Alyssa Everett

by A TrystWith Trouble

  “Objectively!”

  “Yes, objectively. What if I can’t clear my name? I’m an accused felon. Do you really think I’d sink to making some kind of claim on you now? You’re better off without me.”

  “So now you’re to be the judge of what’s best for me?”

  Of course she couldn’t simply trust that I had her welfare at heart. No, Barbara had to argue with everything. “It’s clear enough I’ve given it more thought than you have. Besides, the sooner we go our separate ways, the sooner you’ll get over me.”

  “The sooner I’ll...ugh!” Furious, she jumped to her feet, blinking back tears. “You’re worse than Cliburne. At least he managed to sound apologetic when he jilted Helen!”

  “I’m not jilting you, I’m—”

  Voices floated in from the corridor. I glanced over my shoulder with a flash of frustration before looking back at Barbara. “We’ll talk more about this later. Can you come again tomorrow?”

  She lowered her voice to an angry hiss. “As if I would trouble myself to come back to this stinking jail just so you can describe at greater length how you don’t want me!”

  I held out a beseeching hand. “Then I’ll write you. Let me explain.”

  “Explain what? You’ve made your position perfectly clear. You’ve had your fun, and you’ve no more use for me now than...than your father has for a woman!”

  I gritted my teeth and counted to ten, then spoke as patiently as I could. “Barbara, don’t let’s leave it this way.”

  My mother’s slight figure appeared at the bars. She glanced from my face to Barbara’s, then back again. “Was I gone long enough, Ben, dear? Did you say what you wished to say?”

  Barbara stormed to the cell door, refusing even to look in my direction. “He said exactly what he wished to say, Duchess,” she told my mother as the turnkey unlocked the door for her. “And I’ve heard all I care to hear.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Barbara

  The ride home to Leonard House was almost unbearable. I sat beside Ben’s mother, fighting not to shed any tears. I’m sure the duchess could see something was wrong, especially after the heedless way I’d fled Ben’s cell, but I was too upset to explain and she was too kind to pry.

  I stared, unseeing, out the carriage window. My father had been right when he’d said men like Ben were only after one thing. Even Frye had been right, when he’d warned me Ben had a reputation for trifling with young ladies. I was furious, both at Ben and at myself for being fool enough to suppose I’d meant something to him. What laughable conceit, to imagine my five thousand pounds a year and a few quick squeezes in the morning room would be enough to make him care.

  I felt stupid, used and humiliated. Ben had done a masterful job of making an idiot of me. But I couldn’t lash out at the poor duchess, who seemed as perplexed as I was, and who might soon lose her only son to the gallows.

  Don’t let’s leave it this way, Ben had urged. But what else could he say? He needed my help to convince Helen to change her testimony. It galled me that even that life-and-death consideration hadn’t been enough to keep him from squashing my pretensions. I supposed that to the handsome, egotistical heir to a dukedom, it was inconceivable I might fail to do his bidding anyway.

  The carriage rolled to a stop. We were already before Leonard House. I’d been so lost in my reflections, I hadn’t even noticed Berkeley Square outside the window. I turned in my seat toward the carriage door, preparing to alight.

  The duchess set a staying hand on my arm, her blue eyes fixed on mine in appeal. “Please don’t think ill of him, Lady Barbara. There never was a more honest or a more principled boy. If he’s given you any cause for offense, it can only be because he has so very much on his mind right now.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered dully, for I could hardly tell a worried mother her only son was a heartless, preening, deceitful ass. “And thank you again for your invitation. Meeting you has been the day’s one great pleasure.”

  She smiled. “I feel the same way, my dear. Good day to you.”

  “Goodbye, Duchess.” I stepped down from the carriage, threw back my shoulders and made myself climb the steps to the front door.

  It opened before I could even reach for the doorknob. “My lady! You’re back!” A look of anxious apprehension accompanied Frye’s outburst. “I’ve fair been beside myself. But what happened? Lord Beningbrough...he didn’t...”

  “Lord Beningbrough will not be calling here again, no matter the outcome of his case.” Stalking past Frye, I practically tore my bonnet from my head. “And if by some chance he should call, I won’t be at home to receive him.”

  Frye went limp with relief. “Oh, that’s good. I mean, he’s accused of murder, after all. You mustn’t take any chances, my lady.”

  “I’m never taking another chance for as long as I live.” Bitterly, I strode toward the stairs.

  All I wanted was to be left alone. More than alone—I wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and shut out everything and everyone. Perhaps if I kept the world at bay long enough, this feeling of stupidity and betrayal would fade to little more than a painful ache.

  But when I reached my bedchamber, I stopped dead on the threshold, staring.

  My room was a shambles. The wardrobe doors stood open, and clothes lay strewn about in wrinkled heaps. Someone had stripped the bed and torn the pillow to pieces, leaving goose down to litter the carpet like winter snow. Drawers had been pulled out and dumped unceremoniously on the floor. Even the cheval mirror I’d dragged in front of the peephole had been shoved to one side, the glass now smashed to shards.

  My first thought was Who would do such a thing? But I knew the answer even before I’d framed the question. The killer—the man who’d drawn those caricatures, the same sinister figure who’d watched me through the peephole and tried to shoot Ben in the garden—had ransacked my room.

  Shaking with anger and fear, I did an about-face. Helen had been home all afternoon, and her bedroom door was mere steps from mine. What if he’d attacked her? And if she was safe, surely she must have heard something.

  I went charging across the hall, unceremoniously throwing open her door in my agitation. “Helen—”

  Two startled faces turned in my direction. Helen and John Mainsforth half stood, half sat against the foot of her bed, locked in each other’s arms. They were both fully dressed, but rumpled and unmistakably flushed, and Helen’s lips were puffy from kissing.

  Helen sprung guiltily away from Mr. Mainsforth. “Barbara!”

  I must have looked as shocked and startled as they did. I could hardly condemn my sister for permitting a few stolen kisses, not after I’d smuggled Ben into my bedchamber and then made free with him in the morning room. I could, however, object to the identity of the man doing the stealing. John Mainsforth! No wonder my room had been torn to pieces, if he was in the house. It was a miracle none of us had had our skull smashed in—yet.

  “You!” I breathed, so alarmed to find him still in the house, I made the first objection that sprang to my tongue. “Get your hands off my sister.”

  Mr. Mainsforth raked his disheveled hair quickly back into order. “Lady Barbara, it isn’t the way you think.”

  At the ingratiating smile on his face, fury overtook my fear. “You have some nerve, speaking to me, you...you vandal!”

  His brow wrinkled. “Vandal?”

  “Yes, and murderer and blackmailer and Peeping Tom, and heaven only knows what else. So now you’re seducing your own brother’s fiancée? Thank God I discovered you in her room before you did her some injury! You’re safe now, Helen. I’ll protect you.”

  Mr. Mainsforth took a step toward me. “Dear lady, I haven’t the faintest notion—”

  “Don’t come any closer,” I warned him, looking about wildly for a weapon I might use in self-defense.

  Helen stepped to his side. “You have it all wrong, Barbara. John hasn’t been poaching on Teddy’s territory. Teddy wa
s poaching on John’s.”

  My eyes flickered to her. “What?”

  “I love John.” Wearing an earnest look, she took his arm. “We fell in love before I ever set eyes on Teddy.”

  Mr. Mainsforth smiled down at her, nodding. “What your sister says is true, Lady Barbara. I’ve worshipped Helen from the moment we first met in Brighton.”

  “In Brighton? You love each other?” I looked in confusion to Helen. “This is the first I’ve heard of any such thing.”

  Helen’s chin came up. “We kept it a secret. Aunt Archer is such an old stickler, I knew she would disapprove. Teddy still has no idea, because I made John swear not to tell anyone.”

  It was clear enough what Helen saw in Mr. Mainsforth. He was polished and well spoken, and he possessed a darker, more sophisticated version of Cliburne’s good looks. But he was a monster, and not just because of the dreadful murders he’d committed. Shoot an unarmed man? Send vicious caricatures anonymously to the papers? Blackmail Helen, and then pretend to come to her aid? They were all the acts of a villain and a coward. And now I’d even caught him trying to ruin my poor, imprudent sister, his own brother’s erstwhile fiancée.

  “Helen,” I began, “you’ve made a terrible mistake, sneaking behind Cliburne’s back with this—”

  “Not sneaking,” Mr. Mainsforth interjected. “I’ll own I agreed to keep my feelings for Helen secret, Lady Barbara—of that much, I am guilty. But you mustn’t think ill of your sister, or assume we’ve been carrying on behind Teddy’s back. The instant I realized my brother was falling for Helen, I knew the only honorable course was to step aside.”

  My sister turned her head to gaze up at Mr. Mainsforth with adoring eyes. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  He wasn’t wonderful. He was a pitiless killer. He’d already committed two violent murders, and for all I knew there might be others. Helen’s involvement with him put her and everyone around her at risk.

  And Helen had clearly fallen under the man’s sinister spell. “Nothing about this makes any sense,” I told her as patiently as I could. “If you were really in love with Mr. Mainsforth, why would you accept his brother?”

  She tore her gaze away from Mr. Mainsforth’s face, her expression changing in a flash from adoration to petulance. “Because John wouldn’t marry me, and Teddy would!”

  Mr. Mainsforth sighed, and for a moment he looked thoroughly discouraged. “Lady Barbara, truly, I wanted nothing better than to marry Helen, but I couldn’t. Your father would never countenance the match. My younger brother is the heir, while I have scarcely a sou to my name. How could I keep an angel like your sister in the style she so richly deserves?”

  Tears welled up in Helen’s eyes. “Don’t you see, Barbara? I had to marry Teddy. It’s the only way I could think of to keep John in my life. If I were Teddy’s wife, John and I could even live under the same roof.”

  There was only one possible response to this. I gaped at her. Marry a man in order to carry on an affair with his brother? I’d always known Helen’s principles were a trifle slippery, but that was the outside of enough.

  “I promise you, Helen and I did not see eye-to-eye on that point,” Mr. Mainsforth said hastily. “From the moment I realized how my brother felt about her, I never laid a hand on her, I swear.”

  “And I tried my best to make him touch me,” Helen added, as if this were a point in their favor.

  I cast a scornful look at Mr. Mainsforth. “You had more than a hand on her a minute ago, when I came charging in here.”

  He flushed. “Only because Teddy called off their engagement. I’ll never have the same advantages as my brother, but I hoped...well, given the distressing events of the last week, together with Teddy’s change of heart, I hoped your father might be persuaded to accept my suit after all. I asked him for Helen’s hand, in fact, within an hour of Teddy’s crying off. Unfortunately, Lord Leonard turned me down and ordered me out of the house in no uncertain terms.”

  “And I blame Beningbrough!” Helen burst out. “If he hadn’t been arrested, Papa might have given John a chance. But of course Beningbrough had to go and make the whole family look like a pack of rogues.”

  “Papa knows about you and Mr. Mainforth?” So that was Mr. Mainsforth’s excuse for coming here the day he’d murdered Mr. Harriman. No wonder Helen had been so miserable and so angry with Ben. I’d thought she was simply upset over Cliburne’s desertion, but she’d been pining for Cliburne’s brother all the while.

  How could I make her see that this man couldn’t be trusted? “I might be more inclined to believe your story, Mr. Mainsforth, if you hadn’t been the one to tell Cliburne my sister was carrying on with Sam Garvey at Hookham’s lending library.” I stole a glance at Helen, hoping this revelation would be enough to open her eyes to Mr. Mainsforth’s true character.

  His flush grew more pronounced. “On my honor, I never said they were carrying on. I only told Teddy I’d seen the two of them whispering together, and he jumped to the wrong conclusion. You must take my word for it that I had a compelling reason to say anything at all.”

  As if I would take his word for anything. “This reason of yours—I suppose it had something to do with Helen’s being blackmailed?”

  His face went slack. “You know about that too?”

  Helen was likewise staring at me, openmouthed. “Barbara! You knew, and you never tattled on me?”

  “I’m not a tattletale, Helen. In fact, I’ve gone to considerable lengths to keep your secret for you. But you’re making a dangerous mistake, putting your faith in this man. I’m convinced he’s guilty of murder, and that he and Sam Garvey were partners in the blackmail scheme. Sam was not only pocketing half your hush money, he was planning to meet with someone called M on the night he was killed, someone who lured him to his death.”

  The color had drained from Mr. Mainsforth’s face. “I assure you, I’m as much a victim in this as your sister. Surely you must realize I was the ‘other man’ mentioned in the blackmailer’s letters. I’ve run through all my savings and even sold my watch, purely to help her meet the extortionist’s demands.”

  Though part of me recognized how futile it was to argue with a conscienceless killer, I couldn’t let his lies go unchallenged. “Have you really? Then why tell your brother you’d seen Helen with Sam Garvey? I think you did it so suspicion would fall on poor Cliburne when Sam was found dead.”

  Mr. Mainsforth looked convincingly shocked. “No, I told Teddy I’d seen them together only because I hoped it would encourage Helen to confess everything, to break the blackmailer’s hold over us. I thought if Teddy asked Helen about the Woodfords’ footman, she’d find the courage to tell him about us.”

  “Oh, so now you wanted Cliburne to know about the two of you. A moment ago, you were claiming you’d made the noble decision to step aside so as not to see him hurt.”

  Mr. Mainsforth colored. “That was before the blackmailer made his demands. It was only later that I discovered my silence came at a cost, and someone else had the power to reveal our secret. Unfortunately, I’d already given Helen my sworn promise to hold my tongue about Brighton, but I hoped Teddy might not take the news amiss if it came from her, given that she’d chosen him over me.”

  I glanced at Helen. “You mean after she’d pretended to choose him.”

  Helen’s lips compressed into an angry pout. “I would have made Teddy a good wife, Barbara. Perhaps I didn’t love him the way I love John, but I’m not proud or quarrelsome or unnervingly clever, and I wouldn’t have required Teddy to be particularly clever, either.”

  “Of course not. The less clever, the better, when you’re pulling the wool over a man’s eyes.” I wanted to shake her, she was being so obtuse. Instead I waved a hand toward Mr. Mainsforth. “Can’t you see you’ve fallen under this man’s spell? Do you really believe being a good wife means betraying your husband with his brother? What if someday you were to present Cliburne with a child, and it wasn’t even his?”

&nb
sp; Helen’s chin jutted stubbornly. “I think it would be poetic justice. John is the elder brother. If not for a trick of birth, he would’ve been the heir. Why shouldn’t another trick of birth allow his son to inherit?”

  This had such a twisted logic to it, I scarcely knew how to respond. Then I realized it would be ludicrous to respond at all. Cliburne was well out of the whole business, and Helen’s feelings for John Mainsforth—who, to my surprise, looked visibly pained at the questionable ethics of her devotion to him—were immaterial. The man was a monster, pure and simple.

  If I couldn’t wake Helen up with logic, perhaps a good scolding would do. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Helen Jeffords! It’s wrong to marry a man you don’t love, and it’s downright wicked to do it with the intention of playing him false. As for Mr. Mainsforth here—”

  Helen burst into tears. “It’s easy for you to criticize! You may have your pick of suitors, and marry for love without a second thought. Some of us aren’t so lucky!”

  Having lived with Helen’s crocodile tears for twenty years, I remained unmoved. “What on earth does that mean?”

  “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know how much better you have it than I do,” she raged between sobs. “It’s so unfair! Grandmama Merton left her entire fortune to you, while I got nothing but her ugly old tea service. You have everything—the brains and the bosoms and all the money too!”

  She threw herself, weeping, against Mr. Mainsforth, who gathered her in his arms and made sympathetic shushing sounds while I stared at the pair of them, trying to make sense of what she’d just said.

  “Helen,” I said in confusion, “do you mean to say you envy me?”

  She turned a tear-streaked face in my direction. “You know I do! I’ve tried all my life to be more like you, but I’ve never been anything but a miserable failure at it. Well, at least John loves me for myself. And I’ll never, never love any man as much as I love him.”

  I blinked in astonishment. It had never occurred to me that a girl as lovely and appealing as my sister could possibly envy anyone, least of all me. I’d considered Grandmama’s fortune a sort of consolation prize, since everyone always said a beauty like Helen was bound to make a brilliant match, while I had little expectation of landing a rich husband. My grandmother’s money hadn’t brought me love or happiness, and, wrapped up in my own disappointments, I’d never stopped to consider that it might make a difference to Helen. Yet here she was, in love with a penniless suitor, while I sat securely on my five thousand pounds a year, oblivious to her heartache.