“But… but Rebecca is innocent,” he protested. “It is not as if she was arrested for Charles’ murder. Is Andrew’s arrest not enough to exonerate her of any wrongdoing?”
“It is to you and me, of course,” Lord Peregrine agreed readily. “But my fear, Sheffield, is that it will not do the same for the rest of London society. Look at it this way, Sheffield. If you had a son, and your son had a choice between taking a young lady who had been accused of murder as his wife, and a young lady without any blemish on her character at all, would you not pressure him to choose the latter?”
The Earl did not wish to respond to that, as he knew what the answer would be. Instead, he made a variety of harrumphing and snorting noises as if those would be sufficient to deflect the question.
“But… come now, Lord Peregrine, this is all perfect nonsense. Besides,” he said, seizing on the key fact that he felt would solve the matter once and for all, “Nobody knows that Rebecca was accused, save for the occupants of this house and the doctor.”
Lord Peregrine leaned forward, with the polite and friendly smile still written across his features.
“But I know,” he said.
The Earl stared back at him. I think I know what Lord Peregrine is intending to suggest, he thought, but I sincerely hope that I am mistaken in my understanding.
“My dear Lord Peregrine…” he began, with a mixture of bluster and fear. But Lord Peregrine held his hand up to stop him in his tracks.
“My dear Sheffield, I hope that you will not think that what I am saying is intended to cast aspersions on Lady Rebecca’s future. I am confident that she will make a brilliant match. In fact,” he said, speaking more slowly now, “I am quite certain of it.”
The Earl decided at this point that it would be best to keep quiet. Here was clearly a man who enjoyed talking far more than he enjoyed listening, and if he was about to suggest what he seemed to be suggesting, then the Earl did not want to present any obstacles.
“I have come to speak to you, Sheffield, to ask for Lady Rebecca’s hand in marriage,” Lord Peregrine said. “I believe that given what I have just pointed out about her compromised status, she is unlikely to make a better match than me.
"Moreover,” he added delicately, taking in a breath as if he was being forced to address some very unpleasant matter. “If Andrew is acquitted, then I will remain in my current position. However, if Andrew is found guilty of murder, he will be stripped of his title and very possibly hanged.” Lord Peregrine paused for a moment to allow this point to sink in, and then proceeded, “Lady Rebecca may very well find herself the Duchess of Leinster after all.”
The Earl was listening very carefully. The truth was that every impulse in his heart was urging him to object, to not promise his daughter’s future to a man who clearly lacked a sense of integrity.
“But...but do you not think that you are a little old for Rebecca?” he asked. To his mind, it was not an unreasonable question. Lord Peregrine was younger than himself, but not by a great many years. He must have been nearly sixty.
“I will not take that as a slight, Sheffield,” Lord Peregrine replied, laughing good-naturedly. “I have plenty of energy to spare, and I believe that with a wife like Lady Rebecca my youthful disposition will come to the fore. Besides, a fiery young lady like Lady Rebecca often benefits from an older husband to keep her in check.”
The Earl stared into the fire, not daring to look at his companion. He did not have the least idea of how he might best reply. On the one hand, he could certainly see the sense in what Lord Peregrine was saying.
On the other, he had put his daughter through what he could see had been a good deal of distress and discomfort so that she would be the wife of a duke. If Lord Peregrine did not inherit the dukedom, then it would feel like the whole process had been all for naught, and he was not sure that his pride would be able to suffer the blow.
“Think about it, Sheffield,” Lord Peregrine said. “I do not demand an answer out of you immediately. That is not the sort of man that I am. But, with your permission, I would like to make some overtures toward your daughter to assess how receptive she might be to an offer. Surely, given the position that both of you currently occupy, you cannot object to this?”
The Earl shook his head mutely.
What Lord Peregrine had said is precisely true, he realized. Given the situation that I now find myself in with regarding my daughter, I cannot afford to object to anything.
Chapter 33
Rebecca left the gaol, her heart filled with a strange and unfamiliar sensation. The sensation had first arisen when she had got up that morning, galvanized by her midnight conversation with Grandmamma Horatia, and ordered for the governess cart to be prepared for her use.
After a moment’s thought, she also informed the groom that she would be requiring the foreman to accompany her as a chaperone. It occurred to her if she were to run the risk of speaking to Andrew alone in the gaol, she would be wise to ensure that her journey there passed unremarked.
That sense of galvanization was compounded by marching into the gaol and demanding in her most imperious tone to be permitted to see the Duke of Leinster. The man on duty had blinked at her, clearly dumbfounded by the sight of a lady of evident good breeding in his place of work, but after his initial confusion had died away, he had taken her to speak to Andrew in perfectly good humor.
The foreman had been obliging enough to remain out of earshot so the two of them could speak freely.
And then there was the conversation with Andrew itself. Despite her sense of mounting dread about the future, Rebecca’s heart felt as though it were entirely filled with songbirds after hearing him say that he loved her ardently, that he wants nothing more than to marry her. It was a feeling of such floating, all-encompassing joy that she was wary of it inadvertently diminishing her sense of righteous purpose.
Joy is not what I need now, she thought. Joy is far less useful than rage, and a burning desire for justice.
It was becoming more and more clear to Rebecca that the only way that the facts of Charles’ death would be established would be if she established them herself.
She did not have the least notion of where she ought to start. She had heard of murder investigations taking place in London at the hands of the Bow Street Runners and had even read some newspaper reports of how they questioned witnesses, how they treated what was referred to as ‘the scene of the crime’, how they used expertise to find evidence of foul play.
However, Rebecca had no means to undertake any of those tasks. All she had was her intellect, and the desire to save the man she loved from gaol — or worse, the scaffold.
The idea of this weight on her shoulders was, of course, a frightening one, but in some strange way, it added to the sense of excitement in her breast. Never before had some grand and momentous task fallen entirely to her, never before had a man’s life depended on her wit.
With every beat of her heart, she strengthened herself with the reminder that she would have to be equal to the task before her. That if she succeeded, the rewards would be more wonderful than anything she had ever dared to imagine for herself before.
And if I fail… well, it is better not to think about that too extensively.
She arrived back at the Hall just after noon and was gratified to find that it did not appear that she had been missed. She had instructed one of the servants to inform her father that she had gone out for a walk and would not be joining the party for breakfast, and it did not appear that her father had thought to inquire any more deeply.
She had no interest in speaking to her father that day; there were far too many more important things to be thinking about.
The first of all of these things seemed to be to determine the precise cause of Charles’ death. It astonished her that no one else had appeared to demonstrate much interest in this most significant of matters; it appeared that as soon as the notion of foul play had been uttered aloud, everyone had become far more i
nterested in pointing the finger than in establishing the facts.
Rebecca suspected that she should not be surprised by this. She had grown up around enough conniving members of the aristocracy to be aware that some people were far more concerned with taking care of their own interests than with establishing the truth. Nonetheless, it rankled her spirits.
She went to the sitting room that she shared with Caroline, and sat down to write a brief note to the physician who had attended Charles.
Dear Doctor Boxer,
I wish to discuss with you further the circumstances surrounding my fiancé Charles’ death. Might I ask you to call on me this afternoon so that we may speak together in confidence?
Yours faithfully,
Lady Rebecca Winterson
She dispatched one of the servants with the note and sat back at her writing desk, her heart pounding with a strange mixture of fear and gratification. Granted, she was more fearful than she had ever been in her life, knowing that she was transgressing a thousand written and unwritten rules by attempting to investigate this matter herself.
But, she reminded herself, it is scarcely my fault that there is no one else who appears to be capable of competently conducting the matter.
“I just saw a servant leaving with a note,” a voice behind her said.
It was Caroline. Rebecca almost jumped at the sight of her. The truth be told, she had almost forgotten about her friend’s presence, due to the frenzy of events that had taken place over the recent days.
“Just a note to my dressmaker in town,” Rebecca said, “to let her know that she need not concern herself with working on my trousseau.”
I am astounded by the swiftness and ease with which I lied to her, she thought. It was not that I intended to lie, specifically, but that I feel that I need to approach things differently now.
The only thing that she knew for sure was that she herself had not killed Charles. Beyond that, she believed with all her heart that Andrew was not responsible either, but the fact of the matter was that she did not know for sure.
She had realized, perhaps not quite consciously, that she needed to keep her investigative activities secret. That she needed to be skeptical of everyone and everything in the house, in order to improve her chances of obtaining the truth.
After all, if the allegations of foul play were correct, then someone in this very house was a murderer.
Chapter 34
Doctor Boxer had been a medical man for over forty years, and in all that time he had never dealt with a murder. It had never even occurred to him that someone in his world could be murdered, for that was not the kind of acquaintances he kept.
He often heard stories about the vicious highwaymen who lingered on the roads around London after nightfall, stealing and murdering with abandon, and thanked the lord that he lived in a small and uneventful corner of the north of England where such things simply did not ever take place.
So when the test upon the Duke of Leinster’s remains was positive for a lethal dose of arsenic, he was perhaps more shocked than he had ever been in his life. He had sincerely hoped that the tests that he was conducting would exonerate not only Lady Rebecca Winterson, but anyone else who might have been embroiled in the whole sorry affair.
Instead, he found himself wondering who had been the murderer in the midst of the party at Godwin Hall.
When he received Lady Rebecca’s note, he was initially wary. If she is hoping that she can get some information out of me that would allow her to avoid confronting her own guilt, Doctor Boxer thought, she is mistaken.
However, as soon as he was shown into the small parlor that she used at Godwin Hall, it became very clear to the doctor that this was not her intention at all.
“Doctor Boxer,” she said, greeting him with an effusiveness that suggested that she had been much distressed of late, “I have asked you here to inquire if you have any more information about Charles’ death. It seems to me that few people are interested in establishing the truth of the matter, and so I must turn to you.”
Doctor Boxer was caught off guard but somewhat gratified. As a man of science, he was troubled by the way that the constable had seized upon the late Duke’s accusation and treated it as though it were some irrefutable proof of the lady’s guilt.
“I was just about to send to Godwin Hall with news when I received your note, my lady,” he said, eager to tell his surprising findings to another soul. “I have performed some tests, and alas, I must tell you that my suspicion is confirmed. It is quite certain that the Duke was poisoned.”
“Could it have been an accident?” Lady Rebecca responded eagerly, and with a directness that Doctor Boxer found surprising in a young lady like that. “One does hear of dreadful accidents. Rat poison falling into tea, things like that.”
“Oh no, my lady,” he responded, shaking his head emphatically. “Would that it were the case. But I am afraid that the quantity of arsenic that the Duke had ingested was so large that it seems to me that there is no reasonable prospect that it was administered by mistake.”
Lady Rebecca sat down for a moment, and Doctor Boxer could clearly read the distress on her face. When she spoke, however, it was with remarkable composure.
“Well then,” she said, “At least we know what we are dealing with. It clears up any ambiguity and focuses the mind.”
“Indeed, my lady,” he said, bowing his head respectfully. He had to note that he was quite impressed with her composure.
“Do you know what the poison is?” she asked briskly.
The doctor hesitated, not sure whether this was the sort of matter that he should be discussing with a woman. However, he reasoned, it is not as if there is a male relative of the late Duke with whom I could discuss the matter, since I have been reliably informed this very morning that Lord Andrew - or rather, the new Duke — was just yesterday evening taken to the gaol for his brother’s murder.
“It is arsenic, my lady,” he responded. “I have performed some tests to verify my original suspicion, and now it is a scientific certainty. The Duke’s death was caused by exposure to arsenic, of which he ingested a significant quantity, almost certainly not by accident.”
Lady Rebecca sat very still for a long time after he had spoken. When she did reply, it was in a low, distressed tone.
“Forgive me, doctor,” she said. “It is very hard to hear that someone of one’s very close acquaintance was murdered.” She smiled, in a way that appeared a little pained. “Even if it was someone that one did not wish to marry.”
Doctor Boxer did not know what to say to this, so he responded simply, “I have no doubt, my lady.”
“I suppose there is no way to discern how he might have been caused to consume the arsenic?” she asked.
Doctor Boxer shook his head. “My tests are not that precise, my lady. I fear this information is as much as I can offer you.”
She looked crestfallen but managed a gracious smile.
“Thank you so much for your kind assistance, doctor,” she said.
“At your service, my lady,” the doctor responded, meaning it.
He departed the room with a bow and left, thinking all the while of this strange and rather magnificent young woman, who seemed to have grown into her own authority in the few days since he had seen her last. Far from believing her to be a murderess, he wished her luck with all his heart.
Chapter 35
The next day, by the time that breakfast had arrived, life at Godwin Hall seemed to have settled down into a strange parody of normality.
Grandmamma Horatia, although red-eyed and quiet, presided over the teapot with all her usual grace and dignity. Lord Peregrine had seated himself as close to the head of the table as he apparently dared as if to test out the feeling of what it would be like to be the master of the house.
I have never encountered such a shameless opportunist in all my life, Rebecca thought, stealing quick glances at him between sips of her morning chocolate. It was quite eviden
t, from the way that Lord Peregrine strode around the halls, imperiously addressed the servants and took charge at mealtimes, that he considered himself the master of Godwin Hall in all but name.
Rebecca could not imagine that Grandmamma Horatia took kindly to this, but she seemed to have settled for a policy of watchful waiting, as if she intended to see how affairs unfolded.
Rebecca had not shared with anyone the terrible and heavy news that Doctor Boxer had brought the previous day — that Charles had, beyond a shadow of a doubt, been murdered. She could not have said why she was being so secretive, even from Grandmamma Horatia or Caroline, only that she felt very strongly that it was the right thing to do.
The Obscure Duchess of Godwin Hall_A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 20
