Marquesses at the Masquerade(14)
“Yes.”
She nodded, thinking. “Very likely a nickname.”
“Right.” He’d already thought of that, and it wasn’t a comforting thought.
“And a last name that might begin with W, and we don’t know if the initials refer to the present generation, or an earlier one, though it’s probably safe to assume the pearls were a gift from either a husband to a wife, or a parent to a daughter. Ward, Wilcox, Warner, Wallingford,” she listed, squinting. “Wilson. I can think of dozens of people, and that’s not including Williams. So many people named Williams.” She paused. “And then there’s the fact that these initials could refer to people from a hundred years ago. A strand of pearls is the kind of thing that gets handed down in families for generations.”
“I get your point, Mother,” Marcus said tightly.
“I’m sorry, dearest.” She touched his cheek. “I’d love more than anything to help you. Your Poppy seemed like a very nice young lady.”
“She is.”
His mother tapped her chin. “I suppose the best thing would be to create a chart for different generations and match up names. We ought to be able to narrow the possibilities down that way.”
Having no other sensible course of action, Marcus sat with his mother, and together, they filled several pieces of paper with names. In the end, all they determined was that HPW must be the initials of a woman, since a man would not receive a gift of pearls, though Marcus had assumed that to begin with. Beyond that, he now had a lengthy list of people with initials that matched at least one set of the initials on the clasp, and a much smaller group of those who could be reliably matched in the sort of relationship that would occasion the gift of a costly necklace.
“And this is all supposing the two people were not unrelated people with last names that started with the same initial,” his mother pointed out. “Or someone whose family is not well known to us.”
“I know,” Marcus said, trying to keep his frustration in check.
But he did at least now have a place to start, so he compared their list with the ball’s guest list and arrived at eight families with possible family members that might have, or might at one time have had, at least one of the sets of initials.
Marcus made eight calls, one to each family, and drank many more than eight cups of tea while he tried obliquely to tease out whether any of the families might have a young lady previously unknown to him who’d attended the ball and lost a necklace. This was a tricky undertaking—he didn’t want to give too much away, because the consequences of the Marquess of Boxhaven going house to house looking for a woman whose last name started with W, but about whom he knew little else, did not bear thinking about. If nothing else, he would be besieged by everyone within a fifty-mile radius who had a marriageable daughter, cousin, or friend who had a last name starting with W.
None of the calls yielded anything helpful.
Meanwhile, every night, he dreamed of her.
In his dreams, they danced and laughed and kissed, and then she told him her full name. But in that maddening way of dreams, he could never quite hear it.
By the end of the week, his frustration was mounting. Surely it couldn’t be that he’d found the woman for whom he’d been waiting all his life, only to never see her again. Surely fate wouldn’t be that cruel.
But as the days continued to pass with no sign of her, he began to think that fate might be exactly that cruel.
*
The axe fell six days after the ball, when Melinda was picking through her jewelry box to make a selection for a dinner party that evening. Her scream of outrage could be heard all the way in the Outer Reaches, and Rosamund, putting the finishing touches on the new gown Vanessa was to wear that night, immediately knew that the jig was up.
Bronwen had been instructed that if Melinda discovered the pearls were missing, she must tell Melinda that Rosamund might know where they were. Rosamund was thus summoned immediately, and a livid Melinda demanded an explanation.
As there was nothing for it, Rosamund simply said, “They were mine and I took them.”
“Shocking creature!” Melinda cried. “Where are they? Bring them to me at once!”
“They’re gone.”
Melinda’s features hardened. “You sold them, didn’t you? You little thief! But what should I have expected, inviting someone like you into our home? I have been a fool, a fool who was far too generous for her own good.”
Melinda then demanded the money from the supposed sale, which Rosamund of course didn’t have. Amid Melinda’s resultant pronouncements that Rosamund was a thief and no longer welcome in her house and shouts for a Bow Street runner to be called, Rosamund threw her few belongings in a bag and said a hasty goodbye to Uncle Piggott.
“She’s the thief!” Uncle Piggott nearly spat. “The necklace was yours.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
His fury melted away as his dear old features sagged with concern. “But where will you go, Rosamund?”
“I have some money saved.” Only a very little bit, but Uncle Piggott, who had so little himself, didn’t need to know that. “And I’m sure I’ll find work somewhere.”
“This is an outrage! She has treated you abominably.”
“Shh,” Rosamund said gently. Uncle Piggott would never be thrown out on the street, but he needed to preserve the goodwill of Melinda lest he find himself neglected and mistreated. “It will be all right.”