Harlequin Historical July 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2

by Virginia Heath

  Justin and their sire were two peas in a pod. He was just as callous. Just as pompous and unfeeling. Just as entitled and heavy-handed in getting exactly what he wanted and to hell with everyone else.

  Now she knew the truth, she did not have to see the proof in black and white—she felt it in her heart. Almost as deeply as she felt the dagger in her back.

  ‘I have been doing a great amount of thinking since yesterday, reminiscing on the past, and in so doing I have had to re-evaluate many of the things I believed to be true. Especially around the time of Mama’s death. And all those thefts.’ Warily, he took a step back, his lying eyes darting everywhere while Lydia felt sick to her stomach.

  ‘Then about an hour ago I remembered something I should never have forgotten. Concerning the morning Mama and I left for Bath…’ She walked towards him, her facial muscles hurting from the force of her scowl. ‘The carriage had been loaded and I was sat in it, waiting for her. I waited for twenty minutes, Justin…because she couldn’t find her pearls.’ She paused then, because of all the hideously pivotal moments in her life, this one deserved some gravitas. She lifted her finger and pointed at him.

  ‘They had been stolen before we left, hadn’t they?’ He shook his head in immediate denial, but his eyes were wide. ‘We were gone a whole month…don’t you remember, Justin? And Owen didn’t start working for our father until the day before we arrived back home.’

  Like the mythical Janus, he had two faces. The one which might leak the truth was hidden now by his deceiver’s mask. A disguise she had fallen for time and time again. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about, poppet. I was at Cambridge then. Don’t you remember?’ That he could look both amused and worried about her at the same time was testament to his skill. ‘Surely you aren’t trying to suggest I had a hand in it?’

  Why had she never noticed her brother was dead behind the eyes before? They were as soulless and selfish as her father’s. ‘I am not suggesting it, Justin. I know it. Without a shadow of a doubt. You needed money and because Papa was so stingy with it you took it in other ways. After all, who would expect the heir to steal? What do you say to that…poppet?’

  ‘And what proof do you have for this egregious falsehood?’

  ‘None—bar what I feel in here.’ She thumped her chest. ‘But I will have! I know you put a witness on the stand to condemn Owen. You told me so yourself. I will find Mr Argent and I will pay him twice what you did to tell the truth than you did to have him lie.’

  He smiled. Smiled! And shook his head. ‘Argent is dead, Lydia. He died of a stroke some years ago.’ Like a chameleon, he went from relieved to concerned. ‘You are clearly overwrought to be inventing such nonsense. Or has Wolfe planted these poisonous seeds in your head?’

  ‘It makes no difference. Because I remember! I remember you being there next to me when they arrested Owen. I remember you wrapping your arms around me, telling me you always suspected he was a bad lot. From the outset you were the one putting poison in my head, making me doubt what I knew inside… You probably fed the same poison to Papa and he would have lapped it up. He loved to look down on people. Loved to feel superior.’

  He reached out to take her hand and she stared at it like a snake. ‘Wolfe has always been able to control you and now that Papa is dead he wants this house and he is using your good nature to get it.’

  The deed seemed to pulse inside her reticule, but she did not need the reminder. ‘You sent an innocent boy to the other side of the world to pay for your crimes, Justin, tried to get him hanged.’ She went for him then, couldn’t stop the rage from turning violent, pushing him and slapping him as tears streamed down her face. ‘How could you, Justin? When you knew I loved him?’ He scrambled away and put the desk between them. ‘I am going to Bow Street… I am going to tell them exactly what you did and let them investigate your crimes!’

  ‘No!’ Panic made his voice high-pitched. ‘You cannot do that! I am innocent!’

  ‘You are as innocent as Owen is guilty.’ She snatched his letter to Kelvedon from the desk and shook it at him. ‘If it took the Runner less than two weeks to uncover this, he’ll have found enough evidence to have you arrested and charged within a month!’

  ‘But I am your brother!’

  ‘You had a young man transported for a crime he didn’t commit while you committed fraud, theft, perjured yourself in a court of law and broke our dying mother’s heart when you stole her pearls. She never got over the loss of them. We both remember that, don’t we?’

  The real Justin appeared as his mask crumbled in panic. ‘It wasn’t like that! I only borrowed them…’

  ‘Pawned them, more like!’

  He grabbed her hands and stared beseechingly. ‘With the intent of getting them back, Lydia, I swear it…but I was led astray by bad people and in danger… I had no choice…’

  Even looking at him, watching him squirm, made her sick to her stomach. She tugged her hands away because his true character made her skin crawl. ‘Is nothing ever your fault, Justin? Since when is theft borrowing? Since when is it acceptable to pawn somebody else’s possessions without their consent?’

  ‘I was going to get them back! Things just got out of hand. Papa wanted someone’s head on a pole…’

  ‘And you gave him Owen’s rather than admit it was you!’

  ‘I gave him a servant, someone I assumed was of no consequence…’ His head reeled sideways at the force of her slap, and he whimpered, clutching his cheek as blood dripped out of his nose.

  ‘He was of consequence to me! You knew that and used it to your advantage.’ Just as she knew he would have happily told her father of their romance if she’d had the courage to speak out, then used that, too, as further proof of Owen’s guilt. ‘You callously thought it all through and with malicious calculation, you planted evidence. Paid a witness…’

  ‘You cannot prove that. Nobody but you heard me say it and if you betray me—your own kin—and go to Bow Street, I will deny it all till my dying breath. It will be your word against mine. A peer versus a scoundrel’s wife! Nobody will believe you!’ His face had contorted into a mask of hatred now. Selfish, self-serving, desperate hatred.

  ‘While I might not be able to prove it yet, that makes no difference, because I know without a shadow of a doubt that whatever happens next, you will already go to hell for it!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Whoever had coined the phrase Be careful what you wish for… clearly knew a thing or two.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Randolph’s troubled expression undoubtedly matched Owen’s.

  ‘What can I do? This will break Lydia’s heart.’ The second Runner’s report was more damning than the first. And even when presented with proof of her brother’s debauchery and downright duplicity regarding her, she had still asked Owen to pay his debts. If he sent the blighter to jail, she’d never forgive him.

  ‘You have to tell her.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Because it wasn’t worth it. He saw that now as clear as day. Her father wasn’t yet in the ground, she had just learned her brother had sold her off to Kelvedon. Owen wouldn’t be responsible for shattering what was left of her world.

  ‘I’ll let sleeping dogs lie.’ Better to be the bigger man than the vengeful one.

  ‘Then the past will always be there—hovering in the background.’

  Not if he accepted her forgiveness. He knew in his heart she would still forgive him. She loved him and that would be enough. ‘I’ll simply tell her I stole those blasted candlesticks in a moment of weakness and have been too ashamed to tell her.’

  His friend rolled his eyes. ‘And her mother’s precious pearls?’

  ‘No… I shan’t admit to those. I’ll deny all knowledge of the pearls because they matter too much to Lydia.’

  Randolph threw his arms up in the air exasperated. ‘Thi
s all matters, Owen! Just because the truth is unpalatable doesn’t mean Lydia doesn’t have the right to hear it!’

  ‘He’s right, Owen.’ The so far silent Gertie stroked his hand. ‘You were determined to find the truth. You’ve hunted for it for years. Now you have it, you must see it through to the end. It isn’t fair that we both know it and your own wife doesn’t. That’s not the way to build a good marriage.’

  She was right. They both were. He knew it just as he suddenly knew so much more. Enlightenment had made him very philosophical all of a sudden. It was staggering how clear things became when one was stood on the moral high ground. From the summit he could now finally see everything and no one was more shocked than he was to discover it had altered his perspective.

  Owen knew he should be angry. Knew he should be howling at the heavens and kicking furniture all around the room at Justin Barton’s horrendous crimes, or at least savouring the moment of being completely exonerated, but instead all he cared about was how it would affect Lydia.

  And selfishly, how it might affect him by default.

  Them.

  Could there ever truly be a them if he had her brother arrested? The new Earl of Fulbrook was the only family she had left. She adored the snake. And while she might be currently furious at him for arranging her betrothal to Kelvedon, she would not want to believe Justin capable of committing such a betrayal, nor thank him for appraising her of the fact, and Owen loved her too much to put her through the ordeal of another trial. Another sentence. Another banishment to whichever miserable English prison they sent peers to while she was left to pick up the pieces. There would be more scandal and enough misplaced guilt to crush her spirit.

  Two wrongs did not make a right.

  But, as usual, blasted Randolph had a point. There had been enough lies and he would not add to them. That wasn’t the way to start a marriage. ‘I’ll tell her after the funeral.’ Which she was currently in the midst of planning because her wastrel brother didn’t have it in him to organise anything which did not benefit himself.

  Or at least that was where he assumed she was. He had awoken all alone and, with the reliably watchful Slugger mysteriously missing, too, found nobody who knew where she had gone. They had both been gone all morning.

  * * *

  Gertie was pouring him a second cup of tea when he heard Lydia on the stairs and Owen rushed out to greet her. Except it wasn’t Lydia. It was Slugger.

  ‘Where is my wife?’

  ‘The same place she’s been for the last three hours—sat on a bench in Hyde Park. Staring at a bunch of trees.’

  ‘At the back of the Serpentine?’ Alarm bells started ringing. ‘What’s she doing there?’

  His big friend shrugged. ‘She went to her father’s house, stayed there less than half an hour, came out looking distraught and then went to the park. I can’t get a squeak out of her and, while I was loath to leave her all alone, I can’t deny I’m worried. Something’s wrong, Owen. Very wrong. You need to go fetch her because she will not listen to me.’

  He didn’t need to be told twice, dashed down the stairs, sprinted down Curzon Street and, when his legs weren’t carrying him fast enough, did the unthinkable and hailed a hackney to take him as close as he could get before running again.

  His lungs were burning by the time he reached the Serpentine. In the distance, there indeed was Lydia, still sitting on the bench, her shoulders slumped as if the weight of the entire world now rested on them.

  ‘Lydia.’ Her head snapped up, her expression suddenly so tragic he couldn’t bear it. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the past…and what you said about it being like brambles. And I understand now, because I feel as though they are choking me.’

  All his fault. He’d kicked the hornets’ nest. He couldn’t let it lie and now she was suffering.

  ‘About that…’ Gingerly, he sat next to her on the bench, deciding there and then it was his job to protect her from the truth. She didn’t deserve to feel this wretched. Nor should she have to choose between him over the only living relative she had left. ‘I am calling off the investigation. I’ve decided I don’t care what happened. All that matters is now.’

  ‘Liar.’ It was barely a whisper. ‘You know my brother did it, don’t you?’

  Owen was silent, trying to work out how she had learned what the Runner had relayed to him at eight this morning when she had been gone since dawn. He considered denying it, considered confessing to the crimes himself, then dismissed both foolish ideas because neither would be fair. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Nobody. I remembered something. Something significant. My mother’s pearls…’ She shook her head, then stared back down at her hands, clearly lost in her own personal pit of despair. ‘They were missing weeks before I first met you. She lost them before we went to Bath, which coincidentally was about a week after my brother came home from Cambridge. He had been summoned back by Papa for overspending his allowance and, according to your file, he already owed a thousand pounds of gambling debts by then. I confronted him this morning…’

  He reached for her hand. Through the soft leather of her gloves, he could tell it was frozen solid. ‘Come… Let’s go home. It’s freezing out here.’

  She refused to budge.

  ‘My heart always knew you were innocent. That’s the real tragedy I cannot get over. I didn’t want to believe my eyes, but…’

  ‘I know, Lydia. It doesn’t matter.’ And in that moment he realised it didn’t. Randolph, damn him, was right again. In the grand scheme of things this was in the past, set in stone and ultimately irreversible. Therefore, it was best left there. He wouldn’t allow it to taint his future now that he had a future with her. ‘It really doesn’t matter any more.’

  She turned to him then and he could see she was thoroughly devastated. Guilty and ashamed. Broken. ‘I should have said something, Owen. I should have spoken out. Defended you. Then perhaps…’

  He placed a finger on her chilled lips. ‘There is no perhaps. There is nothing you could have said or done which would have changed the outcome. I would still have been arrested. Still sentenced. Still sent to the other side of the world.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ He wrapped his arm around her and tugged her close. ‘I had this notion that when I came home, I would give you irrefutable proof of my innocence and then I would forgive you and it would all be made better. I really wanted to savour that moment and I suppose feel superior because of it, but I don’t want that now.’

  In fact, all things considered, it was now the last thing he wanted. ‘As I see it, you have nothing to be forgiven for either. We were both powerless to change things, Lydia. Neither of us had a voice. I was a nobody and you were just the sixteen-year-old daughter of a man who never noticed you. We were both victims. We both lost out. Were both unfairly punished. If you had tried to defend me, admitted you knew me, then your father would have sent you away in disgrace, I’d have definitely hanged and your mother would have had nobody with her when she died.’ He kissed the top of her head, feeling bizarrely lighter than he had in years. The truth—the whole truth—had truly liberated him from the past more effectively than he could have ever imagined even a few days ago. Like an oppressive weight had been lifted, those damn brambles hacked away. ‘With hindsight, it could have been so much worse and all we lost is ten years.’

  ‘Thanks to my brother.’ She pulled away, squaring her shoulders, so determined to be brave. ‘He bribed the stable master to testify against you in court.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The stable master is dead.’

  ‘I know that, too. Mr Argent died of a stroke two years ago. But his daughter is alive and well and living in the Lake District…’

  She sighed, her clever brain piecing it all together. ‘I suppose he made a deathbed confessi
on and she is prepared to testify as much in court.’

  ‘She is. But I am not going to bring charges.’

  * * *

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Lydia blinked back at him, completely flabbergasted. ‘My brother blamed you for a crime you didn’t commit. Had you transported! Tried to have you hanged!’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Don’t you want retribution? Justice? Revenge?’ Because she did. She had been sat here for hours, debating whether to head straight to Bow Street to tell them of his treachery or to head back to Libertas to beg for her husband’s forgiveness first and see if he could find it in his big heart to want to remain properly married to her when she could have saved him. She should have remembered that one pertinent detail sooner.

  Ten whole years sooner!

  ‘I’ve never been one for revenge. I’ve always prided myself on being the bigger man. Randolph calls it my most nauseatingly pious trait. While I wasn’t born a noble, I was born intrinsically noble and I rather like the irony of being the obviously bigger and better man in this case.’

  ‘Please don’t be noble for me!’

  ‘I’m not. Not entirely. A tiny part of me cannot bring myself to have your only living relative arrested, that is true, but bizarrely, and for the life of me I cannot explain why, I am quite content to be noble. He knows he is guilty and he also knows we know he is guilty. He’ll get his comeuppance eventually. It is as predictable as night following day. Fate has a funny way of squaring things off—as our marriage bears testament to. Besides…’ He looped his arms around her waist again possessively and kissed her, smiling. ‘The very best revenge is not to let his petty cowardice and self-preserving selfishness win now that we finally are bound together for all eternity as we were always meant to be.’

  ‘After everything, you are going to allow Justin to escape scot-free?’ He really was the biggest of men to allow that. And most possibly the most foolhardy. ‘I want him to pay, Owen!’