The Beguilement of Lady Eustacia Cavanagh: The Cavanaughs Volume 3

by Stephanie Laurens

  Ryder shook his head in disbelief. “I have to admit to being in awe—Hadley shouldn’t have been able to worm his way out of such a situation, but he found a story that Mordaunt didn’t know enough not to believe. Hadley played on Mordaunt’s expectations of ton behavior and got away with it.”

  Frederick drily added, “Hadley also spun a tale that Mordaunt wanted to believe—he didn’t want to think that he’d been played like a fish on a line from the start.”

  “But,” Mary said, “Mordaunt now knows the truth.”

  “Indeed.” Ryder cut a glance at Frederick.

  Frederick noted Ryder’s look and transferred his gaze to Stacie. “In order to ensure that Hadley didn’t, somehow, manage to dream up yet another twist, I felt it wise to tell Mordaunt of our expectations of an addition to our family in January.”

  “What?” The dowager sat up and, along with the other ladies, looked at Stacie.

  She blushed delightfully and tipped her head their way. “We only found out yesterday, when Dr. Sanderson examined me.”

  As delighted as his wife and proud with it, Frederick smiled as congratulations rained down on both him and Stacie.

  Eventually, however, the ladies refocused, and Mary asked, “So what do we do next?” She looked around the table. “I assume we’re all in agreement that it’s Hadley who has been arranging the attacks on you both?” At the last, she looked from Frederick to Stacie.

  It was Ernestine who suggested, “This Mr. Mordaunt doesn’t sound as if he would be the most forgiving of men. Is it possible for us to…well, leave it to him to suitably chastise Hadley?”

  “No.” Both Frederick and Ryder had spoken simultaneously. Ryder looked to Frederick, who explained, “Mordaunt is not a man to cross—Rand and his sources were abundantly clear on that point. And yes, Mordaunt will be exceedingly keen to wreak vengeance on Hadley—not least to ensure the story of how Hadley has effectively swindled him never gets out. However, quite aside from the moral question of consigning even Hadley to the untender mercies of someone of Mordaunt’s reputation, I can’t be comfortable giving Hadley any chance whatsoever of doing something desperate in a last-ditch effort to placate Mordaunt.”

  Her features set, Stacie nodded. “For instance, by attempting to kill you himself.”

  His eyes flicked to meet hers. “Or you.”

  Their gazes held for an instant, long enough for each to sense the other’s resolution.

  “Consequently,” Frederick said, “as we have no evidence beyond the circumstantial, I believe we need to confront Hadley and force a confession from him.”

  “Not by—in any way, shape, or form—using yourself as bait.” Stacie’s words rang with iron-clad determination.

  Her tone brought a smile to Frederick’s lips. He inclined his head. “No, indeed. I am not of a mind to place either of us at risk.”

  He glanced at Ryder.

  To the ladies, Ryder said, “As we speak, Mordaunt will be arranging to go after Hadley, but first, Mordaunt’s men will have to find Hadley, and Hadley’s proved adept at avoiding them. However, that does mean that whatever we do, we need to move quickly—before Hadley realizes something’s changed and that Mordaunt is after him and, this time, decides to take matters into his own hands and makes a bid to remove Frederick or Stacie.” He glanced at Frederick, then at Stacie, and grimly added, “For Hadley’s purpose, either of you would do.”

  Tapping his fingertips on the tablecloth, Frederick said, “While we might, eventually, be able to assemble formal proof of Hadley’s involvement in the attacks, to do so, we would need to trace the thug—or possibly thugs—who have been trying to kill us over the past week, and we don’t have time for that.”

  “Nor,” stated the dowager, “would we wish to visit a scandal of such magnitude as a criminal trial on this family.”

  Frederick inclined his head in acknowledgment. “So that leaves us facing the question of inveigling Hadley to say enough before witnesses to implicate himself.”

  Mary’s eyes had narrowed on her husband. Now, she glanced at Frederick, then at Stacie. “With our combined talents, that shouldn’t be impossible.”

  Ryder nodded. “On the way back here, Frederick and I had an idea.”

  Stacie held up a staying hand and pushed back her chair. “If we’re to give this endeavor our best, I suggest we repair to the drawing room.”

  Readily, indeed eagerly, they all rose and returned to the drawing room.

  As Frederick, the last of the group, was about to cross the threshold, Fortingale ventured, “Once you have your plan devised, my lord, rest assured that I and the entire household will stand ready to do whatever is necessary to implement it.”

  Frederick smiled. “Thank you, Fortingale. Her ladyship and I will inform you of our requirements as soon as we can.”

  Fortingale bowed, and still smiling, Frederick followed the others into the drawing room. The door shut behind him, and they all found seats. Then, between them, he and Ryder outlined the bare bones of the plan they hoped would lure Hadley Barkshaw into revealing his guilt.

  An hour later, Stacie led the others into the room on the first floor she’d elected to use as her private parlor. She crossed to the escritoire, set between two long windows, sat on the chair before it, let down the lid, and reached for a pen and her recently delivered new stationery, embossed with her title and the Albury coat of arms.

  The others took up positions around the room—Frederick and Ryder lounging against the mantel, while the other ladies settled on the chaise and the delicate chairs.

  “Very well.” Stacie dipped her nib into the inkwell. “Tell me how to phrase this.”

  Emily—who was a dab hand at wording invitations, having assisted the dowager in that capacity for a decade and more—dutifully recited, “My dearest Carlisle and Aurelia. It is my greatest hope that you will both find yourselves free…”

  Emily continued, and Stacie wrote out the two invitations they’d decided to send, one to Carlisle and Aurelia and the other to Hadley, inviting all three to a “family dinner” at Albury House that evening. After apologizing for the short notice, they’d decided to include what Ryder had termed a well-baited hook by declaring that Frederick and Stacie were expecting to return to Brampton Hall again, but wanted to discuss a matter that impacted on the estate prior to leaving London.

  Stacie finished the notes and blotted them, and Emily told her the addresses to which to direct them.

  Finally, the notes were ready, and Frederick rang and handed them to Fortingale, instructing him to dispatch both notes immediately in the hands of two footmen. “Tell the men that the notes must be delivered as soon as possible—the man you send with the note to Mr. Barkshaw might have to hunt him down—and both men are to wait for a reply and return with it as soon as they’re able. If necessary, they may say the message relates to urgent family business and tell them to take hackneys as much as possible—time is of the essence.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Fortingale departed with zeal in his step.

  Stacie stretched her arms, then looked at the others. “Tea?”

  They could do nothing more until they were assured that Hadley as well as Carlisle and Aurelia would attend their hastily convened dinner party; there was a general consensus that tea would be an excellent way to pass the time.

  “In that case”—Stacie rose and motioned the others to their feet—“we’ll be much more comfortable in the drawing room.”

  They returned downstairs and settled to wait.

  To everyone’s relief, they didn’t have to wait for long. Both footmen returned within the hour.

  The first, who reported back while the company in the drawing room was still fortifying themselves with tea and scones, relayed Carlisle’s and Aurelia’s politely worded acceptance. The second, who had set out to find Hadley, eventually arrived as the clock ticked toward the hour.

  “I was lucky, my lord,” Thomas reported. “Mr. Barkshaw’s landlady tried to t
ell me he was away in the country, but when I showed her the seal on the letter and explained, like you said, that it was a matter of urgent family business, she ummed and aahed and eventually said he was staying with her sister two streets over, but that I wasn’t to tell him she’d told. So I headed over to her sister’s, but I spotted Mr. Barkshaw walking up the street, so I hailed him and gave him the note—as if I’d just been leaving his old address and happened to see him.” Thomas grinned. “He never thought to ask, and once he read the note, he seemed quite eager and said he would attend as requested.”

  “Excellent.” Frederick and Stacie both commended Thomas, then Frederick dismissed him.

  Now they knew that their plan could go ahead, the others were already discussing the various steps.

  Frederick met Stacie’s eyes and, under cover of the others’ chatter, said, “I’m determined to see an end to this business tonight.” Protecting her and, now, their unborn child had evolved into a compulsion that far exceeded even his previous obsession with the rarest of musical manuscripts.

  She smiled and linked her arm in his. “Well, then.” She turned him to face the others and, in a tone as resolute as his own, said, “We’d better get to it.”

  They returned to the group, and Frederick took charge, and together, they turned their minds to defining how their denouement would run.

  The single, most intractable potential hiccup in their plan was that none of them felt able to definitively absolve Aurelia of complicity in her younger brother’s scheme.

  If, as Emily maintained, Aurelia had been actively supporting her brother, very likely without Carlisle’s knowledge given Carlisle’s attitude to gaming, then her involvement, certainly the degree of it, revolved about who sat higher in her loyalties—her husband or her brother, her husband’s family or her own, one known to be overly sensitive regarding any hint of scandal.

  As Ernestine had said, “Even if she doesn’t approve of Hadley’s scheme, that doesn’t mean she hasn’t known about it all along and is simply turning a blind eye.” The normally mild companion had set her chin and stated, “In my book, that makes her equally culpable.”

  No one had argued.

  However, when Carlisle and Aurelia were shown into the Albury House drawing room at the not-quite-fashionable hour of seven o’clock, the others all greeted them with easy smiles and outward good humor.

  Hadley arrived on their heels, decked out in clothes that were the height of current fashion; both Frederick and Ryder recognized his coat as hailing from the latest premier gentleman’s outfitters and whispered as much in their respective wife’s ear.

  If Hadley saw anything odd in being invited to be part of such a select company, he gave no sign—and Stacie artfully thanked him for helping to balance the numbers about her table, intimating as she did that, given the subject they hoped to discuss after dinner, she’d been limited to inviting only family, and her only unwed brother, Godfrey, had been out of town.

  While in the drawing room prior to dinner, the dowager, Mary, and Ernestine were delegated to do their best to calm Aurelia and, if such a thing were possible, to make her feel welcome enough to relax her usual poker-rigid demeanor. Meanwhile, Stacie and Emily joined Frederick and Ryder in chatting with Carlisle and Hadley about inconsequential subjects.

  When Hadley could contain his curiosity no longer and inquired, in an airy way, as to the family business that had brought them there, earning a disapproving frown from Carlisle, Frederick smiled and, at his most enigmatic, stated, “I rather think the change I wish to discuss after dinner will please everyone here.”

  It would have been atrocious manners to insist on hearing further details then and there. Stymied, yet intrigued, Hadley resisted the urge and continued to play the charming and innocuous rakehell, a role he’d obviously spent some time rehearsing; Stacie considered he’d improved since the first time she’d met him.

  Just before Fortingale was due to appear and announce that dinner was served, Stacie slipped from Frederick’s side and glided across to join the ladies. It seemed they’d expended a significant effort and had achieved a notable result; Stacie saw Aurelia attempt a small smile in response to one of Mary’s more outrageous tales about her children.

  In discussing Aurelia and her possible involvement, all the ladies had agreed that her stiff behavior might well be the outcome of nervousness and tension occasioned by her overactive fear of scandal—but whether that nervousness and tension was due to concern over how she herself and Carlisle presented themselves to the ton or concern arising from her knowledge of Hadley’s scheme, there was really no way to tell.

  After Stacie had chatted with the group for several minutes, Mary rose and drew her aside. Lowering her voice, Mary murmured, “I do believe Aurelia’s starting to thaw. I wouldn’t say she’s relaxed, but she’s more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her. I think it’s the smaller number of people—I’ve only previously met her at balls and the like, and she’s always struck me as someone who’s smiling with her back teeth clenched tight.”

  Stacie thought back to the earlier occasions on which she’d met Aurelia. “Previously, the smallest gathering I’ve seen her at was the dinner Frederick’s mother hosted before our wedding, and there were many more people here that night—lots more of Frederick’s more distant family and connections.”

  Mary nodded. “I wouldn’t say she’s absolved of guilt yet, but I would have to admit the possibility exists that her stiff attitude to you and, indeed, all of us might have nothing whatsoever to do with her harboring a dislike sufficient to make her a party to Hadley’s scheme.”

  Stacie nodded, then observed, “If she doesn’t know anything of Hadley’s scheme…” She met Mary’s eyes.

  Compassion swam in Mary’s gaze, and she dipped her head. “Indeed. If so, we’ll need to stand ready to support her, because if she doesn’t know of it, given her obsession with avoiding scandal, she’s in for a truly horrible shock.”

  Fortingale appeared in the doorway and announced that dinner was served.

  Claiming Ryder’s arm, Stacie led the company into the formal dining room, while Frederick escorted Mary, Carlisle gave the dowager his arm, and Hadley gallantly escorted Aurelia, leaving Ernestine and Emily to bring up the rear.

  The seating had been carefully arranged, and Emily had set out beautifully lettered cards. Necessarily, Ryder and Mary took the places on Stacie’s and Frederick’s right, respectively, but rather than Carlisle being on Stacie’s left, as he should have been, they’d placed Hadley there, with Carlisle on Frederick’s left.

  As they all took their seats, Stacie said to Hadley, “I’m sure you won’t mind being in Carlisle’s place—Frederick wished to sound him out over this latest idea of his.”

  Hadley’s eyes lit. “I see. And what is Frederick’s latest idea?”

  Stacie smiled fondly up the table at her husband, who had already engaged Carlisle in what, from that distance, appeared to be a serious conversation. “I wouldn’t want to steal his thunder, but…”

  When she didn’t immediately go on, Hadley prompted, “Yes?”

  Stacie flung him a conspiratorial look. “Suffice it to say that it’s very possible there’ll be a change in Carlisle’s status soon.”

  Hadley blinked. “Indeed?”

  Fortingale interrupted with the first course, and Stacie turned to Ryder. Hadley had to wait for some considerable time before he managed to extract himself from Ernestine’s and Emily’s steady stream of comments and, again, snag Stacie’s attention.

  This time, with an attempt to make the inquiry jovial, he asked, “And how do you feel about your husband’s latest notion?”

  “Well,” Stacie said, “quite obviously, Frederick’s interest in music is longstanding, and combined with my interest in supporting worthy local musicians, his idea seems a natural evolution.”

  Ryder duly chimed in with a tale of a noble acquaintance who had established an arrangement with his heir—a cousin—to take
over his estate in order to enable the titled gentleman to go exploring in Egypt. “He managed it so that his heir effectively inherited the estate, yet he kept the title, which was important as that allowed him to trade on it in getting foreign rulers’ permission to dig in their lands.”

  Stacie watched Hadley’s eyes grow rounder and rounder as Ryder continued to embroider his entirely fictitious tale.

  When, after the end of the final course, Stacie rose to lead the ladies back to the drawing room, she was smiling; before she turned away, she met Frederick’s eyes and gave an infinitesimal nod. Between them, via a series of separate but apparently connected comments, she and Ryder had succeeded in planting the notion in Hadley’s mind that Frederick was on the cusp of announcing his “retirement” from managing the marquessate’s estates, effectively passing Carlisle’s potential inheritance on to Carlisle early, freeing Frederick, still retaining the title, to devote himself to the pursuit of his music via an extended sojourn on the Continent, visiting the major composers of the day.

  Ernestine had, with absolutely exquisite timing, inserted the last tiny spark designed to ignite Hadley’s hopes and send them skyrocketing; in a whispered exchange, she’d confided to Hadley that she believed that, due to a childhood accident, Stacie had always feared she would be unable to conceive—a fact that had inhibited her from accepting any offer prior to Frederick’s, who, having Carlisle as his heir, hadn’t cared. Ernestine had done a superb job of appearing overcome at the thought of Frederick being so swept away by love, and she’d gabbled just a little in suggesting that a part of Frederick’s reason for wanting to travel on the Continent was to spare Stacie the inevitable questions and expectations and the resulting gossip.