Georgie nodded. It was a sensible strategy. “What will you do now that you’ll no longer be able to collect your ten thousand dollars?” she asked. “I daresay your mysterious benefactor will not look kindly upon your failure to keep his secret.”
“I think you’re quite right,” Lowther said with a shrug. “But he can hardly blame us for your finding us. We could hardly have taken to the streets at a run. Regardless of how much time we had. “
“Besides which,” Mary added, “we were beginning to find the whole business rather tedious. I cannot say that twenty thousand pounds for the two of us together wouldn’t have been wonderful, but at this point, I’m not even sure that this person would even have given it to us after all. It occurred to me that he might simply be recruiting us to do his bidding in exchange for a prize he never intended to pay.”
Con nodded. “I suspect you’re correct. A person would need to be very wealthy indeed to pay out twenty thousand pounds, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that many of these machinations and schemes seem to be remarkably slipshod. After all, if his intention was to frighten Mrs. Mowbray into thinking her husband was alive again, why wouldn’t he or she contact her with the notion directly? As she saw his body after he died, surely she’d have to be incredibly susceptible to seeing and believing in ghosts if she were to be truly frightened at the sight of one. And as the benefactor didn’t tell either Mr. Lowther or Mrs. Kendrick not to speak with Mrs. Mowbray in public, then what’s to stop her from discussing seeing them in my aunt’s back garden when next she sees them in town? Nothing, that’s what.”
At that they all six nodded. Mrs. Kendrick, her shoulders sagging, gave a yawn that was immediately replicated by the rest of them. “I do apologize, your grace, my lord, my lord, Mrs. Mowbray, but I should like to find my bed now that I am no longer beholden to the nameless benefactor.”
Georgina nodded, and stood to see Mrs. Kendrick and Mr. Lowther out. When they reached the front door, they each turned to her and she shook their hands individually. “Thank you for being so frank with us tonight,” she said, despite the lingering sense of betrayal she felt about Mary’s role in the matter. “I greatly appreciate it.”
“I’m sorry to have played you false, Georgina,” Mary said. “I hope that you and your friends will be able to find out who it was that was trying to frighten you. I really do.”
To her late husband’s brother, Georgie nodded. “I know my husband would have enjoyed meeting you,” she said. Though she knew well enough that it might not have occurred to him until it was closer to his death. For whatever reason, he’d only appreciated various people and groups when he was closest to losing them.
Malcolm Lowther smiled, and kissed the back of Georgie’s hand. “I hope that you’ll allow me to approach you as the family we are. I no longer have my parents but I should like very much to get to know my sister-in-law.”
Georgie smiled. “I’d like that too. And please, if you recall anything else about this business—even something that doesn’t seem important—let one of us know. I think the key to figuring out the motive behind this person’s scheme will be somewhere in those letters.”
“You don’t happen to have kept them, do you?” Con asked from behind Georgie, making her feel as if they were a married couple seeing off their guests after a party.
“We did,” Lowther said. “I’ll send them round to you tomorrow. That way you’ll be able to examine them yourself.”
“I so appreciate it,” Georgie said.
Bidding them both good night, they returned to the drawing room where Perdita and Archer were seated at opposite ends of the room. Odd, that, Georgie thought.
But before she could comment on it, she heard Con step into the room behind her.
“So, what we know now is that whoever wished to torment you with the image of your husband is even more diabolical than we first imagined. Who sends a brother-in-law to frighten a woman into believing that her dead husband is alive?”
“Someone who enjoys puzzles and tricks of the eye,” Archer responded without batting an eyelash. “This person is an opportunist, using the resemblance of Malcolm to Robert as a way of killing two birds with one stone.”
Georgie looked from one man to the other, then hurried toward the sideboard on the other side of the room. “I don’t know about you all, but I believe the conversation of the past couple of hours calls for something a bit stronger than tea.”
Wordlessly she poured out four small glasses of brandy and passed them round.
Thirteen
“What the devil was that?” Con demanded after they’d each taken a drink of brandy. “Can they really have been so gullible as to believe that a mysterious benefactor was ready to hand over ten thousand pounds simply for watching over Georgina from afar?”
“It does call into question both Mr. Lowther’s and Mrs. Kendrick’s level of intellect,” Archer agreed, absently stroking the edge of his brandy glass. “Either this mysterious benefactor was just extremely fortunate in his choice of minions, or—”
“Or Mr. Lowther and Mrs. Kendrick made up the tale between themselves,” Georgina finished for him. “I must admit to a certain degree of incredulity when it comes to Mrs. Kendrick because of the way she duped me earlier, but what reason could Mr. Lowther have for lying? It’s not as if Robert left behind a great fortune that he stands to inherit upon my death. Though there is the matter of the stolen jewels that haven’t yet been found.”
“It could be the jewels,” Perdita said thoughtfully, “but perhaps he’s suffering from some mental malady that draws him to you? Perhaps he is jealous for what his brother had that he didn’t. It could be anything.”
They were silent for a moment as they each contemplated what such an illness might mean for their investigation. Con had assumed that they were searching for someone with a rational reason for targeting Georgina. Some plan to frighten her with a pretend ghost. If the person they searched for was simply a madman, then anything could happen.
“I don’t think it’s someone who is unbalanced,” Georgina said firmly. “A madman wouldn’t think to have others do his haunting for him. It’s actually quite ingenious of him to have lured Robert’s brother here to lurk in Lady Russell’s garden. Of course I would see him and immediately think he was an apparition, since I had no notion of Robert’s having a brother. And Mr. Lowther meanwhile thought he was doing something good in looking after me. He simply thought he was following the last wishes of his long-lost brother.”
“And the way this seems to have been engineered from behind the scenes,” Perdita said, “seems awfully familiar, does it not?”
“How do you mean?” Con asked, curious to see Georgina making a surreptitious shushing gesture at her friend. “What’s familiar about it?”
“Nothing,” Georgina said swiftly. “Nothing at all.” She yawned theatrically. “I vow I am exhausted. Why don’t we discuss all this in the morning after a good night’s sleep.”
But Con caught her wrist in his grip. “I think I’d prefer to hear why this seems so familiar to you and the duchess, if you don’t mind. Perhaps you should start talking now.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Georgina said, yanking at her imprisoned wrist. “I am at liberty to tell you or not tell you whatever I wish.”
Perdita sighed loudly. “You may as well tell him, Georgie,” she said. “He’ll get it from Archer soon enough.”
“I say,” Archer protested. “I am not so indiscreet as that!”
“No,” Con said pleasantly, “but when I find out what you’ve been hiding from me, you’ll wish you were.”
“Oh, stop it,” Georgina said, finally managing to free her wrist. Resuming her seat, she stared down at the linen tablecloth, tracing the pattern of its lace overlay with her index finger. Finally, she said, “You were not made privy to Isabella’s ordeal several months ago, when she was terrorized by someone very close to her, who was working at the behest of another.”
; Con listened with mounting anger as she told him about the way Isabella had received threatening notes, packages meant to terrify, and finally was held at gunpoint by someone who had been manipulated into tormenting her.
“While we never learned who it was behind the whole affair,” Georgina said when she had finished, “we did suspect that he was not finished with us.”
“Why was that?” Con asked silkily, though he had a suspicion.
“Because we both received similar threatening notes soon after Isabella’s tormentor was captured,” Perdita said firmly, her hand grasping Georgina’s.
“Why did you not tell me?” Con demanded, his voice low and angry. “I can hardly be expected to do an adequate job of protecting you if I don’t know all the facts, Georgina.”
“See here, old man,” Archer said affably, “the ladies don’t particularly like it when you rip up at them. At least that’s what I’ve heard so—”
“Archer?” Con didn’t bother turning to look at his friend; instead his eyes were locked with Georgina’s.
“Yes, Con?”
Before he could speak, Georgina said, “Lord Archer, perhaps you would be so kind as to escort the duchess back to her establishment?”
“That’s a very good idea,” Con said. “I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll decide where to go from here.”
Perdita took her leave of Georgina, whispering something in her ear before she and Archer saw themselves out.
“What did she tell you?” Con asked, curious in spite of his annoyance.
“She told me that I might try kissing you out of your ill temper,” Georgina said without a blush.
Con raised his brows. “She thinks it’s like that between us, does she?”
Georgina shrugged. “She’s a romantic. Despite what happened with her husband. It never fails to surprise me.”
He’d risen to pace before the fireplace, and at her words, he stopped. “Why does it surprise you? Surely resilience is one of the most reliable of human characteristics? We see it all the time in women who marry again despite previous bad marriages. And vice versa.”
“You are misreading why most women marry,” Georgina said with a sad smile. “It’s not for romantic reasons. It’s because an unmarried woman of no means with no family to take her in is likely to be destitute. If marriage is one’s only respectable means of getting a roof over her head, then a woman will marry.”
“As a man,” Con said, “I must admit that I’ve not considered it that way. I think instead of man’s reasons for marrying. To secure the succession, to gain property, to form alliances with other noble families. All the reasons I was betrothed to the young dowager.”
“Yes, that’s because you’ve never found yourself in the position of needing to rely on someone else for your independence,” Georgina said. “You have your independence whether you are married or not. It’s different for us. And your list of reasons for marriage is precisely why I have chosen never to marry again.”
“Because you do not wish to bring anything to the man you marry?” Con asked, puzzled by her stance. “But surely a husband brings something to the marriage as well. A home, an estate, security. Is that not enough?”
“He brings those things only at his discretion. If he chooses, he might take them away from his wife on a whim. A wife is no more than another possession under English law. It is why so many wives find themselves in marriages like the one I had with Mowbray.”
“I don’t suppose I’m going to change your mind on this tonight,” Con said at last.
“It is unlikely,” Georgina agreed. “So, I believe you were preparing to rake me over the coals? Let’s get this business over with.”
Despite his earlier annoyance, Con found himself wanting to laugh at her attitude toward his proposed scolding.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, once he’d schooled his features into seriousness. “If this is the same person who caused Isabella’s ordeal in Yorkshire and London, then why on earth would you neglect to tell me? I cannot fight this bastard with one hand tied behind my back, Georgina.”
She refused to look up at him, which Con attributed to a feeling of remorse. Though he was likely misreading that, he told himself.
“I honestly did not think the two phenomena were related,” she said finally, looking up at him from where she’d taken a seat at the table. “The letters arrived before you even got to Bath. And the sightings in the garden, and even the dead man in the theater, were so completely different from a letter that I thought they couldn’t possibly be connected.”
“When did you realize that you were wrong?” Con asked, exasperated but no longer angry. He would save his true anger to place it where it belonged. On the head of the man who had orchestrated this coil.
“Only tonight when I heard Malcolm and Mary tell their tales of their own letter writer. It was too much of a coincidence that there should be two people who used missives as their means of controlling the situation, so I realized he’d orchestrated the entire thing.”
“Yet you did not share this with me?”
He watched as she seemed to battle some inner demon for a moment, before finally she got hold of herself and said, “You must understand, my lord, that I have spent a great deal of my life making decisions for myself. Though my mother and I followed the drum, my father was not often there to make day-to-day decisions for us. He was often involved in military business, leaving us on our own. Then, after I married, it was similar. Though my husband was less understanding about the way that life in the camps worked, even he allowed me a certain degree of autonomy. So, if I did not tell you about what I suspected regarding this person who seems to wish to do me harm, it was not because I do not trust you or because I have some secret wish to see you fail. It is more that I am unaccustomed to having someone else involved in the process of protecting me.”
She looked up at him, and Con was struck by just how lovely she was. And just how alone she must have felt when she was making all those decisions for herself. He had little doubt that she was fully capable of making them, but he wondered who she turned to when she wished to simply let someone else take over for a little while. He suspected she had no one to turn to.
“And so, you did not tell me because you had no notion that you should,” he said at last. “I do know now, however, and I hope that you will let me work together with you to figure out who it is pulling the strings of Mr. Lowther and Mrs. Kendrick.”
“Of course,” she said, her eyes large in the candlelight. “Of course I will. I need your help. I would never have been able to lie in wait for Mr. Lowther tonight if I’d been on my own.”
Con stepped back over to the table and resumed his seat there. “I think you underestimate your own bravery,” he told her with a crooked smile.
His words seemed to amuse her, and she reached over to grasp his hand. They’d both discarded their gloves ages ago, and when they touched their bare hands together it felt like something that was as inevitable as the tides. “I will try not to shut you out again,” she said softly. “Though I cannot make promises.”
“Trying is enough for now,” Con responded. “Now, tell me more about these anonymous notes you’ve been receiving.”
“Well, there’s not much to tell,” she said with a shrug. “The first one I received before we’d even captured Isabella’s tormentor. And I believe Perdita received one around that time as well.”
“May I see them?” Con asked, thinking that there might be something about the paper or the writing or some other clue that could be gleaned from seeing the actual letters. “I promise to give them back, if that makes you hesitate.”
Georgina gave a half smile. “I’m not worried about that,” she said. “They’re in my bedchamber. You may as well come up and I’ll give them to you to look over.”
Con felt his brows rise at the invitation. But she had already turned to leave the room and head upstairs, so he couldn’t examine her expression for clues as to wh
ether she meant what he thought she might mean.
Cursing his inability to tell innocent words from innuendo, he followed her upstairs.
* * *
Georgie was grateful that only she could hear her erratic heartbeat as she led the way toward her tiny bedchamber. The rest of the house was quiet, none of the other members of the household having returned yet from the musicale they attended.
She realized that it had been nearly four years since she’d had a man in her bedchamber. And then it had been her husband, who had never set her pulses racing like Con did. There was just something about Dominic, Lord Coniston, that made her want to unwrap his tidily knotted cravat and muss him up.
When she didn’t hear him behind her, she turned and found that he was there, just very quiet. He must have had some practice at sneaking about in houses after dark, she thought wryly. Reaching behind her, she took his hand in hers and led him the rest of the way until she reached her door and reclaimed her hand so that she could open it with one hand and hold the candlestick in the other.
She stepped forward to light the lamp beside her bed and she heard Con shut the door behind them and wordlessly move over to kneel before the fireplace and light the fire which had been allowed to die out earlier in the day. It had grown chillier as the night wore on and Georgie was grateful for the added warmth.
Not wishing to give up the pretext upon which she’d invited him in, she stepped over to her small writing table and opened the drawer where she’d placed the notes she’d dubbed the “Last Season Letters.” They were there where she’d left them, tied up with a bit of green ribbon.
She turned and was startled to find Con standing just behind her. “How do you do that?” she demanded, in a low voice. “I should have thought you were a green boy rather than a man grown from how light on your feet you are.”
He laughed softly at her words. “I grew up in this house and I know how prone to squeaks the floors are,” he said. “I learned to walk on the balls of my feet, though it’s rather difficult in boots. I wish I’d worn dancing slippers instead.”
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