The Counterfeit Lady (10 page)

“We will what?”

The maid entered with the tea tray as I shrieked out the last word. She looked from me to the duke with widened eyes, but she set down the tray without spilling and fled the room, shutting the door quietly as she left.

“I suspected you’d need heavily sugared tea,” Blackford said as he fixed a cup and handed it to me.

I took a sip. It was sugary, but it revived me from a state of sputtering disbelief to full-blown fury. “How did you manage to get us invited?”

“I applied economic and social pressure. Lord Harwin enjoys my help in finding the best investments for his dwindling fortune, and Lady Harwin enjoys mentioning the presence of a duke at her home. Then I simply invited the three of us, and your maid and my valet, to stay with the Harwins for a few days. Don’t worry. They have plenty of room.”

Was no one immune to Blackford’s charm and power? “How long are we going to be there?”

“Four or five days. Phyllida will of course go with us, as will your maid, Emma.”

I set down the cup with a clatter. “Who’s going to manage the bookshop?”

“Whoever’s managing it now.”

“Emma and I are spending our mornings there, taking care of problems.” Such as not shelving
The Ruined Castle
.

“I wondered why you looked so exhausted. Ladies are supposed to sleep all morning.”

“I’m not a lady. Remember?”

“It’s too late to back out now, Georgina.” He stressed my assumed name.

He was right. I was going to have to trust the Archivist Society to take care of the shop. I took another sip of tea and said, “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to the Royal Albert Hall tonight for a concert. All of society will be there. We will make a show of being surprised when we bump into the baron and Sir Henry, and then I’ll casually mention we’re going to spend a few days with Lord Harwin to get out of London’s heat.”

“We’re not sitting next to them again, are we?”

“Not in the Royal Albert Hall. There, the best seats are in the private boxes. I found out what box the baron reserved, and obtained one on the other side. We’ll have a good view of his seats, plus ours is close to the center and therefore more prestigious.”

Of course it is.
“How will we run into the baron? He’ll be on the other side of a very large building.”

“Oh, he’ll come to us. Everyone will. I’ve invited Lord and Lady Salisbury to sit in our box. They accepted.”

My gulp of tea lodged painfully halfway down my throat. I managed to swallow without choking and said, “You’ve invited the prime minister and his wife to sit with us? I have to perform as Mrs. Monthalf in front of the prime minister?”

He smiled. “Think of this as playing your role on a larger stage.”

“What’s next? Dining with the queen?”

“No. That wouldn’t help with the investigation.”

Dear heavens. He was serious. My Georgina Monthalf disguise would have to be very good. “How will attending a concert with the prime minister help us find out if Clara Gattenger died in a struggle to save the blueprints and where those warship plans are now?”

“The best way to clear Ken Gattenger’s name is to seize those drawings during the handoff from the burglar. When the baron arrives to greet Salisbury, which he is almost obligated to do, I’ll tell him we’re to join his little country house party and that we’ll travel down to Gloucestershire with him. Start the party early.”

“He’s going to resist it.”

“I know. That’s why you have to convince Lady Bennett it would be great fun.” He gave me a patently false smile.

I raised my eyebrows in response. Spending more time with that lady would not be fun by anyone’s definition. Her sister’s husband could arrive at any time and denounce me, and my supposed late husband, as a fraud. “You’ll be able to do that better than I can. You’re the one she’s after.”

“Perhaps I’ll have to sweeten the offer.”

“How?”

“We’ll see.”

I hated it when he became enigmatic. However, I could understand his strategy. “You’re going to disrupt their plans as much as possible to try to force them to make a mistake.”

“Yes. Left to their own devices, they would have had those drawings in Berlin by now.”

“And the concert with the prime minister is tonight?”

“Yes.”

I was ready to slide down in my seat. “I need to get some sleep first.”

“Too late for that now.” Blackford spun around as the door opened behind him. “Ah, here’s Lady Phyllida. What have you learned?” he asked, kissing her hand.

“No one can quite decide if you’re lovers yet or not. Oh, good. Tea.” She poured more tea from the pot into my empty cup and drank. “Good gracious, the gossip that flows around this town. I’d forgotten how everyone knows everyone else’s business. Genevieve Hollingsworth, Lady Bennett’s mother, went completely bonkers before she died. Ran naked in the snow and caught pneumonia.”

Blackford cleared his throat, but I suspected it was to hide a chuckle.

“Oh, dear. Excuse me, Your Grace. I also heard the last Lord Peters was so paralyzed with a wasting disease for over a year before he died that no one can imagine how he fathered a child when he did. Of course, no one questions the little boy’s paternity out loud. So unfair to the child.”

Blackford huffed out a breath. “But it would be wrong for the child to have the title if there’s any truth to the rumor.”

Phyllida ignored him and continued. “It appears everyone knew about the liaison between Lark Bennett and Ken Gattenger, including Clara. She gave him a very hard time before she took him back. Meanwhile, Lady Bennett had moved on to the first secretary at the Russian embassy.”

“Is she a spy?” She certainly had affairs with the right personalities for espionage.

“Not one of ours. And Whitehall’s been keeping an eye on her,” Blackford told me.

“They’ve been wasting their time. She’s a light skirt with high expectations,” Phyllida said with her nose upraised.

“She may be both,” I suggested. Lady Bennett was having affairs where she could be learning secrets to pass along. I’d have to consider her as part of our current problem as well as a danger to my disguise.

I was growing weary of listening to gossip and being the subject of rumors. “We’re going to Lord Harwin’s country house party on Friday,” I told her.

“That will certainly tip the balance toward the two of you being lovers. Are you staying for dinner, Your Grace?”

“No. I’ll pick you up for the concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Tell her the rest, Georgina,” the duke said as he bowed and walked out of the parlor.

“We’re sharing a box with the prime minister and Lady Salisbury.”

Phyllida leaped up. “Oh, dear. There’s not a minute to lose. Anyone who wasn’t looking at us before will be now. What do you wear to sit in a box at the Royal Albert Hall with a duke and a marquis who happens to be prime minister?”

L
EFT
to my own devices, I would have been dressed in plenty of time. Instead, Emma and Phyllida worried over every detail of my costume and I still wasn’t ready when the duke arrived. Emma proclaimed me “as good as could be hoped for” while Phyllida said she’d “hoped for more.”

I told Emma to fix my hair because I was attending in what I had on at that moment. It was my finest gown, an icy green with a scandalous neckline, delivered from Madame Leclerc’s that morning, worn with low-heeled pumps and a simple necklace and earrings.

As Phyllida reached the door, she said, “You shouldn’t keep a duke waiting. I’ll be in the parlor with him, since some of us are ready.”

I rolled my eyes at her and told Emma to hurry. Emma grumbled, but she worked miracles with a bunch of hairpins and a bit of ribbon and a brooch. She pronounced me ready and I grabbed a lacy white shawl before I flew down the stairs to the parlor.

The duke rose when I entered the room. “Your cousin has been telling me about the gossip concerning Mrs. Gattenger.”

I nodded, knowing Phyllida must have found the rumors disheartening. Her silence told me she was upset. She’d not said a word to Emma or me about what she’d heard concerning Clara during her visits. “Did you learn anything useful for the investigation?”

Phyllida and Blackford exchanged glances, and the duke nodded.

“The consensus is Kenny killed Clara. Today I heard of two different disagreements between them in public. Oh, Georgia, I don’t believe it. They always seemed so happy.” Phyllida looked ready to cry.

“No one can know the inside of a marriage, except for the husband and wife. And there could have been any number of tiffs that meant nothing.” I gave her a quick hug. “Tell us about them.”

Phyllida brushed an invisible wrinkle out of my dress. “One was at a musical evening. Kenny said something innocuous that Clara didn’t like. She walked off and didn’t speak to him the rest of the evening. The other was at the theater. Some family comedy, but at the end, Clara was seen to have tears pouring down her face. Kenny tried to comfort her, but she pushed him away.”

How odd. “What was the play?”

“The ladies couldn’t remember. But these episodes are going to count against Kenny, aren’t they?”

Blackford took Phyllida’s hand. “If I were the prosecutor, I’d use them to paint a portrait of a troubled marriage. But I think our best bet is to keep an eye on Sir Henry. If Georgia will question him, I think we’ll find he’s the man who hired Snelling and he plans to turn around and sell the plans to the Germans.”

Both Phyllida and Blackford stared at me as if waiting for me to do my job.

Annoyed with their attitudes, I turned to leave. “Let’s not keep the prime minister waiting.”

“I refuse to believe Kenny had a hand in Clara’s death. It’s impossible. Remember that, Your Grace, while you carry out your investigation.”

Once we were in the carriage I asked, “What do you plan to discover tonight?”

The duke smiled, but his eyes stayed grim. “I have no idea. We’ll keep an eye on the baron and listen to all the maneuvering around the prime minister. We’ll see if we can uncover any clues.”

When we arrived at the Royal Albert Hall, we went straight to our box and waited for the arrival of the prime minister. The duke went out to meet him, leaving Phyllida and me on our own. I saw the baron and Lady Bennett arrive in their box with another man, wearing a uniform identical to the baron’s, and the Dowager Duchess of Bad Ramshed and her daughter Lady Magda. None of them looked our way.

“The Germans have arrived,” Phyllida hissed.

“Have you learned any more about them from your afternoon visits?”

“The woman is a relative of the kaiser’s wife. Everyone says she’s a terrible dragon, so it’s not just my opinion from meeting her at Lady Bennett’s. I was given all the particulars when I paid my calls this afternoon. Several people called on her and were treated to a litany of all the things wrong with Britain. Apparently she’s leaving tomorrow, having visited with her doctors.”

Alarm bells rang in my head. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Rheumatism.”

Nothing unusual in a simple case of rheumatism, but could she be the mode for moving the blueprints to Germany? She had such a reputation and had such a powerful family that no one would want to search her carefully for the ship plans.

“What I don’t understand is how Lark Bennett could put up with someone as stuffy as her. Her mother never would.” Phyllida stared across the space to the box a distance away where Lady Bennett sat with the Germans.

Perhaps Lady Bennett would pass the ship blueprints to the dowager duchess and the baron would never have to touch them. I didn’t like the possibilities that kept springing to mind.

I heard noise behind us and turned around as Sir Henry Stanford entered our box. “Sir Henry,” I said with a smile as I rose. “How wonderful to see you again.” Wonderful for him, maybe. His suave smile made me nervous.

“I called today, hoping to find you at home, but you were out.” He brushed his lips along the back of my glove in the European manner.

“Yes. We called on Lady Peters. It was kind of her to invite us.” I sat and waved him into a chair. “Please sit, Sir Henry. We have a few minutes to talk before the performance.”

He sat and leaned toward me in a familiar manner. “I wondered if you ladies would like to accompany me to an art exhibit tomorrow evening. I realize it’s short notice, but I’m leaving town the next day.”

“How extraordinary. So are we. We’ve been invited to Lord Harwin’s for a few days.” I tried looking delighted.

He smiled. I hoped he was buying my act. “Extraordinary. That’s where I’m headed.”

“We won’t have time to go out tomorrow evening, but perhaps we can ride down to Gloucestershire in the train together.”

“Of course.” He glanced at Phyllida. “If I could have a private word with your cousin?”

“Of course.” Phyllida turned toward the stage and Sir Henry beckoned me to the rear of our box.

“I know what you did last night, and it won’t do you any good.” He kept his voice to a murmur.

Blast. The maid must have spotted me before I reached the bottom of the stairs. Trying to brazen it out, I said, “What do you think I did?”

“Rummaged through my study. I don’t keep anything of value there. Too easy a place for someone to search. And I asked around in the city. No one is handling the business affairs of Mrs. Edgar Monthalf. There is no money, is there?”

“Of course there is. How else would I be able to afford these dresses and jewels?”

“When your bills catch up with you, you’ll be hounded out of London.” His breath brushed my cheek as he continued to murmur. It made my skin crawl.

I stared at him, uncertain how to answer. The truth was the last thing I could tell him.

“If you want me to keep your secret, here’s what you’re going to do.” He gripped my upper arm and I gasped. “You’re going to visit Gattenger tomorrow and find out if his ship will sink or float. And you will tell me tomorrow afternoon when I call on you. Five o’clock.”

“That’s too soon.”

He gave me a cruel smile. The smile of a killer. His grip on my arm tightened. “You’ll do it, or I’ll expose you as a thief and a fraud.”

He let go of my arm and said to Phyllida, “Lady Monthalf, it was lovely to see you again. I hope you enjoy the concert.”

I wanted to rub my sore arm, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt me any more than he’d frightened me. “Sir Henry, what do you—” I was ready to tell him off.

Instead, I was forced to stop in midsentence as the duke entered, joined by a pleasant-looking woman and a man with a ferocious beard. Phyllida immediately rose and curtsied. I followed her example.

Sir Henry, his mouth dropping open for a moment at the sight of the prime minister standing in front of him, pressed his lips together and bowed.

The duke made the introductions, saving Sir Henry’s for last as he said, “And before he leaves, this is Sir Henry Stanford.”

I was amazed at how gracefully Sir Henry bowed to the prime minister and his wife and maneuvered around me without coming within reach of the duke, all in a small, crowded area. Gracefully enough to be the burglar?

No. We knew Mick Snelling was the burglar from Ken Gattenger’s drawing. We just didn’t know who’d hired him, or how they planned to exchange the blueprints for cash, or if the person who’d hired Snelling was only a middleman, putting the drawings up for bid.

The possibilities bothered me for the entire first half of the performance. That, and hearing the duke and the prime minister call each other Ranleigh and Cecil. I felt completely out of place.

Phyllida shot me little glances of worry. She’d no doubt heard the tone of my talk with Sir Henry, if not the actual words. I gave her confident smiles in return, while inside I knew I had to deal with yet another problem.

When intermission came, Lady Salisbury murmured, “Prepare yourselves for a great deal of curtsying. By now, everyone in the hall knows the prime minister is here, and there will be a line around the building wanting to greet him or ask if he’s enjoying the concert. Anything to come to his attention.”

“Is it as bad as all that?” I asked.

Voices in the entryway to our box caught our attention. “Yes,” she answered as we rose and curtsied to a duke and duchess.

The parade of British aristocracy and foreign diplomats continued for the entire intermission. Mrs. Monthalf was gracious. Inside, I was overawed.

Near the end, Baron von Steubfeld and Lady Bennett appeared with a count and the Dowager Duchess of Bad Ramshed and her daughter. The duke introduced them to the prime minister and Lady Salisbury. I slid in next to Lady Bennett and said, “So nice to see you again. The duke says we’re to be guests at the same party in the country. I look forward to improving our acquaintance.”

“Perhaps you’ll do us the honor of traveling with us in the Duke of Northumberland’s saloon car,” Blackford added, more to the baron than Lark Bennett.

“Oh, how lovely,” Lady Bennett immediately exclaimed, “we’d love to travel in such a civilized manner,” leaving the baron no choice but to nod agreement as he looked daggers at Blackford.

After all the well-wishers had gone and the orchestra readied to strike the first note, I whispered to the duke, “I invited Sir Henry to travel with us.”

His reply was a low grumble. I’d have thought he’d be glad.

“At least the Dragoness of Bad Ramshed won’t be with us,” Phyllida said.

“No, she won’t be there,” the duke said, eyebrows rising. “‘Dragoness’?”

“A difference of opinion,” I muttered.

I nodded off a few times in the second half. The heat of so many bodies, my long hours, and the strain of acting a role all evening were taking their toll. Phyllida elbowed me twice and the duke, who sat behind me and to the side, took to running a finger down my neck in the most sensual manner. Unfortunately, all I wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep.

We left the hall and saw the prime minister and his wife off before the duke escorted us around the building looking for our carriage. A confusion of horses and vehicles circled the round structure, each jockeying for better position or to park in front of a different doorway. As we moved along the outdoor walkway, nodding greetings to the famous, Blackford said to Phyllida when we reached an open exit, “I don’t think you should walk any further. The carriage should find us in a moment.”

Phyllida glanced up at him with a puzzled frown, looked around, and said, “I suppose you’re right.”

At that moment, the baron and Lady Bennett walked outside with the others who’d sat in their box.

Lady Bennett was holding a large chocolate box from the most aristocratic candy maker in the city. A box like the one I’d seen in Rose Snelling’s room. A box that could hold the folded warship drawings. I moved closer to take a look, saying, “Oh, what a fortunate lady you are,” when I was shoved roughly from behind.

The momentum carried me into Lady Bennett, knocking her off her feet. The duke and the baron did all they could do to keep us from landing in a sprawled heap on the pavement. The dowager duchess shrieked and grabbed her daughter. I managed to shove on the candy box, sending two pounds of the most exquisite chocolates rolling in all directions under our feet as the box spilled open.

“Oh, look what you’ve done,” Lady Bennett exclaimed, her tiara slipping to one side and her evening cloak twisted around her.

“I am so sorry. Some ruffian shoved me. Where is he?” I glanced around, suspecting I’d recognize a face, but everyone in sight was well-heeled and middle-aged.

“There he is. You must catch him,” the dowager duchess screeched in a thick accent and pointed.

“No. It wasn’t him,” Phyllida said. “I’m afraid he’s gone now.”

“He must be an anarchist. We must stop him,” the count exclaimed and took two steps forward, only to collide with Phyllida.

She grabbed on to his lapels, murmuring, “An anarchist? I’m so frightened. You must stay here and protect us.”

“I don’t know who it was. I was too busy trying to catch Mrs. Monthalf and Lady Bennett,” the duke said and glanced around.