The Honorable Heir (3 page)

“Indeed.” Lady Bisterne’s chin edged higher. “But they may escort us downstairs and carry the instruments.”

Ambrose and Florian jumped to comply.

Tristram’s gaze flicked to Lady Bisterne’s expressive chin, where a dimple lay. It appeared as though a fingertip had pressed into the mold of her features to keep them from appearing too perfect, to give them character. Tristram’s forefinger twitched as though he would trace that flaw and test the porcelain smoothness of her complexion.

He tucked his hands behind his back. “You lads should dance with Miss Selkirk, you know.”

“To get her away from you?” Florian grinned.

Lady Bisterne paled. “I forgot you are staying with the Selkirks. You had best go do your duty by Georgette. I will assist Estelle.”

“You can’t carry a cello downstairs any more than I can.” Estelle’s glance was scornful. “Mr. Baston-Ward and Mr. Wolfe shall assist me since it’s not either of them Georgette is interested in.”

Lady Bisterne’s complexion appeared paler than the pearls around her neck, and she stooped to gather up the broken bow, her skirts billowing around her like petals.

“Do help the ladies, you two.” Tristram looked at the pieces of the bow and opened his mouth to ask Ambrose why he had broken it, then silenced himself. He could talk to his cousin at any time regarding his poor behavior. Not so Lady Bisterne. Instead of nonsensical notions of touching that dimple in her ladyship’s chin, he must remind himself that she was the reason for his presence in Tuxedo Park, New York. She was his prime suspect and he needed to talk to her in an environment where they would not be distracted or interrupted, which was not easy with everyone indoors in this inhospitable climate in November. Country walks proved far more convenient for private dialogue, but not in freezing rain.

He might get the opportunity momentarily, however, for with alacrity, Ambrose and Florian began replacing the violin and cello in their cases, and Miss VanDorn did the same with her banjo. Lady Bisterne stood staring at the broken bow as though not certain what it was or what to do with it.

Tristram took a step toward her, his intention to ask her if they could talk.

She thrust the bow at Ambrose. “Estelle and I will go before you two, lest our reputations suffer.” She strode to the door, beckoning to her sister.

Slowly, Miss VanDorn followed.

Her ladyship was right. He couldn’t talk to her there. Eagerness to solve this problem with the jewels and get away from Tuxedo Park before Georgette got her hopes raised in his direction were clouding his good sense.

He reached the door before Lady Catherine did and touched her arm. “May I call upon you tomorrow, my lady?”

“Call?” She patted at her hair where one of the combs had helped pearl-headed pins hold up her masses of glossy waves. “If you intend to explain your ridiculous charges, then yes, you may. Eleven-thirty. We shall be able to speak privately.”

“Thank you.” Tristram bowed and opened the door. “Good evening, ladies. If we do not see you in the ballroom, we shall see you tomorrow.” He closed the door after them, then leaned against it, his arms crossed over his chest. He glared at Ambrose and Florian. “What were the two of you thinking? You know better than to be alone with a young lady.”

“We found a way to get into the good graces of a pretty heiress,” Florian said.

“We aren’t heirs to a fortune and title, like you are,” Ambrose added.

Tristram reminded him, “I am not an heir to a title if my brother’s widow bears a male.”

And if he did not restore the Bisterne jewels to the family, as well as recover the money the marquess was spending to recover those jewels, Tristram wouldn’t continue to receive so much as the quarterly allowance owed him as the second son. Taking away his only means of support was his father’s way of punishing him for failing as a military officer.

Not that Tristram considered what he had done a failure. His actions had succeeded quite well and saved dozens of lives. Unfortunately, saving lives was not the outcome the superior officers wanted.

Tristram focused a narrow-eyed glare at his cousin. “Why did you break that bow and how do you expect to replace it?”

“I’ll take the train down to the city and buy a new one.” Ambrose stroked the splintered edge of the bow. “It looks rather worn anyway. Miss VanDorn might appreciate something new.”

“Purchased with what?” Tristram asked.

Ambrose grinned. “Your largesse, cousin.”

“Reward money for retrieving the jewels.” Florian made the suggestion without a hint of humor.

“If she hasn’t had them all copied and sold the originals.” Tristram retrieved the undamaged comb from his coat pocket and held the jewels up to one of the gas sconces set on the wall.

Light glinted in the diamonds, but then, they were faceted enough that even this poor form of illumination would shimmer off them. He needed sunlight and a magnifying glass to be certain these jewels were artificial.

“The ones you found on the continent were real. Or at least the jewelers and pawnbrokers thought so.” Florian picked up the cello. “We know she must have sold those.”

“But they could have been copied first,” Ambrose suggested. “We’d best hurry if we wish to dance with Miss VanDorn again. She may leave at any moment, and we don’t have permission to call.”

Florian rose, but Tristram blocked the doorway. “Our hostess can leave cards for us.”

“If the elder Mrs. Selkirk is willing to do so,” Florian said, but Tristram didn’t move from the door. “I have the impression that the Selkirks and the VanDorns are not in the habit of making social calls.”

“Then we should have made better arrangements.” Ambrose joined Florian. “Are you going to get out of our way, cousin?”

“In a moment.” Tristram dropped his gaze to the bow. “You still haven’t told me why you broke that.”

Ambrose’s mouth tightened at the corners, forming furrows beside his lips that added ten years to his five and twenty. “Rage. Pure and simple rage that she would steal and lie and cheat her husband, my old friend, and then the Baston-Wards, and act as though she were the affronted one.”

“She is rather cool for a lady we accused of stealing a fortune in gemstones.” Florian drummed his fingertips on the top of the cello’s case.

Tristram recalled seeing her ladyship drumming her fingers against her own wrist and shook his head. “Not as cool as all that. She’s anxious about something.”

“Being caught in her larceny.” Florian grinned as though the prospect of catching her ladyship in the act of thievery pleased him. “Now, if you will excuse us, Tris, we would like to do some pursuing of our own.”

Tristram stepped aside and opened the door for the men. They moved down the hall with strides long and fast enough to fall minutely shy of a trot. He followed at a more leisurely pace, getting trapped behind a crowd of older men who reeked of cigar smoke and talked too loudly. They reminded him of his father—wealthy, self-satisfied men who spoke of nothing but stock investments, railroads and land. They talked of ordering this person to do this and that person to do that. How many of those minions were their sons, whom they called disappointments? If any of those sons of these American equivalents of noblemen wanted to go into the church, they, too, would more than likely be shoved into a profession for which they were wholly unsuited, or worse, be like his brother and have no profession at all, to their own destruction.

Perhaps he was being judgmental without cause and many of these men and their offspring wanted to do good in the world, as did Tristram. With the stipend his father promised him if he succeeded in finding the gemstones and proving he was not a ne’er-do-well embarrassment to the Wolfe family, Tristram could continue the charity to help discharged soldiers too damaged by war to take up their old jobs. If he didn’t solve the matter of the jewels, his father would remove the income and too many of these forgotten servants of the Crown would die in poverty along with their families.

The steps before him cleared, and he took them down two at a time. He wanted to observe Lady Catherine Bisterne before she was aware of his presence in the ballroom and see if she was as nervous without him around as she had been with him close at hand. He wished to take her hands in his and feel for himself if they were cold with composure or warm with her shame...or the fire he had seen in her luminous dark eyes.

Chapter 3

Paying visits differs from leaving cards in that you must ask to be received.

Emily Price Post

“I
told Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Baston-Ward they may call on me today.” Estelle’s cocoa-brown eyes sparked with golden light behind their fringe of long lashes. “And not for Mama’s at home.”

Catherine set down the slice of dry toast she had barely touched and stared at her younger sister across the breakfast table. “You can’t do that, Stell. They are penniless ne’er-do-wells who are only interested in your trust fund.”

“They are interested in my music.” Estelle clipped each word. “Both are accomplished musicians who have no instruments on which to practice here.”

“They don’t even have titles to recommend them.”

Color bloomed along Estelle’s cheekbones. “I’d rather my friends have only their musical ability to recommend them than someone like your husband, who had only his title to recommend him.”

The toast crumbled between Catherine’s fingers. Tears stung her eyes and she looked away from Estelle, focusing on the expanse of Tuxedo Lake, white edging the wavelets in the center. A sheen of ice rimmed the shore like her heart—cold on the outside, turbulent in the center.

“You’re right, Stell.” Catherine’s throat constricted so she couldn’t speak above a murmur. “Edwin chose to give nothing to the world but his title, but then, that was all I thought I wanted. Well, his title and his handsome face. Which is precisely why I wish to spare you from looking only to the surface of the man.”

“I know seeing those men must be difficult for you.” Estelle reached across the table and covered Catherine’s hand with hers. “But I feel like their presence here is such a godsend. So few people here are accomplished musicians, and Mama never lets me associate with the townspeople anymore.”

“I understand they were giving you notions of joining a band.” Catherine grimaced, the mere word denoting lower Manhattan factory workers who turned amateur performers on their off days.

“Amy Beach performed in public.” Estelle never failed to point out the talented Boston musician and composer as an example of a woman of good family who performed. “With an orchestra. And now she is married and not publicly performing.”

Estelle sighed.

“I know you want to play for others, Stell, but playing in a low theater is no life for a VanDorn.”

“And what is a life for a VanDorn?” Estelle removed her hand and drummed her long fingers on the lace table runner. “A marriage where my husband stays in the city more nights than he’s at home with me and the children? Do you know how pathetic Mrs. Post is, driving down to the train station night after night, hoping her husband will appear? He scarcely does. I’m mortified for her. And then you were stranded in that mausoleum of a house on Romney Marsh while your husband gambled away your dowry in London.”

“Bisterne is a very beautiful manor house, not a mausoleum.”

“After your money stopped it from crumbling to bits.”

“What do you know of it?” Catherine’s voice emerged harsher than she intended just as her mother swept into the dining room on a cloud of lavender and rose perfume.

“Girls, you aren’t quarreling, are you?”

“No, Mama,” they chorused.

“Good. Catherine created quite enough of a stir last night with that mauve-and-green gown, and we don’t wish to have the servants gossiping about how the two of you cannot get along with one another.” Mama paused in her speech as a footman entered bearing fresh coffee steaming in a silver pot.

He drew out Mama’s chair with his free hand, then poured coffee into the cup already set at her place. Mama took only black coffee for breakfast, which was probably why she remained girlishly slim despite her forty-five years. The footman departed the room without so much as offering to fill a plate for her.

“You should have remained for the entire ball,” Mama continued. “You looked ashamed of yourself, Catherine. And, Estelle, you will never find a husband if you don’t allow young men to court you.”

“I don’t want—”

Catherine shot her a glance, then faced Mama. “I had developed a headache.”

“I saw old Mrs. Selkirk talking to you.” Mama raised her coffee to drink and her eyebrows to query.

Catherine raised her own cup as though she and her mother were saluting one another with foils before a duel—coffee cups at five paces. “I’m to stay away from Lord Tristram Wolfe.”

Estelle smirked. “Which you didn’t.”

“He wouldn’t stay away from me. In fact—” Catherine took a deep breath. She may as well get this out of the way now. “He’s calling this morning.”

“Indeed?” Though they were as dark as her daughters’, Mama’s eyes gleamed from beneath half-mast lids. “Will I be the first mama in Tuxedo Park—or Newport, for that matter—to see her daughter marry two English titles?”

“I have no intention of marrying another Englishman.” Catherine pushed back her chair. “And if you want the best for your younger daughter, you will be cautious about allowing Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Baston-Ward to call upon her. They are highly unlikely to inherit titles without a number of men dying prematurely.”

As her husband had—far too prematurely—a month short of his thirty-fifth birthday. Edwin had simply never awakened after a night of excesses in dining, drinking and gaming.

“I’m not interested in them as beaux.” Estelle rose, plate in hand, and headed for the sideboard. “I wish for someone willing to indulge my love of playing good music. We will practice for an hour this morning.”

Unwise of you, little sister.
Catherine froze on the edge of her chair, expecting Mama to forbid such a plan.

But Mama’s face took on a beatific glow. “Those two nice young men you danced with last night? That sounds a perfectly acceptable form of activity.”

“But, Mama, they’re—”

“Gentlemen,” Mama said, interrupting Catherine’s protest. “And where would you like to meet your young man, Catherine?”

Catherine clamped her teeth together to hold back a sharp retort about Tristram not being her young man. Pointing that out would only open up a discussion over why else he would call upon her. Mama did not need to know about his accusations.

“The conservatory.” Her jaw was still rigid. This time of year, the room would be freezing with all of that glass. That might convince Tristram to make his stay as brief as possible. “I believe his call is purely business,” she added. “At least I hope that’s all it is. I truly do not wish to upset Mrs. Selkirk. She believes Georgette has set her sights on Lord Tristram Wolfe.”

Mama sighed. “She threatened to ruin us, I suppose?”

“Something like that.”

“She hasn’t managed to do so yet.” Estelle returned to the table with enough ham and eggs on her plate to ensure her girlish figure would soon abandon her. “Or not entirely.”

Catherine stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing important.” Estelle took a dainty bite of ham and began to chew with extensive vigor.

Mama sighed. “Estelle was uninvited to a party or two after Mrs. Selkirk learned she had been in the village playing her music with some of the workers.”

“I didn’t want to go to the parties anyway. Well, not all of them.”

“One was a garden party with Mrs. Lorillard, the younger one.” Mama blinked as though fighting tears.

Catherine shot to her feet. “I will send a note to Lord Tristram right now telling him not to come. Even if his business is with Bisterne’s estate, I won’t risk anything else happening to the family.”

She stalked from the room and headed for the library.

A freshly filled fountain pen lay on the top of the desk along with a stack of paper and envelopes. She seated herself in the wide leather chair and picked up the pen just as the clock on the mantel chimed eleven.

Of course. The hour was late. Despite leaving the ball early, Catherine hadn’t slept until well after Estelle ceased playing the piano and their parents and brother returned from the ball. The clock’s four chimes had risen through the floorboards before Catherine slept and she woke six hours later. How Papa and Paul managed to remain at entertainments until past midnight, then catch a train into New York in the morning, she never understood.

She hurried with her note so a footman could carry it over to the Selkirk house on the Wee Wah Pond. Clearheaded in the cold light of day without old Mrs. Selkirk’s lingering hostility, she of course remembered she could refuse a call from Lord Tristram Wolfe. Catherine, Lady Bisterne, didn’t need to receive a man who outright accused her of a crime.

The quarter hour chimed. There was no time to get across the park to the other lake before Lord Tristram left.

Catherine crumpled the note and tossed it onto the embers of a banked fire. It smoldered on the coals for a moment, flared in a short-lived burst of flame, then died like her brief notion that she could refuse to meet with the younger son of the Marquess of Cothbridge. If she did not, he might tell the Selkirks that he suspected her of being a thief. He might go as far as to contact local authorities or, worse, some diplomatic service between England and America. The resulting scandal would destroy Catherine and her family, despite her innocence.

It was a large step from stealing fiancés to stealing family heirlooms, yet Catherine’s detractors would make that leap. She had come home to mend the past, not create more scandals—she must silence Lord Tristram by allaying his suspicions.

She must also keep Estelle from igniting scandal by indulging her music with two gentlemen who were twice removed from inheriting titles—or anything at all.

Catherine, the Dowager Countess of Bisterne, a thief indeed. She had taken nothing that did not belong to her other than Georgette’s fiancé. For that act, she had paid nearly every day of her marriage.

“Stolen jewels indeed.” With more vigor than was ladylike, Catherine climbed the flaring staircase to her bedchamber. Giving her maid a nod of greeting, she crossed the pink rose-patterned carpet to the window and looked at the lake. The waves frothed like her insides. She should have eaten. She should have thought to send the man packing earlier. She should have...

Too many should-haves filled her life. But her homecoming was supposed to change all that. And therefore, she would start with Lord Tristram Wolfe.

She turned from the window and moved to her dressing table. Smelling faintly of magnolia with her initials in diamond chips on the lid, her jewel case rested atop the golden wood. The bottom drawer held the other jewels Bisterne had given her during their marriage, pieces he declared were not part of the family set. Considering he had lied about the hair combs, she doubted she could trust his word about these, either. She pulled a string of amber beads out of the box and held them up to the light. Despite the grayness of the day, the beads glowed and warmed in her hand. Artificial amber, if it existed, could not do this. Or could it?

Catherine laid the beads on the dressing tabletop and pulled out a brooch with a ruby surrounded by pearls. “Sapphire?” she called to her lady’s maid.

“Yes, my lady?” Sapphire glanced up from the window seat where she perched with a pile of mending on her lap.

“You were a lady’s maid for twenty years before you came to work for me, were you not?”

“Twenty-two, yes, my lady.” Sapphire’s dark gray eyes narrowed. “Is there a problem with the quality of my work?”

“Not at all. I was thinking perhaps you’d know a bit about jewels.” Catherine held the ruby toward the light. “Is this real or paste?”

Sapphire’s eyes widened. “My Lord Bisterne gave that to you.”

Catherine said nothing.

“It’s beautiful, my lady, and will look fine against that blue silk you had made up at Worth’s in Paris.”

Catherine ran her thumbnail across a pearl, wondering if Sapphire would think her stark-staring mad if she tried to bite one of the gemstones to see if it had that gritty feel only true pearls exhibited. “If I dare wear—”

A knock sounded on the door. Catherine jumped and jabbed the pin of the brooch into her thumb. She didn’t need to open the door to know a footman stood beyond it to tell her Lord Tristram had arrived.

While she wrapped her bleeding thumb in a handkerchief, Sapphire answered the door. Lord Tristram had indeed arrived on the stroke of eleven-thirty. Catherine nodded assent that she would receive him and unwrapped her thumb. Only a few drops of blood marred the whiteness of the black-bordered linen, but the digit throbbed too much for gloves to be comfortable.

“It’s morning. It’s my parents’ home. I won’t look improperly dressed without gloves.” She spoke the excuses aloud as she patted a stray tendril of hair back into place before the mirror.

The reflection of her diamond engagement ring and wedding band winked back at her. She dropped her hand and stared at the diamond-crusted circlets. The rings were Baston-Ward heirlooms—her husband had made that clear on their wedding day. Catherine had not removed them from her hand once in five years. Going into muted colors after only a year and a month was one way to announce her widowhood, but removing the engagement ring and wedding ring band was quite another statement, a declaration that she would accept advances from other gentlemen, which she would not.

Yet how could she walk downstairs and declare her innocence to Lord Tristram Wolfe when she did indeed wear jewelry that did not belong to her?

* * *

Tristram walked from the Selkirks’ imitation Elizabethan house to the VanDorn home. He hoped the exercise and biting air would ease the tension gripping him. But by the time he climbed the steps to the curving edifice of Lake House, his guts felt as though they had turned into watch springs.

He pressed the doorbell, then stood drumming his fingers against his thighs. A second before the door opened, he remembered to remove a calling card from his pocket to hand to the silver-haired butler.

“‘Lord Tristram Wolfe.’” The man read from the card. “Her ladyship is expecting you.”

Tristram followed the man’s straight back across a corridor that curved gently away from the door. Several rooms opened along the hall’s length, and he expected the butler to show him into one of these—a parlor, the library, even a cozy sitting room perhaps. Instead, the man headed up the staircase, pausing where it widened into a landing.