After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  “That is exactly what I think. I believe the two are connected.”

  “I believe in science and facts. Does either the science, or the facts prove the two are connected, or even who did this?”

  “The facts are yet unfolding. And here is one fact—the girl, Maisy Carter was clutching this piece of fabric.”

  Tanner fetched the delicate scrap wrapped in a twist of paper out of the leather pouch still secreted around his neck.

  “And what’s more, she also held this coin. It was in the form of a fob— the kind of fob such as only an aristocrat or a monied member of society would wear. Not a laborer or a footman. The fob held a Roman coin—which I have come to find, is a fake. A modern counterfeit made to look like an ancient Roman coin.”

  Jack fetched a hand lens out of his waistcoat to examine first the fabric, and then the fob.

  “But then—correct me if I am wrong and my logic is faulty—if she took this from the man who killed her—” He looked at Tanner in question.

  “Or the man who raped her, assuming they were one and the same. She was clutching it in her hand. There were threads of the same fabric caught in her broken fingernails—yes?”

  “Yes. So whomever she took it from was in front of her, not behind. They could not belong to the man who assaulted her.”

  Tanner gave it only momentary thought. “Not necessarily. He could have tired of her fighting, and man-handled her around.”

  That was exactly what Rosing had done to Lady Claire to shove her face-first into the boathouse wall. “I saw him do just that—manhandle her against a wall—to Lady Claire Jellicoe. And I know for a fact that he’s done it before—raped girls—the man who tired to rape Lady Claire.”

  Jack looked at him over the top of his eyeglasses. “A habituated rapist? Are you going to tell me his name?”

  Why was he protecting such a man? Why not name him? Society’s rules for discretion be damned.

  “Rosing. Lord Peter. Heir of—”

  “The Marquess of Hadleigh.” Jack let out another long, low whistle.

  “Ought to be hanged.” Tanner did not bother to keep the vehemence, the bone deep loathing from his voice.

  “My sentiments exactly. But you can’t hang a man just for being a bastard.” Jack rocked back against his chair. “Christ, Tanner but you can pick them. Rosing is a thorough-going bastard—speaking in terms of character not lineage—but his father is a bastard of an altogether broader stripe, if you ask me.”

  “I do ask you. What do you know of either of them?”

  “Knew Rosing at Oxford. You had taken your degree by then,” Jack reminded Tanner. “But Rosing was sent down. Had been several times from what I recall. But I didn’t pay much attention. Good riddance was all I thought.”

  So Rosing had been a problem for years. Getting sent down from university was a common enough occurrence—half the spoiled young bucks of London through it a rite of passage to get send down—

  Another thought intruded. Rite of passage. Ritual.

  “Did you find any other marks on the body? Marks that could not be explained by the violent manner of her death? Anything strange or out of place that struck you?”

  “Good God, Tanner. Everything about the death of an innocent young girl strikes me as strange, and out of place, and tragic as all hell. And it should strike you too, you cool bastard.” Jack’s self-control was fraying around the edges.

  Tanner brushed aside the implied slight. If he was as cold and aloof as people said he was, then so much the better. It was a sacrifice he gladly made to keep his mind keen, and functioning more clearly than anyone else’s. It was what made him cleverer.

  Clever enough to catch a murderer.

  “Something different,” he explained to Jack. “Some mark, or token, or sign that only you, or I would see—though I didn’t, when I looked. Think man, something amiss. Eyelashes pulled out, or a fingernail, or a cut off finger. Something—”

  “Good God—her hair. At the top of her nape, there was a hank of close cropped hair.” Jack pulled his notebook into his lap, to find the remark. “A little bristle. I felt it when I examined her skull for fracture.”

  Clear, cold rage poured through Tanner like water over a fall, plummeting into him.

  This he had seen before. The words of the housemaid at Lowington House—the first time he had witnessed Lord Peter raping someone, and Tanner hadn’t interfered, much to his shame—came back to him.

  Suzannah Miller, had been the maid’s name. Cut my hair he did, sir. With a little knife. As if the other weren’t enough. He cut a piece of my hair.

  “It was Rosing.” God’s balls, but he should have killed the man when he had the chance. “He’ll have it. A trophy of his deed. A reminder of his sexual triumph. He may even take it out, and pleasure himself all over again while looking at it, reveling in the memory.”

  “Tanner.” Jack’s tone held both horror and alarm—alarm at the vehemence of his own tone. “That’s one hell of an accusation to make against a peer.”

  “I will prove it—I must—that he is the one who raped and then strangled Maisy Carter, and then tried to rape Lady Claire Jellicoe, or he will go on raping and killing with impunity.”

  Tanner’s cold, calculating rage pushed him into action—he began to pace back and forth across the room, his fingers drumming against his mouth, the rhythm both calming and stimulating his brain as he thought out loud.

  “Rosing comes to the ball uninvited, with his father, the Marquess of Hadleigh. Whose mistress, Lady Westmoreland, has a villa at Richmond, and a very passing acquaintance with my grandmother. Hadleigh must have been staying with Lady Westmorland—perhaps she mentioned the ball—when he decided to invite himself. What butler would turn away a marquess?”

  “And he—Rosing, the bloody bastard of a son, rapes, or attempts to rape two girls. We know he is a habitual rapist. But is he a killer? I’ve never heard a word so before, and I’ve listened. So did he kill Maisy? That’s where my logic and the evidence part ways.”

  The frustration was like a dull throb of pain at the back of his brain. “And if he didn’t, what part did he play? He—”

  “Something else occurs to me, Tanner.”

  But Tanner had his metaphorical canvas spread before the wind, and was sailing now. “I think Rosing came across Maisy Carter. Yes, I imagine that is exactly what he did—he’s an opportunistic bastard, rather than a plotter and planner. He’ll have simply prowled the lesser populated hallways, trolling for a stray maid. That’s what he’ll have done. And—”

  “Tanner.” Jack broke in more emphatically.

  “Yes?” He looked at Jack but didn’t pause in his pacing—he rhythm helped him think, helped him to see what he needed to see.

  “I’m actually surprised you didn’t bring it up.” Jack’s voice had changed tone—gone all careful and deadly quiet. “But it occurs to me how similar they are in appearance.”

  “Lord Peter and his father?”

  “No, Tanner.”

  Jack shook his head and closed his eyes, and Tanner could hear the carefulness in his friend’s voice for what it really was—dawning horror.

  “Both petite. Both blond, and both blue-eyed. The maid Maisy Carter and your Lady Claire Jellicoe.”

  Chapter 20

  After a long and gloriously hot bath, during which she scrubbed herself pink, and listened very sympathetically, and very, very carefully to the young maid’s nervous chatter, Claire was summoned back to her parents, who, she was told by the housekeeper, awaited her in her mother’s silken sitting room.

  Claire took the trouble and pleasure of dressing herself for the encounter first. Herself being the salient word—she dismissed the young maid's assistance. And it only seemed fitting that she dress and arrange her hair herself before she went to her hard reckoning in her mother’s softly upholstered room.

  Her father looked unhappy, and primed for a fight.

  He did not disappoint, but got straight
to his point. “The Duke of Fenmore has offered for you, Claire. He said he was ‘compelled to.’” Her father’s tone was clearly one of distaste.

  “Compelled?” That could be both good, and bad. “In what way?”

  Her father was brusque. “I did not ask, and he did not offer any explanation.”

  Claire looked to her mother for assistance, but the countess shook her head.

  So she tried another approach. “And what did you say?”

  “I gave him no answer.” Her father paced before the empty fireplace. Evening approached, but in the long summer twilight, only one lamp was lit for light. “Because I needed to speak to you first. And because your mother and I find ourselves at odds on the issue of Fenmore.”

  Claire looked back to her mother, who nodded encouragingly, and explained herself.

  “I feel that you are old enough, and rational enough, despite what has happened, to make up your own mind. If you feel His Grace will suit, then I have no objection to an engagement, during which period the turbulent emotions of the past few days will fade, and you may consider the matter of his unsuitability more rationally still. But an engagement will serve to quash the rumors.”

  “Despite?” But her parents were looking at her in expectation of an answer. “I—”

  Suddenly, despite the fact that she had thought about the possibility of marriage—thought about him—and known, and hoped, a betrothal was coming, Claire felt as if the air were being squeezed out of her lungs.

  She had never in her life gone against her parent’s advise or approval.

  And she had known Tanner only one long, exciting, ruinously calamitous day.

  “He is rich. You will never want for material things.” Her father’s tone was emphatic. And unhappy.

  “Why don’t you like him, papa?”

  “I thought he had dishonorable intentions. I thought he had taken deeply dishonorable actions. And even if both you and he tell me his actions were honorable—that it was Lord Peter Rosing who acted so horribly dishonorably—it was still wrong of Fenmore to take you away, and keep you away for so long.”

  “But we had to, Papa, because of Maisy Carter.”

  “No.” Her father made a slashing motion with his hand to cut off her argument. “He never should have involved you in that. Never. He should have seen you back to your mother’s care immediately. His actions were not those of a gentleman, much less a peer of such rank as a duke.”

  “Papa, his actions to me were nothing but gentlemanly. I told you so. I have held nothing back.” Nothing but a number of incendiary kisses.

  Hot uncomfortable awareness flashed under her skin.

  Her father saw her discomfort, and took it for distress. “What did he do to you? What did he say or do? What hold does he have over you now?”

  “Papa!” Claire tried to explain. “He has no hold over me.”

  But even as she said the words, Claire knew they were a lie. Knew that he did have a hold over her—a hold of gratitude.

  And of something entirely more.

  Because the Duke of Fenmore had not kissed her out of gratitude. Although certainly she had kissed him. But what might have begun as gratitude, had rapidly become something else. Something much more persuasive than gratitude.

  But she still owed him her loyalty. “Do you distrust him because of his background?”

  Her father’s chin went up in a way that told her she had hit a nerve. “What has he told you of his background?”

  “I know that he wasn’t always a duke. He told me himself.”

  “Did he tell you he was a thief? He spent his youth as a criminal, Claire.”

  “That was a long time ago. He was a child, Papa. And I am quite sure that the Fenmore fortune was made a long time ago, and is not maintained by stolen watches.”

  “Do not attempt to take that tone with me, young lady.” Her father’s voice was as cutting as steel. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Yes, it is. And if he is still a criminal—a thief, of a sorts—he now steals at the behest of the government, of which you are a part. Or is it his current involvement that you object to?”

  “His current involvement? What lies has he fed you?”

  “They are not lies.” But she had no real way of knowing that. “But you have influence, and know people. You know people in the Admiralty.” Indeed, ever since her brother Will had gone into the navy, her father had taken a keen interest in the navy’s political fortunes. “You ask the Lords of the Admiralty for yourself.” Claire’s voice had risen precipitously, and her tone was bitterly defensive.

  And so was her papa’s. “Indeed, I will do so.”

  Their tone had grown so acrimonious, her mother felt it necessary to hold up a conciliatory, cautioning hand.

  “We do not find his background at fault, Claire.” Mama spoke in her calm, reassuring voice, speaking to her husband as much as to Claire. “Indeed the duke was raised by a very great degree by a man your father admires, Captain Sir Hugh McAlden, His Grace’s brother-in-law.”

  “And a finer man I know not,” her father admitted. “I put your brother Will into his care as a midshipman on Captain McAdlen’s ship, upon both my own assessment of his character, and the recommendation of Sir Charles Middleton, as he was then, before he became Lord Barham. And I will say, Barham took a great interest in the young duke as well, however little good it did him.”

  “No.” What her father said now made perfect sense—Claire recalled that Barham had been one her father’s set, and a Lord of the Admiralty. “And why do you think he took such interest? Because Lord Barham could make good use of him. And the Admiralty does still. But you will only believe it if the confirmation comes from someone other than His Grace or me. So ask Lord Barham, or his successor at the Admiralty—you must know whomever that is. Ask him”—she made a gesture, as if she were throwing the name at her father—“about Fenmore.”

  “Claire.” Her mother’s voice called her back to civility. “Are you quite sure? You must understand—someone in your position, someone who has gone through what you have gone through, would be...susceptible. Open to influence by an exciting, mysterious, older man.”

  “Older man? He is but eight and twenty, Mama. And younger than that in many ways.”

  Her mother would not be drawn. “And you, who are older, in many ways, than your nearly twenty years, are going to help, or change him? Are going to save him?”

  Heat burned up Claire’s throat and settled behind her eyes. “Mama. I am not going to save him. I could not. And the cold fact of the matter, is that he already saved me.”

  “For which we are grateful. As I know you are. But such feelings can be blown all out of proportion during a time of heightened emotion.”

  “I do not have heightened emotions now,” Claire lied. “I am entirely rational. And frankly, what choice do I really have? I thought you would be glad that I am happy to accept him. Happy that the scandal can be averted.”

  “Scandal be damned. Scandal can be managed.” Her father’s tone was as imperious and icy as winter. “I am Sanderson. You are the daughter of the Earl Sanderson. I will not allow my daughter to be scandalized into a marriage she does not want.”

  It came down to that—managing expectations. Her father managing those expectations. Her father managing her life.

  Claire had thought that by going in a boat the the Duke of Fenmore she could escape from her circumstances for a little while.

  But the truth was that she could not escape. Not even for a little while. She could never escape who she was. And what was expected of her.

  But she would not be a passenger in the journey of her life. She would not let life pass by her carriage window, and never voice a change of direction.

  Claire damned the tight fist of doubt squeezing her chest, and rode the tide of her rising breath.

  “But what if I do want marriage? What if I want him?”

  Her question was met with an utter cacophony of
silence. Her father turned his face up to the ceiling, as he if could not even look at her.

  “Papa?” Did he still think her at fault? Did he truly think that she had been stupid and so shameful in her conduct so as to create the entire circumstance that she found herself in? The fist of doubt and self-loathing punched itself up into her tight throat. “Papa, please.”

  Her father shook his head, and looked at her mother, and shook his head again.

  “It is that you are my daughter. And you are everything good and right and beautiful. And he is...”

  Her papa took a deep breath and tried in vain to collect himself. But his voice was thin with repressed emotion.

  “He is sharp and clever and rich and terrifyingly resourceful. But for all of that, he is simply not worthy of you.”

  Claire had to find Fenmore—she had to find her Tanner.

  Because she loved him.

  And she missed him. Missed his strange, prickly, fiercely intelligent presence at her side.

  She was most emphatically not going cool her heels waiting for His Grace of Tanner, the Duke of Fenmore to come to his senses and discover he loved her.

  If he didn’t know it yet, he should know it now. Stupid, lovely, clever man.

  He was in the house somewhere, doing something to advance their cause—all she had to do was think, and keep her eyes open.

  She found him just as the darkness pushed the late summer twilight over the horizon.

  She found him on one knee in the middle of the room, examining the rug in the elegant chamber overlooking the lawns and the river in which she had first been housed when she came to Riverchon.

  And though he was dressed in the Duke of Fenmore’s finer, tailored clothes, she could still detect the influence of the Tanner in the dark colors and practical boots he wore—clothes for being unseen.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, even as his hand reached out toward her—such a strange, lovely amalgamation of bristling hostility and unconscious, protective invitation.