A Suspicious Affair (22 page)

Foster nodded his head and turned back to the board. Then he looked sideways at the earl and queried, “Anything you’d like to ask me before I go?”

Carlinn reached for his knight, then reconsidered. “Like what, chub?”

“Like permission to address
my
sister?”

The knight fell out of his hand onto the floor. “You’re beginning to let this courtship nonsense go to your head, bantling. Either that or the hero business.”

“Then perhaps I should be asking your intentions, my lord.” Foster was only partway teasing. “An eligible bachelor running tame in the household, making morning calls before breakfast—that type of thing can’t be good for my sister’s reputation.”

“You’re putting your ugly Laughton nose where it don’t belong, Lieutenant,” Carlinn barked.

Foster hadn’t been in the army long enough to jump when so addressed. Nor had he ever served under Major Lord Kimbrough, for which he thanked his lucky stars. Therefore, he valiantly—or foolhardily—proceeded. “What’s the matter with my nose except that new bump in it? I mean, it ain’t like Wellesley’s honker. Marisol’s got the same beak and everyone says she’s a beauty. Looks like Noel will have it, too, and I’ve heard you say he’s a handsome lad. Anyway, I thought it was my job to ask about your intentions. Head of the family and all that, don’t you know.” He grinned. “Luckily I’m not shipping out just yet. You have another month to get your courage to the sticking point.”

Kimbrough knocked over the chessboard in his hurry to leave.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Why, Mr. Dimm, how clever of you to find Tyson just when I need a new maid so badly.”

Dimm had returned to Berkshire, but not alone. He led the abigail into Marisol’s drawing room and kept one hand on her elbow.

“Not ’zactly, Your Grace. That is, I found your maid, Eleanor Tyson, all right and tight, but she’s took up a new profession.”

Marisol said, “That’s too bad,” wondering why he’d bothered to bring Tyson then, and why the woman was hanging back after her curtsy, staring at the floor. “What new career have you embarked on, Tyson?”

Dimm answered for the maid: “Extortionist.”

Marisol sat back against the cushions. “Those notes? The baby?” No, that couldn’t be. Not Tyson and Arlen. Not Tyson and Marisol’s husband. Eleanor Tyson had been her dresser for three years; Marisol had trusted her. She shook her head. “No, I cannot believe it.”

“It wasn’t any choice of mine, Your Grace, I swear,” Tyson spoke up. “I wouldn’t have hurt Your Grace for the world, you were always so good to me. But he—”

“Why don’t we wait for his lordship to get here?” Dimm suggested. “Magistrate and such. That way we can all hear all of it at once and figger what’s to be done.”

When Kimbrough arrived, Foster came down, but the dowager took to her bed, preferring not to know any more than she had to. Sarah and her Ned stood quietly in a corner while Aunt Tess was furiously knitting close to the fireplace, where she couldn’t hear much, not that her location mattered for that. Marisol would explain things to her later, she said, but little Leonard would need lots of sweaters in Yorkshire now. She refused to consider any other option. The babies were not present. Marisol couldn’t bear the thought of Nolly in the room with someone who had sold her own child. Tyson hadn’t even asked about Arlen’s welfare.

When everyone was assembled, Dimm had his son Gabriel bring in another man, in handcuffs.

“Purvis? Is it really you?” Marisol found that her hands were shaking. She’d written such glowing references for these two, while all the time they’d been plotting her ruin. How could she have been so mistaken, thinking Tyson merely disloyal when the woman was a desperate criminal? To have an affair with her employer, right under his wife’s nose, and then perhaps kill him—or have her other lover, the valet, do it—were not the usual functions of milady’s abigail. Marisol tried to steady her hands by clasping them together in her lap.

Lord Kimbrough brought her a glass of sherry and stood behind her seat, his strong hand on her shoulder. “Let’s hear the whole thing then, Mr. Dimm, before we jump to conclusions.”

“Well,” the Runner began, “my part of the story starts in Bristol. Purvis here had his name on a ship’s waybill, going to the colonies by Robin’s barn. The embargo, don’t you know. So I weren’t half surprised to see him. Then the abigail shows up, the one what’s been missing for four, five months. And she’s got passage money, too. Wasn’t hard to figger.”

“But why?” Marisol asked. “I don’t understand.”

Tyson started to cry. “I swear I never meant to harm anyone.” She put her hands over her eyes.

Purvis awkwardly set his manacled wrists at her waist. “Hush, Nell, I’ll tell it. It’s like this, Your Grace, my lord. I asked Nell, that’s short for Eleanor, to be my wife, and she said yes. But His Grace, he said no. He didn’t believe servants should marry, he said.”

“That’s just like the dastard,” Foster muttered from the opposite sofa. Lord Kimbrough poured him a sherry, too, which Foster managed to clutch in his bandaged hands.

Purvis went on: “So I waited a bit and then asked him again, seeing as how he was in a rare good humor, what with the baby coming and all. Your baby, Your Grace. The heir, that made him happy to be cutting out Lord Boynton finally. And the duke, he said maybe we could marry, maybe we couldn’t. He’d think about it.” Purvis stared at his feet. “But he was thinking that if I wanted Nell so bad, he’d maybe better take a second look.”

“Oh no.”

Purvis nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry, but Your Grace was getting big with the child, and sickly, so his eye was wandering even more than usual. And he did look at Nell. A right pretty lass, my Nell is, too,” he said, patting her back with his shackled hands. “And His Grace told Nell she didn’t have any choice.”

“You should have come to me, Tyson. Eleanor.”

The maid looked at the duchess through tear-swollen eyes. “But I saw how he was with you. Everyone knew how he took his temper out on you, poor lady. If you’d crossed him over me, it would only make things worse. I was that worried about you and your baby,” she said bitterly.

Now Marisol looked away, embarrassed to have so much dirty linen washed in front of Lord Kimbrough. Understanding, he tightened his grip on her shoulder.

“So I didn’t fight him, Your Grace,” Eleanor went on. “He said that he’d let us marry when he was done. If I resisted, he said, or cried foul or anything, he swore we’d both be dismissed. So it wasn’t rape.”

“Of course it was. You had no choice. It was against your will.”

“But Purvis didn’t see it that way,” she said sadly.

“I told you I was sorry, Nell. It was just that at first I couldn’t…”

“You were not to blame, Eleanor,” Marisol insisted with a dirty look to Purvis. “Go on.”

“Well, then I found I was increasing, too. When I told His Grace, he laughed and said now I could marry Purvis, and get out. He wouldn’t keep either of us on. But Purvis, he didn’t want me anymore.”

The swine. To Marisol’s thinking, there was not much to choose from between Purvis and Arvid. Her glare at the valet spoke volumes.

“But how could I support a wife and child without a position, Your Grace? It wasn’t even my child! At least he should have paid…”

“So you made sure he did, eh?” Foster held his glass between two hands and saluted the valet.

It was Marisol who asked, “Which one of you…?”

The maid replied: “First I wrote that note to you, just to get even. Purvis told me where the duke would be and who with. His Grace was bragging something fierce. I wanted you to see what kind of animal he was.”

“Oh, I knew, I already knew,” Marisol whispered.

“But most I wanted to shame him in front of a real lady, his own wife.”

Purvis took up the tale: “When Nell told me what she’d done, I feared he’d get in a rage, Your Grace. The duke didn’t like anyone getting in the way of his pleasures, if you know what I mean. I knew he had taken to carrying that pistol, so I went out to stop you.”

“You wanted to protect me?” Marisol asked.

“Yes, and Nell, too, if he figured out she’d written the note. But I was too late. You’d come and gone and so had Lady Armbruster. His Grace was in a rare snit all right. I’d never seen him in such a taking. He was screaming like a banshee, saying I must have been the one to send you after him like that, Your Grace, and I’d pay for it, and you’d pay for it, too. I knew he meant it.”

Marisol’s shoulder was aching where Carlinn’s fingers were digging into the flesh. She patted his hand and he relaxed a bit, but she knew that if Arvid Pendenning were alive and in the room right then, he’d be wishing he were dead again. Hell had to be less painful than what the earl would have done to him.

Purvis shook his head. “I couldn’t take his threats no more, Your Grace, my lord. That muckworm, ruining everyone’s life that way, and making me turn my back on the finest woman I ever knew. So I told him I was going to marry Nell even if she carried his seed, and if he didn’t give us our fair pay, and something to see us by until I could find a place, I’d go to the newspapers and the magistrates and to Lord Armbruster next door. And he laughed. He didn’t care, don’t you see? He knew he couldn’t be arrested for taking liberties with a common maid or withholding pay from unsatisfactory servants. And fornication was as ordinary among the gentry as fleas on a dog. There was nothing I could do.”

“So you shot him?”

“No. I didn’t have any weapon. I spit on him instead, to show him what I thought of his idea of
noblesse oblige.
I worked for other gentlemen before. I knew what was right and honorable, and he was none of it. So I spit on him, right in his face.”

“Good for you, man,” Foster cheered.

Purvis ignored the interruption, still directing his narrative toward Marisol. “You know how he liked everything about him to be perfect?” She nodded. “I thought he’d go off in an apoplexy right there, but instead he took out the pistol and started waving that gun around like a madman. I was afraid it would go off, so I put my hand on his wrist, to keep it pointed away from me. His Grace, he twisted away, screaming at me to take my hands off him like he was god and I was manure. I held on, though, and the gun went off. He was dead, I could see, so there was no point in calling for help. I went back inside but everyone was still at supper, except Nell. No one saw me coming or going, so I kept mum.”

“But you could have come forward during the investigation. It was self-defense.”

He shook his head at her naiveté. “Who believes a valet? ’Sides, they’d want to know why I didn’t speak up first time ’round. I couldn’t take the chance, not with Nell depending on me. So I kept my mouth shut. I’m right sorry blame fell on any of you, Your Grace, Lord Kimbrough, Lord Laughton, but what was I to do?”

No one had an answer, so the valet went on: “I had enough put by to emigrate, and a cousin in the colonies who would help us get settled. I thought we could get away if I just kept quiet long enough.”

Nell interrupted. “But I couldn’t go on a sea journey, not in the middle of winter, not in my condition. Besides, every time he looked at me, I could see Purvis thinking of how I’d lain with His Grace. He didn’t mean to, but it made me feel dirty all over again. So I went off on my own with what I had. Said my husband was with the army, and I had no family to care for me. Took rooms in Richmond where no one knew me, and had the baby.”

“Who looked like Arvid.”

“And who fussed and cried no matter what I did. And I wanted to go off with Purvis, to start a new life without any reminders, and without throwing myself on his charity in case he changed his mind again.”

“So you decided to sell us the baby.” Marisol couldn’t keep the disapproval from her voice.

“’Twas that or dump him on some church steps and hope for the best. An ocean voyage wouldn’t have been healthy for him, and we were going to set up a little haberdashery out west, not near the big cities. Purvis’s cousin had written that there was money to be made there, but it was rough and dangerous, with red Indians and all. I couldn’t take a baby into that, not after his warning.”

“And you needed more money to set up the little business,” Kimbrough suggested.

“I figured the duke owed us. Purvis agreed.”

“We never meant for you to think we’d harm the little duke,” the valet put in. “We neither of us ever meant you ill, Your Grace.”

“Yes, I can see. My husband was more evil than even I suspected. All of this can be laid at his door. But what’s to be done now, Mr. Dimm? These people were as much victims as criminals.”

“’Spect that’s up to a jury, Your Grace.”

Lord Kimbrough was thinking ahead to that trial. The press would be lapping up the details like a cat at a milk saucer. Marisol would have to testify, all about finding Denning with Lady Armbruster. She’d have to listen as the sordid details of her miserable marriage were made public. “Must we really have a court case, all the additional notoriety?” he asked. “It was self-defense, we all know it was, and Arvid had it coming. I’d have killed him myself if I knew what he’d done to—Why can’t these people just keep going? They’re not a danger to anyone else, and they’ve paid in all the anguish they’ve suffered at that dastard’s hands.”

Marisol looked hopeful, but Dimm scratched his head. “I don’t know ’bout taking the law into our own hands that way.”

“But if I stand by the decision as magistrate? Purvis and Tyson could sign confessions so if they ever came back they could be tried, and legal adoption papers so they’d never have a claim on the boy. It’s like deportation to Botany Bay, only in the other direction and with better chance of survival at the end. We can just say Arvid was accidentally killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound while in a towering rage at his valet. Even the press will accept such a story.”

“His nibs might buy it at that, ’specially if it doesn’t stir up another hornet’s nest at the rumor mill. Just might work.”

The manservant pleaded: “There’s another boat leaving next week. We can be on it and you’ll never hear from either of us again. I swear it, Your Grace.”

“And I,” Tyson promised.

Everyone’s eyes turned to the duchess, as if to leave the decision to her, for revenge or retribution. “Let them go,” she said, “after they sign all the papers.”

She accepted their undoubtedly heartfelt gratitude, but could do no more than extend her wishes for a safe journey before leaving the room. They’d suffered, but so had she, and at their hands. Besides, neither had inquired about the baby’s future. Tyson hadn’t even asked to see her son.

Marisol went upstairs to him and to her own child. She dismissed Rebecca and the maid assigned to help in the nursery, leaving her alone with the sleeping babies and the dogs.

It was over, blessedly over. Tyson and Purvis would be on their way by nightfall. Sarah would leave with her Ned and Leonard in a few days, while Dimm’s niece Suky from the inn would take Sarah’s place as lady’s maid. Foster was nearly well enough to rejoin his unit, and Bettina would go off to her Season…and his lordship would resume his search for a perfect wife.

Marisol and Nolly would finally be alone to start their real life together, just the two of them and Aunt Tess and the dowager.

“And you, Sal.” The collie thumped her tail on the floor. The terrier whined. “And you, Max.”

Lord, maybe she should emigrate, too, rather than stay in Berkshire waiting for him to bring home an impeccable bride like Edelia Sherville. Marisol sighed, knowing there was no place on earth far enough away to escape her own breaking heart.