The Peculiar Pink Toes of Lady Flora Page 28

  Silence, but for the puttering fire and a few drops of summer rain now tapping lightly at the window. Maxim went still and kept his back to her. Everybody else turned their eyes to Flora.

  Edward Godfrey was about forty, stocky, sandy-haired and of florid complexion. He looked to be a pleasant enough fellow and rather embarrassed to be there at all. Not to mention hungry. It must have been well beyond his dinner, as it was for Flora too. Her stomach growled, unconcerned, as ever, by the constraints of ladylike manners.

  "Everybody calls me Ned, ma'am. Plain Ned. Not Edward. Not since I were born." He removed his cap and crushed it between two thick hands as he stared across the room and said, "But that ain't Flora, ma'am. That ain't my wife and the mother o' my boy."

  The air in the room instantly changed. Smug anticipation of victory became anger, impatience and incredulity. The dowager urged him closer for another look. "Of course it is her! It has been many years, remember. This is indeed Lady Flora— Flora Chelmsworth, as she once was. There can be no mistake. This is the woman with whom you eloped to Gretna Green. Think man! Look!"

  "This is the woman who committed bigamy," snapped Harriet, "by taking a second husband while you—the first — are still living."

  George Tarleton, not wishing to be left out, threw in his own sixpenny-worth, "And now she thinks to take another. A woman without conscience," he slumped into a chair, "or heart."

  But poor Ned Godfrey, having stepped closer, half dragged by Harriet Seton, blinked in distress and mumbled reluctantly, "I'd know my Flora anywhere, ma'am, and this lady is not her. This is not the Lady Flora Chelmsworth who married me once." When they all continued to argue with him, he raised his voice. "'T'aint she. 'Tis like in some ways, but it ain't my wife." He turned his baleful eyes to Sir Henry. "Sorry to disappoint, sir— with you coming out on such a stormy night, all for this— but they're wrong. That is not my Flora."

  "Then where is yours, Master Godfrey?" the gentleman asked.

  "I do not know that, Sir Henry. She put our babe into my arms all those years ago and walked off into a fog. The worst fog I ever did see." Lightning flared through the window behind him, the entire room turning white for a split second. "And she never came out again. That were the last time I saw her."

  "But you are certain, after all this time, that you would recognize her again? Her looks might have altered after so long. Take your time, Master Godfrey. Be certain."

  So again he looked, squinting and leaning close.

  Flora looked back, unmoving and expressionless, suddenly feeling quite calm. As if she stood in the eye of her own storm.

  Thunder rumbled closer.

  "No," said Ned. "'T'ain't my Flora. I remember every freckle on my wife's face. This lady is a stranger to me and of that I am certain."

  "Ridiculous!" fumed the dowager. "How could it not be her?"

  And Harriet glared. "This is the Lady Flora I've always known. She must have paid this man off somehow."

  At that, Ned Godfrey took rightful offence. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I would not accept money to lie for anybody. I didn't take money when her family offered it to have me gone, twenty years ago, and I wouldn't take it now. I've got a good business with my son, a farrier's shop. We do very well with it. And I'm a grandfather now. I'm a respectable fellow and god-fearing member of the parish. I pay my own way, don't hold with villainy and schemes of that nature."

  "I'm sure you do not, Master Godfrey," Sir Henry reassured the fellow hastily.

  Flora listened to all this, but as if through a wall. It didn't seem to pertain to her at all and, of course, in a way it did not for she was Rosie, not Flora. It was Flora who was actually a grandmother now, not Rosie.

  Did she know that, wherever she was?

  A grandmother. Tempus Fugit. If one said it with the right inflexion it sounded like a curse.

  "It appears as if the dowager and her friends owe you an apology, Master Godfrey," said Maxim, taking charge as usual. "Also to you, Sir Henry. You have been brought out here by scurrilous rumor and considerable female hysteria." Here he paused to glare at his mother and Harriet, neither of whom could now look him in the eye. His mother looked as if she might faint, but sheer fury kept her upright too. Harriet merely twitched as if she wanted to scratch somebody's eyes out.

  George had fallen into a stupor, head on his chest, feet stretched out. Soon he would probably begin to snore.

  "Perhaps now, we might be left in peace to enjoy our dinner, before returning to Darnley," said Maxim. "I assume tomorrow evening's plans are now cancelled. Ah, of course, how blind I've been. There was no dinner planned at Castle Malgrave, was there? It was merely a ruse to get us here, to this inn, where you knew I would break our journey. Here, where there are no servants to eavesdrop and we would be taken by surprise. Here, where you hoped Flora would be trapped and removed without further scandal."

  His mother was not yet ready to give up entirely. "You still mean to keep her?"

  "She's not a cat."

  "What is she though? If she's not Lady Flora Chelmsworth, who is she?" A brilliant streak of lightning through the window made her hair prickle, her nerves stand on end. "Has that not occurred to you? Clearly, if she is not the Lady Flora who married Edward Godfrey, she is an imposter."

  Perhaps it had not occurred to her lover. Not yet. He was too relieved by Ned Godfrey's denial. He did look a little shaken then, however, as this new realization was thrust to the forefront of his mind.

  But he recovered to open the door for the disgruntled party. "Once again, Master Godfrey, I extend my deepest apologies for this travesty. Please accept my best wishes for your future and extend the same to your family."

  Godfrey would have left then, but the dowager pecked and poked angrily at Sir Henry, insisting that there ought to be further investigation.

  "If she is an imposter," Harriet Seton exclaimed gleefully, "she still has a charge to answer. There has been a fraud committed here, and clearly she is in the midst of it."

  The dowager gathered these threads with quick fingers to sew another picture, another crime. "Sir Benjamin Hartnell died in suspicious circumstances, Lady Manderby too went to her maker in the presence of this woman, so I am told. And since we do not know what became of the genuine Lady Flora Chelmsworth, could the woman who took her place not have had a hand in her fate too? Who knows of what she is capable? As Miss Seton says, there has been fraud committed, either by this woman alone, or by collaboration with the Chelmsworth family." She added scornfully, "Why I should be surprised by that, I do not know. They wanted her to marry the duke years ago. Practically threw her at him. I would put nothing by that family of reprobates."

  Bouncing, banging thunder shook the rafters above and reverberated through the boards under their feet. Still that spider web clung to its corner. Nothing would shake it lose.

  Maxim spoke directly to Sir Henry, ignoring the others."You have no proof of anything and no cause to detain this woman. This tomfoolery has been organized by the dowager duchess and her companions in a feverish fit begun by vile jealousy, fear of change and a desire for vengeance."

  Sir Henry hesitated and then turned to Flora. "Perhaps the lady has something to say for herself in this business? Something to put our minds at ease?" Hands behind his back, he braced his shoulders and said, in a loud, formal voice, as if she might not understand the predicament she was in. "Who are you, madam? Now is the time to say. Speak, do."

  More lightning— a savage spear that ripped through the sky and, by the sound of it, through an oak tree outside the inn. She could smell the burning, could feel the fierce heat. The thunder, this time, was instantaneous as the storm moved directly over their heads.

  And in that moment all she could say was, "I have not the slightest idea, my good man. I hoped somebody might enlighten me."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Maxim insisted on being present while she was examined by a physician. This entire business he blamed on his mother, but he had
known nothing good could come of her invitation to Suffolk and he should have followed his instincts, put down his foot, and refused to let Flora go under any circumstances. The woman, unfortunately, was damned impossible to control when she made her mind up and she'd been adamant.

  In fact she had been oddly cheerful about the whole event. To all appearances, fearless. Even in the mood for a fight.

  "It could be, your grace, that the lady has suffered a concussion of some sort," Sir Henry Mulvey suggested. It seemed to be the only explanation the poor fellow could come up with and thus a physician was summoned.

  Maxim also sent an urgent message to Plumm, needing his advice and— since he seemed to be losing his own—some good sense and reason.

  He wanted to take Flora back to Darnley, but Sir Henry suggested they stay at his house instead, until any doubt was resolved. One way or another. Certainly, Maxim wanted the mystery solved, the accusations answered and put to rest, so he agreed that they would stay a few days.

  "I tried to tell you several times," she confessed to him when they were alone. "But after so long...I thought it might never be necessary. I hoped we could go on as we were. For your sake."

  "Then tell me who you are," he exclaimed, trying to be patient.

  She looked at him with wide eyes, the lavender stalks within waving in a subtle breeze. "I could tell you so many things, Fred, but I don't know which is fact. I do not know which is true. Perhaps they all are." Her voice grew distant until it fell away completely on a weary sigh.

  She must be hiding something from him. Something of which she was ashamed. "It does not matter to me, where you came from."

  "But you said once, that a humble maid could never be compared to Lady Flora Chelmsworth, an earl's daughter. That there could never be any lasting affair between yourself and a woman of the lower classes."

  "You're a maid? A servant perhaps from Wyndham?"

  "It is best, you said, for everybody not to venture beyond their sphere, because it only causes trouble."

  So that was what she dug for that evening, weeks ago, when he could not understand her purpose. When they talked of servants and she criticized him for not knowing all their names.

  "You were one of my staff? Long ago, before you became Lady Flora?"

  "No," she replied somberly. "I lived with an old lady who made wine. Before that...I think I was a pirate. Or was that after? I remember another world too. Not this one."

  He groaned, scraping a hand through his hair. "This is not a game, Flora."

  "That portrait of me that you keep in your watch-case," she said suddenly. "Why did you never show it to me?"

  He frowned. "I didn't think of it. I never showed anybody. Kept it for myself."

  "A secret. You were my secret admirer."

  "Hardly secret. I proposed marriage, remember?"

  "Yes, but...I didn't realize then that you had any feelings for me. You were so stern and proper. If I'd known about the portrait, things might have been different."

  "Tell me who you are," he insisted, clasping her hands in his. "Tell me."

  "I am a nobody. I am an ordinary, common person. Insignificant to the Duke of Malgrave. The sort you would never have noticed."

  "That is not true."

  "But it is, my darling Fred. You see," she sighed, "even when I tell you the truth, you don't believe me."

  * * * *

  He refused to see his mother. All he wanted to know was how she came to be complicit with Harriet Seton and George Tarleton, and that he could find out through Plumm's investigation. Not that it mattered now. The accusers may not have achieved what they wanted, exactly, but they had still caused a stir and cast enough doubt to bring a cloud over his future with Flora.

  "I find nothing out of place, your grace," the physician reported, having taken her pulse, listened to her heart, tried her reflexes and checked her eyes and teeth. "She seems to be all there, sir."

  "Yes. I rather thought she was, but she seems in doubt."

  Sir Henry applied to Earl Chelmsworth for anything he might know of his sister, and also to Sir Roderick Manderby. "If it is true that she is an imposter, one of them will surely know it and shed some light upon the matter."

  The woman he knew as Flora continued to insist that she was not, that she no longer knew who she was, but she would say nothing more, as if she feared getting somebody into trouble. Or else the truth was far worse than he could imagine.

  But Maxim had known her as Flora since that day, so many years ago, when he walked into the midst of Blind Man's Bluff and she ran into him recklessly, laughing and giddy, her fingers straying over his face. Like a thief looking to steal his valuables. In this case, his heart.

  How could she be anybody else?

  To him she was Flora of the Pink Toes. The one and only. She could be no other.

  * * * *

  Plumm was able to confirm that Ned Godfrey was exactly who he claimed to be and that he had indeed been married at a place called Gretna Green, just over the Scottish border, in the year 1762, to Lady Flora Chelmsworth.

  "But she was only seventeen and not of legal age to wed without parental consent," Maxim protested.

  Plumm drooped over his papers and explained, "Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753 does not apply in Scotland, your grace. Perhaps you have forgot. It seems that, since the act was passed, this small place in the wilds of Scotland, formerly unnoticed on any map of the region, has become a popular destination for clandestine marriages. As I have often observed, your grace, those seeking to break a law will always find a way around it. Particularly the young, the insane and the lusty."

  Ned Godfrey had never known there was another woman calling herself Lady Flora Chelmsworth and so, when his wife disappeared, he simply got on with his life as best he could, raising their child, hoping she might return one day. He told Plumm that he once thought of approaching the Wyndham estate to ask after the lady and whether they had received any word from her, but he lost his gumption. Fearing they might snatch his child away, or even take worse measures against him, he changed his mind and slipped away back to Scotland. He heard nothing more until he was contacted by Harriet Seton, who had doggedly pursued old rumors, determined to serve her rival "a comeuppance". All while pretending that she merely did a service to society, by removing a supposed bigamist from the scene.

  "I never wanted anything from that family," Ned Godfrey told Plumm. "If I made myself known to them, I knew they'd think the worst of me, accuse me of some crime, have me whipped off their property. If I ever heard talk of Lady Flora after she left me, I would have thought she went back to her fine life for her own reasons. If she could not love me for what I was, then I would not want her back. A man has his pride."

  Harriet Seton, playing the injured damsel in distress, had persuaded Ned to travel to Suffolk with her to "prevent a great crime." George had merely gone along with it all for revenge against both Maxim and Flora, who had rejected him. The dowager had met them while making her own inquiries into Flora's past, and thus they formed an alliance. For "the duke's own good."

  All of this, Plumm reported back to his master and to Sir Henry Mulvey. But it did not solve the mystery of two Lady Floras.

  As the investigation stretched its wings, the Chelmsworths and Manderbys chorused in outrage at the suggestion of an imposter in their midst. But not because they were ready to deny it. No, their indignation stemmed from the fact that Flora had inherited jewelry from her great aunt. Now they wanted it retrieved from the likely imposter's hands. She had no right to it. They had been cheated out of it. They wanted justice and recompense. Mostly the latter.

  "I do not have it," Flora calmly explained. "I gave it away. As I had every right to do, since it was given to me for services rendered."

  Sir Roderick Manderby, far too ill to leave his house, demanded that the inquiry travel to Hertfordshire so that he might hear all these claims in person. He was horrified, he assured them, to think that his family had been take
n advantage of by a villainess posing as his cousin. He swore that he knew nothing of the matter, whatever she said, and was just as shocked by this turn of events as anybody.

  If there had been any plotting to cover up the real Flora's elopement, he said, then it was his mother's doing and not his. Or else the girl worked alone to pull the wool over all their eyes.

  "Have you considered that this imposter might have disposed of my cousin herself, in order to replace her? If the real Lady Flora cannot be found, surely that is a possibility. Folk do not simply vanish into thin air. Or fog. No. I never liked that girl. Never trusted her. Never liked the look of her. When she returned from Scotland there was something of a common goose-herder about her manner. I remember telling my mother that there was something amiss. I knew she would be trouble. And if she got rid of my cousin for her own advancement, could she not also have done the same to my mother, to get her hands on that jewelry? She was the only one near to my mother at the end. She took over completely, and we were shut out."

  When Flora was asked about this, she replied with a shrug, "Nobody else cared about her, that is why they were absent. I nursed Lady Manderby as best I could and took care of her needs. As for Sir Roderick, he was always more concerned for himself. He never came to visit her sick bed, even after all the years she'd spent tending to him."

  Sir Roderick denied it all, of course, insisting he was kept away by Flora.

  Distant relatives of Sir Benjamin Hartnell now came forward to claim that they too had their suspicions about his widow and the circumstances of his death.

  The word "murderess" echoed and vibrated around them, and it would not go away.

  Maxim assured Sir Henry that the woman he knew as Flora had never done anybody ill. "Whoever she is, she is not a murderess, or a thief."