“Shut your filthy, deranged, criminal mouth, you vile old lecher. Whatever else was true, Trenton Lindsey loved his wife, and she loved him to the best of her ability. You will not defile her memory with your evil slander.”
Wilton arched a silver eyebrow at Ellie’s girth. “Who have we here? Been a busy widower, haven’t you, Amherst?”
“I have to agree with the lady.” Trent slipped an arm around Ellie’s waist, tugging her back against his side. “Shut up, Wilton. If you value your life, not another word.”
He sounded every bit as arrogant as his father, every bit as autocratic, and for the first time in his life, he cared not one whit about the resemblance.
Wilton scanned the small crowd in the hallway with exquisite disdain. “Look at the lot of you, consumed with righteousness and all over a stupid family drama. You’re idiots, and you,” he sneered at Trent, “you won’t press a single charge, just as Leah’s hulking earl didn’t, because if I’m convicted of a felony, the personal holdings will be stripped. Your son will inherit a beggared earldom because of what you did to your father. Think on that, why don’t you?”
“You think I care about the title?” Trent felt only weary when indignation should have lent him rage. “To hell with the title and the lands and the wealth. We’ll manage, provided the Crown finally puts you down like the sick beast you are.”
The earl flinched, minutely, but Trent had the satisfaction of knowing he’d surprised his father.
“You don’t mean that,” Wilton hissed. “You wouldn’t do that to your sister. You wouldn’t visit that scandal on your children.”
“If you ask me,”—Darius’s voice was laden with scorn—“the fact that you continue to draw breath is the scandal. Emily, what say you?”
She leaned heavily on Aaron Benton, his handkerchief stained crimson at her throat. “That man is not my father. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t care what becomes of him, provided no one else comes to harm at his hands.”
Benton turned her into his embrace, shielding her from the rage on Wilton’s face.
“You don’t mean it,” Wilton blustered. “The Lords will never convict me.”
“Don’t be so sure about that.” Baron Trevisham made his way through the growing crowd in the corridor. “You were dimwitted enough to take my oldest son into your confidence, Wilton, and your plans and schemes are being taken down in his statement as I stand here.”
“You’d take the word of a deviant boy over that of a peer of the realm?”
“I’d take the word of a rabid hedgehog over yours, meaning no disrespect to the hedgehog,” Trevisham muttered. “Now, you lot.” He gestured to the maids and footmen clustered at the end of the hall. “Be about your duties or we’ll know the reason why. Heathgate, I haven’t manacles with me, but perhaps we can find a stout length of rope.”
“Trenton.” Ellie gestured at the door, where Wilton had slipped quietly back into his rooms.
“He won’t go anywhere,” Trent said. “This is the only entrance to his suite, and it’s a thirty-foot drop to the ground. Let’s fetch some rope, and paper and pen, and Emily, we’ll send for the surgeon, if you want us to.”
“She’ll be sound enough,” Benton replied. “The bleeding has all but stopped.” His arms stayed around her.
“A cup of tea, then.” Trent met Benton’s eyes and got a nod. Emily would be taken care of, come fire, flood or famine. “And the rest of you.” Trent gestured to the servants. “You heard the baron, be off with you.”
They shuffled away, parting to let Benton lead Emily through their numbers. Darius turned to go as well, when a single, sharp report sounded from within Wilton’s chambers.
“Trenton, no!” Ellie tried to stop him from opening the door to Wilton’s suite.
Darius sprang forward to add his weight to Ellie’s. “Listen to Lady Rammel. It could be a trap, and by God, I do not want to explain to your children that Wilton made orphans of them.”
When Trenton would have argued, Heathgate shouldered around them, a heavy horse pistol in his hand. “Baron, you’ll maintain order here,” the marquess directed. “Benjamin?”
Hazlit made his way forward, then stood aside while Heathgate kicked the door open with a single stout blow. Both men darted into the sitting room beyond, then stopped short, blocking the scene within from the view of those in the hallway.
“Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.” Heathgate’s muttered prayer told the tale.
“That’s it then,” Trent said wearily. “Suicide opens the door to forfeiting much of the family’s wealth.”
Silence followed, broken only by Darius’s soft, continuous cursing.
“Darius.” Trent slipped away from Ellie. “Hush.” He wrapped his arms around his brother. “It’s over. It’s finally over, and inside, he was already dead. He was.”
Darius said nothing, but buried his face against Trent’s shoulder, as he had so many times when they were boys.
The hallway cleared, leaving Trent and Darius curiously alone. Hazlit tugged Ellie away on his arm, while Heathgate and Trevisham tarried in the earl’s sitting room.
“I hate him,” Darius said. “I will always, always hate him. He was evil. He hurt even Emily, and he tried to kill you. He tried to cast Leah into the gutter. He wanted to see me ruined. What did we do, Trent? What did we ever do?”
Darius wept silently in his brother’s arms, while Trent had no answers. None at all.
***
“You will let me find you a bed.” Hazlit’s voice was stern, the voice of an older brother with a nigh hysterical younger sister. “You will put yourself in it, and you will go to sleep.”
“Mr. Hazlit, Benjamin,” Ellie retorted, “who’s with Trenton? He shouldn’t be alone now, and if you can’t bestir yourself to see to him, then I will.”
Hazlit meant well, but he was out of his depth, and Ellie did not intend to indulge his manly displays.
“I’ll see to him, my lady, I promise, but you’ve been traveling all night and need to get off your feet. Think of the baby.”
“The baby is fine!” Ellie bit out, dropping his arm. “Somebody needs to look after Trenton, Darius, and Emily.” She marched up to a young footman who was trying to look inconspicuous, though his face was wet with tears. “You. Have the kitchen send morning tea trays up to the family parlor.”
The man shot Hazlit a panicked look. “Which family parlor, milady? We have three.”
“Which one is most comfortable?”
“The green one.”
“Tea, to the green family parlor. And scones with clotted cream, nothing heavy, no bacon or kedgeree, but…comfort food, and make sure there’s a pot of peppermint tea as well.”
“Peppermint tea, milady?”
As if an earl’s household would never indulge in such a plebeian concoction.
“To soothe the digestion, and gunpowder for Lord Amherst.” By commandeering staff, giving orders, and ignoring Hazlit’s exasperated looks, Ellie organized the green parlor as a center of operations.
Imogenie’s statement was taken, but, thank a merciful Deity, she’d slipped down the back stairs before Wilton had spewed the worst of his bile.
Word came that Tye Benning had been secured in the local jail.
Emily’s statement was taken, while Aaron Benton hovered at her side, holding her hand, and making her sip peppermint tea.
When Ellie saw matters were going smoothly, she slipped away and asked directions to Trent’s room. He wasn’t there—he wasn’t anywhere she could find him—so she climbed into his bed and—once again—waited for the man she loved to come back to her.
***
Trent pushed open the door to his bedroom, his heart weighed with a weariness so great as to eclipse even his sorrow. He’d given his statement and accepted the stern lecture Heathgate had delivered, but mostly, he’d kept track of Dare and Emily, both of whom were shaken. He’d seen Ellie ordering servants about, hugging Emily, and conferring with
Lady Warne, but he’d made no effort to approach her.
She had come. After sending him away, after showing great good sense on numerous occasions, she had charged headlong to his side.
How did a man thank a woman for giving him back his life? For seeing his situation more clearly than he’d seen it himself? For putting herself and her unborn child at risk on his behalf?
He stopped short before his bed.
His personal avenging angel was the picture of exhausted, if somewhat gravid, innocence.
She’d taken the time to get out of her dress, which was consistent with the servants having no clue as to her whereabouts. He peeled out of his own clothes and climbed in beside her.
“Trenton?” She spooned herself around his back, her belly snug between them.
“Hold me, Ellie, please?”
“Hush.” She kissed his nape, wrapped her arms and one leg around him, and held him until he slept.
When he woke she was still there, holding him.
“You awake?” He laced his fingers through hers and squeezed gently.
“I am. My arm is going to sleep.”
“I’ll trade you,” Trent suggested, prepared to hold her for a while. A long while.
Ellie shifted to straddle him. “How about this?”
“Fair enough.” Trent’s arms came around her. “How did you know, Ellie?”
She had come haring down to Hampshire with her reinforcements for no less purpose than to save Trent’s life. Heathgate and Hazlit had both made sure he knew that.
“He hated you,” Ellie said. “The truth was in all your nevers and in the way he treated your sister Leah. He was a man capable of hating his own children. I cannot comprehend this, but nobody else bore you such enmity.”
“In the end, all I can say is he spared me having to put him down by my own hand.”
Ellie kissed him, a condolence of a sort that only intimates could share. “He took his life in a desperate effort to bring shame on you and yours. Some parting gesture.”
“He’ll be denied his victory.” Trent filled his hands with her hair and brought her braid to his nose. “I have taken a leaf from my departed father’s book and altered the facts to suit my convenience. Heathgate will report the gun went off by accident while an old man with failing vision cleaned it. As for the rest, Wilton will never be tried.”
“So he’s not a suicide? No burial at the crossroads?”
God bless her, she sounded disappointed that Wilton would not be held accountable even to that extent.
“No disgrace. Not for me, or my children, though I’ll make sure they know the truth.”
“Hazlit said your wife’s maternal aunt took her own life at boarding school. I cannot fathom such a sad end.”
Trent’s hands went still. “I didn’t know that. Paula took her own life, too.”
Ellie rose over him and cradled him to her. Her warmth and fragrance, the generosity of her comfort and her curves brought the only consolation Trent could have asked for.
“Trenton, I am so sorry.”
“Thomas Benning explained some of the why of it to me just today,” Trent said, gathering her close and needing to say the words, to her, if not to anyone else. “Tye Benning preyed intimately on his younger siblings. Paula escaped by going to boarding school, then marrying me. She feared her brother might someday visit his attentions on our children, but she couldn’t confide her past in me.”
“You don’t have to tell me this. She’s at peace now, Trent.”
“Maybe now she is,” Trent said softly. “Thomas has a letter from her, sent immediately before her death. She charged Thomas to give the letter to me if Tye ever attempted to have contact with the children, and that letter details Tye’s perversion.”
“Thomas kept this letter?”
“I told him to burn it. Thomas is a wreck. He suspected Tye had turned his attentions to their younger sister, but Thomas went to his mother about it, who told him he mustn’t get his brother in trouble over silly schoolboy peccadilloes, and that was the end of it. I’ve my suspicions about the mother, as, I think, does Trevisham.”
“So much sadness,” Ellie murmured. “Your father knew Paula was fragile, didn’t he?”
“He knew exactly what she’d been through. Tye would snicker to him about it when in his cups. Wilton bet I’d never get children on her, but Paula was stronger than Wilton guessed. Just not strong enough.”
“You blame yourself,” Ellie concluded, levering up to hug him close. Her belly came between them, a soft, wondrous swelling of new life incongruous with the events of the morning.
Trent nuzzled her neck, loving the scent of her. “Paula needed to escape a life at the Grange, where sooner or later, her brother could have got her with child. She did what she could, and she protected her children as best she could. In a sense, it’s a relief to know much of what plagued her wasn’t personal to me.”
Ellie subsided against him, no doubt hearing what he wasn’t saying: Much was not personal to him, leaving some that was.
“We will talk more about this,” she said. “How’s Darius?”
“He disappeared on his horse for most of the morning, which is probably for the best. Hazlit’s keeping an eye on him. In his own way, Dare is as innocent as Emily. He still thinks in terms of right and wrong, black and white, and in his world, parents shouldn’t try to kill their children.”
“In any world,” Ellie said sternly. “Could you put Ford on a dangerous pony?” “God, no. Never.”
“It’s a new list of nevers, Trenton, and you are not your father. One wonders if Wilton was your father in truth.”
What a merciful, cheering thought. “One does, though I’ve his height and his coloring.”
“England boasts many tall, dark-haired men.”
“It’s something to think about,” Trent agreed, though his mind was turning to a sluggish mixture of fatigue, shock, and regret. “Ellie, I’ve a favor to ask.”
“Name it.” She cuddled against him, her weight and proportions an even greater consolation than her voice in his ear.
“Never call me by the title,” Trent said, his voice low and fierce. “No matter how you might want to, for whatever reason, I don’t ever want to be Wilton to you.”
“Of course not.” Without hesitation, as if she’d anticipated his request. “Is that the only favor you’d ask?”
“No.”
He arched up, got his mouth on hers, his one hand on her breast, the other planted over her derrière, and held on. “Let me love you.”
She did not let him love her, she went on a campaign of tenderness, arousal, and intimate caring that enveloped Trent and held him captive. She took him prisoner and sheltered him from the grief, worry, regret, and despair trying to drag him into darkness. Ellie was light and love to him, his safe harbor, his friend, the guardian of any pretensions he yet held to decency and honor.
Before she was done with him, he was silently crying, and coming, and holding on, while Ellie clung, and loved him, and crooned meaningless comforts as the love and the relief—the profound, soul-deep relief—took him under.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The funeral was small enough to confirm that Wilton was not at all well regarded, but large enough that the Lindsey family knew their neighbors felt for them. From the family parlor at Wilton Acres, Lady Warne presided over the whole business with the unsentimental competence of the hale elderly. Imogenie Henly had the good sense not to show her face, but was seen later putting flowers on the grave, a quiet Hiram Haines lending her escort.
Thomas Benning did not attend either, but took his father up to Melton for a few weeks of hunting over some of the best fixtures known to man, hound, or fox, while Lady Trevisham kept to her quarters, attended by three shifts of nurse companions.
Tye Benning was found guilty as an accessory after the fact to attempted murder and assault. He was given transportation and seven years. If he survived the close quarters of the outbou
nd voyage, a life of decent nutrition and basic good health suggested he might survive the sentence as well.
Darius Lindsey took himself off to London, where, he told Trent, he had a christening to attend.
Emily Lindsey had a few quiet, subdued days, but responded well to Mr. Benton’s continued insistence that she ride out with him and enjoy the last of the temperate fall weather.
Lady Warne agreed to stay as chaperone for as long as needed, though Trent considered it might be in everybody’s best interests if Emily spent some of the requisite period of mourning with him and the children at Crossbridge.
In the midst of all the comings and goings, Ellie Hampton quietly departed with Hazlit for Surrey, and Trent had no choice but to let her go.
“I will one day marry your sister.” Benton passed Trent a glass holding two fingers of brandy, bringing to mind other occasions when they’d shared a drink in the library. “I know her come out will be delayed because of Wilton’s mourning.”
“Does Emily consent to this?” For Wilton’s passing should not interfere with the happiness of the vilest rat in the vilest sewer of the lowliest slum.
“She would,” Benton said carefully. “Were I free to ask it of her.”
“You’ve spoken to her?”
“I have.” Benton looked a little abashed, and a lot determined. “The timing is wrong, my prospects are modest, particularly if my uncle’s new wife should bear children. Emily’s above my touch. I know that.”
True love made loquacious, honorable fools of all men. “If she’s determined to have you, then there’s little enough I can say to it. Emily wasn’t looking forward to a Season, anyway. Em wants children and a man she can depend on. If you can give her that, you have my blessing. Leah can present her in a couple of years if need be.”
“So she wasn’t making that up?” Benton said, some of the fight leaving him. “About being disenchanted with all the spotty boys?”
“She’s honest,” Trent said, feeling more than a little sympathy for his steward. “Be warned. I think she’d like it here. She hasn’t the memories of the place her older siblings do.”
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 32
