by Liz Carlyle
As with all things, the truth was likely somewhere in the middle.
He sighed. “Give me the letter,” he said, thrusting out a hand.
His index finger set in the center, Sir George pushed the folded paper another inch, then hesitated. “There is one other thing.”
“Yes, with that lot, there always is.” Napier fell back into his chair. “Well, go on. What is it?”
“Lady Hepplewood—your great-aunt, that is . . .” Sir George looked suddenly sheepish. “She has a companion, or . . . or a sort of ward?”
“Saint-Bryce’s intended bride?” Napier looked at him oddly. “Yes, there’s some vague family connection. She was Hepplewood’s cousin, I think.”
Sir George glanced away, never a good sign. “Well, Lady Hepplewood has told Duncaster that the girl has been given every expectation of becoming the next Baroness Saint-Bryce.”
“Well, that will be a damned sight more difficult with Saint-Bryce in the grave,” said Napier dryly, “but I wish Lady Hepplewood every success.”
“Doubtless she’ll be relieved to hear it. Because Royden . . . well, you are Saint-Bryce.”
“The devil I am.”
“Technically, you are,” said Sir George.
“No,” he countered. “Technically, I’m assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police—unless you mean to sack me over this Coldwater debacle.”
“But Baron Saint-Bryce is Viscount Duncaster’s secondary title,” Sir George pointed out. “The courtesy title traditionally borne by the heir.”
“And if he offered it to me,” Napier gritted, “I would bloody well refuse it.”
Sir George lifted his shoulders lamely. “I fear that he and Lady Hepplewood are already referring to you as such.”
“Good God.”
“Oh, I doubt your grandfather shares his younger sister’s marriage schemes,” said Sir George consolingly. “After all, Duncaster’s much older than she and—well, he is a man, Royden. He’ll likely be satisfied with merely your boot across his threshold.”
“I fear they are both to be disappointed,” said Napier coldly. “Moreover, they are never satisfied. I’ve already seen that much.”
“But Lady Hepplewood—” Here, Sir George leaned forward. “Well, my boy, you spent several days in her company. Does she not intimidate you? I always found her terrifying.”
Napier lifted one shoulder. “The lady scarcely spared me a glance,” he said honestly.
Sir George fell back. “Well, she will have more than a glance for you now, my boy,” he warned. “I have known the lady for years, Napier, and I very much suggest . . .”
“What?”
“That you prepare yourself,” he said. “Perhaps . . . perhaps you ought not go alone?”
“How kind of you, sir,” said Napier a little acidly. “I shall greatly enjoy your company on the long ride to Wiltshire.”
Sir George blanched. “No, no, I meant . . .”
“Yes—?”
“Well, I did happen to see you at the opera recently,” he said, “with a strikingly lovely widow on your arm.”
Napier could only glower at him. “With Lady Anisha Stafford, do you mean?”
“Indeed, and she appears both graceful and self-possessed.” The sheepish smile returned. “Her late husband was one of the Dorset Staffords, you know. Certainly her Scottish roots are noble and ancient.”
He was tiptoeing around the fact of Anisha’s Rajput mother, Napier noticed. But no matter. “What, sir, is your point?”
“Nothing,” said Sir George. “But I’m given to understand that the two of you have been keeping company. That you recently dined in her home, and that she has occasionally visited your office. And I just thought that, if there were anything in it, then now might be the time to announce—”
“There’s nothing whatever,” Napier gruffly interjected. “The vaguest of friendships. As to Lady Anisha’s finer feelings, I believe they are otherwise engaged.”
“Oh.” Sir George’s face fell, and he looked suddenly weary. “Oh, that’s unfortunate.”
He mightn’t think so, thought Napier grimly, had he known of Anisha’s involvement in Sir Wilfred’s death. Napier felt a stab of guilt for having used his influence to keep her name from the witness list. But he did not doubt Lazonby’s threat; the man would have mired the Napier name in mud forever, and ruined his father’s legacy.
That, however, had hardly been the deciding factor. Napier truly had no wish to involve Anisha. Oh, he no longer thought of her as anything save a dear friend; the whole of his attention was subsumed by this case.
And by the lady in gray.
Good God. He tried to shove the thought of Elizabeth Ashton away again.
But even now he could feel her cool eyes cutting into him. Could feel the heat of her hand in his as he’d settled her back onto the bench. She was as different from Anisha as the moon from the sun.
“Oh, well,” said Sir George worriedly. “It would have been ideal, of course, to take a prospective bride to visit your grandfather.”
“A bride?” Napier retorted. “I’ve rarely time for breakfast, let alone a bride.”
“Well, nothing less, I fear, will put Lady Hepplewood off her notion.”
“Lady Hepplewood’s notions are no concern of mine,” said Napier.
“Hmm.” Sir George looked worried. “We shall see about that.”
But the talk of Lady Hepplewood’s scheming had stiffened Napier’s resolve. “No, we shan’t see,” he answered. “I haven’t the time to traipse off to Wiltshire to dance attendance on an old man and his whims.”
At last irritation sketched over Sir George’s face. “Royden, for God’s sake, be reasonable,” he hissed beneath the clamor of the room. “When Duncaster dies, what then? Do you think for one moment Commissioner Mayne will keep you on at Scotland Yard? Or will even want you? And I shan’t force him, I tell you. One cannot simply give up estates and titles. One is expected to do one’s duty to the Crown.”
“I did not ask for this,” Napier muttered. “Good God, I never even dreamt it!”
“No one did,” said Sir George grimly. “But far better you go now and make something like peace with Duncaster—and learn a bit of how things go on. For if you wait until he dies, my boy, you’ll be viewed as nothing but a neophyte to be taken advantage of by the staff, the estate agents, and that wheedling pack of granddaughters. You’ll be utterly ignorant—and you’ll be hated in the bargain.”
Napier shrugged. “Already they regard me as nothing but a burr under their proverbial saddles.”
At that, Sir George’s mouth quirked. “Well, then,” he said, flicking the letter across the table. “It will be just like a day at the office for you, won’t it?”
The rain clouds that had visited Hackney in the wee hours of the morning had apparently taken a long-term lease. By early afternoon, the traffic passing by Elizabeth Ashton’s tidy cottage had winnowed away to an occasional carriage clattering past, and a farm cart with an ancient driver wrapped in a damp brown blanket who, hunched miserably as he was, greatly resembled a drowned rat.
With the tip of one finger, she leaned into the parlor’s bow window and pulled back the light underdrapes to look out for about the fifth time at her small but sodden front garden. The gutters around the house still rumbled and rain still bounced off the flagstone path like pea-gravel flung from the heavens. Elizabeth dreaded going out into it. And yet she had to resist the almost overwhelming urge to do just that.
To run. No, to flee.
To rush headlong into something, anything, that might take her away from here.
Or away from herself, perhaps.
Refusing to wring her hands over her plight, she clenched the ends of her shawl in one fist instead. Wherever she was to go, she could not go today. It had taken the past several days to summon her solicitor and tidy her affairs. Still, she had a little time yet; a very little, perhaps, but Elizabeth had become adept at calculating ri
sk and opportunity.
Dropping the drapery, she turned from the glass and considered ringing for a fire to be built up. But the cold she felt, Elizabeth feared, was a chill no fire would mend; it was a coldness of the soul—and one brought upon herself.
The elderly gentleman scratching out a document deep in the shadows of the parlor stretched forward to dip his pen into his inkwell, the creak of his chair drawing her back to the present. Mr. Bodkins returned to his efforts with utter concentration, as if unaware his client still remained in the room.
Suddenly, light, quick footsteps came down the stairs and Elizabeth’s maid Fanny poked her head over the banister, holding a large wicker case by its leather strap.
“Beg pardon, Miss Lisette, but this one for the hats?” she asked. “Or would you rather the boxes?”
Elizabeth blinked, trying to draw her mind back to the pressing tasks at hand. Away from Sir Wilfred’s pale corpse. Away from Lord Lazonby’s knowing gaze, and the black, soulless eyes of Royden Napier. But all of them had begun to haunt her nights.
“The wicker, I think,” she said vaguely.
“And—er—Mr. Coldwater’s things have been sorted.” Something like sympathy sketched over the maid’s face. “Shall I put them in the trunks?”
Elizabeth stilled her hand on the shawl. “We shan’t have room,” she finally said. “Take them up to St. John’s. The Ladies’ Parish Committee will know what’s best done with them.”
Fanny cut an assessing look at their caller. “Those old tabbies might quiz me, miss,” she warned.
“Drop Mr. Coldwater’s things in the vestry,” said Elizabeth flatly. “If anyone asks you why, act as if you’ve been struck dumb.”
At that, Bodkins snapped shut the latch on his rosewood writing box and rose from the parlor table, a worried crease down the middle of his forehead. It had become a permanent fixture over the last twenty years, Elizabeth realized.
“Well, that’s that, Lisette,” he said, making a creaky bow. “If I could just have your signature?”
She went to the table and hastily scribbled upon the lines as he shuffled papers and pointed them out.
“Very well,” he said when she’d laid the pen aside. “Everything has been signed and your accounts brought current. Now, as to the lease on this house—”
“Thank you, Bodkins,” Elizabeth preempted, “but I’m quite persuaded to quit Hackney.”
Bodkins’s crease deepened as he peered at her over his silver spectacles. “But where will you go, my dear, if I may ask?” he said uneasily. “I went to great lengths to obtain this house—and at your insistence. Moreover, Hackney is a quiet, lovely village, and you have the wherewithal to live here in a measure of comfort.”
“Thank you,” she said, “nonetheless, I insist.”
Bodkins shook his head. “But my dear, where do you mean to go?” he pressed. “And when?”
“The day after tomorrow,” she said crisply. “As to where—” Here, her own forehead creased. “Where did you say that old manor house was located?”
“The one that came to you ten years ago?”
“Was there another?” she asked mordantly. “Heavens, if we were so flush with them, perhaps Papa might have sold one and paid the bailiffs rather than take the grim alternative of shoving a pistol up his nose.”
Bodkins paled. “It is no jesting matter, Lisette, your father’s failings. And certainly not his death.”
She widened her eyes. “Indeed it is not,” she agreed, her voice suddenly husky. “Not to me. For I found him, and had to mop up the blood afterward, since Elinor couldn’t—she could never bear such things, you know—and the servants simply wouldn’t. They’d not been paid, you see. And with no hope of ever being paid, everyone save Nanna left us.”
“Oh.” Bodkins’s face fell. “Oh, I fear you are very bitter, my dear.”
“And you are very astute,” she replied, “though well intentioned, I’m sure.”
“But you have become cynical, Lisette. It breaks my heart.”
Bodkins held her gaze a moment and then, apparently persuaded no more was forthcoming, went on. “In any case, the manor passed down to you upon your grandmother’s death ten years ago, since your mother and sister predeceased you,” he said. “As I explained to your father’s sister, Mrs. Ashton, it was the one inheritance your maternal grandfather did not control because your grandmother’s marriage settlements provided—”
“Yes, thank you,” she interjected. “I comprehend marriage settlements. But you . . . you mean to say you wrote to America—to Aunt Ashton—of this inheritance?”
His confusion returned. “Why, I would have been remiss in my duties to your late mother’s family, Lisette, had I not,” he said. “Until this morning, I thought you knew.”
Elizabeth looked at him blankly. “And what did Aunt Ashton say?”
“That I should sell it,” he said acerbically, “and send the money to you—well, to Mr. Ashton, really—in Boston. But I flatly refused to do it until you’d reached your majority, and given me your personal instruction. I heard no more, and simply let the rents accumulate, pittance though they are.”
Elizabeth waved her hand as if it didn’t matter, but she was suddenly, and very deeply, grateful to Bodkins. “Thank you,” she said more gently. “Thank you for looking after me, Bodkins. You have been, I think, my only friend in England. Now tell me, where is the manor located?”
“Well, why, it is in Caithness.”
“Caithness?” Her eyebrows drew together. “And where is that?”
“Scotland, miss.”
“Ah, far from London, then,” she murmured. “Excellent.”
“The North of Scotland, my dear.” Bodkins was looking alarmed again. “Indeed, the very, very tip of the wretched place.”
“Come now!” Elizabeth forced a smile. “How wretched can it be?”
“My dear girl, they don’t even have roads that far!”
“Oh, Bodkins, do not be ridiculous! There are roads everywhere nowadays—trains, too, almost.”
“Lisette, my dear, I fear you’ve been too long in the colonies.”
“The United States, Bodkins,” she reminded him dryly. “I believe they’ve not been colonies for quite some decades. And no, they actually don’t have roads everywhere. Indeed, most of it is an uncivilized hell. But Scotland—why, that is still a part of Britain, unless some vast change has occurred since I left my little schoolroom in London.”
“Yes, yes, to be sure,” he said. “But you can practically see the Orkneys from Caithness, ma’am. And no, they do not have roads.”
But Elizabeth was in deep thought now. The North of Scotland did indeed sound grim. But what was the alternative? Having put herself in this wretched position, she could expect no one save herself to drag her out of it. She had to get away from Lazonby’s ultimate vengeance—which she fully deserved—and Napier’s more immediate investigation.
Perhaps she deserved that, too. Perhaps she should just give herself up. Explain everything. But how to explain what one scarcely understood? What in God’s name had happened to her? Elizabeth turned her head, and fought the urge to burst into tears.
Damn it, she did not cry.
And yet her heart felt like one of those hot-air balloons, once magnificently swelled with the fire of righteous indignation, now left limp and directionless. She had reached lofty, almost giddy heights in her search for revenge, her wings borne high by her hatred of Lord Lazonby. And now she had fallen to the earth, and to the crushing reality of her own mistakes.
Her own madness, perhaps.
Perhaps that was the awful cold she felt; insanity creeping into the crevices of her soul.
Oh, she had to escape it all! “How long will it take to get there, Bodkins?”
“Weeks!” he said stridently. “If you can get there from here. Which I do sincerely doubt. Moreover, the house itself has been uninhabited for years. Consider what it must look like. Consider the weather. Truly,
my dear, it is out of the question.”
“But Bodkins—”
He cut her off. “And if my advice seems presumptuous,” he interjected, lifting one finger, “recall that I have served Lord Rowend’s old and noble family for nearly four decades, and your mother Lady Mary Rowend herself until she wed your father. Your welfare is a serious matter.”
Something inside Elizabeth snapped. “You are kind, Bodkins,” she said, her hand clenching again, “yet I cannot help but wonder where Lord Rowend’s concern was when I was orphaned at twelve, and actually needed it.”
The elderly gentleman drew back as if he’d been slapped. “I do beg your pardon.”
Elizabeth felt the hot press of tears again. “No, I beg yours, sir,” she said more gently. “I . . . I am not myself today. And I realize, of course, it was not your choice I be packed up and sold like a bale of wool. Or that my sister died in the middle of the Atlantic, to be tossed overboard as if she were no better than a piece of old baggage.”
“Lisette, my dear!” Bodkins drew back an inch. “Lady Mary’s family—they simply were not situated to take on two rambunctious granddaughters. And your father’s family, why, they seemed determined to have you in America. Indeed, they begged for you.”
“Is that what Lord Rowend told you?” She strolled toward the parlor door, as if to encourage the old man’s departure. “That he had not even the smallest nook in that great, grand mansion where his orphaned granddaughters might have lived? Well. I shall not challenge it.”
But Bodkins remained steadfast by the table, his jowls trembling a little. “I believe this Coldwater fellow has overset you,” he said bitterly. “Such a scandal he’s mired you in with this dreadful shooting business! And yes, it is true Lord Rowend disliked your father, and had no wish to be reminded of him, but—”
“And we were naught but reminders?” she interjected. “Elinor and I?”
The old man drew himself up indignantly. “It was a misjudgment, perhaps, to send you to your father’s family,” he admitted, “yet one could not but feel for your grandfather. Poor Lady Mary was seduced by Sir Arthur and her fortune run through like water. It left Lord Rowend so distraught he disavowed any relation to her husband.”