A Daring Liaison

by Gail Ranstrom

  Something was wrong. Some change in his manner. Not the slightest bit of warmth in his voice. Her pulse, which had begun to steady, skipped a beat or two. “Why did you not wake me?”

  “You looked as if you needed the sleep.”

  “I tried to wait up for you, but after all the excitement, I think I was more exhausted than I realized.” She accepted his offered hand and got to her feet.

  “I’ve been thinking, Georgiana. I have decided to hold off making the formal announcement that we’ve married. Nor shall I post notices in any of the newspapers.”

  Perversely, though that had been her thought last night, she now took offense to it. “Hold off? But I thought that was the whole point of marrying—to alert the villain that I had married again. To draw him out.”

  He gave a negligent shrug. “Or draw her out. Did you ever think our culprit might be a woman, Georgiana?”

  “I...I never considered that. Why would a woman want my husbands dead?”

  “Jealousy? Dislike?” His voice had been offhand, but it lowered a moment later. “To do you a favor and extricate you from unpleasant or unwanted marriages?”

  She had never seen Charles in such a strange mood, almost as if he were trying to tell her something but did not want to give it voice. “Why?”

  He released her hand and stepped back, then snatched her wrapper from the foot of her bed and tossed it to her. “Put your wrapper on, Georgiana. I cannot think with you standing there half naked.”

  Embarrassed, she looked down at her sheer lawn nightgown. It did reveal rather more of her than was modest. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and secured the tie. “Sorry,” she murmured.

  He went to stand in front of the banked fire. “Have my servants made you comfortable?”

  “They...they’ve been most hospitable. Clara and Sanders are settling in well. Clara is taken with your bathroom. She says the tub is the largest she’s ever seen.”

  One corner of Charles’s mouth quirked in the semblance of a smile. “There is another in the servant’s wing, though the tub is not as large.”

  “She will be delighted, I am sure.” She looked around and tried to hide her nervousness and the questions that rose to her mind. Was it odd that Charles had not come to bed with her but had preferred to spend the night in a chair?

  She turned to see if there was a bell-pull by her bed. “Do you want tea, Charles?”

  He was silent so long she turned to look at him. He rested one elbow on the mantel and was watching her with what she could only describe as detached curiosity. “I’ve told the servants to stay away unless I call them.”

  Things were not going well at all. Perhaps it would be best to be blunt. “Why do you not tell me what is wrong, Charles? What do you want of me?”

  “Answers, Georgiana.”

  A feeling of dread settled in her heart. For all his control, she now understood that Charles was quite angry. His earlier comment, that perhaps the killer, if there was one, was a woman, suddenly became clear. “Do you think... Can you be suggesting that I killed my husbands?”

  “The possibility crossed my mind.”

  “Before or after our marriage? Because if you suspected me before, Charles, you’d have been insanely reckless to have gone through with it.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “By whom?”

  “Never mind that, Georgiana. Just answer the question. Was it you?”

  She gripped the bedpost to brace herself and sat on the side of the bed before her knees could give out. He thought she was a killer! He thought her capable of the most heinous crime possible. He had seduced her, slept with her and now married her, and he could believe such a thing of her?

  Tears stung in her eyes. That he could even ask....

  “Would you believe my answer? Or would you require proof?”

  “Proof, if you have it.”

  “I do not. How could I have proof of something I have not done?”

  “Then you are saying you are innocent?”

  Something snapped in her mind and her anger bubbled up from deep inside. “That you can even ask such a question disgusts me. Why did you marry me, if you think me guilty of such a crime?”

  He spread his arms wide in a bewildered gesture. “I think I may not have had all the facts when I made that decision.”

  She glanced toward her dressing table. He’d said the little journal she’d been reading was in the drawer. Placed there by Charles. Had he read it? She had thought he’d be pleased to learn she had not jilted him her first season. Instead he had become a suspicious tyrant.

  “You are thinking I read your aunt’s journal.” His voice was deep and steady, and she realized this was a part of him she’d never seen before. “You are wondering how much I know, are you not?”

  She met his stare and did not flinch. “Did you?”

  “You answer my question first, Georgiana. Did you rid yourself of your husbands?”

  A deep well of pain churned inside her. He’d never believed in her. He deserved to believe whatever he pleased. “Will you be able to sleep knowing I am in the next room? Wondering if you will be my next victim? Waiting for my footsteps?”

  “Damn it, Georgiana! Give me an answer.”

  “Not until you are rational.” The servants would not come unless he rang? Well and good. She went to the outer door and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Clara! Tea, if you please!”

  By the time she turned, he was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Thank you for coming, Hunter. I am painfully aware that I have torn you away from your charming new wife, but I thought you should hear this.”

  Charles expressed no opinion about precisely how charming Georgiana had been when shrieking for her morning tea. He merely nodded and sat across the desk from Wycliffe.

  Wycliffe leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk. “Walter Foxworthy is being held for questioning regarding Allenby’s and Huffington’s deaths.”

  This was surprising news. Maybe he wouldn’t have to thrash Foxworthy after all.

  “I do not know how long we can hold him. The motive and possible opportunity are the only things that ring true. There is no actual proof. Alas, the Secretary was forced to act.”

  “How was he forced?”

  “Allenby’s father and Huffington’s nephew are insisting that something be done. Of course, they think your wife is the guilty party, but they cannot prove it any more than we can prove it is Foxworthy. Still, he is the only one with a clear motive—control and use of the Betman fortune and Georgiana. But we will need more proof if we are to get a conviction. The good news is that this development has bought us another day to uncover the truth.”

  Charles met Wycliffe’s gaze and knew that there was more. “And the bad news?”

  “A Mr. Hathaway has come to the Home Office and made an official report. He claims that Georgiana killed her husbands with laudanum. Perhaps—” he paused to clear his throat “—even killed her guardian.”

  The bottle of laudanum in Charles’s waistcoat pocket felt like a lead weight. Laudanum and a loveless marriage had provided work for more than one gravedigger. The irony that he’d made the same accusations this morning was not lost on him. Anger tore through him like a winter wind. “Lady Caroline? Why, that’s absurd.”

  “I know. But Hathaway’s claim is that she put laudanum in Allenby’s wedding cup, and that more than mere revelry accounted for his drunken behavior, and that his tumble down the stairs was a result of having been drugged with laudanum.”

  “And Huffington?”

  “That she put it in his toddy before he left for his daily walk about his property, and by the time the laudanum overtook him, he was too far away to make his way back.”

  Charles could guess the rest. “And that she simply gave her aunt an overdose of her usual amount for sleep and no one suspected the truth since Lady Caroline was prone to taking it?”

  Wycliffe nodded. “Hathaw
ay contends that, although Lady Caroline was in a decline, the end came too quickly. Furthermore, he saw the vial in Georgiana’s bed-table drawer.”

  Charles took a deep breath, hating what he was about to do. “Search for it, Wycliffe. I grant free access to Georgiana’s home and mine.”

  “You must be quite certain to make such a sweeping statement.”

  Damn the man! He met Wycliffe’s stare and did not flinch.

  “Charles, if something is found to implicate Georgiana, you know I will have to do my duty.”

  “Hathaway is a bitter former employee. He would say or do anything to spite me or her. He and I had words on more than one occasion, and it was necessary for me to expel him from Georgiana’s house. He made a threat when he was leaving. I was expecting some sort of retaliation, but this goes beyond reason. Surely you see that?”

  “Nevertheless. We had been on the verge of arresting Foxworthy when Hathaway’s report came in. Foxworthy’s arrest is my ploy to buy you time, Charles. And there is not much of it. Act quickly, because the moment we release Foxworthy, we will have to arrest your wife.”

  “You will find nothing to implicate Georgiana.”

  Wycliffe stood and turned to look out his window. “You are certain, Hunter?”

  “Positive.”

  “Foxworthy is likely to be released by the end of the day. Tomorrow morning at the latest. Attention will return to Georgiana.”

  “I understand.”

  “Now what will you do?”

  Charles sighed. “I have no idea where to go from here,” he said. Though Lord Carlington might be a good place to start.

  * * *

  Georgiana watched out her window until she saw Charles leave. She had no wish to encounter him again until she could control her temper. The man could be so maddeningly infuriating!

  Was he going to acquire an annulment? Was that why he hadn’t consummated their marriage last night? That thought sent her mind spinning. She understood why it would be for the best, but her heart tore in two at the thought of losing him again.

  She’d tried to read a few of Aunt Caroline’s—she could not yet think of her as her mother—diaries, but her attention kept wondering at the sameness of Caroline’s days and the loneliness of her nights. When she mentioned Georgiana, it was with the objectivity of an observer, never the fondness of a mother. Georgiana had been daily evidence of Caroline’s shame, and yet she had done her duty and accepted responsibility for her.

  She put three journals aside for Lord Carlington, hoping he would not be bored to distraction. She’d chosen one volume where Caroline had mentioned that ‘Owen’ would laugh at something that had happened in the village. She thought he might like to know that Caroline had still thought of him.

  In an attempt to escape her ennui, Georgiana donned a bonnet and went down to the back garden to cut some flowers for the foyer and dinner table. She found a pair of pruning shears and a basket in the garden shed adjoining the stable and took the path most likely to lead her to flowers. The grounds were not extensive and she arrived by simply turning a corner around a hedge.

  Though it was too early in the year for blooming roses, there were lavish lilac bushes and soft pink and lavender anemone. The sun warmed her skin and she sighed happily. At that moment she could almost believe everything would come aright. She sank to her knees and began taking cuttings of the anemone, hoping there would be enough for a small bouquet for the foyer table.

  Her anger at Charles faded as she worked the rich soil and took careful cuttings so she would not deplete the garden. She thought of various ways to mend the rift between them when he came home.

  The lilac bushes rustled and she smiled. Perhaps it was a hummingbird looking for nectar, or a robin seeking worms in the soft dirt.

  “Aye, yer right pretty, ye are.”

  Georgiana squeaked and toppled backward onto her bottom. Before she could scramble to her feet, a man emerged from the bushes. He was rough looking and dirty. The gardener? How long had he been lurking there?

  “Who are you?” She gripped the shears in her fist like a weapon.

  “Why, I’m yer pa.”

  She recognized that voice. She’d heard it in Vauxhall Gardens. She’d almost forgotten him and his “plans” for her. “No, you are not.”

  “Aye, yer my gal, right enough. I’ve been watchin’ you yer whole life, Georgie gal. Ever since you was brought back to Kent. Finest thing I ever done. Think it was me, but coulda been Artie. An’ everything we done after was fer you.”

  Watching her? And who was Artie? She could not take this in. Could not comprehend what he was saying. But there was something familiar about him, something vaguely disquieting. Yes! He’d been across the street the night of Lord Carlington’s ball, waiting for her and Charles to come out. And she thought she might have seen him before that. In her village in Kent. Hadn’t he once given her a rock candy when she’d gone to market with the cook? All she could remember was that he smelled bad and his teeth were yellowed and broken when he smiled. She had thrown the candy into the bushes on her way back to the manor.

  Another brief memory flashed in her mind, and then another, until she wondered how he could have been so present in her life and she not recognize him. The disquieting feelings of being watched, being followed, had been true! He’d been a specter weaving in and out of her entire life. Dear God! Could this horrid man she’d dismissed as a demented villager actually be her father? But Aunt Caroline would never—

  “I do not believe you.”

  He grabbed her upper arm and squeezed. “Don’t you be gettin’ saucy with me, missy! A gal’s bound to do what her pa says. I’da come sooner but that blasted giant Hunter hired is always in the way.”

  She shuddered with revulsion. “Let me go!”

  “Not yet, Georgie gal. I got plans fer you. But I gotta get rid of Hunter first. Hunter, fer Christ’s sake! I oughta whip you fer marryin’ him like you done. I warrant he’s ridin’ you hard but you ain’t a tart. You was raised better. That fancy ma of yers saw to that.”

  She felt sick to her stomach. Surely she would wake from this nightmare any moment. This horrid man would be gone and his hideous claims would go with him.

  “A gal’s bound to do what her pa says. Now that yer ma’s gone, I’m yer boss. D’you understand?”

  “Y-yes.” She’d say anything to make him release her.

  “That’s better.”

  He eased his grip and she stepped back, drawing a deep breath of clean air. “What do you want?”

  He smirked, certain he’d won their contest of wills. “Yer comin’ with me. Once I put Hunter outta the way, you’ll marry who I say. No more of them country squires an’ the like. Yer fit fer a duke.” He laughed and slapped his thighs with enjoyment. “T’ think. My whelps is gonna be swells. Aye, the Gibbonses is risin’ in the world.”

  She took another step backward. Put Hunter out of the way? The man was quite mad. Caroline would never have allowed a man like that to touch her. But, somehow, he had become obsessed with Georgiana in the village and built a fantasy around being her father. And now that Caroline was dead, he thought he had the right to control her.

  She still held the pruning shears in her hand. She tightened her grip and drew her arm back to lend force to her blow.

  “Mrs. Hunter!”

  Finn’s voice was blessedly near! “Here, Finn!”

  The man snarled at her and glanced over his shoulder, backing into the lilac bushes the way he’d appeared. “Looks like I’m gonna have to teach you not to cross yer pa. You ain’t too big to whip. Use the cane on you, I will.”

  And then he was gone. She sank to her knees, fighting the tears that were crowding forward and trying to still her trembling.

  “Need help with the basket, Mrs. Hunter?” Finn asked as he came around the bend in the path.

  “Yes, please.” She took a moment to get to her feet, waiting until she was certain her knees would not fail her and trying
not to meet Finn’s discerning eyes, then busied herself by smoothing her skirts and collecting her emotions.

  She did not want to tell Finn about the encounter with that horrid man. She did not want to tell anyone what he’d wanted with her. A pack of lies, certainly, but...but she did not want to give them voice. Or was it her own nameless fears that kept her silent? That he could be behind the attacks on Charles. That she, through the obsession of this demented man, could actually be responsible for the deaths of her husbands? That he would keep his promise and come back for her?

  * * *

  Charles stood at the window in Lord Carlington’s study. How could he tell the man what he suspected? It was bound to be a deep shock, perhaps welcome, perhaps not, but a shock nonetheless.

  The door opened and Carlington entered. “Ah! Hunter. I was just going to send for you, lad. Finally heard from my man in the Royal Navy.”

  Ah, yes. He’d been going to inquire regarding Georgiana’s supposed father and mother. He’d almost forgotten the offer.

  “Sherry? Whiskey? Name your poison, lad. Not too early, eh?”

  Charles glanced at the ormolu mantel clock. Five o’clock. “Sherry, I think.” He did not want to arrive home drunk. He still had a few matters to settle with Georgiana. And she would need to hear this news, too.

  Carlington poured two glasses and brought one to Charles. “To old friends in the navy,” he toasted.

  Charles drank and waited for Carlington to take a seat in a chair by the window. “Like to watch the world go by now and then,” he explained, gesturing to the window and chuckling. “See some of the damnedest things when no one knows you’re watching. Sit, Hunter. Don’t want to drink looking up at you.”

  Charles sat in the chair next to him and glimpsed out the window. A very good view, indeed.

  “Yes, well, to the point, eh? The Captain George Carson I was recalling could not have been little Georgiana’s father. Seems he and his wife both went down on his ship. No children. I asked my friend to look into any other Carsons who might fit the bill. No luck. Not yet, anyway.”

  Charles hadn’t expected news. He was now certain Carlington could inquire into every Carson ever in the navy and never find Georgiana’s father. “I suspect you will not get the answer we want.”