Finding Lady Enderly

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  “He was the first to recognize me, and to love what he saw.” I ran my fingertip over the precious words and flipped to the next. They brought a sob to my throat, as it brought back the memory of telling him with marked frustration that I resembled Brontë’s heroine, Jane the lowly governess.

  “You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.”

  I gasped at the final word, blinking and reading it over again. A proposal? I looked hungrily for the next underline.

  “I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions. I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”

  With a sob, I traced the crooked pencil lines. No wonder he’d been so distant in the days before the party. He’d offered up his heart to me and I had said nothing.

  To think of what had been awaiting me while I’d been so busy planning a useless soiree with a façade that had all been lost in the end. I turned with trembling fingers to the last one and read with a pounding heart. “I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you.” I shut the book and hugged it, wrapping my arms around the slender volume that could offer little comfort in return.

  Why did I feel as though it was too late? It was an odd sense of foreboding hanging about the smoke-tinged air, but it must be my nerves. Sully would not give up so easily, after all he’d weathered with me. He’d be happy I was ready to speak the truth now, and there would be nothing between us. I patted my sash absently. Where was that Connemara stone when I needed to feel its solidness most?

  Sitting in that little room, I leafed tenderly through the pages of his gift until I reached the back cover, where I found another inscription.

  I always wanted a life of peace, but I’m afraid I’ve attached myself to the wrong girl for that. So I’m asking you to let us join our futures into one glorious adventure lived out together. A girl so full of escapades needs her rescuer, after all, no? In the words of Dickens, “There is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.” I aim to be that man, if you’ll have me.

  Yes. Yes, I would have him—with joyful eagerness. I was about to throw off the last of my fetters and run to him with a free heart and conscience. He would open his arms and I would fly to them. After all these years, the two best friends could become one—and we would be inseparable.

  The sudden need to find him, to see his precious face, burned in my chest. Before anything prevented me, I must find Sully. I lifted the cloak’s hood over me and took a deep breath, sneaking back out into the rubble and across the debris, but my plans only got as far as the door. When I slipped out, there was Victor.

  He spun and grabbed my arm with a vice grip. “I knew it. I knew you were here somewhere. You are responsible for this mess, and it ends now.” He yanked me forward and I stumbled with a cry. “I warned you what it would mean to double-cross me.”

  I coughed again. “What are you doing?” My voice was scratchy. Scared.

  “Proving to everyone that I did not kill you, you little wretch.”

  35

  No human has the power to take away the inherent dignity given by God, or change the identity he has granted you of belonging to him.

  ~Diary of a Substitute Countess

  As we hurried through the hallway, his grip on my arm tightened until I half expected to hear my bones snap. There was no Uncle Wells in sight to protect me, no Sully to swoop in to my rescue.

  “A very clever trick you played, faking your own death, even being kind enough to frame me for the mishap. Did you know I’ve had men from the Yard breathing down my neck, peering into my personal affairs, finding ways to prove I murdered you?” He jerked me forward and I stumbled, nearly losing one shoe in the hall. “Did you truly think an insignificant little rag girl could outwit me?” A clock bonged in the hall, echoing through the empty rooms.

  The words insignificant little rag girl rang through my overwhelmed brain and my heart dropped. What now, God? Have my mistakes taken me too far from righteousness to even have a chance?

  Victor banged open the study doors and thrust me in, where I stumbled and fell onto the rug. I stared at the carpet fibers beneath my hands, taking in dizzying breaths, pulsing with shame.

  “Here is your proof, gentlemen. Sergeant Brackenly, Inspector Rhys, gentlemen, I give you our murder victim, alive and well. Stand up and show yourself.”

  My pulse quickened, heart pounding at the heady awareness of what he was asking me to do yet again.

  “You claim this woman is the countess?” A gruff voice spoke out for the well-dressed men in the room. “This woman you are handling so, and who is dressed . . .”

  “She’s been through a great deal,” offered another of the men. “She wouldn’t have taken pains with her appearance after that fire.”

  “I assure you, this is her, and no other.” As Victor towered over me, his silence demanding my assent, I waged an internal battle against this enemy of my soul, the one who had attempted to reshape my identity. The one who made me forget who I was and Whose I was.

  There is great significance in a name. Even in his absence, Uncle Wells’s voice carried into me like a sweet breeze, calming and comforting me. Bringing strength. What God had bestowed on me could not be taken away by anyone—even Victor Prendergast.

  So this is what confidence feels like.

  It did not make me proud or poised or beautiful, but deeply awed.

  I rose, my cloak falling away like a rose unfurling its petals and stood tall before those gentlemen and the man of charm who seemed so small compared to the One who had named me. “Sir, I am Raina.” My name felt both sweet and powerful on my lips. “My name is Raina Bretton and I am no countess.”

  My pulse skittered at the mounting tension as I stepped back. I had done it. I’d told the truth—and I was still alive. Despite the heavy silence in the room, there was a breathy lightness to my heart that made me wonder once again why I hadn’t done this sooner.

  I steadied myself and stood tall and poised before the earl, Prendergast, several strangers, and a very shocked Philip Scatchard. The men from Scotland Yard exchanged looks, one grimacing. “What is the meaning of this display? You would pass this woman off as the countess?”

  “I tell you, she is the countess! She’s attempting to frame me for her own murder. Do not let that horrid garment fool you, for it is her underneath.” Victor’s tight voice thrust over theirs. “Ask anyone from Rothburne. They will all testify that this is she.”

  Scatchard stared at me openly, as if glimpsing me for the first time, wonder and understanding dawning over his features. All his doubts and suspicions were finally coming together to form the truth, like a completed puzzle that shows the entire picture. “Amazing.” He breathed the word quietly, but all the men turned to look at him.

  “What’s that, Scatchard?”

  He stepped closer, arms crossed over his narrow chest as he looked me over with a brilliant glow to his features. Approval, or victory over his former enemy? “Well, gentlemen, I’ve worked closely with Lady Enderly in running this estate for quite a while now, and I can attest to the fact that this woman . . . she is not Lady Enderly.”

  “He’s not to be trusted.” Prendergast spat the words, growing tense. “Did we not just read a newly made will leaving this man everything in the estate? His word means nothing.”

  “And mine?” The earl stepped closer with a resolute face, offering a glimpse of the powerful man who made such waves in the House of Lords. “I’ve nothing to gain by telling you that this woman is who she claims to be, and that she most certainly is not my wife.”

  “It’s true.” Stepping away from Prendergast, I faced the gentlemen. “I was hired by Mr. Prendergast to take a position here. It turned out he wished me to stand in for the countess as her lookalike.” When I had the courage, I lifted my gaze to Victor’s face. “But I am not her.”

  His gaze locked onto min
e, his eyes narrow and bright as he spoke in a low, private voice. “You.” His clean-shaven chin trembled, nostrils flared. “You worthless little rat. Do you know why I picked you for this? I could have chosen any number of women for the position, made her look like the countess, but there was one thing that made you perfect for this task—you are disposable. Just like the castoffs you sell, no one misses people like you.”

  You are who God made you and nothing can change that. Not even you.

  As the long-ago words of my sweet mother rose up before me, deflecting the arrows from going deep into the core of my being, I looked into this man’s angry, hardened face with immense sorrow. It was he who had the disposable life, for he had no one. Not even his wife valued him.

  Before I could speak again, Scatchard cut in. “It seems you’ll need to arrest this man on murder charges after all.”

  Prendergast backed away from them. “Horsefeathers! I’ll not suffer an indictment for a murder I haven’t committed. I’ve killed no one.”

  “Well, then.” Philip Scatchard spoke with a barely contained smile and glittering eyes as one very much amused by what was occurring. “I hope you are prepared to prove your innocence when you’re brought before the magistrate for the disappearance of the real countess.”

  “The real—”

  “It is said you were overheard threatening her life.” Uncle Wells strode in from the other doorway, arms folded across his chest. “More than one servant can attest to such threats, and with such proof, I’d personally name you the primary suspect.”

  I caught my breath at the sight of this formidable man towering over the others.

  “Mr. Prendergast, can you tell us where Lady Enderly is now?” The gentlemen callers turned to him.

  Victor turned a dreadful shade of pea-soup green and something bobbed in his throat. The only defense he had now was the truth—the glaring, painful, condemning truth of the entire conspiracy. It was the only way to prove he did not murder or kidnap the countess. His eyes rounded and his jaw slacked. For once he was the one afraid, the one under threat—by his own devices.

  The words of Brontë’s novel Shirley rang through my mind. It was something to the effect of “Give a man enough rope, and he will hang himself,” and the wickedly grinning Philip Scatchard had handed him a ship’s length of it.

  “Go on, then, Prendergast.” The earl spoke from the shadows. “Tell us the whole of it.”

  Prendergast spun on the man. “Don’t be so haughty, my lord. It would be your undoing too, for you were in this scheme as much as I.”

  “So be it.” Lord Enderly moved toward his solicitor and lowered his voice. “And just because you aren’t guilty of murdering the countess, do not forget there are others.”

  “You’ve no proof of anything, Mitchell. Not a single thing.” Prendergast stepped back, speaking to the entire room at large. “None of you has a shred of proof for any of these wild stories, and you’ll not touch me without it.” He turned and stalked toward the door, calling back over his shoulder. “We’ll speak again if you manage to find proof of anything, and not before.”

  “Perhaps I can help with that.” We all spun at the low, sultry voice of a woman standing just inside the doorway. Simone glided in from the shadows and looked over her husband with a solemn smile. “Hello, Victor. Going somewhere?”

  Prendergast froze, his eye twitching as he looked upon his wife with mortal fear.

  “Perhaps we’d best sit down for this.” Simone gestured with a gracious sweep of her arm toward the far table and chairs, as if she were hostess of this event. And in a way, I suppose she was. She lifted those dark, solemn eyes to me one last time, and a flicker of kinship, of silent understanding, passed between us as she crossed the room.

  I moved to join them, but a hand on my shoulder stopped me. Uncle Wells looked down at me with a gentle smile. “What a relief to see you safe and alive.” He squeezed my hands affectionately.

  With an ache, I pulled away and looked up into his face with great regret. “I owe you so much more than an apology.” My throat clogged on the words. “I never should have let you believe—”

  “Come, come, now. I never believed. Why do you think I appeared at your door so suddenly?”

  “You knew?”

  “My solicitor received a very informative anonymous letter when he was here that revealed a great deal. Then when he informed me of the will this supposed countess had created, leaving everything to Philip Scatchard, of all people, I knew there must be something to it and came to see for myself who this rather interesting lady truly was.”

  I blinked. “So all along you knew, as you worked with me on these rooms, offering to help, giving advice, and speaking of your wife . . .”

  “Even then.”

  I gulped.

  “Please tell me, though, that you did not set fire to my beloved abbey and plan this whole escape to save yourself.”

  I shook my head. “It was my lady’s maid, Simone Bouvier.” I inclined my head toward the woman now in private conversation with the visitors. “Simone Prendergast.”

  His brow furrowed. “Well, well, that is a surprise. It seems there’s a great deal of significance to her name too. Who knew there was another snake in our midst?”

  “You must think on her with mercy, sir, for she did it to save my life. She may be married to Victor, but there is so much good in her. I know it.”

  His cheeks folded up in a wide smile as he turned to join the group huddled over the table in conversation. “I was right to like you from the beginning.”

  Regret washed over me anew. If only I had been honest with this man, and with everyone, despite Victor’s threats. I turned my warm face away from his painfully kind countenance and caught sight of Bradford in the distance, his long face troubled, worry folding the aged skin of his forehead into his hairline. Dear Bradford! My heart lurched as our gazes met. I turned, eager to heap my gratitude on him for what he’d been to me during my stay. “Bradford, I—”

  But his shuttered face didn’t melt into its usual smile. Without a word, he bowed his head as one bearing the weight of betrayal and turned to slip out the exit. My heart fell to the floor. The full burden of my deception settled on me again, and I fought its hold. I dared not move from my spot, my worn boots planted directly on the spiraling flower in the rug’s corner.

  When the little group rose from the table and moved toward me, I held my breath. Uncle Wells returned to me with a solemn expression hardening his features. “They will have to take you with them, I’m afraid, but do not lose heart. I have decided to take you under my wing, and I shall personally see to it that you receive what I think is a fair consequence for your part in this and no more.”

  I released a shuddering sigh as I recalled the utter betrayal on Bradford’s face. “I do not deserve your mercy any more than Prendergast does.”

  “Fortunately for you, I disagree. You have one thing that man does not—pure, authentic remorse. And therefore, me.” He withdrew a small white card from his vest and handed it to me. “If you ever run into trouble, reach out and find me.”

  “Thank you, sir. I—” My mumbled words halted as I turned it over and glimpsed his name printed in clear letters across the front. “Edwin Wells Darlington III?”

  “That would be my full name.”

  My throat tightened as I looked up at him. “You . . . you are . . .”

  “The owner of far too fancy a name?”

  “The prime minister.” I looked up at the man I’d worked beside, casually befriended, and with whom I’d stumbled through the details of my insignificant little heart.

  “There is great significance in a name. Use mine whenever you have need, and it’ll help you navigate whatever comes next. I cannot keep you entirely from the consequences, for you officially entered into the fraud by creating that will and signing Lady Enderly’s name. The law will deal with you, but know that you always have an ally in me.”

  “I had no idea you
were . . .” I glanced up at him, then over at Prendergast, now surrounded by men in dark suits, all his charm drained like a tub that had been uncorked.

  “I always had the ability to help you, you know. I was merely waiting for you to ask. It is as I said—your enemy has power, but I have more.”

  I trembled and looked down at the hem of my limp dress. It was something akin to God, the great God of the world, stretching out his hand to me and drawing me near, even in the midst of my confusion. It was more than I deserved.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “It’s just . . . you doing all this for me, after what I did, it makes no sense.”

  His face creased into a pleasant smile. “The greatest things in life never do. Go and make good use of the grace given to you.”

  “That I will. Whatever comes, I will.”

  “Now, perhaps you’ll deem me worthy to know exactly what hold he had over you, and why you agreed to this scheme in the first place.”

  I cleared my throat, then unfurled to him the entire story of meeting in the alley, and of my beloved Sully, who had risen up against abuse and been called mutinous when violence ensued by the men he’d rallied. “He isn’t a criminal. Prendergast only threatened to have him imprisoned to—”

  He grabbed my hand. “To imprison you.” With a groan, he dropped my hand and covered his face. “You wouldn’t be talking about the former second footman, would you? Is that your Sully?”

  Fear clutched me. “Former?”

  He pressed thick fingertips to his forehead. “I’m afraid Victor had him arrested when he found out he was wanted in London. Charges of mutiny.”

  The room tilted forcefully. With a cry, I grabbed the back of a chair, digging my nails into its wood frame. “How long ago? Can we catch them?” But even if we could, what could we do now?

  “It was yesterday. He left in the morning.”

  I forced back a strangled cry as the men approached. Victor was being led out the doors toward the great hall.

  “You’ll need to come with us now, miss.”