Alfreda must have sensed tears were imminent because she abruptly changed the subject with an interesting tidbit. “Gabe seemed out of sorts when he visited me prior to leaving London. He was quite gloomy, actually, and wouldn’t fess up to why.”
Brooke glanced aside. “I didn’t know he left, or that you’ve seen him since we changed households.”
“Of course I have.”
Brooke perked up. “How was Dominic? Did he say?”
“Unapproachable. Not pleasant to be around.”
“But Dominic got what he wanted. Why isn’t he gloatingly happy?”
“Gabe doesn’t know. The wolf is apparently keeping it to himself, what’s put him in another black mood. Likely his mother is the cause and he can’t berate her while she’s still recovering.”
“I suppose he might be angry that he had to give up his coal mines to obtain his goal,” Brooke guessed. “As for Gabe, if he was in the doldrums, it was probably because he was leaving town with Dominic and knew he wouldn’t see you anymore.”
“No, he said they’d be back, he just didn’t know when. But he seemed out of sorts on our trip to London, too. That he didn’t want to discuss any of it finally got me so annoyed I showed him the door.”
“He came to the house?”
“To my room.”
“Oh,” Brooke said without blushing.
“Freda, are you getting married?” Harriet asked in surprise, not sleeping after all.
Alfreda snorted. “He’s too young for me.”
“No, he’s not,” Brooke put in.
“Well, I’m happy enough just enjoying him when I feel the mood to.”
Harriet rolled her eyes before trying again to nap. Brooke closed her eyes, too, wondering if Dominic hadn’t made an effort to see her before he left London because he was angry about something else, specifically his mother’s high-handedness. He might want to get over that before... Who was she kidding? He had no reason to ever approach her again, and she’d lost hers.
But Alfreda must have been stewing over the previous subject because, an hour later, she said in another whisper, “I thought this trip was just to prove that Lady Eloise’s death was an accident. You know if that baby didn’t die with its mother and is in Sevenoaks, you’re going to have a devil of a time stopping your mother from demanding it be given to her. Why is Harriet drawing the wrong conclusion? You did tell her Eloise’s body was found in Scarborough, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but she got it into her head that Ella faked her death so no one would look for her.”
Alfreda snorted softly. “With her own body?”
“With a piece of Ella’s—” Brooke sat up and stared wide-eyed at Alfreda. “Jewelry. The body was only identified by that, and her maid stole her jewelry that day. That could have been the maid who died on that beach, killed and robbed for the rest of the jewelry and tossed in the sea to disappear! Ella might really have sailed to that orphanage that day.”
“The woman who went there to have her baby had a maid with her.”
Brooke sank back into her seat, having forgotten that. Now she was grasping at straws just like Harriet—unless... “She could have gone there with an older servant she’d known all her life, rather than a young maid she might not have trusted yet. And they could have been far enough down that coast to have missed that storm completely.”
“She still died, either way.”
“Yes, but if her baby is in Sevenoaks—my God, Freda, if I could bring Dominic her child, it would change everything!”
“And put your two families at war for a new reason.”
Brooke ignored that to say excitedly, “Tell the driver to drive faster!”
Chapter Fifty-Four
“DON’T BE ALARMED,”DOMINICtold Willis, who was staring agog at the two animals Gabriel was trying to get into the town house. “They’re big, but harmless.”
The improvised leashes were proving useless. Storm slipped her head out of hers and raced across the hall and up the stairs. Wolf ripped his loose from Gabe’s hand to follow, as usual.
