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

by Lucinda Brant

  Sir Charles saw her furtive glance to the servant door and while she was speaking he stepped across and locked it and slipped the key into the deep embroidered pocket of his frockcoat. At his action, Miranda let out a little sigh of defeat but she did not move from the window seat. The sun was on her back, a breeze coming in through the window tickled her wrist and the hum of the bumblebee nestled in the bouquet of flowers was growing louder as it was awakened by the warmth of the sun. She hoped Janie would return very soon. But with the servant door now locked what was she to do? A twinge of discomfort made her put a hand to her belly; the other she stole behind her, fingers feeling for the bouquet of flowers. If she could just reach the flowers; throw the bouquet at him; distract him enough to make for the door… But the idea died almost as soon as it entered her consciousness; the flowers just out of reach.

  “Madam, I did not come here to argue with you,” Sir Charles said confidently, in control now that he had locked the door and had the key. Besides, the woman was in no state to run from him. “Nor do I care particularly one way or the other about Lord George’s pathetic emotions. What I do know is that in the here and now he wants nothing to do with you or your bastard offspring. That you thought you could blackmail him into owning to being your bastard’s father—”

  “Blackmail? George? To make him own to being Sophie’s papa?”

  Miranda looked so confused that Sir Charles almost believed her and for a moment he was tongue-tied. She saw his momentary confusion and had a spark of hope that he might be persuaded from whatever threatening course of action he proposed in coming to her rooms alone and locking the servant door. Her only hope was to remain calm and try to dissuade him with good sense for she had heard he was not an unreasonable man. At one time he had been loyal functionary to the Cleveley household; was he not now a politician? Did he not covert his reputation and his standing amongst society? There was only one way to find out.

  “What possible reason could I have for exposing George as Sophie’s father, Sir Charles? I have not seen or heard from him in five years, which is what I most desired in all the world. I have no wish for George to be known as Sophie’s father, for surely in doing so I expose the ignominy of her lineage, and that is something I mean to keep secret, from her and from the world, until the last breath leaves my body.”

  Miranda grimaced and sat on the window seat, both hands to her round belly, for the twinge had turned into sharp cramp. She took a deep breath and forced herself not to panic and looked up at Sir Charles. His deepening frown and the confusion registering in his pale eyes were oddly comforting.

  “Surely, you can see that it would be my last wish on God’s earth to want to expose that little girl to the world’s ridicule. She should never know her true parentage. She is the innocent party in all this. I cannot imagine that Lord George wishes it either.”

  Sir Charles was still frowning but some of the bitter fight went out of him.

  “Then if you are not party to the blackmail of Lord George as you claim, then you, too, are being ill used, Madam. Confiding in the painter was not wise on your part, for in confiding in him you have given him the means to not only blackmail Lord George but to do the very thing you want so desperately to avoid, and that is expose the child to the world.”

  “The painter?”

  “Talgarth Vesey, Madam. It is Lord George’s belief that threatening letters were written by the painter on your behalf.”

  Miranda shook her head.

  “No, Sir Charles, that cannot be. I have not confided in Mr. Vesey. I would not, and for the reasons I have just explained to you. He has been a good friend to me and to Sophie, and we enjoy his company for its own sake. His visits have been a welcome change from a daily life living removed from the world. But you must believe me: I have never confided my situation, or Sophie’s birth, to anyone save one other. Is Lord George confident these letters came from Mr. Vesey?”

  Sir Charles nodded mutely, and then surprised Miranda by flicking out the short skirts of his frockcoat and sitting in the window seat uninvited; the bouquet of flowers pressed at his back, disturbing the bumblebee which buzzed in irritation and lifted its heavy body in flight.

  “Was it the Reverend Blackwell in whom you confided?” he asked almost in a whisper, as if fearing to be overheard.

  “Mr. Blackwell?” Miranda frowned, nonplussed. “No, Sir Charles. It was he who confided in me.”

  “He confided in you? But…”

  He let the sentence hang, waiting for her to offer an explanation.

  Another sharp cramp pulsated through Miranda’s body and she grimaced and took a deep breath before saying candidly to the politician, “Surely you must see that Mr. Blackwell had as much reason as George to ensure Sophie’s lineage remained a secret from the world, for if he exposed Sophie to the world’s ridicule he exposed George, not only to ridicule and derision but to a far worse fate, given George’s greatest wish, indeed he sees it as his God-given right, to be the next Duke of Cleveley.”

  Sir Charles was so confused by Miranda’s assertions that he was still digesting them when he blurted out, for want of something to fill the silence and curb her penetrating regard,

  “You are aware the Reverend Blackwell recently suffered a heart attack and died?”

  Another painful cramp closed Miranda’s eyes tight, robbing Sir Charles of her initial reaction to his news and when she drew breath and met his open look directly there were tears in her eyes. He was unsure if her tears were from pain or the news of the vicar’s demise.

  “No. I was not,” she confessed, and before he could ask anything further about the dead vicar, said breathlessly, “Sir Charles… I implore you… Unlock the servant door and call for my maid… At once.”

  “Where is Lord George Stanton’s child?” he asked, ignoring her request, something tickling his left ear making him swipe a hand unconsciously in the air near his cheek. “Is she here with you, Madam?”

  “Please… The babe will not wait for you or I. The door…”

  “Tell me the whereabouts of Sophie Stanton, Madam!”

  “Sophie Stanton?” Miranda’s eyes opened wide with new knowledge. “So you do not know… George has not confided in you…”

  Sir Charles rummaged in a frockcoat pocket and pulled out the key to the servant door and this he held between thumb and forefinger before her eyes.

  “Tell me and I will do as you ask.”

  Again, Miranda closed her eyes on a grimace of pain and willed the cramps to subside, to at least abate until Janie returned. She shuddered in another deep breath and when she opened her eyes it was to find Sir Charles still holding the key aloft (did the man have no idea what was happening to her?) and she knew that if she did not give him a satisfactory response to his question he would not leave her alone or do as she requested and so she blurted out the first name that popped into her head.

  “Lord Halsey. He knows. The door… Sir Charles, for pity’s sake, I must have my maid!”

  The name registered with Sir Charles but he continued to hold the key just out of her reach, staring at her, struck not by her beauty, which was self-evident, but by her self-possession, which was striking in one so young and ignorant of the world, even more so given her present predicament; for surely she was going into labor? There was something innately splendid about her; as if she was due his homage as a matter of course. To his utter astonishment he found himself bowing under the weight of noblesse oblige and allowed her words to finally penetrate his skull:

  Blackwell had as much reason as George to ensure Sophie’s lineage remained a secret from the world, for if he exposed Sophie to the world’s ridicule he exposed George…

  What did she mean?

  Astonishment turned to disquiet and disquiet to doubt.

  So you do not know… George has not confided in you…

  What did she know that he did not? And what was foolish George keeping from him? Was he being played for a fool? By whom? Stanton? Lady Ru
therglen? This whore with the face of an angel? For the first time in a very long while he felt matters were out of his control and if there was one thing in this life that scared him half to death it was not being in control. He liked order and predictability, and knowing one’s place in the world; only then could he function and be secure. Now, in less than an hour spent in the company of a woman who called herself Mrs. Bourdon, he had the presentiment that his well-ordered existence was about to unravel and fall all to pieces.

  His heart began to beat faster and a throb pound at his temple.

  Again his ear was tickled by a humming irritation and without taking his eyes off Miranda, who was regarding him steadily in the small welcome reprieve from the debilitating contractions, he swiped at the air near the rolled powdered curls of his wig above his right ear.

  “You must not swat at it or it will think you mean it harm,” Miranda advised, hands gently smoothing over her belly, soothing the baby within, an eye to the bumblebee which, having bestirred itself enough to lift from the dark crimson petals of a fuchsia, buzzed near Sir Charles’s ear and then found itself swept and caught in the lace ruffles covering his wrist. “Remain still and the bee will take flight and settle elsewhere but if you lash out again it will sting you.”

  But Sir Charles did not hear her advice or notice the bumblebee crawling out of the lace folds covering his hand because the pounding in his head was all consuming; pounding with doubt and an upswell of panic. And with panic came a terrible uneasiness that made his stomach churn, his heart to race and his shaved head under the neat powdered wig to bead with sweat. He stared hard at the young woman seated across from him in the windowseat, who did not blink an eyelid in fear at his open regard, until her words and her face were cemented into his brain. And it was then that he had a revelation and he knew: They—Lady Rutherglen, Lord George Stanton, and most assuredly himself—had been duped; they had all been utterly and splendidly duped.

  Panic-stricken, he lashed out and grabbed Miranda’s wrist and yanked her to him.

  “Who are you?” he asked in a terrified, hoarse whisper. “God in heaven, Madam, tell me who you are!”

  The bumblebee lifted its abdomen and plunged its sting deep into the soft pad of Sir Charles Weir’s thumb.

  Alec was enjoying soaking his tired limbs in the hot scented waters of the large copper bath, slipping in and out of consciousness as the aromatics and heat helped to soothe his troubled mind, however temporarily, of unanswered questions regarding the poisoning of a poor old vicar and the murder of a crippled youth far from home.

  Into his mind’s eye came the crumpled and lifeless body of poor Billy Rumble whose one wish was to run away to sea for days filled with seafaring adventure. Instead his young life had been cut short by a stab to the heart; his final moments spent alone in a dark deserted stall. The callous murder of Billy Rumble and the thwarted abduction of little Sophie Bourdon made him frown and lower his wide shoulders into the warm water, as he wondered at the identity of the London gentleman who had promised Billy Rumble a few guineas to abduct her. Were the diamond drop earrings, worth a king’s ransom to the likes of Annie and Billy Rumble and found in the stables of the George Inn, a further inducement to hand over little Sophie; now one of those earrings dangled from the ear of his beloved.

  He smiled at the vision of Selina, sitting across from him at the inn, fair copper ringlets mussed from travel, the one diamond drop earring dangling from an ear, diamonds winking in the candlelight. She was smiling at him, chin cupped in her fist, black eyes alight with mischief. No doubt by the time she arrived in Bath she would have a pocketful of excuses stored up waiting to present to him as to why she could not see her way clear to becoming his wife, and another pocketful of reasons why it was best she be his mistress.

  What was Selina not telling him? And yet she confided in the Duke of Cleveley. As to the revelation she and the Duke had been lovers, that she had miscarried the Duke’s child… That was a whole chapter of her life he had no wish to explore. Yet he had a twinge of intuition that her affair with Cleveley and its consequences in some way had a bearing on his future with Selina.

  He would like to wish thoughts of the Duke to perdition but think of the Duke he must for he believed the nobleman linked in some way to the death of Blackwell. That the vicar had been poisoned, Alec was in no doubt. But he did not believe the Duke had poisoned Blackwell; he was no coward. But had someone else done it for him? Cleveley was named executor of Blackwell’s will and as such he knew the poor vicar was in truth a wealthy member of the nobility; but did the Duke know that Lord George Stanton was Blackwell’s son? Would he have implicated himself irrevocably in Stanton’s base behavior and covered up the seduction and subsequent pregnancy of Miranda Bourdon five years ago had he known his stepson’s true identity? Was Cleveley’s actions still governed by the misapprehension that Lord George Stanton was his stepson and thus his heir? Or perhaps he had discovered the truth and yet having no son continued to champion Lord George as the future heir to the Cleveley dukedom? If so, had Blackwell and the Duke conspired to keep Stanton’s true paternity a secret? The codicil would certainly bear this out.

  A most astounding document, the codicil only added to the maelstrom of mystery surrounding Blackwell’s death.

  There were other protagonists who were in some way connected to Blackwell if not to his death, and these Alec had yet to fully explore, such as Selina’s opium eating brother and the enigmatic Miranda Bourdon. Had Lord George really vandalized Talgarth’s portrait of Miranda and her daughter as Weir suggested or was there a less sinister but no less emotive reason for the portrait’s destruction? Alec was confident the painting had been destroyed before it left Milsom Street. If, as Charles Weir suggested, it was George Stanton who had taken knife and paint to the painting, then he would have had to visit the painter’s studio, but when? Talgarth’s Italian majordomo never mentioned or described the corpulent young nobleman.

  From what Nico had told him, Alec was inclined to discount Stanton as the vandal and this led him to wonder if a more likely suspect was the furious and knife-wielding Lady Rutherglen, who had lashed out at the prized portrait in a fit of venomous pique. What of the Duke’s valet Molyneux and his visits to the painter’s studio. What were his reasons for buying up any and all portraits of Miranda Bourdon? That he was doing so on his master’s behalf was not in question; the reason for doing so was. Was the Duke again aiding his stepson in having all traces of the girl George Stanton had violated obliterated; to what end? Was the woman herself to be silenced once and for all time? Was that the end intended for Miranda Bourdon?

  Miranda Bourdon. The woman remained an enigma. Alec could not wait to finally make her acquaintance and thus have her measure. If he was sure of one thing as he tried to untangle thoughts and the many knots of unanswered questions, it was that Miranda Bourdon was the means by which he would be able to make sense of why Blackwell and Billy Rumble had died. The sooner he was introduced to her the better he decided as he slipped into semi-consciousness only to be woken five minutes later by hot water mixing with the warm water at his feet.

  It was Jeffries.

  He was judiciously pouring hot water from a heavy copper jug into the water near Alec’s toes while silently directing a beefy lackey from the kitchens to deposit the two pails of fresh hot water by the foot of the bath and then take himself off. He put aside the jug to take up two thick bath sheets from the padded seat of a spindle leg chair by the dressing table. These he put carefully on a stool closer the bath. He then disappeared into the bedchamber and returned with a red silk banyan lined with yellow-gold damask and this he draped neatly over the chairback, and hovered, waiting.

  Alec opened an eye and with a toss of his head swept aside a dark heavy curl that had fallen into his eyes, not from having sensed the valet’s soft-footed presence but to an audible and irritating tap-tapping sound. Hands crossed in front of him, the fingers of Jeffries’ left hand tapped incessantly on the
back of his right, yet his long pale face, with its upturned pinched nostrils and cleft chin, was devoid of his inner thoughts. Mouth set in a thin line, Jeffries gazed at a point on the polished floorboards some two feet in front of his perfectly polished shoes. The slight rise to the thick straight brows and the persistent tapping alerted Alec that someone or something had displeased the normally impassive Hadrian Jeffries.

  With a deep breath, Alec slid his shoulders up the side of the bath until he was sitting straight and ran a hand over his damp face and through his wet hair, knowing his internal musings and short respite of solitude were at an end. He asked for the fresh hot water and Jeffries instantly came to life.

  Rinsed, dried, his naked body wrapped in the silk banyan, Alec sat on the dressing stool and toweled moisture from his shoulder-length black curls, an eye on Jeffries who hadn’t said boo. Alec smiled to himself, knowing the man was bursting to speak but would keep his tongue well and truly between his teeth until given permission to do so; the perfect gentleman’s gentleman. But did Alec want perfection? John, who had been his valet before Tam, had been as close to perfection as was possible for a valet to be but he had also been a complete bore. Was Hadrian Jeffries a bore? He had no idea. In fact he knew nothing about Hadrian Jeffries other than he had been a footman in his household for two years. When most noblemen could care less than a tester for knowing more than their valet’s name and that the servant did his job well, not knowing anything but the man’s name disturbed him. No doubt his uncle would have something to say about his lack, or more correctly, his lapse of interest in his household. His uncle always made it his business to know his servants as people, and had instilled the same eccentric habit in his nephew. Alec smiled. His uncle also made it his business to know other people’s servants as people too, which meant he would know all there was to know about Mr. Hadrian Jeffries.