Clare stared at her hard, then scanned the shop, her gaze alighting upon the French woman who had moved on from pink ribbons to examine a bolt of pale blue dimity.
She nodded. “I’m ready.” Then she drew a long breath in and let it out again. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Lizzie.”
Now that the lie she’d told Xavier’s mother had become a reality, Lizzie hoped so, too.
* * *
The White Hart Inn was a half-timbered affair, with exposed beams in the interior, and a quantity of dark wood paneling and furniture that looked as if it had stood the test of centuries.
Mrs. Biggins, the innkeeper’s wife, showed her to the only private parlor on the first floor of the establishment. The stairs were narrow and uneven, and Lizzie briefly experienced a sensation of vertigo as she made her way up.
“In here, Miss Allbright,” said Mrs. Biggins. “Mind how you go.”
She had to duck slightly to avoid braining herself on the rough wooden beam that formed the door lintel.
The woman Lizzie thought of as Lady Steyne stood with her back to the door, but she whirled when Lizzie entered the room. “My dear girl,” she said, rustling forward. “Forgive me for not calling on you sooner. I am wretched that you have suffered so greatly at my hands.”
Lizzie wasn’t sure why she’d been summoned to Lady Steyne’s side today. She suspected Lady Steyne meant mischief, but what could she do to Lizzie here, in a public tavern, after all?
“It is something of a relief, actually,” said Lizzie. “I am pleased to return to Little Thurston and resume my quiet little existence. I might even look about me for a husband now that I am free.”
She couldn’t let Xavier’s mother know there was any hope for Xavier and Lizzie. Nor that they had enjoyed intimate relations so recently.
Lizzie forced a smile. “You are kind to come all this way to see me, but it is unnecessary. I shall pick up the threads of my life and pretend I never met Lord Steyne.”
Lady Steyne bit her lip, and tears sprang to her eyes. “My son hates me. And the rest of the Westruthers … Oh, I wish I had never gone to Harcourt. I should have known there’d be no hope of reconciliation.”
Her hands fluttered delicately, eloquent of distress. Lizzie marveled, watching this woman’s show of helpless despair, at what a consummate actress Lady Steyne was.
Well, Lizzie was no mean thespian herself. She rushed forward to take Lady Steyne’s hands in hers. “Oh, dear ma’am. I could weep for all that you have endured at their hands. When I heard you had been sent all the way to Russia!”
“No one can know the true depths of my suffering,” agreed Lady Steyne. “But come, let us sit and you must tell me all about what has befallen you since we last met. I barely spoke to you during my short stay at Harcourt.”
They sat and Lady Steyne busied herself at the tea urn, her movements precise and elegant, as if the tea-making procedure were a show she put on for entertainment. Lizzie wondered if anything about the woman was real.
Lady Steyne said, “You must tell me what you think of this blend, my dear. I always travel with my own tea chest, you know. The Russians like their tea sweet, but I prefer it unadulterated.”
Lizzie took her cup but did not taste it. The aroma was smoky and pungent, and she rather thought she’d be ill if she drank it. “You must have seen some wonderful things in your travels.”
Lady Steyne shrugged. “I was not in the frame of mind to enjoy any of it. England is my home. But you, my dear. You are not Lizzie Allbright.”
“I do not feel like Lady Alexandra any longer,” said Lizzie truthfully. “I lived here quite happily until Lord Steyne found me again.”
“You have not changed at all. I recognized you instantly,” said Lady Steyne. “But it did not seem to me to be my place to expose the pretense. I am trying, you see, to become reconciled with my son. It is not easy.”
She took up a plate. “Might I offer you another delicacy from my travels? It is pickled herring.”
The sharp smell of the fish made Lizzie reel. Blood drained from her face, and she swayed a little, spilling tea into the saucer beneath her cup.
“My dear, what is the matter?” Lady Steyne rescued the cup and set down the plate of herring. “Never say you are with child!”
“No. No, I am not with child. I simply feel unwell.”
“You do not need to be coy with me, Lizzie. Do you mind if I call you Lizzie?”
“I … No, but I’m not—”
“A child! Well, that is a blessing indeed, if only Xavier might be brought to acknowledge it,” said Lady Steyne. “Does he know?”
Lizzie, still dazed from the heat and that terrible smell, tried not to retch. She shook her head. “There is nothing to know,” she gasped out. “Please. I must have some air.”
Lady Steyne was on her feet. “Of course. I shall ring for the servant to open a window.”
“No, I must … Now. I must go. My apologies. Can’t think what has come over me.” Lizzie rose so quickly, she became a little dizzy. She had to clutch the armrest to steady herself.
“Here, let me help you,” said Lady Steyne. She gripped Lizzie’s elbow to steady her and moved with her solicitously to the doorway.
“You are white as a sheet, you poor child,” said Lady Steyne. “I will come down with you.”
“It’s quite all right,” said Lizzie. “I am well. Please don’t.”
“Nonsense, my dear.” Lady Steyne’s voice was a soft coo. “Let me help you.”
Cold fear smothered Lizzie like an avalanche. She wrenched her arm from Lady Steyne’s grip.
But a sharp shove between her shoulder blades made her lose her footing, and she tumbled headlong down the stairs.
Chapter Nineteen
The elegantly restrained masquerade went on all around Xavier as he stood in his book room, waiting.
This was the night. They’d all agreed no self-respecting assassin could resist such a trap.
Anyone might slip in and out unnoticed during one of these affairs. Most of the guests would be masked, so it would be a simple thing to conceal one’s identity. He would make it even easier for his fair assassin by remaining alone in his book room as he sometimes did during these events.
Bernard had been easy to dispose of. He would no longer trouble anyone, since he’d been shipped to the Americas to oversee Westruther lands there.
Unlike Nerissa, Bernard didn’t have the guts to claw his way back to England. Vanity, when coupled with low cunning, took one only so far.
The only way Bernard would get back here was if Nerissa managed to kill Xavier herself. He had used the month since the party at Harcourt to dismantle every single piece of support Nerissa possessed. Now it was between the two of them.
His family—meddling, interfering, damnably persistent creatures that they were—surrounded him in various guises. He’d forbidden them to stand guard over him. If Nerissa were to walk into his trap, he needed to allow her free access to his person.
He would be ready for her when she tried her damnedest to be rid of him.
Xavier would not make the mistake of underestimating Nerissa tonight. Never again.
The question still remained: What would he do with her? What could he do?
Exile had not worked. Incarceration … perhaps it must come to that. A damnable thing to have on his conscience, though. He’d thought he had no conscience, and no love for his mother, either. Lizzie had changed his perspective on that, and he wasn’t entirely certain it was to the good.
In the long, bleak silence, he pondered the question. To leave Nerissa free would be to have this scenario or one like it repeated over and over until the end of time. When he thought of her harming Lizzie, matricide did not seem as untenable as it had before.
He had Lizzie to think of now. The thought cramped his belly with fear even while something in his chest seemed to expand. That blood-pumping organ of his seemed like it also had a less functional purpose, after
all.
He loved Lizzie. He wanted to tell her that. He needed to tell her.
So instead of calculating ways and means of neutralizing his mother forever, he spent the long hour before Nerissa came to him writing a letter to his Lizzie.
It proved to be a damnably difficult letter to write and he gained new respect for Cyprian with his romantic poetry. Xavier had managed only two pages before the door opened and his mother walked in.
The hard glitter in her eyes told him she was in one of those moods he’d dreaded as a child. This was not the hard, calculating woman he’d seen at Harcourt but the virago whose temper veered wildly out of control.
Her smile was a fierce grimace. “Good evening, Xavier.”
He reached for his pistol, calmly primed it and aimed.
Her expression changed to one of pitying exasperation. “Oh, Xavier. Darling. Is that necessary?”
“Given your recent history of attempts on my life, I’d say so. Given the fact that either you or my uncle had my mistress killed, most definitely.”
She laughed at him. That same humorless laugh she’d given when she told him how she’d duped him about his and Lizzie’s wedding.
His mother knew how to make an entrance: he’d give her that. Nerissa wore a crimson gown tonight, having put off those wildly inappropriate blacks.
A good color for murder. She always dressed the part. Practical, too. When she made her escape, no one would notice the blood.
“Why are you here?” he said. “I must suppose it is not for the entertainment.”
“My dear. My tastes do not run so tame. You should know that.”
Something in her manner alerted him to a nuance he hadn’t seen before. She blinked rapidly, as if at a horrible memory. Her bravado was an echo of her former jeers but it rang hollow.
He thought of Lizzie and that scar on her back. Of her claim that the humiliation had been worse than the pain.
With sudden insight, he realized why Nerissa had lied to him about Bute. She’d said she enjoyed the pain he’d inflicted on her because she could not stand to be an object of pity. She could not bear to admit she’d needed Xavier’s protection.
“Whatever you might have claimed about that instance of Bute’s cruelty, I know better now,” he said. “I know that you did not enjoy such a brutal beating.”
He ought to have realized it since. Those of his acquaintance who did take pleasure in such practices went about it in a far more controlled, consensual, and precisely judged manner than had Bute with his penchant for whipping house maids and daughters.
Xavier had been blinded, as ever, by whatever tangled emotions bound him to his mother.
And he knew in that instant that the pistol he held was useless. He could no more shoot his mother through the heart than he could fly. He released the hammer and laid the pistol on his desk.
Her shoulders had stiffened at his words. Then she seemed to get hold of herself, forcing her body to relax. “Poor little boy,” she mocked. “Always wishing to believe the best of your wicked mama.”
Giving no indication that she realized he’d set down his weapon, she moved to the sideboard to pour herself a generous tumbler of brandy. Perhaps even Nerissa couldn’t kill her own son without a little Dutch courage.
She continued to pace the room like a caged tigress, selecting a book from the shelf, scanning its title, putting it back. Circling closer, as the tension wound inside him.
He scanned her person, but she held no weapon, nor concealed any that he could detect. Perhaps a knife strapped to her thigh? But that would be dangerous for her. Unwise to get that close to him.
“Hardly that,” he said. “You have been trying to kill me, haven’t you? You are here to kill me now.”
He wondered if she actually had a strategy at all. The duality of her nature was such that she might have planned this night down to the very last minute detail. Or she might have come here in a blind fervor of rage.
Her eyes glittered dangerously under the sheen of tears. “You killed Peter. You did not have to do that.”
Another piece fell into place. Her tastes had never run to ugly sadists like Bute. She liked pretty young men, most of whom were in service to her.
This Peter had been a very pretty young man, indeed.
“It was self-defense,” Xavier said. “As you well know.”
“He was my favorite,” she said, ignoring his interpolation. “He was always the one who knew just what I liked.” Her voice became low and hollow. “And you murdered him.”
There was no point arguing. Nerissa saw the world from such a skewed perspective, it made any kind of truth a lie.
Xavier sighed as the mantel clock chimed the hour. “I do wish you’d get on with this business of murdering me. I am missing a good party to listen to this drivel. There are about to be fireworks on the lawn.”
Her eyes flashed. “Drivel, is it? Then shall I kill you now or tell you all about your dear little Lizzie?”
A good thing he didn’t have the pistol in his hand, or his reaction might have sent a bullet into her. “What?” The word came out low and flat.
Fear shot through him. He’d hated the necessity of staying away from Lizzie, and now it seemed he’d protected her in vain. He’d tear Tom limb from limb if he’d let anything happen to Lizzie.
Oh, but Nerissa enjoyed herself now. “What a little innocent you have there, dear Xavier. To think how she swallowed every single line I fed her about wanting to reconcile with you. Such a tender heart as your wife has, I do not know how she ever would have survived wed to a cold fish like you.”
There was a new layer to the old rage that burned inside him. It took every ounce of will he possessed to stay where he was. To listen to her poison with the appearance of calm.
This rage would not harden and add yet another layer to the glacier inside him. This rage was hot and ready to burst. But he needed to know what his mother had done to Lizzie. If he made a move toward her, she might act before he had time to discover he truth.
He couldn’t stop his attention straying to the door.
His mother’s laugh was wild and chilling. “You want to go to her, don’t you? Play the knight-errant. How very sweet.”
Walking toward Xavier, she gulped down her brandy. With a slight huff of breath as the liquor caught her throat, she moved to the decanter and sloshed another large quantity into her glass. Had she added drinking to her other vices?
“Your dear little Lizzie had an accident.”
He got to his feet then. “What sort of accident?”
She turned her head, pausing with the decanter in one hand and her glass in the other. For an instant, he sensed tension in her, and possibly fear.
Taking command of herself, she said easily, “Shall I pour you one, Xavier? You look like you could use it.”
“Just tell me what happened, you she-devil.”
Shrugging, she poured another glass. “There’s no need to shoot the messenger, dear boy.”
She set down the decanter and picked up her own tumbler, and one for Xavier, too.
Holding it out to him, she said, “She’ll be all right. These things happen to women often in the early stages of pregnancy, you know. Good Lord, if I could count the number of times I myself lost babies to unfortunate accidents—”
With an inhuman growl, Xavier launched to his feet and lunged at her.
And felt something wet wash over him, down the front of his shirt, his waistcoat and breeches. “Damnation!”
In a split second, he registered her intent, reaching out to knock the second glass out of her hand as she tried to douse herself in brandy too. But at the same time, her other hand found the nearby branch of candles and gripped it. She held the small candelabra toward him, hissing as hot wax dripped onto her hand.
With a smile that was full of pearly white teeth, she reached back to grip the neck of the brandy decanter, then sloshed the entire contents over her body.
Dark stains bloom
ed like blood on her crimson dress.
He froze, hands half outstretched. “Don’t do this.”
“We’ll go together, my boy,” she crooned to him, as if singing a lullaby. “You and me. I have nothing to live for now that Peter is gone. I loved him, you know. He killed my husband for love of me. I begged him not to go after you, but he didn’t listen. I told him it was too dangerous. And now he’s gone.”
She swayed and the candles fluttered perilously close to her body.
Oh, but she was good. There was genuine desolation in the dark blue eyes that were so like his own. Perhaps she had cared, in her fashion, for that young man.
But it was all an act. She was forcing her son to rescue her this one last time.
He could see it now. As he moved forward to reach for the candelabra, she’d set him alight, and while he writhed on the floor trying to put out the flames, she’d take his loaded pistol and shoot him through the heart.
The sheer brilliance of the way she’d improvised this scene amazed and appalled him. But she’d always possessed the greatest weapon of all against him. His love.
At that moment, Lizzie stepped out from behind a curtain.
“Oh, God, no!” His voice was hoarse with fear for her. What the hell was she doing here?
Lizzie was very pale, her lips almost bloodless, her hair divinely fair. Her willowy form was cloaked and hooded for the party in a black domino; the gown beneath gleamed white, pristine as snow.
She looked like a grim angel moving out of the shadows. The only color she possessed was in those deep green eyes. Eyes that burned with merciless determination as she stared Nerissa down.
“You tried to kill our baby,” she said. Her voice was steady, strong as steel. “But you did not succeed.” Her grip firmed on the butt of her pistol. “You would murder the man I love. Your own son.”
“Stay back!” spat Nerissa, her gaze flicking from Xavier to Lizzie. “Stay back or I’ll send us both up in flames.”
She was panting, her attention fractured. Xavier. Lizzie. The pistol on his desk.
The whistle and pop and fizz and bang of fireworks started up outside, showering the room in sporadic bursts of light.
The Wickedest Lord Alive Page 25
