Wild Lavender

by Lynne Connolly

  “I arrived in London with the prince, but I stayed when he left. I had orders to serve his interests. I took the identity of Everslade when I arrived.”

  “Did you kill Lord Everslade?” Julius rapped out.

  McKinley glanced around at the expectant faces. Everyone stilled. A corner of one of the papers Darius held flapped down, the only movement in the room until McKinley shrugged carelessly. “Yes. But you will never find him. You can’t try a man for murder without a body.”

  “Oh, I think we can,” Julius said softly.

  Darius waved the papers. “I have not found everything yet, but these will serve to hang him. The man is a traitor. That’s for sure. He plotted the death of a subject of his majesty, and he spied for a foreign power.”

  Tom nodded. “I would rather he died for murder. There is less honor in that.”

  “I believe we can discover when and where,” Julius reiterated.

  “Not from me.” McKinley lifted his head, tilted his chin. “Do your worst. Kill me now, if you will.”

  Tom sniggered. “So we can be hanged alongside you? I think not.” He glanced at Julius. “We should call the authorities.”

  “You would do that?”

  Tom kept his attention on McKinley. “For Helena, I would do anything. This man hoped to disgrace her.”

  “How long could you have expected to continue your masquerade?” Julius asked, his voice tight.

  “Everslade was on his way to London. He told me that his mother had died, and now he intended to live a little. She had kept him in the country for years.” McKinley clamped his mouth shut.

  He didn’t need to say any more. McKinley could have murdered the garrulous Everslade on the road, dismissed the servants who knew him, never returned to that part of the country, and lived as Lord Everslade. The man was not mad, as Tom had begun to believe. He was cunning and vindictive. He thought of nobody but himself. Well, he would have nobody but himself to think of now, for the short time he had left.

  “I made it my business to discover everything I could about you,” he said. “I was courting Lady Helena when you made your move. When I showed the evidence to the Prince, he agreed you had to die. So I got my dearest wish. I had the means to kill you and to make you suffer first.”

  Tom had no compunction in sending this disgusting man to the gallows. “How fortunate Bow Street is so close,” he said, satisfaction filling his voice. “You won’t find it as easy to escape Newgate. You will find the vails there onerous, but you won’t have to pay them for long.” Then he struck him and gave him a matching bruise on the other side of his face. Such a pity Tom had not held back, because this time he did break McKinley’s jaw.

  While the man was still squealing in pain, Darius handed him a piece of paper. Tom glanced at it.

  When he was a child, he’d been given a picture of the world, but his tutor had cut it into small pieces. By putting it together again, Tom had discovered the way the world was built.

  The last piece of his personal world fell neatly into place.

  Chapter 19

  “He says he will be up directly,” Lamaire told Helena.

  “Oh, does he, now?” With a rustle of silk Helena climbed off the bed. She’d been sitting reading the journals, waiting with increasing impatience for her husband’s return. No secrets, he’d said. And where was her brother? Why had he not come back with Tom?

  After shaking out her skirts briefly and glancing in the mirror to make sure her cap was on straight, she went downstairs and knocked on the study door, entering on her knock.

  Tom stood before the desk, and his father was sitting behind it. Papers were scattered over the surface, grazing the crystal inkwell, some in a strange mixture of numbers and symbols that could only be code.

  “He was an agent for Charles Stuart,” Tom was saying. He turned his head and met her curious gaze.

  Nodding with a wry smile, he held out his arm, and without hesitation she walked under it, nestling close to him so he could close his arm around her. She only felt complete in his embrace.

  He kissed her forehead. “The man’s name was McKinley. He was an agent of Prince Charles. He is currently locked up in Newgate.”

  She sighed in relief. She hadn’t wanted the man she’d known as Lord Everslade to die at Tom’s hands. He should not have that stain on his soul.

  The duke took up a paper and read it again. The wrinkled document trembled. What was wrong?

  “Are we married in truth?” Perhaps that was it. Then her fears in those years they had spent apart were real. And they were not married now. She did not move away. Even if their marriage wasn’t real, their love was.

  “We are.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “But another difficulty has emerged. Or another complication.”

  “Tell me,” she demanded impatiently. “What are you talking about?”

  “McKinley was a member of the court. Prince Charles’s court, one of the people who owed his loyalty to the prince rather than his father. There he discovered the quest to find the children of his father, the legitimate ones. He came to London five years ago to continue the quest and to work for the prince.”

  “So he worked as an agent?”

  “When he discovered that I was one of those children, he kept the information to himself. Until this year.”

  “Why would he do that?” The truth hit her with the force of a hammer. Helena’s legs gave way. “What did you say?”

  He turned her to face him, holding her firmly, his eyes dark and fathomless. “I am the son of the Old Pretender and Maria Rubio. As far as we know, the oldest legitimate son.”

  The duke looked up at them, “And he tried to kill you. The man I have followed for all these years—the one I nearly lost my fortune and title to, the man I have supported with money and loyalty—tried to kill my son.” His mouth flattened. The lines on his face deepened. He looked less like his usual vigorous self, his strength leaving him. “Whoever fathered you, you are my son. The king made my wife, my bride, tell me that she had betrayed me, that she bore another man’s child. He cared nothing that the knowledge might make me cast her off. Instead, she gave me the child, the one he wanted hidden. The perfect disguise. He may have intended my wife to tell me, but she never did. She sacrificed herself for him.” He clamped his mouth closed, gritted his teeth before he crumpled the paper in his hand. “I will never refer to the Stuart as the king again. I owe his son nothing. He owes me. My loyalty is first to my family and then to my country, whoever represents it.”

  Scraping his chair back, he got to his feet. “Never allow anything to come between you two. Family is always paramount.”

  Tears misted her eyes, so Helena did not see him leave. “He’s right. I love you, Tom.”

  “And I love you.”

  They kissed, and as always, everything else went away.

  Epilogue

  “He died hard, they say.” Tom dropped the journal on the breakfast table, among the debris of a good breakfast heartily taken. “Shall I read you the rest?”

  Helena shook her head, surprised at how empty she felt about the situation. McKinley had been hanged for the murder of Lord Everslade. Julius was as good as his word and had discovered the body. The remains had enough evidence to prove he was his lordship. Letters wrapped in a wax pouch, the remains of his clothes, and a signet ring. Julius had also proved that Lord Everslade and McKinley had shared a room that night, the inn they were staying at being full. Everslade had offered McKinley a ride in his chaise the next day instead of having to suffer the depredations of the stagecoach, and they’d left together.

  Helena recalled how charming McKinley could be when he set his mind to it. She shivered, despite the fire burning merrily in the grate and the snug fit of the sash windows. Outside, the sun shone down, the rains of October having given way to a chilly but fine November.

  McKinley had murdered Lord Everslade the following day, thrown the body f
rom the coach, and when the vehicle stopped to change horses, claimed his lordship had changed his mind about traveling to London.

  He had hired a fresh chaise, together with ostlers and outriders, and traveled on, becoming Lord Everslade somewhere along the road. At the next inn, he wrote a letter to the house the Everslades had hired for their stay and dismissed the servants, claiming they had changed their minds and were returning home to Cumbria. When he arrived at the house, he hired fresh servants. With the knowledge that he was breaking free after years of domination from his mother, few people who knew the real Everslade thought much about it.

  If he’d married Helena, he might have escaped detection. Years of subterfuge and harboring resentment had driven him from that moment, but the court had not questioned him about that matter. The murder was enough. Julius had made it his business to discover the ostlers who’d been paid off and traced the fateful journey.

  “Justice is swift sometimes.” She tried to feel something for the man, but she could not. He’d been the son of a country squire, from Lanarkshire and had taken the Cause as his own at university. He could have lived in moderate comfort for the rest of his days, but he had chosen the darker more lucrative path and had worked as an agent for the Jacobites ever since.

  Now he was dead.

  Glancing out of the window, she got to her feet. “I will visit the new kittens in the stable and then perhaps read for an hour.”

  “Very commendable, my love.” Pushing his correspondence aside, Tom rose from the table and joined her. “How would you feel about visiting my father’s house for Christmas? If we do so, we will have to do it soon, before the frosts set in.” He nodded to the letter he had just discarded. “My father mentions that Lady Abercrombie will be visiting. He has long admired her, you know, but he always said he would remain faithful to the memory of my mother.”

  “Ah.” She went into his arms as naturally as breathing and smiled up into his dear face. “We should go. Do you think your father would marry again?”

  “The scales have fallen from his eyes. He adored my mother, but she adored her king more. That was a shock to him. He has reassessed his priorities, I believe. Will is still a complete supporter, though, and my father will never be a loyal Whig.”

  “He could be a loyal Tory,” she pointed out.

  “We shall see.” He smiled down at her. “I care not.”

  “Could we visit Edensor on the way?” Her father’s house was in North Derbyshire, in the area sometimes known as the dukeries from the plethora of great houses that were situated there. “Then we will have done our duty to both families.”

  A crease appeared between his brows.

  She pressed her finger against it to smooth it out. “My parents will welcome you, or at least my father will. He dislikes talking politics in any case. You can see him in his true setting. He lives for the land and the estate, where my mother—” She grimaced. “She lives for power and influence. To quote someone not too far from here, I care not.”

  “What about your brothers?”

  “Augustus likes to keep to Rome. He says life is quieter there. Julius is too busy caring for Eve and his family to give much thought to our parents, but he’ll be there for Christmas. We do not have to stay long. I like it here. I loved this house the moment I saw it,” she said.

  “Much as I fell in love with you the instant I saw you. I tried to tell myself it was lust or mere liking, but it was not. I could not reason the love out of me.”

  She gazed into his dear face. “And I you. I believe love can last a lifetime. I believe ours will.”

  He touched her cheek and bent to kiss the place, before moving to her mouth and delivering one of the luscious kisses she adored. “Do you really have to visit the kittens? They’re snug in the stables with their mama and perfectly safe. You must be tired, my love. After all, you had little rest last night.”

  “You want me to go upstairs and rest?”

  “Eventually.”

  As she curved her hand around his neck and went on tiptoe to kiss him back, Helena reflected on her luck. The best in the world. Five years? She’d have waited a lifetime for this.

  Historical Note

  Charles Edward Stuart, known during his lifetime as the Young Pretender and later as Bonnie Prince Charlie, did indeed visit London in 1750 and was converted to Protestantism. If he’d hoped it would endear him to the people, the attempt was doomed to failure, and Charles soon returned to his Catholic upbringing.

  The visit was known to the authorities and was carefully watched, but they elected to leave him alone, as to arrest him would be to create a Stuart martyr.

  Another reason was to court and perhaps marry a British noblewoman. At this stage in the campaign, that would have given Charles a foothold at the heart of power, a strong negotiating counter and access to the money he desperately needed.

  The next year, 1751, the popular Prince of Wales, Prince Frederick, died, leaving only a young boy to succeed him, so the Stuart cause looked hopeful again. However, this time they didn’t have a great army at their beck and call, so they had to rely on negotiation and intrigue.

  Another Stuart, Lord Bute, helped to thwart the cause by befriending the widowed Princess of Wales and taking over the education of the heir, young Prince George. The Whigs hated him, but after Prince George became King George III, Bute became Prime Minister for a short period.

  That story is for another time.

  Due to the constant complaints about fortune hunters eloping with heiresses, sometimes abducting them, raping them, and ruining their reputations, the law was changed in 1753, coming into force in 1754. Now marriage was strictly regulated and only valid under the circumstances detailed in the law. Any marriages conducted before that date were valid, if they could be proved.

  Meet the Author

  Lynne Connolly was born in Leicester, England, and lived in her family’s cobbler’s shop with her parents and sister. She loves all periods of history, but her favorites are the Tudor and Georgian eras. She loves doing research and creating a credible story with people who lived in past ages. In addition to her Emperors of London series she writes several historical, contemporary and paranormal romance series. Visit her on the web at lynneconnolly.com, read her blog at lynneconnolly.blogspot.co.uk, find her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter @lynneconnolly.