Discovering Miss Dalrymple (Baleful Godmother Historical Romance Series Book 6)

by Emily Larkin

  He fixed his gaze on the pale blur of Georgiana’s muslin gown, inhaled a shallow breath, and took hold of his courage. I can do this. One step. A second step. As slow and shuffling as old Mr. Dowrey, sweating and trembling, his breath coming fast and shallow, his hands braced on the walls on either side of him. It’s not a chimney. It’s not a chimney.

  The Dalrymples and the Dowreys were clustered together, their heads bent over an object he couldn’t see.

  “Her mother’s pearls,” Mrs. Dowrey said. “See, John?”

  Georgiana looked up. He saw her shock. “Vic!” She came to him swiftly and slid her arms around his waist. “What are you doing in here?”

  Alexander let go of the walls and hugged her close, trying not to squeeze too tightly. “I want to see,” he said. He was still trembling, and he knew she must be able to feel it, but it was much easier to breathe now that he was holding her. The walls seemed to push back slightly, the candles to burn a little more brightly. He looked around and saw that the space wasn’t like a chimney at all, or even a tunnel. In fact, it was more like a pantry. A very long, narrow, dark pantry. Shelves lined the walls at this end, crowded with objects. He saw a cluster of tarnished silver candlesticks and row upon row of small stoneware pitchers with pewter lids.

  The Dowreys were going through a jewelry box, murmuring excitedly. “Her rings,” Mrs. Dowrey said. “Do you remember this one, John?”

  He looked past the Dowreys and found Lord Dalrymple watching him. Dalrymple didn’t appear to mind that Alexander was hugging his daughter; he smiled at him.

  Alexander managed to smile back.

  “Come, I want to show you something,” Georgiana said. She slipped from his embrace and took his hand. “Over here. On this shelf.”

  The shelf she led him to held only three items, each wrapped in cloth. Two were very small, one a little larger.

  Georgie picked up the smallest object and unwrapped it. A pocket watch. “Your father’s,” she said, holding it out to him.

  Alexander hesitated. Not because he was reluctant to touch the watch, but because it felt momentous. His father’s watch. Something Joseph Prowse had owned, had used, had carried in his pocket.

  Carefully, he took the watch. Carefully, he turned it over in his hands, learning its weight, its cool smoothness. My father’s.

  The watch was small and plain, the brass case tarnished with age. There was nothing inscribed on the case, nothing inside the lid when he opened it. The face was quite simple, white with black numerals. The hands had stopped pointing at nine thirty.

  The last person to wind this was my father.

  Alexander’s throat tightened and his eyes stung and for a dreadful moment he thought he might cry. And then the moment passed. He inhaled a deep breath and closed the case and held the watch in his hand, feeling the metal become warm. He didn’t want to put it down. After a moment he removed his own watch from its pocket—embossed silver, with a blue-and-gold enamel face—and carefully placed Joe Prowse’s brass one there instead.

  When he looked up, he realized that Lord Dalrymple had joined them and was watching silently.

  “Will you keep this for me, please?”

  Dalrymple took the embossed silver watch and placed it in his own pocket.

  Alexander looked back at Georgiana. Her eyes were on his face, watchful, faintly anxious, as if she knew he’d come close to crying.

  He smiled at her, a little lopsided, but still a smile.

  She smiled back, and held out her hand. In her palm lay a coiled necklace. Not amethysts or pearls, but coral. “Your mother’s.”

  Alexander reached out and took the necklace. It weighed almost nothing in his hand, beads of pink coral strung together on a thread, inexpensive and pretty. Something a young farmer would buy for a wife he loved.

  His eyes stung again. He held the necklace and felt regret that Joe and Martha hadn’t had the chance to grow old together. Regret that he couldn’t remember them. The stinging in his eyes became stronger. He blinked several times, swallowed twice, and looked at Georgiana.

  She was a viscount’s daughter, born to wear diamonds, not pink coral, but he held the necklace out to her. “Georgie?”

  She smiled at him—the sweet smile he loved so much—and stepped closer. Alexander fastened the necklace carefully. When he’d finished, he realized that he was no longer shaking. His hands were quite steady.

  Georgiana touched the coral beads with her fingertips and looked at him, and Alexander knew that his mother had gazed at his father in just such a way—her heart in her eyes—when he’d given her the necklace.

  If they’d been alone, he would have kissed her; with Lord Dalrymple standing alongside and the Dowreys murmuring over the jewelry box, all he did was take her hand.

  Georgiana squeezed his fingers gently. “There’s one more thing that belonged to your parents.”

  Alexander’s gaze went to the shelf.

  The final object was flat and rectangular. It looked as if it might be a small painting. Georgiana unwrapped it and handed it to him.

  It wasn’t a painting; it was a framed sketch, the sort of thing one could get at any fair: pen and ink with a few dabs of watercolor. An hour’s work for the artist, a shilling in payment.

  For a few seconds candlelight played across the glass and he couldn’t make out the sketch, and then he tilted the frame—and found himself unable to breathe.

  After a long moment, he managed to inhale. He looked at Georgiana. “Is it . . . ?”

  “Your mother and father,” she said. “Your sister. And you.”

  Alexander looked back at the sketch, devouring it with his eyes. He couldn’t see every detail—the reflected candlelight made it impossible—but he could see enough, could see his mother sitting, dimples peeking in her cheeks and a baby swaddled in a shawl in her arms, and see his father standing alongside her—tall and broad-shouldered, a wide smile on his face. And he could see himself, standing in front of his father.

  His hands were shaking again, not from fear but from emotion. There were tears on his face.

  The artist had added touches of color: blue for Martha’s skirt, brown for Joseph’s breeches and vest, pink for the beads around Martha’s neck. Alexander stared at that tiny streak of pink. His mother was wearing the coral necklace he’d just given Georgiana. That knowledge gave him a strange feeling in his chest, as if his heart was swelling with both sadness and joy.

  Alexander studied his father, seeing his own square chin and straight eyebrows, his own broad shoulders. He tried to see the color of Joe Prowse’s eyes, but the light was too dim.

  Then he looked at himself, little Charley Prowse.

  Charley Prowse had Martha’s dimples and Joe’s wide smile. He looked happy, so happy, his father’s hands resting on his shoulders.

  The strange feeling in Alexander’s chest grew stronger—happiness and pain. The tears came faster, hot and stinging in his eyes, warm on his cheeks. He fumbled for his handkerchief, wiped his face, blew his nose. When he’d finished that, he realized that not only were Georgiana and her father silently watching him, so were the Dowreys.

  “Is this a good likeness of my parents?” He held the sketch out to them.

  The Dowreys peered closely. “We never met them,” Mr. Dowrey said. “But that’s the spitting image of you as a child, so I’d say yes.”

  Alexander looked at the sketch again. He wanted to take it outside and see it in daylight, wanted to examine it with a magnifying glass. He forced himself to look back at the Dowreys. “You found Miss Menhennick’s jewelry?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Dowrey said, beaming at him. “And most of the silver. She must have hidden it from Polglaze.”

  Alexander’s gaze skipped over the shelves, noting the tarnished trinket boxes and vinaigrettes and salt cellars tucked among the stoneware pitchers. A cluster of candlesticks was piled haphazardly on top of a case that looked as if it probably held a cutlery service.

  “And her fortu
ne?”

  Mr. Dowrey shook his head.

  “You might wish to examine the pitchers,” Lord Dalrymple said. His voice was mild, but it held a note that made Alexander look swiftly at him. So did Georgiana.

  Mr. Dowrey, unfamiliar with Lord Dalrymple, didn’t hear it. He looked at the ranks of pitchers dubiously. “They’re just stoneware and pewter.”

  Dalrymple eased past the Dowreys in the narrow space and lifted one of the lids with a finger. “Stoneware, pewter . . . and guineas.”

  Someone gasped. Everyone stepped closer. The golden coins glinted in the candlelight.

  Mrs. Dowrey put her hand to her throat. “Dear Lord in heaven . . .”

  “Are all of them filled with guineas?” Georgiana asked, her voice hushed with awe.

  “I don’t know,” her father said. “I’ve only looked inside half a dozen, but all of those . . . yes.”

  Mrs. Dowrey turned to Alexander. “Oh, my dear boy.” She clutched his arm excitedly. “You have a fortune!”

  Alexander smiled down at her. “No, Mrs. Dowrey, you have a fortune.”

  Mrs. Dowrey went pale. She released his arm and exchanged a glance with her husband.

  Mr. Dowrey shook his head. “Eliza wanted you to have everything.”

  “The only things I want are my father’s watch and my mother’s necklace and this.” He tilted the sketch, letting the candlelight gleam across the glass. “I’m giving everything else to you.”

  “But . . .” Mr. Dowrey moistened his lips and wrung his hands together. “But why?”

  There were several answers he could give. Because I don’t need the money. Because you’re poor. Because you worried about me for twenty-five years. Because your wife cried when I came back. “Because you’re family,” Alexander said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alexander had thought Eliza Menhennick’s house grim when he’d arrived, but when he left he no longer thought that. It was still gray and sharp-gabled, but he could now see that its lines were handsome. It looked like a house that had been hibernating for a long time, waiting for happiness and prosperity to return to it.

  He tucked the sketch more firmly under his arm and asked, “Where’s Eliza Menhennick buried?”

  “Not far,” Georgiana said. “Five minutes’ walk.”

  The church was larger than the one in Lansallos and there were many more graves, but Georgiana led the way without hesitation. Miss Menhennick had been buried in the same plot as her parents, her name appended to their headstone. Eliza Grace Menhennick, b. Oct. 23rd, 1731, d. Dec 5th, 1789.

  Alexander stood silently for a moment, gazing at the inscription, wishing he could remember the woman. “Where’s Polglaze now?” he asked.

  “Dead. In a pauper’s grave in London.”

  “Did she steal much from Miss Menhennick?”

  Georgiana’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Two silver teaspoons that are in Tavistock,” she said. “A silver hairbrush that’s in Exeter. A silver tea caddy that’s in Basingstoke. Some coins that are in pockets all over England. And you.”

  Alexander looked back at the grave and studied the dates. Eliza Menhennick had only been fifty-eight when she died. “Did Polglaze . . . do you think she might have killed Miss Menhennick?”

  Both Dalrymple and Georgiana looked at him sharply.

  There was a moment of silence. Alexander heard a cart rattle past in the street. Then Lord Dalrymple said, “Georgiana, where is the person who killed Eliza Menhennick?”

  Georgiana shook her head. “There isn’t anyone.”

  “Where’s the person who harmed her before she died?”

  Georgiana shook her head again. “There isn’t anyone.”

  “Where did Eliza Menhennick die?”

  “In her bed.”

  Alexander was relieved. He tried to piece together what had happened all those years ago. “Miss Menhennick didn’t trust Polglaze, so she hid her valuables, and when she died Polglaze took what she could find, which wasn’t much.” He thought about this for a moment. “Maybe that’s why Polglaze took me?” Would he have been left behind if the maid had been able to steal Eliza’s jewels? “Did she sell me? Or did she just abandon me?” He rephrased it as a question Georgiana could answer: “Where is the person Polglaze sold me to?”

  “Dead, in Exeter.”

  “Where’s the chimney sweep I was found with?”

  “Dead in Exeter.” Georgiana slipped her hand into his. “It’s the same person, Vic. Polglaze sold you to him.”

  Alexander gave an inward shiver. He stared at the dates on the gravestone again. Eliza Menhennick had died in December and Leonard St. Clare had found him in February. He knew the exact date: February sixteenth, 1790. The day he’d stopped being Charley Prowse and become Alexander St. Clare.

  He looked at Eliza’s headstone for a long time, Georgiana’s hand warm in his, Lord Dalrymple standing silently beside them, and then there came a moment when he inhaled deeply, a breath that seemed like a new beginning. He lifted his head and looked around and spied a bench by the church. “Let’s sit over there.”

  They sat side by side. Alexander laid the sketch on his lap. The low sunshine cast reflections on the glass—he couldn’t see his parents’ faces—but he didn’t need to. “You were right,” he told Georgiana. “It’s true that I’m Charley Prowse, but it’s also true that I’m Alexander St. Clare.” He smoothed his hand over the glass, arranging things in his mind in the order they needed to be done, the way he did when his stewards and men of business brought problems to him. “Here’s what I plan to do. First, I’d like to stay here a day or two, hire some servants for the Dowreys, get those guineas safely into a bank. I don’t want anyone taking advantage of them.”

  Dalrymple nodded, as if he approved of this.

  “Second, I want to go back to Lansallos and tell Bill Kernow who I am.”

  Dalrymple nodded again. Georgiana smiled, and tucked her hand into his.

  “And then I want to go home to Thornycombe, because even though I’m Charley Prowse, I’m more Alexander St. Clare.” His memories were all Alexander’s. The little he had of Charley were other people’s recollections, a pocket watch and a coral necklace and a sketch. And a fear of the dark.

  “I don’t want to hide that I’m Charley, but I don’t want to tell anyone, either. It’s . . .” Alexander tried to find the right word and came up with: “Private.” Which didn’t quite encompass it, but came close.

  He looked down at the sketch again. “I think . . . in a way I’ve been lucky.” He’d been loved by Martha and Joe Prowse. Loved by Eliza Menhennick. Loved by Leonard St. Clare. “Not many people have had so many parents as I have.”

  Bill Kernow had wanted to be his father, too. And Lord Dalrymple almost was. He remembered Dalrymple on the clifftop road that morning, calling him a damn fool boy and then hugging him tightly.

  Alexander lifted his gaze from the sketch and looked at Georgiana.

  He’d discovered a great many things about himself in the past week, but he’d discovered almost as much about Georgiana. She had secrets as profoundly life changing as his own: the magic running through her family, the magic running through her.

  But for all that he’d learned about her, one thing remained unchanged. He loved her. He would always love her.

  He lifted Georgiana’s hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “And as soon as we’re home I’m going to marry you.”

  Afterwards

  The wedding of Alexander St. Clare, Duke of Vickery, and the Honorable Georgiana Dalrymple was held on the second Sunday in October. The church was full to bursting; everyone in Eype parish wanted to witness their duke marry their viscount’s daughter.

  In the front pew, alongside Lord and Lady Dalrymple, were three guests no one recognized: a smiling old fellow with a broad Cornish accent, and an elderly gentleman and his wife. When someone asked who they were, the duke replied: “They’re family.”

  The Duke of Vickery had eight
estates and a mansion in London, so the bridal tour took several months, but once it was over the Vickerys chose to make Thornycombe their home. They liked the long shingly beaches and the cliffs and the wide skies and clear light.

  The duke’s bill for candles became less than it had been. His valet started leaving only one candle burning in the ducal bedchamber overnight. Vickery steeled himself to dispense with it altogether, but his wife told him that she liked to see him when they made love, so the candle stayed. Whenever the duke woke in the middle of the night he was deeply glad for that candle, because he really didn’t like the dark.

  When Parliament was in session and the Vickerys were in London, the duchess wore rubies and diamonds and pearls, but at home in Dorsetshire she most often had a simple coral necklace around her throat.

  The duke gave his expensive timepieces away. He owned only one pocket watch and it went with him everywhere. It was small and old and made of brass, but it kept perfect time.

  Get the Baleful Godmother starter library when you join my Readers’ Group.

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  Praise for Unmasking Miss Appleby:

  “Sexy, unusual, and vastly entertaining. The best historical romance I’ve read this year.”

  ~ Anna Campbell, author of the Dashing Widows series

  Praise for The Fey Quartet:

  “Hans Christian Andersen for twenty-first century adults.”

  ~ Mindy Klasky, USA TODAY bestselling author

  Author’s Note

  While the cliffs at Eype are famous for their fossils, the cliffs at Portwrinkle aren’t. (I embroidered the truth a little there.)

  Lansallos church is very beautiful, with arched windows and a Norman font and carved oak pews from the 1500s. There really is a cutting down to Lansallos Cove, but I’ve made it much narrower and darker than it is in real life. It’s actually wide enough for a cart, which begs the question: Why would you take a cart down to a small, deserted beach? Were farmers gathering seaweed for their fields . . . or was the cutting used by smugglers? (You can probably guess which explanation I prefer.)