“I didn’t know you cared for him so much,” I tried, desperately hunting for something to say. I glanced at Richard again and received a small nod. Dear God, this was difficult. He wanted to tell her about John. It was her right to know, but I didn’t think it would help. She opened her hand and revealed a soggy, balled-up handkerchief. I groped for mine, but Richard got there first, handing her a surprisingly serviceable cloth. Richard usually carried handkerchiefs heavy on lace, light on linen, to touch to his nose after he took his nearly imaginary pinch of snuff. He’d found one that inverted his usual selection.
Susan needed it. She buried her nose in the cloth and blew, before lifting a teary-eyed countenance. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here. I promised not to, and I’ve kept my promise, haven’t I?” Her appeal sounded like a child’s, pathetic and desperate.
“Yes you have.” I felt terribly old. Would I mourn for a brother that I knew had done such terrible things? Probably. I thought of James and Ian, and even my nephew Walter, and although I couldn’t imagine any of them in John’s place, I could understand how one could grieve for an evil person. “Susan, it doesn’t matter. We told you to come if you needed to.” I had to tell her, and I thought it might be better coming from me. “Susan. Susan, look at me.”
She lifted her head and stared at me, her eyes bleak.
“John isn’t dead.”
She blinked. “He isn’t?” Her voice sounded hollow.
I leaned forward and took her hands. “John had a scar on his hand, remember? The dead man didn’t have one.”
She nodded. “He told me you’d done it.” She glanced at Richard, who took over the difficult task.
“I did, but he would have killed Rose had I not stopped him. I had little choice.”
“I’d have killed him.” She shook her head. “He exploded back into my life and ruined it.” She wasn’t glad to hear our news? She sniffed and took a deep breath, a hiccup marring it. “Where is he, then? Waiting to burst out again and wreck even more lives?”
“Pressed,” Richard said. “He’s on a ship, heading for the colonies, I believe. It sailed a few days ago. That body wasn’t him. The body was close in appearance and dressed in his clothes, but it wasn’t him.”
“But the papers all report that he died, that they’re looking for his murderer.” She blinked, dry-eyed. We’d distracted her from her real troubles. Whatever they were, they didn’t include losing her brother. “Why haven’t you told them?”
“Because we consider he’s better dead. You’ll inherit his estate, what there is left of it, but don’t hope for too much.”
She shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“It could come in useful. Add to your portion.”
And she burst into tears again. “I don’t need a portion. Not anymore.”
Ah. “Sir Andrew has gone?”
She nodded. “I won’t cry anymore.”
Richard interrupted. “Can we do anything for you?”
She shook her head, pleating the handkerchief between her fingers. “I don’t think so. You were very kind. It turned out that I wasn’t having a baby, not this month, anyway. Then I told him about John, and when the rumours started to circulate he grew more nervous, and then he said he had to go into the country for a few days. I got his letter this morning. He’s not coming back. He sent me some money, for my trouble, he said.”
“Sir Andrew?” Richard’s voice echoed my own amazement. “You loved him?”
She nodded and sniffed. “I thought he loved me. He said he did. Oh, I know he wanted an heir, and I promised to try to give him one, but I thought he wanted me. Me!” She lifted her face, tragic and gaunt. “A whore off the streets! Have you ever heard of such a thing? I must have been mad. And I shouldn’t have come here, I know, but I wasn’t thinking properly.”
“I’m glad you did.” I’d rarely heard Richard so gentle, outside our bedroom. “You’re not a whore off the streets, you’re my daughter.”
She choked. “And you refused to acknowledge John, and yet you say that so carelessly.”
“You didn’t try to destroy my life. He did. I told him the truth, that I didn’t know anything of your conception and birth, but he refused to believe me. Either that or revenge burned him so badly that he couldn’t listen.”
Susan nodded. “He was burned up, you’re right. He rarely thought of anything else. He said you’d cheated him of his birthright and he’d make you pay for it.” She lifted her head. “You didn’t. I think it’s because I knew my mother and he didn’t. He accepted her stories when we were children, when she told us the stories of the princess whose father refused to acknowledge her. Then when she told us about you, I accepted it as something that might have happened. I only knew for sure when I saw you. Even then I realised it wasn’t unusual, a maid falling pregnant to one of the family in the house. I shrugged and got on with life. Even when the Drurys took me in and tried to use me against you, I didn’t really care. I just thought that I’d get something from it.” She bit her lower lip, but Richard’s expression didn’t change. He sat at ease, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, propping up his chin. “I talked to you, I listened. He never would. I don’t think he could think properly where you were concerned. And then he told me what he’d done, and I said I wanted nothing to do with his stupid plans. I told him that he didn’t know you, that you wouldn’t allow it. I told him you didn’t deserve it. He wouldn’t listen.”
“You think I didn’t deserve his hatred?” That meant a lot to Richard, I knew. John’s hatred echoed Richard’s guilt. I held my breath.
“No. You were as much a victim of your mother as we were.” She caught her breath, but she had no need.
“Yes.” He didn’t say any more on that subject, but I felt the tension in the room ease. To hear that out loud meant a lot to him and at that moment I’d have done anything for Susan to thank her for confirming what I’d always told him. What he knew to be true but couldn’t accept in his heart.
Susan got to her feet. “I should go.”
“No.” I stood too and pressed her back down. “You can’t go back to your old lodging. You can stay here.” Maybe I should have waited for Richard to invite her, but I didn’t want to. She shouldn’t suffer, and at present she was suffering. I’d always thought her a self-possessed and graceful young lady, but she resembled nothing so much as a lost child.
“No. I won’t stay here.” She glanced at Richard. “It’s as good as acknowledging me, and you can’t. If John’s not dead, he’ll return and take advantage of that.”
“I don’t think he’ll come back,” Richard said gently. “He’ll stay in the Colonies. It might even help to set him on another path, one where he survives on his own merits instead of using other people to get what he wants. It’s my hope that he does so.”
“But I still won’t stay here. It makes you look cold and unfeeling, if you rejected John when he gave you the opportunity to acknowledge him. And all that legitimacy foolishness could start up again.”
“It didn’t go away,” Richard said. “And society is used to me looking cold and unfeeling. It’s the past two or three years that have been the aberration, not the ones that went before.” He glanced at me. “It won’t affect Rose. You’re not about to take me to court for legitimacy, are you?”
She shook her head. “Why should I? I’m female. That doesn’t mean as much to me as to a boy. I am legitimate, of a sort, because my mother’s husband acknowledged us both as his children. He took that as part of the bargain your mother offered him.” I discerned another difference between John and Susan. Susan was a pragmatist and I was coming to realise that John was a romantic. “No, I won’t stay here. After all, what have I lost? A few months and some hope.”
“You can’t go back to your previous occupation.” Richard had always felt uncomfortable, even though he made sure his daughter was well protected, with bullies big enough to see any would-be rapis
t off and a comfortable place to live. But Susan had refused any more than that. She wanted to make her own way in the world.
I understood what Richard meant and I continued his thought. “John introduced you as his sister. If you’re found working as a—a courtesan, then the world will think the worst of Richard.”
“Of you, you mean,” she said. It appeared that Susan understood Richard’s motives as well as I did. “And he’s right. If they know his daughter’s a whore, they’ll think he forced me into it, assign all kinds of stupid motives to it.” She stopped and blew her nose with a decisiveness that seemed to put her troubles behind her. “I can move to another place. I was born in France, and I speak it like a countryman. I can go there, where they don’t know me and have no reason to link us.”
Richard got to his feet. “No. You can stay here for now.”
“No. I mean it. I can stay at my lodging without—looking for business.”
“You’re in Harris’s list. You don’t have to look.” Harris sold hundreds of copies of that wretched book every year. People—men—would come knocking at her door.
Susan swallowed. “How did you know?”
Richard’s smile took on a slightly exasperated look. “Did you think you could hide it? I know where your lodging is situated, and even if you use another name, I can add a few salient facts together. A good form of advertising, but that person cannot be you anymore. Take my first offer. It’s still open.”
She refused. Richard had offered her an allowance and a place to live, everything her brother had wanted but without the acknowledgement of paternity. He couldn’t give that now, or it would give John leverage in the future, should he want it.
“I’ll find somewhere else.”
“Very well. I’ll find somewhere for you, but you can’t stay there long. Just wait.”
She gave him a sharp glance, so like his, despite her eyes being grey, that nobody watching could have doubted the connection between them. “Until that business of the Drurys is dealt with? Did they burn down your premises?”
Grim-faced, Richard gave her that. “Yes, but we’re seeking the witnesses. As soon as we have them, we’re prosecuting. One more step.”
And that step was to persuade Steven to withdraw his alibi.
Chapter Eighteen
I’D HAVE MORE CHANCE of persuading Steven to tell the truth about the night the youth was murdered, but I had a difficulty. How to meet him in an uncompromising situation but private enough to say to him what I needed to? And I needed to do it quickly. When I heard he was back from his visit to the country, I hit upon a solution. I thought it might do.
The Ludgate Hill area, around St. Paul’s Cathedral, contained many bookshops and bookstalls. They clustered around the area, petitioners around the black-stained face of the newest cathedral in the country. I decided on some book shopping. I was attempting to re-plan our garden at Brook Street, perfectly acceptable but to my mind unexciting, and I could use the excuse to shop for gardening tomes. A little servant gossip via my trusty maid Nichols and I felt fairly sure of meeting Steven that morning.
Richard, at first disapproving, saw the sense of a quiet word. “I should find him later in the day. He’s taken to sitting in one of the Covent Garden coffeehouses close to Maiden Lane. I’ll see if your meeting bears any fruit, and make it easy for him to do the right thing.”
Together or separately, Richard and I made a good team.
So accompanied by two burly footmen and my maid, I made my way up Ludgate Hill by carriage. My driver formed a cheery third to the men watching me, but I decided against the chair, having no desire for the jolting journey with its inevitable halts to greet acquaintances and friends.
When I went into the shop where I thought I had the best chance of conversing with Steven, I met Freddy. I gave him my sweetest smile and my hand to kiss.
His dark eyes twinkled as he gave me the more informal greeting I was used to, a buss on one cheek. “Positively blooming, my lady. You make marriage appear almost tempting.” Freddy had avoided marriage for years, despite the increasingly desperate entreaties of his father.
“You should do it, Freddy.”
“Ah, but you and Richard have also set a standard I’ll never reach.” He clasped his hand over his heart, narrowly missing a nearby bookcase with his dramatic gesture. “True love is elusive and rare. How could I ever hope for your success?”
“All you need is an heir,” I said, a trifle waspishly, because his presence here was anything but a coincidence. “Put us all out of our misery, Freddy. Choose a lovely young woman and marry her.”
Freddy raised a brow. “I shall take your advice,” he said, much quieter now. But before I could apologise for my remark, which wasn’t called for and entirely born of my nervousness and stress, he continued, “This shop has a great many books and some of the best are at the back. I’ll contrive to ensure you some peace while you examine them.”
He’d intercept anyone heading to the back of the shop. I should feel grateful, not irritated. Feeling suitably ashamed, I made my way to the back of the store, with Nichols in discreet attendance. She disappeared into an alcove four stacks short of my goal. The shop held many bookshelves set at angles to the two long walls to provide the greatest shelf space. I doubted the owner ever threw a book away. My brother Ian would entirely agree with that philosophy. At the back I found Steven browsing through an old book that smelled of age and sanctity. He put the tome down, an old Bible. Rather appropriate, considering his erstwhile profession.
“I should think you know that by heart,” I remarked.
He grimaced. “Hardly. The New Testament, of course, but not by heart. You know I only took that profession because I could earn something and remain respectable.”
“Instead, you took a position where you earned a great deal by disreputable means.” I’d long immured myself to Steven’s charm. Undoubtedly he possessed it, and that, with his pleasing countenance, had taken him a long way in the world. “You could keep it.”
“I intend to.”
Straight to business. Just as well. We didn’t have much time. “How?”
He shrugged. “Julia’s becoming difficult. I was glad to hear you’d be here today.” He wouldn’t look at me, instead staring at a point just above my head. “She tried to kill me last night.”
“What?” I should have expected it, but the news shocked me. Had she no sense of self-preservation? She must know that interested parties were watching her closely. I remembered to keep my voice low. “How?”
“Shooting me as I slept. Presumably she wanted to make it look like suicide. Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t in my bed. I was downstairs, heard the shot and ran upstairs. She claimed it was an accident. Right through my pillow?” He snorted in derision.
So Julia had driven someone else away. Her husband. “Do you think you’re in danger?”
“As long as I stay there and as long as she’s alive.” He shrugged. “I’m going away, Rose.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere.”
He had no idea of the opportunity I had now. “We can help.”
His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in suspicion. “Why? What do you want? I can’t lay information against her, we’re married.” And a man couldn’t give evidence against his wife.
I shook my head. “All you need to do is withdraw your support. Say you weren’t with her the night Kneller died.”
His gaze sharpened. “Is that enough? Just that?”
I nodded. “Freddy Thwaite is in the shop, ensuring we have some privacy. Come with me now and he’ll take you. If you want. But we need you to tell the truth, Steven, not some fabricated story.”
He bit his lip. “All the truth?”
I kept his gaze. “Every bit. You can’t appear in court if your wife is prosecuted, but you can help us clear this mess up. You know she’s trying to kill us, and I think she’s out of control.”
“After la
st night, I’m sure she is.” His face crumpled for a split second, and in regaining control, I saw the vulnerability and stark terror that lurked beneath the handsome surface. “I told her I wouldn’t stand for any more nonsense, and I was taking her into the country. She sneered. When I told her I had her father’s support, she refused to believe me. The old man is terrified she’ll leave him in the poorhouse. He’s suffered some ill health recently but his mind is still sharp. But she’s refusing to listen to reason. You think I haven’t seen the jaws of madness closing around her?”
“So you’ll tell us what you know?”
“As long as it stops Julia, yes.”
A coward heading for cover, but in all honesty, he couldn’t do much else. It sounded as if he’d done his best in his own way to stop her, but he had no chance. Julia was running wild. We needed to bring her affairs to a forcible close before any more tragedies occurred.
I laid my hand on his arm and strolled with him back to where Freddy stood flipping through a book of sermons. “Interested in joining the clergy, Freddy?” I released Steven’s arm and moved over to him. “I have someone who might help you.”
Freddy laid down the book very carefully, and oblivious of the assistant who rushed over to rescue the volume before it fell to the floor, nodded to Steven. “How are you, Drury?”
“I’ve been better.”
I picked my words carefully. “Mr. Drury would like a word or two with you. He’s eager to offer us some assistance, but he needs sanctuary.”
Freddy gazed at Steven. “Indeed? Do we consider this request?”
“Yes. Let him tell you, Freddy. Find Richard.”
Freddy gave me an amused glance. “You’re very generous with old flames, Rose.”
I forced a laugh. “That’s me.”
“I’ll just see you to your carriage.”
I put a restraining hand on his arm. “No, really, there’s no need. Stay with him, Freddy. Nichols will accompany me and I promise I’ll go straight home.” I hated the necessity, but with Julia running out of control, I needed to take great care of myself and the child in my womb.
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