Rogue's Reward

by Jean R. Ewing

  “But I am prepared to wager,” he said, glancing up at the sky, “that she doesn’t take kindly to rain.”

  “Oh, good heavens!” A large drop of water fell on the back of Eleanor’s hand. “Poor Lord Ranking! He’ll catch a chill and have to wrap his feet in mustard plaster.”

  “Come on,” he said, laughing and catching Eleanor by the hand. “We’ll rescue them.”

  As a distant growl of thunder rolled overhead, the crowds on the walks began to scatter.

  Diana and Walter hurried up, and they all raced back to the canopy where Lady Acton and Lord Ranking had stayed to admire the illuminations.

  “Does no one have an umbrella?” Lady Acton said, as Eleanor reached her. “Surely you didn’t come unprepared, Lord Ranking?”

  “You said it wouldn’t rain,” the duke’s heir moaned. “I cannot abide wet. If I am soaked now, I shall be abed this fortnight.”

  “Here, take my wrap,” Eleanor said, gallantly handing over her shawl. “Come, Mr. Campbell, have you no protection to offer poor Lord Ranking?”

  “Let me offer you my coat, my lord,” he said instantly.

  He stripped off that garment and held it over Lord Ranking’s head. His shirtsleeves shone white against the dark canopy overhead.

  “You will be soaked yourself, Mr. Campbell,” Lady Acton cried gaily. “Oh, dear! Must I have to witness gentlemen giving up their cloaks for another every time I come to Vauxhall? Last summer it was Sir Robert gallantly protecting Blanche Harrison, and now it’s to benefit Lord Ranking.”

  “Major Crabtree knew Miss Harrison?” Mr. Campbell said with sudden intensity.

  “Oh, indeed! She was engaged to his nephew. Oh, good heavens, he was your friend, wasn’t he, the one you mentioned to me at Hawksley? I never met Manton Barnes, as I told you, but I knew Blanche, and Sir Robert seemed to know her very well. She was upset over something, almost hysterical. The engagement had just been broken off, of course, yet this was some very dreadful distress. Sir Robert took her home. It was most touching to watch. He offered her such a gallant and sympathetic ear. I believe she must have poured out her heart to him. Of course, very shortly afterwards, she went to America.”

  And Manton Barnes received his first blackmail demand, Lee thought with an absolute certainty. So, it was indeed Blanche who’d told Barnes’s secret to the blackmailer, just as he’d suspected. This was the proof. How could he have been so very blind?

  * * *

  “I can’t bear it anymore,” Diana said sadly.

  Eleanor sat with her friend in the drawing room of Acton House. She was trying to busy herself with some embroidery, but it wouldn’t go right. Impatiently, she pulled out the last two rows of stitches. Ever since the meeting with Leander Campbell three days before, she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else. And now he seemed to have disappeared. At least no further messages had arrived from him.

  As if to echo her thoughts, Diana went on, “And now Lee’s going away. I shall miss him so much. If only he were the heir! If I were just a younger sister to the Earl of Hawksley, Mama couldn’t stop me marrying Walter.”

  Eleanor looked down. Diana was indeed a younger sister to the earl, but an illegitimate one. And so Mr. Campbell would never do anything to change the situation.

  “Your brother is confident that you and Walter will be married within the year, Diana dear. He told me so.”

  “Your mother is being very kind to us, too,” Diana replied. “Walter is to call here today. Did you know?”

  “Then that must be him now,” Eleanor said, hearing footsteps in the hall. “Oh, fiddlesticks! I have run out of blue thread. I shall have to go and get some.” She gave Diana a wink. “You won’t mind being left alone with him for a bit, will you? It’ll only take me a moment.”

  Eleanor met Walter in the doorway and showed him in to Diana.

  As she turned to go to her own room, she saw her friend run into her lover’s arms. It wasn’t proper, but who would ever know? She shut the door firmly behind her.

  It may have been half an hour later, when Eleanor suddenly became aware of a commotion in the hall. Running to the banister, she leaned over to see Lady Augusta handing her gloves to the maid.

  “My daughter is here, is she not?” The booming tones echoed up to the ceiling.

  “Yes, my lady,” the maid replied with a curtsy. “Lady Diana is in the blue drawing room with Lady Eleanor. Allow me to show your ladyship upstairs.”

  Eleanor raced to intercept them, almost colliding with Lady Augusta at the head of the stairs.

  “Oh, good morning, Lady Augusta!” she said as loudly as she dared.

  “Is something the matter with your voice, young lady? I am not deaf. There is no need to shout. Most unseemly in a young girl. Where is Lady Acton?”

  “Oh, she’s out, Lady Augusta.” Eleanor positioned herself between the dragon and the drawing room door. “Perhaps you would like to wait for her in the morning room? I’ll ring for refreshments.”

  “I do not require refreshment, Eleanor. I have come to find my daughter. Isn’t she with you?”

  “Diana isn’t well. She’s lying down. If you would like to sit in the morning room and wait, I’ll fetch her.”

  “Stuff and nonsense! The morning room is at the other end of the house as I recall. I shall wait in here.”

  Without more ado, Lady Augusta thrust Eleanor aside and grasped the doorknob.

  As it turned, Eleanor exclaimed as loudly as she could, “Why, isn’t this the loveliest May ever, Lady Augusta?”

  She had failed. Oblivious to the world, Diana and Walter were entwined together on the couch. Wrapped in her lover’s arms, her blond tresses mingled with his, Diana was being passionately and very thoroughly kissed by Walter Feveril Downe. It was equally obvious that she was kissing him back.

  Lady Augusta screamed.

  * * *

  From Vauxhall, Lee rode his black charger through the night, as urgently as if he had dispatches to deliver for Wellington. By the time he arrived at Deerfield, he had long worn out his own horse and left a string of rented nags behind him.

  He thrust aside the footman who answered the door and stormed into the study, only to be met by the surprised butler, hurrying up from the pantry where he had been polishing silver.

  “Where is the major?”

  “Why, we didn’t expect you, sir! Sir Robert left for London not these five hours since.”

  At which Leander Campbell sat down in one of the expensive chairs, threw back his head, and laughed.

  After a moment, he looked up into the astonished face of the servant.

  “Tell me what I need to know,” he said. “Or I shall tear this place apart, every floorboard, every mattress, every fashionable and costly item in it. And if I don’t find what I’m looking for, you will be next.”

  * * *

  The smelling salts and the burnt feathers had been applied to both Lady Augusta and her distraught daughter. Walter valiantly tried to defend his beloved, but Eleanor managed to grab him by the arm and insist that he leave.

  “There’s nothing you can do while hysterics reign, sir. Believe me, if you try to protect Diana it’ll only make things worse. Pray wait in the study. I’ll report everything, I promise.”

  His jaw clenched, Walter strode from the room.

  “How could you?” Lady Augusta cried. “My only daughter! How long has this been going on?”

  Diana couldn’t reply. She had buried her face in her handkerchief.

  “They’re in love, Lady Augusta,” Eleanor said bravely. “They want to marry.”

  If only Lady Acton were here to handle this!

  The Dowager Countess of Hawksley drew herself up like a drill major. “Love!” she exclaimed. “An emotion for servant girls and milkmaids. Never did I think I would live to see the day! How could my daughter be so lost to everything that is suitable?”

  Diana choked, but she looked up. “I shall marry him, Mama. I’ll die if I do
n’t.”

  “Stuff and nonsense! You are an heiress, Diana. Pray, remember whose blood you carry in your veins. What if this adventurer had gained his way with you! I shudder to think what might have transpired had I not arrived.”

  “Mama, Walter would never have—”

  “I saw for myself what this jackanapes would do, young lady. Shocking, contemptible behavior! But the answer is simple: You will never see him again.”

  Diana turned to bury her face on the back of the couch, and sobbed.

  Eleanor put her arms around her friend. She longed to tell Lady Augusta exactly what she thought of her, but nothing could be better guaranteed to make an already bad situation worse, so she held her tongue. Her relief was overwhelming when the door opened again and she heard the cool tones of another countess.

  “Good heavens!” Eleanor’s said mother lightly. “What do we have here?”

  There was silence.

  Lady Acton smiled and walked across to the mantel.

  “I do know, as a matter of fact,” she said to the two woebegone faces and the other, stiff with disdain. “I have just spoken with Mr. Downe in the study.”

  “Is Walter all right?” Diana asked through her tears.

  “As well as might be expected, considering the news I just gave him.”

  “What news can have any importance, considering what I have just witnessed here!” Lady Augusta cried. “My daughter with a viscount’s younger son. In jeopardy for her reputation! Under your roof, Felicity.”

  “Oh, pooh!” Lady Acton said. “Some minor indiscretion, no doubt, unless you choose to publicly refine upon it. A mere trifle. You may have forgotten, Augusta, but we were all young once.”

  Eleanor could read her mother better than that. Something had happened. Something that had upset Lady Acton very deeply.

  “What news?” she asked bluntly. “Is someone hurt? Did someone die?”

  Her mother turned to her. “Not yet, dear child. But I’m very afraid that someone is about to.”

  Eleanor’s heart leaped into her throat. Richard? Helena? Not Leander Campbell? Surely not?

  Lady Augusta took Diana by the elbow. “It cannot concern us,” she said brutally. “Come, Diana! We are going home.”

  “Oh, but it concerns you more than me,” Lady Acton said immediately.

  Lady Augusta stopped and raised her thin brows. “Indeed?”

  “He is a member of your family, after all,” Lady Acton said. “Mr. Campbell has been arrested.”

  “Arrested?” Lady Augusta said. “What depraved crime has he committed now?”

  “I have no idea what he may actually have done, Countess, but he is in Newgate. As you may imagine, the ton is agog with such a delicious on-dit. They say Mr. Campbell rode into town yesterday evening as if the devil were at his tail, and he was immediately arrested. At which, he is reported to have offered to draw his sword on the Bow Street men, but then to have laughed like a Bedlamite, instead. In the end, he went quietly enough to Newgate, where he is to be held until he stands trial.”

  “Trial? How shall we ever live it down? How dare he do this to me?”

  “I don’t believe he has done anything whatsoever to you, Augusta. He is accused by your neighbor, Major Sir Robert St. John Crabtree.”

  Through a haze of blurred vision Eleanor grasped the arm of the sofa and held onto it as if it were a lifeline. She thought she might faint, though she had never done so before.

  A terrible buzzing filled her ears as she heard her mother continue.

  “The crime is murder, Lady Augusta, the killing of the major’s nephew, one Manton Barnes. Our friend Leander Campbell faces the gallows.”

  Chapter 13

  Eleanor did not faint. In fact, nobody even noticed that the blood had drained from her face, leaving her shaken and sick.

  Lady Augusta swept out with Diana in tow, only pausing long enough in the doorway to deliver the parting shot.

  “I have known for twenty years that it would come to something like this!” she cried viciously. “And to think that this unscrupulous Walter Downe is his friend! No doubt the entire distasteful scene I was forced to discover here was Leander Campbell’s doing. Let him be hanged! We would all have been better off had Sir Robert never brought him back to England—and, better yet, had he never been born.”

  Lady Acton paced for a moment, then sent for Walter Downe to join her and Eleanor in the blue drawing room. They all sat down.

  The countess insisted that Walter take a glass of brandy, while Eleanor had no hesitation in gulping down a glass of white wine.

  “Your concerns over Lady Diana can wait, Mr. Downe,” Lady Acton said firmly. “What is this matter of Manton Barnes?”

  “I know nothing about it,” Walter said, his face stiff with shock. “I shall have to go and see Lee.”

  “To get his permission to speak of it? Nothing is more exasperating than these ridiculous codes of honor to which you gentlemen adhere. How can I help him, Mr. Downe, if I don’t know the facts?”

  “You can’t,” Walter said dully. “He’s a commoner. He’ll be tried in the common court, whatever any of us do. None of the privileges of our class apply to him.”

  “I am aware of that,” Lady Acton said, getting up and pacing once again, her skirts swaying about her. “But don’t be concerned that he will be left for months to rot in jail. I can at least see that there’s no delay, so that the trial takes place immediately. He is innocent, surely?”

  Walter looked down into his glass and said nothing.

  There was a noise in the hallway.

  “Oh, Good God!” the countess exclaimed. “Acton is back! I must go and distract your father, Eleanor.”

  She swept out of the room.

  Eleanor boldly took up the brandy decanter and refilled Walter’s glass.

  “You must tell me, Mr. Downe,” she said. “I know that someone has been blackmailing people, and that Lee tried to stop him. You told me before that Lee was upset about Manton Barnes’s death, when I first met him at the Three Feathers. He said something to me then about blackmail. I have no idea what the connection is, but I am certain that Mr. Campbell is innocent of murder.”

  Walter stood and walked across to the fireplace. He looked down at the grate, so that she couldn’t see his face.

  “Manton Barnes was being blackmailed and he told Lee about it. He couldn’t meet the demands. When the blackmailer threatened to expose him, he shot himself.”

  “Oh! I’m so very sorry. But surely the authorities knew it was suicide, not murder?”

  “Lee wanted to protect Manton’s family. He rearranged things so that it would look like an accident. Several fellows witnessed what happened, of course, but they won’t speak up unless Lee asks them to, and he can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then it would come out about the blackmail.”

  “But Mr. Campbell wouldn’t go to the gallows in order to protect the reputation of someone who’s already dead?” Eleanor asked indignantly.

  “I don’t know,” Walter replied, gazing dully at his boots. “He might.”

  “For God’s sake,” Eleanor said. “My mother is right. You gentlemen are totally absurd.”

  Walter looked across at her. He had set his shoulders rather stiffly and his face was completely rigid.

  “And he covered up the suicide, thereby hiding that crime, too, don’t you see? Anyway, I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry, Lady Eleanor. There is no way you could be expected to understand.”

  And Eleanor saw suddenly why Walter must be allowed to leave right away. His eyes were suspiciously bright. It would be the cruelest thing she had ever done to allow him to break down in front of her.

  “Of course,” she said quickly. “You had better go and see him. Good day, Mr. Downe.”

  * * *

  Eleanor ran straight to her own room and found herself marching up and down in front of her bed, actually wringing her hands. In spite of everyt
hing, she laughed at the absurdity of it, and forced herself to sit sensibly at her desk to try to think things through.

  When she had first met Leander Campbell at the Three Feathers, Manton Barnes had just died. Mr. Campbell was in both shock and grief over it, she realized now, and he must already have been determined to uncover the blackmailer.

  I made a promise to myself when my friend Manton Barnes died, but I’m going to break it.

  What kind of promise?

  One of pride, perhaps, or revenge.

  He believed the man to be the same villain as the one who had blackmailed her mother and Major Crabtree. He must have known there was a connection between Manton Barnes and Lady Acton. He had already recognized Richard’s portrait in the locket, so he knew who she was when he had asked her about blackmail. So he’d had no intention of blackmailing her himself, he’d just wanted to know if she knew anything about it. She was relieved to at last understand it.

  But no wonder he had been so ruthless with her!

  Yet her mother knew who the blackmailer was, though she had promised the major never to reveal the name. Although Lady Acton might make fun of the gentlemen’s code, she would never break her own word either.

  So the only person who could save Leander Campbell from this absurd mess was himself. Surely he would see that he must tell the authorities that Manton Barnes’s death was a suicide? The poor major must have heard something that had caused him to grasp entirely the wrong end of the stick. Doubtless he would drop the charges as soon as he knew the truth. Yes, Lee must tell the judges what had happened, then his friends could witness it and he would be released.

  Feeling a great deal better, Eleanor went down to join her parents. She felt confident she could discuss the latest town gossip with equanimity. Of course, she hadn’t allowed for the fact that Mr. Campbell’s arrest would be the latest gossip. Her father spent the evening talking of nothing else. With every word, Eleanor’s optimism shrunk. Finally, she was forced to conclude that Walter had been right.

  Lee would never reveal that his friend had been blackmailed, and neither would anybody else. Gentlemen were enmeshed in their promises to themselves and to others, and they would never break them.