by Robyn Carr
“That you’re sorry doesn’t—”
“Sorry?” Charles questioned. He gave a short laugh that sounded more like a sob. “I am sorry, Boris, that I failed. If it is not enough that I did not best you as I should have, though Elizabeth tried to warn me, I did not see the cost to myself. But I am mostly sorry that no one, not even you, understood why. I needed to beat you. I wanted to feel I was your equal... if only for one shining moment.”
There was a tense moment of silence as Charles put his face in his hands and tried to collect himself. “We will accomplish nothing here,” Lord Moresay finally said. “Lord Ridgley, you will be forced to turn your evidence over to the—”
“A moment, my lord,” Doré interrupted. “Mr. Latimer, did Andrew Shelby know your reasons for aiding him in this quest for the baron’s daughter?”
Charles’s eyes seemed blank as he gave a rueful chuckle. “He actually thought I liked him. Yes, when I was pushing him, giving him money, taking debt off his property, he thought I was trying to help my brother...but in the end he knew the truth.”
“Until Captain Gervais married Vieve, Andrew did not know your purpose?” Doré pressed.
“I never openly admitted to him that my whole intent was focused on her estate. He thought he lost her on his own account and blamed me. All the while, he was using my daughter.”
“Who did know of your goal?”
“A few of my closest workers, my family. Robert left my house because of it; he has left England. I tried to find him, but I was too late and his ship had sailed. Faye died because of it, though she did not learn how Andrew came to be our frequent houseguest until the day she took her own life. There is only Beth left unscathed, for Elizabeth no longer bothers to conceal her hatred for me. She begged me to cease in my attempts, to give attention to my family, but I cast pleas aside with the promise that when I had finally succeeded and stood in line to the title, there would be time for family. She waited twenty years for me to accomplish my single objective.”
“Elizabeth is a strong woman,” Lord Ridgley said. “She will...”
Tyson’s eyes met Doré’s over the baron’s head. He thought of the fires, the attempt on him in his own house, Elizabeth’s strange request for them to leave England. The crimes were all committed with cowardly stealth, none requiring great strength. He remembered Elizabeth’s hateful focus on Vieve’s face, her strange reaction to meeting the earl of Lemington.
He rose abruptly to his feet and moved quickly out of the study, leaving the door ajar. Doré moved quickly from behind the baron in pursuit, leaving the others to stare in wonder at their flight.
Tyson burst into the sitting room, stopping short at what he saw. Elizabeth sat most calmly on the settee beside Vieve, but the fingers of one of the aunt’s hands were locked into the hair at the base of Vieve’s neck, pulling her head back. In her other hand was the pistol, its barrel pressing into Vieve’s cheek.
“Do be cautious, Captain. It is cocked.”
Elizabeth gave Vieve’s hair a sharp tug, and Tyson read the terror in her eyes. He stood stock-still in the sitting room doorway, Doré peeking in over his shoulder.
“Tyson, it was Elizabeth...all the time,” Vieve whispered.
Elizabeth tugged her hair again. “Be still,” she ordered, her lips a white line of rage. “One little step, Captain, and before your very eyes, all this beauty shall disappear.” She chuckled. “All this magnificent beauty.”
“Why do you wish to hurt Vieve?” he quietly asked. “Is it not the title for your husband that you wish?”
“Bah, I have never cared for that ‘twas what Charles wanted, well enough, but all I wished was for a good life for my family. And it always seemed that I could not keep my family in order, for I had no husband and my children had no father.”
“Then it is Charles you wish to hurt,” Tyson said easily.
“I don’t care about Charles anymore,” she said evenly. “This is all her fault. Prancing about and teasing the men, flaunting her success over my girls, holding onto Andrew ‘til the very end...Had it not been for her, my delicate little niece, Charles would have his coveted title, Faye would have married decently, Robert would be with me...Beth...”
“You must think of Beth,” Vieve said softly.
There was a slight commotion in the foyer outside the sitting room, and Vieve knew that the men were all there, though she could only see Tyson. Then Charles came into view behind him, and after a shocked gasp, he tried to push into the room. Tyson spread his hands to hid him back.
“Elizabeth. My God.”
“Don’t you come near me,” she sneered. “You may stand where you are and watch, but don’t you ever come near me again.”
“Elizabeth, don’t...”
She began to laugh suddenly, her light eyes gleaming. “You arrogant bungler, you idiot. Fool. Bastard. All these years spent on property, bribes, loans. It would have never been over. You couldn’t get your hands on it, and while you blustered and fumbled, the rest of us were left to rot. Oh, how I hate you.”
“You? Did you—”
“Robert understood. He knew that Boris would die and you would commit another twenty years to your ritual of buying property, selling, loaning, bribing...all directed at the next baron. Another twenty years...every day saying that by summer it would be finished, by winter, by summer, by winter . ..”
Her voice had become a singsong of anger mixed with despair.
“Elizabeth,” Charles pleaded. “For God’s sake, don’t hurt anyone!”
She gave Vieve’s hair a sharp tug. Tyson stiffened and nearly took a step.
“You are an unmitigated ass,” she hissed. “I’ve already hurt people, you fool. When you whined that but for the ships you would have Boris, I paid a pirate to sink his largest. It cost me everything I had managed to save. When you raged that but for the warehouses you could win, I burned them for you. And then it was the captain you wished to remove.” She jammed the barrel into Vieve’s cheek. “I should have seen all along that the simplest way for you to get your damned title was to do away with his children. I could have done it years ago.”
“You cannot escape, Elizabeth. Put down the gun.”
“Why would I wish to escape? To what? You will either hang me or my husband...it is all the same. Tell him, Charles. Tell him that you are the only thing I have. You have told me often enough that I will have nothing without you. There will be no money, my children leave one by one, my own family is gone.”
“Beth,” Vieve said again. “Think of Beth.”
“I do think of Beth,” she ground out. “I think of how much happier she will be when she no longer has to be compared to her beautiful cousin. Faye’s last words before she died were ‘I am not as pretty as Vieve.’“
Vieve slowly closed her eyes, tears running unheeded down her cheeks.
Charles cautiously stepped a bit farther into the room, standing beside Tyson. “It is me you should kill, Elizabeth. I did not see what I was doing to you.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I think it is better that you live, Charles. And may every day be a living hell.”
“Kill me,” he said, taking another step to the right of Tyson. “No one will blame you. You may tell them how I’ve driven you, abused you, deserted you.”
“I never even went to childbed with a husband near enough to hear my screams,” she said to him, her voice full of venom. Doré was in the frame of the door, Lords Ridgley and Moresay still without, listening. Tyson glanced over his shoulder and met Doré’s eyes. Charles moved farther right, engaging his wife.
“They will not harm you for killing me. You will convince them it was my fault. Kill me.”
“Ha. You should live to face your son’s hatred. You thought it was difficult growing up under your older brother’s scorn, you should end your life enduring your son’s unforgiving—”
“Shoot me and receive him home, Elizabeth. It is my doing; no one else stands responsible.”
&nbs
p; Tyson cautiously edged his way left, taking advantage of Charles’s distraction. Doré stood where Tyson had been in the doorframe, lest Elizabeth take her eyes off Charles and look for a figure in that place.
“God knows you deserve it, Charles, but it is better for me, I think, if you watch your niece’s beauty die.” She cackled almost joyously. “Then you can watch your wife hang, comfort your daughter, and explain to your son—”
Tyson took two quick steps to the right while Elizabeth was shouting and then leapt suddenly, hitting the pistol arm from behind, swinging the bore off Vieve’s face. The only direction it could go was toward Charles, and the report sounded along with Elizabeth’s gasp of surprise. Without looking at the damage the shot had rendered, he grasped Elizabeth’s arms, holding her in an iron vise. Despite her frailty, he had to struggle to hold her, wrestling her off the settee and to the floor.
Charles reeled back with the force of the lead ball and fell with a crash, his hand clutching at his chest, his face distorted with pain. The moment the gun had moved, Vieve had turned her face. In the fire blast of powder, her hands went to her face, shielding her eyes.
Doré ran to Vieve, and the room instantly filled. Boris saw the effects of the shot first and his daughter second. Doré pulled Vieve’s hands from her face. Her cheek and chin were pinkened and sore from the powder, and her eyes watered profusely from the stinging blast, but she was harmed no further.
Doré quickly bent to clasp Elizabeth’s hands, replacing Tyson, and jerked the growling woman to her feet. She was a slight, wiry form, kicking, cursing, and wriggling frantically. He pulled her away from the commotion over Charles and Vieve, holding her wrestling form still by brutally pinning her wrists behind her back.
Vieve went to Tyson, sobbing against his chest as he held her close. “It was Elizabeth,” she wept, distraught and trembling. “Oh, Tyson, that night that you were shot, it was me she had come to kill.”
As Tyson held her, he looked down as Boris lifted his brother’s head.
“Be still now, Charles,” he said. “You’ll be—”
“Don’t...” Charles attempted. Blood poured from his chest. He coughed, and a spittle of blood came from his mouth. He looked into Boris’s eyes. “Don’t hurt her,” he rasped. “It wasn’t her...”
His voice trailed off, his eyes focused on Boris’s face, and he became still. The hand that had gripped his chest slowly fell away. Boris turned and looked up at Tyson. Then, turning back to his brother, he gently closed Charles’s eyes and laid his head softly on the floor.
Boris slowly rose and stood before Vieve. She turned from Tyson and sought comfort in her father’s arms, her frightened tears now buried in Lord Ridgley’s breast. The baron stroked her back. “God Almighty, forgive us all our ambition. This never should have gone so far.”
“Turn your prayers on them, my lord,” Tyson said softly. “Yours was not the sin of ambition, but survival. You cannot accept the blame for this.”
Vieve’s head rested against him, and he gently squeezed her shoulders. “Perhaps if I had been more generous when Charles was young...”
“...Or if your father had not died, your mother had not been lonely, your brother never born,” Tyson went on for him. He shook his head. “If there had been anything you could have done better, my lord, you would have done it.” He placed a firm hand on the baron’s shoulder. “Let it be.”
Lord Ridgley held his daughter’s face in his hands. “Perhaps I should have made him my heir,” he said, seeking some answer from Vieve.
She smiled shakily through her tears. “And I should have been born an ugly maid...Papa, we did not know how deeply they all hated us. How jealous, how driven. What could any of us have done? Could you have passed over your own son to give Charles your title? Could I have given my cousins good looks?” She shook her head. “Tyson is right; your only blame comes in trying to survive their envy and hate. You could have done nothing more.”
Lord Moresay and Doré were busily making use of a bell cord to tie Elizabeth Latimer to a small straight-backed chair. Oddly she did not resist, but stared ahead blankly with a mad, twisted smile on her face. It was in the midst of this that Harriet came to the doorway, having just returned to the house from some errand. She looked into the room, her eyes passing over the form of Charles to Elizabeth being bound, and then slowly her eyes rolled back and her bulky form sank backward with a thump on the floor.
“Blimey,” Bevis gasped from behind. He came into view as the parcels he carried for Harriet fell to the floor and he stooped to her. He looked into the room, slowly taking account of the scene. “Blimey,” he uttered again, not understanding in the least what had transpired.
“It will take a while to explain, Bevis. In the meantime, see to Harriet,” Tyson instructed.
Tyson pulled Vieve closer to him, putting an arm around her shoulders. They looked at Elizabeth.
“I can’t move my hands, Captain,” Elizabeth said. “Vieve, tell him that I can’t move my hands anymore. You must leave London with your Yankee, my dear. You must do so at once, for Faye is to be married and you interfere. Tell Charles that I am ready to go now.”
Vieve shook her head in sadness. “Oh, Elizabeth,” she sighed.
“I should have guessed,” Tyson said. “The fire setting, the intruder after the ball... it always required that the person be small and fleet and quiet. I simply never imagined that a woman...”
“You must remember to wear your gloves, my dear,” Elizabeth crooned, her eyes glassy and unfocused. “And by all means, take small steps. And do appear shy; you must always stay behind your husband, do not interfere with his progress. If you find yourself getting excited about some small matter, simply retire to privacy until it passes.”
Vieve looked at Tyson. “All the while that you were in conference and she held the pistol to my face, when she wasn’t threatening me, she gave me lessons in etiquette.” She shuddered slightly. “I may never follow another social rule.”
“I will see to her now,” Boris said. “She will have to be kept quite closely. Robert can be found and will take care of Beth and what is left of Charles’s holdings.”
“Whatever can you do with her, Papa?”
“Not much more than keep her, guard her. There is no point in sending her to Newgate, mad as she is. I will try somehow to work things out with what is left of Charles’s family. Perhaps Robert will take control of them now, though it will be hard for him. I will bury my brother. Come out of this room. It is too grim in here.”
Boris walked with them to the foyer, where each had to step around Harriet’s generous mound. The woman was softly moaning, slowly rousing.
“Please,” Boris said, his voice catching. “Leave the house, the two of you. Tyson, take my daughter for a long ride. There is very little left to be done here. Let me do it alone.”
“I have come this far, my lord...”
Boris held up his hand to stop Tyson. “I have detained you long enough, and what remains of this grievous business is mine to bear alone. Leave. Walk, ride, take your leisure in the park. Talk about a long sea voyage to America.”
“Papa, Tyson and I will assist you to the end....”
“My sweet child,” Boris said softly. “This is the end. Thank God.” He gently kissed her cheek. “Go with your man.”
Vieve watched as her father stepped back into the sitting room and quietly shut the doors. She looked uncertainly at Tyson.
“Come, love,” he said gently, taking her arm. “The death of a brother, even one such as Charles, is a painful thing to bear. Let us do as he bids us and leave him be.”
“He may need us...”
“He is not shy of voicing his needs, Vieve. Let him finish this as it suits him.”
Chapter Fourteen
June 6, 1795
Vieve halted Tristan in front of the old keep. Before dismounting, she glanced out toward the coast, noting that the smudge on the horizon would be the Lady Lillian anchored j
ust offshore, ready for two passengers.
She jumped down from Tristan’s back, her heart jumping in sentimental wonder as she approached the ruined old building. She faintly heard Tyson’s horse approach behind her, but she did not turn. Instead she gazed at the crumbling rock. It appeared as any fairy castle to her.
She marveled at the strange mixture of fate and chance that comprised life. She never would have met her husband, she reasoned, had he not been tricked into a duel. And had Charles Latimer not worked for so many years to ruin Lord Ridgley, there would have been no burned warehouses, no need for her father to seek a rich business partner.
Elizabeth Latimer’s last violent act had been the end of her strength. She sat, now, in a bolted bedchamber, depleted of energy, weak and listless. Though she seemed finally harmless, her son guarded her dubiously, determined to proceed with the care of what remained of his family responsibly. Though the relationship was strained, Lord Ridgley and Robert seemed to have a common goal in ending the bitterness even if they could not develop a great deal of warmth. The many years of hostilities had left their mark on the young man as well as the old.
Vieve looked around the inside of the keep. She could not help but think of Andrew. He had been given back his deeds, but still he caroused London in search of a rich bride, rather than working the land his family had left him. Some things, she thought with a heavy sigh, even fate could not change.
She was ready to say good-bye to her father and begin another life for herself in Virginia. Leaving Lord Ridgley was difficult, but he was a hearty soul and promised to visit. Now he busied himself with the long-overdue refurbishing of Chappington Hall and waited impatiently for the birth of Paul’s heir. It was a glad time for her family, their troubles past and hope on the horizon. She would miss them.