Lady Anne 03 - Curse of the Gypsy

by Donna Lea Simpson

  His breath caught in his throat at the thought, and his sudden understanding overwhelmed him; any man so fortunate as to win Anne’s love must not care what the world thought the price. What was between them, no man could put asunder, and he was a fool if he let her go.

  The carriage rattled to a stop and he opened the gate, strode to his mother’s carriage and opened the door latch. He held out his hand and the marchioness took it, sailing past him and toward the lodge. He put out his hand again and Anne stepped down, her cat following and looking around with every appearance of remembering the place well.

  “I’m sorry if that was a long and tedious journey, my dear Anne,” he murmured, tucking her arm into the crook of his.

  “On the contrary. It was astonishingly revelatory,” she said, looking up at him and smiling faintly.

  “Oh?” He couldn’t think what else to say. What did she mean?

  “Your mother and I have had a conversation,” she said as they strolled toward Ivy Lodge, their shadows elongated and playing across the gravel walk from the slanting rays of late afternoon sun. “I think I understand her a little better now, even if I understand you less.”

  He was to think about that long into the night, for that was the last bit of conversation they had alone before the ladies departed for their suites to rest and dress for dinner. They all dined together and retired for the night after such a wearisome journey.

  Twenty-two

  “I can’t think why you wished to come along. My business is grim today, Anne,” Darkefell said the next morning as he pulled away from Ivy Lodge with Anne up next to him on the high seat of his gig. They fell in behind the farm cart that had the miserable prisoner, Hiram Grover. Darkefell had fed him well, he told Anne, and allowed him to bathe and change his clothes, but he had not trusted Hiram near a razor, so the fellow’s gray beard was getting shaggy, while his bald pate was wigless, spotted with the signs of age that had overtaken him in the last two months on the run.

  “I do not intend to interfere, if that is what you are concerned about, my lord,” Anne said sharply. She hadn’t slept well at all. Nightmares of being trapped in a deep hole had plagued her all night, perhaps the result of her conversation with the marchioness, or perhaps from her unsettled feelings toward Darkefell after their early morning confrontation.

  Lady Darkefell had been almost pleasant in the breakfast room that morning. Lydia had stared back and forth between the two women in amazement as they carried on an agreeable conversation and was speechless, thus adding to the comfort of the meal for all.

  Anne was silent for a few minutes. “I didn’t mean to snap, Tony,” she finally said, still stiff, but trying to be fair. “I am a little tired. Perhaps this … this grimness and terror is all taking its toll, finally.” She gestured ahead of them to Grover in the farm cart.

  “He’ll get his day in court,” Darkefell said grimly, “and pay for killing Cecilia Wainwright.”

  By hanging. She shuddered. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Grover deserved it, but life and death … it was all too close to her that moment. “We have to talk, Tony,” she said. “I’m … I’m confused. After yesterday morning, and the afternoon before … I just don’t know what to think of you. I feel like you’re a stranger, or …” She shook her head but kept her gaze straight ahead of her. “I just don’t know.”

  “I’m just a man,” Darkefell said, his hands tight on the traces. “That bastard tried to help Grover escape. He defied me and would have undone all the work we did in Kent. Grover would have been free to try again to kill you; I haven’t forgotten that he shot you, Anne. He admitted it to me in the hours I questioned him, he gloated about it, how close he had come to murdering you! I’ll never forget it. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him then and there, save the crown the cost of a rope.”

  Anne’s breath caught in her throat at the guttural darkness in his voice. He would kill for her. Was that what love meant for a man? She shivered. “I don’t know what to think,” she said again, and almost didn’t recognize her own voice. She sounded lost.

  They didn’t speak again. The village was busy, as it was market day, unfortunately. Their entry into Hornethwaite was like some disreputable parade; children skipped alongside the cart, and some pelted Hiram Grover with loose cobbles.

  “Stop them, Tony!” Anne cried, distressed. “Let us at least do this with some dignity.”

  The marquess pulled the horse to a halt and hollered for the cart ahead of them to stop, then he leaped down from the gig to the village road and grabbed one young ruffian, the ringleader, by the back of his shirt. “You! No more of that, or there’ll be trouble. From me.” He shook him then released him, and the boy scampered away, as did the other children, tearing off down a dirty narrow side lane. Darkefell returned to the gig and gave his hand to Anne, who stepped down and looked around her. Dark clouds were gathering overhead.

  “Where shall I meet you?” Darkefell asked her, his hand rubbing her arm.

  A lady passing by shot one scandalized look at the two of them and he backed away from Anne, murmuring that he did not want to damage her reputation in a place he hoped would be her home before long.

  “It seems like the weather may change,” she said, looking up at the sky, “and with the open gig we do not want to be caught in a rainstorm. Perhaps you did not understand, Darkefell; I am going with you to see Grover locked up.”

  He stilled and Anne waited for him to forbid her. She was on the edge of heading back to Kent, sure they could never find a way to live together. His behavior in this moment could make that decision or break it.

  But he said, “All right. This business with Grover and Pomfroy won’t take more than half an hour. Pomfroy’ll lock the devil up this time or answer to me.” Darkefell took her arm and they walked toward the guildhall at the top of the high street while the gig was cared for by a boy from the livery, and the farm cart carried Grover onward.

  Thunder growled overhead and a spatter of light rain followed but almost immediately stopped. Anne saw a familiar figure, the usually drunk William Spottiswode, but though he looked utterly miserable, he was not drunk. He stared fixedly at Hiram Grover, now being carried past him toward the guildhall jail in the cart while she and Darkefell walked alongside.

  “’E’s back,” Spottiswode muttered.

  Anne, on Darkefell’s arm, began to walk past the fellow, but he grabbed her arm, pulling her away from the marquess.

  “’E’s back!” he said, pointing toward the wagon and the bound figure huddled on it.

  “Yes,” Anne said, jerking her arm from his grasp. “Lord Darkefell and I captured Hiram Grover and he is back in Hornethwaite to face murder charges.”

  “My lady,” Darkefell said, stopping and looking back at them. “Is he bothering you?”

  She examined Spottiswode, and remarkably, as bad as he looked, the fellow was clearly sober with no smell of alcohol at all on him. “You must be glad, Mr. Spottiswode,” she said, ignoring Darkefell for the moment, “after all you suffered, being accused of a crime you didn’t commit, that Hiram Grover is finally to be tried for Miss Wainwright’s murder.”

  “Aye. I s’pose. But marm, it don’t matter, as I ’member now … I did it.”

  “No, you didn’t, Mr. Spottiswode,” she said patiently. “You did not kill Cecilia Wainwright.”

  “No,” he said, staring into her eyes, tears gathering in his and trickling down his cheeks into his scruffy whiskers. “Not that poor lass. But I kilt my Tilly. I kilt Tilly Landers, strangled ’er dead, I did, an’ she with my child in ’er belly, too. I’m a-goin’ to hell.”

  Frantically, Anne called Darkefell to come back to her side. He had been at the street, speaking with the cart driver, telling him to wait, and now came back to her side. She told him what Spottiswode had said while that man stood by, the picture of dejection.

  “Are you sure he is not imagining it, the way he did when he confessed to killing Cecilia Wainwright?” Darkefell aske
d, referring to the confession that had confused all of them for a time. A stiff breeze blew up the high street and tousled a dark lock of his hair, tossing it across his broad brow. He impatiently swept the curl aside.

  “I don’t think he is this time. Don’t you remember, Tony?” she asked, clutching his sleeve in her gloved hand. “When Spottiswode spoke of killing Cecilia, he said he had strangled her and dumped her body! We knew that was not true—she hadn’t been strangled and she hadn’t been moved; she lay where she died—and so we knew he hadn’t killed the poor maid. But Tilly Landers … it’s possible she was strangled, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said, still eyeing Spottiswode. “No doctor examined her, but … I saw her body.” He shuddered and shook his head. “She had a gash on the back of her head, but bruising other places as well, including her neck. She could have been strangled, I suppose.”

  “Darkefell,” Anne said urgently, tugging at his sleeve, trying to recapture his attention. He was caught in the horror of the memory of his lover’s dead body, as any feeling man who had had an affair, however brief, would have been. It spoke well of his heart and reminded her what she saw in him, that for every time he was a bewilderingly masculine brute, he was also a feeling, thinking man of great tenderness. But as much as she honored his horror at Tilly’s death, she needed him to attend to her. “Listen to me,” she said. “You always thought it possible that Tilly did not die at Staungill Force, but that her body was dumped there. We spoke of that. The writer of the anonymous letter placing you there was either the murderer or knew who did it.”

  “I already said I believe it was Grover who wrote the letter,” he muttered, his gaze slewing between Grover and Spottiswode.

  “And Spottiswode said he had been told to dump the body in the Force. It explains everything. Everyone in the village apparently knew you had had a brief affair with Tilly Landers. Grover harbored a grudge against you, but we couldn’t imagine that he had killed Tilly simply to lay the blame on you. After all, he did not murder Cecilia until she posed a threat to him by trying to blackmail him. As twisted as his reasoning is, Grover thought he had just cause for killing poor Cecilia. She was threatening his status in the community by saying she’d tell about him ordering the sheep killed and that ridiculous werewolf costume used.”

  “But how did Hiram Grover know Spottiswode killed her and dumped her in the Force, if it is all true?”

  “That’s what we need to find out,” Anne said. “Spottiswode says someone told him to dump Tilly’s body there. Who else but Grover? It explains even more about why Grover gave him his expensive wine … it was to keep him foggy and bound to his service.”

  Both of their gazes turned to Hiram Grover, who was watching them with an unwonted intensity. He struggled in his bonds, rolling over in the cart. “What has that drunken wretch said?” he called out.

  Anne turned to Spottiswode, the man’s pocked face shadowed with fear. “William, who told you to dump Tilly Landers’s body at the bottom of Staungill Force?”

  His eyes slewed to Grover in the cart. “Mister Grover. He was me friend. I arsked ’im what t’do wiv Tilly, an’ he helped me.”

  “Helped you?” Anne asked.

  “Helped me take care o’ my poor Tilly. But it weren’t the right thing t’do, was it?”

  “No,” Anne said, putting one hand on his shoulder while she held her bonnet with the other as a wind swept up the high street. William Spottiswode was a murderer, but he had been used as a dreadful tool by Hiram Grover, a cat’s paw to ruin Darkefell and his family. “Willy, will you tell us everything, and Sir Trevor Pomfroy, as well?” He hesitated, and Anne could see his Adam’s apple goggling up and down his throat, but at long last, with terror in his eyes, he nodded.

  “I’m dead already; I knows it now.”

  They gathered in Pomfroy’s comfortable home, at the top of the high street in Hornethwaite. The magistrate had been stiffly formal, but though he was clearly displeased at Spottiswode’s presence, he didn’t dare deny the marquess’s request. So they were all shown into a cold drawing room kept, clearly, for visitors the magistrate did not want to pollute his more comfortable family rooms.

  Hiram Grover sat in silent outrage, keeping his ponderous dignity even as he was scruffy, his gray beard many days old. But Anne noticed that Darkefell had allowed him to bathe and dress in clothes retrieved, presumably, from his former estate. It was a symbol of humanity that Anne cherished, as it revealed that as cold as Darkefell could be, there was a side of him that was humane. Grover sat with his fingers threaded together over his deflated paunch, his embroidered waistcoat loose from the weight he had lost during his flight from justice. The magistrate made constant use of his handkerchief and Anne did sympathize, for though Grover had been allowed to wash, Spottiswode was his usual dirty self.

  Darkefell took command and Pomfroy wisely allowed it. He had displeased the marquess by letting Grover escape in the first place, two months ago, because he had taken the gentleman at his word that he merely wished to go back to his home to pack a few necessities. Of course Grover had disappeared, which led to the late-night attack near Staungill Force when the criminal had almost toppled Anne off a cliff.

  Darkefell had not informed Pomfroy that his brother, Lord Julius Bestwick, was alive and at Ivy lodge that moment. Perhaps he should have, for Grover made it his first speech.

  “Sir Trevor, I don’t suppose Lord Darkefell has seen fit to tell you that he has harbored that … that brother of his, Lord Julius, for many months now,” Grover said. “Yet he is trying to lay all of this outrage at my feet while protecting his brother, a murderer, and worse, perhaps!”

  “There is worse than being a murderer, Mr. Grover?” Anne said.

  “Shut up, Hiram, if you know what’s good for you,” the marquess said, his deep voice echoing in the chilly, cavernous room.

  Pomfroy had stiffened at the news that Julius was alive and living at Darkefell, but he kept his own counsel on that. “My lord, if we could just ignore Mr. Grover and get down to business? Why did you bring this creature here?” he asked, waving his handkerchief at Spottiswode, who was sunk low in his seat, dismally trying to be ignored.

  “He is sober, at least, this time,” Anne said.

  “Spottiswode has confessed to killing Tilly Landers, the crime that was blamed upon my brother, as you must remember. The anonymous letter blaming me was, we suspect, sent to you by Mr. Hiram Grover.” Darkefell threw the prisoner a stern look.

  “Nonsense!” blurted Grover, his face turning red and sweat beginning to trickle over his flapping cheeks, through his scruffy beard to his neckcloth.

  Sir Trevor turned a basilisk stare at Spottiswode. “What is this? You killed Tilly Landers?”

  “Nonsense!” roared Grover.

  Spottiswode trembled.

  “Shut up, Hiram,” Darkefell said, “or I will gag you.” He shot an apologetic look toward Anne, but she was not alarmed.

  “My lord,” Pomfroy said, shaking his head in dismay. “No violence, please! I must protest that these proceedings are highly improper in the presence of the young lady!”

  “Balderdash,” Anne said. “You will not eject me, not when we are finally getting down to business.”

  Darkefell shrugged. “She’s stubborn. You were married once, Pomfroy, you know how women can be.”

  Anne felt a sincere urge to punch the marquess’s shoulder, but restrained herself. Was he deliberately baiting her?

  “Spottiswode did kill Miss Landers,” she said, with an arrow of sadness piercing the levity of the moment and the marquess’s joking comments. “That is what Willy was remembering when he confessed to killing Miss Cecilia Wainwright. All along, Lord Darkefell and I were puzzled by the details in his confession. They didn’t match Cecilia’s murder, but did seem vivid and pointed. That is because, Spottiswode says, he was remembering killing Miss Landers, his erstwhile lover.”

  “Tell Sir Trevor, Spottiswode,” Darkefell urged.


  Pomfroy said, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  It was a painful, drawn-out procedure, with much hesitation on Spottiswode’s part and much bellowing on Hiram Grover’s, for the man would not be shut up. He was sweating profusely, his face brick red, his stained neckcloth loosened, a vein pulsing in his throat. He would only stay still because the marquess threatened to bind him again if he didn’t remain seated.

  Spottiswode haltingly told his story: He and Tilly Landers became lovers. She was not overly particular, being a young woman of exceedingly easy virtue. Spottiswode, back then, was a working man and had only begun to drink heavily. When he found out Tilly was with child, he was resigned to marriage and even began to look forward to it. She was a cut above him and he knew it, but he intended to look after her and their child.

  When he spoke of marriage, Tilly laughed in his face. She, who had been a lover of a marquess, should marry him, a common laborer?

  Darkefell colored darkly, but Anne kept her gaze from him in case it should appear to be reproachful. They had the conversation about his affair long ago, and she would not throw it in his face again. It was over long ago, and before she knew him.

  Spottiswode argued with Tilly, jealously asking if the baby was the marquess’s. She said no, it wasn’t, it was Willy’s baby, but she wasn’t going to marry him. She’d find another beau, someone with more money. Spottiswode, crushed, left her alone, but brooded for a few days and drank. Then late one night, roaring drunk, he entered the bar where she worked, looking for her.

  “Did the bar owner see you quarrel?” Darkefell asked.

  “Yers,” Spottiswode replied. “Got ’is son to toss me, ’e did. Tolt me not to come back.” But he waited outside. After closing, when Tilly was about to walk back to the room she rented from a local lady, he accosted her, just to talk, he said. She brushed him off, saying he should get away from her and never talk to her again. She was done with him.