An Infamous Betrayal

by Lynn Messina

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries

  Love Takes Root series

  AN INFAMOUS

  BETRAYAL

  LYNN MESSINA

  potatoworks press

  greenwich village

  COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY LYNN MESSINA

  COVER DESIGN BY JENNIFER LEWIS

  ISBN: 978-1-942218-24-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Published 2018 by Potatoworks Press

  Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or my any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  As sympathetic as Vera Hyde-Clare was to the pain her niece suffered as the victim of a brutal assault that had left her badly bruised, she couldn’t help but feel the situation had several advantages to recommend it. Naturally, she would never wish a pair of swollen, battered eyes on anyone, not in the least the poor parentless child who had been delivered to her care more than twenty years ago—even if that orphan, who owed her family nothing but docility and gratitude, had suddenly and inexplicably turned willful and disrespectful. But Vera hadn’t countenanced Beatrice’s sneaking out of the house in her male cousin’s clothes to attend the funeral of her former beau, a law clerk struck down in the prime of his life. It went without saying that she would have expressly forbidden such an act if her permission had been sought, and given that her niece was fully aware of the wrongness of her conduct, Vera felt it was fair and just to hold the girl responsible for the unfortunate attack.

  Having done nothing to create the situation, Vera felt no compunction in utilizing it to her purpose and claiming that Bea was still too injured to attend the Duke of Pemberton’s ball. “Obviously, I wish you could come for your own sake, my dear, for being trapped inside this house for three weeks cannot have been fun. But you must own that it would be beyond scandalous for you to appear in public with that discoloration on your cheek.”

  Beatrice Hyde-Clare examined her face in the mirror next to the grandfather clock and insisted that her complexion had returned entirely to normal. There was no trace—faint or otherwise—of the abuse she had suffered.

  Her aunt tsk-tsked softly as she worried that the thrashing Bea had endured might have permanently damaged her sight. “For I assure you the signs of the injury are readily apparent to anyone who looks at you. No, you need at least another week to recover completely.”

  The thought of being confined in the house like a chicken in a coop for another full week horrified Bea. “I really don’t think—”

  But Aunt Vera was having none of it and swore it was her sacred duty to protect the reputation of her niece as well as the standing of her family. “Only when there is no hint of your terrible misfortune visible shall you be allowed to attend society events or receive visitors. For now, I suggest you retire to your room and think about how lucky you are to have your devoted family looking after you with such care. Other, more unfeeling relatives might let you step outside and risk censure and embarrassment. Now do be a dear and allow me to find Mrs. Emerson. I must discuss tomorrow night’s menu.”

  Although Bea wanted to protest further, she knew better than to waste her breath, for her aunt was fully committed to the fiction that her skin still displayed evidence of her recent beating. Having found a way to control the movements of her unpredictable niece, she was determined not to give it up a single second sooner than was necessary. At most, Aunt Vera had another week left in the ruse, and as impatient as Bea was to leave the town house in Portman Square, she could submit gracefully to seven more days of confinement. Indeed, despite her discomfort, she couldn’t really blame her aunt for manipulating the circumstance to her own benefit and actually found herself impressed with the woman’s ability to successfully pull off the ploy. She hadn’t credited the forty-six-year-old woman with either the cunning or ruthlessness.

  Furthermore, Aunt Vera’s interpretation of events was somewhat accurate: Bea was a little bit responsible for the attack, as she had snuck out of the house in her cousin Russell’s clothes to insert herself in business that was no actual concern of hers. As to the particulars, of course, her aunt was wrong, for the story Bea had told her family was a complete fiction. No, she hadn’t gone to the funeral of Theodore Davies, a law clerk with whom she had conducted a secret romance. And, no, she hadn’t been attacked by his father, who thought she was flirting with his bereaved daughter-in-law—recall, please, that she was wearing her cousin’s clothes—when in fact she was merely offering her condolences. Of course, Mr. Davies, in his grief, could not be relied upon to act sensibly or sanely when witnessing a strange young man, oddly handsome with his broad shoulders, paying attention to the sad, beautiful mother of his grandchildren.

  What a ruckus it caused! And poor Beatrice—pummeled by a man overcome with anguish before his wife could pull him away.

  It was all nonsense, of course, for she did not have a former beau who was a lowly law clerk at the Chancery. At six and twenty, Bea had never had any beaus at all. She was a plain-looking woman with brown eyes, slender lips, pale skin and a spray of freckles across her cheeks and nose. Her portion was small, her conversation limited and her social success nonexistent. What little confidence she’d had on her presentation—always modest and propagated on the belief that those freckles had an endearing charm—had been almost immediately undercut by the insidious Miss Brougham, who described her with gleeful malice as drab. Before Lord and Lady Skeffington’s house party in the Lake District that her family had attended in the fall, she hadn’t spoken three coherent sentences in public during the whole of her career.

  And then she stumbled upon the bludgeoned corpse of Thomas Otley, a spice trader who’d made a fortune in India, and everything changed. Suddenly, she found herself embroiled in the great mystery of his death, for nobody else in the house seemed the least bit interested in discovering who had bashed in the spice trader’s skull with a candlestick. It fell to Beatrice to investigate, which she did with surprising skill and success.

  It was in pursuit of this larger truth that she had made up the minor fabrication of Mr. Theodore Davies, law clerk. Suspecting that one of the young guests at Lakeview Hall was engaged in an illicit relationship with an unsuitable man, Bea invented an illicit relationship with an unsuitable man for herself. It was meant to demonstrate empathy and elicit confidences.

  Instead, it created a situation
so complicated and absurd she was still trying to extricate herself from it five months later.

  The problem was her aunt, who, taking it into her head that the secret to her niece’s future lay in her past, had resolved to meet this remarkable young clerk and discern from him all the traits and characteristics her niece found appealing in a suitor in order to locate another man with similar qualities. It certainly seemed wiser than holding to the present course of trying to marry the chit off to a third son or a clergy with a small parish in the country, an exercise that had borne no fruit in six seasons. As an additional inducement, Vera felt Bea’s behavior in the Lake District, so unaccountably bold, indicated that an arrangement just a little outside the bounds of polite society might be the best way to contain the girl’s suddenly unconventional conduct.

  If only Mr. Davies could be located!

  Obviously, Bea could not let her family spend months looking for a phantom and she couldn’t confess to inventing one, so she arranged for Mr. Davies to suffer a tragic, premature death. She wrote up the notice and brought it to the newspaper office to run in the next day’s edition. That should have been the end of it and would have if not for the Earl of Fazeley, who chose her feet at which to drop in the entrance of the London Daily Gazette.

  That charge was unfair, she knew, as a man who had been stabbed in the back by a fourteen-inch knife wasn’t actually capable of deciding at whose feet to fall. Beatrice merely had the misfortune of being closest to him at the moment his legs could no longer support his body and his heart ceased to function.

  Suddenly, she found herself embroiled in another great mystery.

  It was in pursuit of his lordship’s killer that she had obtained the twin black eyes, but she couldn’t tell her family that. They would be horrified to learn she fancied herself an investigator and as such had inserted herself into matters that had nothing to do with her. How heedless! How ill-bred! How monstrously self-confident! They were already convinced that her faculties had been corrupted by the sight of Mr. Otley’s bloody corpse. And, of course, they thought she was deep in mourning for Mr. Davies because they could not conceive of her being anything other than devastated by the loss of her only chance at happiness. Yes, despite the fact that her ersatz former beau had settled in Cheapside with a wife and two children, her family believed she’d still nurtured hopes of a future with him.

  It was a humbling new low to discover just how hopelessly desperate they thought her.

  And yet she made no move to correct them, for the less her relatives knew about her activities, the more likely they were to prosper. If her aunt had any idea she’d spent a week interviewing the various owners of the jade knife that cut down the Earl of Fazeley, she would consign her to the insanity ward at Bedlam. If she discovered that Bea had worked alongside the Duke of Kesgrave in the pursuit, her eyes would no doubt pop out of her body and roll down the front staircase in shock.

  Bea could understand that reaction, for she herself had a difficult time digesting the fact that the esteemed peer who wanted for nothing—neither wealth nor looks nor status nor society—seemed to enjoy helping her identify murderers. He did not need to do it in tandem with her, as he had freedom and access and could easily follow every scrap of uncovered information on his own. And yet he sought her out and provided her with updates and asked her to dance even though leading her in the waltz at the Leland ball served no discernable purpose in the discovery of who killed Lord Fazeley.

  It was almost enough to turn a foolish girl’s head.

  Fortunately, Bea wasn’t foolish.

  She was just imprudent enough to fall in love with him but too clever to believe for a moment that he could ever return her regard.

  This clarity of understanding, she contended, was her saving grace, for it ensured she would not do anything so pitiful as pine for an unattainable duke. No, she would stiffen her resolve and throw herself into a new, consuming passion. All she required was an occupation to distract her thoroughly from thoughts of Kesgrave’s crystalline blue eyes and his square jaw and blond curls and his impertinent sense of humor…

  A murder!

  Yes, a murder was exactly what she needed to keep her thoughts from lingering on the duke’s many attractive attributes. As soon as she was released from her confinement, she would make a rigorous attempt to find one. During the three weeks she had been trapped in the house, she had given the matter serious consideration and realized it was the only solution to hopeless infatuation. Using her wits to identify a killer was truly exhilarating, and once she had a clue to decipher, she could think of nothing else.

  It was the ideal solution.

  The fact that she had promised Kesgrave that she would cease investigating the horrible deaths that kept crossing her path was immaterial to the situation, for she intended to seek one out. The difference between the two might strike some as a minor semantical distinction, but she thought it was enough to proceed with a clear conscience. She could find her distraction and keep her word at the same time.

  All was well.

  If only the duke would stop calling on her aunt to keep abreast of her progress.

  It caused her heart to lurch every time her cousin Flora informed her the duke was downstairs inquiring about her health. She knew his concern was sincere, for he had been with her when the attack occurred and had witnessed the damage to her face firsthand. It had disturbed him greatly, she thought, to see a woman so egregiously battered. But that was all it was. His interest in her welfare was not personal. She firmly believed he would show just as much distress for any creature that was similarly abused—his groom, a footman, a horse—and it was only her aunt’s determination to keep her home as long as possible that caused him to worry that the damage was more severe than her injuries had indicated. If he knew Aunt Vera was merely using the unexpected development to advance her own agenda, he would stop calling every third or fourth day to check on her condition.

  Bea suspected Aunt Vera knew very well that Kesgrave’s visits would stop as soon as her niece was deemed healthy enough to return to society and this provided her with another reason to delay her recovery. Having one of the most sought-after partis in London calling regularly to her house had raised her stock considerably. As far from dashing highfliers as mice were from tigers, the Hyde-Clares were situated comfortably on the margins of society, where they interacted with sedate precision with other fringe dwellers. The duke’s notice, however, had thrust Vera to the center, and hostesses who had only tipped their heads in her general direction now engaged her in conversation. She insisted she put up with the treatment only to further the prospects of her twenty-year-old daughter, Flora, but it was apparent to everyone that she adored the attention. Indeed, it had put her in such a genial mood, she finally relented and allowed her son to take lessons at Gentleman Jackson’s salon. It was a stunning reversal, as she had been irate with him when he’d revealed that he may have accidentally mentioned Bea’s injuries to Kesgrave, whose attention and approval he assiduously sought. (The specifics of how the conversation somehow wound its way to his cousin remained a mystery to Russell, which Bea thought was rather to the duke’s credit.)

  Kesgrave was not the only member of the ton to take an interest in Bea’s welfare, and her aunt was equally in alt over her other visitor: the exuberant Countess of Abercrombie. Unaccountably, the beautiful widow, who was famous for her wit, daring and numerous love affairs, had decided to make Bea her particular project for the season. She had resolved to do the impossible—to bring a plain-faced spinster into fashion—and she refused to be deterred from her mission, no matter how hard Vera tried to persuade her to mentor another young lady. Such an effort was necessary, of course, for her ladyship’s objective of drawing attention to her strange, unpredictable niece was precisely the opposite of hers. Initially, she’d argued in favor of her own delightful progeny, but perceiving her ladyship’s desire for a significant challenge, had switched her focus to Mrs. Marlton’s daughter, a prett
y girl whose pronounced limp had made popularity elusive.

  No, Lady Abercrombie remained stubbornly focused on Beatrice and sent Vera Hyde-Clare regular notes asking when she could meet with her protégé to discuss her plans for the season. The missives, which were at once abrupt and effusive, drove Aunt Vera to distraction, as she’d been convinced the woman would lose interest in her niece after a few days. After all, she was famous for having the mind of a butterfly, always flitting from this thing to that. And now, suddenly, just when it pertained to Beatrice, her memory proved as long as an elephant’s.

  It was decidedly unfair.

  Like her aunt, Bea had expected the countess’s interest in her to wane quickly and she could not conceive why the other woman persisted in her scheme. Obviously, as a woman approaching the middle of her sixth decade, she had a penchant for novelty, for she kept an African lion cub as a pet and had decorated her drawing room in an Oriental style so extravagant it rivaled the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. But spinsters were not rare birds one sought to get a glimpse of in a tree. They were as common as dirt in the London ballroom, and if Lady Abercrombie was so committed to making such a creature the height of fashion, she could easily locate one who hadn’t been secluded from society for almost a month.

  Apparently, her ladyship had another reason for her interest in Bea. At first, Bea had assumed it was because she had discovered the truth about the widow’s relationship with one of her son’s friends. Having engaged in a light dalliance with Lord Duncan over the Christmas holiday, Lady Abercrombie hoped to keep the affair a secret by proposing a quid pro quo: the promise of popularity in exchange for a vow of silence. At the time, Bea had suspected her of murdering Lord Fazeley, for the widow had both a reason to want him dead (the earl had tried to blackmail her) and an opportunity to end his life (she was the original owner of the jade dagger that killed him).