Deadly Engagement: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (36 page)

Alec came up for air, his face lacking all natural color. He had come to the end of the page and he quickly turned the sheet over as if expecting there to be more, yet what he had just read was more than enough to overwhelm him. Over the rims of his spectacles he saw the two greyhounds at the edge of the Grove frolicking in the undergrowth. They had found the burrow of some hapless wood creature. Watching them, Alec unconsciously folded the sheet and slipped it into an inner pocket of his waistcoat before dropping his gaze to the second sheet.

Dearest Meg
(it also began)

My illness prevents me from writing much at all these days. I do tire so easily and spend the greater part of my day chair-bound and being fussed over by Martha. The pain in my joints is considerable. Nothing gives relief.

The matter I spoke to you about on your last visit, do you recall it? The time has come for me to confront my son. I don’t expect a warm response, perhaps no response at all. Yet, in good conscience before I die I must persuade him to do what is right and proper. After all we are talking about his own flesh and blood whatever he may say to the contrary.

I had no option but to send the boy away, for who wants a constant reminder of one’s lack of moral fiber staring one in the face day in and day out? I am no fit person to judge on that score! I sent him to his uncle, and with enough money for the boy to get an education so that he might make his own way in the world. God knows he deserves better, the title if it was in my power to bestow! It matters not a jot to me that his father is—

Here the writing had come to the end of the page, but this time Alec did not turn the sheet over. And for a long time he just sat there with this page in his hands, staring out across the small field of bluebells, wondering what he was going to do with his mother’s letters. He wondered what had happened to the subsequent pages and reasoned that they must have been withheld, possibly secreted in a safe place, for all that was required to blackmail his brother were these pages, proof that there did indeed exist damning letters written by their mother. He wondered too what revelations were contained in the missing pages, if their mother having mentioned her adultery so openly had mentioned his father by name. But there was no doubt in his mind that Jack Belsay had taken the letters from his mother, but whether he had then given them to Simon Tremarton for safe keeping or Simon had stolen them from Jack he could only guess at.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour of sitting still, he returned this page to the worn envelope, took off his spectacles and put both in a pocket of his discarded frockcoat. He still felt dazed, so much so that the hard snap of a twig underfoot made him look up with only mild interest to see who trespassed on his solitude.

It was Selina. She came across the Grove through the filtered light, a hesitant smile on those beautifully curved lips he so wanted to kiss again and again. He returned the smile, convinced he had dozed off because the last time he and Selina had met in the Grove was, unbeknownst to him, the morning of her wedding day. Selina was now a widow and wore mourning, not a velvet cloak of deepest purple, its hood pulled lightly over her abundance of apricot-curls. She stopped a few feet away, gloved hands clasped in front of her holding a riding crop, and frowned down at him.

“I’ve come to warn you,” she said as if through a thick fog. “Gervais has sent for the Runners. His wife has accused you of murdering Simon Tremarton.”

“Is that so?” he said mildly. “Do you know, I have aged a twelvemonth in the space of an hour. Strange… I don’t feel it in my bones but just knowing—”

“Alec! You don’t seem to understand,” Selina demanded and took a step closer. “Gervais means to arrest you for
murder
.”

“Yes. So you said, darling,” he replied. “I wondered when he’d make his move.”

Selina was startled. “Gervais? You have suspicions about that pompous judge?”

“I do, and on several fronts. Accusing me of murder robs me of the same opportunity. I cannot now turn round and point the finger at him, without people thinking I acted out of malicious revenge.”

Selina watched Alec get to his feet, a crease between her brows. “You think he murdered his brother-in-law and by accusing you has deflected suspicion away from himself? But why murder Simon Tremarton?”

Alec flicked her under the chin. “Oh, I could think of one very good reason why a pompous upstanding member of the judiciary would want to do away with the embarrassment of a homosexual brother-in-law who was attempting to blackmail a member of the aristocracy. But no, I wasn’t about to accuse our officious judge of murder, though he must remain a suspect surely, but of attempted rape—”

“Emily?”

“Yes. The night Emily was attacked, he made the mistake of going to Sybilla’s rooms to complain about the boys playing pranks in the servant passageway. Obviously he’d panicked, perhaps he thought he’d been seen fleeing down the backstairs and hoped to deflect suspicion away from himself by seeking out Sybilla before the boys got to her first with their version of events. Yet, all it did was bring himself under scrutiny. What was he doing in that part of the house, in the servant passageway no less? And in speaking to Sybilla about the judge’s most uncharacteristic late-night visit I recalled a conversation Gervais and I had earlier that night Emily was attacked.

“He spoke and acted like a man three-parts drunk. But I wonder now if he was drunk at all. He waxed sentimental about how sweet and innocent his wife had been at the time of their marriage. And the way he was regarding Emily as he spoke, like prey… Sweet, innocent Emily was about to share Delvin’s bed, just as Gervais’ wife was doing and I suspect it was enough to send the judge over the edge. It was an opportunity to have his revenge on a man who had made him a cuckold but who he couldn’t publicly condemn for fear of losing face…” He shrugged and with a smile kissed Selina’s gloved hand. “Of course it is all speculation on my part,” and he seemed to see her for the first time. “That cloak is very fetching,” he said pleasantly. “Sets off your lovely hair.” He lifted a corner of the cloak. “Doesn’t mourning require widows to wear more somber hues? And if I am not very much mistaken that riding habit is Florentine green.”

“My dear Mr. Halsey,” she said with a laugh, “You talk of would-be rapists and acts of revenge and question the lack of proper mourning attire of a hypocritical widow all in the one breath! If I didn’t know you better, I’d say it was you who are drunk, but—”

“But you do know me better,” he murmured and gently kissed her mouth.

Their second kiss, like the night before on the balcony under the stars, was different. It was full of hungry urgency, passion and need. And here, in the quiet and privacy of the Grove, there was nothing to stop them fulfilling that need. Yet, Alec came to his senses and pulled away, blue eyes troubled. When Selina put a hand to his cheek he kissed it abruptly then walked a little way off, leaving her by the oak feeling foolish for thinking last night had brought them full circle to where they had begun before her marriage to J-L. He must have had second thoughts. Why had she thought they could begin again? Why had she kissed him as if her future happiness was vested solely in him? Because it was true and she must be a fool.

But she couldn’t have been more wrong. Alec wanted to kiss her, wanted to take the expectation in that kiss to its rightful conclusion, yet when it came to the one woman who truly mattered in his life he hesitated like a damned schoolboy on his first encounter. So much for the experienced lover, he who had been involved in more than his fair share of bedroom politics! Yet, if he was brutally honest with himself, over the past six years on occasions too numerous to count, he had given and received pleasure from his lovers imagining it was Selina who moved and moaned under him. And now she was a widow. It was obvious she loved him as much as he loved her. He should have been overjoyed that providence had handed them a second chance. But it was overshadowed by a need to win her trust, for her to know that he loved and respected her above all others; that it had only ever been her with whom he wanted to share his life. How was he to explain this to her without appearing condescending and when he had come within a hair’s breadth of asking Emily to marry him?

He came back to pace in front of her, feeling unequal to the task of expressing his feelings (he who was known at many a foreign court for murmuring pretty nothings to steeple-haired beauties only too willing to share his bed), and so he was blunt and unflattering and at the end of this awkward speech he wondered if any man had ever sounded less romantic.

“Selina! I admit I hated you for marrying Jamison-Lewis, but that doesn’t mean I stopped loving you! I convinced myself that there was no point to feeling anything for you when you were married to another. I even went as far as foolishly thinking I could replace you. I’m not talking about the casual liaisons I’ve had. Those women were part of the forgetting process. God knows it’s easy enough to satisfy a physical need, but I wasn’t any more fulfilled. And then, when we unexpectedly bumped into each other on the stair that day and I felt you against me again and smelled the fragrance in your hair…” He laughed self-consciously, a hand through his tussled curls. “Damn it, I’m not doing this at all well!”

“Go on,” she said gently, stripping off her gloves, a hesitant smile hovering about her lovely mouth. “You’re doing splendidly.”

He stopped in front of her, dark blue eyes unblinking. “I went to a Turkish Bath that same night,” he confessed, “determined to expunge the feeling of you in my arms with the first whore I came across. And do you know, the thought of touching—of
making love
—to another woman so repulsed me that I believe you’ve made me impotent. So I drank myself to stupefaction instead. And the worst of it is, through it all, since that fateful moment on the stair, I never again gave thought to marrying Emily.”

“I’ve never given any other man a thought.”

At that he pulled her into an embrace. “Then promise me, you little wretch, that this time you will marry me.”

She snuggled into his embrace, her cheek against his chest, reveling in the feel of his hard body; such a welcome change from the soft fleshy excesses of a cruel and disinterested husband. “Can we begin again?” she asked. “Here. Now. As it was six years ago.”

At that he chuckled in his throat. “No. You must marry me first.”

“Must I?” she asked, looking up at him as if contemplating his offer. She lifted the hood of her cloak back off her hair, untied the cord that held it at her throat, and let if fall at her feet. “But I lack the moral fortitude to wait out the rest of my mourning,” she confessed and stepped back to unhook the front of her green velvet bodice. “And, I hope, neither do you…”

He gave a bark of laughter, gaze firmly on face, and not on her bare breasts through the thin cotton chemise as she let the bodice fall to the carpet of leaves. “Darling, I want you to be my wife not my whore.”

At that she unhooked her petticoats and let the yards of lace and velvet slide down her shapely thighs to her ankles. She stood before him in a transparent cotton chemise that barely covered her thighs, stockings and half boots, and smiled when his gaze finally dropped from her face to openly admire her. And for the first time in six years she saw lust spark in a man’s eyes and was not ashamed of her body, thought of as nothing more than a repellent, necessary means to an end; she felt desired as a woman should be, and by the man she loved above all others.

She wriggled free of the chemise. “Ah, my love, and I’d hoped to be both.”

It needed only that to evaporate the last of his resolve. He gathered her up in his arms and they descended as one to the discarded clothes on the soft deep bed of leaf litter.

Much later as they lay still and quiet in one another’s arms Alec finally reached for his crumpled shirt, but Selina stopped him. She drew him back down beside her, an arm about his neck, the long sweep of her tangled curls falling caressingly across her breasts.

“Again.”

They made love a second time, blissfully unaware that the home wood now crawled with heavy booted trespassers. Two of their number finally stomped into the Grove brandishing clubs and loomed large over them.

Alec and Selina scrambled to dress to the howling jeers of four unshaven brutes carrying batons. Alec only had time to pull on his breeches before pushing Selina out of the way as he was struck across the shoulders with a heavy club. He turned on his attackers and fended off another blow by grabbing the lout’s wrist and forcing the raised arm out of the air, his other hand planting a direct hit to the man’s stubbled chin. The man staggered back, stunned, the sight of his own blood on his fingertips enough to make him fall backwards into a bed of leaves. As Alec shook the sting out of his smarting hand he was hit again from behind, this time at the base of his skull. The blow knocked him to his knees.

Two more thugs appeared from the thicket and joined in the fray. Selina screamed for help. Dressed only in her chemise, she rushed to Alec’s defense, hitting out wildly and indiscriminately at the three men. She was grabbed about the waist and hauled out of the way, kicking back wildly at her captor’s legs and with all her strength, but her efforts were in vain. A sharp painful tug on her long curls forced her head back against her captor’s chest so that she was compelled to watch in horrified disbelief as the Earl of Delvin strode forward, pushed the three thugs aside and with his whip hand high above his head, struck his defenseless brother with a force fueled by absolute hate.