Kate gasped. “Good Lord. Did he die?”
“Traherne? Of course not. I’m certain that’s who you saw this evening. He’s kept to himself a good bit, understandably—well, no decent hostess’ll have ’im at her table—but I suppose he feels he’s had to make an entree back into society, if he ever wants to get that hellcat of his married off.”
Kate took a deep breath for patience. Her long acquaintance with the Earl of Palmer had done more to prepare her for a teaching career than any formal training ever could.
“I meant,” Kate said, “did his wife’s lover die, when Lord Wingate threw him out the window?”
“Oh,” Freddy said. “No, not at all. He recovered, and married the woman, once the divorce was final. Of course, the two of them couldn’t set foot in England again, not after that. Nobody would have ’em, not even their own families.”
“And the child?”
“The child? Isabel, you mean? Well, Traherne raised ’er, of course. You’d hardly expect ’im to let his wife do it. Former wife, I mean. I doubt the woman ever saw her daughter again. Traherne would have seen to that. I remember there was a bit of a fuss not too long ago about old Wallace—Elisabeth’s father, don’t you know—wanting to visit with his grandchild, and Traherne forbidding it. Very unpleasant, I must say.”
“Very.” Kate frowned in distaste. “What a perfectly horrid little tale.”
“Oh, it gets worse,” Freddy said cheerfully.
Kate held up a hand, palm out. “I don’t care to hear it, thank you.”
“But it’s quite good. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, Katie.”
Kate, lowering her hand, shot him a warning look. “You know I don’t like gossip, Freddy. Particularly when it involves members of the beau monde. There is nothing duller to me than hearing about the trials and tribulations of the absurdly rich.”
Freddy grinned delightedly. “Oh, are we going to have a debate? I dearly love debating with you, Kate. It will be just like old times.”
Kate glared at him. “No it won’t. Because there’s nothing to debate. There can’t be two sides to this issue. I’m sick to death of hearing about wealthy, educated people who are incapable of behaving better than … than back alley curs.”
“You’re being quite hard on poor Traherne,” Freddy chastised her. “From what I understand, the fellow never recovered from his wife’s betrayal. He’s turned into a cold, bitter shell of his former vigorous self.”
“He looked extremely vigorous to me,” Kate said, thinking of the ease with which the man had thrown his daughter—who was no lightweight, being a good few inches taller, and a good many pounds heavier than Kate.
“Oh, he’s not wanting for female companionship,” Freddy assured her. “Sara Woodhart’s the latest, from what I understand. You remember, I told you about seeing her last month in
Macbeth
.”
Rousing herself from memories of the marquis’s vigorous figure, Kate said, “Yes, that’s right. His daughter mentioned something about how he’d rather be with a Mrs. Woodhart than tagging along after her from ballroom to ballroom—”
“Which would be why Traherne’s got a slew of chaperones looking out for her. And not very well, either, from what I’ve observed.”
Kate shook her head. “He ought to remarry. It would be cheaper for him, in the long run. And I’m certain in this year’s crop of society misses he could find a girl stupid—or greedy—enough to turn a blind eye to his philandering with vapid actresses.”
“Except that Traherne’s sworn off marriage. Everyone knows it. Says marriage ruined his life, and he won’t chance it a second time, thank you very much.”
“Oh,” Kate said knowingly. “How original. A rich and handsome nobleman who has sworn off marriage. He must have every eligible young lady in London in a dither, trying to dissuade him.”
“There, you see?” Freddy, grinning broadly, leaned forward and tapped her on the hand. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? You did quite well. I’m prodigiously proud of you.”
Kate, after blinking at him for a second, realized what he was talking about, tightened the hand he had touched into a fist, and got up suddenly from her chair.
“That wasn’t fair,” she said, facing away from him, her back very stiff.
“Of course it was.” Freddy did not seem to notice her distress. He yawned and stretched before the fire. “It was a lovely gossip. I feel quite like it was old times again.”
“Stop it,” Kate said, still addressing the wall, and not him. In fact, she spoke so softly, Freddy only then noticed she’d left her seat, and looked toward her curiously. “It can never be old times again. You know that.”
“Now, Katie,” Freddy said, staring at her back with a certain degree of alarm. “Don’t go dredging up all of—”
“Freddy, how can I not?” Her voice did not shake, not even once.
“Katie,” the earl said gently. “Don’t.”
“I can’t help it. I think about it all the time. The other night I even ….”
“The other night you even what?” Freddy asked.
“Oh,” she said, shaking her head. Her eyes, however, when she finally turned around to face him, were too bright. “Nothing.”
“Kate,” he said, with a severity that didn’t sound teasing. “Tell me.”
She shrugged, but couldn’t meet his gaze as she said, “I thought I saw him again.”
Freddy blinked at her. “Thought you saw who?”
“Daniel Craven.” The words, as they fell from her lips, sounded heavy, as if each syllable were a brick, dropping onto the floor. “I thought I saw Daniel Craven.”
Freddy was up and out of his chair almost before the words were fully out of her mouth. He strode toward her, and took one of her hands in his. “Kate,” he said gently. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I know,” she said. Her gaze was on the carpet beneath their feet. “I know. But I can’t help it. I saw him, Freddy.”
“You saw someone who looked like him. That’s all.”
“No.”
Kate snatched her hand from his, and went to the closest window, parting the velvet curtains that covered it. She gazed unseeingly out into the fog-enshrouded street.
“It was him,” she said. “I know it was him. What’s more, Freddy, he was following me.”
“Following you?” Freddy hurried to her side. “Following you where?”
“Right here, on Park Lane. I was with the boys—”
“Daniel Craven,” Freddy said skeptically. “Daniel Craven, whom no one’s seen in London in seven years, was following you along this very street?”
“I know it sounds absurd.” Kate dropped the curtain back into place and turned back toward the fire. “You think I’m mad. And maybe I am …”
Freddy stared after her, clearly troubled. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Kate. It’s just …”
She stood, bathed in firelight, fingering the back of her chair. “It’s just what?” she asked, not looking at him.
“Well, so what if it was Daniel Craven, Kate? You can’t still think he had something to do with your parents’ deaths, can you? I thought we’d settled all that. What are you imagining?” Freddy shook his head. “That after seven years he’s come back to finish you off, as well?”
Kate set her jaw. “Yes. That’s rather what I was thinking. I’m sorry if you find it maudlin.”
“Oh, now, Kate,” Freddy cried. “Don’t look at me like that. You know there’s nothing, nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you. But all this rubbish about Daniel—you know what people said about it, at the time.”
Kate, looking very cross, sank back down into the chair she’d abandoned. “Of course I do. They all thought I made it up. I forgot you were among them,” she added, with genuine bitterness.
“Well, Kate, really,” Freddy said in gently chiding tones. “You always did have something of an imagination. That isn’t a bad thing, not at all. I’m sure it helps a good deal where your little charges are concerned, but—”
“All right,” Kate said, closing her eyes tiredly. “All right. I couldn’t have seen Daniel Craven. I won’t mention it again. But you … you’ve got to stop proposing to me, Freddy. I can’t bear it. I really can’t. I mean, besides the fact that I’m not in love with you, you know I don’t want anything to do with those people—”
“Those people,” Freddy echoed. “Polite society, you mean?”
“I never saw anything polite about them,” Kate said stiffly. “Nor anything kind or considerate. My God, Freddy, I’m quite sure Cyrus Sledge’s Papua New Guineans would have treated me with more compassion than your mother—or all those people who claimed to be my friends—ever did. I’d hardly call a society that spent all of its time whispering about me, blaming me, for what my father did, a polite society—”
“Bloody hell!”
Now it was the earl’s turn to stride across the room. He did so with his fists buried in his trouser pockets.
“I came here to take you out for a nice evening, Kate,” he declared, from behind a table heavy with stuffed birds beneath glass bell jars. “So that you could forget, for a little while. How is it that no matter how hard I try to make you forget what happened with your parents, we always manage to come back to it?”
Kate turned on her hard chair to look at him, a little smile playing across her lips. “How? Freddy, take a look around. Isn’t it obvious? We’re sitting in someone else’s drawing room, because I haven’t one of my own anymore, and I daren’t set foot in yours, for fear of what your mother will say. Freddy, I am living proof of the fact that the gods do visit the sins of the fathers upon the children—”
“I thought,” Freddy interrupted, “that you hated the Bible. You always said that it didn’t have enough female characters in it to be interesting—”
“That wasn’t a quote from the Bible, Freddy, for heaven’s sake. It was Euripides. Didn’t you ever pay attention in school?”
Freddy ignored that question. “I feel like smashing something up,” he declared loudly.
“Well,” Kate said. “Then you’d better go. I can’t afford to get the sack on account of your smashing something. The Sledges might be hideously boring, but at least they’re kind, which is more than I can say for some of my past employers.”
Freddy said, “Bloody hell,” again and turned to go, just as the doorknob moved, and Cyrus Sledge, looking extremely nervous, poked his head into the room.
“Oh, my Lord Palmer,” he said, waving a fistful of pamphlets. “I see that you’re going. Before you do, sir, please take some of these tracts. I mean, if you will. They are extremely illuminating on a subject that I’m sure a young man like yourself will be fascinated by, the unfortunate fate of the Papua New Guineans ….”
There was a look on the Earl of Palmer’s face that suggested to Kate that her employer would be far better off saving his tracts for another time. She hurried to her feet and hastened to make him aware of that fact.
“Oh, Mr. Sledge,” she said, “Lord Palmer isn’t feeling well. He has a bit of a headache. Perhaps another time—”
“A headache?” Cyrus Sledge squinted up at the robust figure of the earl. “Do you know how the Papua New Guineans cure a headache, sir? They chew up the bark of a particular species of tree, then spit the masticated bits into a great pot, the contents of which are allowed to ferment for several days in the heat—”
“Kate,” Freddy said in a strangled voice.
Kate placed a hand reassuringly on his arm. “It’s all right, Freddy,” she said soothingly. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Sledge, I’ll just show his lordship to the door.”
“He said ‘masticate’ to me, Kate,” Freddy hissed, as she steered him toward Phillips, who waited by the door with the earl’s hat, cloak, and cane.”He said ‘masticate’!”
“It isn’t what you think, Freddy. ‘Masticate’ means ‘chew.’ That’s all.”
“Oh.” Looking relieved, Freddy allowed the butler to drape his cloak over his shoulders. “I thought … I thought ….”
“I know what you thought,” Kate said. “Never mind that now.” She reached out and took his cane and gloves while he settled his top hat firmly over his short blond hair. “I’ll see you next week. Pick me up at seven o’clock.”
Freddy nodded. “Yes, that’s better. It never works, your meeting me somewhere.”
“No,” Kate agreed. “Not when you never remember to write the address down. Good night, Freddy.” She caught Phillips’s eye. “I mean, Lord Palmer.”
As soon as the earl was gone, and Phillips had shut the door, Mrs. Sledge poked her head over the upstairs balustrade and asked, her voice warbling, “Did he take the tracts, my love?”
Cyrus Sledge looked sadly down at the pamphlets in his hand. “No, my love,” he called back woefully, “he didn’t.”
Kate, observing their disappointment, couldn’t help saying, “Oh, but he did, Mr. Sledge. When you weren’t looking, I stuck some of the ones you keep there on the entry table into his lordship’s pocket.”
Mrs. Sledge inhaled sharply. “Then he’s likely to find them tonight, when he undresses!”
Kate did a fair job of keeping a straight face. “Most certainly he will, madam,” she said.
“And he’ll read them before he goes to bed,” Mr. Sledge said happily. “And when he falls asleep, his lordship will dream of the Papua New Guineans! Don’t you think so, Miss Mayhew?”
“I can’t imagine he’d be able to dream of anything else,” Kate said honestly, “after reading those tracts.”
Mr. and Mrs. Sledge retired to their room, congratulating themselves at having converted yet another believer in the Reverend Billings’s miracles, leaving Kate momentarily alone with Phillips, their butler.
“Miss Mayhew,” Mr. Phillips said, as he turned the locks on the front door.
Kate cautiously replied, “Yes, Mr. Phillips?”
“Earlier this evening, when we spoke belowstairs …”
Hardly daring to believe the butler was going to apologize for his earlier rudeness, Kate asked suspiciously, “Yes, Mr. Phillips?”
“I forgot to mention one thing.” The butler turned to face her. “In the future, will you kindly keep that animal of yours confined to your own room? This morning I found a hairball in one of my shoes.”
And without another word, Phillips turned and headed for the baize door.
Kate, suddenly very tired, indeed, leaned back against the wall. Really, she thought to herself. From now on, she was going to spend her evenings off locked in her room with a book.
It was well after midnight when Burke knocked on the door to Sara Woodhart’s apartments in the Dorchester. Still, it oughtn’t to have taken her so long to answer. After all, she generally didn’t even leave the theater until eleven. She could not possibly be in bed, even though it was—Burke, while he waited, took his pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket, and squinted at it in the dim light of the hotel corridor.