Chapter 3 #2
He said, more evenly, “If your name is damaged publicly, whoever planned this gains both disruption and a convenient distraction. Society loves a muddle when there is a young woman to blame for it.”
Genny held his gaze for a moment. “That sounded dangerously like sympathy.”
“It sounded like fact.”
“Those are not always different.”
No, he thought, they were not.
He looked away first, which was deeply irritating.
It irritated him more because looking away did not help. Her words stayed with him, snagging on things he had never thought to question: the rooms where she was welcomed as delight, the hands that gently moved her aside when business began, the ease with which even he had done the same.
The study proved more promising. It lay at the rear of the house, paneled in walnut, with two large desks and shelves lined in orderly ranks.
Lord Penworth’s secretary stood there when they entered, plainly unnerved by their arrival and rather more unnerved by Harrison’s first question regarding the subscription book.
The poor man protested ignorance with such earnest misery that Harrison believed him almost at once, though belief did not excuse carelessness.
“Who has been in this room within the hour?” he asked.
The secretary swallowed. “My clerk. Lord Penworth. Mrs. Wexley, briefly. And Maggie, the upstairs maid, to ask whether Lady Penworth still wanted the blue ribbons sent down.”
Genny, standing near the side table, turned. “Blue ribbons?”
“Yes, miss. For the flower arrangements, I believe.”
Genny and Harrison exchanged a look.
“Mrs. Wexley’s maid was carrying ribbons,” Genny said.
“Trimming ribbons,” Harrison corrected automatically.
“She did not open the parcel and inventory them in front of him, my lord.”
He inclined his head. “A fair point.”
The secretary’s clerk, when summoned, proved red-faced and overawed but no more guilty than his superior.
Harrison questioned him anyway, walking him carefully through the order of his morning until the young man stammered out one useful detail: he had seen a woman leaving the study in a bonnet trimmed with blue silk flowers, though he had assumed she belonged to Lady Penworth’s household.
“Blue silk flowers,” Genny repeated once the clerk had fled. “That narrows matters to perhaps half the women presently in Mayfair.”
“It narrows them somewhat more within this house.”
“Unless the bonnet belonged to a maid sent on an errand.”
“Or to a lady who had no business here and relied on the fact that servants seldom look directly at their betters.”
Genny considered. “Lady Dorring’s maid wore brown.
Mrs. Wexley’s maid had a plain cap. Lady Penworth’s companion had violet trim this morning.
Alexandra wore cream roses. Louisa had nothing at all.
I had primrose satin. Mrs. Vale…” She frowned.
“No, Mrs. Vale had jet trimming, because she said spring colors made her look charitable.”
The observation was so perfectly unnecessary and yet so perfectly useful that Harrison could only stare for a beat before asking, “Do you catalogue bonnets as a matter of habit?”
“I catalogue everything as a matter of habit. I merely arrange the facts less tediously than you do.”
He ought not to have enjoyed that answer. Yet he found himself doing exactly that.
The clerk’s detail did not produce the ledger, but it did send them back to the corridor with a clearer sense that the house had become a stage on which someone moved in borrowed ordinary motions. Harrison disliked stages. They invited performance, deception, and applause for the wrong people.
As they descended the rear stairs toward the smaller sitting room adjoining the conservatory, he became aware that Genny had gone uncharacteristically quiet.
He looked down at her. “You are thinking.”
She glanced up. “Do I usually give the impression of avoiding it?”
“Often.”
“That is very rude.”
“That does not make it untrue.”
She made a face at him, which was shockingly difficult not to find delightful.
“I was thinking,” she said, “that if the person meant to harm only the fête, they need not have chosen me. A missing ledger would be enough to throw the household into panic. The note was personal.”
He slowed slightly. The hallway was cooler here, touched by the damp sweetness of plants from the conservatory beyond.
Light filtered through the glass doors and crossed the carpet runner.
In that softened half-light, with her features less animated than usual, Genny looked younger and more vulnerable than he liked.
“Yes,” he said. “I think so too.”
“Then it is someone who either dislikes me or finds me useful to dislike.”
The plainness of it stopped him.
He thought of alliances, obligations, visible interests. She thought of the glance over a fan. The smile offered half a beat too late. The way one woman could use another as a blade and leave no fingerprints upon the handle.
“You have enemies?” he asked.
She let out a laugh with no mirth in it. “Only the ordinary sort. Women who dislike noise. Mothers who fear I shall corrupt their daughters. Men who prefer their young ladies meek and decorative, though I try to be decorative enough to comfort them.”
He did not care for the bitterness under the jest.
“And no one more particular than that?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Not that I know of.”
It was the wrong answer only because it left him dissatisfied.
Harrison found he wanted particulars. Names.
Motives. A ledger of grievances neatly inked and arranged so he might draw a line through each one until he came to the guilty party.
The trouble was that the world did not present its injuries so neatly, especially where women were concerned.
When they entered the sitting room, he began another systematic search while Genny moved toward the conservatory doors.
Outside, beyond the glass, palm leaves cast feathery shadows across the tiled floor.
A gardener stood in the distance adjusting pots of white azalea, oblivious to scandal unfolding a few paces away.
“Nothing here,” Genny murmured.
“Not yet.”
She turned back to him. “You always say things as though persistence alone obliges the universe to cooperate.”
“Persistence is generally more reliable than optimism.”
“And yet here we both are, persevering in the same cause by different methods. It is almost companionable.”
He looked at her then, properly looked, and for one deeply unfortunate moment companionable was not the word that came to mind.
She stood framed by spring light, one hand against the glass, her bonnet ribbons loosened. No laugh hid her now. Thought moved plainly across her face, quick and unguarded.
Companionable, no.
Dangerous was nearer the mark.
Before he could say anything, footsteps approached from the far corridor. A maid appeared at the threshold, bobbing a curtsy.
“My lord. Miss Moreland. Lady Penworth asks whether the ledger has been found.”
“No,” Harrison said. “But tell her we are making progress.”
The maid departed.
Genny arched a brow. “Were we?”
“We are now obliged to.”
That won him another quick laugh, and he began to understand how intoxicating that sound could become if a man were careless.
He returned to the side table and paused. Beneath a stack of gardening journals lay a folded sheet, half hidden. It was not the ledger, but it bore the Penworth crest.
Harrison unfolded it.
It was a subscription acknowledgment list from earlier in the week with several names lightly scored through in pencil and one, Lady Castlemain, circled twice.
Genny came to his side. “What is it?”
He showed her.
Her eyes narrowed. “Lady Castlemain is one of the principal benefactors, is she not?”
“Yes.”
“And Mrs. Wexley mentioned this morning that her seating must be handled carefully because Lady Dorring cannot bear to be ranked beneath her.”
He looked at her. “You think the subscription list, the changes to the papers, and the social placements are connected.”
“I think someone may be doing more than causing confusion. They may be trying to provoke a very specific public quarrel.”
The idea fell into place. A missing ledger. Misdirected packets. Competing ladies. Subscription rankings. A blame note left for a young woman easy to dismiss. It was not random. It was deliberate.
Harrison felt the old, cold focus settle over him. He knew this feeling well. It came when accounts failed to balance, when a steward lied, when an estate difficulty hid something uglier beneath the obvious. He became still. Precise. Difficult to distract.
Unfortunately, Miss Genevieve Moreland had become the foremost exception to that final rule.
“She would attend the fête regardless,” he said slowly, thinking aloud. “But if Lady Castlemain were offended publicly, or if her subscription were omitted or mishandled, the matter could spread quickly.”
“And if I were blamed for the errors,” Genny said, “everyone would be far too busy discussing my spectacular incompetence to notice the larger design until it was too late.”
He met her gaze.
“Yes.”
She exhaled slowly. “That is devilish.”
“It is deliberate,” he said. “Which is worse.”
For a moment they stood shoulder to shoulder over the list, not touching, yet close enough that Harrison could feel the warmth of her beside him. He should have stepped away. He did not.
Instead he found himself saying, more quietly than intended, “Whoever planned this counted on you being dismissed.”
Genny did not answer at once. When she did, her voice had softened. “Many people do.”
Something tightened in his chest. It was not pity. Harrison disliked pity and had no use for it. It was anger, perhaps, or something more dangerous, because it carried the sudden, ungentlemanly desire to prove every one of those people wrong.
He folded the subscription sheet and slid it into his pocket. “Then they have made a serious mistake.”
Her eyes lifted to his. The look in them was searching, startled, and far too direct.
“You mean to catch them.”