Page 22 of The Heiress in Disguise
Angelique slipped out of the dining room, knowing that she should take advantage of her opportunity to work on the decorations while the family was eating and thus distracted. She believed Aunt Wilhelmina’s claim that she’d expect to see the decorations finished by the end of the day, and given that she was going to be out shopping with them for a large portion of the late morning and early afternoon, it would be difficult to get all that work done.
She hurried back to the bedroom she’d been given in this house, which was naturally among the servants’ quarters, and came to astop. Something was sitting on the foot of her bed—it looked like a small package.
She went out into the hall. Molly was just entering her own room. “Molly, I’m sorry to disturb you, but did you leave something on my bed?”
“What?” Molly frowned. “No, I didn’t. Is there something on your bed?”
“Come and see,” Angelique suggested.
Molly came down to Angelique’s room and peered in the door, taking in the package at the foot of the bed. “You didn’t leave that there yourself, Lady Angelique? Perhaps you forgot?”
“No,” Angelique said. “I’ve never seen it before in my life.” She approached it. “There’s a tag!”
“What does it say?” Molly asked her.
Angelique examined the tag. “To Lady Angelique from your very own Fairy Godmother.”
She looked up at Molly. “You didn’t put this here, did you? It’s not some kind of joke you’re playing on me?”
“No, I would tell you the truth, my lady,” Molly assured her.
“It’s just that you and Peter are the only ones who refer to me asLady Angelique,” Angelique explained. “My relatives obviously don’t, and the rest of the staff lives in fear of them and calls me Ella, with the exception of Jane, of course, who calls me by my first name alone, which I’ve told you before that you’re welcome to do.”
“There’s no one else keeping your true title alive and showing you the respect you properly deserve,” Molly said. “I’ll never abandon the use of that title, Lady Angelique. Your parents wouldn’t have it any other way. I know you and I are very close, and that’s why I insist on honoring you in the way everybody else ought to.”
Angelique smiled. “It means more to me than you know,” she admitted. “I feel as if I shouldn’t care very much about a title—ordinarily, I don’t. But the reasons you have for using it mean the world to me.”
“I understand, my lady.”
“But as I say, only you and Peter use that title, and he wouldn’t call himself my Fairy Godmother. It has to be you!”
“I promise you it isn’t,” Molly said. “But come. Let’s open the package and see what’s inside. Perhaps that will serve as a clue to who sent it.”
Angelique nodded and unwrapped the package carefully. Inside were a pile of handkerchiefs—finer ones than she had owned since childhood. When Aunt Wilhelmina had come to Somerset Manor, she had taken all the fine things that had belonged to Angelique’s mother and father, leaving nothing special for Angelique herself. Angelique recalled owning a beautiful, embroidered handkerchief as a young child, but never since then.
She picked one up to examine it and found that it was heavy. Unwrapping it, she found a lovely soap, one of the sort that Gwyneth used and would never have allowed Angelique to even touch. She picked it up and inhaled the fragrance, then handed it to Molly and lifted up the next handkerchief. This one also contained soap. The third contained a pair of thick socks, and the fourth two beautiful hairpins.
“I don’t understand,” Angelique said. “Who would have given me these things. Mustn’t they have been meant for Gwyneth?”
“I don’t believe so, Lady Angelique. It’s your name on the tag.”
“But whoever wrote that tag thinks they’re writing to a lady,” Angelique pointed out. “Perhaps they saw Gwyneth walking and,knowing about my family’s history, assumed that they were looking at me.”
“And what if they did?” Molly asked. “Even if that’s what happened, that means the gift was intended for you, Lady Angelique. Accept it. You deserve these things. There’s no reason for you to try to give them up. Someone has given you a gift.”
“My Fairy Godmother…” Angelique pondered the matter, wondering who the mysterious benefactor could be. It had to be someone here in London, and since the gifts had been delivered to her bed, it must have been someone colluding with a member of the household staff to bring them to her. “Someone here knows,” she realized. “Someone here helped to get these things to me, and they might be able to tell me who’s responsible.”
“Perhaps,” Molly said. “But clearly, whoever it is wishes to remain anonymous. Perhaps it’s to your benefit not to try to discover their identity.”
“How could that benefit me?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Molly admitted. “But maybe the best thing to do is to accept your good fortune and dig no further.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Angelique said. “I want to know where these things came from, so that I can thank the person responsible if nothing else.”
“I don’t think a person who gives you an anonymous gift and signs ityour Fairy Godmotheris looking for any thanks,” Molly said gently. “But I do admire the impulse, Lady Angelique. It’s very thoughtful of you. You’re like your mother in that way—always thinking of others.”
“I’d better hide these things away for now,” Angelique said. “If my family were to discover them, I’m sure they would take them away from me.”
