Which had somehow slid into perfunctory contact with his entire life, until Darius had taken him in hand.
“Her family doesn’t visit the children?”
“The baron did, once, but Ford was the only one born then.”
“You English.” Cato reached for the basket of rolls. “You’re too trusting. You need to keep an eye on these people, Amherst. Their grief or indignation or what have you might be the source of your difficulties.”
“Butter?”
“Of course.”
“And you Irish,” Trent replied. “You’ve been dodging bullets in your bogs for so long only the wiliest among you is left to breed.”
Cato lifted his glass a few inches in salute. “And the most charming.”
“Daft.” Trent lifted his wine in acknowledgement. “I’ll say something about Paula’s family to Heathgate when next I see him, but speaking of the marquess, he’s sent an epistle, which will no doubt include the secrets of the universe.”
“He knew who I was?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“He strongly suspected.” Trent slit the seal on the note, read it, then passed it to Cato. “Delphey’s nowhere to be found, and Mrs. Soames thinks he’s been gone at least a week.”
Cato set the letter aside. “Which means he could be your culprit, or he was paid by your culprit. In any case, Heathgate won’t get any answers out of him.”
“Heathgate’s brother had connections among the Irish aristocracy, because they breed horses with particular success,” Trent said, going after the rolls himself because he’d cleaned his plate but wasn’t full. “He would not suspect who you are but for that connection.”
“So both Heathgate and Greymoor know.” Cato blew out a breath. “I do not want to travel further afield than I have already, and I am bloody homesick.”
That a fit, muscular, handsome man would admit such a thing was at once touching and uncomfortable.
Damn all family intrigues anyway.
“So go home. Tell the grasping little twit you’ll provide for her child, but she’d best recant her accusations if she wants your coin. Send her here. I can use a housekeeper, and the child would likely be about Michael’s age.”
“You’d accept an Irish bastard in your nursery?”
“I’d accept a young woman willing to work for honest coin, and last time I checked, toddling children ate little.” Trent slapped butter on his roll and wandered off to sit on a corner of the desk. “Do not scold me in my own library about dropping crumbs, either. You can’t drift forever, Catullus, and you’ve a duty to your papa’s title, too.”
Much as Trent winced to hear the very words.
“I know.” The way a man new to a title knew and resented his unfulfilled duty.
“Are you married, Catullus?”
“And if I were?”
“It would be none of my affair, other than to wish you felicitations.”
“If I were. But I’m not. Not yet.”
“There’s time.” Trent shoved off the desk and tamped the cork back into the wine bottle. “The right wife would spike Miss McMahon’s guns. Still, we won’t solve all the world’s problems in one day.”
“We won’t.” Cato finished his wine and headed for the door. “My thanks for the meal and for your discretion.”
“Catullus?”
“Amherst?”
“Why did you send for me, in truth?” The question was not the product of any accusation, but rather of genuine curiosity and no little gratitude.
“I have seven sisters I haven’t seen in two years,” he began. “Little ones, nieces and nephews I’ve never held. I wasn’t there for my father’s funeral, and my mother misses me like only an Irish mother can miss her firstborn prodigal son. But you…your brother and sister, your wife, your children, even your benighted excuse for a father, they can all count on you. I’ve watched, and you always, always rise to the occasion when called upon, or before, if you can perceive the need. I thought you could use somebody at your back for a change. I thought you might be able to use a…friend.”
Spare me from honest Irishmen. “You were right, Catullus.” Trent passed over the wine bottle, then extended his hand. “You were, and you are, right.”
Cato looked at that hand, hesitated only moment, then shook it firmly.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m here to discuss with you certain aspects of my situation.” Trent wished that, of all people, he didn’t have to disclose his history to the dour, perceptive Marquess of Heathgate.
“Any particular aspects?”
“Who might wish me ill.”
Heathgate regarded him with blue eyes so cool their impact eclipsed the warmth of a summer morning. Then the music of little feet thundered overhead, and those eyes softened.
“We’re about to be invaded, Amherst. Prepare to repel boarders.”
“Papa!” A little boy, perhaps five years old, followed by smaller siblings, a boy and girl each, charged into the study and clambered up onto their father’s chair. The girl assumed pride of place in his lap. The two boys flanked her more or less on the arms of the chair.
The female child turned guileless blue eyes on Trent. “Papa has a guest.”
The boys scrambled down and offered Trent respective bows, the elder, then the younger. Trent rose and offered them reciprocal courtesies, after which the children bounced back into their father’s chair.
“We’re sailing away on a treasure hunt,” the oldest boy informed his father. “We shall be pirates, and Joyce will be our captive princess.”
“Is there a sea monster?” the marquess inquired, “or is this to be a land-based mission?”
“Uncle Andrew makes the best monsters,” Joyce said. “He isn’t coming, so no sea monster. Will you be our dragon?”
“Alas, Lord Amherst and I must tarry here in our dungeon.” Heathgate looked genuinely regretful. “What is this treasure?”
“Mama won’t say,” the younger boy reported. “But she was baking yesterday.”
“We know what that means.” The marquess shared a look with his children. “Well, good luck, mates. Recall the Crown must have its share of the booty.”
“Is that you?”
“Heavens, no. I am merely the lowly papa, but your mother certainly should have royal honors, don’t you think?”
“If we want her to make more cookies,” Joyce agreed, hopping down with her father’s assistance. “Come on, you two, and take me prisoner.”
The invading forces disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived, leaving Trent to regard his host in a far kinder light.
“Heathgate, you are a fraud.”
“I am a parent, as you are yourself, so my secret is safe. Don’t suppose you’d like to play dragons and sea monsters for a bit?” The invitation was only partly in jest.
“I’m on holiday from monster duty. My three have been with their aunt and uncle at Belle Maison for much of the summer. They’re due back next week.”
“Is that wise?” Heathgate went to the French doors, which looked out over the gardens. The marchioness, two nurses and a footman progressed across the lawns with the small band of pirates.
“Hear me out,” Trent said. “If you think it necessary, I’ll send word to Nick and Leah to keep the children with them awhile longer.”
“I’m listening.” Heathgate turned his back on window and the pirate parade with every appearance of reluctance.
“You inquired the other day whether I had enemies, detractors, people with a reason, real or otherwise, to take a shot at me at close range.”
Heathgate settled in behind an enormous mahogany desk. “At you or the lady in your company.”
“I could think of no one who’d have cause to shoot at either me or Lady Rammel, except perhaps Drew Hampton, who might want to ensure he inherits his late cousin’s title.”
Heathgate reached for a silver inkwell topped by a rearing unicorn. Trent didn’t kn
ow the man well enough to decide if his scowl was thoughtful, ill-humored or both.
“Lady Rammel might bear a girl child,” Heathgate said, “in which case she’s no threat, and if the child is a boy, it’s far easier to kill a child of whom one is guardian than a grown woman obviously carrying your replacement. While I don’t know Drew Hampton well, neither have I heard he’s impulsive or prone to flights of irrationality.”
“My wife was.” Oh, to be a pirate on the high seas of Surrey, battling monsters for fresh ginger biscuits instead of walking this particular plank.
Heathgate set the unicorn down in the exact center of his blotter, the horn aimed at Trent like an admonitory finger.
“Explain yourself, Amherst.”
“Paula was my father’s choice. She wasn’t stupid or mean, but she was prone to flights of many types. I did not know her well when we wed. In hindsight, I can see our meetings were few and carefully orchestrated to show the lady to her best advantage.”
“That isn’t unusual.”
Heathgate’s courtship of his marchioness was rumored to have progressed upon very peculiar lines. One day, Trent might ask Ellie what she knew of those particulars.
“I wasn’t a callow lad, just down from school,” Trent countered. “I should have been more cautious of any scheme that had my father’s approval, but Paula had money, and Wilton has all but bankrupted the earldom.”
“So you married well for the sake of your progeny.” Heathgate steepled his fingers, while out in the garden, shouts and shrieks suggested somebody had been taken captive. “Or thought you did.”
“Oh, the money was real.” Trent rose and went to the window, but the children—the pirates—were nowhere to be seen, though a bed of pink roses was in riotous bloom beneath the window. “I’m comfortably fixed, my children comfortably fixed, and with Wilton buttoned up at the family seat, my siblings need not worry, either.”
“A happy ending, then.” Heathgate remained seated while Trent wondered what Ellie was doing at that moment. Did little Andy play pirates? Did she have anybody to play pirates with?
“Not a happy ending for Paula.” Trent tried to focus on the flowers, which bore a resemblance to vine gracing his pergola. “Paula was unhappy for most of our marriage.”
For every single day and night of their marriage, even on those occasions when she was overcome with hilarity out of all proportion to the moment, she hadn’t been well.
“Some people are determined to be miserable,” the marquess observed. “I was once among their number, though I hardly knew it.”
“Paula wasn’t merely miserable. She was unbalanced, ill in her spirit. All she wanted of me was children, and that preferably if I could arrange for an angel to visit her for purposes of conception rather than my lowly, human self.”
Trent cast around for polite phrases, while Heathgate—magistrate, reformed rake, and veteran papa—made no effort to fill the ensuing silence.
“Paula loathed my touch but begged me for more children.” Trent longed to breathe the roses through the sparkling glass of Heathgate’s mullioned window. “She cried the entire time, every time, but insisted it was what she wanted. At first she sought to give me my heir and spare, and that was enough—more than enough, as Darius will likely wed, particularly did I ask it of him.”
He paused, again giving Heathgate a chance to cut him off, but when the silence only stretched, Trent slogged on.
“I relented because Paula must have a daughter, she said, to love and protect, and thank God in his mercy we had Elaine, and then when Elaine was six months old, she rejected the breast. Paula was devastated, and the begging started again.”
“For another child?”
“For another child.” Trent grabbed on to his composure, hard, hating even a recitation of the drama that had been his married life. “My father suggested I beat my wife, not because she’d learn her place, but because she might enjoy it enough to become biddable. I’ve never been so revolted by my patrimony.”
Which, given his patrimony, was saying a great deal.
“Does this imply your wife might have confided in your father?”
Heathgate’s reputation as a rake prior to his marriage had reached even Trent’s ears, and his question bore only curiosity—no shock, no revulsion.
“Paula very likely did confide in Wilton, for he can be charming when it suits him.” Trent pressed his forehead against the cool panes of glass, while an entire morass of uncomfortable emotions threatened, and the brandy decanter whispered to him from the sideboard. “She importuned my brother to get a child on her, and when Darius told me that, I realized my wife was not sane.”
“He told you this?”
“He was concerned she’d take her begging elsewhere, anywhere.” Trent had to pause again. Had to slow his breathing by force of will. “That would not have been safe for Paula. From that point, I had her not simply carefully attended, but watched. All was handled respectfully. On her bad days, her outings were curtailed, because the coach horse had thrown a shoe, her maid had a megrim, or one of the children was starting a sniffle, but Paula soon grasped that her wings had been clipped, and her decline was precipitous.”
Loud, hysterical, and precipitous.
“Physicians?” Heathgate’s quiet voice sounded near Trent’s shoulder, but Trent remained where he could see the summer flowers.
“They suggested bleeding, or private estates with trained assistants, but I didn’t want Paula to leave my care. She was vulnerable and dangerous, both. I was afraid to leave her alone with her own children and afraid to keep them from her entirely, so I sought to manage her. I undertook a balancing act, between cajolery, a drop of laudanum in her tea, hoping for the good days, and maintaining appearances. Throughout all of this, I came to understand she could not help herself.”
Until she’d helped herself in the only fashion left to her.
“And then she died,” Heathgate said, gently, kindly even, but the words still had the power to constrict Trent’s breathing and make the roses waver in his vision.
“I thought we were finding the routine best suited to keeping her safe, and at least not…miserable. She grew to like the pattern of her days, or I thought she did, and while I relied on slipping her a few drops of laudanum on the bad days, Paula seemed to be settling down. Then the baby started cutting teeth, and Paula became worse than ever.”
Out on the high seas, laughter graced the morning air, while Trent had lost sight of shore.
“I wanted Lanie weaned,” he went on. “Not only because her mother occasionally took laudanum, which made the baby sleep a great deal, but because I didn’t want Paula to unduly influence children who might already share her excitable tendencies. So I made the decision to wean the baby when those teeth appeared, and the baby seemed ready.”
“The physicians supported this course?”
“They did. I consulted different experts, for both Paula and the baby, and their opinions were unanimous.”
“What did you do?”
“I kept Lanie in the nursery and increased Paula’s few drops to a few more. At first, it seemed to work, though I never meant it as more than a temporary measure.”
“One develops a tolerance for opium, or a dependence, I believe.”
Trent hunched in on himself. “One can. Paula must have seen her companion dosing her tea and tried to wean herself. She accused me of taking Lanie away because of the laudanum, and in a sense she was right.”
“You took the child away because of the symptoms that required the laudanum. Nobody would quibble with a mother making occasional, limited use of a tonic.”
Trent swallowed back the anger and pain knotting in his chest. At that moment, was Ellie napping in her fanciful bed? Digging among the flowers? Taking tea in the nursery with Andy, because a mother, a good mother, occasionally did?
“Somehow, some goddamned how, Paula found the strength to refuse the drug. She wanted her baby back, and I would not allow th
at unless I was in the room with them. This went on for days and nights, for I don’t know how long, until she seemed to accept defeat. She became docile, then vacant, alarmingly so, and then quieter still.”
Heathgate said nothing for a long time. “Overdoses can be accidental,” he offered at length.
The marquess had hidden reserves of compassion, but Trent shook his head. “Her death wasn’t an accidental overdose—no laudanum was involved directly—but you can see why her family would blame me?”
Heathgate shifted to stand beside him. His scent was a complex, expensive sandalwood blend that made Trent want to open the window so the simpler fragrances of the summer garden could fill the room.
“Her ladyship’s family could attribute motive to you for ending her life, I suppose. You married a crazy woman and couldn’t make her sane any more than her family could. At least you didn’t pawn her off on some soon-to-be-titled, unsuspecting stranger. She’s lucky you didn’t beat her, have her discreetly confined among strangers, or send her home to her parents.”
Whatever else was true, Paula had been in no wise lucky.
“You don’t understand, Heathgate.” Trent turned to face his host. “If Paula’s tendencies were inherited, then somebody, her mother, her older brothers, her dear papa, might be as unbalanced as she. When she was motivated, she could appear as blithe and charming as any young lady of good breeding. To appearances, her family is equally normal and likeable. And yet, in what passes for lunatic logic, I am the murderer, and I deserve to die.”
Heathgate’s lips pursed, as much a display of surprise as anybody likely saw from his lordship.
“If your children, yours and Paula’s, are safely off visiting your sister, then the time to strike has come. Interesting theory.”
“Particularly when anybody with a spare shilling could have learned from my town house staff I wasn’t coping at all well this spring.”
“Can you hire a Runner?”
“To make inquiries in Hampshire,” Trent surmised. “I can, but do I bring my children home or leave them summering in Kent?”
“Bring them home. In the first place, we might be chasing our tails on this Gothic theory of murderous in-laws, and in the second, the children, and your attachment to them, could well be what will keep you safe. Then too, a man has a need to impersonate a sea monster on occasion.”
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 16
