by Darcie Wilde
“But he wasn’t angry in the least. In fact, he was very gentlemanlike. He spoke of his continuing admiration for you, and said he blamed himself for your elopement. He’d been too slow about the business, was how he put it. I began to think that he’d simply come to break with me and show there were no hard feelings.”
“Then what happened?”
“He said he was sure there was still a way the business could be brought to a positive conclusion.” Father’s eyes grew bright. “He reached into his wallet, and he laid a note on the table. A banker’s draft. It was . . . large. He said it was a first installment. He said he still wanted you, and he said . . . he said . . . it would be on the terms I’d had with . . . oh, heaven help me, Leannah, on the terms of your marriage to Elias.”
Leannah closed her eyes, but only briefly. She couldn’t hide from this, or refuse to see.
“He wants the Wakefield estate,” she murmured.
“He said it was about to prove very profitable and that I would have my share of those profits, but any such arrangement was contingent upon his marriage to you.”
“But, why should my marrying him make any difference? You’re still Jeremy’s guardian. You still have a say in what happens to the property. Who I am married to makes no difference.” He wants more than the land, he must. There’s some larger plan.
“He was unclear . . . no.” He must have seen the look on her face. “I didn’t ask for details. I just kept staring at the draft. Leannah, I could do so much with that money. I know just what should be done with it. And the land! If he’s right about the road, just think about the profits . . .”
“The road? What road?”
“The Great Devon Road. It’s set to pass right by the estate. Think of it! It means traffic and business of all sorts. There’d be new shops, and mills and steam looms, and more money to invest. We wouldn’t have to fear a few losses, because there would be plenty. I saw the numbers, moving back and forth, adding up so beautifully. I knew what to do. I knew exactly what to do.”
Horror gripped her and Leannah felt it tear her heart as easily as ancient velveteen.
“All the while he talked, the draft just lay there on the desk. I thought of you, and my other children. How you should have the best, only the best. As I thought this, it seemed like that note began to grow. It was going to drape over the whole room, like a wedding veil, or a shroud . . .”
“Stop it!” Leannah cried. “Stop it at once! Just tell me what you promised him!”
Father trembled. His voice, when he spoke again, was nothing but a whisper.
“I promised him nothing, Leannah. I picked up the draft and threw it on the fire.”
* * *
Is it true? Harry stared at the closed door, his brain spinning. What Nathaniel said? Can it be true after all?
Harry could hear them arguing in the study, but couldn’t make out the words. He wanted nothing more than to press his ear to the door like a spying parlor maid. He turned away before that ludicrous idea could take a firm hold.
No. I won’t believe it. There’s some reasonable, innocent explanation for why Valloy was here. But the thought had no strength.
Harry walked to the end of the narrow corridor. He should have been angry, but he wasn’t. He felt drained, numb. He’d reached the end of the short, dim hallway, and turned to stare again at the closed door. He walked back toward it a half-dozen steps, and stopped, swaying on his feet.
He should go, he knew that much. But he couldn’t think where he would go, or how he would get there. He couldn’t think of anything except that Leannah had lied.
A shadow fell across him. Harry glanced up the stairs. The boy, Jeremy, was back, leaning over the railing and scowling. They stared at each other for a while. Distantly, Harry expected Miss Morehouse to appear once more to take charge of her brother. Judging from the way Jeremy glanced over his shoulder, he expected the same thing. But his sister did not return. Instead, the boy started down the stairs, stepping over one in particular as he descended. Harry suspected that one creaked in the fashion of an alarm.
Jeremy came to stand in front of him and drew himself up, head back, arms folded.
“You’re him?”
“Yes,” admitted Harry. “I’m Harry Rayburn.”
“Jeremy Morehouse.” Jeremy frowned up at him. He was taking Harry’s measure. It was popular to assume children were empty vessels waiting to be filled with the thoughts of adults. The people who went around preaching this view had never met the sort of boys Harry had grown up around.
“Come on.” Jeremy jerked his chin toward the back of the house. “I want to talk to you and we’ll never get a chance if my sisters catch up with us.”
The boy opened one of the right-hand doors and Harry followed, because he couldn’t think what else to do. At least, if he was talking to her brother, he was not standing about stupidly waiting for Leannah, and whatever lie she’d tell him next.
Jeremy led Harry down the back stairs and through the kitchen; much to the consternation of the cook and her girl, and the carter who was sitting at the table enjoying a mug of tea. A small and sooty garden waited on the other side of the kitchen door, complete with the obligatory cucumber frames and small brick shed. Jeremy retreated behind the shed. Clearly, this was a place where the boy discovered he could not be seen from the house.
Once they were both crowded into the shed’s weak shadow, Jeremy straightened himself up to look Harry as directly in the eye as he could manage. He was going to be tall when he finished growing. Unlike his sisters, the boy was a genuine “ginger,” with bright red hair and a spray of freckles across his sharp face. It was his wary obstinacy that touched Harry, though. That hadn’t come just from facing a stranger suddenly thrust onto his family. It came from never quite knowing who or what to trust.
“I know what Lea’s mad about,” Jeremy said. “All right. I admit it. I took it.”
What was this now? Harry felt his brows knit together. Was the boy somehow involved in his family’s schemes?
“I’m not sorry,” Jeremy informed him stubbornly. “It’s my duty to look out for my sisters.”
“Naturally,” murmured Harry, bemused in spite of himself. “I’ve only got one question. What did you take?”
That caught Jeremy flat. “You mean they didn’t tell you about the ring?”
The world froze. Not one thing possessed the power of movement. Harry’s heart did not beat, his lungs did not draw breath.
“No, Jeremy,” he said, and he was stunned by how calm his voice sounded. “No one told me about the ring.”
Jeremy clapped his hand over his mouth. Harry strongly suspected he was uttering a whole string of words with which a young gentleman was supposed to be entirely unacquainted.
“Next time, don’t assume the other fellow knows the same as you.” Harry went on. “Let him do the talking and find out what he’s really keeping under his hat.”
Jeremy grimaced. “I’m still not sorry,” he muttered.
Harry glanced around the corner of the shed. He couldn’t see any sign of movement in the house. Were Leannah and her father still talking in there? Was she looking for him? If she wasn’t now, she would be soon. He dropped his gaze to the boy again. It was wrong to be standing here quizzing Leannah’s little brother, but he didn’t seem to be letting that stop him.
“Will you tell me why you took your sister’s wedding ring?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I wanted to find out if it was genuine. The fellow at the pawn shop said it was.”
“You took a ring worth hundreds of pounds to a pawn shop?”
Jeremy shrugged with the affected casualness that was particular to young boys who wanted to look tougher than they felt. “We had to be sure. If the thing was a fake, you might be just stringing Lea along. You might be planning to leave her flat after a week or a month of high living at a hotel we couldn’t never afford.”
The ground shifted under Harry’s boots. Of course. His fa
mily wouldn’t be the only ones with doubts. The Morehouses knew all about dishonest dealings, large and small. This boy who had seen so much disaster come from money—and the lack of it—would want to be sure his beloved sister hadn’t just thrown herself headlong into a fresh scheme. It all made complete and heartbreaking sense.
But it doesn’t answer why Dickenson expected Genny to give the ring to him.
Jeremy was looking at him in confusion. Clearly, he was waiting to be yelled at. Harry shook himself.
“It was still not a smart move for all that,” he said. “The broker might have thought you’d stolen the ring.” Which you did. “He could have summoned the police, or might just have knocked you on the head and kept the ring as payment for his trouble.” Your sister might have been beaten by a callous brute for failing to deliver on a promise.
“Oh.” Jeremy shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Next time you’re making off with other people’s property, do.”
“Are you going to tell them?” He jerked his chin toward the house.
“I expect at least one of them already knows. But no, I won’t say anything, as long as you tell me where the ring is now.”
The fact was, he already knew. He saw Jeremy’s hand shifting inside his trouser pocket, like he was fingering something.
It seemed the boy realized he’d been caught, fair and square. He pulled the ring out of his pocket, and handed it over. “Was going to put it behind Genny’s dressing table, like it had dropped there, but never got the chance.”
There were holes in that story, but now was not the time to pick at them. Harry took the ring, and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. “Did you get your answer? Is it genuine?”
Jeremy nodded. “Doesn’t answer as to what you were doing running around with a lady’s ring in the middle of the night.”
“I’d been turned down by the girl I meant to marry, and I hadn’t gotten around to selling it back to the jeweler, or throwing it in the river.”
“Oh. Well. Her loss, ain’t it?” Jeremy added in the spirit of manly camaraderie.
“Thank you.”
“You’re not what I was expecting.”
“Neither are you.”
Now it was Jeremy’s turn to glance toward the house. “Better get back. They’ll be shouting for us before long.”
“One minute,” said Harry. Harry felt the tiny bulge of the ring pressing against his rib. It seemed to remind him he shouldn’t ask this next question. It was entirely dishonorable. He should speak directly to his wife.
“Leannah said Mr. Valloy had come to the house recently. Do you know what he wanted?”
Jeremy’s face screwed up tight, like he was trying to hold back anger, or tears. “He’s starting trouble, and he’s doing it on purpose. He’s got no business hanging about here offering our father his dirty money.”
“What’s he giving your father money for?”
“For Leannah, so he can marry her.”
Thirty-Six
I don’t know anything. Harry told himself. I don’t know anything.
“You got it wrong,” he said to Jeremy. “You misheard something.”
“Didn’t. You can hear everything goes on downstairs if you put a glass up against the chimney in my room.”
Of course you could, and of course the boy would know that. He’d be suspicious of any man talking to his father, just as he’d been suspicious about the ring. He had seen what came of men having private talks with Octavian Morehouse.
“Valloy was offering a settlement,” Harry said, painfully aware he was grasping at straws. “He must not have known she had married again.”
Jeremy snorted. “Oh, he knew all right. Didn’t care. He was talking big about ‘their’ plans and how there was going to be so much money to go around once everything came through.”
She’d been hiding this from him. Spinning stories. Pretending. Lying. Using her sister as a go-between for herself and Dickenson and Valloy.
No. Don’t think like that. You don’t know. You’ve only got a boy’s version of events. He’s sharp, but he’s still only a boy. Just because she married for her father’s advantage once, it doesn’t mean she’d do so again.
Jeremy eyed him nervously. “Got to get back in. I’m supposed to be doing lessons.”
This probably wasn’t true, but the boy didn’t give Harry a chance to question him. He just turned on his heel and pelted back the short distance to the kitchen door. Harry heard it slam, and he heard the cook’s indignant shout that followed quickly after.
He stayed as he was, standing in the shadow of the garden shed where he could not be seen from the house, trying to understand, trying to think.
It can’t be her fault. She was used before. Her father’s the fraud, not Leannah.
The money’s gone. My father’s ill. A weakness of nerves.
Except that Octavian Morehouse hadn’t looked ill. He’d looked calm, and in perfect possession of himself. And why wouldn’t he? Everything was going according to plan. Leannah’s family needed money. Leannah knew how money could be gotten and she helped set the plan in motion.
Which was why she couldn’t bring him here before. He might discover why she’d really taken off her wedding ring and given it to her sister, who was intimate with Anthony Dickenson, who was bent as a corkscrew.
Harry’s guts knotted tight. He doubled over, as if he’d just taken a blow straight to his solar plexus.
I don’t know anything!
But that was the problem. He didn’t know anything. He’d let himself be led by lust and pride. He thought Leannah had needed him in a way that Agnes never did. It had been a magnificent relief to be with her and to not have to be careful of her person or her body, or of his. He hadn’t wanted to understand what was behind her acceptance of him, or any of her actions after that.
“Harry?” a voiced called from the house. “Harry?”
Leannah. Harry straightened, startled. He shrank back, coward that he was, even as he cursed himself for his weakness. But before she had to call again, he stepped out to where he could see her, and she could see him.
“There you are!” she cried. She ran to close the last few feet between them, like any girl would on catching a glimpse of her own true love. “Oh, Harry, I’m sorry about what happened in the study. I was afraid there’d been new trouble, but everything’s going to be all right.”
“Is it?” he murmured.
“Yes, it is.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. Even now, understanding all he did, his body yearned for hers. He wanted to catch her up in his embrace and bury his face in her hair. He wanted to tell her it didn’t matter that she’d lied. It didn’t matter that she tried to betray him. Nothing at all mattered as long as she stayed with him.
He didn’t move.
Leannah pressed her face against the side of his neck so he could feel each movement of her warm, vibrant mouth as she spoke. “I know, I’m talking like a madwoman, only I’m so happy.” She paused, and lifted her face away from his collar. “What are you doing out here? Did Jeremy bring you?” She smiled, her eyes alive with sparkling good humor. “He probably wanted to give you a thorough going-over to prove he’s the man of the family.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. He also wanted to give me this.” Harry reached between them so he could draw the ring from his pocket. He waited for the shock to overcome her, but it didn’t. She just clapped her hand against her cheek in surprise.
“My ring! Oh, thank goodness.” She seized it and slipped it back onto her little finger. “I’d been absolutely sick about it. Did Jeremy take it?”
“Yes,” replied Harry dully. “He wanted to make sure it was genuine.”
“Why that little . . .” She shook herself. “Well, never mind. We’ve got it back, and that’s what’s important.”
“I wish it was.”
Leannah frowned up at him. God, he was going to miss her eyes. Ev
en now, with her brows knitted and her face filled with confusion, her eyes remained beautiful. He could see all those tiny flecks of gold that added such luster to her brilliant green irises. It occurred to him that Leannah’s wedding ring should not be a diamond, or even a ruby, but an emerald.
But then, perhaps Mr. Valloy and Mr. Dickenson didn’t care for emeralds.
“Harry?” Leannah gripped both his hands and shook them. “What’s wrong? What did Jeremy say to you?”
“It’s not what he said, or not just what he said. Leannah, I know.” Harry drew in a shuddering breath. “I know you gave the ring—your wedding ring—to Genevieve so she could give it to Dickenson.”
For a moment, Leannah only stared. Then, she yanked her hands away from him, as if she’d suddenly realized she’d touched something rotten.
“What was it for?” Harry asked as Leannah backed away, horror rising in her beautiful, shining eyes. “Was it a pledge against future income? Or a down payment for another piece of land along the Great Devon Road? Or was he just supposed to pawn it to raise more cash for the bribes to the ministers so that the route would go ahead as you all had planned?” He paused. “Is that what happened to your settlement, which was spent, not lost?”
She swallowed. He watched the movement of the muscles beneath her golden skin. He remembered how the satin flesh of her throat had felt beneath his fingertips, beneath his mouth. She wasn’t speaking. She didn’t offer any excuse or defense. Like her brother, she knew she’d been caught fair and square.
“Although, I don’t see why you’d need any more cash. Surely, I was pouring out more than enough.” He couldn’t stop talking. He should. He should get away from here. Run away. Run home. Beg his parents’ forgiveness for his foolishness and lock himself in his room like a child. Lock away possibility of any more mistakes, lock away the memories of need and love—yes, love. Love that would never come again. A broken heart could never hold love, and his heart was broken—truly, utterly completely.
“You all must have had great fun creating those false bills for me to pay so you could take the money and give it to God knows how many corrupt men . . .”
