The Scandals Of An Innocent

by Nicola Cornick

  “Opium,” the duchess uttered. “My dear Miss Lister, you are going to sleep now.”

  Alice tried to wrench herself away, but she could not breathe, could barely think, and then the darkness came rushing in so quickly that it seemed all the stars went out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  L YDIA AWOKE SLOWLY. Her body felt pleasantly languid from Tom’s most recent lovemaking and she was as warm and contented as was possible, given that she was curled up under a smelly old horse blanket on a prickly mattress in an old barn on the Cole Court estate. It had been Lydia’s idea to take refuge at Cole because she knew every last inch of the estate, where to find food and where to hide. But time was passing and they were no closer to clearing Tom’s name. In the last few days, Tom had seemed more preoccupied, barely speaking to her about his plans, though his amorous attentions to her were as ardent as ever.

  Lydia stretched, relishing the echo of pleasure that rippled through her body, and reached out a hand to her lover. He was not there.

  She sat up abruptly, the shreds of sleep driven from her mind by a sudden fear. Where had Tom gone? Why had he not told her he was going out? Why had he left her? Was he safe? Lydia’s insecurities, barely hidden below the surface, rose and almost choked her. She scrambled up, tidying her clothes with trembling hands, grabbing her shoes, stumbling to the door.

  The cold wind hit her in the face as soon as she went outside, and the rain soaked her. She scoured the dark moors desperately, giving a sigh of relief as she saw Tom’s figure walking down the track to the east, the road that led down to Cole Court itself. Even now, as a wanted man and with a price on his head, he had a jaunty walk, a cocksure manner that Lydia had always found so confident and appealing but that now, for some reason, struck a chill into her heart. He looked very purposeful. He was going somewhere-without her. She started to stumble after him; she called out, but the wind whipped the words from her mouth and carried them away and Tom did not turn.

  Lydia started to hurry. Perhaps, she thought, Tom was going to Cole Court to ask her father’s permission to wed her. That was a nice idea. She had told Tom how her family had cast her out and disowned her, how she had lost her inheritance, and he had not seemed to care much. He had told her that he was sure they would take her back once his innocence was proven and their wedding had taken place. Noble families, Tom had said, hated scandal. Once she was finally and respectably married it would all be swept under the carpet and forgotten. Perhaps, Lydia thought, Tom was so eager to wed her that he was going to plead her case with her parents, proclaim his innocence and ask for their help in clearing his name so that the marriage could take place as soon as possible. The thought warmed her even as the rain drenched her clothes and made her shiver.

  She had reached the edge of the deer park and was about fifty yards from the road when she saw the Cole carriage, driven at a breakneck pace, turn into the drive in a spatter of mud and rather than make its way toward the stable yard, veer off down a short track to where a small, squat, rounded building sat on its own. Lydia knew it was the icehouse. Tom, she noted, had also seen the carriage arrive and now he moved toward it, cutting between the trees of the deer park, still ahead of her and still not looking back. Lydia opened her mouth to call out to him again, but then closed it. She was not sure what it was that prompted her to keep quiet, but a strange and unpleasant unease was creeping through her limbs now and seemed to be weighting them with lead.

  The Duke and Duchess of Cole were descending the carriage, and Lydia watched as Tom sauntered across the grass toward them. She saw her mother stiffen, a horrified expression crossing her face, and her father straighten up very tall and proud as though he were about to tell the coachman to horsewhip Tom from the estate. But Tom was speaking; she crept closer to hear what he was saying, pressing herself against the stout trunk of a concealing oak, her shaking fingers digging into the rough bark. Suddenly she did not want him to know that she was there. There was something terribly wrong. She knew it. She wanted to turn and run, but hideous curiosity held her planted to the spot.

  “Cole!” Tom sounded disrespectful, she thought. “I’ve come to talk to you about your daughter.” He drove his hands into his pockets and strolled up to the duke and duchess. “I have Lydia,” he said. “She is my mistress. My pregnant mistress.” He gave Henry Cole an insolent look. “She must take after you, sir. She has an appetite for it.”

  Lydia felt suddenly faint. She wanted to put her fingers in her ears and blank out what she was hearing, to run as fast as her legs could carry her. But it was too late. Her knees were trembling and she could not run anywhere and some hateful, horrible compulsion to know the worst held her still.

  “What do you want, Fortune?” The duke sounded testy but not as angry as Lydia had thought he might. There was something else in his voice that struck an odd note, something that sounded like fear.

  “I want money,” Tom said clearly. “I want you to make Lydia’s inheritance over to me and then I will marry her and leave the country-since there is a price on my head-and we’ll never trouble you again. You will be able to forget your harlot of a daughter. I’ll take her off your hands so that she won’t besmirch the Cole escutcheon anymore. But I’ll only do it if you pay me.”

  “We don’t want anything to do with that little trollop!” The duchess’s voice rose to a screech and carried to Lydia on the wind. “Throwing herself away on you, and you barely even a gentleman. We’ll not pay you a penny. Be damned to you both.”

  “Get out,” Henry Cole said. “You heard her.” He looked at his wife. “We don’t give a toss whether you marry the chit or not. Get out before we call the authorities to arrest you.”

  Tom, Lydia thought, with a strange, cold detachment, was looking chagrined. If only he had asked me, she thought, with the same cold clarity. If only he had told me he was going to go to my parents and ask them to pay him to take me-and my scandalous name-away. I could have told him he was wasting his time by trying to extort the money from them. Because they do not care what happens to me. And neither does he…

  Tom said something filthy and disgusting about throwing her in the gutter where she belonged with the other whores. Lydia covered her ears. The coachman really was going to horsewhip him now, and Tom knew he was beaten, turning away with one last lewd remark and walking off with as much dignity as he could muster. Lydia slumped against the unyielding trunk of the oak tree, the tears choking her throat, her heart pounding. She hated herself. She hated herself for being so stupid that she had trusted Tom not once, but twice, when he had never cared for her at all. Oh, he had lied and lied and told her he loved her and pretended he wished to wed her, but all the time he had been remembering that she had once been heiress to fifty thousand pounds and might be again. He was a gambler and she was his last bet…

  He had lost. And so had she.

  She straightened up. One day, she thought, I will tell Tom Fortune what I think of him. I will make him pay. But now she felt sick and ill and faint and all she wanted was the comfort of someone whom she knew loved her, which meant she must find her way to the village and seek out Alice or Lizzie or Laura and confess what a fool she had been again…

  She was about to slip away from Cole Court and leave her parents to whatever mysterious thing they were doing at the icehouse, for really she did not give a damn about anything anymore. But then she saw that the groom had opened the door of the building and the duke and duchess were helping someone out of the carriage, supporting her between the pair of them. The woman’s bonnet had come off, her head was drooping and her bright ringlets shone palely in the spring sunshine. She stumbled, dragging her feet as though she could not walk properly, and the duchess tightened her grip on her arm and said something to her.

  Lydia caught her breath on a gasp. Alice! She started forward, but then checked herself as the duke and duchess steered Alice solicitously across the grass and into the icehouse. The iron door clanged shut behind them. The groom stood guar
d by the door whilst the coachman whipped the team up away toward the stables. Lydia stood staring, trying to make sense of what she had seen. Fear clawed at her. There was something very strange happening here. This must have been why the duke and duchess had seemed so ill at ease to see Tom. He had arrived most inopportunely for them, for what on earth were they doing? Alice had looked as though she was drugged. And now she was locked in the dank isolation of the icehouse and goodness only knew what the duke and duchess were planning, but whatever it was it required an armed man guarding the door…

  “Lowell!” Lydia thought. His farm at High Top was no more than a quarter mile distant. If she could only reach him he would know what to do. Fear was making her legs tremble. She had never been particularly courageous, like Alice, or wild, like Lizzie. But Alice was her friend. She had taken her in when her parents had turned her from their door and left her destitute. So Lydia was not going to stand here and wait whilst Alice was in danger.

  She released her comforting hold on the oak tree and slipped from its cover to the next tree and then the next, each time expecting to hear a shout from the groom when he saw her. Nothing happened. She reached the hedge and slipped through, and then she was on the muddy lane, her skirts torn and stained, her feet soaking and terror in her heart. She turned toward High Top and she ran.

  ALL ALICE WANTED TO DO was sleep, but someone kept slapping her and pulling on her hair, and the sharp pain dragged her back from the darkness and forced her to open her eyes.

  “Wake up, you stupid girl!” There was another sharp slap. Alice blinked, trying desperately to throw off the thick blanket that seemed to be fogging her brain. What had happened to her? There was a bitter taste in her mouth and there were images and memories at the edge of her mind, but even as she grasped after them they slid away and she groaned. She wanted to lie down but someone had forced her to sit upright, her back against a wall. It was bitterly cold. She slumped. Her head felt too heavy for her to support it so she rested it against the rough brickwork behind her.

  The sharp slap came again, and Alice opened her eyes and stared into the furious face of the Duchess of Cole, so close to her own. She blinked, unable to focus as the duchess’s features blurred before her eyes.

  “Overdid the opium, old girl.” Someone was speaking from close by. “Don’t know why you had to bring her back here, anyway,” the voice continued. “Damned nuisance. Should have finished her off in the carriage.”

  “Be quiet, Henry! I need to know if she remembers,” the duchess hissed.

  “Doesn’t matter if she remembers or not, old girl, you’ve still got to get rid of her now.” The duke sounded resigned. “Made a dashed mull of the whole thing, if you ask me.”

  “You were the one who could not hit a target directly in front of you,” the duchess retorted. “If only you had shot her on Fortune Row, none of this would be necessary!”

  “Remember what?” Alice said. Her throat felt rough and her tongue too big for her mouth. She did not seem to be able to form the words properly. “I remember nothing.”

  “You see!” the duke said triumphantly. “Waste of time. Knock her on the head now. Get rid of her like vermin!”

  Alice drew back an inch against the wall. Even the tiniest effort made her feel exhausted. She was not restrained, but then she did not need to be. She could scarcely lift her head.

  “Pretty little thing,” the duke continued, sounding disgustingly like a boy wheedling for a treat. “Spirited little serving wench, just my type. Perhaps I could have her before we finish her off-”

  His hand touched Alice’s breast, stroked, and she recoiled against the rough wall, banging her head. Waves of nausea rolled through her.

  “There’s no time for your whoremongering ways,” Faye Cole snapped. “We get her to talk and then we get rid of her.”

  “Pity,” the duke said. There was in his voice the same geniality that had struck so oddly in his wife’s tones earlier. They both appeared quite, quite mad, and equally quite unaware that they were. As her mind spun and scattered, Alice wondered if she was dreaming the entire encounter. Opium, the duchess had said. Or had she dreamed that, too?

  “Talk, girl.” The duchess’s voice was edged with anger now. “We know you know…”

  “I don’t know anything…” Words were such an effort. Alice blinked to try and see through the shadows of the room. Why was it so cold? She could hear water dripping off the walls. It was like being encased in a vault of ice.

  “That’s it, then. Let’s not waste time-”

  Alice saw the duke’s arm rise as though to strike her, and she turned her head blindly aside. There was no escape. She could barely even move, let alone run away. She imagined her head smashing back against the wall. It was such a ridiculous way to die, at the hands of these two. Would Miles ever know? They would probably throw her body into the millpond and no one would find her for years. No one would guess. The Duke and Duchess of Cole were above suspicion.

  The duke’s arm descended and Alice closed her eyes as a last defense against the blow, but Faye Cole caught him by the wrist.

  “Not yet, you old fool!” She grabbed Alice, shook her. “Damn you, remember. November last year. Bonfire night.”

  Alice’s memory lurched, taking her back to the night of the Guy Fawkes bonfire in Fortune’s Folly the previous autumn. Once again she could see the terrible scene between the duchess and Lydia when Lydia had revealed that she was in love with Tom Fortune and her mother had attacked her like a fishwife on the quays. The stark horror of the duchess’s denouncement of her daughter and then the discovery of Warren Sampson’s body on the bonfire had made Alice forget what else she had seen that night, but now…

  “I’ve remembered,” she said.

  The duchess’s hands fell to her sides. The duke stepped back.

  “I’ve remembered,” Alice said again. She looked from the duchess’s face to the duke’s tomato-red one. “I saw you both on Guy Fawkes night, before the bonfire was lit,” she said slowly. “You were struggling to lift the figure of the guy onto the top of the bonfire. I thought how odd that was, for who would imagine the Duke and Duchess of Cole helping to dress the bonfire? It is scarcely in keeping with your ducal dignity, is it?” She shook her head a little. “How stupid I was! Even when the guy fell off and Warren Sampson’s body was revealed, still I did not suspect what had happened. But it was you, was it not? You killed him!”

  The duchess gave a little triumphant crow, as though Alice had said something particularly clever.

  “You see! She does remember!”

  “You murdered Warren Sampson,” Alice said again. “It was you, not Tom Fortune.” With an enormous effort she opened her eyes to look at Faye Cole. “I suppose you killed Sir William Crosby, too,” she said.

  “Of course we did not, you foolish girl!” Faye snapped at her as though she was a schoolgirl having difficulty learning her spelling. “That was Sampson’s work right enough. Crosby was nobility, one of us! Why should we kill him? But Sampson-” she swirled away, skirts swishing “-he was a nobody, a beetle. He wanted us to acknowledge him-we, the Coles of Cole Court, to invite a…a peasant turned merchant into our house? And he sought to blackmail us when we refused.”

  “Made me speak to him at the Fortune’s Folly Ball,” Henry Cole said, aggrieved. “Said he wanted everyone to see I had accepted him into my social circle. Damned scoundrel.”

  There was silence but for the monotonous drip of the water onto stone. The cold was biting into Alice’s bones, but it was starting to revive her, as well, clearing the cobweb remains of the drug from her mind. She could see now that they were in the icehouse; she was sitting on blocks of ice packed in straw. They rose all around her up to the domed, thatched roof. Presumably the duke and duchess had brought her here because it was well away from the main house and the prying eyes of the servants, and it made a neat little prison with only one way in-and out. She knew she was not going to get out of there alive. She h
ad remembered now-and in some bizarre way she had flattered Faye Cole’s monstrous vanity in doing so, because clearly the duchess had wanted to boast about her crime, but now that the truth was out she would have to die.

  “Sampson had a hold over you,” Alice said.

  “He threatened to have me tried over the death of some maidservant,” Henry said. He sounded even more aggrieved now. “They found her in a ditch near here. Don’t know what the fuss was all about. She was willing enough…”

  The bile rose in Alice’s throat. She remembered the girl that she and Lowell had found, the girl whose name Henry Cole had probably not even known before he raped her and left her in a ditch. She could not bear to think of it. Her mind reeled with horror, for Henry was coming closer now, his hot, rank breath on her face, his hands pawing at her again, excited by the thought of violence…

  “How did you kill Sampson?” she asked quickly, desperately. Her voice was still croaky, her body felt bruised and aching, but her mind was sharp now.

  Keep the duchess talking… Don’t let the duke touch you… Use her against him…

  Henry paused in his fumbling as Faye slapped his hands aside and came to squat at Alice’s side.

  “It was easy.” Faye sounded excited, pleased to have been asked. “We invited him to visit us here. He never suspected a thing. An invitation to Cole Court! It was the height of his ambitions. I drugged his wine. And then-” she made a grotesque little twisting gesture with her hands “-we broke his neck.”

  The sickness rose in Alice’s chest. She forced it down. “You hid Sampson’s body, I suppose, and then decided to disguise it and dispose of it on the bonfire,” she said.

  “That’s right!” The duchess sounded very proud of herself. “Such a cunning plan. Or it would have been had you not seen us.”