A KIND MAID HELPED AN OLD WOMAN MOCKED IN A DRESS SALON — UNAWARE SHE WAS THE DUKE’S MOTHER

Chapter 3

A carriage waited for her at the corner — plain and black and without a crest. The footman who handed her in did not laugh at her rags, for he knew exactly who she was. As the wheels turned toward Mayfair, Isold sat back against the cushions and pressed the warm flannel to her cheek, and thought of the girl with the steady hands.

When the carriage rolled into the courtyard of Stonehurst House, Evander came out to the hall in surprise. He was a man of two-and-thirty, tall and dark, built like the men in the old family portraits who had ridden to war. He had a grave, handsome face and a habit of stillness that strangers mistook for coldness.

“Mother,” he said, and stopped. “What in God’s name are you wearing?”

“A lesson, Evander.” Isold let the footman take the wretched cloak and stood revealed in her own fine gray gown. “I have spent the afternoon as a beggar in the finest salon in London. Do you know what I learned? The women who smile at your title would not cross a room to keep an old woman from freezing. I was mocked. Called a beggar. Lady Saraphina Morant told me that some stains never come out. She meant me.”

The Duke’s jaw went hard. “She did not know you.”

“Of course she did not know me. That is the entire point. A person’s true face is the one they wear toward those who can do nothing for them.” She paused, and her voice changed. “All but one. A maid in a black dress and a white apron knelt and took my frozen hands and gave me tea. When I asked why she would risk her place for a stranger, she said cold is cold, whether it touches a duchess or a beggar. And for that kindness, that woman Belmont dismissed her on the spot and cast her out into the snow.”

The study had gone quiet. Edmund Ralthorne, the Duke’s solicitor, stood in the doorway, his watchful face gone still.

“Find her,” Isold said. “Find that girl and see that she does not freeze for the crime of being decent to me.”

The Duke turned to his solicitor. “Ralthorne. You heard.”

“I did, sir.”

“Madame Belmont’s salon, Harrow Street. A maid dismissed this afternoon. Find her lodgings. Do it quietly and do it quickly.” His dark eyes were unreadable. “And make discreet inquiries into the salon itself. I have a sudden curiosity about how Madame Belmont conducts her affairs.”

It took him two days. Edmund Ralthorne was a thorough man — the sort who pulled a single thread and followed it to the whole garment. He learned the maid’s name was Lydia Thornton. He learned she had worked three years for wages a stable boy would scorn. He learned from a tearful junior seamstress that the maid was the finest pair of hands in the establishment, and that her work was passed off as Madame Belmont’s own.

He learned, last of all, where she lodged. And on the third morning, a black carriage drew up outside a narrow boarding house off Cheapside, and the whole street came to its windows to stare.