Three Times the Scandal (37 page)

* * * * *

The Mortons were at dinner, when Giles barrelled his way in past the matching footmen. “Did you beat her?” he bellowed, to a shocked chorus of complaints.

Morton snatched up a napkin to wipe the gravy from his lips, and then forced Giles across the hall into his study. “What the devil are you doing here, Dovecote? You’re a mess. Have you been attacked?” Brows crinkled in alarm and disgust he tugged at the sodden sleeve of Giles’s shirt. “Jeezus, man, you reek. Have you been in the river, or just rolling about in the gutter?”

Giles pushed him away. “Neither.” Here in the warmth, the dampness of his clothes was beginning to filter through his senses. He ignored the urge to shiver, and persisted. His state of dress was completely irrelevant. “Did you? Admit that you drove her to it with your filthy acts.”

“
Drove whom to what?”

“
You beat her. Darleston told me about your tastes. Can’t believe you defiled her like that. She took her life because of you.” He sniffed. There was water running from his hair over his brows. “How could you take pleasure in hurting a woman like that?”

“
What the devil are you talking about, Giles?”

“
Emily. You drove her to her death.”

Andrew Morton’s pockmarked skin took on a ghastly ochre hue. He gripped the edge of his mahogany desk until his knuckles whitened, and his voice, when he spoke, emerged as a thinly disguised growl. “She died in childbirth along with my son.”

Giles had heard the all lies before. “No.”

“
Stop this. Are you drunk? Have you been in a fight? I’ll have them make a bed for you. Mrs. Peters can prepare a poultice for those bruises.” Morton leaned over to reach the bell pull, only to have Giles grasp his coat breast.

“
No bed. No interruptions. I want to the truth out of you. I know what you’re saying is a lie, because I saw her, and she told me—”

“
Giles!” Even standing squarely to attention, the top of Morton’s head only reached Giles’s nose. Morton tugged at Giles’s grip on his coat. “Dear God, man. I don’t know what’s happened to you tonight, or what Darleston has said, but you need to rest. We’ll have this conversation tomorrow.”

Giles further tightened his grip, forcing Morton to bend forward. He hissed into the man’s face, “We’ll have it now. Do you deny ever raising a hand to her?”

Something cracked in the sallow planes of Morton’s face. His lips thinned into two bloodless lines. “I worshipped her, Giles. I’ll not deny I lay my hand on her behind more than once, but only because she begged me to do so. Before our marriage I’d never raised a hand to anyone in my life. It was her suggestion.

“
No…no…”

“
She’d seen pictures of it, you see. Pictures, which I understand are on display in your house.”

“
No…no… Listen to me.” Giles gushed. “She couldn’t have seen ‘em. She wasn’t like that. My Emily was pure, innocent.”

Morton actually dared to laugh in his face. “The devil she was. She had a rakehell for a brother. I’ll give you that she was a virgin when she came to my bed, but she was no prude. Rather she was sensual and needy. If she got maudlin and sullen she’d beg me to bend her over my knee and smack her bottom until it burned. Base desires never troubled her, though she liked to deny her enjoyment. Oft times she’d try to lie still while I took my pleasure, and try to stop herself from enjoying it like she imagined a proper lady ought, but she never could stop herself from giving in.”

No. This wasn’t so. Cold seeped beneath Giles’s skin, dispersing his righteous warmth. Nothing Morton said made sense. Emily had been unhappy. She’d told him before the marriage that she hated Morton to his core. And she hadn’t died in childbirth. He knew…he knew that she had drowned. He’d followed the trail of puddles upstairs and glimpsed the doctor pumping the water from her lungs, before the nurse had shut him out.

“
You’re lying.” Recently, he’d seen too much deceit. Unable to contain his rage any longer, he lashed out, catching Morton a good one in the stomach so that he doubled, gasping for breath. “You ruined her,” he growled. “You killed her.” Feelings Giles had locked up for over a year welled up like a torrent, and spilled out of him as an incoherent babble. Months of grief he’d tried to disguise, all the love he’d felt, the anger at her loss compounded with the recent loss of Fortuna.

Crouched in a defensive position, Morton yelled back at him, but all Giles heard was the rushing of blood in his ears. His sister had deserved a chance at happiness. All women deserved their freedom, not the tyranny of marriage. He’d never wanted to be responsible for binding a woman in that way again, and that’s why he’d failed Fortuna. No matter how he acted, he couldn’t make things right. He couldn’t free her from the stranglehold of marriage.

He swung at Morton again, only for something heavy to hit him across the jaw. Giles ploughed into a small table, upsetting it, so that the gaming pieces stored beneath its hinged lid spilled across the carpet.

“
Stop it, stop it! He doesn’t know.” His attacker tugged at his wet sleeve, pulling him upright off the carpet again.

Giles blinked uncertainly at his assailant—Clemencè, while Morton used the distraction to scuttle behind the secretaire.

“
Giles, he knows less than you do.” Lip trembling, Clemencè dipped her dark head. Tears glittered in her eyes when she looked up again. She released her hold on his sleeve, and turned to her brother. “Andrew, I’m sorry. Giles is right. She didn’t die in childbirth. She drowned.”

“
Drowned—how could she drown?” Morton bellowed the question so loudly, Giles swore a pistol had fired inside his head. He found the sound curiously sobering. “But the ruined sheets…the screaming…the blood.” Morton lapsed into a blanched silence. The veins in his temples seemed to protrude form the skin, pulsing with his emotions. “Are you telling me none of that was real?” He stared at his sister, and then turned, bewildered, to Giles.

Clemencè crossed to the fireside mantle, her delicate hands clasped as if in prayer. “The screaming was our mother. Dr Poulson thought there might be a chance the baby had survived so he cut Emily’s stomach open.” She hugged herself tight, but her mouth remained determinedly set.

Giles stood in a daze, still without an answer to how his sister had died. Morton, however, sagged to his knees, not just dazed but crushed.

“
It was an accident.” Clemencè returned to her brother’s side. She knelt before him, so that her white skirts fanned over his knees, and clasped his hands. “It was a stupid accident, but mother made me swear not to tell you. She said it was best not to burden you with the details, for if you thought it were because of the baby you’d get over it quicker. Women die so often during birth.”

Morton stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “What accident? What happened? Who says we get over it?”

“
Yes, do explain,” added Giles.

The tip of Clemencè’s upturned nose turned pink. “We were down by the lake, throwing crumbs for the ducks when her waters broke. I ran for help, but I guess she slipped. She was doubled over with the pain. I heard a splash and went back, but she was too far in for me to reach her.” She bowed her head, as tears slid across her cheeks.

Morton wept too, his tears dripped in a steady stream onto his cravat.

Giles found himself curiously devoid of tears. Mostly, he felt disorientated and angry. Oh, yes, still angry. “She died due to a tragic accident and you thought foxing us with some nonsense about childbirth would make things easier? What sort of drivel is that?” He paced twice back and forth across the rug, trying to make sense of such a ridiculous notion. “There was never any doubt in my mind that she’d drowned. I saw that she was wet through, but I thought she’d taken her own life, that your brother had driven her to it. She’d been so weary.”

Morton raised his head and spoke up, “The weight of the baby was tiring her. She hadn’t been sleeping well either, and her appetite was erratic due to the sickness. But she was happy, Giles. She was delirious with the joy of bearing our first child.” His face crumpled, his eyes briefly closing. “Good God, now I understand why you hated me. Why you were so keen to avoid us.” He glared at his sister and shook his head. “We’re going to the country in the morning and there you and mother are going to explain all this to me in detail until I can make sense of it. Giles,” he offered his hand. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I feel the need to retire now.”

Giles accepted both Morton’s hand and the brush off. He felt curiously calm, although his head still spun as he strode towards the door. Clemencè followed him into the hall. “I tried to tell you the truth.” She reached out to touch him, but Giles tottered out of reach. “But you wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t meet with me.”

“
You could have written everything you’ve just said in a note.”

“
Mama…”

He shook his head at her protest. Sometimes you had to step out of line and act as you thought best, rather than blindly follow orders. “Goodbye, Clemencè.” He staggered back into the night.

By the time Giles reached Piccadilly he’d realized that marching up to the Allenthorpe’s front door would achieve nothing, save perhaps his arrest by a constable or another beating. There seemed to be an unusually large number of lower class men loitering in the vicinity. Macleane’s hired dogs, no doubt.

He paused outside St. James’s church, only for a carriage to draw to a halt beside him a moment later.

The twins leapt from its belly. “Thank the Lord,” Darleston sighed. They dragged him inside, where a lantern spilled a warming yellow glow over the plush interior. Giles collapsed onto the squabs cold and achy.

“
Dare we ask where you’ve been?” Darleston threw a rug over Giles’s lap. “Ned assumed you’d gone after Fortuna. I told him even you weren’t that stupid. Not without concocting a half-cocked plan first.”

Safely in the bowels of the carriage, with a lantern spilling a yellow glow over the interior, exhaustion began to grip Giles more tightly. “I went to see Morton. I was overdue sorting that one out and it seemed an appropriate moment. They can’t do anything to Fortuna until she’s well. And I can’t get any nearer than this.”

“
I take it Morton wasn’t too friendly when you saw him,” said Ned.

Eyelids already heavy, Giles let them close a moment. His jaw ached, but not as much as his heart. As for the bruises the length and breadth of his body, he just hoped that when he woke tomorrow it wasn’t to find his ribs were cracked. “Not Morton,” he mumbled. “This was courtesy of Clemencè.” He mustered up a smile, but couldn’t maintain it. The new bruise along with the others was beginning to sap his strength. They certainly hurt more now that the brandy induced numbness had worn off.

Darleston edged forward on the seat opposite and pressed three fingers to Giles’s chin, forcing him to turn his head. His grey eyes opened a fraction wider at the extent of the bruise. “Well damn me! I never thought the woman had it in her to do more than pout prettily and embroider. What did she hit you with, an iron?”

“
A vase.” And a whole slew of distressing truths.

“
With the flowers still in it?” A smirk chased Neddy’s lips, which Giles couldn’t stop himself reciprocating. Only smiling hurt like hell, and he was still so chewed up inside he was scared he might start laughing and never stop again. Lord knows what the damn vase had been made of, but it had near smashed his jaw in two and yet had survived completely intact.

“
Know I’ve been an idiot,” Giles said. “Don’t know how to make it right.”

“
I think you might start with a bath and a night’s rest. There’s nothing else you can do for Fortuna right now, Giles. She needs to heal. Any further adventures you’re thinking of offering her will have to wait.”

“
Can’t abandon her to Macleane.”

“
And we won’t.” Darleston tucked a second blanket around Giles’s shoulders. “Rest easy, now. We’ll work something out in the morning. Oh, and you’ll be pleased to know you’re not the only one who’s had a foul day. We bumped into Henry Tristan a little while back. Apparently, Pitt’s resigned as Prime Minister over the Irish Catholics. Doesn’t want to antagonise the King. Addington is to form the new government.”

Chapter Fifteen

Much wickedness abounds in the affairs of the most noble Lord D—. If abandonment of his lady wife were not proof enough of his wretchedness towards the fairer sex, her ladyship now fears her husband complicit in such crimes as Lord Castlehaven was convicted more than a hundred years ago.

Giles flung the open newspaper into the fire. Damn Lucy and her slanderous rumours! As if things weren’t awry enough already without her petty interference. What did she hope to achieve? Darleston would never welcome her back. He’d leave the country rather than tolerate a return to his sham marriage.

Fingers pressed to his eyes, Giles’s thoughts drifted rapidly away from his friend. Nine days he’d now spent without Fortuna, a longer period than she’d spent in his house. Nine days of waking alone in a house choked with ash. The fire had completely destroyed the drawing room and entrance hall, and everything else was soot stained and smoky. He lifted a book from the nearby table and blew the dust from its cover. The library had been closed and hence had been spared much damage. It remained his one haven while Kitty, and the still poorly but indomitable Leach, along with an army of plasterers and carpenters repaired the damage. Not for the first time he contemplated leaving town, but he couldn’t leave Fortuna behind, but nor could he get to her. His only consolation was the fact that Fortuna remained unwed. However, with Macleane’s constant presence at her bedside and his dogs patrolling the area around her house, he’d been unable to visit or even discover much about her condition.