After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  “You should know she didn’t suffer, Maisy didn’t.” Her voice was as smooth and soothing as a balm.

  A balm Molly Carter needed to hear.

  “Thank God.” The woman looked upward, as if in entreaty to a God who had clearly forsaken her, and tried to catch her breath, but tears were still streaming down her cheeks. “Thank God for that.”

  “Yes. Thank God. Did she come home, here, to see you often?” Lady Claire’s voice was soft and kind, encouraging intimacy—a much more subtle weapon than any he knew how to wield.

  “No, I didn’t like her to.” Molly Carter shook her head, and mopped at her face again with the apron. “She’d gone on to better, hadn’t she? Didn’t like to have her come back here.”

  “But she did anyway?”

  “Well, aye. Aye, she did, bless her.” Molly Carter was nodding and smiling and crying and wiping her eyes all at the same time. “Said I were her mam, and that were that. Came on her half days, at least once a month. Always made sure I had a piece of cake for her here, though I’m sure she had finer up at Riverchon Park.”

  “Yes. They treated her very well up there. Just as they ought. She was a hard working girl. A good girl. And such a good girl likes to come see her mam, no matter if she’s gotten used to better, doesn’t she?” Lady Claire consoled. “When was the last time she came here?”

  “Tuesday, week it were.” The admission brought on a fresh spate of tears, which Lady Claire dealt with by rubbing the space between the woman’s hunched shoulder blades.

  “She came to visit regularly, because she was a good girl.”

  “She were. The best,” Molly Carter confirmed on a watery wail. “She were the best. It’s not right.”

  “I know it’s not right, Mrs. Carter. I know. That’s why we’ve come. To find out everything we can, and make it as right as we can. To find out everything we need to know about your Maisy.”

  Claire kept up her rubbing of the woman’s back, and patting her hand, and wrapping her arm abound her every few minutes to give her a squeeze. And she kept talking, kept on with her soft kindness.

  “Did she say anything about her work at Riverchon Park? Was she happy at her work?”

  “Excited, she were that she were to help to see to some very grand ladies soon. Ambitious, she was, my Maisy. Sharp and quick. Could see that when she were but a girl. Too sharp and too quick for the likes of the Almonry. Would’ve ended up in some bleeding kidding ken, with a kidman working her rough ‘till she were stretched for a handkerchief.”

  Molly Carter banged the flat of her hand against the table in emphatic denial. But the truth could not be denied, and Claire held on, and never stopped rubbing Molly Carter’s heaving shoulders.

  “So I got her out. Got her into service with an honest woman I did washings for. Trained her up. Moved her on. Bigger houses, better positions.”

  “How she was getting on at Riverchon Park? How did she like the other staff?”

  “Working her way up, she were. Told me she were going to be Housekeeper someday, she was. Had her eye on the higher prize. Saved all her wages, too—never one to spend it on cakes or ribbons and fripperies. Too smart for that. Brought me most of it. But I wouldn’t take it. Wanted her to keep it.”

  “You were very good to her, just as she was very good to you.”

  “She were,” Molly Carter repeated. “The best.”

  “And she was a very pretty girl. So what about young men? Was there anyone, anyone special, she talked about?”

  “She was, wasn’t she? Very pretty.” Molly Carter reached out her coarse, chapped hands, and cupped Lady Claire Jellicoe’s soft, unblemished face. “Remind me of her, you do. Same blue eyes, and sweet pale hair.”

  That someone might think Lady Claire Jellicoe resembled anyone else in the world, was an idea so foreign to Tanner, that his mind—his constantly, inexorably scheming mind—simply ground to a stop.

  Because Lady Claire Jellicoe was too unique, too much her own, special, luminous self to resemble anyone, especially some poor murdered maid.

  “You are so kind.” Lady Claire was smiling, as if Molly Carter had given her the greatest possible compliment, although her cheeks were also wet and shiny with tears. “I imagine Maisy’s prettiness brought her admirers.”

  “It did. Had to watch her close when she were a little one—keep her from the kiddy snatchers. And only put her in service with good houses, where I knowed she’d be looked after.”

  “Did she ever say she had admirers at Riverchon Park? I thought the footman...” Claire turned her wide, guileless eyes upon him.

  “Jesse Lightfoot,” he supplied.

  “Yes, thank you. Jesse.” She turned all her attention and comfort back to Molly. “A very handsome young man. He certainly admired her.”

  “Told me about him, she did. But she weren’t that kind of girl as lets her head be turned too easy.” Molly fished out a thin, worn handkerchief, and mopped at her nose. “She were ambitious, she were, my Maisy. Wouldn’t have wanted to let any man get in the way of her plans. Saw what happened to me, didn’t she?”

  “Hmm. Yes.” Lady Claire was all agreeable sympathy. “So she wasn’t walking out with him?”

  “Could be. If’n he accepted the way it stood with her. Could be they came to an understanding.”

  “Yes.” Lady Claire nodded. “But a girl that pretty. Men don’t often take no for an answer, do they? They often insist, don’t they? More than insist.”

  Tanner heard the tremor in her voice—the uncomfortable emotional after-shock—and saw the slight shaking in Lady Claire’s hand, though she kept trying to comfort Molly Carter.

  Molly Carter saw it, too, for this time she put her own hand over Lady Claire’s. “God rot ’em. Never leave you girls be, do they? Think they can take what they want, when they want it, and be damned if they ask. The bastards.” Again, her rough, reddened hand came up to gently cradle Lady Claire’s face. As tenderly as of Lady Claire had been her own daughter.

  Remarkable.

  “Yes.” Claire’s voice was small and tight. But she kept her clear gaze steady on Molly Carter. “I don’t imagine a girl like Maisy would put up with that.”

  “No. Did he do that to you?” Molly Carter gave him a cutty-eyed look, and tossed a defiant chin his way.

  “Oh, no. Not Tanner, ma’am. He’s the one that saved me. Kept it from going any further. Broke the Beau nasty’s leg, he did, and cracked his head as well, I should think.”

  “Good,” Molly Carter said with some small relief. “Good.” Though her eyes lingered on him as if he were a marker for all the evil, no-good bastards of the world.

  “Did Maisy ever have trouble with gentlemen, like I did?” Claire pushed on, though her voice was thin, and she had to swallow to speak. “Did she ever find herself...imposed upon?”

  He had always thought of her as naturally open and honest, but for the first time, Tanner could see that it took a sort of bravery he didn’t understand, for her to be so.

  A strength hidden beneath the delicate surface of her skin.

  Molly could see what it cost her as well, for she was the one to put her arm around Claire, and rub her back now.

  “Bless you, no, I shouldn’t think so. I’d warned her, hadn’t I? Taught her how to protect herself. She kept her eyes open, my Maisy. Kept away from that kind of gentleman.” Molly Carter still thought him somehow responsible, still a stand-in for all unworthy gentlemen—she narrowed her eyes at him again, as if she could see under his raffish clothes, and see the gentleman hiding somewhere underneath.

  Funny. He usually feared it being the other way round—that under his gentlemanly tailoring, someone would discover that he was nothing more than an impostor. Playing at being the Duke until they found him out.

  “She must have gotten her smarts and cleverness from you.” Despite her own emotions, Claire was still working to ease Molly Carter’s distress.

  “Bless me,” Molly said on a rough half-laugh,
“but you’re kindness itself.”

  “I wish I could be kinder still. I wish I could have given you better news. I wish we had met under different circumstances.”

  “Bless me, child. Had Maisy not been murdered, we’d never have met under any circumstances at all. Quality, real quality you are, despite the fact that you’re here in the Almonry. And with ‘im.”

  “He only looks that way, Molly. He’s really as sweet as pudding underneath that fierce exterior, which he will put to good use finding Maisy’s murderer.” Claire gave him a quick smile, before she asked him, “Speaking of—ought we to ask Molly about the fob?”

  Tanner fished out the gleaming ornament. “Have you ever seen this?” he asked the washerwoman.

  “Dunno.” Molly Carter turned down her mouth, and shook her head. “Where’d it come from?”

  “From Maisy,” Claire explained.

  “Some gentleman give it to her?”

  Molly Carter was as clever as she was heartbroken and weary—she had immediately grasped that any man with such an ornament had to be a gentleman.

  “Oh, no,” Claire said. “We think she took it.”

  “Never. She weren’t no thief, my Maisy. She’d too much pride to lower herself. Pride I gave her, God help her.”

  “No, ma’am.” Lady Claire took Molly Carter’s hand again. “We think she took hold of it because he was trying to kill her.”

  It was too much for Molly Carter. But by now her sorrow was mixed with a more characteristic fury.

  “Oh, damn him to hell. Had to have been one of those bleeding nobs, then. Toffs think they can do what they want, don’t they?”

  Tanner saw Claire close her eyes, even though she nodded. “Too bloody right, Molly. They do.”

  It took every bit of restraint he had to ignore her quiet distress. But she had got Molly Carter talking, and they needed more information.

  “Why do you say that, Mrs. Carter?”

  “Stands to reason, don’t it. Never was one of those boys she worked with at Riverchon. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

  “Why?” he probed again, taken by her absolute certainty.

  “You wouldn’t as if you’d ever ‘a met the housekeeper, Mrs. Dalgliesh, out to Riverchon. Runs that house and her staff right and tight. Never would have stood for a footman or anyone a’messing with my Maisy. Made me that promise the day I took my Maisy down there. Looked me in the eye, Dalgliesh did, and said it would be so. And so Maisy said it was. No. Had to be one of the nobs. Had to be someone even Dalgliesh couldn’t cross, or was afraid of. Here, let me see the thing.”

  This time, it was Molly Carter’s hand that shook as she reached for the fob, and peered at it close, stretching her mind to it limit to think.

  “Poor lamb.” She wiped away more tears with her apron. “I don’t know—summat about it brings to mind a gentleman I seen once or twice. I takes washing from his dolly-mop up on Little George Street. She’s no more than she should be for a whore, and remembers where she come from though she’s over in Sloan Square now.”

  “His name?”

  “She called him Taffy, if you can believe that.”

  “Taffy? Why, that’s the Hon. Mr. Edward Laytham,” Claire breathed.

  The name set of an alarm bell clanging in Tanner’s brain. The name was familiar. But he couldn’t remember ever having come across Mr. Edward Laytham before—couldn’t remember if he had been on the guest list of his Grandmother’s ball—or put a face to the man. A mystery.

  But he would certainly search him out now.

  No. They would search him out now.

  “Obliged to you, Molly Carter.” Tanner touched the brim of his hat, and set his mind forward, toward a murderer.

  Chapter 11

  They left Molly Carter with assurances that Maisy’s body would be delivered unto her mother, and all the expenses of a decent burial paid for.

  Lady Claire was especially reticent to leave Molly Carter on her own to bear the burden of her daughter’s death, but Tanner felt they had already spent more time than he had planned with the woman.

  In the long hour they had spent in the Almonry, morning had broken across London—the summer sun was up, and somewhere, either in Mayfair or in Richmond, a murderer was still breathing freely, enjoying the morning in a way that neither the dead Maisy Carter, nor her mother, nor even the damaged Lady Claire Jellicoe ever would again.

  “The game has been afoot for hours, and the trail is growing cold,” he told Claire. “Every minute that passes since the moment Maisy Carter was murdered means it will be harder to find answers. We have to act, and act swiftly. But thanks to you, we have a new name, and a new direction.”

  “You are most welcome.” The small pleasure of her smile was a gift to him. But Lady Claire must have heard something else besides praise in his voice. “Did you not expect Molly Carter to be able to help us?”

  As much as he derided the glaring faults and weaknesses he saw in himself, he had to acknowledge them. And one of his faults was that he always assumed his way was best—he always assumed he was the most clever person in any room, in any given situation. The only person he had ever deferred to was his sister. The only person he had felt his equal in intellect was Jack.

  And now Lady Claire Jellicoe had just proved that intellect was not enough. She had gifts that were entirely different. And entirely lacking in him.

  And he needed to acknowledge that. “You handled Molly Carter superbly. Far better than I would have accomplished on my own. I never would have gotten her to talk. And if you hadn’t got her to talk, she never would have seen the fob, and never would have mentioned the Honorable Edward Laytham.”

  Her pleasure added warm color to her already livid cheek. “Thank you. I wasn’t thinking about the information, really. I just did what I felt was right, but I’m glad it yielded a good result.”

  “A very good result. Come.” He steered her around a corner. “This way.”

  To free them of the Almonry’s narrow, sloping streets, Tanner turned them east on Orchard Street, moving swiftly into the wider, less dangerous stretch of Dean Street.

  Claire kept his pace, striding along by his side, looking decidedly more confident than she had an hour ago going into the Almonry. Her head was up, and she was gazing more resolutely at the filth and poverty now, though in the sharp morning sun, the scratches and bruises on her cheek looked far more livid than they had in the gray light of dawn.

  And with her confidence came intelligence. “I’ve been thinking about that fob, Tanner. I’ve been thinking that there can’t be too many places, or dealers perhaps, that deal in ancient Roman coins.”

  So had he. But she had just called him Tanner, and the appellation set up a buzzing in his brain that extended outward from his chest.

  God help him, but her acceptance of him—glaring faults and all—excited him as much as her cleverness.

  His attraction to her was a itchy, warm vibration that worked its way down into his gut, and back out to his fingertips. An excitement that could only be assuaged by easing his arm over her shoulder, and urging her snug up against him.

  “Yes, exactly.” He liked this leaning down to speak low into her ear. “That kind of gold work—custom fitting an irregular ancient coin into a framework—would take skill. There are only four, or perhaps five firms in London that deal in those kinds of rare numismatics.”

  She did not object to his presumption—she relaxed her slight weight into him readily enough.

  “What a compendium of London’s firms you must have in that head of yours. So, we should visit them first, one by one, until we find the right firm?”

  “I have another idea. I know a fellow in the City—a goldsmith—who should be able to tell us exactly what we need to know.”

  “And what a compendium of interesting people you know, as well. Not at all the usual acquaintances for a duke.” She was smiling, and shaking her head in her amusement—for the first time, truly at ease with hi
m.

  Happy even.

  The welcome jolt of fist-clenching, pure male triumph that shot through his chest was more than just his savage pride. More than mere physical arousal.

  It was bone deep pleasure for her sake as well.

  And it made him want to please, and amuse, and put her even more at ease.

  “I told you, I wasn’t always a duke. And because of that, the Honorable Edward Laytham, has heretofore escaped my rather encyclopedic eye.”

  But unlike him, Lady Claire inhabited society as a familiar. She would naturally see things and people very differently than he. It was often very useful to have another person’s opinion as a comparison.

  “What do you know of him, this Taffy?”

  She pleated her pristine forehead with that adorable little frown of concentration. “Nothing to the purpose. I do know the name, and I know him by sight. Rather short man. Looks like a small badger.”

  “Excellent. What else?”

  “Solid country gentry, if I recall correctly. Suffolk. Middle-aged, married man. Wife stays in the country. Third or fourth son of Lord Laytham, whose heir has sons of his own, so I don’t think Mr. Edward is in any real line for the title. Don’t think he’s an ally of my father’s in Lords. Don’t think he’s political at all, really. He’s too young to be one of my father’s set, and too old to be one of my brothers’.”

  “That was not ‘not much’—you knew more than you thought you did. That was a very clever assessment.” He gave her the compliment not only because it was true, but because it gave him the opportunity to watch her cheeks pink with becoming color.

  He gave her the compliment because it gave him the opportunity to be a better man. For her.

  “So those are our two clear choices at the moment—find out more about the fob, or find out more about the man.” He turned his head to face her. “Claire, what do you think we should do?”

  Claire stilled—or would have stilled if his arm had not been around her shoulder, and not carried her along with his momentum.