Free Aurora by Joan Smith Page A

mentioned—then that possibility could be disposed of. That is the only stumbling block I can see. Who else could I be? And it won’t have slipped Mama’s notice either.”
    “Why do you call Clare that?” Marnie asked.
    “Because she dislikes it so much,” he answered, smiling wickedly. “She is my stepmother, too. As wicked as the worst one ever invented to scare children.” He arose and took a look around at the room, as though seeing a friend again after a long absence. “I see the clock still doesn’t work,” he commented, looking at a head-and-shoulders clock on the mantel piece. “The place hasn’t changed much—just got older. I must be going now. We’ll meet again soon. I look forward to having a nice long talk with you, Marnie, catching up on old times. And to becoming better acquainted with you, Miss Falkner,” he added, nodding in her direction. “It isn’t every day I have the pleasure of meeting such a pretty family connection. I feel quite cheated to have been deprived of your friendship all these years. We must make up for lost time.”
    Malone sidled forward to hear a few words on coming to know her better too. “Delighted to have met you, Mrs. Malaprop,” he said, with an irrepressible smile.
    “Well now if that ain’t a caution!” she squealed. “That’s exactly what your Bernard used to call me, Marnie. Where did you get that name from? It’s downright eerie is what it is. Malaprop! I haven’t heard that name since dear Bernard stuck his spoon in the wall.”
    “There was a strange link between my brother and myself,” he said. “We liked the same names, and people.” There was just a barely noticeable peep in Marnie’s direction at that point. A slight reminder that they both favoured the elder Miss Falkner?
    Marnie read that into it at least, and blushed happily. He left, and Malone took up a position, standing between the two seated ladies to deliver her opinion of him. “The man’s a rascal and a rogue. Got an eye in his head that belongs in a panther. But it seems he’s Kenelm right enough.”
    “He has convinced me,” Marnie agreed.
    “It’s an impalpable story enough, but he knew about the fenugreek and the pippins and Cranky Jangler, and the telepathetic link makes it certain,” Malone said. “Malaprop.”
    “I was just thinking—the gypsy told me a tall, dark man was coming into my life, and she was right,” Marnie said.
    “She told you he was in trouble too, and that you should help him,” Rorie reminded her.
    “So she did. They’re up to anything, those gypsies.”
    “They have some occluded powers, in league with the devil likely as not,” Malone told them, and left.
    Marnie too went off to speak to Cook, but Rorie sat behind, dissatisfied. She thought the gypsy’s occult powers might rather be explained by Kenelm’s having put the gypsy hag up to reading that particular fortune, to request the lady’s help in this romantic, roundabout way. The phrase “golden lady” had been used by her, and Kenelm too had mentioned Marnie’s golden halo more than once in the showering of his compliments. She had begun the day hoping he was Kenelm. All the evidence presented indicated that he was, yet she felt a nagging doubt. He was too pat with his answers, too liberal with his compliments, too hasty to hint a reward. And if he could now persuade the Rutleys—who might quite possibly he his own grandparents, surely not difficult to persuade—to say their son was in America, to produce maybe a letter from him, his way was clear.
    She did not absolutely accuse him of being an impostor, but she did not close her mind to the possibility. Clare descended on them shortly after lunch to cast a few more doubts, though they fell on no fertile ground as far as Marnie and Malone were concerned.
    “He has been living with that pack of gypsies for a week,” she announced, her fine blue eyes flashing. “Making up to every servant wench in the district. No wonder