“Did you speak with him that night at Almack’s? Was that why you left so precipitously?”
“Yes, and yes.” Amanda bit her lip while the two gentlemen waited. She told them about Mr. Charles Ashway and her expectations. Her voice trembled when she spoke of receiving the cut direct from him.
Amanda swore the floorboards shivered when Mr. Stamfield jumped to his feet. “That cad. I shall call him out for you, Miss Carville. No gentleman leads a lady to await an offer, and then treats her so abysmally.”
“He had his reasons. I demanded an explanation, you see.” She blushed and stared at her hands, but she managed to whisper the slander Sir Frederick had told Charles.
“And he believed your stepfather’s lies? Anyone can tell you are a lady, not any barque of frailty. I will not bother challenging the mawworm, then, I shall just pound him into the ground. Dueling is illegal anyway.”
Amanda had to smile. “I thank you for the thought, Mr. Stamfield. I wished to hit him myself.”
Rex wanted to wring the dastard’s neck, but that was for another time. “You must have been furious.”
“Oh, I was worse than angry. I wanted to shout and stamp my foot and throw that insipid orgeat they serve right at him. But there was Elaine to consider. Besides, I knew Mr. Ashway was not the culprit. He simply did not trust me, and he cared more for his family name than he did for me.”
Daniel sat back down. “That whole family is a bunch of bobbing blocks. You are better off without him.”
Rex thought so, too. “Go on.”
In firmer tones, Amanda told them, “My stepfather was entirely to blame. So I went home, alone, to confront him once and for all. I was going to go to the solicitor’s in the morning, and the bank. And I intended to write to Lady Royce in Bath, asking her advice and assistance. I hated Sir Frederick more than I thought possible at that moment, and I did wish him dead.”
“Perhaps you ought to keep that thought to yourself from now on,” Rex warned. “Not that wishes equate to deeds, but it looks bad.” He asked the name of her bank and which solicitor handled the family’s affairs, then brought her attention back to Sir Frederick. “He must have been upset when you said you were going to expose his thievery. That would not have helped his daughter make an advantageous match.”
“I did not get the chance to threaten him. He was already dead.”
“So there was no struggle, no physical violence on his part?”
“No.” In a voice as thin as a thread, she repeated, “He was already dead.”
“Then how did you happen to have the gun in your hand?”
“I thought he was in his cups and had dropped it. I wanted to protect the rest of the household.” She paused. “Then I saw him.”
Rex saw her shudder and exchanged a glance with his cousin. “There is no need to tell us more. We can speak to the coroner for the rest. You had cause to shoot the dastard but you did not.”
Now Amanda started crying again. “You truly believe me?”
“Of course. True-blue, like I said.”
“No one else did.”
“Well, we shall have to change their minds. Let us start with the gun. Was it Sir Frederick’s?”
“I have no idea. I know he owned a brace of pistols because he mentioned shooting at Manton’s Gallery a few times, but I never saw them.”
“Can you describe the murder weapon at all?”
“It was cold and gray and heavy.”
“No pearl handles or carvings? Some pistols have fancy work on them.”
“I did not notice. I was too angry, and then . . .”
“Yes.” Rex made a note on his paper to examine the gun, and to check at Manton’s. “Sometimes they can be identified by their markings. A gunsmith will recognize his own work and recall who bought it. A weapons dealer might have records of the purchase. We’ll start there. Now, who else would have been at the house that evening?”
He wrote down the servants she mentioned, noting that they had been given an evening off, with the ladies at the assembly rooms. “Sir Frederick did not sound like the type to be generous to his staff.”
“I was surprised, but glad for them.”
“It might be that Hawley was expecting company he wished to keep private.”
“A whore?” Daniel asked, then blushed and begged Amanda’s pardon.
“Or a partner in more shady dealings. We can easily find the men he drank with and gamed with at his clubs. We’ll need the names of his friends, his investment advisors, his tailor.” Rex turned the page and added more avenues to pursue.
“What the deuce do you want to know his tailor for? I can give you the name of mine if you want to cut a dash.”
Rex raised his eyebrow at his cousin’s ensemble. “I want to know if the baronet paid his debts. A man’s tailor can tell a lot, if he wishes. So can his valet. Where was his man that evening?”
“I do not know. I think I saw him in all the confusion, after.” She gave him Brusseau’s name.
“Another French valet? Hmm.”
“Do not make too much of it, coz. French servants are all the thing; the Quality think it gives them style.”
“Did Sir Frederick dress in the latest fashions?”
Amanda and Daniel both shook their heads.
“What of Sir Frederick’s son?”
“I do not know Edwin Hawley’s mode of dress or if he has a valet. Edwin and his father were estranged. He moved out several years ago and I have not seen him since. I believe him to be residing at Hawk Hill, the Hawley seat in Hampshire. Sir Frederick hated the country and bled the estate to finance his investments. He could not sell the entailed property, or cast Edwin out of the succession to the baronetcy, of course, although the servants hinted that Sir Frederick borrowed heavily against the income. I thought they must have argued over the rents and mortgages but I never knew.”
“He had motive to get rid of the drain on the estate, then, and claim it for his own?”
“Oh, not Edwin. He is such a nice young man.”
They all knew nice men did awful things when forced to it. Watching one’s fields go fallow and one’s tenants go hungry could make a fellow desperate.
“I would have known if he was in Town. Elaine would have told me.”
Rex would send a man to Hampshire to check. “Very well, one last question. Who was the gentleman you were seeing?”
“I told you, Mr. Charles Ashway, of the Derby Ashways. The family holds a distinguished barony.”
“No, not that man, the other one.”
“I had no other suitors. Sir Frederick discouraged them all.”
Rex studied his notes. “They said you went out at night on occasion.”
Now Amanda looked at the fire burning in the hearth. “That has nothing to do with the murder.”
“Of course it does. The talk leaves you looking no better than you ought to be. Did you meet a man outside your house?”
“I shall not speak of it.”
“But you will not deny it, in words?”
She did not say anything.
He cursed under his breath. “Do you own a blue cape?”
“You must know I do.”
“Is it with your belongings sent over from your former home?”
“I do not know. I did not unpack. Nanny did.”
Rex made a note to look into that, too. “The blue cape was how you were identified in the park across the street from Sir Frederick’s house on several nights.”
Again she said nothing, just rubbed at her forehead and the headache forming there.
The interview was over.
Chapter Ten
Everything she’d said was true. Everything she had not said was damning. It appeared Miss Carville was guilty of something, after all.
More secrets, damn it.
“What do you think?” Rex asked his cousin after Nanny helped the woman back to her own bedchamber, wrapped in the blanket. He was ready to carry her, but Nanny glowered a
t him, as if the shady female’s exhausted, teary condition and pained expression were his fault. He stepped aside, holding the door.
“I think she is a diamond of the first water. Those golden curls look soft as silk, and that little nose has an enchanting tilt. She has the sweetest brown eyes, when they aren’t filled with tears, and as for her shape . . .” Daniel held his hands in front of his chest instead of discussing a lady’s bosom in his lady aunt’s sitting room. “Of course I prefer my women on a larger scale. Why, I’d be afraid of breaking that little china doll.”
Rex knew Miss Carville was soft, not at all brittle like a porcelain figurine. “I meant what do you think about her avoiding questions about the man she was meeting?” Rex was prowling the sitting room, picking up this book, that ormolu clock on the mantel. He was thinking more about the woman who had just left than the woman who resided here, though. He had stopped wondering about Lady Royce years ago, or so he told himself.
“She refused to discuss why she was going out alone at night, breaking every rule for an unmarried miss. At the same time she was chasing after Ashway for his ring.” He could not decide which was worst—Miss Carville’s lack of candor, her lack of morals, or her lack of honor.
“Perhaps the chap is unsuitable, a servant, say, and she knew her stepfather would never give his permission. Or he could be a married man. She could be keeping his identity hidden so his wife doesn’t find out.”
“Or she is protecting her lover from the law.” He checked his notes. “Yet she said she did not know who killed Hawley. It was a clear blue, with no muddied maybes.”
“Well, then, she does not know and does not suspect the fellow in the park. And you are damning her for a light skirt without knowing the facts of the matter. She might have a fine reason for going out, not to meet a lover at all.”
“Name one.”
Daniel lowered his brows in concentration, without coming up with a single possibility. “Why don’t you ask her?’
“I did and she refused to answer.”
“No, ask her if she has a lover, not who he is. That’s what has your ballocks in a bind.”
“It is not!”
Daniel smiled and scratched his armpit. Verity the dog, whose only truth was a bone with meat on it, sighed and slumped at Daniel’s feet.
Rex glared at both traitors. “Furthermore, Nanny Brown managed to drum the basics of polite behavior into my head. One does not ask such questions of a lady. Can you imagine? How do you do, Miss Furbelow. May I have this dance? Oh, and by the way, are you a virgin?”
Daniel laughed. “Such honest dealing might make for happier marriages, without some poor nodcock finding out on his wedding night that his blushing bride has been gathering her rosebuds with the gardener.”
Rex was not laughing. He had more riddles than a Sphinx and did not need another puzzle. He already had to consider why the countess kept his few, coldly courteous letters in her desk, or why his boyhood portrait hung in her sitting room. Or why Miss Carville would not name the man in the park, even to save her own neck. Did she love him that much—and why did that notion bother Rex so much? Then there was the question of why French valets seemed to be cropping up like mushrooms.
The most important mystery, of course, was who in Hades had killed Sir Frederick Hawley. Rex had less than a month before the trial, but he hoped to solve the riddle by week’s end. Once he did that, he could wash his hands of all of them.
Nothing could be done until after nuncheon, not with Daniel’s stomach growling. While they ate Rex consulted his lists and divided the tasks. Daniel could search Hawley House and find the names of Sir Frederick’s associates at the gentlemen’s clubs, including any he might have owed gambling debts. Murchison could listen for word of that valet, Brusseau, who was in need of a new position. Rex would go to the bank and the solicitor’s—after he did his damnedest to keep out of prison for obstructing justice.
With their battle plan in place, Rex knocked on Miss Carville’s door. Nanny Brown opened the door, then stood in the entry, refusing to leave.
From the hall, Rex asked if Miss Carville wished anything else brought from her former home. “That will give Daniel an excuse to look around for the baronet’s guns, signs of struggle, that kind of thing. He might get lucky and find the estate books to, ah, borrow. I would like to see how Sir Frederick managed his finances.”
“The servants would never let Mr. Stamfield pry into family matters.”
“They will if they know my cousin’s reputation. Few people argue about the niceties when Daniel is around. His size alone usually makes folks extremely cooperative.”
She gnawed on her lip. “What if they do not let him in? Will he resort to fisticuffs again? I would not want more mayhem attributed to me.”
“I doubt it will come to that. Daniel can be very persuasive, and I gave him a purse full of coins to buy the information he needs. If worse comes to worst, we will break in when everyone is asleep.”
Amanda gasped. “You could be arrested! Dear Lady Royce would be horrified. No, it would be far better if I went. I should not like your cousin accused of wrongdoing, and I know where to look.”
He could tell that she could barely lift her head. The pucker was back between her eyebrows, and she was back in bed, in a nightgown. This one was a bit of lace, not plain and concealing like the borrowed one he’d bundled her into. Nanny caught him looking and hurriedly pulled the covers up high, but not before he wondered if that other man had seen her like this.
“I was merely teasing. Daniel will find what we want or the barrister we hire will ask for a warrant. He may have to get an order from the courts to inspect the bank-books, but I am hoping for cooperation there, too, before we have to resort to official means. Lawyers have their own ways of doing things, usually slowly. And I’m hoping to avoid the sensation of a public trial by finding enough evidence to see the charges dropped altogether.”
“I wish to help,” she insisted. “The last barrister I had never let me speak.”
“You can help by writing a note to the butler there, giving us permission to fetch your things. Daniel knows what to do after.”
“Miniatures of my mother and father are in my bedroom. Those are what I miss most. But this is my life, and I should go.”
“You are not well enough yet, and there is your reputation to consider, what is left of it anyway. Out and about with two single gentlemen within days of your stepfather’s murder? There is no reason to bring to the ton’s attention that you are without chaperonage here.”
“Nanny could come.”
“Lord love you, lambie,” Nanny spoke up. “You know I don’t count. The toffs think only one of their own can guard a lady’s virtue.”
Amanda sighed, conceding that she was not up to much more than holding a pen. She wrote the note despite the headache that pounded at her temples.
Nanny was already mixing her powders and drops. “You leave everything to his lordship, pet. He’ll see you through.”
Rex wished he could see through the covers.
Amanda scrawled the note with shaking fingers. It was barely legible, but Hareston, the butler at her stepfather’s house, could barely read. If he was still there. He might have decamped with the good china in lieu of his quarter pay, knowing Edwin would not keep him on even if the new baronet did not shut up the London town house to save funds.
Amanda fleetingly worried about Elaine, immured in the country. She had always feared her father, who’d ignored her as much as possible. The two had been rubbing along better this year, with Elaine delighted with her new gowns and finally having a social Season, and Sir Frederick viewing the girl as a way to better himself. Perhaps Elaine was grief-stricken at her loss, both of her father and the entertainments of the city. She would have to go into mourning either way. At least she would have her own brother to look after her. Amanda hoped Edwin would not push the seventeen-year-old into an unwanted marriage, the way his father had planned. Then she
worried that she was putting too much confidence in the young stepbrother she had not seen in two years, and rarely before, while he was at university. She was counting on his honor to restore her own fortune; she was assuming his family feelings would protect his sister. She could be wrong.
Why borrow trouble? The Hawleys were no longer her business. Staying out of jail, proving herself innocent, those were her concerns. Granted, she was too weak to make inquiries, and the gentlemen’s clubs’ doors were locked to women, but she could examine the accounts books when Lord Rexford brought them, if she could keep her head clear.
“No more laudanum, Nanny. I need to be able to think.”
“Oh, you can let Lord Rexford do that, too, I swear.”
Amanda had to smile at the old woman’s confidence in her former nurseling. He was a large man, not as big as his cousin, of course, but still tall and commanding. He was not, however, a god. “He is being immeasurably helpful. He believes me, which is more than anyone else does. But if he manages to free me from the charges, I still have to plan my future. I cannot be a weight around Lady Royce’s neck, and my soiled reputation will prevent Elaine’s finding a husband, if I were welcome to stay with her at all.”
Nanny smiled. “I am thinking you can leave that to his lordship, too. He’ll do the right thing.”
“The right thing . . . ?”
“Of course. He helped ruin your good name, didn’t he?”
The old woman could not be thinking what Amanda thought she was implying. “But I am an accused murderess.”
“Not for long, if I know the lad.”
But what Nanny did not know was that the viscount believed her another man’s mistress, no fit bride for a gentleman, no fit mother to his heir. He might not believe Sir Frederick’s slanders like Mr. Ashway, but neither did he believe her untouched. She’d seen the shadows fall over his face when he spoke of the man in the park. She feared for a moment he’d grow violent when she could not, would not, answer his questions. Besides, he did not seem to like her. She was a chore to him, like mucking out the stables. Why, he had not so much as blinked an eye at the change in her looks, after an entire morning of Nanny’s fussing. He could have smiled or paid her more than the cursory compliment that she looked better. A small smile of approval would have been enough. His cousin was gallant, but that did not count.
Truly Yours Page 9
