“She refused to discuss why she was going out alone at night, breaking every rule for an unmarried miss. At the same time she was chasing after Ashway for his ring.” He could not decide which was worst—Miss Carville’s lack of candor, her lack of morals, or her lack of honor.
“Perhaps the chap is unsuitable, a servant, say, and she knew her stepfather would never give his permission. Or he could be a married man. She could be keeping his identity hidden so his wife doesn’t find out.”
“Or she is protecting her lover from the law.” He checked his notes. “Yet she said she did not know who killed Hawley. It was a clear blue, with no muddied maybes.”
“Well, then, she does not know and does not suspect the fellow in the park. And you are damning her for a light skirt without knowing the facts of the matter. She might have a fine reason for going out, not to meet a lover at all.”
“Name one.”
Daniel lowered his brows in concentration, without coming up with a single possibility. “Why don’t you ask her?’
“I did and she refused to answer.”
“No, ask her if she has a lover, not who he is. That’s what has your ballocks in a bind.”
“It is not!”
Daniel smiled and scratched his armpit. Verity the dog, whose only truth was a bone with meat on it, sighed and slumped at Daniel’s feet.
Rex glared at both traitors. “Furthermore, Nanny Brown managed to drum the basics of polite behavior into my head. One does not ask such questions of a lady. Can you imagine? How do you do, Miss Furbelow. May I have this dance? Oh, and by the way, are you a virgin?”
Daniel laughed. “Such honest dealing might make for happier marriages, without some poor nodcock finding out on his wedding night that his blushing bride has been gathering her rosebuds with the gardener.”
Rex was not laughing. He had more riddles than a Sphinx and did not need another puzzle. He already had to consider why the countess kept his few, coldly courteous letters in her desk, or why his boyhood portrait hung in her sitting room. Or why Miss Carville would not name the man in the park, even to save her own neck. Did she love him that much—and why did that notion bother Rex so much? Then there was the question of why French valets seemed to be cropping up like mushrooms.
The most important mystery, of course, was who in Hades had killed Sir Frederick Hawley. Rex had less than a month before the trial, but he hoped to solve the riddle by week’s end. Once he did that, he could wash his hands of all of them.
Nothing could be done until after nuncheon, not with Daniel’s stomach growling. While they ate Rex consulted his lists and divided the tasks. Daniel could search Hawley House and find the names of Sir Frederick’s associates at the gentlemen’s clubs, including any he might have owed gambling debts. Murchison could listen for word of that valet, Brusseau, who was in need of a new position. Rex would go to the bank and the solicitor’s—after he did his damnedest to keep out of prison for obstructing justice.
With their battle plan in place, Rex knocked on Miss Carville’s door. Nanny Brown opened the door, then stood in the entry, refusing to leave.
From the hall, Rex asked if Miss Carville wished anything else brought from her former home. “That will give Daniel an excuse to look around for the baronet’s guns, signs of struggle, that kind of thing. He might get lucky and find the estate books to, ah, borrow. I would like to see how Sir Frederick managed his finances.”
“The servants would never let Mr. Stamfield pry into family matters.”
“They will if they know my cousin’s reputation. Few people argue about the niceties when Daniel is around. His size alone usually makes folks extremely cooperative.”
She gnawed on her lip. “What if they do not let him in? Will he resort to fisticuffs again? I would not want more mayhem attributed to me.”
“I doubt it will come to that. Daniel can be very persuasive, and I gave him a purse full of coins to buy the information he needs. If worse comes to worst, we will break in when everyone is asleep.”
Amanda gasped. “You could be arrested! Dear Lady Royce would be horrified. No, it would be far better if I went. I should not like your cousin accused of wrongdoing, and I know where to look.”
He could tell that she could barely lift her head. The pucker was back between her eyebrows, and she was back in bed, in a nightgown. This one was a bit of lace, not plain and concealing like the borrowed one he’d bundled her into. Nanny caught him looking and hurriedly pulled the covers up high, but not before he wondered if that other man had seen her like this.
“I was merely teasing. Daniel will find what we want or the barrister we hire will ask for a warrant. He may have to get an order from the courts to inspect the bank-books, but I am hoping for cooperation there, too, before we have to resort to official means. Lawyers have their own ways of doing things, usually slowly. And I’m hoping to avoid the sensation of a public trial by finding enough evidence to see the charges dropped altogether.”
“I wish to help,” she insisted. “The last barrister I had never let me speak.”
“You can help by writing a note to the butler there, giving us permission to fetch your things. Daniel knows what to do after.”
“Miniatures of my mother and father are in my bedroom. Those are what I miss most. But this is my life, and I should go.”
“You are not well enough yet, and there is your reputation to consider, what is left of it anyway. Out and about with two single gentlemen within days of your stepfather’s murder? There is no reason to bring to the
ton
’s attention that you are without chaperonage here.”
“Nanny could come.”
“Lord love you, lambie,” Nanny spoke up. “You know I don’t count. The toffs think only one of their own can guard a lady’s virtue.”
Amanda sighed, conceding that she was not up to much more than holding a pen. She wrote the note despite the headache that pounded at her temples.
Nanny was already mixing her powders and drops. “You leave everything to his lordship, pet. He’ll see you through.”
Rex wished he could see through the covers.
Amanda scrawled the note with shaking fingers. It was barely legible, but Hareston, the butler at her stepfather’s house, could barely read. If he was still there. He might have decamped with the good china in lieu of his quarter pay, knowing Edwin would not keep him on even if the new baronet did not shut up the London town house to save funds.
Amanda fleetingly worried about Elaine, immured in the country. She had always feared her father, who’d ignored her as much as possible. The two had been rubbing along better this year, with Elaine delighted with her new gowns and finally having a social Season, and Sir Frederick viewing the girl as a way to better himself. Perhaps Elaine was grief-stricken at her loss, both of her father and the entertainments of the city. She would have to go into mourning either way. At least she would have her own brother to look after her. Amanda hoped Edwin would not push the seventeen-year-old into an unwanted marriage, the way his father had planned. Then she worried that she was putting too much confidence in the young stepbrother she had not seen in two years, and rarely before, while he was at university. She was counting on his honor to restore her own fortune; she was assuming his family feelings would protect his sister. She could be wrong.
Why borrow trouble? The Hawleys were no longer her business. Staying out of jail, proving herself innocent, those were her concerns. Granted, she was too weak to make inquiries, and the gentlemen’s clubs’ doors were locked to women, but she could examine the accounts books when Lord Rexford brought them, if she could keep her head clear.
“No more laudanum, Nanny. I need to be able to think.”
“Oh, you can let Lord Rexford do that, too, I swear.”
Amanda had to smile at the old woman’s confidence in her former nurseling. He was a large man, not as big as his cousin, of course, but still tall and commanding. He was not, however, a god. “He is being immeasurably helpful. He believes me, which is more than anyone else does. But if he manages to free me from the charges, I still have to plan my future. I cannot be a weight around Lady Royce’s neck, and my soiled reputation will prevent Elaine’s finding a husband, if I were welcome to stay with her at all.”
Nanny smiled. “I am thinking you can leave that to his lordship, too. He’ll do the right thing.”
“The right thing . . . ?”
“Of course. He helped ruin your good name, didn’t he?”
The old woman could not be thinking what Amanda thought she was implying. “But I am an accused murderess.”
“Not for long, if I know the lad.”
But what Nanny did not know was that the viscount believed her another man’s mistress, no fit bride for a gentleman, no fit mother to his heir. He might not believe Sir Frederick’s slanders like Mr. Ashway, but neither did he believe her untouched. She’d seen the shadows fall over his face when he spoke of the man in the park. She feared for a moment he’d grow violent when she could not, would not, answer his questions. Besides, he did not seem to like her. She was a chore to him, like mucking out the stables. Why, he had not so much as blinked an eye at the change in her looks, after an entire morning of Nanny’s fussing. He could have smiled or paid her more than the cursory compliment that she looked better. A small smile of approval would have been enough. His cousin was gallant, but that did not count.
No, Captain Lord Rexford was not the least interested in Amanda as anything but an investigation to pursue; afterward, he could close his notebook and go back to whatever he did in whatever rural fastness. Perhaps he would rejoin the army and torture prisoners.
She shook her head, then regretted the pain that caused. Still, she refused to believe that last, not when the viscount was here at his mother’s house, which obviously bothered him, on a stranger’s behalf. There was only so much, though, that anyone expected from a good Samaritan. No one would possibly demand that he wed a fallen woman, least of all Amanda.
If some misguided smidgeon of chivalry forced a proposal out of the man, Amanda would refuse. She did not want to be married to a fiercesome gentleman subject to black moods and bouts of drinking. Her mother had made that mistake, and Amanda had seen the results. Worse, Lord Rexford was reclusive and bitter and wont to batter opponents with his fists and his nose. And he had secrets of his own. She doubted he would ever reveal himself to anyone other than his cousin, not even his future wife.
She knew that any number of females would leap at the chance to be a wealthy countess eventually, no matter the costs. Amanda pitied that poor woman, whomever she turned out to be. Marriages of convenience seldom turned out to be convenient at all, especially for the wife.
No, if she could stay out of prison, and out of the hangman’s clutches, she could stay out of a lifetime of misery.
“His lordship did not destroy my reputation,” she told his doting old nurse, who only wished to spoil another generation of Royce infants. “He saved my life. I can never ask for more. I will be forever in his debt for that alone, and longer if he helps clear my name of the murder. What reward would that be, to demand his bachelor life, his name? Even if he does not wish me near his family, Edwin will assist me, especially if I can show that his father misappropriated my fortune. Any honorable man would make amends, wouldn’t he?” she asked, more to convince herself than Nanny. “Perhaps I can recover enough of my father’s fortune or my dowry to live quietly somewhere.”
Nanny tsked and took up her knitting. Amanda slept, without the drugs, and dreamed of blue capes and blue-eyed babies.
Chapter Eleven
H
e should have gone through proper channels. He should have made an appointment. He should have reported to the officer in charge. He did nothing of the kind. Damned pettifogging politicians, all of them. The real soldiers were at the front, fighting the bloody war.
Hell, he should have resigned his commission first, in case they wanted to court-martial him.
Instead he asked the subaltern at the door for Major Harrison. There was no Major Harrison, of course; he’d checked the roster of officers. The name was a code to open doors, a great many successive doors, at which he had to identify himself with the proper answer to the query: “What is the nature of your business with Major Harrison?”
The proper response was: “I come in aid of my country and the war effort.” Rex supposed that was how the man he wished to see became known as the Aide, although he served no general in London and wore no uniform. Rex had been through the intricate rigmarole once before, when he was given his orders to report to General Wellesley himself. His father had given him the passwords. To this day he wondered how the Earl of Royce had come to know the key to the most secret of England’s hidden defenses. He also wondered if the codes had changed, or if his own name would be enough to deliver him to the innermost sanctum.
He was passed from one junior officer to another, each waiting for instructions to proceed. Then he was handed over to a higher-ranking flunky who led him up stairs and down corridors in the vast building, with no concern for Rex’s leg or his limp. If he was not fit for duty, the attitude seemed to be, he should not be wasting the Aide’s time.
Rex made no complaint, nor did he when left to wait in a small office empty of everything but two hard wooden chairs. He sat on one and put his aching leg on the other. To the devil with protocol and politeness. Of course he had to jump to his feet, doing his leg more insult, when a lieutenant colonel he did not know entered the room.
He saluted, gave his name and rank and unit, to the officer’s grim disapproval and rigid posture. Then he repeated that he had come in aid of the country and the war effort but added: “And please inform Major Harrison that I have come about the truth.” That way Major Harrison, who did not exist, would be sure of his caller. The officer left without saying a word.