Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance)

by Lucinda Brant

  Selina bit her lip. Why couldn’t she be left to her monthly bills in peace? But she didn’t have the cold heartedness to turn her sister-in law out; the woman was married to her priggish brother after all and that in itself engendered Selina’s sympathy.

  “You have no reason to be jealous of my friendship with an illused girl who lives a blameless life in the wilds of Somerset,” she said as she sorted through the smaller pile of bills and extracted the one she was looking for. She absently tidied the others back into formation. When Lady Cobham remained silent she looked up and saw the pout. “The child came to my door when she had nowhere else to turn,” she added patiently. “She and her infant had been abandoned by her lover. She had just turned fifteen. What would you have done?”

  Lady Cobham shrugged as she tried to dislodge a chewed sweetmeat from an aching tooth. “Directed her to the nearest workhouse. Helping the poor to help themselves is one thing, Lina, but aiding and abetting a girl who is foolish enough to get herself and her bastard abandoned, well! That’s just asking to be taken advantage. The lower orders need to be put in their place, their actions not condoned.”

  “Thank you for your advice, Caro,” Selina answered quietly, her only sign of anger the flash of her large dark eyes. “I must remember that for the next meeting of the Belsay Orphanage Board of Governors.”

  Lady Cobham shifted uneasily amongst the tapestry cushions on the chaise longue. “Oh dear, I’ve offended you.” She took the last sweetmeat from the silver dish. “The trouble with you, my dear, is that you haven’t hardened your heart to the many miseries that surround us. You think you can make a difference with this absurd orphanage of yours. But you can’t. No one can. Misery will always be there.”

  Selina cast her eye over an exorbitant bill for Parisian embroidered silks and delicate lacework. Four more months and then she could discard her dreary mourning for color and fashionable whims. She was counting the days. “Now that is my brother talking,” she replied absently.

  Lady Cobham eyed her beautiful sister-in-law speculatively. Such delicate features framed by an over-abundance of flaming apricot curls gave Selina the appearance of an ethereal being, deserved of being put atop a pedestal, or at the very least surrounded by a diffuse golden halo worn by the angels woven into mediaeval tapestries. But appearances could be deceptive, and none more so than with Selina. And there was a saying, something about still waters running deep. Lady Cobham thought this very apt for her sister-in-law. She could well believe the rumor that Selina was having a passionate affair with the notorious and handsomely dark Lord Halsey. Still, it would be gratifying to have the whispers confirmed…

  “I hadn’t finished telling you about Sir Charles Weir’s dinner party,” said Lady Cobham lightly, hoping to draw Selina out.

  “I’ve heard all I want to know about the death of that poor cleric.”

  “If you recall, I was just about to tell you who was seated next to the scruffy cleric when we were interrupted with the tea things.”

  “Is that important?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll be vastly interested, my dear, for the man happens to have the suspicion of murder on his own head. Cobham says that must make him the prime suspect in the cleric’s death. Though why he would want to murder such a nobody is anyone’s guess.”

  Selina sighed. She really did not have time for Caroline’s scandal mongering. Her man of business was arriving at any moment for the purpose of discussing suitable tenants for this monolith of a house in Hanover Square. She couldn’t continue to live under this roof. It had been her husband’s home and contained too many painful memories of an arranged marriage that had been a disaster from day one.

  “A murderer at Sir Charles’s dinner party?” she heard herself say as she sorted through a pile of correspondence. “A pity Cobham was out of town. He’d have enjoyed pointing the finger.”

  Lady Cobham looked about the vast room with its furniture still under covers, strategically avoiding Selina’s dark eyes for fear she would give herself away. “I should think most of London is pointing the finger at him, Lina. Cobham says there was talk of reinstating him at White’s since His Majesty saw fit to bestow a Marquessate upon him but not after this latest little drama he’s become embroiled in. And as he was seated next to the cleric, that can only make matters worse for Halsey—”

  “Halsey?” Suddenly, Lady Cobham had Selina’s undivided attention. “Why was Al—Lord Halsey at one of Sir Charles Weir’s party political dinners?”

  “He and Sir Charles were at Harrow together,” Lady Cobham replied blandly, though her pulse was up under her sister-in-law’s hard stare. “As I said, Halsey was seated next to the cleric throughout dinner and was again beside him when the men sat over their port, and that’s when the cleric up and died.”

  Selina left the desk to stand by the undraped sash windows with their view of the expansive Square, hoping to hide the heat in her throat. “How dreadful,” she murmured. “What did the attending physician say caused the vicar’s death?”

  “Officially he died of a heart attack. Of course no one believes that. How can we when the cleric dropped dead at the feet of a man accused of murdering his own brother to get an earldom for himself?”

  “That’s a lie!” Selina exclaimed, rounding angrily on her sister-in-law. “I won’t have you repeating such malicious gossip, Caro!”

  Lady Cobham sat up and slowly drew on her lavender kid gloves. “I don’t begrudge you your Parisian dalliance with Halsey,” she said silkily, a sly glance at her red-faced sister-in-law. “No sane woman could be immune to such potent masculinity. It matters not a wit if he did kill a penniless vicar, or his own brother, for that matter. What Cobham and I find particularly abhorrent is the persistent rumor he’s the base-born product of his mother’s affair with her mulatto footman. Marquessate aside, one shudders at the likely shade of the offspring from marriage to a man with such muddied blood. But what particularly offends Cobham is not so much the man’s black heritage, that could be swept aside had he been a prince of the subcontinent, but that the Countess of Delvin chose to lower herself to couple with her footman; a menial. You, Lina, are a Vesey, descended from an unbroken line since the Plantagenets with no one in the family tree related to anyone below the rank of Viscount. There is most definitely no servant blood of any rank. Our interests must and will be guarded. Do I make myself understood?”

  Selina remained stubbornly mute, face averted, a long hand to her burning throat. Lady Cobham glanced at the ornate clock on the mantle and made motions to leave, yet waited for her sister-in-law’s assent. Finally, Selina nodded, hating herself for being weak-willed enough to appear to acquiesce to family pressure. But she wasn’t about to reveal to her sister-in-law the very personal and heartbreaking reason why she could never marry Alec, not when she had yet to tell the man himself.

  “Cobham has no need to fear for the Vesey name,” she stated dully. “Alec and I… Matters between us… I have no intention of marrying Lord Halsey.”

  “Your brother will be pleased,” Lady Cobham replied sweetly and kissed Selina’s flushed cheek. “I’ll be at the exhibition. Cobham won’t lower himself to attend. But one must support family. I might not approve of Talgarth but he is your brother and a Vesey, so one must do one’s duty. I know you say Talgarth is very talented but…” She shrugged realizing Selina was not listening. “Adieu, my dear.”

  Selina watched Lady Cobham maneuver her hooped petticoats along the passageway and down the stairs to the waiting sedan chair then turned back into the library. Damn Caro’s love of gossip! How was she to front up with carefree enthusiasm to an exhibition of her younger brother’s pictures (his first, too), when all she could think about was the effect of the unfortunate cleric’s death on the love of her life? She resolved to write to him at once. They may have parted acrimoniously but that did not stop her giving him her total support. She wondered how he would receive such a letter.

  She worried herself needlessly. />
  In the exhibition rooms they came face to face.

  He was not pleased to see her.

  The show rooms in Oxford Street were crowded, the air hot and heavy with perfume. And it was noisy; too much harsh laughter competing with the chinking of wine glasses. Tables strained under the weight of prepared food, punch in silver urns, and elaborate arrangements of fruit and flowers in season. Given the animated conversations and the high spirits, the uninvited would hardly have guessed that they had stumbled across a select preview to honor fresh new talent to the art world.

  Those members of the aristocracy who considered themselves of the artistic demi-monde had turned out in their best silks and powder; the ladies in wide hooped petticoats moving sideways through the crush of bodies, and the gentlemen in outrageously tall toupees powdered blue and threaded with ribbons. Most had not even bothered to venture into the next room to view the pictures. That chore was left to the critical eye of the newssheet hacks who were expected to provide a succinct review for their readership before the exhibition covering the four walls was formally opened to the public the following day.

  Into this frothy soiree sauntered His Grace the Duke of Cleveley escorting the beautiful widow Mrs. Jamison-Lewis, her long fingers resting in the crook of the Duke’s satin sleeve and dressed in a low-cut, pearl seeded bodice that left little to the imagination. More than one strategically placed mouche quivered with surprise to see the Duke of Cleveley at such a function. It was difficult to imagine the great man having an interest in the patronage of new artistic talent. He was too much of the old school. Raphael, Titian and, at a stretch, Lely were more his style. Even more eyebrow raising was his choice of partner.

  The whisper circulating many an elegant drawing room said the apricot-blonde widow had left the bed of a Parisian lover to fall immediately into the waiting arms of Cleveley. That Mrs. Jamison-Lewis and the Duke were exchanging witticisms at an art exhibition seemed to bear this out. It changed the entire focus of the evening. Where now was the interest in a collection of pictures by local artists of no reputation when there was gossip to report? Gossip made all the more tantalizing because it involved the Duke of Cleveley, chief architect of the country’s foreign policy. That he, a widower himself chose to have on his arm a woman in the last months of her mourning sent the reporters into a frenzy of scribbles, backs turned on the art world.

  Talgarth Vesey, one of the painters of the moment, did not seem at all concerned by this scene stealing. Whereas several of his colleagues, who had spent the evening mingling with guests or answering questions about their work put to them by the journalists, were infuriated to be so easily abandoned because a politician had arrived with his latest whore, Talgarth Vesey was content to sit in a corner of the room, broodingly chewing the quick of a ragged fingernail. His gaze was on a canvas draped in black cloth and set on an easel. The cloth was the idea of his majordomo Nico. As his master’s finest work at the exhibition, Nico said the painting deserved to be unveiled with ceremony, when all the guests were assembled and hushed. It would set the work apart from that of the other painters. Talgarth wondered if the Duke of Cleveley would condescend to perform the unveiling. Now that would be a coup!

  The painter did not immediately rise when approached by the exhibition’s most illustrious guest. A tall gentleman in somber frockcoat with no powder in his coal-black curls had diverted his attention. The stranger hovered on the edge of the pastel shaded crowd and stood so close to the works of art that it was obvious he needed spectacles. Talgarth decided there and then that he must paint this gentleman and was about to cross the room when he was stopped by a beloved voice before he had taken a step.

  “The least you could do is appear as if you’re enjoying the evening,” Selina quipped. “It might get you one or two lucrative commissions.”

  With a frown of preoccupation, the painter looked away from the dark haired gentleman. Seeing his sister, he jumped to his feet, smiling broadly and pulled her to him to kiss her cheek. “Lina! You came! I can’t wait for all this fuss to be over with, can you?”

  Selina smiled reassuringly, pressed her brother’s hand, and made the necessary introductions; pleased Talgarth had the good sense to bow respectfully. But when he stared hard at the Duke she wanted to kick him for his lack of manners; the urge became a necessity when he addressed the Duke with one of his blunt questions.

  “Where have we met, your Grace?” he enquired, his mind’s eye wondering how the Duke appeared without his magnificent powdered wig that served only to accentuate a prominent beaked nose.

  The Duke took snuff and stared straight ahead. “We have never been introduced before today.”

  “Are you sure? Venice? Florence? Bath, perhaps?”

  “The Duchess frequently took the waters at Bath.”

  “Not the Italian States. Bath,” Talgarth Vesey stated, adding without apology, “You see, I never forget a face. Do I, Lina?”

  “Or perhaps it was somewhere close to Ellick Farm? It’s on the Duke’s estate, Tal. Remember?” Selina said with a smile at her brother’s continuing frown, a wary eye on the Duke who was not pleased at having questions put to him, least of all in so blunt a fashion. She drew the Duke’s arm around her own. “Come, let me show you what I consider Talgarth’s best work, your Grace,” and walked off with him, blowing her brother a kiss over her bare shoulder. “You must forgive Talgarth,” she said at her chatty best. “He is young and quite the eccentric for a Vesey. We are all rather staid creatures except for Talgarth. Cobham inherited the title but no imagination; I am useless at most things except I have a mathematical brain; Talgarth is a major artistic talent, although devoid of all the social graces. Needless to say Cobham has filled the ancestral pile with hideous works of art while Talgarth is forced to compromise his great talent by painting yappy little dogs and their hideous fat female owners. So, your Grace, I am relying on you to provide my little brother with the respectability he deserves,” and she directed the Duke’s attention to the nearest canvas.

  It was Alec whom Talgarth Vesey had spotted in the crowd and whose likeness he decided he must paint. Alec had arrived behind the Duke. In the commotion that followed that nobleman’s entrance he was able to slip away to the second room to look at the pictures in relative peace. He had almost come full circle uninterrupted when he was rudely tapped on the shoulder.

  A glass of champagne was pressed into his hand.

  It was Lord George Stanton who recklessly flung out an arm toward the four walls covered with pictures from floor to ceiling. “What do you think of this lot by these new fellows?”

  Alec pocketed his eyeglasses. “I like them. Less formal than Reynolds and Lely.” He motioned to the picture to his right. It was one of Talgarth Vesey’s works. “Take this picture here. The style is particularly refreshing. The expanse of sky, threatening a thunderstorm, and the sun, filtering muted light onto the valley floor below, is in direct contrast to the child’s innocence. She seems oblivious to the storm at her back; her future is all before her…”

  Lord George gave him a nudge, eyes sweeping over Alec from toe to wavy black hair pulled into a long plait. He hadn’t heard a word. “The black velvet suits. So does the lack of powder. A magpie amongst peacocks,” he said and stifled a belch. “But don’t get me wrong. It won’t see you rise to ambassadorial rank. Father says you can’t have an ambassador who don’t look the part.”

  Alec decided Lord George was drunk, very drunk. And by the way he was throwing back the champagne, had every intention of staying that way. And it explained why he was talking to Alec. Sober, he doubted Cleveley’s stepson would have come within ten feet of him. That had been proven at Weir’s dinner party.

  “This hardly seems your sort of gathering, my lord,” Alec said conversationally, turning his back on the painting of the beautiful child.

  Lord George pulled a face. “It ain’t.” He leaned closer. It didn’t stop him talking loudly. “Can’t stand any of ’em. Painters. Pah! G
ood-for-nothin’ bunch of bird-witted parasites. Take this Vesey character for instance. You tell me why the son of our most decorated General is eeking a living from paints when he could’ve made a respectable career following in his father’s footsteps. Mad. Has to be. No other explanation. Pictures and letters and such nonsense won’t see the kingdom rise to greatness. How can it? Who will care in a hundred years whether Mr. Reynolds or that fellow Gainsborough is the better painter? Who cares now?”

  “But a far more palatable and enduring legacy of what our great nation is capable than say—a society built on the ill-gotten gains of slavery…?”

  Alec said this with such a nice smile that Lord George didn’t know whether to be angered by his insolence or consider it a quip and laugh. He decided the latter and gave Alec a friendly push with his elbow.

  “You’re not so bad, Halsey. Not so bad at all. Thought you a bit queer in the attic. What with that iffy business over your brother’s death, and keeping to yourself. Not one of the lads, if you know what I mean. But I was wrong. You’re quite a Trusty Trojan underneath.”

  Alec gave him a wry smile. “Thank you, my lord. I’m much gratified by your reappraisal. I may now hold my head up in society knowing I have your approval.”

  The heavy sarcasm by-passed Lord George. “That’s the spirit,” he slurred and loudly called out to a passing waiter to bring a bottle and be quick about it. “Do you like pictures? Not this pap; the Italian school and all that?”

  Alec was saved a reply when Lady Cobham swept up and claimed Lord George, who showed little resistance at being dragged away and introduced to a group of giggling dilettantes lounging in front of a full-length portrait of an admiral with four faithful hounds at his boot heels. Relieved to be left alone, Alec took out his eyeglasses only to find himself confronted by a tall, slightly emaciated and lanky young gentleman with dark circles under his eyes who wore an overlarge flowered frockcoat and disheveled neckcloth. He was stared at from head to foot, the gaze lingering a little longer than was polite on his face. He sighed. Another drunkard…