To Love a Tormented Earl - Bridget Barton Page 0,30

quite lost my senses in my panic for my companion.'

The housekeeper had moved Alice to a chair, from which the latter had begun to rise upon seeing the countess approach.

'In heaven’s name, why?' Lady Ceastre demanded.

'Oh, my dear Miss Bromley, are you well again?' Emilia asked in desperation.

'‘Twas but a moment’s faintness,' Alice murmured, her face reddening to an alarming degree. 'A weak spell—perhaps the stairs—I beg your forgiveness, Lady Ceastre—'

Alice was still in the process of standing and the countess frowned and waved her hand at her.

'Please, you mustn’t bring on another episode,' she said. 'Mrs. Leigh, perhaps a spot of tea for the lady.'

'Oh, no, we would never want to impose!' Emilia cried.

The countess turned and narrowed her eyes at her then. 'We have met, have we not?'

Emilia’s spine straightened automatically and she lowered her gaze, her cheeks warming. 'Yes, my lady,' she said. 'I’m Emilia Whitmore. Jonathan Whitmore’s daughter. My father was a barrister and he served the late earl...'

'The music tutor!' Lady Ceastre exclaimed. Her countenance lightened considerably, and Emilia felt some of the panic within her abate. 'Of course. Why, it’s been years, my dear. How you’ve grown. Are you still unmarried?'

Smiling with genuine warmth, the countess indicated a sofa. Emilia could not politely refuse, so she took a seat as soon as the countess had done so herself.

'You are correct, my lady,' she said in answer to the countess’s question.

'And how is your father? Is your mother still with you?'

'I’m afraid we lost her ten years ago,' Emilia said, 'and my father is unwell.'

'Unwell? What ails him?' the lady asked.

'Cardiac insufficiency, my lady.'

And so it was that Emilia and Alice came to take tea with the Countess of Ceastre, who, as they soon learned, had returned early to the estate to prepare for the ball.

'And in any case I cannot abide London when the weather becomes so detestably hot,' she told them.

Emilia recalled that she had always liked Charlotte's mother. ‘twas an unexpected pleasure to converse with her now.

'Have you seen the gardens, Miss Whitmore?' the countess asked. 'We shall have to take a turn, for there is a pleasant breeze today, and it has a most agreeable consequence of making the lavender and roses waft fragrance all about.'

And so it came to be that for the second time that week Emilia found herself walking with a member of the nobility. Ever since Maximilian Emery had returned from the dead, life had become most surprising.

***

That same afternoon Max decided to visit his solicitor in person rather than send the letter he had begun, the previous day, to compose. His impatience was not mitigated by the knowledge that Emilia Whitmore might find answers for him very soon.

‘I have a partial list of the staff at Ceastre,’ Ibbott, the solicitor, informed him.

Max took the list and sure enough, the name ‘Nicholas Reid’ appeared near the top of the page.

'But I took the liberty of doing research beyond what you had asked,' Ibbott said, 'and I discovered something else I think you may find interesting.'

Max looked up from the paper. 'And what is that?'

'The earl—that is, your uncle, who currently holds the title of Earl of Ceastre—probably should not be the earl even had you remained...out of the way,' Ibbott said.

Max frowned. 'How do you mean?'

'It would seem he made a brief show of looking for the next in line, and then announced that there were no male heirs, taking the title for his own.'

Max blinked. 'He never searched for the rightful heir?'

'I still have some assistants making inquiries, but that is how it would appear.'

After that, Max found it hard to think of anything else, and he excused himself.

The afternoon sun was high, but the narrow street remained shadowed as Max made his way down it, heading back to Portman Square. Another time, the night he was followed might have come to mind, but in daylight the alleys seemed not so dim, and he was lost in thought. His uncle Edward’s apparent fraud was of deep concern to Max. What did it mean?

He had never considered that his uncle might have any ill intentions. Charlotte, yes, although she was only a girl of fifteen. The villain, he had always thought, was the footman, Nicholas. When the dark figure accosted him, striking him down and leaving him the letter, it seemed likely that it was Nicholas himself.

That Charlotte was involved, he had had no doubt, of course. The letter threatened to expose acts he had allegedly done