Her cheeks burnt. A part of her quite longed to take his arm; to walk with him into the drawing room – and let Flora smile as much as she pleased! But Lady Carrisbrook was waiting for her; and Mr Lansdale’s package was still in her reticule, and if she did not act now she might never know the whole solution of her mystery. And besides…
If she went with him now; if she allowed him to pay her such very public attentions, then what could she do but deceive him as to her behaviour of the last two days? And she did not think that she could bear to do that. It would be lying where she most wished to confide: replacing trust and honesty with dissembling and pretence…
‘I am sorry, Mr Lomax,’ she said, ‘but it is, in part, business which has brought me to Brooke this evening. I pray you will excuse me – if you and Flora will just go on ahead – I must consult with Lady Carrisbrook for a moment or two.’ She smiled sadly at him as she walked off, and she felt his eyes following her, until a turn in the passage took her beyond his reach.
She was led quickly down three steps, around another corner, up two more steps and into a cool, pretty little room where there was a wide bowl of dried rose-petals standing on a gate-legged table, and a casement window standing open upon a herb garden. Here the harp music was no more than a faint echo, like the playing of a ghost.
‘Now, Miss Kent,’ said Lady Carrisbrook, leading her to the deep, old-fashioned window-seat. ‘Please tell me what you mean.’ Her face was alive with curiosity – and hope. ‘What is it that you wish to return to me?’
As she was speaking, Dido was drawing the package from her reticule. Now, taking care to watch her companion’s face, she unwrapped it and revealed the emerald necklace. The little cry – the eager look of pleasure and relief as it appeared confirmed all her ideas.
‘It is yours, is it not?’ she said holding it out.
Maria nodded, took the jewels and fastened them about her neck. And if there had been any doubt remaining in Dido’s mind it must have been done away in that moment, for there could be no doubting that the necklace had been chosen to match the green and white silk gown – and the emerald earrings. It was as if, until that moment, the toilette had been incomplete.
‘Now, I think your husband will be more inclined to smile!’
Maria bent her head. ‘Miss Kent,’ she said very seriously. ‘How did you know that the jewels were mine?’
Dido turned away from her: gazed out into the darkening herb garden and listened a moment to the faint, rippling of the music. ‘It was not so very difficult to discover,’ she said, ‘though I confess that at first I was rather stupid about it.’
‘Please, you must tell me everything.’
‘Well, you see, I made enquiries at Gray’s about an emerald necklace and I discovered that someone – another lady – had applied to them to have a replacement made for just such a piece as this. A rather tall, brown-haired, poorly dressed lady.’
Maria was not altogether pleased by the description. ‘And you guessed that it was me?’ she said.
‘No, not at first, for I was blinded by the “poorly dressed” and was foolish enough to suppose that it might be Miss Neville.’ She shook her head. ‘So very stupid of me! For, if one does not wish to be recognised, it is easy enough to put on a shabby gown, is it not? But beauty and charm, they are not so easily put on and off.’ She smiled. ‘I do not think that even when she was one and twenty poor Miss Neville had the power to throw a tradesman into such confusion – to make him blush and stammer – or to make him so very anxious about her welfare. You see, all the time the shop-boy was talking to me I had felt there was something he was telling me which I was not understanding. Today when I spoke to him he confirmed my suspicion – the one thing that he had not previously put into words, but which his whole manner had declared, was that his mysterious customer was extremely beautiful!’
Maria seemed better pleased. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘And… And you guessed that the necklace was a gift from my husband?’
‘Yes. You have been very anxious about this evening as the date approached. I guessed that there was some particular difficulty facing you. And of course, this was the first occasion since your marriage when he would most certainly expect you to wear the necklace. And the fact that you had not come forward – with some kind of story – to claim it, made it certain that Sir Joshua did not know that it was lost.’
Maria was watching her keenly. ‘With some kind of story?’ she repeated, raising her brows.
‘Oh yes. You would have had to manufacture some tale. You could not, of course, have told Mr Lansdale the truth about how your emeralds came to be in his drawing room.’
‘No,’ she admitted quietly. ‘I could not.’ She hesitated for a moment, and then seemed to make up her mind: to determine to know the worst. ‘Miss Kent,’ she said firmly. ‘How much do you know? How much do you know about me – about my life before I was married?’
Dido did not answer for several minutes. She rested her warm cheek against the cool stone of the old window embrasure and gazed into the darkening herb garden where the dark shapes of bats were beginning to skitter out from under the eaves of the roof. The harp had ceased and, after a moment or two, it was replaced by the notes of the pianoforte.
‘I know,’ Dido began cautiously, ‘that you were Miss Henderson before you were married.’ She kept her eyes upon the garden, not turning to look at her companion. ‘And I know that your…family occupied Knaresborough House for several months, without the permission – or knowledge – of the agents responsible for its letting.’
‘I see. And do you know why…I mean, do you know what our purpose was in occupying that house?’
Dido leant out into the dusk and took a long breath, as if intent upon enjoying the scents of mint and thyme. ‘Such a house,’ she said carefully, ‘such a very respectable, solid house, would make a very advantageous setting for three beautiful, unmarried girls. It would do a great deal to disguise their poverty – and desperation.’ She stopped and turned her eyes slowly upon the woman beside her. For a moment neither of them spoke. But the memory of her guilt coloured Maria’s cheeks. Far away in the drawing room the sweet voices of glee singers were joined to the music of the pianoforte. ‘For you, Lady Carrisbrook, I believe the undertaking answered rather well. Sir Joshua’s visits to that house ended in him making you an offer of marriage.’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘But,’ said Dido with a smile, ‘there was something rather strange about that offer. By my reckoning, it cannot have been made until after the Lansdale’s came to Knaresborough House. For when, at Flora’s picnic, Sir Joshua told us – so happily – of his engagement, he spoke of it as having just been formed – within the last week. But by then, of course, Mrs Lansdale and her nephew had been resident at Knaresborough for a month.’
Maria smiled briefly. ‘He had,’ she said, ‘very nearly come to the point when we were obliged to leave the house. I was sure – absolutely sure – that one more visit would settle the matter.’
‘And so you decided that for one evening, your household must be reformed? Sir Joshua must be deceived into paying one more call upon the charming Miss Henderson – deceived into entering another man’s home without his knowledge.’
‘But how do you know this?’ cried Maria. ‘How can you possibly know so much. We were so very careful.’
‘I am sure you were, Lady Carrisbrook. But I have a strange habit of noticing small things which when added together… Well, you see what is achieved when they are added together.’
‘But what kind of small things did you notice?’
‘Oh, things like the music that you had left behind on the pianoforte. Your handwriting, you know is singular – particularly your Ss and Ws. I recognised the hand immediately when I saw the note which you had sent to my cousin.’