She would go home. Nothing had changed. She was still Winnie Wallace, despite the name she had invented. She was still her mother’s daughter. She was still alone—as she had always been—and it didn’t matter how much she wanted…
But she could not put words to what she wanted. Not now, not when what she wanted was close and enticing and impossibly far out of her reach.
“Yes,” she said, “you’re right. Everything will go back to normal.”
Chapter 6
In the week following her arrival at Number Twelve Mayfair, Winnie watched with increasing perturbation as Spencer received and discarded invitation after invitation.
Each one seemed a missed opportunity. If Spencer accepted one of the dinner overtures, she could press him for information regarding the guests. If one of the men from whom her mother had stolen the necklaces seemed likely to be present, she could not pass up the chance to attempt a return.
She could follow Spencer in a hired hack, perhaps, and disguise herself as a serving maid. She could bump into one of the aristocrats and drop his necklace at his feet. Now that her black eye had faded, she didn’t think she would draw too much attention.
Her mind spun out more and more outlandish scenarios to return the jewels at various events. At a society dinner, she could slip into the kitchens and deposit Lord Noake’s diamonds and rubies in his chocolatepot de crème.At a garden party, she might conspire to temporarily separate Lord Brownbrooke from his hat and slip the acrostic necklace inside the band. At Spencer’s club—well, she did not know how precisely she could make her way into the club, but she imagined it would involve an elaborate costume and possibly fake mustaches.
But Spencer did not seem inclined to accept any invitations.
Indeed, the only correspondence that Spencerhadreplied to was a letter from Henry Mortimer, his best friend and solicitor, which informed him in sheepish, besotted fashion that Henry and Spencer’s sister Margo would not be returning immediately to London. Because they had eloped.
Spencer had taken on the look of someone whose house had just slid from its foundation off a cliff and into the sea.
“Eloped?” he said dazedly. “Margo and Henry? Together?”
Winnie peered over his shoulder at the letter. “I think that’s what he’s implied, yes. When he’s written,We’ve eloped.”
Spencer blinked furiously at the page of neat script, as though a coded message might reveal itself somewhere in the spaces between the words. When he was done gaping, he turned it over on his desk and put his hand to his face.
“You did not notice an attachment between them?” she inquired cautiously.
“I—” He scrubbed his fingers over his face and then looked at her. His dimple was nowhere to be found. “Hell. I should have known, shouldn’t I? I should have seen what was between them.”
“Perhaps it came on rather suddenly.”
He shook his head. “I ought to have been paying better attention. Our father would have—” He broke off, his jaw tightening as he cut off the words.
“Spencer,” she said, “it seems to me you’ve been doing quite well.”’
He rubbed at the back of his neck and did not look at her when he spoke. “I’ll write to Henry now that I know where he is. I’ll ask them to come back. There’s no one else I trust half so well with our legal entanglement.”
He did not appear to be upset with his sister and his friend. Rather, his frustration seemed turned inward—at his own lack of foresight, perhaps. His expectations of himself seemed impossibly lofty. The Earl of Warren, in his mind, ought to be perfect, invulnerable to error.
She wondered if he thought his father had been so.
Spencer let loose a short sigh and went on. “Unfortunately, it may be two weeks or more for Henry to receive my letter and then return. I know you have responsibilities awaiting you in Wales. You’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to help? Anything you need in the meantime—clothing or carriages or…?”
He was sonice.So bloodyearnest.It was far more attractive than invulnerability, and much harder to shore herself up against.
It was difficult, in the face of all that goodness, to deceive him. But she did so anyway.
“I should like to go and look at rich people,” she said.
He blinked.
“For my thread,” she said, as cool and calm as though she were not lying to his face. “I’d like to see how ladies are wearing it. The latest styles in embroidery. Where might we go to see thetonin flocks in October?”
His expression of bemusement had cleared. He looked relieved to have something productive to do, some way to aid her. “Perhaps shopping? On Bond Street?”
“And you’ll go with me?” She wanted him there to point out Noake or Roxbury or Brownbrooke if any of them made an appearance—but she could not tell him that.
