Behind the Mask (House of Lords)

by Brooke, Meg

  Georgina smiled. “There is a letter here for you,” she said, rising and crossing the room to the desk. “It came with the rest of the correspondences.”

  “It is from the Countess of Stowe,” Eleanor said happily. “I hope she has included some details about the school. I have been wild with anxiety about the preparations.”

  Georgina sat back down at the desk and picked up her pen as Eleanor tore open the letter. “You enjoy being involved in the school, don’t you, Eleanor?”

  She nodded, looking down at the letter. “It is worthwhile work, Georgie. There is nothing quite so satisfying as doing something meaningful.”

  Georgina chuckled, but did not look up from her own letter. “Does that mean that floral arrangements and masquerade balls are not meaningful work?”

  “Not to me,” Eleanor said. “It is invigorating to have a useful profession. I wish I could take a teaching position at the school, but Mama would never allow it.”

  “No, indeed,” Georgie said. “Allow her eldest daughter to spend her days wiping noses and tying bootlaces? She would be horrified.”

  “It’s not all drudgery. I have met some of the children who will be boarders at the school already. They are such dear little things. It would be hard work, teaching them the manners and skills they never learned on the streets, but I do not think you can argue that it would not be satisfying.”

  Now Georgina put down her pen and turned. “I did not think you liked children, Eleanor.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Only that...well, you have never seemed particularly interested in them. The Countess of Stowe’s babies, for instance. I don’t believe I have ever seen you holding one of them.”

  Eleanor looked away, out the window at the blue summer sky. “I did, once,” she said. She could not bear to explain to her sister the strange ache she felt every time she looked at Clarissa Rennick’s twins and thought that she might never have children of her own. For despite the fact that she was young yet and had many seasons before she would really be a spinster, Eleanor had begun to realize that she was not the sort of woman men of the ton appreciated. She had had suitors, of course, but they had all melted away when she opened her mouth and began to speak about the Knightsbridge School or her charity work. The matrons of society had labeled her a bluestocking, and that sort of epithet stuck. No man wanted a bluestocking, who might besmirch his good name with her involvement in unsavory endeavors such as caring for the poor or reforming the prisons, for a wife. Oh, they would dance with her and flirt with her because she was pretty—Eleanor had no illusions about that. But once they discovered what lay beneath her looks, they vanished back into the crowd, seeking out partners who would not try to discuss Parliament or the Poor Laws.

  “Eleanor?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Out in the corridor the supper bell rang.

  “You looked a thousand miles away.”

  Eleanor smiled, folded up her letter, and rose. “Perhaps I was,” she said as she went out.

  TEN

  Eleanor could easily have spent the entire evening in her room mulling over everything that had happened in the last two days, which was why she forced herself to go downstairs the moment she was dressed. If she allowed herself to begin ruminating, she knew, she would never stop.

  She knew no one else would be dressed, so she brought the letter from Clarissa along with her down to the drawing room. Once she was seated on the sofa she opened it, eager for news from London. Of course, the first part of the letter was all about the twins, Henry and Eloise, who were very nearly one now. Clarissa and her husband Anders, the Earl of Stowe, were doting parents who clearly relished every moment they could get with their children. Eleanor sometimes envied Clarissa for the way her husband had thrown himself headfirst into fatherhood. Not one in a hundred men, she thought, would be so enthralled as to spend whole afternoons playing in the nursery. Leo had told her that only a few weeks earlier, just days before the close of the Parliamentary session, Anders had left the chamber in the middle of a speech after receiving an urgent message. When Leo had gone to Stowe house a few hours later to find out if anything was amiss it had been to discover Anders and Clarissa upstairs in the nursery, marveling as little Eloise took her first steps. He had told the story with a note of awe in his voice, as though the very idea of fatherhood mystified him. But Eleanor knew that Leo also respected Anders a great deal—indeed, not long ago he had hoped that there might be a match between his best friend and his oldest sister.

  It would never have worked, of course. Eleanor had known Anders since she was an infant, for he had spent many summers and holidays at Sidney Park after his mother had remarried and moved to Kent with her new husband. The Earl of Stowe was like another brother, and Eleanor could never have thought of him as a potential spouse. Seeing how well he and Clarissa fit together made her envious not because she wished she had married Anders, but because she was beginning to feel a longing for the life Clarissa led. She had a husband who respected her, valued her opinion and never ignored her. She had two beautiful children. She had a place of her own. When Eleanor allowed herself to consider what her life would be like if she continued as she was, never marrying, always filling the role her mother would not take up, she sometimes wanted to scream. But it was not Clarissa’s fault that Eleanor could not be satisfied with her lot. She read the details about the twins and the party Clarissa was planning for their first birthday with joy in her heart.

  When she reached the section about the Knightsbridge School, however, she became more interested. The last teachers had been hired, it seemed, and five children had already moved into the dormitories. It had been necessary to take them in early because of the desperation of their situations, Clarissa wrote. She added descriptions of the children, each one more heartbreaking than the last. One in particular, a young girl named Annabeth, had been living on the streets for over a year to escape her drunkard father and abusive mother. She had spent a cold winter in the alleys of Pall Mall, where Cynthia Bainbridge had discovered her. Now she would have another chance, an opportunity for a better life. Her mother and father had signed the papers Eleanor had recommended they have drawn up by a solicitor to avoid future arguments about parental rights and had given over custody to the trustees of the Knightsbridge School. Not all the children would have to have such contracts, of course. Three of the five already living at the school were orphans with no parents or guardians to sign for them, and so they had only had to agree verbally to obey the rules of the school. Eleanor, Cynthia, Clarissa, and Imogen had laid out those rules themselves. Some of them were straightforward: no fighting, no stealing. But other rules were slightly less orthodox. One upon which all the women had agreed was that each child’s past was their own. No child would be forced to tell their story or to reveal more than they wished to about their origins. The school was meant to be a fresh start for everyone.

  Finding a headmistress who had accepted all their rules had not been easy. But the woman they had eventually chosen, an immigrant of Dutch descent called Margot Jansing, had wholeheartedly agreed to all their terms. Eleanor was still not convinced that Miss Jansing had been the right choice. The woman had said, after they read the rules to her, that she could understand why someone would want to keep their past just that—the past. Eleanor wondered whether that meant that Miss Jansing might have some skeletons in her own closet that would come back to haunt them. But the woman’s references had been excellent, and she had been ready and willing to take charge of all the elements of the school’s makeup with which the trustees had little or no experience. But according to what Clarissa wrote, Miss Jansing was proving to be a capable headmistress. Within two weeks of being hired, Miss Jansing had found four additional teachers, a cook, a matron to oversee the dormitories, and half the classroom furniture the school required. Eleanor had to admit that the woman, who could not be more than five years older than her, had a great deal of determination and creativity, two qualiti
es Eleanor admired greatly.

  The door to the drawing room swung open and Lord Pierce strode in. When he saw her sitting with the letter still in her hands he said, “Forgive me for intruding.”

  “No, indeed,” Eleanor said, folding the letter. “I was just reading the news from the Countess of Stowe.”

  He came over and sat in the empty chair beside the sofa. “Anything interesting?”

  She told him very briefly about the school, starting with Cynthia’s first letter detailing her plan and ending with the five children they had already taken in. When she finished, he nodded thoughtfully.

  “You are right, of course, that those children cannot possibly survive in the workhouses. On the Continent they see such brutality and think that we are monsters, though they have few solutions that are better. But the belief that the British have that it is a crime to be poor, and that the children of the poor are doomed to repeat their parents’ sins, does not seem as prevalent in the courts of Europe. Of course, they have all seen now what the poor can do in sufficient numbers.”

  “Are you suggesting that we ought to have a revolution as the French did?” Eleanor asked. “It did not end particularly well for them. Louis-Philippe barely has hold of the reins of France, from what I can tell.”

  He nodded. “The July Monarchy will not last,” he said. “But that was not what I meant. The poor will continue to increase, it seems to me, as long as the wealthy do nothing to improve their living conditions. When their numbers have grown enough, we will see a collapse to rival that of the French, you mark my words. You and your friends are doing your part, and I am glad of it.”

  “And you are doing yours in Brussels, I suppose?”

  He shrugged. “There are other places where I could be of more use.”

  “Then why do they not send you there?”

  He frowned, his expression suddenly troubled. “I am being punished, Miss Chesney. My assignment in Brussels is my atonement.”

  She stared at him. “But what crime did you commit?”

  Just then the door opened again and Georgina came in, crossing quietly to the other sofa. “Good evening, Lord Pierce,” she said softly as she sat.

  He greeted her warmly, and then did the same as Eleanor’s mother and other sister came in. But Eleanor was being eaten up by curiosity. What had Lord Pierce done that had gotten him banished to Brussels? For what crime what he being punished?

  Her curiosity whetted, Eleanor knew that she would never be satisfied until she knew the answer.

  All through supper Colin found himself wondering what Miss Chesney would have thought if he had told her about the events that led up to his departure from Vienna. Would she have been horrified? He doubted it. In his limited experience of her, she did not startle easily. And he wanted to tell her, which was a new feeling. Ever since that terrible night, he had wanted nothing more than to suppress those events forever, to forget that they had ever happened. But when she had asked what he had done to be sent to Brussels, he had felt an almost overpowering urge to unburden himself, to tell her everything. She would understand, he thought. She would not ridicule him. She would not scold him for his foolishness.

  He was not sure how he knew these things about her. But so far she had proved herself to be a sensible woman of good judgment, though he would never have dared to say so to her face. In his limited experience with women he had at least learned that they almost never appreciated being called sensible or practical. Angeline had told him that it was because those were only codewords for another, more hateful epithet: boring. No woman wanted to be boring. No woman wanted to be ordinary.

  Eleanor Chesney was anything but ordinary, and she certainly was not boring. Perhaps it was because so many bizarre things had happened during the four days Colin had spent in her company, but he doubted it. If she lived her life with the same passion he had seen, she certainly would never have to worry about being thought of as boring.

  Of course, it had been years since Colin had been in the fashionable ballrooms of the London ton. Perhaps boring was now in vogue.

  It was certainly the ideal word to describe the afternoon he had spent in the servants’ hall. Miss Chesney had been right about the staff of Sidney Park: they were loyal to a fault. In less than four hours he had interviewed nine upstairs maids, four footmen, three ladies’ maids, two scullery maids, the cook, the butler, and the housekeeper. He had not managed to uncover even one detail that was of any interest. Nearly all the staff had been born in the village; those that hadn’t were either from Norfolk or, in the case of the ladies’ maid shared by the twins, brought on in London. All had spotless records, most were the second or third generation of their families to work for the Chesneys. None of them were hiding anything. Some had been nervous, of course, and one of the little scullery maids had cried a little, but that was nothing extraordinary. No one reported anything odd or out of place in the house or any suspicious events. In short, he had managed to discover absolutely nothing that could be of use.

  Tomorrow he planned to interview the grounds staff and the grooms, but he knew he would find nothing of interest, and he really had not expected to learn anything useful today, either. The White Hand would not waste his time infiltrating the household staff at Sidney Park; it was simply too time consuming. The Serraray had only tortured and killed Yates because the opportunity had presented itself, because they knew it would send a message to others who were trying to stop them. But their mode of operation was not infiltration and secrecy. When they moved, they would move quickly and decisively, capitalizing on whatever fear they had managed to create with Yates’s death.

  Still, the interviews of the staff would accomplish one thing: they would put every servant at Sidney Park on their guard. Everyone would be watching for suspicious persons or things that were out of place now, and the more eyes and ears he had, the better. Colin had decided not to waste his own time hoping that Sir John would agree to turn tail and go back to London; he would be prepared when the princess arrived.

  Supper was a rather somber affair. Lady Sidney spoke very little, Miss Georgina not at all. Maris attempted bright, witty conversation, but it was clear that the wind had gone out of her sails. Miss Chesney watched Colin closely for most of the meal.

  After supper was over, he held back, waiting until the others were already in the drawing room. Then he said, “Miss Chesney?”

  She had been about to follow her mother and sisters, but she turned. “Yes?”

  “Do you think you might show me the Priest’s Passage?”

  She looked back at the drawing room door. “Now?”

  He nodded. “I think it would be best to do it while the servants are having their meal,” he said. When he had been down in the kitchens today he had noticed that the cold cellar was about as far from the servant’s hall as possible. The ideal time to examine the secret tunnel would be when all the servants were occupied, and the only time that happened was in this short interval between when the family finished eating and when they expected tea.

  She seemed to understand this as well. “Follow me,” she said, and she led the way out into the hall and back towards the servants’ entrance. Before they went down the stairs she picked up a candle in a beautiful silver candlestick. Then she opened the door and they descended into the servants’ area.

  Just as in most of the great houses he had visited, the downstairs of Sidney Park was a warren of small rooms and narrow corridors. At the bottom of the stairs they passed a gun room, a wine room, a laundry and a pantry. Then they came to the cold cellar, a room cut into the bare dirt. Miss Chesney lifted her skirts as they entered. Beneath their feet, the floor was cold as ice even in the height of summer.

  “There’s a latch here,” she said, feeling along the edge of the shelf at the back. “Ah.” She gripped something and pulled, and the shelf swung out on creaking hinges. She winced at the sound.

  He stepped forward to look into the dark space that had been revealed. She lifted
her candle and came to stand beside him. “We...we aren’t going to walk the whole tunnel, are we?”

  Only now did a reason for her hesitation occur to him. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

  “No,” she insisted, staring into the darkness. “Only, it’s six miles to the last exit.”

  “There is more than one exit?” he asked as she led him into the blackness, past casks and shelves of wine. Inside the tunnel smelled wet and earthy, though the floor, walls and ceiling were lined with stone. Their shoes echoed down into the gloom.

  She nodded. “About a mile in there’s a ladder. It comes out under a trapdoor in the ruins of the castle. The tunnel was dug back then, you see, by the Normans, though it fell into disrepair in the intervening years. But when the first Viscount Sidney was given the property, he had the tunnel restored. He was a dedicated member of the Church of England, so I’m not quite sure why it was called the Priest’s Passage, but the name stuck.”

  “We won’t go all the way in,” he said. “I just wanted to see what sort of condition the tunnel was in.”

  “Decent enough, I would imagine,” she said. “It hasn’t been neglected. Leo used to sneak through it over to the Holliers' when he and Toby wanted to go down to the village at night, and Toby would—”

  “Would what?”

  But instead of answering him, she stopped dead and turned to face him. Her hand came up and gripped his arm. “Lord Pierce, is there anything you’re not telling me about this situation?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. Her hand stayed on his sleeve, her fingers gripping the material. “Are there any other details I ought to know?”

  A thousand, Colin thought. “I believe I have told you everything I can.”

  She frowned. It made her lower lip stick out rather enticingly. The candlelight illuminated her face and made her hair sparkle like gold. “That was not my question. I asked if there was anything I ought to know, not if there is anything more you can tell me.”