Page 17

I sat at my writing desk and drew a family tree in pencil, with the fourth Lord and Lady Kershaw at the top on the left. On the right, I wrote the names of Mabel and William Shepherd. I ruled solid lines from the Kershaw side to their two children, Lady Elizabeth Wentworth and her brother, the fifth earl, the man who’d married the Shepherds’ daughter before he inherited the title. Their marriage would probably have angered his parents, if they’d known. I wasn’t yet sure if they had. It was possible only the local vicar and the obligatory witness knew at the time.

“The marriage must have occurred in secret,” I said to Harmony. “Otherwise it would be common knowledge in Morcombe.”

She peered over my shoulder and pointed to the name of Esmond Shepherd. “There should be a dotted line connecting him to his adoptive parents, Mabel and William, and a solid one connecting him to his real parents, Susannah and the fifth earl.”

I ruled the lines as described. “If the fourth earl didn’t know about his son’s secret marriage at the time, surely he found out when Susannah died.” I tapped the pencil against my chin as I realized something didn’t add up. “The name recorded in the parish register for burials was Susannah Shepherd , her maiden name, not Wentworth.”

“The fourth Lord Kershaw could have used his influence to force the vicar to record it that way, so that nobody found out his son married her.”

That would explain it. It seemed he’d known after all, but perhaps not at first. “The fourth Lord Kershaw may have been the one who tore out the marriage register page. I wonder if he also tore out the pages in the St. Michael’s baptism register, or if that was Esmond’s doing.”

“I think it was all Esmond’s,” Harmony said. “He must have had some proof, otherwise it’s just slanderous gossip nobody would believe.” She watched as I extended the family tree with branches for the sixth Lord Kershaw and his sister, Mrs. Browning. It just occurred to me that Mrs. Browning had a relationship with her half-brother. I wonder if she knew.

Harmony traced her finger along the lines up the tree, stopping at Lady Elizabeth. “Do you think she knows? Do you think she knew all along? She’s the only one alive now who was old enough to be aware of events back then, and the fifth earl was her brother.”

If she did know, she’d lied to my face.

Harmony leaned her hip against the edge of the desk and crossed her arms. “Why bother hiding the marriage after Susannah died? Her husband was free to marry again, and to a woman of his family’s choosing if that was so important to them. Why not admit that he’d married Susannah, thereby making Esmond legitimate? By denying the marriage, he denied his son legitimacy and all that goes with it.”

“I suspect that was the intention. As the firstborn son, Esmond would inherit and become the sixth earl. Any sons of a second wife would simply be spares. The best wifely prospects from the best families would never accept that, and the Kershaws wanted only the best.”

Harmony pulled a face. “I’ve seen blood sports that are less brutal.”

“When you realize that, murdering Esmond makes sense. It didn’t before, but this…” I underlined his name on the family tree. “His legitimacy is the motive. With proof, he could oust the current Lord Kershaw. Imagine the upheaval.”

“Proof,” Harmony echoed. “Where is it? Those torn pages must be somewhere.”

“Unless whoever killed Esmond destroyed them. That’s what they were looking for in Esmond’s cottage after he died. Some time after we looked through it that first day, and before Harry and I went back, someone searched high and low. They must have been looking for the pages torn out of the registers, which Esmond told his killer he possessed. The question is, did they find them? And have they been destroyed?”

Dinner in the hotel restaurant was a laborious affair. Now that I was confident I knew why Esmond had been killed, and that Lord Kershaw was most likely the killer, I couldn’t concentrate on the chatter around me. I tried to surreptitiously watch him while he talked and ate, bearing the new information in mind.

I was also very aware that I hadn’t talked it through with Harry yet. It wasn’t that I needed to; Harmony had been an excellent sounding board. I simply wanted to talk to him. It would have to wait until the morning.

Despite my frustration, I think I managed rather well to keep my features schooled and pretend nothing had changed. I listened to just enough conversation to contribute a comment here and there or laugh at an appropriate moment. When dinner eventually came to an end and it was time for the ladies to retreat to the private sitting room, I pretended I didn’t have a care in the world. All the while, I sifted through the evidence in my head, sorting absolute facts from the circumstantial, and deciding who I needed to speak to next.

The person who emerged as most likely to tell me something of use turned out to be Mrs. Browning. While Lady Elizabeth possessed decades’ worth of knowledge, I decided not to speak to her again. I suspected she’d already given me everything she would, or could. Likewise, Lord Kershaw was unlikely to admit he killed his half-brother so he could keep the title for himself. Mrs. Browning, however, had known Esmond very well. As her lover, he may have told her things he’d not told anyone else. Even if he’d not known who his parents really were in those days, he might have told her about hiding places within his cottage. Places where he could have hidden the proof of his birth.

The problem was, I didn’t want to reveal that I knew about the circumstances surrounding Esmond’s birth. For one thing, it could make Mrs. Browning clam up altogether. For another, it could place me in danger if she informed the killer.

I waited until tea and coffee were brought in by the waiters. I helped serve then took a seat beside Mrs. Browning. She couldn’t get up without appearing rude in front of everyone.

Realizing I’d cornered her, she sighed heavily. “What is it now, Miss Fox?”

“I simply wanted to speak to you on your last night with us. Have you enjoyed your stay in London, Mrs. Browning?”

“Well enough. Thank you for accompanying my daughter this morning to Harrods. She says the tiepin was your suggestion. I think it’s a good choice for her fiancé.”

“He’s going into politics, I hear. How exciting for them both. What an interesting life they have ahead of them.”

She narrowed her gaze at me as she sipped her coffee, perhaps trying to detect if I were being sarcastic.

“I’m looking forward to their wedding,” I went on. “Janet tells me it will be a lavish affair.”

Her gaze narrowed further.

I couldn’t work out why. “Is something the matter, Mrs. Browning? Have I offended you?”

“I don’t know why you think me a fool, Miss Fox, but clearly you do.”

“Pardon?”

“You sit next to the one person in this room you don’t like very much, and who doesn’t particularly like you, when there are several other places available.”

“I like you.” It sounded lame, even to me. “You intrigue me,” I added with a little more confidence.

“You pretend to engage me in conversation with the sole purpose of finding out more information about my family, in the hope of pinning Esmond’s murder on one of them.”

“That’s not?—"

“Stop it,” she said with pained effort. “Why do you care so much about the death of a man you never knew?” Her breath suddenly hitched. “Did something happen between you before his death?”

“No! I only met him once, in Lord Kershaw’s office. He was reading a book while he waited for his lordship, but left before he arrived. Our encounter was brief and a little odd, if I’m honest.”

“Liar.”

I blinked rapidly. “I assure you, that’s what happened. That is all that happened. Not every woman found him attractive.”

“It must be a lie. You can’t have caught him reading. He can’t read very well. He would not pick up a book while he waited. He’d hum a tune or do a jig, anything but read.”

I turned to face her fully. “Are you saying he couldn’t read? Not at all?”

“He could a little, but not well. It’s not for lack of trying over the years. He went to school with the village children. My father even paid for my brother’s tutor to teach him, but Esmond didn’t progress. He was sensitive about it and didn’t want people to know. It wasn’t common knowledge. I tried helping him to read and write, too, but he just couldn’t grasp it. He’d jumble up the letters and write them back to front. He’d get cross from frustration, so I gave up before we had a falling out over it.”

I’d heard about word blindness. It had nothing to do with a person’s level of intelligence. It was simply a phenomenon that happened to a few and meant they couldn’t read as well as others.

“Esmond wasn’t stupid.” Mrs. Browning sounded protective. Despite everything he’d said and done, she still loved him enough to ensure falsehoods weren’t spread about him. “He just needed time to concentrate on the words to make sense of them.”

A slow reader would want to read an important document at their leisure. They would take it home to read in a comfortable and familiar environment without others around.

That’s why Esmond had torn out the pages in the registers—to read them properly and carefully in his own time. They were proof of his legitimacy, and his right to be the earl. Understanding them was of vital importance.

I thanked Mrs. Browning. Not only had she inadvertently given me the reason why Esmond had taken the pages, she’d also given me a possible location of where he’d hidden them.

Unless, of course, they’d been found and destroyed.

I spent the next little while chatting to Lady Kershaw. After half an hour, I’d scored an invitation to accompany the family back to Hambledon Hall the following day. Under the pretense of being a keen art lover, I said I wanted to take a closer look at the masterpieces acquired by several generations of Kershaw earls. Not only would such an excuse get me back inside the house, it would also allow me a measure of freedom to wander around.

My evening was cut short when the gentlemen returned. Aunt Lilian wanted to retire and asked me to accompany her upstairs, to use my steadying arm for support. Since my arm was not as sturdy as her husband’s or son’s, I braced myself.

I was right to be worried.

Once we stepped out of the lift on the fourth floor, she let go of my arm. She turned to me, her once-clear eyes full of despair, the shadowed skin around them bearing evidence of her exhaustion. “Does loyalty mean nothing to you, Cleopatra?”

“I, er…yes, of course, it does.”

“Your uncle and I took you in. We didn’t have to. We could have let you fend for yourself in Cambridge.”

“I know, and I’m grateful. Aunt, what?—?”

“This is how you repay us? By accusing our friends of murder?”

“I haven’t accused anyone.”

“You will. I know you will. You have that air about you.” The muscles in her face twitched before distorting with a myriad of emotions that were too fleeting for me to identify.

Before I could assure her that I wouldn’t accuse anyone without proof, she continued, her voice as thin and frail as her figure, like a woman twice her age. “Your grandparents wouldn’t let us adopt you after your parents died. They didn’t want us anywhere near you. Our money was good enough, but we weren’t.”

Tears stung the backs of my eyes, but I didn’t let them spill. I felt compelled to defend my paternal grandparents. They’d just lost their only child in a terrible accident, and his daughter was all they had left. They didn’t want to lose me, too. And knowing Uncle Ronald as I did now, he would have found some way to diminish their influence in my life. “They only took enough money for my upbringing and education. Nothing more. They didn’t want?—”

“What about what I wanted?” she snapped. “Nobody ever asked me. Not my parents, not your mother, my husband, or your grandparents. Why do my feelings not matter?”

That was the heart of her pain, the reason for her melancholy, which led to her becoming addicted to the cocaine-laced tonic. It wasn’t my investigation into the death of her friends’ gamekeeper that caused us to reach this point. It was a lifetime of feeling inferior. Whether others had genuinely put her down, or whether it was her innate lack of self-confidence that imagined it so, I didn’t know. Indeed, it didn’t really matter. She felt that way, and that had plunged her into the depths of despair.

“Your feelings matter to me, Aunt.” I reached for her, but she slapped my hand away.

“You hold them in such high regard.” Her words were a little slurred, and her train of thought difficult to follow.

“My grandparents?”

“Higher regard than you hold your uncle and me. So selfish, just like your mother. She and Ronald were supposed to marry, but she changed her mind. He could have made it difficult for her. He could have insisted the arrangement go ahead, but he let her go because he wanted her to be happy. He settled for me instead.” She tapped bony fingers hard against her chest. “The stupid sister. The dull one. The ugly one.”

“You are none of those, Aunt. You are beautiful, inside and out.” I went to circle my arms around her, but she pushed me away with surprising strength. I lost my balance and stumbled into the wall.

She spun around and raced along the corridor to her room. She did not look back and slammed the door behind her.

I tasted the salty tear as it slid onto my lips. I wasn’t sure when I’d started to cry, but I couldn’t stop. My heart hurt. My throat ached and my head felt woolly. I couldn’t think.

Instinct took over. It was the only explanation for what I did next.

I ran down the stairs to the foyer. Philip, the night porter, said something to me. I didn’t hear his words as I opened the door myself and ran outside.

Later, I tried to remember how the air had felt on my skin. Was it cold? Damp? I had no jacket or coat, just my silk evening dress, yet I felt nothing but a driving force that propelled me along Piccadilly, past the Circus, toward Soho. I pushed open the black door between the confectionery and tobacco shops, and raced up the stairs. I knocked on another door without hesitation.

It seemed to take an age before it opened. Harry stood there in trousers and an undervest. “Cleo! What is it? What’s wrong?”

I buried my face in my hands and burst into great, gulping, ugly sobs.

His arms came around me and drew me against his body. The thud of his heart against my cheek wasn’t as steady as I expected it to be, but he was warm and solid and wonderful.

I didn’t know how long we stood on his threshold, me sobbing into his chest. It could have been seconds or several minutes. As my crying eased, my mind began to finally clear, and I realized the full implications of where I’d gone in my moment of greatest need, and why.

Harry drew away. He took my face in his hands and tilted it up. His thumbs wiped my damp cheeks and his worried gaze searched mine. “What happened, Cleo?”

“Not out here. Let’s go inside.”

He hesitated. Swallowed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea given your state. And mine.”

“I don’t care, Harry. I don’t care.”

Still, he hesitated.

Very well. If it had to happen on the threshold in full view of his neighbors, if they cared to look, then so be it. I cupped his face as he cupped mine and drew it down to my level. I stood on my toes and kissed him.

It was neither fierce nor hungry; it was full of longing. Releasing my emotions after suppressing them for months was cathartic. It allowed for a flood of new feelings to take their place, and they filled me more completely than anything ever had.

Harry pulled away. His breaths were ragged, his eyes shining feverishly in the dim light from the stairwell. He let me go and tucked his hands behind his back. “You’re upset, Cleo. You’re not thinking properly. We should talk about this when you feel more yourself.”

“I am myself, Harry, and I am thinking properly.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, only to lower them to his sides again, then tuck them behind his back once more. He didn’t know what to do with them. “Cleo… I can’t do this if you mean to go on as we were. I’ve tried being just a friend, being patient with you…” He shook his head. “I can’t anymore. Not now. Not after that kiss. Either we move forward or…” He swallowed. “Or we don’t see each other anymore.”

I stepped closer and reached around behind him. I took his hands in mine and looked up at him. He blinked rapidly down at me. “Since I cannot imagine my life without you in it, Harry, it seems the decision is made. We move forward. Together.”

His fingers twined with mine behind his back. A slow smile teased his lips, causing his dimples to make a sudden appearance before disappearing again. I wanted to capture that smile and bring the dimples back.

I kissed him. He released my fingers and circled his arms around me and kissed me, too.

When it ended, Harry pressed his forehead to mine. “Is this real? Or am I still dreaming?”

“It’s real.”

“Good,” he said on a contented sigh. “Let me dress and I’ll take you home.”

I waited just inside the door while he disappeared into the adjoining bedroom. Harry’s flat was rather plain, befitting a bachelor who never brought home female guests. Photographs of his birth mother, as well as the parents who’d adopted him, added a personal touch, as did books on architecture and science. He owned a few novels, but they weren’t well-thumbed like mine. There was no dust on the furniture, in stark contrast to Esmond Shepherd’s cottage where dust and grime were everywhere.

Harry emerged from the bedroom fully clothed, a jacket slung over his arm. He took a coat from the stand and placed it around my shoulders, then put on the jacket. “Ready?”

The fabric at his shoulder was crumpled. I smoothed it with the palm of my hand then stroked his jaw, rough with stubble. “Ready.”

He turned his face and kissed my wrist, then he took my hand and led me outside.

We continued to hold hands as we walked. “Now, tell me why you were crying. What happened?”

“My aunt said some things…” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter what she said. I wasn’t crying because I’d taken her words to heart, I was upset because I didn’t recognize her. Aunt Lilian is sweet and kind. The woman she has become isn’t her, and I was upset because I want her back. I don’t know how to go about it, Harry. I don’t even know how to begin.”

“You can’t do much unless she wants to get better.”

“I know, and in the meantime, I’ll be there for her, although it won’t be easy if she continues to say nasty things.”

Harry squeezed my hand. “We need to speak to a doctor who specializes in cocaine addiction. Perhaps with a little guidance, we can be more useful.”

“Should we ask your uncle for a name?” As hotel manager, Mr. Hobart could get his hands on the rarest of things, from tickets to sold-out theater shows, to appointments with the Prince of Wales’s tailor. But a doctor specializing in cocaine addiction might be beyond him. Indeed, I doubted such a fellow even existed. It was an affliction most medical professionals didn’t even recognize as a problem.

“I’ll ask Dr. Garside,” Harry said.

“The scientist from St. Mary’s Hospital who helped us on the poisoning case?”

“The same. He’s well-connected and keeps up to date on medical breakthroughs and theories. If anyone knows of a specialist in the field, he will.”

My heart swelled. Harry had offered me kind words and support before, but this time he was giving me more. He was giving me a practical solution, and that gave me hope.

I stopped between lampposts and drew him into another kiss. He lifted me onto my toes in his eagerness. Even though we were on a main street, it was late at night and the light was poor. If someone we knew happened to pass by, they wouldn’t know it was us. Although we’d moved our relationship a giant leap forward tonight, we still had obstacles to overcome. The greatest obstacle of all being my family. I didn’t want to be forced to face that obstacle until we were both ready.

We continued our walk but stopped holding hands as we drew closer to the hotel. Harry asked if he could see me in the morning, but I had to decline.

“I’ve made arrangements to go to Hambledon Hall, and I don’t want to lose the opportunity to look around inside.” I told him what I’d learned that day, beginning with the telephone call from Reverend Pritchard and finishing with Mrs. Browning’s revelation about Esmond Shepherd’s difficulty reading.

Harry didn’t say anything, but I could see he was worried. “I’ll come to Morcombe, too. Meet me in the teashop when it’s all over.”

“I’ll be all right,” I assured him. “There won’t be any danger to me.”

“I’m not worried about your safety. I want to make sure you haven’t changed your mind about this.”

I laughed softly before kissing him again. “I won’t, but your company on the journey home will be welcome.”

Someone standing behind Harry cleared his throat, making me jump. Harry stepped aside to reveal Victor, arms crossed over his chest. Despite the formidable pose, he looked amused and rather smug.

“You’re lucky Philip fetched me and not Sir Ronald or Mr. Bainbridge,” he said. “He suspected you’d gone to see a…friend and thought it best if another friend went to check you’d arrived safely, rather than send a family member after you. I was just finishing my shift.”

If I’d been capable of clear thought at the time, I would have realized Philip would worry. It may not be terribly late and there were still many respectable people making their way to and from theaters and private parties, but it was nighttime and I was a lone female. To think of fetching Victor, who was not only my friend but someone who was still in the building rather than in his room at the residence hall, was well done indeed.

My hasty goodbye to Harry wasn’t as heartfelt as I would have liked given the momentousness of the evening, but I felt awkward in front of Victor. When we reached the door to the hotel, I turned around and waved.

Harry stood there, watching, and waved back.