Unsure of the part she needed to play, she ignored the servants she passed on her way to Martha’s apartments.
These were much as she remembered them—frilly and feminine, in shades of delicate pink. The scent of Martha’s perfume assailed her as soon as she entered.
“Oh, my lady, thank God!” exclaimed Mathews, rushing through from the bedchamber beyond the boudoir. She halted in her tracks, frowning. “Lady Meg?” she asked uncertainly.
Mathews had begun by serving both twins when they were fifteen years old. Despite their tricks and their mischief, she had learned to tell them apart very quickly. It had been hard for her when Martha’s marriage had separated them, but she had not lost her skills of identifying one from the other.
Meg sighed. “Yes, it is I. Where is my sister, Mathews? You have to tell me.”
Mathews dropped the pile of linen she was carrying onto a chair. “I would tell you if I could, my lady, I swear it.”
“And is the reason you can’t because Martha told you not to?”
Tears started to Mathews’s eyes. She shook her head violently. “No, my lady, she told me nothing. Not a thing. She just vanished!”
“Taking what?” Meg asked. “Clothes? Tooth powder?”
“There’s just her best riding habit missing, and a traveling cloak.”
Which is why Calvert believes she has gone to London. She probably means to wear my clothes there, as I planned to wear hers here…
But that was too comfortable a belief. Martha could be anywhere, in any kind of danger. Meg stepped closer to the maid. “Mathews, was she upset last night? Unhappy?”
“No, my lady, not really. A bit…excited, perhaps.”
Meg nodded and walked into her sister’s bedchamber. For a while, she wandered around the room, touching various things of Martha’s that she remembered—a hairbrush, a perfume bottle, a dressing gown on the back of the door, a jewel box on her dressing table. Then she sank down on the bed, trying to unwind the knot of anxiety in her stomach.
Where are you, Martha?
She realized she already knew her sister wasn’t dead. That, she would have felt. But would she have felt any huge unhappiness that had driven her from her home at this precise moment? Had she not been so concerned with the trivial scandal at Connaught Place and seeing Harry again. She had been enjoying her journey while her sister suffered.
Or did she?
Martha was a flirt. Which was what had won her Calvert. Had she decided the prize of an unfaithful husband was not enough? Had she found someone else to flirt with? Or run away altogether? Now, there was a scandal to eclipse Meg’s.
Only, she couldn’t quite believe it of Martha. At least not out of the blue.
She might have been deluding herself, but she didn’t believe her sister was distressed. Wherever she had gone, she had done so deliberately and, rightly or wrongly, did not wish to be followed. Otherwise, she would have left clues, “breadcrumbs” for Calvert, or at least Mathews, to follow.
So, what am I supposed to do, Martha?
What they had always done for each other. Cover for her.
“Mathews,” she called. “Will you help me to dress as Lady Calvert?”
*
When the household gathered for tea, Harry had to look twice to assure himself Martha had not come home in the last hour. Their likeness in appearance was still profound, but the change was in the mannerisms, which Meg adopted as her own. The drama of her gestures, the fashionable languor of speech that Martha had affected even before her coming-out, the way she flirted with her eyes and her fan.
She drifted into the room in a cloud of exotic perfume and palest blue gauze. “Why, Harry, my hero, how wonderful to see you!” she greeted him, extending her hand. She fluttered her eyelashes as he bowed over it, and he couldn’t help the twitch of his lips. “Thank you for being so kind to my sister.” She turned and smiled at Aline Garrow with no recognition whatsoever.
“Ah, my love, this is Mrs. Garrow,” Calvert said smoothly.
“Of course,” Meg exclaimed. “How wonderful to meet you at last. I have heard so much about your husband.” She glanced around the room as though surprised. “But where is Captain Garrow?”
“He was a trifle indisposed on the journey,” Aline explained. Not by the faintest crease in her brow or hesitation in her smile did she betray a hint of suspicion that this was not her hostess but the lady who had traveled in her carriage. “So, I thought it best to leave him comfortably at the inn. My son is not a peaceful traveler, and he would have driven his stepfather to an apoplexy on top of everything else. I hope you do not mind when you and I have not the pleasure of acquaintance?”
“How could I mind? You are most welcome, as is your son. In fact, Calvert’s old nurse still lives in the house, so she will be glad to help look after him.”
“How kind,” Aline purred.
“And your poor husband! I hope nothing serious ails him?”
Amused, Harry debated with himself who was the better actress. In this particular role, he rather thought it was Meg, for he caught Aline watching her once or twice, as though to reassure herself that this really was Lady Calvert.
As he accepted his cup of tea from Meg, he murmured, “My compliments. I could almost imagine we were children again.”
“I feel alarmingly grown-up,” she confided. Raising her voice, she said, “Perhaps we can take a turn in the garden after tea. I’m sure your son would like to join us, Mrs. Garrow.”
“He would love to if he is not in the way.”
Harry, too, was glad of the fresh air and the opportunity to stretch his legs. Despite the crazy jaunt through the woods after highwaymen, the Garrows’ coach had been considerably more comfortable than Robert’s poor curricle. He felt none of the pain of yesterday. As a result, he was quite happy to lope ahead with Basil and play hide and seek, while Aline made herself agreeable to Calvert.
“So, what do you think?” he murmured as Meg caught up with him, and they pretended to look in all the wrong places for the audibly chortling child. “Is Martha safe?”
“I believe so,” she said with a worrying trace of anxiety. “But I don’t know for sure. Her maid has no clue where she is. But I think for some reason Martha wants it that way, though I don’t know why or whether I’m right to go along with this masquerade.”
“If you ask me,” Harry said carefully, for he was wary of speaking against the man she had once loved and perhaps still did, “Calvert knows more than he’s letting on. Not necessarily where Martha is, but why she left. I don’t like that he hasn’t told you.”
She gave a faint shrug, not irritated as he had half-expected, but as though it was unimportant. “It will reflect badly on him,” she opined.
He blinked, and she cast him a wry smile. “What? Did you think I was blind as well as silly?” She lunged past him and caught Basil behind the tree. He smiled at the child’s delighted laughter, but his attention lingered on Meg.
They returned to the house in due course but sat out on the terrace to enjoy the last of the afternoon sun. Meg disappeared into the kitchen garden for a few moments and came back with a basket of kittens for Basil to play with. Not long afterward, she went inside with Calvert.