“I’ll drive the damned coach myself,” Ellie threatened. “I’ll walk, I’ll crawl, I’ll waddle—”
“How soon can you be packed?”
“F-five minutes. We have to get there in time. We have to.”
“Wilton thinks he has all the time in the world,” Heathgate reminded her. “He’s getting a sick pleasure out of toying with Amherst, thinking he can time this murder whenever he pleases. Isn’t Lady Warne underfoot and the youngest daughter, what’s her name?”
Ellie stepped back, equally resenting and appreciating Heathgate’s ability to think so calmly. “Lady Emily. Wilton dotes on her.”
“Wilton won’t commit murder most foul with his darling daughter on hand,” Heathgate assured her.
“We hope,” Hazlit added. “I have to agree with Lady Rammel, though. We’re not dealing with a rational criminal.”
“We’re not sure our theory is correct,” Heathgate said, sending Hazlit a repressive version of the You-Dolt-There’s-a-Breeding-Woman-Present glower. “We’ll set out when the Lindsey children are safely ensconced in my nursery. If I might borrow pen and paper, Lady Rammel, I’ll send word to my brother of my impending absence, and he’ll keep an eye on matters while I’m on the king’s business.”
A groom was dispatched with the note to Lord Greymoor, Mr. Spencer took off to alert the nursery maids, and Ellie bustled away to toss some clothes into a satchel.
“Shall I come with you?” Minty asked, as they stood under the porte-cochère waiting for Heathgate’s coach twenty minutes later.
“I want you here with Andy,” Ellie said. “She’ll worry for me, disappearing like this. I left her a note, but no details.”
“Shall I tell her the truth?”
“Tell her I was very worried for Lord Amherst’s safety and had to see for myself that he was well.”
“In the middle of a pouring-down rain at well past dark and you expecting the Rammel heir.”
“It’s misting. I’m carrying a girl, and I can see a few stars.”
“In your eyes.”
Ellie turned on her. “None of that matters. What matters is that Trent isn’t safe, and he doesn’t know where the danger comes from.”
“You don’t know he isn’t safe. You are going off half-cocked, my girl, and I say—”
“Not now, Minty,” Ellie hissed.
“I say,”—Minty drew her into a hug—“it’s about damned time.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Trent rose to a disgustingly pretty day. The previous evening had been wet, a soft, pattering rain that refreshed rather than muddied. His decision would have been the same if the heavens had opened up and the roads were quagmires.
He’d had as much sniping and posturing as he could take. He dreaded each meal, and the hurt in Emily’s eyes was becoming all too real. He would make his good-byes at breakfast and leave for Crossbridge that day.
And somehow—some damned, benighted how—he would find a way to work things out with Elegy Hampton. A gentleman left the field when he was excused, and Ellie had very clearly excused him.
Then cried her heart out.
The memory of her sobbing as he’d lingered in her darkened corridor weeks before tore at him the way Paula’s death had, the way this miserable farce with Emily did. Thank heavens, the latter showed some signs of affecting Wilton. Trent’s father regarded him with a flat, reptilian stare that at least bore a hint of trepidation.
Previously, Wilton’s sole sentiment toward his heir had been disgust.
Not wanting to wait for a cup of hot tea, Trent pulled on breeches, shirt, and waistcoat and made his way to the kitchen.
“Master Trent, good day.” Nancy puttered at the sink, though not a single lamp was lit.
“How can you tell? It’s dark as the pit here.”
“I can tell it’s you by your scent and the way you move.”
Trent lit a taper from the hearth coals, only to find Nancy was already making tea—in pitch darkness. He used the taper to light a branch of candles, and still the cavernous kitchen was mostly shadows. “How well do you see?”
“I can tell you’ve lit us some candles, or perhaps a lamp.” Nancy took a slow breath through her nose. “But no, it’s candles. I smell the wax.
“That’s the extent of your vision?” Something niggled at the back of his mind, something important.
“Most days I can still see light if it’s bright enough, but I spent too many nights doing the mending in poor light or making do with tallow.”
“Have you seen a physician?” Though nobody should be this incapacitated in the Wilton household.
“Couldn’t see him if I did,” Nancy said gently. “Tea?”
“Please. Have some yourself, too.”
“Already had my first cup.” Nancy poured him a mug as easily as if she had the eyes of a woman half her age. “I do miss my Bible, but Mr. Benton has the vicar come visit and he reads to me on Wednesdays.”
“Who reads you Louise’s letters? Who writes your letters to her?”
“Louise?” Nancy snorted. “Louise Compton? That besom you took pity on a few years back? Why would I correspond with the likes of her? The entire household breathed a sigh of relief when Wilton tossed her over the transom. Mostly, you feel sorry for a body when the earl takes ’em into dislike, but not that one. She lorded it over all of us when he summoned her to his chambers, and her reckoning didn’t come soon enough.”
Trent took the hot tea from her hand, dread trickling down his spine.
“Then you don’t correspond with Louise.”
“I don’t correspond with anybody. Wilton was never one for seeing to it his staff could read and write, and he begrudges paper to the few who do. I can make out most verses, because I know my Bible, but what would I write in a letter?”
“That you’re retiring to lighter duty at Crossbridge?” Trent suggested.
Nancy poured herself a cup, the scent of gunpowder teasing at Trent’s sense.
“Wilton’s a canny old thing,” Nancy said. “I’m like those mill horses. You show me around, show me my job, then take my sight away, and all I’m good for is working in my own mill. I know where things are here. I can put names to voices and get myself through the day right enough.”
“You will always have a home here,” Trent said. “But we’ll have to find somebody to read you the news, Nancy, not only your Bible.”
“Don’t go to any trouble. Take your tea and be off with you. Cook will soon be stirring about. We’ve people to cook for, for a change.”
“I’m heading back to Surrey right after breakfast, but keep that to yourself.”
She passed him a handful of cinnamon biscuits. “To tide you over until breakfast.”
He stepped in and hugged her, no doubt taking her by surprise. She was old, and frail, and blind, for pity’s sake, but her blindness had given him the clue he needed to unravel the mystery of his impending death.
Trent made his way by the servants’ stairs up to Darius’s room, pushing the door open without knocking.
“Dare?”
“Sleep.”
“I’ve brought biscuits,” Trent sing-songed. “And a nice big cup of hot tea.”
“Biscuits?” Darius lifted his head from his pillows, his dark hair sticking out in all directions in the pre-dawn gloom.
Trent perched at the foot of the bed and held out a biscuit to his brother.
“What is this about?” Darius sat up, apparently naked beneath his sheets, and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, then pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He munched a proffered biscuit, then took the mug Trent passed him.
“I’m heading back to Crossbridge today. Right after breakfast.”
“This is a bit sudden.” Darius accepted another biscuit and passed the tea back. “What’s the urgency?”
“I’ve a murdering cook to see to.”
Darius cracked his jaw. “More biscuits, please. Don’t think I heard you ari
ght.”
“Louise.” Trent kept his voice down. “She was corresponding with Wilton the entire time she was at Crossbridge.”
“Do you know this?”
“I know Nancy hasn’t seen well enough to write, much less read, a letter for some time and has no love for Louise.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. Louise might have been writing her girlish fantasies to Wilton. He trysted with her once upon a time. That’s common knowledge.”
“He did; then he turned her into his spy. You and I both populated our households with his cast-offs.”
“I employ the halt and indigent. I doubt they’re spying for him.”
“While my town house got the maids, footmen, a butler, my gardener.” Trent leaned back against the bedpost. “Louise at Crossbridge and practically my entire staff in Town was composed of people he described as solid Hampshire lads and lasses eager to see a little Town life but not quite appropriate for an earl’s household.”
Darius glowered at his tea cup. “After he’d fucked all the pretty ones silly. This isn’t good, Trent. Who at Crossbridge came from Wilton?”
The question of the hour. “Louise now. Maybe the occasional footman, but they’ve been with me since I came into the place.”
“Can they shoot?”
“I’m sure they can, but I wouldn’t put it past Louise, or past Louise to hire somebody for the job. You coming with me? I’d rather you stayed here and kept an eye on Em and Lady Warne.”
“I don’t like leaving you to deal with Louise and God knows who else alone. Your children are there.”
“They’ve been safe so far, and Cato’s sharp. He’ll keep them from harm.”
“You pray.” Darius took another swallow of tea. “This is good.”
“Gunpowder.” Trent went to Darius’s wardrobe, which held a small selection of very well-made attire. “I can send Lady Warne back to Town, but that will take a day or two. When did you turn into such a dandy?”
“The ladies put stock in one’s finery. That’s a nice ensemble.”
“Get your handsome arse into it, and I’ll meet you in the breakfast parlor.”
Trent left Darius to dress, returned to his room, and packed up the few belongings he’d brought down from Crossbridge. Fear for his children figured prominently in his thoughts, but so did fear for Ellie, who was living next door to a woman who’d kill for coin—or for whatever version of love Wilton tossed at his paramours of late.
And Trent felt a towering anger that his own father would wreak havoc on the people he was supposed to love and protect. Wilton’s wife, his children—and God help them, likely even his grandchildren when the time came—were merely so many domestic animals to the earl, their continued existence subject to his whim.
The Earl of Wilton was not sane.
Trent knew this, and the wiser parts of him—the boy who had drowned the puppies, the boy who’d bested the crazy ponies, the man who’d realized his wife wasn’t in sound emotional health—they screamed for him to use extreme caution, to avoid Wilton at all costs until further evidence could be gathered.
To hell with breakfast. Darius could make his good-byes for him. Trent shouldered his traveling bag and left not a trace of his habitation in the room.
Exactly how he wanted it.
As quietly as he could, Trent made his way down the corridor of the family wing, thinking to use a servants’ stair to slip out unnoticed. He’d put his hand on the latch to the door at the top of the stairs, when the door flew open and an enraged Imogenie Henly emerged.
“Move aside, your lordship.” She barged past him, heading straight for Wilton’s suite. “That lying, thieving, no-good dog had better have some answers.”
“Imogenie,” Trent hissed, setting his bag down. “No. Stop now.” He grabbed her arm, and she tried to shake out of his grasp. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“He gave me paste!” she cried, wriggling furiously. “He gave me jewels, but they’re all paste. Not even good paste, according to the jeweler in Anvil.”
Trent tried for reason, having neither the time nor the patience for melodrama.
“Wilton’s not even awake. Maybe there’s an explanation. You’ll accomplish nothing if you go barging in there now and confront him.”
“Oh, really, Amherst,” the earl drawled from his doorway. “She’ll entertain me, which is the whole point. Good morning, my dear. It seems you’ve been naughty again.”
“I’ve been naughty?!” She twisted out of Trent’s hold. “What about you? You said that once he was taken care of,”—she jerked her thumb at Trent—“I’d be your countess. You promised, but you don’t give your countess paste! I’m dumb, Wilton, but I’m not a complete fool.”
“So I gave you paste.” Wilton looked supremely bored. “Does your farm boast a safe, that you could securely store real gems? I think not. This grows tedious, and you will watch your mouth, my girl.”
Something had flickered in Wilton’s eyes, though, something Trent felt in low, miserable places.
“Watch my mouth!” Imogenie screeched. “Tye Benning was drunk at the Pig and Pen by noon yesterday, claiming his friend the earl had asked him to have a fast horse at the Wilton postern gate at first light. And he laughed at me. Laughed at me! You asked for one horse, Wilton—only one! You weren’t thinking to take me with you, were you?”
“Imogenie, what did you expect?” Trent asked. “That he’d keep his word to you after all the people he’s betrayed and disappointed?”
Imogenie rounded on Trent. “And you! You’re supposed to be dead!”
“Papa?” Emily appeared in the doorway across the hall, looking sleepy and confused in her robe and slippers. “What is all this commotion?”
“Nothing you need bother your head about, Emily.” The earl’s tone was clipped. “Miss Henly is overwrought and in need of a sound beating.”
“Overwrought!” Imogenie lunged for the earl the same instant Trent dove for her. He bent his strength to subduing her without hurting her, but behind him, a scuffle had ensued.
“Papa!” Emily’s voice, raised in alarm.
Trent clamped a hand over Imogenie’s mouth, hauled her up against his chest, and turned to see that Wilton had Emily in a similar grip, Wilton’s shaving razor pressed against Emily’s throat.
“Oh, dear Jesus.” Imogenie went still and silent. Trent gently pushed her toward the servants’ stair, then took a step toward his father.
“Wilton, let Emily go.”
“You let me go,” Wilton said, “then I’ll let Emily go. I’ve had enough of your terms, Amherst, enough of you. Now the terms are mine.”
“I comprehend this, and I won’t argue. You can do what you want with me, but let Emily go. You love her. She’s the only good, right and dear thing in your life.”
“She is.” Wilton drew the blade lightly across Emily’s throat. “She’s also my only bargaining chip, now that your crazy wife is no longer available for that purpose.”
Somebody drew in a sharp breath behind Trent. Imogenie, maybe, too stupid to protect herself when she could.
“My wife wasn’t crazy, but she was miserable, and you’ll be miserable, too, if you hurt Emily. You can still leave and take me with you, or kill me and leave, but you don’t have to hurt your own daughter to get what you want.”
Wilton casually nicked Emily’s throat. “Do you honestly think I’ll believe a word you say? You hate me, you always have, exactly as your mother always did. She took you from me and turned you against me. Emily will turn, too, soon enough. Maybe Tye has the right idea—get ’em while they’re too young to think for themselves.”
A bright red line welled on Emily’s neck, while she closed her eyes and sagged back against her father.
“Please, Papa. Don’t hurt me. I love you.”
Wilton rolled his eyes, but then his expression shifted as heavy footsteps came down the hall. In the split second his father’s attention wavered, Trent launched himself
across the hallway and wrested Emily from Wilton’s grasp. At the same moment, he pushed his father’s hand straight up, smashing it hard enough against the door frame that the razor fell to the carpet.
“Wilton.” Heathgate’s voice sounded with cold calculation.
Trent had never been so surprised—or pleased—to see his growling neighbor.
“Desist, or I’ll happily—delightedly—shoot you where you stand for resisting arrest.”
Trent stepped back, beyond the range of his father’s fists. Like a benediction, he caught a whiff of roses, as if Elegy Hampton were with him in spirit.
“The local magistrate is on his way,” Heathgate continued. “One Tidewell Benning will be arrested as accessory after the fact to attempted murder, assault, and as many other charges as I can encourage these witnesses to think of before we put pen to paper.”
Wilton drew himself up. “I do not know you, sir. You are under my roof, and you will do me the courtesy of introducing yourself.”
Though Wilton had, in fact, crossed paths with the marquess previously, Trent rose to the challenge of observing the civilities in a situation beyond bizarre, and all the while, Ellie’s sweet, soft scent gradually steadied him.
“Wilton, may I make known to you Gareth Alexander, Marquess of Heathgate, whom I have never been happier to see. I will cheerfully swear out charges against you, Wilton, for the attempted murder of my sister Emily. Imogenie will likely sue you for breach of promise. I can toss in assault and many, many counts of attempted murder of your own son.”
Wilton examined his fingernails. “Why would I bother to kill you?”
“Sheer malevolence, I suspect. But you didn’t quite see the matter done, did you? You didn’t get your hands on all that lovely money Paula had me set aside for the children; you didn’t get your hands on our beautiful children; and you didn’t get your power of attorney back, either.”
“Paula—another example of your inability to do a single thing right,” Wilton scoffed. “After what her brother put her through, you were never likely to bed her, much less get three brats on her.”
“Be silent, you!” Ellie Hampton advanced from behind Trent, who was too stunned to grab her.
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 31
