Arabella, Lady Thorpe was sitting by the fire, looking somewhat bored.
“My lady,” Griselda said, making a slight curtsey, “I am sorry I was not here to receive you. I have been out taking the air.”
“Did you walk all the way to Fulham to do so?” said Lady Thorpe, getting up. “There is enough mud on your hem.”
“What can I do for you, ma’am?”
“Do for me?” she said. “Very little, I fear.” She gave a weary sigh and walked a few steps up the room, to where the Claude hung on the wall. “That dreary landscape. Does Thorpe change nothing? Perhaps you will get the upholsterers in. Though your taste in hangings won’t be the thing that the town wants to talk about.”
“I am sorry, ma’am?”
“Oh, don’t be so innocent. I know what you are – an ambitious little baggage who has ensnared my son. And by the most degrading means I think. I don’t suppose he married you just because he thought you had a pretty face. He married you because he had to. When will I have to face the dubious honour of becoming a grandmother? Eight months hence, I should think.”
“You are mistaken in that, ma’am.”
“Oh, was it a love match? I am sorry. Has he turned your head? You would not be the first one, my dear, and you won’t be the last. And don’t fool yourself that being his wife makes any difference. Why only last night I was talking to Lady Happisburgh – they were entangled you know, for quite some time – one of his longer episodes – and she told me how he deserted her for an opera girl. ‘I pity the creature who becomes his wife,’ she said – to me, his own mother. And she is the sweetest creature alive, not given to malice.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Griselda managed to say.
“Don’t flatter yourself, dear girl,” said Lady Thorpe. “It is better to face the facts than live in a cloud of fancy. I never had any illusions about my husband and I don’t think you should about yours.”
“If you have come here merely to make trouble,” Griselda said, “I think you should leave.”
“There isn’t any need for me to make trouble,” Lady Thorpe said with a wicked smile. “The facts are self-evident. A journey to Italy and Greece? Why, he’s bored already. You’re with child. What further amusement can you be to him? He’ll come back in nine months – if it’s a boy – and you might get a pearl necklace out of him then, if the confinement doesn’t kill you first.”
“Italy…” Griselda said.
“Didn’t you know?” She began to laugh. “Of course you don’t.”
“Has he told you this?” Griselda said.
“Manton told me. And poor silly old Gough. Servants can be so delightfully loyal sometimes.”
And she strolled from the room, saying, “Adieu, poor goose. I wish you joy of my son.”
Tom got to the courtroom just as Clarke was coming down from the witness stand.
“You’ve missed all the drama, Tom,” Will muttered as Tom sat down. “Clarke was magnificent.”
“I was waiting for Griselda.”
“Did you manage to talk to her?”
Tom shook his head, glad to see that Woburn was approaching the judge. He would be spared a cross-examination from Will.
“In the light of this new evidence, I would like to recall Lord Wansford, my lord.”
“Granted,” said the Judge.
“Call Lord Wansford!” bawled the usher.
“Why not?” said Will to Tom.
“Because she’s been out since the crack of dawn. Heaven knows where she is.”
“And you didn’t manage to broach the subject last night?”
“No,” said Tom. “She was asleep. How can you disturb a sleeping woman and tell her you are leaving her?”
“Indeed,” said Will, rather critically.
“I know you don’t approve of this but you have to understand it is for the best.”
“That I can’t accept,” said Will. “Ah, here comes Wansford. You must be looking forward to this, Tom.”
Tom watched as his old tormentor took the bible and swore to tell the truth, with an unconcerned air.
“He’s damnable cool,” said Will. “I wish Woburn would let me at him.”
“He’s beneath you, Will,” said Tom.
“Lord Wansford,” Woburn began, “you were attending to Mr Clarke’s evidence, I dare say.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Unfortunately?”
“It is painful to hear a man perjure himself,” said Wansford. “A tragic case. He’s clearly a rogue.”
“Perhaps then you would tell the court the reason that you gave him such a valuable living?”
“One likes to be charitable,” said Wansford with a wave of his hand. “And I was sadly deceived by him. He was very plausible in his distress.”
“And it was most generous of you to settle his debts,” said Woburn.
“From your tone, it seems that you think me incapable of such a disinterested action, Mr Woburn,” said Wansford, bristling.
“What I think is niether here nor there, Lord Wansford. The opinion of the court is what should concern you. They have listened to a very credible witness in Mr Clarke.”
“He is lying,” said Wansford quite calmly. “How could such a farrago be true? Lady Thorpe dictating love letters from her son in the library at Felsham? What brain fevers produced that fancy, I wonder?”
“It would be an easy matter to call Lady Thorpe to the witness stand,” said Woburn.
“And you would find her a very credible witness. Her reputation is spotless.” This amused the crowd in the public gallery but Tom felt his heart sink. His mother’s notoriety was beyond dispute. However, the crowd’s reaction did seem to put Wansford on his mettle. He continued, raising his voice slightly, “Unlike Mr Clarke about whom a great many unfortunate stories might be told. For example, the reason why Sir Francis Thorpe turned him out all those years ago.”
“No!” exclaimed Clarke jumping up from his place. “No, Wansford.”
The Judge began to bang his gavel.
“Sit down, Mr Clarke,” he said. “You have had your chance to speak.”
But Clarke seemed determined to speak to the Judge. He pushed past the ushers and went up to the bench.
“My lord, I cannot stand this any longer.”
“What do you mean?” said the judge.
“I cannot bear it. I cannot!”
And then Clarke dived into his coat pockets and drew out a pair of duelling pistols which he aimed directly at Wansford.
And fired twice, with formidable accuracy.
***
Tom, accompanied by Will Randall, were put by the butler to wait on Lady Mary in the exotic vulgarity of the Chinese drawing room at Wansford House.
“Hardly an appropriate place for this conversation,” said Tom, gazing up at the gilded and tasselled pagoda-style silk canopy which had been suspended over the long banquette on which they sat.
“This is the sort of room that would give you a headache if you had to spend more than ten minutes in it,” remarked Will.
“I already have a headache,” said Tom, massaging his temples. “Lord, what a business.”
“He seemed so rational when Woburn was examining him,” said Will. “And who would have thought he would be such a good shot. I couldn’t fire a pistol that straight. Nor could you – and you are a much better shot than I.”
“No,” said Tom. “I invariably shoot to the left.”
“You’d have got the judge then,” said Will.
“I admit it – I can’t say that it hadn’t occurred to me from time to time, to shoot Wansford myself. But now it’s done and he’s…” Tom broke off and got up from the banquette, crossing the huge room. “Where is she?”
Will made a slight inclination of his head and Tom turned to see the double doors opening.
Lady Mary walked into the room. She was dressed in a very plain white morning gown that Tom felt became her better than any of the expensive clothes he had previously seen her in. It emphasised her delicacy. She looked fragile and simple, and the task with which he was faced seemed worse still. But he was glad to see she was accompanied by a middle aged, respectable-looking female who looked like a governess.
“Sir Thomas, good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” he said, making his bow. “Lady Mary, I am afraid I have some very grave news for you. Won’t you please sit down?”
“What sort of news?” she said, obediently sitting down. Tom pulled up a chair close to her.
“About your father. There’s been an – ” he hesitated. “An incident. I’m afraid he’s been killed.”
She stared at him.
“Killed? A carriage accident or some such?”
Tom shook his head.
“A man called Clarke shot him. In the court this morning.”
“Shot him?” Lady Mary’s doll-like blue eyes widened for a moment and then she looked away, grimacing as she did so. “No, no, that can’t be true…”
“I am very sorry, it is.”
“He died almost instantly,” said Will coming forward. “He would have felt nothing.”
She looked back at Tom. He could see the tears starting in her eyes.
“I am sorry, this is…” she began and gave up. She sniffed hard, trying to stop herself breaking down, pressing her fingertips to her lips.
“Lady Mary, I will fetch the salts,” the woman who attended her said.
“No, no, Miss Price, I am not going to faint,” she said, with a resolution that both surprised and impressed Tom.
“You might want this,” said Will, and produced from his coat pocket a neatly folded white pocket handkerchief, which he held out to her.
“Thank you, Mr…?”
“Randall,” Tom said. “Mr William Randall. He is my friend – and he was present also.”
She nodded an acknowledgement and then reached out and took Will’s handkerchief. With both hands she pressed it to her eyes for a moment and then she got up and walked away down the room, and stood with her back to them.
“How did this happen?” she said, after a long pause and without turning to face them. “How?”
“Ma’am, if you might permit me to explain,” said Will stepping forward. “For Thorpe ought in fairness to go to his mother now.”
“Oh Lord, of course!” she exclaimed and turned back to them. “Of course he must. She will be…” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “A man called Clarke, did you say?”
“A clergyman. You met him, I believe. He came with his wife to Felsham,” Tom said.
“Oh yes, I remember them. Why should he want to kill my father?”
“Because…” Tom began but Will had gone straight up to Lady Mary.
“It was Clarke who forged the letters that you thought were from Sir Thomas. It was your father’s idea. He gave him a living for his pains,” he said. “And although Clarke admitted it under oath, your father would not admit his part in the scheme. So Clarke shot him, I suppose because he had nothing more to lose. He had already admitted to being a common forger.”
“They were forgeries?” she said, covering her face with her hands, and starting to cry in earnest. “Oh dear God…”
“Come, sit down,” said Tom, taking her arm and leading her to one of the banquettes that sat against the walls for the room. Tom and Will sat down beside her and she wept bitterly into her hands for some minutes.
Then she took control of herself and sat up straight again, looking directly at Tom, brushing the tears from her face with Will’s now sodden handkerchief.
“I am sorry. Very sorry,” she said. “For any distress my stupidity has caused you. I should have seen it. I should not have been so…”
Tom could not bear it any longer. He remembered the nervous little girl he had once sat on a pony.
“It is not your fault. You owe me nothing,” he said, and took her into his arms and held her. She clung to him for a few seconds and then broke free. She stood up, and took a few paces down the room to compose herself.
“Well,” she said, in a dry, cracked voice. “We are free of him then. You and I, at last, we’re free. I must confess that I found it very hard to love him at times. Especially after what he did to my poor mother.” She was silent for a moment, twisting the handkerchief in her hands before holding it out towards Will. “Thank you for that. I think I have ruined it though.”
“You may ruin as many of my handkerchiefs as you please, Lady Mary,” Tom heard Will say. He glanced to his side and watched his old friend get up from his place and go towards her. “I will always be at your service,” he said, taking the handkerchief from her. They stood for a moment, face to face, still both holding the handkerchief, and Tom saw a faint flicker of a smile lighten her features as she read the calm sincerity of the man who stood in front of her.
“I had better go and talk to my mother,” said Tom, getting up from his seat, sensing that Lady Mary was now in safer hands than she had been for many years.