He smiled. “I see you’ve a redheaded temperament. I like that. She had one as well, did Ann.”
“Ann?” Mari turned her full attention to him for the first time.
“She was a soprano with the Royal Opera. Had the exact same auburn hair and blue eyes. I’ve no idea what happened to her. She left the opera. You could be her daughter you look so much alike.”
“What was her surname?” asked Mari.
“I’m not sure I recall.”
“It wasn’t Murray, was it?”
“That’s it! The famously beautiful Ann Murray. How did you know?”
Ann Murray. The name written in her Book of Common Prayer. The date that matched the year of her birth.
Could this man actually have known her mother? “Tell me more about her,” Mari said.
“I’d be happy to, my dear, but I must leave now. Perhaps you would care to meet me at a tea shop tomorrow for a more extended... conversation.”
Tomorrow wasn’t one of her off days, and meeting strange earls for tea didn’t sound very respectable, but she couldn’t pass up an opportunity to learn more if the Ann Murray he spoke of could have some connection to her.
She made a quick decision. “I’ll meet you at two o’clock at the British Museum, Lord Haddock. I’ve been wanting to see their collection of Roman and Greek marbles.”
His smile was oily as a plate of kippers. He bowed over her hand. “I will count the seconds until tomorrow.”
“If you’ll excuse me, my lord, I must go to the children.”
Before she could leave, Robertson appeared at the door to make an announcement. “Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Banksford,” he intoned.
The small number of remaining guests hushed.
“Well,” said Haddock. “This is a surprise.”
Mari watched Edgar’s face as his mother was announced. It was like a window being hastily shuttered against a storm.
Everything shut down. Closed up.
His face. His fists.
Mari wanted to run to him, take his hand, tell him to breathe.
The dowager duchess looked exactly how Mari had pictured her. A grandiose personage, tall of stature, and upright of carriage, swathed in black and topped with white ruffles and feathers.
The lacy turban she wore was so high that it made her the tallest living thing in the room, and underneath it, her silver-streaked hair was dressed in a perfectly round row of ringlets placed at precise intervals along her forehead.
She swirled into the room like a wintry wind, coating everyone’s faces with frost.
“The Ice Queen cometh,” Haddock chortled. “This ought to be entertaining.”
Chapter 20
Edgar clenched his fists as the dowager made her way across the room, guests parting before her like the Red Sea.
Theirs was an infamous estrangement, replete with all of the scandalous ingredients thetoncraved. Dark family secrets. Betrayal.
Violence and revenge.
She stopped directly in front of him. “Banksford,” she said.