But this was no naïve girl. This was a woman in the full flush of her beauty, strong and self-assured. It was ludicrous to think that she could have fallen in love with Edmund.
Anthony, much to his regret, was quite familiar with manipulative beauties and the ways in which they ensnared men too weak or lonely to see past their looks.
“Lord Neale?” Eleanor Townsend said, and there was a certain wariness in her eyes that made him feel even more certain that she was an adventuress. An innocent female, surely, would not be so guarded when meeting her fiancé’s relative. “You are Edmund’s uncle?”
He nodded shortly, irritated by the fact that her voice, low and throaty with just the trace of an American inflection, made his loins tighten. “Yes.”
Her eyebrows rose a fraction at his response, and he knew that he had sounded rude. He was not a man who was particularly at ease in social situations. While he enjoyed intelligent conversation, he had never mastered the art of polite small talk. Indeed, he had never tried, disdaining both trivial conversation and the social occasions at which it was employed. He was considered blunt and rather antisocial, and the only reason he continued to be invited to all the best parties, even though he rarely attended, was because of his title and his fortune. But on this occasion, he knew, he was even stiffer than usual, rattled by his body’s intense reaction to this woman.
“Why don’t we converse in the drawing room?” she suggested, gesturing down the hall, then turning and starting in the direction she had indicated. “I am sorry that Edmund is not here.”
“I didn’t expect him to be.” It was, after all, not yet noon, rather early for anyone to be visiting. “I came to see you, Miss Townsend.”
“Indeed? I am honored.”
Anthony did not miss the slightly ironic twist to her voice as she said the words. She sat down in a chair, motioning him to do likewise, and waited, watching him coolly.
Lord Neale shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze and finally said abruptly, “Lady Scarbrough, my sister, asked me to speak with you.”
“Ah.” Eleanor said nothing else, giving him no encouragement.
“She—I—you cannot marry Edmund,” Anthony blurted out, realizing even as he said it that he had been even more maladroit than he usually was. He felt a flush starting in his cheeks. Damn the woman! She made him feel as awkward as a schoolboy.
“Indeed? Why not? Is there some impediment?” Eleanor responded, her voice cool and faintly sarcastic.
He had expected indignation, and he was aware of a curious disappointment at her lack of dismay. It was obvious that she had expected him to say something of the kind.
“Only common decency,” he snapped.
“I should think it would be more indecent if Edmund resided in my house without the benefit of marriage, don’t you?” Eleanor replied, her blue eyes challenging him.
The look in her eyes was like a spark to tinder, and anger flared to life in Anthony, quick and hot.
“You must have known his family would object to this marriage,” he retorted, nettled.
“Of course. No doubt it will be quite a loss to you,” Eleanor told him.
Her tone carried a sting. Anthony was not quite sure what she meant by her words, but her contempt for him was clear. It would be useless, he knew, to try to persuade or reason with her. So he went straight to the point.
“I am prepared to pay you.”
“Pay me?” Eleanor’s eyebrows soared, and her voice became almost a purr. “You are offering to pay me not to marry Edmund?” She crossed her arms, considering him. “Just how much are you prepared to offer?”
For an instant he thought she would accept. Hope surged up in him, mingled, strangely, with a kind of disappointment, and he named a figure far higher than he had originally intended.
Eleanor rose to her feet, her movement not quick but with a kind of regal grace and power that made him realize suddenly how mistaken he had been in thinking she might accept his offer. He had, he saw, gravely underestimated his opponent.
“It is interesting to learn,” she said bitingly, “that your concern for your nephew is solely monetary. I shall not tell Edmund about your offer, as he inexplicably admires you, and I do not like to see him hurt.”
She was fairly vibrating with fury, her blue eyes blazing at him, and, much to Anthony’s surprise and self-disgust, lust coiled in his loins in response.
“I am sorry,” Eleanor went on in a clipped voice that clearly said she was no such thing. “But I must decline your offer. Pray tell Lady Scarbrough that it is too late. Her son is out of her grasp now. Sir Edmund and I were married yesterday by special license.”
Anthony had not seen Eleanor, Lady Scarbrough, again. Two months later, she and Sir Edmund had sailed for Italy. A year later, Sir Edmund was dead.
THE SOUND OF WHEELS on the driveway outside roused Anthony from his reverie. His sister’s carriage had arrived. He watched as a footman hurried forward and let down the step of the carriage, opening the door to help his sister down.
Honoria, Anthony saw, was dressed all in black, her figure still slim, though she had reached middle age. She looked touchingly fragile. A heavy mourning veil was draped over her hat, but as she came up the steps, she reached up and turned it back, so that it fell down on either side of her face in a flattering manner. Honoria always wanted to make a statement, but not, of course, to the detriment of her looks.
Anthony repressed the cynical thought, reminding himself that his older sister had recently lost her only son and had every right to be in the depths of sorrow—even if she did mourn Sir Edmund to the utmost effect.
He strode out into the entryway to greet her, schooling the impatience out of his face and voice. “Honoria.”
“Oh, Anthony!” Tears filled her limpid blue eyes, and she held out both her hands to him, her body somehow bending a little in such a way as to hint that she might faint.
Anthony took her hands in his, and led her quickly into the drawing room and over to the sofa. He had had enough experience with his sister not to allow her to develop her scene to its fullest extent.
“What brings you here today?” he asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.
“Oh, Anthony,” the older woman repeated, one hand going to her heart. She looked up into his face. “That woman murdered my son!”
CHAPTER TWO
HIS SISTER’S WORDS LEFT Anthony speechless.
He did not have to ask what woman she meant. There was only one—at the moment—who earned the title of That Woman, always pronounced in the most scathing of accents. However, even for Honoria, the accusation of murder seemed excessive.
Anthony frowned. “What basis do you have for thinking that? You cannot go about accusing people without any reason.”
“She has written me. She is coming back here.”
“It would seem the natural thing to do, Honoria,” Anthony pointed out, wondering if this could possibly be all that had set his sister off.
“Natural? There is nothing natural about any of it,” Honoria snapped, in her annoyance casting aside the mantle of wilting sorrow. “She is bringing Edmund’s ashes. His ashes!”
“But, Honoria, isn’t this where you would want Edmund to—”
“Yes, of course, this is where I want my son.” She raised the handkerchief to her eyes again. “This is where I want him buried. But she has denied me even that solace. She burned him, Anthony!”
“Yes, Honoria, I know.”
“Do you understand the horror of that? There is not even the shell of him left to bury in the Scarbrough mausoleum. It was wicked of her. Wicked! First she took him to that awful country, so far from home. And she did it only to spite me. I know it. And now…now that he has been taken from me forever, she deprives me of even this comfort. It is outside the bounds of decency. It is sacrilegious!”
There was, Anthony knew, a good deal of religious feeling against the immolation of a body. However, it was the first time he had he
ard of his sister being in any way religious.
He said only, “Wouldn’t you rather have his ashes here than have his body buried in Naples?”
Honoria cast him an irritated look. “That is not the point. He should not have been there in the first place. He should have been here where I could look after him. That is why she took him to Italy—to keep him from me. She knew that if she separated him from me and his family, no one could protest anything that happened to him. If only he hadn’t gone to Italy, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t be dead now.”
She began to weep again. Anthony sighed.
“Edmund was a grown man, Honoria. She could not make him go. And we could not keep him here,” he pointed out.
“You could have made more of a push to stop him.”
“How was I to foresee that Edmund would be in a boating accident there?” he replied reasonably, his words as much for himself as for his sister. “I had never known him to show a preference for sailing.”
“That is just it!” Honoria said triumphantly, her eyes lighting now with fervor. “Edmund abhorred such activities. You know that. You remember how he was about riding. Or any sort of sport.”
“Yes.”
“Well? Don’t you see? How do we know that Edmund died in a sailing accident?” His sister went on. “All we have saying so is the letter that she wrote me!”
Anthony hesitated. His sister was often hysterical and given to dramatics, but he could not help but think that she had a point. It was very odd that Edmund would have taken up sailing. Edmund had found the desire for outdoor activities largely incomprehensible in others and absurd for himself. His lungs had always been too weak for him to engage in any strenuous physical activity, and the thought of perhaps injuring his hands and being unable to play his music had filled him with horror.
“Why else would she have had his body burned?” Honoria saw Anthony’s hesitation and pressed her advantage. “It is bizarre. Unnatural. Why would she do it—unless she had something to hide? A dead body can be dug up. Poison can be found in a person’s body even after they are dead. I have heard it.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“But if there is no body to exhume, no one could ever find the poison. Or a crack in his skull or some other injury. No one could prove that he did not die in a boating accident.”
“But why would she kill him?” Anthony found it hard to believe that Eleanor, however grasping she might be, was a murderer.
Honoria sent him a scathing look. “His money, of course.”
“She already had that. And I cannot imagine that Edmund was a demanding husband.”
“What reason does any woman have to do away with her husband?” his sister replied matter-of-factly. “Because she has found another? Because she no longer wants to have to ask him for money? Because he refuses to allow her to do exactly as she pleases? It would not surprise me that when she married him, she thought his weak lungs would carry him off within a few months, but then Edmund did not die. So she decided to help him along.”
“Honoria…”
“I am not being foolish, Anthony. Stop being a man, and look past her pretty face and elegant figure. Women are capable of killing to get what they want.”
“I am sure they are. But there is no reason to think that she did.”
“I believe Edmund had discovered what she was like. Anthony, he cut her out of his will. Why else would a man do that except that he knew she was a rapacious harpy who married him for his money? Or that she was having an affair with another man? Perhaps both.”
“Edmund cut her from the will?”
“Yes. He did not leave her a cent.”
Anthony scowled. It would take something very compelling to make a man like Edmund leave his wife nothing to live on. “Still, Honoria, that would argue against her killing him. She would get nothing.”
“Well, she may not have known that before she murdered him. She might not have realized he had changed his will. Besides, there is a way that she can get to his money. Edmund left everything to his sister—outside of his entailed estate, of course, which goes to Sir Malcolm. Why he would have done that, I do not know. I am his mother, after all, and—”
“He left you nothing?” Anthony asked skeptically.
“Oh, he left me a bit,” Honoria allowed, waving it away. “A mere pittance, really. However, that is a mother’s lot, I suppose.” She released the sigh of a martyr.
“But how does this help Lady Eleanor?” Anthony asked, dragging Honoria back to the subject at hand.
“He left control of the trust to her!” Honoria said indignantly. “Even though I am Samantha’s mother, he did not make me guardian of her money until she comes of age. He left That Woman as sole trustee!”
“Why would he cut Lady Eleanor out of his will, then put her in charge of Samantha’s money for the next six years?” Anthony asked.
“I don’t know. Edmund was never one who understood money.”
Anthony thought that her statement was a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but he wisely refrained from pointing this out.
“You have to see what an opportunity this presents for her to siphon off money from the trust,” Honoria told him. “She wrote me saying she would ‘explain’ the trust to me when she brings poor Edmund’s ashes home. I do not need any ‘explanation.’ It is quite clear to me what she intends to do. My poor daughter and I will live in poverty, while she bleeds Samantha’s trust dry.”
“Honoria, calm yourself. I will not let that happen,” Anthony promised her grimly. Even allowing for Honoria’s usual gift of hyperbole, Anthony was troubled by what she had told him. It did not make sense, really, but neither could he ignore Honoria’s theories. If Lady Eleanor did indeed have control of Samantha’s money, she could easily take out a great deal of it without anyone’s noticing. And there were several suspicious things about Edmund’s death.
“But how can you stop her? She has gotten away with murder, and she has control over Samantha’s money.”
“I will go to see the woman,” he told Honoria. “And I will make sure she realizes that if anything is amiss, she will have to answer to me.”
ELEANOR STEPPED DOWN out of the carriage and simply stood for a moment, looking up at her house. It was an elegant white stone structure, with clean, symmetrical lines, and it warmed her heart to look at it again. It had been almost a year since she had been here, and it wasn’t until she saw it again that she realized how much she had missed it.
The children bounced out of the carriage after her, letting out a whoop at the freedom after being confined in the carriage all day. “Look! We’re home!”
Their amah, a small, quiet Indian woman named Kerani, followed them at a more sedate pace. “Wait, please,” she called after them softly, and it was a measure of their affection for her that they waited at the bottom of the stoop, bouncing up and down, as she walked over to join them.
The front door was opened by a grinning footman, who stood aside to let Bartwell exit the door first. “Miss Eleanor!”
Bartwell’s well-worn face was creased with a smile. One would have thought, Eleanor told herself affectionately, that it had been months since her old friend and butler had seen them, rather than the few days it had actually been. The servants had gone ahead to open the house and prepare it as soon as their ship had pulled into port, while she and the children had stayed behind for a few days. It had given the children a much-needed respite from traveling. The days cooped up on the ship they had taken from Italy had left them bored and full of pent-up energy. It had also served, much to Eleanor’s delight, as a means of breaking free of the smothering company of Mr. and Mrs. Colton-Smythe.
Hugo Colton-Smythe, a middle-aged cousin to a minor baron and a lifelong civil servant, and his wife, Adelaide, had been traveling on the same ship home from Naples to England as Eleanor, and they had taken it upon themselves to provide her with their respectable chaperonage. Only six months a widow, she wa
s not, they were sure, up to dealing with all the exigencies of life, even the restricted sort of life aboard ship, and certainly she should be shielded from the importunate advances of the other passengers, many of whom were foreigners, and several of whom, they were sure, were adventurers seeking out a vulnerable wealthy widow.
Eleanor knew that kindness had been their main motive—and ignored the uncharitable thought that they were almost as interested in being able to drop into conversation little tidbits, such as, “When we were traveling with Lady Scarbrough…” However, she had found it an ever-increasing chore to put up with their mundane conversation and stultifying outlook on life.
She had been afraid that they would want to ride on with her to London, and for that reason, the thought of spending a few extra days in port while Bartwell saw to the house had seemed a godsend to her.
“Bartwell,” she greeted the butler with a happy smile and a quick hug. Most people, she knew, found her choice of butler strange. He was a retired pugilist who had worked for her father since Eleanor was a child, and he was as fond of her as if she had been his own daughter. He had accompanied her when her father had sent her to school in England when she was fifteen, and she had been grateful for his companionship as much as for his protection. “I trust everything is in order.”
“Oh, the usual, miss,” he told her with a grin. “That Frenchified cook of yours is throwing a fit. But we’ve got the house all tidy and ready for you and the little ones.”
He turned to the little ones in question, nodding his head in polite greeting to the shy, soft-spoken Indian woman before inviting Nathan to show him his boxing form, holding up his hands as targets, then admiring Claire’s new bonnet.
Eleanor reached back into the carriage and pulled out the teak box that had traveled on the seat beside her all the way from the coast. It was dark, made of the finest wood and beautifully carved, and its hinges and fastening were fashioned of gold.
Swallowing the lump that rose in her throat, Eleanor murmured, “You’re home at last, my dear.”
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