What She Knows
Chapter twenty-seven
Violet
Five days of chocolates had gone into the window box. The geraniums were dead.
Violet sat up and pulled her shawl to her shoulders when Sarah came in with the tray and the news that there was fog on the square. She set the chocolate by the window and crossed to the fire without being told.
“His Grace was asking after you yesterday. About the stillroom.” She paused while smoothing her sleeve. “He doesn’t usually trouble himself with the household.”
“Was he,” said Violet. “The stillroom was His Grace’s mother’s domain. He would want it to honour her memory.”
“While we are on the topic, I have been going through the stillroom receipts,” she said, as Sarah came to the dressing table. “Some of them go back thirty years.”
“Her Grace kept it up herself until her eyes went.” Sarah took the hairbrush from the table. “After that it stood idle.”
“Did the other duchesses use it?”
“Lady Elizabeth had a country upbringing. She might have.” Long strokes, from the crown down. “Lady Catherine had no interest in it. Lady Margaret brought her own woman for such things.”
Violet watched Sarah in the glass. Her face was composed and at work.
“Catherine,” she said. “She looked so well in the portrait.”
“She was.” The brush slowed. “Very lively. Right up until…”
“Go on.”
“It was nothing, Your Grace.” Sarah’s complexion was slightly rosy.
“I would still like to hear it.”
The comb paused mid-air while Sarah considered. “She was not quite herself. Perhaps she’d taken too much sun.”
“In what manner was she different?”
The comb resumed through Violet’s hair. “She would lose the thread of what she’d been doing. Get up in the night and not know why.”
Violet looked at her own reflection. The fourth wife. “Poor woman,” she said.
“Yes.” Sarah’s voice was full of sympathy. “You’ve done a great deal with the stillroom, Your Grace. The whole house has noticed.”
“I expect they have.”
Sarah moved to dress her. When she leaned in to fasten a button, Violet caught a faintly rotten smell. She kept her expression neutral. By the time Sarah straightened, it was gone.
She let Sarah work in silence for a moment. Sarah moved around the room, folding. Violet sat at the dressing table and turned the wedding band on her finger.
“There is something I have been curious about,” Violet said. “Mr Vexley called on Thursday. The more I see him, the easier I find him.”
“He is easy,” Sarah said.
“He spoke of his situation at some length.” Violet turned her ring on her finger. “He seems to be looking. For a companion, if I read his pauses correctly. He struck me as being quite particular about what he wanted.”
Sarah laid out hairpins on a tray. “Men in his position often are.” Her voice was perfectly detached.
“Yes. He seemed eager for a fresh arrangement. Someone young, I gathered.”
Sarah paused her hands. “I—I wouldn’t know about his arrangements.”
“No. Of course not.” Violet reached out for a pin. “Speaking of which, His Grace has spoken of the arrangement. For the child.”
Sarah took the pin. “His Grace has always been generous. To those connected to the family.” The pin went in.
“Yes.” Violet watched her face in the glass. “Mr Vexley appeared quite shocked about His Grace’s involvement.”
Sarah’s breath caught, her hand faltered. “I couldn’t say what Mr Vexley knows or doesn’t.”
“No.” Violet held out another pin. “He seemed rather shaken. I cannot imagine why.”
Sarah’s hands stilled at her crown. She rubbed her hands on her skirts. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
“No. Of course not.”
The pins continued. Sarah was at the temple curls now, her fingers working close to Violet’s ear, albeit distractedly. Violet passed another pin across.
“Does the child do well?”
Sarah hesitated for a moment. “Well enough.”
“Does Edmund know him?”
“Ed… Mr Vexley has no part in it.”
Sarah moved to lay out the gloves. Violet twirled a curl around her finger, satisfied.
“Is there anything else Your Grace requires?”
“No. Thank you, Sarah.”
She watched her go. So, her lady’s maid was quite familiar with the duke’s cousin. It was possible that she was looking for a wealthy man to provide for her and her child. But Edmund was not a wealthy man. Unless he inherited. A chill went down her spine.
Kit was at the gate of the square garden. He fell into step and kept his voice low.
“She hired a carriage,” he said. “Out of a yard off Southampton Row. She knew the yard and she knew the driver.”
Violet kept her face toward the path.
“An hour south. A village in Surrey. She went directly to a cottage at the end of the high street without asking directions.”
They passed a nursemaid wheeling a child.
“A respectable household. A couple, middle-aged. The woman came out when she heard the carriage.” A pause. “With a boy. Dark-haired.”
Violet nodded. A maid hiring a carriage was unusual but not shocking given she had the financial support of a duke.
“She was different. Warm and motherly. She held the boy for a long time. Kissed his face all over, brought him gifts. She laughed.”
They walked while the crease between Violet’s brows deepened.
“I spoke to the villagers. The boy has been placed with the cottagers since he was an infant.”
Violet’s steps slowed.
“They called him Edmund.”
She stopped and turned toward Kit. “Do you think he’s Edmund’s son and not Harold’s?”
Kit regarded her without blinking. “Perhaps. The boy has dark hair. Edmund’s is light. Baker’s is light as well.”
“What does that signify? Surely, the name is more telling than the colour of his hair?”
His silence felt like an hour had passed when he said, “Violet… your husband’s name is Henry Edmund Rockford Vexley.”
The breath died in her throat. She couldn’t move.
“It gives her motive,” Kit said.
She made herself stand still and think past it.
The boy could be her husband’s. The name, the dark hair, the private meetings with Sarah in his chamber.
It would explain everything—the secrecy, the generosity, the years of silence.
It would also mean that every word he had spoken to her in the garden, in the carriage, in the dark, had been spoken over a lie.
She did not believe it. But she could not afford not to ask.
Kit continued. “A woman killing to replace the duchess or just purely out of jealousy is nothing new.”
Violet managed to nod. She knew this, of course, but she could not believe him to be a liar or a coward. Gradually, certain facts assembled themselves. Why he would invite Sarah to his bedchamber to discuss the boy. Why he’d not suspected her all these years.
“And the boy is ten. Just turned.”
Violet’s footstep echoed through the corridor as she marched to her husband’s study. The secretary started to rise when the door opened. Violet was already past him.
Henry looked up from the desk. The warmth that had come into his face fell away.
“Leave us,” he said. His secretary gathered his papers and went, rather eagerly, she thought.
Violet stayed near the door and didn’t move toward him. She needed the distance between them. “Your middle name. Is it Edmund?”
He put his pen down. “It is. What of it?”
“Kit followed Sarah yesterday. To a village off the high street. She visits a couple there.”
His fist went to his chin and rested beneath it.
“There was a boy living with the couple, dark hair. Like yours.”
His eyes narrowed but said nothing. Violet swallowed, “They call him Mrs Baker’s son. They call him Edmund.”
His frown deepened and a shadow spread over his countenance. “He is not mine, if that is what you are suggesting.” His voice was eerily quiet.
She took a deep breath and stood tall, lifting her chin. “He is not Harold’s either. He is ten years old. When did Harold pass away?”
“Thirteen years ago. I was told he was thirteen.” He paused. “Has it not occurred to you that the boy may be Edmund’s?”
“Yes. But Edmund is not the one who received Sarah in his private chambers.”
“I told you what that conversation was.”
“I know what you told me.”
He turned around to face the window. His hand went to his nape, holding it there.
When he turned back, his voice was calm.
“I acknowledge that it was improper. It was convenient and afforded us the privacy for I did not wish to sully my brother’s good name.
However, I should not have allowed it. Not especially after our marriage.
” He walked around the desk and leaned against it.
“However, nothing ever happened between us. I never laid a hand on her.”
Violet studied his face, waited for a sign of guilt or unease. When she found none, she said, “Has Edmund said anything about the boy? About any natural born children?”
“No.” He crossed his ankles. “I never suspected their involvement either.”
“It is possible that he does not know about the child. There is only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
Henry’s head tilted a little.
“Why not ask him?” she said, leaning against the wall. “Shall we have him for dinner? We ought to get to know him better, what with him being your heir and all.”
Henry looked at her. The line between his brows eased.
“Thursday,” he said. “I shall write to him myself.”