Page 36 of Fatal By Design
“For the ladies and gentlemen alike,” Cassandra said, pinning the duke with an expectant glare. “Isn’t that right, brother?”
Fournier looked far from happy, but he merely grunted agreement. “The ladies may row as well.”
Hugh had been ignoring Westbrook, who had thankfully been seated well away from Audrey. But now, the marquess huffed his disapproval. “Next they’ll be joining us for the shooting.”
“Excellent suggestion, my lord,” Cassandra said brightly. “I am a rather good shot, as are many ladies. Mrs. Filmore, I hear you took down a stag last autumn.”
Mr. Filmore’s wife sipped her wine while looking sideways at Westbrook. “It was a wild boar, my dear.”
Thornton smirked and shared a conspiratorial grin with Cassie at his side. But her humor quickly faded when another young woman, seated across the table from Hugh, spoke up.
“I do love a fox hunt,” Miss Cynthia Stewart said brightly. “My father would allow me to tag along whenever he ran the hounds at our estate in Derbyshire.”
Mrs. Stewart added softly, “God rest his soul.”
Earlier in the drawing room, Hugh had learned the Stewarts had been neighbors and friends of Genie’s family. The younger son of a viscount, Mr. Stewart had taken ill the previous autumn and passed on before Miss Cynthia, his sole daughter, could make her debut during the season. The gleam of interest in Mrs. Stewart’s eyes when Genie had introduced Cynthia to Hugh had been as cunning as Lady Kettleridge’s and had left him just as discomfited.
Cassie pressed her lips thin and made a show of looking down the table, away from Cynthia. Three debutantes might have been too many for one house party, Hugh thought, but at least with Cassie, he knew she had no designs on him.
“Well then, I shall take part in the regatta,” Veronica said at a pitch loud enough for the whole dinner party to hear. “I am no wilting violet and have some experience boating. What do you say, Lord Neatham, to my joining your crew?”
Rowing in a regatta across Greenbriar’s lake did not appeal to him in the least, especially when there was a missing viscountess to track down. While the murder investigation was now in the hands of the magistrate, Sir Ridley, and the man would surely like to find Lady Redding too, it was Hugh and Audrey who had leads to follow. But asking to row on his crew in front of all and sundry had been a well-played move. He could not refuse her without appearing unspeakably rude.
He grinned stiffly and hoped it did not appear as forced as it felt. “I would be delighted.”
ChapterFourteen
Mr. Filmore, seated to Audrey’s left, should have occupied her interest vastly more than the debutante several chairs down the long, crystal- and china-filled table. Unfortunately, she found it difficult to focus on the forty-something member of the landed gentry when the young and beautiful Lady Veronica continued to simper at Hugh.
Necessity forced her hand, however. With a simple prompt, asking whether he had any knowledge of the silver venture, Mr. Filmore had spilled forth with a veritable tide of information, all of which she heard and committed to memory. He had accumulated great wealth through shipping and trade and was now investing in steam engines and, as of several months ago, in the Brazilian silver mine.
As interested as she was in Mr. Filmore’s knowledge, she couldn’t help but wish that Genie had seated Hugh closer to them so that he could take part in the conversation too. Instead, he sat at the other end of the table, cradled between Lady Kettleridge and the delectable Lady Veronica. She had made her bow the previous Season, and it was said she’d received numerous offers, but none that had matched what she or her father, the Earl of Kettleridge, expected in the man who would win her hand. With an exorbitant dowry and a face to rival Helen of Troy—or so the gossip sheets had printed—Lady Veronica was the catch of the Season. And she had her sights firmly set on the new Lord Neatham.
“Five.Thousand.Pounds.”
Audrey cut her eyes away from Hugh and Veronica and focused again on Mr. Filmore. He’d formed the number with elaborate pauses to indicate the weight of the sum.
“I’m sorry?” she said, having forgotten her initial question before Mr. Filmore had gone on a meandering explanation of the demand of silver, most of which she had not paid attention to. But then, she remembered.
“Oh, yes, of course. The initial investment. Five thousand?” The steep amount now made an impact. “That is quite dear.”
“It is, indeed,” he said. “But it takes money to make money, as my father always intoned, and he steered me well in my earlier investments.”
During the last few courses as Mr. Filmore had discussed his business in investing and in the silver mine specifically, Audrey had gotten the sense that the man was not conceited about his wealth so much as he was exuberant. He was energetic in his conversation and did not seem to acknowledge the startled reception of it among those around him. He was the sort of man to lean a hair too close when speaking, though not in any threatening way. Mr. Filmore was simply animated.
“Tell me, Mr. Filmore, did many other men such as yourself join with Mr. Henley in his venture?”
At her right, she sensed rather than saw Lord Thornton’s interest; he and Cassie had been making polite conversation, but it appeared to have stalled.
“Several,” he replied. “When he brought Mr. Teague, the owner of the mine, to White’s, he turned heads, indeed. Mr. Teague is a most amiable fellow. No matter that he is not a peer. Fine business sense and a penchant for adventure saw him flush with more wealth than he knew what to do with.”
Beside her, Thornton turned to enter the conversation. “I have not heard of this Mr. Teague. Does he hail from London?”
“Trinidad. Owns a few estates there. Sugar, you know. A trip to Brazil and a chance meeting with a local tribal elder or some such, and he discovered a lode of silver, ripe for mining.”
“I do hope this Mr. Teague is fairly compensating the villagers there,” Audrey said, her stomach curling at the thought that this man could have simply waltzed in and taken what the locals had not realized would be so profitable to them.
By Mr. Filmore’s blank expression, she presumed he had not thought about that aspect just yet. Audrey sighed and moved on, though not without first glancing toward Hugh and Lady Veronica again; she and her mother had leaned forward to confer over Hugh’s plate. Veronica’s insistence that she join his regatta crew the following day had brought on an uninvited surge of envy, which she had been trying to temper. How absurd! Hugh had declared himself to her. There was no reason to be jealous of Lady Veronica Langton.
