“Why marry under a false name?” she asked.
“For the mother’s benefit— Madame Stephanie, as you know
her,” he answered without hesitation. “She’s a horrid hag, I know, but I believe she is convinced that her daughter has married one Angus d’Arcy, a west-country landowner, and they come to London and stay with her occasionally. Far safer than going to any hotel, where they’d have to register and Hunter might possibly be recognised, and madame firmly believes her daughter is happily married to this d’Arcy and knows nothing at all of the Perivale that a girl named Carter married. Isabella’s clever enough to know she mustn’t outrage the sense of respectability that goes with her mother’s generation, and I don’t doubt she’s deceived that mother.”
“But— but why this terrible deception?” Miss B
