“I know! I know!”
My shrieking convinced Dandy he’d be safer underneath the piano.
Toby patted one of my hands. “I wouldn’t worry too much,” he soothed. “You’ll just have to stay here a little longer.”
The thought of that, and a look around the cramped room with its sad furniture and poky fire and ugliness, made me want to cry.
“There’s more,” I continued gloomily. “Millicent’s blackmailing me.”
“Oh my God! Does she know about Raymond?”
“No! Thankfully!” Who knows what damage—to me, him, and the rest of our family—she might do with that information? “Apparently Hampton left me a love note at Gryden, and now she’s got it and is threatening to show it around.”
Toby stared, so perplexed he couldn’t formulate questions right away. “But—but Hampton’s dizzy as a daisy over Belinda. Why is he sending you love notes?”
“I wish I knew.”
He sighed again. “Sticky wicket,” he admitted, shaking his head. We both brooded in silence for a while; then Toby perked up. “I’ve got something that may cheer you,” he said. “I was housebound with a miserable cold while you were away, and I was so bored I had a nice woman from Edgry’s office send over some of your father’s papers to see if there was anything interesting there. And wouldn’t you know it: I found Pearl!”
I straightened up. “You didn’t!”
He nodded, crossed to the writing desk and pulled a sheet of paper out of the drawer. He unfolded it and handed it over. “Pearl Insurance Company” was stamped across the top in grand, curlicued letters. It was a policy insuring my mother’s life for £5000, to be split between two beneficiaries: myself and Raymond Carlyle.
I stared at the paper for several minutes.
“Was this the only policy?” I finally asked as Toby resumed his seat.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Why on earth would he insure Mother’s life and not his own? What was—” Something occurred to me suddenly, and I went dead cold. “Toby, was she dying?”
My mind frantically rifled through the months leading up to the accident, picking out clues here and there. I must have been a fool—or unbelievably self-absorbed—not to have noticed. My mother had changed in subtle ways. She’d been quieter and had gone out less in the evenings. Her appetite had gone off, and her coloring too. She’d looked wan, and her clothes hung oddly on her frame.
Father, too, had been different. He was preoccupied and a little thinner. The hearty greetings he met me with had seemed forced. Or perhaps that was just the patina I was applying to the memories now.
I remembered Father inviting me along on that last drive, saying it would put roses in my cheeks. At the time I’d thought Mother needed the fresh air and the roses.
Dr. Hartleby. A last hope, perhaps, for two people desperate for a miracle. My father would have done anything, including driving himself into debt, to keep my mother from disappearing. I had never known them to spend more than a few nights apart. He had looked to Mother for everything. How would he have managed, without her?
And all that time, I’d been experimenting with cocktails, dancing all night, and careening about London with brash young men. Buying new dresses and hats and useless things I didn’t need. Had my parents kept this secret because they didn’t think that I, a frivolous creature who seemed to exist for no purpose at all, would be of use to them? Or did they like that their daughter was bright and giddy, and worry about permanently popping the bubbles of my effervescent life?
Toby’s face, so triumphant a moment ago, was now pinched with sympathy. He patted me on the knee and sighed. “I’m sorry, old girl, but I don’t know what was wrong with your mother. Does it really matter now?”
It mattered. All of this was at the heart of how my parents had felt about me. The real truths about my life.
I swallowed hard and looked back down at the paperwork. “Raymond Carlyle,” I murmured. Why did Raymond have our mother’s maiden name, not Davies?
As though he’d read my mind, Toby said, “I wondered about the name as well. Was he … born before she was married, do you think?”
So not just an insane brother, an illegitimate one as well? I closed my eyes and wished for deliverance from this mess. Why had I ever telephoned Rosedale? Why couldn’t I be content to be ignorant?
“Was this policy ever paid out? Did you find anything else?” I asked, trying to focus on the task at hand.
“No. Everything else was about the investments that went bust.”
“I’ll have to go to the source, then. It’s about time I had a word with Mr. Edgry.”
* * *
Dressed in my most sensible suit and armed with some of the more interesting documents from my father’s papers, I arrived at the offices of Billington, Phipps, and Edgry precisely on time for my appointment. A pleasant-looking secretary paused her typing just long enough to ask me to wait “for just a few minutes.” Seated on a chair that seemed designed for maximum discomfort, I watched the minutes tick by on the secretary’s desk clock. Tick, tick, tick. Ten, then fifteen. Just before twenty, something on her desk buzzed and she told me I could go in.
I had never been to Edgry’s office, and my first impression was that it had been decorated entirely from the Pompous range of office and professional furnishings. Everything was dark, hard, and massive, from the blocky walnut desk with its green leather blotter to the looming bookshelves filled with desert-dry titles like The Disposition of Shared Assets in the Third Generation, Volume IV.
Edgry himself was making a great show of being busy, scribbling away at something and refusing to acknowledge me. If he thought that would put me off, he was wrong. I took a seat opposite the desk and waited.
At last, he returned the pen to its stand, folded his hands, and looked up, exasperated. “This is not convenient, Astra. What do you want?”
“I want to know more about this.” I slid the insurance paperwork across the desk.
He glanced at it. “An insurance policy on your mother,” he said, as if I were completely feeble-minded. “Possibly one of the few sensible things your father ever did.”
“I know what it is,” I icily informed him. “I want to know more about it. Is there only the one? Was it ever paid out?”
“I only know of the one, and yes, it was paid.”
“When?”
“Two months after your parents died.” He began shuffling papers around, trying to look busy while avoiding eye contact.
“So what happened to this money?” I asked.
“The bulk of it has been placed in trust.” Again, the paper shuffling.
“What do you mean, the bulk of it?”
He moved on to fiddling with the banker’s lamp on the desk. “Well, I took my fees, of course,” he finally admitted.
“You took your fees?” My fingers twitched, and I wondered if a jury would convict me for pummeling him with Principles of Property Law.
“Yes! I’m not operating a charity, Astra. My services do cost money, you know!”
“Of course I understand that. But you can’t simply help yourself, Mr. Edgry. I never gave you permission to do so.”
“It’s how things worked with your father,” he said gruffly.
“Well, I am most assuredly not him. And you yourself have noted that things weren’t working so well for him. Now, who told you to put that money in a trust?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I discussed matters with your aunt, and we agreed that it was for the best that I manage the payment. After all, you were clearly incapable of making any decisions. We had a doctor who was willing to attest to it.”
“Which doctor?”
“Dr. Anderson, from Market Harborough. He’s known you all your life, and we know he can keep a secret.” Another nervous shift in his seat. “Your aunt didn’t want word of your … indisposition getting out. Between that and the … person at Rosedale and your father’s endless foolis
hness, people would start to say your family was quite touched indeed.” He tapped his forehead with one meaty finger.
A white heat started to build in my chest and threatened to boil up into my face. I tamped it down, afraid it might come out as tears. My eyes must have blazed pretty fiercely, though, because Edgry actually looked startled. “Neither you nor my aunt had any right to make these sorts of decisions,” I said, concentrating on keeping my voice even. “My parents’ estate was left to me, and I’m not under age or permanently incapacitated. You took advantage of my grief.”
His face reddened. “You ungrateful child! You should be thanking me!”
“Did my father thank you for this?” I demanded, practically throwing another document at him. It was the details of my father’s investment with Clarence Hatry, all prepared by Edgry. The amount was so huge I had actually struggled to breathe for a few moments after I first saw it. “Clarence Hatry was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? Was Father grateful for that introduction?”
Most of the color drained from his face. “Who told you I was friends with Hatry?”
“Oh,” I said, my head cocked in a mocking imitation of innocence, “was it a secret? My father didn’t seem to think so. He mentioned your kind introduction in his diary.”
Edgry breathed heavily and slumped.
“I know all about your chum and his fraud,” I continued in a tone so chilly even I was shocked by it. “How many of your clients did you convince to invest with him?”
Edgry started to rise, waggling a finger at me, face reddening once again.
“Now, Clary … Clarence was a good prospect,” he gabbled. “Your father was desperate for something so he could meet expenses and keep paying that Harley Street quack, so he was throwing money every which way. I was doing him a favor. Clary’s always come right, always made money for his investors. It’s not his fault that things went awry this time. It was those damned Americans, ruining things!”
He dropped into his swiveling desk chair, which swayed alarmingly at the sudden shock of his weight. I kept my face perfectly still, not wanting to give him any ground. He may have made me cry before, but not this time.
“How much money did you have invested with ‘Clary’?” I asked with a sneer. Judging from the quick purse of his lips, I guessed it was quite a bit. “You steered clients toward an unsavory investor because he was your friend and you were in deep yourself. I think you’ve been covering some of your losses by helping yourself to ‘fees’ from my account and, I’ll wager, others as well. Is that where my brother’s part of the insurance payment went? Into your bank account? Is that why Rosedale’s fees went unpaid?”
It was a complete shot in the dark. Perhaps Edgry sensed that, because after fumbling with the pen for another moment, he pulled himself together and looked down on me with the same expression he’d had that horrible day at my parents’ house. That mixture of pity and contempt that said he just couldn’t imagine what it was like to be such an imbecile. It made me want to smash his jowly face in with the banker’s lamp, spatter those dull volumes with blood. At that moment, I would have enjoyed it. But I kept my face impassive even as I dug my nails into my thigh.
“I didn’t take his money,” he said tightly. “I’m not at liberty to tell you what arrangements were made. Client confidentiality, you know.” He looked smug.
“Perhaps someone else can explain matters to me, then, since you have a conflict,” I suggested. “Mr. Billington’s always been very kind. He was at my parents’ wedding, you know. Gave them a lovely silver pitcher which I still have. I’m sure he’d be quite interested to hear about all of this and could explain to poor, silly me how things work and why it’s perfectly all right to defraud your clients.” I paused, letting that sink in.
Edgry stared me down for several long moments, then deflated into the chair. Something surged through me, made my heart quicken and my face feel hot. I felt like I could do anything.
I continued in that cool voice—the same one poor Officer Anson had once encountered, “You will return your ‘fees,’ Mr. Edgry, and undo this trust you’ve put the money in. You have until Friday noon to get everything in order, or we’ll be having a very different sort of meeting. Is that suitable? Convenient for you?”
I watched as he blustered for a minute. Then he grudgingly nodded.
I got to my feet and extended my hand with a frigid smile. “Good day, Mr. Edgry. So very sorry to have bothered you.”
* * *
My heart was still going at a brisk gallop as I stepped outside. It wasn’t until I was around the corner and half a block away that it fully sank in: I had just outmaneuvered Edgry. I had struck out on my own—I could do this! I had got my money back. I could manage. Perhaps I would save Hensley after all! Yes, of course I would. I would!
I put my chin up and smiled, then strode down the pavement as if I owned all of London.
I caught a bus back to Chelsea and, daringly, sat in the open top deck because it was a fine day and I wanted to enjoy it. I ignored the sideways glances of the men seated nearby and enjoyed the bird’s-eye view of London.
The air was clearer than usual, and everyone seemed to want to be out. The pavement surged with people: nannies in uniform pushing prams, businessmen in suits dodging dashing children, ladies in the sorts of hats usually worn to impress female friends. Newsboys bawled the headlines (“Prince of Wales wins over South Africa! Rally in Konigsberg sees ex-Kaiser’s son beaten with a truncheon!”) and an organ-grinding busker entertained a crowd with his dancing monkey.
In the street, a choking mix of cars, trucks, and buses vied for space with dangerously weaving messengers on bicycles and plodding horse-drawn carts. One driver, standing on a stack of crates with the reins of a pair of coal-black drays held loosely in one hand, used his free hand to make a rude gesture to a driver who’d honked at him. Another double-decker, with a poster that screamed, “BOVRIL!” on the side of it, passed us going the other way. The conductor hung off the staircase spiraling toward the upper deck, and called out a greeting to his counterpart on my bus. There was a powerful hum to all of this, an energy that seemed to be both exciting and exhausting.
I alighted near Aunt El’s, grateful for the relative peace of the neighborhood. As I rounded the corner onto Gertrude Street, I spotted Reilly, who’d had the afternoon off, standing in front of the house, talking and laughing with another woman. Not wanting to intrude, I slowed my pace. The other woman reached out and gently brushed something off Reilly’s lapel, and Reilly smiled in a way that brightened and changed her whole face. Another few words, and the woman turned away and began walking in my direction as Reilly unlatched the black-iron gate and descended to the servants’ entrance.
As the woman approached, I noticed she was a fair bit older than Reilly—probably close to forty, if not past it, and she had orange-red hair worn in a low chignon under a black cloche. She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place her. As we passed, she glanced at me and then swiftly turned her face away, as if she didn’t want me to see her.
Strange though that behavior was, I didn’t have time to dwell on it. As soon as I walked in, I was greeted by Dandy, waggling joyfully, and the butler, who informed me that Lord Hampton was waiting for me in the drawing room.
“He’s been waiting for some time,” he added emphatically, making it clear he disapproved of my having forced a future duke to wait for me. He’d tell Aunt El about it, and I’d take it on the nose over dinner. I thanked Jeffries and went into the drawing room.
“Oh, Miss Davies,” Hampton said as soon as I appeared, “I’m sorry for coming by unannounced, but, well, it seems there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.”
“Has there indeed?” I checked to make sure no servants were nearby to listen in and closed the door. “Will you take a seat, Lord Hampton?”
“It seems,” he explained as he lowered himself into one of the armchairs (and winced), “that a note I intended to have delivered to my darling Belin
da at Gryden Hall went astray and wound up on your pillow instead.”
“I see.” That did make more sense than Hampton suddenly deciding he was in love with me. And to be honest, it was a relief to know that wasn’t the case.
“It was a silly thing, really,” he continued. “All that talk about romantic gestures—I thought Bin would be charmed if she found a little note when she returned to her room. I asked one of the footmen to deliver it while I was out for the afternoon drive, but it seems he delivered it to the wrong lady. I’m so sorry for any confusion.”
“No worry, there’s no real harm done,” I lied. “I’m glad it’s cleared up.”
He smiled, but in a rather brittle manner. “Well, that’s just it: I think a bit of harm has been done. You—you don’t still have the note, do you?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I admitted. “It … went missing from my room.”
“It was taken,” he said, face darkening, “by Lady Millicent.”
“Has she been to see you?” Surely Millicent wouldn’t have the audacity to try to blackmail Lord Hampton as well?
He nodded. “She came to see me today, just before I came here. She warned me that she could show Bin-Bin the note at any time. And, of course, Bin knows my handwriting.” His face pinched in helplessness and concern. “I think Lady Millicent’s a bit put out about … Well, you see, she and I … that is to say, there was an expectation …”
“It’s quite all right, Mustard, I don’t need the details.”
He nodded, then burst out, “Astra, I’m not quite sure what to do! If I lost my Bin-Bin …” He bit his lip as if he were afraid he’d start crying.
I reached over and patted him on the arm. “I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. I doubt Millicent will do anything to scuttle your wedding at this point. She’s worked too hard to become friends with Belinda.” Millicent wouldn’t have bothered to put in the effort for a mere Honorable Miss Avery. She wanted a duchess in her stable of friends. Then again, she was probably incredibly bitter over having lost Hampton to Belinda. Perhaps she saw all this as some twisted chance at revenge.
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