Page 34 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

‘Had you any jealous suitors who might have wished to strike back at you for choosing to wed another?’

‘I’d considered that. But though I had a great number of admirers, some of whom professed themselves devastated by my engagement, I believe their protestations were mere gallantry. Most were dashing bucks who much prefer flirtation to treading a path toward the parson’s mousetrap. Nor can I remember slighting anyone who might feel so spurned as to justify taking such a revenge, or repulsing anyone at all who appeared calculating enough to create so elaborate a plan. Unless he were playing a very deep game indeed.’

Captain Hawksworth nodded slowly. ‘What of your family—might they have any enemies who sought to strike back at them through you? Someone with a sister seduced? A married woman whose affair embarrassed her husband or her family?’

Though her initial response was to laugh at the absurdity of such a notion, Honoria made herself consider the possibility. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said after a moment. ‘My father has been in uncertain health for years and, in any event, is devoted to my mother. My elder brother is the epitome of uprightness; I can’t imagine him taking advantage of a woman, maiden or married. Now, my younger brother…’

‘The Army man?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled, her heart warmed, as always, by thinking of Hal. ‘He’s accounted a rogue and a rake, but as far as I know—such escapades are usually screened from maidenly ears—his excursions among the fair sex have always been limited to willing widows and ladies of broad experience.’

‘Anything else you can recall? A quarrel between families?’

She paused a moment, grasping at a thin shred of memory. ‘There was some sort of scandal that occurred back in my father’s day—though I’m not sure I’d even been born yet when it occurred. There was some trouble about it again a few months ago, but it all died down. We children were never told very much in the first place, and what little we were told I no longer remember.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Perhaps I could ask Aunt Foxe.’

He nodded. ‘That might be helpful, or further details may occur to you later. Let’s move on to the night of the ball. Who, besides your brother and fiancé, do you remember from that night?’

She sat back, scanning a series of memories in her mind. ‘Papa wasn’t feeling well, so Mama remained at home with him. Our former governess, Miss Price, had run off and married and Mama hadn’t yet engaged another one, so my sister Verity and I were escorted by my brother Marcus. Lady Dalrington’s ball was attended by the usual set. No one who seemed to be watching me. No one who seemed angry with me.’

She shook her head again, frustrated by her inability to recall anything out of the ordinary. ‘I’m sorry; none of this can be of much help.’

‘Who besides your brother and fiancé came to the garden?’

Clenching her teeth, she forced herself to remember—and found most of what occurred after Lord Barwick released her to be a nightmarish haze. ‘That I truly don’t remember well. Some of Anthony’s friends, I suppose.’ She shuddered as one figure detached itself from the fog. ‘Viscount Keddinton, an associate of Father’s I’ve never liked—he has the sort of pale eyes that look right through one.’

‘Could there have been a disagreement there?’

‘I don’t think so. He still advises the family. Indeed, he’s my sister’s godfather.’ One who, as they’d grown to womanhood, looked at both her and Verity with something in his eyes they’d found disturbing, though since his behaviour remained impeccable, neither had ever mentioned that fact to their brother.

‘Marcus probably asked him to come lend his support,’ she continued. ‘Besides, even if he disliked me for some fault of which I was unaware, I can’t imagine what benefit my ruin would afford him.’

‘No one else you can remember?’ When she shook her head, he said, ‘What happened after your brother arrived?’

She scanned her memory, the process a bit less agonizing this time, though she had little more success identifying the sequence of events than she’d had in attaching identities to the pale faces leering out of the darkness. ‘After fighting desperately, suddenly I was free. Marc was there, ripping off his coat and thrusting it around me. Shouting an exchange with the rogue, then hurrying me down the pathway to the coatroom. I stood shivering while he fetched my wrap, handed him back his own coat after I’d pulled the cloak over the tatters of my gown.’

Suddenly the other memory occurred. ‘My cloak! I didn’t discover this until days later, on the journey out of London, when I took my handkerchief from the little pocket I’d had made in its lining—and found a curious piece of glass. Though not unique, such interior pockets are uncommon enough that someone, doubtless the perpetrator, must have made a special effort to find that place to hide the stone, intending for me not to find it until later.’

The captain angled his head at her. ‘A piece of glass?’

‘Yes—with a meaning that was easy enough to decipher as soon as one examined it: facetted and polished on one side, rough and unfinished on the other. A reminder that I, who had been accounted a Diamond of the Ton, was now no more valuable to society or my family than a worthless lump of glass.’

The captain had been shaking his head in bemusement when suddenly his body tensed and his eyes widened. ‘Facetted like a diamond, you say? Does the family name of Carlow mean anything to you?’

Shock coursing through her, she stared at him, speechless. Had he guessed her identity? If so, how?

Uncertain what he knew, she said cautiously, ‘I am…related to the Carlows. Why do you ask?’

‘I met a Gypsy trader at the inn here by the name of Stephano Beshaley. He said he specializes in diamonds, had important London connections—and claimed that he’d gotten the better of a prominent London family named Carlow. Tall, slender, elegant fellow, dressed rather flamboyantly. English features, but with a bronzed skin and faintly foreign air that spoke of his Gypsy heritage.’

While the captain described the trader, a shadowy recollection crystallized in her memory. ‘A gem trader? Yes, I remember encountering such a man at the jeweller’s the day Anthony and I quarrelled! He had provided the stones for a parure the jeweller showed us, one I liked very much, for the design was lovely and set with very fine diamonds indeed. The dealer bowed to us when the jeweller acknowledged him, though I don’t believe we were ever given his name.’

Just then another image filled her head—a detail she’d not previously noted among the fog of events that awful night. ‘He was there, too, that night in the garden!’ she cried. ‘At the edge of the crowd. A dark, slightly foreign face I didn’t recognize until just now. Perhaps he planted the stone in my pocket.’

‘Could he have engineered the whole scheme?’

Honoria shook her head. ‘What possible reason could he have for doing so? A man not even of my world? But he was certainly there in Lady Dalrington’s garden. I suppose he might have been hired to place the stone in my cloak by the same person who engaged the false footman to deliver messages. The man who did plan and set in motion the whole.’

‘You are sure he’s not more immediately involved? If he’s part Gypsy, he’d believe in revenge, if one of your family had done him or any of his clan an injury.’

‘I suppose it is possible, but I can’t imagine who or why. My mother owns some exquisite jewellery, but mostly family pieces passed down through generations. Marcus probably bought some things for his bride, and most assuredly Hal needed baubles for his various chere amies, but I can’t imagine either of them not offering fair value or failing to pay in full. And what if they had? Even for a Gypsy, the ruin of a sister for the failure to pay a debt seems a bit extreme.’

He smiled. ‘You’re right. We had a tribe camp on family land one summer, and though they could be a hot-blooded, argumentative lot, very careful of their horses and their women, they had a scrupulous sense of honour, according to their lights. Still, you are sure there was a slightly foreign gem trader in the garden that night.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I’m certain.’

‘Then we shall start there. Though I should like to have a word with your brother! Had he started an inquiry immediately, we’d not be looking at a trail that’s had more than a month to cool.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought it possible a few weeks ago that I’d be defending Marcus, but I see much more clearly now why he behaved as he did. With his new wife in an interesting condition and my father so delicate, he would have been frantic with worry about the deleterious effects the scandal might have on their health. And outraged over how the debacle would adversely affect my younger sister’s prospects.’

She paused a moment, recalling Marc’s letter, still sitting unread on her desk, and forced a small, painful smile. ‘If I hadn’t been so heedless and unmanageable, so often involved in small scrapes of one sort or another, perhaps he would have given more credence to my protests of innocence. As it is, I can understand how, angry and worried as he was, he would find it easier to believe that I’d foolishly set these events in train than to think that some unknown someone, possessed of no motive we’ve yet been able to determine, had devised so outlandish a scheme.’

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