Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13)

by Grace Burrowes

  “My thanks for the scandals. Keep looking, will you? Focus on gossip surrounding somebody named Althorpe who’s no longer among the living. I have a hunch it’s important.”

  Hazelton assayed another whiff of the daffodils and bowed with the flowers in hand.

  Ashton took his leave without informing his lordship that a streak of fern-dirt now graced the earl’s cravat. Hazelton’s countess would find that detail adorable, as she very likely found the rest of her earl adorable, did the poor fellow but know it.

  * * *

  “Please be sure the words ‘She Should Have Known Better’ are prominently etched on my tombstone,” Matilda said, “assuming I’m interred in hallowed ground.”

  Pippa hung her bonnet on a hook near the back door. “If you say so, ma’am, but are we to be coming and going through the garden now?”

  “Yes,” Matilda said. “And Pippa, if you have other prospects for employment, you should pursue them.”

  Pippa was savvy, and she’d made the transition from streetwalker back to respectability, or its shabby near-relation. Helen’s situation was more difficult. Ashton would see to the girl, if Matilda asked it of him, which she would.

  Then there was the house. Matilda could probably rent the entire premises to a gentleman in town for the Season, but after that, it should be sold, though a documented legal transaction was always risky.

  “I don’t have other prospects for employment,” Pippa said, “not unless you want me chasing Sissy off her street corner to flaunt me wares again, which I don’t fancy. The French ailment is everywhere these days, and it will put you in the grave, they say, after it drives you mad.”

  Matilda was going mad, though with that peculiar manifestation of insanity that allowed her to think clearly with part of her mind, while collapsing into a howling fit with the other.

  “I’m back!” Helen called from the laundry room. “What’s for lunch?”

  “Pippa, please find Helen something to eat, and don’t forget your own meal. I have a few matters to sort out.”

  One option was to grab the bundle Matilda kept under her bed and disappear. Mrs. Bellingham had taught her to do that. All the women in a bawdy house learned to keep a bundle close at hand for when the authorities raided the premises.

  “Do a bunk,” Matilda muttered. Street talk for disappearing into the night, not a trace to be seen.

  Another option was to stay right where she was and let the damned law find her. She’d considered that option many times.

  Or she could take a short time to plan and then leap in the most sensible direction.

  The front door closed, and a distinctive tread sounded in the front hall. Abruptly, the thinking side of Matilda’s mind stumbled to a halt as Ashton Fenwick came down the stairs.

  Booted feet, bare knees, soft wool pleats and a plain leather sporran, trim waist, dark jacket with a lacy cravat, and then the part she’d miss the most—his smile.

  “Mrs. Bryce, good day. These are for you.” He held out a bunch of daffodils, their bright color more cheering than a simple bouquet should be. “Miss Pippa, good day to you as well.”

  “My thanks,” Matilda said, ignoring Pippa’s smirk. “My vase is in the sitting room, and there’s a pitcher of water there as well.” She had only the one vase, a cheap vessel that had been pressed into service far too seldom.

  He offered the flowers with a flourishy bow. “They need water. I’ve carried them from Mayfair, and I learned a thing or two on the way.”

  How would Matilda learn to leave him, much less without a word? “Tell me.” She took the daffodils and led him up the steps to the parlor.

  “A man in a kilt turns heads, but a man in a kilt who’s carrying flowers makes conquests. Your suggestion that I wear the dress of my homeland was sheer genius.”

  Utter folly, more like. Any suggestions that made the members of Matilda’s household distinctive had been stupid in the extreme. A woman trying to live her life beyond the notice of the law knew better, though self-recrimination was pointless.

  A woman raised for nothing more than genteel family life couldn’t be expected to turn herself into a very successful fugitive.

  “Matilda, is something wrong?”

  Everything was wrong. “Market was crowded this morning, and Pippa is in a mood.” She fetched her humble vase from beneath the sideboard. The vessel was cylindrical, periwinkle blue, with a slightly uneven lip. No chips or cracks, but no art to it either.

  Ashton stood behind her while she arranged the daffodils in the container. Her hands shook, then she nearly spilled the water trying to pour it from the pitcher.

  “I left you after breakfast,” Ashton said, “and your smiles could have lit up the Outer Hebrides on a January night. I come home, and you’re as pale as a lost soul and as tense as a fiddle string. Did you see Mr. Aberfeldy’s ghost again?”

  This was not his home. Soon it wouldn’t be Matilda’s either.

  Ashton topped off the vase with the water, but the stems were too long for the container, and the whole business looked pathetic. He used his handkerchief to wipe up the drops of water Matilda had spilled on the sideboard.

  Such a competent man. Matilda took the sorry bouquet from the sideboard thinking to set it in the windowsill. The flowers were doomed to fade and die, but they might as well have the comfort of sunshine in their final days.

  Ashton stood in the middle of her parlor, making the scarred sideboard, faded carpet, and plain vase that much more humble by comparison. His expression said he was concerned for her, and all Matilda could think of was how to leave him with most of his ignorance intact.

  She’d been moving too swiftly, or too thoughtlessly, and misjudged the distance to the windowsill. The bottom of the vase smashed against the woodwork, and water, glass, and flowers went everywhere.

  “Blast it to Hades. That was my only vase.”

  And the only bouquet any man had ever brought her.

  Ashton’s arms came around her. “Did you see our journalist again?”

  Oh, the comfort, the safety, the rightness of his embrace. “How did you know?”

  “Because you’re furious, and frightened. A mere journalist would not have put you in this state.”

  “Ashton, he’s not a journalist. He’s a thief-taker, and he’s after me.”

  * * *

  Matilda was shaking with upset, while water dripped from the windowsill to the carpet in a steady stream. Ashton got out his flask and tipped it to her lips.

  She drank, she coughed, she waved a hand in front of her face, and some of her color came back.

  “Tell me what’s afoot, Matilda, or I will march out your door, find this thief-taker, and give him a drubbing he won’t soon recover from. If you nicked a purse in a weak moment, I’ll make it right. I have the funds, and you wouldn’t steal unless somebody you loved were starving.”

  Matilda stood in the circle of his embrace, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t his vibrant, articulate, easily annoyed Matilda.

  “I don’t know how to nick a purse, and I nearly did starve. If I tell you any more, you’ll become an accomplice after the fact of my crime. I couldn’t bear that.”

  He led her to the sofa, sat her down, and put his flask in her hand.

  “The flowers…” she said, looking as if she’d pop right up and tend to the housekeeping rather than discuss the danger she was in.

  “I can clean up a wee mess,” Ashton said. “If you think to protect me by remaining silent, you’re daft. I’ve already set a man to unearthing the scandal in your past, and—”

  “You didn’t.” She’d closed her eyes and clenched her hands around Ashton’s flask so tightly she might well crumple it.

  “A very discreet man, who’s doing nothing more than reading his journals and consulting his lady wife at present. He’s not the reason a thief-taker has been after you since nearly the day I met you.”

  Water dripped in a slow trickle from the windowsill, and Matilda
offered Ashton no contradiction.

  Well, damn. “Stay right there,” he said. “I mean that. No climbing out the window with the clothes on your back, Matilda. I’m off to find a dustpan and broom, and you will compose your story from the start.”

  She eyed the window Ashton had hauled her through days ago. “I’ll stay.”

  For now. The words silently echoed about the room along with the fragrance of daffodils.

  By the time Ashton brought a broom, dustpan, and rags to the parlor, Matilda had moved from the sofa to the house’s only rocking chair. Ashton tended to the destroyed vase, put the flowers in a drinking glass, and left the wet rags, broom, and dustpan outside the door.

  “Talk to me,” he said, taking a place cross-legged on the worn carpet beside Matilda’s rocking chair. “Tell me the truth, Matilda. Lies at this point will only waste time and put me in a temper.”

  “Lies might save your life. An accomplice to murder can swing beside the murderess.”

  “You’re a murderess now?”

  “I’m stating a fact of English law.”

  Ashton didn’t care if she’d taken a life, because Matilda Bryce would have done so only in self-defense or in defense of a loved one. Even that blighted convolution of common sense known as English law forgave a life ended under those circumstances.

  Though Matilda might not forgive herself.

  “Don’t tell me facts, then, tell me a story, a fanciful tale of a young woman, gently raised, whose marriage was a disappointment.”

  “She was a good girl,” Matilda said, rocking slowly, “but ignorant, as good girls are meant to be. She married an earl’s heir, and she’d become a countess in time. This was supposed to matter.”

  “Earldoms are forever causing problems,” Ashton said. “Go on.”

  “Her husband was not the worst man ever to take a bride. He was unkind, his weapons of choice harsh words, disparaging glances, public insults. He was a trial, and his sole purpose in taking this young woman to wife was to get a spare on her, for the man’s older son was also a trial.”

  “Tends to work like that, acorns and oaks being what they are.” Sitting cross-legged in a kilt on a worn carpet was uncomfortable, though Ashton would not have left Matilda’s side if the 95th Rifles had aimed every gun at the parlor window.

  “Just so,” Matilda said, “and all might have eventually settled into tame, domestic animosity, but the young lady did not conceive.”

  “Or her husband didn’t get her with child.”

  Matilda stroked a hand over Ashton’s hair, just the once. “Thank you. A child did not bless the union, much less a healthy male child. Tensions rose, and to make matters worse, the son tried to assume liberties with his step-mother. He was little more than a boy, just gone up to university, but he was a persistent boy, with one thing on his mind.”

  Ashton had missed a piece of glass glinting among the fringe of the worn carpet. The jagged edge would cut an unsuspecting foot badly on some dark night, so he crawled over and retrieved it, then set it on the windowsill.

  “Most boys have the same thing on their minds,” he said, “as do many men. They have enough couth not to act on their urges, though.”

  Or some obliging father, uncle, or older brother would beat the manners into them and, by example, educate the young cretin regarding the pleasures of having one’s bodily privacy disrespected. Ashton had provided that education to two of the stable lads who’d worked for him at Blessings, and the housemaids had nearly gathered around to applaud.

  “Couth was in short supply among my in-laws,” Matilda said. “I mean, the young lady’s in-laws. An older brother, the title holder, was the worst of the lot. He appeared full of genial understanding and occasionally attempted to diffuse tensions, but all the while, he was making plans of his own.”

  “If he succeeded where the son did not—”

  “His lust was for the young lady’s money, which he does indeed have control over and has for the past six years. The marriage settlements were generous, for the young lady was one of only two daughters, and the other child was a mere infant.”

  The cut glass caught the sun at an odd angle and reflected a bright beam right onto Matilda’s hands. She did not have the pale, idle hands of a lady. Her nails were short, her fingers red, and in the bright sunshine, the scar near her wrist was in high relief.

  Ashton wanted those hands on his body every night for the rest of his life, so he summoned patience and a question.

  “How did your husband die?”

  “An accident. He accused me of betraying him with his son, shouted at me, and for the first time, I feared he’d raise a hand to me. I shouted back—I’d had enough by then—and this only enraged him further. He’d been drinking, of course.

  “If Althorpe had shown me a tenth of the affection he had for the bottle, ours would have been a pleasant union. The row went on until I couldn’t tell if I was being castigated for cheating with Stephen, or for refusing Stephen’s overtures. The boy had been sent down for getting some girl pregnant, proving his ability to sire children, and this upset his father terribly.”

  “Not the life you’d envisioned for yourself,” Ashton said, weathering a wave of shame. He’d pouted for three years because a title had been thrust upon him in place of a muck fork. Matilda had got a house full of spoiled, greedy imbeciles in place of her domestic dream, and she’d yet to complain.

  “My ambitions have become modest, Ashton. I’d like to remain alive and at liberty.”

  Ashton’s vision of the future had changed as well. He’d like Matilda to remain alive and at liberty and to have a title as she’d been promised long ago—his title.

  “So you and Althorpe were arguing. Then what?”

  “I stood near the fire, which a footman had just supplied with fresh coal. Althorpe railed at me from across the parlor, near the sideboard on which a plethora of decanters stood. When I told him I was going up to bed, he rushed at me with a drink in his hand. I thought he meant to cast the spirits at me, which was the outside of stupid with the fire roaring at my back. I stepped aside, he pitched his drink, and then he stumbled and fell.”

  “As drunks are wont to do.”

  That earned Ashton another caress. “Althorpe fell face first onto the hearth, then rolled to his back. The hearth stand toppled, scattering the implements and making a great racket. I expected Althorpe to struggle to his feet, and I knelt to set the stand back up. When Stephen charged through the door, I had the poker in my hand, and Althorpe still hadn’t moved.”

  “But,” Ashton said, “he had a great gash on his forehead or temple, or some bloody where, and you stood over him with the poker in your hand.”

  “He had a welt, but I think he broke his neck. His head was at an odd angle to his shoulders. I’ve been assured a jury would convict me of murder, regardless of the facts. I was an embittered young wife, unable to conceive a child, shackled to a nasty drunk twenty years my senior. What jury would have allowed me to flounce on my way with handsome settlements in my pocket?”

  Fair question. “So you fled?”

  “Not at first. At first I was too upset, too bewildered, and too trusting. Althorpe had been annoying, but I’d learned to tolerate him, and even have some pity for him, because he was unhappy. The spirits he consumed to deal with the unhappiness only worsened most of his problems, but he couldn’t see that.”

  “Bugger your compassion, Matilda. The man was a disgrace.”

  Matilda slid from her chair and sat next to Ashton on the floor, her head on his shoulder. “If only I’d met you years ago.”

  “I was far to the north and smelled often of the stable. When did you realize you were in jeopardy?”

  “My brother-in-law was summoned to the scene, and his lordship was concerned for me. He ordered Stephen to await him in the library, poured me a stout drink, and told me to get straight up to bed. I took the drink but didn’t sip it. Brandy had made my marriage miserable and likely cost m
y husband his life. Then too, I assumed the authorities would interview me, and evidence of strong drink even under the circumstances wouldn’t be ladylike.”

  Ashton looped an arm around her shoulders when he wanted to pace and shout and hit things—Matilda’s in-laws, for example—hard.

  “You made the shrewd choice, Matilda. If you’d been drinking when the magistrate questioned you, your credibility would have been ruined. Stephen could have drained three bottles while conversing with the king’s man, and his word would have been taken as gospel.”

  “His word was taken as gospel. I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to retrieve my journal from the library before the magistrate and Bow Street runners were loose in the house. Outside the library door, I heard Stephen explaining to the magistrate that I’d always had a spoiled girl’s temper. Stephen went on to claim he’d seen me beating his father with the poker and heard me shout at his father that I hated him and wished he were dead.”

  “And Stephen was doubtless in tears at the recollection?” Ashton was nearly in tears.

  “Oh, of course. For a hale man badly beaten by his much smaller wife, Althorpe had had only the one welt when I’d seen him. I expected my brother-in-law to speak on my behalf, to counter Stephen’s allegations, because I’d told his lordship Stephen was making a pest of himself.”

  “And the earl remained silent?”

  “Not quite. He cleared his throat and hemmed and hawed and left no doubt that I’d been very much of a problem from the day I’d joined the family—my fits of pique and ungovernable temper had become apparent only after the wedding. A warrant was issued for my arrest, the charge murder. My money—including a generous inheritance from my father—has been in his lordship’s hands ever since. Because I haven’t been convicted of anything, even the portion of Althorpe’s estate that was left to me in his will has been languishing in the earl’s hands. My disappearance was very profitable for the earl, who is managing all of Althorpe’s estate until my fate is settled.”

  Which meant Stephen had more reason than ever to wish his step-mother ill. “The whole estate is tied up in chancery proceedings?”