“How do you propose we—I shall correct myself before you do—I mean, how do you propose that I arrange such a meeting?”
“Why Patrick, my darling boy,” Standish scolded, shaking his head, “you don’t mean to tell me that I have to think of everything, do you? Isn’t it enough that I, your commanding officer, have given you an assignment? Do I have to hold your hand as well while you carry it out?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
VICTORIA STOOD ALONE in her darkened chamber, watching from behind the sheer underdraperies as the lamplighter moved slowly down the street, leaving the yellow glow of the lamp near Number Sixty-three behind him, then vanishing into the darkness.
Twin flames of light reflected on the smooth lenses of her spectacles as she stared into the heart of the soft glow as if it were some sort of divine fire wherein she could find the answers she sought.
For there were questions; so many questions.
Who had killed the Professor—and why?
Even more to the point, why was she, the man’s un-loved daughter, going to such lengths to unmask his murderer?
“Because you promised a dying man you would do just that, that’s why,” she reminded herself aloud, wincing at the sound of self-mockery she heard in her voice. She sighed deeply, then reluctantly admitted the truth. “Because you wanted some small bit of excitement before you resigned yourself to spending the rest of your days steeped in the same dreary dullness that has so far marked your existence, that’s why.”
Closing her eyes, she turned away from the window. “That may be how this whole crazy scheme began,” she jibed scornfully, “but even that is not the whole truth, and you know it. Admit it, Victoria, you are allowing yourself to be carried along in this mad rush into Society so that you can be close to Patrick Sherbourne. You want to watch him as he goes gracefully down the dance, perhaps snatch a moment in conversation with him so that you can drink in his beauty, breathe the same air as he, delight in his smiles, and pray for the accidental brush of his arm against yours. In short, you, my dear, have read one too many Minerva Press novels, if you actually believe such a man would ever think to fix his interest with someone such as you!”
Clapping her hands to her burning cheeks, Victoria raced over to the bed and cast herself down on it, shaken to the core now that she had finally voiced her feelings aloud. What had begun as an investigation based on cold logic and Dame Reason had—within one bewitching twinkling of Sherbourne’s dark eyes that fateful day the Professor’s will was read—turned into a hopelessly convoluted melodrama, complete with a stars-in-her-eyes heroine mooning in her chamber over the prerequisite unattainable male.
“And I don’t even like the man,” she muttered wretchedly into her pillow. “He treats me like a particularly unlovely, backward child—when he isn’t baiting me unmercifully, that is. Why, the only reason he comes around at all is for his own twisted amusement, as if I am some freak at the fair that he delights in tormenting, just to see me perform. I should hate him, actually,” she vowed with some heat, pushing out her full bottom lip in a satisfied pout.
Then, turning over onto her back so that she could stare up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling above her flickering bedside lamp, Victoria slipped off her spectacles and began chewing on one earpiece, as she had done in her childhood. She could feel a soft curl of pleasure growing deep inside her as she remembered how cherished she had felt when Patrick had taken hold of her elbow in order to help her up into his phaeton just a few hours earlier.
Of course, he had not been quite so solicitous upon their return to Ablemarle Street, but she had decided to overlook this lapse, preferring to think that he had been put slightly out of coil by Mr. Brummell’s kind attentions to her while they were in the park.
As for her impulsive outburst of temper—an unfortunate circumstance which her hindsight had thankfully colored in a more lenient hue—it had not been referred to again by either of them, leading Victoria to believe she had been forgiven.
“He couldn’t have just been being polite in saying that my new appearance was pleasing either, for heaven knows he can be most brutally frank when it comes to compiling lists of my shortcomings,” she mused, gnawing thoughtfully on one of the earpieces of her spectacles.
“And, although he was perfectly beastly in teasing me about my shortsightedness, he did offer to assist me in public so that I don’t make a complete fool of myself by tumbling into a ditch or something. That is not the action of a completely selfish man. No,” she decided, a slow smile teasing her lips, “the Earl has a good heart, I am sure of it—not like that Pierre Standish, who has no feelings at all.”
Rising from the bed in order to search out her night-gown—the one the efficient Willie must have returned to the cupboard after Victoria had laid it on the bed not an hour earlier—unbuttoning her gown as she went, her smile faded as she remembered the mysterious locked box the solicitor had handed Mr. Standish.
“The Earl may no longer be a suspect,” she declared with conviction as her simple dimity gown whispered softly past her slim hips to gather in a soft yellow pool around her feet, “but Mr. Pierre Standish certainly fits all the requirements. If only he and Patrick were not such obvious good friends. Proving Mr. Standish to be a murderer could make things very awkward for Patrick, but if I give up my search I will likewise relinquish my only reason for being in Society at all. And that I refuse to do!”
This little bit of introspection brought Victoria back to thoughts of her discovery earlier in the evening of a secret compartment in the Professor’s desk, although how it had remained a secret throughout Wilhelmina’s twice-annual waxing and polishing, she was at a loss to understand. The contents of this compartment—a small ledger written in some sort of numbered code—had served to confirm Victoria’s growing feeling of there being “something rotten in Denmark,” although she had not as yet had time for a full study of the book.
“Tomorrow I shall closet myself in the library and devote my full attentions to breaking the Professor’s code,” she decided, walking toward her bed. “I always thought there was a darker side to the man, and now I have to discover if this darker side could be the real reason behind his murder. Indeed, I am almost beginning to feel empathy for whoever did him in. What an unnatural child I am! But,” she ended on a sigh, “if the Professor was truly evil, it would go a long way in making me feel less an ungrateful daughter.
“I wonder,” she added, hesitating a moment at the side of the bed. “Does Uncle Quentin have similar suspicions? And the Earl—perhaps he knows more than he is telling me, and that is why he has been so eager to lend me his assistance. This whole affair is becoming more and more curious.”
She dragged back the worn cotton bedspread and slid gratefully between the covers, wriggling about slightly until she found her usual comfortable spot in the middle of the ancient mattress. “What a complete change from my former dull life. There are so many questions now, so many problems,” she complained, stifling a yawn. “I should be feeling quite put upon, actually.”
She slipped her hands behind her head, stretched out her legs until the covers came free from the bottom of the bed, and wiggled her bare toes. A wide grin split her face as she realized that she was not feeling the least depressed. “Actually, I can’t remember the last time I was this happy!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EMMA HAMILTON WAS FITTING into her new niche in the Quinton household with the ease of someone who has through necessity made a career out of making herself as amiable and comfortable as possible.
She complimented Wilhelmina on the woman’s extraordinarily efficient housekeeping (while secretly wondering if she would ever again feel it safe to leave her knitting on a chair for a moment without it being whisked away into its basket while her back was turned).
She did her best to remain neutral during the constant mealtime wars (during which Wilhelmina and Quentin constantly bombarded Victoria with pleas to clear her plate, and the young lad
y counterattacked by way of fiercely lowered eyebrows, deadly verbal salvos, and, just once, a well-aimed dish of stewed plums).
She pasted a polite, if slightly bemused, smile on her face whenever Quentin decided to regale her with yet another implausible tale of his adventures in India, Africa, and Southern Europe (and did not whimper even once when he minutely described his interminable sea-sickness on the stormy voyage back to England).
But, for the most part, what Emma Hamilton really excelled at was The Nod.
She nodded her agreement to Wilhelmina’s heavy, nearly indigestible menus, designed with Victoria’s still-slim frame in mind.
She nodded her enthusiasm as Quentin proudly prosed on at length that all his darling Puddin’ needed was a wee bit of patina added to her polish before she surprised everyone and took the town by storm.
So dependent on others for her survival was Emma that she even bit her tongue and nodded her approval when Quentin showed her his latest surprise for Victoria—a heavy, three-inch-high diamond-encrusted pin fashioned in the shape of a Q, which was meant to be his present to her when she received her voucher for Almack’s.
What Emma thought privately about all these things, no one knew, for no one ever bothered to ask her.
For amid the whirlwind of activity that was the Quinton household, Emma had become the single calm port in a sea ravaged by storms—nodding and knitting as Quentin entertained thoughts of renting out the entire Pulteney Hotel for a ball; patting her hankie delicately to her nose and nodding as Wilhelmina told her that Quentin Quinton was simply the shiftiest thing in nature, while reeking with the scent he had slipped into her apron pocket that morning; murmuring soft nothings and nodding as Victoria patiently explained that Society meant nothing to her, that discovering the Professor’s murderer was the only reason she was allowing herself to be a party to the whole insane business going on around her.
Perhaps that was why Emma immediately became the center of everyone’s attention two days after Victoria’s ride in the park when she finally opened her sweet, rosebud-pink mouth and declared loudly: “No! Absolutely not! I cannot, I will not, allow it!”
“But why, Emma?” Victoria asked solicitously, going over to the settee to sit down beside her companion and take the woman’s hand in hers. “After all, it is not as if Uncle Quentin cannot afford it. Besides, I think you’ve hurt his feelings. Just look at him standing over there, his poor chins dragging on the carpet—how can you be so cruel?”
Emma obediently looked over at Quinton, who did appear to be almost comically crestfallen, and her bottom lip began to tremble. “Oh, you are all so kind, so well-intentioned—but you have no real conception of what is done and what is just not done!”
“Oh laws,” Wilhelmina muttered under her breath, searching in one of her apron pockets for a large white handkerchief, which she held out to the whimpering woman. “Anybody would think we just told her we was goin’ to sell her to a chimney sweep.”
Shaking her head in silent warning, Victoria waved the housekeeper away. “You must come with me, Emma,” she began bracingly. “After all, how can I attend a theatre engagement if my companion refuses to accompany me?”
Emma disengaged her hands from Victoria’s and fluttered them agitatedly in her lap. “It—it’s not that, Victoria, you dear, sweet girl. Of course I must accompany you to the theatre. But, good gracious, I cannot allow your uncle to purchase me a gown for the evening. I am a chaperone, not a young girl on the catch for a husband.” She shook her head vehemently, setting her blonde ringlets to bouncing. “It—it just isn’t done,” she wailed again, unable to come up with anything more to the point that she could say on the subject.
“Heyday! Is that all that’s got her blubbering and whining?” Quentin cut in, utterly blind to the effect his frank words might have on someone with Emma’s tender sensibilities. “Good Lord, gel, I’ve got more of the ready than a body could spend in five lifetimes. Who’s to say me nay if I want to shower a little of it on a fine, pretty miss like you? It’s not like I had designs on you, or the like, seeing as how you know it’s Wilhelmina holds m’heart. How did the girl get a maggoty idea like that into her head?”
“Ohhh…” Emma turned to Victoria in desperation, her china-blue eyes awash with tears.
“Uncle,” Victoria warned quietly, wishing the well-meaning man would take the hint and withdraw before his plain speech could throw Emma into strong hysterics.
“Now don’t you go pokering up on me, Puddin’,” he responded, unrepentant. “Lord Wickford sent this here invitation for you and your companion to attend the theatre tomorrow night with him and one of his fancy friends. All I say is, why shouldn’t little Emma here cast out a couple of lures while you’re about it? You know—get herself some new duds like the ones I got you and, who knows, maybe she’ll land herself a fine fish.”
“Uncle!”
“Mr. Quinton!”
“Quentin!”
Quentin looked from one to another of the three women, sensing reactions of amused indignation, extreme embarrassment, and—from the love of his life—an immediate threat to his physical person, and threw up his hands as if to say, “I give up, do what you will,” then quit the room, muttering under his breath about the injustice of it all. “Try to do something nice for a body, and what do you get?” the women could hear him asking as he strode away.
“You get a piece of my mind just as soon as I catch up with you, that’s what you get!” Wilhelmina called after him, shaking her fist at his retreating back. “And close the door after you, Mr. Rich Man Quinton,” she ordered. “Didn’t you learn anythin’ in that India of yours?”
A few minutes later, after Wilhelmina had also withdrawn, taking with her the sal volatile she had employed to good effect on the wilting Emma, Victoria embarked upon a lengthy rational discourse, which ended with her at last convincing her companion that accepting a few paltry gowns and other fripperies from Quentin did not constitute a rapid descent into the role of “fallen woman.”
“It is so kind of you all to even think of me,” Emma gushed gratefully, still dabbing Wilhelmina’s enormous hankie to the corners of her eyes. “My jointure is rather small, you know, which is why I have been forced to, ah, I mean, so I find it helpful to lend my small consequence to less socially prominent young ladies like, er, that is—”
“I know just what you mean, dear lady,” Victoria interrupted kindly, “and I can only say that Uncle Quentin couldn’t have chosen better when he decided to ask you to join our rather strange little band. And I most assuredly am cognizant of the fact that I am certainly not going to be an easy debutante to launch. Why, any other chaperone would have thrown up her hands within an hour of arriving in Ablemarle Street, not that I could blame her.”
Anyone who had the coach fare home to Hampstead Heath, Emma corrected silently, but she did not give voice to her thoughts. “Oh no, Victoria,” she protested swiftly, careful to concentrate her remarks on her charge’s last statement. “You must not say so! You are rather thin, and…and tall, and your coloring is not what is currently in fashion, but you are really a very striking girl.”
“Striking, is it, Emma?” Victoria quipped, pulling a wry face. “You couldn’t stretch that little fib wide enough to say beautiful, could you?”
“But you are not beautiful,” Emma responded impulsively. “Beautiful is commonplace. You are—different. Yes, that’s it; you’re different. Your marvelous carriage, that long, slim neck, those curious amber eyes. I—I think you—oh dear, this will sound so silly, I know—but I think you have a way of growing on a person, Victoria.”
“Rather like moss?” Victoria offered dryly, smiling a bit in spite of herself.
Emma waved her hands excitedly and pointed to Victoria’s face. “There! There, you see it? There’s that dimple. It’s so unexpected, my dear, and should be most intriguing to a gentleman. Oh no, you must not be so hard on yourself. Your Uncle Quentin may be wishing for too much when he thin
ks you will become the Sensation, but you will have your share of beaux, believe me.”
Victoria lowered her head so that Emma couldn’t see the embarrassed blush that had crept into her cheeks. If Emma thought she was passable, perhaps she did stand just a slight chance with Patrick Sherbourne. It was a wild dream, but it was heady nonetheless.
Then, reluctantly bringing herself back to the matter at hand, she remarked honestly, “Well then, dear Emma, if I can be a moderate success, you, whose size and coloring are indeed the mode, should certainly take advantage of the opportunity Uncle Quentin has offered. After all, you told me your husband has been, er, gone for over five years. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you enjoyed yourself.”
Coloring pretty, the older woman lowered her long eyelashes and gushed, “Dear Harry. Oh yes, Victoria, I do believe Harry would tell me I was being silly, refusing this chance for a little excitement.”
Bless you Harry, Victoria offered silently, raising her eyes heavenward. She had been sitting in the drawing room for the past half hour listening to Emma, and she longed to retire to her chamber and think about the Earl’s invitation, which had arrived just an hour earlier, setting off this entire chain of events. “Of course,” she agreed aloud.
“Not that I should wish to make a habit of it, you understand,” Emma persisted, still trying to convince herself she was doing the right thing. “I wouldn’t care to be thought of as a dashing matron. After all, I am your chaperone. But,” she began slowly, before ending in a rush, “it would be the greatest good fun to have a new gown.”
Sensing her victory, Victoria reached up her hands to remove her spectacles and slipped them into the pocket of her morning gown. “Then it’s settled! We shall prevail upon Uncle Quentin to allow us to go to Bond Street directly after luncheon, and we shall both acquire stunning new gowns for the theatre. You, my dear friend, may act as my guide, as I do believe I am sufficiently ‘different’ already without pushing the point by wearing my spectacles out in public, don’t you?”
The questioning Miss Quinton Page 11
