An Infamous Betrayal

by Lynn Messina

  He could not quibble with her participation, she told herself.

  And yet she knew he could quibble about anything, for he was a duke and a man and believed he knew best about everything.

  Ah, but he could not know best about something he did not know about at all.

  Mr. Skeffington let out another deep breath, and his whole body seemed to lighten. “You have no idea what a relief your attitude is, Miss Hyde-Clare. I trust it goes without saying that I hesitated greatly before coming here today. Even after I entered the house, I wasn’t sure I would have the nerve to bring up the matter, for it’s beyond inappropriate that I’m asking you. But when I recall all that I have already done to you—that is, whacking you with a plank, imprisoning you in a shed and accusing you of licentious behavior before a house full of people, including your family—asking you to investigate the suspicious death of my future mother-in-law’s lover feels almost minor in comparison.”

  Bea laughed with unexpected force and darted a quick look at the settee, noting with relief that her aunt was still too engrossed in her own miseries to notice anything amiss. “As I said, I’m certainly happy to help in any way I can, but why seek me out? Would not the authorities be even more helpful in this situation?”

  “Mrs. Otley refuses to allow us to alert them and wants to dispose of the body by contacting a physician who works at an asylum,” he said with a growl of frustration. “She claims no woman’s reputation could withstand two dead men. One, particularly a husband, was understandable, for whose life was without its difficulties. But a second suggests a recklessness. I tried to reason with her but she simply won’t listen, and I can’t allow Emily to live in a house that may or may not be occupied by a murderer. We must discover the truth, no matter how unpleasant, and I did such a shabby job of it last time. You, however, knew exactly how to put all the pieces together to make a complete picture. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you’re willing to assume this horrendous task.”

  She nodded gravely, as if the gratitude was solely on his side, but she could hardly believe he’d appeared on her doorstop with a mystery at the very moment she was on the lookout for one. Indeed, the absurdly providential timing of his request made it seem almost preordained, and silently she told the Duke of Kesgrave to take the matter up with his maker if he had a problem with that.

  “And I, in turn, am deeply gratified by your trust in me. I promise I will do everything in my power not to let you and Miss Otley down,” she said solemnly, sparing another glance at her aunt, who was now dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “Naturally, my family cannot know anything about this. They aren’t as practical as I am about these matters. Aunt Vera, in particular, tends to get flustered. She also believes exposure to dead bodies corrupts one’s faculties, a stance with which I heartily disagree. Speaking of exposure to dead bodies, how did Mrs. Otley respond to her lover’s convulsive episode? I cannot imagine she remained composed.”

  “She tried to shush him.”

  Bea leaned forward, certain she could not have heard him correctly. “Shush him?”

  He nodded. “Yes. You see, his suffering was quite acute and he was making a tremendous amount of noise and she wanted him to be quiet, so she tried to shush him. That did not work, as he was beyond sense at that point, according to Emily, so she tried covering his mouth with a pillow.”

  To her surprise, Bea discovered it was possible to be even more appalled by Mrs. Otley. “She what?”

  “When she could not get him to regulate his volume on his own, she sought to do it for him by placing a pillow over his mouth. It was futile, of course, as the convulsions were so strong he flailed all over the mattress like a fish suffocating for air. He did not stay anywhere for long, but she kept flopping over the bed, trying to place the pillow over his mouth. When Emily first entered the room, she thought her mother and Mr. Wilson were engaged in some sort of bed sport,” he explained tightly, his cheeks turning bright red at the hint of carnal activity.

  Something in his bashful expression caught Aunt Vera’s attention, pulling her out of the doldrums she had sunk into since hearing the news of Miss Otley’s triumph. Promptly, she lifted her head from where it rested on Flora’s shoulder. Knowing nothing of the situation, she assumed her niece was responsible for Mr. Skeffington’s discomfort and apologized at once for Bea’s behavior. “The fault is my own, for she has been under the weather most recently, and I should not have allowed her to have company.”

  “You mustn’t be so hard on yourself,” Flora said comfortingly. “I’m the one who decided Bea was ready for company, not you. The fault is entirely mine, although I must say I think this visit has been good for her. Her eyes are shining, and there’s a healthy glow to her skin. It’s quite an improvement.”

  Although Flora could hardly know it, she had all but said that murder was excellent for her cousin’s complexion.

  Bea had the grace to blush.

  “I must thank you, Mr. Skeffington, for coming around,” Flora added. “Your good news has brightened the day for all of us.”

  Naturally, Aunt Vera mewled again at this reminder of Mrs. Otley’s unqualified success, and the image of the widow trying to smother her lover’s cries of agony as he convulsed to death in her bed flitted through Bea’s mind. As she watched her aunt’s bottom lip tremble with disappointment, she wondered if her judgment would soften if she knew of the ghastly events of that morning or if her disappointment in losing a future baron to an old school rival was so entrenched nothing could mitigate it.

  Despite this very great setback, Aunt Vera was still mindful of her duty and she managed to echo her daughter’s thoughts with a modicum of grace and composure. She asked Mr. Skeffington a few brief questions about his plans, listened patiently to the answers, and then drew attention to the lateness of the hour. It was time they started getting ready for Pemberton’s ball.

  It was barely three o’clock.

  Mr. Skeffington was too well-bred not to respond instantly to the hint and stood up to make his goodbyes. “Yes, of course. I had intended to go myself, but an unexpected issue has arisen that requires swift action.” He darted a speaking glance to Bea that was as frantic as it was helpless. “But I’m very sorry to have to miss it.”

  At this indication of further bad news, Flora expressed sympathy, and while Mr. Skeffington tried at once to minimize its importance and hide his distress, Bea considered the best way to proceed with her investigation. As she had told Mr. Skeffington, the first step was to examine the scene where Mr. Wilson had met his excruciating end. To do that, however, she would have to leave the house without arousing Aunt Vera’s suspicions. During her last investigation, she’d discovered how easy it was to slip out of the house unnoticed, but now that her family was aware of her tricks, she imagined executing a furtive exit might be slightly more challenging.

  If she announced her intentions openly and honestly, her confidence might confuse her aunt into compliance.

  “I will go with you,” Bea announced.

  Aunt Vera turned to look at her with bewildered eyes. “Go with whom? Go where?”

  “To visit Miss Otley,” she said simply, as if stating an obvious fact. “Mr. Skeffington is on his way to her right now, and he said she’s despondent that I haven’t visited since returning to town. After all, she is one of my dearest friends and I have yet to congratulate her on her coming nuptials. I’m sure you understand. I will just get my pelisse and my maid.”

  As far as baffling statements went, this announcement was probably the most confounding one she could have come up with and her aunt stared at her bewildered, as if she could not even understand the words. “One of your dearest friends?” she echoed. “But you don’t have any friends.”

  Although Bea had not only invited this response but relied on it to attain her goal, she was still taken aback by the casual cruelty of her aunt’s tone, whose matter-of-factness did not allow for the possibility that her status could change. “If Emily wa
s not my dearest friend, then why would I have confessed my deepest secret to her? You knew nothing of Mr. Davies, for I had told nobody in the family about him.”

  To this point, her aunt had no answer because it was true: Bea had shared the details of her love affair with an unsuitable law clerk with only one person in the world and it had not been a Hyde-Clare.

  By any account, this fact did seem to indicate an unprecedented intimacy.

  “But she’s engaged to Mr. Skeffington,” Aunt Vera said—by which she meant: You cannot be friends with the Incomparable who stole a baronetcy from me.

  Bea knew it was unkind to be amused by her aunt’s distress, but she couldn’t quite smother her mirth. “I know, dear. And that is why I must go. But do not worry. I will be back in plenty of time to get ready. I know how disappointed you would be if I missed the ball.”

  Unsure if she was being teased, Aunt Vera managed a half smile.

  Flora, whose intense fascination with Miss Otley had faded as soon as her family’s unsavory secrets were revealed in the drawing room at Lakeview Hall, gave her full support to the scheme. “You must go. I’m sure Emily has been made desolate by your neglect. Do pass along our kind regards and assure her we look forward to visiting with her soon.”

  It was a lovely speech and entirely self-serving, for Flora was convinced her cousin was up to something dashing and hoped to discover the specifics of it later. Bea knew what she was thinking because she’d spent weeks fending off Flora’s curiosity. The story about the funeral had struck the other girl as implausible, for she felt certain nobody would be ill-bred enough to raise their fists in a cemetery, and every so often she would ask Bea to repeat a detail just to see if it varied from previous retellings.

  Unlike the rest of her family, Flora did not think Bea’s faculties had been undermined by grief and exposure to Mr. Otley’s gruesome corpse. Rather, she believed the explanation for her recent behavior was far more straightforward: They were simply seeing their relative clearly for the first time.

  Bea had always been tricky and clever and full of mischief.

  No other explanation accounted for how she had managed to conduct an entire courtship without anyone in the house raising an eyebrow, not even the servants. What was most astounding was how Bea seemed to have been present in the house the entire time she was off being wooed by Mr. Davies. No one could think of a single occasion when Bea wasn’t on hand exactly when her presence was required.

  Flora’s awe made Bea distinctly uncomfortable, for she did not relish the way her cousin treated her now, as if she were some magical creature who could achieve impossible things. The trick, of course, was that there wasn’t a trick: She’d seemed always to be around because she always had been around. Day after day, week after week, year after year, she’d been at her aunt’s beck and call, ready to serve in whatever capacity was needed—and why wouldn’t she have been? She had nothing to take her away from the drawing room: no clandestine assignations, no secret lover. As Aunt Vera had so helpfully pointed out only a few minutes before, she didn’t even have friends with whom to pay calls or attend the theater.

  Taking his cue from Bea and Flora, Mr. Skeffington thanked Bea for her willingness to visit his fiancée without hesitation. “Ordinarily, I would not admit this to company, but I was actually under orders from Miss Otley to engineer this exact situation. She will be so pleased—and perhaps a little amazed—that I was able to do her bidding exactly as she requested. I cannot thank you enough, Mrs. Hyde-Clare, for your allowing me to steal your niece away for a couple of hours. You are so wonderfully kind and generous. And you must not worry: I promise I will have her back in plenty of time to get ready for the ball.”

  Highly susceptible to flattery, Aunt Vera simpered at these compliments and almost forgave him for choosing a diamond of the first water over her very pretty but in no way ravishing daughter. “Yes, yes, of course, you must go. Poor Miss Otley has suffered so much shame and humiliation, and if she finds some measure of consolation from my niece’s presence, we must not deny her it, no matter how little we comprehend it.”

  Bea shook her head in amusement and, swallowing a smile, told her aunt that her graciousness was humbling to behold.

  “I try, dear,” she said as if surprised by the amount of effort she was continually called on to make. “I try all the time.”

  “Of course you do,” Flora murmured, wrapping an arm around her mother’s shoulder as Mr. Skeffington escorted Bea and her maid, Annie, to the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mrs. Otley screamed when she saw Bea enter her front parlor. A high-piercing trill that continued for several unnerving seconds, it brought the housekeeper, two footmen and one of the girls from the kitchen to the room at top speed. They hovered in the doorway as if expecting to see something dreadful, perhaps another dead body, and it was only when Mrs. Otley spotted the scullery maid on the threshold that she modulated her tone. The volume of her shriek lessened and faded into silence. Then she laughed awkwardly.

  “Oh, goodness, such a lot of bother,” she said, coloring slightly as her butler appeared to gently direct the group of gawking servants away from the room. Annie, who had entered the room a few steps behind her mistress, was swept along with the assortment. Before he closed the door behind him, she requested a pot of tea to soothe her nerves. “Do sit down, Miss Hyde-Clare. I’m sorry for the reception. I truly don’t know what overcame me other than I’m apprehensive and not quite in control of myself. It has been such a trying day. To be honest, I feel like a clock that is continually striking midnight. Bong. Bong. Bong. It’s awful. And to take it out on you! My dear, I’m mortified. It’s just that the sight of you brought back all those awful memories from Lakeview House, and suddenly I was in that drawing room again being subjected to the public revelation of all my family’s private business. To be perfectly candid, Miss Hyde-Clare, I’d hoped to never see you again, and to have you here on this miserable day of all days is a particular cross to bear. I’m not sure I can stomach it.”

  Her daughter, who had entered the room in time to hear the second half of this speech, had no patience for her mother’s dramatics. “You will stomach it, Mama, and much more besides,” she announced coldly before greeting Beatrice warmly. Emily Otley was a beauty in that classic English way, with pale skin, rosy cheeks, pouty lips and dark lashes defining light-blue eyes. She was taller than her petite mother, whose coloring she shared, and prided herself on an ample collection of elaborately plumed hats. Today, her dark head was unadorned.

  “Mr. Skeffington sends his apologies for not joining us in tea. He has an appointment with the solicitor, for which he must be particularly grateful, as he cannot enjoy listening to me and my mother bicker. Now you may have the pleasure,” she said with a wry smile as she sat down next to Bea on the dark-colored settee. “I’m so glad you were able to come so quickly. I did not know what to do with myself this morning when my mother insisted we not call the Runners to investigate the matter. Given the recent discovery of my mother’s heartlessness, I naturally assumed she was responsible for Mr. Wilson’s unfortunate condition and that was why she resisted contacting the authorities.”

  It was quite a harsh indictment of her mother’s character, and Bea was genuinely taken aback. Aunt Vera was a rather callous human being—a fact that was in no way a recent discovery for her—but Bea would never suspect her of murder.

  “But she did succeed in making a reasonably sound argument for why she couldn’t be responsible,” Emily admitted.

  “It’s true,” Mrs. Otley said with a wary glance at her daughter. “If I was keeping my relationship with Mr. Wilson a secret from you, why would I murder him in the most ostentatious way possible? Would I not have simply thrust him in front of a carriage on Bond Street or pushed him out of a high window somewhere far from here? I’m sure every person who has ever plotted the demise of a troublesome interloper knows the first thing to consider is location. Never dirty one’s own nest if one c
an avoid it.”

  Emily sighed loudly and looked at Bea with an expression of sad resignation as if to convey the hopelessness of her situation. “In this way, I’ve ruled my mother out as a possible perpetrator, but she still refuses to let the authorities handle it.”

  Mrs. Otley shook her head. “Why can’t we just plant him in the garden, or if that offends your sensibilities, we can hire an undertaker to emboss him properly, although if you ask me that is a needless and foolish expense that we cannot easily afford at the—”

  “Embalm him,” Emily said, interrupting.

  “Excuse me?” her mother asked, torn between impatience and confusion.

  “You emboss stationery,” Emily explained. “You embalm a dead person.”

  Now Mrs. Otley sighed heavily, as if exhausted from all the details she’d been forced to keep abreast of during an already arduous day. “It appears you have the matter well in hand. I’m not sure why I need to be here.” She turned to look at Bea. “You don’t need me here, do you? The viper whom I’ve nurtured at my breast says it’s vital that I talk to you. But it’s not really necessary, is it?”

  Although she had coolly announced her mother capable of murder only a few minutes before, Emily took offense at this description. “Mother,” she cried in an injured tone. “How can you speak of me like that?”

  Mrs. Otley shook her head. “How can you speak of me like that?”

  “Must I remind you of your relationship with Mr. Wilson?” she asked. “That is how I can.”

  “I gave him up for you!” her mother exclaimed, outraged by the charge.

  “You made a lavish spectacle of severing the connection and then continued your dalliance as if nothing had happened,” Emily replied with passionate disapproval.

  “Yes, and I went through that pretense because you’re my daughter. Your feelings are important to me,” Mrs. Otley explained gently. “I assure you, my dear, there’s no one else in the world for whom I would make such an effort.”