After the Scandal (43 page)

But the coach and four was rolling slowly by, the coachmen and footmen chatting as they went, so she stood, and flattened herself as best she could against the white-painted brick of the house’s wall, so her dress would blend in, instead of standing out against the conservatory’s dark roof.

But it worked, or no one noticed her anyway. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that lamps and candles were being lit and turned up within the house, and she had to get away before the spill of light illuminated her.

And so she pretended she was back at Downpark or back in that alley in Chelsea with the Tanner, and she tied her skirts up so she could use her legs, and she jumped.

The moment she hit the ground she rolled and came up running, straight for the tree line, secreting herself in the darkness to wait. But when her heart stopped pounding in her ears she realized she’d made a mistake.

The surety hit her hard in the chest—he wasn’t coming with her. He wasn’t waiting to cause a diversion. He wasn’t coming at all.

No. She had to be wrong. She could see him through the well-lit windows, walking calmly across Lady Westmoreland’s chamber, headed out the back of the lady’s room, moving toward the servants’ stair.

Claire counted out the steps, going back again when he should have emerged at the bottom to recount and think of where he might be. Counting and wishing and praying. Hoping against hope.

But she knew. Claire blinked into the night, and knew deep down in her bones that he was staying within to confront Hadleigh. That Tanner would face him down and demand justice.

But he was alone.

Poor clever, stupid lamb. He had not learned how very much he needed her.

Claire picked up her skirts and pitched herself toward the skiff.

*   *   *

It was a game. The same game he had played day in and day out as a child—plan what you want to happen. Play a role. Brazen it out, but make it real. Make it convincing.

He would make it convincing. Because the alternative was all too real. The alternative was a noose.

And so he ignored the throbbing of his pulse in his ears, and watched Claire make her careful way across the roof. Then he latched the window.

One less way out. But he wasn’t going out.

He was going downstairs, sneaking his way through the dark to the connecting door, and then through Lady Westmoreland’s chamber to the servants’ stair, so he could make his invisible way through the house.

He was going to Lady Westmoreland’s well-lit library to sit and take his ease—perhaps help himself to a drink—and wait calmly for the Marquess of Hadleigh, and his guests, to find him.

It was a matter of some minutes before Hadleigh did find him.

“Forgive me,” the marquess was saying to someone in the entry hall. “It seems Lady Westmoreland had an intruder. I’m her guest, of course, but I’ve checked the house, and assured her…”

Tanner took a deep breath and let the jangling excitement, the keen sense of physical and mental readiness, fill him up. If ever there was a moment he had wished for the Duke of Fenmore’s sartorial precision, it was now. But needs must while the Devil drives. He would use the duke’s precise rapier-sharp words instead.

Outside the door, the voice gained in volume. “… on my way to the country now that my business in Lords is done. Why don’t we come in here—”

Lady Westmoreland’s footman opened the door, and Hadleigh strode through first. And stopped in his tracks.

“How do you do?” Tanner minded his manners and doffed his wide-brimmed hat with an elegant bow. “I’m Fenmore. We’ve not met, but I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

If looks alone could kill, Tanner would be bleeding his life’s blood into the plush carpet. Hadleigh’s eyes bored into him, and though the man did not move so much as an inch, the muscle along the edge of his jaw hardened, like steel annealing.

Behind the marquess, Tanner recognized the face of the local magistrate, Lord Bartholomew Bennet, an old card-playing crony of his grandmother’s.

A shiver of sly relief slid through him. Hadleigh had chosen badly. He had chosen an honest man. And Tanner could only hope the two men with Lord Bennet—either lesser magistrates of some kind or constables—were just as honest.

Unlike Lord Bennet, Hadleigh was not an honest man. The Marquess of Hadleigh was as powerful and controlling and evil as his son was criminally rapine. They were quite a pair—the House of Hadleigh’s bad blood ran deep.

Though the marquess was a man Tanner had never had occasion to cross, he was someone Tanner instinctively and very logically distrusted. He was known to be both political and politically dirty. He shifted his allegiances as often as the weather, depending upon who was in power and whose allegiance he could buy, beg, or steal. He was a man whose skills Tanner might have been tempted to admire, but for the fact that he was known to have no loyalty. No sense of morals. No sense of what was truly right.

And he was a murderer.

So Tanner kept his eyes on Hadleigh, who crossed to the desk and took up his position of power, though he also looked as if he would like to stab Tanner with the gleaming penknife so conveniently left upon its surface. Tanner would have to mind himself, lest he find himself stuck in the ribs. Murder could become a habit just as easily as rape.

But the marquess was no fool, and would make the best of this situation. “There he is,” Hadleigh crowed. “There’s the man who is wanted on a charge of murder. Arrest him.”

To which accusation Tanner smiled. “Ah. As you say. Good evening, my Lord Bennet.” Tanner made his bow to the magistrate. “Which is why I have come. To prove my innocence, so you may dismiss the charge. Which”—he smiled in Lord Bennet’s direction—“I should very much like to do at your earliest convenience, my lord. You see, I’m getting married.”

“Felicitations,” Lord Bennet murmured politely.

“Prove your innocence?” Hadleigh scoffed. “Good God, Fenmore. You can’t imagine that we’ll be proving anything over my library desk.”

“Ah. Then perhaps we can do it over Lady Westmoreland’s library desk. And thank you, but I have already poured myself a drink. Although coffee would be acceptable, if you have it. Lord Bennet?”

His Lordship nodded and settled himself into a chair opposite Tanner. “Coffee, if it looks for us to have a long night.”

Tanner made one of his ducal gestures to Lady Westmoreland’s footman, who was still hovering at the door. “Thank you.” Tanner then sat and turned conversationally to his accuser. “So, Lord Hadleigh. What is all this nonsense?”

“Nonsense, Duke? A charge of murder has been laid against you.”

“By whom? I should like to know the scurrilous rat who has done so much to waste your time. And mine.”

“By Lord Peter Rosing, sir, my son. Laid evidence last night with the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. Been looking for you ever since.”

“Apologies.” Tanner made another elegant little bow of his head. “I’ve been traveling. But Lord Peter Rosing could not have laid evidence against me.”

“The devil you say,” Bennet murmured.

“Bow Street have his complaint, signed and sealed, sirrah,” Hadleigh countered.

The footman—no doubt not wanting to miss a word—was already back with a tray of coffee. No doubt at least half of the servants were listening at the door. Good. It would be best to have an audience. More witnesses.

“Then that complaint is fraudulent. Quite a fraud.” Tanner took a very long, satisfying draught of the hot coffee. Just the way he liked it—strong and dark. Already he could feel the stimulating effects coursing through his veins and sharpening his brain.

“How so, sir?” Lord Bennet obligingly asked. “This is an astonishing charge. How so?”

“Because Lord Peter Rosing was until late this very afternoon in a state of coma, a word I have learned in consultation with a learned surgeon and professor of anatomy, Mr. Jackson Denman. Do you know him?” Tanner adopted Claire’s breezy sympathetic style of speech. “He consults with Bow Street and the Old Bailey on a frequent basis. But the coma is a state of unnatural heavy, deep, and prolonged sleep, with complete unconsciousness and slow, stertorous, often irregular, breathing, due to pressure on the brain.”

“Egad,” said Lord Bennet.

“Do you come to lecture me, sir?” demanded Hadleigh.

“No, Hadleigh. Only to state to you that I am innocent, and that the charge made against me is false, because Lord Peter Rosing could not have made any charge, as he was insensate. I have had it from Lady Westmoreland’s mouth, as I’m sure the servants who have been nursing him will confirm.”

“This is your explanation? You do not dispute the truth of the charge, only the legality of who has made it, when my son lies
insensate
?”

“Ah. Thank you for confirming it. And absolutely not. I deny all of the charges. I have not committed murder. Nor an abduction, and what it more, I can prove it. I only ask that you see the charge is pure conjecture, Lord Bennet, because I must assume it was made by Lord Peter Rosing’s father, Hadleigh here, on his son’s behalf.”

“And if I did? Nothing wrong with that,” Hadleigh asserted.

Tanner drew back, and invested himself with all of the chilly hauteur of the Duke of Fenmore. “I beg your pardon. It is a manifest conjecture on the part of the marquess, who was not present, in an attempt to clear his son of the very crime of which he accuses me.”

It took a long moment for Lord Bennet to grasp Tanner’s accusation. “And this is your testimony? But I imagine Lord Peter Rosing will say the opposite.”

“I imagine he will. I imagine he will say anything to clear himself. For he is the guilty party.”

“Guilty of what?” Lord Bennet queried.

“Of the vicious rape of a maid. And complicity in her murder.”

“That is ridiculous,” Hadleigh thundered. “How could my son have done any of those things? He is the one who has been viciously assaulted. He is the one who lies mortally injured.”

Lord Bennet turned his steady regard back to Tanner. “And can you explain, or should I ask if you were responsible for the injuries to Lord Peter Rosing?”

“Yes.” Tanner made his statement as easy as it was unequivocal.

“You see,” roared Hadleigh.

Lord Bennet was not yet satisfied. “And may I ask why?”

Tanner judged it best not to engage in an argument in which he had no defense, “the bastard touched my woman” not generally being accounted as an acceptable excuse.

He could feel the nasty sick tension snake through his body. He had thought he would have the advantage with Lord Bennet. He thought he would be able to make it clear with science and fact and evidence, but all of a sudden he could see that there were other, stronger factors at play here. And for the first time in all his deserving years, he saw that he just might end up being undeservedly sent to prison, and from there to await trial.

It gave him some small comfort to know that he could remarshal the forces of truth and fact and science to his side should the matter come to trial, but it would be a grimmer battle. He would already have lost so much by that point.

And he could not involve Claire.

He found his voice somewhere at the bottom of his worn boots. “The young woman who was murdered, Miss Maisy Carter, was in the employ of my grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Fenmore, at one of her dower properties. I’m sure you will appreciate that I have a responsibility to the people in my grandmother’s employ. Miss Maisy Carter is dead. But I did not murder her. The Marquess of Hadleigh did.”

The room went absolutely and unequivocally quiet for a long, long, sick moment.

“He can’t make such an accusation,” Hadleigh said directly to Lord Bennet.

Tanner kept his voice careful and mild. “But I just did. And what’s more, I should like to make it formally. I have proof. I should like to lay
my
evidence and
my
charge against the Marquess of Hadleigh.”

“I will crush you, Fenmore” was Hadeigh’s answer. “You and anyone else you try to bring against me.”

“Will you? How predictable you are, Hadleigh, for you said the same to me last night.”

The wide double doors to the library were opened to admit the Earl Sanderson. And behind him was calm, upstanding Jack Denman. And the Countess Sanderson, as well as Tanner’s grandmother, leaning on Doggett’s arm.

And behind them all, pushing to the front, was Claire, looking like God’s avenging angel.

His angel. His Claire.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Ah. Lovely.” He beamed at her, as if it had all been arranged. As if he didn’t want to shout and tell her to go while she had the chance. Go before Hadleigh turned his accusations on her. “You are all here. All armed with evidence. How kind.”

“You have no evidence,” Hadleigh stated. “Only jumped-up lies to save your own neck, while my son lies prostrate from your assault.”

He had no argument to make against assaulting Rosing, so he made none, and concentrated upon what he did have. “That is for my Lord Bennet to decide. This is England, my lord, a nation of laws. Laws that stand, and must be met, whether you try to bend them to your will or no.”

Tanner moved quickly on, so Hadleigh could not interrupt, and force him to surrender the high ground. “I have evidence that the maid, Maisy Carter, who was a good and dutiful servant, was brutally assaulted by Lord Peter Rosing, who choked her, broke her nose, and raped her—all injuries which can be attested to by the eminent surgeon and professor of anatomy from the Royal College of Surgeons, Mr. Jackson Denman, who is present with his report”—Jack, God bless him, held up his notes—“in a closet at Riverchon House. At which point Lord Peter Rosing stole a necklace—a religious cross that had been a gift from her former employer, Lady Harriet Worth—and has since kept it in his possession, here at Lady Westmoreland’s, upstairs. I would suggest you send your man to Lord Peter Rosing’s chamber, Lord Bennet, before the marquess can charge his people to make off with it.”

The entire room swiveled toward the marquess, who reddened with dangerous ire. “How dare you—”

“I dare because I saw what you and your son did to that young woman. I pulled her body out of the cold water of the river Thames where you had so callously dumped her.”