“Much good it did me,” Madame grumbled, her voice becoming notably more slurred. The glaze over her eyes grew thicker.
“Where is it?” Anna demanded, but her mother’s gaze had tracked to a corner of the room where it remained, unfocused and unseeing. Anna tossed her embroidery loop aside and reached out to give the woman a quick shake. “Madame, where is it?”
“What?” Madame blinked at her like a sleepy, irritated owl. “Where is what?”
“The contract you had with my father, where do you keep it?”
“With the others, of course. Must you be so loud?” She pushed away Anna’s hands. “Let me be.”
Anna flicked her gaze at the ceiling. The others were no doubt in the locked sitting room off the master bedchambers. Madame liked to keep her most prized possessions nearby.
“I want to see it. I want . . . Madame?” Anna watched in frustration as her mother’s eyes slid close. “Madame.”
It was no use, Mrs. Wrayburn had succumbed to the laudanum at last.
Damn it.
She scowled in defeat at the sleeping form.
Damn, damn, damn it.
“Now you give me peace?” she groused. “Confounded, disagreeable—”
“I wish to see that contract.”
Anna started at the husky voice that sounded behind her. Turning in her seat, she found her companion, and one-time governess, standing in the open door of the room.
A remarkably large-boned woman of advancing years who towered over Anna by more than half a foot, Mrs. Culpepper possessed hands that looked strong enough to crack walnuts, shoulders broad enough to be mistaken for a man’s, and unbeknownst to most, an enviable mane of thick black hair she kept tightly bound beneath a frilly cap.
Anna had heard the nickname “Ogress” whispered by a gentleman once. It was the only occasion in which she had requested her mother remove a specific guest from the house. The request had been denied, but she’d felt the better for trying.
Mrs. Culpepper was no ogress. She was a friend and confidante, a woman of uncommon intelligence and admirable character. Had the offending idiot troubled to set down his drink and look beyond what was merely different, he’d have seen she was also quite handsome, with a well-proportioned nose, large brown eyes, and full lips that were more often to be found smiling than not.
Anna gave her mother one last look of disgust, then left her seat to meet with Mrs. Culpepper in the hall.
“Were you eavesdropping just now?” Anna teased, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Nothing of the sort. I overheard the two of you speaking whilst passing in the hall.”
“You overheard an entire conversation in passing?”
“Indeed.” Mrs. Culpepper took her arm and ushered them both down the hall at a clipped pace. “Come along, dear.”
“What? No.” She took a fretful glance over her shoulder, half expecting her mother to come stalking out the sick room. “We cannot go snooping about Madame’s chambers.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s wrong.” She’d have thought that very fairly obvious.
Mrs. Culpepper threw her a bland look without slowing her pace. Right and wrong were primarily academic considerations in Anover House.
“Very well,” Anna conceded, “because Madame will hear of it and rain hell upon our heads.”
“By locking you up like a princess in a castle?” She pulled Anna up a back stairwell. “Yes, we should hate to see that happen.”
“She might ban me from the library.”
“The marvelous thing about libraries is that their contents can be easily moved.”
“But what if she—?”
Mrs. Culpepper stopped at the stop of the stairs, turned, and took Anna by the shoulders. “Now you look at me, and you listen carefully. Your mother is on another level of this house, where she will remain unconscious for the next eight hours, thank you, heavenly Father. Anyone else who might give a fig is out of the house and fully occupied devising the means that will allow them to remain out of the house for as long as possible. Everyone else can be bought off. You are not likely to see this opportunity again.”
All valid points, but before Anna could nod agreement, Mrs. Culpepper turned and marched resolutely down the hall. Anna followed cautiously, casting furtive looks behind her, then watched in awe as the woman who’d once been paid to be a child’s moral compass slid a key into the lock of the most sacred, most forbidden of rooms at Anover House.
“Where did you get that?” Anna demanded in a whisper as her friend opened the door.
“Never you mind. Suffice it to say . . . Oh . . .” Mrs. Culpepper went still at the sight of the sitting room. “Oh, saints preserve us.”
Anna peeked around Mrs. Culpepper and sucked in a quick breath. “Good Lord.”
The room was filled, positively filled, with . . . everything.
Boxes and chests, furniture and clothing. There were crates and trunks, and odds and ends—some odder than others, and some of them unidentifiable—covering the crates and trunks. An épée peeked out from behind an armoire, the familiar glitter of diamonds spilled out of a hat box, and everywhere one looked, there were piles upon piles of paper.
Some women used their sitting rooms to write correspondence and receive friends. Mrs. Wrayburn used hers as a vault. These were the items she considered too valuable to be stored in the attic. These were her most meaningful, most treasured possessions.
Anna’s eyes widened at the sight of an old-fashioned gentleman’s nightcap perched atop a fraying parasol sticking out of a boot.
Shaking her head in wonder, she said the only words that came to mind. “My mother is most odd.”
“Indeed,” Mrs. Culpepper agreed with feeling. “Well, no use in dillydallying. Older paperwork is over here.”
Anna dragged her eyes away from the bizarre assemblage and watched Mrs. Culpepper pick her way expertly across the room. “You’ve been in here?”
“I have. Madame likes to have things dusted out and reorganized every now and then. With careful oversight, mind you.” She lifted her skirts to step over a stack of books. “But it was not so filled as this the last time I was allowed access.”
Anna glanced nervously over her shoulder at the door. “Perhaps we ought not be doing this.”
Mrs. Culpepper calmly opened a small wooden chest and began to extract stacks of letters and papers. “Breaking into your mother’s sitting room? Too late, I’m afraid. But if needs must, I shall blame this escapade on you. Dragged me straight inside, you did.”
“I have been told I can be heartless.”
Mrs. Culpepper flicked her a stern look. “You shouldn’t repeat such nastiness, even in jest. It gives the words a weight they do not deserve. Now come along and help, dear.”
Poking fun at her mother’s sentiments seemed the very thing to lighten their sting, but experience told Anna that this was not an argument she was likely to win.
With a shrug, she forged her way through the room to Mrs. Culpepper and picked a mound of papers to dig through. She found receipts, correspondence to her long-deceased great-aunt, a number of invitations to balls and dinner parties, and what looked to be pages that had been removed from at least two ledgers. All of it more than a decade old. She found much the same in the next pile, and the next, and the one after that.
“This could take days,” Anna muttered after what felt like hours of searching.
“I may have something,” Mrs. Culpepper announced, and Anna looked up to see her opening an oversized, unmarked book. “It’s a journal. It’s . . . Oh my.” Mrs. Culpepper’s eyebrows winged up as she turned one page, then another. “It is a most explicit journal. She names her paramours, the generalities of their contracts, her opinions of their particular . . . er, charms and . . . and . . .” Mrs. Culpepper titled her head and grimaced. “Good heavens, did you know your mother can sketch?”
“No.” Anna leaned forward for a look, but Mrs. Culpepper drew
the book away. “I suppose the value in such a book would be in blackmail.”
Mrs. Culpepper shook her head and gingerly turned another page. “Any gentleman in search of a discrete affair would keep well away from your mother. Although, some of them might be willing to pay to have these sketches destroyed. Particularly Mr. Hayes.” She squinted a little at the page and tsked in sympathy. “. . . That poor man.”
Anna had been introduced to Mr. Hayes two years ago. She recalled a rail-thin man with dull amber eyes who had introduced himself to her bust. “May I see?”
Mrs. Culpepper yanked the journal away again and pressed the open pages against her chest. “Certainly not.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Anna groaned, dropping her hand. “I am the grown, illegitimate daughter of the Mrs. Wrayburn. Who the deuce will know or care if I see another naughty drawing?”
“I do, and so would your mother.”
“Have you gone daft?” At the estimated age of ten, Anna had been given a detailed accounting of what went on between men and women behind closed doors. The lesson had been delivered at her mother’s orders and had included a variety of visual aids. According to Mrs. Wrayburn, carnal innocence was but a silly euphemism for ignorance, and ignorance was but an open door for curiosity and its many unpleasant consequences. It was rare for Anna to be in agreement with her mother on anything, but in this matter, they were in complete accord.
Anna reached for the journal again. “I’ve seen dozens—”
“There are several self-portraits.”
“Oh.” She winced and drew her hand away. “Oh, ick.”
Mrs. Culpepper sniffed. “Indeed.”
Wrinkling her nose, Anna waved her hand in the general direction of the offending book. “Look at the older entries.”
Mrs. Culpepper flipped through page after page of the journal. “The earliest is well after you would have been born. I think . . .” At last, her eyes landed on a page and stayed. “Wait . . . Wait a . . . Here it is. Good heavens, here it is. Listen to this . . . ‘Anna’s birthday approaches. I sent word to her father but naught will come of it. There will be no response or visit from Engsly.’ ”
Mrs. Culpepper caught Anna’s gaze over the book in the ensuing silence. “Well,” she said at length. “It would seem you really are the daughter of the late Lord Engsly.”
“It would seem I am,” Anna agreed. Pushing aside an old cloak and a pair of half boots, she took a seat on one of the trunks and waited for a feeling of excitement or recognition, or even anger, but nothing came. She felt strangely detached from the news, as if she were hearing of someone else’s lineage. “Is there anything else?”
Mrs. Culpepper scanned the page. “Let us see . . . ‘no word or visit from Engsly,’ ” she repeated, “ ‘though perhaps it is best as the child grows uncommonly . . .’ ” Mrs. Culpepper trailed off, lifted her eyes from the page, and cleared her throat. “There’s no need to read this. We have the information we need.”
Annoyed, Anna jumped up and snatched the book away before Mrs. Culpepper could close it.
. . . The child grows uncommonly fat and I daresay stupider with each passing day. Were the marquess to visit now, he would most certainly leave again with all due haste.
“You were an exceedingly clever child, Anna,” Mrs. Culpepper said loyally.
“And fat, apparently. I don’t remember that.”
Mrs. Culpepper waved the comment away with pursed lips. “You might have been going through something of an awkward stage when I first came to Anover House, but you were beautiful.”
“I was fortunate,” Anna said, tossing the journal aside. “To have had you.” Taking a deep breath, she looked about the room and suddenly felt at a loss of what to do next. “Do you suppose the marquess believed Madame’s claim that I was his?”
“It would have made little difference one way or the other, to my understanding. The late lord Engsly was not the sort to take notice of his parental duties. I remember your mother speaking of him a time or two.”
“Poorly, I assume.” Her mother spoke poorly of everyone, provided the individual in question was out of earshot.
“She referred to him once as a fickle, untrustworthy cad, or something along those lines. I took that to mean he failed to honor their contract.”
Anna nodded, remembering her mother’s earlier words. Much good it did me. That was the trouble with being dependent upon the wealth and power of nobility. They had the wealth and power to do as they pleased.
Mrs. Culpepper turned and began to shuffle through the papers she’d removed from the chest once more. “I wonder how much was left owing?”
“Why? The man’s passed, hasn’t he? One can’t expect a dead man to honor his debts.”
“By all accounts, one couldn’t have expected it from him alive. His sons, however . . .”
“Sons,” Anna repeated slowly. “I may have brothers. How strange.”
“You’ve brothers with considerable fortunes and reputations for honoring familial debts. The late marquess left the estate in something of a mess, made worse by the perfidy of his second marchioness. It was all the talk last year.” As was her wont when there was great gossip to be shared, Mrs. Culpepper leaned forward a hair and lowered her voice. “It is said that the late Lady Engsly, the marquess’s second wife, conspired with her husband’s man of business to bilk the Engsly estate out of a fortune. I’ve no idea if it is true, but it is known that Lady Engsly amassed a veritable mountain of debt and enemies, and she was forced to flee to the continent when her stepson gained the title and discovered her betrayal. She died not long after and your brothers have been about for the last year making amends and settling her debts. If the new marquess would do that for his stepmother, you can be certain he’d do the same for his father.
You might . . . Oh!” Mrs. Culpepper exclaimed suddenly. She spun about and began searching the papers once more. “Do you know, I might have seen . . . Yes, here they are. Letters from the marquess himself. I’d not thought anything of them at first, but . . .”
Anna watched her friend quickly open the first missive and begin to read. “Did you see him, ever? The late marquess?”
“Not that I recall,” Mrs. Culpepper replied without looking up. “Certainly not here.”
“What of the current marquess?”
“He is not the sort to move in Madame’s circle.”
“Well then, I am inclined to like him already.”
“He is also a dear friend to Lord Dane.”
The name, so unexpected, caused the air to catch in Anna’s lungs.
Max Dane. Good heavens, there was a man she’d not given thought to in some time. She’d made a point of it. Well, she’d made a point of trying not to dwell on him, at any rate.
She’d had no other choice. Max had not come back to call on her as promised after their encounter in the nursery. In fact, he’d ceased visiting Anover House altogether. She’d never heard from him again, and after a brief bout of heartache and self-pity, Anna had come to the conclusion that she had been a silly, shortsighted girl to have expected differently. She’d seen her mother deep in her cups often enough to know that plans made in the thick of drink were rarely seen to fruition, generally to the benefit of everyone involved.
A viscount and the illegitimate daughter of a courtesan with nothing more in common than a shared kiss. What future could there have been for them, really? None at all, and it had been the height of naïveté to believe otherwise.
Anna took pains to keep her voice and expression neutral. “Is he? Well, there is no accounting for taste, I am told.”
“There is no accounting for your stubbornness,” Mrs. Culpeper countered. “Pretend it means nothing to you, if you like, but I know he captured your fancy that night.”
“I should never have told you of it,” Anna mumbled. She’d held out for two days, all but bursting at the seams with the secret and the hope it had sparked. In the end, however she’d succumbed to excitemen
t and given Mrs. Culpepper a lengthy, albeit slightly modified, retelling of the night. Anna had wisely chosen to edit out any mention of kissing.
Mrs. Culpepper gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Not everything is meant to be kept secret, poppet.”
“Not everything need come to light.” She contemplated that statement as it pertained to current circumstances and ran a thumb over the binding of the journal on the floor. “What am I to do with this information?”
“Make use of it,” Mrs. Culpepper said, picking up the next page in her stack of letters from the marquess.
“Approach Engsly?” She wrinkled her nose at the idea. “I don’t know that I wish to do that. I don’t care for the idea of visiting the father’s sins upon the sons.”
“Better they be visited upon his daughter?”
That seemed a mite melodramatic. “They’ve not—”
“He ought to have provided for you,” Mrs. Culpepper cut in with a quick, sharp look over her letter.
Anna shrugged. “He may very well have. Or perhaps he knew full well I was someone else’s bastard. Who’s to say Madame doesn’t lie to herself, same as everyone else?”
There was a brief pause before Mrs. Culpepper answered. “. . . The marquess himself.”
“Beg your pardon?”
Mrs. Culpepper offered the pages of the letter. “See for yourself.”
Anna snatched the papers and scanned the contents. It didn’t take long before she found the passage that held her name. The marquess expressed all due pleasure at the news of his infant daughter’s continued good health. The tone of the letter struck Anna as one of mild irritation rather than pleasure, but that hardly registered in the grand scheme of things.
“He acknowledged me?”
Stunned, she shared a look of wonder with her friend before returning her attention to the letter.
“Why on earth would Madame keep that a secret?” she mumbled, going on to the next page, hoping to find a date, at the very least. “What could she possibly stand to gain? Why would he admit paternity and then . . .” She trailed off as the mention of a contract and a number on the last page caught her eye. “Good heavens.”
Practically Wicked (Haverston Family Trilogy #3) Page 4