Just as my mouth dropped open, Aunt Alva made a telling gesture that suggested her remorse might not be as sincere as she’d have Consuelo believe. With a hand pressed to her heart she made a clearly visible struggle to catch her breath; she even added a raspy little cough. For effect?
Hmm . . . Yes, the strain of Consuelo’s disappearance had taken its toll on Aunt Alva; I’d seen that for myself in recent days. But I’d still maintain the woman was as healthy as any of the costly horses in her stables.
“Come, Mama, sit down.” Quickly Consuelo pulled out a chair from around the table and pressed her mother into it. She took the chair beside it and sat with her knees nearly touching Alva’s. “You are ill,” she said, reaching for her mother’s hands. “Please don’t lie to me. You’re ill and it’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“It’s nothing, really. I’m sure to recover completely now that you’re home. The doctor said . . . oh, never mind. Consuelo, where were you? I worried so!”
Consuelo caught my eye through the doorway. Before parting with Jesse, the five of us—Derrick and Marianne included—had agreed upon the story that would enter the record books as well as the newspapers. It would be a sordid tale involving James Reid, Amelia Beaumont, and Madame Devereaux, wherein James would be accused of double homicide. To explain Consuelo’s presence at the crime scene and her seeking help at a neighboring cottage, we would put out that she had gone for a carriage ride with her family’s “good friend” Derrick Andrews—quite properly, of course, in an open carriage no one needed to know was mine—and, upon hearing shouts and screams from the Reids’ cottage, they stopped to investigate. There would be no mention of Consuelo running away, and especially no hint that she had ever so much as spoken to James Reid. If the accused decided to bring her name into his testimony, the rest of us would deny all knowledge of his claims.
Yes, we would be perpetrating a fraud. Yes, Jesse in particular would be compromising his scruples. But at the same time we were saving a young woman’s future. Consuelo’s reputation would never recover should the truth ever get out. Whatever her future held, we would see to it there would be no shadow cast by recent events.
“I was with a friend,” she said now in reply to her mother’s question. “No one you know, Mama, and I’m not going to reveal her identity to you. Suffice it to say she stepped in when I most needed someone and if not for her, I wouldn’t be here right now. I mean I wouldn’t be home,” she added hastily when her mother’s eyes widened with alarm.
Then Alva turned a suspicious look on me.
“No, Mama, I wasn’t with Emma. It was Emma who found me today and persuaded me to come home.”
“Who’s that?” Alva thrust a finger at Derrick’s back.
I placed a hand on his arm. Wincing slightly, he turned around and we walked into the morning room. “Aunt Alva, I’d like you to meet Derrick Andrews, of the Providence Andrews family. He was of great assistance to us today. Derrick, Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt.” I knew better than to introduce her as Mrs. William Vanderbilt, what with the recent divorce.
Her eyes narrowed. “Andrews, as in the Providence Sun, I presume?”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Vanderbilt, and yes, my family owns the Sun. But, no,” he said in response to her unspoken question, “I’m not here in any official capacity. You’ll see no articles about any of this in our paper.”
Her light scowl persisted for several more seconds. Then she apparently dismissed him. “Consuelo,” she whispered with a tremor, “the Duke is on his way to Newport. What shall I tell him when he arrives?”
Once again her hand strayed to her heart—one would swear unconsciously. Yet I knew her. Alva Vanderbilt never made a move that wasn’t both planned and determined.
Consuelo straightened in her chair, squaring her shoulders and raising her chin—the posture of a confident, independent woman capable of guiding her own life. A fierce light I’d never seen before entered her eyes. To me, she became suddenly older, worldlier, more her mother than ever before, yet, somehow, more beautiful than I’d ever seen her.
“You’ll tell him he’s most welcome. And that I accept his proposal of marriage. I shall be his wife. I shall be the Duchess of Marlborough.”
Chapter 20
That night I wrote my article for the Newport Observer. Was it the article I truly wished to write—would have written, under normal circumstances? No, because for my cousin’s sake it contained inaccuracies my reporter’s heart found difficult to live with. Still, it was with pride and no small sense of elation that I delivered my account of the Murder at Marble House into Mr. Millford’s hands the following morning.