Emma and I exchanged one quick look before I said, “What idea, my lady?”
“Emma will be the Ice Queen, and you will be the Fire Queen. Show them the fabric swatches, madame.”
The red silk was beautiful, catching the light almost like flame. If fabric could shimmer and smolder, sending sparks along its length, this fluid material did. I touched only the corner, expecting to be shouted at by the dressmaker. She mustn’t have noticed. I was surprised by smoothness so soft it barely registered as more than air on my fingertips and didn’t burn my skin. I looked up to see Emma was just as entranced with her shade.
“The fabric is perfect, Lady Westover, but queens? How will we appear as more than well-dressed women?”
“Leave that to me. Just be here in time to dress the night of the ball.” She put her hands together as a look of pure joy crossed her face. “Oh, I feel like a fairy godmother.”
Emma and I looked at each other, grinning with pleasure. Fortunately, we had chosen to wear our best corsets, because once we were out of our skirts and blouses, Madame Leclerc and her assistant measured us so these gowns would be snug against our current undergarments.
“Lady Westover,” I began.
“Don’t move!” Madame Leclerc sounded like an angry schoolmistress.
I made certain only my mouth moved. “How am I paying for this?”
“You’re not.”
“That’s a relief. But I can’t expect you to—”
“I’m not.”
“Then who?”
“The Duke of Blackford.”
“What?” I spun around, knocking Madame Leclerc off balance and into a fern.
“Don’t move!” came in a chorus from Madame Leclerc, Lady Westover, and Emma. Madame Leclerc straightened herself from the plant, stomped over, and swung me around again.
I obediently took up my pose and she went back to measuring me, a palm frond stuck in her hair.
“He’s also lending you the tiaras for your crowns,” Lady Westover said. “And your jewels for the night.”
“Tell me they’re paste.” I couldn’t guard a fortune in jewels and find a murderer at the same time. Certainly not in evening clothes. We wouldn’t have any place to hide a handkerchief, much less a knife. The idea of going to a glittering ball in a beautiful dress was growing less appealing by the second.
“I doubt very much that the jewels will be paste.”
I had a bad feeling about this. “Then I hope someone will be on hand to guard them.”
“Oh, Georgia,” Lady Westover laughed. “You’ll be in a sea of diamonds. The jewels will be perfectly safe.”
Madame Leclerc began to measure my face. When I jerked my head back, she said, “For your mask. It shall be of the same silk as the dress.”
I held my head still, my eyes closed, and heard her murmur close to my ear, “A half mask. More dramatic.”
“I don’t know what the duke has planned.” Lady Westover sounded worried.
“When did he say he would pay for these gowns?” I asked.
“I sent him a note, suggesting my idea. He came to visit me at luncheon. As soon as I said you’d be dressed all in red, he murmured, ‘It’ll be easy to follow her,’ and pulled out a stack of banknotes. He wasn’t in the least interested in Emma’s costume.”
Emma gave me a raised-eyebrow look with a sly smile. Sometimes that girl can try my patience. The duke was a suspect, not a potential lover.
I was now beyond worried. I was confused, appalled, and frightened. These dresses would cost a fortune. What was Blackford up to? Why would he want to follow me? Or was he setting me up for somebody else?
*
NEITHER EMMA NOR I spoke on our trip from Lady Westover’s until we were almost to Sir Broderick’s doorstep. I was too busy listening to the duke’s man, Sumner, following us as he’d been ordered to do, and wondering why this was the first time I’d heard his footsteps when Emma said, “You’re really worried about this ball, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” came out in a hiss.
“In that crush, how will anyone find anyone? I suspect it will be a great deal of bother for a wonderful night and nothing more. Even a duke can’t stage-manage unmasking a murderer, if indeed Drake was murdered.” Emma reached out and rang the buzzer.
As Jacob, Sir Broderick’s young manservant, opened the door, I had a sickening thought. Either the duke had already deduced who had tried to abduct Drake, or he was the one after Drake and that meant he was a murderer.
We hurried in, glad of the light and warmth after the cold and fog. Jacob took our cloaks and we walked upstairs to the study, where we met with the rest of the Archivists who’d been summoned for our meeting.
“There’ve been developments?” Sir Broderick asked from his wheelchair parked by the fire.
I ran down everything new, from confronting Edith Carter, or Anne Drake, about her real name and marriage to Nicholas Drake to the fire at Drake’s house in Hounslow where he’d been hiding, and from meeting blackmail victims the Duke and Duchess of Merville and the Earl of Waxpool to the Duke of Blackford’s involvement in our attending the Duke of Arlington’s masked ball.
“Harry Conover. I’ll look him up again. When Jacob talked to Tom Whitaker, Drake’s other friend, he’d not seen Drake or Conover lately. Maybe Conover can tell us who Drake feared and what happened when someone tried to abduct him,” Adam Fogarty said, limping across the room to the fireplace, head bent in thought.
Sir Broderick caught my eye and winked. I knew Fogarty’s contacts inside the police force were valuable to the Archivist Society. Apparently, he was well liked by every constable and sergeant he’d ever worked with. Why the higher-ups let him go after he sustained his injury was a mystery he refused to discuss. If Sir Broderick knew, he wouldn’t say, and he wouldn’t allow the rest of us to ask.
“Find out what the police report says about the fire and the body,” Sir Broderick said to him. “I’ll have my man of affairs arrange a burial in the closest cemetery unless the widow has other plans.”
I felt heat rise up my cheeks. “With everything else, I haven’t told her yet.”
“First thing in the morning, Georgia. You can’t put a thing like that off,” Sir Broderick said.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Frances Atterby’s gray hair and ample bosom made her the perfect person for breaking bad news.
She’d spent decades working with her husband in their hotel before his murder. She’d developed a ready sympathy and an ability to talk to people that made everyone her friend. And I hated the bad-news part of the job. “Yes. Please. Thank you.”
“So,” Sir Broderick said, looking around at us, “who’s going to figure out what the Duke of Blackford is really up to?”
“The answer to that is at Castle Blackford, and none of us are going to have time for that trip until after the ball.” I looked around. “We need to attend Drake’s funeral at the very least. We need to find out what Lady Dutton-Cox is hiding besides a belief that her daughter was murdered. My guess is Drake stole letters from her daughter Victoria before she died, but neither Lord nor Lady Dutton-Cox seems at all concerned about blackmail or Drake. We need to find out the particulars of Lady Caphart selling or giving the house and land in Hounslow to Drake. Was she also a blackmail victim? And can someone attend the ball as a footman and bring a weapon? We don’t know what the duke plans, and I want to be ready for any eventuality.”