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“Of course,” said Geraldine. “Rayley and Trevor shall find your dear Anne.”
“Trevor and Rayley shall help look for your dear Anne,” Trevor amended, for Geraldine was prone
to be a bit rash in her promises. Her confidence in them was a fine thing, but he didn’t wish to offer
this clearly shaken woman false hope. “But you say you know where she is already? Perhaps if you
started again and told us the story in a more… logical fashion.”
Tess nodded and sighed, making a Herculean effort to control her nerves. She sipped her sherry,
gazed for a few moments at the half-decorated tree, and finally managed to present an admirably
linear recounting of recent events. Her youngest daughter Anne, just seventeen, was to have her debut
in the spring and in anticipation of the event Tess had commissioned an artist to paint the girl’s
portrait. The man, who went by the suspiciously affected name of LaRusse Frederick Chapman, came
with the highest recommendations and, in fact, his early sketches of Anne had shown great promise.
But he turned out to have what Tess described as “bohemian tendencies” and apparently at some point
in the process of painting her portrait, he had furthermore managed to seduce the girl. The two of
them had now disappeared south, into the countryside of Kent.
And here Tess paused to withdrawn a letter from her pocket, one scribbled by Anne before her
departure, telling her mother she was in love, that LaRusse had declared her to be his perfect muse,
and that the two of them were traveling to Hever Castle to join an artist colony there. There was a bit
of the obligatory girlish nonsense about how this LaRusse was “her preordained fate,” along with a
warning that she would not, under any circumstances, be persuaded from his side. At the bottom of
the note the girl had written in large block letters: DO NOT FOLLOW ME, MAMA. I MEAN IT.
“What do you make of this last bit?” Trevor asked quietly, before passing the letter to Rayley. But, to
his surprise, it was Tess who answered the question.
“I believe the last line is a subconscious admission that Anne wishes to be followed,” Tess said.
“That she may have been having doubts on some level even as she penned the note. She went out the
window,” she added, with an ironic twist of her mouth. “Climbed down the side of the chimney, at
least according to our neighbors, which is quite the grand gesture when you consider that she simply
could have walked out the front door. She was hardly kept a prisoner.”
“So you suspect this is more an act of youthful rebellion rather than a true determination to be with
this man,” Trevor said, privately pleased that Tess was seeing the situation so clearly.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean she will gladly return – not with me and not with any emissary I might
send,” Tess said. “Anne is of a certain temperament. She says she intends to be her own person. She
says this quite often, whether anyone asks her or not.”
“Quite,” said Trevor, who felt an unexpected flicker of sympathy for the girl. Her mother was a
known bluestocking – well educated and, like the others in Geraldine’s social circle, an avowed
supporter of liberal causes, including votes for women. Her older sister was a paragon of a different
sort. Marjorie’s own spectacularly successful debut had resulted in the match of the season, a lavish
wedding which linked her to a rising young barrister from one of the best families in London. This
coup was followed a year later by the triumphant birth of not one, but two, sons - the perfect “heir and
spare” that dynasties demanded. It would be hard for a young girl to claim her turf in such a family,