“I hardly know the man,” Miss Yarmouth said, her voice rising and her hand buffeting the aromatic lemon leaves. “He is… He’s nearly forty, and his teeth are so yellow and crooked and all he speaks of are his hounds. Always, his hounds. But he has over thirty thousand a year, and this is my second Season. Papa is annoyed that I’ve been out for so long and I’ve only received one other proposal. If I don’t accept him, he won’t be pleased.”
Definitely not a love match, which would make it easier to deliver unpleasant news if that was what it happened to be. “Very well. Consider this—” she held up the coin “—a down payment. You will owe me another one after I give you the information.” The orphans at St. Anselm’s seemed to grow out of their frocks and pants weekly. Angelica eyed Miss Yarmouth, who gulped but nodded firmly. Then Angelica tucked the crown into her reticule and, after a glance to determine Mr. Beemish’s whereabouts (still across the room, in line for lemonade) continued, “You must provide me with something that Framingham has touched with his bare hand. And you understand there is only one thing I can tell you about him.”
“Yes, of course. Chastity explained how you helped her. You can tell me only how he will die,” Miss Yarmouth said, her voice pitching so low at the end of her speech that the music fairly drowned it out.
“After a fashion. I can only see a person in a still image at the moment of death. And the only reason I am willing,” Angelica said, her voice and expression becoming vehement as she tried to ignore the fact that that was no longer quite true, “is to enable you to make a knowledgeable decision as to whether you wish to accept his hand in marriage.”
She ruthlessly pushed away the flash of memory from the grisly dream she’d had last week. It had only happened once. Surely it meant nothing.
Miss Yarmouth’s eyes were wide and she nodded fervently. “Yes, of course,” she said again.
Despite the other woman’s assurances, Angelica launched into her standard lecture. “We of the fairer sex have little to say in regards to our marital matches and our lives. If I can offer a piece of information that might tip the scales a bit in our balance, then I am happy to do so.”
“I do wish you’d cease this ridiculous game,” a voice suddenly hissed into Angelica’s ear. “We’ve got other things to be concerned with tonight.”
Angelica pulled her arm away from her older sister’s firm grip. “Stow it, Maia. At least one of us ought to enjoy ourselves,” she muttered, “and it best be me. Heaven knows you don’t know how. Have you even danced once tonight?”
“While our brother is quite possibly lying dead somewhere?” Maia pressed her slippered foot down hard onto hers, but her sister was nimble enough to pull her toes out before they were smashed, and without stumbling and making a scene in front of her client.
Angelica slipped a sharp elbow into her sister’s side as she turned and smiled at Miss Yarmouth. “I shall meet you in the ladies’ retiring room in thirty minutes to examine the item you’ve retrieved from him. Don’t be late.”
“Thirty minutes?” Miss Yarmouth’s lips opened in shock. “But—”
“Yes. Half past midnight. You’ll have to work quickly and intelligently,” Angelica told her. “My services do not come cheaply or simply, but they are worth it.” Then she turned her back on the lemon tree and her client, and faced her sister.
She opened her mouth to tell Maia that she knew Chas wasn’t dead…but then closed it. Even now, even to put her sister out of her obvious misery, she wouldn’t go on that path. She couldn’t allow herself to do so, to open herself—and her family—up to such a Pandora’s box.
Nor did Maia understand why Angelica felt compelled to do what she did, assisting the other young women of the ton. Maia was affianced to a handsome, kind man for whom she had great affection, but that was only because she had a forceful way about her and because Chas, for all of his constant traveling, loved and cared for his sisters dearly. There were plenty of other young women who made miserable—or worse—matches with men much older than they were. At least Chas wouldn’t force any of them into something they didn’t want.
Maia was the eldest of the three of them, not counting their brother. He was older than all of his sisters and, since they had been orphaned for ten years, he was also the head of the family, which, although it wasn’t titled, held a lovely county seat in Shropshire and a smaller estate in Derby. This made the Woodmore sisters welcomed in most homes of the ton, as well as fine wifely candidates for the bachelors thereof.
Chas was twenty-seven, and Maia was nearly twenty—just ten months older than Angelica. Sonia was only thirteen, and she was currently tucked safely away in a convent school in Scotland.
In addition to their comfortable wealth, the Woodmores were a particularly fertile family. And thanks to Angelica’s great-great-grandmother, who, after the death of her older, wealthy husband, had become enamored with a handsome young groom, they also had acquired a bit of Gypsy blood that cropped up every generation or so. Chas and Maia hadn’t been blessed (or cursed, depending upon whom one spoke to) with the Sight, but their two younger sisters had. “And I have danced—twice,” Maia retorted from between tight lips. “Despite the fact that one of my partners couldn’t seem to find a spot on the floor between my feet during the entire set.”
“So you danced with Flewellington? I warned you about him.” Angelica’s ire faded quickly, as it often did, and she smiled at her sister in sympathy. It had taken only one set with Baron Flewellington for her to learn the same lesson: avoid the man and his large, clumsy feet at all costs. “At least you didn’t sit against the wall like you normally do. And, drat it, Harrington isn’t here tonight.”
“I haven’t seen Corvindale yet, either,” Maia said, changing the subject and reaching over to adjust one of her sister’s curls. “Hold still. This one is coming undone, Ange.”
Angelica obeyed as deft fingers adjusted the little pin that held one of the curls in place at her temple. “I’m not certain I would recognize him even if I saw Corvindale,” she said. “Are you certain he’s to be here?”
“Everyone who is everyone is here tonight. I think it’s disgraceful that he hasn’t made any attempt to answer the message I sent him yesterday. We haven’t heard from Chas for a fortnight, and I’m only following his directions in contacting the earl. I made that perfectly clear in the letter.”