LITMIR.BIZ

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ended with the long-lost heiress marrying Lord Thorpe. The whole story, in Lambeth’s opinion, sounded like something out of a lurid novel of the sort Penelope professed to enjoy.

      Lambeth’s purpose in persuading Buckminster to call on Penelope and her family had been accomplished. He had not found out the secretive Mrs. Cotterwood’s location, but he had discovered all that was to be gotten out of Penelope. It would be enough, he reasoned. A book lover—not what he had expected of that redheaded temptress—would return to the same lending library. A servant set to watch the place would soon find out where she lived.

      Accordingly, Lambeth took his leave, having no wish to endure Lady Ursula’s presence any longer than was absolutely necessary. As soon as the front door closed behind him and Lord Buckminster, Lady Ursula turned on her daughter, scowling.

      “Really, Penelope! Did you have to go on about those silly novels? One would think you could have made a little effort to impress Lord Lambeth.”

      “Oh, Mama, Lord Lambeth has no interest in me,” Penelope replied, flushing with embarrassment. “I wish you would not say such things.”

      Lady Ursula sighed. “Sometimes I quite despair of you, Penelope. Any other girl would have at least made a push to be appealing.”

      “What nonsense, Ursula,” the Countess put in. “Lord Lambeth and Penelope would not suit at all. I wonder you can even think of such a match.”

      “Would not suit? How could a marquess with a family back to the Invasion and barrels full of money possibly not suit?”

      “I am sure I would not suit him, Mama. Everyone says he will eventually marry Cecilia Winborne, and even if he did not, well, I am sure that I am hardly his style.”

      “Who a man flirts with and who he marries are two entirely different things,” Lady Ursula said pedantically. “Our family is as old and genteel as one could hope to find—the equal of Lord Lambeth’s and certainly better than the Winbornes, I should hope.”

      Penelope gave up the struggle. She had found out long ago that it was useless to try to make her mother see reason. Her grandmother spoke quickly to forestall Ursula, who was gathering herself for another attack.

      “Of course we are,” Lady Exmoor said. “Indeed, I wonder that you should think a Montford should marry an upstart like the Duke of Storbridge’s son.”

      Ursula turned a startled gaze to her mother, then grimaced as she saw the twinkle in the Countess’s eyes. “Really, Mother, this is scarcely something to joke about.”

      “I think it is precisely the sort of the thing to joke about. As if Penelope would want to marry Lord Lambeth. Do let us stop talking such nonsense.” She turned back to Penelope. “I have had a report from the Runner I set on finding Marie Anne.”

      “Did he have any luck?” Penelope asked eagerly.

      Lady Exmoor sighed. “Partially. I had told you that he found an orphanage outside London where a child named Mary Chilton had been taken, and it was the right time. When he went there, he found that the matron was retired, but one of her assistants still worked there, and she remembered the child. ‘Redheaded spitfire,’ was the way she put it.” A smile trembled on the older woman’s lips, and Penelope saw moisture in her eyes. “That sounds like Marie. He managed to worm out of them where the child went when she left the orphanage.”

      The Countess paused and swallowed hard before she could continue. “She went into service at a local house.”

      “Oh, no!” Penelope cried, reaching out and taking her grandmother’s hand. Lady Exmoor squeezed it hard, pressing her lips together to stop their trembling. “That’s awful! I mean, well, to think of my cousin having to scrub and clean.”

      “Yes. For nobodies like those Quartermaines,” Lady Ursula added, her indignation roused by the slight on the family. “I’ve never even heard of them.”

      “Local gentry,” Lady Exmoor explained. “Still, I don’t suppose it really matters who they are. The real problem is that she left there a few years later, and no one seems to know where she went. The trail just vanishes.”

      “So that’s the end of it?” Penelope asked, disappointed.

      “The housekeeper told him that she was friends with another maid. But that girl is gone from the house, too. The servants and family seem to be an unusually reticent lot. The Runner is inclined to think that there was perhaps some scandal involved in her leaving.”

      Penelope’s eye widened. “This is terrible.”

      The Countess sighed. “Well, at least the other man would have had no better luck, I guess. That’s the only bright side.”

      “What other man?”

      “There had been someone else at the Quartermaine house asking questions about Mary Chilton before my fellow came. The housekeeper remarked on it, wondering why so many people were suddenly interested in her.”

      “And you think this other man is from—the Earl?”

      Lady Exmoor’s mouth tightened. “I am sure of it. Who else would be looking for her? He knows I suspect him of having gotten rid of Marie Anne and Johnny—oh, if only that wicked woman had lived!”

      Penelope knew to what woman her grandmother referred. It was her grandmother’s cousin and former companion, Willa Everhart. Recently, on her deathbed, Miss Everhart had confessed that twenty-two years earlier, she had conspired against the Countess to keep her grandchildren from her. During the dark days in Paris, after the storming of the Bastille, the Countess’s son, Lord Chilton, and his wife had been killed by the mob, who had mistaken them for French aristocrats. The reports that had come back to London had said that Chilton’s three children had been killed, as well. But in fact they had not died, but had been smuggled out of France and brought to London by an American friend of Lady Chilton’s, Rhea Ward. Mrs. Ward, lonely and unable to bear a child herself, had taken the baby, Alexandra, as her own and raised her in the United States, but she had brought the older two, John and Marie Anne, to the Countess’s home.

      The Countess, prostrate with grief over the deaths of her son and the supposed deaths of his children, had taken to her bed and refused all visitors, so Miss Everhart had been the one who spoke to Mrs. Ward and took the two children from her. Mrs. Ward then left the country, thinking the children safe with their grandmother, but Miss Everhart had played the Countess false. Desperately in love with Richard Montford, the distant cousin who had become the Earl of Exmoor upon the death of Chilton and the supposed death of his son John, the true heir, she had taken the children to Richard instead. The existence of the boy John, she knew, would mean that her lover would lose the title and estates, and she counted on his gratitude for what she had done to tie him to her. The boy, Willa had told them as she lay dying, had been very sick with a fever and had died. The girl Marie, however, had been taken to an orphanage.

      The Countess had immediately hired a Bow Street Runner to investigate Marie’s whereabouts, but she had realized that there was little she could do about Richard’s treachery. Willa had died immediately after telling them her story, and they had no proof or witnesses to show that the present Earl of Exmoor was the villain they all knew he was. He, of course, had denied the story and claimed that Willa was a madwoman who had undoubtedly acted on her own—if there was any truth to the story in the first place. Since the boy John was dead, even though not at the time or place they had thought, Richard was still the legal holder of the title. To accuse him of kidnapping the children and murdering John, as the Countess suspected, would do nothing but involve the family in an enormous scandal.

      “But why would Richard be searching for her?” Lady Ursula asked, puzzled. “Richard doesn’t give a whit about her. I would think he would just as soon she stayed lost.”

      “I am sure he does,” the Countess agreed dryly. “I think it is precisely for that reason that he is searching for her—to make sure she stays lost.”

      Penelope sucked in a startled breath. “You mean…you think that

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