But her indignation wasn’t what it should be. Instead it was lined and stuffed with fear. Did he know about Henry? In what other way could she be described as “unconventional,” a label she’d assiduously avoided, as it usually referred only to suffragettes and bluestockings and women otherwise unfit for the upper echelons of Society?
And if Mr. Marsden chose to take it upon himself to inform Stuart, who was to say that he wouldn’t see it as his further duty to inform the rest of the world? Once her conduct with Henry became common knowledge, she’d be banished to some bleak cottage in the moors to live out the rest of her life in disgrace and ostracism.
“Paris. Madame Belleau’s house. The burgundy chamber with the mirrors,” he said.
She stared at him, understanding nothing at first. Then she did.
“Deny it,” he prompted her. “Laugh at me and tell me it was only my sordid imagination. That you would never, ever do such a thing. That you never even knew such a thing was possible. What an abomination!”
“Oh, please.” She was almost giddy with relief. What Mr. Marsden had witnessed was the merest of trifles, something she and Stuart could laugh about were he to learn of it. “Let us not insult Mr. Somerset’s intelligence. Do you think he would care that I once allowed an omnivorous Frenchwoman to kiss me? I assure you that far worse things happen at the best finishing schools on the Continent.”
“I think he might care if his fiancée preferred his cook to himself.”
“Which I most decidedly do not, or I would have eagerly participated in the goings-on at school. And Madame Belleau only caught me at a moment of great ennui. Believe me, when she disrobed and beckoned to me from her overly gilded bedstead, I had absolutely no intention or desire to ravish her.”
Mr. Marsden looked at her a long time, as if trying to decide whether she was telling the truth, and as if that decision held some great personal significance to him. “A good thing,” he said at last. “Since her husband walked in a minute later.”
“A good thing indeed.”
“I always thought it a masterly performance that you put on, holding her hand, wiping her brow, and telling him that she’d succumbed to a particularly virulent case of the vapors.”
It had been a masterly performance, if Lizzy said so herself.
“A depraved couple,” she said. “She acted shocked enough, diving under the bedspread and giving me all those panicky looks, but I’m not convinced that his arrival was an accident.”
Mr. Marsden chortled, with what seemed to be surprised glee. There was still something enigmatic about his mirth, but compared to what she was used to from him, it was as guileless as a baby’s burble.
“A pity, really, that your Sapphic inclinations weren’t more overwhelming,” he said. “For I do love a good melodrama.”
“You must look for it elsewhere, sir,” she said. “Now, if you are done blackmailing me, good day.”
He nodded. “Until the funeral, Miss Bessler.”
She walked off, but as she turned to climb up the steps that led toward the house, she saw that he’d remained in place, watching her, his scarf streaming in the morning breeze.
“I was looking for you,” said Stuart to Lizzy, who approached the house from the direction of the river.
He wanted to apologize to her. It was her first visit to their future home and he’d been barely adequate in his role as her host and husband-to-be. The effect of dinner had lasted the whole evening—and well into the night—and it had been all he could do to pretend to listen to Marsden and Mr. Bessler’s conversation and nod at seemingly appropriate points.
“I took a long walk,” answered his fiancée, not sounding at all as if she’d noticed his distraction. She turned around and looked back at the wide avenue leading down to the wrought-iron river gate and the formal gardens that flanked the passage on either side. “Fairleigh Park is beautiful.”
“Can you see yourself spending time here?”
“Very easily. I love it already.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I know you wanted a much greater place for yourself.”
“Oh, no. Please, Stuart, you must not go on reminding me of my girlish arrogance. I’m thoroughly ashamed to have been so vain.”
He smiled at her. “You were not vain, but ambitious. I understand a thing or two about ambition.”
“Sir?” someone called him from behind.
He turned around. It was the housekeeper. “Yes, Mrs. Boyce?”
Mrs. Boyce handed him a brown envelope. “Sir, the maids found this. I thought I should bring it to your attention.”
The envelope had To be buried with me written across it. The script was elaborate, formal. Bertie’s, from the days when they’d written each other almost every day, before Bertie’s handwriting transitioned to a loose, loopy cursive during his later years at Harrow.
“Where did the maids find it?”