Alyssa Everett (21 page)

This had such a twisted logic to it, I scarcely knew how to respond. Then I realized it would be ludicrous to respond at all. Cliburne was well out of the whole business, and Helen’s feelings for John Mainsforth—who, to my surprise, looked visibly pained at the questionable ethics of her devotion to him—were immaterial. The man was a monster, pure and simple.

If I couldn’t wake Helen up with logic, perhaps a good scolding would do. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Helen Jeffords! It’s wrong to marry a man you don’t love, and it’s downright wicked to do it with the intention of playing him false. As for Mr. Mainsforth here—”

Helen burst into tears. “It’s easy for you to criticize! You may have your pick of suitors, and marry for love without a second thought. Some of us aren’t so lucky!”

Having lived with Helen’s crocodile tears for twenty years, I remained unmoved. “What on earth does that mean?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know how much better you have it than I do,” she raged between sobs. “It’s so unfair! Grandmama Merton left her entire fortune to you, while I got nothing but her ugly old tea service. You have
everything
—the brains and the bosoms and all the money too!”

She threw herself, weeping, against Mr. Mainsforth, who gathered her in his arms and made sympathetic shushing sounds while I stared at the pair of them, trying to make sense of what she’d just said.

“Helen,” I said in confusion, “do you mean to say
you
envy
me?
”

She turned a tear-streaked face in my direction. “You know I do! I’ve tried all my life to be more like you, but I’ve never been anything but a miserable failure at it. Well, at least John loves me for myself. And I’ll never,
never
love any man as much as I love him.”

I blinked in astonishment. It had never occurred to me that a girl as lovely and appealing as my sister could possibly envy anyone, least of all me. I’d considered Grandmama’s fortune a sort of consolation prize, since everyone always said a beauty like Helen was bound to make a brilliant match, while I had little expectation of landing a rich husband. My grandmother’s money hadn’t brought me love or happiness, and, wrapped up in my own disappointments, I’d never stopped to consider that it might make a difference to Helen. Yet here she was, in love with a penniless suitor, while I sat securely on my five thousand pounds a year, oblivious to her heartache.

Poor Helen. And I’d thought she was the fortunate one...

But even so, how could she be so blind to the truth about Mr. Mainsforth? By rights, I should have taken her by the elbow and pulled her across the passage to view the ruin he’d made of my bedchamber, as well as the peephole he’d used to spy on me. I should have shown her the jeering caricatures he’d drawn and, more important, reminded her how Sam Garvey and Mr. Harriman had looked with their skulls smashed in. John Mainsforth had obviously been passing in and out of the house at will, probably with Helen’s help. She needed to put an end to this dangerous infatuation and use her head before it was too late.

Unfortunately, seeing the dewy-eyed longing with which she clung to Mr. Mainsforth, I realized nothing more I might say would do any good. Besides, after Ben’s humiliating rejection, the ransacking of my bedchamber, and now the discovery that my only sister was madly in love with a cold-blooded killer, I had precious little fight left in me. I turned to leave.

Helen looked up from where she’d been crying on Mr. Mainsforth’s shoulder. “Where are you going? You don’t mean to tell Papa I have John in my room, do you?”

“Papa never listens to a word I say. For your own good I’m going over his head, to someone who’s even more determined than I am to see the real killer brought to justice.”

Fifteen minutes later, a hired hack deposited me in front of the Duchess of Ormesby’s door without so much as a maid to lend me consequence. The Ormesby House porter, a grand figure in black-and-gold livery, peered down at me with a faintly challenging air.

My hands tightened nervously on my reticule. “Would you please inform Her Grace that Lady Barbara Jeffords has come to call on a matter of some urgency?”

“Her Grace is out at present, my lady.”

“Oh.” My spirits sank. With neither Cliburne at my elbow nor a maid to play propriety, I hesitated to ask for the duke directly. But however forward or encroaching my call might appear, I desperately needed help. Every minute Helen refused to see the truth about John Mainsforth was another minute our family remained at the mercy of a killer. “Then would you announce me to the duke?”

The porter bowed, only to return a moment later. “His Grace will see you in the drawing room, my lady.”

As the servant ushered me into the duke’s presence, Ben’s father came forward to greet me. He was holding his head at the same self-assured angle as Ben did, wearing a preoccupied version of Ben’s smile. I felt a sharp stab in the vicinity of my heart. In my agitation at discovering Mr. Mainsforth with my sister, I’d nearly managed to forget, at least for the moment, the way Ben had cast me aside. Now, the resemblance between father and son brought the painful reality flooding back.

“Lady Barbara,” the duke said eagerly as I sank into a curtsey, “any news? Has your sister decided at last to amend her testimony?”

I shook my head, sorry to have to disappoint him. “No, sir, I’m afraid she hasn’t. But I’ve just learned why she’s so set on making matters difficult, and the reason has me most distressed.”

The duke frowned and gestured toward a sofa of blue figured silk. “Do sit down and tell me all about it.”

Taking the seat he’d indicated, I related how I’d discovered Helen and John Mainsforth together. I blushed to have to admit the truth, but I could see no other way to explain why Helen had accepted Cliburne while remaining devoted to his illegitimate half-brother.

Pacing before the sofa, the duke wore a faintly bemused expression. “Well,” he said when I finished, “your sister certainly has an unconventional approach to problem-solving.”

I looked down at my lap in embarrassment. “That’s a most charitable way of putting it. But however improper her intentions may have been, she’s still my sister and I fear for her safety.” Looking back up, I met the duke’s gray eyes. “Truly, no one is safe as long as the real killer remains at large. I know how much you and the duchess wish to clear Ben, and I know Mr. Mainsforth has a connection to her family. Will you help?”

The duke stood at the ready, his feet planted, his hands clasped behind his back. “Let me see if I understand this correctly. Lady Helen refuses to recant her testimony because she blames Ben for spoiling her chance to marry John.”

“Yes.”

“And you have two aims in this, to ensure your sister’s safety and happiness, and to see that justice is done.”

“Yes.” What a relief it was to shift the burden of my problems to another, more capable pair of shoulders. “That’s it exactly.”

The duke nodded slowly, a faint smile curving his lips. “Then rest assured, I shall be only too happy to help.”

Chapter Twenty

Barbara

The duke was better than his word. He called for his carriage at once, and we set out for Leonard House together. As soon as we arrived, I led him up to the drawing room, then hurried to Helen’s bedchamber to rap on her door.

“You’re wanted in the drawing room, Helen,” I called through the closed door. “Mr. Mainsforth too.”

Having said all I cared to say to that gentleman, at least until he was safely behind bars, I crossed the corridor to my own room. Before asking Frye to hail a hack for me, I’d left instructions to have my ransacked belongings put back in order, and now I discovered my abigail and the chambermaid hard at work.

“Oh, my.” I surveyed the damage anew. The maid was on her hands and knees, raking together the goose down that littered the floor, while Sills, my abigail, shook feathers from the clothes that had been tossed out of my wardrobe. “I’d nearly forgotten about this mess. You have quite a task ahead of you.”

Sills looked up with her usual brisk, efficient air. “Yes, my lady, but we’re making good progress. Give us an hour or so, and we’ll have everything back as right as rain.”

“Only an hour? You’d have to be a miracle worker, Sills.”

“No, it’s not so bad as all that, my lady. You’ve just been a shade down in the mouth lately, if you don’t mind my saying so, and feeling easily discouraged.”

“I
am
a bit blue-deviled.” I held back a sigh. “It’s been that kind of day.”

Sills gave me an encouraging smile. “Well, then, why not go shopping? Nothing picks up a girl’s spirits in troubled times like a new bonnet. You ought to get out, my lady, while we’ll need another hour here to set matters right.”

A new bonnet wasn’t going to change the way Ben felt about me or make the pain of being cast aside go away. I shook my head. “Things are a good deal more serious than that.”

“Well, of course they are, my lady, what with the awful goings-on about this house in the last week. But that’s all the more reason you should get out and take a little fresh air.”

Perhaps she was right. At least a walk outdoors would give me time to sort out my thoughts and to reconsider my future. “I suppose I could do with a little exercise. Thank you, Sills.”

Five minutes later, I was setting out across the park. What had begun as a sunny day was now turning cool and blustery, with the wind picking up and gray clouds massing in the sky. A sudden gust caught my skirts and wrapped them around my legs. But I didn’t mind the weather, for braving it made me feel more intrepid, somehow. After murders and betrayal and heartbreak, a little wind and chill weren’t going to stop me. I tied my bonnet more securely under my chin and quickened my pace, heading in the general direction of Lansdowne House at the south end of the square.

By now the duke was probably confronting Mr. Mainsforth. What was happening back in the drawing room? Could the duke convince his nephew to turn himself in to Bow Street? Surely if Mr. Mainsforth confessed, the authorities would have to set Ben free.

Ben.
At the mere thought of him, a fresh ache knifed through me.

I stubbornly ignored the pain. If I still hoped for his release, it wasn’t because I was foolhardy enough to have feelings for him, not now that I knew he’d only been toying with me. It was simply because I had no wish to see an innocent man hang. From here on out, even if I should hear Ben’s name mentioned, I would feel nothing more than a high-minded desire to see justice served.

I was determined that was all I should feel.

I’d made two complete circuits of the park and was nearing the gardens of Lansdowne House again when the clouds burst and it began to rain—hard. Ducking my head, I raced across the street for the closest cover, an awning projecting from a doorway at the corner of the square. Rain drummed violently on the green canvas, but once sheltered beneath it, I remained tolerably dry.

Nor was I the only pedestrian to seek refuge there. A young man and a young lady came through the rain at a run, the man laughing at both the downpour and his companion’s squeals of consternation. They’d no sooner joined me under the awning than the young man recognized me, doffing his hat to reveal a pale face with slightly protuberant eyes under a thatch of blond hair.

“Why, Lady Barbara! Were you caught in this deluge too?”

“Mr. Stewart—and Miss Stewart! What a pleasant surprise, meeting you. Yes, I was out walking when the clouds gave way.”

Mr. Stewart was one of my brother Will’s old friends. His family had hosted the picnic I’d attended almost a month before, the one at which Cliburne had asked me about proposing to Helen and I’d stupidly assumed he meant to offer for me. It seemed so long ago. Had I really once hoped to marry Lord Cliburne?

“Felt the need to get out, did you?” Mr. Stewart said.

“We read about the murders in the paper,” his sister added in an eager, confiding tone. “How dreadful it must have been for you!”

“Not nearly as dreadful as it was for the two men who died,” I said. “Fortunately, I have reason to believe the fiend who committed the crimes may soon be brought to justice.”

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ll hang Beningbrough all right.” Grinning, Mr. Stewart cocked his head to one side and stuck out his tongue in a quick pantomime of a man strangling at the end of a noose. The action would have been disturbing enough from anyone, but with Mr. Stewart’s pale face and bug eyes, it was positively ghastly.

“I read that Lord Beningbrough had been making up to you,” Miss Stewart said. “How disappointing that he should have turned out to be a killer. You might have been a duchess someday! But you’re well out of it in the end.” She lowered her voice to a salacious whisper. “You know what they say about his father, and the apple never falls far from the tree.”

Heat rushed over me. Yet, oddly, I wasn’t angry or embarrassed for my own sake, but rather for Ben’s. He was innocent of murder and cautious of his family name, yet this pair found his troubles little more than a source of tittle-tattle and diversion.

I had to struggle to keep my tone cool and matter of fact. “You’ve obviously been paying too much heed to the papers, despite their appalling habit of printing rumor as if it were fact. The truth is, Lord Beningbrough has been unjustly accused. What’s more, the Duke of Ormesby is one of the finest gentlemen I know. In fact, I’d sooner be a member of his family than—” I groped for a tactful comparison, and when none was forthcoming, gave in to my anger and finished, “—than waste another second of my valuable time standing here talking to you.”

With that, I stepped forth from under the awning and out into the downpour, my head held high.

Ben

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. I pushed myself up off my cot and crossed to the cell door in a single motion, irrationally hoping Barbara had returned.

“Oh. It’s only you,” I said when I saw my father approaching with the turnkey.

My father smiled his usual wry smile. “Not the most enthusiastic greeting I’ve ever received. How are you faring, Ben?”

I moved out of the way as the guard opened the cell door to admit him. “I’ve had better days.”

“I can believe it. Fortunately, I have some news that should cheer you.”

He’d no sooner entered than the guard locked the door behind him. Only three days in prison and already I was becoming all too used to iron bars, heavy locks and a cell I could cross in a few paces. No wonder I was losing hope. “I could use some good news for a change.”

“Sir Francis Ames wished to tell you himself, but I insisted it was a parent’s privilege,” my father said as the guard’s shuffling steps started away. “I went to Leonard House today—”

I perked up. “Yes?”

“Lady Helen Jeffords has agreed to recant her testimony and admit she invented your connection to the first murder victim. The King’s Bench is granting Sir Francis’s petition to review the case, and he believes her retraction should weigh heavily with the justices.”

“That’s...heartening.” I wondered why I wasn’t more encouraged. Perhaps it was because my experience of the courts told me it would be a miracle if Lady Helen’s retraction made any difference at all. Or perhaps it was because when my father had mentioned Leonard House just now, I’d had the harebrained notion he’d come to tell me Barbara regretted storming out of my cell and was asking to see me again.

My father regarded me with his head tilted to one side. “Come now. Surely such news deserves a bit more fanfare than that. I know it’s not the fashion for young men to affect much interest in anything, but this could mean the difference in your defense.”

“I’m happy to hear it, sir. Truly. And I’m grateful to you and Sir Francis. If I seem less than cheerful, it’s just that Lady Barbara was here earlier and...” Sinking to a seat on my cot, I gave in to my bitterness. “Her visit didn’t go well. I wanted to prepare her for the worst, but all I succeeded in doing was making a botch of things.”

From the moment Barbara had stormed out, there’d been a painful ache in my chest. I could still hear her voice in my head, still sense the softness of her body from when I’d held her in my arms, still see those long-lashed green eyes gazing up into mine. I felt Barbara’s absence more keenly than I felt other people’s presence.

My father regarded me with a pensive frown. “It’s not like you to be so hard on yourself, Ben.”

That might be true, but it wasn’t every day I had the only woman I’d ever loved walk out on me. Only days before, a promising future had stretched out ahead of me. Now, despite news that might clear me of murder, happiness seemed out of reach, and only because I’d tried to do the right thing rather than drag Barbara’s fortunes down with my own. “It’s not like me to make such a colossal hash of things, either. You don’t know Barbara. I doubt she’ll ever forgive me.”

My father lounged with one shoulder against the stone wall, his elegant appearance sharply at odds with the crude surroundings. “On the contrary, I believe I’ve grown to know Lady Barbara quite well in the past few days, and something tells me she’s as eager to mend fences as you are.”

I gave a skeptical grunt. “What makes you say that?”

Instead of answering my question, he gazed off thoughtfully into the distance—all ten feet of it, given the size of my cell. “Do you know why Lady Helen changed her mind and decided to recant her testimony? She’s in love with your cousin John.”

“You mean Teddy.”

My father’s eyes twinkled. “No, I mean John. Apparently they met before Teddy ever set eyes on the girl. She accepted Teddy’s proposal primarily to maintain ties with John.”

I shook my head. “Leave it to Lady Helen.”

“Her initial refusal to recant her testimony was apparently meant to punish you for throwing an obstacle in John’s path. He went to Leonard House to ask for her hand on the same day Teddy cried off, you see, but because of your arrest, Lord Leonard was in no mood to approve his suit.”

“John is claiming he went to Leonard House that day to offer for Lady Helen?” I jumped to my feet. “Has no one considered that it might be an empty excuse? Barbara suspects he’s the real killer. She found a notebook that belonged to the first victim—”

My father cut me off with an upraised hand. “Lady Barbara already made the same objection, and I know all about the notebook. I also know John couldn’t possibly have killed Sam Garvey. I’ve made a few inquiries of my own, and on the evening of the first murder John was with your uncle Daventry at White’s, right up until they received Teddy’s summons. You might have discovered as much yourself, if you’d only troubled to ask him.”

His words brought me up short. Thinking back to the day I’d questioned John at Daventry House, I realized I’d been so determined to impress Barbara by solving the murder before she did, I’d interrogated my cousin as if he were a common criminal. As much as I’d always prided myself on my family loyalty, I’d peppered John with questions about the blackmail plot and his part in Sam’s murder, never stopping to ask whether he had an alibi. Perhaps Barbara was right, and I needed prison to teach me a little humility.

My father pushed himself off from where he’d been leaning against the wall. “Once I learned John was the other man in the blackmail letters and Lady Helen had her heart set on marrying him, it seemed clear enough how to win her cooperation. I’m sending John to Parliament as member for Lytchbury.”

I regarded my father in surprise. “You’re giving John a seat in the Commons?”

“What’s the point in owning a close borough if not to advance young men of energy and talent, and allow them to serve their party and their country? With John’s looks, address and discretion, I’m convinced he’ll make a fine politician. I should have thought of it sooner, to be honest, but Daventry seemed content enough to have him at home.” My father shrugged. “John may never be rich, but he’ll have patronage enough to keep a wife, with or without Lord Leonard’s blessing. Once I mentioned the Lytchbury seat, Lady Helen was only too happy to recant.”

Yes, I could believe that. If I had to pick the one girl in the world most likely to change her tune for personal gain, it would be Lady Helen Jeffords. “But won’t everyone say we’ve simply bought her testimony?”

“John and Lady Helen have agreed not to make a public announcement for the present, and then to marry quietly. Since Lady Helen was so recently engaged to Teddy, it’s in their best interests as well as our own.”

That was reassuring, and at least I could content myself that we wanted nothing more than the truth. “What does Barbara say to all this?”

My father’s brow crinkled thoughtfully. “I can’t say. I spoke to John and Lady Helen in private, then went directly to Sir Francis with the news.”

“If I know Barbara, she won’t rest easy until the real killer is caught. I know I shan’t.”

My father nodded. “Naturally, I’ve asked Sir Francis to continue the investigation. In the meantime, my hope is that with John and Lady Helen’s secret out, there’ll be no more blackmail demands and thus no motive for further attacks.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely convinced. What about the peephole in Barbara’s room? Had that simply been part of the blackmail plot? I sincerely hoped Sir Francis would have more success in getting to the bottom of the mystery than I’d had.