He claimed to have knowledge you had conspired with the French, and were responsible for the Marquess of Searle’s death. All he required of me was that I take on the role of governess to Lady Constance and Lady Honora and search your belongings for ciphered messages, which I was to then decipher and provide to him.
I was desperate to save my father and myself, and though I know it is not a sufficient excuse, I hope you will one day forgive me for my part in this injustice. I could not have known what I would find within Whitley House was not evidence of your guilt but instead the other half of me I had not known was missing. I could not have known I would fall in love with you, or that I would come to love your sisters as though they were my own.
Nor could I have known the Earl of Kilross brought me here under false pretenses. I have destroyed the original ciphers that were placed in your drawer—not by you, as I know now, but by the earl or one of his emissaries. I will not rest until I can right the wrongs I have aided in perpetrating against you.
Most affectionately yours,
Jacinda
Swallowing against a fresh rush of tears, she folded the letter into thirds. There was so much more she longed to say, but she was running out of time. Deciphering the messages from Crispin’s drawer had led her to a discovery all its own. The ciphers bore the same errors as the test cipher Kilross had given her. Words were transposed, jumbled out of order alongside one another. The mistakes were too many in number to be overlooked.
And as she had stared blearily at the deciphered messages in the early hours of the morning, what had never made sense to her at long last did. Crispin was not guilty of anything. The ciphers had been written by Kilross himself.
But going to Crispin with her evidence was out of the question. As it was, she doubted he would believe her. Even if he did, he would seek out the Earl of Kilross, demanding answers. A man so intent upon bringing about another’s downfall that he planted false evidence against him was a desperate man indeed. Perhaps even an unhinged one, and Jacinda could not bear for anything to happen to Crispin.
In her naïveté, she had brought this misery upon him, and it was now her duty to undo all the damage she had done. She did not dare hope Crispin would ever forgive her, but if she could lift this curse from his shoulders, she would.
With a shaking hand, she addressed the missive to him before standing.
All that remained for her to do was leave Whitley House without anyone being the wiser. First, she needed to dispense with the guard at her door. Once he was out of the way, she could escape via the same passageway she and Crispin had made use of the night of the masquerade. Taking a deep breath for fortification, she moved across the chamber, setting her plan into motion.
*
Crispin stared at the breakfast he could not stomach eating. Exhaustion mingled with the anger that would not be ameliorated by any number of smashed objects. He had not slept but had spent the night alternately pacing in his study and breaking nearly everything inside it to bits. The culmination had been his chair, which had been surprisingly difficult to destroy. But he had finally accomplished it by holding the legs and swinging it into his desk. The legs had made excellent kindling, as had the arms.
Still, he was not satisfied. Nothing healed the gaping wound inside him. Nothing could chase the sickness swirling in his gut. Nothing could change the fact the woman he loved had betrayed him so thoroughly and viciously, that he did not know how he would ever recover from the staggering treachery of it.
He would have to face her today.
Would have to craft some sort of plan for dealing with her. For dealing with Kilross as well, a man he had spoken a scant handful of words to if his recollection served. Thus far, he had no notion of why such a man would be so invested in seeking his downfall. Nor had he any inkling why a woman who had been tasked with orchestrating it would also go to such great lengths to do so. Had bedding him been necessary?
His hand clenched, the knuckles sore from the abuse they had received in the night. Had telling him she loved him, writhing beneath him, and sucking his bloody cock been necessary? Her betrayal was personal. It ran him through like a lance.
Nicholson appeared suddenly in his peripheral vision, clearing his throat. “Forgive the interruption, Your Grace.”
“I bloody well told you I wish to be alone,” he snarled at his butler, slamming his fist upon the table with so much force the cutlery danced.
Nicholson remained stalwart, not even wincing. “Yes, Your Grace. However, there is a Sir Robert Smythe at the door, and he is most adamant about an audience.”
“I know of no Sir Robert,” he said, making a dismissive gesture as if to shoo an unwanted fly. “Send him away.”
The butler cleared his throat again. “He is asking for an audience with Miss Turnbow, Your Grace.”
It was no secret Miss Turnbow was currently a prisoner in her apartments, with a rotating guard courtesy of Duncan positioned outside her door. The action had been met with perplexity by his domestics. He had not given a damn. The woman was a viper, and she needed to be contained whilst he decided what he would next do with her.
His gaze narrowed. “Explain to Sir Robert that Miss Turnbow is not at home.”
“I already have, Your Grace, and I am afraid he is quite adamant.”
Beelzebub and hellfire. He rose from his seat. It was not as if he was going to eat the bloody breakfast before him anyhow. And if Nicholson could not chase the blighter away, Crispin would. There was also the possibility a visitor for her might have some information regarding her that would prove useful.
His strides lengthening at the notion, he stalked to the front hall, surprised to find a tall, thin bespectacled gentleman with a shock of hoary hair that looked as if he had been raking his fingers through it. He held a hat in his hands that looked as if it had seen its heyday some thirty years earlier. But there was something familiar about the man’s face. The shape of it, perhaps, and he possessed a warm brown gaze with such unique striations of color that Crispin had only seen it before on one other person.
Her.
Good God, could it be possible the man before him was her father?
“Sir Robert,” he clipped out abruptly, offering a curt bow. “I am the Duke of Whitley. What brings you here?”
“I have come for my daughter,” he said in a booming voice, eschewing a return bow altogether. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”
“Who is your daughter, sir?” he returned tightly. “I cannot answer your query until you answer mine.
“My daughter is Jacinda Turnbow, you blackguard,” the older man snarled with a startling amount of vigor. “I demand to see her at once.”
He hissed out a breath of displeasure. “Perhaps this is a dialogue better conducted in private, Sir Robert. Nicholson shall see to your hat and coat. Come with me.”
Crispin wisely refrained from leading his unwanted guest to his decimated study, opting instead for the small salon where his mother had favored receiving callers. He waited for Nicholson to close the doors before gesturing toward a settee. “Please, Sir Robert.”
But Sir Robert stood firm. “I will not sit until I see my daughter. Do not think for a moment I am unaware of your black reputation. If you have harmed her in any way, you will answer to me.”
He had gone all night without sleep and felt as if he had been picked apart by ravens from the inside out. His patience was nonexistent. “And what do you propose to do to me, Sir Robert? Do tell.”
“I shall pummel you with my fists if I must, you scoundrel,” huffed Jacinda’s father, raising his wizened hands as if in warning.
Crispin could not contain the dark mirth at the image Sir Robert’s threat brought to mind. Had she somehow gotten word to her father that she was his impromptu prisoner, he wondered? Surely this could not be a coincidence. Perhaps Sir Robert was a part of the machinations against him.
“If you do not mind, sir, I would far prefer for you to answer some
questions before the pummeling commences,” he quipped, careful to keep his tone flippant when inside, he was a maelstrom. “What do you know of her association with the Earl of Kilross?”
The elder gentleman paled. “How much do you know?”
A fresh stab of betrayal sank into his gut. If any part of him had foolishly continued to believe that proof of Jacinda’s innocence might somehow emerge, her father’s words crushed it. “I know she has been here in my household under false pretenses. Whether she had been tasked with planting false evidence against me or discovering it, I cannot yet say, as the lady in question continues to deny knowledge of it.”
“Good God.” Sir Robert ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “She is not to blame. I am at fault for everything. Please, Your Grace. Allow me to explain, I beg you. Jacinda must not be held accountable for my sins.”
On that point, he would beg to differ, but he would not quibble now when it seemed that some much-needed answers could possibly be at hand. “Go on, Sir Robert.”
“I have lost everything,” Sir Robert revealed, pausing as he seemed to collect his thoughts. “I do not know when the downward slide began or even how, but a few hundred pounds one night and then a few more the next…I kept thinking to win back what I had lost. But the hole became deeper. The Earl of Kilross holds all my vowels. He promised he would forgive my debts in exchange for Jacinda doing as he asked.”
The breath left him. If Sir Robert was to be believed, Kilross had committed extortion against Jacinda. “Go on.”
Sir Robert’s gaze fell to the floor. “Because Kilross works for the Foreign Office, he is familiar with the fact that I am a decipherer. My eyes are no longer what they once were, and I have been relying upon my daughter for assistance in my work. Jacinda is an excellent decipherer in her own right, and Kilross knows it. He arranged for her to become governess here so she might have access to your correspondence, where she could then read any ciphered letters you received from the French and report back to him.”
The very notion he would be receiving ciphers from the enemy made Crispin so bloody angry, he wanted to tear apart his study a second time. Hellfire, but there was only one person who could be intent upon making it look as if he were guilty of treason.
Kilross himself. Not Jacinda. His heart rejoiced. She had been forced to deceive and betray him, and while that did not mean his forgiveness would come easily, it meant there was hope for them yet. That all was not lost. That she was not lost.
That everything they had shared had been as real and true as he had believed.
But there was more to this sordid tale, he could smell it, and he needed to know precisely what faced him.
“There is just one problem with the earl’s misguided pursuit of me,” he drawled, feeling an icy chill settle deep inside him. “I am not guilty of conspiring with the enemy. Nor would I ever do so. I did not dedicate years to being a soldier, risking life and limb, just to assist Boney in his desire to conquer the bloody world.”
Heaving a sigh, Sir Robert met his gaze once more, and though it was distorted behind the lens of his spectacles, the resemblance to Jacinda’s rare eyes once more gave him an uncomfortable jolt. “I am aware of that now, Your Grace. You may be a rakehell and a despoiler of innocents, but you are not a traitor. Nor are you a murderer.”
With a bitter smile, he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I thank you for the glowing report of my character.”
“There is good news to be had in all of this, however, and it is the reason for my precipitous arrival here,” Sir Robert continued. “Jacinda need not be at the mercy of Kilross any longer, for I have used her notes to break the great cipher we received from the Peninsula.”
Crispin frowned, wondering if the man was a bit mad. “I am afraid I do not follow, sir.”
“Napoleon’s army has been making use of a new, numerical cipher for several months now,” Sir Robert elaborated, and he did not sound mad at all but utterly lucid. “The intelligence officers on the Peninsula have been unable to break the cipher. Dispatches discovered in the possession of captured or killed French soldiers have been sent to me so that I may solve it. Jacinda was aiding me before coming here to you as governess. It was her notes that ultimately led me to decipher them just this morning, and that is how I know beyond a doubt there can have been no conspiracy committed by you to murder the Marquess of Searle. He is very much alive, Your Grace. According to one of the dispatches I read, he is being held prisoner by the French.”
The familiar confines of the salon swirled before him as he struggled with the knowledge that Sir Robert had just imparted. “But that is impossible. Morgan was taken by El Corazón Oscuro and murdered. I witnessed the aftermath with my own eyes. I saw the pools of his blood, the hand containing his signet ring all that remained.”
“The marquess is alive,” Sir Robert repeated. “He is a captive, and from what I was able to glean, he has been tortured in an effort to gain information about our forces. But the Spaniards did not kill him that day, Whitley, and neither did you conspire to have it done. I know that now, and I shall go to the Foreign Office with the proof myself.”
Incredible. Impossible.
Morgan was… alive.
His brain whirred, calculating and assessing everything Jacinda’s father had just told him. One face struck him. “The cipher you just cracked was numerical, Sir Robert?”
The elder man nodded. “You are not to speak a word of this to anyone. I should not even have divulged this much to you. Indeed, I would not have done so had not my conscience weighed upon me so heavily for my part in this disaster.”
“There were ciphers hidden in a locked drawer of my study desk,” he said, the jagged shards of the truth piecing together in his mind. “Someone planted them there. But they were nothing but random letters, no numbers to speak of.”
Sir Robert’s expression was grim. “It is as I feared, then. Kilross created a cipher for Jacinda as a test before sending her here. It was alphabetical, based on one of the old French ciphers no longer in use. I believe the earl has a vendetta against you, Your Grace.”
It would certainly seem so. But why? And how? Crispin did not even know the man. “We are in agreement on that, sir. As to your daughter… I am keeping her confined in her chamber, under guard.”
Red surged to Sir Robert’s pale cheeks. “You are keeping her a prisoner?”
Shame assailed him. How quick he had been to think her false. How easily he had turned his back upon her, so caught up in his own selfish grief. “I shall take you to her, Sir Robert. She is free to leave with you, this very morning should she wish it.”
Damnation, but he hoped like hell she did not wish it. The thought of her leaving Whitley House… leaving him… it left him aching as if his flesh had been torn open by the stab of a bayonet. Furious as he had been over her betrayal, he still had not allowed himself to contemplate the notion of her being anywhere else.
He cleared his throat against the violent surge of emotion threatening to choke him. “Follow me, if you please, sir.”
In uncomfortable silence, he led Sir Robert to the second floor. But when they reached Jacinda’s apartments, the door was ajar, and there was no sentry stationed outside. Heart hammering in his chest, he broke into a run.
Crashing into her chamber, he found the guard sitting on his arse on the floor, rubbing a knot on his head with a wry expression. “I am sorry, Your Grace, but she claimed she saw a rat. When I came inside to have a look, she knocked me over the head with something.”
Jacinda was gone.
Damn it all to hell.
Panic clawing at him, he began a cursory inspection of the room, stopping when he discovered the neatly folded missive on her writing desk bearing his name. He tore it open, the panic growing tenfold as he read the content.
“Where the hell is my daughter, Whitley?” Sir Robert demanded from the threshold.
“She has gone after Kilross herself,” he bit out hoars
ely. “We have to find her.”
For if anything happened to her, he would never forgive himself.
*
“Mrs. Turnbow.” The Earl of Kilross rose at her entrance to his study, odious as ever, bearing an expression that was equal parts surprised and smug. He offered her an abbreviated bow. “You have arrived with ample time to spare. I trust you have the ciphers and their translations?”
“Yes,” she said agreeably, fixing her most saccharine smile upon him. An eerie calm settled in her bones. Finding her way to him as a female traveling unaccompanied had been no mean feat. But she made it there, and she knew what she needed to do. “Of course, my lord.”
His smile deepened as he gestured for her to take a seat opposite his desk. “Seat yourself, madam. I expect this accounting shall take some time. Tell me, where did you locate them?”
Jacinda crossed the soft carpet, but instead of taking the chair he had indicated, she remained standing, extracting a packet of letters from a pocket she had sewn into her spencer. “I found the ciphers in His Grace’s desk drawer, tucked between the pages of his journals.”
“This is most excellent,” he said, holding out his hand impatiently. “Deliver them now, Mrs. Turnbow, and I shall return some of your father’s vowels to you in exchange.”
She ought not to be surprised a man who would attempt to incriminate another would also renege upon his promises. Biding her time, she played along, dropping the packet of letters into his hand. “Only some of the vowels, my lord? But you promised all of them would be restored to us. I have found the ciphered missives as you required.”
“So it would seem, but it took you far longer than I anticipated, and I find myself unwilling to part with such a sum so easily.” He paused, his stare dropping to her bosom. “Perhaps, as a widow, there is another means by which you can offer repayment.”
Duke of Depravity (Sins and Scoundrels Book 1) Page 25
