‘I did not realise your sisters were almost all of the same age, Mrs St Harlow.’
‘Prudence and Harriet are nearly seventeen. They will come out next Season.’ Aurelia did not quite feel comfortable using Lady Lindsay’s first name and so did not add anything else at all.
‘And your father?’
‘Is indisposed at the moment with the influenza. He is in bed and has been for the past few days.’
‘Then let us hope he makes a good recovery with no lingering bad effects.’
In answer Aurelia smiled, the lies falling bald into the room between them. It had been so long since any stranger had set foot in Braeburn House and the need for lies made everything dangerous. Her eyes strayed to the clock. How long did one of these visits usually last for? She hoped it might be quick.
‘I visited Mrs St Harlow and her sisters yesterday with Rodney, Hawk. Aurelia St Harlow is…unusual.’
Cassie’s statement made both men turn from their seats in the corner of the St Auburn library.
‘She wore the same dress we saw her in at your ball, which was interesting, though she had done away with the glasses. Her eyes are the most surprising of colours. Different shades,’ she continued as neither her husband nor Stephen spoke. ‘I wonder why she hides herself beneath yards and yards of shapeless black bombazine.’
Nat began to smile. ‘What are you trying to tell us, Cassie?’
‘Secrets linger in Mrs St Harlow’s eyes like ghosts and she is careful with every single thing that she says. Charles, of course, was difficult, so that may be part of it. But there are other things, as well. The same servant who greeted us at the carriage after the ball last night took our coats, provided us with tea and showed us out.’
‘You think they are short of money?’ Hawkhurst made the observation.
‘The house is furnished well and is one of the prettiest properties in all of Mayfair, so that possibility seems remote. There was an odd sound whilst we were there, though. A howling if I had to name it. Mrs St Harlow said that they had just taken over the care of a small puppy and were trying to train the animal. Her sisters looked less than comfortable with the explanation, however, and I got the feeling they were relieved to see us go. Not Leonora, of course. Rodney and she existed in a space all of their own and I have never seen my brother so happy.’
‘Is it wise to encourage him, do you think?’ Nat asked the question.
‘You refer to Mrs St Harlow’s past, no doubt, and the unfortunate accident at Medlands.’
‘It was widely known that they were not happy. Charles had apparently said something of his wife expressing her desire for his early demise not long before he died. His friends testified that she harassed and badgered him all of the time, a woman who was never content with all the gifts that he was showering upon her. By all accounts from the London jewellers and suchlike, there were many.’
‘Which friends?’ Stephen joined in the conversation.
‘Freddy Delsarte and his cronies were amongst their number, if I recall.’
‘Delsarte waylaid Mrs St Harlow at the ball. She had bruises on her wrist from his grip.’
‘Perhaps he is another of her disenchanted lovers, then. The parties they held at Medlands were notorious.’ Nat used a tone that was unusual. Stephen had heard the same cadence when information was being extracted from a difficult informant, the undercurrents of deception held within.
‘I thought it brave of her to even attend, Hawk.’ Cassie’s voice resonated with a definite query.
‘She has three sisters to marry off. That would make a warrior out of any woman.’ Hawkhurst remembered her antics above Taylor’s Gap.
‘Yet she makes no effort at all to give her side of the story. If she was pardoned by the courts, she must be innocent.’
‘Or she had a good lawyer,’ Nathaniel interjected and Stephen could hear his impatience with the whole thing. ‘Charles was a man who none of us liked and Mrs St Harlow is a woman whom society detests. Perhaps they suited each other entirely.’
‘I don’t think I detest her,’ Cassie interrupted. ‘I think, under other circumstances, we might have been friends. You had a waltz together, Hawk. What do you make of her character?’
She kisses well and goes to pieces on the smallest of caresses.
He wondered what would be said should he voice such things and remained quiet.
‘I barely know her.’ Stephen did not wish to be drawn into Cassandra’s wiles by admitting more and when the conversation meandered on to other topics, he was pleased.
On Monday afternoon, despite willing himself not to, Hawk found himself in the park watching for the conveyance containing Aurelia St Harlow and her father. Why he did not just dismiss the woman from his notice was beyond his understanding but there it was, logic lost beneath a will that had forgotten what was good for him.
He did not have long to wait before they came, Aurelia in her black bombazine with a matching hat and her father tucked in beside her in the open landau. She chatted and laughed, the driver on the front box dressed in the livery of the stables complex in Davies Mews and the horses a well-matched pair of greys.
The senior Beauchamp must be a gifted conversationalist, Stephen thought, as he caught her laughter on the wind, for he had never seen Aurelia St Harlow look so animated. He hated the way his body responded to the sound and bit down in irritation.
Below this thought, however, another one less generous tumbled, born from his years of observing people closely, he supposed, and from a lifetime of finding the wrong in things.
He could not see her father’s lips moving in the spaces when his daughter did not speak and though he craned forward to watch more closely as they returned around the path for a second time, he was beginning to get the feeling that the gaiety of this carriage ride was a sham.
For whom? His eyes took in various lords and ladies gracing the park, the busiest time of the day, and although other conveyances slowed down to speak to those who might hail them, the Beauchamp carriage maintained a steady speed and a one-sided conversation for three whole passes around.
Then it simply left, gliding through the gates with all the grace of a completed outing, the horses perfectly in time and undoubtedly barely stretched.
Would Aurelia St Harlow never stop surprising him and why would she be bent on such a show?
Rodney Northrup chose that moment to saunter over towards him. The lad looked happier than he had looked for a long while and Hawk guessed his joyous admiration of Miss Leonora Beauchamp to have some hand in such newly found cheerfulness.
‘Lord Hawkhurst. I have not seen you here before at this hour of the day. You have just missed Mrs St Harlow and her father. They left not more than a brace of minutes ago.’
Stephen decided to play along. ‘I had heard they frequented the park on a Monday. I expect you were here to catch sight of the sister…Leonora, is it not?’
‘Oh, Miss Leonora never accompanies them. It is always just Mrs St Harlow and her father.’
‘I see,’ Stephen returned. And he did.
With only the two of them in the carriage no one would stop to talk. Curious acquaintances would be a danger to any hidden secret and as Aurelia so religiously rebuffed anyone who might offer more than a glance, she and her father stayed safe from closer attention. Was Braeburn House entailed? No one had seen Richard Beauchamp in any company save that of his daughter in years. Could Aurelia St Harlow have kept any intimation of her father being ill a secret to protect the inheritance of her three unmarried sisters? Such a shield was exactly the sort of thing he knew she might have held on to, safeguarding any change detrimental to her siblings’ chance of a good