Chapter 2 #2
Audrey looked up from her notes, startled. The footman stood just inside the door, posture impeccable in his dark livery, his white gloves folded behind his back.
“Yes, Howard?”
“His lordship wishes to speak with you. He is in his study.”
She blinked once, then nodded, closing her journal with deliberate care and stacking her books in a neat pile on the little side table for easy retrieval in the morning.
These endless days of leisure in the earl’s grand house were enough to drive anyone to distraction. Every detail gleamed with genteel wealth—mahogany shelves lined with calfskin bindings, gleaming brass fire irons, even the richly woven Axminster carpet underfoot. Yet she was bored nearly to tears.
Being summoned for an audience was at least a novelty.
She found herself welcoming the interruption to the monotony of her London confinement.
If only she could have kept treating patients, it might have made the heavy grief of her father’s death bearable.
Instead, she was left to idle in this cavernous townhouse, haunted by memories of the life she had lost.
Perhaps the guild would write soon, she thought with a stab of hope. Then she could begin planning her future in earnest.
Dutifully, Audrey slipped her notes into her valise, adjusted her skirt, and set off down the long corridor toward the study.
The hall was hushed but for the muffled thump of her footsteps on the thick runner.
Wall sconces with smoky glass shades cast flickering light onto gilt-framed landscapes of distant hills and stormy seas.
Lord Stirling had seemed busier than ever these past two weeks.
She recalled that dreadful quarrel with Lord Trafford.
Howard had even mentioned how rarely the master had been seen since.
The earl was always engaged with matters of state, but lately, he had vanished into work like a man determined to forget.
She felt a pinch of discomfort at the memory. She had not realized before that day why Lady Stirling and the daughter had been absent so long. A wave of embarrassment still prickled her skin over the knowledge she now carried, gained by accident while treating the starling outside the study window.
Yet she reassured herself it had been worthwhile. Her patient would soon take flight.
Pausing at a gilt-framed pier glass hanging between the tall doors, Audrey smoothed the linen of her sleeve and checked her hair. She repinned a few stubborn curls that had escaped to rest against her neck, strands that seemed determined to defy all attempts at restraint.
She studied her reflection critically. Once she had been considered an attractive country lass, cheeks browned by sun, hair windblown and free.
Here in London, by society’s stifling standards, she felt a disheveled mess.
Constant fussing with her appearance had become an endless, weary chore.
She longed for the village, where no one cared if a lock of hair fell free while she gathered herbs or comforted a crying child.
She adjusted her locks, decided it would have to do, and exhaled a steadying breath.
Turning, she knocked smartly on the study door.
“Enter.”
Audrey unlatched the door and stepped inside.
Lord Stirling was an imposing peer—tall and broad-shouldered, his dark coat fitting with military precision.
There was a warm charm to him that made him well-liked by most, even those inclined to distrust the nobility.
Yet Julius Trafford was correct. Over the years the earl’s genial manner had hardened into a forbidding solemnity.
Audrey could recall a time, dim as it felt now, when he had smiled readily and laughed in easy company. She suspected the shift to grimness had grown worse after Lady Stirling’s departure for France.
Not that Audrey had spent much time in their company before her father’s death earlier in the year.
But there had been dinners in Stirling and the odd autumn gathering where she had observed them from across candlelit tables.
She remembered Lady Stirling’s gentle laughter, and the way the earl’s eyes had softened when they lingered on his wife.
Now that she thought on it, it struck her as almost comical. Lord Trafford’s coats had grown ever more colorful in approximate proportion to his father’s descent into dourness, as if one absorbed all the missing cheer of the other.
She forced the smile from her lips as she cleared her throat softly.
“Good evening, your lordship.”
“Audrey, you look lovely this evening.”
His voice was perfectly polite, but she noted the distracted furrow of his brow, the way his gaze seemed to move past her even as he spoke.
“Thank you, Lord Stirling.”
He stood at the mantel, one arm resting along its carved edge, fingertips drumming slowly on the polished wood.
The flames in the grate crackled low, their glow reflecting off brass fire irons and catching on the intricate frame of the portrait above.
For a moment, his eyes rose to it, Lady Stirling’s serene painted likeness with pearls at her throat, hair fair against pale skin.
Audrey felt a pang of sympathy for the man who looked at his absent wife as if she might speak to him from the canvas.
“I have some business to take care of on the Continent, which means I shall be leaving at first light.”
Audrey nodded automatically. She had grown used to these abrupt Crown assignments over the past months. Usually, he gave her a day or two of warning, but the tension in his voice suggested urgency.
“Lady Hays is not in Town, so I have arranged to have Lady Astley collect you in the morning.”
Audrey’s heart sank like a stone into her thin-soled slippers.
“Lady Astley?”
“That is correct.”
She struggled to keep her expression neutral.
Lady Astley was the very definition of the embittered matron—her sharp nose raised imperiously, every word dripped with social scorn.
She embodied all the worst traits of high society.
Proper, yes, but also endlessly censorious.
Audrey could all but feel the headache settling in at the thought of endless embroidery, tepid tea, and sermons on deportment.
She swallowed hard, voice catching as she sought an alternative.
“How … long … will you be gone?”
The earl’s eyes dropped to the hearth, as if examining the patterns of coal dust on the iron grate. It took him a moment to answer, and when he did his tone was leaden.
“It could be as much as two weeks.”
Audrey nodded, though her thoughts were churning in frantic circles. There must be something she could do.
“What if I remain here? I would not want to inconvenience Lady Astley.”
The earl shook his head once, firmly.
“You must have a chaperon. Next month, your mourning period will be over, which means we can begin the hunt for an appropriate husband. Your reputation must remain pristine.”
Her heart did not just sink. It tumbled down through the carpet, into the very foundation of the townhouse, and all the way to the servants’ hall belowstairs. They had not spoken in such explicit terms before about what would come next, but there it was. Her future laid out in blunt expectation.
Finding an appropriate husband was nowhere in her plans.
She clasped her hands tightly before her skirts, fighting the urge to fidget. She did not wish to be disrespectful, but …
“Perhaps the maid assigned to me could act as a chaperon? She has accompanied me to the bookshop, and to the modiste?”
“It will not do for a prolonged period, I am afraid. Lady Astley is a peeress of quality who will ensure that there is no doubt of how you spent your days.”
Audrey wished she could stamp her foot in protest like a spoiled child. The thought of being trapped under Lady Astley’s eagle-eyed gaze made her feel faint. She would sink into a dull, stifling gloom in that household. Better to be a Bedlamite!
Her ladyship was horrid beyond words. Audrey could already imagine being forbidden even her precious books, let alone tending Flapper. The starling would not be ready to take flight in the morning. Would Lady Astley permit her to care for him at all?
The earl had been kind and generous in taking her in, but he did not understand the life she had led in Stirling as her father’s apprentice. There, she had mattered. She had helped the sick, mixed poultices by the hearth, offered comfort with practical skill.
In London, she was nobody. A polite ornament in the earl’s grand townhouse. She clenched her fingers against her skirts, reminding herself she needed to be grateful for his protection. Once she came of age, she would take control of her inheritance and choose her own future.
“I … understand.”
What else could she say? The Season was over, and nearly all high society had left Town. Lady Astley was surely the only peeress available at such short notice.
Drat! It is going to be an awful fortnight!
She could only hope Lord Stirling’s mission would be swift and successful, and the weather would stay fair to hurry his return.
Julius knew it was a terrible idea. Not one of his friends or acquaintances would support it. It was reckless. Brazen. Rash. Idiotic. Which meant Julius was, perversely, in his element.
The lamplight pooled on his writing desk, reflecting off brass fittings, casting long shadows that shifted as the wick hissed and popped in the quiet room.
Since his friends had each irrevocably tied the knot over the past two years, he had grown increasingly dissatisfied with his idle pursuits.
He had no interest in joining them in matrimonial hell, but he found himself mired in a half-life.
Too bored to carouse. Too bored to attend endless soirées.
Determined, in the depths of his stubborn soul, not to grow up.
He had once considered visiting his mother in Paris to bury himself in the city’s temptations, drifting through salons and coffee houses with other English exiles. But the notion held little true appeal.
If Julius were honest with himself—a rare exercise—Lord Snarling was not entirely incorrect.
His mother would certainly disapprove of whom he had become.
He refused to admit that was part of why he had not gone.
It had nothing to do with his last wretched voyage over the Channel, when he had spewed his guts into a bucket for the entire journey.
It stung to realize he was rebelling against his austere father with ever more ridiculous behavior and scandalous fashion.
Yet it was the only real rebellion he had left.
Julius refused to become a humorless old goat like Lord Snarling, so he fought tooth and nail against the inexorable march of respectability.
Which was why, despite his very real fears for Brendan and the baroness, or his guilt over Abbott’s forced marriage, Julius felt downright chipper as he inked his notes to the three remaining suspects.
He tamped down the instinct to prepare a fourth for Smythe. Abbott was investigating his own father-in-law, and Julius knew better than to overstep there.
Nay, he thought, flexing his cramped fingers, I shall focus my energies on the other men.
Henry Montague, heir to Lord Montague. Julius had uncovered a taste for gambling, a promising hint at financial desperation. But Montague’s wagers were cautious, even clever. The man generally won more than he lost.
Then there was Simon Scott, half-brother to Lord Blackwood.
Handsome, charming, ambitious—yet no known scandals.
He did have a calculating approach to courtship, aiming at a high-ranking debutante with unimpressive intellect but impeccable lineage.
The sort of girl Julius would avoid like the plague, lest she trap him in tedium for life.
And finally, Edward Stone, vicar and youngest brother of Lord Harlyn.
A cheerful, well-liked man who seemed harmless, content to serve his flock in a sleepy parish.
Yet Julius refused to rule him out. Even a kindly priest might prove desperate enough to ensure his inheritance, perhaps to mend a leaky roof or fund his parish’s debts.
One of these men could well be a stone-cold killer who had bludgeoned the baron in his own study, leaving Brendan Ridley to swing for it.
Julius set his pen aside and cracked his stiff knuckles before returning to scratch out his letters. Each carried the same cryptic threat, with only the location and time differing between them.
He did not sign his name. This was bait. The guilty man, or his loyal henchman, would show up at the assigned time, desperate to learn the sender’s identity.
If none appeared, he would have cleared them of suspicion. But if even one did, they would know their culprit and could finally narrow the maddening search for parish records of the mysterious Peter’s marriage.
Reckless. Idiotic. But effective.
Donning a dark woolen cape to shroud his colorful attire, Julius paused to check the lock on his writing case before slipping out into the corridor. He moved silently through the sleeping house, boots soundless on the Persian runner.
By morning, the field of suspects would be smaller. And the next day promised to be filled with the sort of mischief and danger he relished. His steps were buoyant with anticipation at the thrills to come.