It was no wonder he and Max could barely stand to be in the same room.
“Don’t like green food, either,” Bentworth said. He pushed away a bowl of soggy spinach in favor of stabbing a boiled potato bursting from its skin. He plopped it on his plate and beckoned the footman to bring the butter. Apparently Bentworth was a frequent guest at the Hungreaths’, as the servant seemed well aware of the man’s delight with the dairy confection, and apportioned a generous pale yellow slab onto the potato. “Don’t care for the sweets, and told him too. M’wife has a sweet tooth, loves sugar biscuits, but don’t care for ’em myself. Just meat and potatoes and bread. Stewed carrots, beets, onions. Can’t abide hard or crunchy.”
“He must be a versatile chef in order to prepare those items in an agreeable way,” Victoria commented in a voice as bland as the food she was eating. Perhaps the Hungreaths ought to speak with Lord Bentworth about hiring a better chef. But she wasn’t all that hungry, and, unlike in Italy, the food here was pale in color and mostly the same texture. And thankfully, as long as she kept nodding every so often and adding a comment once in a while, she could try to comb through her tangled thoughts.
It was no news to her that Max had been involved with the Tutela when he was younger. She’d seen the secret society’s mark on the back of his shoulder: a whiplike, sinuous dog curved in a writhing circle. As abhorrent as the society it represented, the tattoo was symbolic of the mortals who acted, as Kritanu had once said, like subservient bitches and whores for the undead.
The Tutela coaxed and lured people of all ages into their alliance, preying on the mortal fear of death by promising a chance for immortality and protection from the undead. Max had been one of them for a time, but now she knew without a doubt that the experience, and his early, naive choices, had given him an unflinching and deeply rooted hatred of the undead and the Tutela.
Victoria realized with a start that the people around her seemed to be looking at her, waiting for something. “Pardon me,” she said with a little smile, “I seem to have been woolgathering. What was it you asked, Mrs. Cranwrathe?”
The woman across the table cleared her throat in a grating, rough manner that sent Victoria reaching for her own wine. “I was saying, Lady Rockley, how delightful it was for you to encourage the new marquess to join us this evening.” There was a sparkle in her light eyes that made Victoria straighten up in her chair. “I understand you are still in residence at St. Heath’s Row? And he arrived yesterday?”
She glanced down the table and saw that James, who’d been seated clear at the other end near his hostess, was buffeted on both sides by eager mamas. The poor man. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mrs. Cranwrathe. I’m no longer in residence at St. Heath’s Row, but have taken over the home of my mother’s deceased aunt.”
The footman slipped in between her and Lord Bentworthand removed their rose-patterned dishes: the man’s fairly gleaming in its emptiness, and Victoria’s roses still obliterated by blobs of potatoes, carrots, and a bit of stringy pheasant. Frivolous confections towering on small plates replaced them, and everyone’s dessert was dispatched with great enthusiasm, except for Bentworth’s.
“Shall we ladies repair to the parlor for sherry?” said Lady Hungreath from her position further down the table. “There are sugar biscuits as well.”
Victoria made her way between the other guests, slipping her arm around Gwendolyn, who’d just returned from refreshing herself. As they walked to the parlor, she glanced out at the gardens behind the house. It was barely eight o’clock, so the sun had slipped near the horizon, but was still at just the top of the trees in the distance. She would stay for another hour, perhaps ninety minutes, and then would make her excuses.
Once the flurry of skirts and crocheted wraps and reticules were settled, along with their owners, in the parlor, Victoria realized that Sara Regalado was missing. Drat and blast! She should have hung back and waited to enter the room until she was sure the other woman had joined them.
That faintly supercilious smile during the soup course had implied the Italian chit was up to no good. But now Victoria was in a fix. The men were in the study, enjoying their cigars and brandy, and until they came in to join the women in the parlor, she was going to be stuck here, playing whist or listening to wedding plans or gossip about who was fornicating with whom.
Or at least, if she weren’t Victoria Gardella Grantworth de Lacy, she would be stuck in this green and gold parlor, playing the polite Society matron. But being Illa Gardella, and having other matters to deal with besides gossip and fashion, she would take matters into her own hands.
Victoria stood, excusing herself to freshen up.
And, as luck would have it, as she started out of the room, she glanced toward one of the hip-level square windows that faced the Hungreaths’ enthusiastic gardens of pergolas flanked by clusters of lilies and hyacinth bushes, decorated with climbing roses. She saw the flutter of a rose-colored fabric as it passed behind the statue of a water-spouting cupid.
Sara had been wearing a rose-colored frock.
Moments later, Victoria was hurrying along the slate pathway, staying out of sight of the house windows as much as possible. Although she had to enter from the other side of the garden, she found the cupid fountain and started off in the direction in which the fluttering skirt had disappeared.
Victoria avoided dry sticks and rustling leaves, peering around trees and hedges before turning a corner. One arm of the path took her through the herb garden, where she passed clumps of silver-leafed sage, yellow hyssop, and miniature myrtle. She paused often to look through a filter of climbing rose vines and decorative wrought iron, or clusters of tall grasses and equally tall blooms.
Everything was still but the spray of water from the cupid’s mouth, rumbling in the distance. A bird chirped a warning, then fluttered to its nest, sending a few dried leaves drifting down. The sun lowered, its orange ball blazing through the treetops in the distance, still clearly lighting the garden.
Victoria increased her pace, and found herself retracing her steps through the four large circular pathways of the garden, all of which intersected at the cupid fountain. There was no one about.
Frowning, she pivoted at last to return to the house, admitting defeat. Either she hadn’t seen what she thought she had, or Sara had made her way back inside. Or she was hiding somewhere that Victoria couldn’t find—but there was really no place for her to do so.