While waiting for their children to be brought down, Violet and Griselda edged closer to Penelope, flanking her as all three watched Hugo exchange a few careful and conservative phrases with Cara.
“The way he treats her,” Griselda murmured, “it’s as if she’s a porcelain princess.”
Penelope smiled and whispered back, “She blushes like one, too.”
By straining their ears, all three ladies heard Cara’s hesitant response to Hugo’s gallantry, then she drew in a breath and attempted—quite definitely—to deny there was any need for him to dance attendance on her…
Hugo merely looked at her. If anything, his jaw set more determinedly.
Then with one last bow, he turned, and Mostyn opened the door. With a general wave, Hugo clattered down the steps and strode away.
Penelope, Griselda, and Violet watched Cara—watched her continue to stare at the space Hugo had filled until Mostyn shut the door.
Then Cara sighed, turned, found a sweet smile, and thanked the six of them, sincerely and from the heart, for their championing of her cause.
The last in line, Penelope squeezed Cara’s fingers. “Think nothing of it—it’s what we’re good at, and we enjoy the challenge, too. Now, off you go and have a good night’s sleep. I take it you have everything you need?”
Cara confirmed she had, said another round of thanks, then raised her hems and went up the stairs.
On the landing, she passed the nursemaids—Gloria carrying a sleeping Megan slumped over her shoulder and Hilda with a bundled Martin cradled in her arms.
Watching Cara disappear along the gallery, Griselda murmured, “Why did she try to discourage Hugo? Over all the earlier hours, she and he seemed to be growing ever closer.”
“Indeed.” Penelope grinned. “I suspect that Hugo, at least, is falling head over heels for her. His mother has nearly despaired of him—I rather think she’s going to be pleased. I must send her a note. But as to Cara’s dissuading Hugo, if I read the signs aright, she’s worried that any damage this business causes to her reputation will sully his. She’s being noble in making every effort not to encourage him.”
“That speaks well of her,” Griselda observed.
“It does.” Penelope continued to smile. “I have no doubt that her heart is in the right place, so to speak—especially when it comes to Hugo.”
“Perhaps she thinks she isn’t worthy of him?” Violet said.
Penelope pushed her spectacles higher on her nose. “If so, we’ll have to teach her otherwise. As Lord Carisbrook’s niece and ward, she’s perfectly acceptable as Hugo’s bride. And, of course”—she exchanged glances with Violet and Griselda—“collectively, we’re going to ensure that, no matter what the solution to the puzzle of the Carisbrook emeralds proves to be, it won’t in any way interfere with us guiding this budding romance to a successful conclusion.”
“Just so.” Smiling, Griselda reached out and took Megan from Gloria. Stokes instantly appeared at Griselda’s shoulder, checking that their daughter was still asleep.
With a grin and a nod of agreement to Penelope, Violet took Martin into her arms.
Mostyn had summoned the Stokeses’ and the Montagues’ carriages, and the families, with cloaks and hats donned and cuddling their sleeping children close, descended the steps. Barnaby and Penelope stood in their doorway and waved the carriages off.
Then Penelope looked up, met Barnaby’s eyes, and grinned. “Once more, into the breach!”
Barnaby laughed, took her hand, and drew her inside, and Mostyn shut the door.
Chapter 5
Stokes’s meeting with the commissioner went exactly as he’d hoped. Although Sir Phillip looked peeved at the prospect of a serious burglary in Mayfair hanging in the balance, he approved of Stokes consulting with the Adairs; that Barnaby’s father, the Earl of Cothelstone, was one of the peers who oversaw the police force and was also a personal friend of Sir Phillip’s was a source of continuing joy to Stokes. Sir Phillip concluded by grunting and telling Stokes to get on with it.
Stokes was very ready to comply. He jumped into a hackney and directed it to Ludgate Hill, but before the coach had traveled a block, he tapped on the roof and told the jarvey to detour via Albemarle Street.
Last night over dinner, Violet had asked if Cara had inherited her father’s artistic talent, and although Cara had demurred, if Stokes had read Hugo’s reaction correctly, she possessed superior drawing skills.
Regardless, her drawing had to be better than Stokes’s ability to describe jewelry.
When Mostyn opened the door to Stokes, the majordomo smiled and informed him that both Barnaby and Penelope had already left the house. “The master thought a quick word with his father might be in order, and the mistress has gone to St. Ives House to consult with the ladies there.”
“Luckily,” Stokes said, surrendering his overcoat, “it’s not either of them I need to see. Is Miss Di Abaccio downstairs?”
“Indeed, sir. She’s in the back parlor with Mr. Hugo Adair. And, of course, Mrs. Montague.”
“Naturally.” Stokes hid a grin. He, Barnaby, and Montague had overheard enough of their ladies’ comments in the front hall at the end of their evening to recognize that their other halves’ interest in the case had expanded to include Hugo’s and Cara’s futures. With one shared glance, he and the other two had elected not to interfere. Furthering romances was what ladies did, after all.
He walked into the back parlor; a nicely proportioned room with long windows overlooking the back garden, the parlor doubled as Penelope’s office.
Seated side by side on the damask-covered sofa, Hugo and Cara were discussing the offerings of various theaters revealed in a handful of playbills. They looked up as Stokes entered, as did Violet, who was perched behind Penelope’s desk and appeared to be comparing Penelope’s correspondence with her diary. Violet spent a few days each week organizing Penelope and the translations she undertook for various colleges and institutions up and down the country.
All three occupants of the parlor smiled at Stokes, then looked at him inquiringly.
He smiled at all three, then focused on Cara. “I hoped I would find you in, Miss Di Abaccio. My meeting with the commissioner went as well as I’d hoped, and I’ve been given a free hand to investigate this case as I see fit. I’m therefore on my way to visit Rundell, Bridge, and Company, as we discussed. However, I realized that my ability to describe the Carisbrook emerald necklace and earrings is likely to prove woefully inadequate. I wondered if I could prevail on you to make me a sketch of the set?”
Cara blinked, then her face lit. “Why, yes, Inspector.” She bounced to her feet. “I will be very pleased to be of help.” She stepped forward and gestured to the door. “If you will wait, I will fetch my pencils and paper.”
Stokes bowed. “Thank you.”
Smiling, Cara hurried past and whisked out of the door. A second later, the sound of her slippers running quickly up the stairs reached them.
Grinning, Stokes turned back to find Hugo gazing at the now-empty doorway, then Hugo raised his gaze to Stokes’s face, and Stokes saw concern and an unvoiced query lurking in Hugo’s dark-blue eyes.
“No one,” Stokes stated, “not even the commissioner—who would dearly like to see the thief apprehended sooner rather than later—believes Miss Di Abaccio is guilty.”
“Except for her loudmouthed aunt,” Hugo replied.
Stokes inclined his head. “Except for her ladyship, but as matters stand, her unsupported stance is already reflecting more on her than on Miss Di Abaccio.”
Hugo searched Stokes’s face, then the tension thrumming just beneath his surface eased. “That’s…good to know.”
Aware of Violet watching their exchange, Stokes regarded Hugo for a second more, then, given that Hugo was there and showing no signs of shifting from Cara’s side, Stokes yielded to impulse and said, “It occurs to me that until we resolve the question of who took the emeralds and why, it would be an excell
ent idea for Miss Di Abaccio to have a reliable watchdog by her side. Not just when she’s outside but at all times through the day.” Stokes paused for a second, then added, “I suppose I could delegate Morgan to guard her—”
“No need.” Hugo met Stokes’s gaze, his expression sober, serious, and utterly implacable. “I’m only too happy to oblige.”
Stokes fought to hide his grin and inclined his head. “Very well. I’ll leave that aspect in your hands.”
He looked across the room at Violet, who, as Hugo was again watching the doorway, grinned widely and approvingly back. Stokes arched his brows. “Where’s Martin?”
“Upstairs, playing with Oliver, Hattie, and Hilda.” Violet set down one letter and picked up another. “Those girls have been a godsend.”
Stokes nodded. “I don’t know what we’d do without Gloria.”
Pattering footsteps announced Cara’s return. She swept into the room, beamed at them all, then returned to her place on the sofa, dumped a handful of pencils in her lap, retaining one in her fingers, and placed a sketch pad on her knees.
She bent over the pad. “The emeralds are—as Mrs. Adair said—quite ugly.”
With quick, sure strokes, she created a sketch, at first bare bones, then filling in considerable detail of a necklace composed of what looked like medallions, each medallion formed from highly wrought gold wrapped around a large rectangular emerald. To Stokes’s eyes, the result bordered on the hideous.
“And these are the earrings.” Cara quickly sketched the matching earbobs—each made up of one medallion dangling from a shepherd’s crook—on the same sheet of paper.
Cara sat back and examined her work. She bent again and added several tiny touches, then straightened, dropped her pencil into her lap, tore off the sheet, and handed it to Stokes. “There. That is the best I can do.”
Stokes took the sheet and studied the sketch. Somehow, even without using colors, she had made the gold appear to be gold—even to glisten. There was perspective and depth to the items; he almost felt he could reach into the sketch and grasp the necklace. He looked at Cara—into her upturned face with its hopeful expression. “You truly are very talented.”
She shrugged and looked away. “I just draw. It is easy.”
Stokes felt his brows rise; he knew little about art, but even he could see that her talent was no minor thing. He folded the sheet carefully and slipped it into his pocket. “Thank you. This will help me greatly.”
That made Cara beam again. “I am truly pleased to have been able to assist.”
Stokes bowed to her. Straightening, he met Hugo’s eyes and nodded, then at the last, raised his gaze to Violet and tipped her a smiling salute. “I’ll leave you all to your day’s endeavors.”
With a general wave, he turned and left the room.
Seconds later, he quit the house. As he went quickly down the steps to where the hackney waited, he thought again of his suggestion to Hugo and felt his lips curve in a self-satisfied smile. Who said only ladies could matchmake?
Penelope hadn’t known who she might find in the back parlor of St. Ives House that morning, but the instant she walked in and saw Lady Osbaldestone and Helena, the Dowager Duchess of St. Ives, ensconced in armchairs by the fire, she knew her visit wouldn’t be in vain.
After the initial round of greetings, Honoria, Duchess of St. Ives and their hostess, fixed Penelope with a commanding look and arched her brows. “Well, my dear? Have you an inquiry for us to assist with?”
Penelope and, she suspected, all the others there viewed the queries she brought to such meetings as her contribution to the event—much like a superior form of parlor game. She pushed her spectacles higher on her nose—she really needed to get the bridge tightened—and swept her gaze over the interested faces now turned her way. “As it happens, a strange case fell into our laps just yesterday.”
These ladies knew what they were doing when it came to secrets and the ton; without reservation, she gave them a précis of the disappearance of the emeralds, Lady Carisbrook’s accusation against Cara, and what they’d subsequently learned and deduced.
After the inevitable exclamations died away, Penelope swept the gathering with her gaze. “What I would like to ask is, firstly, what any of you know about the Carisbrook emeralds and, secondly, what you can tell me of the Carisbrook family—the current members.”
Heads bent close as the ladies whispered, then Lady Osbaldestone rapped her cane on the floor, drawing every eye.
“Helena and I,” her ladyship declared, “both consider the emeralds quite hideous—so ridiculously overblown—but as far as either of us know, they’ve been in the family for generations.”
Helena nodded. “I can remember the current Lord Carisbrook’s grandmother wearing them in the days when I first came to England.”
“So,” Penelope said, “they’ve been around for a long time.” She looked at the others. “I gather Lady Carisbrook—the current one—wears them frequently.”
“At every possible turn,” Caro Anstruther-Wetherby averred.
“Even when they clash horridly with the color of her gown,” Patience Cynster confirmed.
“We can take it as read, therefore,” Penelope said, “that the emeralds would be recognizable to many.” She reviewed her questions. “Now, what about the current Carisbrook family?”
From various quarters came comments—confirmed by others—to the effect that her ladyship had a very firm notion of her own and her family’s station. Several described incidents they’d witnessed that testified to her ladyship’s often-sour disposition and her tendency to be overbearingly domineering to those of even fractionally less standing than her own.
“It’s not so much a case of putting on airs above her station,” Lady Osbaldestone explained, “as insisting to the nth degree on every last possible acknowledgment of her status. Of what is due to her by virtue of her birth and marriage.”
“And,” Honoria said, “she’s been rigid in inculcating her children—the older three, at least—with the same attitude.”
Others were quick to agree, citing examples of the pompous arrogance affected by her ladyship’s older children.
“She was indefatigable in managing their lives up to and including their marriages,” Celia Cynster, one of the older matrons, observed. “But as those three are very much made in her image, they fell in with her directions—well, to be perfectly accurate, I would say her directions paralleled their own.”
Penelope was supplied with the older children’s names and ages—the Honorable Gresham Carisbrook, now in his late thirties and married to a milksop named Hortense, the Honorable Millicent, now Lady Fletching, in her early thirties and married to Sir Herbert, and the Honorable Lucinda, Lady Collard, thirty and married to Sir Finlay.
“As for the younger children,” Felicity Cynster said, “Franklin, who is in his late twenties, and Julia, who I think must be about twenty-three years old—I’ve only met them in passing, but they seem very different to their older siblings.” Felicity met Penelope’s eyes. “I would say they strongly favor their father rather than their mother. Regardless, both seem to chafe under her hand, which I don’t recall being the case with the older three.”
Jacqueline Debbington nodded. “Those two are certainly much…well, nicer young people, rather quiet and sensitive. One feels quite sorry for them having to cope with Lady Carisbrook as their mother.”
Adding those insights to her own observations of Franklin and Julia left Penelope feeling that she was making progress in understanding the underlying family dynamics. “What about Lord Carisbrook?”
Silence reigned for several seconds, then Horatia Cynster, a redoubtable grande dame, stated, “A quiet, honorable gentleman. He’s entirely unremarkable, and I’ve never heard a word said against him.”
“Beyond the obvious question of why he married Livia Henry, as she then was,” Celia said. “She was always a spiky character, but the marriage was arranged, of course.”
r /> “For money?” Penelope asked.
Celia frowned. “No—if anything, the Carisbrooks were wealthier than the Henrys. As I recall, it was more a case of both families agreeing it was a suitable match.”
Before Penelope could frame her next question, Helena spoke. “As to Livia Carisbrook accusing her husband’s niece of stealing her emeralds, understanding the earlier Carisbrook scandal might prove instructive.”
All the other ladies swung to stare at Helena and Lady Osbaldestone.
“There was an earlier scandal?” Patience exclaimed. “I don’t remember that.”
“You wouldn’t.” Lady Osbaldestone folded her hands over the head of her cane. “It was before your time—before all your times, except for Celia, Horatia, and Louise.”
Horatia nodded sagely. “Indeed—and quite a scandal it was.”
Louise Cynster leaned forward. “It was Humphrey’s—the current Lord Carisbrook’s—younger sister, Margaret. Meg, as she was called. She was a beautiful girl, vivacious and charming—full of joie de vivre. The family wanted her to marry to their advantage—to an older widowed peer. The Carisbrooks had made up their minds, but frankly, no one could imagine a girl as lively as Meg settling down to a quiet life in the distant north—least of all, Meg herself.”
Horatia shook her head. “A classic and entirely predictable case—Meg had met an Italian painter who had been invited to England to commemorate the Victory celebrations. He was dashingly handsome and also very talented. As I recall, although not titled himself, he was connected to one of the Italian contes, and of course, he and Meg fell in love.”
Lady Osbaldestone snorted. “Naturally, when Meg stated she wished to marry him, her family would have none of it. They stood firm and whisked Meg off to the family estate in Surrey, thinking to put an end to her rebellion.”
“What did Humphrey have to say to this?” Penelope asked.
Lady Osbaldestone’s gaze grew distant as she apparently dredged deeper into her memories. After a moment, she said, “Most expected him to support the family line, but while he didn’t speak against it, he didn’t denounce Meg’s wishes, either. Indeed, when she vanished from Carisbrook Hall, there was always a suspicion that Humphrey had had a hand in helping her run off with her Italian.”