Elissande was overcome for a moment. Her uncle had said plenty of unpleasant things about her parents, but at least he had never accused her father of thievery.
“Please do not speak ill of the dead, my lord,” she said, her voice tight with fury.
“Telling what happened in truth isn’t speaking ill of someone. Besides, it’s a fascinating story, what with your mother having been a kept woman and all. Did you know she was your great-uncle’s mistress before she married your father?”
Of course she knew that. Her uncle had made sure she understood well the ignominy of her parentage. But it was the worst breach of manners for Lord Vere to speak of it publicly, with such carelessness for the ramifications.
For the very first time Lord Frederick, red at the ears, spoke in censure of his brother. “Penny, that’s enough.”
Lord Vere shrugged and gathered his cards to reshuffle them.
There was a long, awkward silence. Lord Frederick broke it—lovely, lovely Lord Frederick. “I do apologize,” he said softly. “Sometimes my brother gets his stories confused. I’m sure he’s quite mistaken about your family.”
“Thank you,” she murmured gratefully.
“No, it is I who should thank you, for the chance to admire a Delacroix when I least expected it.” He handed the painting back to her. “What joy such beauty brings.”
“I found this among my father’s things last night. We have trunks and trunks of my father’s possessions. Perhaps I can unearth some more.”
“I would dearly love to see what else you can find, Miss Edgerton.”
“She’s not wearing anything,” said Lord Vere, suddenly next to her. She had not heard him get up from his chair at all.
“It’s a nude, Penny,” Lord Frederick explained.
“Well, yes, I can see that: She’s not wearing anything.” Lord Vere leaned in farther. “Except a pair of white stockings, that is.”
His arm practically brushed her hair. She would have expected his clothes to reek of tomato sauce—he’d had quite an incident with the sweetbread at luncheon. But he only smelled brisk and clean.
“It’s a study of the female form. It’s not prurient,” said Lord Frederick. “It’s not supposed to be prurient.”
Oddly enough, Lord Frederick flushed. But he quickly gathered himself. “And thank you again, Miss Edgerton, for the privilege. I hope you find more hidden treasures. I cannot wait to see them.”
“I will be sure to show you anything I find that very instant,” she said, smiling and rising. There was still much, much to do.
Lord Vere called after her, “I’d like to see them too if they look like this, wearing only stockings!”
She did not throw a vase at his head. Her canonization was now assured.
Miss Edgerton’s movements and gestures intrigued Vere. The way she sometimes played with the ruches on her sleeves. The way she touched her hair, as if deliberately drawing attention to the soft, shining mass of it. The way she listened to Freddie, with one index finger along her jaw, her torso slanted at a slight angle, so that it gave a clear but still discreet impression that she wished to be closer.
But nothing incited Vere—and repelled him—quite as much as her smiles. When she smiled, despite everything, his heart skittered.
There was a science and an art to manufactured smiles. He, too, was fairly accomplished at smiling, no matter what he truly felt. But she…she was the ceiling at the Sistine Chapel, the glorious, eternal, unsurpassable standard.
Where had she come by the ingénue charm and the virtuoso radiance? How did she manage to retain the honest naïveté in her eyes and the relaxed set to her jaw? Her smiles dazzled so much that sometimes he could not remember what she looked like otherwise.
But she had not smiled when she’d discovered that she’d sat on his lap. She had not smiled at any point during the ninety minutes his drunken antics had kept her away from her aunt’s room. She had not smiled at him just now, as he reveled in her less-than-desirable parentage. And for her, not smiling was akin to another woman leaving the house without her petticoats.
It was what he wanted, wasn’t it, to grate on her nerves enough to send her screaming to bedlam? Then why did it incense him so? He was even irked by Freddie, the object of her obvious affection, because Freddie didn’t care about it one way or the other—and Freddie almost never rankled him.
“I’m going upstairs for a minute, Penny,” said Freddie, rising from the desk where he’d been writing a letter since Miss Edgerton left. “I need my card case.”
“I’ll come with you,” Vere answered. “I’ve nothing better to do.”
He’d been working for hours on deciphering the code used in Douglas’s dossier, with letters marked at the corners of the cards he’d been arranging and rearranging, sifting for patterns. Or at least such had been his aim. He’d accomplished nothing on that front, his concentration flaccid the entire day.
Besides, Miss Edgerton still lurked somewhere in the house.
“Why do you want your card case? Are we calling on somebody?” he asked as they made their way up the stairs.
“No,” said Freddie. “I’m writing a letter to Leo Marsden. He’s on his way back from India.”
“Who?”
“You remember him—we were all in the same house at Eton. I have his address in my card case.”
Inside Freddie’s room, Freddie opened the drawer of his nightstand and scratched his chin. “That’s strange. My card case is not here.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
“This morning.” Freddie frowned. “Perhaps I’m not remembering correctly.”
Freddie was highly charitable: Most gentlemen would suspect the servants. Vere helped Freddie search around the room to no avail.
“You should tell Miss Edgerton that it’s missing.”
“I suppose I should.”
They did not see Miss Edgerton again, however, until everyone had returned to the house for tea and chitchat on the day’s events. Miss Edgerton expressed the appropriate mix of shock and dismay that such a thing should have occurred in her house and promised to do everything in her power to locate the card case and return it to Lord Frederick.
But as she gave her concerned reassurances, new lamb–pure and kitten-sweet, Vere suddenly suspected her. What she could possibly want with Freddie’s card case he did not know. He knew only that when she didn’t smile, there was a hardness to her eyes—a grimness, almost.
And that his instincts were almost always correct.
Lady Avery’s demeanor at dinner elevated Vere’s unease from mere disquiet to active alarm. He knew Lady Avery very welclass="underline" A man of his profession would be foolish not to embrace such a fount of information. And he recognized her bloodhound look: eyes squinted, nostrils almost quivering, ready to pounce upon a meaty scandal if only she could follow its scent to the source of the delectable transgression.
Something was afoot. That in itself was not strange, but this something was suddenly afoot. For at tea Lady Avery had shown no sign of the hunt, content merely to tantalize Miss Melbourne and Miss Duvall with gossip too improper for their maidenly ears.
What could possibly have put Lady Avery on such alert? The girls, notwithstanding their youth and love of fun, were not a particularly scandal-prone group. Miss Melbourne’s main interest lay in her figure; Miss Duvall’s in music. Miss Beauchamp nursed a strong tendresse for her second cousin, who was not present. And Miss Kingsley, despite her flirtation with Conrad, was keener on education than on marriage—she was due back at Girton in October.