The Devious Duchess

by Joan Smith

  “Oh, you great goose, Anna! I told you to stay away from that wretch!” Polly said. Tears spurted from Polly's eyes now, too. “It ain’t Anna’s fault, miss. She was took advantage by Sir Nevil,” she told Deirdre.

  “I know it very well, Polly. Help Anna to bed, will you please?”

  “The law won’t get hold of her, will it, miss?” Polly asked.

  Both girls looked to Deirdre for consolation on this important score. “No, I don’t think it will,” Deirdre said. If necessary, she personally was ready to tell any lie the law required to save Anna.

  Deirdre sat alone in the kitchen. After the ordeal just passed, she wasn’t about to go back home alone. She thought she should call Adelaide or Mrs. Haskell, but the quiet cozy kitchen, free of bothersome company, suited her mood, and she sat on alone, thinking. Nevil couldn’t get far with three men chasing him. He hadn’t had much of a head start.

  They’d catch him, and he’d have to stand trial for Dudley’s murder. And as though dragging the family through the mire for murder weren’t bad enough, he had done it in the most cowardly way possible, seducing a poor ignorant servant girl and making her his unwitting tool. She was surprised Anna had succumbed to his blandishments, but then the poor girl never had any love or attention. And Nevil could lay on the charm with a trowel when he wanted to. She had begun to think him not so bad herself, at one point. It must have seemed like a dream come true to Anna, that Nevil had secretly loved her all these years and would rescue her from servitude.

  After ten minutes, Deirdre was rested and impatient to learn what had transpired with Nevil and the others. She went upstairs and told her tale to Adelaide.

  “Let’s get going!” Adelaide said, and ran for a shawl.

  They took Bagot with them for protection, but there was no one at the conservatory or at Fernvale when Deirdre slipped back in the front door, from which she had left earlier. Where could they all be? Had Nevil managed to get away after all?

  “I’ll send Bagot to have a look in the stable and see if any nags are gone,” Adelaide said.

  Not only the nags but also Straus’s and Belami’s carriages were missing. Sir Nevil’s was still there, however, which suggested that the culprit had been caught and taken into Banting to be charged and incarcerated.

  “The old lady will have a deal to say about this,” Adelaide prophesied.

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than the heavy tread of the duchess’s step was heard, limping toward the saloon.

  Chapter 16

  It was more than an hour later when Belami and Pronto returned to Fernvale. Her grace had had ample time to cajole, threaten, and insult Lady Dudley into lowering her price on the Grange. The new price, including all furnishings, was seven thousand. Still under negotiation was the repair of the roof, and, of course, the seven thousand as well. The duchess was determined to have the place at six, and Adelaide equally determined not to go a penny lower than sixty-five. All such thoughts flew from their heads when the gentlemen entered.

  The duchess’s negotiating demeanor changed to one of lofty contempt. “So you’ve put my nephew in jail for murder, have you, Lord Belami?” was her opening salvo.

  She expected a heavy setdown and was surprised at Belami’s restrained manner. “That proved unnecessary,” he answered.

  “What happened, Dick?” Deirdre asked, running to him.

  “He committed suicide,” Dick said.

  “Bonbons,” Pronto said.

  “This is no time for sweets, Mr. Pilgrim!” the duchess exclaimed. “Neither does that portly frame of yours require fattening, I can tell you.”

  “Poison in the bonbons,” Pronto explained. “The ones he was trying to give Anna. We got out of him that he laced three of ‘em with poison and ate one of the ones that wasn’t poisoned himself to convince Anna they weren’t dangerous. But when he realized we had him dead to rights, he popped one of the poison ones into his mouth and didn’t tell us. Was sick as a dog before we realized what he was up to. Pity, but there you are."

  “Why on earth did he want to kill Anna Wilkey? She has no money to leave him,” the duchess said.

  “Was afraid she’d crack under the strain of Straus’s questioning and tell the whole thing,” Pronto informed her. “Planned to walk her back to the Grange and have her slip up to die quietly in her bed, while he went round to the front door and let on he hadn’t seen her. Told you he was going to see Adelaide,” he said, tossing his head toward the duchess. “Meant to see her as planned and be surprised in the morning when Anna woke up dead, you see. Don’t see how he thought anyone would swallow Anna’s having murdered old Lord Dudley, but Dick thinks that was his plot.”

  “Of course the whole business would look highly suspicious,” Dick added, “but it would have been impossible to prove anything with Anna dead. She was the only one who could give hard evidence of his guilt.”

  “I’m surprised at Anna Wilkey!” the duchess said, her close-set eyes narrowed in anger. “I always thought she was a halfway decent girl. Turn her off, Adelaide. We don’t want a murderess running around the house. Or will Straus be able to have her put in jail, Belami?”

  “She was certainly involved, but Sir Nevil gave her some cock-and-bull story about feeding Lord Dudley a sleeping powder so that he might return that night and . . ." He came to a stop as the duchess glared an icy glare. "He also arranged to have Mrs. Haskell dispatched, and it was Polly’s day off, so that would have left the house free for . . ." Again he came to an embarrassed pause.

  “For what, man? Can’t you ever finish a sentence?” the duchess demanded.

  Dick pulled at his cravat and tried again. “He had been making up to the girl, you see. Promised to set her up in an apartment in London as his, er, light-So’-love.”

  “Anna Wilkey?” the duchess asked, incredulous. “No, really that is unconscionable—a serving wench, and as ugly a piece of merchandise as you will find in all of England! Upon my word, if Nevil meant to do anything of the sort, he was mad. But to get back to giving Dudley a sleeping powder, Belami, what was the point of that? What did he mean to do that he wanted the house empty?”

  “Gorblimey, Duchess! He meant to sleep with Anna,” Adelaide explained impatiently.

  Her grace considered this a moment and found it unsavory but possible. She knew well enough there was no limit to men’s salaciousness. “Why didn’t you say so?” she snapped at Dick. “I never took you for a Bath miss, Belami. It was all a take-in, of course. Sir Nevil is a vile and irredeemable scoundrel, but he would never sink so low as to take up with Anna Wilkey as his mistress.”

  “Of course not. He had no intention of returning that night,” Belami agreed, “or of ever honoring his promises. He’s been blackmailing Anna into silence by calling her an accessory to murder. He wanted to be far away when the poison was administered, but he was worried over what Anna might have said to the authorities when Dudley died. Anna first thought Lord Dudley had only fallen asleep and slipped in and exchanged the glass that held the poison for one that held only brandy. She didn’t realize till the next morning that he was actually dead and still didn’t twig to it that he had been poisoned. She thought it was a natural death, that he died in his sleep, and so said nothing. It wasn’t till I happened to mention—that is . . ."

  “Aye, till you so kindly called it murder and brought all this disgrace down on our heads for no reason!” her grace replied, eyes kindling.

  “I had my reasons,” Dick reminded her. “There was some poison administered from your private cache that night, you will recall.” Their eyes met. Charney lifted her chin and tried to stare him down.

  “To the rodents, you mean?”

  “Of course, your grace. That extremely large rodent in the stable that you were afraid would find its way into the house.”

  “I didn’t know there were big rats in the stable! How horrid,” Deirdre said, shivering in distaste.

  “Your aunt didn’t want to disturb you with the
news," Dick said.

  “Deirdre always hated rats,” the duchess said, but her expression was one of fury. How did that brass-faced man know about Shep? Was he in league with Satan? Her servants would never dare to reveal that matter. She wished she had told Deirdre about it herself, but how could she? The girl loved that smelly old dog, and she loved Deirdre. She didn’t want to alienate the one person in the world who didn’t hate her.

  She called for wine and soon reverted to Sir Nevil’s demise. “We must wrap this mess up in clean linen as best we can,” she said, frowning with the exertion of how to accomplish it.

  “There’ll be no trial with the murderer dead,” Belami said. “An inquest into Nevil’s death will be necessary, but an inquest doesn’t gain much notoriety.”

  “Anna Wilkey must be made to pay!” her grace told them in no uncertain way.

  “Oh, Auntie, she has paid!” Deirdre said. “The only wrong she did was to fall for Nevil’s story and agree to give Uncle Dudley a sleeping draught. If you could have seen her . . ."

  “It’s a fine thing when servants are allowed to poison their masters, and consort with their masters’ guests, and not be called to account for it. Next you’ll be saying she deserves a reward.”

  “Straus says that if she agrees to give testimony, she won’t have to go to jail. That is the reward that will please her most,” Dick said. “It might be best if a position can be found for her away from this neighborhood.”

  “I think Polly is the only friend she has in the world. She won’t want to leave,” Deirdre said, remembering how Polly had come to Anna’s support.

  “That’s true,” Dick agreed. “Polly became suspicious and dropped a hint to Nevil. He said it was Anna who’d hang if she spoke up and put the idea in Polly’s head that she was an accomplice, too, through negligence as she’d deserted her post that night. Polly tried to get Anna to run off with her, but Anna still thought Nevil loved her. I hope the new owner of the Grange will keep them both on.”

  The duchess cast a calculating glance at Adelaide. “Lord love us, no one will ever buy that shambles of a place with the border in dispute and all. And Miss Pankhurst is anxious to return to Bath.”

  “Not all that anxious,” Adelaide retaliated. “I’ll stick around till I get my asking price, now that I’m on such close visiting terms with my neighbors. Meanwhile, Anna can stay with me. She’s a good worker.”

  Adelaide soon left, and the duchess also found that she was fatigued. “I’ll be waiting to speak to you in my room when Belami leaves—in five minutes,” her grace said.

  Belami arose and accompanied her to the foot of the stairs. “She doesn’t know about Shep, your grace. And I may need a little more than five minutes to arrange the wedding with Deirdre,” he said, flashing her his infamous smile.

  She stifled the instinct to rake him over the coals. Deirdre would require him in a good mood to hint him into buying the Grange for her wedding gift. “I don’t know how anyone is expected to deal with such twisters of people!” she scoffed mildly.

  “It’s difficult, but I do my poor best.” Dick bowed and watched her hobble upstairs.

  Her reluctant smile was hidden from him. It soon faded to an expression of calculation as she reminded herself to speak to her solicitor about Sir Nevil’s estate. There was the three hundred and nine pounds, two shillings, and sixpence from Lord Dudley that Nevil hadn’t had time to squander yet. That would more than cover the cost of a small country wedding, if it turned out that she was his heiress. On this happy thought, she went to bed to listen, open-eyed, for Deirdre’s ascent.

  Deirdre, meanwhile, wrestled with the problem of getting rid of Pronto for a moment so that she might have a private word with Dick in which to reinstitute their engagement.

  “I expect you’ll find some brandy on the sideboard in the dining room, Pronto, if you’d care for a glass before you leave,” she suggested.

  “Doubt I’ll ever touch the stuff again. Seems to be a lot of brandy poisoning going around.”

  “Just one case—Lord Dudley,” she pointed out.

  “That’s true. Shep’s was in the mulligataw—er, ah . . ."

  “Shep’s?” she demanded. “Shep was poisoned! Do you mean to tell me Auntie . . . And Dick knew it all along! That’s the large rat he was talking about, isn’t it?”

  Pronto deemed it a propitious moment to retire from sight. Wearing a face that reminded her of a peevish cod, he said, “How the deuce should I know? Nobody tells me anything.” He went to the dining room to invent excuses for his latest blunder. Dashed hard being Dick’s second in all his duels with life. Only natural a fellow would slip up once in a while. When Belami returned to the saloon, he had Deirdre all to himself.

  She didn’t waste a minute in calling him to account. “Dick, you knew all along Auntie poisoned Shep and didn’t tell me!”

  The infamous smile was called into action again. “If I had told you, then I couldn’t use it as a weapon to beat your aunt over the head and force her to hasten the wedding forward. After first beating you over the head and convincing you to take back this,” he said, extracting the diamond ring from his pocket and shaking it in the palm of his hand. “With double mourning fallen on the household, I need all the weapons I can lay my hands on. You must, under no account, let on that you know,” he urged, hoping to allay her anger by this truthful explanation. “I don’t have to ask who let it out of the bag, do I?”

  “Since you had the wits to see through Nevil’s vile schemes, I’m sure you can deduce who blurted out the truth.”

  He took her hand and walked to the reluctant glow in the grate, for the room was freezing cold. Deirdre looked at his closed hand, waiting for him to put the ring on her finger. “You haven’t forgotten our agreement?” he reminded her.

  Vexed with his tardiness, she said, “The agreement that I wouldn’t marry you if my aunt was guilty, you mean?”

  “Just so, and its logical corollary that you would marry me if I proved her innocent.”

  “I didn’t say that, ac-tually.”

  “But you meant it, and don’t think I’m going to let you weasel out of bestowing my reward now that I’ve wrapped the family’s shame in a not-too-soiled rag of linen.” As he spoke, he slid the diamond ring onto her finger. She smiled softly at it. Suddenly her world was back on its proper course.

  “I wasn’t setting an obstacle course for you, you know, Dick, when I said I wouldn’t marry you if Auntie was guilty.”

  “I know you weren’t, but I enjoyed pretending I was a Prince Charming who had to slay the dragon before winning my princess.”

  “I always thought of you as my Prince Charming,” she admitted. But even in her picture books of fairy tales the prince had never been so charming as this real, flesh-and-blood man who stood, holding her hand, with love and impatience glowing in his black eyes.

  “I am going to get you to a preacher very soon, Miss Gower, before your aunt falls into some new hobble.”

  “Yes, please do,” she urged. “I feel selfish, thinking of my own happiness when all these miseries surround the house. Nevil and Dudley and poor Anna. I’m sure Auntie will hire her in the end. She talks hard, but she does the right thing.”

  “Poor Anna, indeed,” Belami said with great feeling. “You can’t harp on the gloomy aspects of life, darling, or you’ll go into a decline. The thing to do is to help as much as you can, then move on to the next item. You know what the next item is, don’t you?” he asked softly, his finger tilting her chin up so that he gazed into her eyes.

  She felt warm at the expression on his face. She closed her eyes and lifted her lips to his.

  His arms wrapped around her, crushing her against his hard, lean body while he kissed her hungrily. In the heat of the moment, she had a foretaste of the hot Italian sun that would soon be blessing their union.

  Pronto chose that moment to stick his head in at the door. “Called the rig, Dick. Réal’s waiting out front. Oh, sorry to interrupt
. . ." He fell silent, standing first on one foot, then on the other, drew out his watch, cleared his throat, and finally spoke again. “Said Réal’s waiting, Dick. Cold night out there. Course Réal won’t mind that.” He scratched his ear, and still they continued their embrace. It seemed an excellent moment to confess to his blunder about Shep's death. “Sorry I let the dog out of the bag—Shep.”

  Belami lifted his head and said in a ragged voice, “Go away, Pronto.”

  “Well, maybe I will have a shot of that brandy. Mean to say, looks as though I’ll be cooling my heels here for a spell.”

  Copyright © 1985 by Joan Smith

  Originally published by Fawcett Crest

  Electronically published in 2003 by Belgrave House

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.