A Lady by Midnight (4 page)

He didn’t answer her.

“Four little words,” she taunted. “ ‘I . . . love . . . the . . . dog.’ And he’s yours.”

“I
own
the dog,” he said tersely. “He is mine. I paid coin for him.”

“Then I’ll pay you back. But I will not surrender this sweet, defenseless little creature to a man with no feeling, no heart. No capacity to care.”

Just then the front door of the Queen’s Ruby burst open.

Mrs. Nichols came running out from the inn—as much as the poor old dear
could
run. Her hands were flapping. “Miss Taylor! Miss Taylor, oh, thank goodness you’re here at last.”

“I’m so sorry to have worried you, Mrs. Nichols. I missed the stagecoach home, and Corporal Thorne was good enough to—”

“We’ve been waiting and waiting.” The older woman put her arm through Kate’s and pulled her toward the door. “Your visitors have been here for hours. I’ve run through three pots of tea, exhausted all possible topics of conversation.”

“Visitors?” Kate was stunned. “I have visitors?”

Mrs. Nichols gathered her shawl about her shoulders. “Four of them.”

“
Four
of them? Whatever do they want?”

“They won’t say. Except that they’ve insisted on waiting for you. It’s been hours now.”

Kate paused in the threshold, scraping the mud from the soles of her boots. She couldn’t imagine who these visitors might be. Perhaps a family seeking music lessons. But at
this
hour of night? “I’m so sorry I’ve put you to such trouble.”

“Not a trouble, dear. It’s an honor to have a man of such rank and stature in my parlor.”

A man? Of rank and stature?

“Might I just nip upstairs and see to my appearance first? I’m all mussed from the road.”

“No, no. That won’t do, my dear.” The inn’s landlady tugged her inside. “One can only keep a marquess waiting so long.”

“A
marquess
?”

While Mrs. Nichols closed the door, Kate turned to catch her reflection in the looking glass. She jumped in her skin when she found herself nose-to-button with Corporal Thorne instead.

“I thought you weren’t coming in,” she accused his lapel.

“I changed my mind.” When she finally dared look up, she found his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He asked, “Do you know any marquess?”

She shook her head. “The highest-ranking man I know is Lord Rycliff, and he’s an earl.”

“I’ll go in with you.”

“I’m sure that’s not necessary. It’s a parlor, not a crime den.”

“I’ll go anyway.”

Before they could argue it further, Kate found herself being hustled into the parlor. Thorne followed close behind. Several of the rooming-house guests lined the corridor. They gave her wide-eyed, speculative glances as she moved past.

When they reached the parlor, Mrs. Nichols pushed Kate through the door. “Here’s Miss Taylor at last, my lord and ladies.”

With that, the landlady shut them in. Kate could hear her on the other side of the door, chasing the residents away from the corridor.

There seemed to be a dozen guests in the parlor, though a quick count assured Kate they numbered just four. Wealth and elegance crammed the room. And here she stood in a torn, dirt-streaked frock. Her hair wasn’t even pinned.

A dark-clad gentleman rose to his feet and bowed. Kate had barely managed a slight dip of a curtsy when a loud, collective gasp nearly guttered the candles.

“It
is
her. It
must
be her.”

Kate swallowed hard. “Er . . . I must be who?”

A pretty young woman rose from a chair. She looked a few years younger than Kate, and she wore a frock of spotless, snowy muslin and an embroidered jade-green shawl. As she came to the center of the room, her expression was one of pure wonderment. She regarded Kate as one might a ghost, or a rare species of orchid.

“It must be you.” The girl raised her hand and stretched two fingertips to the birthmark at Kate’s temple.

Kate flinched out of instinct. She’d already been called a witch and a child of shame for that mark today.

Now she found herself wrapped in a warm, impulsive hug.

Caught between the two of them, Badger yipped.

“Oh, dear.” Kate pulled back, flashing an apologetic smile. “I’d forgotten him.”

The young woman in front of her laughed and smiled. “The pup is right to object. Where
are
my manners? Let’s begin again. Introductions first.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Lark Gramercy. How do you do?”

Kate clasped the proffered hand. “Delighted, I’m sure.”

Lark turned and indicated her companions in turn. “Here we have my sister Harriet.”

“Harry,” the woman in question said. She rose from her chair and pumped Kate’s hand firmly. “Everyone calls me Harry.”

Kate tried not to stare. Harriet, or Harry, was the most stunningly beautiful woman she’d ever seen. Without a trace of adornment in the form of rouge or jewels, her face was a symphony of perfection: pale, luminous skin, wide eyes, wine-red lips. A small beauty mark on one cheekbone added a sultry punctuation to the sweep of her dark eyelashes. She wore her jet-black hair parted to the side and pulled back in a severe chignon that emphasized the swannish curve of her neck. And despite all her classic feminine beauty, she was dressed in what seemed to be men’s attire. A chemisette with hardly any frill at the neck, a waistcoat cut in the style most gentlemen wore, and—most shocking of all—a divided skirt of gray wool, hemmed several inches too short for modesty.

Good heavens. Kate could see the woman’s
ankles.

“My brother Bennett is off traveling the Hindu Kush, and our other sister, Calista, is married and living up North. But we have with us Aunt Marmoset.” Lark patted the shoulder of a seated woman in her later years.

Kate blinked. “I’ve heard you wrong. I thought you said Aunt—”

“Marmoset. Yes.” Lark smiled. “It’s properly Millicent, but as a child, I could never pronounce it. It always came out Marmoset, and the name just stuck.”

“I resemble the name more every year,” Aunt Marmoset said good-naturedly.

“Yes, old dear,” said Harry dryly. “I was just complaining the other day, if I have to pluck you down from one more tree—”

“Oh, hush. I meant I’m small and spry and infectiously adorable.” The diminutive older woman stretched a bony hand toward Kate. Her grip was warmer and stronger than Kate would have expected. “It’s remarkable to see you, child.”

Before Kate could puzzle out the old woman’s meaning, Lark was making her final introduction.

“And this is our brother Evan. Lord Drewe.”

Kate turned to the gentleman standing near the window. The marquess, she presumed.

Lord Drewe made a deep, formal bow, which she tried to repay with her best curtsy. Here was a man, as they said, in his prime of life. Handsome, assured, worldly, and though he was doubtless responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of tenants and dependents, he appeared to be in command of no one more than himself.

Kate found herself rather awed in his presence. She could understand Mrs. Nichols’s excitement now.

“The ancestral home is in Derbyshire. But we have a property over near Kenmarsh,” Lark explained. “It’s called Ambervale. Just a cottage, really. We’ve been summering there.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you all.” Kate dropped into a chair so the marquess might be seated. “And you’ve come to Spindle Cove for . . . ?”

“For you, Miss Taylor,” Lark said, taking a seat nearby. “Naturally.”

“Oh. Were you wanting music lessons? I offer instruction in voice, pianoforte, harp . . .”

All the Gramercys laughed.

Behind her, Thorne cleared his throat. “Miss Taylor has had a long day. Surely your business can wait for the morning.”

Lord Drewe nodded. “Your concern is duly noted, Mister . . .”

“Thorne.”

“Corporal Thorne,” Kate put in. “He’s in charge of our local militia.”

She might have embellished the introduction, she supposed.
He’s good friends with the Earl of Rycliff,
or
He served honorably on the Peninsula under Wellington.
But she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward him at the moment.

She lifted Badger. “He gave me a puppy.”

“And it’s a lovely puppy,” Aunt Marmoset cooed.

Lark clapped her hands with impatience. “Corporal Thorne is right. It’s ungodly late. Harry, just show her the painting.”

Harry rose and came forward, bearing a rectangular, paper-wrapped parcel.

As her sister removed the paper covering, Lark chattered away. “I needed a summer project, you see. Ambervale is quiet, and I do go a bit mad without something to occupy my hands. So I decided to go through the attic. Just old crockery, mostly. A few moldering books. But tucked back under the rafters, I found this canvas wrapped in a tarpaulin.” Her voice pitched with excitement. “Oh, do
hurry,
Harry.”

Harry continued at the same pace. “Settle your feathers, pigeon.”

At last she had the thing unwrapped and held it up in the lamplight.

Kate gasped. “Oh my Lord.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified by her accidental blasphemy. Cursing, in front of a marquess?

The Gramercys didn’t seem perturbed, however. They all sat quite calmly and quietly as Harry revealed a painting of a reclining, flagrantly nude woman tangled in white bedsheets and a red velvet counterpane. Swollen, ruby-tipped breasts rested like twin pillows atop a rotund, creamy belly. The woman in the portrait was obviously pregnant.

And she looked like Kate. She looked a great deal like Kate, save for some differences about the eyes and chin, and the absence of any birthmark. The resemblance was uncanny, disturbing, and readily apparent to everyone in the room.

“Oh my
Lord,
” Kate breathed.

Lark beamed. “Isn’t it gorgeous? When we found it, we just knew we had to search you out.”

“Put that away.” Thorne stepped forward. “It’s vile.”

“I beg your pardon,” Harry replied, proudly propping the nude painting on the mantelpiece and standing back to admire it. “The female form is beautiful in all its natural states. This is
art.
”

“Put it away,” Thorne repeated in a low, threatening tone. “Or I will make it kindling.”

“He’s just being protective,” Aunt Marmoset said. “I think it’s sweet. A little savage, but sweet.”

Harry yanked Lark’s jade-green shawl from her shoulders and draped it over half the painting, obscuring most of the nudity. “This backward little village. Philistines, all. When we showed it to the vicar, he developed a stammer and visible hives.”

“You . . .” Kate swallowed hard, staring at the painting now boldly displayed above the fire. “You showed this to the
vicar
?”

“But of course,” Lark replied. “That’s how we found you.”

Kate crossed her arms over her chest, feeling unaccountably exposed. She leaned forward and peered at the face of the woman in the painting. “But it can’t be 
me.
”

“No, Miss Taylor. It’s not you.” With a long-suffering sigh, Lord Drewe stood and addressed his siblings. “You’re making a right hash of this, I hope you know. If she wants nothing to do with us after tonight, you’ll have only yourselves to blame.”

What on earth could he mean? Kate’s brain made a lazy twirl in her skull.

The corporal addressed the room in a deep, commanding voice. “I’m giving you one more minute to start making sense. Otherwise, I don’t care if you
are
lords and ladies—you’ll be leaving. Miss Taylor’s under my protection, and I won’t have her treated ill.”

Lord Drewe turned to Kate. “I’ll make this brief. As my youngest sister has attempted to explain, I am the much-beleaguered head of this traveling circus. And we’ve been waiting for you, Miss Taylor, because we believe you may be a part of it.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “A part of what, precisely?”

He gestured with one hand, as though it should be obvious. “A part of the family.”

Chapter Five

T
he room swam in Kate’s vision. Badger scampered to the floor, and she made no effort to stop him. All around her, the Gramercys argued.

“I told you we shouldn’t have sprung it on her this way.”

“It’s been sprung on us all. It wasn’t as though we knew, starting out this morning . . .”

“Oh, dear. She’s so pale.”

They were such a . . . such a
family.
Kate could scarcely believe that she might be a part of it. The temptation to hope was so great, and optimism came to her too easily. But she didn’t want to make a fool of herself. She had to make some sense of this first.

While the rest of them talked, Aunt Marmoset came and sat next to her. She pulled a small, paper-wrapped candy from her pocket. “Have a spice drop, dear.”

Kate accepted it numbly.

“Go on,” the old woman urged. “Eat it now.”

Uncertain how to refuse, Kate unwrapped the sweet and popped the hard lozenge into her mouth.

Oh . . . blazes.

Her eyes watered instantly. The disc of pure, sugared fire burned on her tongue. It took everything she had not to spit it out.

“Strong, isn’t it? A bit overwhelming at first. But with patience, and a bit of work, you’ll arrive at the sweetness.” Aunt Marmoset patted Kate’s arm. “This family’s like that.”

Then the old woman sharply addressed the room. “All of you, be calm.”

They were all of them instantly calm. Even the one who was a marquess.

“The only way to tell this is as a story, I think.” Aunt Marmoset’s papery, age-spotted hand clasped Kate’s. “Once, there was a man named Simon Gramercy, the young Marquess of Drewe. Like all Gramercys, he tended toward tempestuous, inappropriate passions. Simon’s particular interests were art, and the charms of a highly unsuitable girl. The daughter of a tenant farmer from his Derbyshire estate, can you imagine?”

Kate shook her head, her tongue still puckered around the evil spice drop.

“Simon’s mother, the dowager, was scandalized. The girl’s parents disowned her. But Simon would hear no censure. He set up a love nest with his muse at Ambervale. They lived ensconced there for several months, merrily painting and posing and making passionate—”

“Aunt Marmoset.”

“Really, after the portrait, I don’t think it can come as a shock.” The older woman continued, “Anyhow, poor Simon’s health took an ill turn. The next the family heard of him, he was dead. Suddenly, tragically, dead. And no one knew what had become of the farmer’s daughter. She seemed to have vanished completely. Perhaps she’d taken ill, as well . . . Perhaps she’d gone on to be another man’s muse. No one could guess. The title passed to Simon’s cousin, my brother-in-law. And then, on his death, to Evan.” She waved in Lord Drewe’s direction.

“Are you confused yet?” Lark asked.

“We’ll draw you a chart later,” said Harry.

Kate stared at the painting. “We do look rather alike, I’ll admit, but I’m only twenty-three. And I have this.” She raised her hand to her birthmark.

“Oh, but that’s a family trait,” Lark said. “Several of the Gramercys have something like it. Harry has only the small beauty mark, and most of mine is covered by my hair. Evan’s is behind his ear. Show her, Evan.”

Lord Drewe gamely turned to display the side of his neck. Yes, he did have a port-wine mark that disappeared beneath his crisp, immaculate cravat.

“Is it making sense now?” Lark asked. “When we found this painting in the attic, we knew she must be Simon’s lover. But no one ever knew she was pregnant. The question was, what became of the child?”

“Dead, we assumed,” Harry said. “Otherwise we surely would have heard something. But Lark couldn’t resist the chance to investigate.”

Lark smiled. “I do love a mystery. If the babe had been born from Ambervale, we knew some record of the birth ought to exist. So we went to the local parish, but there we learned that the church had burned in 1782 and not been rebuilt for a decade. Some sort of accident with a censer and a tapestry . . .”

Lord Drewe cleared his throat. “Keep to essentials, Lark. For Miss Taylor’s sake.”

Lark nodded. “So there were no records. During those years, the parish was divided between the three neighboring churches. We decided to make family outings, visiting one per week.”

“Only in this family,” said Harry, “would we consider it high entertainment to go searching musty parish registers for a stillborn cousin.”

Lark ignored her sister. “We started at St. Francis, the closest. No luck there. This week was a choice between St. Anthony in the Glen and St. Mary of the Martyrs. I must admit, I was lobbying for St. Anthony’s, because I liked the pastoral sound of it, but—”

“But our resident martyr had his way, and St. Mary’s it was.”

“Yes, thank goodness. The book, Evan?”

Lord Drewe withdrew a large volume that looked to be a well-thumbed parish register. Kate was surprised he would have been allowed to remove it from the church. But then, he likely paid the vicar’s living. She supposed any requests from the local marquess would be difficult to deny.

He opened it to a previously marked page, found a line with his fingertip, and read aloud, “Katherine Adele, born February the twenty-second, in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-one. Father, Simon Langley Gramercy. Mother, Elinor Marie.”

“Katherine?” Kate’s heart began to pound. “Did you say Katherine?”

Lark bounced in her chair with excitement. “Yes. We scanned the next several years’ worth of records—no death listing. No christening either, but no death. We asked the vicar if he knew of any Katherine living in the area who might be the right age now. He replied that he didn’t. However, he said he’d recently received a letter.”

“A letter?” Badger nosed at Kate’s shins, and she lifted the pup into her lap. “
My
letter?”

For the past several years, she’d played the organ for Sunday worship at St. Ursula’s. She asked no financial compensation for the service. Only a favor. Each week, Mr. Keane gave her an hour in the vicar’s office. She chose a parish from his enormous Church of England directory and penned a letter, requesting a search of parish registers for any female children born between 1790 and 1792, given the Christian name Katherine, who had since fallen from the local record. She’d begun with the parishes nearest Margate and worked outward.

Slowly. Over weeks and months and years.

The vicar signed and posted the letters for her. He also did her the favor of keeping them secret. Most of the villagers would have laughed at her for spending so much time and effort on a fruitless enterprise. In their eyes, she might as well have spent her time sticking notes in bottles and heaving them into the ocean.

But Kate hadn’t been able to let the idea go. She’d made hope her weekly habit. Every time the post brought another crushing “No”—or worse, when months passed with no reply at all, letting her know a perfectly good stone had gone unturned—she listened to that voice inside her heart:
Be brave, my Katie.

And now . . .

Now Aunt Marmoset’s spice drop had nearly dissolved in her mouth—and the older woman was right. A thick, delicious sweetness coated her tongue.

Kate savored it.

“Yes,” Lark said. “It was your letter. And I just knew in my heart,
our
Katherine must be you. We set off at once, traveled all afternoon, and arrived here a few hours ago.”

“We showed your vicar this”—Harry indicated the painting—“and once he recovered from his small apoplexy, he told us that Miss Kate Taylor did indeed bear a remarkable resemblance to the portrait.”

“From the neck up, of course.” Lark directed this comment—and a timid smile—at Corporal Thorne.

“So there you have it, my dear.” Aunt Marmoset patted Kate’s knee. “The tale has a miraculous ending. We have found you. And by all evidence, you seem to be the long-lost daughter of a marquess.”

The words hit Kate like an avalanche. In the aftermath, her emotions were frozen, scattered things. It was all too much. She had parents named Simon and Elinor. She had a birthday. She had a middle name.

If . . .

If
this could all be believed.

“But I never lived anywhere near Kenmarsh,” she said. “I was raised as a ward of Margate School until just four years ago. That was when I came here to teach music lessons.”

“And before Margate, where were you?” Lord Drewe asked.

“I haven’t any clear memory, unfortunately. I asked my schoolmistress for details.” Goodness, had her horrid interview with Miss Paringham only been that afternoon? “She told me I was abandoned.”

Kate stared at the woman in the portrait. Her
mother
, if this could be believed. Had she died? Or given her baby up, unable to care for a child on her own? But it was plain from the way the woman’s hand draped affectionately over her rotund belly, she’d loved that infant in the womb. How amazing, Kate thought, to think she could be
in
that painting, underneath the skin of it, fetal and wriggling and . . .

Loved.

“You poor thing,” Lark said. “I can’t imagine how you must have suffered. We can’t undo those years, but we will do our best to make up for them now.”

“Yes,” Drewe agreed. “We must install you at Ambervale as soon as possible. When I’m home tonight, I’ll send a lady’s maid to help with your packing.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“Did you already have your own lady’s maid?”

Kate laughed, astonished. “No. I haven’t that many belongings to pack. What I meant was, it’s not appropriate for you to invite me to your home.”

Lord Drewe blinked. “Of course it’s appropriate. It’s a family home.”

A family home.

The words made her breath catch painfully. “But . . . wouldn’t I be an embarrassment?”

“Absolutely not,” Harry said. “Our brother Bennett holds the position of family embarrassment, and he jealously guards it against all would-be usurpers.”

“Why would you embarrass us, dear?” asked Aunt Marmoset.

“Even if all you say is true . . . I’m your illegitimate second cousin, by a tenant farmer’s daughter.”

Kate waited for the import of her words to sink in. Surely people at the Gramercys’ level of society didn’t associate with bastard relations?

“If you’re concerned about scandal, don’t be,” Lark said. “Scandal comes with the Gramercy name—along with enough wealth that no one much cares. If there’s one lesson Aunt Marmoset instilled in us from our youth, it’s—”

“Beware of spice drops,” said Harry.

“Family above everything,” countered Lord Drewe. “We may be a motley assortment of aristocrats, but we stand by one another through scandal, misfortune, and the rare triumph.” He pointed to the parish register. “Simon claimed his daughter and gave her the family name. So if this infant is you, Miss Taylor . . .”

A dramatic pause thickened the air in the room.

“. . . then you are not Miss Taylor at all. You are Katherine Adele Gramercy.”

K
atherine Adele Gramercy?

Like hell she was.

Thorne clenched his jaw. He wasn’t a man of words. This situation called for eloquence, but he could only think of action. Chiefly, he wanted to fling open the door and turn all these queerly chattering aristocrats out on their arses. Then he’d lift Miss Taylor in his arms and carry her upstairs to have the restful lie-down she’d been needing for the past several hours. Her cheeks were deathly pale.

He would want to lie down next to her, but he wouldn’t. Because unlike these presumptive intruders,
he
had restraint. Thorne had heard of aristocratic inbreeding being to blame for imbecility and bad teeth. This family seemed to have contracted a sort of verbal cholera. Everything they spouted was rubbish.

He couldn’t believe these people proposed to take Miss Taylor away. He couldn’t believe she’d consider going with them.
She
had sense.

And she promptly displayed some of it.

“You’re so kind. But I’m afraid I can’t leave Spindle Cove so hastily. I have obligations here. Lessons, pupils. Our midsummer fair is just a week or so away, and I’m responsible for all the music and dancing.”

“Oh, I love a fair.” The youngest one bounced in her seat again. She had an irritating way of doing that, Thorne noticed.

“It isn’t much, but we have a good time with it. It’s a children’s festival, mostly—up at the ruined castle. Corporal Thorne and his militiamen are helping, too.” After throwing him a hesitant look, Miss Taylor continued, “At any rate, surely you’d wish for this . . . connection . . . to be more official before inviting me to your home? If we find that your suppositions are wrong, and I am actually
not
your relation . . .”

“But the portrait,” the young lady protested. “The register. Your birthmark.”

“Miss Taylor is right,” Lord Drewe said. “We must prove it’s not merely coincidence. I’ll dispatch men to interview at the school, canvass the local area around Ambervale. I’ve no doubt we’ll find the link between your infancy and Margate easily enough, with a bit of digging.”

Thorne knew Lord Drewe’s men would find no link between that parish register and Margate school. He could have cleared his throat and informed them precisely where Kate Taylor had spent her early years. She could see how eager these people were to claim her as a Gramercy then. There was high-class scandal, and then there was immoral squalor.

He said, “Miss Taylor isn’t going anywhere with you. All you’ve presented are suspicions of her identity. And we don’t even know who you are.”

Miss Taylor bit her lip. “Corporal Thorne, I’m sure—”

“No, no,” the mannish one interrupted. “The good corporal is absolutely right, Miss Taylor. We could be a gang of white slavers, or bloodthirsty cannibals. Or occultists looking for a virgin sacrifice.”

Thorne did not believe the Gramercys to be white slavers or cannibals or occultists—though they seemed to him the genteel version of bedlamites. And though he knew something of Kate Taylor’s childhood, he had to admit—he could not say with certainty that they were
not
her cousins. It was possible, he supposed. She hadn’t been born in that place. And she had the right name, the right year of birth. Those facts, plus the portrait and birthmark, made an argument that couldn’t be easily dismissed.