Page 79 of Mesmerized

Stephen sighed. “I hope she will not dwell on it too much.”

“I left them in Lady St. Leger’s room. Your mother is lying down, with a cloth dipped in lavender water on her head, and Belinda is reading to her. I’m not sure either of them is attending much to what is on the page, but at least it keeps their minds off what happened.” Olivia looked up at him, concern in her eyes. “What about you? How are you faring?”

“I am all right. It was foolish of me not to guess that Pamela was involved in their scheme. Obviously someone had given them a large number of facts about Roderick and the family. Who better than a member of the family? And I knew Pamela’s mercenary nature better than any of them.”

“You could not have known,” Olivia said firmly. “Disloyalty, I think, is too far from your nature for your mind to leap to that sort of conclusion. If anyone should have thought of her involvement, it is I. It is my field of expertise, after all, and as an outsider, I should have been better able to look at the situation logically, impartially.”

She knew, in fact, one reason she had not even considered Pamela to be in league with the medium was that she had been too wrapped up in her own jealousy of the woman. She had had difficulty looking at her as anything but the woman Stephen had once loved and might still.

Olivia took a breath, summoning up her strength. It was not a subject she wished to pursue, but for Stephen’s sake, it had to be done. “You must be feeling a great deal of sorrow. You were, after all, in love with her.”

Stephen looked at her, startled. “You knew that I—”

“Pamela herself told me that you were in love with her, although her story was far from the truth. Belinda told me later what had really happened between you—how much you had loved her and how she had broken your heart.”

“I thought myself madly in love with her,” he agreed. “She was beautiful.”

“Yes, she was.”

“She was even lovelier at eighteen—fresh and blooming. I was a complete fool. I had no idea what sort of person lay beneath her looks. Looking back on it, I have to be thankful that she jilted me. If she had not, I would have married her and been miserable these past ten years, no doubt. I was filled with hurt and rage at the time, of course. I rashly ran off to America, hating my brother, hating her. But before long, I realized what I had escaped, and I was thankful. I only wish my brother had not had to endure marriage with her.”

Olivia looked at him, perplexed. Stephen glanced down at her and smiled. “Why do you look so? Did you think I had been pining away for her all these years?”

“Well, I—I mean, you loved her, and she is—was—so beautiful. I—did you not?”

“Lord, no. I was infatuated with her looks. I scarcely knew her, really. As it is with young girls making their come-out, we were all chaperoned. I danced with her. I exchanged the kind of polite chitchat that one does. We managed to sneak away enough to share a few kisses. But that was all. I would like to think that if I had actually talked to her, spent time with her, I would have realized what she was like. As it was, I was in love with an image. Nothing more. It died quickly once I was away from her. When I returned, I wanted nothing to do with her. I looked at her and felt nothing.”

“Oh.” Olivia supposed it was awful of her, with the poor woman dead, but she could not help feeling a burst of joy at Stephen’s words. “I see.”

“I am sorry she died,” Stephen went on. “As I would be sorry for anyone. But I do not mourn her as a lost love.”

Stephen took her hand and raised it to his lips. “You are—”

“Ah, there you are,” said a voice behind them, and Stephen released her hand and turned.

“Lord Moreland. Come in.”

For once Olivia was less than happy to see her diminutive great-uncle. What had Stephen been about to say?

“I hope I am not intruding.”

“Of course not, Uncle,” Olivia lied. “Come, sit down with me.”

His bright bird eyes went from her face to Stephen’s as he came over to the chair Olivia had indicated. They sat in front of Stephen’s desk, and Stephen resumed his seat behind it.

“I wondered what news you had had,” Great-uncle Bellard said. “Has the constable come? Has Madame Valenskaya been found?”

“Yes, the constable and the doctor have both been here. They removed Pamela’s body. As for Madame Valenskaya...” Stephen shrugged. “Rafe has joined Tom and the servants in searching for her, but they have found no sign of her yet. I am inclined to think she probably got well away from the house before we even knew she was gone. Perhaps she even had some sort of conveyance waiting for her. It seems far too organized and efficient for the woman, but it may be I am entirely wrong about her, and she is so clever that she carries on a perfect masquerade as a fool.”

“Do you think she killed Lady Pamela?” Great-uncle Bellard asked.

“I have no idea. I am not even sure that Lady Pamela was killed. According to the doctor, she was not shot, nor stabbed nor beaten nor strangled. He is inclined to believe she died of natural causes, probably a heart attack. I did not tell him, of course, that she was in the act of stealing the Martyrs’ treasure. But given that she was, perhaps the fear of being discovered or the excitement of it caused her heart to fail, though no one has ever seen any indication in her of a weak heart.”

“And one has to wonder if Madame Valenskaya would have been able to kill her,” Great-uncle Bellard added. “After all, she was much older than Lady Pamela, who was young and fit.”

“And Madame Valenskaya had been drinking,” Olivia pointed out. “I noticed two nights in a row that there was alcohol on her breath.”

“And why, if they fought over the casket, were there no signs of a struggle, either in the room or on Pamela?” Stephen mused. “Why, having bested her, would the woman not have seized the casket and taken it with her?”