Chapter 47
J
ames Lavington was not a patient man. A full week had passed since Lydia had laid her Irish husband in the ground and still she spent the day in a darkened room, still she refused to take food, and still she wept at the slightest reference to the captain.
“Michael would not have wanted this,” he told her softly at first.
Lydia raised her tear-stained face and looked at Lavington disdainfully. “You would upbraid me for grieving?”
Limping over to her, Lavington put a hand on her shoulder. “Grief or guilt, dear Lydia? How much longer can you keep up this pretense?”
Lydia sighed deeply, then looking at him directly and with desperation in her voice she pleaded: “What is it that you want of me, Mr. Lavington?”
The lawyer shook his head. “Oh dear, I haven’t made myself clear enough, have I?” he mocked.
Lydia frowned, still holding his gaze.
“I want you, dear Lydia. I want you to be my wife.”
At these words, she suddenly felt nausea rise in her stomach. “Your wife?” she mouthed. The words stuck in her gullet, like barbs. His insensitivity amazed her. “Sir, you are too hasty,” she cried, suddenly finding her voice again.
Exasperated, Lavington clenched his fists. “How much longer do you have to play the grieving widow, Lydia? Do not tell me you need time. Time is what they said was needed to heal these wounds,” he barked, pointing to his disfigurement. “But time did not heal the scars. They were left for all to see. Time is vastly overrated.”
He was walking toward her now, his eyes on fire. She cowered away from him, afraid that he would lash out.
“Do not tell me you need time. You were the one who was whoring with that colonist when your husband was rotting in jail.”
At these words, Lydia brought her hands up to her head to cover her ears. “No. No. It wasn’t like that. It was ...”
“Love? Is that the word you have for it, you poor deluded slut?”
“Stop it, I beg of you,” she pleaded, but still he lumbered toward her, his eyes fixed on her. From somewhere deep within her she summoned up the courage to straighten herself and face her accuser.
“Get out,” she cried. “Leave my house and never come back here again.” Her outburst left her panting for breath as she watched for Lavington’s reaction. Yet instead of retreating, his back stiffened and his jaw set firm in a gesture of defiance. His head then began to shake slowly from side to side in a way that both puzzled and infuriated Lydia.
Finally, after what seemed like an age of holding her gaze, he said: “You cannot ask me to leave what is rightfully mine.”
Lydia was confused. “I do not understand you,” she said in a half whisper.
The lawyer’s lip curled in a half smile. It was the same infuriating look that her husband had often given her to make her feel small and insignificant and worthless.
“You are standing on my property,” he told her plainly.
Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Boughton Hall, or at least most of it, belongs to me.”
Lydia dropped like a stone onto the sofa, closing her eyes as she did so. When her opened eyes scanned the room once more, they settled upon the card table in the corner and she began to make sense of Lavington’s words.
“He lost the estate?” she asked incredulously.
Lavington smiled, twisting the disfigured side of his face. “No, no. Nothing as obvious as that,” he said cruelly. “But I do have in my possession debtors’ notes worth ten thousand guineas, and unless I am very much mistaken, you would be unable to honor that debt without selling off your beautiful home.”
Lydia felt a great swell of anger surge through her body and suddenly leapt up from the sofa. “I will never sell Boughton,” she screamed, her fists clenched in unbridled anger.
Lavington threw his head back and snorted. “My dear Lydia, whoever suggested that?” he sneered. “I could no more make you homeless than turn poor demented Lady Crick out on the streets.”
Lydia thought of her sad, confused mother. It would be the death of her if ever she were to leave her beloved Boughton.
“Speak plainly, sir, if you please,” she urged.
Lavington limped forward. “Your mother shall stay here and so shall you”—he said softly, taking her hand in his—“as my wife.”
Lydia wrenched herself away from his grasp. “So, this is what you planned all along,” she said softly, pulling away. “But Michael trusted you.”
Lavington drew near once more. “He had every right to. I was a good friend, but an even better card player.” He shrugged. “Come, come, Lydia,” he began, reaching for her hand once more. “Michael would have won it all back from me eventually. It is just that now, poor fellow, he will never have the chance.”
Lydia pulled away once more, shaking her head. “You drove him to the rope,” she screamed. “It suited you that he took his own life.”
The sneer disappeared from Lavington’s contorted face. He looked offended. “How can you say that?” he whimpered. “Your husband was a brother to me. I would never have said nor done anything that would encourage him to do harm to himself,” he protested vehemently. He took a deep breath, as if trying to restore calm to his troubled soul. “Believe me, it is out of loyalty to Michael that I could not bear to see you sell your family home,” he said softly. “As your husband I can protect Boughton and ...” he looked at her knowingly, “your tarnished reputation.”
Lydia sank once more, as if weighed down by the gravity of what Lavington had just disclosed. Her guard was down and she did not resist when the lawyer took her hand. “I am sure we can come to some sort of mutually acceptable and beneficial arrangement,” he said softly and with these words, he lowered his face and let his scarred lips brush lightly against the back of her milk-white hand. “You have until tomorrow to decide.”
Chapter 48
T
homas read the letter once more. The unforgettable smell of Lydia’s scent wafted in the air at the touch of the paper. He had lost count of the number of times he had scanned each line, each sentence, and then searched it again for innuendo and double entendre. He looked for clues in each letter, each dotting of the i’s and crossing of t’s and from it, he deduced the message was clear. Lydia was in grave danger.
Dear Dr. Silkstone,
Please forgive me for not having thanked you in person for carrying out your duties in regard to my late husband so diligently. I deeply regret not having seen you before your departure from Oxford, but my state of mind was such that I could not receive anyone. As a man of medicine, I am sure you will understand.
I also write to inform you that Mr. James Lavington has asked for my hand in marriage and I have consented. We are to marry within the next few days.
Please do not think ill of me in these matters. I realize that the haste may appear unseemly, but I have my reasons.
Yours truly,
Lydia Farrell.
A terrible, sickly feeling gripped hold of Thomas’s stomach. He looked at the letter once more, this time with unseeing eyes. Something was wrong—very wrong. Although Lydia had written only a few terse words, to Thomas they spoke volumes. They told him of betrayal and of duplicity and of malice and coercion. Lydia had been a good wife. She may have admonished her husband on a number of occasions, but these chastisements were deserved. She had been trapped in a loveless marriage and yet she endured her lot with fortitude. Thomas knew her to be constant and dutiful and she would never be so disrespectful to his memory so soon after his passing. She “had her reasons,” she said. Could those reasons be that Lavington was threatening her in some way, wondered Thomas. There was wrongdoing afoot, he knew it, and he determined to find out in person. On the morrow he would take the coach to Oxford and find out for himself the real meaning behind Lydia’s cautiously sparse words.
First he would approach Sir Theodisius and show him the letter. Surely he would have to act now and allow him to perform a postmortem on Captain Farrell’s body? Surely now Lavington had shown his true colors and provided enough evidence for any court to investigate the captain’s death? Lavington must have Farrell’s blood on his hands, thought Thomas, and it was up to him to prove it. Hastily he began to pack his medical bag with all the instruments he would require to perform an autopsy. Just as he was securing the last specimen jar there came a knock at his door.
“Yes,” he shouted, buckling a leather strap. When he glanced toward the door, he saw Francis Crick. “Crick,” he exclaimed. “What brings you here, my friend?”
The student looked grave.
“I do, sir,” came the unseen voice of a woman from outside and, as soon as its owner came into view, Thomas’s face turned deathly white.
“Hannah!” he cried, rushing forward to greet her. “But I thought you were ...”
The maidservant looked gaunt and troubled. “Dead, sir,” she obligingly finished the sentence. “I should be, should I not?”
Thomas suddenly remembered that she had not been told of the outcome of his experiments and, as far as she knew, she still believed herself responsible for the death of her young master.
“No. No,” interjected the young physician. “Thank God you have been spared, Hannah. I have much to tell you, and you me, I am sure.”
The maid looked at Thomas warily, but sat as he bade her. She looked exhausted and drained.
First Thomas felt it his duty to inform Hannah of the outcome of his tests on the
digitalis purpurea
. “Then ’twas not me who ...” Her voice trailed off incredulously.
“No,” replied Thomas. “You did not kill Lord Crick.”
Hannah looked up, her face drawn and mottled. There was not a trace of the relief that the young doctor had anticipated, only mistrust. “Did Mr. Lavington know this?” she asked cautiously.
Thomas nodded. “I informed him as soon as I found out.”
“And what of Captain Farrell?” Her question cut Thomas to the quick. She did not know. How could she? Crick and Thomas exchanged anxious glances and the maid knew something was amiss.
“What is it? Have they found him guilty?”
Thomas paused for a moment, thinking how best to frame the shocking news. “Hannah, I am afraid that Captain Farrell was found hanged in his cell.”
At these words Hannah leapt up from her seat. “No. No,” she said, wringing her hands. Her state became so agitated that she began to pace the room from wall to wall, her hands clutching at her head. “Lord, no!” she screamed.
Thomas stepped forward and took hold of her by the shoulders. “Hannah, please. Calm yourself,” he urged her, holding a cup of water to her lips, but she merely dashed it out of his hand and sent it flying across the room.
“ ’Tis all my doing,” she sobbed.
Francis intervened. “You must not blame yourself, Mistress Lovelock,” he said, trying to ease her into her seat once more.
“ ’Twas him. He made me ...” Her voice once more trailed off in an avalanche of sobs.
“Who?” urged Thomas. “Hannah, please explain yourself.”
“Mr. Lavington, sir. He told me not to say ...”
“Have you any idea how important it is that you tell us all you know?” insisted Thomas, grabbing the maid by the shoulders so that she faced him.
“He said he’d turn them out, Jacob and the children. I ... I thought it best to take the money and go. He told me never to come back again.
“I told him, Dr. Silkstone, that I could not see an innocent hang,” she wailed. “But he says to me: ‘The captain is a guilty man. Make no mistake of that.’ And he came up to me and stood by me with that stick of his, as if he was about to beat me, so I took the money and I ran, sir. I left that place as fast as I could and I ran.”
Thomas had suspected as much, but now he had a witness. Hannah’s testimony was not proof, but her words would carry weight with Sir Theodisius.
“We must leave for Oxford at first light,” he told Hannah. The maidservant nodded, but Thomas could see she was afraid. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You do the right thing, Hannah, and the law will look on you with mercy for it.”
Chapter 49
T
he Oxford coroner endeavored to rise out of his chair as he saw Thomas enter the room, but his weight pulled him down again so that his efforts to stand were futile. Instead, he proffered his plump hand to the young doctor.
“And what brings you here, Dr. Silkstone?” he enquired in a friendly manner. A half-empty glass of claret stood on his desk and Thomas deduced the strong wine had put him in a relaxed mood. “I thought we had closed the sad and sorry Crick saga.”
“Would that we had,” replied Thomas.
The coroner motioned him to sit, but before he did so, Thomas retrieved Lydia’s letter from his pocket and handed it over the desk to Sir Theodisius.
“Please, sir, read this.”
The coroner looked at him warily, then, taking the piece of paper, unfurled it and scanned the letter. His expression grew graver with each line until he looked up at the end of it with an angry scowl.
“But this is preposterous,” he boomed. “Farrell is barely cold in his grave and Lavington creeps into his bed.”
Thomas tried to blot out the image of the lawyer lying with Lydia, but he was heartened by the coroner’s reaction. Indeed, such was Sir Theodisius’s ire that he tried, and this time succeeded, in easing himself out of his chair.
“There is more to implicate Lavington. Much more,” Thomas revealed. “He threatened Hannah—”
“The maidservant?” interrupted the coroner. “She is alive?”
“Indeed, sir, and she has much to relate, but that is not all.”
Thomas produced the silken cord from his coat pocket and dangled it in front of Sir Theodisius. “I have good reason, scientific reason, to believe that this rope did not kill Captain Farrell,” he said. “It came from Mr. Lavington’s Merton Street rooms.”
The coroner could not disguise his alarm.
“Now will you consider a postmortem?” urged Thomas.
By now Sir Theodisius had made his laborious way over to the window and looked out on the street below. It had been raining steadily for the past forty-eight hours. Already it was growing dark and the lamplighters were about their business.
“So, Lavington killed the Irishman,” he said. His words were framed as a statement, not a question, and Thomas did not reply. “And young Crick, too?”
The doctor shifted uneasily. Obviously the thought had occurred to him, but he could think of no motive.
“I cannot say, sir,” he replied hesitantly.
The coroner turned to face him. “Then I shall give you the means to find out,” he said and, returning to his desk and easing himself down into his chair, he took up his quill, dipped the nib into his inkpot, and signed the necessary papers.
Lydia Farrell lay on her bed in a white cotton nightgown and wished it were her shroud. She closed her eyes and pictured herself next to her dead husband on top of the hill. Her heart was so filled with remorse that she thought it would overflow and spill out into her very blood, but then she remembered that Michael had left her through his own choice and her sorrow turned to anger. How dare he take his own life and leave her to face the world alone? Had he done it out of self-pity or out of kindness to her? If he had believed it to be the latter, then he was mistaken. Perhaps in some perverse way he had planned that Lavington should be there to pick up the pieces of his broken life and rebuild them again with her? Had he not asked him to take care of her in the event anything should happen to him? Or was there some truth in what Dr. Silkstone had to say that afternoon in Oxford when he had been the bearer of such fateful news? What was it he had told her? “I do not think your husband took his own life. I have reason to believe he was murdered.” She recalled his face; his handsome features, his kindness to her. She had mentioned his words to no one, but hid them in her heart. If Dr. Silkstone’s suspicions were well-founded, Sir Theodisius would have ordered an enquiry. As it was, he had not and the true circumstances surrounding her husband’s death would probably remain a mystery until she joined him in death.
Lydia had thought about ending her own life many times, too, since Michael had gone, but it was always the same thought that prevented her: What would become of her mother? The old woman was incapable of looking out for herself for much of the time and was often in a perplexed state, not knowing what day it was nor even her own name. At other times, however, she could be quite lucid, able to make judgments and eloquent statements of fact. Lydia had no notion of what ailed her. All she knew was that she, and she alone, was the reason she had consented to Lavington’s ludicrous and untimely proposal.
She cared not what the people of Brandwick, or even farther afield, would say. The goings-on at Boughton Hall had fueled the fires of the gossips and tittle-tattlers for months now. Her hasty marriage would only add more kindling to the noxious flames. Lavington had bribed some poor curate with the promise of a living on the estate if he but perform the marriage service without first having read the banns, and it had not been difficult to find a man of the cloth to comply, such was the income of a country parson.
While she had reluctantly consented to marry Lavington, she had laid down a condition to which he had agreed. She had asked him not to come to the marriage bed until such times as she was ready to receive him. The thought of his scarred hands wandering over her naked breasts and thighs, the notion of his gnarled fingers probing her secret place, filled her with such utter revulsion that she thought she might retch. She would be his wife in name, but not in body, nor mind.
As she lay in the cold, still room she became aware of a noise at the window. Was it heavy rain or hail? Or was it the sound of pebbles being thrown at the pane? Her heart began to race and she leapt out of bed and rushed toward the window. There it was again. She could see nothing in the darkness outside, but lifted the sash as gently as she could.
“Thomas? Thomas, is that you?” she whispered hoarsely.
Suddenly a tall, thin figure stepped out of the shadows below.
“Thomas?” she called faintly, as the man began to climb up the wisteria that draped itself over the facade of the house and up around Lydia’s casement. She was alarmed at first, but then she realized, as the figure came nearer, there was no need to be afraid.
“Francis,” she mouthed, as the young student drew level with the window and eased himself through the frame.
“Dear Lydia,” he greeted her, putting his arms around her.
She hugged him tightly. “Oh my dear Francis, it is so good to see you,” she whispered.
Still holding her by the shoulders, Francis studied his cousin’s face. “My poor dear Lydia,” he whispered.
“Did Dr. Silkstone tell you?”
Francis nodded.
“Is he here? Is he with you?” she asked eagerly, glancing over Francis’s shoulder.
Her cousin shook his head. “No, my dear.”
“But you have word from him?” she urged, tugging Francis’s sleeves.
“Trust me and all will be well,” he told her, pulling her head toward his shoulder once more and stroking her chestnut curls. “You are in safe hands.”
Hannah Lovelock picked her way along the rain-sodden lanes, hiding behind hedgerows as the need arose. Her shoes and the hem of her calico skirt were caked in mud and slowed her progress, but she pressed on. The carriage had dropped her perhaps half a mile away from Boughton Hall and she was to make her way to her home and alert her husband to the plans.
Through the window she saw him, mending the fire, with William and Rachel at the table, eating rye bread and sipping milk from their bowls. This was a scene she thought she would never again see and a great surge of love overwhelmed her as she rushed in through the door.
“Ma! Ma!” shouted the children, rushing toward her as soon as they clapped eyes on her. Jacob instantly dropped his poker and, open-mouthed, held out his arms to embrace her.
“Hannah. Oh my dearest,” he cried, tears rolling down his pockmarked cheeks.
Hannah, too, could not hold back her tears, but pressed a muddy finger to her lips, calling for quiet. “Hush yourselves. No one is to know I am here,” she told them, urging them to be silent.
“By what miracle are you free?” asked her incredulous husband.
“I will tell all in time,” replied Hannah, “but right now, I am needing your help. Down the road a carriage waits. It carries the coroner. Dr. Silkstone has gone ahead. He is going to cut the captain open.” She turned to Jacob. “You and Amos must be the bury men and dig up the coffin.”
Jacob looked at her questioningly.
“Dr. Silkstone thinks that the captain may not have taken himself to the rope,” said Hannah.
Her husband frowned. “Then who ... ?” His voice trailed off thinly.
When Hannah spoke the name, her husband nodded. “I knew as much,” he muttered.
“What do you say?” urged Hannah.
He looked earnestly at his wife. “We have no time to lose,” he told her. “Lavington is to marry Lady Lydia in the chapel this morn.”
Hannah’s hands rose to her face to signify her shock. “Today? In the chapel?”
“The service will take place at ten o’clock. Amos and I will go and fetch picks and shovels and meet the gentlemen at the grave at that hour, so that we are not seen,” said Jacob.
Hannah nodded. “May God save her ladyship,” she muttered under her breath.
“May God save us all,” corrected her husband.