All was spoken in a light, friendly voice while large blue eyes regarded her from a fragile, beautiful face. An adoring mother afraid of releasing her child from babyhood, Fleur thought with some sympathy despite the imperious nature of the words themselves.
“Yes, your grace,” she said.
“You may leave now and spend half an hour with my daughter under the supervision of Mrs. Clement,” her grace said.
But as Fleur turned to leave, her grace spoke again.
“Miss Hamilton,” she said, “I approve of the way you areclothed this morning and of the way you have dressed your hair. I trust that your manner of dress will always meet with my approval.”
Fleur inclined her head again and left the room. And since she was dressed in a severe gray cotton dress, one of her new purchases, with a small white lace collar, and had her hair combed entirely back from her face and confined in a heavy bun at her neck, she thought she understood the duchess perfectly.
Was the duke the type of man to harass his younger servants, then? Was that why her grace had asked about her relationship with him in London? She hoped fervently that he would keep himself there for a long time to come.
Well, she thought, thinking back, with a slight chill, to the duchess’s words and manner, she had been warned that neither her grace nor Mrs. Clement would be pleased to see her. And she must not complain. Neither of them had been openly hostile to her. They would come around, surely, when they realized that she had no intention of standing over Lady Pamela with a stick all day long in a stuffy schoolroom.
MR. SNEDBURG WAS ATthe end of a long day’s work. He had unbent enough to take a seat in the parlor on St. James’s Street and even to accept a glass of port.
“Much obliged, sir,” he said, taking the glass from the hand of his host. “The feet get sore from so much walking and the pipes dry from asking so many questions. Yes, indeed, Miss Fleur Hamilton. Too much of a coincidence not to be the same young lady, would you not say? And she fits the description.”
Mr. Snedburg did not add that both his informants, Miss Fleming and the young woman’s landlady, had described Fleur Hamilton as a very ordinary-looking young lady with very ordinary-looking reddish hair. He understood that his client rather fancied his cousin even if she was a murderer and ajewel thief. And men in the throes of an infatuation were to be forgiven if they occasionally waxed poetic. Sunshine and sunset tangled all together, indeed. It was enough to make the Runner want to toss up his victuals.
“And?” Lord Brocklehurst was watching him keenly, his own glass of port halfway to his lips. It had taken the Runner well over a week to make his first report, despite his reputation.
“And she has been hired as governess to the daughter of a Mr. Kent of Dorsetshire. By”—the Runner paused for effect—“a gentleman who waited four whole days at the agency just for her, for a red-haired Fleur. She has left on her way already.”
Lord Brocklehurst frowned. His glass was still stranded several inches from his mouth.
“There can’t be that many Kents in Dorsetshire,” Mr. Snedburg said. “I shall look into the matter and see if we can’t nail our man to one single spot on the map, sir.”
Lord Brocklehurst drank, deep in thought. “Kent?” he said. “Not the Ridgeway Kents, surely?”
“As in the Dook of Ridgeway?” the Runner asked, raising one hand to scratch the back of his neck. “Is he a Kent?”
“I knew his half-brother,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “They lived in Dorset. Willoughby Hall.”
Mr. Snedburg dug into his ear with his little finger. “I’ll see what I can find out for definite, sir,” he said. “We will run her to ground in no time at all, take my word on it.”
“Fleur,” the other said, gazing into the swirling contents of his glass. “She used to have tantrums as a young child because my mother and father would not call her that. Apparently it was the name she went by until her parents died. I had forgotten.”
“Yes, well, right you are, sir,” Mr. Snedburg said, downing what remained in his glass in one gulp and getting to his feet. “I’ll see what I can find out about this dook and his governess.”
“I want her found soon,” Lord Brocklehurst said.
“It will be soon, or sooner,” the other said briskly. “My word on it, sir.”
“Well,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “you were recommended to me as the best. Though it has taken you precious long to find out this much.”
The other chose not to comment on either the compliment or the criticism. He saluted in almost military manner and hurried smartly from the room.
FLEUR’S LIFE WAS BY NO MEANS ARDUOUS DURING her first two weeks at Willoughby. She had been instructed to take her orders from Mrs. Clement, and Mrs. Clement, it seemed, did not approve of schooling for her young charge any more than the duchess did. The new governess was lucky if she was granted an hour morning and afternoon with her pupil.
She was somewhat uneasy, perhaps a little worried that she would be dismissed as a servant of little use or that the duke and Mr. Houghton would come home and find that she was not after all earning her keep. But she tried to take the advice of Mrs. Laycock, who told her to relax and do her best, and who assured her that when his grace finally arrived home—and he would surely come when he heard about the party that her grace had organized—all would be set to rights.
In the meanwhile Fleur became familiar with and comfortable in her new home. There were long hours of quiet and peace in which to allow the old fears to die and the old wounds to heal. Sometimes a whole day would pass without her feeling that old urge to look anxiously over her shoulder for a pursuer. And sometimes she could sleep for a whole stretch without seeing that hawkish and scarred face bending over her and telling her what she was while making her into just that.
She was eating well and had put back on some of the weight she had lost. Her hair seemed thicker again and shinier. The worst of the shadows had disappeared from beneath her eyes. There was color in her cheeks. There was energy in her muscles. She was beginning to feel young again.
Mrs. Laycock found the time over those two weeks to stroll over much of the vast park with her. And always Fleur found out more from the quiet conversation of the housekeeper about her new home and the family for whom she worked.
