Despite herself, Caroline found herself starting to smile. A moment later, Lewis threw back the curtain and stepped into the room.
“Good evening, Julia,” he said politely. “Perhaps we may help you find whatever it is you are looking for?”
The maid, Letty, started screaming and it was Julia herself who gave her a sharp slap.
“Be quiet, you foolish creature! Do you wish to bring the whole house down around our ears?”
“It is a little late to worry about that,” Lewis said laconically. He and Richard Slater moved to light some of the candles, whilst Caroline drew the heavy curtains across the windows. Julia, who had been looking from one man to the other with a rather calculating expression on her face, stared at Caroline balefully.
“What is going on here? What is she doing here, Lewis? Surely I have not interrupted some tryst?”
Caroline met Julia’s sharp blue gaze. “I heard a noise and followed you downstairs, Julia,” she said quietly. “I was curious to know what you were doing.”
“Is that so?” Julia scoffed. She seemed to be growing in confidence as the minutes passed, seating herself in the most comfortable chair and arranging her dress about her in precise folds. The candlelight shone on her guinea-gold curls and perfect profile, and Caroline felt a little sick. Julia was so artless, so plausible. Was it possible that she was about to make fools of them all?
Julia’s gaze, amused and slightly condescending, went from Lewis’ stern face to Richard Slater, who had urged the snivelling maid to take a seat and was now standing, rather ominously, by the door.
“Well, this is a cosy gathering!” Julia said sweetly, her eyes resting on Lewis’s face. “But why the long face, my dear? All I was looking for was a book to ease my sleeplessness—”
“Or, in fact, a set of estate maps,” Lewis suggested softly. “The set in which your bungling accomplice here—” he nodded towards Letty “—hid my father’s last letter!”
The maid began to sob at once. “I didn’t do nothing wrong, sir! I just thought…They had had a quarrel, and if he had changed his will…”
“Be quiet, you fool!” Julia said venomously. She turned her gentlest smile on Lewis. “The girl understands nothing! Dearest Lewis, let me explain this to you alone and not in front of all these people!”
Once again her disparaging gaze flicked over Caroline. “Indeed, I cannot think why we need an audience! My servants and your best friend! Send them away and we shall set all to rights!”
Caroline went across and put an arm around the maid, who was crying in earnest now and grasped thankfully at the clean handkerchief Caroline handed her.
“I didn’t do nothing wrong, miss,” she repeated miserably, “only I couldn’t remember where I’d put the letter—”
“Don’t distress yourself, Letty,” Caroline soothed. “The letter is found now, and—”
“The letter is found?” Julia swung round in her seat and glared at Caroline. “By you, I suppose, you scheming creature! To think that I ever trusted you! Why, all the time you were planning to discredit me and we all know why!” Her poisonous glare turned from Caroline to Lewis. “I do not know what she has told you, Lewis, but it was all self-seeking! Insinuating herself into the family, befriending Miss Brabant—”
“That’s enough, Julia!” Lewis spoke quietly, but there was a note in his voice that made Caroline jump and Julia fell silent, the colour coming into her face. Lewis continued. “Miss Whiston found the letter and very properly brought it to me, since it bore my name. So you need not concern yourself any longer that it is lost.”
“Oh well,” Julia gave a casual little shrug. “I was only looking for it because I remembered that Uncle Harley was writing when I saw him that night, and I thought it might be important. But I daresay it is of no consequence—”
“As it turns out, it is very important,” Lewis said, with a smile, “though not, perhaps, in the way in which you imagine.” He crossed to the hearth and leant one arm along the mantelpiece. “You will be relieved to know that the letter contained no change to his will.”
Caroline saw that Julia’s face was a study in indecision. Clearly Lewis’s words meant something to her, more than they could to Caroline herself, who was quite at sea. Instinct told her that Julia’s motive for searching out the letter was not as altruistic as she liked to pretend, and the maid had effectively condemned her anyway. It seemed that Julia had thought that the Admiral had written a codicil to the will and had been trying to keep it quiet. In which case, what had prompted Admiral Brabant to take such a course of action?
Julia shrugged again, carelessly.
“Well, I am glad that the will still stands, but I am not surprised. It was only the tiniest quarrel, after all—”
“Is that so?” Lewis gave her a hard stare. “Now that must be…the fifth time you have lied? Certainly not the first…”
Caroline gasped, but Julia gasped louder, her face suddenly bright red with outrage. “How dare you, Lewis? Just what do you imply?”
Lewis shifted slightly. He seemed utterly unconcerned, unmoved by Julia’s rage. “Well, as you have asked me to explain, we shall start at the beginning. The first lie was the one you told me when you said that you had come to Hewly to care for my father. In fact, you arrived before he was taken ill, did you not, Julia? He was hale and hearty—at least for a few hours!”
Julia looked evasive. “Well, what of it? I did not intend to deceive! I had every intention of staying here to care for Uncle Harley! Why, I loved him like a daughter—”
“So you professed,” Lewis said, and there was a grim note in his voice that sent a shiver down Caroline’s spine. Letty heard it, too, and raised her head from the handkerchief for a moment, her eyes darting like a frightened rabbit. Richard Slater looked unmoved, his face like granite.
Julia’s face was working like boiling milk. “I do not see why I should bear this nonsense any more!” she said stormily. “I never intended to mislead—if I forgot to tell you that Uncle Harley was well when I arrived—”
“It was because you did not wish to have to explain the cause of his sudden illness,” Lewis finished, giving her a very straight look. “But we shall come to that. For next there was the matter of your…forced marriage…”
Caroline shot Julia an incredulous look. The letters had scarce implied any coercion, in fact Julia had been quite ruthless in setting her cap first at Andrew Brabant and then at Jack Chessford. Looking up, she caught Lewis’s eye and saw the cynical gleam there.
“You may remember, Julia, that after my father died you told me a sad and affecting tale of how he had tried to force you into marriage with my brother,” Lewis said smoothly. “When Andrew died, you told me that my father had put himself forward as a suitor in his place, so anxious was he to keep your fortune in the family. You had been so much in fear…” Lewis hesitated, “that you chose to elope with Jack Chessford in order to escape him.”
His eyes met Caroline’s for a moment, dark and sombre, and it seemed that he was speaking directly to her. “I confess that I was horrified by the tale. A man in my father’s position, a position of trust, to so abuse his ward that she felt she had to flee! It sickened me!” He sighed. “Of course, I could not ask him if it were true, for he was beyond both recall or confession. I was the one who had to live with the horror of it.”
Julia stirred slightly in her chair. “Well, I am sorry for it, but truth must out!”
“Indeed!” Lewis said quietly. “And my father’s will appeared to bear this out! It seemed that he had taken his rejection so badly that he wished to punish you, Julia! Not only did he leave you a smaller sum than you had hoped for, but he also expressly forbade that we should marry. He had known, of course, that I was once at your feet—” again, Lewis’s gaze met Caroline’s, his expression unreadable “—and no doubt he suspected that such sweet feelings might reassert themselves when we were together once more. So he asked me to choose between my inheritance and t
he woman I had once loved.” Lewis looked away, into the fire. “That was one interpretation of events. There was, however, another. The true version.”
There was a silence. Even Julia was looking a little frightened now.
“The truth of it,” Lewis said softly, “is that it was your desire to marry my brother, and none of my father’s doing. Nor did he ever press his suit on you or make improper advances. You quarrelled with him on the night you returned to Hewly and tried to blackmail him for money. He was so distressed that he had an attack almost immediately. But not before he wrote me the letter…”
Julia was very pale now. “Lewis, I protest—”
“As you wish,” Lewis said inexorably. “I know from Churchward that the Admiral vouchsafed considerable sums to you over the years and that your own fortune was finished years ago. Jack Chessford was a gambler, was he not? And I believe you adopted the same expensive vice.”
He looked across at Richard Slater, who had kept silent during the whole exchange. “There are plenty of people who have seen you run through a fortune in one sitting, Julia! And as always, you applied to my father to pay your debts. Only this time, he refused to help you!”
“This is monstrous!” Julia was looking wildly from Caroline to Richard Slater. “They are all out to discredit me! Your so-called friends and my companion…” She burst into noisy sobs. “It is iniquitous!”
Lewis was looking grave. “So reluctant was Richard to tell me what he knew that I had to confide all my own suspicions first! As for Miss Whiston, she scarcely deserves your censure—”
Julia sniffed furiously. “Oh, do not speak of her! Treacherous creature!”
“She has spoken not one word against you,” Lewis said, gently, smiling at Caroline. “But let me finish. You had a quarrel with my father, a bad one. When you realised that he did not intend to give you the money, you threatened to spread slanderous gossip. You told him that you would say he had tried to force you to marry my brother, that he had then pressed his own suit, that he was a satyr who had abused his own position as your guardian to maltreat you! None of it was true, but it would make a good story! My father reacted furiously and you stormed out, intending to leave immediately. Then, you heard that he had been struck down by the attack that would eventually kill him.”
Lewis turned away. His voice was toneless. “You decided to stay at Hewly. It was a convenient place to hide from your creditors, you knew you might inherit something if my father died, and Lavender told you that I was returning home. There were all sorts of possibilities.” He sighed. “It was not for a while that you heard the rumour that my father had been writing something when he was taken ill, but then the horrid thought took you that perhaps it had been an alteration to his will, made with the intention of cutting you out altogether!”
Lewis looked across at Letty, who was sitting quietly, head bent. “Unbeknownst to you, it was your own opportunistic maid who had hidden the letter, intending to come back for it later and make use of it as best she could! She was planning a little blackmail of her own, but you made it worth her while to join forces with you! Unfortunately, however, she had forgotten quite where she had hidden it, and the two of you were obliged to sift through every book in the whole house, and then without success!”
He crossed to the table, took out the letter and placed it down by Julia’s side. “Here it is. You were the ghostly figure who was wandering about the house after my father died, but you were on a more earthly quest! You did not wish to lose what little money had been left to you!”
Caroline found her voice. “But if the letter does not contain an alteration to your father’s will, Captain Brabant, what does it say?”
There was grim humour in Lewis’s voice. “I doubt that my father would have had time to make a legal amendment to his will even had he wished to. But that was not his aim. Angry, outraged by Julia’s threats, he cared more about honour than money. My father was at pains to tell me that your accusations were untrue, Julia, and that if you should ever seek to besmirch his memory, you would be telling falsehoods. He told me that you petitioned to marry Andrew of your own free will—both Lavender and Mrs Prior bear this out. You ran away with Jack Chessford because you were bored and Jack had a fortune—before he gamed it all away, of course! So—” Lewis finished quietly “—your lies are ended. Not even the theft of Miss Whiston’s letters was enough to save you!”
Caroline looked startled, but Letty, whose nerves were clearly in shreds, started to sob again. “I’m sorry, miss! I burned every one of them like she told me!”
Caroline shook her head in bewilderment. “Never mind, Letty. I doubt it matters after all else that has happened.”
“My father had already been disillusioned by you when Andrew died, Julia,” Lewis finished quietly. “He added the bizarre stipulation to his will to try to dissuade me from ever marrying you. He need not have troubled himself. I have seldom heard such an ugly tale of double-dealing and deceit, and I was already suspicious of it before I ever had his letter.”
Julia leaped to her feet. Her eyes were wild and two bright spots of colour burned feverishly in her cheeks. “That being so, Captain Brabant, I shall remove from your house at once!”
“You shall!” Lewis seemed amused rather than anything else. “I am obliged to you!”
“But do not seek to try to cut me out of the will!” Julia added viciously, as she headed for the door. “I am entitled to that money for tolerating Uncle Harley’s tedious company for all those years! And as for you—” she turned on Caroline with a fury that made her flinch back “—with your scheming ways, I wish you happy! I can do much better for myself than a miserable sea captain with no title and a tiny fortune!”
“Which is probably true,” Lewis said cheerfully, as the slam of the library door echoed through the whole house. His eye fell on the maid, who was shrinking in her chair. “Well, run along, girl,” he said, not unkindly. “Your mistress will need help with her packing! The two of you deserve each other!”
Caroline sat down rather heavily in the chair that Julia had vacated. There was a silence. “A glass of wine, perhaps,” Richard Slater said, moving across to the sideboard. “I believe we are all in need of fortification!”
“She took so many risks!” Caroline said, still thinking of Julia and the enormity of what she had done.
“She’s a gambler,” Lewis said shortly. “Reckless risk has become part of her life. Perhaps it always was…”
Caroline gratefully accepted a glass from Richard and drank deeply, welcoming the reviving warmth. She shivered. “This is a nasty business, Captain Slater. How did you know that Julia was so deep in debt?”
Richard Slater looked uncomfortable. “It was gossip only, which was why I was at pains not to pass it on to Lewis. My sister Fanny had been in London the Season past, and commented to me that Mrs Chessford was playing deep and on the watch for a rich husband. I believe she only mentioned it because she knew of Mrs Chessford’s connection with Lewis’s family…” He shrugged. “I thought little of it until Lewis told me of the Admiral’s letter.”
“Speaking of letters,” Caroline turned her enquiring gaze upon Lewis, “how did you know that it was Julia who had taken mine?”
Lewis stretched. He gave her a mischievous grin. “My dear Caroline, when you accused me of stealing your property you had forgotten one important fact! You thought that I was the only one who had known of the existence of the letters, but there were always two—myself and Julia. After all, she had written them and knew what they contained! When I told her of the incident of the letter left in Marmion, she immediately realised how incriminating they would be and how they contradicted her own story! So,” he shrugged, “she took them, or had Letty steal them for her.”
Caroline thought of the artless phrases the young Julia had written when she was planning to throw Lewis over in favour of Andrew Brabant. There was no doubt that they conflicted dramatically with the tale that she had been forced unwil
lingly into the betrothal and they would have done her much harm had they come to light.
Lewis shifted slightly. “I have to confess that I read more of that letter than I first admitted, Miss Whiston! It was that that planted the first doubts in my mind when Julia tried to pretend she had not wished to marry Andrew.” He cleared his throat and quoted dryly: “‘Of course, Andrew is the elder and so will inherit the Admiral’s fortune one day, which is so much more comfortable than having to scratch around on a sailor’s income…’”
“Oh dear…” Caroline said, grimacing.
“Well, I have to agree with her,” Richard Slater said with a grin. “A most practical woman, Mrs Chessford!” He yawned. “Excuse me, I am worn to a thread with all this Cheltenham tragedy! I will see you both in the morning!”
He drained his glass and sauntered out of the room. Left alone with Lewis, Caroline felt suddenly and unaccountably shy. She avoided his eyes.
“I think I should retire also, sir. It is very late—”
“And you seem to have a penchant for creeping about the house in your night attire,” Lewis observed, his gaze wandering over her in a thoroughly disconcerting manner. “Miss Whiston, there is something I wish to ask you. It has nothing to do with what has just passed, and no doubt it should wait until the morning, but I find I cannot wait.”
He got to his feet and pulled her up too. Caroline’s gaze searched his face, a little bewildered. “Sir?”
“Miss Whiston.” Lewis kept hold of her hand, grown suddenly cold, in his. “You must be aware of the regard I have for you. I should therefore deem it an honour if you would consent to be my wife.”
Caroline was not sure how long it was that she stared up into his face. “You are precipitate, Captain Brabant,” she managed to say, after a pause. “You have only just cleared your decks—”
“And having done so, I believe in aiming for my goal. It was what I had intended all along. Perhaps I should have waited, but as I said, I could not.”
A Companion of Quality Page 17
