by KJ Charles
Pat repressed a groan and launched into a detailed account of the day, despite Lady Anna’s audible sigh of annoyance: if nobody else was going to speak, they all deserved to be bored to death. Bill took over when she ran out of steam, giving an exhaustive account of all his shots and concluding each, “Missed the blighter,” with an entirely straight face.
Miss Singh had recovered her composure by then. Once Bill’s invention gave out, and as the soup bowls were being removed, she said, voice calm as ever, “Dear me, Mr. Merton, how regrettable. And how was your day, Preston?”
“Good heavens,” Haworth said, breaking his silence for the first time. “Do we understand that our principled—”
Miss Singh raised her voice, deliberately speaking over him though her expression and inflection didn’t change at all. “I do hope that you had an enjoyable time. I dare say it was somewhat damp in the latter parts but at least you had the sunshine all morning.”
Haworth had stopped speaking, apparently startled by the interruption. Clearly he expected to be the only one breaking the rules of good manners. He opened his mouth again as she finished, and Preston said, loudly, “It was a delightful day, thank you. I had a fine bag, but Pat here carried off the honours. She gave a very modest account just now, but the fact is, I’ve rarely seen such shooting. Privilege to witness.”
“Oh, so—” Haworth began, and Fen came in, at a pitch that threatened the glassware and cut right through his deeper voice. “How wonderful, Pat! You showed all the men how it’s done. Even Jimmy, and Mr. Merton?”
“I’m rather—”
“Especially me,” Bill said. “I’m used to it, of course. Even our eldest brother gives her the laurels, and he’s not one to admit himself second best.”
“Marvellous.” Fen clapped her hands. “Pat was teaching me to shoot yesterday, you know, and she was really wonderful. I learned a great deal. Not that I have any ambitions to be a champion, of course.”
“You—”
“You couldn’t have a better teacher.” Bill was clearly enjoying the game of talking over Haworth as much as Victoria Singh and Preston. Jack looked decidedly wary, and the family did not appear to be enjoying themselves at all. That was their hard luck. Miss Singh had no more volunteered to be Haworth’s punchbag than Pat had to be the audience to his nasty little games.
“Fen was remarkable,” she said. “Took to it like a duck to water. I think with practice you could be a fine shot.”
“I hope so, though of targets,” Fen said. “I don’t aspire to game, though I am happy to carry on with my wobbly and inconsistent principles and eat what others shoot for me.”
“Very reasonable.” Miss Singh smiled at her. “I might even join your next lesson, if I may, Miss Merton. I’m fired with a spirit of emulation.”
“Oh, yes, do!” Fen cried. “That would be great fun.”
“You’d be very welcome, although...” Pat couldn’t help glancing at Preston.
Miss Singh’s smile widened. “But surely I ought to learn from the best?”
“Argh,” Preston said, clutching his heart. “Cut to the quick. Actually, I’d be a rotten teacher—know what to do, but not how one does it, if you follow me—and Pat’s a better hand with a gun anyway. I own myself beaten on all points.”
“Do you know, I find it thrilling how many men of our party are happy to accept when they’ve been exceeded by a woman,” Fen remarked.
“There comes a point where even a chauvinist like myself has to face the facts,” the Earl put in, with a little bow to Pat.
“I should be careful, if I were you, Miss Merton,” Lady Anna said. There were red spots on her cheeks, and her voice was shrill. “You might win plaudits by beating men, but you won’t win hearts.”
It was astonishing how quickly the convivial atmosphere could be destroyed. Miss Singh shut her eyes, and someone gave a just-audible groan. Pat forbore to point out that she wouldn’t have taken Lady Anna’s advice on men for all the tea in China. “That’s all right, thanks. I shan’t worry.”
“I don’t think Miss Merton is interested in men’s hearts,” Haworth said, finally seizing an opportunity. “Why, she’s a man herself in all but the clothing. Give her a pair of trousers and nobody could tell the difference. I can just picture her wooing some pretty girl, can’t you?”
“And that will do.” Bill’s chair scraped in the frozen silence as he stood, tossing his napkin down. “Step outside with me a moment, Haworth.”
“Oh God,” Jimmy said under his breath.
“Did you not hear me?” Bill enquired, since Haworth hadn’t moved. “Get up.”
“Don’t be absurd, Bill.” Pat was pleased at how calm she sounded. “Sit down. I really can’t see he’s worth bruising your knuckles.”
It wasn’t a peacemaking comment, but she didn’t want to make peace, only to prevent Bill from hauling a fellow guest off the Countess’s dining table. All the same, she wished almost immediately that she had temporised, done the little performance of smiling and soothing that women so often used to turn away male wrath, because she could see Haworth’s face, and it was pure malevolence.
“Worth,” he repeated, spitting out the syllables. “What an interesting word, Miss Merton. Why don’t you ask my esteemed father in law about his net worth—”
“Maurice,” Jimmy said.
“—or about what his name would be worth if the truth about certain arrangements came out? Why don’t you ask the worth of my wife’s chastity, or Jack’s honesty, come to that?”
“Maurice!” the Countess and Jimmy said together, and Jimmy went on, “Curse it, man—”
“And tell us, Jimmy, how long do you intend to endure your empty-headed heiress before you return to the lover you keep in London?” Jimmy’s mouth dropped open. Haworth bared his teeth in triumph. “Or will your dumpy commoner put up with your illicit trysts as worth her coronet?”
Half the room was shouting now. Jimmy had gone chalk white; Fen was scarlet. Maurice Haworth’s eyes blazed with unholy pleasure. He leaned forward to see the Countess. “And you, madam—”
Victoria Singh picked up her glass of water and threw it in his face.
Then it was chaos. Haworth lunged for her, shouting a word that Pat wouldn’t have expected even from him, sending his wine glass flying. Miss Singh recoiled, but Preston was already on his feet, sprinting round the table. He grabbed the dripping Haworth by the shoulders and dragged him up and backwards, spun him round, and punched him square in the mouth.
The Countess was watching, frozen; the Earl had his eyes shut. Lady Anna and Miss Singh stood, staring, as the men grappled; Bill strode over, speaking in a commanding voice that was entirely ignored; and Fen got up and hurried to the door.
“Fen!” Pat turned, but before she could stand, Jimmy had pushed away his chair and was going after her.
Hell. Hell.
Preston had his hands around Haworth’s throat now. Bill was trying to separate them but the purpling of Haworth’s face suggested he wasn’t having much luck, so Pat took a leaf from Miss Singh’s book, picked up the water jug, and tossed the contents over both combatants.
Preston got most of the soaking. He recoiled, spluttering. Haworth, bloody-mouthed and dripping, lunged forward, and found Bill’s hand at his chest.
“You’d better get out of here before you get the thrashing you deserve,” Bill told him. “No, don’t speak. If you open your mouth again, I’ll close it for you.”
“Mr. Merton,” the Countess said. “Please. Stop. Let us deal with this. I would prefer everyone to leave. I— If anyone should like to order sandwiches, please do ring.”
Pat looked at her, sat among the ruins of her dinner table and her family, and said, “Come on, Bill. Let’s go.”
Bill took her arm as they left the room. “Crikey. Crikey.”
“I need to find Fen.”
“Do you?” Bill said dubiously as she set off for the drawing room. “She might be busy.”
&n
bsp; Pat hoped she was busy giving Jimmy his marching orders. “We’ll see. I imagine Jimmy might need a shoulder to cry on too.”
“Jimmy deserves every damned thing he has coming,” Bill said, with quiet savagery. “Stupid swine.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
The drawing room door was open. Pat and Bill came to it together, and stopped.
Jimmy and Fen were in there. They weren’t arguing. They were embracing, tightly—not kissing, but holding one another in a desperate grasp, so absorbed that they didn’t seem to have heard the Mertons’ footsteps.
Bill’s fingers clenched hard on Pat’s arm, almost spasmodically, then he stepped silently back, pulling her away. “Come on, old thing,” he murmured. “Come on. Better leave them to it.”
“CHRIST ALMIGHTY,” BILL said some time later. “Excuse my French.”
“Feel free.”
They’d settled in Pat’s room, since there was nobody in the house either of them wanted to speak to. The room had no chair, so the siblings sat on the bed, backs against the wall, as they had when they were children. The wind howled outside, flinging sheets of rain against the window with heavy splats.
Bill, taking the Countess at her word, had rung for sandwiches and beer. Pat supported that, since she’d done a lot of walking today, although the hollow feeling in her gut had nothing to do with the interrupted meal.
How could Fen forgive him? He’d ignored her, he didn’t appreciate her, he was keeping a mistress, for God’s sake. Why hadn’t she thrown the ring back in his face?
Men keep mistresses, she reminded herself. Fen’s a great deal more worldly than you are, when it comes to society marriages. She’ll be a countess. You only met her two days ago. It didn’t help.
She wrapped her arms around her knees, knowing it would probably crumple the dress. She’d put so much effort into looking nice.
“Are you all right, old thing?”
“I feel terrible,” Pat said. “I do wish I hadn’t said anything. If I hadn’t made that remark, given him that opening—”
“He’d have taken another. You heard him. He was going at Miss Singh all evening, and he didn’t like being snubbed at all.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have. Although, not provoking him is the Wittons’ tactic, and it doesn’t work either. One can see why they try not to, of course. I wonder if that sort of outburst happens often.”
“I suppose he builds up to it. What a nasty piece of work.”
“What do you think is wrong with him?”
“Being a nasty piece of work,” Bill said. “He enjoys making people unhappy; I don’t see anything more than that need be said.”
“Fen thinks he’s a drug fiend.”
“Does she, now.” Bill considered that. “Perhaps. But I’d think the drug-taking is an element of his delightful personality, rather than the root cause. That’s a man who enjoys the upper hand, and God help those he has it over.”
“Quite. Bill, shall we go home? This is really too awful and I don’t know how much more I can bear to watch.” She’d be leaving Fen to fend for herself, of course, but Fen wasn’t incapable and if she’d chosen Jimmy, with all his faults, as her protector, Pat had to respect that, no matter how much it hurt.
“I think you probably should. We’ll get you on a train tomorrow. I don’t imagine there’ll be shooting for a few days, and being trapped in this house with that swine—no, you should go.”
“And you.”
“I can’t,” Bill said. “You don’t mind travelling alone, do you?”
“What do you mean, you can’t? For heaven’s sake, come home. We can ignore Jonty; I dare say he’ll be wrapped up in Olivia. Or we could go to the seaside. You really do need a break, and this isn’t it.”
“It’s not that. I’ve a responsibility.”
“To Jimmy?” Pat said. “Really? Because it seems to me—”
“No, not Jimmy. Just a moment, I think that’s our dinner.”
A harried-looking maid came in bearing a platter of enough sandwiches for six and four bottles of beer, precariously balanced. Bill leapt up to take them with a word of thanks, and shut the door firmly after her. Pat took a sandwich more out of duty than pleasure, but the first bite reminded her that she was hungry, even if she was miserable. It was excellent thick-cut ham, mustard applied with a heavy hand, and she demolished two sandwiches while Bill ate four.
“Goodness, I needed that,” he said, taking a swig of beer.
“So did I.” Pat sipped hers more cautiously. “You were about to tell me why you can’t leave the worst house party since Julius Caesar invited Brutus for dinner.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Mmm. Well.”
“Bill.”
Bill sighed. “All right, you may as well know. Have you heard of Threppel and Swing?”
“It sounds like a gymnastic exercise.” She frowned. “Although it does ring a bell. What is it?”
“A stockbrokers’ firm that collapsed a few months ago.”
“Oh. Oh. Is that the place Maurice Haworth used to work?”
Bill nodded. “He was a junior partner, invested all Lady Anna’s money in the company, and they were pretty much ruined in the crash. The thing is, there are a number of questions over what happened to the firm. Word was circulating a couple of months before the house of cards came down, you see: questionable practices, paying debts with borrowing.”
Pat nodded. “Does this have anything to do with the accusations Haworth was tossing at the Earl?”
“Indeed it does. The Earl was a major investor and on the Board of Directors. That’s how Haworth came to his position there in the first place, I believe. He was in some other City firm, rather a shabby outfit, previously.”
“And the Earl lost money in the crash?”
“Yes, a great deal,” Bill said. “Or so it appears. That’s the thing, you see. A lot of money came into the firm, and the question is where it went. Bad investments, of course, but the books are in the sort of muddle at which a clever man would work very hard if he wanted to hide his tracks.”
“You think there was something criminal going on?”
“It looks like malpractice, yes. It’s a tangle well beyond the Met to unpick—financial wrongdoing is an awfully tricky business—so my office is looking into it.”
“Your office is looking into the Earl’s affairs,” Pat repeated. “And by that you mean, you are?”
Bill made a face. “I declared an interest at once when I was given the job. I assumed they’d take me off it, but our chief thought it might be handy to have an inside track. The upper classes do close ranks, you know, even in this sort of business. I agreed because it never crossed my mind that I could do the old chap anything but good. It was unthinkable that Jimmy’s father should be dishonest. Only, you see, it isn’t looking terribly bright. His name is on a few papers it oughtn’t be on, authorising things that ought not have happened.”
“The Earl was embezzling from his own firm?”
“Call it robbing Peter to pay Paul. Using funds unlawfully to prop up the business, and losing people’s money.” Bill blew out his cheeks. “He was in over his head. I think he was steered to some bad decisions, and to sign things he didn’t fully understand, and I’ll bet I know who by. But it’s his name, in the end, and his responsibility if I can’t prove otherwise.”
“Oh, hell,” Pat said. “Does Jimmy know you’re doing this?”
“I told him at the start, and he was happy enough to think they had a friend in the business. We haven’t discussed it since.”
“But even so, if you believe the Earl is up to his neck in this, whether by accident or design, ought you have accepted an invitation to stay with him?” Pat demanded, and then it clicked. “Oh, no. Bill. In his own house?”
“I told them again I wanted to recuse myself when it started to appear that Lord Witton was likely to face charges,” Bill said. “I explained I had an invitation to shoot with him. And—well, there was
a great deal of discussion, but the conclusion was that I ought to come here and see what I could dig out.”
“To spy on your host.”
“To see what I could dig out,” Bill repeated. “On the clear understanding that if I find anything favourable to the Earl, any evidence of manipulation, that will be taken into account. It’s his best hope, Pat. The net’s closing around him. He’s made a rotten mess of things and lost a lot of people’s money, and nobody else will be terribly interested in making excuses. I don’t feel marvellous about this, in case you’re wondering.”
“I’m sure you don’t. I can’t say I like it much either. Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, palling up to Haworth instead of threatening to sock him in the jaw?”
“Probably, but I have some standards.”
There was a knock at the door. Bill muttered, “Oh God, what now?”
“Come in,” Pat called. The door opened, and Fen slipped in.
For a girl who’d just been in her fiancé’s passionate embrace, she looked miserable. Her eyes were red, as was her nose, and her hair was something of a mess. She registered Bill as he scrambled to his feet and said, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Not at all,” Bill said, vacating the bed. “I suppose you’re come for a word with Pat, Miss Carruth. Let me leave you to it. Pat, about that train—”
“We will speak tomorrow,” Pat said. “And I’ll decide for myself, thank you. Night night.”
“Sleep well, old thing. Miss Carruth.” Bill hurried out, nabbing another sandwich and a bottle of beer as he went.
Fen sniffled. “I’m sorry. I interrupted you.”
“Don’t worry about that. Do you want to sit down? There’s only the bed.”
