"I didn't say she should make it," Juliana pointed out. "I only said she should bring it. I'll make something for her to bring."
"Thank you," Corinna said sweetly. It wasn't so bad being a bungler in the kitchen, really. In truth, she'd much rather paint.
SIXTEEN
"I WONDER WHY Corinna's so nervous," Rachael said to her sisters during the drive home in their carriage. "There's the reception, of course, but she seems to be worrying about more than that."
Corinna had been very far from calm and collected. As a person who wasn't quite herself these days, Rachael recognized the signs. Griffin was supposed to have returned yesterday, and she was on pins and needles waiting to hear what he might have discovered.
"I don't know what's bothering Corinna." Elizabeth shrugged. "But I've been thinking."
"That's a novelty," Claire teased.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue. "I meant I've been thinking about something else. I've been thinking about how Mama never wheezed like Lady Mabel."
"I told you, that's because she refused to come to London." Claire fiddled with a new amethyst ring she'd made, twirling it on her finger. "She knew better than to aggravate her condition."
"But Mama was very quiet," Elizabeth pointed out. "I'm wondering if she actually suffered from asthma at all. Maybe she just didn't want to socialize, so she made that up as an excuse."
Claire stopped twirling. "You think Mama lied?"
"I didn't say she lied. I said she might have used it as an excuse."
"She would never have—"
"Mama wasn't perfect," Rachael interrupted. An understatement, considering the woman had hidden the truth from her all of her life. "It's possible Elizabeth could be right." Thinking back, she couldn't remember her mother ever having difficulty breathing. "Mama never attended large social gatherings. She always preferred to stay home with her needlework and her watercolors and her children."
"She went to Cainewood," Claire argued. "Often."
"But only to visit with family. Never for a ball or any other major occasion."
"I don't believe it," Claire said, looking pouty.
"Well, it doesn't signify anyway, does it?" Rachael sighed. "We'll never really know."
They all rode in thoughtful silence until the carriage came to a stop before their town house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Elizabeth climbed out first, then emitted a little yelp.
"What are you doing here?" she cried.
Rachael followed Claire out to find Griffin standing in the courtyard.
"Good afternoon, ladies," he said with the crooked smile she always found disconcertingly attractive. But when his gaze swung to meet hers, his expression grew more serious. "I've been waiting for you. I have news."
"What news?" Claire demanded.
"I'll explain later," Rachael told her sisters. She didn't want an audience when she heard what Griffin had learned. "Go inside. Griffin and I will talk in the square."
Grumbling all the way, her sisters entered the house while Rachael and Griffin crossed the street and went through the gate to the private park in the center of the square. It was a nice day, sunny but not hot, and Lincoln's Inn Fields was filled with people enjoying the fine weather.
Choosing a bench beneath a large tree, where the shade would hide them from view of the houses all around, she sat and smoothed her pelisse's thin lavender skirts. "You took longer than I expected."
Angled toward her, he pulled her father's jeweled badge from his pocket and placed it in her palm, folding her fingers around it. "Rachael…I know who he was."
"Was," she repeated. "He's dead, then."
In a cousinly, concerned way, he took one of her hands in both of his. "You knew that, didn't you?"
"Yes. Yes, of course." But apparently part of her had hoped that wasn't true, because a pang of disappointment seemed to spear her in the vicinity of her heart.
"There's more," he said, squeezing her fingers. "Not all of it good."
She nodded and pulled her hand free, staring down at the badge she held. She couldn't think straight with him touching her. "Start at the beginning. Please."
He took a deep breath. "I searched all the records for the time in question and found a member of the Tenth who took leave to wed a woman the month before you were conceived. An officer, a lieutenant. His name was Thomas Grimbald."
"Grimbald," she echoed, testing the word on her tongue. She should have been Rachael Grimbald, but that sounded so very wrong. "Are you sure he was the right man?"
Griffin nodded. "He married a woman who was thereafter known as Lady Georgiana Grimbald."
Startled, she looked up at him. "He was titled, then?"
"No. She must have been a peer's daughter."
"But my mother was a commoner. She was born plain Georgiana Woodby, not a lady. She always said she was uncommonly lucky to have wed an earl. You found the wrong man."
"I also thought so at first. That's why I was gone the extra day. I combed the records going back years, in case your mother married long before conceiving you. But very few men from the Tenth wed in the correct time frame, and no one else married a woman named Georgiana."
"You're sure it was her, then?"
"There's no other explanation. Your mother acted the lady through and through, didn't she? And wouldn't she have thought herself, a woman ripe with another man's child, uncommonly lucky to have wed at all? It cannot be a coincidence that Grimbald's wife had the same given name. He had to have been your father."
"Maybe." The name sounded wrong, but she still couldn't seem to think straight. She focused on a wooden stand in the distance, where lemonade was sold in the square. "This Grimbald…did the records say how he died?"
"They did."
She waited, but no more information seemed to be forthcoming. She waited some more. When she finally
