Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (17 page)

Alec took her silence for stubborn disbelief.

“Whatever your faith in him, I cannot rule out Cleveley’s involvement in concealing his stepson’s despicable behavior. When I offered his Grace the opportunity to deny the rape, impregnation and abandonment of Catherine Bourdon, he gave me the satisfaction of telling me he was off to Somerset—”

“His estate is in Somerset,” Selina interrupted defensively.

“—and any interference on my part would jeopardize the Cleveley name.”

“He said that?” Selina asked rhetorically, knowing Alec would never lie to her, whatever imagined jealousies prejudiced him against the Duke. “Then it’s just as well Tal and I are not half a day behind him. We leave for Ellick Farm today. Miranda will need our support more than ever if indeed what Weir has told you is true. Although...” A thoughtful expression came into her dark eyes and she plucked the Duke’s note off the mantle. “This is my annual invitation to the Michaelmas ball at Bratton Dene, the Duke’s estate. All the local landowners are invited. Ellick Farm, the farm where Miranda and Sophie live, is on the Duke’s estate, in fact it’s visible from Bratton Dene’s east turret, and this year I’ve been specifically requested to bring Tal. He’s been commissioned to paint an official portrait of the Duke. Why would he give Tal such a lucrative and honored commission if he thought my little brother was blackmailing Lord George?”

“You are Cleveley’s tenant?” Alec asked, his annoyed surprise overshadowing her pertinent question and the fact he had been about to voice the same thought.

“Yes. He gave me the farm for my lifetime. A retreat, he said; a place where I could get away from—from J-L.”

Alec smiled crookedly. “A clever ploy. Your husband would never have dared trespass on
the great man’s
lands.”

She sank onto the window seat, silk petticoats billowing out around her, and clasped her hands in her lap. “You have no right to mock him for providing me with the only sanctuary I had from that fiend.” Then made to rise at a persistent scratching on the outer door but Alec sat beside her and took hold of her hands. “The door…” she began and faltered when he gently planted his lips to one wrist then the other.

“Forgive me,” he said gently. “It is I who am acting the fiend. I’m jealous of Cleveley because he was able to offer you some respite from that madman, when I could not. I am forever grateful to the Duke for sheltering you.” He brushed a wisp of apricot curl from her cheek. “I meant every word I said to you in Paris. In and out of your bed. I repeat the question I put to you then, and I want an answer now, before you run off to the wilds of Somerset and the company of others: Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

She kept her head bowed, unable to meet the expectation in his blue eyes, and withdrew her hands from his. She wanted to marry him more than anything she had ever wanted in her life but Cleveley was the voice of reason. Marriage was out of the question. As a wife she could not give Alec what he deserved and had a right to expect. The past was unalterable. She had no right to ruin his future.

With all the courage she could muster she met his unblinking gaze.

“Alec... Darling, I love you with all my heart... I just... I just can’t marry you.” His silence made her stumble on to say what she had not said in Paris, anxious her nerve would not fail her a second time. “I thought perhaps we could come to some—some
arrangement
. It’s a common enough practice, particularly amongst our kind, as you know. Of course I would have to be discreet, for Cobham’s sake, but Tal would understand, in fact I don’t think he would much care one way or t’other. I’ve given the notion plenty of thought and the more I think about it the more I’m certain such an arrangement would suit us both.”

Alec’s eyebrows drew sharply together. “You’re willing to be my mistress in preference to becoming my wife?”

Selina smiled hopefully. “Yes, that’s it.”

He could hardly believe his ears. The hope in her dark eyes and the accompanying anxious smile made him feel hollow.

“You want me to visit you under cover of darkness, via the tradesmen’s entrance and skulk up the back stairs, so you can play the whore for me behind the closed doors of your boudoir? And if we are discreet you can remain the respectable wealthy widow, accepted in all the best drawing rooms, your elder brother none the wiser?” He swallowed. “You would be satisfied with such a beggarly arrangement?”

“When you put it in such terms—”

“For God’s sake, Selina, what other terms are there? You’ve no idea what it is to be a man’s whore!”

Selina blushed. “Of course I do. I’m not so naïve.”

“Indeed? Then do you think so little of
my
character that you believe I look upon you as nothing more than a desirable means of satisfying my lust? That I may avail myself of your body and your carnal talents where and when it suits me with little or no thought to your needs. That is a whore.”

“Many a nobleman has loved his mistress more than his wife.”

Alec sighed his exasperation. “Selina, I
love
you. I want you to be my wife, not my whore or my beloved mistress,” he said patiently, again taking hold of her hands. “You mean so much more to me. I couldn’t conceive of you in such an undignified role. I want to wake up each morning with my wife, not catch a few hours of temporary satisfaction whenever the urge strikes. I want you as my life’s companion, for you to take your rightful place beside me as Marchioness Halsey; for us to share our lives as one, for us to have children—”

“No! Please—
Please
don’t ask that of me,” she pleaded croakily and snatched back her hands. “I must answer the door. It could be Tal...”

Alec roughly caught her to him.

“Up until a month ago, until I came to you in Paris, you gave no indication that you’d had a change of heart—”

“Not of heart.
Never
of heart.” She struggled against his arms encircling her waist. “I must answer the door.
Please
. You know—I can’t—I can’t
bear
to be—to be
trapped
.”

Her plea of desperation brought him to his senses and he released her, instantly ashamed of having caused her a moment’s distress. For all her outward serenity, the emotional scars of an abusive marriage had yet to fully heal. He had hoped their marriage would help that healing process, indeed, bring closure to that abhorrent chapter in her life, but marriage did not now seem probable. Why had she suddenly decided against marrying him? Why had she turned to Cleveley for support? Why did he feel as if she was withholding something fundamental to their happiness? Why couldn’t she confide in him? Bewildered and feeling as if their future was out of his control, he wrenched open the door.

Selina’s maid fell into the dressing room and dropped a curtsy, saying without preamble, eyes lowered to the floorboards, “My lady, it’s Mr. Vesey. He’s waiting you in the carriage.”

Evans was ignored as Selina pursued Alec into the passageway. He bowed to her in farewell, saying with a coolness that was much more hurtful than any angry outburst,

“I need you in my life. Wife or mistress, you decide. But in either
rôle
, I enter by the front door or not at all. Good day, Madam.”

When Alec returned to St. James’s Place his butler greeted him in the hall, eager with the news Plantagenet Halsey had come downstairs and was partaking of a very late breakfast in the dining room. In fact the old man was sharing his kippers with an absurd looking gentleman with overlarge teeth and dressed in a canary yellow frockcoat that had seen better days. But Alec was so grim-faced and preoccupied that Wantage kept his mouth shut. He watched two footmen divest Lord Halsey of greatcoat and sword, before his lordship took himself and his black mood off to the billiard room.

Alec hoped that by knocking a few billiard balls about before nuncheon his anger and frustration with Selina would burn itself out before he went up to see how his uncle was faring. His grim solitude lasted all of ten minutes.

There was a perfunctory knock on the door which he ignored but Tam bounded into the room anyway, carrot hair falling into his green eyes and hugging a leather bound text to his chest. The heavy curtains had been pulled back to allow light to stream across the green baize surface of the billiard table where the three balls had been scattered. The rest of the paneled room was in shadow and it was in the shadows that Alec stood chalking the tip of his cue while absent-mindedly pondering his next shot. Tam saw him nonetheless and went straight up to him, and such was his anxiety that he spoke without first being addressed.

“Mr. Wantage said I’d find you here, sir. Sir, the rumor circulating town is that because I dispense medicines to the poor and because you were at the dinner party at which Mr. Blackwell died, that you—that we had a hand—Sir, just because you were falsely accused of mur-murder once don’t mean—Well, it ain’t fair!”

“Yes, I’ve heard that rumor, too. I hope you didn’t give the doubters the benefit of argument?”

“I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of speech!”

“After all, Blackwell may indeed have had a heart attack. He wasn’t exactly the picture of health,” Alec answered in a clipped voice, and more for the benefit of relieving the boy’s anxiety than his belief in such a statement. He went to the table and sized up his shot. “You have more important matters with which to concern yourself. Tomorrow is your exam—”

“But, sir, the more I think on it the more I’m convinced Mr. Blackwell could’ve been poisoned. I didn’t get the opportunity to tell you earlier, on account of Mr. Halsey’s injury, but while I was at the Stock and Buckle I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. Molyneux and he said—”

“Mr.—er—Molyneux?”

Tam dropped the heavy leather-bound text on the sideboard and returned to the table, absently scraping back the mop of hair falling into his eyes.

“Mr. Molyneux is the Duke of Cleveley’s valet. He doesn’t usually speak to us—the other valets and upper footmen—just sits in his corner and reads the newssheets. He thinks we’re beneath his touch on account of his grand position with such an important nobleman. We all refer to him as
the Duke
and that’s the way he likes it too, sir.”

“This conversation?” Alec prompted and racked his cue after a particularly dismal attempt at potting the red.

“He only spoke to me because he owed me a favor. He suffers with an arthritic knee and I supply him with an oil preparation that helps relieve the pain. The thing is, sir,” Tam continued as he followed Alec around the table, completely oblivious to his master’s brooding preoccupation, “I managed to turn the conversation to Mr. Blackwell. Mr. Molyneux was reluctant to speak about Mr. Blackwell’s stay at St. James’s Square. All he would say was that Mr. Blackwell
was not all he seemed
and that
some wrongs just can’t be undone
. But what wrongs could Mr. Blackwell cause a Duke? It just don’t seem possible.”

“Do you believe Mr. Molyneux spoke with sincerity?”

Tam nodded. “Yes, sir. He was quite upset about it. It was as if
he
had been ill-used by Mr. Blackwell.”

Alec leaned against the table and crossed his arms, the boy’s enthusiastic questioning bringing him sufficiently out of his angry abstraction to ask, “Mr. Molyneux’s feelings aside for the moment, why do you now suspect Mr. Blackwell may have been poisoned?”

Tam took a moment to collect his thoughts.

“You asked me if poisoning was a possibility and I’ve thought about it. To begin with I tried to rule it out, that it was an impossibility for Mr. Blackwell to have been poisoned at dinner, or just before, so that the effects of whatever substance was administered took effect while he was at the dinner party. The more I tried to rule out poisoning the more possible it became, until I was forced to admit that he could’ve been poisoned so that it
appeared
as if he had suffered a heart attack.”

“Poison administered before or during dinner?”

“The fact he was ill so soon after eating would suggest the poison was administered during the meal.”

“I see. As I recall, you said that it was an easy thing to poison a man at a dinner party but what we need to be looking for is a poison which reproduces the symptoms of a heart attack, and the form of that poison to know how it was administered...?”

“That’s right, sir! And in this instance we need to establish how such a poison could have been given to one man without his fellows being poisoned into the bargain.”

“A very deliberate and premeditated action with no room for error... And do you know of a poison which can reproduce the symptoms of a heart attack?”

Tam could not control his enthusiasm. His freckled face broke into a grin. “Yes, sir. It came to me while I was reading up on the preparation of abortifacients.” His smile dropped into an embarrassed frown and he looked uncomfortable. “Not that I’m in the habit of making up such preparations, sir. I just thought the examiners might ask, if—”

“It is quite unnecessary for you to offer me an explanation,” Alec said placidly. “I have every confidence in your judgment. The poison...?”