“Miss Marwick, I pray you will forgive me speaking so candidly, but I must ask you about the brooch you wore that night.”
And there it was. Despite having known the moment was coming, Alice felt her stomach perform a complicated somersault but continued to gaze beatifically up at Mr Seymour.
“The brooch?” she repeated, effecting astonishment. “Gracious me. Whatever for? Which brooch was it?”
Mr Seymour opened his mouth but hesitated at this last question. “Do you own many brooches?”
Anyone else might have missed the way his eye evaluated her redingote—serviceable rather than fashionable, and of decent but not fine cloth—and the bonnet, which even to Alice’s eye had seen better days. Not that she couldn’t afford to buy better, she just didn’t dare. Alice gauged her entire wardrobe to a nicety, ensuring she always blended into the background, entirely unremarkable. Her gown last night had been borrowed from Izzy Honeywell, who had taken pity on her when she’d admitted she owned nothing fine enough for such a fancy affair.
Alice saw the moment his suspicion that there was no way on God’s green earth she’d come by the brooch legally took a firmer hold in his imagination.
“Oh, dozens,” she trilled, laughing and waving her hand in a careless gesture. “All paste, naturally, but even if I could afford the real thing, I would not dare. I may not lose my head, but brooches, hat pins, ear bobs, everything else I scatter like breadcrumbs in a fairy story. Though sadly, unlike Hansel and Gretel, the jewellery never finds its way home. A pity, but there you have it.”
Alice waited, her heart thudding, her stomach churning. If only he could believe she was a pea-brained idiot and leave it at that. Sadly, Mr Seymour was not a pea-brained idiot, and he wasn’t about to let it go.
“That brooch wasnotpaste.” His tone became harder, a touch of impatience there now, and Alice swallowed, knowing she must tread carefully. Whilst he might look like the kind of fellow her younger self would have cast as the hero of a daft novel like the one open before her, she had never had the luxury of being naive. Lord Erskine was an immoral brute, and the brooch had belonged to his wife. If this man was intimate enough with the family to recognise the brooch, well, there was every chance he was a long way short of heroic.
Alice forced another laugh, a sound which even to her ears fell far short of the girlish trill she’d be aiming for. She really must get a grip on herself before she ruined everything. “Oh, I promise you it was. Alfie couldn’t possibly afford the real thing, you know. The poor dear has done wonderfully well, but jewels are beyond our touch. Now tell me, was it the one shaped like a daffodil, or the one like a bee? At least, I think it is a bee. I’ve always been rather worried it might be a fly. I do so detest flies.Nasty, dirty little beasts.” She made a little moue of distaste and gave a delicate shudder.
“Alfie?” Mr Seymour narrowed his eyes at her.
“Yes. My brother, Alfred,” she said easily, though the thought of putting Alfie Marwick in the same sentence as a stolen brooch made her stomach churn. Visions of a thick hemp rope coiled into a noose danced behind her eyelids.Concentrate, you fool!“Was it the bee, then?”
“No, Miss Marwick, it was a floral brooch, diamonds set in gold. A very distinctive design. One of a kind, in fact. Quite magnificent, and quite unmistakeable.”
“Ah, well, we must agree to disagree, Mr Seymour, for you are quite mista—” Alice swallowed a very unladylike oath as he drew out a chair and sat down with a thud, his heroic air long gone. He looked furious and rather more dangerous than she had bargained for.“Mr Seymour!”she exclaimed with a gasp of shock, falling upon her best helpless female act, despite being anything but. “How dare you! What will people—”
“Stuff people,” he said savagely, his green eyes glittering with anger. “That brooch belonged to my aunt and was among many priceless jewels that were stolen from her home in October. You may indeed be as innocent as you proclaim, though I take leave to doubt it, but either way, I want to know where you got it from. If I am mistaken and you bought it legitimately, I promise you will be compensated for any financial loss, but I intend to get it back, and you will help me do that. So you can drop the witless female act, for I do not believe a word of it. Do you understand?”
Alice stared at Mr Seymour, realising with dismay that she was guilty of underestimating him. Never in her life had she made such a hash of reading a mark. What the devil was wrongwith her? She had been lazy in her assessment, assuming he was a brainless fop, like so many of them were, but she could see now this fellow would be a dog with a bone. He’d keep worrying at her until he’d got his answer.
Dropping her gaze, she lamented anew her inability to blush but spoke in her natural voice, dropping the act—or at least most of it— as he had suggested. “My brother, Mr Seymour. He gave me the brooch, but I promise you he would not be involved in anything so wicked as burglary. It ispossiblehe bought it from a less than respectable source, though. I’m afraid he sometimes associates with men who are not quite what one would like. Please forgive me for trying to deceive you. I knew immediately that Alfie must have done something ill-advised.”
All at once she felt the tension and the imminent threat dissipate and dared to glance up, to see Mr Seymour looking at her with something like chagrin. He let out a harsh breath and sat back in his chair.
“Miss Marwick, I pray you will forgive me for treating you so harshly. I’m afraid I was rather a brute. I ought to have known you were not directly involved but…” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it in delightful disarray, one thick curl tumbling over his forehead. Alice told herself not to look. Itwas notin the least bit charming or boyish. Not at all. “The truth is, Miss Marwick, that brooch belonged to my late mother.”
Alice blinked, taken aback.His mother?“But I thought you said—”
“My aunt,” he agreed with a short laugh.
He was silent for a long moment, studying her and looking like he desperately wished to say something but knew he ought not. Alice held her breath, surely he wasn’t considering confiding something…in her?Was he a lunatic?
He leaned across the table, one gloved hand toying absently with the sugar tongs. “Do you read the scandal sheets, Miss Marwick?”
“Er… yes,” she admitted cautiously.
“Then you’ll have heard of Lord Erskine?” His mouth hardened, quirking into a sardonic smile that sat ill on his handsome countenance.
“Yes,” she agreed, wondering where this was going.
He nodded, not looking entirely pleased by this as his expression grew darker, his eyebrows tugging together. “And you’ll know that Lord Erskine is a wicked libertine with no more notion of honour than a snake.”
Alice felt her eyebrows shoot up. Well, that was not the description she’d been expecting him to give.
“My dear uncle,” he said bitterly, casting the sugar tongs aside. “My aunt is quite unlike him, I assure you. A poor, sweet creature, who lives in terror of her husband.”
Alice gazed at him, mentally putting the pieces together. His mother was dead. He was fond of his aunt—his mother’s sister? His uncle had possession of his mother’s brooch, which had been part of a quite magnificent parure. How had he got his hands on them? Had his mother given it to her sister, or had the uncle taken a hand? Had they been taken by force? Blackmailed out of her? Had it been the payment of a debt?
