The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  “Miss Fleur Hamilton?” The man who was seated behind a large table examined her slowly and keenly from head to foot.

  Fleur stood still and looked back. He was young, bald-headed, thin. If her appearance was unacceptable, then let him tell her so now before her hopes soared despite herself.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  He gestured to a chair, and she sat, her back straight, her chin high.

  “I am interviewing for the post of governess,” he said. “My employer is Mr. Kent of Dorsetshire. His daughter is five years old. Do you consider yourself in any way qualified for the job?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was educated at home until I was eleven and then at Broadridge School in Oxfordshire. I was proficient in all my lessons. I speak French and Italian tolerably well, I play the pianoforte and have some skill with watercolors. I have always been particularly interested in literature and history and the classics. I have some skill with a needle.”

  She answered his questions as clearly and as honestly as she could, the blood hammering through her temples, her hands clasped into fists in her lap, the fingers of both hands crossed out of his sight.

  Please, God, she prayed silently. Oh, please, dear God.

  “If I were to communicate with your former school, the headmistress would confirm what you have told me?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I am sure of it.” But please don’t. They would not recognize the name. They would deny that I was ever there.

  “Would you tell me something of your family and background, Miss Hamilton?” Mr. Houghton asked her at last.

  She stared at him and swallowed. “My father was a gentleman,” she said. “He died in debt. I was forced to come to London in search of employment.”

  Forgive me, Papa, she begged her dead father silently.

  “What?” she said.

  “How long ago?” he repeated. “How long ago did you come to London?”

  “A little over a month ago,” she said.

  “What employment have you had since?” he asked.

  She was silent for a while, staring at him. “I had enough money to last until now,” she said.

  She sat still while his eyes moved over the unsuitable silk dress beneath her cloak. He knew. He must know. How could she have lived through all the pain and degradation of the past week and keep it all invisible to the eyes of strangers? He must know that she lied. He must know that she was a whore.

  “Recommendations?” he asked. “Do you have any letters with you?”

  She had known it was cruel, this hope. She had not really hoped at all. “I have none, sir,” she said. “I have never been employed. I have lived as a gentleman’s daughter.” And she waited quietly for dismissal.

  But hope had been cruelly kindled. Please, God, she prayed. Please, dear God. Oh, please.

  And she wished she had not come. She wished there had not been this illusory hope.

  “What?” she said again.

  “The post is yours if you wish for it,” he repeated.

  She stared at him. “Will Mr. Kent not wish to speak with me first?” she asked.

  “He trusts my judgment,” Mr. Houghton said.

  “And Mrs. Kent?” she asked. “Will she not wish to interview me?”

  “Mrs. Kent is in Dorsetshire with the child,” the man said. “Do you want the post, Miss Hamilton?”

  “Yes,” she said, one fingernail finally cutting through the flesh of her palm. “Oh, yes. Please.”

  “I will need your full name and address,” he said, drawing paper toward him, picking up a quill pen and dipping it in the inkwell, his manner brisk and businesslike. “I will deliver to you within the next few days a ticket for the stage into Dorsetshire and will arrange to have you met at the town of Wollaston and taken to Willoughby Hall, Mr. Kent’s home. In the meanwhile, I have been empowered to pay you some money in advance so that you may purchase clothes suitable for a governess.” His eyes lifted and ran over her again.

  She sat numbly listening to the impossible, the unbelievable. She was going to be a governess. She was to live in the country and have charge of the education of a five-year-old child. She was being handed enough money to buy herself some decent dresses and bonnets and shoes. She was to live with a respectable family in a respectable home.

  What would Mr. Houghton say, she wondered, how would he look at her, if he knew the truth about her? What would happen if he ever did find out? Or if Mr. and Mrs. Kent ever found out? How would they feel if they knew that their man of business was employing a whore to teach their child?

  “No,” she said, rising from her chair as Mr. Houghton stood at his side of the table, “I have no questions, sir.”

  “I shall bring your stagecoach ticket within the next few days, then, Miss Hamilton,” he said, inclining his head dismissively to her. “Good day to you, ma’am.”

  She left the room and the agency in a daze, hardly noticing Miss Fleming, who nodded to her graciously as she passed.

  Inside the inner room, Peter Houghton pursed his lips and stared at the closed door through which his master’s ladybird had just passed.

  He could not see the attraction. The girl was thin and pale, with unremarkable features and reddish hair that lacked luster. When she had some weight on her, perhaps she would have a pretty-enough figure. But when all was said and done, she was but a whore whom his master had picked up outside the Drury Lane a few nights before.

  He had never known his employer to house a mistress even in London. And yet this girl was not to be set up discreetly in a town house of her own, where she could be visited and enjoyed at the duke’s leisure. She was to be sent to Willoughby, housed under the same roof as the duke’s wife and daughter. She was to be the daughter’s governess.

  His grace was a strange man. Peter Houghton respected his master and valued the employment, but still there was something strange about the man. The duchess was ten times lovelier than the ladybird.

  Wife and mistress under the same roof. Life could turn interesting. Presumably his grace would soon decide that a return to the country and domestic bliss would be in order.

  Peter Houghton smiled slightly and shook his head. One thing was certain, anyway. He would be delighted to be free of this room and Miss Fleming’s simpering and flirtatious smiles after four whole days of waiting for thin, red-haired Fleur to put in an appearance.

  FLEUR LEFT LONDON ON the stage six days later, having had one more brief meeting with Mr. Houghton. She took with her a trunk of modest size in which were folded neatly her blue silk dress and gray cloak as well as several plain but serviceable new clothes and accessories.

  It was a long and an uncomfortable journey, in which more often than not she was squashed between large and irritable and unwashed passengers. But she would not complain, even in the privacy of her own mind. The alternatives were all too real to her.

  If she were not on this journey, she would be living in her little hole of a room by day and plying her trade as a whore by night. By now she would have experienced several different customers, and perhaps she would have discovered the truth of what her first had told her. Perhaps it would have been possible for other men to treat her more roughly. And perhaps they would have paid her less, so that she would have been forced to work every night.

  No, she would not complain. If only Mr. and Mrs. Kent did not discover the truth about her. But how could they? Only one man on earth knew the truth, and she would never see him again, though he would live in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

  Of course, there was another truth for Mr. and Mrs. Kent to discover too. And once London and its terrors were left behind, she was reminded more strongly of it again and found herself looking nervously about her for she knew not what.

  She saw Hobson’s dead face more often in her mind once she was back in open countryside, the eyes staring, the jaw dropped open, the face ashen and surprised. She was amazed it had not haunted her dreams more than it
had during the past seven weeks. But of course there had been the even greater terror of surviving in the slums of London.

  It haunted her waking dreams now.

  She had killed him. As well as a whore, she was a murderer. What would these people in the stage do or say if they knew who she was or what she was? There was something almost hilarious in the thought. Horrifyingly hilarious.

  “What’s the joke, ducks?” a buxom woman carrying a basket almost as large as herself asked from the seat opposite.

  Fleur sobered instantly. “I was just thinking how we might all be bounced to a jelly by the time we cross this particular stretch of road,” she said, and smiled.

  It was a fortunate answer. All the inside passengers brightened as they aired their grievances against the parish responsible for the repair of that stretch of the highway over which they were passing.

  No, she was not a murderer. She must not put that label on herself. She had pushed him and he had fallen and caught his head on the corner of the hearth and been killed. It had been an accident. She had been defending herself. He had been going to hold her at Matthew’s signal. She had been struggling to free herself.

  Matthew had used the word “murder” after examining the body. It was that word and the shock of seeing the chalky dead face that had sent her fleeing blindly instead of continuing with the plans she had made.

  She tried not to think of it. Perhaps there had never been any pursuit. Perhaps, after all, Matthew had explained it as an accident. And even if there had been pursuit, perhaps it had been called off by now. Or perhaps she would never be found. It had all happened seven weeks before. But she had felt safer in London.

  She half-smiled again. Safer!

  She tried to picture little Miss Kent in her mind, and the child’s mama and papa. She placed them mentally in a cozy manor, a close-knit family group held together by love—rather like her own parents and herself as a young child. She tried to picture herself being drawn into the group, being treated almost as one of the family.

  She would make up to them for the great deception she was perpetrating against them. She had not answered Mr. Houghton’s question honestly. When he had asked how she had been employed since her arrival in London, she had pretended that she had had enough money with which to keep herself. She had not told him of the only employment she had found.

  But she would put it behind her. No one need ever know. The only person she would ever feel obliged to tell was a future husband, and she did not imagine that she would ever wish to marry. Not now. She thought briefly of Daniel, but pushed the image of his kindly smile and blond hair and clerical garb from her mind. If circumstances had been different, she might have married Daniel and been happy with him for the rest of her life. She had loved him.

  But circumstances were not different. There could be no going back to him now, even if she could suddenly hear that Matthew had not called that death murder. There could be no going back. For now she was a fallen woman. She closed her eyes with brief regret and opened them in order to study the scenery that was bouncing past the windows of the carriage—or past which they were bouncing, to express the matter more accurately.

  She was beginning a new life, and she must be forever grateful that it had been made possible for her, that she had called at Miss Fleming’s agency during the precise hour when Mr. Houghton was there to conduct interviews. She could wish and wish that he had appeared there just five days earlier, but he had not, and that was that. She would not be ungrateful for the gift of a new life and a fresh start. She would show her gratitude by being the very best governess that a family had ever had.

  MATTHEW BRADSHAW, LORD BROCKLEHURST, had taken bachelor rooms on St. James’s Street during his stay in London, preferring not to take up residence with his mother and sister during all the bustle of a London Season, though he did call on them with the news, which did not surprise her in the least, his mother had said arctically. She had always known that Isabella would come to no good.

  He did not at first anticipate that his stay would be a long one. Isabella had thoroughly frightened herself and disappeared from the neighborhood of their home in Wiltshire. She had not even run to the Reverend Booth, he had discovered when he had pursued her to the parsonage. She must have come to London. It was the only possible destination she could have chosen. She would have thrown herself on the mercy of his mother or of some acquaintance, though she could not have many in town. She had not been from home a great deal during her life except for the five years when his mother had insisted on sending her away to school to be rid of her.

  He had found no trace of her, though he had searched for more than a month and made endless inquiries. And of course she had not run to his mother. It was stupid of him to have expected it.

  Finally he had been driven to desperate measures. The stocky, red-faced man standing feet astride in his parlor two mornings after Fleur left London, his cravat none too clean, his greasy-looking hat turning and turning in his hands, was a member of the Bow Street Runners. The two of them had been talking for some time.

  “That’s what will have happened, sir, mark my words,” Mr. Henry Snedburg assured him. He had refused to be seated, explaining that his time was a valuable commodity. “She will be hiding in the poorer quarters and looking for employment.”

  “The search will be hopeless, then,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “The proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “No, no.” The Runner raised a hand to scratch the back of a large red neck. “I would not say that, sir. There are agencies. As a lady, she would have thought to try one or more of those. All I need is a list, which I daresay I have filed away somewhere, and off I go. Wanted for murder, you say, sir?”

  “And attempted theft,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “She tried to run off with the family jewels.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Snedburg said, “a nasty piece of work she is, then, sir. I will begin my search without any delay at all and with all caution. She will be a desperate young lady. We will have her in a twinkling, you may be sure. What names might she assume, may I ask?”

  Lord Brocklehurst frowned. “You think she will have changed her name?” he asked.

  “If she has a modicum of sense, she will, sir,” Mr. Snedburg said. “But I find that people rarely fabricate a wholly new name. You give me her full name, sir, and her mother’s name, and the names of some of the servants at your home and those of some of the young lady’s friends and acquaintances.”

  Lord Brocklehurst frowned in thought. “Her full name is Isabella Fleur Bradshaw,” he said. “Her mother’s name was Laura Maxwell, her personal maid’s, Annie Rowe, her closest friend’s, Miriam Booth.”

  “Your housekeeper’s, sir?”

  “Phyllis Matheson.”

  “The girl’s grandmothers?”

  Lord Brocklehurst thought. “Hamilton on the father’s side,” he said. “Lenora, I believe. I don’t know about the mother’s side.”

  “Your butler?”

  “Chapman.”

  “I’ll try these, sir,” Mr. Snedburg said finally. “I’ll come up with something. I don’t doubt. Now, I need a description of the young lady.”

  “Somewhat above average height,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “Slender. Brown eyes. Red-gold hair.”

  “Her crowning glory, would you say, sir?” the Runner asked, eyeing his client closely.

  “Yes.” Lord Brocklehurst gazed sightlessly across the room. “Her crowning glory. Like the sunshine and the sunset all tangled up together.”

  Mr. Snedburg coughed. “Exactly, sir,” he said. “A beauty, then, you would say?”

  “Oh, yes.” The other looked back to him. “A beauty, indeed. I want her found.”

  “As a justice of the peace, I understand, sir,” the Runner said. “Because, despite the fact that she is your cousin, she must stand trial for the murder of your personal servant.”

  “Yes, for that reason,” Lord Brocklehurst said, his hands opening and closing at his s
ides. “Find her.”

  Mr. Snedburg executed an inelegant bow and strode from the room without further ado.

  “MISS HAMILTON?”

  Fleur turned in some surprise to the young man in smart blue livery who questioned her as she descended from the stage in Wollaston. “Yes,” she said.

  “Ned Driscoll, ma’am,” he said, “come to fetch you to the Hall. Which are your trunks, ma’am?”

  “Just that one,” Fleur said, pointing.

  The young man was dressed very smartly indeed. And he hoisted her trunk to his shoulder as if it weighed no more than a feather and strode across the cobbled yard of the inn where the stage had stopped toward a closed carriage with a coat of arms painted on the side panel.

  A cozy manor? A small family group?

  “You are Mr. Kent’s servant?” she asked the groom, following him. “This is his carriage?”

  He turned to grin at her in some amusement. “Mr. Kent?” he said. “He had better not hear you call him that, ma’am. He’s ‘his grace’ to the likes of you and me.”

  “His grace?” Fleur felt rather as if her knees were turning to jelly beneath her.

  “His grace, the Duke of Ridgeway,” the groom said, looking at her curiously. “Didn’t you know?” He strapped her trunk securely to the back of the carriage.

  “The Duke of Ridgeway? There must be some mistake. I was hired as governess to the daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Kent,” Fleur said.

  “Lady Pamela Kent, ma’am,” the groom said, extending a hand to help her into the carriage. “Mr. Houghton was it who hired you? His grace’s personal secretary. He must have been having a joke with you.”

  A joke. Fleur sat in the carriage while the groom climbed to the box, and closed her eyes briefly. Her employer was the Duke of Ridgeway? She had heard of him. He was reputed to be one of the wealthiest peers of the land. Matthew had known his half-brother, Lord Thomas Kent. Kent! She had not even noticed that it was the same name.