career?”
“If you want to advance yourself in your profession, you must acquire a better class of client. This is a golden opportunity. I will not allow you to pass it by. Our futures depend on it.”
“I am flattered that you have aligned your fortunes with mine, Mrs. Crofton. Does that mean that you have abandoned any hope of moving back up in the world by finding another employer?”
“It’s not as if I’ve got a great deal of choice at the moment, now, do I? Neither do you, I’m afraid. You know as well as I do that if you intend to better yourself, you need a housekeeper like me who knows the ways of the quality.”
“Do you know, Mrs. Crofton, until I met you I had not actually planned to better myself? I thought that I was doing rather nicely as it was.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Crofton said. “You mentioned at breakfast just last week that you wanted to earn money so that you could make some investments to secure a comfortable retirement.”
“Yes, but that is another matter entirely.”
“I’ve got to think of my own retirement as well. As you just pointed out, we are stuck with each other. So I strongly suggest that you go into the parlor and accept Lady Mansfield’s commission for a looking-glass reading.”
Reluctantly Virginia pushed herself to her feet. “It is obvious that you are not going to follow my instructions to show her the door, so I will perform the task myself.”
“Don’t you dare be rude to her,” Mrs. Crofton warned. “Once word gets around that you have performed a reading for Lady Mansfield, other fashionable ladies in her circles will want to commission readings. This is how one builds a quality clientele.”
Virginia crossed the small room toward the door. “I appreciate the advice, Mrs. Crofton. Now, if you’ll be so good as to get out of my way.”
Mrs. Crofton did not move. “One more thing.”
Virginia paused. “Yes?”
Mrs. Crofton lowered her voice a bit more. “Whatever you do, don’t appear too eager or grateful for the commission. Just be reserved and polite. Professional. Tell her that you’ll have to check your calendar before you commit to an appointment. Make her think she’s fortunate to be able to obtain your services.”
“I really don’t know how I managed to conduct my business without your advice before you came to work in this household, Mrs. Crofton. Now will you kindly get out of the way?”
“Right, then.” Mrs. Crofton stepped smartly aside and wrapped her hand around the doorknob. “I can hardly believe our good fortune. I wonder how your name came to Lady Mansfield’s attention. Perhaps it is your recent association with Mr. Sweetwater. And here I’ve been worried about that.”
“I have no idea why Lady Mansfield chose to call on me today, but I can tell you exactly how my name came to her attention. Indeed, she has been aware of me for thirteen years.”
Mrs. Crofton opened the door. “How’s that?”
“My mother was her husband’s mistress until both Lord Mansfield and Mama were killed in a train accident. They were returning from a tryst at Mansfield’s hunting lodge in Scotland.”
Mrs. Crofton blanched. “What on earth?”
“Lord Mansfield was my father,” Virginia explained in a tight voice. “I do apologize, Mrs. Crofton. I realize you had no way of knowing that you had assumed a post in the household of the illegitimate daughter of a high-ranking gentleman, but there it is. I don’t think you need bother with a tea tray.”
Virginia went out the door and down the hall. She paused on the threshold of the parlor and collected herself.
Lady Mansfield stood at the window. She looked out into the street as though there were something of great import there.
“Lady Mansfield,” Virginia said.
Helen, Lady Mansfield, turned to face her. “Thank you for seeing me, Miss Dean. I apologize for the intrusion. But I am quite desperate, and I have nowhere else to turn.”
“Lady Mansfield, I really don’t think we have anything to discuss.”
“Please, I wish only to ask you a simple question. If you will be so kind as to answer it, I assure you I will not linger under your roof a moment longer than necessary.”
The thing that had always struck Virginia as inexplicable was the fact that Helen was a remarkably beautiful woman. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, she was endowed with a classic profile and a fine figure, enhanced by the latest fashions. She was one of those women who drew the eye. At the age of eighteen, when she had married her much older husband, she must have been breathtaking, Virginia thought. She had also been a great heiress, a fact that always enhanced a bride’s charm.
With such a wife gracing his home and his arm when he went out into society, what had possessed Lord Mansfield to continue his longstanding, illicit relationship with a lowly glass-reader? Virginia wondered. It was not as if her mother had been a dashing actress or a much younger or more beautiful woman. Yet the relationship that Mansfield had begun with her mother years before his marriage to Helen had endured.
On those rare occasions when she allowed herself to sink into a dark mood and brood for a time on just how very much alone she was in the world, she summoned up the shards of memories of her childhood. When she did so, she took some comfort from knowing that Mansfield had loved her and her mother. One’s parents were always great mysteries, she reflected.
She started to speak the little speech she had rehearsed on the short trip down the hall.
“What was it you wanted to know, madam?” she heard herself say instead.
“I am well aware that this is difficult for you, Miss Dean,” Helen said. “Surely you realize that I find it equally uncomfortable. I would not have come here today if there had been any other course of action open to me.”
“Please sit down,” Virginia said. She motioned to one of the two dainty chairs that bracketed the unlit fireplace.
“Thank you.”
Helen sank gracefully onto the chair, arranging the elegant folds of her expensive blue day gown with small, practiced movements of her gloved fingers.
Virginia took the matching chair and twitched the skirts of her plain copper-brown housedress into position.
“I realize that you have no reason to help me,” Helen said. “But I am hoping you will feel some degree of compassion for me in my hour of need.”
“Perhaps if you would get to the point, madam?”
“Yes, of course. My daughter, Elizabeth, has disappeared.”
In spite of everything, Virginia felt herself grow cold. “You believe she is dead?”
Helen’s eyes widened in shock. “God forbid.” She pulled herself together. “I meant that she has vanished from her home. She ran away sometime this morning. She told no one where she was going. No one saw her leave. I will come straight to the point, Miss Dean. Is she hiding here with you?”
Virginia was so taken aback by the question that for a moment she could not think clearly.
“Good heavens, no,” she finally blurted.
“Please do not lie to me. I must know the truth. I have been absolutely frantic since I discovered that she was missing.”
“Why would she come here? She does not even know that I exist.”
“I’m afraid that is no longer true.” Helen’s hands tightened into a knot on her elegant lap. “She learned recently that you are her half-sister.”
Virginia went quite still. “I see. How did that come about?”
“Perhaps it was inevitable. I told myself that no one would remember the old gossip. But there are always
