She didn’t seem to care that I guessed she’d been eavesdropping. She simply continued to toy with the ring on her finger.
“Were you angry with your husband for fathering another woman’s child?” I asked. “Did you get angry with Pearl? Enough to kill her, perhaps?”
She scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I never met her. I’ve never been in the same room as her.”
“Perhaps she threatened to tell the newspapers that your husband fathered her child if he refused to give her money to support Millie.”
“She made no such threats. He refused to believe the child was his and ordered her to leave. He gave her nothing, promised her nothing.”
“And how did she react?”
She lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Of course you do.”
“She left, Miss Fox. As you ought to do.”
The last time I’d been here, she’d called me into this very room after I’d been in Lord Wrexham’s study. Pearl would have had to pass it on her way out too. When the encounter in Lord Wrexham’s office was over, perhaps Lady Wrexham raced back into the drawing room to avoid being caught eavesdropping, then called Pearl in as she passed.
I wondered how that conversation transpired. The childless wife and the mistress who abandoned her girl but now wanted money to take her back. A new idea occurred to me, although it sickened me.
“Did you offer Pearl money in exchange for Millie?” I asked.
Her entire body seemed to tremble with her reaction, from her lips down. “If you mean did I want to raise my husband’s child, the answer is a resounding no. If you think that, you don’t know how the world works, Miss Fox.”
The vehemence of her denial struck melike a blow. I admit that people from high society were like another species to me, but surely they had the same base human emotions as the rest of us. Surely this woman felt some jealousy that Pearl had a child by Lord Wrexham and she, Lady Wrexham, did not.
“Then explain it to me,” I said.
“The child is already three years old, nearly four. It’s too late to pass her off as ours. But I would be prepared to do it, somehow, if it weren’t for the child herself being damaged.”
“Damaged?” I blurted out. “I’ve met her, and she’s very sweet.”
Her nostrils flared and the grooves at the corners of her mouth deepened. If I thought her plain before, I thought her positively ugly now. “I’m glad the girl’s not mine. If you ask me, it’s God’s way of punishing that whore. She deserved what she got.”
I was so stunned by her outburst that it took several moments before I could speak again. When I did, I got to my feet and glared down at her. “If we all got what we deserved then Millie would have parents who loved her. You, however, got precisely what you deserved with a husband like Lord Wrexham.”
Lady Wrexham’s hand slapped over her mouth, but not before her horrified gasp escaped.
I strode towards the door, my skirts getting tangled around my legs in my haste to be out of her presence.
I hadn’t calmeddown by the time I reached the hotel. To spare everyone my moody presence, I locked myself in my suite and dined alone. I didn’t see anyone except for the footman who delivered my meal until the following morning when Harmony arrived, bringing Victor with her.
As soon as the door opened, she pushed him in and closed the door behind her. “Go on,” she prompted him. “Tell Miss Fox.”
“Was that my breakfast tray outside?” I asked.
Harmony blocked the door. “Breakfast can wait. It won’t take long for Victor to say his piece.”
“I don’t want it to get cold.”
She crossed her arms. I sighed and followed Victor through to the sitting room. With his hand loosely grasping the knife holstered in his utility belt and his stance a little apart, he would have looked like a gunslinger from the American Wild West if not for his chef’s whites.
“There’s no need to hurry,” he told Harmony who also joined us in the sitting room. “I’ve got time before my shift starts.”
“But Miss Fox has work to do and you shouldn’t be in here.”
“Who’s going to know?”
