Edith Layton (3 page)

Julianne smiled but felt even more wary. Her blue wrapper was as old as the earth, and her hair looked like mud when she compared it to her cousin’s fair tresses. And so far as she could tell, Hammond hadn’t looked at her sideways. “Thank you,” she said, and waited for whatever it was Sophie had really come to say.

“So, what did you think of him?” Sophie asked excitedly. “My fiancé,” she explained. “My dear Hammond.”

“He seems like a very nice young man,” Julianne
said. “I hadn’t known you were engaged. Has it been long?”

“Oh, months now,” Sophie said with a wave of her hand. “He came here in September, and we were engaged by December.” Her eyes grew wide, she looked as though she’d have clapped her hand over her mouth if she hadn’t stopped herself in time. “Didn’t you know? I was sure we’d sent your parents the announcement,” she added quickly. “Didn’t you see it in the
Times
?”

“We don’t get it regularly,” Julianne said quietly, feeling both offended and defensive; insulted because she hadn’t been considered important enough to notify and inferior because she didn’t scan the
Times
for the social news.

“Well, there it is.” Sophie shrugged. “It hardly matters. You were going to be invited to the wedding, of course.”

“Of course,” Julianne murmured, suddenly not believing that at all. “Look, Sophie,” she began, and hesitated, wondering how to say it. She couldn’t spend a night in this house, however grand it was, without knowing why. She was too tired for intricate reasoning, so she decided to just be honest.

“Sophie,” she said, “I guess I ought to have written to ask before I came. But Mama went on about your wanting to see me again, introduce me to society and such, and I wanted to believe it. That was before I knew you were engaged. Now it makes very little sense at all. You haven’t seen me in five years, and here you have a fiancé, and I suppose more friends than you can count. So,” she asked, cocking her head
to the side as she studied her cousin, “why in the world did you invite me here?”

Sophie blinked. Then she giggled. “La! But you’re so forthright! Just as I remembered.”

“What a faradiddle!” Julianne laughed. “I’ll bet you did no such thing. I was only here for a week, and we didn’t spend that much time together. Oh, I liked you well enough, and I suppose you liked me, but cut line, Cousin, and tell me the truth, would you?”

Sophie looked dumbstruck. But Julianne felt the hard knot of tension in her stomach relax, to be replaced by a sad little lump of disappointment in her chest. This whole affair looked less and less palatable and very suspicious. She’d probably be going home tomorrow.

Mama would be disappointed, and so, come to think of it, was she. But all wasn’t lost. Marriage to a suitable lad, even if only to heal her parents’ hearts, wasn’t a bad idea, and she wasn’t ready to give it up yet. Maybe they could go to London, after all. Weren’t there people you could hire to introduce you around? Mightn’t there be some other long-lost relative they could ferret out?

Sophie’s smile faded. She looked at her cousin and shrugged. “Very well. Mother wanted to talk to you, but I suppose it’s best that I do first. But you know we never meant anything bad, and in fact, much good could come from this for you, too. Really. Because you can have a good time here with me. It’s too bad we never got to know each other better. It isn’t too late for that now. I mean, I’m engaged, but I don’t intend to sit home and sew until
my wedding day. There are parties we can go to, a wonderful round of social life we can share until I do marry. And after that, too. It wouldn’t be the worst thing for you to be friends with a countess, you know,” she added with a sly grin.

“But speaking of that, the thing of it is…” Sophie paused. She raised her cornflower blue gaze. The look in her eyes wasn’t at all that of a giddy girl. “…Do you remember a boy named Christian Sauvage?”

“Christian Sauvage?” Julianne asked in surprise. “Of course I do! The scandal made sure of that.”

“Do you remember him well? I mean well enough to know him if you saw him again?”

“My goodness!” Julianne marveled. “Christian Sauvage! I haven’t thought of him in years. He was my brother’s best friend before we moved away, so you can imagine how shocked we were to hear what he and his father did. It was so bizarre. My brother was sure it was a mistake. He wanted to leap on a horse and ride to London to talk with Christian and rescue him from what he was sure was some evil plot.

“But he was only a boy himself, and though he raged and ranted, he never got farther than the posting inn. He actually packed some things and ran away, hoping to make it all the way to London. My father found him at the local coaching stop and brought him home before he even left the inn yard. Jonathan went away to school soon after. I know he wrote to Christian when he heard he was in Newgate Prison, but then they lost touch, I think. At any rate, I never heard his name again, except the way you do when people rehash old scandals.”

“Do you think you’d recognize him?” Sophie asked eagerly. “I mean if you saw him again?”

“Christian Sauvage,” Julianne said pensively, remembering. “He was a tall boy. So handsome, with such blue eyes.” She opened her own eyes and fixed them on her cousin. “But I was a very little girl then, Sophie, and so for all I know he wasn’t tall at all. And maybe I thought he was handsome because he was kind to me, or at least, he didn’t torment me the way some of my brother’s other friends tried to do. But Jonathan wouldn’t have that, he always defended me…”

She felt sorrow welling in her heart again and brought herself back to the present with effort. “The truth is, Sophie, I don’t know if I would recognize him now. But why do you ask? Why is it important?”

So Sophie told her.

“Y
ou see, I’m going to marry Hammond, and I wish to become countess and mistress of Egremont when I do,” Sophie summed it up when she’d finished explaining her problem, and her cousin just sat staring at her wide-eyed. “Well, who wouldn’t? It’s the size of a small country. That’s what Hammond said when he first saw it.” She giggled. “After he succeeded to the earldom, he was going to remodel the manor according to my wishes; that’s why he hadn’t moved in yet. Who’d want to live in the dust and noise of a major renovation? It was to be ready for our wedding. We had the architects, landscapers…then, almost at the last minute, this
person
arrives and claims the estate as his? It isn’t fair. And it may be criminal.”

She lowered her voice and looked around the bedchamber, as though it was a ghost story she was telling by the fire. “After all, as Papa says, it may even be more than coincidence that so many heirs to Egremont died in such rapid succession, and so many from accidents. It is quite suspicious, wouldn’t you say? Yes, Christian Sauvage and his father were
halfway round the world, but who knows how long the arms of the criminal fraternity can reach?

“I’ll say no more,” she said primly, “because Hammond doesn’t care for it. He’s kind, and trusting to a fault. It’s very lucky Papa convinced him to come stay with us while he looked over his inheritance. Luckier for me, of course,” she added, dimpling again. “But for him, too. Because, never fear, my papa’s hired Bow Street and private investigators, and crowds of lawyers, too. But Mama and I wracked our brains to think of someone else who might help. And we came up with you!”

“Don’t be angry,” Sophie concluded with a charming smile, seeing Julianne’s stunned expression and reaching out to pat her knee. “After all, whatever else happens, nothing about this can hurt you.”

Julianne suppressed her anger and her disappointment. She hadn’t been invited for any purpose but to be used as a stalking-horse. Though the truth hurt, it made perfect sense. “I suppose you’re right,” she said, and couldn’t resist adding, “but you may decide to put me on the next coach back home, Sophie. Because as I said, that was years ago. I’ve changed, he’s changed, and I don’t know if I can help at all.”

“You’ll stay for the month even if you don’t know him from Adam. We’ll have such fun,” Sophie said, getting to her feet, “because we two did have fun together years ago, didn’t we? And who knows? Your memory may be better than you know. Don’t worry about it. Now, get some sleep. We’ve so much to do tomorrow.” Smiling, she left Julianne to her muddled thoughts.

An hour later, Julianne sat upright in her bed. She felt cross and ill used, thinking of what she could have and should have said to Sophie. Her dignity was bruised. She was being used and had no way to protest, except with her feet. She should go straight back home.

But she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that. Mostly she was angry with herself for being naive and needy enough to believe she’d been wanted for herself. She wished she’d been told why she’d been invited before she’d left home. She wouldn’t have come…

No, she admitted, she would have. Her curiosity would have guaranteed it. It goaded her now.

Christian Sauvage.

She hadn’t wanted to remember him. She supposed it was because memories of those days hurt too much, and so she’d buried them deep. But now they streamed back, and she realized that time had dimmed the pain. Remembering those long-ago days actually made her happy now.

They’d been good years, filled with long summer afternoons romping in meadows, gathering flowers while the boys flew their kites. Or catching minnows in a jar while they fished for fat lake perch. Or pretending to be a lady fair as they dueled with branches for her honor.

She remembered golden autumn hours spent riding her rugged little pony, trying to keep up with the boys as they went on their adventures, gathering nuts while they explored the deeper forests. There were rainy afternoons lying before the fire, listening to them dream
aloud or watching them play chess, or sometimes, if she were very good, they’d include her in a game of jackstraws or charades.

And she remembered wailing, in any season, whenever her mama wouldn’t let her go with them, or called her from play with them, so she could have her lessons and learn to be a lady. She only wanted to be one of them.

She’d been allowed to roam with them because, whatever mischief they got into, they always took good care of her. They read her stories and told her tall tales just to see if she believed them, and made her giggle by tickling her with straws or words, just to see how breathless they could make her with laughter.

Christian Sauvage had been Jonathan’s best friend, but they hadn’t been much alike, except in their love of mischief. Christian had been a quieter lad, more likely to slip a fish off the hook and watch it swim back into the stream than to stuff it in a creel. He’d been the one to memorize famous speeches to give their acting games more excitement, and the one who’d bring a book the next day to prove a point he’d made. And he’d been the one to caution Jonathan about danger. Yet he always participated in Jonathan’s wilder pranks. In fact, it was his imagination that made them wilder.

His hands—she remembered his hands, she suddenly saw them holding a fishing pole, showing her how to use it—those thin hands were usually chafed and reddened from the cold, but skilled, and patient. And his eyes—crystalline, filled with light, blue and dazzling. Eyes too lovely for a boy to have, Mama had
said. And his hair, thick, lighter than Jonathan’s…she began to remember even more.

Jonathan had missed his friend badly when their family had inherited the farm and moved away, and had been making plans to invite Christian for a visit when the shocking news had come to them.

Christian’s father had stolen a silver snuffbox from a client whose books he was working on. And Christian, with him that day, had taken a silver candlestick.

The goods had been found, the pawnbroker betrayed them, and the pair was thrown into Newgate. It was a hanging offense for both. Christian was only ten, but boys of seven were taken to the gallows for less, and it wouldn’t have been the first time the rope claimed father and son together. But it turned out that the Sauvages were distantly related to the Earl of Egremont, and so their sentence was transportation rather than a noose. They languished in jail, then they’d disappeared from England as surely as if they had been hanged.

Now after all these years, Christian was back? Alive? And well? And wanting to be named earl of Egremont? It went beyond irony.

He’d avoided the wars, the battles, the wounds. Had he stayed in England, he might very well have gone to war with Jonathan and died along with him. But instead, he’d returned, in triumph. Julianne buried her head in her hands. Unworthy and unbidden, the thought struck her like a flash of pain: Christian had emerged from the past, unscathed. Where was the justice? Why should Christian, the criminal, be alive, and Jonathan, the hero, be dead?

Julianne raised her head. She had to meet this man who claimed he was the boy she’d known. If he were indeed Christian Sauvage, it would almost be like recovering a bit of Jonathan, a part death couldn’t take away.

Her lips tightened. But what if it turned out the fellow was an imposter, raking up the past and all its pain in order to fill his pockets, just as the real Christian had supposedly done all those years ago?

Then she’d want to be the one to hang him.

“Today, we’ll show you the wonders of Egremont,” Sophie told Julianne at breakfast. They were sitting in a sunny dining parlor with the squire and Hammond. Her mama wasn’t there because she kept Town hours and didn’t rise until noon. “We’ll ride over there after luncheon, when the sun’s dried the dew. There’s walking involved, and we don’t want to get our slippers wet. Then you’ll see what the fuss is about.”

“They say Queen Elizabeth stayed at Egremont one summer and came back twice,” the squire said, gesturing with his piece of toast. “But people have always lived in style there. There was a Viking hold on the site and records of a Roman fort before that. That was built over a mound from before even that. The manor sits on a rise overlooking the valley. It was popular because it was a defensible position.”

“Not very, I don’t think, if it was in turn Viking and Roman and all the rest,” Sophie said, and giggled. “But we shan’t have to worry about that,” she said, with a smile at Hammond. “After all, no one will come at us with a battering ram.”

“No,” he said quietly, “only with a writ and a record of birth.”

“I haven’t seen them yet,” the squire said. “
If
they exist, my solicitors will. We’re pursuing every angle of this, my boy. In fact,” he added as he rose, “I have to go. I’ll be meeting with that fellow from Bow Street. He’s arrived from London and sent word that he’ll be here soon. I’d like you to speak to him, too. So, if you’d stop by my study before you go to Egremont?”

“Of course,” Hammond said, getting to his feet in deference to his future father-in-law.

“Sit, sit, my boy, finish your breakfast,” the squire said. “I’ll see you later.”

When he’d left, Hammond sank to his seat again, looking troubled.

“Never you mind, Hammond,” Sophie chirped. “We’ll unmask the fellow, and things can go on as they were.”

“Have you seen much of him?” Julianne asked.

“Not since he first came,” Hammond said. “I think that’s been a mistake. The more he talks, the more chance we’ll have of discovering the truth.”

“Ah, he’s been avoiding you,” Julianne said, nodding. “That’s a point against him. An honest man would have nothing to hide.”

Hammond’s face grew ruddy, and he slid a glance at Sophie. “No. He’s not avoiding anything. He’s been seen everywhere around the village. He’s just not been invited here.”

“Well, I can’t bear the sight of him,” Sophie cried, jumping to her feet and throwing her napkin on the table. “And I tell you it isn’t right to force him on us.
You should be trying to dispose of him rather than asking me to talk to him. He’s ruined our plans and is trying to destroy our lives, and I don’t want to see his wicked lying face again!” She ran sobbing from the room.

“Excuse me,” Hammond said heavily as he rose. “It’s been a bone of contention. But now you’re here, it will resolve itself.” He left the room in pursuit of his fiancée.

Julianne was left sitting alone, looking at a plate of cooling eggs, trying to ignore the sympathetic gaze of the footman clearing the table. She felt sorry for Hammond, a nice young man, who seemed to be in love with her cousin. Sophie was acting as though she wanted him to challenge the imposter to a duel. Certainly, she mused, if a woman loved a fellow, it would be painful to see him lose a rich heritage. But wouldn’t it hurt his feelings if all that carrying on led him to think that was all she cared about?

Still, maybe that
was
all Sophie cared for, Julianne thought, as she went upstairs to wait to prepare for what was bound to be a long day.

Julianne was disappointed; she’d thought a Bow Street runner would be dashing. She could have passed him in the street, town or country, and not noticed him. Mr. Murchison was a short, thickset middle-aged man; he dressed like a clerk and spoke in London accents. But then she noticed that his dark, deep-set eyes missed nothing.

As they stood in the hall waiting for a carriage that was being brought round, he studied her from under
his bushy brows. Then he gave her his instructions.

“You’re off to Egremont, eh? Well, now, if you should run into this fellow who claims to be the heir,” he told Julianne, “because you may, as he’s been poking around the manor, all you need to do for now, Miss, is get a good long decko at him. Look at him close, I mean. Don’t try to be clever. Don’t try to trap him or lure him, trip him or test him. He’d be better at that than you. Leave that to me.”

She smiled. “I’d no intention of anything of the sort. As I told my cousins, I was just a little girl when I last saw him. I doubt I’ll recognize him any more than he’d recognize me. I certainly won’t challenge him. I wouldn’t even know how to begin! And,” she added, “there’s been talk about how suddenly the succession came to him. I’m a great coward. I wouldn’t like to anger a villain.”

The runner shot a dark look at the squire. “I told you, no need for spreading such talk, sir! Only muddies the water. A great many heirs died in a row, but it happens in the best of families, and there’s not a scrap of proof one way or the other. Mr. Hammond here is right, better relations with the fellow would make my work easier. It’s easier to find out things about a man who thinks he’s a friend than one who feels you’re his enemy. Don’t have to get under the covers with him, missy,” he told Sophie, who gasped. “But there’s nothing amiss with being polite. Oh, aye, sorry. My talk’s a bit rough. But it’s straight. Now, if anyone thinks of anything they’d like to tell me, anytime, I’m stopping at the White Hart, a message will always find me there.”

“Isn’t that where
he’s
staying?” Sophie asked.

“Aye,” he said. “And where we two have lifted a pint many a night since I got there. Well, here’s your coach. Good afternoon.” He clapped on his hat and stalked from the house.

Julianne was glad to step out of the house, too, and not just because it was a mild spring afternoon. But she’d noticed that there was increased tension between Sophie and Hammond, and she didn’t know whom to speak to or what to say. So she got into the carriage, anxious to see the great estate that was the reason for her visit and even more hopeful of getting a glimpse of the man who had started all the fuss.

They drove off. Julianne sat back and enjoyed watching the countryside as it responded to the spring sunshine. They passed long green pastures filled with fat sheep and plump cattle, fields of sunshine-bright hops and rapeseed, and meadows teeming with poppies, violets, primrose, and pinks. She was so taken with the lovely scenery it helped relieve some of the tension. Because neither Sophie nor Hammond spoke a word, and Sophie’s maid sat silent in a corner of the coach.