The Lady Emily Capers, Set One

by Regina Scott

  “I doubt the Prince will be much help,” Emily whispered back. “You’ll have better luck with your duke.”

  Priscilla brightened, but her smile lasted only long enough for their manservant to announce another caller. Trailing behind him and simpering obsequiously were a young lady and her mother.

  “Oh, no,” Priscilla breathed, but she managed a smile as her mother rose to greet their guests.

  Emily knew the feeling as well as she knew the girl who was sashaying toward them. Four other girls had graduated with Emily, Priscilla, Daphne and Ariadne. Emily had little trouble making conversation with any of them except Acantha Dalrymple. Acantha was narrow and dark, as if even her physical nature was stingy. Every topic of conversation must be brought around to her, or she simply brought conversation to a halt. Worse, she fancied that her insipid, uninspired watercolors made her an artist. She quite simply rubbed Emily the wrong way.

  But Emily had to admit to surprise over Acantha’s mother. Mrs. Dalrymple was the epitome of overblown satisfaction. Her ample girth was encased in a stylish muslin gown of pale yellow. Her bonnet groaned under the weight of peacock feathers, silk sunflowers, and green satin ribbons. With her short quilted jacket of a deeper yellow, she resembled nothing so much as an overripe melon.

  Though Mr. Dalrymple’s father had made his fortune in trade and the family had only recently joined the ranks of the Beau Monde, Mrs. Tate acted as if royalty had come to call. She darted about, fingers flying from the soft pleats of her blue day dress to the dark curls beside her slender face. To Emily, who’d visited often over the years, Priscilla’s mother had always seemed rather bemused that she’d birthed someone as breathtaking as Priscilla. Now she couldn’t seem to believe she’d been visited by people as impressive as the Dalrymples.

  Mrs. Dalrymple seated herself on the flowered sofa beside Lady Minerva, who blinked as if the sun had come into the room, leaving Acantha to take up a spindle-backed chair next to Priscilla and Emily. Her gown was a wondrous creation of fine blue cambric and silk lace, with a ruffled skirt and graceful sleeves that danced when she moved her gloved hands. Emily thought she heard Priscilla sigh in envy as she gazed on the paisley shawl that draped Acantha’s boney shoulders. Acantha merely smiled beatifically.

  “And are you enjoying your Season, Miss Dalrymple?” Priscilla’s mother asked after they were all settled.

  Acantha dropped her gaze demurely. “Oh, a very great deal, Mrs. Tate. Everyone has been so kind, so gracious.”

  “I declare our sitting room is never void of callers,” Mrs. Dalrymple said with a proud smile at her daughter.

  Acantha shot Priscilla and Emily a look. “Yes, even Lord Robert Townsend, who I believe is a particular friend of yours, Lady Emily. He calls most every day.”

  Emily stiffened. Surely the girl knew Lord Robert and Emily were betrothed. She could not know how little Emily liked him, but how rude to imply that Emily’s fiancé was more fascinated with her!

  Priscilla must have been of the same mind, for she winked at Emily. “Oh, how delightful,” she told Acantha. “I’m certain the two of you get on famously.”

  Acantha blinked as if she had not expected so enthusiastic a response. Then she stroked her lovely shawl, and Priscilla’s gaze followed each movement.

  “Indeed we do,” Acantha said. “Such a fine gentleman. He has the very best taste, in clothing, in furnishings. He was most admiring of the sapphire necklace my dear papa gave me upon graduation.” She beamed about at everyone as if dispensing bon bons instead of bile.

  Her mother reached out to pat her hand. “And you, minx, must take more care of such baubles. You gave us quite a scare.” She nodded to Lady Minerva and Mrs. Tate. “She couldn’t find them the other day. We thought them stolen. Can you imagine?”

  Emily could. Her gaze met Priscilla’s, and she knew they were thinking the same thing. First Lady Minerva’s pearls, and now the sapphires. Lord Robert really was a jewel thief!

  Priscilla smiled at Acantha. “Such a shame you lost them.”

  Acantha’s smile was nearly as poisoned. “But I didn’t lose them. I found them later, in the drawer of my dressing table.”

  Now Emily blinked. “What?”

  As Priscilla frowned, Acantha nodded. “It’s true. It seems I’d only misplaced them.”

  Mrs. Dalrymple put her plump hand to her plumper bosom. “So many jewels she can misplace them. Such a daughter!”

  Mrs. Tate rushed to assure her that Acantha was indeed a gem, but Emily was no longer attending. If the necklace wasn’t missing, and even James Cropper could not find evidence that Lord Robert had taken Lady Minerva’s pearls, did that mean they had been mistaken about Lord Robert all along?

  “It seems you’ve been quite fortunate,” Priscilla said to Acantha, but each word was bitten off as if she didn’t appreciate being in a position to praise the creature, for anything.

  Acantha fluffed at the limp brown curls on one side of her narrow face. “Too true. Fortune seems to follow me, just as it does my dear papa. Of course, I am entirely too gracious to lord it over anyone, particularly someone of your dire straits, Miss Tate.” Her dark gaze roamed over the mismatched furniture and common paintings of the sitting room, and she scrunched up her nose in obvious distaste.

  Priscilla’s fingers were pressed so deeply into the lion’s mouth of the armrest that Emily wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the wooden beast gag. Why couldn’t Acantha leave well enough alone? If Emily had been home, she’d have called for Warburton to throw the girl out, but as Emily was in Priscilla’s home, all she could do was sit and try not to do or say anything that would bring shame on Priscilla, the Tates, or His Grace. The head mistress of the Barnsley School said that the daughter of the duke would sit serenely while her fate was pronounced by the executioner.

  Sometimes Emily hated being the daughter of a duke.

  The older women began discussing the tedious task of shepherding a young lady on her first Season, and Acantha focused her attentions on Emily and Priscilla.

  “I am, by nature, entirely too sensitive,” she said with a sigh, as if she bore a burden too great for her scrawny frame. “I care too deeply what others think and feel. In fact, I’m likely the only one who understands how devastated Lord Robert was after the tragic accident.”

  Emily started. Accident? She opened her mouth to ask and felt Priscilla’s slipper come down hard on her own.

  “Well,” Priscilla said, “that was most kind of you. I suppose the fellow needed someone to comfort him. Don’t you agree, Emily?”

  Emily met her green gaze, feeling a bit as if she were walking out onto an empty field with no knowledge of how she’d come to be there in the first place. “Oh, indeed,” she tried.

  It must have been a good enough answer, for Priscilla nodded. “And then compounded with the death of his poor father. Well . . . “

  “Actually, his father died first,” Acantha corrected her with a sniff of disdain at Priscilla’s apparent ignorance. “Though I’m sure Lavinia Haversham’s death hit far harder. He thought himself in love, after all.” She squealed out one of her laughs. “That was before he met me, of course.”

  It was very nearly the same conversation he’d had with Emily! That could only mean one thing: this Lavinia Haversham must be the merchant’s daughter with whom Lord Robert had dallied.

  “It didn’t matter if Lord Robert was in love,” Emily told Acantha. “His family would never have allowed him to into trade. Particularly a girl ill enough to die so young.”

  “Ill?” Acantha squealed another laugh. “You two are sadly misinformed. Lavinia Haversham was never ill. Indeed, she went everywhere with Lord Robert. Several balls, Astley’s Riding Amphitheatre, the Egyptian Hall, Lord Elgin’s marbles . . .”

  The Marbles! But Emily had had to beg him to take her there! And he hadn’t offered to take her anywhere else.

  “He might even have offered for her,” Acantha insisted, “if she hadn’t died.
Can you imagine anything worse than dying by accident in your first Season? She passed on only four days before we graduated, you know.”

  “No,” Priscilla said, “we didn’t know. And I do believe you’re making this all up.”

  Emily couldn’t tell whether the tragic story of Lord Robert’s relationship with Miss Haversham was true or not. For all his claims of grief and loyalty to his father and the girl he’d thought he loved, Lord Robert had a poor way of showing those tender emotions. And if she was adding the time correctly, he must have been camping on her father’s doorstep from the very day that Miss Haversham had died. Any way she looked at it, Lord Robert was an unconscionable scoundrel.

  Acantha apparently thought otherwise, as her gaze darkened. “I did not make it up! I have exquisite details from the gentleman himself. Take a turn about the room with me, and I shall tell you all.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “So you have nothing,” the Bow Street magistrate said, leaning back from his worn wood desk.

  Jamie shifted on his feet were he stood across from his superior in the back room of the station. “Nothing that would stand up in the docket, sir. Lady Skelcroft, Lady Minerva, and Mrs. Dalrymple all report thefts in the last fortnight, and Lord Robert Townsend has been implicated in every case.”

  “Lord Robert has been seen visiting, you mean,” the magistrate corrected him, steely gray eyes narrowing above his low-hanging black mustache. “I am well aware of your feelings toward the fellow, Cropper. Have you learned nothing since you were made a Runner?”

  Jamie kept his smile polite and his gaze on the fading reward bills posted behind his superior’s desk. “I’ll be forever grateful you saw something in me to warrant the position, sir.”

  The magistrate brushed his beefy hands down his heavy face. “Anyone would have seen it had they looked. Determination, dedication to duty, you had them in spades for all you’d fallen in with a tough crowd.”

  “Hard not to, living in Ratcliffe,” Jamie acknowledged, remembering the day two years ago.

  His superior inclined his balding head. “And there we agree as well. You were the only one to stand up to the ruffians when they planned to burn down St. George’s-in-the-East to cover their crimes.” He snorted. “Hiding goods stolen from offloading ships in the very crypts! No one would have known if you hadn’t come forward, and with impressive evidence. But this?” He waved a hand over the file. “This sounds like nonsense. You have no witnesses. You can’t even confirm the thefts by the sound of it. As you yourself report, Lady Skelcroft’s brooch and the Dalrymple sapphires were later found. That leaves us with only one theft, and if you’ll pardon me for saying so, Lady Minerva Southwell would paint herself blue for a moment of attention.”

  But Lady Emily Southwell would not. She had far more important things to paint. Of course, he could not say that to the magistrate. Should his admiration for the lady become known, his superior would have even more reason to believe Jamie was out for Lord Robert’s head.

  “And Lavinia Haversham?” he pressed. “Are we to ignore her death as well?”

  The magistrate brought his hand down hard on Jamie’s case notes. “That was a tragic accident, Cropper. It has no bearing on this matter. And as Lady Minerva appears to have discharged you, I have no choice but to call this case closed.”

  “Wait!” Jamie darted forward. Though neither Emily nor the magistrate could appreciate it, those notes, these thefts, were all that stood between her and danger. He couldn’t leave the matter be. His superior eyed him, skepticism written in every line of his face.

  Jamie stood taller. “Lady Minerva may have discharged me, but that doesn’t change the fact that her pearls are missing. She is the sister of the Duke of Emerson. Surely he would expect us to carry through on our promise to discover the culprit.”

  He counted the seconds, willed his superior to agree. He could not leave Emily to Lord Robert’s heinous care.

  The magistrate nodded. “Very well, Mr. Cropper. I will give you another week. If you cannot locate Lady Minerva’s pearls in that time, you will be assigned to a different case. And if I hear another word about Lord Robert Townsend’s involvement, it will mean your position.”

  *

  Emily was quite glad Priscilla, Daphne, and Ariadne had scheduled fittings for their ball gowns the next morning, for it gave the four of them an excuse to meet and discuss Acantha’s strange tale. Of course, Emily was not being fitted. Everyone including her father thought she was still to be married.

  She’d tried broaching the matter to His Grace the previous evening. He’d been home and in his study for all of a quarter of an hour before changing for dinner with the Home Secretary.

  “I am hearing distressing rumors about Lord Robert,” she had tried when her father noticed her standing in the doorway and asked her what was wrong.

  His smile was kind. “I imagine any young man of Lord Robert’s expectations engenders some amount of envious gossip.”

  Emily moved closer to where he stood behind the massive, claw-foot desk. Parchment was neatly stacked here and there across the polished top, and he seemed to be taking a moment to study each piece before laying it back down again.

  “I explained to him my passion for painting,” she told His Grace. “He did not seem encouraging.”

  He frowned, but she could not tell whether it was from concern over what she’d said or concern over what was on the paper in his hand. He did not look up. “Lord Robert is under a great deal of pressure from his family. I imagine that’s what’s driving his desire to marry so quickly.”

  Emily bent her head to try to peer up under his gaze. “Could you not persuade them to wait?”

  He sighed and let the paper fall. “I would prefer to proceed, Emily Rose. These are trying times. We thought the threat to England vanquished, yet he manages to raise an Army and rally France into a furor once more.”

  He, Napoleon. That’s what was keeping her father so busy. He had important duties, for the Crown, for England.

  His Grace looked up and met her gaze, brown eyes solemn. “I want you safely settled, Emily. Your mother and I both wanted this match. I know she’d be very proud of you.”

  Emily had nodded and left. Truly, what else could she do? She had no proof Lord Robert was a jewel thief, had no other fault to lay at his door. And it wasn’t as if she could appeal to her mother for help. The very idea just made her feel hot, angry, ready to throw something.

  But that wouldn’t have helped matters either.

  Now she stood at the back of Madam Levasard’s, watching as Priscilla and Daphne took turns on the raised platform so that the seamstresses could tuck and pin and stitch them into their gowns. The shop was light and airy, with bolts of fine fabric clustered along the walls, lace dripping from wooden wheels, and fine feathers waving from drying racks. Half-finished gowns hung here and there, whispering of magnificence. The air smelled of crisp cotton and the chamomile tea that Madam was so fond of serving. Indeed, Lady Minerva, Mrs. Tate, and Daphne and Ariadne’s mother, Lady Rollings, were already seated by the front window with steaming cups in front of them, waiting to critique the final gowns.

  “So who exactly is Lavinia Haversham?” Daphne asked as if she had not been able to follow the explanations Priscilla and Emily had attempted to give her and Ariadne. She was taking her turn on the platform, a seamstress kneeling at her feet to let out the hem of the dazzling white gown.

  “That wealthy merchant’s daughter who dallied with Lord Robert,” Ariadne offered, thumbing through some sketches Madam had drawn and pausing on one of a daring green gown with a sigh. “Though I would have made her a princess, mind you, with a name like Scheherazade or Alamahari.”

  “She was not a member of Good Society,” Priscilla explained, eyeing the delphinium blue fabric that had draped her only moments before, “but her father hoped to buy her way into the Beau Monde with a titled husband. That should not have been difficult. Acantha related that Miss Haversham was
beautiful, gracious, and kind. If she hadn’t slipped in her bedchamber, struck her head on the corner of her dressing table, and expired, Lord Robert might well have defied his family and married her.”

  “Perhaps not,” Daphne put in hopefully. “Perhaps he realized that Lady Emily had always been his one true love.” She gave Emily a look out of the corners of her eyes.

  Certainly Lord Robert wanted Emily to think that. She still couldn’t make herself believe it. “Perhaps pigs might fly,” she replied.

  Priscilla nodded. “His behavior is shameful. It’s as if he simply forgot all about Miss Haversham and went happily on with his life. Doesn’t the poor girl deserve better?”

  Ariadne and Daphne were nodding as well. Emily could not look at them. She gazed down at her gloved fingers, so tightly entwined in front of her that she could feel all her bones.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “it’s easier to forget, to pretend you never knew the person you loved.”

  Someone, likely Daphne, sucked in a breath. Emily managed to look up. They were all regarding her as if she were made of fine crystal, and if they touched her, she might break. Even the seamstress paused to stare at her.

  “I simply meant,” she said, wanting to hide under the little wire-backed chair, “that there might be a reason for him rushing to marry me, why he doesn’t speak much of her.”

  “I suppose his heart may be broken,” Daphne conceded. Then she turned so the seamstress could work on her graceful train.

  Priscilla shook her head. “I’m not willing to agree that he has a heart. Acantha said Miss Haversham’s family has retired to the country for the remainder of the Season to mourn. Should he not mourn as well?”

  It did seem rather heartless. Was this all some game to him? Would he treat Emily the same way? Was he pretending to court her, only to dash her hopes at the last second? If so, he was toying with the wrong person. One did not abandon the daughter of a duke!

  “I can’t understand him,” Emily said. “As much as it pains me to admit, however, this sad tale doesn’t help us in the slightest.”