Suzanne Robinson

by The Treasure

  “Allow me to give you a tour of the whole house, then.”

  “I should enjoy that,” Emmie said. What luck. He was going to show her everything right away, and she’d get a better idea of where to start looking.

  North offered his arm again. As Emmie laid her hand on his sleeve, he said, “Have you no quotations about houses with which to regale me?”

  “I can think of none. Where are we going?”

  “To the gallery,” North said as he led her beneath a rounded arch and into darkness.

  Emmie stopped at once. “I can’t see.”

  “Wait a moment.”

  “I still can’t see.”

  She felt his hands on her arms as she was turned away from the sunlight. “Don’t look at the light or your eyes will never adjust.”

  Blinking rapidly Emmie found she could distinguish him standing in front of her. She could smell a hint of some clean-scented soap, and her mouth went dry. She cleared her throat and looked away from him. “What did you want to show me?”

  “Do you really enjoy Shakespeare, Miss de Winter?”

  “Yes, but what has that to do with—”

  “Because since we’ve met I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve never met a young lady who could quote Shakespeare, or who even wished to read him. You’re different.”

  The sound of his voice zinged from her ears to her spine! She had to get away from him and compose herself. Drat. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t play a part she’d managed easily in the past?

  “I think we should go inside. I’m sure Lady Ottoline expects me.”

  “No, she doesn’t. Listen to me, Emmie: ‘Is it thy will thy image should keep open/ My heavy eyelids to the weary night?/ Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,/ While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?’ ”

  She had always loved words, reading, and literature—what little she got of it—and now Valin’s phrases lifted her into a world inhabited by them alone. If there was magic, it was in such words and images.

  Valin touched her cheek, and Emmie started. Whirling around, crinoline tilting precariously, she rushed into the sunlight. She took refuge behind one of the lion statues. She was a lady. If she didn’t remember that, she’d lose more than her chance to find the Spanish gold.

  Valin had followed her. “Still my lady coward, I see.”

  “I’m more fatigued from my journey than I thought, my lord. Please show me into the house.”

  Grasping the lion’s neck, he swung around the statue and grinned at her. “What makes you so different, Miss de Winter?”

  “I’m sure I don’t understand you.”

  Valin’s smile vanished as he rounded the statue. He clasped his hands behind his back and stared at her in a musing manner. “You may fool everyone else, but not me.”

  “I fail to …” Had he discovered something? Emmie went cold.

  “You have mysteries about you, Miss Emily de Winter, and I’m going to solve them.”

  “What fancies, my lord.” Emmie lifted her skirts and walked up the stairs that led to the front door of Agincourt Hall.

  North mounted the stairs two at a time and planted himself in front of her. “You’re unnerved. I can see a tiny vein throbbing at your temple, and you’re breathing as hard as if you’d ridden in the Derby.” He narrowed his eyes as he regarded her. “I’m onto something, by Jove. And it’s important, by the look of you. Who would have thought?” She tried to go around him, but he stepped in her way, bent over her, and smiled lazily. “What are you hiding, Miss Emily de Winter?”

  Emmie gaped at him. To be nearly unmasked in so sudden a manner robbed her of speech. She might have stood there, her mouth hanging open like a dead fish, but the doors burst open behind North and disgorged his aunt.

  “Dear Miss de Winter, how good of you to accept my invitation. Valin! Don’t keep the dear girl standing in the hot sun. Come in, come in.”

  6

  Valin was in the Russian room because no one ever came there. He was feeling guilty. Having allowed Aunt Ottoline to arrange this country house party, he had intended to approach it with the proper marriage-market attitude. With all sincerity, he’d expected to spend most of his time with the young ladies she invited. But it quickly became obvious that he would never be as important to Miss Kingsley as she was to herself. Lady Victoria was so in love with her Thoroughbreds he could hardly get her attention, and Lady Drusilla had the intelligence of a whelk. None of them would do; Aunt would be furious.

  Valin settled in an armchair and tried to read The Times, but he was still bothered. It was because of Miss de Winter. She’d been at Agincourt Hall for almost two weeks, and he was spending too much time with her. The other guests were beginning to talk. The young ladies were annoyed and offended, but Valin didn’t care. If any of them had been tolerable, he wouldn’t have found Miss de Winter’s company preferable. It wasn’t his fault.

  On top of this, he still hadn’t returned her fan. He had a curious reluctance to part with it and give up the honeysuckle fragrance it bore. To make matters worse, he was feeling guilty for having done something unforgivable. Before she arrived he was already intrigued by Miss de Winter, and the day she arrived his curiosity had been piqued even more. After a week in her company, however, Emily de Winter had become a genuine mystery. So much of one that he’d hired a private inquiry agent to investigate her.

  He had an evil mind; he’d become suspicious simply because the poor girl had tried to be nice to him by admiring his house and grounds. Oh, and because she didn’t seem to know the relative rank of his various guests. Surely he could attribute such ignorance to her foreign upbringing. He would have if another suspicious question hadn’t returned to annoy him. He still wasn’t satisfied about her lack of even a trace of an accent. After having spent so many years in France Miss de Winter should have at least had difficulty with her Rs.

  “You bastard,” he muttered. “She probably spent months trying to Anglicize her speech to fit in.”

  No. He wasn’t being unreasonable. There had been other incidents.

  After dinner one night, he’d shown everyone the conservatory. While the others were admiring the tropical plants, he had found Miss de Winter inspecting the walls of the house that adjoined the glass structure. She’d been startled to see him appear from behind an ancient oak tree.

  “What are you doing, Miss de Winter?” he’d asked.

  Whirling around she sucked in her breath and stared at him for a moment. “Oh, just admiring the way the conservatory is constructed.”

  “You could see it better if you weren’t right next to the wall.”

  “True.” She hurried past him into the garden, and gazed up at the glass panels.

  He joined her. “We had Bertie here last year, and he loved it.”

  “Who?”

  Valin glanced down at Miss de Winter with a frown. “Even a girl from a French boarding school ought to know there’s only one Bertie in England.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the Prince of Wales.”

  “Oh, that Bertie,” she said. “Shall we go in? The others will wonder where you are.”

  Valin shifted in his armchair and let The Times fall to his lap. He could have sworn she hadn’t the least idea that Prince Albert Edward was known as Bertie. And there had been other small instances that made him suspicious of the elegant Miss de Winter.

  She hadn’t understood him when he referred to his cattle. Everyone he knew would have known he was referring to his horses, not real cattle. Miss de Winter had not. Then there was the way she’d complained about the bell that was rung at six o’clock in the morning. The other young ladies had blushed when Miss de Winter talked of it at breakfast. Why hadn’t she known the bell was rung so that those married ladies and gentlemen who’d spent the night with their lovers could return to their proper rooms before the servants were up and about? Every schoolgirl knew that, even if th
ey didn’t understand what went on during those nighttime sojourns.

  A few days ago he’d mentioned in passing that a distant relative “had his strawberry leaves.” Her confusion told him she had no idea that he was referring to part of the design of a ducal coronet as a way of indicating that the man had succeeded to the title. That was when he decided to find out all he could about Miss Emily Charlotte de Winter, but now he was having regrets. Miss de Winter couldn’t help having been raised in France. Her parents had done her a disservice leaving her there for so long. The poor girl was a stranger among her own kind, and he was about to find out how ridiculous were his suspicions.

  He should have realized he was succumbing to his own habit of distrust. He expected people to disappoint, and if they didn’t he found a way to make them. It was something he’d learned after his father had married his stepmother, Lady Carolina.

  Valin closed his eyes and forced himself not to allow ugly memories into his mind. There wasn’t time to think of Carolina, no time to torture himself with more guilt. The inquiry agent had arrived, and Thistlethwayte was showing him upstairs. Valin would listen to his no doubt harmless report, pay the man, and forget his own folly.

  Valin’s shoulders twitched in discomfort. He suspected himself of ignoble motives where Miss de Winter was concerned. He couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. He heard her voice, low and provocative, when he was reading correspondence. He smelled her when he was out riding alone—that captivating scent of honeysuckle and Emily that always seemed to envelop him when he was with her. He saw her in the face of every woman he met, or, rather, he found himself wanting to see only her. He was a sick man.

  Disgusted with himself, Valin jumped up from the chair in which he’d been sitting and went to one of the glass display tables arranged around the room. His grandfather had brought back dozens of expensive curiosities from his travels in Russia. He paused beside a pedestal on which rested a sixteenth-century gold chalice decorated in a niello pattern of floral scrolls. It was mounted with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires; his fingers traced the rim. The antique gold reminded him of the highlights in Emily’s hair.

  “Stop it. She’s been here less than three weeks, and you’re behaving like a madman.”

  He wandered over to look at the kovsh, a sixteenth-century Russian dipper, in one of the cases. Silver, with a high, elongated handle, it was shaped like a wide boat and was engraved with lions and griffins. The rim was lined with pearls. He focused on the toasting bowl next to the dipper. He’d always liked it because it had a pointed lid and was decorated with a raised foliate pattern. It had an inscription that his grandfather had said translated, “True love is like this golden vessel. It never breaks, and if it bends, it can be mended.”

  “Love,” Valin whispered. “First you have to be worth loving before your love can bend or mend.”

  A knock sent him hastening for his chair. He sat and picked up The Times as Thistlethwayte entered followed by a stranger.

  “Mr. Mildmay, my lord.”

  Valin had hired Ronald Mildmay upon the recommendation of a friend and hadn’t met the man before. He was surprised and impressed that Mildmay was dressed like a gentleman in a well-cut coat, silk tie, and boots obviously made in Bond Street. The inquiry agent had a dour, regretful manner, as if he were a long-suffering parent to the continually misbehaving world. He was slight, with sloping shoulders, thinning dark hair, and a nose shaped like the Russian dipper in the display case.

  Mildmay began immediately after the introductions were over. “Your lordship realizes that I needed more time. My report is extremely preliminary.”

  “Get on with it, man. You found nothing, did you? Well, I expected as much. A foolish whim on my part—”

  “Oh, no, my lord. I found something, or rather, it’s what I didn’t find that’s suspicious.”

  Valin went cold. He dropped the newspaper and rose. “Let’s have it. What did you find?”

  Mildmay opened a document case he had been carrying and referred to the papers within it. “From what my inquiries have uncovered, mylord, there is no such person as Miss Emily Charlotte de Winter.”

  “The de Winters are in DeBrett’s. My copy is old, so I assumed—”

  “No branch of the family has a daughter named Emily Charlotte, or even a lady of the right age,” Mildmay said sorrowfully. He sighed. “As you instructed, my agents were careful not to reveal their purpose when inquiring at the houses of the families with whom she’s stayed. However, we are certain that no one ever met Miss de Winter before a few weeks ago. Her only connection with society is the Honorable Miss Agnes Cowper, whom we cannot find, either.”

  “I told you, she’s in Northumberland.”

  “She’s not where we can find her, my lord. And an elderly lady like that shouldn’t be so hard to discover.”

  Mildmay closed his document case. “The details would bore you, my lord, but I may summarize by saying that I could find no tradesmen who could attest to Miss de Winter’s presence in London for more than those few weeks I mentioned. A respectable person of her position would have dealt with at least some of them—purveyors of fine lace, corsets, the more expensive fabrics and headgear. No blacksmith, livery, or domestic service agency has had anything to do with her.”

  “And that means?” Valin asked.

  Mildmay glanced around at the Russian gold. “It means, my lord, that it’s likely that the lady in question is an imposter, a refined adventuress out to steal from you, or—”

  “Or what?” Valin snapped.

  “Or she has grander designs.” Mildmay shook his head in grief. “Designs upon your lordship’s heart and hand.”

  Valin turned away from the agent, staring at the gold chalice but not seeing it. “My heart and hand?” he said faintly.

  “Forgive me, but as she’s been here so long, that appears to be likely.” Mildmay placed the documents on one of the display cases. “A simple robbery would require only a short stay during which she could locate the desired objects. She would then leave and send minions to do the actual robbery.”

  “So, that’s how it’s done,” Valin said without interest.

  “Often, my lord, but in this case—”

  “Thank you, Mildmay. Thistlethwayte has a cheque for you. Should I need anything else, I shall call upon you.”

  Mildmay was a man of discretion who knew when to make himself invisible, and this he did.

  Valin heard the door close and walked blindly to the window. It looked out over the eighteenth-century terraced gardens at the back of the house. He’d been suspicious, and yet to be faced with the truth was a shock. She was an imposter. Perhaps she’d been born into a good family that had fallen upon hard times. Certainly Emily, or whatever her name was, had been educated and trained as a lady. Certainly she was clever, more than clever. She was brilliant. Valin glared at the documents Mildmay had left behind. She had him panting after her like a puppy, curse her soul.

  Was she after his heart and hand? Was she like all the rest, interested in his title and riches? Dear God, she was ruthless. She’d twisted his guts around her ivory fan.

  Valin swore, whipped around, and started pacing. “Bloody liar! Vicious, deceitful creature. I’ll toss her out on her ear, I will. Dear God, if only it were permissible to raise one’s hand to a woman.”

  “Va—lin!”

  He winced at the mad-parrot screech. The door flew open, and Aunt Ottoline soared in on a wave of apricot silk with yellow bows.

  Valin squinted at the garish effect, sunk his hands in his pockets, and grumbled, “Yes, Aunt. I’m extremely busy at the moment. I’m due to meet Miss de Winter. We’re going for a drive around the park.”

  “Not until I have a word with you.”

  “Only one?”

  “Don’t be impudent, Valin. I boxed your ears when you were a boy, and I can do it again.”

  Breathless and pink with agitation, Ottoline subsided into a chair, battered her enormous skirts into s
ubmission, and turned her glittering stare on Valin.

  “It was you who came to me, Valin. Months ago you threw yourself on my mercy, and begged me to help you find a suitable girl to marry in order to save Agincourt Hall from Acton’s depredations. Then you behave as if I am persecuting you when I do my best to help you.”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt.”

  “I declare I shall fall into a brain fever if you don’t mend your conduct.”

  In his preoccupation, he barely heard her. “I will, Aunt.”

  “Good.” Ottoline patted her lace cap and folded her hands in her lap. “Now, who is it to be: Miss Kingsley, Lady Drusilla, or Lady Victoria?”

  “I don’t care for any of them,” Valin said absently. Then he started at the high, gooselike wail that echoed off the walls.

  “Va—lin!”

  Ottoline fell back in her chair, sputtering and moaning. Alarmed at her color, Valin rushed to her, found her scent bottle, and held it under her nose.

  “Aunt, don’t carry on so. I can’t help it. None of those girls is congenial to me.”

  “No one ever will be!” Ottoline sniffed and tossed her head from side to side. She was flushed and breathing rapidly. “I’m undone. No one knows what I suffer. Oh, my heart, it flutters so, and my head is pounding. Oh, oh!”

  When his aunt’s face turned crimson, Valin grabbed his newspaper and fanned her with it. “Shall I call a doctor? Truly, Aunt, you don’t look well.”

  “I shall be disgraced. Everyone in Society knows I’m arranging your marriage. The families of the girls you’ve rejected will hate me, and everyone else will laugh at me.”

  Ottoline began searching for her handkerchief. Valin found it for her, and she covered her nose with it.

  “I know what you think of me, Nephew. You think me a ridiculous old woman, and perhaps I am. But I love you, and I’ve tried to help you.”

  It was Valin’s turn to redden. All this time he’d thought only of his own difficulties while making his aunt suffer for her good-hearted attempts to help him.

  “I’m a swine, Aunt. Can you forgive me?”