A Scandalous Lady

by Rachelle Morgan

  A flock of long-beaked white birds flew past the bay windows, and a sailboat drifted out of the harbor, its canvasses billowing in the wind. Snippets of the story Anton had told last night at supper came back to Honesty. She could only imagine what anguish her father had suffered when he’d discovered his own brother was responsible for stealing—and presumably murdering—his two daughters on the day of his wife’s burial.

  “According to the police reports, Deuce McGuire wasn’t the only suspect in the girls’ abduction. A second man was believed to have been involved.”

  “That’s right,” Alex concurred. “There were a great many people at the funeral that day; we were all suspects at one time or another. But since a positive identification could not be made, the abduction of both girls was laid on McGuire.”

  As if aware of how uncomfortable it made Honesty to be talking of the man she’d been so fond of for sixteen years in front of her, her father added, “It was also hoped that when McGuire was found he might reveal the identity of his accomplice.”

  “Except he had no accomplice to his knowledge.” Jesse scanned the letter Deuce McGuire had left behind for Honesty to find. It had taken her and Jesse months to unravel the riddle and track down the “flowing stones of time.” “He only mentions being hired by someone who promised him wealth beyond his wildest dreams. McGuire took Honesty, that’s a fact. But he never once mentioned Faith, nor can I find anything to substantiate his involvement in her abduction, which leads me to believe that there was a second man involved.” Jesse slid a yellow-edged photograph out of the pile. “Does either of you recognize this man?”

  “His name was Frances Capshaw,” Anton announced, glancing on the image. “His friends called him ‘Cappy.’ He worked in the shipyards, but we let him go after we discovered that he was selling cargo on the black market.”

  “Is this the man who took Faith?” Honesty asked, looking at the picture over Anton’s shoulder.

  “I think it’s a strong possibility,” Jesse said. “Phillipe must have known the risks in taking the girls himself, so he had to hire someone to keep his hands clean. I’ve spent years tracking criminals. One of the easiest ways to throw the scent off your trail is to split the gang. I think Phillipe arranged for Capshaw to take one, McGuire the other. Once the ransom was paid and the girls returned, they would split the money and disappear.”

  “Except my fath—Deuce spoiled the plan when he learned that Phillipe had no intention of returning me alive.”

  “Exactly. Which leads me to believe that McGuire had been nothing but a pawn all along.”

  “What makes you think Cappy was the second man?” Alex asked.

  “Someone would need to take the blame. Who has better motive and means than a disgruntled employee? I’ve not been able to find a single connection between McGuire and Phillipe, but my gut tells me we’ll find one between Capshaw and McGuire.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Honesty cried, hope rising inside her for the first time since she’d discovered her sister missing. “Let’s talk to this Cappy fellow!”

  “Unfortunately that’s not possible. He was killed in a brawl a week after the abduction,” Alex said. “Several witnesses will attest to it.”

  No! Oh, God. Oh, God.

  “I also believe that’s why the case was dropped for so long; Since McGuire seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, the only other viable suspect had been killed, and with the girls believed dead . . .”

  “How will we find out if he was responsible for taking Faith now?”

  The silence in the room became deafening. The men looked at each other, as if the answer might be found in one of their worried expressions.

  Finally, Alex said, “Uncle Anton, do you remember hearing rumors of his involvement with a woman around the time he was caught selling the cargo?”

  “Yes, yes. A woman of ill repute down near the wharf. Alice Moore was her name, if I remember correctly.”

  Honesty wasted not a second in seizing her shawl from the back of a chair. A flick of her wrist sent Jesse’s hat sailing toward him. “Let’s go, then.”

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going,” he asked, catching the Stetson.

  “To the docks with you. If we can find this Alice person, she might be able to tell us something.”

  Alice Moore was not the type of woman that inspired hope. She had the look of a small barge that had ridden through one too many storms. Her hair was an odd mix of sunset red and royal purple, and hung in coarse shanks down to her knees. She had washed-out green eyes with bags down to her cheekbones, a bulbous nose, and three chins.

  And Honesty had never been so glad to see anyone in her life.

  It had taken them the entire morning and a small fortune to track her down. The shanty they found her in reeked of stale sex and onions and beer. The only pieces of furniture in the room were a bed that Honesty wouldn’t have sat on if her life depended on it, a shredded chair with stuffing bulging out from the tears in the horsehide, and a table bearing a soot-crusted lamp. There was a charred black cookstove in the far corner with a cast-iron skillet that hadn’t been washed in who knew when, and a slanted wooden cupboard with no food in sight.

  She and Jesse crowded together on a bench at the table. Honesty had never thought of herself as a snob. After all, she’d spent half her life living in everything from tents to train cars to brothels, some places so pathetic as would have offended a stray dog. But never had she been exposed to such filth, and she was careful not to touch anything but her husband.

  “McGuire . . . McGuire,” Alice said, tapping her finger against her cheek. “I don’t know. Been a lot of men in my life. Not sure I could recollect one from the other.”

  “Maybe this will jar your memory.” Jesse held out a shining gold piece and her eyes lit up.

  “I think it’s coming back to me now. . . .”

  She reached for the coin, but he snatched it back. “Not till you answer our questions.”

  She fell back in the chair with a pout, and Honesty swore the house shook. “He was some Irishman that used to come around now and again. I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “What was his connection to Cappy?”

  “Cappy?”

  If not for Jesse’s restraining arm across her waist, Honesty would have come out of the chair at her pretense of stupidity. Up until now, she’d kept quiet and still while he “interviewed the subject.” But she was fast reaching the end of her patience.

  “Frances Capshaw. We know you were involved with him.”

  “So what? I been involved with lots of men.”

  “So, we also know that Cappy did some work with two gentlemen: McGuire and Phillipe Jervais. Tell us what you know about their business with a little girl.”

  She went suddenly quiet, and her eyes darkened before she dropped her gaze to her lap. “I don’t know nothing about no little girl.”

  And Honesty snapped. “You’re lying.” Even her husband’s arm couldn’t stop her from rising off the bench and storming toward the woman. “Let me tell you something, Mrs. Moore,” she hissed in her rolled face. “I’ve spent most of my life living with people who would eat you for breakfast. We know she was here.” Just the thought of her sister in this hovel made her stomach turn. “Now tell me what you did with her, or I promise you, you will regret it.”

  Drawn back into herself, she glanced around Honesty’s shoulder and pleaded to Jesse for help. “Can’t you do something with this she-cat?”

  “ ’Fraid not. She’s one mean interrogator,” he replied, beaming.

  Realizing that she’d just signed herself onto a losing battle, Alice blurted, “I got rid of her! On a ship.”

  “What ship?” Honesty demanded, her hands on the arms of the chair.

  “I don’t remember the name. Just some ship in the harbor. Climbin’ Christophers, I only had her with me a few days, and she was driving me daft. Kept staring at me with those deer eyes—”
r />   “When?”

  “A couple days after Cappy kicked the bucket. McGuire ran off with his share of the money. When Cappy found out, he met Jervais at the tavern and told him he was going to spill if he didn’t come up with some tuppas real quick. Next thing I know, Cappy’s dead. A couple of the boys said a fight broke out in a tavern, and he got caught in the middle. If ya ask me, Jervais done him in.”

  Jesse nodded, as if the news didn’t surprise him. “That’s right about the same time the hunters started after Deuce.”

  “Why didn’t you just turn the girl over to the police?” Honesty pressed. “You had to know she belonged to someone.”

  “ ’Course I knew. It was all over the papers. I knew if I got caught with her, they’d think I nabbed her so I took her to the first ship in the harbor and convinced one of the fellows I knew aboard to take her with him.”

  “How did her clothes end up in the water?” Jesse asked.

  “I was taking her up the plank when she started crying because she’d spilt something on her dress, so I ripped it off her and threw it into the bay. Later on, it washed up and she was pronounced dead. And my problems were over.”

  Honesty narrowed her eyes on the smiling face. “That’s where you are wrong, Alice. Because if we don’t find her safe and sound, your problems have only just begun.”

  They lost a week poring over shipping logs and manifests in every office of every shipping station in San Francisco. Anton used his considerable power in the city to commission the records, and to Honesty’s admiration, often worked with them late into the night. She was learning so much about the man who’d sired her, and for the first time in sixteen years, realized that though her life had gone on in blissful ignorance, his had stopped the day his wife and girls were taken from him. And she desperately wanted to give him back some of what he’d lost, to try and make up for the sorrow that had rested deep in his heart for so many years.

  Hope was waning, though, that they would be able to find the name of the ship and its destination, until one day, a small entry in the captain’s log of the Queen Victoria caught their notice. “Several weeks into the journey, a young stowaway of near four years was found in the hold. Couldn’t speak. Upon interrogation of the crew, one of the seaman confessed that his sister had just died, and that he was taking the child to relatives. . . .”

  “Do you think he was talking about Faith?”

  “I think it’s a distinct possibility. Right now, it’s the only one we’ve got.”

  Honesty fell against her husband. “Oh, God, Jesse, she could be anywhere.”

  He tipped her chin up, kissed her nose, and grinned. “Anywhere in England.”

  Chapter 8

  The sleepy barony of Westborough lay in the Downs directly between the thick woodlands of West Sussex and the bare and arable view of East Sussex, with the English Channel to the south and the wilder landscape of the Weald to the north. Clumps of beech and ash held in their embrace a village that had birthed itself from Westborough’s womb at the foot of blinding green hills, then encroached upward on the gently swelling slopes.

  Horse hooves clattered in a hollow rhythm as Troyce guided his black steed across the stone bridge stretching toward the estate. A gusty wind whipped at his coat, bringing with it the tang of limestone cliffs and the briny scent of seawater. Before him, the manor house itself loomed against the azure sky like a sea captain’s widow, tall, proud, lonely, a centuries-old sentinel for wayward ships crossing the Channel. She stood three stories high upon the summit of a chalk-faced hill that dipped its base into the Channel. Notched turrets flanked her north and south walls, and ivy had taken control of the western walls, leaving the quarried white stone of her pediment bare to the elements.

  The journey had been uneventful. Lonely even. Troyce had often found himself wishing for the banter shared with Faith on their first carriage ride. Of course, the lord of the manor would never share a coach with a female servant, and so she had ridden in the company of Millie while he had ridden on horseback, alone.

  He was suddenly nervous about her reaction to his home. He probably shouldn’t have taken her to Radcliff first; no doubt he’d given her false expectations. At the time it had seemed a more prudent decision than making the long journey to Westborough. Though easily a half day’s ride in good weather, the same couldn’t be said in the dark of night and under such gloomy conditions, and he’d suspected that she would run the first chance she got.

  It seemed his instincts had been right on the mark.

  An image of her royal pain in the behind hanging by her pant hems from the trellis like a sea monkey the night before had him chuckling.

  At least there were no trellises at Westborough.

  A crunching against the oyster-shell drive drew his attention to the lavish pair of landaulets bearing the Duke of Brayton’s crest, each drawn by a matching set of black Percherons. Troyce swung out of the saddle of his own mount just as Chadwick, his steward, valet, and groomsman all rolled into one, set the brake of the first carriage near the gate of the low stone wall surrounding the manor. The lines of weariness around the old man’s eyes and increasing stoop of his shoulders concerned him.

  “How are you faring, Chadwick?” he asked, noticing as well the addition of gray in his rumpled pepper black hair. Though he suspected he only stayed with him out of concern that his advanced years would hinder employment elsewhere, he still appreciated Chadwick’s loyalty.

  “Well as can be expected, milord.” His gaze strayed to the manor house.

  “We’ve got our work cut out for us, don’t we?” Troyce said.

  “Aye. ’Twill take an army to set the place to rights.”

  As to that Troyce could not argue. It would take an army, and he’d had only one old man, one old woman, and a saucy thief. He left Chadwick to see to the horses and met Devon just as her footman was assisting her from the first carriage. Lucy emerged after her, and Troyce pretended not to notice the coy smile she sent his way. Thank God she had transferred to Devon’s household during his absence. He was getting too old to be dodging the attentions of a former bed partner. In that, Lucy left no doubt that if given the least encouragement, she would willingly resume the relationship from their distant past. It was not an inclination Troyce shared.

  While Devon directed the unloading of her trunks, he wandered to a second, more modest but no less comfortable landaulet, where another footman had already opened the door and was handing Millie down the step. Then the second passenger appeared behind her and Troyce’s heart stumbled.

  He’d thought her lovely this morning, but in the broad light of day, she was nothing less than glorious. She’d tucked her hair beneath a mobcap, but a few stray wisps flirted against her cheeks. And her eyes, such a sultry contract against her red-gold hair, positively shined.

  He closed the few paces between them and the scent of her, warm sun and innocent wonder, wrapped around his vitals.

  Unaware of his reaction, she stared at Westborough with open-mouthed shock. “This is your country house?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Crikey, guv, ye never told me ye lived in a castle!”

  Troyce almost choked. A warmth invaded his chest, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Leave it to Faith to give this decrepit heap of stone and debris such a fanciful description. It had once belonged to some nobleman of status—Troyce had long since forgotten who—before being awarded to his grandfather by the king. “Pray, do not be too impressed by this monstrosity; It’s naught but a hand-me-down.”

  Hand-me-down? Bloody hell, Faith thought, reverting to old habits, I wish someone would hand me down a palace by the sea. She was lucky to get clothes that fit decent! Never, in all her imaginings, had she reckoned on the baron owning half a bloody country. Not only did the lands surrounding the enclosed outer yard stretch for miles, but the building seemed to go on forever as well. Fifty rooms, at least! And there were turrets—turrets carved of re
al stone on either side with notches in the bulwark, a cathedral-high entrance, and windows en masse. It was a home fit for a fairy-tale princess. The only things lacking were a moat and a drawbridge. “It’s so . . .”

  “Remote? Maudlin? Uninviting?”

  “Big,” she finally said.

  “Aye, it is.”

  Faith licked her lips and smoothed the narrow panel of her borrowed skirt. She waited for him to say more, to ease the anxiety curling through her veins. Instead, he simply watched her with that same unnerving manner that threw her senses off-balance and set her nerves afire, eyes twinkling, lips twitching, as if he knew a secret that she didn’t. Though she tried not to, she found her attention straying to him more often than was wise. The weather was fine, the sun warm, and a blustery breeze blew in from the Channel. Beneath his coat, his white shirt billowed and flattened against his torso, a taunting reminder of the strength that had lain beneath her hours earlier. And she decided then that there was only one way to describe the third Baron of Westborough.

  All man.