Mr. Campbell moved away to stand at the window. He said nothing as his stepmother turned to stare blankly at her daughter.
“Because I paid him not to, of course,” Lady Augusta said. “How do you think that he could afford Deerfield all these years?”
And suddenly it all made sense to Eleanor. This was why Deerfield was so lavishly kept, and why there was no extra money at Hawksley. Why Lady Augusta’s steward pinched the purse, and why repairs were delayed until Leander Campbell paid for them. All the wealth of Hawksley for twenty years had been drained off to support the major’s lavish life-style—and all because he knew of Moira Campbell’s marriage.
Diana was still struggling to comprehend what had happened. “You were being blackmailed by the major?”
“Yes, but it has stopped now,” the dowager countess said. “Sir Robert told me yesterday that I would receive no more demands from him. It has been such a relief. I thought I was free at last.”
“How could you do it, Mama? You have cheated Lee all these years.”
“Hush, Di,” he said firmly. “Lady Augusta did it for you, and at a huge price.”
Diana was flushed, but with her newfound confidence, she stuck out her chin.
“Then it’s over now. Eleanor has the marriage lines. The truth shall come out, and you must claim your rightful inheritance.”
Lady Augusta stared at Eleanor. “Why should you have anything to do with this?” she said. “Why must the Actons always win?”
“Lady Eleanor has not won anything.” Mr. Campbell turned to face his stepmother. “Nothing has changed.”
“What do you mean?” Diana asked. “Everything has changed. You shan’t hide the truth because of me.”
Eleanor had never seen him truly angry before, but he stalked up to his sister, eyes blazing.
“Then you would reveal to the world that our father was a bigamist? You would happily ignore your mother’s sacrifice and suffering for the last twenty years? You would hold her up to the ridicule and persecution of society and strip her of her portion, leaving her in penury, dependent on my charity? If there is one person beside yourself who is an innocent victim in this mess, it is your mother. And do you care nothing for my precarious honor? Lady Augusta took me in when I was five years old, knowing that I embodied the possibility of ruin, and raised me. You would have me return that kindness by showing her to be a harlot, and my sister nameless and penniless, her position ruined?”
“I don’t c—” Diana began bravely.
“Then what of Walter? You would involve him in a sordid scandal that would rock London. A bastard isn’t the most suitable wife for a bishop. If you try to publish this bizarre story, I shall maintain that it’s a farrago of nonsense. Whatever papers the Actons may have in their possession I shall demonstrate to be forgeries. If necessary I shall go to Scotland and destroy the records at their source. Then I shall leave the country, but this time forever. You will neither hear from me, nor see me again. I repeat: You will forget this. Lady Augusta may sleep easy in her bed and you, Diana, shall remain heiress of Hawksley.”
Diana’s face was white as her muslin dress. “I won’t!”
“You will,” he said, “and you will never breathe a word of this to anyone. Neither will your headstrong, interfering friend, Lady Eleanor Acton.”
“If you are to order me, sir,” Eleanor said, desperately gathering her courage. “You might do it to my face.”
He had been avoiding her. Lee could face his stepmother and Diana, but how was he to control his emotions when he confronted his brave brown hen? He had already guessed how she had obtained the papers, and he assumed she had done it in a naive attempt to help Diana marry Walter.
It had, of course, occurred to him that the minister at Strathbrae would have a record of the marriage. Yet it was unlikely to be discovered, and he had not had time yet to do anything about it. A small church buried in the Highlands, a minister who had no idea why the marriage was so important, and an unclaimed earl who was about to leave for Belgium and India—it hadn’t been worth worrying about.
Yet, as he had threatened, he could still go to Strathbrae and destroy the records. Only Lady Augusta had ever understood the impossibility of his claiming his birthright under the circumstances. Maybe in twenty years, once Diana was safely settled and Lady Augusta gone to her grave, maybe then. But now? It would be a tainted legacy. He would rather die a pauper.
Yet, God help him, it would cost him Eleanor!
She sat stiffly on the sofa, her brown eyes bravely waiting for his wrath. He reached deep inside himself to find it.
“Your busy fingers are in every pie, aren’t they, Lady Eleanor?” he said. “How noble of you to try to disinherit your friend. Your promise didn’t last long, did it? Yet you have overlooked the type of creature you would elevate to the peerage: one who prefers the gutter to the drawing room; a gaming hell to a seat in Parliament; and the charms of a whore to those of a lady. Better let him remain a bastard. That way he can die un-remembered as he wishes, drunk under a table.”
Ignoring the shine of tears that Eleanor couldn’t keep from her eyes, he spun on his heel and stalked to the door. He stopped for a moment and glanced back at his stepmother.
“You will also give your consent to Diana’s marriage to Walter Feveril Downe, Lady Augusta. He’s an honorable and good man. Though he isn’t a duke, his family credentials are impeccable. If you try to force her into wedlock with someone like Lord Ranking, that is the one thing that might make me change my mind.”
Eleanor barely registered that this one goal at least was achieved. She had known that he would never forgive her if she interfered in his mother’s marriage. Yet she couldn’t help herself then and she couldn’t help herself now.
Since in spite of it all, she knew now that her feelings for him were no mere schoolgirl crush. She was deeply, everlastingly, and impossibly, in love with him.
Chapter 15
Diana would not be moved. With a set face she agreed to remain silent about what she had learned. Yet when her mama agreed to her marriage with Walter, then suggested that Viscount Clare be invited to come and discuss the marriage settlements, she wouldn’t hear of it.
“It would all be a falsehood,” she declared. “I shan’t marry Walter under false pretenses. I’m not really Lady Diana Hart, am I? What name should we put on the register?”
And thus Eleanor discovered that it still wasn’t over. For herself, she would never interfere again with Mr. Campbell’s concerns, but she had promised to help Diana wed Walter. If the present state of affairs didn’t change, he was taking his sister to the sacrificial altar with him, rather than ensuring her happiness.
She was too deeply involved to back out now. Once again, it was up to her. What did she have left to lose?
* * *
Sir Robert Crabtree had taken rooms in Piccadilly. Eleanor grimaced as her carriage stopped in front of his door. Only a couple of short months before, she had been looking forward to an ordinary coming out. Instead, ever since she had discovered that her best friend had a half-brother, she had been embroiling herself in ever more disreputable adventures.
Well, making a morning call on a gentleman who was old enough to be your father and had once been your mother’s lover, was nothing compared to visiting a notorious rake imprisoned in Newgate!
How could she have thought she respected Major Crabtree? The man had been blackmailing Lady Augusta for years. Whatever her opinion of Diana’s mama, the cruelty of it sickened her. It had not taken long to realize that he must also have been the villain in Manton Barnes’s case and, incredible as it may seem, her mother’s.
The clues had been there, all along. Since Leander Campbell was not the blackmailer, who else was there?
The butler seemed less surprised than she expected. Perhaps the major had all kinds of victims of his nasty hobby coming to call?
Eleanor was shown into a small study and she composed herself to wait.
&nbs
p; If Sir Robert thought he had a monopoly on Mr. Campbell’s secret, he was wrong. She wasn’t sure how that could help, but it might be worth something. In the meantime, he might still hold evidence about Manton Barnes, and that was another weapon he could hold over everyone. Perhaps if she could convince him that Mr. Campbell intended to go away, he would give it up. It didn’t really make sense.
Her palms were becoming clammy. Lady Eleanor Acton had barged in once again with no clear plan of action.
A voice echoed from the hallway.
“By all means go ahead, sir,” the major said. “But I think there is nothing else to discuss. I have agreed to your terms. Indeed, I am gratified by your generosity. Pray, wait in the study while I secure the papers. I shan’t be a moment.”
The door opened and Eleanor stood up to face him.
It was not the major who entered. It was Lee Campbell.
“Well, well,” he said with a lift of the brow. “It’s the stalwart, chivalrous scion of the house of Acton, girded, accoutered, and armed in steel. Prepared once again to do battle on the side of the angels, no doubt. Do you bring cannon this time, brown hen?”
She collapsed back into the chair. He propped himself carelessly on the corner of the major’s desk, his long legs stretched in front of him, and grinned at her.
“You are in league with him?” she said faintly. “All along you were accomplices?”
He gave her a genuine smile and her heart turned over. There was no anger there at all, even at such an outrageous accusation.
“So you know that Major Crabtree is our original blackmailer. It wasn’t too hard to figure out, was it, brown hen, although it took me an unconscionable length of time. And to think I pride myself on my powers of reasoning! I was as blind as the proverbial bat. But no, we are not accomplices.”
“Sir Robert found out Manton Barnes’s secret from Blanche Harrison, didn’t he?” Eleanor said. “After that night at Vauxhall when they were caught in the rain. Miss Harrison confided in Manton’s uncle, thinking he’d be sympathetic, but the major only used the information to destroy his own nephew, because that’s when he began to blackmail him.”
“Indeed. And when your mother and Major Crabtree became friends, Barnes found out about it from his uncle and guessed she’d be the next victim. Yet how could he warn her? They had never met. Instead, he tried to warn me, though it was too late by then.”
“And for twenty years he’s been draining Lady Augusta, too. It’s horrid! Why has he decided to stop that now?”
The door opened quietly. Major Sir Robert St. John Crabtree stood smiling at them beneath his splendid mustaches.
“Because Leander Campbell has the oddest ideas of family loyalty, Lady Eleanor. So he is being kind enough to pay me, instead.”
She spun to face him. “Then you don’t deny it?”
“Dear lady, why should I? But pray don’t share the glory of my enterprise with Mr. Campbell. He has never been anything but a victim, I assure you.”
“Then why is he here?” Eleanor asked.
“Mr. Campbell brings papers for our final arrangement. He signs over to me all title to his book collection. I have already been the beneficiary of some most welcome funds from the advance sale of some choicer volumes. Now, I shall have the whole.”
“I don’t understand.” She turned to Leander Campbell. He seemed completely relaxed. “Your books? I thought you said you loved them? Is that all that love means to you? Something to enjoy while it’s there, and to dispose of when it’s convenient? Why are you paying this monster?”
“Surely it’s obvious enough? I told you we made a bargain.”
“You pay him to keep silent about your birth? Is that why the demands on Lady Augusta have stopped? Your funds replace hers? And this bargain is why the charges against you were dropped?”
Mr. Campbell inclined his head.
“Don’t you think he owes me something?” the major asked. “Thanks to his interference, my lovely little scheme with Lady Acton came to naught almost before it began.”
“It’s the most despicable thing I can think of, to so use my mother,” Eleanor said indignantly.
“On the contrary, it amused her. As for Lady Augusta, Hawksley is drained anyway,” the major added complacently. “The proceeds from the sale of the bulk of Mr. Campbell’s collection will keep me in sufficient comfort for a long time, and there are a couple of volumes I have coveted for years, especially those ancient law books. So fascinating! Yet my needs are really quite modest. Such old-fashioned sensibility is so rare anymore, but Mr. Campbell wishes to protect his stepmother and his sister from my avaricious grip. I believe that’s how you put it, isn’t it, sir?”
“Something like that,” Mr. Campbell replied.
The major laughed. “The source of my income matters not to me. Mr. Campbell’s gold is as good as Lady Augusta’s. But what an odd fellow, to be sure! I had been so confident that he would seize his inheritance, if the truth ever came out. But there you are!”
“You even victimized your own nephew,” Eleanor said. “How do you justify that?”
“I don’t,” the major said. “Though it’s deeply moving, isn’t it, how our gentleman friend here cared for poor Manton Barnes, when he shared nothing of the fellow’s sadly illegal predilections. I am most distressed myself, of course, that my nephew met such a sad end. Nothing could have been further from my intentions, but he was a weak reed.”
“How can you give up your books to a Judas like him?” Eleanor asked Mr. Campbell.
“Does it surprise you to learn that I love Diana a great deal more than the books?” He smiled with warm reassurance. “It wasn’t hard. What use would such volumes be to me in India?”
Eleanor turned once again to the major. “You must have known that Manton Barnes committed suicide and why. It was your fault. What sense did it make to bring charges of murder against Mr. Campbell?”
“Simple, Lady Eleanor! I am surprised you have not guessed it. As soon as Mr. Campbell knew that I was the entrepreneur who had inconvenienced poor Barnes, he realized what a delightful weapon the possession of the marriage lines must have been to hold over Lady Augusta. Mr. Campbell was then impetuous enough to tear Deerfield apart. He eventually found all the evidence he required: papers pertaining to my nephew’s lovers; records of my receipts from Lady Augusta. Your mother’s letters, of course, he discovered some time ago, and returned them to her. Yet while he was so busy, my butler sent me a warning. I thought Mr. Campbell would slay me on his return to London, so I had him thrown in jail. But I have never understood the intricacies of his fertile brain. He only wanted to pay me, instead. Touching, isn’t it? If I hadn’t been so suspicious, we could have made our little agreement much sooner and saved all that business of the trial.”
“And deprived the town of so much entertainment?” Mr. Campbell asked with deliberate irony. “I couldn’t wait to see you with a cudgel, Major.”
Sir Robert ignored him. “Now I can hardly believe we have anything more to say to one another, Lady Eleanor. No doubt Mr. Campbell will see you home. Good day!”
The major bowed himself out.
Eleanor turned to face Leander Campbell. “Did you suspect him at Deerfield?”
“I don’t know what I suspected. I wondered if he knew about Manton Barnes’s lovers, of course. That’s why I came to Norfolk in the first place. They hadn’t been close, yet Manton had no nearer male relative left alive, and it was possible that he had confided in his uncle. I’m not sure why, but I felt that Sir Robert was holding something back from me. I tried to get him to give himself away more than once.”
Eleanor closed her eyes for a moment. She could still picture that careless and magnificent horsemanship. If she and Diana had not arrived when they had, would he have achieved his goal then?
“Like after the attack on the practice grounds?” she said.
“Which achieved very little in the end. But I could never find a shred of evidence and I w
as reluctant to believe it, I suppose.”
“He rescued you from the nuns with the white sails. Yes, I know. But only because when he saw the papers that came with you, he knew they represented a fortune.”
His smile was more sad than bitter. “At first I even believed his explanation about why your mother’s letters were hidden at Deerfield.”
“That’s where you found them?”
“I came back that night to look for anything that might cast light on poor Barnes. Instead, I found you examining the paneling, and learned about Lady Acton’s letters. They were hidden in another of those little cupboards. But when I confronted him, Sir Robert told me he had himself recovered them from the blackmailer. Then he tried to cast suspicion on Walter, of all people.”
“But when my mother said that he had known Blanche Harrison, you knew for sure, didn’t you?”
“As if the proverbial scales had fallen, brown hen.”
“Why don’t you fight a duel with him?”
“Because I would kill him, and nothing would be achieved by his death. Do you think I should take it upon myself to be judge, jury, and executioner of the man who taught me to shoot? He gave in to this nasty temptation and innocent people have suffered for it, but he has also given years of his life in service to his country. I loved him dearly as a boy. I thought him Hector and Sir Bevis all rolled into one. Nothing can bring Manton Barnes back to life, and he had many causes for despair besides the blackmail. Sir Robert certainly never wished him dead. He appears callous about it, but in fact I believe the suicide shocked him very deeply. He has now returned to me all the rest of the evidence he had concerning the other men involved, and I have destroyed it. Those men are safe. Your mother is safe. Only Lady Augusta can still be harmed, and I have made sure that her secret will never be told.”
“And you achieved all this by signing over your books? I thought you swore revenge? A lead ball would do that for you, wouldn’t it?”
“Which is why I can’t use it, brown hen. And now you will give me your solemn oath that you will forget all about me and my sordid affairs.”
Rogue's Reward Page 18
