Her response was extreme even though the unexpected presence of her brother in London must come as a considerable surprise. He was barely able to stop himself from frowning as the thought occurred to him: was her response too extreme? Did she, in fact, know?
Not unless she was possessed of the second sight, he assured himself. How could she, after all? The trail which had brought him here was known to no one save himself and a few—very few—trusted confederates. He had chased Marcus’s killer all the way to Colombo, then lost him. Instinct had taken him to the port’s crowded dock area. There he had picked up the scent again, and followed it clear to London, where he had found his quarry at last, rotting in a rented room in a flophouse so disgusting that the scent of a corpse could pass unnoticed for three days. Someone had clearly gotten to the gunman first. That someone was, he guessed, his quarry, his true quarry. The man who had ordered Marcus’s death. The message with which Marcus had summoned him to Ceylon had read, in part, Come at once—believe it or not, I’ve found what you seek. He hadn’t believed it, not really, but had gone nonetheless. But still, he’d been too late—Marcus had been killed before his eyes, ironically lending credence to his message. Now all he could do was try to flush out the man who had ordered Marcus’s death. The best way to do that, he’d decided, was to assume Marcus’s identity in hopes that the killer, befuddled into believing that his first stooge had failed him, would try again. So far, though, the scheme hadn’t worked. Having flaunted himself throughout London without success, he was coming to the reluctant conclusion that the man he sought was intelligent enough to lay low.
Now here was Marcus’s sister, looking at him like he had just crawled out from under a rock. But she could not know he was not Marcus. Not unless she’d had a spy in Ceylon.
Still, he looked at her carefully, sizing her up with a keen intelligence veiled by lowered lids. She was dressed in deep mourning suitable for the death of a close relative, and her astonishment at seeing him seemed disproportionate to the circumstances. But if she were truly in mourning for any recent death, she would not now be in London planning to launch her sister into the ton, which, courtesy of the voluble Mrs. Bucknell and the less loquacious but corroborating Stivers, he knew was the reason for the ladies’ very inopportune intrusion into his plans. A closer glance was sufficient to disclose that the garments she wore were not only not in the current style, but well worn. Her bereavement, then, was most likely a long-standing one.
What, then, was he to make of her reaction to his presence? Was she, perhaps, of that stamp of female who was overset by the least departure from the ordinary?
Looking at that square jaw, he wouldn’t have thought so.
“M—Marcus?” she said. Her voice was low and hesitant, and surprisingly husky.
“Am I really such a surprise, dear sister?” he asked lightly, releasing her hand and smiling down into her widened eyes. Still a shade wary, he looked closely into their depths. The gray irises were as cool and clear as the never-ending English rain. Their very clarity reassured him: this woman—this proper English lady—was the keeper of no secrets. In him, she saw no more than the obvious: her older brother, head of her family, a man she did not know who, now that he came to think about it, held her future in his hands, arrived out of the blue to possibly interfere in her and her sisters’ lives. Looked at that way, her astonishment could be reinterpreted as at least partly consternation, and became more understandable. Clearly, whoever the mourning was for, it was not for Marcus Banning, seventh earl of Wickham. In other words, not for him.
Relaxing slightly, he looked beyond her to where the other three females in the party stood regarding him with no more than the normal amount of surprise and interest. The gaunt old woman sizing him up with a narrowed, weighing gaze he immediately recognized as some kind of an upper servant, naturally protective of the young ladies in her charge. The beautiful girl—indeed, she was ravishing enough to make his eyes widen before he got his expression under control—who leaned on the old woman’s arm had to be the second sister, Claire. And the plump, smiling youngster with the carroty hair was Elizabeth.
Of course.
“Marcus, is it really you?” The youngest one, Elizabeth, came forward then, hands extended to greet him, a bounce in her step, delight in her voice. Before she had quite reached him she was stopped in her tracks by a quick sideways grab by Gabriella, who seemed to have recovered her wits if not, entirely, her composure. Halted but uncowed by her sister’s restraining hand on her arm, the younger girl grinned up at him cheekily.
“It is indeed,” he answered, taking her hands and smiling back at her. Gabriella had let her hand fall away from her sister’s elbow with obvious reluctance, and he barely resisted casting her another assessing look. Instead, he kept his gaze focused on the youngest one. “And you, I fancy, must be Elizabeth.”
“Yes, but, remember, I am called Beth.”
“Beth, then.” He was still smiling as he released her hands and his gaze flicked beyond her to the remaining sister. Though he did not look her way again, he was increasingly conscious of Gabriella’s growing frown and that she watched him as a bird might a snake. “And you are Claire.”
The beautiful one smiled shyly at him. God, she was lovely. It was going to take some doing to keep the idea that she was his sister firmly fixed at the forefront of his mind.
“Yes.”
While his answering smile still retained its avuncular quality, he shifted his attention to the servant. Gabriella’s unwavering regard continued unabated, making him increasingly uncomfortable. Whatever ailed the woman, his best course of action was to appear unaware of any unusual behavior on her part, he decided. Following his gaze, Gabriella turned slightly and made the introduction, her voice as husky as before but less hesitant now: “This is Miss Twindlesham, who has taken care of us all for lo these many years.”
He bowed. “Miss Twindlesham. Welcome to Wickham House.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Miss Twindlesham’s expression relaxed, and as she smiled primly at him he got the feeling that he had passed some sort of a test. Claire continued to smile at him, too, and young Beth positively beamed at him. The only one of his newfound relations who did not look delighted to make his acquaintance was, in fact, Gabriella. Instead, she was watching him with a wary frown.
He smiled at her with, he hoped, a good approximation of brotherly fondness.
“Will you not introduce us to your sisters, Marcus?” Belinda appeared beside him, twining her arm in his. The wife of Lord Ware, an elderly, infirm peer who lived year round at his seat in Devonshire, she traveled annually to London where, despite having a taste for gaming and an open appreciation of men, she was nevertheless everywhere received. He had met her at a card party not long after he had arrived in town, and she had been his mistress since that date. But her proprietary air was beginning to grate on him, and, while she was held to be a beauty, her rather mature looks could not hold a candle to those of, say, his newly met middle sister.
As he made the introductions, he allowed no trace of what he was thinking to show on his face.
“Lady Ware, allow me to present Lady Gabriella, Lady Elizabeth, and Lady Claire Banning, and Miss Twindlesham.”
Gabriella, he saw, with what must be an innate ability to judge quality, held out a mere two fingers to Belinda. She murmured something appropriate while looking as if she did not count herself completely honored by the introduction. The two younger ladies smiled and held out their hands, and Miss Twindlesham sketched a curtsy. He concluded the introductions with a careless wave of his hand toward the other members of his party. “Also, Lady Alicia Monteigne, Mrs. Armitage, Lord Denby, and the Honorable Mr. Pool.”
The exchange of polite greetings was interrupted by Stivers, who, after a quick conference with the footman, approached to hover at his shoulder.
“Yes, Stivers?”
“My lord, the carriages have been brought ’round.”
He nodded in
acknowledgment. “Thank you.” Then, to the assembled group, which, he thought with some amusement, resembled nothing so much as a flock of curious peacocks crowding around a quartet of beset crows, he said in a louder voice: “It seems that, if we are not to miss the evening’s entertainment entirely, we must go. Gabriella, Claire, Beth, we will talk more on the morrow. In the meantime, Stivers will take excellent care of you, I know.”
The theatre party grew boisterous again as good-byes were said, and assorted hats, greatcoats, sticks, and cloaks were handed around. Then the door was opened, and they headed out into the night, which, even though it was now April, had grown teeth-chatteringly cold. His last over-the-shoulder glimpse of his new sisters showed him that Gabriella, who still stood in the center of the hall with the others clustered around her, had turned all the way around to watch them go. Their gazes met for only the briefest of moments before the closing door blocked her from his view. But even as he swung inside the waiting chaise and settled himself next to the warm, sweet-smelling armful that was Belinda, he could not get her expression out of his mind. It took him a few minutes to recall where he had seen such a look before, but when he did the memory was unsettling: it had been during the peninsular campaign, on the face of a young soldier he had seen get hit in the midsection by a shell. In the seconds before the boy collapsed and died, the look in his eyes had not been pain, or terror, as one might have expected, but utter disbelief.
That was what had been in Gabriella’s eyes as she watched him disappear into the night: utter disbelief.
4
“I must say,” Beth said with enthusiasm, turning to her sisters as the door closed behind the exiting party, “our brother is something like! Did you ever see anyone more handsome, or more complete to a shade?”
“In any event, what a surprise to find him here. Although he did say in his letter that we might expect him to join us in London in a few weeks. He seemed quite nice, actually. Certainly he has an air.” Claire’s voice turned reflective as she glanced at Gabby. “Do you think we might be able to get one or two new gowns made up immediately? I could see that Lady Ware and the others thought us the veriest provincials. And Lady Ware’s gown! Did you ever behold anything so ravishing? Do you not think that something similar would look well on me?”
“Not unless you were planning to set yourself up as Haymarket ware,” Gabby snorted, recovering her wits to some degree now that her supposedly deceased brother was out of sight.
“That dress was certainly not meant for young ladies in their first season,” Twindle agreed. “And as for you, Miss Beth, what have I told you about using cant terms? You will give people a very pretty opinion of you if they hear you talking so.”
“Miss Gabby, Miss Claire, Miss Beth, Stivers only just now sent to tell me you had arrived.” Small and round as a dumpling, Mrs. Bucknell came bustling into the hall, her florid, rather plain face wreathed in smiles despite the scandalized tone of her voice. “Was there ever such a surprise as His Lordship being here? And for all that I thought he might send me and Stivers straight back home again, as he had already set up here as a bachelor establishment, no sooner did Stivers tell him that you meant to come to town for Miss Claire’s season than he bade us stay and take the place in hand, which we did, you may be sure,” she tut-tutted. “You look fagged to death, the lot of you, and you especially, Miss Claire. You’ll be wanting to go straight upstairs, as any but a nodcock such as Stivers would know, and have a can of hot water sent up to you, and refresh yourselves. Then would you be wanting supper served in the morning room, Miss Gabby, seeing as how the dining room is still at sixes and sevens from His Lordship’s dinner party? Or a nice tray in your rooms?”
Gabby gathered her resources enough to greet the housekeeper warmly, and answer her questions.
“Miss Claire, for one, would be wishful of retiring to bed,” Twindle said firmly, shepherding Claire toward the stairs. Mrs. Bucknell, clucking at the severe trials travel imposed on those with a delicate constitution, undertook to show them to their chambers herself. Twindle glanced back over her shoulder at her younger charge. “Miss Beth, I leave it to your own and Miss Gabby’s discretion as to whether or not you retire for the night as well, but just let me remind you that London is not going anywhere. It will still exist on the morrow.”
Beth looked imploringly at Gabby. “If I went to bed now, I could not possibly sleep so much as a wink. Claire, I cannot believe you would be so poor spirited as to retire to bed on our first night in town.”
“I would not do so, but I have the headache, and my stomach is behaving in the most disgraceful way,” Claire said apologetically as she began to climb the stairs.
“Of course you must go up, Claire. Beth, do you go upstairs too, and at least wash your face and hands. I’m coming as well, as soon as I’ve had a word with Stivers. In about three quarters of an hour, if you like, you and I will take a light repast—Mrs. Bucknell, something cold will do—in the morning room. After that, I for one am going to bed. If you hope to see anything of London tomorrow, I suggest you do, too. Otherwise, you’ll be as cross as a bear.”
Beth made a face, but obediently started to follow Claire and Twindle up the stairs. When they had climbed enough to be out of earshot, Gabby turned to the butler.
“Stivers, was he indeed here when you arrived?” she asked in a low voice.
Stivers frowned at her. “His Lordship, do you mean, Miss Gabby?”
“Yes. His—his Lordship. Was he already in residence here at Wickham House when you arrived?” Despite her best effort to remain nonchalant, her voice had an urgent undertone.
“Why, yes, Miss Gabby. I apprehend from something his man—Barnet, that is—said that His Lordship arrived in the country some two weeks ago, and came straight away to London, meaning to travel down to Hawthorne Hall at some later time.”
Her expression must have revealed something of her feelings, because he added anxiously, “Is aught amiss, Miss Gabby?”
Gabby’s mind was racing. All her scheming and worrying, her arguments with Jem, her sleepless nights, had been, apparently, for naught. Marcus was alive and well and, indeed, here at Wickham House. And seemingly perfectly pleased to see them, too.
It was unbelievable. How could Jem have made such a mistake? Perhaps her brother had been merely wounded, and had recovered. But Marcus didn’t look as if he had been recently ill—or, indeed, ever ill for so much as a day in his life, for that matter.
Something did not make sense.
“No, nothing is amiss, Stivers,” she lied, and from somewhere summoned up a rather weak smile. “I was just rather surprised to encounter my brother here, is all.”
“Indeed, Miss Gabby, it was a surprise to Mrs. Bucknell and myself too, but it is surely a happy day for us all when the earl returns to take up his rightful place, is it not?”
“Yes, indeed it is,” Gabby replied with a forced smile, and began to walk toward the stairs. With one hand on the banister she paused, glancing back at Stivers.
“Jem went around to the stables with the coach, did he not? Would you have a message sent to him that I need to speak with him right away? Put him somewhere where we may be private, and tell him that I will join him presently.”
“Yes, Miss Gabby.”
Stivers was too familiar with his young ladies’ long-standing bond with the groom to express any surprise. As he turned away with a bow, Gabby, her thoughts in a whirl, headed up the stairs. She tried to recall everything she could remember about her brother from the one time she had met him, when her father had for some unknown reason summoned his heir to Hawthorne Hall. Marcus had been a spindly youth of seventeen, not over-tall, with black hair and pale skin and—what color eyes?
Of course, they must have been blue. A deep indigo shade. Hadn’t she just seen them again, scarcely more than a quarter of an hour since? Eyes did not change.
But the rest of him had changed greatly from her memory of him. Had the youth she just vaguely remem
bered really grown up into that tall, muscular, splendidly handsome man?
Obviously he had, as impossible as it seemed.
He had been quiet, and rather shy. She remembered that. And bookish—she remembered that, too. And homesick. The few conversations she had had with him had centered on his grandfather, whom he loved, and his longing to be back with him at their home. Gabby remembered envying him for having a loving grandfather and a happy home to go back to, even if it was on some heathenish island, as her father called it.
And then someone had come for him, and he had left Hawthorne Hall, just like that. If she had questioned where he had gone, and why, she did not remember the answers. Probably she had not asked. Her father had not been the kind of man of whom one asked idle questions.
Or, indeed, any questions at all.
“Miss Gabby, I’ve put you in the countess’s apartments, if you’ve no objections. And this is Mary, who will be waiting on you. Mary, this is Lady Gabriella. See you take good care of her.”
Jolted from her thoughts by Mrs. Bucknell’s words, Gabby looked up to see the housekeeper holding open a door for her. The young maid standing beside her, eyes nervously downcast, bobbed a curtsy at her new mistress. She was a slender, freckle-faced, sandy-haired girl, obviously unsure of what to expect. Gabby summoned a smile for her, and, trailed by housekeeper and maid, passed into the chambers allotted her.
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