The devil. “But—”
“Not another word, son.” She waved her hand. “Isn’t it natural that I would want to congratulate him on his new position?” She turned toward the footman. “Bless you…Mark, was it? Well, Bless you, Mark—”
Neville winced. He wouldn’t have remembered the new footman’s name if he had been asked.
“—yes, yes. Take the pattens away.Dreadfulthings. I shouldn’t have worn them at all, but for the necessity of traveling by stage.”
“The stage?!” Neville exclaimed.
“The stage. Or perhaps I traveled by the mail. I can’t be bothered to remember which.” She shrugged as if details were problems for other people. “Anyway, I wished to come to London, and Farnsworth’s carriage was unusable. A matter of a broken wheel, you see.” She paused. “One never notices just how essential a thing is in one’s life until it breaks.”
Briefly, she met his gaze with a look that would have puzzled him in the past. He’d since learned the meaning; Millie gave him the same look whenever she made a point she thought should have been obvious. But what was his mother trying to tell him?
What was the essential thing that had broken?
John?
“A ribbon is just a ribbon,” she went on lightly, “until the one on one’s hat frays, and then off the hat blows, exposing one’s hair.” She patted her curls as if expecting to find them indisarray. “A window is just a window, until so caked with filth one cannot see the approach of an unexpected visitor.”
“I suppose…” Thoroughly flummoxed, Neville let his voice trail.
“Thank you again, Mark,” she beamed up at the footman. “A lady needs a reliable retainer as much as…as much as…oh, I don’t know.” She glanced Neville’s way. “As much as a child needs a mother.”
His mother rarely, if ever, thanked a footman. What in heaven’s name was going on?
“That will be all,” his mother finished.
The footman rose, dirty pattens in hand, gave Neville a slight bow, and then headed for the back of the house. Not until he had left the room did his mother rise. She went to the door, pulled it closed, and then laid her ear against the paneling.
“Mother—”
She held up a finger.
He couldn’t imagine what she was listening for, but after a few moments, she was satisfied enough to turn around.
“He’s relatively new, is he not? I don’t remember him from my time here last Season.”
“Yes, he started just a few weeks ago.”
“You see?” She smiled a smile of self-satisfaction. “I was right not to trust him. The girl says the villain has spies in the houses of every enemy.” She cocked her head. “Do you think the nonsense about the wheel made Mark think me eccentric? That was my purpose, you know.”
What girl? What Villain?
She sighed. “Couldn’t have Mark inquiring into the reasons why I arrived in the middle of the night, although it is true that you don’t know the value of something until—”
“Mother?” Neville interrupted. “Whydidyou come in the middle of the night?”
“Because I’d just visitedFarnsworth.”
Neville lowered his voice. “Has John taken a turn for the worse?”
“Just the opposite, actually,” his mother whispered back. “He is vastly relieved.”
“Why?”
His mother glanced heavenward. “Because of Temperence, obviously. Took me a few weeks and several false starts, but I finally found her.”
“Pardon?” he managed. His mother had found Temperence Wilson?