The Trouble With Honor (The Cabot Sisters #1)

Monica blinked. “Do you mean Lady Beckington was lost?”


“Oh, that I don’t know, ma’am. The footman found her quick as you please, buying hothouse flowers of all things. Mrs. Hargrove, she’d send someone down for flowers, I think. She’d not walk to Mayfair on a day like this.”

Violet folded the wrap as Monica pondered the news. Things were beginning to make sense, pieces of a puzzle falling into place.

After her chocolate, Monica dressed and made her way to the drawing room, where she found her mother and father. The room was small and dark, what with the wood paneling and worn draperies. Her mother wanted new drapes, but her father would not allow it.

This morning, her father was reading, jotting down notes on a sheet of paper at his elbow. Monica’s mother was on the settee, busy with her needlework. Her hair was still strawberry-blond, still caught the candlelight, even on a dreary day such as this. “There you are, darling!” she said, and put down her needlework. Her father paused in his study of the book and glanced at Monica over the top of his spectacles.

“How did you find the ball?” her mother asked.

“Lovely,” Monica said.

“And our Lord Sommerfield? Did he enjoy it, as well?”

Monica shrugged and sat next to her mother. She’d never known Augustine to be unhappy. “I think so.”

Her mother patted her knee. “You should make sure of it, my dear. It’s very important to keep a man happy. Is that not so, Benjamin?” she said to her husband.

Monica’s father had gone back to his study and said absently, “Is it, Lizzy?”

“Mamma,” Monica said, “how does one know if someone is going mad?”

That brought her father’s head up. “Feeling a bit mad, are you, darling?”

“Not me, Papa,” she said with a smile. “But...how does it descend on a person?”

Her father put down his pen and pivoted around in his seat. “It depends on the sort of madness, I should think. If one suffers from senility, it might come on gradually. A lapse here or there, unusual forgetfulness. I knew of a chap once who lost his young son to fire. Madness came on him overnight. Why do you ask?”

Monica was almost afraid to say aloud what she was thinking. It seemed at best disrespectful, at worst scandalous. But it was the only thing that made sense, and her parents were looking at her expectantly. “I think that perhaps Lady Beckington is going mad.”

Both of her parents stared at her, neither of them moving for a moment. Her father asked, “What do you mean, darling?”

“It’s difficult to explain. But she seems rather too forgetful.” Monica told them about the last time she’d been at Beckington House, and how Lady Beckington couldn’t seem to follow the conversation. She told them what Violet had said. She told them how, at times, Lady Beckington’s eyes looked strangely vacant, as if she weren’t there at all.

Her father listened intently, and when she’d finished, he nodded and sat back in his chair, templing his fingers. “I don’t see any reason for alarm, love. As people age, they become forgetful.”

“Benjamin, she is only a year older than myself,” Monica’s mother pointed out.

“As I said,” he said, and turned back to his book.

“When we were young, before you were born, Joan and I would go to the Mayfair flower stalls together,” her mother said. “The flowers always seemed so much prettier than the hothouses where we lived.” She looked wistfully away for a moment, seeing something in the distant past. “I’ve always enjoyed Joan’s company.”

“You will enjoy it again, Lizzy,” Monica’s father said. “She has forgotten a thing or two, nothing more.”

Monica noticed the slight change in her mother’s expression. She smiled at Monica. “Come, darling, let us go and dress your hair, shall we?” She stood up.

“Lizzy, do not put ideas into our daughter’s head,” her father said without lifting his gaze from his book. “You and Teddy have already suggested she turn the Cabot girls out to pasture.”

“I’ve done no such thing, Mr. Hargrove,” her mother protested, and took Monica’s hand, pulling her along.

But that wasn’t precisely true—her mother and Teddy had suggested more than once that perhaps the Cabot girls and their mother would be better suited to the dowager house at Longmeadow...or something even farther afield.

As they entered the narrow hall, Monica’s mother put her arm around her shoulders. “I daresay your father is right, you’ve seen nothing more than a bit of forgetfulness in Lady Beckington. It happens to all of us. However...”

“However?”

Her mother glanced at her from the corners of her eyes. “However, if you were to notice a change, you might think again about the importance of finding a comfortable place where she and her daughters might reside. Out of the public eye, naturally.”

Monica looked at her mother curiously.

“Are you aware that, in some cases, madness may turn to violence?”