by Jo Beverley
The earl let out a crack of laughter. “Gads, man, you’re taking in a gutter-full!”
“Father!” exclaimed Fort. Cyn surged to his feet.
Walgrave turned on his son. “Are you on their side, boy? You’re a fool then. If the chit wasn’t debauched by Vernham, then she was debauched by Malloren.”
Cyn’s sword hissed from its scabbard, but Rothgar raised his hand. Cyn froze, cold eyes on the earl.
Rothgar turned to Vernham. “My dear sir, are you an innocent after all? Did you not have your wicked way with Lady Chastity?”
Vernham was clearly terrified out of his wits. His eyes were fixed on Cyn’s drawn sword, even though it was not pointed at him. “No, of course not! Hardly touched her.”
“It must have been a prank gone awry. And you nobly offered to wed her to repair the damage you had so inadvertently caused.”
“Yes, yes. If she was a virgin when I climbed into her bed, she was one when I climbed out.”
“If?” demanded Cyn, and now the rapier did point at Vernham, inches from his terrified eyes.
“She was. She was!” he babbled. “He had her hymen broken to stop her proving her innocence. But that was later!”
All eyes turned to Walgrave.
He was unmoved. “Gibberish. If you seek to whitewash the girl this way, Rothgar, you’ll fail.” He looked down his nose at Vernham. “I’ll have the paper, wretch, and let you live.”
Vernham shrank back. “I don’t have it, I tell you!”
“Then we’ll take you apart piece by piece to make sure—”
The door opened.
Everyone in the room turned to stare as a woman entered. Cyn even lowered his sword from Vernham’s face. A stranger. No, not a stranger, thought Chastity. She gasped with horror when she recognized the woman who had stolen her proof of virtue.
She was tall and handsome, if one did not note the hardness of her eyes and mouth. She was dressed as richly as any lady in the house.
“Ah, Mirabelle,” said Rothgar. “Welcome.”
Mirabelle gazed around the room with infinite cynicism. “I was paid by the Earl of Walgrave,” she said clearly, “to break the maidenhead of Lady Chastity, his daughter. All the evidence spoke of her being completely untouched by man.” A slight smile curved her pointed lips. “I am more in the business of repairing what has inconveniently been broken…”
“Is this supposed to count for anything?” asked the earl. “A woman such as that can be bought for a few guineas.”
“On the contrary, my lord,” said Mirabelle. “I do not so much as blow a gentleman’s nose for less than twenty.” With that, she nodded to Rothgar and swept out of the room.
Rothgar turned to Vernham. “As you are innocent, why not give the earl his document, then you may leave.”
“I don’t have it, I tell you!” Vernham exclaimed. “Verity has it in one of her damn pockets.”
“Then perhaps we should send for Lady Verity and the letter. Lord Thornhill, would you oblige?”
Chastity saw her father react to the word “letter.” which told him Rothgar knew what the document was. He turned to sneer at his son. “Go and be Rothgar’s lackey, boy. It’s all you’re good for.”
Fort’s lips tightened, but he left the room.
“While we wait,” said Rothgar, “why don’t you tell us, Mr. Vernham, how you came to be in Lady Chastity’s bed without her consent, and without her raising the alarm? It’s a trick I could use on occasion.”
Vernham’s wits were clearly scrambled by drink and fear, and he didn’t see the strange turn the conversation had taken. He laughed, “She sleeps like the dead. An army could get in the bed with her and she’d scarce stir. I had to pinch her to wake her when the witnesses arrived.”
“You can’t have counted on her deep sleep, surely?” Rothgar inquired mildly.
“Walgrave told me,” said Vernham, and then looked nervously at the earl.
The earl looked death back at him but said nothing. If Rothgar hoped to force him into an incriminating admission, he was failing.
Chastity wondered if she could break her father’s control again.
She rose, dodging Cyn’s restraining hand. “And my father didn’t care a fig for me, did you, you monster?” She took an insolent stance in front of Walgrave and laughed at him. “You must have thought it would all be so easy, but I’ve thwarted you at every turn!”
She saw his lips form a snarl.
“If I’d married Henry Vernham, none of this would have happened, would it? But I laughed in your face! So you decided to force me. You gave that man the key to my room, then brought the cream of Society to be witnesses. You as good as debauched me yourself, you stinking hypocrite!”
She was ready for his use of the slashing cane and danced out of the way. Cyn stepped forward, sword ready.
The earl grasped his cane and twisted it to unsheathe a blade. He tossed it to his henchman. “Lindle!”
Cyn smiled lovingly. “Ah, so you are Lindle. You really don’t want to do this, you know.”
Lindle came at him. Cyn danced back. “You are badly outmatched,” said Cyn, “and cannot possibly prevail. Is it worth death to do that man’s bidding?”
Lindle’s expression did not change, and he wore that strange smile. “Stop crowing, cockerel, and fight.”
The swords clicked briefly, then—almost idly—Cyn gashed Lindle’s cheek. The man cried out and pressed a hand to the wound. Blood welled between his fingers.
Cyn’s point now rested at his neck. “I don’t think your smile will ever be quite the same.” He pushed with the sword and the man staggered back, until he was against a wall and had nowhere else to go. “Now,” said Cyn, “did Mistress Mirabelle break Lady Chastity’s hymen on the earl’s orders?”
Truly Lindle must have some deformity of the mouth, for he was still smiling in a ghastly way as he flashed a desperate look at his master.
The earl ignored him as if none of this had anything to do with him at all.
“Yes,” Lindle choked.
“You were there?” asked Cyn.
“Yes.” Blood still poured through his fingers. That casual cut had been deep and the man looked ready to collapse.
“And did the earl arrange for Mr. Vernham to be caught in his daughter’s bed?”
“Yes!” gasped Lindle. “On the earl’s orders, I let him in, I encouraged him. The paltry worm didn’t think it would work. But once he realized how deep she slept, he had a merry time touching her up.”
Chastity felt sick. Cyn snarled, and for a moment it looked as if he would skewer the man, but he moved back and lowered his sword. He bowed slightly to his brother. “My apologies for interrupting your discussion.”
“Not at all,” said Rothgar. “Walgrave? Why not admit it? You doubtless had your reasons.”
But Walgrave held firm. “I deny all of it. I thought Lindle had more courage than to spew lies on command, but I was mistaken.”
Verity came in with Nathaniel and Fort. She paled at the sight of her father, and gasped to see Lindle covered in blood.
“Lady Verity,” said Rothgar, “have you retrieved the paper mentioned earlier?”
“Yes,” said Verity, and produced the folded, sealed paper, walking forward to give it to Rothgar.
Walgrave snatched it, and in one move threw it into the fire and pulled out a pistol. “Keep back!” he cried. “No one try to snatch that out!”
They all watched as the paper blackened and then caught, to flame into ash.
Walgrave started to laugh. “At last! Free! Ha, Rothgar, for all your clever tricks, you’ve cleared my way. You can have my damned family, every plague-ridden one of them. May they make your life hell as they’ve made mine!”
“Hell surely comes from the company there,” said Rothgar, looking thoughtfully at the ashes of the evidence. “You appear, however, to have won. Perhaps you could be noble in victory and admit that your daughter did not lose her maidenhead to a man.”
The earl was giddy with liberation. “Certainly,” he declared. “Though what the devil good it will do you I can’t imagine.”
“Perhaps in writing,” said Rothgar, indicating a desk where paper and ink stood ready.
The earl hesitated, but he was still grinning madly. It was as if success had succeeded where threats had failed, and tipped him into insanity. “Why not? But I’ll write that I did it to force her into a necessary marriage. It doesn’t alter the fact that Vernham was in her bed, and I deny any part in that.”
Chastity was weighed by a dull sense of failure. Rothgar was making the best of things, but without the evidence of treason, nothing could be done. Nathaniel could soon be under attack, and nothing that had happened here could do her any good.
“What?” cried Vernham, leaping to his feet. “You won’t put the blame on me, you devil! It was all your plan, every bit of it, just to stop my brother from using that letter. It may have gone, but I know it word for word. I can still tell the world—”
Walgrave turned and shot him.
The crack of the pistol reverberated in the small room and Chastity clapped her hands over her ringing ears. Vernham crashed back into his chair, a look of amazement on his face, blood spreading over his chest. He tried to speak, then grimaced in sudden agony as he died.
Cyn dropped his sword to pull Chastity into his arms, as Verity was held by Nathaniel. Chastity clung to him, but then pushed away to stare at her father. “That was cold-blooded murder.” She looked around at all the men. “You can’t let him get away with cold-blooded murder.”
Her father dusted his sheet of paper with fine sand and delicately tapped it clean, then held it out. “Here, girl. Take this and hold your tongue. Learn to keep out of men’s affairs.”
Chastity grabbed the paper, but threw it aside. “Men’s affairs? Men’s affairs have ruined me!”
“I’m pleased you at least realize the finality of that.”
“And you don’t care. You, my father, don’t care that I am unjustly vilified. How can you think you can serve England when you cannot serve your family?”
“My family exists to serve me,” he said, rising. He shoved her carelessly out of the way.
She grabbed Lindle’s sword from the floor, and despite the outcry, lunged at her father. He deflected the blade with the pistol, but the point slashed into his sleeve, gashing his arm. He snarled, and swung the pistol viciously at her head. Chastity felt it brush her temple as Cyn tackled her to the ground and safety.
“… in the noble house of Stuart we see fortitude and verity, accompanied by victorious chastity, all virtues dedicated to the greatest good of England.”
Everyone froze. Silence fell over the room as they all turned to where Rothgar stood, reading from a document. A bloodstained, slightly chewed document.
“No,” choked Walgrave.
Lindle giggled.
“You really should have read it before you burned it, shouldn’t you?” asked Rothgar mildly.
“No!” howled the earl. He raised his pistol and fired, but it was already discharged, and merely clicked. He hurled it at Rothgar. It missed.
“Kill him!” he raged at his two henchmen. Still on the floor, half under Cyn, Chastity saw that at last the earl was mad, but would he cause the deaths of all of them?
The two men had merely been goggle-eyed observers to all this mayhem. Now they looked at each other and did nothing.
“Kill him, or I’ll see you hang! I’ll ruin you. I’ll ruin your families…”
The men looked to Rothgar for help.
Rothgar smiled. “Now, my lord,” he said to the purple-faced earl, “you dance to my tune rather than the Vernhams’. Do you think you will like it any better?”
“Never,” snarled Walgrave. He plunged a hand into the pocket of the nearest man and pulled out a pistol. The man, clearly terrified by all these goings-on, stood like a dummy and did nothing.
By the time Walgrave raised the gun to fire it, however, both Brand and Rothgar had firearms aimed at him.
“An interesting situation, isn’t it?” asked Rothgar, “You could kill me, but you will surely die. Are you ready to meet your maker?”
Walgrave’s mouth twitched in a rictus of hate. “I’d rather die than give you the victory, Rothgar. You’ve been a thorn in my flesh for too long.”
“I’m pleased to be appreciated.”
“Give me that document, and no one need die.”
“No,” said Rothgar. “But I give you my word not to use it as long as you live quietly at Walgrave Towers, take no further part in government affairs, and do not concern yourself with your offspring anymore.”
“What?” cried Walgrave. “Dance to your piping for the rest of my life. Never, you fiend!” He waved his pistol around the room wildly.
Would he shoot Rothgar?
Brand?
Fort?
Herself?
With a cackle of insane amusement, Walgrave backed toward the door. “Don’t try to stop me!”
“You may leave,” said Rothgar calmly. “Just remember my conditions. Unlike Vernham, I will lose nothing by making this paper public.”
“Public,” Walgrave crowed. “Yes, public…” He opened the door and ran cumbersomely into the hall.
Cyn leaped to his feet. “He’s mad. He’ll hurt someone.” He ran after him.
Chastity struggled up too, hampered by skirts and domino, and followed with all the others.
She heard Walgrave howling something about treason and Rothgar. He was trying to incriminate Rothgar…
She dashed into the marble hall to see her father waving his pistol and ranting about traitors and fornicators like a mad preacher. Guests cowered behind chairs and pedestals. Chastity saw Fort enter the far side of the hall and move swiftly to control the earl.
It happened so quickly.
The earl’s demented eyes focused on someone in the gaming room. “You…!” he snarled. “You! The author of all my woes…!”
Fort whipped out a pistol. “Father, no!”
The earl aimed.
Fort shot him.
The earl’s arm jerked, and his own ball ricocheted harmlessly off a marble pillar. He crumbled in an ungainly heap. Chastity had the peculiar thought that he would hate to be seen in such an undignified position.
She ran forward, but her father was quite dead. Shot through the heart. She looked up and saw Princess Augusta sprawled inelegantly unconscious in her chair, cards spilled from her hands. She had been the target and had fainted from terror.
Chastity looked up at Fort, where he stood white and frozen, staring at what he had done. Then Verity and Nathaniel were at his side.
Excited chatter, shot through with weeping, built all around them. Cyn pulled Chastity into his arms and away from the body.
Brand and Rothgar’s pistols had disappeared from view. Rothgar moved smoothly to calm alarmed guests, but Chastity noted that he did nothing to prevent people from gathering in the hall. Elf appeared and ran forward to tend to the princess, untying Augusta’s mask and applying smelling salts.
Word immediately spread as to who the mysterious lady was, exciting the gentry rather more than the corpse.
Rothgar passed by and quietly instructed Cyn to take Chastity away from the center of the action. They accordingly moved back through the crowd. What now? How many of those events had been part of the clockmaker’s design? Surely even Rothgar would not have planned for a son to shoot his father.
Would he?
She looked over, but Fort had disappeared from view.
“Cyn,” she said, “I must go to Fort. He must feel so terrible.”
But Cyn grasped her arm. “Not yet. Verity is with him.” He edged them around the back of the crowd to a place where they could see and hear what went on in the card room.
Augusta had regained her senses and was being tenderly assisted to a chaise. Rothgar bowed solicitously over her, assuring himself of her health.
“I fear he went mad, your highness,” said Rothgar.
Augusta moved the cloth slightly, clearly coming to terms with the situation. “He was shouting about treason. I think he accused you of treason, my lord marquess.”
“Said you’d been a Jacobite in the ‘45,” said Lady Fanshaw. “Man was crazed. You couldn’t have been out of the schoolroom in that year.”
“True,” said the princess. “And you are so loyal, you Mallorens.” Chastity saw the flick of Augusta’s eyes toward Lord Bute, who had tactfully moved away. It would not be desirable for the rather conventional gentry to realize the mother of the king had come to this affair without attendants other than the man reputed to be her lover.
“Completely loyal,” said Rothgar, pouring her some wine. “I cannot tell you how distressed I am to have had this happen while you were a guest in my house, your highness. We must find your lady-in-waiting.” He looked around. “Where is Lady Trelyn?”
Nerissa Trelyn was a lady-in-waiting, but Chastity knew she hadn’t come with Princess Augusta tonight. The suggestion, however, neatly conveyed the impression of propriety. But how would Rothgar make the Trelyns dance to his tune?
The princess relaxed and sipped her wine. “I’m sure this fiasco was none of your fault, my lord. I wonder what turned the poor earl’s wits.”
“I fear he was consumed with remorse, your highness.”
“Remorse?”
“Yes, your highness. You see, at this affair he met the scoundrel who brought about his daughter’s disgrace earlier in the year. He discovered, since the man was in his cups, that his poor child was innocent of all wrongdoing.”
“You speak of Chastity Ware?” asked Augusta in amazed disbelief.
“Indeed. It appears that Henry Vernham obtained the key to the lady’s room and slipped into her bed. He knew from family gossip that she is an extraordinarily heavy sleeper. He deliberately shamed Lady Chastity in order to gain her hand, and her large dowry.”