Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (25 page)

“Precisely! But why did Billy and Annie kidnap Sophie for a handful of guineas?”

“It might be pin money to you, darling, but to the likes of a poor farmhand and a scullery maid, a handful of guineas is a small fortune.”

Selina smiled crookedly at his misinterpretation of her question and squeezed his hand a little too tightly. “Not all wealthy widows are immune to the plight of the less fortunate,
my lord
, whatever your uncle’s prejudices to the contrary. I do know the worth of a guinea. I may have spent on shoes alone a sum that could feed Bristol’s poor for a week, but my man of business can’t praise enough my meticulous account keeping. In fact,” she said with thoughtful frown, “I do believe every time I put my books before Browne he feels his employment is under threat...” She roused herself. “No, not Billy, silly. What did Billy’s murderer want with Sophie?”

“I really have no idea,” Alec answered on a sigh. He was so tired that if Evans did not return with a bowl of broth, at the very least, food would soon be of no interest. “Any number of possibilities come to mind but given that your brother’s painting of Miranda and her daughter was vandalized, my guess is the child was to be used to get at her mother. The vandalized painting was a warning to your brother. Likewise taking Sophie from Miranda. If indeed it is the same man, though I have no reason to think otherwise. It would be too much of a coincidence if Talgarth’s vandalized picture and Sophie’s attempted abduction were not connected in some way.”

“You think Lord George vandalized Talgarth’s painting and is also somehow involved in Billy’s murder?”

“I have no evidence connecting him to either circumstance, and only Charles Weir’s word that Lord George was being blackmailed.”

Selina was skeptical. “You think Lord George capable of cold-blooded murder? Vandalizing a painting, yes I can see a drunken George Stanton performing that cowardly act, but a sword thrust to the heart requires rather more backbone.”

“I agree with you, but I suspect Billy was killed out of spite, for not giving our murderer what he wanted, and if so then piercing the poor boy’s heart was done in an impotent rage.”

“When you put it like that,” Selina conceded, “it’s just the sort of act I could believe of Lord George. He may be cowardly, but he has no conscience.”

“I’m not convinced Lord George had a personal hand in any of these crimes. Pay someone else to do it, yes. But get his own fine hands dirty?” Alec shrugged. “He isn’t the only one under suspicion.”

Selina put her hands to her white cheeks in thought and gazed into the darkened bedchamber. “The notion of that buffoon getting his hands on Sophie...” She shuddered, appalled. “The dear little thing was terrified, exhausted, hungry and on the verge of frost bite. If a harmless farm boy with a limp can be murdered in cold-blood, then his killer wouldn’t have a second thought for Sophie’s welfare, now would he?”

Alec followed Selina’s gaze to the bedchamber where a small hump in the bedclothes indicated the sleeping child. “Don’t let her out of your sight. Who’s to say Billy’s killer isn’t still at the inn awaiting an opportunity to pounce.” He looked intently at Selina. “She wasn’t harmed in any way, was she?”

“No, not physically. Sophie’s a very healthy little girl. But the sooner I can return her to Miranda the better for the child’s peace of mind.” Selina smiled wistfully. “Sophie doesn’t remember who I am. It’s a twelvemonth since I saw her last. But she trusts me because I speak to her in French. Miranda has always conversed with her daughter in that tongue.”

“If Miranda Bourdon speaks fluent French then she certainly received the upbringing of a young lady... But why choose to speak it in a cultural backwater such as Ellick Farm?”

Selina regarded Alec as if the answer was self-evident but when he continued to look puzzled she explained with a laugh, “The locals. They can’t read or write so it is perfectly acceptable to write one’s letters in English. But they aren’t deaf. It’s all very well for us to regard servants as if they’re part of the furniture, but when one is in the depths of the country the same approach just doesn’t work if one wants to hire good help from the village. Hence, conversing in French is preferable to having the locals eavesdropping on conversations and spreading it about the village by sundown.” Selina screwed up her nose on a sudden thought. “Although... by doing so we are denying them their only form of entertainment, aren’t we? It’s not as if they can attend the theater or the opera, is it?”

“The minds of females,” Alec murmured with a roll of his eyes. He took from his frockcoat pocket a bundle of letters. “These were found strewn near Billy’s body. They’re letters you wrote to Miranda Bourdon. And this,” he added after perching his gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose and dropping in Selina’s palm a small silver button with the raised engraving of a bumble-bee, “was found near Billy’s body. Have you seen a similar button before?”

Selina shook her head and handed the button back. “Should I know it? It looks a perfectly ordinary button. Or is it a button of significance? It must be because you’re laughing at me!” she accused him when he regarded her over the rims of his spectacles as a tutor might his pupil. It didn’t stop her snuggling into his embroidered waistcoat with a practiced pout. “First you accuse me of being a feckless creature and now you expect me to know the origins of one tiny silver button! You tell me. You’re the Bow Street Runner masquerading as a nobleman.”

“I didn’t expect you to know,” he confessed, holding the button between thumb and forefinger. “I admit I had no idea until Tam enlightened me. But I would wager that if you asked any upper servant in Westminster to identify this button they could do so in an instant. Livery and unusually engraved buttons and such are very important social minutiae in servant circles.”

“I had no idea,” Selina said with mock awe. “I must show your button to Evans to see if she can pass inspection. Although, being a Methodist, she will decry such fribbles as useless vanity. Why she remains with this immoral creature I know not.”

Alec tweaked one of her loose curls. “Perhaps she desires to see you made an honest woman? Or have you told her of your new vocation? Either way, you will provide her with a surfeit of material to add to her nightly prayer.”

“This button. To whom does it belong?” Selina asked, taking the button back and examining it closely to hide the heat in her cheeks.

“The Cleveley livery,” Alec responded casually, though he was watching Selina intently over the rims of his spectacles. “That there is no thread attached suggests it wasn’t ripped from the killer’s frockcoat, as would happen in a struggle. Just as there was no thread attached to the button discovered in my uncle’s fist. My first thought was that Uncle had pulled off the button in a struggle. That this button was also found near Billy makes me wonder if it was placed there deliberately.”

“There you are then!” Selina said with certainty, handing back the button. “They were placed there to incriminate Cleveley.”

“Or as a warning from the Duke to stay out of his way, perhaps?”

Selina scowled, yet had to concede Alec had a point. “I don’t know why you’re so ready to condemn Cleveley over one—
two
—buttons,” she argued, the heat intensifying in her throat and cheeks because he was regarding her as if she had something to answer for. “Lord George or Weir could just as easily have had a hired a ruffian or ruffians to place the buttons there to cast suspicion Cleveley’s way.”

“True,” Alec agreed, pocketing his spectacles. “Charles is the methodical type, but George Stanton...?”

“George is a buffoon and Weir a toad but Cleveley is neither.”

“Your Aunt Olivia defends him too. She has her own reasons for doing so... What are yours?”

“I told you in London...” she faltered, tightly entwining her fingers in the lap of her voluminous petticoats. “He was kind to me during my marriage. He was no friend of J-L’s. And when I needed someone... When I needed a shoulder to cry on—he-he was there.”

“You were lovers.”

It was not a question. He wished it were.

When Selina looked away, desolate, he lifted her chin and turned her face to his.

“It’s all right, darling. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. I love you. And we are together now. That’s all that matters. God, I was no saint during your horrid marriage to Jamison-Lewis. I wanted to expunge all thought of you married to another. That you found comfort in the arms of an understanding lover doesn’t surprise me. I just wish I’d been there for you; that I’d been he.”

Selina swallowed.

“Once. It happened just the once,” she confessed and voiced her thoughts because it was better than dealing with silence between them. “I’d been married two years. His Duchess had been told she was dying, and he had just buried his niece. We were both very low and lonely. It’s just something that happened. I can’t explain how. He was very gentle and understanding.” She glanced up at him. “If it’s any consolation, the whole time I was with him I was wishing it was you...”

“Don’t be too harsh on yourself,” Alec heard himself say in an even tone, though he felt anything but calm. “Sometimes circumstances arise... situations develop...” His voice trailed off, he didn’t know what else to say.

He was thinking that once was once too often. No wonder Cleveley’s smile had been smug at Hanover Square. He knew he shouldn’t let it bother him that Selina had found comfort in the arms of the Duke because he had treated Selina with kindness and an understanding of her plight married to a sadistic misogynistic husband. But it did bother him, not only because they had shared a bed, but because the Duke was still very much part of Selina’s life. He knew he was being utterly selfish and vain; possibly unreasonable, but it smarted whichever way he thought about it.

What she confided next sucked the air out of his lungs.

“I fell pregnant but lost the child early in the pregnancy.”

“To Cleveley? You were pregnant to
Cleveley
?”

“Yes. Such things can and do happen.”

“Are you sure it was his child and not your husband’s?”

Selina scowled, wondering where his questions were heading and not liking his tone. “Yes. Certain. Women know these things.”

Alec tempered his tone and said evenly, “I only ask because the rumor, according to Olivia, is that Cleveley is—”

“—barren? Yes, that’s the whisper. But it’s not true. It’s just that he—Justinian—thought it best not to shout my pregnancy from the rooftops; and the Duchess was dying of cancer...”

“His Grace is all consideration,” Alec murmured, asking before Selina could launch into another defense of
the great man
, “So you told him?”

“Of course. J-L? Never in a month of Sundays!” Selina suddenly teared up. “He—Justinian—was so joyous at the news. He said my pregnancy was a gift; it gave him
hope
and then—and then I lost the baby...”

When Alec just sat there, a deep furrow between his brows, Selina could not bear with his brooding silence, which was much more difficult to deal with and hurtful than a jealous lover’s castigation, so blurted out, as if by confessing every lurid detail she would be cleansed,

“Cleveley is my
godfather
, which renders the affair and the subsequent pregnancy that much more sordid, doesn’t it? Making love with one’s godfather isn’t far removed from sleeping with one’s own father or brother or uncle. After all, he was there at my christening with them. As for falling pregnant by him... It’s the stuff of Julio-Claudian melodrama. And to make certain I would loathe myself forever more for what I’d done, while I was imagining he was you, he was imagining I was
her
... At the crucial moment, he cried out for Mimi. He cried out for his fifteen-year-old
niece
.”

Evans opened the door on a heavy silence. Following her were four of the inn’s waiters. Two carried trays heavy with dinner things, a third had two bottles of the inn’s finest claret and two glasses, and the fourth brought extra candles and an ornate candelabra for the center of the table. Alec got off the sofa and went to stoke the dying fire while the table was reset with cutlery, plates, wine glasses and candelabra. Bread, a fancy tureen containing soup maigre, a pot of olio, bowls of pickles, parsnips, mushrooms and carrots and various sauces in small dishes completed the feast. Nothing had been spared for his lordship. Evans had made it clear to the Cook that the dinner he was to prepare was for the Marquess Halsey.

When a waiter remained behind the chair at the head of the table, Alec dismissed him, saying they would serve themselves. Evans saw the gaping functionary to the door before she once again retired to the darkness of the bedchamber, a look from one bleak face to the other deciding her that the food could not have arrived at a more inauspicious moment. She silently closed over the door to give the couple further privacy.

Alec was starving. He had eaten his soup and was well into the main course before Selina took her place at the table and decided that whatever her frame of mind, her stomach required sustenance. The silence continued between them until Alec, pouring her out a glass of wine, asked mildly,

“Where’s Talgarth?”

“The next room along. He’s locked himself in. No doubt, by this hour, he’s experiencing some nether world after finally feeding his addiction.”

“There goes my plan of bedding down on his floor for the night.” When Selina glowered at him he added with a crooked smile, “It’s not a new thought, darling. I’d always intended to bunk in with your brother. There’s not even a spare square of hay to be had here tonight. And with your maid and little Sophie for company you’ll find the bed crowded enough. But I might need to take the sofa, and be up before the sun. Talgarth should be able to drag himself to the door by then and I can wash and shave in his room. Here, try these caramelized onions. They’re delicious.”

“I shouldn’t have told you!”

“Why?” He tried to sound off-hand. “If spending one night with your godfather is the worst of it and the reason you can’t see your way clear to marrying me then—”