Hero took the teacup handed her. “Has he given you reason to suspect his sincerity?”
“Truthfully? No.” Miss Austen took a sip of her own tea and stared out over the sun-warmed, French-style garden. “Eliza—my cousin—believes that Anne’s love has proven itself so enduring that she ought to be allowed to marry her captain, although of course she worries what sort of future lies ahead for them. We’ve all known young women who married poor men for love, only to live a life of regret. Poverty can be so terribly grinding.”
Hero studied her hostess’s even, carefully composed features and found herself wondering about this woman’s own romantic past. How much of the author’s own life experiences, Hero wondered, had made their way into her books?
“Yet she won’t be poor,” said Hero, choosing her words carefully. “Stanley Preston’s death means that Anne is now free to marry her impoverished young captain and keep her inheritance from her father.”
Miss Austen raised her gaze to Hero’s face. “I may have questioned Captain Wyeth’s sincerity, but I never would have believed him capable of—of—”
“Murder?”
“Especially one of such savagery.”
“He’s spent the last six years at war. That sort of experience can brutalize some men.”
“Most men, I should think,” said Miss Austen quietly.
Hero took a sip of her tea and shifted her gaze to where the old gardener, Jenkins, was forking over the earth of one of the parterres. “I understand Miss Preston attended Lady Farningham’s musical evening in your company.”
“She did, yes. My cousin had hoped to be able to go with her, but I’m afraid Eliza rarely leaves her room these days.”
“Did you know Captain Wyeth would be there?”
Miss Austen expelled her breath in a kind of a sigh. “No. Although I realize in retrospect that Anne obviously knew it. No simple musical evening could have inspired the level of excitement and anticipation she displayed. Unfortunately, she and the captain had words during the break, and he left almost immediately afterward.”
“They quarreled?”
“Yes, although I couldn’t tell you the reason for the disagreement. Anne refused to discuss it, and I had no desire to press her. We ourselves left not long afterward. She pled a sick headache and wanted to go home.”
“So she was home before ten?” A good half hour before her father’s murder, thought Hero, although she didn’t say it.
“Yes.”
“Interesting. I don’t believe that was made clear to anyone.”
A vaguely troubled look came over Miss Austen’s features. But she simply picked up the plate of biscuits from the tray and held it out to Hero. “Please, have some.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s an interesting necklace you’re wearing,” said Miss Austen, adroitly shifting to a safer topic of conversation as she set the plate between them. “It looks quite ancient.”
Hero touched her fingertips to the bluestone and silver triskelion at her neck. “I believe it is, yes. Although I must confess, I don’t know its history.”
“I saw something quite like it once while visiting friends near Ludlow. We were invited to dine one evening at Northcott Abbey, and Lady Seaton showed us the portrait gallery. There was a painting of a woman wearing an almost identical piece. I remember it because the family legend attached to it caught my imagination. According to the story, the necklace had the power to choose its next owner by growing warm to that person’s touch. It seems Lord Seaton’s great-great-grandmother was a natural daughter of James II, and the necklace was his gift to her on her wedding day.”
Hero was suddenly, intensely conscious of the pendant lying warm against the flesh of her throat, and of the inscribed initials entwined on its back.
A.C. and J.S.
“There was some tragedy involved,” Miss Austen was saying, “although I must confess I don’t recall all the details. I believe she married a Scottish lord who treated her abysmally after her father the King lost his throne. In fiction, we can mold reality to our will and make all rich men as worthy and handsome as anyone could wish. But life is unfortunately far less tidy. Wealthy men are often silly, insufferable bores—or worse—while far too many handsome men with good hearts have everything to recommend them except a comfortable independence.”
“So is Captain Wyeth a particularly vicious version of George Wickham, or a sadly impoverished Mr. Darcy?”
Miss Austen’s worried gaze met Hero’s. “I wish I knew.”
Hero was perched halfway up the library ladder, a copy of Debrett’s Peerage open in her hands, when Devlin walked into the room.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Trying to find the name of the Scottish lord who married one of James II’s natural daughters,” said Hero, still flipping through the pages.
“Why?”
“I saw Miss Austen this afternoon.”