“I can’t believe this has you so furious,” his half sister, Gwyn, said from her perch on Mother’s favorite settee. “All of this stomping about isn’t like you at all.”
“I’m not ‘stomping about’—I’m pacing. That’s what men do when they’re angry. Stomping about, indeed. You make me sound like a . . . a—” A half-cocked lad with a hot temper. He halted in front of her. “You should have seen Lady Eustace. I tell you, that woman was laughing at me. Laughing! She didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she’d once been in Sanforth. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn she murdered Uncle Armie and Father with her bare hands.”
“We both know that’s unlikely. Probably it was that Elias fellow, doing the bidding of an employer we have not yet uncovered. Besides, according to what I gleaned from your less-than-coherent tale of your visit to the Pryde house,” Gwyn said, “she might have been more confused than anything. I mean, it sounds to me as if she was trying to figure out where she’d learned of the bull running, and Vanessa was trying to help.”
Sheridan shook his head. “You don’t understand. Vanessa gave her mother a perfectly good reason for having heard of it, so if Lady Eustace was confused, she could have seized on that. Instead, the woman flat-out said that wasn’t where she’d heard about it! Without proposing an alternative explanation. She was taunting me, I swear.”
Gwyn smirked at him. “I notice you’re not claiming that Vanessa was trying to cover up her mother’s perfidy.”
“Because that would be absurd,” he said. Vanessa’s very name caused a different sort of agitation in him. “The poor woman was mortified by every word out of her mother’s mouth. I don’t know how she can endure such a mother. Now I see why Grey hates his aunt so. She’s a . . . a rude, pushy gossip who insisted on mocking me about the debts I inherited.”
“Ah, now we are coming to the truth of what has set you off. You didn’t like looking bad in front of Vanessa.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.” It wasn’t the least true. Couldn’t be. He didn’t care that much about Vanessa. Did he?
Gwyn tried to rise from the settee but fell back onto it.
“Careful,” Sheridan said with concern, holding out his hand to help her up. Damn, but at seven months along Gwyn was heavy now. That child of hers must be quite a bruiser.
Then again, Gwyn’s new husband had the shoulders of an ox.
Once she was on her feet, she said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry? I shall call for some tea and cakes. And perhaps an apple. Wait, does Cook still make those heavenly apple tarts? That’s what I want: tea and cake and apple tarts . . . and maybe a bit of cheese. Oh, and pickles! Yes, I shall definitely want some pickles with it.”
“Eating for seven, are we?” he said dryly.
“You have no idea. I think I single-handedly devoured half of the supper Olivia laid out last night.” She leveled her inquisitive gaze on him. “And speaking of last night, you and Vanessa seemed very chummy.”
“I have no intention of discussing last night. You and Mother are intent on marrying me off, and I won’t have it.”
“Why not?” When he didn’t answer right away, Gwyn searched his face. “Wait a minute. Surely you’re not still mourning Helene. It’s been five years now.”
He stiffened. “Six. And it feels as if it were only yesterday.” Or it should feel that way. One should not get over loving somebody so easily or quickly just because that person had died. It seemed wrong somehow. “I don’t want to talk about Helene.”
“Well, then.” She rang for a servant and gave the footman her lengthy list of food and drink demands.
Sheridan couldn’t believe it. Were women in her condition always filled with a ravenous hunger? Or was it just the ones like his sister, who presently looked as if she’d swallowed a whole ham?
Unbidden, an image of Vanessa in Gwyn’s situation assailed him—of Vanessa rosy and glowing, Vanessa carrying their child in her belly, Vanessa dandling their son or daughter on her knee.
Blast it! What was wrong with him? It felt disloyal to Helene to imagine such a thing, especially since he’d never conjured up such an image with her. So why was he doing so with Vanessa?
As the servant marched off to do Gwyn’s bidding, she waved her hand at him. “Since you won’t let me talk about Helene, continue with your tirade against Lady Eustace, that ‘rude, pushy gossip.’ I begin to be rather glad I never met her.”
“Trust me, you should be.” But oddly, the heat of his anger had cooled. “I just wish I knew what her game was. She doesn’t seem to like me, yet she insisted on quizzing me about the state of the dukedom’s finances.”
“And Vanessa didn’t join in.”
“No. If anything, she was horrified by her mother’s line of questioning.”
Deep in thought, Gwyn lowered herself carefully onto the settee. “And you’re sure Vanessa knew nothing incriminating about her mother?”
“If she did, she hid it amazingly well.” He shrugged. “I have to go back tomorrow. I need to find out if her mother had been hinting at the truth or was just an awful creature in general.”
“You should bring Mama with you.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“They were friends once, weren’t they? Or at least relations. Lady Eustace was Mama’s sister-in-law for the year Mama was married to Grey’s father. And Mama will have the perfect reason for going—because she wants to get to know Vanessa after meeting her at Thorn and Olivia’s party.”
Just what he needed—his mother and Vanessa putting their heads together about anything.
Gwyn shifted on the settee. “And what does Mama have to say about Lady Eustace’s whereabouts at the two house parties, anyway? Have you asked her?”
“Of course I asked her.” Sheridan sighed. “For the first party, as you know, Mother was dealing with a sick infant and husband, so she barely got to see her guests. For the second party, she was in labor. So she was not in a position to know where everyone was.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Gwyn muttered.
“What?”
“Not in a position . . . Never mind.” She cocked her head. “I still say if you bring Mama, she can get Lady Eustace to reminisce with her about those house parties more naturally than if it’s you trying to elicit information.”
“I suppose.” He would never admit it to Gwyn, but he disliked the idea of chatting with Vanessa with his mother anywhere nearby. Bad enough he had to do it with her mother monitoring the conversation.
But Gwyn did have a point. He wasn’t supposed to be there for Vanessa. He was supposed to be chatting with her mother. If he could call whatever that woman did “chatting.”
Perhaps he should turn this on Gwyn. She had a part to play in these investigations, too.
“So,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant, “have you spoken to Lady Hornsby yet?”
Gwyn scowled. “No. But not for lack of trying. She hasn’t been ‘at home’ a single day since we started this.”
“That in itself is interesting.”
“I think so, too. I was planning to try again tomorrow.”
Before he could comment on that, the servants came in with a feast worthy of a king. Or rather, a very enceinte queen. Gwyn’s face lit up, and she barely waited until they left before she began loading a plate with the oddest combination of ingredients he could imagine.
He dropped into the chair opposite her and took an apple tart. “Do you think I’m overreacting with this investigation?” He took a bite of tart. They really were very good. “Is it possible all the deaths were exactly what they seemed for so many years—borne of accidents or illnesses? That they have no connection to each other beyond the weird coincidence that they all involved someone close to Mother?”
“You are not overreacting in the least.” Gwyn had a bite of cake, then a bite of pickle. “We already have proof that Grey’s father was poisoned. For all we know, the villainess poisoned Grey, too, but he survived it. We
also know that the note supposedly written by Joshua to Father, which lured Father to his death, wasn’t actually in Joshua’s hand. And we know that Elias, who might very well have written those notes, was hired to do all kinds of mischief that nearly got a number of us killed. Then he was poisoned in prison. That is clearly a pattern of villainy and not mere coincidence.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
She nodded sagely at him as she cut two thin slices of cake and one of pickle, then made a sort of sandwich of them.
“That looks vile,” he said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” She cut a bit of her “sandwich” and ate it. “But it’s surprisingly delicious.” She licked some crumbs from her lips. “Is Mama right? Do you really like Vanessa?”
He tensed. “Of course I like her. I always have. She’s a perfectly amiable woman.” Who kissed like a seductress.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“Perhaps so, but that’s all I’m admitting to.” At least to Gwyn, anyway.
Now if only he could convince himself of it.
Over the next two days, Sheridan dutifully went to the Eustace house in Queen Square at the proper time to pay calls. Both days he tried delving into Lady Eustace’s whereabouts during the house parties, but she continued to be vague and unhelpful. His questions also seemed to bewilder Vanessa. He feared he might reveal his purpose before he actually found out the truth.
So on the third day, he reluctantly followed Gwyn’s suggestion and asked his mother to join him when he went to pay his call. She was gracious about agreeing to do so, which made him wish he’d asked her before. What had he been afraid of?
This time when he went, it was after five P.M., when calls from family and close friends were expected to be made. Lady Eustace might not have had anything to do with his mother in decades, but the two women were still related through Grey’s father. So he supposed that made them intimates for life.
When they arrived, they discovered Sir Noah already there visiting his sister. Great. Now Sheridan had to watch his mother flirting with Vanessa’s uncle. At least he had Vanessa to chat with. As they had on the previous two days, they discussed everything from gardening—she enjoyed it and was knowledgeable about hybrids—to horses—she rode a great deal—to books. Unbeknownst to him, she was a great reader, and though her choices weren’t the same as his, they had a mutual enjoyment of poetry. Clearly, it was Juncker’s skill as a poet that had drawn her.
The thought soured him. She was simply too fine a woman for the joking, theatrical likes of Juncker. Today she wore a cheery gown of the same hue he’d been told by Gwyn was “evening primrose.” Whatever it was, the dark yellow made her blue eyes sparkle and her skin light up.
Or perhaps that was just how he saw her—sparkling and alight. Damn, he needed to be careful about that. Especially since her captivating smile turned him hard in all the wrong places.
He mustn’t think about her in that way. Yet he did, blast it.
The only solution was to focus on the reason for their visit—to get Lady Eustace talking. She actually seemed surprised and pleased to have Mother pay her a call. Unfortunately, his mother seemed disinclined to reminisce much about the past with Lady Eustace. Mother also seemed to be taking her time steering the conversation in the direction he wanted. He would have done so himself, but he couldn’t find an opening.
So once the two women were done with broader subjects of mutual interest, their conversation lapsed into a heavy silence. Sheridan had coached his mother in what to say or ask in order to get Lady Eustace talking about the past two house parties. But as usual, Mother never could follow a plan proposed by her children. She always had to go her own way.
“So tell me, Cora,” his mother said. “Is it true that you and Eustace mistreated my eldest son when he lived with you?”
Sheridan stifled a curse. This went far beyond going her own way. This was leaping off a cliff. He looked to Vanessa for help, but she was clearly frozen in shock. Meanwhile, Lady Eustace sat there agape, obviously horrified that Mother would be so direct. And Sir Noah raised his gaze to the heavens as if asking the angels for help in steering this visit into calmer waters.
“Mother,” Sheridan said firmly, “I hardly think this is the time—”
“It’s the only time I have,” she told Sheridan. “I don’t intend to return here again, so this is my only chance to get an answer from this harpy about her wretched behavior toward my firstborn.”
Lady Eustace had gained her wits at last. “I don’t know what Grey has been telling you, but—”
“It took me years to get him to tell me anything,” Mother cut in, obviously not caring that Lady Eustace’s face had turned a peculiar shade of purple. “Even then, I had to deduce the full truth from talking to servants and the like. But that doesn’t explain why you would betray me so. What did I ever do to you to warrant that? Grey was only a child. He deserved better from his aunt and uncle.”
Yes, he had. And though Mother was obviously filled with righteous anger over this, it was pain he saw written large in her face. It tore a hole in him, reminding him of the pain he’d seen in the faces of Helene’s parents.
Family could rip your heart out sometimes.
But his mother wasn’t done. She leaned forward in her chair. “And you were my friend. I entrusted my ten-year-old son to you, because I thought it was good for him to learn how to run the dukedom one day and because I thought, wrongly, that he would be cared for kindly by his uncle and my friend. But now, knowing how your husband chose to treat him—starving him, caning him, trying to steal his birthright from him—I live with guilt every day. I realize that what I did was, in theory, the best thing for his future, that I couldn’t have predicted how Eustace would torment him. Still—”
Sheridan stood. “Mother, we should go.”
His mother shook her head. “I’m not finished.” She fixed Lady Eustace with an icy look. “How do you live with the guilt? What could possibly have made your husband’s behavior acceptable in your eyes? How could you have condoned it?” She tapped her foot impatiently. “Well, have you no answer for me? No plausible excuse? Although I doubt such a thing exists.”
Lady Eustace’s mouth had dropped open, but no sound came out of it. Sir Noah rose and held out his hand to Sheridan’s mother. “It’s such a fine day. Perhaps we should go for a stroll in Queen Square Garden, Duchess.”
“That sounds lovely,” she said, but didn’t take his hand. “First, I’d like a reply from your sister.”
Lady Eustace stood to point her trembling finger toward the parlor door. “Get. Out. Of. My. House.”
Mother rose, too, with a steely glint in her eyes. “Gladly. As soon as you answer my question.”
With a sad expression, Vanessa stood. “She has no answer, I’m afraid, Duchess. Or she would have told me long ago when I first asked.”
“Whose side are you on, girl?” her mother snapped.
“Grey’s,” Vanessa said softly. “Always. Because he had no one who cared in this house but me.”
That cut right through Sheridan’s heart. He’d known Grey had suffered, but the enormity of how his half brother must have felt to be alone in a house with only an infant for a friend hit him hard. Now he understood why his brother hadn’t wanted to return to this place, to be in his aunt’s presence again. How could he?
His mother turned to Sir Noah. “I suppose we might as well take that stroll, sir. That is probably the only answer I will ever get from your sister.”
Sheridan met Vanessa’s gaze. Mother was right about one thing—there was no point in trying to get anything out of Lady Eustace today. “Will you join us on our walk?” he asked Vanessa.
Grimly, she nodded. He couldn’t blame her. He wanted to get away from the warring matrons as soon as possible himself. Although truth be told, he understood his mother’s determination to find out the truth. What had happened to Grey, which he’d only known a small port
ion of until today, had been unfair and unjust. And even after having repaired her relationship with her eldest son—a relationship torn asunder by forces she hadn’t even known about—Mother still ached that she couldn’t prevent it.
A lump caught in Sheridan’s throat. Father had died without ever knowing why Grey was so distant from them all. One more reason to do his best in finding out who had murdered Father.
The four of them left together, pausing to retrieve hats, bonnets, and greatcoats from the footman in silence, as if departing from a funeral. It was a funeral of sorts, he supposed. It was the death of whatever little had remained of Mother’s friendship with Lady Eustace.
Once they were out on the street in the light of the oil lamps, they headed across to the pretty garden mostly used by residents of the square and their guests. Sir Noah and Sheridan’s mother headed straight to the statue of Queen Anne, but Vanessa tugged at his arm to get him to go down a different path.
When they were out of earshot, she said wryly, “Wasn’t that fun?”
“Allow me to apologize for my mother—” he began.
“Don’t you dare. I admire your mother. She’s fierce in defending her children, but without trampling over those who don’t deserve her anger. Mother deserved it, trust me.”
“You were just a baby when Grey came. How do you know what he went through?”
“The same way your mother knows. From other sources. For me, it was servants. And from reading between the lines in things my parents said or overhearing their discussions when they thought I wasn’t around. I did learn some of it from Grey. First from watching his wariness whenever he was in Father’s presence.”
“I don’t imagine they got along, given what Mother said.”
“Hardly. Even though Grey went off to school at thirteen, he still came home for holidays and the weeks between terms. When I was old enough, he told me some of what he’d suffered before he went to Eton. I think he just needed someone to listen and to care about it. Once he was off to school, the punishments stopped, since he wasn’t ever home long enough to sustain them, but he was unable to leave Papa’s oversight for good until he was twenty-one. Before then, whenever he was home, he would take me on walks in this very garden, teach me how to ride, rescue me from trees I climbed—”
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