Chapter Eight
I could not interrogate Miss Dujardin while Leander was present, so I tried casting lures before the boy.
I had served in Spain under Wellington.
I had once known a real pony named Dasher.
I’d known another fellow with a middle name of Merton.
Nothing I said or hinted at inspired Leander to mention his father. He’d either been taught not to broach the topic, or having had no experience of a father in life, it didn’t occur to him to embark on such discussions.
By the time we were enjoying our ices beneath Berkeley Square’s maples, I had given up my reconnaissance efforts.
“Let’s have a constitutional,” Hyperia said, rising and smoothing her skirts. “If I’m to walk anywhere in this weather, I’d prefer to walk in the shade.” She extended a hand to Leander, who popped off his bench and toddled off at her side.
“Miss Dujardin?” I rose, and before I could offer assistance, she was on her feet. Not to be outflanked, I winged my elbow. “You’ve been notably quiet.”
She accepted the courtesy, which I found a trifle disappointing. Miss Dujardin on her mettle was impressive, but she was apparently choosing her battles today.
“Leander has been notably voluble. He has so few people to talk to. Mrs. Danforth ascribes to the theory that children should be neither seen nor heard, and that doesn’t leave much room for a small boy to be himself.”
“A Miss Clothilda Hammerschmidt paid a call on me yesterday,” I said, purposely opening the topic without preamble. “She claims to be Leander’s mother.”
Miss Dujardin’s gaze was on Leander, who had stopped to inspect a bug, or a rock, or clover growing from a crack in the walkway. At his age, the world should be full of wonders.
“Did this Miss Hammerschmidt offer any proof of her claim, my lord?”
“She offered threats. I’m to see a generous sum settled on her, or she will interfere with my attempts to improve Leander’s situation.”
A hint of displeasure crossed Miss Dujardin’s damnably serene features. “She cannot threaten a ducal household and hope to gain by it. Besides, she’s not his mother.”
“Right, his mother was the late Mrs. Waites, who would have been consumptive at the time of his conception. Then too, I can find nobody who places Harry consistently at Mrs. Waites’s side during the relevant winter. The path through which they became acquainted—backstage at the theater—serves more credibly for Miss Hammerschmidt’s purposes. I can place Harry at the opera that winter, and I do know he was popular with ladies of a certain ilk.”
“Lord Harry was the son of a duke. Of course he was popular with the ladies.”
“I am the son of a duke, and yet, I cannot make the same claim.”
She stopped on the walkway. “Nobody disputes that Lord Harry is that boy’s father.”
“Nobody can prove it either. Mrs. Danforth struck Leander today, hard. Forehand and backhand to the face, and all he could do was run away. She clearly has no respect for the boy’s paternal antecedents, or perhaps she knows they are lowly rather than aristocratic.”
Bad of me to ambush Leander’s nursemaid, but Miss Dujardin had been lying to me from our first encounter. She sank onto the nearest bench.
“She struck him?”
“He came downstairs on his own, ostensibly to make a short trip to the garden, probably in search of you. She caught him outside of his room without supervision and chastised him. His room was devoid of a chamber pot at the time.”
I did not want to loom over Miss Dujardin, so I shared her bench.
“That woman… Martha said Mrs. Danforth wasn’t so bitter, so contrary, in India. Time can change people.”
Time had certainly changed me. “Here is my challenge, Miss Dujardin: If Leander is illegitimate, then his mother is his legal custodian. At any point, she can disrupt his life, whisk him from whatever security I can provide, and threaten scandal and mayhem. I need to know who his mother is even more than I need to know his father’s identity. Leander’s current situation is untenable, and if you know anything—anything at all—that would illuminate the truth of his antecedents, you owe it to the boy to share that information with me.”
She swiped at her cheek with a worn handkerchief. Somebody had taken the time to embroider a border of violets and greenery on the thin linen square, but the colors were faded, the stitches unraveling.
“Leander won’t tell me where his soldiers are,” Miss Dujardin said. “He doesn’t want anything to happen to them, so he’s hidden them. I hate that.”
“I saw a valise in the stable aisle,” I said. “Have you packed Leander’s effects in anticipation of being evicted?”
She nodded. “He has so little, and I do not trust Mrs. Danforth farther than I could toss you, my lord. Martha had no place else to go, and none of this is Leander’s fault. If she turned us out, I wanted Leander to at least keep what little he has.”
“I can send somebody to retrieve the valise,” I said, “but what of your effects?”
“I can bundle up what I own in less than a minute.”
She spoke from wretched experience, apparently.
“My inclination is to simply keep the boy,” I said. “Take him back to Waltham House, send Mrs. Danforth a chilly note of explanation, and be done with her. She wants him gone, he’s not safe there unless you hover at his elbow, and he knows it.”
“What’s stopping you? Mrs. Danforth begrudges Leander butter for his porridge, and he’s learning from her how to hate. He never encountered the sort of meanness she’s shown him until he came to her household.”
“I hesitate to essentially kidnap Leander, because he’s had enough upheaval in recent weeks, and I’d like to spare him another shock. I can have a stern word with Mrs. Danforth, and I will. The real problem is that as soon as I publicly acknowledge that Leander is a Caldicott, then his mother, whoever she may be, has influence over His Grace’s household. She’ll extort coin at least from the duke and make worse trouble for him than that.”
Arthur had been discreet with Banter—very discreet—but Clothilda Hammerschmidt worried me. Polite society speculated about Arthur’s friendship with Banter, especially now that they were planning to travel together, though polite society speculated about any passing triviality if it bore a hint of salaciousness.
Miss Hammerschmidt would not speculate. She would accuse . She’d allege . She’d create problems for Arthur and Leander both, and coin alone might not be sufficient inducement to shut her mouth, much less keep it shut.
Then there was Clarissa, who also needed money and whose relationship with Harry was the nearest I’d found to a mistress and her protector.
As a footnote to the above, Miss Siegurdson had had opportunities for intimacy with Harry, she protested her innocence vehemently, and she’d all but pointed a finger at some housekeeper I’d be unlikely to track down in years of trying. Helvetica Siegurdson was an exceedingly intelligent woman, and she’d have an ally in Her Grace of Ambrose if I gave any indication that she was among my list of maternal suspects.
“Take Leander home with you,” Miss Dujardin said. “Send somebody for his valise. One more change of abode won’t make that much difference at this point.”
I wanted to kick something—Mrs. Danforth’s Christian charity, for example—but the situation called for reason.
“Until I’ve sorted Miss Hammerschmidt out, taking the boy into the ducal household is ill-advised. I will speak to Mrs. Danforth when I return you and Leander home. Speak to her very pointedly. She has given me another week to get Leander settled, and I need that week. Then too, the boy will want to collect his soldiers.”
“They are somewhere in the garden,” Miss Dujardin said. “I know that much.”
I knew precisely where his soldiers were, but that wasn’t my secret to share. “You’ve never heard of a Clothilda Hammerschmidt?”
“She was a seamstress. Martha knew everybody backstage, and the wardrobe seamstresses were all friendly. Pansy said Clothilda came around yesterday, asking the housekeeper for Martha’s dresses, but I had no idea… She claims she’s Leander’s mother?”
“Vociferously. She says she left him with Martha, the respectable widow who had a bit of a widow’s pension coming in, though Clothilda contributed conscientiously to the household coffers too. Clothilda claimed that a widow with a baby was treated more kindly than an opera dancer with a baby would be.”
“I cannot fathom… I cannot grasp such boldness. You must not let her have Leander, my lord. She’ll sell him to a brothel, or worse.”
“She might threaten, but he’s the goose who can lay golden eggs for her, once I admit he’s Harry’s son. As long as there’s doubt about Leander’s paternity, Miss Hammerschmidt will tread carefully.” A hope rather than a certainty.
“So you leave Leander and me with the Danforth creature while you do what?”
“My next step will be a frank talk with Lady Clarissa Valmond, who intends to decamp from London at first light. Tell Leander that he should be ready to collect up his soldiers on short notice.”
“Right.” Miss Dujardin stalked off in the direction of Hyperia and Leander, who were admiring the various fancy coaches parked around the square.
“Miss Dujardin?” I called.
She turned. “My lord?”
“One more question.” I closed the distance between us. “Were you at the agencies this morning?”
Her chin came up. “And if I was?”
“They can’t offer you much if you lack a character and references.” Not quite what I’d meant to say.
“I know that, and if I didn’t, they certainly made the situation plain to me.”
“I had hoped when Leander came to Waltham House that you’d join him. Call yourself his nursemaid or his governess—he’ll need both—but don’t abandon him in strange surroundings.” I’d made my plans plain to her on a previous occasion, but she hadn’t agreed to those plans, had she?
Her expression turned not merely bleak, but desolate. “Sometimes a clean break is best.” She hailed her charge and inspected his mostly clean hands, while I considered a question:
Best for whom?
“I will see if Lady Clarissa is in.” The sniffy butler appropriated my card, set it on a salver, and decamped without so much as offering to take my hat. He had a slight limp and was at least six inches shorter than a regulation Mayfair butler should be.
Affordable summer help in London. At Valmond House in Sussex, the staff knew me on sight and would have caught me up on all the latest household gossip on the way to the family parlor, rather than offer me the next thing to the cut domestique.
Lady Clarissa was sharing quarters with her brother, Viscount Reardon. His lordship was a gifted artist, flush with the success of his recent debut exhibition. Reardon came down the steps, his cuffs turned back, no morning coat, his blond hair sticking up on the right, and a faint odor of linseed oil wafting about his person.
“Lord Julian? What are you doing loitering in the foyer? Is Clarissa going out in this heat? Excuse my dirt, by the way. I didn’t know we had a caller. Hanford!”
“I believe he’s gone to see if her ladyship is in. I take it the painting is going well?”
“Splendidly.” He rolled down a cuff, fished in his pocket for a sleeve button, and finding none, turned his cuff back again. “I took your advice and scheduled sittings only upon receipt of a retainer. I thought that would put people off, but it seems demanding coin made a spot on my calendar more desirable.”
He was Clarissa’s younger brother, which put him more than five years my junior. As the only son of the Earl of Valloise, Reardon had not served in uniform, not even in the local militia, and yet, his battle scenes were eerily realistic.
“You’re still enjoying the work?” I asked.
“Interesting question. When I’m required to paint a specific person, the task isn’t the same as when I can follow the inspiration of the moment, but both can be challenging. Mr. Osgood Banter will sit to me later this month. I don’t know him well, but he’s an attractive fellow. They make for easier subjects than the other kind.”
Reardon was happy, and more to the point, he was earning much-needed coin. He would doubtless have waxed eloquent by the hour about pigments, light, and symbolism, but Hanford scuttled forth from down the corridor.
“Lady Clarissa will see you, my lord. I’m to warn you that she hasn’t much time to spare.”
“Clary’s haring off,” Reardon said. “Can’t stand the stink of Town in summer, though I’m partial to eau de turpentine myself. Hanford, send a tray in to her ladyship when you’ve got Lord Julian situated, and for pity’s sake, don’t leave a caller cooling his heels in the foyer. That’s what we have guest parlors for.”
Hanford’s expression went from haughty to the glacial stoicism of a junior officer receiving an undeserved dressing down before his fellows. “Yes, sir. My apologies, sir. This way, my lord.”
Reardon waved us on our way and disappeared into the house’s lower reaches. He’d violate eight standing orders of decorum by intruding belowstairs, but if he was at all akin to Harry, the staff would like him for it.
“You were infantry?” I inquired as Hanford led me down a shadowy corridor.
“Artillery. The French didn’t get me, a mule tromped on my foot, then wouldn’t get off. We should have forgotten all about besieging those Spanish towns and simply turned a herd of army mules loose on ’em.”
“Would that Wellington had had your insight.”
We shared a smile, and Hanford announced me correctly. Clarissa received me in the family parlor and rose from an escritoire to clasp both my hands.
“My lord, what a delight. An absolute delight. Hanford, we must have refreshment. Will lemonade do, Julian? Or are you still favoring meadow tea?”
“Cold meadow tea would suit. Any sort of mint. You’re looking well.”
She twinkled at me as only Lady Clarissa Valmond could. Her beauty was unconventional—dark hair instead of the favored fair locks, brows a touch too heavy, and jaw a bit angular. Rather than try to soften her appearance, she reveled in her differentness. Lady Clarissa had an arsenal of smiles, each one more intimate and memorable than the last, and she knew how to touch a man such that even an innocuous brush of her fingers on his sleeve approached a caress.
Harry had warned me against her charms, but I had yet to decide whether Harry was being protective of me or possessive of Clarissa. His admonitions had not flattered the lady, and that puzzled me too. To the extent Harry and Clarissa had had any sort of understanding, the arrangement had been on Harry’s terms.
“You are too kind,” Clarissa said, waving me to the second wing chair. “Looking well in this heat is impossible for any save a parakeet. I vow I’ve never endured a more oppressive summer.” She accepted my proffered hand and settled onto the opposite seat with all the grace of a sylph.
“I hear you are abandoning the capital to return to Sussex, my lady. Will Reardon be escorting you?”
“Don’t be catty, Julian. Reardon has moved his studio to Town, his commissions are all here, and honoring his commissions has become his raison d’être . Mama and Papa have returned to the seaside, and I will join them after a short respite at home. How are Waltham’s travel preparations coming along?”
A typical Lady Clarissa prevarication, delivered with all the sparkling good humor in the world, though she’d also aimed a surreptitious glance at the clock on the mantel.
“Waltham would leave tonight if his solicitors permitted it.”
Clarissa’s vivacity faltered. “Society does that. Makes foreign shores look extraordinarily appealing. I’ve yet to see Paris myself. Tell me what it’s like. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
She knew I had. She was being equal parts flattering and manipulative. Behind her warmth and smiles lay an agenda, though I had yet to divine the particulars.
“We can discuss Paris some other day, Clarissa. At the moment, I’m pressed for time and more than a little frustrated.”
She made a face. “This has to do with Harry again, doesn’t it? I’ve told you all I know, Julian, and the topic bores me. Harry was a war hero, taken much too soon, felled in his prime, and all that, but he’s been gone for some time, and we were never as close as people thought.”
“Because,” I replied, “that was the point. For all the hostesses and hopefuls to think Harry was so smitten with you that, but for a nasty little war, you and he might as well be betrothed.”
She tapped a manicured nail on the upholstered arm of her chair. “Old news, Julian. Harry paid me to keep up that pretense, to swan about on his arm when he was in Town and look smitten. I appreciated the coin I earned with my fawning, and Society was fooled. I wonder what’s keeping Hanford with that tray.”
I rose and closed the door, then resumed my seat. “I am up to three candidates for the post of mother to Harry’s by-blow, if the boy is even Harry’s in the first place. We have the late regimental widow, and now an opera dancer turned seamstress has come forth. She’s threatening to make life difficult for His Grace. If she is Leander’s legal custodian, difficult will be an understatement. I’ve also learned that Harry’s domestic staff doted on him shamelessly that winter, though it’s a toss-up whether the pretty cook or the devoted housekeeper favored him with her affections. I have only the cook’s inferences to go on regarding the housekeeper, you see.”
“Half the world doted on Harry. He was handsome, charming, well-heeled, and ruthless in pursuit of a goal. He considered himself doomed to become the duke one day and intended to have a fine time while he awaited his fate.”
“He was aware that Waltham was unlikely to marry?” If so, that was news to me, and likely to Arthur too. Bad news.
“Abundantly aware. On Harry’s twenty-first birthday, the old duke sat him down and made matters appallingly clear. Harry was to be fruitful and legitimately multiply, so Harry of course charted a path that did not include matrimony or the near occasion thereof.”
“He did not marry you?”
“Julian, has the heat addled your wits?”
Worry was addling my wits. “Harry might well have procured a special license, though investigating that possibility will take some time. Easier to ask what you’re hiding and why you’re leaving Town when you can finally afford to frequent the shops for the first time in years.”
She smiled blandly. “Perhaps I’m removing myself from temptation. I bought a few necessities, but I don’t want to lose the habit of frugality. The estate has been neglected, the commissions could dry up as quickly as one of Reardon’s portraits cures, and there’s little company of merit left in Town this time of year.”
“Your insults are usually more subtle, my lady.”
“The heat,” she said, gesturing languidly. “My wits wilt in the heat. You must admit, the countryside is a more comfortable place to while away high summer, and thus I will decamp on the morrow.” A tap on the door interrupted that prevarication. “Ah, the tea. At last. Come in!”
Clarissa beamed at her butler.
He set the tray on the low table. “Will, there be anything else, my lady?”
“Not for the nonce. Lord Julian won’t be staying long.”
“Very good, my lady.”
Hanford closed the door in his wake, which spared me the effort. Clarissa passed me a drink and sipped at her own glass while regarding me over the rim. The effect was more watchful than flirtatious.
Harry could be ruthless—Clarissa was right about that—but Clarissa had a ruthless streak too. She’d gone to great lengths to preserve her family from financial ruin, even to accepting coin from Harry to play the role of fiancée-in-waiting. She’d been a ferocious advocate for her brother’s talent, and she’d kept the family seat functioning on sheer resolve.
“May I ask how Harry compensated you?”
She ran the fourth finger of her left hand around the rim of her glass and again allowed her gaze to stray to the clock. “He paid me. What other sort of compensation is there? Must you belabor the past at such tedious length?”
“I apologize for prying, but I’m trying to make sense of Harry’s ledgers. I can find no indication of your arrangement with him in his account book. No invoices from jewelers or modistes, no exorbitant debts of honor. If he hid his payments to you in the undergrowth, so to speak, he might have had a similar arrangement with Leander’s mother. I would not ask, except that Leander deserves to know the truth of his antecedents.”
That had become my agenda. Clothilda Hammerschmidt’s threats, Mrs. Danforth’s cruel charity, Helvetica Siegurdson’s evasiveness troubled me exceedingly, but my concern was more and more for Leander, who, of all parties, was blameless.
“Maybe, Julian, the boy and his mother will be better off if you simply put a roof over his head and cease meddling. Leander might be devastated by the truth. Did you ever think of that? Society loves a mystery, but you cannot allow even your departed brother any privacy. You must have your facts, and damn the consequences.”
For Clarissa, that was a tantrum. She wanted the world to think her vain, shallow, and harmless, but she was, in truth, defined by determination to protect the interests of her loved ones. What could drive an attractive, privileged woman to extended feats of deception, even as she appeared to swan from parlor to music room to conservatory, not a care in the world?
Clarissa glanced at the clock for the third time, a breach of manners, even given that she found my errand tiresome.
“You’re leaving this evening, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Oh, perhaps. If I finish packing in time. Spares the horses the worst of the heat to travel at night, and there’s so much less traffic at the tollgates.”
After dark, fewer people would see a lady quitting Mayfair on short notice, without an escort. Something about my queries was driving Clarissa into a disorderly retreat. She was brave, tenacious, and much smarter than she wanted the world to know.
More cunning, as I’d recently learned in Sussex, and more devious.
My curiosity returned to a question Lady Ophelia had posed more than once: Why wasn’t Clarissa married? True, her family was pockets to let, in far worse straits than anybody knew, but she was an earl’s pretty daughter. She was precisely the sort of bride a wealthy cit sought for his darling son, the socially well-placed half of what was usually called an advantageous match.
She’d not only failed to pursue such a course, she’d apparently discouraged all comers and contented herself with Harry’s unflattering arrangement, followed by looming penury.
Why? What could inspire a woman raised to value the married state above all else to deny herself that solution?
These thoughts passed through my mind in the time it took Clarissa to circle her finger twice more around the rim of her glass.
She was trying for an annoyed expression and failing. Behind the feigned boredom and testy oratory lay a watchfulness. A vigilance. I’d kept relentless vigils on reconnaissance, observed French scouting patrols by the hour, noting their every move. I’d defied exhaustion, common sense, and my own self-preservation instincts to ensure the menace stayed far, far from my fellows back in camp.
Insight struck on the third pass of her ring finger around the rim of her glass. Clarissa wasn’t motivated by a what . Her actions were inspired by a who .
“You did have a child,” I said. “But was Harry the father?”