The room stilled. Alexander had never felt so much dread in his life. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet as Isadore approached, pausing in the center of the room and shrinking like an animal on display at the menagerie. Her simple clothes marked her as a working woman, her face lightly freckled from a lifetime of labor, moles decorating her cheeks. Celeste’s face flashed in front of Alexander’s eyes. It was not a perfect match, but it was close.
“You wished to speak to His Grace,” Carlisle barked through the silence. “Well then, now you will speak. Who are you to have come here on the day of His Grace’s wedding?” His uncle balled his fists, hiding them behind his back. “There is no excuse for such comportment. Shame on you!”
It was clear from the tone of Carlisle’s voice – from his protective proximity to Margaret – that he assumed the woman standing before them was a past mistress of his nephew’s. Alexander looked at Margaret, and a chill passed through him.
“Pray, do not think the worst of me yet. Things are not as they seem,” Alexander said to Margaret. He redirected himself to Isadore. There was no use trying to conceal the truth any longer. “Tell us who you are.”
“You know precisely who I am, Your Grace,” the woman replied. “From what I understand, you have been looking for me for many years. I came here to understand why.” She paused. “But I had not expected to interrupt a wedding. For that, I am sorry.”
Her accent was thick. She must have resided in London almost her entire life, like Ripley had claimed, living right under their noses the whole time they had been searching for her. Carlisle, when Alexander dared a look at him, was puzzled. Margaret scowled in Alexander’s direction.
"I do know this woman, in a much-limited capacity,” he said softly. He redirected himself to the woman in question. “But before I explain myself, have you any proof that you are who you claim to be?”
Isadore looked momentarily affronted before she extracted a letter from her pocket and tendered it toward Alexander. A footman stopped her from approaching, bringing the letter to Alexander for inspection. The familiar handwriting struck him. The contents were damning.
“That note is from Mr. Ripley,” Isadore said. “I assume you are acquainted with him? He wrote to my employer wanting to know about me. But Mr. Graham has always been good to me, and he worried Mr. Ripley had all sorts of malicious intentions. He told me about Mr. Ripley’s visits, and I waited many nights for Mr. Ripley to return. When he did, I threatened to sic Mr. Graham’s hound on him if he didn’t tell me who he was. He said it was none of my business... I learned enough from that to draw my own conclusions.”
Alexander folded the note. “Which were?”
“That someone had hired him to find me. And it could only have been you—the Duke of Langley. I knew it was only a matter of time before you would come looking for me. But I wasn’t going to wait for you to find me first. I want to know what you intend to do with me, and I wanted a witness.”
She made it sound like Alexander had planned to kill her – tie up the end left loose by their father. She had come to Langley House to ensure she would be seen.
“You were right... But I intended nothing beyond confirming your existence. Whatever else you are imagining is false, far out of the realm of my capabilities.” He repeated what she had said in his mind. “How could you possibly have concluded that I was the one searching for you?”
“From Maman, of course.” The woman hid her face, wiping her cheek on her shoulder. “For a long time, I thought all the stories were lies, that I had made them up in my own head as a child. But they were all true, weren’t they? You are the child of Celeste Rousseau and Theodore Somerton, and so am I.”
“It would seem that way.”
Carlisle stepped forward suddenly. His mouth hung open, eyes wide. Could he see the resemblance between Isadore and Celeste now that she had revealed their connection? From what little Carlisle had shared about the time before Alexander’s birth, hehad met Celeste once or twice, when his father’s indiscretions had spilled over into Somerstead Hall.
“Impossible...” Carlisle murmured, stumbling back into Margaret. She held him upright, staring intently at Isadore.
“You said there were stories. What stories?” Alexander asked.
Isadore looked sideways at Carlisle. “Nothing I much believed for many years. I grew up in France, but always knew I hadn’t been born there. The woman who raised me called herself my aunt, Tante Marie, but I felt in my heart that we were not that closely related. She let things slip over the years when she was displeased, about how my mother had been a famous singer in England, but her lover had forbidden her from keeping me, because I was a mean girl. My father, she said, had been a lord, who she hoped would change his mind and take me off her hands.”
Alexander listened carefully. He was waiting—hoping—for evidence that Isadore was lying. But everything she had claimed so far was consistent with his own investigation.
“One day, I found a stash of my mother’s things. Mostly worthless trinkets and sheet music, but there were letters too. Maman wrote of a duke, not a lord. Tante Marie was so angry with me for snooping through her belongings that she caned me so hard I still have scars. Not long after, I was returned to London and taken to a workhouse in Charing Cross. Little did I know my father and brother were just a stone’s throw away. It took many years before I started remembering what Tante Mariehad said, and then some more years passed before I heard tales about the Duke of Langley and his bastard heir.”
Alexander bridled at the termbastard. Isadore herself was illegitimate, but she spoke the word with so much scorn that it made his stomach turn. She must have reviled Alexander for living a life of luxury while she was enslaved in the workhouse. It was no wonder she did not trust him.
“This is all lies,” Carlisle muttered, his voice trembling. He snarled as he pointed a finger at Isadore. Alexander had never seen him so angry. “Everything you have said is a lie.”
“That is for His Grace to decide. I don’t even know who you are.” Isadore glanced from Carlisle to Alexander. “Do you think I would have risked myself for no reason if I did not truly believe that I am the woman you are looking for? I know what you are. I know the things men with riches and power do. You would crush me if you thought I was trying to deceive you. Just like Maman was crushed.” She raised her chin at Carlisle. “His Grace came looking for me first. I will not be held responsible for his actions, regardless of what you think of me. So, Your Grace. I ask again what you intend to do.”
Alexander felt the room turn to him. He pinched the bridge of his nose, reviewing Isadore’s story. The note from Ripley was evidence enough that she had met him and was the woman they had been searching for. All reasonable thinking suggested that shewasIsadore Bell, the daughter of Celeste Rousseau and Theodore Somerton, his sister.
“I believe her story to be true.”
Carlisle gasped. “Your Grace?—”
“No.” Alexander raised a hand to stop him. “The woman is right. I pried into her life, hoping to locate her. Her sudden appearance here today is the only crime of which she is guilty.”
“You have more sense than this.” Carlisle’s eyes were wild, pleading. “Do not cast this family further into notoriety on a baseless lie.”
“I will not be persuaded on this matter. Miss Bell should be accorded what she is owed from me, first of which is my trust.”
