Deceiving an Earl

by Sharon Cullen

  He was considered a genius in his field.

  But at what price did that reputation come?

  The demand for his lectures increased yearly. Students were put on waiting lists to watch and learn from the master.

  Oliver supposed that the beast of Needham’s genius must be fed somehow.

  “It seems your outlandish theory might be correct,” O’Leary said, as he took his seat in his creaking chair behind his desk.

  Oliver leaned forward, waiting expectantly, while Ashland took a more casual pose, but was no less interested in what O’Leary had to say.

  “We sent an officer to the house you had indicated. It is owned by a Mr. Durant, an assistant of Needham’s. A rather belligerent fellow, who initially refused to let the officer in. Upon first inspection it appeared there was nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently, the other assistant lives with this Durant in the same house. Including the two wives. The wives were not happy that their home was being searched, and there seemed to be some commotion in a small room off the kitchen. When the officer demanded a look, he found a body buried in a pile of straw.”

  “A body?” Oliver asked. “As in a deceased body?”

  “As in a deceased body. Recently deceased. The four claimed they did not know how the body got there. Then one of the wives said that the deceased had arrived one night and had commenced drinking and gambling with them. When everyone woke up that morning, he was dead. Not knowing what to do with him, they buried him in the straw in the kitchen.”

  Oliver raised a disbelieving brow. “Because that is what people do upon discovering a dead body in their home? Bury it in straw?”

  O’Leary suppressed a grin, but it quickly faded. “The deceased is Blue Posey.”

  The men were silent for several moments, letting the information sink in. Blue Posey. Oliver had never met the man, but he knew of him. Everyone knew of Blue Posey.

  Ashland muttered a curse.

  “Did they admit to being in the employ of Needham?” Oliver asked.

  “After a bit of prodding they admitted to everything. Needham pays them seven pounds a body.”

  “A small fortune,” Ashland murmured.

  Four people could live off seven pounds easily in the East End, especially if they were careful with their funds. With the amount of bodies they were providing—at seven pounds a body—they were beyond rich.

  “What of Needham?” Oliver asked.

  “We will question him,” O’Leary said. “Although I’m unsure how much he will be implicated in this. He can claim to not have known about any of it.”

  “Or he could have masterminded the entire thing,” Oliver said.

  “Most likely that is the scenario, but based upon his reputation and the fact that he is a physician to the royal family, this all might be swept under the carpet.”

  So where did that leave Oliver?

  Should he tell Ellen?

  He felt he owed it to her to tell her. She needed to know that the man she was about to marry might be an accessory to many murders.

  “And so we have solved another mystery,” Ashland said.

  Another mystery solved, but a conundrum created.

  After a night of sitting up, drinking expensive port, and thinking deeply, Oliver came to the conclusion that he owed it to his and Ellen’s past relationship and, yes, their past love, to tell her what he’d learned.

  What she did with the information would be up to her.

  And that’s how he found himself lifting the door knocker to her home.

  Would this be the last time he laid eyes on her in private?

  Suddenly their last meeting came roaring up from the depths of his memories. The searing kiss that had touched his soul. The desperation he’d put into that kiss. The ardent need to let her know just how much she meant to him and what she was doing to him by marrying that bastard Needham.

  He was a fool.

  A bloody, bloody fool.

  And yet he kept coming back like he did now, waiting for her in her own parlor. He kept allowing her to shred his heart over and over again.

  “Oliver?”

  He spun around to find her standing in the doorway, her expression guarded, her body language hesitant.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked softly.

  “I…” He swallowed, touched by the sight of her, his heart hammering, his hands clammy like he was a lad of Philip’s age, speaking to a woman for the first time.

  How could he let her go? How could he walk away if she asked him to?

  She stepped fully into the room and closed the door firmly behind her. “We agreed,” she said softly. “We agreed that you would not come back.”

  “I never agreed to anything. You told me not to come back.”

  “So then why are you here?”

  “There is information I just discovered that involves you.”

  Her eyes widened, and her cheeks paled. She blinked rapidly a few times as her mouth opened then closed.

  She visibly swallowed and seemed to gather her wits. “H-how did you know?”

  His brows drew together. “I discovered it myself.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes widened even more. “How?”

  Alarmed, Oliver took a step toward her, ready to catch her should she fall, but she held a hand out to stop him. “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m just…” She blinked again. “I have no words.”

  No words? “So you’ve known all this time? And you let it happen?”

  “Known?” She laughed. “Of course I knew. Nearly right away. How could I have not?”

  “And this does not seem wrong to you?”

  She lifted her chin. “I did what I had to do. For Philip and myself.”

  Oliver wanted to shake his head, afraid his ears were clogged. This was not the Ellen he knew. Why was she so desperate to stay with Needham, even knowing he was complicit to murder?

  “What hold does this man have over you, Ellen? At least tell me that.”

  She frowned. “Hold? Who has a hold over me?”

  “Needham.”

  Her frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”

  “My God, you just admitted that you were aware all along that he was ordering the murders of innocent people.”

  “What?” she whispered. “What are you saying?”

  Oliver was more confused than ever. “You admitted that you knew Needham was complicit in the murders of several people.”

  Using the couch as a crutch, she made her way around it on unsteady legs and plopped down on it.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what you know.”

  “You said you knew—”

  She waved her hand in the air. “I thought you were talking about something else.”

  Something else? What the devil else was he supposed to be talking about?

  “Please, Oliver. Tell me.”

  So he told her everything. From attending the autopsy, to the subsequent search and discovery of the dead body at the assistants’ home.

  She listened silently, her hands clenched in her lap, her face pale, and her dark eyes wide and unblinking.

  “He could walk away from this with merely a scratch to his reputation,” Oliver said. “He can deny ever knowing about any of this, and his assistants will take the blame and probably hang for it.”

  She sat in silence, still as a statue.

  “Ellen, love.” Oliver went to one knee in front of her and put his hand over her clenched fingers. Her hands were ice cold, and he could feel a fine tremor running through them. “Look at me.”

  She turned her dark gaze to him, but there was nothing in there. Her eyes were a blank slate.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I… This is all so… I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this. I thought you should know. If you break it off with him now, before the press finds out, then your reputation can be saved.”

  But
she was shaking her head before he’d even finished. Frustration welled within him. How could she deny this? How could she stay with a murderer?

  “You mustn’t tell anyone,” she said. “Promise me, Oliver. Promise that no one will find out.”

  He sat back on his heels, stunned. “You can’t mean that.”

  She turned her hands over so that they were cupping his. “For me. I’m asking you to do this for me. For what we once meant to each other.”

  He yanked his hand free and stood to pace a few feet away. “For what we once meant to each other? Once, Ellen?” Good God but how many different ways could this woman break his heart?

  She stood a bit unsteadily. “I have to marry him.”

  “No, you don’t. Marry me. Or don’t marry me. But for God’s sake, don’t marry a man who condones the killing of innocent people.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them there was determination and a hardness he’d never seen before. “You said yourself that he will probably walk away from this unscathed. Maybe he didn’t know about the killings. Maybe he trusted that his assistants were collecting these bodies the right way.”

  “He knows, Ellen. He knows exactly how he’s getting those bodies.”

  She turned away to circle the room, tapping her index fingers together in thought. She had acquired some strength in the past moments and a determination that confused him.

  From across the width of the couch she faced him. “I’m asking that you don’t tell anyone about this. Let the assistants be arrested quietly.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “What if I beg?”

  “Bloody hell, Ellen. What is happening here? This is not like you. Do you truly love him that much that you would marry him, even knowing he’s a killer?”

  She lowered herself, painfully, slowly, to her knees, holding the arm of the couch for support.

  “Ellen, for God’s sake. Get up.”

  “Please, Oliver.”

  “Stand up.”

  “I’m begging you.”

  “Please, Ellen. Please, stop this.”

  She clutched her hands together as if in prayer, and he felt as if he might be sick. His stomach churned at what she had done to herself.

  “I have to marry him,” she whispered. “I have to.”

  “Whatever it is that is making you do this, I can help you. We can work through this together.”

  She shook her head as tears formed in her eyes. “We can’t. Not this we can’t.”

  He stood there helplessly, feeling as if his heart were being ripped from him. In two strides he was in front of her, tugging on her hands until she was standing. Not knowing what else to do, he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly to him. There was a deep fear inside him, a terror that he had never felt before, that was slowly strangling him.

  “Tell me,” he kept saying over and over, and she kept shaking her head, her body trembling. But never once did she give in to the tears that he saw in her eyes.

  “You have to promise,” she said. “Promise that you won’t pursue this. That you won’t let the press find out. That this will quietly go away.”

  “I can’t, my love. I can’t. If it were in my power I would, but the arrests have already been made.”

  “No,” she whispered brokenly. “Please, no.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ellen stood at the window and watched Oliver bound down the steps and into his carriage. She blinked the tears from her eyes because she wanted to memorize his form, his long stride, the way his shoulders moved when he walked with purpose. She wanted to imprint upon herself the wholly masculine scent of him and the strength and feel of his arms around her when he held her close.

  She wanted to remember it all, because it would be the last time she would see him alone.

  She knew she’d acted irrationally, but she was a mother trying to protect her son. She cared little for herself. As long as Philip was protected—as long as the secret of his paternity was kept guarded—she didn’t care what happened to her.

  Except when Oliver was present. When he was next to her, talking to her, she tended to forget all reason. He was so persuasive. For a moment she’d believed that he could help her, that he could make this nightmare go away. But she was also saving Oliver from her secret, protecting him the best that she could.

  Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she had gone to him when she realized that Philip was his child. It wouldn’t have changed anything. She certainly couldn’t have left Arthur and gone to Oliver. The scandal would have destroyed them all. But sometimes she liked to pretend that Oliver would have swept her and Philip away and they would have lived happily ever after in a small cottage in the country, drunk on love and happiness and little else.

  That was a fairy tale, however. And reality was never like fairy tales.

  Her lie by omission had grown and grown until its evil tentacles had wrapped around her and she’d become a prisoner to it.

  But wasn’t that what all lies eventually became? A prison?

  William wielded her secret like a sword, threatening her and everyone she loved.

  For Philip she had to stay true to the course. For Oliver she had to stand firm.

  The thought of what William had done, killing people to provide his lectures with bodies to cut up, sickened her. She’d not thought that she could be any more disgusted by the man, but this was a new low. What was she to do? William would never let her go. He would never allow her to walk away in light of these accusations. Even Oliver admitted that William would probably find a way out of this mess.

  “Was that Lord Armbruster?”

  Ellen spun away from the window and tried to surreptitiously wipe the tears from her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said to Philip. “He just left.”

  “And what did he have to say?” Philip stood in the doorway, tense, his gaze direct and burning.

  Uncomfortable, Ellen turned away from her son. “Nothing important.”

  A heavy silence fell between them, so many unspoken words. She felt his disapproval from across the room.

  “Nothing important,” he repeated with little emotion. “I see.”

  She fiddled with a silly piece of crystal that was nothing more than a dust-catching ornament and wondered where it had come from, how long it had been there. This was her home; shouldn’t she know these things? But she looked at it like she’d never seen it before.

  “So, you’re intent on marrying Needham?”

  Her hand dropped from the frivolous ornament. “Yes, of course.”

  “Even after what Armbruster told you?”

  Her head jerked up to find her son staring at her with an odd, focused expression. “What do you know about that?”

  “He’s a bastard,” Philip hissed with more emotion than she’d seen from him since his father died. “And you’ll just ignore it and marry him anyway?”

  “Philip.” She passed a weary hand over her eyes, tired of trying to explain herself when she knew that her explanations were weak. What she wanted to do was scream at Oliver and Philip that she was doing this for them. That she was saving them from public humiliation and ruin. But she couldn’t say that, so she kept her course.

  “This is unbelievable,” Philip said. “Insanity at its best. The man’s true character has been revealed, and you insist on staying with him. He’s a bastard, Mother.”

  “That’s enough!” Her voice whipped out, startling them both. She never yelled at him.

  Philip shook his head. “I don’t understand you.”

  He turned to leave the room just as the butler opened the door to announce that Sir Needham had arrived.

  Philip sneered at William and brushed past him, knocking shoulders with him.

  William grabbed Philip’s arm, stopping him mid-stride.

  Ellen made a sound of alarm, but it was as if her feet were nailed to the floor.

  They were face-to-face, nearly nose-to
-nose.

  “Show some respect, you miserable whelp.”

  Philip’s face turned red with rage, and he yanked his arm from William’s hold. “Never lay a hand on me again, sir. Or there will be fisticuffs.”

  Before Ellen could move, William cocked his hand back and punched Philip in the jaw. The boy reeled back, his hand going to his face, his eyes wide and shocked and filling with a rage that frightened Ellen.

  “No,” she cried out, hurrying toward them.

  Philip turned his gaze to her, and she instantly recognized her mistake. By not berating William she had let her son know that he came second to William. That was not true, of course, but it was what he saw.

  “Go to the kitchen. Have cook put a slab of meat on that. The swelling will go down in no time.”

  But Philip had already turned away from her, leaving her standing there helplessly.

  William took her arm and led her back into the parlor. “That boy needs some manners beat into him.”

  Ellen turned on him in a swirl of skirts. “Don’t ever touch him again,” she said through tight lips.

  William grinned. “And what will you do? Nothing. You will do nothing, because I know your secret, and I won’t hesitate to tell everyone I know.”

  Ellen’s stomach clenched, and she felt as if she were to be sick. But there was one thing she could do. She would separate the two, keep them apart, so William’s evil could not touch her son. After all, she’d spent his entire life protecting him, and she wouldn’t stop now.

  “Is it true?” she whispered. “What they are saying about you? Did you kill those men so you could cut them up?”

  William appeared surprised and then calculating. “How did you come by this information?”

  She realized her error. She could not tell him that Oliver had been by to warn her. He’d told her never to speak to Oliver again.

  William took a threatening step toward her. “Tell me how you found out.”

  She had no choice but to throw Oliver to the wolf, in order to save herself. “Armbruster came by to warn me.”

  William chuckled. “How very noble of him to try to save his damsel in distress. He’s such a lovesick fool, still pining after you even after our engagement. Really, I feel sorry for the chap having lost out to Lord Fieldhurst and now me.”