The violin began running through phrases, intricate flourishes in the higher register. Axel Belmont was talented, and his performance would hold everybody’s attention.
Unease crept down Theresa’s spine as Emmanuel Capshaw took a step closer. He was not a young man, but he was taller than Theresa, and from the scent of his breath, he wasn’t entirely sober.
“Your daughter apparently doesn’t want to be found,” he said. “Nobody will notice your absence, and isn’t that just the most convenient gift a man could ask for at the holidays?”
* * *
“Richard, a moment,” Matthew said. “You’ve been avoiding me all morning, and you needn’t.” Had been avoiding his devoted papa for months, in fact.
Richard closed the book he’d been reading, for Matthew had tracked his youngest to the reading loft in the library.
“Uncle’s concert is about to begin,” Richard said, shoving the book back onto a shelf. “We’re the hosts, and he’ll expect us to be there.”
“Your brothers and cousins are likely wondering where you are, but as for Axel, he’ll dazzle everybody. The ladies will declare him dashing and talented, and then he’ll put his violin away for another year.”
Richard made no move to leave. “He is dashing and talented, also grouchy.”
“And I am your father.”
Ambushing the boy was unfair, but left to his own devices, Richard would likely disappear back to Oxford in a cloud of sullenness, and that, Matthew could not allow.
“Whose turn is it to watch you, Papa?”
“Sutcliffe’s, but the simple expedient of leading him to the mistletoe beneath which his baroness stood has gained me a moment of privacy with my youngest son. Somebody is trying to kill me, Richard, and in the event they succeed, I want you to know that I love you, I consider you my son and mine alone, and I’m sorry if the circumstances of your birth were conveyed to you without my knowledge.”
“You’re sorry?”
Richard’s expression gave away nothing. Matthew had seen men with the same bleakness in their eyes marched to the dock to face a certain verdict of guilt.
“I’m very sorry you overheard your brothers arguing—and they are your brothers—but I am not sorry at all, I have never been sorry, to be your father.”
Axel’s violin had fallen silent, which suggested the neighbors were assembling in the conservatory and the concert about to begin. Axel could play for hours, though he’d limit himself to perhaps fifteen minutes of public brilliance.
Richard braced two hands on the railing overlooking the library, much like a captain on the deck of a ship might brace himself against an approaching storm.
“Priscilla claims Sutcliffe’s family sent him away when he came of age,” Richard said. “Stuffed a packet of money in his pocket and told him to be gone.”
Bloody hell. Matthew had never considered that Richard might be frightened by the facts of his parentage, tossed adrift amid fears and uncertainties too terrible to name. Matthew joined his son at the balcony, pleased that the boy had a few inches to grow before surpassing his father’s height.
“Richard, I cried like an infant the day you left for Oxford. Got sloppy drunk, shut myself in this library and fell asleep before the fire next to Maida on the rug.”
Richard alone deserved to know this. Matthew would probably describe his grieving to Theresa one day—one day soon.
The boy bowed his head as if warding off blows. “Why would you cry to finally get rid of us? We cost a perishing lot of money, we make endless noise, you have no privacy with us around. We eat like a bloody p-plague of l-locusts, and we—”
Matthew wrapped Richard in a hug as secure as the love wrapping around his own heart.
“I miss you every day, Richard. I’m proud of you every day. You are my son, and since the day I first held Christopher in my arms, all I’ve wanted in this life was to be worthy of the honor of raising your brothers and you. Some man, some pathetic fool, took advantage of your mother’s tender heart, and his penance is that he hasn’t seen you become the magnificent young men you are. I pity him, and I thank God every night for my boys.”
A great sigh went out of Richard, while Matthew simply held his son, reveling in a sea of sentiment too complicated and vast for mere words. The house became quiet, and one wayward child was welcomed home.
Richard sniffed, then turned away and fumbled at his pockets. Matthew passed him the handkerchief Rem had wrinkled earlier.
A friendly round of applause came from the direction of the conservatory.
“You don’t know who he could be?” Richard asked, blotting his eyes with the handkerchief. “You’ve no idea? I suspect Rem has figured it out, but the bloody bugger will never say.”
Tears had deepened Richard’s voice. He dashed his hair from his eyes and reached for his flask, for apparently Matthew was the only Belmont on the premises unarmed with holiday spirits.
And in that gesture, that reaching, uncapping, and tipping up of a silver flask, Matthew’s memory and instincts collided with an awful insight, followed by a worse premonition.
“I have my suspicions, Richard, about which we can talk at greater length when the house isn’t full of tipsy neighbors and overfed dogs. Would you happen to know where your Uncle Emmanuel has got off to?”
Richard tucked his flask away. “Doubtless, he’s getting drunk, groping somebody’s cousin, and disgracing his vows, the usual.”
Axel’s violin began a sweet, soaring melody, while cold settled in Matthew’s bones.
“Belmont, are you up there?” Sutcliffe called from beneath the balcony. “I’ve been looking all over for you, and Loris will have my hide—Theresa will have my hide too, and Priscilla will serve me up in little pieces to the nearest dragon—if I can’t report your whereabouts.”
Footsteps clomped up the spiral stairs as Sutcliffe’s head, shoulders, and then the rest of him came into view.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” Sutcliffe said, “but the professor has started his performance, and you, Belmont, are the last person permitted to play least-in-sight today.”
“Thomas, where is Theresa?”
The baron’s demeanor shifted without a change in his posture. “She went looking for Priscilla, whom I also haven’t seen, now that you mention it.”
“And did you happen to note Emmanuel Capshaw among the audience in the conservatory?” For Richard’s benefit, Matthew tried to keep the question casual—and mostly failed.
“He was half in his cups and lurking near the mistletoe before noon,” Sutcliffe said, “but no, I didn’t see him in the conservatory just now.”
Perishing hell. “Gentlemen, my every instinct tells me we have trouble. We have serious trouble and I fear Theresa is in the middle of it.”
* * *
The only gift Theresa needed to make her holidays complete—Matthew’s love, for the rest of her days—had already been given to her, and to Matthew’s side, she would return.
“Mr. Capshaw, I think you’d better leave.”
Capshaw stood between Theresa and the open barn doors. Instinct warned her to keep her distance from him, and that same instinct urged her to flee.
“Leave, well yes. Bit difficult, when a fellow has no means. The tenant farms barely make their rent, which my dear wife assures me is because they’re poorly managed—by me, one supposes. I would love to decamp for a life of gay abandon on the Continent, but I’m held fast to Sussex by necessity. For now. Investments in train and all that, but none of the ready at present. Don’t suppose you’d care for a nip?”
He took a step closer, close enough that Theresa could see a slight tremor in the hand grasping his flask.
“No, thank you.” She moved left, and he dodged the same direction, a parody of a dance partner.
“You’re no one to judge me,” Capshaw said. “No one to judge anybody, in fact. Time somebody relieved you of your high-and-mighty airs.”
Theresa shifted her right foot ba
ck, ready to relieve him of his very breath, when movement behind Capshaw caught her eye.
“Emmanuel Capshaw, you will miss your nephews’ performance.”
Never had Theresa been so glad to hear a man scolded. Agatha Capshaw, wearing a cloak but no bonnet, stood in the sunlight at the end of the barn aisle. Her expression was calm, suggesting she hadn’t overhead her husband’s philandering, or perhaps the poor woman was accustomed to Emmanuel’s unmannerliness.
He turned, hands wide. “My dear, I simply wanted a bit of air and to exchange my flask for a fresh one. The younger Miss Jennings has apparently absented herself from the gathering. If I see her, I’ll send her to the conservatory, shall I?”
“Thank you, Mr. Capshaw,” Theresa said, though Priscilla had better sense than to come within ten yards of him.
“Miss Jennings and I will follow shortly,” Agatha said. “Run along, Manny.”
Capshaw tottered off, and Theresa recalled Axel Belmont’s admonition that today, nobody was to disgrace the family name. Emmanuel Capshaw was an embarrassment, at least, if not a disgrace.
“You probably wonder why I don’t leave him,” Agatha said, advancing into the stable. “But you of all women should understand my circumstances.”
“We depend on our menfolk for necessities, at least until we’re widowed,” Theresa said. “I’m not fond of this system, myself.”
How odd, to think that Theresa had something in common with Agatha Capshaw.
“My portion wouldn’t suffice to keep a mouse in summer stockings,” Agatha said. “Emmanuel ‘invested it,’ in his pocket flask and his fancy ladies, I presume. He visits his soiled doves almost nightly, when he thinks I’ve gone to my solitary slumbers. I’ve made shift as best I can. You know all about making shift, I’m sure.”
The observation bordered on pitying, which was worse than if it had been snide.
“You are Matthew’s family, Mrs. Capshaw. I’m sorry for your circumstances, but I’m sure Matthew will not let you become destitute.”
Agatha peered at Matthew’s mare, who’d gone back to munching hay.
“Haven’t you found, Miss Jennings, that relying on the good offices of some man is a poor substitute for managing matters oneself? Women are pragmatic, determined, and much smarter than men give us credit for. You have emerged from a scandalous past to capture the attention of a handsome, wealthy man, for example. I commend you for that, I truly do.”
Theresa was formulating an innocuous reply to that odd compliment when Mrs. Capshaw pulled a sleek, heavy pistol from beneath her cloak.
She pointed the gun at Theresa. “I most sincerely regret, Miss Jennings, that for all your cleverness—because of your cleverness, in fact—you must die. And at the holidays too—such a pity.”
* * *
Nicholas and Beckman had been subtly beckoned from the audience in the conservatory, Sutcliffe was sniffing at the decanters, and Richard had gone to assemble the cousins and brothers, intent on keeping them singing until sunset, if need be.
“All those years of shared Sunday dinners,” Matthew fumed, “and I was sitting down with the author of my marital failures. I cannot fathom—well, I can, but I don’t want to. Emmanuel is not even very bright, and yet Matilda was woefully besotted.”
“And now he’s going after Theresa?” Sutcliffe asked. “But why?”
“Because she caught the squire’s eye,” Nick Haddonfield said, “and when a man’s eye is caught, his purse is likely caught as well.”
“Particularly if the lady becomes the mother of his children,” Beckman added, studying the portrait on the back wall. “You were generous with your first wife. What provisions might you make for the second, and her child, and any subsequent children?”
“So the motive is greed,” Matthew said, as Axel stomped into the library. “Emmanuel is one of the trustees of the estate, and of all the obvious connections to overlook, I chose that one.”
“The baroness would provide me no details,” Axel said, pacing the carpet before the fire, his violin in one hand, his bow in the other. “Trouble’s afoot, that’s all she said. Get to the library, she said, so I tear myself away from more simpering beauties than—Matthew, what the hell is wrong?”
“Emmanuel Capshaw cannot be accounted for, and Theresa and Priscilla are missing as well.”
“Emman—?” Axel came to a halt. “He’s passed out under some bush, or swiving somebody’s widow. Don’t be daft.”
My very dear man, Rem had quoted. Not man, but rather, Man. Short for Manny.
“Emmanuel is the father of Matilda’s children,” Matthew said, taking the violin and bow from his brother and setting them on the sideboard. “I hear Emmanuel’s voice in Richard’s words. I see Emmanuel in the way my sons raise a flask. I know it, when I look back on all the times the family was together, and Matilda offered Emmanuel her cheek for a kiss.”
Axel braced a hand on the mantel. “That’s—that’s… Bloody hell. Shall I kill him for you?”
“Let’s find him first,” Sutcliffe said. “We can take turns killing him after we find him.”
“That means tracking him in a crowd,” Matthew retorted, crossing to the window nearest the corner, “which is damned near impossible without an excellent scent hound. Agatha might know where he’s got off to, but she’s been flitting from the buffet to the guests to the kitchens all morning. We could organize a searching party and obliterate any sign of where Capshaw has—”
Emmanuel came sauntering across the gardens, a flask glinting in his hand. His complexion was ruddy, his gait somewhat unsteady.
Matthew was out the French doors in the next instant. “Where the hell is my wife?”
Emmanuel blinked. “In the churchyard, best as I recall. Pity about that too.”
“Not Matilda, you idiot, Theresa—the wife I married not three hours ago, before witnesses that included your sons.”
Emmanuel pitched the flask off into the bushes. “Tilly said you’d never know. I told her you knew all along. Wish I’d been wrong. I wish a lot of things, come to that.”
At that moment, Matthew wished this pathetic fool were dead, but for one question. “Have you seen Theresa?”
“Miss Jennings is immune to my charms, much like my dear wife. Left them in the stable. Agatha chased me off. Agatha’s not usually the jealous sort, but she likes your Miss Jennings, or feels sorry for her. Agatha’s a fine one for feeling sorry for her inferiors.”
Agatha ? For an instant, Matthew was suffused with relief. Agatha Capshaw might sniff and mutter and thank-the-Lord Theresa into a stupor, but Theresa had nothing to fear—
Be happy while you can.
With the next beat of his heart, Matthew knew Theresa had everything to fear. Agatha had managed through years of penury, watched her own sister repeatedly fall prey to Emmanuel’s dubious charms, and could well have authored attempts on Matthew’s life. If Matthew were dead, the Belmont wealth would be that much closer to Agatha’s control.
“Beckman,” Matthew snapped, moving off toward the stable, “take Mr. Capshaw to the estate office and don’t let him out of your sight.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Nick said, falling in on Matthew’s left. “A pity, but a relief. Not a word of this—”
“Nicholas, you will please shut your mouth. Theresa Jennings is alone in the stable with a woman who was for years scorned by her own spouse. If Emmanuel is concerned I’ll squander my wealth on a second wife, Agatha is likely rabid to prevent the possibility. If anything happens to me, Axel becomes guardian of my sons, but the Belmont estate lands will come under Emmanuel’s immediate supervision.”
“Nobody would suspect Agatha Capshaw of anything save an over-fondness for elderberry wine,” Sutcliffe said from Matthew’s right. “Though perhaps we ought to find a gun or two, or three.”
“The guns are all under lock and key in the armory above my office,” Matthew said, “and Spiker has the key. By the time we locate Spiker, discreetly draw him
aside, and procure and load weapons, Agatha could have done her worst.”
“I’m guessing she was here the day Maida died,” Axel said, bringing up the rear. “She could easily have hired one of the tenant farmers to move that damned harrow. She knows you eat like a regiment on forced march, and she might have slipped into your stable on some family visit and tampered with your gun. Good God, hell hath no fury—”
“Hell hath a much greater fury,” Matthew said, “and Agatha Capshaw is about to come face-to-face with him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Theresa had realized in earliest adulthood that death could be the ultimate temptress, and death’s handmaiden was despair. Alone at Sutcliffe Keep but for a contemptuous grandfather and leering cousins, faced with a worse fate even than that, death had whispered to Theresa of peace, of a final righteous indictment of an unfair world, of lasting woe for those who’d wronged her.
Common sense had retorted that Grandpapa and the twins would have congratulated themselves on having accurately ascribed a weak mental constitution to Theresa. They’d have made free with her settlements, while Thomas….
Thomas would have been devastated to lose the only person who loved him as he deserved to be loved.
So love had preserved Theresa from death once before, and then love for Priscilla had preserved her from folly many times since. More love was hers to claim now—love for Matthew, for his family, for life itself, and for a future full of hope and promise.
“Mrs. Capshaw, you will please put that gun away. You apparently fear that Mr. Belmont and I have conceived an interest in each other, though how that affects you, I neither know nor care.”
Indecision flickered in Agatha’s eyes, while the gun remained unwaveringly pointed at Theresa.
“Matthew is besotted—he intends to offer for you, of all the outlandish notions—and you are no debutante to refuse him your favors. I cannot risk him becoming entangled with you.”
Thank God that Matthew had insisted the wedding be kept secret. Theresa mustered the glower that had subdued even her cousins.
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