After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  His Grace, the Duke of Fenmore stepped back into the small passing alcove set into the wall at the turn of the narrow stairwell, and let his grandmother’s housekeeper pass by down the stairs.

  In her wake, he came out of the narrow space. “My apologies, Claire. Good thing I’ve grown so tall, or I think she might have slapped the word ejaculate right out of my mouth, the way she did when I was a child, and said distressing things.”

  Claire’s heart ached for him anew. What a strange, un-frightenable boy he must have been when he became the duke. “And did you often say distressing things?”

  “Always.” His eyes slid to hers, before he turned his head to regard her fully. “But you’re not distressed.”

  “Oh, I am, certainly—I’d be lying if I said otherwise. It’s only that I’m determined not to give way to my distress. I’m determined to learn from this. Learn how to see things like you do, and protect myself.”

  He nodded, and though he didn’t smile, the corners of his eyes warmed just a little. “You’ve made a remarkable start.”

  “Yes.” She felt her own mouth curve in answer, and felt the sense of naive distress fade just a bit. Just enough.

  He nodded again. “Good. Then you come.” He steered her a few steps back along the corridor, and turned her to face the open servants stair. “Show me what you see. Show me what Maisy would have seen.”

  “But she knew this house, did she not? She’d been here for several years. She would have known this was the servant’s stair, and that this was her best escape, wouldn’t she? And she was clever—she would have understood immediately that Lord Peter was up to no good. She would have gone straight for the sanctuary of the stairs.”

  “Yes.” He agreed with her, but his eyes were regarding the two even-more-narrow doors that flanked the door to the servants’ stairwell. “But what if she didn’t make it.” He looked back at the door to Claire’s chamber from whence they had originally come, as if to gauge the distance. “What if he caught up with her? Where would he take her?”

  The question was rhetorical, because he was already moving to the left hand side closet.

  “He was right handed.” She pointed to the door on the right, keeping her voice as even as possible even as the gorge rose in her throat at the memory of Rosing’s strong, merciless hands upon her.

  Perhaps they had been on Maisy as well. “Rosing had opened the door to the boat house with his right hand.”

  While he shoved her along with his big, merciless left clamped around her upper arm.

  “We haven’t yet proved it was Rosing, Claire.” Tanner corrected quietly. “But that is a very good observation. Made under duress. Well done.”

  “Yes, well.” His compliment and confidence helped her take a fuller breath. “You said there are no coincidences.”

  “I did. But there can be no accusations without proof. So what we need is proof that— Ah. God’s balls.”

  It was a narrow broom closet lit by a very small window at the back, such as maids and footmen would use for storage and supplies. There were copper tubs and buckets, an empty coal scuttle, whisk brooms, mops and pails alike stored neatly on shelves, and hanging on hooks.

  But along the left hand wall was a dark, smeared, tell-tale stain that trailed down to the very bottom of the bead-board wall.

  This was where poor Maisey Carter died.

  Chapter 21

  “Blood,” Tanner said before she had to.

  The wall was dotted with blood, both above and below the heavy smear. Just as he had predicted it would be. Maisy’s blood.

  This was where Maisy Carter had been attacked. And most likely murdered.

  Claire took a step back, and another, and another.

  She could hear the rising cadence of her blood in her ears, and feel the panicked force of her own breathing, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. “I think I’m going to sick. Again.”

  He was at her side, leading her to a nearby chair situated along the corridor and pushing her head down between her knees.

  “You didn’t vomit the first time, so you won’t do it again.”

  “Don’t be too sure.” His hand was drawing lazy circles on her back. It was distracting. “I might surprise you yet.”

  “You have done nothing but surprise me, Claire,” he remarked in an amused tone that suggested the opposite. “But you will not vomit. You’re too determined. You told me so yourself.”

  She pulled a deep draught of air into her lungs. “Yes. I am, aren’t I?”

  “Annoyingly so.” The back of his hand was cool along the nape of her neck. “You’ve become entirely un-saveable. Can you sit up yet?”

  “Yes, I think so.” She sat up slowly, trying to keep her breathing even. “Thank you. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to come all over missish.”

  “If ever there were an excuse for coming all over missish, seeing the place where another human being was murdered is it.”

  “Yes. It’s like there was evil trapped in there, and it just came rushing out.”

  “Perhaps.”

  She could see that he didn’t believe anything so strange, but he was being kind to her, rubbing her back so gently. Because he really was a nice man. A very nice man.

  She would tell that to her father.

  “So now we’ve found the place,” she asked. “What next?”

  “I need to bring Jack down here to take all his meticulous notes. This is the charge that has been laid against me—not Rosing’s murder, but Maisy’s.”

  She was too shaky to withstand the fresh rime of fear—she went clammy and cold everywhere, from her skin to her bones.

  “Oh, good Lord. How unfair.”

  He was still crouched in front of her, and he looked at her from under his brows, still and serious. “Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Because I could have done it, I suppose. You didn’t see me before we met in the boathouse—I could have been anywhere.”

  “Of course you couldn’t. And of course I saw you. You were in the drawing room, standing next to the tall case clock when I came down and Maisy departed. And then you were in the ballroom, propping up the north wall the entire time. You never moved, though you were not still. Of course I believe in you. I saw you.”

  He turned his face away sharply, and then stood and moved away.

  “Tanner, whatever is the matter?”

  He answered her question with a strange, uncomfortable shrug. “Forgive me. False charges laid against one with a magistrate tend to have a rather dampening effect, don’t they.”

  There was the sly, dry humor. She peeked up at him through her lashes. “You don’t seem especially dampened.”

  He closed his eyes, and shook his head as if he could rattle his brain back into proper place.

  “Claire, we have to find a way to prove that it was Rosing. To put a stop to him once and for all. You’ll never have a day of peace if we don’t. Think about it. What will happen if you have to face Lord Peter Rosing across a ballroom? Or on Bond Street? It’s a small world, the ton.”

  The cold could not spread any further—she felt clammy all over. “I had rather hoped you had crippled him enough that he would never again grace a ball with his hideous presence.”

  “Well, yes. So did I. But we can’t count on that. Especially now that he’s laid a charge against me. I’ll be the one who is discredited and unwelcome. Or worse. Not that I care particularly for myself. But I won’t have your name besmirched as well.”

  Claire braced herself for the next numbingly cold blow. But she had to ask. “Is that the only reason you made your proposal? To save my name?”

  “No,” he said immediately. “Not only. You know it was not only.” He looked her dead in the eye. “You must know it was for you, yourself. You, and only you.”

  “God’s balls. The world seems entirely intent upon ruining my proposals.”

  Tanner stopped his extraordinary speech to listen to footsteps coming at a measured pace up the
central staircase, beyond. He stood in preparation.

  Doggett appeared. “Your Grace. I thought you should know that we have a visitor—the Marquess of Hadleigh has come to call. For the Earl Sanderson.”

  Claire rose slowly from her chair as if pulled up by some invisible hand. “My father?”

  “Thank you, Doggett.” Tanner put a hand to Claire’s elbow to steady her. “Where have you put them?”

  “I showed his lordship the marquess into the library, Your Grace, and have asked a footman to conduct the earl to him there. But I thought you should like to know.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Doggett.”

  The man bowed again in his stiff, elegant way, but Tanner was already taking Claire by the hand, and leading her away, giving further instruction over his shoulder.

  “I want this closet locked, Doggett, and Mr. Denman only given the key. No one but he is to disturb it. No one is to clean it. Do you understand?”

  “By all means, Your Grace.”

  “Yes, by any and all means, keep Mrs. Dalgliesh and her mop squeezers out.” He turned to her. “Here we go, Claire. The game is getting trickier.”

  “What could the marquess have to say to my father?” she asked as he rushed her onward. “Do you think he’s come to make some sort of apology?”

  “I doubt it.” Tanner led her upward to the third floor of the library wing and into his bedchamber, whereupon he immediately locked and barred the door. He wanted no interruption—not even from Jack—no noise that might give them away.

  “What is this place?” Claire kept her voice low, already sensing the need for stealth in the moonlit darkness.

  “My bed chamber. It connects with the library below. ” He laid his finger across her lips, and then he led her to the narrow stairway door.

  “We can’t just barge in,” she whispered in his ear.

  “Don’t have to barge,” he answered at her ear. “The acoustics are such that we’ll hear their every word.”

  The moment he cracked the door, voices rose up from below.

  “Sanderson.” The marquess’s deep voice was everything Tanner had expected—commanding and haughty, and sure of his precedence over the earl.

  And then the earl’s greeting, his voice restrained. “Hadleigh.”

  Tanner pulled the door open just enough so that he could peer through the slit between the panel and the jamb. A warm wash of light from the fire and the lamps in the library below spilled in a hot wedge across the floor of his chamber.

  Tanner urged Claire closer to him, deep in the enveloping shadow.

  Hadleigh’s tone was brash and over-confident.

  “...you must see?” Hadleigh has finishing.

  “No, I don’t, Haldeigh.” The Earl’s deep voice was level, but slightly strangled, as if his vocal chords had been worn nearly to bits holding his words back diplomatically. “Perhaps you will explain it to me.”

  “Very simple really. Came here this evening to put an end to this needless speculation and gossip about your daughter. My son is prepared to give her the protection of his name.”

  If Claire had not clapped her own hand over her mouth to stifle her shock, Tanner might have done so.

  But when she turned her wide, startled eyes to him in utter horror, he could only draw her close to stop the little tremors of indignation and fear that shivered through her body.

  “Protection? Of his name?” Her father’s voice was still conversational and controlled, but Tanner could detect a fine honed edge of perturbation sliding under the pleasantness.

  “And mine of course.” Hadleigh might as well have thumped his chest. “My son will be marquess some day—although not anytime soon.”

  “And what do you imagine this protection would be for?’

  “Why, don’t you know?” Even Hadleigh’s voice sounded disingenuous. “I hate to be the one carrying tales, but surely you’ve heard some of the things that are being said?”

  “I have heard a great deal of different things being said, Hadleigh.”

  “Then you will know that very few of them are flattering.”

  The Earl Sanderson waited a long cold moment before he replied. “Then I should like to know exactly why you started those rumors.”

  “Me? Come man”—Hadleigh tried to sound bluff and sympathetic—“let us be realists. My son did his best for her then, but... I understand she’s made her way back, but she’s clearly ruined. She was gone for some time.”

  To Tanner’s ears, Hadleigh sounded about as sympathetic as a serpent.

  Apparently Sanderson thought so too—his tone was as cold as a March wind. “You are misinformed. My daughter is here, just as she has been these past few days, and whoever has been telling you these lies will be brought to account by me.”

  That was steel running like a blade straight through the Earl Sanderson’s voice.

  Hadleigh tried his best to evade the sharp edge.

  “Come man. You may be able to cozen the world—as well you should try to do for your daughter’s sake—but you can’t cozen me. My son was there, man. He tried to save her.”

  “From what?”

  “From Fenmore.”

  “Really?” Sarcasm entered the earl’s tone. “She did not mention that Lord Peter had done so.”

  “Oh, no? What exactly did she say?” Hadleigh tried to sound only casually curious, but he was too used to getting what he wanted to wait. “How did she account for what happened?”

  “She found the body of a young maid who had gone missing.” Sanderson was playing his cards very close to his chest. “It was entirely distressing for her, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

  “Drowned herself did she?”

  Alarm bells immediately began to peal in Tanner’s brain, resounding like a steeple on Christmas morning. With the exception of Claire, Jack and himself, no one else knew that Maisy Carter’s body had been found in the river. Perhaps Claire had told others, like his grandmother and her parents, although Tanner hoped they had enough sense not to let that information out.

  And Claire was just as quick to find the slip—she put her lips to his ear to whisper, “My father never said that we found her in the river. How does Hadleigh know that?”

  It was a very good question indeed. Tanner’s guess was that Rosing must have told his father that he dumped Maisy Carter’s body in the river.

  “I beg your pardon?” There was something sharper, and more incisive in the earl’s voice as well, and Tanner had to let go of Claire to inch closer to the light, so he might see through down through the brass railing to the faces of the men below.

  Hadleigh was seated, slouching negligently against the high upholstered back of his chair. Sanderson stood across from him, with his hand on a chair’s back.

  “Your information is wrong. My daughter is not drowned,” Sanderson clarified. “She is well, apart from being deeply distressed by the death of the maid.”

  Ah. The earl was fencing with the man—subtly probing for weaknesses and and holes in Hadleigh’s armor of arrogance. Almost as if the earl, too, suspected Hadleigh of lying.

  Tanner inched as close to the edge of the railing as he dared.

  “I meant the maid drowned, man.” Hadleigh’s tone was still dismissive. He did not realize his mistake.

  Another clanging gong in echoed in Tanner’s brain. If Hadleigh thought—or was told by his son—that the maid drowned, why had he laid a charge of murder against Tanner?

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say.” Thankfully, Earl Sanderson did not let out any more information. His face was a study in calm.

  “Come, Sanderson.” Hadleigh turned cajoling.

  His narrow, hawkish face wasn’t particularly familiar to Tanner. But he would remember it now.

  “You needn’t be so stoic around me,” Hadleigh cozened. “I’m a father—I understand. My son lies broken in a friend’s nearby home due to the events of that unfortunate evening. What I propose will answer for both of them.”

 
; “A friend’s? How tragic.” The Earl’s answer was non-committal. “How does the young man fare?”

  Oh, well played—another subtly snide touch of steel from Sanderson in the veiled reference to Hadleigh’s mistress, Lady Worthington.

  Hadleigh pressed what he wrongly saw as his advantage. “I can pledge that my son considers himself engaged from this moment forward.”

  The earl held up a staying hand. “And yet I feel that would be too precipitous. I must give the idea some thought, for it is not the first proposal I have had the honor of receiving this evening.”

  “Not?” Hadleigh rose, finally alarmed.

  “No.” The earl was as cool as a lake.

  The Marquess of Hadleigh drew himself up, and tossed his chin at Sanderson. “And may I ask who else may have asked for your daughter’s rather soiled hand?”

  Sanderson, ever the canny tactician, waited a long, considering moment before he answered. “You may.”

  Hadleigh’s face was growing red with barely concealed ire. “And?” he demanded.

  “Himself.” The earl gestured to the tall portrait hanging over the mantle, looking down so severely upon them. “His Grace, the Duke of Fenmore.”

  The air in the library was calm, like the weather in the eye of a storm, for only a moment before Hadleigh burst into motion. “How? Where?” He stormed toward the library doors. “Is he here?”

  The earl did not follow. “I should think not. I give little countenance to the rumors that he has fled, because of course I have seen him. But search if you like. This is his grandmother’s home—I am sure the dear, influential dowager duchess will take no umbrage at your searching about like an unleashed dog after a bone.”

  Hadleigh turned back sharply, and Tanner very, very slowly withdrew into the dark of his chamber, making no sudden moves that would attract Hadleigh’s eye.

  “You mock me,” the marquess spat at the earl.

  Sanderson retained his calm. “I do not, my lord. I merely remind you that we are both guests in another peer’s house, and need to behave as such.”

  “Save your lectures on how to behave for your daughter,” Hadleigh roared back. “This is a matter of law.”