stair rail. 'I can not decide which looks worse, Lacey, you or your house.'
Ever tactful, was Marianne. Grenville had gone outside to speak to his coachman and Matthias, so Marianne and I stood relatively alone in the hall.
'I hope that both will mend,' I said to her.
Marianne craned her head and looked up the open staircase. 'It is interesting to see where you came from, though. Quite posh, it must have been. I imagine Lady Breckenridge rubbing her expensively gloved hands and planning supper balls and summer fetes.'
'Possibly,' I said.
'Definitely,' Marianne answered.
'Why on earth are you agreeing to ride all the way to Lincolnshire?' I asked. 'Surely Grenville would hire a chaise to take you back to London.'
She gave me a dark look. 'Because obtaining time to speak to his worship is difficult. He does rather avoid conversation, as you can surmise by the fact that he rode horseback almost the entire way here from Cambridge.'
'He grows ill in carriages. Perhaps he does not like you to see that.'
'Perhaps he does not like to actually speak with me. But he will with you, and so I will listen and pretend I am part of it.'
'He said that you wanted to 'consult' with him. You meant by that, what?'
She put her head on one side. 'Not really your business. Perhaps I simply want to converse with him.'
'I cannot blame him for avoiding you, if you are this maddening. Conversation with you, Marianne, can put a gentleman off.'
'Rot. I know exactly what sorts of things to say to a gentleman. The trouble is, he won't sit still long enough for me to say them.'
I made a noise of exasperation. 'Because he is not looking for conversation with a courtesan who knows how to flatter and tease. He wants a real conversation-with the real Marianne.'
Marianne looked at me a moment, then her voice went soft. 'That is what I fear.'
'I speak the truth. Grenville is not a stupid man. He has no use for Spanish coin and flummery. He wants to know you.'
'And then I will watch him run from me as fast as his legs can carry him. Maybe to a lady who has a cultured tongue and can converse about art and music with her nose in the air.'
'Ask him to teach you about them. And you have a more cultured tongue than you know. I've often observed that you speak far better than your colleagues at the theatre. You were never gutter born. Stand amazed at my discretion in never asking you.'
'Yes, I had noticed that,' she said. 'Thank you, Lacey.'
Out the open door, we saw Bartholomew come dashing back, toss my bag up to his brother, who was now on top of the coach, and climb up to join him.
Grenville said nothing to us as I escorted Marianne out of the house and handed her into the carriage. Grenville got in beside Marianne, leaving the empty backward-facing seat for me. In any other circumstance, this would be a discourtesy, but I'd grown used to riding backward in Grenville's coaches. Grenville became even more violently ill if he did not face forward.
'Are you certain you will be well?' I asked him.
'Not at all,' he said. 'But I can hold out long enough to tell you my tale. Besides, my backside is a bit sore from all the hours in the saddle.'
He spoke glibly, but as soon as the carriage jerked forward, Grenville looked as though he regretted giving up the steadiness of a horse. He opened the window and breathed deeply.
'Tell me what you discovered,' I said. 'It will take your mind from things.'
Grenville dabbed his pale lips with a handkerchief. 'I discovered Denis's man,' he said. 'He'd spoken to the people Terrance Quinn told you he'd spoken to, but found nothing new. However, when Denis's man broadened his inquiries a bit, he found a woman who'd looked after Helena when she first arrived in Cambridge. She was the person who persuaded Helena to move on to Lincolnshire and found her a place there.'
I frowned at the heaths and farmland of inland Norfolk moving by us. 'I am confused. I thought Miss Quinn and her husband settled in Cambridge and then moved north. That is what Terrance reported Braxton's neighbors as saying.'
'Yes, but I have not told you the crux of the matter. Miss Quinn is not married. She is living as a lady's companion to an elderly woman by name of Edgerton, in Lincolnshire.'
'A lady's companion?' I stared at him. 'Did she jilt Braxton, then? All those years ago?'
'Ah, now I come to the crux of the crux.' Grenville's smile became triumphant. 'There is no such person as Edward Braxton, who came to woo Miss Helena Quinn. The man does not exist.'
Chapter Twenty-Three
After the violence of the day before and with the continuing pain in my body, I was in no mood for riddles.
'Of course he exists,' I said. 'Mrs. Landon and Lady Southwick met him. Robert Buckley met him, as did Miss Quinn's mother and father. Please do not tell me that people in three parishes, including Lady Southwick, conspired to invent him.'
'No, indeed. There was a man who came from Cambridge to Norfolk and seduced away Miss Helena Quinn. He told everyone his name was Edward Braxton, but it was not. There is a true Edward Braxton, neighbors of the people Terrance Quinn spoke to, but upon further investigation, this Mr. Braxton is seventy, and he and his wife, a woman of his same age, went to live near their daughter and grandchildren in York some years ago. He was certainly not the young and handsome gentleman who swept into rural Norfolk to woo a naive vicar's daughter.'
'Then who on earth was Helena's Mr. Braxton?'
'No one seems to know,' Grenville said. 'A ghost.'
'A smooth-tongued devil, that's who,' Marianne broke in. 'A confidence trickster. Do not look so amazed, gentlemen; I have seen this sort of thing time and again. A man takes whatever name he pleases, invents whatever background he pleases, and seduces a woman-usually for her money-and then disappears, leaving her ruined, humiliated, and destitute. No doubt the true Edward Braxton is a respectable solicitor or banker's clerk, so that if people do inquire, they'll find a man of impeccable reputation behind the name. Better still if he's recently moved elsewhere, so no one can say he hasn't traveled to Norfolk for a holiday. If inquiries turn up that the man of the same name is of venerable years, those asking will assume he is the father or grandfather of said trickster, which will lend still more credence to his story. A respectable name, passed down through generations, is always esteemed.'
Grenville listened with interest. 'But why would a confidence trickster travel to a remote corner of Norfolk and entice away young Miss Quinn? What could he hope to gain? Miss Quinn did not come from a wealthy family.'
Marianne shrugged. 'These men will take anything they can find. A man such as the false Mr. Braxton might persuade a woman to marry him, perhaps with a sham ceremony and sham special license, only to take the family silver and leave the poor lady high and dry. Or he might have come to convince local men to invest money in some scheme-a new invention that's sure to make them all rich, or some such. In that case, the respectable vicar's daughter putting in a good word for him does not hurt.'
I did not hear half of what she said, because one word had caught my attention. 'Silver,' I said.
Grenville's brows rose. 'You mean the candlesticks from the church? He stole them? Or persuaded Miss Quinn to?'
'You can be certain that he persuaded the girl to nick them for him,' Marianne said. 'A man like that never gets caught with his hand in the pot. He likely convinced her that they needed the money the silver would fetch to make their escape.'
