Dangerous in Diamonds - Madeline Hunter [43]
“Daphne, you will not believe what His Grace has offered,” Mrs. Albrighton said. “We are all invited to use his barge tomorrow evening for a dinner party, then to visit Vauxhall Gardens as his guests.”
The exquisite Mrs. Joyes smiled at her friend very sweetly. She said all the right things to thank him for his condescension. The slight tint on her cheeks, however, suggested she was extremely surprised to find herself cornered again.
A letter awaited Castleford when he returned home. It came from Mr. Edwards. He reported that the engineers and surveyors had arrived and taken over the inn at Cumberworth. He had been most firm with all of them that the women on the property in question were to be avoided and in no way importuned.
He had visited The Rarest Blooms to reassure Miss Johnson and Mrs. Hill. He estimated that work would begin immediately in the morning and promised to oversee all matters with great care. He concluded by mentioning his suspicion that the inn, in which he had slept last night, was infested top to bottom with bedbugs.
With no secretary readily available, Castleford was forced to pen his own response. He instructed Mr. Edwards to make sure the examination of the property was very thorough. The men were not to rush it in any way. Indeed, if they completed their labors in less than a fortnight, he would be forced to conclude the report could not be trusted.
He poured himself some brandy and gave orders regarding the barge and tomorrow’s dinner to his steward. He then went to his chamber to work on his book.
The manuscript could not hold his attention. That was another problem with his relative sobriety these days. It was much more fun writing a guide to London brothels when one was drunk.
His mind wandered to the lovely Mrs. Joyes. He considered what he had learned of her character today and whether the revelations were of any significance.
She was a fraud, it appeared. A liar, to be blunt about it. No Captain Joyes had died in the war. That had been clear after the hour he spent in the War Office cellar with the documents Sykes had handed him. He had read the lists of dead and wounded twice to make sure he had not missed the name.
He now doubted there had ever been a Captain Joyes at all, although it was possible there was one somewhere still, alive and well. He would have to find out.
However, if he were correct, she was not a widow and perhaps had never been married.
There were reasons to lie about that, he supposed. Widowhood gave a certain protection to an independent woman. She may have also wanted an excuse to be known under another name. With family in London and about in the country, she would need a reason to give them for a different name, and marriage was the only one that worked. But why change her name at all?
It was also a way to hide one’s identity and to make it hard to be found. Except she hadn’t been hiding these last years. She had family in London, and she had lived in its environs.
If she wanted to hide, she would have taken herself off to someplace far away, where she might never be found. Furthermore, while she lived in Middlesex, she walked about London frequently. Finally, people chose to hide because they had done something wrong, and if she were a criminal he would lose all faith in his judgment of people.
His ruminations soon brought him to the most logical and simplest explanation. Old Becksbridge had probably insisted she adopt that name and a widow’s identity. Her maiden name might raise questions if members of his family knew she lived on Becksbridge’s land and enjoyed Becksbridge’s patronage.
They might recognize the name of a girl who had been a governess in that household. No one would know anything about a Mrs. Joyes.
He had assumed an affair from the beginning, and this would seem to confirm it. A new annoyance with Becksbridge accompanied his conclusions. Daphne had been dependent on the duke back then. She had probably entered his service as an innocent. Her father had been the duke’s friend.