Rogue's Reward (22 page)

Lee drew her over to the sofa and let his sister sink back down beside Eleanor. He then took an elegant side chair and straddled it.

“The trial is over. This is 1815, dear Di, not the time of the Lionheart. There was more than one technicality to tie them all into knots, and enough pure absurdity to entrance the best legal minds of the realm. Trial by combat! It may have accidentally been legal, but the Court of King’s Bench wasn’t about to let it happen. Although you have to admit, it was amusing to try.”

“It wasn’t amusing at all,” Eleanor interrupted furiously. “Everyone has been worried sick.”

“Everyone?”

“Diana and Walter—even my mother!”

“Lady Acton was never worried sick, dear Lady Eleanor. I imagine she enjoyed following every minute of the process.”

“She and half of London,” Diana said. “How could you do such a thing, Lee?”

He raised a brow. “I didn’t accuse myself and lock myself in Newgate, you know. Yet once there, I decided I’d rather not hang, after all.”

“Why really was the case thrown out?”

Eleanor wanted not to care, not to be involved, but she couldn’t help herself. His rich lashes narrowed slightly over the violet eyes as he looked at her, completely masking his real feelings.

“Because Major Sir Robert St. John Crabtree withdrew the charges. I suggested trial by combat in order to buy enough time to persuade him to do so—and to create such a diversion that everybody would forget about the victim, poor Manton Barnes. Fortunately, my ploy succeeded. I had no real desire to try to batter Crabtree to death with a cudgel. After all, he rescued me from the nuns in my mewling infancy.”

Eleanor refused to give up. “He withdrew the charges? Why?”

“Lady Eleanor, you really should curb your curiosity, a most unseemly attribute for a young lady. I made a bargain with him, that’s all.”

At the cool disinterest in his tone Eleanor looked down at her hands.

She had no right to pry into his affairs and even less to interfere as she had done. He must think her a gauche schoolgirl, indeed. And soon he would leave for Belgium. In which case she might never see him again. Her thoughts were shattered by the shrill cry of a newcomer.

“Leander Campbell? Good heavens, sir! You dare to bring the taint of the prison and the shadow of scandal into my drawing room?”

Lady Augusta swept into the room. Her gown rustled stiffly about her as she walked. Since Leander Campbell was impeccably dressed in the cleanest possible linen and smelt faintly of soap, her comment seemed absurd to Eleanor. The dowager countess ignored the indignant looks of the two girls and raised her voice once more to her stepson.

“You have brought disgrace and opprobrium to this house, sir. It is enough. I will thank you to say farewell to my daughter and pledge never to see her again.”

“Mama!” Diana leaped to her feet. “You shan’t forbid Lee the house!”

“I shall forbid what and where I like, young lady. Mr. Campbell has trespassed too long on the generosity of Hawksley. It was his influence that brought you to lose your senses over that Feveril Downe boy. I will not have him in this house again.”

Diana was pale, but she seemed seized by a newfound courage. Eleanor watched in astonishment as she stood up to her formidable mother for the first time.

“You can’t forbid him the house, Mama,” she cried. “It’s his house. Everything here is his. That chair and this sofa and the curtains and the fire irons—everything!”

Lady Augusta paled. “Whatever do you mean, Diana? You forget yourself.”

“No, I don’t. Father legally married Lee’s mother before he married you, and she was still alive at your wedding. So I’m not an heiress, and Eleanor’s just shown me the papers to prove it. They’re there in her reticule. Lee is the real Earl of Hawksley and has been all along.”

Lady Augusta crumpled as if she were felled by an axe. Mr. Campbell caught her and helped her to a chair. She moaned softly.

“For God’s sake, Di!” he said sharply. “Get some salts!”

But it was Eleanor who held the smelling salts under the fire-breathing nose. After gathering her courage for the outburst, Diana seemed appalled at what she had done. She sat white-faced as her brother and Eleanor tended to her mother.

Yet she was changed. Diana would never be afraid of her mother again.

Meanwhile, Eleanor wanted to disappear, but nothing could change the inevitable now.

Mr. Campbell knelt calmly next to her, supporting his stepmother. Eleanor could smell the fresh scent of his clean linen. She could not take her eyes from his hands, those lovely, long-fingered hands.

Yet it was as if the marriage papers hidden in her reticule were some terrible, treasonous documents. She knew perfectly well what he must think of her, now he knew what she had done. She had promised at Deerfield never to reveal his mother’s marriage to anyone. Yet at the first sign of trouble, she had gone running to Diana and put the papers straight into her hands. That she thought she was doing it to save his life had been made totally irrelevant by the fact that he had already been released.

After a few minutes, Lady Augusta sat up and straightened her cap. She seemed to have regained her composure, but the fire was gone.

“It was bound to come out,” she said dully. “When Gerald took me to the altar, he already had a wife. How can one ever forgive such perfidy?”

“You already knew?” Diana asked.

Lady Augusta stared grimly at her daughter. “I have known for more than twenty years. Ever since Sir Robert brought that little boy back from Ireland. He looked so like his father, it was enough to break my heart. The major showed me the birth certificate and the marriage lines, with the evidence of when Moira Campbell had died. There was no doubt that Leander was the true heir. Yet how could I face it?”

“You were with child yourself,” Mr. Campbell said gently. “None of it was your fault.”

Lady Augusta looked at him, her eyes damp with tears.

“It might have been a boy—and then when Diana was born, she was such a lovely baby. So innocent! How could I live with bringing a child into the world who was already shamed, disgraced, disinherited?”

“You mean Major Crabtree knew this all along, too?” Diana asked. “Why didn’t he tell anybody?”

Mr. Campbell moved away to stand at the window. He said nothing as his stepmother turned to stare blankly at her daughter.

“Because I paid him not to, of course,” Lady Augusta said. “How do you think that he could afford Deerfield all these years?”

And suddenly it all made sense to Eleanor. This was why Deerfield was so lavishly kept, and why there was no extra money at Hawksley. Why Lady Augusta’s steward pinched the purse, and why repairs were delayed until Leander Campbell paid for them. All the wealth of Hawksley for twenty years had been drained off to support the major’s lavish life-style—and all because he knew of Moira Campbell’s marriage.

Diana was still struggling to comprehend what had happened. “You were being blackmailed by the major?”

“Yes, but it has stopped now,” the dowager countess said. “Sir Robert told me yesterday that I would receive no more demands from him. It has been such a relief. I thought I was free at last.”

“How could you do it, Mama? You have cheated Lee all these years.”

“Hush, Di,” he said firmly. “Lady Augusta did it for you, and at a huge price.”

Diana was flushed, but with her newfound confidence, she stuck out her chin.

“Then it’s over now. Eleanor has the marriage lines. The truth shall come out, and you must claim your rightful inheritance.”

Lady Augusta stared at Eleanor. “Why should you have anything to do with this?” she said. “Why must the Actons always win?”

“Lady Eleanor has not won anything.” Mr. Campbell turned to face his stepmother. “Nothing has changed.”

“What do you mean?” Diana asked. “Everything has changed. You shan’t hide the truth because of me.”

Eleanor had never seen him truly angry before, but he stalked up to his sister, eyes blazing.

“Then you would reveal to the world that our father was a bigamist? You would happily ignore your mother’s sacrifice and suffering for the last twenty years? You would hold her up to the ridicule and persecution of society and strip her of her portion, leaving her in penury, dependent on my charity? If there is one person beside yourself who is an innocent victim in this mess, it is your mother. And do you care nothing for my precarious honor? Lady Augusta took me in when I was five years old, knowing that I embodied the possibility of ruin, and raised me. You would have me return that kindness by showing her to be a harlot, and my sister nameless and penniless, her position ruined?”

“I don’t c—” Diana began bravely.

“Then what of Walter? You would involve him in a sordid scandal that would rock London. A bastard isn’t the most suitable wife for a bishop. If you try to publish this bizarre story, I shall maintain that it’s a farrago of nonsense. Whatever papers the Actons may have in their possession I shall demonstrate to be forgeries. If necessary I shall go to Scotland and destroy the records at their source. Then I shall leave the country, but this time forever. You will neither hear from me, nor see me again. I repeat: You will forget this. Lady Augusta may sleep easy in her bed and you, Diana, shall remain heiress of Hawksley.”

Diana’s face was white as her muslin dress. “I won’t!”

“You will,” he said, “and you will never breathe a word of this to anyone. Neither will your headstrong, interfering friend, Lady Eleanor Acton.”

“If you are to order me, sir,” Eleanor said, desperately gathering her courage. “You might do it to my face.”

He had been avoiding her. Lee could face his stepmother and Diana, but how was he to control his emotions when he confronted his brave brown hen? He had already guessed how she had obtained the papers, and he assumed she had done it in a naive attempt to help Diana marry Walter.

It had, of course, occurred to him that the minister at Strathbrae would have a record of the marriage. Yet it was unlikely to be discovered, and he had not had time yet to do anything about it. A small church buried in the Highlands, a minister who had no idea why the marriage was so important, and an unclaimed earl who was about to leave for Belgium and India—it hadn’t been worth worrying about.

Yet, as he had threatened, he could still go to Strathbrae and destroy the records. Only Lady Augusta had ever understood the impossibility of his claiming his birthright under the circumstances. Maybe in twenty years, once Diana was safely settled and Lady Augusta gone to her grave, maybe then. But now? It would be a tainted legacy. He would rather die a pauper.

Yet, God help him, it would cost him Eleanor!

She sat stiffly on the sofa, her brown eyes bravely waiting for his wrath. He reached deep inside himself to find it.

“Your busy fingers are in every pie, aren’t they, Lady Eleanor?” he said. “How noble of you to try to disinherit your friend. Your promise didn’t last long, did it? Yet you have overlooked the type of creature you would elevate to the peerage: one who prefers the gutter to the drawing room; a gaming hell to a seat in Parliament; and the charms of a whore to those of a lady. Better let him remain a bastard. That way he can die un-remembered as he wishes, drunk under a table.”

Ignoring the shine of tears that Eleanor couldn’t keep from her eyes, he spun on his heel and stalked to the door. He stopped for a moment and glanced back at his stepmother.

“You will also give your consent to Diana’s marriage to Walter Feveril Downe, Lady Augusta. He’s an honorable and good man. Though he isn’t a duke, his family credentials are impeccable. If you try to force her into wedlock with someone like Lord Ranking, that is the one thing that might make me change my mind.”

Eleanor barely registered that this one goal at least was achieved. She had known that he would never forgive her if she interfered in his mother’s marriage. Yet she couldn’t help herself then and she couldn’t help herself now.

Since in spite of it all, she knew now that her feelings for him were no mere schoolgirl crush. She was deeply, everlastingly, and impossibly, in love with him.

Diana would not be moved. With a set face she agreed to remain silent about what she had learned. Yet when her mama agreed to her marriage with Walter, then suggested that Viscount Clare be invited to come and discuss the marriage settlements, she wouldn’t hear of it.

“It would all be a falsehood,” she declared. “I shan’t marry Walter under false pretenses. I’m not really Lady Diana Hart, am I? What name should we put on the register?”

And thus Eleanor discovered that it still wasn’t over. For herself, she would never interfere again with Mr. Campbell’s concerns, but she had promised to help Diana wed Walter. If the present state of affairs didn’t change, he was taking his sister to the sacrificial altar with him, rather than ensuring her happiness.

She was too deeply involved to back out now. Once again, it was up to her. What did she have left to lose?

* * *

Sir Robert Crabtree had taken rooms in Piccadilly. Eleanor grimaced as her carriage stopped in front of his door. Only a couple of short months before, she had been looking forward to an ordinary coming out. Instead, ever since she had discovered that her best friend had a half-brother, she had been embroiling herself in ever more disreputable adventures.

Well, making a morning call on a gentleman who was old enough to be your father and had once been your mother’s lover, was nothing compared to visiting a notorious rake imprisoned in Newgate!

How could she have thought she respected Major Crabtree? The man had been blackmailing Lady Augusta for years. Whatever her opinion of Diana’s mama, the cruelty of it sickened her. It had not taken long to realize that he must also have been the villain in Manton Barnes’s case and, incredible as it may seem, her mother’s.

The clues had been there, all along. Since Leander Campbell was not the blackmailer, who else was there?

The butler seemed less surprised than she expected. Perhaps the major had all kinds of victims of his nasty hobby coming to call?