“Lady Thornleigh, may I present Mr. Gabriel Crowther?” Harriet said. “He has been living in the Laraby House in the village.”
Crowther bowed, and Lady Thornleigh offered him a slight curtsy. Her movements were perfectly graceful, yet made with the minimum of effort. Crowther remembered her former profession was as a dancer. He wished he could have seen her perform.
“Yes, I recognize you. We sent our compliments when you arrived in the village.”
“I have been a slave to my studies, Lady Thornleigh.”
She looked at him again for a long moment, her smile mocking. The word “slave” seemed to please her. She broke the moment with a sweep of her skirts.
“Well, let us sit down then. Miss Trench, always a pleasure, I’m sure.”
When Lady Thornleigh bothered with the ordinary civilities, she did so with such ill-disguised boredom, Crowther almost laughed. As they sat she leaned back her beautiful head and shouted for her footman at the same volume as a street seller advertises her mackerel.
“Duncan!” The gold door opened again and a footman leaned in his elaborately powdered and wigged head.
“Tea.” The head nodded and withdrew. Lady Thornleigh stared at them again for a moment. “Mr. Crowther, do you like my drawing room? The earl had it done for me by way of compliment when we married. He said it suited me. I took it as a great kindness before, but now I wonder if he was being funny.”
She yawned a little behind her hand. All Crowther could think of was a cat. The nature of the smile that hung on her red lips made him hope he was never the bird she chose for sport. He bowed a little. Harriet settled her skirts.
“I hope Lord Thornleigh continues comfortably, my lady?”
My lady leaned back her head to admire the golden ceiling as she replied, “Oh, just the same. It is so dull-one marries a man for his wits then he loses them.” She looked at each of them in turn with a slow blink. “He was entertaining company before I married him, you know. He always had the cleverest things to say about his friends and neighbors. What a shame he never met the ladies of Caveley Park before he fell ill.” Lady Thornleigh let this thought sit in the air a moment, then shifted her gaze toward Crowther. “We were in London at first, you know. He used to promenade with me in the London parks, and all the dowager duchesses would try to run away. He could make them be civil, of course. Everyone was frightened of him then. Now people just pity him.”
No one could think of a response to this. If Lady Thornleigh found the silence uncomfortable, she did not show it. She turned her focus to Rachel.
“Miss Trench, I must thank you for that preparation you sent us. It smells disgusting, you will admit, but the nurse tells me it has eased the inflammations Lord Thornleigh is prone to suffer on his skin.”
“During my father’s last illness, it gave him some relief,” Rachel said softly.
Harriet looked at her sister in surprise. Lady Thornleigh noticed it and tilted her head to one side, her eyes wide.
“Did you not know your sister has turned apothecary, Mrs. Westerman? You will hear soon enough how half of Hartswood is in love with her skin salves.” She turned back to Rachel and raised her hand to wag a finger at her. “Though you should charge a full shilling, dearie-it is a mistake to sell it for only sixpence. People value things according to what they have paid for them. Charge them the shilling and they will tell everyone it is a wonder, for who wants to look a fool spending money on nonsense?”
After this moment of relative animation, Lady Thornleigh sat back in her chair again, watching Harriet’s continuing surprise with real pleasure. She looked away again to examine the middle distance of the golden air.
“It is remarkable how little some people know about what is going on in their own house.” A hand lifted to her face and she bit her full lower lip a second, pulling on one dark ringlet. “And it is not even a very big house.”
Crowther coughed.
The rituals of serving tea followed. Crowther noticed Harriet seemed a little at a loss in the presence of the earl’s wife. Her introduction of the subject of the body in the woods seemed almost clumsy.
“Is it not strange, Lady Thornleigh, that Viscount Hardew’s ring was found on the corpse?”
Lady Thornleigh yawned. Even her hands were exceptionally well made, Crowther thought as she lifted one to her mouth before replying. It was always a matter of proportion; the length of the fingerbones compared with those webbing together to make the palm, the ratio of fat and muscle, and of course, the quality and properties of the skin.
“No doubt he found it in London, recognized the arms and was coming to the house to see if he could gain a reward from Hugh,” she said with a shrug. “It is what I would have done.”
Harriet frowned briefly, then struggled on.
“How strange, also, to have had no news of Viscount Hardew for so long, and now the ring. He left the house before we came to Caveley, I believe. I do not think I have ever heard the detail of the case.”
“Have you not? Well, I always thought you above such a romance. I suppose we can pass the time telling the story again. It is almost funny when one considers it.”
Lady Thornleigh paused to reach for one of the dainty cakes provided with her tea, and nibbled at it with her small white teeth. It did not please her, so she replaced it with a little pout of disgust and picked up another from the plate to try instead. It was obviously an improvement as she kept it between her neat white fingers as she continued.
“Alexander fell in love with one of the family with which he was lodging. Some family in Chiswick with a funny name. Ah yes, Ariston-Grey. Sounds a trifle French to me. Musicians. A widowed father and his whelp. Alexander was mad for music, I am told. The old man died still fiddling away for his family’s entertainment, though I’m sure my husband paid him enough for keeping Alexander all those years, so he can have had no need to spin out tunes to entertain.”
“Perhaps he did it for the love of the music, Lady Thornleigh,” Rachel suggested.
“If you say so, Miss Trench.” Lady Thornleigh looked at her a little amazed. “I only ever had to do with music for my profession. No butcher slaughters animals for his own entertainment at the end of a day. Why should a fiddler play?” Rachel had no answer, so Lady Thornleigh continued. “The funny thing is, the lady turned out to be so terribly virtuous he could not have her without marrying her. My husband was fearfully angry. Thought Alexander a ridiculous fool and said if he couldn’t get a girl like that to be friendly without marriage, he was certainly not fit to run the estate, as he would be robbed at every turn. Alexander was a terribly upright sort, by all accounts, so before you could spit he was off out of the house and ready to marry the girl on the little scrap of money the fiddler left, and they’ve neither of them been heard of since.”
She ate a little more of the cake. “I say funny because of course Lord Thornleigh was thought to be a little daring to marry me, but I think it was Alexander’s priggishness and whining about the virtues of his intended that brought about the breach, more than the rather unequal nature of the match.”
She wiped the crumbs from her mouth and smiled her catlike smile. “We have so much money that the Thornleigh men could all marry paupers for five generations and it would still be all thoroughbred horses and ices in July.” Her dark eyes drifted over Rachel’s face. “That is, if they really wished to do so.”
The rest of the visit was nothing but awkward banalities, and an attempt to discuss the weather which made Lady Thornleigh yawn so widely Crowther was afraid she was in danger of dislocating her elegant jaw. Her remarks had been unpleasant enough that he expected Rachel and Harriet to be very angry when they left, but they were oddly forgiving. He was surprised by their generosity.