Louisa and the Missing Heiress by Anna Maclean Read Free Book Online Page A

down.
    A half hour passed. The doorbell rang.
    “Finally!” Mr. Wortham ran to the door and was about to fling it open when Digby, with a gentle clearing of his throat, discreetly stepped before him into the hall. Gentlemen do not answer their own doors.
    “Preston,” growled a woman’s voice, “I have come again to tea, as Dot pleaded. I hope she is here for a change.” Alfreda Thorney marched into the parlor, stopping only to let Digby take her wrap. There was a frozen moment of hostility between Digby and Alfreda (Did no one notice it but I?); then she recollected herself. “Ah. I see she is not. Good thing I did not remove my gloves. Really, this will not do. I will cease calling on her.” She folded her arms over her meager bosom and glared.
    “Good day, Miss Thorney,” Sylvia said, rising and extending her hand.
    “It is not a good day. I do not like being mocked in this manner.”
    “I’m sure Dot doesn’t intend—” I began.
    “I’m no longer sure of what Dot does or does not intend. Her hasty marriage to this gentleman seems to have altered her. She has lost her breeding. No tea, thank you. I won’t be staying.”
    Preston Wortham turned beet red with anger.
    “Perhaps if her own family had been more sympathetic to her nature, Dot wouldn’t have wandered so far from home when she made her vows,” he growled at Alfreda. “She told me about her sixteenth birthday, when for a gift you brought a physician who specialized in weight reduction!”
    “For her own good. She had spent the summer in Newport and ate too many ices!” Alfreda roared back, and then jumped, surprised that she had raised her own voice.
    “I think this kind of conversation will do us little good,” I suggested, stepping between them, for Mr. Wortham had clenched his fist and seemed on the verge of violence. The doorbell rang again. Digby quit the parlor and returned with the Misses Sarah and Edith Brownly.
    “Oh my,” Edith said. “Dot has done it again, hasn’t she?”
    “We had better get to the bottom of this,” I said. “Digby, did she by any chance lose her hat again today?”
    The irony was not lost on Digby. He smiled ever so slightly. “No, miss, not that I know of.”
    “Did she say where she was going? Do you know when she went out?”
    “No, miss. On both accounts.” Digby seemed a man of few words.
    The parlor maid giggled louder and raised her hand. “Miss,” she said softly.
    Mr. Wortham, his black hair standing on end, turned to the little maid and roared, “Speak up! Speak up!”
    “Well, sir, if you yell at me like that . . .”
    “I’m sorry, Brigid. Tell me, please, what you know of Mrs. Wortham’s absence,” he said in a low voice between grinding teeth.
    “She went out to buy a raisin cake, sir.”
    “A raisin cake?” four voices shouted at once.
    “I’ll be damned,” said Preston Wortham. “I wonder if she’s got herself in the family way. This just is not like Dot!”
    “Quite so,” agreed Alfreda. “Though I must add that any discussion of . . . of . . . is completely out of place in the front parlor.”
    “Discussion of what?” asked Edgar Brownly, appearing in the curtained doorway. “I let myself in,” he said. “No one seemed to hear the bell ring. What is the commotion?”
    He was breathing quickly, panting almost, as if he had been running or in some way exerting his large frame. I noticed a water stain darkening the hem of his trouser legs and I looked to the window, where the cold winter sun still shone, though it was low in the sky.
    “Ah,” Edgar wheezed, looking at the group. “Dot is not here.”
    Digby tried to placate us with tea and sandwiches and seedcake, but the cold silence that filled the parlor as Dottie’s family sat on silk-covered settees and carved armchairs and again began their wait was palpable. Silver spoons tinkled against thin bone china; somewhere from deeper in the house a canary sang. Edgar slurped his tea. Alfreda sniffed. Sarah