As the two continued to speak, Isabella could see now just how many people did not have Esme Montague’s good grace. They now stared openly. With the business of the Countess of Upperton’s burial over, they were free to indulge themselves. Worse still, Isabella knew that Elliot was painfully aware of it all. She could have screamed at them all to go to the Devil with their filthy curiosity.
“Elliot.” Isabella touched his arm and looked up at him. “Would you be so kind as to keep Esme company for a moment whilst I speak to my father. I know I must do it, for it is impossible to escape the encounter here.”
“Of course. But please stay close. I shall not remain silent if the Earl seeks to torment you.” His voice was rich and smooth, and the authority in it was unmistakable.
Isabella could see Esme smile, clearly impressed with her old friend’s new husband.
“I shall.” She nodded briefly at them both before turning to walk towards her father.
The Earl was, just as Esme had said, hovering awkwardly a few feet from his wife’s final resting place. He looked even worse close up, and Isabella wondered if she had her theory quite right. Could guilt and remorse really make a person look so low?
“You wish to speak to me?” Isabella chose not to address her father.
“Isabella, I am so very sorry.”
“For killing my mother?” Isabella kept her voice low; she was not keen for the onlookers to pick up on her words.
“Please, believe me, I did not kill your mother. I would never have done such a thing.”
“You would never have pushed her down the stairs? I find that curiously hard to believe.” Despite the harshness of her words, Isabella felt a little uneasy.
There was something in his expression which suggested he was almost devastated. And yet she had seen his open contempt for her mother for her entire life. How could he be devastated now by her loss?
“I know I have been hard over the years, but you cannot truly believe I would hurt her like that.”
“You told me yourself that you would hurt her if I did not convince my husband to pay you even more of a settlement on me.”
“But I did not mean to see it through. Not like that, at any rate.”
“But you would have hurt her, would you not? In some other way?” Isabella was not convinced of anything anymore.
She knew her father was cruel, but did he really have it in him to kill?
“I would have hurt her only as a means of hurting you and securing the funds I needed. I knew you would find some way to convince your husband to pay me.”
Isabella could hardly believe what she was hearing. The admission struck her as almost brutally honest. He spoke with shame at his behaviour, but it was at his threat and intention to do some harm to her mother, not to kill her, she felt sure of it.
“Actually, I told the Duke not to pay you a penny,” Isabella said defiantly and winced when she saw the old flash of anger in his eyes; old habits clearly did die hard.
“But he did pay me, Isabella. And so, I had no cause to hurt your mother.”
“You did not have a true cause to hurt my mother either way. You never did!” Isabella spoke a little more loudly than she had intended, but her anger was threatening to boil over.
She was aware of Elliot shifting a little some feet away from her as if ready to rush in and save her.
Once again, she had that wonderful feeling of protection.
“Whatever you think of me, I did not kill your mother.” He began to sound exasperated and desolate all at once. “I did not kill her.” His voice broke a little, and the sound took her back.
Isabella had never seen a moment’s emotion from the man before her until then.
“So, my mother just fell, did she?”
“No, she did not fall.” His words brought Isabella up short; she had been expecting flat denial. “She was pushed.”
“Pushed?” Isabella, despite knowing her mother’s death had been anything but an accident, still felt shocked to have it confirmed.
“Yes, your mother was pushed.” The Earl seemed ready to unravel before her very eyes.
Isabella felt hot and nauseous, and she wondered what on earth her father was about to tell her.
“If you did not push her, then who did?” Her voice was raspy and her throat dry and suddenly sore.
“Anthony.”
Chapter 27
“But I do not understand, Elliot. It was my understanding that things were going very well. Very well indeed.” Crawford Maguire’s exasperation was clear in his voice.
“It does not change what I did. It does not change what her father did either.” Elliot had known beforehand that this would be extraordinarily difficult to explain.
After all, when a person had what they wanted, they did not customarily find a way of letting it go. But that was what Elliot had decided to do; what he knew he must do.
“But as you told it to me, Isabella does not blame you for the manner of your marriage. She understands, Elliot. Did you not say so yourself?”
“Yes, and I know that she does understand. If I am honest, that makes it even worse.”
“How on earth does the understanding of your wife make things worse?”
“Because it reminds me what a fine person she is. It reminds me day in day out what I did to her.”
“Does it really matter how the marriage began? Surely what is important is how it continues.”
“I understand what you are saying to me, Crawford, and I know that you do so because you are my oldest and finest friend. And I thank you for it; please do not think that I am ungrateful for your kind words, for I am not.”
“You may not be ungrateful, Elliot, but you most certainly are obtuse.” Crawford was struggling to hide his annoyance, and Elliot was sorry for having put his friend in such a position. “Has something happened? Has the poor woman made some other mistake that you cannot forgive her for?”
“Isabella has never done anything for which I could not forgive her,” Elliot said and knew that his friend had not meant his harsh words. “And I know that you are referring to the doll, and I have, in my own way at least, apologized for my reaction. And it is true we are far past that now and have no need to speak of it again. The doll is in my room, for heaven’s sake, beneath the portrait of my dear Eleanor.”
“Then what has effected this sudden change? What has brought you to this terrible decision?” Crawford spread his hands wide and leaned back in his chair.
Elliot sighed. He had been far from looking forward to this meeting, and even as he had walked through the corridors of Coldwell Hall towards the study he had long ago set aside for his friend, he wondered if he would actually say the words out loud.
But ever since Isabella had told him it all, he had been unable to think of anything else. She had suffered enough, and he would see to it that she did not suffer a moment longer.
“You know me better than anybody, Crawford, and something has changed, as you have quite rightly perceived. After her mother’s funeral last week, Isabella told me something that has made me question my own actions, my own selfishness.”
“And that was?”
“This must remain between the two of us, my dear Crawford.”
“Of course.” Crawford looked a little affronted and rightly so.
“I know that your word is inviolate, Crawford, forgive me. But this cannot even go as far as Kitty, that is how serious it is.”
“Then it must be very serious indeed. For goodness sake, what is it?” Crawford looked suddenly concerned.
“You know as well as I do that Isabella immediately suspected her father of her mother’s death. You were there, and you heard it with your own ears, did you not?”
“Yes, and I did not doubt her, I must say. I have never liked the Earl of Upperton, and I have found his dealings with you in respect of his daughter unseemly and underhand. It would not surprise me to hear that the man would stick at nothing, especially when he had alrea
dy threatened his wife as a means of coercing his daughter. But as we all agreed at the time, there would never be a way to secure the proof of it since such proof had never been secured by those who first attended the scene. What on earth is there that we can do about it?” Crawford shrugged.
“I did not intend to do anything at all about it. As you say, the thing cannot be proved. But the Earl of Upperton had a few moments with Isabella shortly after the funeral service, and it was then that he admitted to his only daughter that the death of her mother had not been an accident.”
“You are saying that he confessed to the thing? The Earl of Upperton admitted murdering the Countess by pushing her down the stairs?” Crawford’s eyes were as round as saucers.
“No, he did not confess.”
“Then I do not understand. Either her death was an accident, or it was murder; there is no middle ground. Either the Earl killed her, or he did not.”
“He did not.” Elliot knew that he was fast reaching the point of no return.
However, he knew in his heart that he could trust Crawford Maguire with any piece of information on God’s earth and know that it would never be uttered abroad. “He told Isabella that Anthony, the young man who will one day be the Earl of Upperton, murdered his own mother.”
“Isabella’s younger brother pushed his own mother down the stairs?” Crawford’s mouth hung open in a way which almost made Elliot inappropriately laugh.
“That is exactly what he told her.”
“Then it is clear that the man would stick at nothing.” Crawford Maguire shook his head violently. “That he would blame his own son for it is appalling. The man would obviously stoop to any depth to save his own hide.”
“But his hide was not in any danger, was it?” Elliot said quietly and studied his friend’s face. “After all, as we all knew at the time, nobody suspected the death to be a crime. To all intents and purposes, the Earl of Upperton had got away with murder. The only person who did suspect him, whom he always knew would suspect him of it, was his daughter. But he knew that she could not accuse him of it without evidence, and so he was in the clear, do you not think?”
“Well, since you put it so succinctly, yes, he was in the clear.”
“And Isabella believes him,” Elliot added.
“Of all people, if Isabella believes it, I think it must be true. But really, that a boy of his age could commit such an atrocity and against his own mother is unthinkable.” Crawford was still shocked.
“He is a product of his father’s upbringing, is he not? After all, as Isabella says, Anthony has only ever seen his mother treated with contempt. And she was treated with contempt by the only person who has instructed Anthony on how life ought to be lived. Is he not mirroring his father’s behaviour, albeit in a most extreme manner?”
“Our fathers do have the greatest influence over us, that is true,” Crawford said thoughtfully. “But what possible reason could the young man have had to push his mother down the stairs?”
“Isabella asked her father the same question,” Elliot said. “And this is the hardest part of all to understand. There had been no argument between them whatsoever.”
“Nothing at all had passed between mother and son?”
“No, the Earl of Upperton was at the bottom of the stairs and saw his wife approaching from above. As if from nowhere, Anthony stepped out and put a hand squarely on his mother’s back before shoving her hard and standing with wide eyes to watch her fall, to see her hit every step on her way down. I think the whole thing has quite frightened the Earl.”
“I am not surprised it has frightened him. And perhaps it is time that dreadful man was made frightened by something. Perhaps it is fitting that he has been frightened by the fruits of his own labours. He instructed the young man in the ways of the world, and murdering his own mother was his interpretation of his father’s teachings.”
“I think you have it exactly, Crawford. And in truth, that is exactly how Isabella sees it.”
“And how is Isabella? How is she taking it all?”
“She is not at all well, Crawford. It has hit her very hard indeed although it is true to say that there was no love lost between Isabella and her brother. He had been raised by his father to see his elder sister as beneath him, almost amongst the ranks of the servants.”
“And I take it that Anthony was physically violent with Isabella also?” Crawford asked the question awkwardly.
“Not until the very end, she assures me.” Elliot felt his stomach tighten, knowing that he would have to tell the tale. “Some weeks before she was due to come here to Coldwell Hall and marry me, Isabella attempted an escape from Upperton Hall.”
“I had no idea.” Crawford sounded amazed.
“And neither did I, until Isabella and I talked. You see, I asked her exactly the same question as you did. I asked her if Anthony had ever been violent towards her, had ever hurt her physically. She told me that he had only done so once. Naturally, I asked her to recount the circumstances for I should now like to have a better account of that young man’s character. And that is when she told me of the plan she had made to escape her family and make her way to Ireland. As a matter of fact, to escape me if the truth be known.”
“But that is before you knew her and before she knew you, my dear fellow.”
“I cannot see how that makes it better, Crawford. In the dead of night, Isabella attempted to creep out of her house and into the town to walk through the darkness so that she might get onto the earliest post-chaise unseen. For a young woman to be forced to do that rekindles the shame that I felt at the time.”
“She clearly did not make it out of Upperton Hall,” Crawford said and seemed keen to have the rest of the story.
“She had crept down the great staircase and made her way almost to the door before her brother appeared. And I shudder to think about it, but it is very clear from her telling of it that he knew well that she planned to escape. He had found in her bag a timetable of sailings from Liverpool to Ireland and, instead of taking the thing straight to his father, he sought to capture her himself. That dreadful child must have waited night after night in the darkness of the hall to see if his sister would try to make her escape. I am only grateful now that he did not apprehend her on the stairs, for the Lord only knows what would have happened to her.”
“And so, he physically stopped her?”
“He pulled her back through the hall by her hair. And apparently, he did not let go until his father instructed him to do so. That his ungentlemanly brutality was witnessed by so many of their servants did not bother the young man at all. He cared only for his father’s opinion on the matter.”
“The child is surely a monster.”
“He was raised to be a monster by a monster, that is my genuine belief.”
“But I do not see how Isabella can be blamed for it.”
“Good heavens, I would never blame Isabella for such a thing. What on earth gives you such an idea, Crawford?”
“I daresay it is the fact that you now seek information on how an annulment to your marriage might be obtained. Surely that is punishment, is it not?”
“I do not seek to have the marriage annulled as a means of punishing Isabella, but as a means of setting her free.”
“But how would that be setting her free? I do not understand.”
“Isabella has lived her life with a man who was so awful he has raised a son who would kill his own mother. What that woman must have suffered in her life, I cannot begin to imagine. And then, there was I, a man so lonely that he would do any selfish thing to alleviate that loneliness.”
Lords to Be Enamored With: A Historical Regency Romance Collection Page 23
