Free Aurora by Joan Smith Page B

he knew all about us. Why did he not come to the door as soon as he arrived, if he had nothing to hide? I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
    “Do you think he might be Horace Rutley?” Rorie asked, to a pair of scowls from the others present.
    “I wouldn’t be in the least surprised, and I shall go to see them this very day. Not that it would do any good. Oh dear—how came we not to think of it? They could have been helping him all the while. Giving him any information he didn’t already have. It is very odd the way Horace disappeared without a trace.”
    “Odd the way Kenelm disappeared, too, with no reason as far as anyone knows except yourself,” Marnie said.
    “The reason, my dear Marnie, is too awful to be admitted. Even to you I am ashamed to tell the truth.”
    “Has it to do with the missing emerald necklace?”
    “Oh, if only that were all! But it is worse than that. Much worse. Half the reason I am convinced it is not Kenelm is that Ken would never have the nerve to show his face at Raiker Hall again after what he did. It was too low, too disgusting, too utterly shameful. You must know his father would not have turned him off for any paltry reason. It was serious in the extreme.”
    “You said yesterday he was a sweet boy,” Marnie reminded her.
    “He used to be. I prefer to remember him that way. One tries to think only good of the dead.”
    “Nobody said he was dead,” Rorie said.
    “Well, gone—dead to us. Lord Raiker considered him as dead. It grieves me to have to speak of him.”
    “We must speak of him, all the same,” Marnie continued. “He says he wrote to his father from India. Was any letter received?”
    Clare considered this a moment. “No, there was no letter to my knowledge. No, there could not have been a letter. It is impossible. My husband was unwell from the night Ken left—no need to go into the cause. I took his mail up to him myself. There was no letter from India. No word from Ken at all.”
    “The letter could have gone astray. I believe he is telling the truth. He has convinced me he is Kenelm,” Marnie told her, with a defiant tilt to her chin.
    “He has buttered you up with flattery and offered you money, probably.”
    “He did nothing of the sort!” Marnie retaliated at once. But of course he had, ever so subtly, Rorie remembered.
    “Do you not mean to stand my friend, then?” Clare demanded.
    “I mean to discover the truth. Indeed, I believe I have done so,” Marnie replied.
    “I never took you for such a gullible fool!” Clare flashed out angrily. “You think to marry him and get yourself installed back at Raiker Hall. That’s what it is, and you won’t do it. You don’t fool me. You mistake your man if you think Horace Rutley will ever marry you, my girl. It is Dougall’s chit he has in his eye, thirty thousand pounds, and an unexceptionable connection in every way. Besides, you are just a little long in the tooth to appeal to him, I think.”
    “I see no point in continuing this discussion,” Marnie said, colouring up angrily at this slur on her youth and beauty.
    “What do you think?” Clare asked, turning to Rorie .
    “I think whoever the man is, he is very sly.”
    “I pity your sister hadn’t a little of our wits. He comes to Raiker Hall tomorrow at ten to meet with my solicitor. His solicitor and mine will discuss the matter; I shan’t say a word to him. I was going to ask you to attend, but there is no point in it now.”
    “I will be there,” Marnie said.
    “Come if you like, but if you know what’s good for you, you won’t put all your eggs in one basket. He is not Kenelm Derwent, and I can prove it, so don’t start packing to remove to my house yet, Lady Raiker.”
    Her positive statement that he was not Kenelm, when put beside the man’s equally absolute assertion that he was, created just a small seed of doubt, but Clare was not in a mood to expand on the matter.
    “You’ll see,” she said, and swept