“She isn’t supposed to do anything. She’s a girl.”
“So she should simply endure? Has it occurred to you how humiliated she must feel? I’ll wager anything her so-called friends have been slyly tormenting her. How is she to strike back? It’s impossible. Meanwhile, she’s painfully aware that all the men who once admired and respected her now think she’s a dirty joke. Can you imagine how that feels?”
“Feelings,” he said in that mocking tone that made her want to punch him.
“Yes, feelings,” she said. “Why not? She can’t hit back. She can’t make them stop. It must have been horrible for her. And so she ran away. It was that or run mad, I don’t doubt. I’m worried about her, and I wish she hadn’t done it—but I have to admire her risking everything, rather than passively suffering.”
There was a long pause. She didn’t try to fill it, only looked straight ahead, waiting for her ire to die down.
Insensitive clodpoll. She knew she’d wasted her breath, but really it was too much—
“You admire her,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “She was brave.”
“Reckless is more like it. Stupidly reckless.”
“Like her brother.”
Another pause.
“You have a point,” he said.
The rant was a surprise, and it wasn’t the only one.
Longmore still hadn’t fully digested her astonishing speech about Clara when, a while later, as they were crossing the Thames again, Sophy spotted the old palace.
“Oh, how wonderful!” she cried out. “Oh, look!” She laughed, a throaty sound that tickled his ears and set off odd, warm feelings in his chest.
“I was about to say that Lucie would love this,” she said, “but I must be six years old, too, to be so excited.”
He looked at the sprawling building and back at her. “You’ve never seen Hampton Court Palace before?”
“When would I?” she said, still smiling. “My world’s been London, for three years. I’ll admit, it’s seemed large and interesting enough for me. But I’ve never been outside it.”
This was another Sophy altogether, an almost childlike Sophy. She practically bounced in her seat with excitement.
“No river jaunts?” he said.
“I own a shop,” she said. “It’s open six days a week. We’re at work from nine to nine.”
She worked longer than that, he realized: into the night and early morning, spying for Tom Foxe.
No time for pleasure jaunts into the country.
He’d never thought of that. Why should he? He’d never worked. He knew nothing about it.
Didn’t know much about his sister, either, apparently.
That was another surprise. He wasn’t sure his brain could contain any more of them.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” she said.
It certainly was.
“I’ve only to step out of the shop and look down St. James’s Street to see St. James’s Palace,” she said. “I know it’s from Tudor times as well. But it’s got buildings and streets around it. Carriages going back and forth. Omnibuses and carts and such. To me, it’s merely another building. It’s more or less the same with the other palaces. They all look grand enough but”—she made a sweeping gesture—“this sprawls over the countryside. It looks like a castle.”
“It’s one of the more decrepit ones,” Longmore said. “For ages none of our monarchs have wanted to live here. Not the present king. Not the last one or the one before. It’s bachelors and spinsters and war heroes’ widows . . .” He trailed off as comprehension dawned, finally.
Richmond Park. Hampton Court. Of course.
“Spinsters and widows?” Sophy said.
“In the grace and favor apartments,” he said. “Awarded to those who’ve served the Crown in some special way. Or whose fathers or husbands or brothers did. It’s mainly single women, mostly elderly. And I know why Clara came here.”
Though Longmore hadn’t called on his grandmother’s crony in a while, the palace officers recognized him. Yesterday they’d recognized his sister, too, as they quickly let him know, volunteering the information before he had to ask.
They must be wondering why Lady Durwich was so popular with the Fairfax family in recent days. Longmore let them wonder. He hurried Sophy through the maze of passages toward the grace and favor apartment Lady Durwich had occupied for the last twenty-five years.
That was to say, he tried to hurry Sophy. She wanted to gawk at the quaint old turrets and such and peer down passages into the courtyard. It was like trying to lead a child along.
“One would think you’d never seen a lot of crumbling Tudor brick before,” he said.
“I own a shop,” she said.
“Right,” he said. “Six days. Nine to nine.”
“Sometimes one of us would take Lucie to the zoo or to Astley’s Amphitheater or to a fair or such. But we’ve never made a day’s jaunt outside of London. This is so interesting. Lucie would love it.”
“Well, then, Clevedon ought to take her sometime while the rest of you are blowing up your competition,” Longmore said. “Today we haven’t time for a tour. I’ll take you at another time. There are some fine paintings and statues, and the gardens are agreeably odd. But for now, the only sight for us is Lady Durwich.”
“I understand,” she said.
“Don’t play any parts,” he said. “For this you have to be yourself.”
“A dressmaker?” she said.
“Lady Durwich is a thousand years old,” he said. “I doubt there’s anything left on earth that can shock her. Still, I’m an old-fashioned fellow—”
“Backward, I’d say.”
“And a little shy—”
“That’s the first thing I noticed about you,” she said. “Your shyness. When you burst into the Duke of Clevedon’s house ranting about—”
“Quite shy, in fact about introducing you to my grandmother’s friend as my chère amie—most especially when you’re not.” A fraction of a pause. “Yet.”
“And never will be, but I can pretend so beautifully you’ll believe it’s true,” she said.
“The point is, I can’t deal with her and an imaginary female at the same time.”
She considered. “You’re right,” she said.
Not very long thereafter, a manservant ushered them into Lady Durwich’s drawing room.
The dear old thing had acquired a few more wrinkles and shrunk somewhat, but she was remarkably well preserved, considering she was in the region of ninety. She’d always been the plump, comfortable sort, not in the least high-strung—the antithesis of his mother—and today she was as well-groomed as always. Once upon a time, she and Grandmother Warford had formed, with the Dowager Countess of Hargate and some others, one of London’s most dashing sets.
“Longmore, I haven’t seen you this age,” she said, putting out her plump, beringed hand, which he gallantly kissed. “Your family has been unusually busy visiting lately. Clara yesterday. But that’s why you’ve come, of course. She told me she’d bolted, the silly chit. I told her to go straight home. What nonsense! ‘Doesn’t love him,’ she says. She should have thought of that before she went out to the terrace and allowed him to take liberties. Really, I was amazed. I always thought Clara had more sense—” Her sharp brown gaze fell on Sophy. “But who’s this?”
The old lady took up her quizzing glass and made a slow inventory of his companion, from the top of the ridiculous hat to the toes of her stunningly impractical silk half-boots. “Looks familiar—but not one of you, I know. No Fairfax, this one.”