Richardson scratched his head. “Allenby was young, and Huffington was mature. Both had quite comfortable fortunes. Both had little family. Neither were titled. But there is nothing so remarkable in those things.”
“Both had country estates and neither was often in town,” Wycliffe added.
“Seems as if Lady Caroline wanted Georgiana settled comfortably in the countryside.”
“And she achieved that. Twice. But why should that matter to her? She’d done all she could to hide Georgiana’s past. We’ve only discovered it because we were looking for something else and found this instead.” Charles thought of Georgiana waiting for him upstairs and wondered how much of the truth she knew.
He swallowed the remainder of his whiskey and poured more. A change of subject was in order.
“About Gibbons?” he asked.
Richardson turned from his position near the window. “Wycliffe filled me in while we were waiting for you. I am asleep on my feet, gentlemen. I’m going home. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
Charles opened the library door for him and nodded to a discreetly waiting Crosley to see him out. Turning back to Wycliffe, he said, “Hope it’s better news than Richardson’s.”
“Gibbons has been seen loitering around the Crown and Bear. I find that odd considering he knows you frequent the place and your brother-in-law owns it.”
“Odd? Not if he’s looking to kill me. Good Lord. I’ve searched seven months with nary a glimpse of him, and now that my attention is elsewhere, he’s everywhere I turn.”
“Gibbons must be desperate,” Wycliffe said.
Charles stopped his pacing to look down into the fire. “No more so than I.”
“What would you say if Gibbons offered a truce, Hunter? Would you agree?”
He shook his head. “He killed Adam Booth and shot me. Those are hard things to ignore. Aside from that, I have no faith he’d keep a truce. Gibbons never honored an agreement in his life.”
“And if he asked for a meeting? Would you want to know what he had to say?”
What could Gibbons possibly have to say to him? Now, that was tempting. “Perhaps. Let’s go. We can fetch Devlin along the way.”
Wycliffe stood and clapped Charles on the back. “Not tonight, Hunter. It’s your wedding night. Go upstairs. Make love to your wife. Forget your pride. It will not keep you warm.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” he admitted.
“Then you are a bigger fool than I’d ever thought possible.”
* * *
Georgiana’s hair spread across her pillow and her lashes lay in dark spikes against her pale cheeks, almost as if they’d been formed by tears. Regrets, sweet Georgiana? Her lips—those soft petals that beckoned him—were slightly parted. He longed to kiss her awake but he merely stood there, studying the woman he had married. In the flicker of dim candlelight she looked almost ethereal.
In the face of better judgment, of past rejections, of vague suspicions, he’d married her. Knowing she was keeping secrets from him, he’d married her. He could not distinguish what he was feeling—the odd misgivings. Was it anger? Or something darker?
She’d fallen asleep waiting for him, and he could not regret it. He’d have welcomed any delay in talking to her because he did not know what to say. Would she be shocked to learn that her ‘aunt’ Caroline had been her mother? Or had she known and kept it from him?
Tomorrow. They’d sort it out tomorrow.
A black leather-bound journal lay facedown against her chest, her hand curled over it. She must have fallen asleep reading. Carefully, he slipped the slender volume from under her hand and smiled at her soft sigh.
He glanced at the writing, wondering if it were hers, and wondering if he would learn more about her from these pages than he had in the past week of conversations and confessions. But the date of the entry was from years before, and the handwriting was not Georgiana’s.
June 7, 1816
Thank heaven the unpleasantness is past. I have spoken with Mr. Hunter, and I believe I have successfully misdirected him by telling him Georgiana is embarrassed by his attentions. My conscience troubles me little over the lie, though I was distressed to see the depth of his attachment. Had I known how close they were growing, I would have ended it sooner. After Georgiana’s encouragement, he had every right to expect a different outcome.
As for Georgiana, I have warned her against fast behavior and told her that Mr. Hunter has lost interest in her. She is crushed, but it is for the best. I simply cannot have her marry into such a family as the Hunters. Despite their country seat, they are city dwellers. Some London busybody would snoop into Georgiana’s past to everyone’s ruin. ’Twill be better by far to have her settled in the country with no one to ask questions. Mr. Allenby seems a good prospect, as he is so smitten that he will believe she is exactly what she appears to be. His parents will not object, owing to the size of her dowry.
If only she would not cry into her pillow every night....
So, after all these years, he finally knew what had happened that long-ago spring. Lady Caroline had betrayed them both. No wonder, then, that Georgiana had been so cool and distant when they’d been reintroduced. No wonder she’d been confused by his thinly veiled anger. She must have thought him quite a bounder. Lady Caroline had driven a wedge between them that would have lasted a lifetime had Wycliffe not coerced him into investigating her husbands’ deaths.
He flipped the pages to the end and read how Georgiana had begged Caroline to recant her engagement to Allenby, and how Caroline had remained firm, nearly pushing her down the aisle. Enlightening, to say the least. Georgiana had not loved Allenby. All the easier for her to kill him?
He shivered. Where had that thought come from? They were married now. And he knew now that she had never deceived him. The time for doubts was past.
He closed the volume, wondering, how much more might he learn from Caroline’s other journals? And where were they? After tonight, he would most especially like to read the account of Caroline’s “accident” and Georgiana’s birth. Though he was fairly certain he knew it, would the name of her father be mentioned?
He glanced at Georgiana again. His earlier suspicion had likely been right. Her spiked lashes were due to tears. He could not imagine the pain of learning that the person she’d trusted most in the world had betrayed her. Had forced her into two marriages she hadn’t wanted.
He opened her bed-table drawer to put the book away, vowing to discuss the matter with Georgiana tomorrow. As he slipped the book into the drawer, his fingers brushed a thick vial. He pulled it out and read the label in the guttering candlelight.
Laudanum. A vague suspicion began to nag at him. Wycliffe had warned him to look for it, and here it was.
Damn. This was not how he’d thought he’d spend his wedding night.
* * *
Georgiana woke and stretched. She sat up in bed and looked around, disoriented. The last she could remember was waiting for Charles. And she’d been reading her... Caroline’s journal. Good heavens! It was gone!
She threw her covers back and dropped to her knees to look under the bed. Had it fallen from her hand?
“It is in the drawer, Georgiana.”
Her pulse pounded and she sat back on her heels, searching the shadows. Something stirred in the chair in the far corner. A dark figure unfolded and rose like a specter. She could only see his form, but it was enough to reveal that it was Charles. Relief washed through her.
“Oh! You frightened me half to death. What were you doing in the corner?”
“Waiting for you to wake.”
She glanced toward the draperies to see a thin line of daylight where they met. “Have you been there all night?”
“Yes.” He came toward her.
Something was wron
g. Some change in his manner. Not the slightest bit of warmth in his voice. Her pulse, which had begun to steady, skipped a beat or two. “Why did you not wake me?”
“You looked as if you needed the sleep.”
“I tried to wait up for you, but after all the excitement, I think I was more exhausted than I realized.” She accepted his offered hand and got to her feet.
“I’ve been thinking, Georgiana. I have decided to hold off making the formal announcement that we’ve married. Nor shall I post notices in any of the newspapers.”
Perversely, though that had been her thought last night, she now took offense to it. “Hold off? But I thought that was the whole point of marrying—to alert the villain that I had married again. To draw him out.”
He gave a negligent shrug. “Or draw her out. Did you ever think our culprit might be a woman, Georgiana?”
“I...I never considered that. Why would a woman want my husbands dead?”
“Jealousy? Dislike?” His voice had been offhand, but it lowered a moment later. “To do you a favor and extricate you from unpleasant or unwanted marriages?”
She had never seen Charles in such a strange mood, almost as if he were trying to tell her something but did not want to give it voice. “Why?”
He released her hand and stepped back, then snatched her wrapper from the foot of her bed and tossed it to her. “Put your wrapper on, Georgiana. I cannot think with you standing there half naked.”
Embarrassed, she looked down at her sheer lawn nightgown. It did reveal rather more of her than was modest. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and secured the tie. “Sorry,” she murmured.
He went to stand in front of the banked fire. “Have my servants made you comfortable?”
“They...they’ve been most hospitable. Clara and Sanders are settling in well. Clara is taken with your bathroom. She says the tub is the largest she’s ever seen.”
One corner of Charles’s mouth quirked in the semblance of a smile. “There is another in the servant’s wing, though the tub is not as large.”
“She will be delighted, I am sure.” She looked around and tried to hide her nervousness and the questions that rose to her mind. Was it odd that Charles had not come to bed with her but had preferred to spend the night in a chair?
She turned to see if there was a bell-pull by her bed. “Do you want tea, Charles?”
He was silent so long she turned to look at him. He rested one elbow on the mantel and was watching her with what she could only describe as detached curiosity. “I’ve told the servants to stay away unless I call them.”
Things were not going well at all. Perhaps it would be best to be blunt. “Why do you not tell me what is wrong, Charles? What do you want of me?”
“Answers, Georgiana.”
A feeling of dread settled in her heart. For all his control, she now understood that Charles was quite angry. His earlier comment, that perhaps the killer, if there was one, was a woman, suddenly became clear. “Do you think... Can you be suggesting that I killed my husbands?”
“The possibility crossed my mind.”
“Before or after our marriage? Because if you suspected me before, Charles, you’d have been insanely reckless to have gone through with it.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“By whom?”
“Never mind that, Georgiana. Just answer the question. Was it you?”
She gripped the bedpost to brace herself and sat on the side of the bed before her knees could give out. He thought she was a killer! He thought her capable of the most heinous crime possible. He had seduced her, slept with her and now married her, and he could believe such a thing of her?
Tears stung in her eyes. That he could even ask....
“Would you believe my answer? Or would you require proof?”
“Proof, if you have it.”
“I do not. How could I have proof of something I have not done?”
“Then you are saying you are innocent?”
Something snapped in her mind and her anger bubbled up from deep inside. “That you can even ask such a question disgusts me. Why did you marry me, if you think me guilty of such a crime?”
He spread his arms wide in a bewildered gesture. “I think I may not have had all the facts when I made that decision.”
She glanced toward her dressing table. He’d said the little journal she’d been reading was in the drawer. Placed there by Charles. Had he read it? She had thought he’d be pleased to learn she had not jilted him her first season. Instead he had become a suspicious tyrant.
“You are thinking I read your aunt’s journal.” His voice was deep and steady, and she realized this was a part of him she’d never seen before. “You are wondering how much I know, are you not?”
She met his stare and did not flinch. “Did you?”
“You answer my question first, Georgiana. Did you rid yourself of your husbands?”
A deep well of pain churned inside her. He’d never believed in her. He deserved to believe whatever he pleased. “Will you be able to sleep knowing I am in the next room? Wondering if you will be my next victim? Waiting for my footsteps?”
“Damn it, Georgiana! Give me an answer.”
“Not until you are rational.” The servants would not come unless he rang? Well and good. She went to the outer door and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Clara! Tea, if you please!”
By the time she turned, he was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
“Thank you for coming, Hunter. I am painfully aware that I have torn you away from your charming new wife, but I thought you should hear this.”
Charles expressed no opinion about precisely how charming Georgiana had been when shrieking for her morning tea. He merely nodded and sat across the desk from Wycliffe.
Wycliffe leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk. “Walter Foxworthy is being held for questioning regarding Allenby’s and Huffington’s deaths.”
This was surprising news. Maybe he wouldn’t have to thrash Foxworthy after all.
“I do not know how long we can hold him. The motive and possible opportunity are the only things that ring true. There is no actual proof. Alas, the Secretary was forced to act.”
“How was he forced?”
“Allenby’s father and Huffington’s nephew are insisting that something be done. Of course, they think your wife is the guilty party, but they cannot prove it any more than we can prove it is Foxworthy. Still, he is the only one with a clear motive—control and use of the Betman fortune and Georgiana. But we will need more proof if we are to get a conviction. The good news is that this development has bought us another day to uncover the truth.”
Charles met Wycliffe’s gaze and knew that there was more. “And the bad news?”
“A Mr. Hathaway has come to the Home Office and made an official report. He claims that Georgiana killed her husbands with laudanum. Perhaps—” he paused to clear his throat “—even killed her guardian.”
The bottle of laudanum in Charles’s waistcoat pocket felt like a lead weight. Laudanum and a loveless marriage had provided work for more than one gravedigger. The irony that he’d made the same accusations this morning was not lost on him. Anger tore through him like a winter wind. “Lady Caroline? Why, that’s absurd.”
“I know. But Hathaway’s claim is that she put laudanum in Allenby’s wedding cup, and that more than mere revelry accounted for his drunken behavior, and that his tumble down the stairs was a result of having been drugged with laudanum.”
“And Huffington?”
“That she put it in his toddy before he left for his daily walk about his property, and by the time the laudanum overtook him, he was too far away to make his way back.”
Charles could guess the rest. “And that s
he simply gave her aunt an overdose of her usual amount for sleep and no one suspected the truth since Lady Caroline was prone to taking it?”
Wycliffe nodded. “Hathaway contends that, although Lady Caroline was in a decline, the end came too quickly. Furthermore, he saw the vial in Georgiana’s bed-table drawer.”
Charles took a deep breath, hating what he was about to do. “Search for it, Wycliffe. I grant free access to Georgiana’s home and mine.”
“You must be quite certain to make such a sweeping statement.”
Damn the man! He met Wycliffe’s stare and did not flinch.
“Charles, if something is found to implicate Georgiana, you know I will have to do my duty.”
“Hathaway is a bitter former employee. He would say or do anything to spite me or her. He and I had words on more than one occasion, and it was necessary for me to expel him from Georgiana’s house. He made a threat when he was leaving. I was expecting some sort of retaliation, but this goes beyond reason. Surely you see that?”
“Nevertheless. We had been on the verge of arresting Foxworthy when Hathaway’s report came in. Foxworthy’s arrest is my ploy to buy you time, Charles. And there is not much of it. Act quickly, because the moment we release Foxworthy, we will have to arrest your wife.”
“You will find nothing to implicate Georgiana.”
Wycliffe stood and turned to look out his window. “You are certain, Hunter?”
“Positive.”
“Foxworthy is likely to be released by the end of the day. Tomorrow morning at the latest. Attention will return to Georgiana.”
“I understand.”
“Now what will you do?”
Charles sighed. “I have no idea where to go from here,” he said. Though Lord Carlington might be a good place to start.
* * *
Georgiana watched out her window until she saw Charles leave. She had no wish to encounter him again until she could control her temper. The man could be so maddeningly infuriating!
Was he going to acquire an annulment? Was that why he hadn’t consummated their marriage last night? That thought sent her mind spinning. She understood why it would be for the best, but her heart tore in two at the thought of losing him again.
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