Deadly Engagement: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance)

by Lucinda Brant

  “Don’t know, do I. I ain’t been ’ere. Like I told you. I’ll have to fetch more,” she grumbled, looking at the mug of milk on the dressing table. “Missy don’t like cold milk.”

  Tam bit his lip. He didn’t know why, but he felt uneasy. In all probability Jenny and Miss Emily were huddled together gossiping about the dinner party. Yet it was unusual to keep the chambermaid waiting, especially when she had been sent to fetch hot milk. Why hadn’t Jenny let her in to deliver it nice and hot?

  “I’m goin’ back to the kitchens,” the girl said with a long sigh. “You’d better leave. Y’can’t wait ’ere alone.”

  Tam stayed by the door. “Did you try and open it?”

  “Not my place.”

  “Why don’t you try the handle and see if the door’s locked?”

  The chambermaid shook her head and picked up the mug of milk. “It’s cold.”

  Tam gently pulled on the handle and the door silently opened inwards. It was the chambermaid who screeched and tried to pull Tam back into the room. He shrugged her off, told her to hold her tongue and stuck his head around the door. There was no light. Something was not right. Tam had a terrible feeling all was dreadfully wrong.

  The servant door at the far end of the darkened room was illuminated by the full moon and swinging wide, forced open by the air rushing up the narrow winding stair. Downstairs someone must have left a door open. The curtains billowed opened letting in a gust of cold night air and the eerie glow of the full moon, giving Tam a glimpse of an overturned chair. Just as quickly the curtains were sucked back against the window frame and the room was in complete darkness again. From somewhere deep within the room there was uncontrolled sobbing. Tam slowly moved into the blackness and stumbled over the uneven carpet. He picked himself up just as the curtains billowed again and a thousand tiny lights twinkled across the carpet. He felt the crunch of glass under foot and realized just what the tiny lights were.

  And then the chambermaid let out a piercing scream just as Tam reached the four-poster bed and caught a glimpse of someone tangled in the tumble of bed clothes. He pushed the girl back into Jenny’s bedchamber, “Get help! Run. Go! Now,” and dashed back to the bed where Miss Emily lay sobbing face down with her arms over her head.

  Emily’s gown had been ripped from her back.

  “Gypsy” hissed a voice at Selina’s ear, the hand leaving her shoulder to brush a soft curl from her neck.

  For a split second Selina thought it was J-L and braced herself for the inevitable violence that accompanied her husband’s infrequent and uninvited visits to her bedchamber. But her husband was dead and having survived his unspeakable behavior she was determined that no one would frighten or abuse her ever again. So she slapped the hand away and pushed the chair back, hoping to off-balance the intruder. She turned and came face to face with the Earl of Delvin.

  He retreated to the bed and poured wine into two glasses from a bottle he had brought with him.

  “Join me in a toast, Gypsy?” he asked with all the aplomb of an invited guest. He held out a wine glass. When Selina refused it he put aside the bottle and her glass and sipped at his wine with a smile. “Oh, do you think I mean to poison you?”

  “No,” Selina answered calmly. “That form of murder is too subtle for you. Green Park is more your style.”

  Delvin was genuinely amused and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Yes, it is, isn’t it. Poison is a woman’s way; cowardly and unpredictable.” He glanced at the table under the window. “In your counting house, Gypsy?”

  Although his smile remained fixed Selina heard the edge to his voice and smiled crookedly. “Oh, I don’t think I could count all of my inheritance in one lifetime, do you?”

  “Black and blue but a wealthy widow nonetheless. It’s just as well for you the magistrate found in your favor.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We all know George blew his brains out. It wasn’t a shooting accident. Suicides forfeit their inheritance. He should have been buried at the crossroads where cowards belong.”

  “Oh? Were you in expectation of receiving a legacy? How disappointing for you,” Selina said without sympathy.

  “Odd that a man who loathed and despised females bequeathed his entire fortune to the one female he hated above all others.”

  “Perhaps J-L had a conscience after all?” she retorted.

  Delvin snorted. “George? A conscience? That’s rich! Come on, Gypsy. Tell me: How did you get him to sign that scrap of a will just before he put a shotgun in his mouth?”

  “You forget. Jack and Andrews were the only ones to witness J-L’s signature.”

  The Earl sneered. “I’m unlikely ever to forget your insipid cousin’s influence over George, Gypsy.” His gaze wandered to the desk again. “I don’t suppose that fool Andrews has come across that IOU?”

  “No. Andrews has been through J-L’s documents—and so have I,” said Selina as she closed over the ledgers from his prying eyes and stacked them neatly, an eye to the guttering candle, thankful the candles in the wall sconce by the door still burned brightly enough to cast light across this half of the bedchamber. She heard the Earl swear softly and turned to face him with a smug smile. “I’m sure a man of your substantial means can live without a simple IOU, especially now you are to marry an heiress…?”

  Delvin drained his glass and put it on the bedside table next to Selina’s untouched wine. “A debt is a debt and I want it repaid.”

  “Certainly. You need only produce J-L’s IOU.”

  “We have been through this before, Gypsy. George and I shook hands on it. He gave me his word. That was good enough for me.”

  “Well it isn’t good enough for me!”

  Delvin smiled through his teeth. “I suggest we come to some arrangement or I may be forced to extract payment. I assure you, if it comes to that, it won’t be pleasant.”

  Selina laughed in his face. “What could you possibly do to me that would be in anyway more unpleasant than the six years I’ve just endured?” She went to shoulder past him. “Now if you’ve done threatening me…”

  But the Earl blocked her exit, an arm outstretched to the wall, a long tear in the lace ruffles of his right sleeve exposing fresh deep scratches across his wrist. “You were wasted on George,” he murmured, fingering the small collar of her chemise as he looked through the thin cotton fabric. “Not a man who appreciated the female form. And that you have in abundance, Gypsy. Nice and full, aren’t they?”

  “Take your hand off my breast, murderer.”

  “Murderer?”

  “Jack—”

  “Jack? Insipid, mousy Jack?” Delvin replied incredulously, continuing to knead her breast through the chemise, blood from his wrist smearing on the white cotton. “He had only himself to blame.”

  Selina pushed his hand off. “Jack would never have forced a fight on you over Emily or anyone else. And you know why.”

  “Do I?” He laughed in his throat and playfully pinched her nipple.

  “Emily—”

  “—will do as a wife. But it’s you I want. I’ll wager George never touched these magnificent breasts. Wasted,” he whispered in her ear as he pushed the flowered robe off her shoulders and let it fall to the carpet. “Rode himself to a sweat but never once brought you to satisfaction, did he, Gypsy?” He tugged violently at the collar of the chemise, putting a long rent in the fabric and exposing the rounded milky whiteness of her left breast. “Tich. Tich. Nasty,” he said without sympathy, gaze flickering over the healing welt across her bosom. “George’s last beating must’ve been monumental. Happened just before his accident, did it?”

  “As if you care,” Selina spat at him, struggling to break free. Yet a hard swallow belied the anger in her dark eyes. “Poxy Cindy out of action this week?”

  Delvin laughed heartily. “God! Cindy can’t compare to you, sweetheart. Let’s forget George’s IOU and go to bed.”

  Selina looked up into his pale blue eyes with loathing.
“Never.”

  “Oh? Come now, Gypsy. After six miserable years you must be aching for a good rut.”

  “Yes, a good one. But you couldn’t go the distance!”

  The Earl laughed harder, enjoying her verbal sparing nearly as much as he did caressing her bare flesh. And when he kissed the base of her throat, running a hand the length of her back to cradle the roundness of her bottom, Selina finally ceased struggling and seemed to yield into his embrace. He laughed softly in triumph and lifted her onto the table, fondling her as he pushed the chemise up over her knees. He stooped to kiss both her breasts as one hand tugged frantically at the buttons of his breeches. To his surprised delight she moved to accommodate him, opening her knees and arching her back sufficiently for her chemise to slide completely off her arms and torso to bunch at her hips, leaving her almost completely naked, and arousing him beyond the point of no return.

  It took all Selina’s self control to mask feelings of repulsion and nausea at having Delvin’s hands upon her, but she needed him distracted enough so that she could grope behind her for the guttering candle by the window with its bowl of hot liquid wax. She arched her back so that her torn chemise fell off her arms, giving her the freedom of movement she needed to find the loop of the candlestick holder. Using one finger in the loop she slid the shallow bowl of melted wax across the table. Once she was sure she had a firm hold on the base she waited, enduring Delvin’s hungry fondling as he let his breeches drop to his knees and tugged up his shirt out of the way. She carefully positioned the candlestick holder precisely where she wanted it in relation to his aroused body and then, just as he exposed himself in all his glory she dared to smile into his eyes and dashed the hot liquid across his hard bare flesh.

  His reaction was immediate and all that she hoped for. He fell back in shock, both hands between his legs as the hot wax instantly seared his tender flesh and then solidified like a second skin. He swore and stumbled to the bed looking for something to relieve an intense stinging. He found Selina’s untouched glass of wine and splashed its contents over his tortured flesh, but the burn lingered and he tried desperately to scrape off the now cold wax with shaking fingers. Fascinated, Selina watched the Earl’s feeble attempts to ease the pain, her sheer relief and his look of complete shock and horror that she had dared do this to him only serving to set her off into a fit of unrestrained giggling.

  Evans swept in on this scene, Alec on her heels, saying over her shoulder she knew nothing about a servant being sent to fetch him here. She had been down at the kitchens getting her mistress a glass of hot chocolate to help her sleep. She had certainly not sent for him. And her mistress could not be disturbed now, not at this late hour, and certainly not by a gentleman caller. Mrs. Jamison-Lewis was a respectable widow who kept respectable hours…

  And there was the Earl of Delvin by the bed, tucking his shirt into his damp, unbuttoned breeches. The respectable widow, her face flushed with laughter, was sitting upon the desk with her crumpled chemise bunched at the hips, beautiful naked breasts on display and long shapely legs bare and swinging freely. With her bouncy ringlets in wild disorder down her back she looked every inch a woman well satisfied. Neither she nor the Earl was aware of an intrusion until the old woman gasped in outrage and then both reacted in very different ways.

  Evans hurriedly went forward, scooped up Selina’s flowered silk robe off the floor and made a great fuss of putting it about her mistress’s bare shoulders, all the while muttering to herself about the outrageous liberties men took on unsuspecting and defenseless females. Selina endured the fuss because she had suffered a great shock and was wondering how best to deal with a situation that required an explanation and yet was inexplicable.

  Delvin fastened the four buttons of his oyster-colored silk breeches and made a display of adjusting himself, the burning sensation between his legs suppressed at sight of his brother.

  “Sweetheart, I’ve warned you in the past about bolting the door,” he said to Selina with good-humored annoyance, a swift telling glance at Alec.

  Selina stared open-mouthed at the sheer audacity of his presumption and went over to him, shooing Evans aside. “You knew he’d come,” she whispered in furious disbelief. “You planned this.”

  Delvin winked at her, his supercilious smile widening into a grin at Selina’s hot flush of defeat. “You can’t expect poor Evans to keep constant watch, now can you, darling?” he lectured with a shake of his powdered head and maneuvered himself to stand between Selina and his brother, as if to shield her from prying eyes. “For modesty’s sake,” he added gently, “may I suggest you button your robe…?”

  “How—how dare you do this to me!” Selina said in a choked whisper, hands balled into fists of frustrated rage. She pushed past the Earl and found herself standing before Alec in all her glorious dishevelment. She did not know which way to turn and took a step backward, a hand clutching at the front of her nightgown to cover her nakedness.

  But Alec could not bring himself to look her way again. He had nothing to say. Having taken less than three steps into her bedchamber he turned on a heel and walked out. He was completely numb.

  Two footmen carrying lighted tapers rushed through the door of Miss Emily’s bedchamber with the chambermaid close behind them. They ran around at her direction tripping over furniture and swearing loudly in their attempt to light all the wall sconces. But no sooner was the room ablaze with light than they brought themselves up short, staring speechless at the destruction that surrounded them; and then they turned to the four-poster bed.

  The chambermaid let out a great wail and threw herself at the bed. Tam, who still sat on the bed with a comforting hand on Miss Emily’s arm, stood up and went to speak but the footmen had already made up their minds as to what had gone on in this room. Seeing Miss Emily sobbing amongst the covers, her gown all twisted and torn from her shoulders, and that upstart red-haired footman, who now called himself a valet, with a hand on her was enough to stir them into action.

  Before Tam could speak one of the footmen grabbed him by the front of his worsted wool waistcoat and flung him across the room so hard that he fell against the far wall, winded. For good measure a boot was laid into his side, just in case he decided to get up and make a run for it.

  But Tam wasn’t going anywhere. He got to his knees, gasping for breath, hands hugging his aching ribs, and mutely watched the two thugs retreat to the foot of the bed. He wished he’d been knocked unconscious. He wanted to look away but couldn’t. One of the footmen rolled over the limp body and put an ear to the slack mouth and a hand to the pale cheek. But these actions were a mere formality for it was obvious that the girl was dead, despite there being no apparent injury or loss of blood. Yet Tam refused to see who it was. How his ribs ached. He was sure one of them was broken. He refused to see that the lifeless form with her head curiously twisted to one side and her black hair wild about her was Jenny. His Jenny. Jenny with eyes wide open, dark-circled and yet seeing nothing.

  The two footmen turned and stared at him then and he knew in an instant that not only did they think him a rapist but now he stood accused of murder. He dropped his head between his knees, ears filled with Miss Emily’s quiet, aching sobs and the chambermaid’s piercing, wild screams and prayed hard that Alec Halsey could rescue him from this nightmare.

  “Alec!? There you are!”

  It was Sir Cosmo, an elaborately embroidered silk banyan over his nightshirt and a turban with silver tassel atop his shaved head. He had a hand to this twisted silk affectation to stop it sliding onto his nose because he was walking so fast he was almost running; not an easy task in yellow kid mules on terrace tiles wet from a light cold rain. He was puffing as he came to stand beside his friend and wondered how long Alec had been out in the rain. The man’s curly black hair was visibly damp, as was his open necked shirt and he leaned against the marble balustrade in his shirtsleeves, staring out into the blackness.

  “The whole house… Up looking for you,”
Sir Cosmo managed to pant out. “Aunt Olivia… wants you… Pronto.”

  When Alec finally turned his head Sir Cosmo wondered if he was drunk, such was the glazed far away look in his normally sharp blue eyes. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about Jamison-Lewis?” he demanded in a restricted voice, hard gripping the balustrade in an attempt to stop the tremors that coursed through his body.

  Sir Cosmo blinked. “What about him?”

  “What about him? Damn you! That he was a-a wife beater.”

  “Not my business.”

  “Yet everyone knew?”

  Sir Cosmo swallowed. “Everyone knew. Yes.”

  “How often did it happen?”

  “Alec—”

  “How often?”

  “There’s no point to this now.”

  “How often did he—did he lay a hand on her?”

  “Alec! For God’s sake, leave it be. The brute’s dead.”

  “Indulge me.”

  It was Sir Cosmo’s turn to stare out into the blackness. “Enough,” he said quietly. “To be honest, I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t want to know…?”

  Sir Cosmo dug his cold hands deep into the pockets of his embroidered banyan and said lamely, “What goes on between husband and wife is really none of anybody’s business, is it?”

  Alec looked up into the night sky. “Marriage gives legitimacy to such bestial behavior, does it, Cosmo? Because they were man and wife he could hit her at will and no one gave a damn? Jesus Christ.”

  “We did what we could, Jack more than most, but J-L was her husband. He had rights; he owned her and he could do to her what he liked! That’s it, plain and simple.” He let out a sigh. “Thank God he’s dead and it’s over with, is what I say.”

  The rain started to fall again, this time in big heavy drops.

  “Why? Because you need no longer feel any guilt?”

  Sir Cosmo blinked at him. His friend’s expression of self-righteous indignation twisted his mouth into an ugly sneer. “You’ve got a nerve,” he growled. “You ruined her virtue and then abandoned her to that fate. And for the six years of her marriage you kept your distance, not caring to know what became of her. And now she’s free of that monster’s brutality you decide to castigate the rest of us for not taking a stand against him? Damn you, Alec. Damn you for your mistreatment of her. If anyone should feel guilt it’s you.”