Anne Barbour (3 page)

She contemplated the forthcoming meeting with the Marquess of Canby. Seth Pinfold had told her that over the years the old man had become almost obsessed with discovering his granddaughter’s whereabouts. Without his young friend, the Earl of Branford, to protect him, he would have embraced the first claimant to come down the pike, an enterprising actress, according to Pinfold, whose story had proved to be as full of holes as Martha’s oldest pair of drawers.

Her own background, she thought with some complacency, should hold up under any but the most intense scrutiny. She had told the truth—in the most part—to Lord Branford. She’d merely left out one critical fact. She had, she told herself, a perfectly legitimate right to declare herself the granddaughter of the old marquess. One could almost say she was doing the man a favor. He wanted a granddaughter. Martha Finch stood ready to assume that position.

Her eyelids grew heavy and her breathing deepened. After four days spent in relative idleness of travel in a well-sprung coach, she should not be tired, but she felt drained, as though her carefully contrived design was a leech, fastening to her flesh and gathering nourishment from her life’s blood. Just before she sank into sleep, however, an image floated from the back of her mind. A small face and fine curls, bright as fairy gold falling over a pale forehead. Dear God—Mary.

“Mary. Please forgive me, little one,” she whispered. “I do you no wrong—and you know I would have . . .” Her voice trailed off and she slipped into the blessed darkness of sleep.

4

“My boy, it is she! It must be she!” cried the Marquess of Canby.

Bran stood in the center of Lord Canby’s study, an elegant but comfortable chamber that featured roomy leather armchairs glowing with the patina of age, and several massive tables littered with pictures, mementos, and items of everyday life. Canby House itself was a sedate mansion set in Grosvenor Square, and had been in the family’s possession since the first development of Mayfair some two hundred years ago.

Though approaching his seventieth year, the Marquess of Canby stood straight and tall, his silver hair still waving luxuriantly. At the moment, he was nearly dancing about the room in his delight, and watching him, Branford thought his heart might break. He loved this old man more than anyone else on earth. Certainly more than his own parents. He shrugged. Perhaps he could not fault his father and mother for busying themselves so thoroughly in their own pursuits. Even the servants had virtually ignored him. It was Lord Canby and his family who had taken note of his unprepossessing self and seen the boy beneath, lonely and unloved. Bran had grown up more on the adjoining Canby estate than his own. The sun seemed to shine with more warmth there, and the sound of laughter filled his heart.

His throat tightened now as he strove to answer the old gentleman. How many times had the marquess reacted in just this manner to the news that another female had turned up, declaring herself to be Felicity Marshall? It was always like this. The marquess’s hopes would flare almost to combustion point, only to be dashed on the rocks of reality when the claimant invariably proved to be an unscrupulous confidence artist.

Branford sighed. “It is, of course, possible that Mrs. Finch is the genuine article, sir, but we must proceed cautiously.”

“Bah! How could she not be Felicity. Look at the locket!” He waved the bit of silver in the air. “I recognized it immediately. I gave it to the little darling on her fifth birthday. Do you not—? No, I don’t suppose you would remember, but—

“Sir, the woman could have picked up the locket almost anywhere.”

“Good God, boy!” the marquess exclaimed impatiently. “Why are you always so pessimistic?” He halted abruptly, his shoulders sagging. “All right. Bran. I know I have leaped to unwarranted conclusions in the past. If it were not for you, we would have some scheming adventuress installed here as my granddaughter. But,” he continued pleadingly, “this does not mean that the Finch woman is not Felicity. It seems to me, despite your arguments to the contrary, the locket is quite conclusive. And what about the shawl?”

“I think, sir, that we may safely conclude that the shawl is a convenient fabrication—no pun intended.”

“Possibly,” responded the marquess with a sigh. “But, still—Jennifer frequently embroidered monograms on the children’s clothing. And Mrs. Finch is left-handed! In addition,” continued the old man hastily as Bran opened his mouth, “Wister told us she is the right age. Tell me more about her. What does she look like? Is she pretty? Does she have brown eyes the color of a pansy’s heart? Felicity’s hair was the most beautiful gold—like that of an angel, I always told her. Does—?”

“No. Mrs. Finch has light brown hair. And no— Branford frowned. “She is not pretty. I would call her attractive, rather—or at least she would be if she were not so—scrawny—and did not pull that brown hair back in a ridiculously tight bun. Her eyes are a sort of coffee brown—though sometimes they seem more amber—like brandy.” Branford halted abruptly, reddening. “She is tall and thin,” he concluded colorlessly.

“Well, of course she would be tall, would she not? Ben was well above average height—and Jennifer was willow-slim. And Stewart was tall as well.” The old man’s eyes glistened suddenly. “When he went off to war, he topped—oh, God, Branford, if only he had listened to me. I begged him not to go a-soldiering. ‘Leave it to others.’ I said. ‘There are plenty of young men who have no responsibilities at home.’ But he was army mad, and he didn’t listen. He never listened, did he? And he never returned.” He extended a shaking hand to Branford, who grasped it convulsively.

“I, too, tried to dissuade him, sir,” he whispered. “But Stew never followed aught but his own drumbeat.”

The marquess straightened and cleared his throat. “So, she has brown hair. I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, Felicity’s hair color as an infant is well known. If Mrs. Finch were a fraud with brown hair, surely she would have dyed it.”

“With all respect, sir,” Branford responded austerely. “It is difficult to dye one’s hair convincingly, and it requires constant attention once one has done so. I’m sure Mrs. Finch has considered that Felicity’s golden curls might well have faded to a sort of light, wheaten brown.”

The marquess nodded reluctantly. “You are right, of course, I should have learned my lesson by now, after all the disappointments. I don’t understand,” he mused softly, “how anyone can be so cruel as to engage in such a pretense. To embark deliberately on such a fraud, knowing the heartache that will result when the hoax is penetrated.”

Branford sighed once more.

“I can only say, my dear sir, that I wish you had not bruited it about so publicly that once having Felicity restored to you, you would make her your heiress. You are an extraordinarily wealthy man, after all, and only a small portion of that wealth is entailed. In fact, your heir will be left with little besides the title and Canby Park—and this house, of course. A not insignificant portion, but—

The marquess waved an impatient hand. “My nephew will do well enough. In any case, I am not concerned with him. It is of Felicity I wish to talk. I am anxious to see her.”

“I plan to give her an early dinner at the hotel, and then I shall bring her here.”

“Excellent. How do you find the hotel, by the by? Is it acceptable? I would much rather you had put her up at Grillon’s or the Pulteney, but—” He interrupted himself hastily. “Yes, very well. I can see the wisdom of keeping her in a more out of the way spot until we verify her bona fides.”

“The hotel is all one could wish, sir. It positively reeks of tonnish excess, and the clientele seem entirely unexceptionable.”

“Good-bye, then,” said Lord Canby, walking with Branford to the door of the study. “I shall see you later this evening.”

As Bran made his way back to his lodgings in Duke Street, his thoughts were full of the enigmatic Mrs. Finch. He wished she were not so compelling, with her earnest air of candor and her extraordinarily expressive eyes. Yes, their color did resemble the velvety heart of a pansy, he reflected, and it had seemed to him he had observed in them flashes of pain when she talked of her past. He wished that irritating sense of connection with her would go away. She was not what he would call diffident, for her demeanor was composed. Yet she did not push herself forward. Was this merely a masterpiece of strategy, or was she truly only interested in discovering her true background?

The vision of the vibrant, golden-haired child flashed before him once more.

“When you are grown, you will not marry anyone but me! Now you must kiss me good night, for Nurse will be coming for me soon.”

Her lips had been warm, her arms around him were soft, and she smelled of warm milk and daisies.

Bran sighed. He might find Mrs. Finch’s motives highly suspect, but he was somewhat unnerved at the desire she had created in him to believe her.

5

Martha sat stiffly on the edge of her chair in the dining room of the Grand Hotel, feeling very much like a frowsty brown sparrow in a room full of peacocks. As thickly carpeted and as elegantly furnished as the rest of the hotel, the chamber provided an appropriate setting for birds of luxurious plumage. She told herself that no one was taking any notice of her, but she expected at any moment that some person in authority would sweep down to order her immediate removal from the sanctified precincts of this haunt of the ton.

Not that such an outrage would likely be visited upon a guest of the Marquess of Canby. Or his surrogate, the Earl of Branford. She would be allowed to remain unmolested, but made to feel the veriest interloper under stares of contemptuous indifference from the other patrons. Chief among these, of course, was the earl himself.

For the first several minutes after she was served a portion of tasty, tender cutlets, smothered in an indescribably delicious sauce, she addressed herself solely to its consumption. When she looked up, she found the earl gazing on her in startled bemusement. She flushed, realizing the picture she must present of a starving street urchin. It had been a long time since she had eaten to her fill.

‘‘It’s very good,” she remarked brightly, gesturing with her fork.

“Yes, though the hotel is quite new, the chef here has already made a reputation for himself as a premier artist with spatula and spoon. French, of course, and, I hear, wildly temperamental. And now,” he continued, “do tell me about your life in the fisherman’s cottage.”

Martha provided him with details of that brief, idyllic time in her life. “My days were busy,” she concluded. “In addition, Margaret, who could read and write, taught me my letters.”

Bran watched her narrowly. She certainly appeared to be telling the truth. In any case, her story could be easily verified by the agent he had sent to the village of Tenaby. He pictured her as a child. Despite her description of sunny days on the seashore, life would have been hard and lonely for the child of fisherfolk scrabbling for a living on the isolated shores of the North Sea. Had her hair been golden then? He started, aware that she was speaking to him.

“. . . but how is it that you became such close friends with the marquess?”

Clever minx. He did not thwart her transparent attempt to turn the subject, but answered easily. “I believe I mentioned that his grandson, Stewart-Felicity’s brother—and I grew up as best friends. We were constant companions as striplings, and went to both Eton and Oxford together. Later, we spent the requisite period idling about London at great expense to my parents and his grandfather respectively. Stewart was a hey-go-mad youth, always ripe for any spree. After the loss of his father at sea, he was, of course, Canby’s heir—and the light of the old gentleman’s life. After Stewart left for the Peninsula, the marquess lived most of the time in London, in Canby House. I visited him there often. We would talk of Stew for hours, comparing notes from the letters he sent.

“When Stewart was killed, I thought for a while the old man would succumb as well, for he lost all desire to live. He returned to Canby Park and became a virtual recluse. I had returned to my own home, Winstead Priory, after I acceded to the title. I spent as much time as I could with the marquess. He was always available for advice on the management of my estate, which I appreciated greatly. My father—” Bran paused. “My father had taken little care that I be made familiar with the running of the Priory, and later, as young men will, I had found life in Town much more worthy of study.”

Bran had been gazing down at his plate as he talked, his mind many miles and many years away, but now he looked up suddenly. He could not remember ever having spoken at such length about his relationship to the Canbys, or about any other aspect of his private life, for that matter. What had got into him to gabble on as though his tongue were on wheels? Was it that intangible bond he felt between them? Perhaps it was Mrs. Finch’s air of silent but empathetic—and no doubt feigned—interest. Whatever the case, he realized somewhat irritably, he had opened up like a thirsty petunia in a rain shower.

He grimaced inwardly. He was not ordinarily so susceptible to feminine wiles, and he would take care not to be so lulled again.

“Tell me about your bookshop,” he said, somewhat testily. He thought he observed a slight stiffening of Mrs. Finch’s spare form. “You have been running it for, um, two years?”

As though her food had suddenly gone tasteless, Mrs. Finch pushed a forkful of peas around her plate.

“Yes.”

“A successful enterprise, I trust?”

The widow lifted her head abruptly. It was odd, mused Bran, how the color of her eyes varied. Ordinarily a deep chocolate, they appeared to lighten when she was startled or overset. Right now, they were a sort of cinnamon.

“Things were very difficult, at first, particularly since we were not doing well when my husband was in good health. He—he was not a businessman, although he loved books. I have little skill myself, though I, too, love to read. Through necessity, I forced myself to learn the mechanics of running a shop, and though I am not yet showing much profit, things are beginning to turn around. While I shall never become wealthy as a seller of books and papers, I am surviving.”