A Woman of True Honor (True Gentlemen Book 8)

by Grace Burrowes

The parlor had sufficient seating, but rather than avail themselves of it, Caleb and Tobias remained standing. The room had only the one exit, and Valerian gestured Adam into the chair nearest the door. Emily’s brother would stop anybody intent on bolting.

  When Emily joined them, she took one of two wing chairs near the fire. “Briggs will be along shortly. I told the footman to haul her here bodily if need be.”

  Briggs arrived a moment later, looking as annoyed as a hen dethroned from her nesting box. “What is the meaning—Adam?” She sank onto a tufted chair near the door.

  Adam rose and bowed. “Miss Briggs.”

  A footman brought in the tea service, and Valerian took the chair opposite Emily’s and poured out while he considered theories. Who benefited from having Adam sent to the Antipodes? Osgood, Tobias, and Caleb all benefited, while Emily did not. As for Briggs…

  Osgood Pepper’s arrival interrupted that speculation. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “We’re having a discussion,” Emily said. “Valerian is pouring out. Have a seat, Papa.”

  Pepper had marched right past his son when he’d stormed into the parlor. Adam remained standing by the door, and Pepper caught sight of him apparently for the first time in five years.

  “You’re here,” Osgood said, studying his son intently. His countenance gave away no emotion, no joy, no relief, no sorrow.

  “Hello, Papa. I’m pleased to see you looking well.”

  Pepper blinked several times. “You are looking quite well, too, you fool.”

  “Papa.” Emily’s tone was mild, even sweet. “Have a seat. Now.”

  Pepper sank into a corner of the sofa. “Whatever course you embark upon, Dorning,” he said, “I ask that you undertake it with discretion. Old rumors were flying around London when we decamped several months ago. After all these years, I have no idea why ancient family scandal should rear its ugly head so recently, but my business dealings rely on a reputation for scrupulous probity.”

  “Your son’s life hangs in the balance,” Valerian replied. “Your daughter’s happiness might well be at stake, and you are concerned with your business dealings?”

  “My business is all I have to leave them.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Briggs muttered. “Your health is quite improved, and your children have no need of your funds.”

  Emily picked up her cup and saucer, holding them before her. “You’d know that how, Briggs?”

  Briggs scooted around on the cushion, again bringing to mind the image of a broody hen. “Your mother left you both well-off. The money has been collecting interest for years. I did review her settlement terms. I simply wasn’t ready to reveal them to you without first consulting your father.”

  Emily took a slow sip of tea, her very calm portending doom for the porcelain—or perhaps for Briggs.

  “Veronica,” Osgood said softly, “that will do.”

  “That,” Valerian said, “won’t nearly do. Miss Briggs has removed yet another motive for Adam to have forged any bank drafts. His mother left him funds, which he very likely learned of when he came of age. When do the funds disburse?”

  Briggs sent Osgood a look that appeared to convey the sentiment you tell them, or I will.

  “For Adam,” Osgood said, gaze returning to his son, “the funds were to be made available on his twenty-eighth birthday, which has passed. For Emily, upon her marriage or her twenty-eighth birthday, whichever first occurs. I dared not risk sending the money to Botany Bay, travel over that distance being perilous for anything of value.”

  Caleb Booth was studying the carpet, Tobias Granger the crown molding. They either knew of these terms or had no reason to care about them.

  “And these funds were in addition to any pin money Emily could claim?” Valerian asked.

  Osgood nodded, and he, too, appeared to become fascinated with a slightly worn carpet.

  Adam sank into the chair near the door. “So Emily had no need to forge a bank draft. Papa similarly had no motivation, unless he took me so much into dislike he’d risk my life on a transport ship, which I am loath to believe.”

  “I took every precaution,” Osgood retorted, his veined hand gripping the arm of the sofa, “every measure, every possible safeguard for your welfare. The damned governor of the colony intervened on your behalf, and I hate to tell you what that cost me.”

  “The damned governor of the colony shouldn’t have had to intervene on my behalf,” Adam said, “but I grasped that you and I were protecting Emily.”

  “You most assuredly were not,” Emily said, tapping her spoon against her teacup. “Not for a moment, Adam. I had as little to gain by forging Papa’s signature as you did. For Caleb and Tobias, the same cannot be said.”

  She smiled at them, teeth gleaming over her cup and saucer.

  Valerian moved the tea tray a few inches closer to her knee. “Booth, Granger, you both had motive and opportunity. This very day, I found you headed away from the village on horseback, rather than taking the Pepper family coach and four to London. The coachman would have reported your destination back to your employer. That suggests you weren’t aiming directly for the capital. What say you?”

  “We wanted to have a look at a merchantman for sale in Portsmouth,” Tobias replied. “We were bound for London, but I suggested a detour to Caleb that we could make discreetly without arousing Osgood’s ire. Redesigning a ship is not a cheap or simple undertaking, and an inspection of the vessel itself was in order.”

  “No,” Emily said, “it wasn’t. I had a look at the plans you drew up, as did a master shipwright. He scotched your foolish notions thoroughly.”

  “Give me the name of the ship,” Valerian said. “I’ll verify that it’s in port and that it’s a merchantman for sale. Mr. Pepper’s trust in you will be vindicated, and we can focus our attention on the events of five years ago.”

  A tense silence ensued. Nobody was drinking the tea except Emily, and Briggs was perched on the very edge of her seat.

  “It won’t wash,” Caleb said, tossing himself onto the sofa. “We were going straight to London, where I suspect Tobias was about to withdraw every penny he’s hoarded away for the past five years, leaving me to make awkward explanations, except I haven’t anything to explain.”

  “Try,” Emily said. “Try very hard, Caleb.”

  He sat forward, his forearms propped on his thighs, his gaze on the empty hearth. “Here is what I know. Somebody signed Osgood’s name to a bank draft for three hundred and fifty pounds. The bank draft was blank on Friday morning, the funds were in Adam’s keeping by the end of the day, and Adam took it to the bank to be cashed. Osgood swears he didn’t sign that draft. Tobias says he didn’t either—not that he’s much of a forger. That left Emily or Adam as the culprit, both of whom know their father’s signature well. I wasn’t about to point a finger at Emily. Tobias and I agreed that Emily must not be implicated.”

  “I had no motive,” Emily snapped. “Tobias had more motive than I did. He was a former clerk earning a manager’s wage, with few funds to invest and a long, hard climb to amassing any sort of fortune. You had more motive than I did, Caleb. The clerks in the counting room had such a motive, but Adam did not.”

  “How was I to know that?” Caleb retorted. “How was I to know that your pin money was adequate, that you had no private debts you could not mention to your father? How was I to know Adam wasn’t frittering away his funds on vice or gaming? Tobias is too careful to commit such a blunder, and I’m not brave enough.”

  “You’re brave,” Tobias said. “Sometimes stupidly so.”

  “Thank you,” Caleb replied, smiling slightly. “While you are merely stupid, but not stupid enough to steal from the hand that literally feeds us. You were convinced Emily was to blame, though—an erroneous conclusion, it seems.”

  “Perhaps even a stupid conclusion,” Valerian mused. “Mr. Pepper, what have you to say about this matter?”

  “I didn’t sign that bank draft, but
I made a holy commotion when I learned somebody had. That was foolish of me. The clerks heard me, and they were questioned accordingly, but if one thing is certain in my business, it’s that the competition has spies everywhere. I had to hold somebody accountable, or I would have lost the custom of the Italians, and at the time they were crucial to my endeavors.”

  They had also very likely been under a French blockade, meaning Osgood had been doing business with smugglers. Not exactly a genteel lot.

  “Then why,” Adam said quietly, “hold your only son accountable for another’s wrongdoing? If you were convinced of Emily’s guilt, why not confront her and give her an opportunity to explain?”

  Emily’s gaze grew thoughtful, then she set down her cup and saucer. “Papa is protecting somebody,” she said, “but that somebody isn’t me.”

  Valerian had reached the same conclusion nearly at the same moment Emily had. He passed Emily his cup and saucer, and noticed that Adam was standing directly in front of the only exit.

  “Briggs,” Valerian said, “you need not admit to anything, but after all these years, airing the truth would be a profound courtesy to those inconvenienced by your lies.”

  Valerian spoke gently, not as a man passing judgment, but as a man pronouncing sentence on one already condemned. Emily suspected his courtesy was not for the criminal—for Briggs was clearly the culprit—but for Emily herself, for Adam, for Papa, and even a little bit for Tobias and Caleb.

  And maybe a little bit as a nod to the inherent gentlemanliness owed even to a felon.

  Briggs spread her soft, pale hands in her lap, the hands of a lady, and yet, Briggs was not a lady, was she?

  “Veronica, hold your tongue,” Papa said. “We can attribute this whole contretemps to a grave misunderstanding.”

  Briggs met his gaze, volumes being exchanged between them in silence. Emily could parse out the despair and the regret, but other emotions too subtle for labels hung in the air as well.

  “I needed the money,” Briggs said. “My brother was in the Marshalsea prison, already showing signs of consumption. If I didn’t get him out of there, he would have been lost to me. You lot can’t know what it’s like to lose your only sibling. No man wanted me for a wife, my parents were long gone, and Jemmy was the only kin I had.”

  Osgood shook his head. “I would have—"

  “No, you would not have, Osgood Pepper.” Briggs’s tone was more sad than angry. “You are eloquent on the topic of impecunious debtors. You give no quarter, unless it’s in your commercial interest to do so. A judge’s daughter goes free, but my brother was to rot away his life in a foul prison he had no hope of leaving.”

  “I do not make the laws,” Osgood said. “I had to buy a property to even qualify to vote for the scoundrel of my choosing. I didn’t put your brother in debt, but, Veronica, if you’d come to me, I would have made you a loan, something. You need not have tried to steal from me.”

  “You forged Papa’s signature,” Emily said, needing to hear an admission of guilt. “You had plenty of practice addressing invitations, as I did, and you saw a chance to solve your problems with the stroke of the pen. When would you have retrieved the money?”

  “The safes are often left open,” Briggs replied, “both here and in London. Failing that, Osgood always jots the combinations on the underside of his blotter. Retrieving the money on Sunday morning while the rest of the household was at services would have been easy enough.”

  Tobias and Caleb were quiet for once, while Valerian spoke up. “But the bank ledger would have shown the money withdrawn. How were you planning on hiding that fact?”

  “I had asked Tobias to bring the weekly reckoning directly to me,” she said. “I told him I wanted to use it to acquaint Emily with commercial ledgers. I could document the transaction half-illegibly, and nobody would have looked too closely.”

  Tobias looked uncomfortable. “Emily was already well acquainted with ledgers of every sort, and had she wished to peruse more ledgers, they were stacked six deep in the office cabinets. I was thus suspicious, but in any event, Osgood was at his desk early Saturday morning when the bank reckoning for the week arrived. I had no means of retrieving that document before he was poring over it. When the theft became apparent, I concluded Briggs was trying to protect Emily.”

  “And Briggs,” Emily said, turning her gaze on her companion, “doubtless realized the advantage in fostering your error. Papa might well send an embezzling lady’s companion to the gallows, but not his own daughter. Briggs, did you decide that if you were to lose your brother, I should also lose mine?”

  “She pleaded with me,” Osgood said. “Begged me not to pursue the matter, but Tobias had made a few remarks that implicated my own daughter. Emily has often copied my signature on social correspondence, on regrets, on any manner of documents. Emily was frequently my amanuensis for business correspondence and well knew my office routines. Then too, the clerks were alerted to the theft, as were Tobias and Caleb. What sort of merchant would I be if I allowed my own offspring to steal from me with impunity? An example had to be made.”

  And that was Papa, trying to talk himself out of blame for a stupid decision. “You could have made an example of a clerk, tossed him out without a character and had Tobias quietly slip him a few pounds. You are complicit in this, Papa. You never gave me a chance to speak for myself. You simply chose for me how the matter was to be resolved.”

  “And you chose for me too,” Adam said. “Why, Papa? I denied my guilt, I’d never broken my word to you, and yet, you let me be put on a transport ship and sent to the ends of the earth.”

  “Did you good,” Osgood said, chin coming up. “Look at you now. Hale and fit, possessed of more than a bit of blunt. You were bored witless with the business, and I wasn’t about to slip off to some garret to slurp porridge so you could take over what I’d built with my own two hands. Caleb and Tobias were always trying to pit us against each other, and you were starting to run about with titled fellows and idle heirs I couldn’t approve of.”

  “They were my friends,” Adam shot back. “Young men from good families whom I’d met at school. That’s precisely why you subjected me to university. Now they dare not acknowledge me on the street, even assuming I complete my sentence.”

  But Adam hadn’t completed his sentence, and therein lay a terrible problem. “You sent my brother away for a crime he didn’t commit,” Emily said, “and you kept in your employ a woman who betrayed your trust. What will you do about that now, Papa?”

  It wasn’t really for Papa to say, there being a magistrate present. Emily darted a peek at Valerian, but his expression gave away nothing. He might have been enduring another tea tray with the new neighbors, so calm was his countenance. He even smiled at her ever so slightly.

  I won’t lose him over this. The relief of that realization was physical, a lightening of a heavy burden, and it gave Emily the courage to press for further answers.

  “The rumors that started earlier in the year in Town,” she said. “They originated with you, Briggs, didn’t they?”

  “Veronica?” Papa prodded.

  She nodded. “Once Emily found a husband, I’d have no post. No reason to remain under your roof. I’d be just another aging companion in want of a position.”

  “So you encouraged me to wear the wrong dresses,” Emily said, thinking back. “Engaged incompetent French tutors for me, suggested I walk out with the fortune hunters rather than the young men of means and character. You sabotaged my success socially to keep your salary.”

  Briggs looked away. “Not only to keep my salary. You would write me an excellent character, I know, and I might have found another post. I betrayed this family’s trust in one regard, and sooner or later you’d find a spouse—witness, Mr. Dorning sits among us now. I simply wanted to be…”

  Near Papa. Who’d almost died, while Briggs had watched and worried in silence.

  Valerian held out a plate of cakes to Emily. She took one to be poli
te, but the gesture conveyed more than simple guest-parlor civility. The Peppers and their retainers were having a discussion, much to her surprise, a quiet, albeit sad, but honest discussion.

  “When did you begin to suspect that Emily was not the guilty party?” Valerian asked, directing the question to Osgood.

  “That took a while,” Osgood said. “The wheels of justice turn swiftly when the matter is criminal. I was much taken up with ensuring Adam’s passage would be safe and his situation as comfortable as I could make it. My suspicions eventually fell on Tobias and Caleb, but they weren’t behaving any differently, and they are in their way loyal, if not to me, then to each other. They would not jeopardize long-term gain for the short-term return of three hundred and fifty pounds.

  “Then Emily went through yet another London Season without securing a match. She’s pretty, well dowered, smart… Any man should be proud to call her his wife. I am a mere merchant, heavily tainted with the smell of the shop, but I am a wealthy merchant. I control several seats in Parliament, and Emily’s inheritance will be considerable. Somebody was interfering with her search for a spouse, and the most logical somebody put her feet under my table every night. By the time that realization dawned on me, I was quite ill, Adam had only another two years to serve, and the rumors regarding his crime had reached London.

  “Worse yet,” he went on, “in my desperation to convince everybody that the right culprit had been found, I adopted an attitude toward Adam appropriate to a betrayed father. I am sorry for that, son. Very sorry, but at the time, I thought I was safeguarding your sister.”

  “So you came to Dorsetshire,” Valerian said. “To the back corner of nowhere, thinking to die in peace?”

  Osgood’s gaze returned to Adam. “Veronica told me Emily had been corresponding with Adam, and my eyes and ears in Botany Bay told me Adam had slipped the leash. I suspected he was coming home to set matters right with me, thinking me at death’s door.”

  “You were at death’s door,” Emily interjected. “You could be again if the medication stops working.”