by Liz Carlyle
“But of course, my dear.”
A few minutes later, they were going up the mossy terrace stairs, following the gamekeeper’s path. The stables lay beyond the west pavilion, some distance from their end of the house, and were reached through an apple orchard. Together Lisette and Napier made their way through the expansive rear gardens, which were lush and exceedingly formal.
“Your grandfather is vigorous,” she remarked, “for his age.”
“Yes.” Napier’s tone was wry. “But at his age, most men have been dead for a decade.”
“Ah,” she said quietly. “We do not need to have this conversation, do we? You see what is inevitable. And it’s hardly my place to warn you.”
Napier shrugged. “As to your place—”
“Yes?” she said.
He seemed to hesitate. “Never mind,” he answered as they passed a tall, travertine statue—a Greek goddess pouring water from a ewer into a twelve-foot marble pool shimmering with flashes of gold. They were fish, she realized.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” he remarked. “The wealth and the opulence shine upon us even outdoors, like the very sun itself.”
Lisette murmured her assent for the remark seemed rhetorical. But the sun was indeed warm on her shoulders, the air rich with roses and new-mown grass. As her shoes crunched softly on the pea-gravel path, she felt increasingly aware of Napier’s warmth and powerful male presence by her side. She glanced again at his arresting profile.
He seemed deep in thought, his mood inscrutable.
“I begin to understand what brought you here,” she said quietly. “I wish for your sake that Duncaster understood it, too.”
Napier gave a dismissive grunt. “He understands only that his iron will is being thwarted,” he replied, “which to him is as unforgivable as murder.”
“So you do fear there’s been a crime?” she pressed. “That someone wanted Hepplewood dead? And perhaps Saint-Bryce?”
“I hardly know what I fear,” he replied, “other than having this pile and all its duties dumped on me.”
After a time, they entered a long, vine-covered pergola that seemed to lead from the formal gardens into something more wild and natural. At the center was a wrought-iron bench, angled away from the house and stables so as to take in the view of the ornamental lake to the east. On the hill above it, one could see the towering stone folly rising from the trees.
“Napier,” said Lisette, “there’s something I wish to say to you.”
He stopped on the path and paused. She sensed something was troubling him—something besides his quarrel with his grandfather—and she suspected what it might be.
“Duncaster after all?” he asked. “Or something more dire?”
“Something more dire.” With a withering smile, she motioned to the bench. “Will you sit with me a moment?”
Though she could see he fairly chomped at the bit with impatience, he nodded. After settling onto the bench, Lisette looked down the rolling expanse of green, all the way down to the lake, so crystalline and smooth it threw up the cloudless blue sky like a mirror. What a pity all of one’s choices and decisions weren’t as clear.
As if urging her from her reverie, Napier touched her arm and she flinched. He drew back his hand at once.
Lisette turned to face him. “I’m sorry.” Oddly, she found herself reaching for his hand, and took it between her own. “It isn’t you. I was lost in thought.”
He dipped his head as if to better see her, his hand warm and heavy in hers. Lisette knew what she owed this man. The truth. And she knew, too, the questions it would lead to. Questions she really did not wish to answer. So an apology must suffice.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly, “what is it?”
She released his hand, and forced herself to press on. “I begin to see how seriously you take your duties with the police,” she said. “That, I’m sure, is part of why Sir George turned to you when he was worried about matters here.”
“I can’t speak to Sir George’s views. But in mine, there is no higher calling than police work. At least not for me.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I’ve no talent for medicine, and I think we can agree I’d be ill suited as a priest. But Elizabeth, did you really pull me onto this bench to discuss my career?”
She cut him a rueful glance. “No, I did it so I might apologize.”
“Apologize?” At last she had surprised him.
Lisette drew a steadying breath. She wanted to have done with it. “Almost two years ago,” she began, “I . . . I barged into Whitehall and accused you of being incompetent. I believe I may even have called you venal, and suggested you could be bought. I think none of that was true. I think you care deeply.”
“Do I?” Almost pensively, Napier forked a hand through his heavy, dark hair. “After a dozen years in this business, I hardly know.”
“Those who work hard at things which truly matter are often worn down by them,” she said evenly. “And I think you must be very good at what you do. There’s a distance in you, yes, but I wonder if one could otherwise survive in your world. It was wrong of me to malign you. I misjudged your character . . . and even that was not my worst mistake. I was wrong about the whole business. About everything. Everyone.”
To her shame, her words ended a little tremulously.
“Elizabeth,” he said chidingly.
She made a sound—a cross between a sob and a laugh—and threw up one hand. “Now be sure, Napier, that I am not putting you on,” she said. “I am, or so you imagine, quite an infamously good actress.”
“Well,” he said quietly, “you do owe me an apology. But you’d do better to worry about Lazonby. He’s powerful and probably vindictive, and I am n—”
“What, you are not?” Lisette’s smile was wry.
His expression darkened. “I’ve exacted my pound of flesh by dragging you here,” he replied. “I said I’d protect you from Lazonby should it become necessary, and I will.”
“I . . . I think you will.”
“I will,” he said gruffly. “But there is something else, Elizabeth, that I need you to do for me.”
She lifted her gaze to his, troubled by the sudden edge to his words. “Yes?”
He watched her warily for a moment, his eyes gone dark as a thunderhead. They had looked the very same just before he’d kissed her, and for an instant, Elizabeth’s breath caught.
But kissing her seemed the farthest thing from his mind.
“I need you to tell me,” he finally said, “exactly what you heard Sir Wilfred say in the dairy the day he died. I’m not asking you to tell me more or concede anything. I just want to know, beyond a shred of doubt, what was said.”
Lisette knew what he was asking. “About your father.”
His jaw flinched. “Yes. About my father.”
Inwardly, she sighed. Yet another discussion she did not wish to have—she now counted about four since breakfast. And to do what he asked required her to step carefully indeed.
Lisette licked her lips. “You know I attended the garden party,” she began uneasily. “All the volunteers from Hannah’s—Lady Leeton’s—charity school did. It was Prize Day for the girls. I . . . I gave the Grammar Prize.”
“Yes,” he said patiently. “I believe Lazonby said as much. But now you bring it up, Elizabeth, I confess I’ve never understood just how you ended up volunteering there. Especially when you claim you knew nothing of Sir Wilfred’s involvement in your father’s death.”
Lisette had often wondered the same. “I think . . . I think I just wanted to see Hannah again,” she finally answered. “I wanted to think of what might have been had Papa’s life not gone so wrong. To me, Hannah was always so beautiful, like a fairy queen. And I had always hoped someday she would come to . . . well, to like me.”
“Hannah—?” he said. “Lady Leeton?”
Lisette shrugged lamely. “I was a little afraid she might recognize me,” she confessed. “So I went to the school on a sort of p
retense—the wig helped, of course—and then I just got . . . got caught up in my own lies, I guess.”
She glanced up to see a puzzled expression on Napier’s face. “But Lisette, why would she know you? Why might she recognize you?”
Lisette looked at him blankly. “Because of Papa,” she said. “Because they were lovers—serious lovers—long before she married Sir Wilfred. Did you not know? That the three of them were all bosom beaus?”
Napier shook his head. “There was nothing in the old murder file about Hannah Leeton,” he said, “though Lazonby did suggest there was some competition for the lady’s favors.”
“It went beyond that. Hannah adored Papa and wanted to marry him.” Lisette’s voice dropped to a raw whisper. “But now I know the truth. That Sir Wilfred wanted Hannah—and her money—for himself.”
Napier’s brow was furrowed. “I didn’t grasp that,” he said. “I thought Sir Wilfred was just a hired killer for some gaming syndicate. Or so Lazonby said.”
“Oh, he was,” said Lisette, “and well paid for it. The syndicate wanted rid of Lazonby; he was too good a card player. So they paid Sir Wilfred to get rid of him—and they didn’t care how.”
“And Sir Wilfred confessed to all this?” Napier still looked dubious. “In the dairy?”
“Y-yes,” said Lisette. “As I said that day, he bragged about it. He claimed he chose Elinor’s rich fiancé as his victim, not just to set Lazonby up, but so that Papa might be driven to panic when the marriage settlements fell through. He wanted Papa to flee his creditors and head for the Continent. To abandon Hannah so that he—Sir Wilfred—might console her.”
“Dear God,” said Napier under his breath.
Lisette steeled herself against the unexpected press of tears. “How could anyone be so vile? So utterly scheming?” she said, this time aloud. “Sir Wilfred said . . . he said that he saw a way to kill two birds with one stone. To take the syndicate’s money and rid them of Lazonby, then have Hannah in the bargain.”
“And this Lord Percy, your sister’s intended—he had a long-standing quarrel with Lazonby,” Napier mused. “So of course, to the police it looked like a plausible crime.”
Lisette felt the old, familiar nausea well up in her again. “And we all of us believed he’d done it, didn’t we? You did. I did. I went . . . good God, I went to Newgate. To the hanging.” She set a palm hard against her forehead as if it might block the memory, but it never did. “I was twelve. I remember how the rope snapped taut. Lazonby just dangled there, dead—or so we believed. Then Ellie fainted in the mud. Somehow, I got her up. And the next day, Lord Rowend’s solicitor took us to Bristol and put us on a ship to Aunt Ashton’s.”
Wordlessly, Napier set an arm around her shoulders, and this time she did not flinch. There was no reaction left in her.
“Ellie was dead a fortnight later,” she whispered. “A fever, they called it. But I think her heart was just broken. And now . . . dear God, now I look back on all that has happened—all that I believed—and it’s like a horrific nightmare.”
“I know the feeling,” muttered Napier grimly. “Whatever our disagreements, Elizabeth, I’m sorry you had to live through that. But if Hannah was a rich, willing widow, why didn’t Sir Arthur marry her?”
Lisette felt her face flush with heat. “Because of Elinor,” she finally answered. “Elinor told Papa she would never forgive him if he sullied our family’s name in such a way.”
“In what way, exactly?”
Lisette lifted one shoulder lamely. “Elinor had just come out that Season,” she said. “Papa borrowed horribly to launch her, and many gentlemen were captivated. But she’d set her sights on Lord Percy Peveril, for he was a duke’s son. The duke was a frightful snob, and Ellie knew it. She told Papa that Hannah was a pariah who would ruin her chances. That Hannah was a jumped-up shop girl who’d got rich on Jewish money, then used it to run with a fast crowd . . .”
“And?” Napier gently prodded.
Here, Lisette’s voice hitched humiliatingly. “—and yes, Napier, the irony does not escape me,” she continued, “that the fast crowd Elinor disdained was Papa’s crowd. And Sir Wilfred’s crowd. But men can be forgiven such indiscretions. Women, apparently, cannot.”
Napier was very quiet. “I recall vaguely that Hannah’s first husband was a wealthy trader in the City.”
Lisette sighed. “She was not herself Jewish, I don’t think—not that I cared,” she said. “And it’s true Hannah’s father was just an apothecary. But she made Papa laugh, and I do sometimes wonder . . .” Her words broke away, and she shook her head.
Napier squeezed her hand. “What do you wonder?”
I wonder if my sister wasn’t a selfish bitch.
But Lisette snatched back the thought as soon as it entered her head.
Ellie had been special: beautiful and charming. People had loved her for that, just as they had loved Papa. And Elinor had been proud of her connection to Lord Rowend—proud of her blue English blood. Was that so very wrong? Was not aristocratic pride the very thing that sustained the English upper class and provided a backbone for the nation?
And yet Lisette knew that in America blood accounted for almost nothing, and the nation little suffered for it. Indeed, some would argue the country was stronger and more equal without it. Mr. Ashton had argued it—blatantly, belligerently, and on a weekly basis—in his radical newspaper. And for the most part, Lisette had agreed with his politics, if not his execution.
Yet another irony that made her head hurt. Oh, why could the world not be black and white? Sometimes, yes, she did find herself angry with Elinor and with Papa—more and more of late, and it shamed her. She told herself she was just looking for someone to blame for her family’s misfortunes now that Lazonby had been vindicated.
She gave a soft, sardonic laugh. “Do you know, Napier, what Hannah used to call me?”
“No,” he said tentatively.
“Elizabeth the Unfortunate,” she said. “I once heard her tell Papa that Ellie was a diamond, but that I was going to prove ‘difficult.’ I was too gangly, too pale, my hair too red.”
“What utter balderdash,” said Napier. “I hope you didn’t heed it.”
Lisette forced a shrug, a little embarrassed by her childish confession. Indeed, she had indulged her maudlin notions for far too long—and this time, far too openly. She did not want anyone’s sympathy, nor had anyone ever given her much.
It was just as well, she imagined. Papa’s life had proven one rarely knew who to trust. Napier, moreover, was simply watching her; weighing her, she thought. Wondering, perhaps, if this was all just a cheap theatrical, and if she meant ever to actually answer the one question he had asked.
“So there, I’ve apologized to you,” she managed, drawing in a steadying breath. “Beyond that, my personal tragedies are utterly a waste of your time. The business of Papa’s death is done, and Ellie’s, too. But you . . . you wished to know exactly what Sir Wilfred said about your father.”
“Yes,” he said tightly.
Lisette realized that his arm was no longer around her shoulders. She half turned on the bench, and forced him to hold her gaze. “Exactly?” she pressed. “I have, regrettably, the gift of near-total recall.”
“Exactly,” he demanded.
Lisette closed her eyes, and felt the cool, thick air of the dairy furl about her like a musty blanket. She could still hear Lady Anisha, half conscious and sobbing; could still smell the sharp tang of soured milk. No matter how many nights she’d spent trying to get that scent out of her nostrils—no matter how many times she’d shut away the thought of Sir Wilfred’s blood trickling over the flagstone into his own spring box—the memory clung like a dampness, a nightmare to be lived over and over again.
“Elizabeth?” said Napier.
“Wait, I’m remembering.” Her eyes snapped open. “All right. Sir Wilfred said, and I quote: ‘I didn’t touch Arthur. I just stabbed Percy. And, yes, I bribed Hanging Nick Napier a
nd that porter chap. And fixed the blame, I suppose, on Lazonby. But that’s it. I liked Arthur. I did. And after I persuaded Hannah to marry me, I meant to visit him. In France. Or wherever he ended up.’ ”
“Christ,” muttered Napier.
“I think that’s exact,” she said.
And oddly, having to say it aloud had somehow stiffened her resolve. It was over—or would be, she prayed, once this business of Napier’s was done. As the rage inside her had slowly settled these past few days, it was coming increasingly clear to Lisette that somehow she must put this long and awful madness behind her.
Somehow she had to find a way to salvage from the wreckage something like an ordinary life. She had to, for there was no one left to blame. No place else to seek revenge. Her family was dead and she couldn’t bring them back. And now she had to forgive herself, somehow, for the horrific injustice she’d done Lord Lazonby—even if the man himself never forgave it.
But the one thing she must not do was lean too hard upon Royden Napier. She no longer disliked him, but Lisette knew that he was the sort of man who would place his pursuit of justice above all else, even his own interests. Hadn’t he just proven that with his grandfather?
She straightened on the bench, and set her shoulders resolutely back. “I take no joy in repeating that, Napier,” she said quietly. “And just because Sir Wilfred said it, doesn’t mean it was the whole truth.”
“Aye, but was it a part of the truth?” he muttered, his gaze fixed almost blindly on the distant lake. “I have the sickening suspicion it was.”
“Have you ever looked at your father’s accounts?” asked Lisette pointedly. “At the time of his death, you must have done.”
Napier nodded, swallowing hard. “I did. Once or twice.”
“Money like that would be hard to hide.”
“There were . . . occasional infusions of cash into the household accounts.” Napier’s voice sounded strained, almost disembodied. “Yes, more money than his salary could account for. I told myself it was horse racing. Something like that.”
“Perhaps it was.” Lisette shrugged. “And after all that trickery, Leeton’s plan didn’t even work. There was no flight to France; Papa took one of his morose spells, tamped it down with a bottle of brandy, then shot himself. A niggling detail, of course, to Sir Wilfred. He still got Hannah’s money—and for a time, he was rid of Lazonby, too.”
