CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The Means to an End
“. . . to be low-spirited oneself, to have no consolation to offer . . . is a very painful situation for anyone to be in who is her friend.”
Langdale, Charles, Memoirs of Mrs. Fitzherbert
Rosalind paid the driver and stepped onto the path up to her front door. It was barely nine o’clock. The morning had cleared, and the sun’s warmth pressed against her bonnet.
She was exhausted. Her steps dragged. She knew Alice and Amelia, and possibly George, would be inside. They would probably be at breakfast.
They would definitely be waiting to hear what had happened, and what they should all do now. Rosalind stopped and stared at her front door.
The problem was, she didn’t know.
She was still stopped in the middle of the path when the door opened. Alice walked out and stood in front of her.
“Are you coming in?” she asked.
Rosalind drew a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Good girl.” Alice took her arm and walked her the rest of the way to the house. When they were inside, she took Rosalind’s bonnet and hung it on the peg by the door and then steered her into the parlor.
The windows were open, and the sun flooded the room. The teapot was there, along with fresh rolls, some of which had already been split and spread with butter and jam. Alice retired to the far side of the room and took up a book, which she held up in front of her face.
“What have you done with George and Amelia?” Rosalind asked as she sat down.
“They are in the dining room,” said Alice to the pages of her book. “Under strict orders not to come out until sent for.”
Rosalind gazed at the book that shielded Alice’s face. She looked at the closed door and back at the book. Alice turned a page. Rosalind pressed her hand against her mouth to stifle her laugh. She also poured herself some tea, which she drank without even pausing to add her usual slice of lemon. She then proceeded to devour three rolls with jam.
Energy and a sense of perspective flowed back into her veins. “Thank you, Alice,” she said.
Alice closed her book and went to open the door. “It’s all right!” she called.
George and Amelia made a great show of crossing the foyer in a calm and decorous fashion. Alice bowed them into the room and closed the door. George took Amelia’s hand and led her to a chair. He bowed; she curtsied. They both sat.
Rosalind eyed Alice, who simply shrugged and plopped down onto the stool beside the tea table. “So,” she said. “What’s happened?”
“Adam has taken Captain Dawson to Bow Street.”
“So it was him!” cried Amelia. “Oh, poor Miss Seymore!”
“Don’t tell me she was involved?” said Alice. “Good Lord, poor Mrs. Fitzherbert! And her sister . . . !”
“No,” said Rosalind. “No, Dawson is not responsible for the burglary or the deaths.”
“How can you be sure?” asked George.
Rosalind remembered how Miss Seymore and Captain Dawson had gazed into each other’s eyes and how he had waited for Adam when he had the choice to try to run. She remembered that what robbed him of his bluster was not any threat to himself but concern for her.
She remembered also the way Minney Seymore spoke of the king and her mother and her heartbreak.
“It may be that Captain Dawson is an excellent liar,” she told them. “But Minney Seymore is not.”
“That’s the truth,” said Amelia. “Schoolgirl tricks. That was what her mother called what she got up to, and I’d have to agree.”
“But Dawson could still deceive us,” said Alice. “He’s already tried to slip the net once.”
“This is true,” agreed Rosalind. “But while he may have blinded me, and perhaps Adam, as well, I do not think he will have so much success with Mr. Stafford at Bow Street.”
There was a moment’s silence while they all considered this.
“But there’s something else,” said George. “If Dawson’s innocent in all this . . . What if . . . what if Stafford decides he needs a scapegoat? If Adam is to be believed, he and Townsend aren’t always too particular about who gets arrested for a matter as long as someone is.”
Rosalind bit her lip. George was right. It was one of the reasons Adam had left Bow Street. “Well, then, it is all the more reason for us to try to uncover the truth.”
“Excellent,” said Alice. “But how will you do it? Mrs. Poole is clearly ready to lie as it suits her. Mrs. Fitzherbert has thrown you out, and the newspapers have already got their claws into the whole business, and heaven knows what Lady Jersey and her friends are saying.”
“Alice,” murmured Amelia.
Alice had the grace to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Rosalind.”
“No. You haven’t said anything that’s not true.”
“So, what are we to do?”
Rosalind shook her head. She was conscious of a growing anger and shame. She had never before failed to do as she had promised. In her mind’s eye, she saw the look of hurt in Mrs. Fitzherbert’s eyes. The sense of failure curdled inside Rosalind, leaving her ill and deeply frustrated.
There had to be something. She could not, would not let Mrs. Fitzherbert leave London without some sort of hope. Would not let the girls be sent away with only their mama’s wounded trust. Would not let herself sink into doubt and regret with the whole world watching.
Would not let herself, and Adam and Alice and all the other people in her life, her circle, her profession, down.
Rosalind stared at her hands in her lap.
She thought about Tom and Judith Faller.
She thought about Minney and Mary Ann.
She thought about Melora Poole and William Considen—each of them trying to protect and support the other, and how that natural urgency could lead to so many different kinds of mistakes.
She thought about George Dawson and the improbable fact that he did love Minney Seymore, about Mrs. Fitzherbert’s care of her adopted daughters, about Mr. Brougham’s desire for justice and power in equal measures.
She thought of something Mrs. Fitzherbert had said the very first night, as they sat calmly in her parlor, talking about the possible fall of the king. If I tell him the marriage certificate has been stolen, it is very likely that he will panic, and in his panic, he will speak to the wrong person.
She thought about the people who surrounded her now, and about Adam, who would return soon. This odd sort of family she had assembled across the years. She thought about the family of her birth. She thought about her father, desperate and grasping; her mother, who had let her mind be broken rather than believe his betrayal; and her sister, who had bartered herself in order to survive.
She thought about herself and how all her life she had faded into the shadows, about how she had meticulously set out to learn the ways of the world so she could walk carefully and inoffensively through it.
She thought about the Countess Lieven and her sparkling eyes, about her talking so languidly about how matters might appear to those who had only one part of the story.
And Rosalind realized that she had been so thoroughly terrified by this business and all that she did not know that she had let herself lose hold of all that she did know.
All I do know.
She lifted her head.
“I promised Mrs. Fitzherbert I would get her certificate back,” she said. “I am afraid it cannot be done quietly or without fuss, as she wished, but it can be done.”
“She turned you out,” said Amelia. “You don’t owe her anything.”
“But I owe something to myself, and to everyone in this room. No, please do not say that isn’t true. It is, and I will keep my word.”
“You have a plan,” said George.
“I should say she does,” breathed Amelia. “Look at her face. Rosalind, what are you thinking?”
“I think Melora Poole has the certificate,” said Rosalind. “Or, at least, she knows where it is. And I think it was someone in that house who murdered Josiah Poole and Thomas Faller.”
“But how do you prove it?” said George. “From what you’ve said, Mrs. Poole has been lying through her teeth this whole time, and she threw Adam out of the house. Do you think she would let him or you back in?”
“I do,” said Rosalind. “But first, we have to remove the danger that the certificate poses to Mrs. Fitzherbert before it’s too late.”
“How on earth are we going to manage that?” asked Alice.
Rosalind smiled just a little. “We’re going to start a rumor.”