After the Scandal (41 page)

“What are we going to do?”

“Come, Claire. We’re going to go visit your counterfeit betrothed.”

*   *   *

It was a good night for some housebreaking. The moon danced in and out of the clouds, cloaking their approach, and Lady Westmoreland’s villa stood quiet in the night.

Tanner had rowed them the three minutes upriver to the neighboring property in the silent little skiff. He tied the vessel off with a slipknot—two ways in and three ways out of every hole—prepared for a hasty escape should they need it. But they shouldn’t need it.

He had something else entirely in mind.

But he did take the trouble to check the small stable to assure himself that the Marquess of Hadleigh was still out, and would not be there to interfere and protect and cover up for his son. Not this time.

Not ever again.

Lady Westmoreland’s villa—so called as it was merely a small country house sent in small grounds with no extended farm or tenanted land attached—resembled a jewel box at night. Light spilled out of every window as if there were no concern for economy or the extravagance of keeping wax candles.

The villa was not a country estate, but a house for retreating from the worries and heat of town in the summer months. Rumor had always been that Hadleigh had bought the house for Lady Westmoreland, who had been made a widow at a young age, and been left without a jointure or recourse to her deceased husband’s fortune by a strictly enforced entail.

Hadleigh must be a generous benefactor. The entire house seemed to be illuminated, as if someone within were afraid of the dark. The light presented a problem, in that Tanner would need to extinguish a great many candles in order to skulk about effectively, but it also provided him with a great deal of information.

From without the house, it was easy to see who was within. It was easy to ascertain that Her Ladyship had retired to her sitting room above, with the windows open to the drive so she could be apprised of Hadleigh’s return. It was easy to see that the servants were for the most part below stairs, congregating in the small servants’ hall with the shining basement windows.

Outside, the wide lawn stretched uninterrupted from the house all the way to the river without the relieving cover of any greenery save the grass. There was nowhere to hide.

Tanner checked his weapons again, running his fingers over the pistols and touching the knife in his boot. And then he headed Claire toward the torch-lit front door.

“Do you mean we’re just going to knock and ask if we can search the place?”

“No.
You’re
going to knock, and ask to see your betrothed. I am going to go in through that library window we just passed.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Say you’re here to see Rosing. That you want to hear his proposal from his own lips. Use some of that marvelously forcible charm of yours.”

“Forcible charm?”

“Yes. Where you smile and people fall all over themselves to do your bidding.”

“You’ve never fallen all over yourself to do my bidding.”

He looked at her from under his brows and spread his arms wide. “Have I not?”

“But—” She fidgeted, and turned back the way they had come, and knotted her fingers into fists. “But I don’t particularly want to see Rosing. In fact, I hope never to see him again.”

“Courage, Claire. You can do what needs doing, even if you’re afraid. I’ve seen you. Just get inside, and I’ll help with the rest.”

A deep, uneasy frown was scrubbed between her brows, but she nodded twice, As if she were still convincing herself. “All right. I can do it.”

“Good girl. Clever, good girl.” And he kissed her—a quick, heady stamp of his love and encouragement—and slipped away. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Tanner took a moment to put himself back into housebreaking mode. He had to change his brain—twist it round a bit to see things with a different set of eyes. Still, the knowledge he had gained by being the Duke of Fenmore would put him in very good stead. He knew the inner workings of a stately house, even a small one like Lady Westmoreland’s.

Tanner crept low along the wall until he was directly beneath the library window, which had conveniently been cracked open to cool the south-facing room with the evening breeze.

It was the work of eight heartbeats to slide the window open and slither over the ledge. Another two heartbeats and the branch of candles was extinguished, the flames quickly and silently snuffed between his thumb and third finger. He left the window open behind him. Another way out, if need be, and the open windows would provide an easy excuse if someone noticed that the candles had been blown out by the breeze.

Tanner took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark, and memorize the layout of the furniture, especially the placement of any chairs that could be moved easily. The layout of the interior was typically Palladian, balancing one side of the house against the other, which meant that the room configuration and stairways would be exactly the same. Music room and drawing room on this side. Dining room and library on the other.

Tanner paused at the double doors to the hallway listening as someone—a male servant judging from the sound of the heavy footfalls—went to the door.

“Good evening.” Claire’s voice was clear, but she sounded nervous, the edges of her intonation flicking sharply upward. But that should suit. If she were really a young lady who had come to see her betrothed at his father’s mistress’s house in the middle of the evening, she ought to sound unsure. “I’d like to see Lord Peter Rosing.”

“His Lordship is indisposed.”

“He is ill. I know. That is why I’ve come. His father said I ought—”

She broke off, either in a very well-played show of delicacy, or else because she had run out of lies. Either way, it worked.

“If you’ll wait one moment, Miss…?” The servant paused meaningfully, waiting for Claire to supply her name.

“Lady…” Claire made her own dramatic pause. “I’m sure you understand, but as we’re to be betrothed, Lord Rosing and I, perhaps—”

“Lady Claire, isn’t it?” Lady Westmoreland’s amused purr pattered down from above. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to see Lord Rosing. His father, the marquess, came to speak to my father tonight, but I needed to see Rosing myself, and speak to him, and— I’m sure you understand.”

“Actually, I don’t.” Lady Westmoreland’s voice grew stronger, as if she had at least partially descended the stair. “He’s not fit for any visitors, much less a young lady. He’s practically swathed from head to toe in bandages. And he woke up for the first time only this afternoon, and only for a short while. He’s too weak to speak, really, done in with pain, and of course the laudanum.”

“Oh.” Claire’s distress sounded all too real. “Nevertheless, I feel I ought.”

“Suit yourself.” Lady Westmoreland must have made some motion of acceptance, because in another moment two treads could be heard on the stair. “From what I understand he’s lucid only for short intervals. But have your wish. For myself I can’t stand a sickroom.”

The voices trailed away, and the entryway was left in silence. And then Tanner was following after them, extinguishing wall sconces as he went and opening windows where he could. Lady Westmoreland was to be complimented on her housekeeping—every window and door was well oiled, and opened easily and soundlessly. A lovely house for the breaking.

And at the top of the stair he moved to the open door of the corner bedchamber, where Claire stood alone, staring at the bed in the low light of a single candlewick. Tanner closed the silent door behind him, and moved to stand next to Claire, and offer what little comfort he could.

And there he was, Lord Peter Rosing, stretched out in the bed like the veriest invalid, his body encased in a linen nightshirt. He was motionless, his head upon the thin pillow swathed in bandages, as were his arms—evidence of what must have been repeated bleedings to try to relieve the ill humors trapped in his concussed brain. Well they could try, but his shallow breathing and deep sunken cheeks meant that His Lordship did not appear to be recovering. And the fact that they had left him—the seat of the chair by the bedside was cold to the touch—meant that they did not fear his waking.

He had well and truly cracked the bastard’s skull.

Tanner tried for a moment to feel some sort of remorse or pity, but nothing came. No finer feeling stirred in his breast. Nothing but the need to prove that this man lying in such a pitiful state was the lying, raping, murdering bastard both Claire and Tanner, and half the serving girls in London, knew he was. “He doesn’t look so very dangerous now, does he?”

“Snakes look all innocent coiled up in the sun, too,” she said.

“Good. He doesn’t deserve your pity.” Tanner looked round the room. “I’ll check the wardrobe. See if you can rouse him.”

The wardrobe between the curtained windows held a well-tended valise, folded and laundered clothes neatly stacked, as well as a pair of well-polished boots and a pair of evening slippers. The evening slippers Rosing had been wearing when he stepped on the back of Lady Claire Jellicoe’s train, and shoved her face against the wall.

Tanner’s vision went blank and black and red. Funny how the simplest things could trigger such unmitigated rage. But the shoes didn’t matter; the waistcoat did.

Tanner flipped through the careful stacks. Only a few shirts, four cravats, and two pairs of breeches. Rosing had not intended to stay in Richmond long. And there were only two waistcoats. The first was the sort of crisp, warm lemon-colored linen that would look good at a garden party or in a drawing room. But the second. The second was evening wear. A starkly white silk designed to be worn with a dark coat, like the superfine from Schweitzer and Davidson, and white satin evening breeches.

Plain white silk. No gold threads. No twilled weave. No rip or sign of repair on the slit pockets. Not the man Maisy Carter had scratched at in her desperation. And not a married man, with a ring upon his finger.

Two pieces of evidence that said Rosing was not a murderer.

But there was something else. There was a small, round leather box—the sort of thing in which a man might keep his ornaments, like a cravat pin. Or a watch fob.

There was no fob, but then Tanner hadn’t expected one—Rosing’s fob would likely be the one in his possession. Except for the contrary evidence of the waistcoat. So, for a long moment Tanner stared down into the box, too intent upon what he didn’t see to take note of what did lay coiled in the bottom. Hanks of blond hair. Tokens of Rosing’s conquests. And amid them was a simple gold cross, studded with garnets. Just the sort of humble piece of jewelry a girl like Maisy Carter would have been given by a former mistress as a parting gift. It was worn and well used. dirty even, as if she touched it often and never took it off.

Rosing might not be a murderer, but he was certainly a vicious rapist. He had strangled Maisy when he raped her. He would have had this cross on him, in his pocket, when he went back downstairs to find Lady Claire Jellicoe, and put his filthy hands upon her, and drag her down the garden, and try once more to satisfy himself with violence.

The man in the bed didn’t look like a rapist. He looked small and diminished, swathed in a bandage that wound around his head like a dowager’s cap. But he looked like he was coming round, as Claire waved a vial of strong-smelling salts close under his nose.

“Wake up, Rosing,” he growled close to the bastard’s ear. “I’ve come to finish what I started.”

It would be an easy thing to kill him here and now. Tanner had told himself that if given another chance he would kill him. He had come here with just that intention riding like a whip at the back of his mind. It would be all too easy. And no one would ever know.

“Tanner.”

Claire would know.

But killing Rosing now would be a mercy, and save the man the ironic horror of recovering just so he could be hanged. And it would certainly satisfy the savage bloodlust coursing through Tanner’s veins. But choking the life out of Rosing just the way he had choked the life out of Maisy Carter would only serve to push Tanner closer to the noose.

“Tanner,” she said again, stronger this time. “Look at me.”

It was enough. Enough to remind himself that he was not an animal—a ravening beast with no brain to guide his heart. No matter his savage lust for revenge, he could choose.

He could choose, he had told Claire. And so he would.

He would choose the right course.

Tanner shifted his focus to Rosing, staring up at them with a muzzy combination of fear and disassociation that must come from the laudanum. “Tell us what you did.”

Rosing transferred his wide, startled gaze to Claire. In the dim light from the single candle her white muslin dress was illuminated, making her look like an avenging angel come down to take God’s vengeance.

She said, “Tell us about Maisy Carter. I know what you did to me. But now I want to hear you admit what you did to Maisy Carter.”

Rosing’s gaze darted unevenly back and forth between the two of them and then at the door, as if he might find some salvation there. But perhaps he realized he wouldn’t, because he looked back to Claire before he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His voice was a dry, weak scrawl, and Tanner saw Claire, being the kindhearted person she was, transfer her gaze to the glass of water on the table. “Should I give him water, Claire, for his dry throat?” Tanner asked. “Or should I break his other leg, so he tells you the truth?”

She flinched a little at the violence in his voice. But not as much as Rosing, who looked like he was trying to crawl out of the bed. Tanner leaned his weight onto the sheets, trapping the man beneath the linen. “What’s it to be, Claire?”

“The leg.”

Ah, that was his girl. His immaculate avenging angel.

“No.” Rosing’s protest was stronger. “No, please. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“The maid,” Tanner clarified for him. “The maid you raped before you tried to rape Lady Claire Jellicoe.”

Rosing’s wide, dark gaze swung back to Claire.