Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(89)

He strode to the main entrance and gave his card to the hunchbacked gentleman who answered the door. He was shown into a dim, drab parlor, the striped paper on the walls faded but clean. A coal-fire smoked fitfully in the hearth.

A few books stood at attention on a shelf. Gareth peered at their spines. A Brief History of Western Etiquette stood next to The Rules of Precedence. The thin volume on the end was imprinted with the illuminating title of Forks, Spoons, Knives and the Proper Use of a Serviette.

Gareth would have been willing to bet that Jenny, his mischievous, exuberant Jenny, had never set foot in the room.

The door opened behind him. Of course, it did not do anything so uncouth as creak; instead, it sighed, a dim sound.

“Lord Blakely. How can I be of service? What can I tell you of our school? Would you like to sit?”

The voice was old. The words formed questions, but the tone was dry command. It was the voice of a woman who had ordered young girls for so long she knew no other way to communicate.

Gareth turned. The woman who stood there was as exact as every other aspect of the school. Not one strand of gray hair escaped her precise bun. Her colorless face blended into the tired, pressed gray of her dress. Her lips formed straight lines, as if any bend or kink would offend her orderly nature.

“You must be Mrs. Davenport,” Gareth said. “You wrote me.”

Her eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“In answer to the inquiry my man of business made,” he continued. “I’m here about Jenny Keeble.”

It would have been gauche for Mrs. Davenport to show emotion. But the emotion she very carefully didn’t show—not even a hint of surprise that a strange man would ask after a pupil who attended her school more than a decade before—was all too telling. It was the decorous, hopeful blankness of a gossipy woman who had a scandalous story to tell, and who expected to receive a juicy tidbit in exchange.

“Is there some problem? Is Miss Keeble…” Mrs. Davenport paused delicately.

“Dead? Convicted? Wanted for fraud?”

Mrs. Davenport’s eyes grew wider with every possibility Gareth listed. Satisfaction radiated from her.

Gareth drummed his fingers against the leg of his trousers. “No. She’s not.”

A subtle tension entered the woman’s shoulders. “Well. That child gave me more trouble than any other girl in my twenty-nine years here. If you know her, you know she has a predilection for…” Another delicate pause.

“Lies,” Gareth supplied helpfully.

“Mistruths,” finished Mrs. Davenport. “And indirection. Often involving money. But you seem to have news of her. I dare not hope she has adopted an honest profession?”

Mrs. Davenport raised one perfectly formed eyebrow. Hidden behind the brittle cold of her censorious glare lay a spark of avaricious desire.

“My God,” Gareth said. “You really are a vulture, aren’t you?”

Her lips pursed. “If it would please you, my lord. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. There are young girls here, and they will repeat every last naughty word they hear.”

“I’m here to find out more,” he said. Once he’d imagined that if he could uncover her deepest secrets, he’d be able to put her behind him. He didn’t fool himself that was still the case. Now, he just wanted to know. “What was she like? Who were her friends?”

“Friends?” Mrs. Davenport scoffed. “A girl of her like doesn’t have friends among proper women. I made sure of that. I protested her admittance, I did. No good can come of girls with uncertain parentage. They come from shame, and can bring only shame upon themselves and those they associate with.”

Gareth swallowed. “Do tell.”

Mrs. Davenport looked off into the distance. “But she was a tricky little thing. She’d get the other girls talking to her, friendly like, every time she had half the chance. If I hadn’t watched, she’d have wrapped them all ’round her finger. She had them fascinated, she did. I told them over and over, stay away from that Jenny Keeble. They listened, mostly. But…”

But Jenny had done her best to win them over anyway.

“She was four when she came here,” Gareth observed mildly.

“You can’t fight nature, my Lord Blakely. What’s bred in the bone will bear fruit in the character. What do you suppose happens to a girl who never knows her parents?”

A girl who was lied to from the age of four and told she was formed for ill-behavior from birth? Gareth could only imagine. And yet…it hadn’t happened to Jenny.

“I suppose,” Gareth said quietly, “you did your duty by the girl and informed her what to expect from life.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Davenport said with relish, leaving little doubt about precisely how she’d performed that responsibility. “And—just in case—” She crossed over to a desk, shuffled around in a drawer. And then she pulled out a yellowing sheaf, the edges of the papers crackling. “There. I recorded all her misdeeds. I saved these, in the event I was ever asked to testify as to her character, and the magistrate was inclined to foolish lenience.”

Gareth held out a hand. “She was damnably silent about her childhood.”

Mrs. Davenport’s eyes narrowed, but she handed over the papers. “Language, Lord Blakely. Watch your language. Tell me, did she become a…”