Anna Campbell - Regency Rogues and Rakes

Pompous ass.

Longmore said, “Miss Noirot, will you allow me to present my brother, Valentine Fairfax.”

Another excruciatingly polite bow from the nitwit, who said, “Miss Noirot, perhaps you’d be so good as to allow me to speak to my brother in private.”

She curtseyed. It wasn’t remotely correct. Down she went in a great flurry of bows and lace and muslin whispering like scandalized playgoers when a notorious tart appeared in her theater box. And up she came again, graceful as a ballet dancer. Then she looked up at Valentine, all wide blue eyes. “I’m not good at all,” she said. “Ask Lord Longmore.”

“I’m still undecided in that regard,” Longmore said. “I will say it’s no good trying to keep secrets from her.”

Valentine, now gazing raptly into the great blue eyes, didn’t hear a word.

“A message, Valentine,” Longmore prompted. “Did our sister leave a message?”

Valentine shook himself out of his trance and dug out from the recesses of his waistcoat a piece of notepaper. He gave it to his brother.

The message was short enough:

I will not marry that man. I’d rather be disgraced for the rest of my life and live as a beggar.

C.

“Oh, good,” Longmore said. “That’s what we need: drama.”

Yet he remembered the way Clara’s face had crumpled last week, when he’d brought her here. She’d said … What had she said?

Something about their mother harassing her. Something about the marriage. The hasty marriage.

The marriage she wouldn’t have had to face had he done the one simple task even he’d understood was necessary: keep Adderley away from her.

Sophy held out her hand. He gave her the note.

She scanned the few lines quickly. She turned the paper over. On the outside Clara had written “Mama.”

“As soon as Mother realized that Clara hadn’t gone to Aunt Dora’s, she ran upstairs and ransacked Clara’s room,” Valentine said. “The note was tucked into Clara’s jewel box. She’d taken everything else out of it. Not that she’d much of value there. Usually our mother lends her jewelry—and she keeps the good things under lock and key.”

“She could sell her clothes,” Sophy said. “Her maid could do it for her. That’s why she took all the parcels.”

Both men looked at her.

“They’d fetch a fair sum, each of her dresses, especially the ones we made,” she said.

That was when Longmore felt the first stirrings of alarm.

Clara. On the road. With nobody but her maid to look after her.

He felt sick.

“I daresay our mother’s worked that out by now,” Valentine said. “She’d have found the wardrobes and such empty.”

“Has she stopped screaming long enough to work anything out?” Longmore said.

“She didn’t scream at all,” Valentine said. “First she fainted, then she started crying, then she locked herself in Clara’s room. She won’t let anybody in and she won’t speak to anybody.”

“Oh, no. The poor woman.” Sophy put her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes. It was only for an instant. One hint of emotion. Longmore realized at that moment how rare a sight it was: true emotion. He didn’t know how he knew it was true, but he knew it in the same way he knew her, no matter what disguise she wore.

A glimpse of feeling, then it was gone, and she became brisk. “One could wish she’d left larger clues. But she did take her maid. And clothes and trinkets to pawn. So she planned, to a degree. But first things first. We need to discover which direction she’s taken.”

“We?” the brothers said simultaneously.

Lord Valentine Fairfax, whom Sophy had seen many times before, resembled his eldest brother only in size. His coloring was like Lady Clara’s. Yet it was obvious they were brothers. Both men regarded her with the same rapid succession of expressions: surprise, confusion, annoyance.

They were aristocratic men. Their brains were not over-large and definitely not attuned to subtlety.

She donned a look of confusion. “I assumed you’d wish to help me.”

“Help you ?” said Lord Longmore.

Lord Valentine remembered his manners. “It’s very—er—kind of you, Miss—er—”

“ Noirot , you idiot. I told you. Clevedon’s sister-in-law. And if she—”

“Yes, of course,” said Lord Valentine. “I daresay we can call on Clevedon to assist in organizing a search.”

“Ah, yes?” she said. “Where do you propose to begin looking?”

“Why …” Lord Valentine frowned and looked at his brother.

“Because I’m baffled where you’d start,” she said. “Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that you’ll need a prodigious large search party, to search every way out of London for a sign of her, and then all possible routes to … well, everywhere.”

They looked at each other, then at her.

“I can’t help wondering, too, how you’d do this without calling attention to the fact that Lady Clara Fairfax has run away from home, with no companion but her maid,” she said. “Perhaps I’m wrong—I’m merely a shopkeeper—but I’d always thought that gently bred girls were not allowed to simply dash off by themselves. I’d supposed that if a girl did such a thing, her family wouldn’t want it known.”

“Well,” said Lord Valentine.

Longmore uttered a vehement oath.

Sophy could have added several equally vehement ones, in two languages. This was so bad, on so many counts. A gently bred girl, traveling unchaperoned and unprotected, except by one maid. She might as well paint a big red target on her back. And front. And if the Great World found out … after what had happened with Adderley …

Nothing could mend her reputation then.

One could only hope the girl had had second thoughts and was even now on her way home.

But Sophy knew better than to rely on hope.

Thanks to a lifetime’s practice, nothing of what she felt inwardly showed outwardly.

“I’ve a large network of acquaintances I can call upon in a situation like this,” she said. “Even better, we have Fenwick. I suspect he’ll be able to call on his own associates as well. Among the two groups, someone will have noticed two women in a vehicle of such-and-such description, going in such-and-such direction.”

She waited for arguments. The two men only stood and listened, both wearing the same intent expression. She supposed they were both thinking hard about what she’d said. One couldn’t expect them to do anything else at the same time.

“All I need from you is a description of the vehicle and its distinguishing features.” She took up the little pocket watch that hung from her belt and opened it. “It’s nearly half past four o’clock. With any luck, we’ll hear something before nightfall.”

“Nightfall!” said Lord Valentine. “My dear girl, she’s already been gone for hours. By nightfall she could be in Dover or Brighton or even on a vessel traveling to the Continent.”

“Miss Noirot is not your dear girl, you pretentious half-wit,” Longmore said.

“She’ll need papers to travel to the Continent,” Sophy said. Unlike the Noirots, Lady Clara wouldn’t know how to go about obtaining forged passports and letters of credit and such, or how to forge her own.

“That merely leaves all of Great Britain,” Lord Valentine said.

“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Longmore said.

“I only meant—”

“Never mind what he means, Miss Noirot,” Longmore said. “He doesn’t know what he means, and being high-strung, like the rest of our lot, he flies into a panic over everything.”

“I think there’s some reason to panic,” she said. “This isn’t good.”