Mary Balogh - Slightly Wicked

The servants all held their peace. Which of them, after all, would voice an objection when doing so must throw instant suspicion on them?

Lord Braithwaite cleared his throat. “You may search my room too, sir,” he said.

There was a murmuring of assent from all the other guests, though Judith guessed it was grudging in many cases. It would feel like violation to have one’s room searched, to feel even if only for a few minutes that one was being suspected of theft. But she kept her mouth shut.

“Would you like to go to your room, Grandmama?” she asked again after Uncle George, Horace, the butler, and Tillie had left the ballroom. “Or to mine if you would prefer?”

“No.” Her grandmother was looking more dejected than Judith had ever seen her. “I will stay here. I hope they do not find the jewels. Is that not foolish? I would rather never see them again than know that someone in this house has stolen them. Why did whoever it is not ask me? I have plenty. I would give to any relative or friend or servant in need. But I suppose people are too proud to ask, are they not?”

Julianne was sobbing in her mother’s arms, and looking remarkably pretty in the process.

“This has turned out to be a perfectly horrid evening,” she wailed. “I have hated every moment of it, and I am sure everyone else will pronounce it a disaster and never accept another invitation from us all their lives.”

The servants stood in silence. The guests huddled in small, self-conscious groups, talking in lowered voices.

Another half hour passed before the search party returned, looking grave.

“This has been found,” Uncle George said into the hush that had fallen over the ballroom. “Tillie recognized it. It is from Mother-in-law’s jewelry box.” He held aloft the wine-colored velvet bag that usually contained her most valuable jewels. It was very obviously empty. “And this, also from the box.”

He held up a single diamond earring between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand.

The small swell of sound instantly died away again.

“Does anyone wish to say anything about these items?” Uncle George asked. “They were found in the same room.”

Branwell’s. Judith felt sick to her stomach.

No one wished to say anything, it seemed.

“Judith,” Uncle George said, his voice low and devoid of all expression, “the bag was at the bottom of one of your dressing table drawers. The earring was on the floor, almost out of sight behind the door.”

Judith suddenly felt as if she were looking at him down a long, dark tunnel. She felt as if her mind were still grappling to decode the sounds he had just spoken, to make sensible words out of them.

“Where have you hidden everything else, Judith?” he asked her, still in that flat voice. “It is not in your room.”

“What?” She was not sure any sound had come out of her mouth. She was not even sure her lips had formed the word.

“There is no point in even pretending that there must be some misunderstanding,” Uncle George said.

“You have stolen costly jewels, Judith, from your own grandmother.”

“Oh, you ungrateful, wicked girl!” Aunt Effingham cried shrilly. “After all that I have done for you and your worthless family. You will be punished for this, believe me. Criminals hang for less.”

“We should send for the constable, Father,” Horace said. “I do apologize to everyone else that we must be seen airing our dirty family linen thus publicly. If only we had known it was Judith, we would have hushed all up and waited until everyone had gone to bed before investigating. But how were we to know?”

Judith was on her feet without any memory of having stood up.

“I have not taken anything,” she said.

“Of course you have not. Of course she has not,” her grandmother said, grabbing her hand again. “There is certainly some misunderstanding, George. Judith is the very last person who would steal from me.”

“And yet,” Julianne said scornfully, “she does not have a penny to her name, Grandmama. Do you, Judith?”

“And her brother is deep in debt,” Horace said. “I must confess that I suspected him when Tillie first came here with her discovery. Did anyone else notice that he disappeared in the middle of the ball? It was, I fear, because I reminded him of a trifling debt he owed me. I really thought he had done something foolish, though I hated to say it aloud. But it appears that it was Judith.”

“Or Judith in league with Branwell,” Aunt Effingham said. “That is it, is it, you evil girl? That is why the jewels are not in your room? Your brother has made off with them?”

“No, no, no!” Grandmama cried. “Judith has done nothing wrong. That bag ... I-I gave it to Judith to keep some of her own things in. And that earring. Judith often takes them from me when they pinch my ears, just as she did these I am wearing now. She must have dropped one when she brought them back to me and we did not notice.”

“That is not even a very good try, Mother-in-law,” Uncle George said in the same flat voice. “I believe we should all go to bed now and try to sleep. Judith will be dealt with in the morning. No one will have to face the embarrassment of having to see her again. She will be sent home, I daresay, for her father to deal with. In the meanwhile we will have to have Branwell pursued.”

“Father,” Horace said, “I still believe a constable would—”

“We will not have Judith thrown into a cell and create a sordid sensation for the whole countryside to gossip over,” Uncle George said firmly.

Judith raised both hands to her mouth. This was all too horrifying even to be a nightmare from which she might hope to awake.

“I fervently hope my brother will take a whip to you, Judith,” Aunt Effingham said, “as he ought to have done years ago. I shall write making that very suggestion. And I hope you intend to lock her into her room tonight, Effingham, so that she cannot rob us all in our sleep.”

“We will not be melodramatic,” Uncle George said, “though this scene bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the worst of melodrama. Judith, go to your room now and remain there until you are fetched in the morning.”

“Grandmama.” Judith turned to her and stretched out both hands. But her grandmother had her own hands clasped tightly in her lap and did not look up.

“Branwell is in debt,” she said so quietly that no one but Judith could hear, “and you did not tell me. I would have given him some of my jewels if he had asked or if you had asked. Did you not know that?”

Grandmama believed it, then. She believed that Judith had conspired with Bran to rob her. It was the worst moment of all.

“I did not do it, Grandmama,” Judith whispered as she saw a tear plop onto the old lady’s hands.

She never afterward knew how she got herself out of the ballroom and up to her room. But she stood against the closed door after she arrived there for a long, long time, her hands with a death grip on the handle behind her back, as if the weight of her body was all that stood between herself and the universe crashing in on top of her.

It was really far too early in the day to be making a social call, Rannulf thought as he rode up the long driveway toward Harewood Grange, especially the morning after a ball. But he had paced his room rather like a bear in a cage from dawn onward and had not been able to settle to anything even after going downstairs, though there were letters to answer and another account ledger he needed to study.

And so he had come early in the hope of finding at least Sir George Effingham up and about and in the confident belief that Judith would not still be in her bed. Had she found sleep last night as difficult as he had? She surely could not have mistaken his meaning last evening. How did she feel about him? What answer did she plan to give him?

If it was no again, then he would have to accept it.

It was a gloomy thought, but he clung to the hope that he had not imagined that magnetic sort of pull between them last night. He surely could not have. But his heart pounded with unaccustomed anxiety as he rode into the stable yard, turned Bucephalus over to the care of a groom, and strode toward the house.

“Ask Sir George if I may have a private word with him,” he said to the servant who opened the door.

A minute later he was being ushered into the library, where he had very nearly met his doom last night.

Sir George was seated at a large oak desk looking glum. But then he rarely looked any different, Rannulf reflected. He was the picture of a man discontented with his family circle yet not quite content with his own company either.

“Good morning, sir,” Rannulf said. “I trust everyone has slept well after last evening’s revelries?”

Sir George grunted. “You are out early, Bedwyn,” he said. “I am not sure Julianne or the others are up yet. But your business is with me, is it?”

“Only briefly, sir,” Rannulf said. “I would like your permission to have a private word with your niece.”

“With Judith?” Sir George frowned, and his hand reached for a quill pen and fidgeted with it.

“I thought I might take her walking outside,” Rannulf said. “With your permission, that is, and if she is willing.”

Sir George put the pen down. “You are too late,” he said. “She has gone.”

“Gone?” He knew she was to be sent home, but so abruptly, so soon, the morning after a late ball?

Because of the way she had thwarted her cousin’s marriage scheme, perhaps?