“Who is this person who claims to have seen this?”
Sir Horace laughed. “Let us just say it is someone I can put my hands on quickly enough, who will speak if I ask it of him.”
“Damnation, whoever it is, he lies. I did not even dine here myself, so I have no idea of where and when my brother did.”
“So you have said, many times.” Sir Horace picked up his glass and sipped some brandy. He appeared pleased with himself, and unwavering. Protestations of innocence would do Lance no good.
“Why your niece?”
“You find her at least moderately appealing, if you called. And my daughter . . .” He looked down at his glass. “My daughter is not suitable due to her illness.”
Lance stood. Hands in pockets lest he succumb to his urge to punch Sir Horace, he paced away.
He did not need to ask why Sir Horace wanted this marriage. Any relationship to a duke brought advantages. It nearly always could be exploited for financial gain. Sir Horace’s ability to get close to a man of influence would bring him influence in turn. Others would curry his favor, and offer him partnerships.
Most likely in the years ahead, if this marriage happened, Sir Horace would be sitting here many times, demanding some favor or another that would ultimately enrich him and his new friends.
“I will add some honey to the pot,” Sir Horace said. “I have considerable influence with the coroner. Not only will you not swing if you agree to my plan, but I will also see that you are exonerated. At least officially. He will change his determination from unknown causes, to natural causes.”
Lance would have liked to dismiss this new offer, but it pulled at his soul. The suspicions about him had made time stand still. With such a sword hanging over a man’s head, he could never be truly free.
As for the “at least officially”—there would always be some talk of it, but without the official exoneration of this crime, the common references to it would never cease, no matter how virtuous a life he may lead.
“You are assuming the lady will have me.”
“What woman would not?”
A willful woman. A smart woman. “I’ll not have you coerce her, as you are coercing me, if I agree to this. One partner in such a match is bad enough.”
“I am counting on your seeing that no coercion is necessary. Women aplenty have made fools of themselves over you. What is one more?” Sir Horace gazed over with a wizened spark in his eyes. “Woo her if you choose. Play the lovesick swain. Seduce if necessary. I leave the details to your expertise.”
“And if she proves intractable? There is no way you can force her to accept a proposal when it comes. All my expertise may be for naught.”
Sir Horace chuckled. “Possibly, possibly. We will consider that problem should it arise. I am sure it will not.” His mirth died. “Do we have a right understanding, Your Grace?”
It was a hell of a bargain, and one not to accept if there were any other choice. “I need to think about it.”
Sir Horace got to his feet. “Think all you want, but not too long. The coroner has been restless for several months now, and it can go badly if he is left to his own conclusions.”
* * *
“I’ll be damned.”
Ives muttered the curse for the third time. Or was it the fourth?
He and Gareth sat with Lance in Lance’s dressing room. A bottle of port, its contents almost depleted, stood on the dressing table. Glasses dotted the chamber.
Lance had sent for them when it became clear he would not sleep this night. Now they all sat half foxed, ruminating over the news he had shared about Radley’s visit.
“No, I’ll be damned, from the looks of it, no matter what I do,” Lance said. “Have you no advice? No insights? No calls for action? No solution?”
That made his brothers alert.
“What do you think of her?” Gareth asked.
“What he thinks of her does not matter,” Ives said. “Lance, you cannot agree to marriage on these terms. He is bluffing. Lying.”
“Or someone is lying to him,” Gareth said.
“Let us assume it is the latter. Not because I trust Radley, but because he appeared far too sure of himself. If there is indeed a person willing to hang me with a lie, who might it be?” Lance grabbed the bottle, poured some, and passed it around. “A servant in this house, I expect, since only the servants and I were here. There is no one else to claim to have seen anything.”
“That hardly helps,” Gareth said. “There must be forty of them. How would you ferret out the scoundrel?”
“Actually, there are seventy or so,” Lance said.
“Eighty-seven, counting the ones on the grounds,” Ives corrected.
How like Ives to know.
“Yet not all eighty-seven would have excuses to be where a dinner might be prepared or transported,” Gareth offered.
Lance waved that idea off. “Any of them could find an excuse to explain how they came to see me at my nefarious deed. We are stuck with all of them as possibilities.”
More silent rumination.
“I am going to put Radley off,” Lance said. “I will attend on the lady, and allow Radley to think I am going to propose. While I dance attendance, I will find out who this witness is.”
He set aside his glass and closed his eyes. Attending on Miss Radley—Marianne—would not be difficult. He had intended to anyway, to occupy his time. He did not like the idea of being required to court her, however. No man would. Just as no man, least of all a duke, would allow the likes of Sir Horace to dictate his choice of wife.
“Here is a problem,” Ives said. “If you pursue the lady in order to garner some time to find this liar, it will create expectations. From Sir Horace. From her mother and the county neighbors. From her. If it goes on very long, it will be assumed by all that a proposal is imminent.”
“I will ensure the lady will not have me. I will arrange it so she throws me over before it reaches any proposal.”
“Oh, of course. You will merely do what dukes always do to discourage women from wanting to be wealthy duchesses of incomparable station. We should have thought of that, Gareth.” Ives cocked his head. “How do dukes manage that again? It has slipped my mind.”
“She already does not care for me much,” Lance said. “And after what happened to her cousin at the lake—” He glared at the port, annoyed it had made him loose-lipped.
Ives’s sudden frown looked like canyons emerged on his brow. “I knew you took us there for a reason. What happened to her cousin at the lake? And why were you at the lake with her cousin?”
Resenting every word, Lance explained Nora’s accident, and his suspicions about what had really happened. “Miss Radley said a few things that led me to think it was no accident too,” he concluded.
“Why did she do it?” Gareth asked. “Why would Miss Radley think this was her cousin’s effort to harm herself?”
Lance searched his memory about the confusion after they pulled Nora out. “It was not clear, but she blamed herself. And me. My arrival, and my offer of that carriage ride, seemed part of it.”
“That explains why it is Marianne Radley whom Sir Horace now throws at you, and not his daughter. I was wondering about that,” Gareth said. “Her state of mind does not allow marriage, from the sounds of things. In particular, it does not allow marriage to you.”
“I did not even know her before that carriage ride.”
“But she knew you, or of you. She knows you are a duke, if nothing else.”
They all knew what the something else might be. Being thought a murderer was not the kind of thing to reassure a very young, very frightened girl who was not right in her head.
“It explains Radley’s threat and blackmail. His daughter made her views most clear, and he can’t risk she will do it again. So he turned to the cousin,” Gar
eth said. “Now he will not have to talk you into marrying a madwoman either. You might have balked at that, especially with your duties to the title and the family.”
“Is this other one the ‘she’?” Ives asked, proving he had not missed one word of what Gareth said.
“She?” Gareth looked curiously at Ives, then Lance.
“Lance showed evidence of a blooming fascination when I arrived. I guessed it was why he took off without a word that afternoon, and I was right. So, again, is Marianne Radley the ‘she’?”
Damnation. “I will admit that I chanced to meet her, and thought her company might alleviate the unending tedium of my days. She is, and was, by no means a fascination.”
“So you will woo the lady, and ensure she does not like you at all before you are done,” Ives said. “And while you woo and pursue, you will find out about this lying witness. It is not much of a plan, but I am at a loss for a better one.”
“I will be doing one other thing,” Lance said, the decision coming to him with a certainty he had not felt about anything in the last nine months. “I will be making sure I am never again the victim of schemes like Radley’s, and that any fool who chooses cannot threaten me with exposure of a crime I did not commit.”
A bolt of anger crashed through him while he spoke. He hurled his glass into the fire with his last word. The flames jumped as they consumed the remnants of the spirits.
“I am going to rid myself of the damnable suspicions that follow me like a pending tempest, and that will never go away no matter what is done. I am going to ignore your advice, Ives, and stop living like the saint I have never been, and instead become an avenging angel.”
He glared at his brothers, waiting for them to try to soothe the unholy fury that gripped him. All he saw were two men watching him with concern and, God help him, sympathy.
“How are you going to do that?” Ives asked.
He grabbed the bottle, got up, and aimed for his bed. “I am going to find out who did kill Percy, damn it.”
CHAPTER 8
The Times of London
. . . With that reassurance to readers regarding the health of Lady Jersey, who continues her long residence in Cheltenham, and our description of improvements intended at one of that spa’s pumps, we now must conclude our notes regarding that town.
In other county news, a widow of very high station has found herself attended upon by a man of merely respectable fortune and birth. Society watches to see if the lady will be persuaded the gentleman is worth the relinquishment of both her independence and the control of her considerable income. Local wags think that unlikely unless the gentleman strikes a bargain with the devil to give him new youth and at least a fair amount of wit.
Elijah Tewkberry, Gloucestershire
Marianne stepped out of the silk dress. The color of ice frosting a lake, its hint of blue enhanced her eyes.
“We will have it ready for a final fitting on Monday,” Mrs. Makepeace said. Her daughter Mrs. Trumball began helping Marianne into the outdated green muslin she had worn to the dressmakers.
Uncle Horace had generously offered to have this dress made for the assembly next week. Mama was getting one too. He had not even objected when Nora refused to accept one herself. Perhaps he really had given up on the idea of forcing Nora into social situations.
These visits to the dressmakers in Dutton had become part of life the last week, as Marianne’s days had followed life’s inevitable preference for routine and predictability.
She usually spent the mornings with Nora, and by week’s end had even coaxed her cousin out into the garden to watch the men rehabilitating the plantings to Mama’s instructions.
Every few days she joined Mama on her calls. Normally they visited the village too. Twice now they had taken the longer carriage ride to Cheltenham, however, for better shopping or for other errands.
Mama had deigned to make use of the Dutton dressmakers due to the press of time, but she let the women know that if the resulting dresses disappointed in any way, all further wardrobe additions would be procured in London.
With such a prize dangling, the dressmakers found their best materials, such as the lovely ice blue silk that Mrs. Makepeace now folded with care. Marianne stepped from behind the curtain into the shop’s little sitting room while she buttoned her gray wool pelisse.
“It was very bad of you to demand they remake four of our other dresses, too, and for no extra money,” she said to her mother while she pulled on her gloves. Behind the curtain, the women hurried to straighten up the workroom for the grand lady who would be fitted next.
“They are charging too much for these new dresses, so I am only evening the accounts. You must be alert to that, Marianne. Shopkeepers will want you to pay more if they think Sir Horace’s fortune is behind you.”
Marianne tied on her bonnet. “While you are being fitted, I think I will take a turn outside.”
“Do not be long. I do not want to have to wait for you.”
Promising to return soon, Marianne slipped out of the shop.
She marched down to Howard’s bookshop, and took care of her business there. Before leaving she broke the seal on a letter from London. The editor of the Times had written to Elijah Tewkberry, and informed him that the sum of five shillings had been deposited in the London bank account designated for any payments.
Unfortunately, he had also written that some of the letters were not suitable for the Times. Her letter regarding the woman and the eloquent gentleman who took chambers at Dutton’s inn had been rejected. He advised that Mr. Tewkberry should expand his circle of papers should he want to sell such gossip. He even provided the address of a gossip sheet, and said he had been told they paid handsomely for information. He hoped, however, that any news of true importance would first be offered to the Times.
She would never meet this editor, but she would someday express her gratitude. Eighteen months ago, after attending the quarter sessions in Calne, she had written up a report of a murder trial, complete with dialogue from the proceedings. On a whim she had sent it to the newspaper. Assuming such a missive from a woman would not find favor, she had plucked the name Elijah Tewkberry out of her head.
To her amazement, a bank draft had arrived four days later. As it was made out in Mr. Tewkberry’s name, she had been unable to do anything with it. Since Vincent was in London at the time, she wrote and asked him to open a bank account there in both her name and that of Elijah Tewkberry. He had done so, never once asking why, or even who this man was. If she had harbored any remaining hopes regarding Vincent’s interest in her private life, his utter indifference to the reasons for her unusual request made the truth very clear.
After that she had the newspaper deposit payments in that London account, then had a bank in Calne transfer the money to it. Thus she maintained the illusion that her correspondence came from a man.
This money earned from her correspondence had become more important all of a sudden. She did not trust Uncle Horace to permanently set aside his intentions to use Nora in some marriage scheme. Should he take such steps in the future, she wanted to have money to make good on her threat to remove Nora from the house.
Which meant that Elijah Tewkberry needed to correspond more frequently. She hoped she could find enough respectable news to avoid approaching the gossip sheets, but if it came to that, she would swallow her pride and do it.
Joining Mama on calls would provide some. Uncle Horace, it appeared, would be another source. Just last night he had described a humorous event that took place at the petty sessions he presided over. She intended to start attending those herself. Unfortunately, the really interesting transgressions were only brought forward at the quarter sessions, and the last one at Michaelmas had ended before she left Wiltshire.
She debated whether she had time to walk all the way out to the Blackthorn coaching inn, to chat with t
he servants and see if they had any information that might point her toward something useful. She had formed an acquaintance with two talkative maids there when she stopped by while out riding. That was something else that had changed since Nora’s “accident” at the lake. Uncle Horace no longer demanded her company on rides. Rather, he seemed to encourage her to ride on her own now.
Deciding she did not have time to walk all the way to the inn and back, she strolled along the main lane in the village, stopping on occasion to look in shop windows. She was peering into a tailor’s shop when a voice behind her interfered with her thoughts.
“Rare to see you here in the village, sir,” a man said loudly. “As it happens, I’ve been wanting a word with you.”
“I have time for two words, Mr. Langreth. I regret that you waited to share them. I always am happy to speak with a neighbor.”
Hearing Aylesbury’s voice, Marianne became most attentive, but bent to pretend close study of a waistcoat on display in the window.
“Talk between neighbors is one thing. A right understanding is another, Your Grace.”
“You appear vexed, Mr. Langreth.”
“I am, sir. I am. I have been after that sly thief Jeremiah Stone for almost a year, and when I finally catch him red-handed, he gets off at the petty sessions, due to you, when he should have been bound over for a judge’s trial.”
“You must refer to those hares found with him when you detained him. As the magistrates said, there was not sufficient information to assess his guilt. Or at least that is what my steward reported.”
“He is a poacher! Everyone knows it. He makes free use of my land and everyone else’s. I swore down information as such.”
“Why was he not convicted, then?” Another man spoke now. Marianne strained to see him in the glass panes’ reflection, but all she could make out were three dark heads clustered together on three tall male forms.
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