“Oh, pray don’t scold them, sir. I dread to think how I would have fared without their intervention.”
Doctor Hathaway glanced at her, and she was relieved to note the good humour in his countenance. “My dear ma’am, if my sons were able to be of service to you, I am only too happy. But their presence at Willow Court still calls for explanation.”
“We were following the madwoman,” said the boy she recalled as Ben.
“Upon what occasion?”
“Well, we saw her escaping.”
“And we followed her into the woods,” disclosed Tom, who had led Phoebe from the grounds.
Here Lady Fan intervened, and Phoebe was relieved to see merriment in her eyes. “It did not occur to either of you to raise the alarm, I collect?”
Evidently not, from the anguished glance exchanged. The boy Ben frowned in furious thought for a moment, and then looked relieved as this exercise evidently rewarded him.
“Well, if we’d wasted time going for help and hadn’t followed her, she might have got lost.”
“Ah, I see. So you kept her in sight.”
Ben brightened at this show of acceptance. “Yes, and when she came out again, that’s why we followed her to Willow Court, ’cause we were going to tell them where she’d been.”
“Ingenious,” commented Lord Francis.
Doctor Hathaway laughed out, and Phoebe felt acutely relieved. She could not bear to think the boys might be punished after what they had done for her.
“Have another sip, child,” said the dowager, presenting the glass to Phoebe’s lips again.
Phoebe shook her head. “I am feeling a deal recovered, if a little sore.”
“I should think she is sore,” burst out Tom, looking round at his elders. “The madwoman beat her dreadfully, Auntilla.”
“Yes, so you said.” Lady Fan crossed to the sofa, and Phoebe looked up into her concerned countenance. “Are you much hurt, my dear?”
Phoebe let out a shaky breath. “I scarcely know. I feel a degree bruised.”
“You will feel it more as the day wears on,” said Doctor Hathaway, coming to flank Lady Fan. “I can give you a salve, ma’am. I’m sure my sister will be happy to anoint your hurts.”
“I should not dream of troubling you, ma’am.”
Lady Fan smiled. “Then take the salve with you. I dare say your maid can do the business as well as I.”
Scarcely had Phoebe agreed to this when the dowager’s maid appeared in the doorway. “Lord Bennifield, my lady.”
Phoebe jumped violently, her eyes flying to Giles’s striking presence as he strode into the room and stopped short, blinking at the roomful of people.
“Good God, I had not expected such a crowd!”
His gaze swept the faces, settled for an instant on Lady Polbrook, and jerked back to Phoebe seated beside the dowager. Discomfort gathered in his handsome features and Phoebe’s pulse hammered furiously in her chest.
“You are opportune, Giles,” said the dowager on the edge of a snap. “Poor Phoebe here has been so unfortunate as to be the target of an attack.”
Shock swept across his face. “What? An attack? How in the world —?”
“Tamasine Roy tried to strangle her,” continued his grandmother, and Phoebe could not acquit her of relishing the pronouncement. “When that failed, she took to beating Phoebe nearly senseless.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Giles sank into a chair, kneading his brow with a fist. “Oh, my god!”
Before anyone could say anything, the boy Tom suddenly spoke up, in a tone of bright innocence. “You’re the fellow who was meeting the madwoman in the woods.”
For a moment Giles was tempted to repudiate the charge. But in the face of what had happened to Phoebe, denial was useless. The thing was blown. Willingly could he have thrown the lad through the window.
“Well, Giles?”
His grandmother’s tone was arctic and he winced. He dropped his hand and looked across at her. “Well, what, ma’am? Which accusation do you wish me to answer first?”
“No one has yet accused you of anything. But since you ask, let us at once be clear. Are you, or are you not, betrothed to Tamasine Roy?”
Shock swept over him. “How did you find out?”
“Then it is true! Oh, Giles, how could you be so idiotic?”
This was no answer, but to his relief, his aunt Ottilia stepped in. “I’m afraid it was Simeon Roy who betrayed you, Giles.”
Fury lit in Giles’s chest. “That fellow! He has a deal to answer for.”
His uncle cut in. “I dare say, but that does not explain your conduct.”
“Which particular conduct are you citing, sir? It seems as if everything is my fault!”
Relief came from an unexpected quarter.
“Not everything, Giles. You cannot be held accountable for what the creature did to me.”
Phoebe was actually smiling at him. He regarded her with wariness, belatedly hearing the brittle note underneath her words. The smile did not reach her eyes.
He sighed, feeling suddenly weary. “Perhaps I am. I led her to believe in my sincerity, despite the realisation…”
He broke off, recollecting his company. He had been within an ace of taking Phoebe into his confidence in the old way. He glanced about the room, discovering the presence of a stranger standing alongside two boys, one the tell-tale who had given him away. Sudden irritation erupted.
“How in the world did you know I had been in the woods with Tamasine? Were you watching us?”
“You may be thankful they were,” came snappily from Phoebe. “If they had not followed that creature, I would not have been rescued.”
Had he not seen behind that spurious smile? The tone touched a raw nerve within him, a hurt he was unable to place. Restless, he stood up again.
“Why in the world did you go there? What possessed you?”
“Well, if you don’t know that, you are a bigger fool than I supposed.”
“Children, children!” chided his aunt Ottilia.
Giles paid no heed. “You had no right, Phoebe! What should take you to interfere?”
Phoebe shot to her feet, and at the back of his mind Giles noted how unsteady she was. Her words overbore the thought. “If we are to talk of rights! What right had you to spurn me for a bedlamite? As for mine, I went to meet my rival, to fight for you, if you must know, being an even bigger fool than you! Little did I suppose I should meet her returning straight out of your arms.”
“No such thing. I have more conduct than to take advantage of an innocent girl.”
“Oh, indeed? Then I must have imagined it when Tamasine boasted of your kissing her.”
“She did not. You are making it up.”
Phoebe flung out a hand towards the two boys. “Ask them if I am making it up. And I daresay, if we were to put them on oath, they could readily bear witness to even worse conduct on your part.”
Infuriated, and all too conscious of being in the wrong, Giles erupted. “That’s what you think of me, is it? Well, let me tell you —”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, be silent, the pair of you!”
His grandmother’s snapping tone had the effect of cutting him off mid-sentence, and Giles retreated to the mantelpiece, drumming his fingers on the wooden surface there and keeping his gaze firmly away from the rest of the party. He heard the dowager speak again.
“Phoebe, sit down, child. Don’t allow yourself to be goaded. It is undignified and unnecessary besides.” She paused briefly, and her tone altered. “I make you my apologies, Doctor Hathaway. This is a poor return for your assistance, and you are supposed to be on holiday.”
A laugh from the guest drew Giles’s attention.
“Make yourself easy, ma’am. Like my sister, I am inclined to enjoy a trifle of liveliness. Besides, I must hope our relationship may allow you to count us into the family and therefore no apology is called for.”
“You must be off your head, Patric
k,” said his uncle Francis. “Though that alone may qualify you, for the place is rapidly turning into as frantic a bedlam as Willow Court.”
The words had hardly left his mouth when a sudden hammering sounded on the French windows. Startled, Giles looked across the room and, to his utter disgust and sorrow, saw Tamasine Roy outside, her fists beating the glass. Her pearly teeth were bared and the wild look at her lovely eyes had indeed a stamp of insanity.
Pandemonium broke out in the parlour, and as one in a dream, Giles heard the reactions as he stared at the girl with whom he had believed himself in love, to whom he had pledged his life, his future.
“Dear God, the wretch is back again!”
“Pray don’t let her come near me!”
“Whatever you do, Francis, don’t open the door!”
“Uncle Fan, she’s going to break the window!”
“For pity’s sake! Patrick, quick! We’ll go out the back way and seize her from there.”
“We’ll come with you, Papa.”
“No, stay here with Auntilla.”
Giles watched bemused as his uncle and Doctor Hathaway hurried from the room, while the boys raced back to the French windows, swiftly followed by their aunt.
“Ben! Tom! Come away at once! You’ll only make her worse.”
Ottilia drew the two youths away from the window, where Tamasine had given over beating at the windows in favour of rattling the doors, incoherent sounds issuing from her mouth. Aghast, Giles remained riveted until his grandmother’s irate tones grated on his ear.
“This only was needed! To be besieged in my own home by a lunatic.”
A yearning for relief swept through Giles and he grasped at a random thought, catching at straws. “She is distraught.”
“Distraught? The girl is demented! Can you still doubt it, Giles?”
“I must, Grandmama, I have no choice.” He turned to his aunt. “You know about these things. Is it the grief? She is bereaved. The loss has driven her to this. I was near losing my mind when my mother died.”
His aunt Ottilia laid a hand on his arm. “I wish I might agree with you, dear boy, but I cannot.”
As of instinct, his eyes went next to Phoebe. Her gaze was fixed upon Tamasine, but as if she felt his regard, she turned. Giles received a shaft of something from those tell-tale eyes that bordered perilously on agony.
“Your sufferings, Giles, were real. Tamasine Roy feels nothing for her guardian, nor for anyone, including you.”
Wild with despair, he flung a hand towards the French windows. “What then do you call this?”
A little gasping sigh escaped her. “I call it pitiful, Giles.”
He was silenced, baffled by her abrupt change of face. Where was the righteous anger, the accusation? Her words crept back into his mind, and their meaning could not be gainsaid.
A sudden flurry of activity outside the window attracted his attention. The two black servants had arrived on the scene just as his uncle Francis and Doctor Hathaway appeared. In seconds, Tamasine was captured, the two footmen catching her between them so that she was lifted right off her feet, where she began to kick. There was a brief discussion and then Tamasine was borne away, still shrieking imprecations, her legs flailing.
As the noise retreated, silence permeated the parlour so completely that Giles felt as if an aeon of time were passing. Into his head floated the words Tamasine had spoken, and the hideous truth of them made him utter aloud.
“She did do it. She killed him. She pushed him down the stairs. The reckoning in revenge for her mother.”
Despair gripped him, and the age-old cry of his childhood rose up as he turned to the one person who had always been able to offer him succour.
“Grandmama, what am I to do?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I knew there was more to be learned about this reckoning.”
Ottilia moved restlessly to the window in the bedchamber. The sight of the remains of the snow, criss-crossed now with the footprints of many birds, reminded her of the first time she had seen Tamasine Roy. She sighed.
“Poor little sugar princess.”
Her brother’s measured tones reached her. “Compassion, Ottilia? For a murderess?”
Ottilia looked across to where he was sitting at his ease upon the daybed, but Francis interrupted before she could speak.
“We have yet to be certain the girl is indeed a murderess, Patrick. Believe me, if Tillie had been convinced by Giles’s words, she would have said so by this.”
He was leaning against the mantel, as was his wont. The three of them had retired to the Fanshawe’s chamber as the only place likely to afford privacy, Sophie and Miss Mellis having returned from an outing to the shops in nearby Thrapston before the explosive events of the morning could be thoroughly thrashed out.
Sybilla had despatched Phoebe on her way in her own carriage with her maid Venner in attendance to see the girl safely home, and was now closeted with Giles in her study. The boys, on pain of expulsion from any further involvement in the investigations, had been excluded from the conference. Ottilia did not doubt they would be up to some mischief, and guessed they were likely at Willow Court at this moment, trying to find out what had happened to the madwoman, as they insisted on calling Tamasine. She was guiltily aware that she had not drawn their father’s attention to this likelihood, in hopes something materially useful might be discovered from their explorations.
Her husband shifted his back from the mantelpiece and came across to her. “I wish you will take a rest, Tillie. If you are not exhausted by all this hullaballoo, I assure you I am.”
She allowed him to usher her to the daybed, which her brother obligingly vacated, instead drawing up a straight chair to the fire. She took up a comfortable position, moving her legs to make room for Francis to perch beside her.
Patrick caught her eye. “Well, Ottilia?”
“It is not well at all, I fear. This but complicates matters, without bringing us any further forward.”
“But if it shifts suspicion away from the young fellow Roy?”
“Does it, though?” put in Francis. “We know he tried to obtain the hand of this sugar heiress years ago.”
“And was exiled for his pains,” Patrick agreed, crossing one leg over the other. “But even if he aspires to gain her fortune that is not to say he must needs eliminate the guardian. If he could worm his way in, he could as easily elope with the girl.”
Ottilia put up a finger. “That is the crux of the matter.”
“An elopement?”
“No, Fan. Worming his way in. He has an accomplice in Willow Court. Someone kept him informed.”
“How do you know?” demanded her brother.
“He makes no secret of the fact that he kept up a correspondence with Tamasine. But Tamasine cannot write. I have no faith whatsoever in Simeon’s assertion about the girl making herself understood in pictures. Nor is she capable of sifting the necessary information to pass on.”
“No, she is no plotter.” Francis laid his hand over hers where it lay in her lap. “Who, then? You believed Hemp when he told you he was not party to it. And Cuffy’s attachment to his master was evident that first day.”
“Ah, and the Ingleby female was clearly in love with the fellow,” put in Patrick with interest. “Who does that leave?”
Ottilia could not resist. “Well, you are both so knowledgeable on the subject, why don’t you tell me?”
“Whiting and Lomax,” said Francis at once.
“Just so, Fan. However, I cannot imagine why Mrs Whiting should be in cahoots with Simeon Roy.”
Francis removed his hand and sat back, the furrow lifting from his brow. “Lomax, then. I’ll believe it of him. The fellow is both surly and insolent. What is more, I recollect that he was not of Matthew Roy’s party and need not be considered loyal to him. He came with the original sugar heiress, Florine, and had been in her father’s employ.”
“Yes, that must stand against him.” Ot
tilia recalled another instance that pointed to the butler. “He also filched a piece of paper from the desk on the morning of Sir Joslin’s death.”
Patrick’s lips twitched. “I hardly dare ask how you know that?”
“I saw him. What is more, he knew just what he was looking for. I marked it particularly, for he gave an audible sigh when he found it.”
“What in the world could it have been?”
“As to that, Fan, I have a suspicion, but as there really is no evidence to support it, I will keep my own counsel on that for the moment.”
Her brother snorted. “How very unfair.”
“Ha! This is typical, Patrick. She will never disclose something of which she is uncertain.”
“Then for heaven’s sake, sister mine, at least share with us your views about this business of the mother’s death.”
Ottilia frowned. “That is puzzling. I am inclined to believe Tamasine is confused. She may have heard something and added up two and two to make five.”
“That I can well believe,” he said, his voice returning to its habitual even tone. “These mental derangements do not allow for logic. I have read a number of papers by practitioners in the field. The subjects tend to be completely literal in their thinking. They will take a statement at face value. If someone told Tamasine her guardian was in some way responsible for her mother’s death, she would likely make the assumption he had actually killed her.”
“But did not Giles say she told him Sir Joslin had hurt her mother? She did not say he killed her,” objected Francis.
“True. But Tamasine said her mother died and Sir Joslin therefore had to die too. The mother was also deranged. Suppose she attacked Joslin. If he then was obliged to use force to overpower her, his actions might be taken by Tamasine as having caused her death.”
Ottilia stared at him. “Patrick, that is genius.”
Her brother laughed and Francis gave him a mock slow handclap. “Bravo, old fellow! You have joined the ranks of the Fanshawe detection team.”
The Opium Purge (Lady Fan Mystery Book 3) Page 25