Wilkins, the butler, smiled rather more warmly than she expected.
“Good afternoon, Wilkins,” she said cheerfully. “Please have Mrs. Garrow shown to her rooms. Where will I find…?”
“There you are!” exclaimed a delighted male voice.
Lord Calvert strode out of the ground floor library, beaming. Meg, who knew she wasn’t expected, was rather baffled to be greeted quite in this way until it entered her head that a letter from her parents must have already reached him. However, Calvert seemed to mind neither her scandal nor her late arrival, for he strode right up to her with rather more enthusiasm than she was used to.
“Selwyn,” she murmured, offering her cheek.
To her amazement, her brother-in-law threw both arms around her and kissed her full on the lips.
Chapter Six
There was a time when she would have swooned with happiness to receive such a sign of affection from Lord Calvert. At this moment, she was conscious chiefly of outrage and a powerful desire to box his ears. Her arm even twitched outward.
His lips left hers rather quickly, then.
“Play along,” he breathed in her ear, then more loudly, “Honestly, Martha, you are never happy except when you set the house on its ears. Come and tell me what you have been up to before tea.”
His arm still behind her waist, he swept her toward the library.
Aware of watching servants, of Mrs. Garrow on the stairs who might or might not have witnessed this oddity, Meg bore it until they were inside the library when she threw off his arm and spun indignantly away from him.
The door shut with a definite click, and both Meg and Calvert glanced over in startlement.
Harry leaned against the door. “My lord.”
Calvert frowned, clearly irritated, though baffled at the same time. “Um, Captain, is it?”
Harry straightened and bowed. “Harry de Vere. We have not met for several years.”
“De Vere? You are Staunton’s brother?”
“Of course he is, Selwyn,” Meg said impatiently. “And more than that, he is a family friend who has had the goodness to drop everything and escort me here. So the least you can do is give him a glass of wine while you explain why you suddenly can’t tell your wife from your sister-in-law.”
“Of course I can,” Calvert said, stamping impatiently across the room to a decanter, where he slopped rather than poured sherry into two glasses. He paused, glancing at Meg.
“Yes, please,” she said recklessly.
Harry strolled forward and took the glasses, while Meg, wary of further contact with Calvert, avoided the sofa and sat in an armchair.
“Well?” she demanded, accepting the glass from Harry with a murmur of thanks. He leaned his hip casually against the arm of her chair. His presence there felt oddly protective, and, shaken despite herself by Calvert’s intimate greeting, she was glad of it.
“Well? No, not very,” Calvert said impatiently. “I have always been able to tell you apart, though I confess when I saw you from the window, I did think for a moment you were Martha.”
Meg scowled at him. “Where is Martha?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you! We are expecting guests for a fortnight, culminating in a grand masked ball—all of which Martha planned—and yet she has chosen this moment to absent herself.”
“That does not sound remotely like Martha. Where has she gone?”
“Away.” Calvert dragged his hand through his hair and paced toward the window, where he paused, taking a sizeable gulp of sherry. “She did not say where.”
Meg peered at him more closely, the first twinges of unease seeping through her. “You quarreled.”
Calvert waved that aside. “We are married. We quarrel. She doesn’t usually run away in high dudgeon.”
“Run away!” Meg repeated, startled. “When was this?”
“At some point between yesterday evening and eleven o’clock this morning when I realized she had gone.” Calvert sank onto the sofa. “I went looking for her, of course. Those I can trust have looked, too, and she is nowhere on the estate.”
“Was she riding?” Harry asked briskly. “Did she take a carriage?”
“The mare I gave her is gone. She saddled it herself unless the grooms are lying.”
“And Mathews? Her maid?” Meg asked.
“Knows nothing,” Calvert said impatiently. “My only hope is that she rode to London, to you. Well, to your parents since you are here.”
“Hope?” Harry repeated in disbelief.
Calvert knocked back the rest of his sherry. “I know. Riding all that way alone, without even a groom. The dangers are unthinkable. As to what happens to her reputation… Well, we can at least save that part of the matter while I discover her. You, Meg, must be Martha to greet our guests.”
“Your only guests so far know I am Meg,” she said dryly. “And I will not recline here playing Martha while she is at the mercy of every villain between here and London.”
Calvert stared at her. “But you would know, wouldn’t you? You would feel it if anything happened to her? Even if she was afraid.”
“I don’t know that I would.” Meg met his gaze. “We are not children anymore. Our lives went in different directions. We no longer sense what happens to each other.”
“Martha told me you did.”
Meg’s gaze fell. It was true she had been aware of her sister’s unhappiness since her marriage. But that was as much observation as whatever connection they had shared as children.
“I have been too involved with my own problems to be aware of Martha’s,” she muttered. “You should know I am ruined. I came here to pretend I could not have been in the Princess of Wales’s house two nights ago.”
Calvert swallowed that with barely a flicker. Indeed, an eager gleam lit his eyes. “Of course. I will ensure everyone knows you have been here for three days. You may easily play both yourself and Martha, greet our guests as their hostess, while I ride up to London and bring her back.”
“And if she isn’t there?” Meg demanded.
“Where else would she go?”
“More to the point, what if Lady Calvert is seen in London,” Harry interjected, “while your guests are supposedly being entertained by her here?”
“I have to hope she has the sense not to go out,” Calvert said grimly.
Meg and Harry both looked at him.
Calvert sighed. “I know. It is a faint hope. But I daresay His Grace retains some hold on her. Will you do it, Meg?”
“Just to save you from the scandal of a runaway wife?” Meg snapped.
“It seems we are both avoiding scandals of one kind or another.”
Meg jumped to her feet. “I can’t think, Selwyn. I don’t know. I’m going to Martha’s chamber. You’ll find accommodation for Harry, won’t you?”
She fled, needing to be away from Calvert’s fear and her own anger and guilt.
She had not looked out for Martha. Knowing her sister’s unhappiness, she had still allowed the distance to form between them, at first from the faulty belief that Martha was responsible for her broken heart. Of course, such silliness had not lasted, but in those first months of the marriage, the damage had been done between them and could not all be undone.