The Honorable Heir (4 page)

“Make yourself comfortable, my lord. Lady Bisterne will be with you shortly.” The butler bowed and withdrew.

Tristram stared at the panorama before him. The chamber stood out from the house to allow floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. The abundance of glass made for a chilly chamber, and a view that made up for the cold—the wind-whipped waters of the lake and the woods beyond; gardens, a gazebo surrounded by spruce trees and the house itself, which curved along the shore.

“Astounding.” The word escaped his lips.

“It is, rather.”

He startled at the sound of her voice behind him. Half smiling, he faced her ladyship and held out his hand. “Thank you for receiving me, Lady Bisterne.”

“Of course.” She accepted his proffered hand.

Her fingers felt like icicles against his palm, and for a moment, he fought the urge to clasp her hand in his and warm it. The action would have given him a moment to gaze at her by the light of day, for she was worth a moment—or a hundred—of gazing.

She’d been pretty by the gaslights of the clubhouse. But here, even in the gray of a day threatening more rain, her complexion glowed like a natural pearl, emphasizing the depth of dark eyes behind lashes long and thick. The dark green jacket and skirt she wore brought out the red in her smooth hair. All of her was smooth, neat perfection except for that dimple in her chin. That dimple, that slip of the sculptor’s chisel, served to emphasize the flawlessness of her bones, while making her far more approachable, far more...appealing. Too appealing.

No wonder Bisterne had fallen for her. The wonder was how he had managed to leave her behind at Bisterne, while he cavorted in London.

His mouth suddenly dry, Tristram tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his coat and tore his gaze from Catherine. A suite of sofas and chairs rested upon a Persian carpet in the center of the room. “May we be seated? This may take a while.”

“I will send for coffee.” Her nostrils pinched. “Or would you prefer tea?”

Perhaps the VanDorns’ cook made better tea than did the Selkirks’, but her face told him she disliked that oh-so-English beverage. “Coffee is well enough.”

While she rang for a footman to bring up coffee, Tristram returned his attention to the lake. The waves had died down and precipitation that suspiciously resembled snow fell lightly like feathers from a pillow. “Snow at the beginning of November.”

“Not uncommon here. They’ve been seeing a bit here and there since the middle of October.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Seeing she had seated herself on a sofa facing the windows, he settled on a chair across from her. “They? You weren’t here?”

“I only arrived in Tuxedo Park three days ago.”

“Yes, from Dieppe. Wouldn’t Le Havre have been more convenient?”

Her hands flattened on the brown velvet cushion, and a stillness settled over her. “How do you know where I was in France?” Her voice was as cold and brittle as the ice rimming the edge of the lake.

“I thought I would—”

The arrival of coffee, hot and fragrant, along with cream, sugar and sweet biscuits, interrupted him. Her question and his partial response hovered in the air while she thanked the footman, then poured Tristram coffee, adding a dollop of cream and pinch of sugar he preferred. Not until she settled back on the sofa, a fragile china cup cradled in her hands, did he continue.

“I thought I could catch up with you in Paris, and then Le Havre, but I miscalculated your direction there, and arrived in New York a week ahead of you.”

Her eyes widened, a little too far for genuine surprise, as far as Tristram was concerned. “Why, may I ask, were you following me?”

“To recover the jewels, of course.” He smiled.

She gave him a blank stare, sipped her coffee, then set the cup on the low table between them. Light from the wall sconces flashed off the diamond-studded wedding band and matching engagement ring on her left hand, rings that should grace the far less attractive fingers of the current Countess of Bisterne, Florian’s sister-in-law.

Tristram leaned forward and slipped his hand beneath Lady Catherine Bisterne’s, tilting it so a cold flame burned at the heart of the engagement diamond, and asked, “Shall we start with these rings?”

Chapter 4

A handshake often creates a feeling of liking or of irritation between two strangers. Who does not dislike a “boneless” hand extended as though it were a spray of seaweed, or a miniature boiled pudding? It is equally annoying to have one’s hand clutched aloft in grotesque affectation and shaken violently sideways, as though it were being used to clean a spot out of the atmosphere. What woman does not wince at the viselike grasp that cuts her rings into her flesh and temporarily paralyzes every finger?

Emily Price Post

B
lood drained from Catherine’s face. Beneath Tristram’s grip, the rings warmed. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her lips, no longer dusky rose, compressed.

“Please.” Her voice rasped barely above a whisper, and she tugged her hand free.

Tristram considered rising and crossing the room so he could bang his head against one of the myriad glass panes in the windows to knock some sense into himself. She hadn’t just been reacting in guilt; he had been holding her hand too tightly.

“I am sorry, my lady.” An urge to raise her hand to his lips washed over him. If blood had drained from her face, then it surely flooded into his, for his ears and cheeks burned. His necktie grew too tight. “I forgot myself.”

“I’d ask you to leave but I believe we have unfinished business.” Her hands steady, her expression now the smooth mask adopted by a lady used to court circles, she refilled both their cups. Instead of picking up hers, she twisted off the rings and laid them on the table, where the diamonds winked and shimmered like lighthouse beacons warning of danger ahead. “As you can see, I have never taken them off.” Her ring finger bore the marks of rings long worn. “I was afraid to remove them lest people think I was hunting for another husband.” Two rapid blinks betrayed emotion trying to break through her facade. “I’d recommend you tell old Mrs. Selkirk that, but then you would have to admit you were here.”

“I expect she already knows.” He seized on the diversion like a man stuck in quicksand grasping a rope to haul himself out. “I had to ask the Selkirks’ butler for directions.”

“They wouldn’t lend you their carriage?”

“I wanted to walk.”

This time, the widening of her eyes appeared to be natural surprise. “You wanted to walk in this cold?”

She glanced at the windows. Beyond the glass, snow swirled like confetti defying gravity, never touching the ground. What flakes did land melted on impact, leaving the winter-brown grass and walkways to the gazebo and lake wet.

“After two years in South Africa,” Tristram said, “I appreciate precipitation regardless of the temperature.”

“You were in South Africa?” She gave him a look of sincere interest.

He returned it with a rueful shrug. “Not a shining hour of mine. The Boer War.”

“I remember hearing something about you being in the military. You—” She pressed her fingers to her lips as though trying to shove back the rest of her thought.

He bowed his head. “Captain Lord Tristram Wolfe at your service, my lady.”

Except he didn’t have a true right to use the military rank. He hoped she didn’t recall that bit of gossip that must have made its way to Bisterne. He had, after all, been allowed to resign his commission.

“But since I resigned,” he hastened to emphasize this fact, “I never use the rank.”

“You were wounded.” Her glance flicked to his head. “Are you certain you’re quite well?”

His hand flew to flatten his cowlick, and he narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you suggesting that my conviction that you are responsible for the missing Bisterne jewels is a result of my being bashed on the head?”

“I would never be so vulgar.”

“You’re wearing colors. The vulgarity of that was all Mrs. Selkirk talked of at breakfast this morning.”

Catherine laughed.

At the sound of her laughter, an invisible hand wound the already taut watch springs of Tristram’s middle, causing friction, too much warmth. He drank his now cold coffee in an attempt to ease the tension inside him.

“Shall I order fresh coffee so we may start this conversation over, Lord Tristram?” Catherine rose without waiting for his response, and crossed the room to the bell. “My sister tells me she is trying to convince our father that an internal telephone system will save the servants a great deal of work running up and down steps, as we could call them with our request.”

Tristram raised his brows at this sudden chatter. It, like the way she stabbed the bell push three times instead of one, spoke as loudly as her voice of her nervousness.

“But then,” Catherine continued, “Estelle likes gadgets. She is forever recording her own music on her phonograph cylinders. I prefer to listen to live music myself, and perhaps one day—”

The arrival of the footman stopped the uninterrupted string of words—a string suggesting nervousness on her part, or an effort to keep him from saying anything to her. She gave the order for fresh coffee, remaining silent until the footman removed the tray of used cups, his stare fixed on the discarded rings.

The instant the man’s footfalls no longer sounded on the stair treads, Tristram rather expected her ladyship to take up her flow of chatter where she had left off. Instead, she glided across the room to a set of windows, her soft wool skirt flowing around her like dark green water.

“Enough fencing, my Lord Tristram.” She spoke with her back to him, though the day had grown so dark with cloud cover her reflection shone in the glass. “Tell me what transformed you from soldier to Scotland Yard detective? Tell me why you and my cousin by marriage have accused me of stealing jewels from the Bisterne estate. Other than the wedding and engagement ring, of course. I never thought about how they belonged to the estate until this morning, before your call. Surely you didn’t chase me across Europe because of a couple of paltry rings.”

Paltry? The new Earl of Bisterne could feed every tenant on his estate for a year with the price of those rings alone.

Tristram said nothing for a full minute, then he rose and joined her at the window. “I’m scarcely a Scotland Yard detective, my lady. We have a family connection to the current Lord Bisterne, and his father was a friend of my father’s from the time they were in short pants until Baston-Ward’s death a half dozen years ago. Baston-Ward had made some foolish investments that ruined his fortune, and his son tried to recoup those losses through gaming instead of hard work.”

“A trait of the family,” Catherine murmured.

Tristram inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Which is why the estate fell into such disrepair.”

“It isn’t in disrepair now, thanks to my dowry.” A hint of bitterness edged her tone.

Tristram barely managed to stop himself from reaching out and touching her hand, her elbow, her face in a gesture of comfort. She had made her bed. If Edwin had not been such a profligate in gaming, drink and food consumption, she would still be lying in that bed of neglect after buying her way into the English nobility. Surely she had known the risks, but then, perhaps she had not. She couldn’t have been above eighteen or nineteen years of age when she succumbed to the lure of a title and Bisterne’s charm.

“You gave a number of people much-needed work.” He offered truth for comfort instead of his touch.

“But that won’t last. The dowry reverted back to my trust fund principle upon my husband’s death.”

“Which is where the jewels come in. Bisterne needs to sell them to gain capital enough to continue the estate into a paying prospect.”

The footman returned with the chime of silver and the rattle of china. Out the window, the snow had turned to freezing rain that pattered against the glass. When the footman departed, the soaring notes of a violin rose in his wake.

“That’s not Ambrose playing, is it?”

“That is Estelle. We don’t know where she gets her talent. Mama and even my father and brother can play adequately at the piano, but Estelle’s talent is special.”

“I hear that.”

Estelle was playing Vivaldi with a warmth that probably would have pleased the composer. It pleased Tristram, cutting straight to his heart as good music should. With those glorious notes swooping up the staircase, discussing Lady Catherine’s larceny seemed as much a crime as taking someone else’s jewelry.

“My lady.” His throat felt tight. “I didn’t believe my father when he told me the Bisterne jewels were missing and you were the only person who could have taken them. But I set out to follow you anyway, and found too much evidence to deny the charge.”

“You are referring to more than the wedding and engagement rings.” Her voice was expressionless, but he could not see her face.

“Considerably more.” He was growing numb standing so close to the expanse of glass. “Shall we sit?” He could see her better if they faced one another across a coffee service rather than staring into the autumnal gloom side by side.

Wordlessly, she returned to the sofa, touched her fingertips to the side of the coffeepot and poured them fresh cups. Neither of them drank. They sat in identical poses, their backs too straight to touch the cushions behind them, their gazes fixed somewhere beyond the other’s shoulders.

Then Catherine blinked twice and met his eyes in a challenge. “So what is this evidence?”

“You spent the past thirteen months in Italy and France.” He drew up a mental list. “Venice, Rome and Florence. Avignon, Lyon and Paris. In each of those cities, at a jeweler, I found at least one piece of jewelry that I know for a fact had previously been in your possession.”

* * *

A lifetime of training kept Catherine’s face expressionless, her teeth clenched together. If she opened her mouth for so much as a sip of coffee, she would probably shriek with hysterical laughter or say something unforgivably rude to Tristram.

He shifted on his chair, set down his cup and drew a sheaf of papers from an inside pocket of his coat. “Receipts.” He held them out to her. “For the pieces I managed to recover.”

She snatched the receipts from him and scanned prices in lira and francs. Each bill of purchase was attached to a detailed description and drawing.

“Who made these?” She tapped on the pictures.

“They were in the vault where the jewels should have been.”

“I never saw them there.”

“So you did go into the vault?”

She slapped the papers onto the sofa beside her. “Of course I did. I was mistress of the house. We kept coin there for paying workmen and wages on quarter days. Bisterne was rarely at home, so that duty fell to me. I never even saw most of the jewelry. Other than a parure of emeralds, I never wore any of it. It wasn’t to my taste.”

“And the combs?”

“Those were a wedding gift.” To her horror, tears filled her eyes. She blinked, but to no avail. “And you know they are artificial. Perhaps they all are.”

Tristram shifted on his chair. Finally, he produced a white linen handkerchief and pressed it into her hand. “None of them, according to the jewelers, are artificial. And in thirteen months, you had plenty of time to have copies made.”

“I wouldn’t wear paste gemstones.” She dashed the handkerchief across her eyes, then crushed it between her fingers. “I think you need to leave, my lord. You have been here long enough, and my intentions are to make amends with Georgette Selkirk, not make matters worse between our families.” She rose to force him to do so.

He was too well-bred not to, but he gave her an uncompromising stare. “No one else had access to the jewels except for you and Edwin. But Edwin was already gone, so that leaves you. I
will
find a way to prove you have, or know where to find, the rest.”

“You may try, my lord, but you are forgetting one important detail.”

“Indeed?”

“Why would I do such a thing? My quarterly allowance from my trust fund holds more money than all the Bisterne jewels put together.”

For a heartbeat, his eyes flickered with uncertainty. Then he smiled and bowed. “Touché, my lady. I will find my motivation.”

“You are welcome to try, Mr. Holmes.”

He laughed at her reference to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective. “I will find a reason, my lady. I likely have more of a stake in winning this game than do you.” He executed the most fluid and graceful bow she had witnessed since her husband’s death, then clasped her hand in his and raised her fingers to his lips.

A jolt of electricity shot through her, and she snatched her hand away. “How dare you?” The whispered words lacked the hauteur she wished for.

“With very little trouble.” He smiled, turned so smartly on his heels she expected him to salute the portrait of her grandfather hanging at the top of the steps, then strode from the room.

Once he descended the steps, Catherine sank onto the sofa. She started to cover her face with her hands until she regained her composure—and spotted the rings still lying on the table.

So he was not as confident as he pretended. He wouldn’t have forgotten the rings if he were.

“He can do without them.”

Yet it was legitimately within his milieu to take them from her on behalf of the new Lord Bisterne. They never should have left England on her finger. She could have purchased a plain gold band to let the world know she was not in the market for a second spouse.

She would catch him up and give him the rings. He would not find in her more reasons to accuse her of being a jewel thief.

She snatched up the band and betrothal diamond and raced down the steps to the entryway. It stood stark and empty, cold stone lighted by long windows on either side of the front door.

She flung open that door and gazed down the path leading through the trees to the road. Swirling snow stuck to the grass and flagstones, descending now in sheets instead of dancing through the air. If Lord Tristram were out there, she could not see him. If she tried to follow, she would likely slip and fall in her light leather shoes, not to mention freeze in her thin wool jacket and lace-trimmed shirtwaist.

Already shivering, she shut the door, headed for the nearest fire and heard the music recommence. It was a cello this time, an instrument Estelle hadn’t mastered as well as she liked.