And the bucket flung from an upper floor at just the right moment to drench Miss Ellen had been perfectly targeted.
Yes. Mrs. Dove-Lyon had done well.
As it turned out, Miss Ellen was also pleased with Captain Harraway, Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s choice of groom. “He is so handsome, Kat. And tall.”
Kat had seen him from her station at the door of Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s room and was forced to agree on both counts. A blond gentleman, so their children would probably all be flaxen-haired and blue-eyed. In his late twenties, as far as Kat could judge it, so a good age match for Miss Ellen, too.
He wore full dress uniform as an officer of the guard, though Miss Ellen said he was in the process of selling his commission. Apparently, with the war over, the opportunities for advancement were few, and Captain Harraway did not have powerful sponsors to ensure his promotion.
“He has inherited a country estate within easy reach of London, and wealth enough for us to live comfortably, Kat. That sounds perfect, does it not?”
It would be perfect if the man did not cry off when Miss Ellen told him the whole truth.
Not that she had lied. Miss Ellen could not tell a lie if her life were at stake. From what she’d told Kat about her meeting with Harraway, she had told him the truth. That her mother, Lady Miller, had left her a small—a very small—inheritance, and that she needed a husband.
Kat and Mrs. Dove-Lyon had introduced Miss Ellen asLady Ellen, thereby implying she was the daughter of at least an earl and perhaps a marquess or duke.
The man wasn’t titled himself. Surely it would not matter to him that she was the daughter of a mere baron?
Miss Ellen’s mind must have been marching with Kat’s. “I shall write him a letter, Kat. I need to tell him before the wedding next week that I am merely the daughter of a baron. And I suppose I must admit I merely borrowed Carr Abbas while we were homeless. Do you think he will mind?”
Would he? Surely it couldn’t matter to the man? Miss Ellen had pretended to be the Lady of Carr Abbas in a good cause, and it was not, after all, any skin off Captain Harraway’s nose.
Captain Harraway’s lodgings, the following day
Jake waited untilhe had the captain lathered up for a shave, and the naked blade of the razor against his cheek, all the better to have a captive audience for what he was about to say. “Captain Harraway, I’ve heard something I think you ought to know. It is about your promised bride and her connection with your house.”
The captain had prohibited any mention of his unwanted estate, but Jake was going to have to ignore that, no matter how the man glared at his reflection in the mirror.
“Lady Ellen Miller also calls herself the Lady of Carr Abbas, and I think she might be living in your house. I heard about it from my friend Skippy, who works at the Lyon’s Den.” Jake had had to ask Skippy to repeat the estate’s name. Itmustbe the same one as that left to Captain Harraway by his uncle. There could not be two estates inEaling called Carr Abbas.
Lady Ellen Miller couldn’t be the same Ellen Miller Jake remembered. Nor could her servant, a man called Fivepence, be the Kat Fivepence Jake knew. “Knew” was a pale word. He had loved that girl with every particle of a heart he’d thought already wizened and twisted, though he was little more than a boy himself.
Jake toyed with the idea that this Fivepence might be related to his Kat. But Kat had been an orphan from nowhere, like Jake, with neither known parents nor known brothers and sisters.
And yet those two names together seemed too much of a coincidence! Fivepence wasn’t a common name. Kat had been given the name, according to the story she’d been told at the orphanage, because of what the orphanage servants found tucked into the blanket she had been wrapped in before someone left her on the doorstep.
“My ma left me with five pennies wrapped up in a scrap of fabric, so they called me Fivepence,” she had explained. She was quite proud of the fact—that her mother or father, or whoever it was who could no longer keep her, had still managed to scratch together five whole pennies to start their baby on her new life.
As she said to Jake, it was her very own name, with nobody else to share it. How she would stare to know Jake had encountered someone else with the same name! If it truly was someone else and not Kat herself.
Until he knew more, he would not mention the possible link with his own past to Captain Harraway.
A blink from the captain. Jake took it as permission to continue.
“A servant has been coming from Ealing once a week, bringing Mrs. Dove-Lyon a gift of game and produce. If I’m right, your game and your produce. He announces each delivery as a gift from the Lady of Carr Abbas.”
Raised eyebrows. The captain was as intrigued as Jake.
“I thought we could watch for the footman andask him some questions.” Actually, Jake thought they should ride out to Ealing this afternoon, and take a look at the house, but he doubted Captain Harraway would agree.
He moved to do the captain’s other cheek. The man’s hair could do with a trim, too. Would he let Jake touch it? “Shall I trim your hair, sir?”
A frown and a wagging finger.No, then.
He finished his task in silence. From the captain’s frown, he was thinking about Jake’s revelations, and sure enough, when Jake handed over the hot towel he had ready and began cleaning the shaving gear before putting it away, it was of the Lady of Carr Abbas that the captain spoke.
“What does the lady want? Does your gossip know? Or guess?”
