Louisa hardly recognized the woman from the dinner party. Gone was the vapid mouse of a woman and in her place was a paragon of polite decorum with bright eyes and a wide smile full of confidence.
It took a moment for Louisa to return the curtsy. “Thank you for receiving me, my lady. I hope I am not inconveniencing you in any way.”
The countess shook her head, her thick brown hair swaying gently where it was coiled about her face. “Not at all. It is I who must apologize for my appearance the other evening. It’s this insufferable child, you see. I find I’m not quite myself.”
Louisa felt a sharp pain of longing at the sight of the countess laying her hands against her rounded stomach.
How she longed for a babe of her own, one with Sebastian’s eyes and smile. But her hope was somewhat soured as she recalled the distance between them. She had to discover the truth if she were ever to rid Sebastian of his curse.
“Shall I ring for tea?” the countess went on.
Louisa stopped her with a raised hand. “I’m afraid my visit is more of a personal one rather than social. I understand you might have a woman by the name of Tabitha Shaw in your employ.”
The countess’s smile dimmed somewhat, but she kept her poise. “Yes, she is. Is there something amiss?”
“Not at all,” Louisa was quick to reassure her. She didn’t wish to put Mrs. Shaw’s employment at risk. “I had only wished to ask her a question about her former employment.”
The other woman’s face clouded with confusion. “Do you mean with Viscountess Raynham?”
“Yes. You see I had a question about an occurrence that neither the viscountess nor my husband seems to recall with detail, and I was hoping Mrs. Shaw might provide assistance.”
“Of course. Allow me to fetch her for you and provide you with some privacy.”
Louisa nodded her thanks as the woman left. She was alone only for a few moments before the housekeeper arrived. Louisa didn’t know what she’d been expecting but it certainly wasn’t the woman who stood before her. Housekeepers in her mind were older women who had been promoted to the position after serving for years faithfully on a staff. While this woman appeared older by the fine lines around her mouth and eyes, she was in no way decrepit or aged. She was beautiful with shiny, black hair held back in a simple chignon that accentuated the fine bones of her face and long neck. She carried herself with a regal grace, her chin high and steady as she curtsied.
“Your Grace. You wished to speak with me.” Her voice had a melodious timber that curled around Louisa, and she couldn’t help but hear the slight Irish inflection in the woman’s words.
Louisa was suddenly gripped with nerves now that she faced the woman who could fix everything for her or destroy it entirely.
“Mrs. Shaw, thank you for speaking with me. I think you may know I am the Duchess of Waverly. I married Sebastian at the beginning of the season.”
Mrs. Shaw gave a nod. “Yes, I had heard, madam. Congratulations.” She spoke the words with graceful neutrality.
“Thank you,” Louisa whispered, set off balance by the woman’s steady tone. “You see I had hoped to ask you of a delicate subject. Please understand that my husband has already told me what he knows of the events that occurred that night, but I was hoping you might provide better insight as a servant in the household.”
“You mean the night the duke killed himself.”
The statement rang through the air between them even though Mrs. Shaw had spoken it in her soft and commanding way.
“Yes.” The word came out as four or more syllables as Louisa tried to regain her composure.
She felt slightly ill. It only then occurred to her she was prying into family secrets that were not hers, and yet the price was too great if she did not proceed.
“What is it you’d like to know, Your Grace?”
“Well, I think I should like to know the truth.”
The housekeeper smiled then. It was soft and somewhat beguiling as the woman seemed to consider something within herself.
“We all represent different versions of the truth, Your Grace. Which one do you seek?”
“The one that exonerates my husband from the prison he’s built around himself.” The words were out before she could stop them, and Mrs. Shaw’s gaze grew pointed.
“His Grace has always chosen a more sequestered life, preferring to rely on his own merits rather than the attention of others. Has this changed?”
Louisa licked her lips, wondering if she could speak the words that burned through every day. “He says he cannot love.”
She hated how her voice shook on the words, and she clasped her hands together in front of her, willing herself to calm.
Mrs. Shaw’s eyes dimmed, a frown settling on her lips. “I see why you’ve come then. How can I help?”
“Viscountess Raynham suggested you might know something.”
“I find it hard to believe the viscountess would give away her secrets.”
“Oh, it was nothing like that,” Louisa was quick to reassure the woman. “It was more that she gave it away unintentionally.”
This seemed to strike a chord with the housekeeper as her mouth tightened.
“What happened that night is not what the current duke believes. Victor Fielding did not kill himself.”
Again, she spoke as if she were doing nothing more than reading from a grocer’s bill, and yet her words held the power to knock the strength from Louisa’s knees. She sat on the sofa behind her before she could no longer hold herself up.
“He didn’t kill himself.” It wasn’t a question. She’d merely needed to repeat the words.
“No, he did not. Of that I am certain.”
So many questions poured through Louisa’s mind, but only a single one stood out.
“How can you know that?”
“Viscountess Raynham told her son that his father killed himself when his lover wished to end their affair, correct?”
Louisa gave a quick nod.
“I can tell you that’s not true. The duke’s lover never ended their affair. Further, I can tell you there was another person in the house that night. The viscountess’s own lover was present, a spiteful dandy who was enraged to find the duke in residence. You see, they had an arrangement of sorts. They kept their lives separate but discreet. Never should one life cross the other, if you are to understand my meaning.”
Louisa’s heart thudded harder at the mere mention of separate lives. With every word the woman spoke, Louisa understood with greater clarity every nuance of her husband, every moment in his younger years that had shaped the man he had become, and her heart ached for him.
“What happened?” Louisa couldn’t stop now. She had to know.
“The young dandy became enraged, as I said. We were all below stairs then, you understand. We were under strict orders to remain in the servants’ areas when the viscountess was carrying out her affairs. We heard yelling and doors slamming and then there was a single gunshot and the viscountess screamed.”
Mrs. Shaw closed her eyes briefly, and Louisa knew she was reliving that night. She felt a stab of guilt at forcing the woman to endure it, but there was too much at stake.
When she opened her eyes, she said, “The viscountess sent the stable master to fetch her son at his club. No one was allowed in the room where the duke lay.” Louisa wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard the woman’s voice hitch on the last part.
She’d heard enough, though. Louisa stood and went to the woman, taking both of the housekeeper’s hands into her own.
“Thank you, Mrs. Shaw. You cannot know how much this means and what it will do for my husband.” Louisa paused, searching the woman’s face. “You’re so very sure that the duke did not kill himself over his lover?”
The woman shook her head, her lips firm.
“How can you be so certain?” Louisa hardly whispered the question, the need to know burning through her.
Mrs. Shaw’s voice was clear when sh
e said, “Because I was Victor Fielding’s lover.”
Chapter 15
He was surprised to find his duchess not at home when he returned after the morning session in Parliament. He recalled she had said something about a gardening society, but as he couldn’t imagine Louisa gardening, he had dismissed the idea. In his limited experience with the female sex, he chalked it up to some kind of flight of fancy, a whimsical notion of attempting new things.
He sorted through the post Milton gave him as he made his way to his study. When he passed the small table in the hallway where he usually laid Louisa’s letters, he found the table wasn’t there. He stared at the spot where it should have been, his mind unable to figure out the void that he found.
He looked up, blinking, the post forgotten in his hand.
The vestibule had been transformed.
Gone was the water-stained wallpaper that had hung there since his boyhood. In its place was a simple silk paper of startling blue, so pale and yet so touching it expanded the space beyond one’s imagination. The cramped and dark vestibule was now a grand foyer. The woodwork had been polished, the crumpling plaster repaired. He could even make out the individual panes of stained glass in the windows beside the front doors. Had he known they were stained glass?
Finally, his eyes set on the table.
He eyed it suspiciously as if he wasn’t quite certain it was the same table. For one, it was gleaming like something entirely new when he was very well aware the table had sat in this same hallway for more years than he’d been alive. Inspecting it carefully, he found the place where he’d chipped his tooth on its surface when he’d carelessly chased their spaniel through these halls as a boy. She must have had it refinished just as she’d said. And it was in a much more advantageous place now. Tucked into the corner, it was closer to the door and anyone coming inside who needed it for packages and whatnot while also freeing the corridor itself for traffic.
The woman was a master at beauty and practicality.
He pressed a hand to his chest where a sudden pain throbbed, and he turned back into his study, Louisa’s letters still in his hand.
This love nonsense was just as unpleasant as he had suspected. It interrupted his daily activities and clouded his mind. He didn’t have time for it. And yet, he couldn’t imagine his life without it.
He needed to tell her.
He needed to tell her he loved her just as soon as possible, but how?
Was he to simply blurt it out?
He was saved from such unwieldy thoughts by the sound of the front door being thrown wide, banging into the hallway beyond. He turned to the study door, which gave way to the foyer, and was pleasantly surprised to find his wife come sailing through the it.
She threw herself into his arms before he could stop her, her grip tight around his torso.
“Louisa, whatever is the matter?”
She didn’t answer, merely shaking her head against his chest.
He held her tightly, attempting to peer down at her, only to be poked in the chin by the stone of the hatpin he’d given her. He reared back to look at the thing so innocently tucked into the brim of the small, purple hat perched on the front of her head. It warmed him to see it there, but he dismissed the thought as he attempted to unravel himself from his wife.
“Louisa, you must tell me what’s happened? Is it the Garden Society? Was it really so awful?”
He pried her arms away so he could shift her back enough to see her face. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.
“Oh, Sebastian, it’s terrible,” she whispered.
A coldness began to creep through his concern.
“Louisa, is it one of your sisters? What’s happened? Are they all right?”
She shook her head again. “It isn’t them, Sebastian. It’s you.”
Trepidation replaced the concern that had built in him, and he dropped his hands from her arms, taking an automatic step back.
“What are you talking about?”
A line appeared between her brows, and like watching a spooked horse, he couldn’t help but know what was about to happen with a growing sense of remorse. Dax’s words whispered through his mind, and somehow Sebastian just knew.
Louisa had done something. She had tried to right a perceived wrong, had tried to cure him of something of which she thought he needed a cure. Years of protective instincts kicked in, and the euphoric feelings of only moments before evaporated as his need for survival overpowered it all.
“The other day at tea your mother said something strange. Only I didn’t understand how strange until just this morning when Williams was doing my hair.”
“I still don’t understand, Louisa.”
She pulled at her gloves, which he only now noticed she still wore. She’d been so hasty to get to him she was still entirely dressed for her outing. An outing he was coming to suspect had not been to the Garden Society meeting.
“I told you your mother had asked some unusually prying questions about your father’s death, and at first, I just thought she was trying to squeeze her way back into your life, so I dismissed her and her foolishness. I would never do something to betray your loyalty, but I knew she thought otherwise.”
She had said all this before, and while he still believed her, the sense of impending disaster overrode his feelings toward it.
“So what is it she said that has led you to this state?”
“She asked me if you entrusted me with your secrets because gentlemen have no one with whom to confide without their wives where as women always have their lady’s maids.”
Sebastian was uncomfortable keeping a valet, so he did not understand how a woman could presume to entrust anything to a servant. But then, he knew Louisa was vastly different when it came to such things and that included relations with her maid.
“Go on.” This all seemed like utter nonsense. Perhaps Louisa was only misinterpreting his mother’s words, reading into them something she wished were there.
“I found her lady’s maid.”
This statement meant very little to him. “I’m not seeing how such a task would be difficult. I’m sure her lady’s maid was in residence at Raynham House.”
Louisa was already shaking her head as he spoke, prying the other glove from her hand. “No, the maid employed at the time of your father’s death left her post as your mother’s lady’s maid some years ago. She’s now the housekeeper for the Earl of Bannerbridge.”
He blinked, his feelings too twisted up to speak. He willed Louisa to get on with it, so he could determine just how much damage had been done.
“Did you go speak with the housekeeper then?” It seemed the next logical step, and one Louisa would have no qualms in taking.
“Yes.”
The single word pierced his heart like a dagger.
“What is it you discovered, Louisa?” For he was sure now she’d uncovered something. Something he would wish were kept buried.
“Mrs. Shaw—that’s her name, you see—told me your father didn’t kill himself over his lover, but rather she suspected he was, in fact—” She paused and licked her lips as if the next she had to say would take all her strength. “He was murdered, Sebastian. Murdered by your mother’s lover.”
The words seeped into his consciousness, but their unsettling effect left him uncertain if he was still even in his study or not, if he were standing or not. He reached out a hand as he turned away from Louisa, no longer able to look at her. He placed his palm on his desk behind him, the solid wood reassuring him that he was still alive and still in his study.
His father hadn’t killed himself over his lover? He’d been killed by—
He whirled around, anger coursing through him. “How do you know this? How can you be so sure?”
He wasn’t sure what showed on his face, but Louisa took a step away from him, her hands going up to her breast as if to shield herself.
“Mrs. Shaw told me. She was there that night, Sebastian. She heard what was happen
ing. She knew who was in the house.”
One emotion tumbled over the next until he couldn’t be certain what it was he felt. Anger, certainly, but there was also a numbness that clouded his thoughts. If what Louisa said were true, his father died at the hand of his mother’s lover. His mother, who had been nothing but consistent in her abandonment of both of them, who had proven time and again that they were nothing to her—she would have been the cause of his father’s death, the one parent who loved Sebastian unconditionally. The one parent he’d had to rely on, to teach him the things of the world, to teach him to be a gentleman.
Flashes of his childhood paraded through his mind, so many parts of it empty except for those with his father. Any moment worth remembering included his father, and his father died because of his mother’s selfishness. A sense of powerlessness swept over everything, and through it, he saw Louisa, standing in front of him, biting her lower lip.
“Why?” The word came out strangled, and he cleared his throat, tried again. “Why would you do this, Louisa? Why would you go poking where you don’t belong?”
Her mouth opened on a silent exclamation as her eyes grew wide. He’d surprised her, and somehow it sent a wave of calm through him.
“Sebastian, I thought you deserved to know the truth.”
“I deserved to know the truth?” The part of him that felt violated and hurt that she would intrude into his life like this, that she would attempt to fix whatever she thought was wrong just as she’d torn apart his house, fueled his angry words. “I deserved to know that my father was murdered. Did you ever stop to think what that means? That there might be a killer out there. That my father’s death was never avenged.”
She said nothing, only blinking as her mouth remained open without sound emerging.
“Did you not think about that because you were too concerned with fixing me?” The words flew from his mouth before he could stop them, and like an arrow finding its mark, Louisa’s mouth snapped shut, her eyes narrowing in fury.
“No, Sebastian.” She spoke the words calmly, carefully.
“You’re so busy trying to fix me. Have you ever looked at yourself? Have you ever seen how you bow to your sisters’ will? What about you, Louisa? Before you fix anyone else, perhaps you should fix yourself.”
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