Art and Artifice (14 page)

Her aunt turned to eye her. “Why do you care
what I think? Why do you care what your father thinks?”

Emily blinked. “You are my family. I rather
thought I owed you a duty.”

“Duty and love are two different things. It
appears you prefer the latter.”

Emily turned away, busied herself in tidying
up her paints. “Did you have something else you wished to discuss?
If not, I would prefer to paint.”

“So you have said,” her aunt had replied,
moving toward the door. “But perhaps you should think about whether
the two are connected.”

She refused to think on it. She knew she’d
only go mad. She’d simply been grateful her aunt had been willing
to accompany her on a call to Priscilla’s house today, so she could
at least talk to someone she had confidence actually cared about
her wellbeing.

“All boys cannot be mad,” she told her friend
now, settling back in her seat and keeping an eye on her aunt, who
was conversing with Priscilla’s mother as they sat on a
Egyptian-styled sofa nearby.

“They are completely illogical,” Priscilla
insisted, long fingers curling around the worn gilt ends of her
chair’s armrests, which were shaped like lion’s heads. “You’ve
heard about how Byron alternately chased and pushed aside Lady
Caroline Lamb.”

“Poets are expected to be a bit mad,” Emily
pointed out.

“What of the way the Prince Regent treats his
wife?” Priscilla said. “She’s all but banished to the
Continent!”

Her mother paused in her conversation to give
Priscilla a look in warning.

Emily shook her head. “I hardly count His
Highness as an example of good decorum. He wears a corset!”

Priscilla shuddered at that. But she
obviously refused to be swayed. “Look at Lord Brentfield, then,”
she said, keeping her voice low to avoid a further scold from her
mother. “He is no poet, and you cannot claim he was anything less
than charming. What on earth would possess him to marry Miss
Alexander of all people?”

Emily knew Priscilla still smarted over the
fact that the Earl of Brentfield had preferred their art teacher
over her or her Aunt Sylvia.

“I like to think it was her art that
impressed him,” Emily said, fingers anchored to her navy gown. She
refused to give in to the temptation to stroke the arms of her own
chair, which was covered in scarlet ostrich plumes. “She’s very
good, you know.”

Priscilla rolled her eyes. “A gentleman is
seldom as impressed by a lady’s accomplishments as he is by her
anatomy.”

Emily sighed. “I certainly hope you’re wrong,
or I’m doomed, Pris.”

“No, you’re not,” Priscilla said immediately,
straightening so quickly the pink satin ribbons decorating the
front of her gown fluttered like birds. “Because the only thing
more impressive than a lady’s anatomy to a gentleman is her
connections. You are the daughter of a duke, you know.”

“So you think that’s what Lord Robert finds
attractive?” Emily shook her head. “Perhaps your father can adopt
me in time for me to attend the ball.”

Instead of laughing, Priscilla’s look
darkened. “You do not wish to be a member of my family right now.
Trust me on that score.”

Emily glanced toward Mrs. Tate and her aunt,
then lowered her voice even further. “Are things still so bad?”

“Impossible,” Priscilla whispered back.
“Mother keeps insisting that only the attendance of the Prince
Regent at the Ball will save us from disaster.”

“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
straights, 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.”

“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.”