Deadly Engagement: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (41 page)

St. Neots House was shut up. The furniture was put in covers. Only a small staff of servants remained to see to its upkeep. The rest were sent to the Duchess’s country estate in Bedfordshire. The stables were empty of horses and equipage. Two huge travel coaches stood in the circular drive, loaded down with portmanteaux, trunks, and pieces of furniture the Duchess declared she could not live without. The drivers awaited their occupants to be off.

The travelers were standing in the hall seeing to last minute details. Alec found them there, with the Duchess issuing instructions to her gardener for the upkeep of her precious flowers and shrubs while she was absent. He had not been back to the house since his return to St. James’s Place three weeks earlier. Legal matters to do with his brother’s death, the estates and financial affairs had kept him so busy that each day merged into the next, leaving him little time to himself. When he had received the Duchess’s note informing him she was quitting St. Neots House he had given it little attention, thinking she meant to go into Bedfordshire for a few months of well-earned and necessary seclusion. It was Selina’s letter, hand-delivered only the day before, which brought him out of his preoccupation and sent him galloping across country to see her.

She was sitting on a sofa waiting on the Duchess and Emily, Evans beside her, fussing over the fall of her mistress’s unruly curls. The older woman saw Alec first and decided she needed a breath of fresh air before being shut up in a coach for hours on end. Before Alec could go to Selina the Duchess appeared from the back of the hallway and intercepted him, giving him her cheek to kiss.

“You look worn out,” she said with concern.

“It comes from many hours closeted with lawyers I have no desire to see.”

“How are…things?”

Alec sighed. “In a mess. It will take months to sort it all out. I just hope I don’t die of boredom in the mean time. I expect my visit to Delvin to be no better.”

“As bad as all that?”

“Yes. I am informed the weeds are only five feet tall on the south lawn, and that with extensive repair work three of the chimneys can be saved from demolition. As to the state of the tenant farms, I’ll have to do the rounds before I know the worst.”

“You poor boy! You’ll have your hands full for months.” She glanced at Selina. “Perhaps that is just as well,” she murmured and smiled brightly at Alec. “Emily’s taking one last look at the garden. I’ll just fetch her.” And left Alec alone with Selina in the vastness of the marbled hall.

“Olivia’s right,” Selina said finally, breaking the silence and bravely meeting Alec’s steady gaze. “You’ll be so preoccupied sorting out Delvin’s mess that you won’t have time to—the time to—”

“That doesn’t make your going away any easier,” he said quietly, taking her hand when she stood. “Must you go?”

“The time apart will do us good. You have so much to do as the new earl, and my mourning must run its course if we are to be married, as Olivia keeps insisting, above reproach and with society’s blessing.” She forced herself to smile. “I’ve never been to Paris. Talgarth is meeting us there. Won’t that be a treat for me?”

“If it were only Paris…”

She looked up into his blue eyes then and wished she hadn’t. “I can’t be with you—yet. So I can’t stay in London. And we agreed not to announce our betrothal until my return. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I want to say yes because I’m selfish. I don’t want to be left here without you. But I understand why we must wait.”

Selina bit her lip and controlled the urge to throw herself in his arms. She must be strong for both their sakes. “I won’t be gone above nine months. Nine months will go so quickly. You’ll be far too busy to think about me! Which is as it should be.”

He smiled and raised her hand to his lips. “You have a very poor opinion of my constancy, my darling.”

Selina turned her head away. “I didn’t mean…”

“Forgive me,” he said gently, knowing she was on the verge of tears. “I’m being a selfish bore. Nine months will pass soon enough.”

Selina nodded, feeling suddenly depressed. She wanted him to stop her from going. She wanted him to be angry with her for leaving him. Somehow that would make their parting so much easier. But he wouldn’t get angry; he wasn’t like that. And she loved him too well to remain in London and be his mistress. That’s what would happen if she stayed. And that wouldn’t be good for him or her, not if society found out. Not with the suspicious death of his brother still on everyone’s lips. She tried to smile. “I’ll write.”

He chuffed her under the chin. “I should hope so. I’ll send news about your home for orphans.”

“Yes. I’d like to know how it goes on. I’m sure your uncle will keep me abreast of developments.”

“Yes, he’s very pleased with himself to be a member of the Board of Trustees. He tells me the endowment is well over eight thousand pounds. That was very generous of you; as was your gesture to name the orphanage after Jack.”

“Generosity had nothing to do with it,” Selina answered truthfully. “I couldn’t touch a penny from J-L’s sordid dealings in good conscience. Best that it be put to good purpose.”

“Jack would have been pleased.”

“Yes, yes, he would’ve,” she answered and changed the topic. “Did I tell you Cosmo is taking Emily and I to Venice to meet Emily’s mamma?”

“Cosmo?”

“You didn’t expect Emily and I to go all the way to Venice without a male chaperone?”

Alec’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. “But…
Cosmo
?”

“And what do you find so amusing?” she asked indignantly.

“Cosmo is such a poor traveler; you and he both! I pity Emily sitting between the grumblings of the two of you. Besides, he has no sense of direction.” He touched her cheek. “I think I’d best come with you to Venice.”

“No!” she said before she could stop herself and blushed. “I didn’t mean…”

He smiled crookedly and let his hand drop to his side. “It’s perfectly all right, my love,” he said dryly. “I understand better than you know. After such shocking events, we both need not only time but distance. And then we can start afresh.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I hoped… I knew you would understand.”

Their moment of intimacy came to an abrupt end when Emily, a large plumed hat over her blonde curls, and Sir Cosmo, fiddling with the shiny big buttons of his traveling cloak, came through from the gardens with the Duchess a step behind giving hurried last minute instructions to the housekeeper.

“Alec! Come to see us off?” Sir Cosmo said cheerfully. “You’re just in time. We’ll miss the Dover packet if we don’t bustle along.” He stuck out his hand in response to Alec and they shook hands. “I hate farewells,” he grumbled. “I’ll write from Paris, and Venice. And where ever else we end up!” He glanced at Emily. “Got to keep an eye on the ladies. Don’t you worry, dear fellow.”

Alec bowed over Emily’s out-stretched hand and smiled. “You will keep an eye on him for me, won’t you, Emily? He gets terribly lost in foreign abodes and can’t speak a word of decent French.”

Sir Cosmo was flustered to refute this but a tug on his sleeve and his attention was claimed by the Duchess. Emily giggled and nodded and was pulled into the discussion with her grandmother and Sir Cosmo; all three soon in deep conversation about their upcoming journey. Alec watched them, pleased and relieved to see them all much recovered from Emily’s disastrous engagement and the awful events of that weekend.

Selina did not join in the conversation. She just wanted to be on her way, dreading the hours of monotonous travel yet eager to be anywhere but in England. She turned to the looking glass and put her bonnet over her apricot curls and tied its silk riband under her chin, aware that Alec watched her as he stretched on his riding gloves.

So much had been left unsaid between them. Yet they both knew it was best not to say too much. Nine months. It was not such a long time to wait. Nine months. Apart it would seem an eternity. But then she would come back to him and they would be married. Yes, the time would pass soon enough.

Alec turned on a heel and walked away, out into the bright sunshine of a perfect spring day.

Alec Halsey’s adventure continues in
Deadly Affair
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Alec Halsey accepted Sir Charles Weir’s dinner invitation on the assumption he was the only guest. Now, standing in the politician’s drawing room surrounded by a dozen unfamiliar faces, he found himself in the midst of a party political dinner. The other guests were all in some way connected to the government, come together to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Sir Charles’s election to Parliament, not a career diplomat in the Foreign Department like Alec. The guest of honor, the Duke of Cleveley, twice First Lord of the Treasury and the present Foreign Secretary, had yet to descend amongst them, and Alec supposed this was why the double doors to the dining room remained closed.

Wine glass in hand, Alec sidled to the window that overlooked Arlington Street, and turned his back on the crowded and noisy room. He disliked gatherings of this sort. Too intimate. In a faceless crowd, one could remain anonymous and still enjoy the evening’s entertainment. Here everyone knew his family’s history, had devoured every scandalous detail in the London newssheets about the macabre circumstances surrounding the murder of his estranged brother. Despite the coroner’s open verdict, it was Alec society blamed for his brother’s death, thus condemning the newly elevated Marquess Halsey to a lifetime of suspicion.

Why had he returned to the city? He should have remained in Kent where he had spent the seven months since his brother’s death resurrecting the family estate. He should be visiting his tenants and seeing to their needs, not time-wasting rubbing shoulders with over-fed, opinionated politicians, and their parasitic hangers-on, all of who avoided his eye. There was so much for him to do and learn about his unwanted inheritance that he hardly knew where to begin.

He sipped at the wine and stared down at a sedan chair come to rest on the steps of Horace Walpole’s townhouse, and ruminated on fate. He had spent most of his adult life on the periphery of Polite Society, a diplomat on the Continent speaking in foreign tongues. His estranged brother’s untimely death changed his well-ordered life forever. Did he want to run an estate and take his seat in the Lords? He knew so little about either that a winter posting to St. Petersburg held more appeal. What was he supposed to do with a Marquessate he did not in the least want and one his peers considered he did not deserve? Yet he had been compelled to accept with good grace the newly created title. As if his elevation from the family earldom of Delvin to the Marquessate Halsey would somehow miraculously expunge from the collective memory of Polite Society his connection to a murdered brother who had hated him with a passion bordering on mania. To Alec’s way of thinking, thrusting a Marquessate on him considerably complicated his life, and merely heightened suspicion.

Perhaps he would request a second posting to Constantinople?

He was roused from these musings at the mention of his name in loud whispered conversation over his left shoulder. Overhearing the rest was unavoidable.