Chapter 13
Nell found Cassandra later that evening in her room before bed, propped against her pillows with a book.
“He has all but asked me to the assembly at Truro,” Cassandra said suddenly, without context, glowing with it.
“Really?” Nell asked as she sat down by her bed.
“Next month. He hasn’t said the words outright, but I know Tristan well enough now to know when he’s working up to something. I only hope Adrian will allow it. I’ve thought of nothing else all day! That’s why I took to the piano forte.”
Nell watched the hope move across her face, unguarded and entire, and understood, sitting there, how far past sense she had let herself go in loving this girl.
It made her heart ache, knowing that the connection between them would not last. Nell had to be careful and remind herself that this was an act, no matter how real it had become in any other way.
I am not Lady Vane, I am not Lady Ashcroft. But this is my friend, and she deserves the world.
“I hope he does,” she said, and meant it. “I only came to say goodnight. Great job playing earlier, until that shaky bit.”
They both laughed and said goodnight. Nell left the room and saw two figures in the hall outside of Adrian’s study.
It was Adrian, and a man she did not know.
She decided it was some tedious matter. Adrian looked easy about it as they talked, the way a man thinks nothing of a clerk who has done him a service.
He patted him on the back, and the other man turned.
Nell had no warning. There was no time to arrange her face before Mr. Greaves turned and found her there.
He was all courtesy then, with a bow to Adrian, a smaller one for her as he crossed down the hall.
Then, straightening, he paused, as though a thought had only just occurred to him. He turned back toward her.
“Forgive me, my lady, but I believe we share an acquaintance. A Miss Nell Frayne, of Plymouth.” He tilted his head and lowered his voice. “The likeness, now that I see the countess close, is really quite remarkable.”
To Adrian it was nothing, and he barely heard the words he had shared with Nell as he walked toward them.
To Nell it was her own name, laid flat between them, spoken in a beautiful hall in a beautiful house she could not leave, and to a face she dared not let change.
She smiled. She said something, although she could not afterward have said what.
And then she wished the earl goodnight, bowed, and hurried to her room.
She stood on the other side of the door, her back against the cool wood, for a long while after the sound of his footsteps had faded.
Whatever hold Mr. Greaves means to take of me, he has not yet closed his hand. If he did, Adrian would have said something. No, he is only showing me that he could do something...and I cannot afford to still be here when he does.
She crossed the room and took the jewel case from the bottom of her trunk and laid its contents out across the coverlet. Those baubles were the only items of real value she had ever owned, the whole of her plan for Edinburgh sewn into a few glittering stones, and the promise of more from Honoria.
They would have to be sold. Quietly, and soon enough to run on before Mr. Greaves decided the waiting had gone on long enough to suit him.
She tucked them away and climbed into bed. She lay awake a long while, turning over onto each side and then the next. She had to think of something.
I will go shopping. Yes…a countess is entitled to shop…and there…yes! There I will see what I can fetch with this, and how far I can go.
***
Truro was busy with noise when they arrived, the scent of fresh bread swirling in the air and the sounds of shoppers haggling for better prices.
Nell quickly sent Betsan off toward the draper’s with instructions to take her time over the ribbon, and slipped alone into the goldsmith’s two doors down before she lost her nerve.
“Good day, Lady,” the goldsmith said as he limped over to the counter.
“Good morning, sir.”
She laid the case open on the counter.
“What will these fetch?”
The goldsmith barely needed the loupe. He turned one stone, then another, his mouth settling into a thin line.
“Paste, my lady.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This piece is cheap glass, and gilt over base metal beneath it. I am sorry to say it…”
“What is it worth then?”
“Worth nothing, or next to nothing, any of it.” He looked up at her, not unkindly. “Someone has had you, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, that is all right,” she said quickly. “I had…only happened on these…and came to you in a passing curiosity.”
“I see.”
“Thank you,” she said sheepishly. She gathered the worthless stones back into their case with hands that had stopped being steady somewhere in the middle of him speaking. She walked out into the street, tears prickling behind her eyes.
No jewels. No means to sell them, no means to run. Honoria lied to me, took advantage of my lack of knowledge when it came to such baubles. I took her word on so much of this, and for what?
Now, there was nothing left between herself and Edinburgh but a debt of jewels that had never existed at all.
She knew then there would be no more money coming from Honoria either.
And she knew worst of all that she had no means to escape when Mr. Greaves decided to let it slip.
She was still reeling with all of it, the case cold and useless in her fist, when she looked up and found Betsan across the street.
The girl stood quite still, a parcel of ribbon under her arm, her eyes moving from her mistress’s face to the goldsmith’s door and back again.
Her gaze was slow and deliberate. Then, as she met Nell’s eyes, she smiled.
The girl lifted a hand in an easy little wave, all bright innocence, and walked toward her.
But she had seen. Nell understood it at once, crossing the street to meet her with a fake smile of her own already rising to match it.
The Countess of Ashcroft had come out of a goldsmith’s shop with nothing bought, and nothing sold that anyone could see, empty-handed and pale, and that of all the things she could not afford to have witnessed this week, this might well be the worst of them.