Page 82 of His Lordship's True Lady
“Best of luck, Grampion, and you will most assuredly need it.”
* * *
Lily came awake when a cool breeze wafted across her cheeks—and there he was, standing in the shadows by her bedroom window.
“Hessian.”
“You should be in bed, madam.”
Had he hoped to find her in bed? The mantel clock said Lily had slept for only a few minutes, and yet, exhaustion had molded her to the deep cushions of the reading chair.
“I was thinking,” she said. “I must have nodded off. How are you?”
He looked tired and serious, also a bit wicked. His attire was dark, not even a white neckcloth relieving the black, no signet ring on his finger, no pin winking from the folds of his neckcloth.
“I am… Is the door locked?”
“Yes.” Lily had started taking that precaution as a result of Oscar’s gleeful hand-patting. When in his cups, he might attempt to anticipate vows Lily would never willingly speak.
Hessian took the hassock, rather than open his arms to Lily or draw her to her feet. “Ephrata Tipton appears to have departed from Chelsea, at least temporarily.”
The hollowness Lily had carried in the pit of her stomach since learning of her mother’s death years ago opened up wider. “Where would shego?”Please let her be safe.And then:Why would she leave me?
“On her wedding journey, as it happens.”
Anxiety receded—it did not vanish, for not all wedding journeys were happy—and yet, Lily was also aware of a touch of envy.
“Good for her. I hope he’s worthy of her.”
“He’s a retired Navy captain who frequently visits friends at the royal hospital. He and Miss Tipton struck up an acquaintance nearly a year ago. I have his name and direction, though the cottage in Chelsea has yet to be vacated.”
Lily had to touch Hessian, even if he merely tolerated the overture. She leaned forward enough to run a hand through his hair.
“You have learned much, and yet, you don’t appear pleased with yourself. I am pleased to see you.”
His gaze brushed over her. “I am pleased to see you as well. I engaged in a subterfuge.”
“You would abhor subterfuge.” Did he abhorher?
“My opinion on the matter has grown complicated. We learn the classic works of drama because they are art, a form of great literature. We play charades at every house party to pass the time in harmless diversion. We tell tall tales over a pint in the pub… I told the innkeeper that my sister-in-law was a former charge of Miss Tipton’s, and I’d offered to look in on the old dear.”
“And now, having told a harmless fabrication, you feel like a confidence trickster?” What did that make Lily, who was fraud wearing a ballgown—or a nightgown.
Hessian’s smile was crooked as he tucked Lily’s lap robe over her feet. “I feel clever, which is very bad of me. The innkeeper volunteered that I sounded as if I’d grown up in the Borders and bided there still. Perhaps I lived near my brother in Birdwell-on-Huckleburn?”
That smile… that smile was not among the smiles Lily had seen on Hessian to date. It brought out the resemblance to his brother, Worth, and went well with the dark clothing.
“What has Birdwell-on-Anywhere to do with Tippy?”
“The innkeeper was showing off, flourishing his eye for detail. Somebody has been writing regularly to Miss Tipton from Birdwell-on-Huckleburn. I grew up in Cumberland and have occasion to know that Birdwell is a market town not far from Dumfries. Her Grace of Quimbey confirmed that Lawrence Delmar had been a braw, bonnie Scot and that he and Walter Leggett quarreled loudly on the eve of your sister’s elopement.”
Hessian’s recitation provoked such a degree of upset, Lily put a hand over his mouth. “A moment, please. Somebody has been writing regularly to Tippy from Scotland?”
He took her hand, his grip warm. “Mrs. Lawrence Delmar. She is among Miss Tipton’s most faithful correspondents. She writes every other month, has no need to cross her letters, and seals them with a family crest.”
Hessian was trying to convey information—facts, implications, conclusions. Lily could not make her mind work to grasp any of it.
“My sister isalive, and Tippy never told me?” Lily wanted to shout, to throw things, to climb out the window and dash headlong for Birdwell-on-Deception. “I don’t know whether to be… but Annie is alive—she was always Annie to me—and surely that is a miracle. I refuse to cry, because this is good news. It must be.”
