devastating news that her husband had been murdered. By the time she had gone upstairs to dress for the ball, her head was aching, and her stomach was twisted into a knot.

  Why had they heard nothing? She wondered. Surely Hirst's body had been found by now and Edwina apprised of that grisly fact? Was the estrangement so deep between them that her sister didn't feel that she could come to her?

  Anxious, uncertain, and dreading the evening ahead, Thea descended the stairs once more, hardly aware of the bell-skirted pale yellow silk gown her maid, the ever-faithful Maggie Brown, had helped her put on. The gown had tiny puffed sleeves, and the rounded low-cut bodice was edged with a profusion of delicate lace. Maggie had also arranged Thea's gleaming black hair into a saucy topknot of curls that begged to be tugged loose by a masculine hand. A few wispy curls framed her fairy features, and no one looking at her, seeing the speaking dark eyes and rosy mouth, would ever guess of the turmoil hidden behind the charming facade.

  Modesty was also handsomely garbed. Her gown was far less daring but obviously made by a skilled hand and of a rich plum shot silk. A black-silk shawl was draped around her shoulders, and a necklace of small but fine pearls adorned her neck. Her thick, gray-streaked hair had been decorously arranged in a gold-netted chignon at the nape of her neck, and she looked precisely what she was—a fashionable older woman of independent means.

  The ball was every bit as dreadful as Thea feared. As she laughed and chatted with friends and relatives, she tried not to think of Hirst's body lying on the floor of the Curzon Street house or her sister's pain upon learning of his death. As far as Thea was concerned he had been a wretched man and she could not regret his death—only the manner of it. But Edwina, she reminded herself unhappily, had loved him, and her heart ached for her sister.

  The Hilliard ball was very successful. The magnificent ballroom had been decorated with pale yellow roses and waxy, white gardenias grown in the greenhouses of the Hilliard country estate, the scent of the gardenias perfuming the entire room. The company was all the first stare; the clothing worn by the guests was an ever-changing sea of gorgeous silks and satins, the ladies glowing in the pale rose, blue, and cream shades of their gowns. The gentlemen were handsomely attired too, with their carefully tied white cravats and cutaway dress coats of embroidered silk in hues of burgundy, dark blue and dark gray. Pale, tight-fitting breeches revealed many a shapely masculine leg—or not, as the case might be. The hired musicians played wonderfully, and liveried servants in black bustled about with enormous silver trays of refreshments. To drink there was lemonade, punch, port, and a vast array of wines, and to nibble upon there were small pastries filled with shrimp, chicken, and veal and crystal bowls full of bonbons and dainty almond and lemon tartlets.

  But Thea could have been standing in the middle of a dung heap for all the pleasure the sights, sounds, and scents gave her. As far as she was concerned, the evening was simply to be endured; she was merely marking time until she and Modesty could take their leave.

  Upon their arrival, Modesty sought out several older matrons and widows of her acquaintance and, having been greeted with happy enthusiasm, was settled in their midst. Thea had no doubt that she was passing away the evening gossiping, smiling, and observing the amusing antics of the younger guests with her many friends. Thea had friends, too, and she usually enjoyed herself, talking and laughing with several young, dashing matrons and a couple of equally young, but decidedly sophisticated, widows.

  Despite the decade-old scandal and the gossip and rumor that swirled in her wake, she was, these days, welcomed in most houses of the ton. But Thea never quite forgot that she owed her return to the reluctant bosom of society to her family—they had worked unceasingly on her behalf to help her regain a measure of acceptance. She had been fortunate to be related by blood or marriage to two barons, a countess, and a duke, as well as possessing a fortune of her own; all of which had made her partial redemption possible.

  Of course, she was well aware that she had not been totally absolved of her crimes, and there were people who still oh so politely avoided her company. Innocent young ladies and eligible young men had always been, and still were, carefully swept from her vicinity. When she became aware of what was going on, those actions used to hurt her, but no longer. The stratagems employed by some parents to keep their innocent little doves and pups from coming under her wicked spell now brought a wry smile to her face. Occasionally, goaded by an imp of mischief, under the very noses of those helpless guardians, she would charm members of this protected and coddled set. But her conscience would all too soon make itself felt, and she would relieve the anguish in the parental breasts by gently and swiftly ending the tete-a-tete before any harm was done. She was never deliberately cruel.

  Thea managed to pass the evening well enough. She danced a few of the country dances with her cousin, John, and a couple of his friends, and spent part of the evening laughing with other friends and acquaintances. The ball was already half-over when a particular friend of hers, Lady Elizabeth Roland, came up to her.

  Lisbeth, as Lady Roland insisted that Thea call her moments after they first met three years ago, looked nothing like one would expect a widow of some years' standing to look. A year older than Thea, she was a tall, stately creature with laughing sea-green eyes and a mass of riotous silvery-fair hair. Lady Roland was considered very dashing by many of the older, stuffier members of the ton, which of course instantly endeared her to Thea. They spent many a pleasurable hour together thinking up horrid fates for the top-loftiest members of society and laughing at the foibles of those who considered themselves leaders of fashion. Both were reckless and had little respect for convention. Theirs had been an instant and natural affinity, both of them considered "not quite the thing" and both having enough family connections and fortune to thumb their pretty little noses at all who looked at them askance.

  Thea had just sent John and his friends on their way and was thinking of finding Modesty to beat a retreat for home, when Lisbeth came up to her.

  Flouting convention, Lisbeth was wearing a lovely gown in a brilliant shade of emerald green. The silk skirt was so narrowly fashioned that it clung to her long legs, and the bodice was cut daringly low, revealing a tempting amount of her magnificent bosom. Lisbeth had no compunction about shocking society.

  The sea-green eyes were sparkling, the silvery hair was pulled back into an artful cascade of curls; a mocking smile was on her generous mouth when she swam up to Thea's side. They exchanged greetings and Lisbeth took a long look at he
r friend.

  Affectionately pinching Thea's chin, she asked, "What is the matter, pet? You look positively hagged tonight. Don't tell me that that wretched brother-in-law of yours has been causing trouble again."

  Thea nearly jumped out of her skin, and only by the greatest presence of mind did she prevent herself from telling Lisbeth how very right she was. Forcing a smile, she glanced at Lisbeth and muttered, "I think I have a headache. I was just on the point of going to look for Modesty when you appeared. Are you having a good time?"

  "Hmm. Probably. I'm almost positive that with this gown I've managed to offend at least two old pussies and given them enough scandal broth to keep them happy for weeks," Lisbeth replied, those intelligent green eyes not moving from Thea's face. She gave Thea's arm a little shake. "And you are not going to put me off that easily. I know you too well. Something is wrong. What is it?"

  Thea smiled at her. "Nothing. Really. I am just not feeling quite the thing tonight. Nothing for you to worry about."

  "Why don't I believe you?"

  "Because you are a naturally nasty, suspicious woman?" Thea asked sweetly, amusement glimmering in her eyes.

  "Hmm, there is that," Lisbeth readily agreed, an enchanting little dimple appearing in one cheek as she smiled at Thea.

  Apparently abandoning the present topic, Lisbeth sent a glance around the handsome room. "Lady Hilliard is to be complimented on managing to have such a large turnout considering how many families did not return to London this fall for the Little Season." She looked at Thea. "Are you and Modesty going to remain in London? Or are you going to Halsted House for the winter?"

  Thinking of Edwina and the mourning period Hirst's death would require, Thea said, "We shall probably go to Halsted House. In fact, I think we may be leaving shortly."

  "Aren't your plans rather sudden? I thought you intended to remain in the city until the first of November?"