Little Coquette Read Online Free

stick. She had taken his arm to help him back to his bedchamber.
    “Papa! Surely you have not been downstairs! Why did you not call a servant if you needed something?”
    “I mustn’t let my legs atrophy,” he had said. “Truth to tell, I was after a nip of brandy and didn’t want anyone to know. No need to tell your mama. I am feeling a little better this evening.”
    “Don’t get better too quickly, Papa,” she had said, tucking him in. “We want you home a little longer.” He hadn’t been carrying the brandy bottle with him. His breath hadn’t smelled of brandy either, had it?
    He often stayed in London when he had these attacks of gout. Why had he come home this time? In the first heat of anger, she could believe anything of him. Had he had a falling out with his lover? Had she jilted him, and in an excess of jealousy, had Papa killed her? But he would hardly do it here, on his own doorstep.
    The answer came in a blinding flash. Papa had jilted her, and she had come threatening to tell Mama. She was holding him to ransom for some huge sum. That was why money was tight. If Papa had not done the deed himself, he might have hired someone else to do it. Lydia was in a chastened, uncertain state when Beaumont returned, dangling a key from his finger.
    “The Daffodil Room, second floor,” he said. “It cost me a quid. We’re not to take anything. Oh, and he’s expecting the constable any moment, so we had best hurry.” They walked swiftly to the staircase and began climbing.
    “What was her name?” she asked.
    “She registered yesterday afternoon as Mrs. St. John, from London. She took the room for only the one night.”
    Lydia wondered if it was a coincidence, her using a variation on Sir John’s name. “Did he not wonder when she didn’t return to the inn last night?”
    “He suspected her vocation. It is not unusual for a member of the muslin company to stay out all night.”
    “She would not have told him where she was going, I suppose?”
    Beaumont hesitated a moment before replying, “She didn’t say.” Lydia looked on the verge of fainting. No need to let her know the worst.
    The bedroom doors bore painted flowers to match the name of the room or suite. When they espied the daffodil, Beaumont inserted the key and they entered a spacious chamber done in daffodil yellow, with a view of the High Street through a pair of windows, one on either side of the canopied bed. The room smelled of musky perfume, powder, and stale air. A bottle of wine, half empty, and a single glass rested on the bedside table, along with a ladies’ magazine. Although the bed had not been slept in, the coverlet had been pulled down and the pillows tossed aside. The room bore other traces of occupancy as well. Lydia’s nostrils pinched in distaste to see such slovenly disarray.
    Mrs. St. John had made a great deal of mess for someone who traveled so light. It was hard to believe that so many objects had come out of the one bandbox. The round cardboard box, covered in elegant maroon kidskin and lined in silk, had been tossed on the bed, with its lid beside it. A foam of lingerie tumbled onto the coverlet. One pink satin mule with a high heel and a puff of pink eiderdown decorating the toe was latched playfully over the rim of the bandbox. The other was on the floor halfway across the room, as if she had not just kicked it off but thrown it in a fit of temper.
    On the toilet table sat an array of cosmetic bottles and boxes, along with a brush, comb, and hand mirror in chased silver. Lydia went to examine the articles, which held a strange fascination for one accustomed to seeing only a brush, comb, and talcum powder on her own and her mama’s toilet tables. Face powder, rouge, perfume, nail file, manicure scissors, and assorted small articles, perhaps for arranging the coiffure, sat in a jumble on the mahogany surface. All this for one day’s visit. A dusting of face powder was sprinkled over it all.
    “Do you see a