“You are not going without me, Joel,” Abigail announced with a voice that quavered slightly. “I blame myself for all this. If I had gone with Mama, everything would have been different.”
“If she had taken my carriage and a few hefty servants and a maid,” her aunt Louise, the dowager duchess, said, “everything would certainly have been different. They would have dealt with the pretensions of that man, whoever he is, and sent him packing in some disarray.”
“I am going with you,” Abigail said again.
“And I will accompany you to give you countenance, Abby,” Elizabeth, Lady Overfield, said. “Oh, do not look at me that way, Alex. Of course Abby wants to go search for her mama. And of course another lady must go with her. Wren cannot go in her condition. Why not your sister, then? And, Joel, do not you look at me that way. We may all be needed in one way or another.”
“I do think that is sensible, Elizabeth,” Lady Matilda Westcott, the eldest of Viola’s former sisters-in-law, said in her strident voice. “It would be most improper for two gentlemen to go alone, even if they are Viola’s relatives. What would they do when they find her? And it would be out of the question for Abigail to accompany them without a chaperon.”
That settled the matter. All four of them would go in pursuit, though it was very possible the trail would run cold at the town where Viola had last been seen. Where she had gone no one could begin to guess. Or with whom. That was the question that loomed largest.
They set off before midafternoon in the earl’s carriage, waved on their way by the other family members gathered outside the house on the Royal Crescent. Some of them were tearful, including Camille and Winifred. Sarah clung to Camille’s skirts, looking soulful after her father had hugged and kissed her and climbed into the carriage without taking her too. Jacob was asleep again in his great-aunt Mary Kingsley’s arms.
* * *
• • •
Marcel, Marquess of Dorchester, was not missed at first. André arrived duly at Redcliffe Court, bringing with him the explanation that his brother had been unavoidably detained but would follow shortly. No one peppered him with awkward questions. No one was particularly surprised. That did not mean they were all happy.
Jane and Charles Morrow, as Marcel had predicted, were more relieved than chagrined over the delay. They were not fond of their brother-in-law. Worse, they had strong moral reservations about his possible influence over his children. If Adeline had not been such a silly ninnyhammer, they often assured each other, she would have married someone of altogether stronger moral fiber and there would be no danger of her children backsliding into sin and debauchery. However, she had been both silly and a ninnyhammer, and they could only hope that their brother-in-law’s visits remained both brief and infrequent and that the strength of their own moral influence over their niece and nephew would prove stronger than the effect of heredity.
The marchioness, Marcel’s elderly aunt, and Isabelle, Lady Ortt, her daughter, were more divided in their feelings. On the one hand, they were disappointed that they must wait longer for the marquess’s return and the blistering setdown he was sure to deal the upstart Morrows, who behaved for all the world as though they owned Redcliffe and everyone and everything in it. The two ladies detested the couple heartily. Lord Ortt merely stayed out of their way and had no known opinion of Marcel, whom he avoided even more diligently when they happened to be beneath the same roof. On the other hand, the dowager and her daughter were deeply immersed in the planning of an increasingly elaborate wedding for Margaret, Isabelle’s youngest daughter, and both entertained a gnawing anxiety that the marquess, without saying a word but with a mere lifting of his eyebrows in that way he had of expressing displeasure, might spell doom to their carefully laid schemes.
André was reasonably content, at least at first, to hide out from his creditors and from the shame of his gaming debts until his brother should choose to amble homeward.
It was the normally placid, biddable twins who were the problem.
All the ladies had been in the drawing room when André arrived, all usefully employed with needlework or tatting or knitting. Lord Ortt was there too, his head hidden behind a newspaper. And Bertrand Lamarr, Viscount Watley, was reading a book until the sound of an approaching carriage caused them all to raise their heads. He got to his feet and went to look out the window.
“Is it he, Bert?” Lady Estelle Lamarr asked eagerly.
“It looks like his carriage,” he said. “Yes, it is.”
Estelle would have run downstairs to greet her father on the terrace, but she looked toward her aunt first, and that lady shook her head slightly and smiled fondly. It was not seemly for a young lady to go dashing about the house, displaying unbridled emotion. Estelle looked at Bertrand, who had turned from the window, and a silent message passed between them, as it often did. They were not identical twins, of course, so there was not that almost psychic bond that many identical twins shared. Nevertheless, they knew each other very well indeed, having been almost inseparable since birth. Estelle returned her attention to her embroidery, and Bertrand stayed where he was, much as he would have loved to dash down to meet his father himself.
Lord Ortt slipped from the room unnoticed.
And then their uncle André strode into the room. Alone.
“Father is not with you?” Estelle asked in clear dismay.
That was when he gave his vague explanation about his brother’s having been unavoidably delayed.
“But he wrote to say he was on the way,” Estelle said. “I have planned a party here for his fortieth birthday the week after next. I begged Aunt Jane to let me, and she said it would be good training for me.”
“I daresay he will be here long before then,” André assured her cheerfully. “How do you do, Aunt Olwen? And Isabelle? Margaret?” He did the rounds of the room, bowing to each of the ladies in turn.
“I knew he would not come,” Bertrand said. “I told you so, Stell.”
“Oh you did not,” she protested.
“And I warned you that your father is sometimes unpredictable,” their aunt Jane said kindly. “I warned you too, Estelle, that he may not be as delighted as you hope at the prospect of a party in his honor here in the country. The company is bound to seem insipid to a man of his tastes. It will probably be just as well if he does not come in time, though I hate to see you spurned and disappointed.”
“Yes, Aunt Jane,” Estelle said as she resumed work on her embroidery.
“He has never spurned us,” Bertrand said, but he spoke quietly enough that his aunt either genuinely did not hear or wisely chose not to comment.
Their father had still not come after a week had passed or sent word to say when he would be there—if he came at all. Estelle grew steadily unhappier as the hope that he would arrive in time for his birthday grew slimmer. Bertrand, unhappy on his own account but even unhappier on his sister’s, tackled their uncle André about the true cause of the unavoidable delay—and then reported to his sister in her room.
By the time he had finished, Estelle had grown unaccustomedly angry—she had been taught that a lady never allowed strong feeling to rob her of a calm dignity. “I suppose,” she said, “that if he set off with Uncle André and then decided to stay in some godforsaken village—were those his exact words, Bert?—I suppose that if he did that and even deliberately stranded himself there without his carriage, there can be only one of two explanations.”