“Felicitations,” Lord Bennet murmured politely.
“Prove your innocence?” Hadleigh scoffed. “Good God, Fenmore. You’ll have to do that in a court of law and not over my library desk.”
“Then perhaps we can do it over Lady Worthington’s library desk. And thank you, but I have already poured myself a drink. Although coffee would be acceptable, if you have it. Lord Bennet?”
His lordship nodded, and settled himself into a chair opposite Tanner. “Coffee, if it looks for us to have a long night.”
Tanner made one of his ducal gestures to Lady Worthington’s footman, who was still hovering at the door. “Thank you.”
Tanner then turned conversationally to his accuser. “So, my Lord Hadleigh. What is all this nonsense?”
“Nonsense, Fenmore? A charge of murder has been laid against you.”
“By whom? I should like to know the scurrilous rat who has done so much to waste the magistrate’s. And mine.”
“By my son, sir, Lord Peter Rosing. Laid evidence last night with the Bow Street Magistrate’s court. Been looking for you ever since.”
“Apologies.” Tanner made another elegant little bow of his head. “I’ve been traveling. But Lord Peter Rosing could not have laid evidence against me.”
“The devil you say.” Bennet murmured.
“Bow Street have his complaint, signed and sealed, sirrah,” Hadleigh countered.
The footman—no doubt not wanting to miss a word—was already back with a tray of coffee. No doubt at least half of the servants were listening at the door. Good.
It would be best to have an audience—more witnesses.
“Then the complaint is fraudulent. Quite a fraud.” Tanner took a very long, satisfying draught of the hot coffee. Just the way he liked it—strong and dark. Already he could feel the stimulating effects coursing through his veins, and sharpening his brain.
“How so, sir?” Lord Bennet obligingly asked. “This is an astonishing charge. How so?”
“Because Lord Peter Rosing was until late this very afternoon in a state of coma, a word I have learned in consultation with a learned surgeon and professor of anatomy, Mr. Jameson Denman. Do you know him?” Tanner adopted Claire’s breezy sympathetic style of speech. “He consults with Bow Street, and the old Bailey on a frequent basis. But the coma is a state of unnatural, heavy, deep and prolonged sleep, with complete unconsciousness and slow, stertorous, often irregular, breathing, due to pressure on the brain.”
“Egad,” said Lord Bennet.
“Do you come to lecture me, sir?” demanded Hadleigh.
“No, Hadleigh. Only to state to you that I am innocent, and that the charge made against me is false, because Lord Peter Rosing could not have made any charge, as he was insensate. I have had it from Lady Worthington’s mouth, so I’m sure the servants who have been nursing him will confirm.”
“This is your explanation? You do not dispute the truth of the charge, only the legality of who has made it, when my son lies insensate?”
“Ah. Thank you for confirming that Rosing is indeed incapable of having made a charge. And absolutely, I deny all of the charges. I have not committed murder. Nor an abduction, and what its more, I can prove it. I only ask that you see the charge is pure conjecture, my Lord Bennet, because I must assume it was made by Lord Peter Rosing’s father, Hadleigh here, on his son’s behalf.”
“And if I did? Nothing wrong with that,” Hadleigh asserted.
Tanner drew himself back, and invested himself with all of the chilly hauteur of the Duke Fenmore. “I beg your pardon. It is a manifest conjecture on the part of the marquess, who was not present, in an attempt to clear his son of the very crime of which he accuses me.”
It took a long moment for Lord Bennet to grasp Tanner’s accusation. “And this is your testimony? But I imagine Lord Peter Rosing will say the opposite.”
“I imagine he will. I imagine he will say anything to clear himself. For he is the guilty party.”
“Guilty of what?” Lord Bennet queried.
“Of the vicious rape of a maid. And complicity in her murder.”
“That is ridiculous,” Hadleigh thundered. “How could my son have done any of those things? He is the one who has been viciously assaulted. He is the one who lies mortally injured.”
Lord Bennet turned his steady regard back to Tanner. “And can you explain, or should I ask if you were responsible for the injuries to Lord Peter?”
“Yes.” Tanner made is statement as easy as it was unequivocal.
“You see,” roared Hadleigh.
Lord Bennet was not yet satisfied. “And may I ask why?”
Tanner judged it best not to engage in an argument in which he had no defense—the bastard touched my woman, not generally being accounted as an acceptable excuse.
He could feel the nasty sick tension snake through his body. He had thought he would have the advantage with Lord Bennet. He thought he would be able to make it clear with science and fact and evidence, but all of a sudden he could see that there were other, stronger factors at play here.
And for the fist time in all his deserving years, he saw that he just might end up being undeservedly sent to prison, and from there to await trial.
It gave him some small comfort to know that he could re-marshall the forces of truth and fact and science to his side should the matter come to trial, but it would be a grimmer battle. He would already have lost so much by that point.
And he could not involve Claire.
He found his voice somewhere at the bottom of his shoes. “The young woman who was murdered, Miss Maisy Carter, was in the employ of my grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Fenmore at one of her dower properties. I’m sure you will appreciate that I have a responsibility to the people in my grandmother’s employ. Miss Maisy Carter is dead. But I did not murder her. The Marquess of Hadleigh did.”
The room went absolutely and unequivocally quiet for a long, long, sick moment.
“He can’t make such an accusation,” Hadleigh said directly to Lord Bennet.
Tanner kept his voice careful and mild. “But I just did. And what’s more, I should like to make it formally. I have proof. I should like to lay my evidence, and my charge against the Marquess of Hadleigh.”
“I will crush you, Fenmore,” was Hadeigh’s answer. “You and anyone else you try to bring against me.”
“Will you? How predictable you are, Hadleigh, for you said the same to me this night.”
The Earl Sanderson stood in the wide double doors to the library. And behind him was calm, upstanding Jack Denman. And the Countess Sanderson, as well as his grandmother, leaning on Doggett’s arm.
And behind them all, pushing to the front was Claire, looking like God’s avenging angel.
His angel. His Claire.
Chapter 26
“Ah. Lovely.” He beamed at her, as if it had all been arranged.
As if he didn’t want to shout, and tell her to run while she had the chance. Run before Hadleigh turned his accusations on her.
“You are all here. All armed with evidence. How kind.”
“You have no evidence,” Hadleigh repeated. “Only jumped up lies to save your own neck, while my son lies prostrate from your assault.”
As Tanner had no argument to make against assaulting Rosing, he made none, but concentrated upon what he did have.
“That is for my Lord Bennet, to decide. This is England, my lord, a nation of laws. Laws that stand, and must be met, whether you try to bend them to your will or no.”
Tanner moved quickly on, so Hadleigh could not interrupt and force him to surrender the high ground.
“I have evidence that the maid, Maisy Carter, who was a good and dutiful servant, was brutally assaulted by Lord Peter Rosing, who choked her, broke her nose and raped her—all injuries which can be attested to by the eminent surgeon and professor of anatomy from the Royal College of Surgeons, Mr. Jackson Denman, who is present with his report”—Jack, God bless hi
m, held up his notes—“in a closet at Riverchon House. At which point Lord Peter Rosing stole a necklace—a religious cross that had been a gift from her former employer, Lady Harriet Worth—and has since kept in his possession, here at Lady Worthington’s, upstairs. The Duchess of Fenmore will be able to identify it. I would suggest you send your man to Lord Peter’s chamber, Lord Bennet, before the marquess can charge his people to make off with it.”
The entire room swiveled toward the marquess who reddened with dangerous ire. “How dare you—”
“I dare because I saw what you and your son did to that young woman. I pulled her body out of the cold water of the River Thames where you had so callously dumped her.”
“She was a slut.”
Tanner felt his precious control slipping from his cold palms. “She was a small, vulnerable woman.”
“You thieving bastard, I know all about you, Fenmore. You’re nothing more than a lying sneak thief, whose word can’t be trusted, and—”
“If you please, my lord,” Lord Bennet voice cut into Hadleigh’s rant.
Tanner quieted the room his own way. “There is more.” He pressed on into the astonished silence. “There is much more. There is the murder itself. Which took place in that same closet on the upper floor of Riverchon house. The blood of the victim still stains the wall where the housekeeper, Mrs. Dalgliesh—a servant above reproach in the employ of the Dowager Duchess of Fenmore for some twenty years—found them and brought them to the attention of Mr. Denman, who was investigating the matter at my behest.”
“This changes nothing,” Hadleigh insisted. “Nothing.”
“It changes nothing of the fact that you murdered Maisy Carter in cold blood. Cleaning up the mess your son had created when he raped her, you thought. Crushing the life out of the struggling girl”—he was obliged to talk over his grandmother’s pitiful cry of anguish— “as she fought you. You wrapped your hand around her windpipe, and choked the life out of her as ruthlessly, and completely as if she had been hung.”
There were more gasps from the ladies, and even the Earl Sanderson, closed his eyes and turned away.
“But you left your mark, your lordship. The impression of your ring, sir. That crest of the house of Hadleigh upon your left hand. It left a mark and a bruise upon her body for the world to see.” Tanner gestured imperatively at Jack, who did his bit and held up his bound report, as if the pages within contained that very fact.
Tanner also caught the stern eye Jack leveled on him, as if to warn him he was laying in on too think.
But Lord Bennet was the only one who mattered now, and he was open-mouthed and slack-jawed, staring at the Marquess of Hadleigh with new eyes.
“And then he wrapped her in the white velveteen summer cloak of his mistress”—Tanner forbore from making any further reference to the lady, as the name of one lady would invariably lead to another, and that he would not countenance—“and spirited the girl’s dead body out of the house, witnessed by Riverchon staff, and down the lawn to dump her unshriven into the river.”
Tanner held them all spellbound with the tale, and for one fraction of a moment Hadleigh looked well and truly caught, stripped bare of all his layers of cunning and influence and money.
And just as quickly it was gone.
“Preposterous. This is all a... A fantasy, a story he has concocted to save his own neck from the noose. His neck that should have been stretched years ago, for it is well known that Fenmore is nothing more than a thief himself, born and bred.”
Lord Bennet swung his troubled gaze back to Tanner.
“It is an old accusation,” Tanner assured him with calm certainty. “You may be assured that the House of Fenmore made quite sure that I was the true and rightful heir, despite my unfortunate and dreadful childhood at the hands of a kidwoman.”
God forgive him for abusing poor old Nan so, but he had to press his advantage, he had to strike while Lord Bennet was growing hot, and wanted such a contentious case removed from his desk, and passed on to a grand jury.
“I have spent the past sixteen years of my life in atonement for my youth. And that atonement has been a dedication to English justice that many here are prepared to attest to.”
“Here, here,” said the Earl Sanderson. “I will attest to that.”
“They’re all in it together,” Hadleigh spat. “You can prove nothing.”
“I can prove everything,” Tanner roared back at him. “I can prove that the deceased, Maisy Carter fought you with her very last breath, because she took something from you. Took it in her hand, and held it tight while you strangled her. She clawed and ripped at you, while you choked the life out of her, didn’t she? She ripped your waistcoat—and held tight to the threads. She took the only thing that she could reach, which was your watch fob, and she held it tight until the surgeon Mr. Jackson Denman pried the trinket from her cold, stiff fingers.”
“You bastard!” The Countess Sanderson could not contain her horror.
“Your watch fob, my lord,” Tanner continued, “the token of your financial power. The symbol of a syndicate of investors you have gathered for the purpose of the financial conquest of Britain. A syndicate of investors in a horde of gold aureii from Pompeii. But not even your investors”—here he turned to nod to the Earl Sanderson—“know that the coins are all fakes.” He tossed the clipped, leaded forgery onto the desk were it rolled and clattered to a stop. “Male fide,” he intoned. “Made entirely in bad faith, of lead barely covered in gold. The evidence of which lies in this very house. Upstairs, in the Marquess of Hadleigh’s traveling case.”
Lord Bennet, turned to one of his men. “Go now. Secure to it immediately.”
“He put it there,” Hadleigh accused. “He was in the house. He planted it there to accuse me.”
“A case with your initials stamped into the leather? Come, Hadleigh, you should know there are records, records of everything, that will prove me true. Bills of sale, or an entry into your household accounts for the purchase of such an expensive case. Your man of business will have made an entry into a ledger. His lordship will not have to take my word for it.”
“But I will,” Bennet confirmed. “For now.”
“No,” Hadleigh roared.
“Yes.” Tanner rose and advanced upon him, ready for him. Ready for a gun to be brandished. Ready for the wicked slice of the letter opener.
Ready for anything.
“Like a house of cards, sir, all an elaborate, fraudulent show. As is everything that the Marquess of Hadleigh has charged. It has all been male fide, in bad faith. Now he adds perjurer to his crime of murder.”
Hadleigh was nearly shaking with some frightful combination of fear and rage. “What about my son.” He played his last card. “What can you say to your assault on him?”
Tanner chose his words carefully, for he knew well he was treading on dangerous ground. “I can say nothing. I can say nothing but that he is a rapist. And a habitual, flagrant one at that. And that he deserved the brawl that ensued when we met.”
“Ha, ha! You see,” Hadleigh crowed. “Haha.”
“I am happy, my Lord Bennet, to stand the charge of assault. It is my duty as a peer, and an Englishman to face my actions before the law. I only ask that you see fit to do the same to Hadleigh.”
The eyes of every person in the room swiveled from Tanner across to Bennet.
It all hung in the balance, whether the magistrate had been swayed, or whether he would toss his hands up, and let a jury of his peers hear Tanner’s story before the King’s Bench.
“It all comes down,” Bennet said cautiously, “to the word of one man against another.”
“Indeed,” Tanner intoned. “One marquess against one duke. Rather a play on the old expression, ‘put up your dukes.’ But along with my word, I have evidence. And witnesses. I do not make conjectures.”
Lord Bennet could not make up his mind. “Be that as it may, in the end it is as I say—one man’s word against another.
“And one woman’s.” A clear voice spoke from the back. “I should like to speak on behalf of the duke. And, upon my own behalf.”
Claire could hold her tongue no longer—even if Tanner was content to let it all come out in a trial, she was not.
“No,” Tanner said, furious and panicked. “No. Take her away from here,” he said to her father, and anyone else who would listen.
“A moment, please,” said the magistrate. “Why should she not speak? What do you think to hide?”
Before the marquess could make an accusation, Claire answered. “He thinks to hide my part in this tragic affair.”
She stepped forward, holding her chin up high, as cool and serene as ever the lofty Duke of Fenmore could be, because she would be his duchess and learn to walk like that if she chose.
And she chose Tanner, and a life together with him.
She chose herself.
“I am Lady Claire Jellicoe, daughter of the Earl and Countess Sanderson. And I am the lady that Lord Peter Rosing was attempting to—” She faltered, frozen for a moment by her shame and regret under the eyes of so many strangers.
But here was only one man whose eyes counted, and so she looked to him for strength.
Tanner shook his head, back and forth, silently begging her not to speak, not to expose herself to their condemnation. But she had no choice. It would not stop until someone with an unassailable reputation stands up and says so, he had said. And so she would.
“I am the young woman that the Duke of Fenmore aided, by striking Lord Peter Rosing down. I am the young woman whom Lord Peter Rosing was attempting to compromise and force into marriage against my will by rape. I am the here”—she turned to acknowledge Hadleigh, but she would not look at him, for fear she would not be able to withstand the hatred in his eyes—“to refute each and every one of the charges laid by the Marquess of Hadleigh.”
After the Scandal Page 35
