My Lord Murderer (9 page)

“Then what’s to be done?”

Selby drained the last of his brandy, put down the glass, and sat back in the deep winged chair. He clasped his hands across his belly and shut his eyes. Wys watched him in fascination. The only sign that Selby was alive was a slight movement of his lips, as if he were involved in a debate in a dream. A few moments later, Selby’s eyelids flickered. His eyes opened, revealing an alert brightness that proved he had not been sleeping, and he sat bolt upright. “We’ll do it,” he said chortling. “We’ll proceed exactly as she wishes.”

Wys gaped at him. “You don’t mean it! You intend to permit her to take Lady Rowle to Suffolk? And you want
me
to lure
Drew
there? And in that underhanded, secretive way? I can’t believe you’re in earnest!”

“I am perfectly in earnest,” Selby said placidly.

“Have you thought this through carefully? Only
think
what can happen! Lady Rowle, who is not a fool, will see through the plan in a moment. Then, being a woman who in my view is lacking in moderation, she will very likely fall into a fit of hysterics or wild fury. This will cause Drew to feel far from pleased at our interference in his affairs. We shall then suffer the wrath of both of them. We shall have to endure a veritable
storm
of villification and abuse about our heads. We shall lose Drew’s friendship, gain Lady Rowle’s enmity, and all for nothing.”

Selby looked at Wys admiringly. “You should definitely stand for Parliament, dear boy. You present your case in such commendable style: a gifted mixture of the factual and the dramatic, well seasoned with verbal pyrotechnics of a high order. Yes indeed, you must certainly consider standing for Parliament.”

Wys regarded him with a cool stare. “Thank you. Is
that
all you have to say to the purpose?”

“What else shall I say?” Selby shrugged and heaved himself up from his chair with great effort. “If your prediction is correct—and I have little doubt that it is—Hetty shall get no more than she deserves, and I hope it may teach the saucy chit a lesson to be less interfering in the future. If, on the other hand, your forecast proves to be inaccurate, and the two victims of these devious machinations do not fall
out
but rather fall into each other’s arms, we shall have the satisfaction of having done a good deed.” With that, he patted his protruding stomach with satisfaction and turned to leave.

“And do you expect me to go ahead with the dishonorable and dastardly plan that Hetty has concocted to get Drew there?”

“My dear boy, don’t look at
me
so accusingly. I don’t care what you do.
You
are the one who promised Hetty you would do it, not I.”

“Yes, but … you see, she had started to cry…”

Selby grinned. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you about Hetty’s tears. Talented little minx, ain’t she?”

“Are you going to let her think she’s pulled the wool over your eyes?” Wys asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Selby answered, signaling a waiter to get his hat and coat. “I’ll see. I’m going home now to play a little cat-and-mouse game of my own.” And with a cheerful wave of his chubby hand, he left the room.

Wys watched him go with an expression of bewilderment. “They’re quite right,” he muttered dazedly. “I don’t understand a thing about marriage.”

Hetty had dismissed her abigail, donned a lovely and expensive new nightdress made up of yards and yards of filmy blue gauze, and sat brushing her auburn curls to a shiny luster. At the sound of Selby’s knock, she dropped her brush and ran eagerly to the door. Selby, resplendent in a maroon velvet dressing gown held together across his bulk by several pairs of frogs woven of gold cord, had no sooner stepped over the threshold of her bedroom and shut the door when Hetty jumped up on her toes and flung her arms around his neck. “Here you are at last,” she said, chiding him affectionately. “I’ve been waiting for you this
age
!”

“Have you, my dear?” he asked fondly. “I was under the impression that I’d left the club rather earlier than usual tonight.” And he settled himself in an easy chair and drew her onto his lap. “What is this?” he asked, fingering her nightgown. “Another new gown? I hope the size of the bill won’t spoil my delight in looking at it.”

“You
do
like it!” Hetty said, pleased with herself and settling herself snugly against his shoulder. “I’m so glad you do, for the bill is shocking, I warn you.”

Selby sighed. “You’re a shameless little chit. Whatever am I to do with you?”

Hetty, recognizing his mellow mood, giggled and nuzzled his neck. “Don’t lose patience with me, for I have some news which will please you. I know you’ll be delighted to hear that I’ve decided to accompany you to Suffolk after all. I’ll be ready to leave next week, if that pleases you. So you see, I’ll be quite removed from all the London shops and the dressmakers, and thus won’t be spending your money for a while.”

“You’ve decided to go to Suffolk? After being quite adamant about it only a few days ago? How am I to account for this sudden change in plans, my girl?”

“Well, you see, I’m growing quite bored with London these days. Ever since the ball, I’ve had the feeling that people are avoiding me. I may be imagining it, of course, but I see no reason why we shouldn’t leave town for a while.”

“I’m delighted that you want to go, my dear,” Selby said blandly. “We’ll make arrangements to do so quite soon. If all goes as I expect, we can leave in a month or six weeks.”

“A month or six weeks!” Hetty cried, stunned.

“Yes. By the early part of January at the latest.”

“But what—? You said—! I mean, you’ve been urging me to go with you to Stonehaven for the past
month
!” She stared at him, dumbfounded.

“I understand your surprise, my dear, but you seemed so reluctant to go at this season that I decided to put my plans off for your sake. Now, I’ve made other arrangements. Some business meetings in the city, etcetera. A couple of months’ delay is not so important, is it?”

“But of
course
it is! I
can’t
wait for two months!” she cried, jumping to her feet and staring at him, aghast.

“I don’t see why a small delay should upset you so,” said her husband, blinking at her in exaggerated innocence.

“Because … because I’ve invited someone to come with us. How can I turn around and tell her we’re not going until
January?
”

“Invited someone? Who is it?”

Hetty dropped her eyes guiltily. This was not the way she had planned the evening at all. She did not want to break the news to him like this, but what else was she to do? “I’ve asked Lady Rowle and her brother to join us,” she said in a timid little voice.

“Oh, I see,” said Selby mildly. “That
is
awkward, isn’t it.”

“Awkward!” Hetty exclaimed. “It’s much
worse
than awkward—it’s impossible!”

“Balderdash! All you need do is tell the woman we can’t go right now, and that we’d be glad to have her with us in January.”

“But I can’t do that! I shall
die
of shame! You don’t know what I had to go through to get her to agree! I couldn’t
possibly
cry off now!”

“Seems to me, my dear, that you are making too much of this. If you had discussed this with me, however, before going off and extending invitations without so much as a by-your-leave, you wouldn’t be in this bumble-bath.”

“Oh?” Hetty raised a quizzical eyebrow haughtily. “I didn’t realize that it was necessary for me to ask your permission before issuing my invitations.”

“Don’t get on your high ropes with
me
, my dear. You know very well that you have absolute freedom to invite to our home anyone whom you wish. But taking Gwen Rowle to Suffolk for two weeks or more is quite a different case, is it not? Don’t you think you should have discussed such a decision with me first?”

“I don’t see why,” Hetty said stubbornly.

“Well, suppose, for example, that I had taken it upon myself to invite your brother. A
fine
hank we’d be in then!”

Hetty looked at her husband keenly. “
Did
you invite Drew?”

“Of course not,” Selby said with a holier-than-thou smile. “I would have discussed such a course with
you
first.”

“What a whisker!” Hetty snapped. “You would have invited him without giving
me
a passing thought, and he would have arrived at our doorstep without my having been in the least prepared for him.”

“Be that as it may, I did
not
invite Drew, but you
did
invite Lady Rowle. Now, what do you propose to do about it?”

“There’s only one thing I
can
do about it,” Hetty said, her face crumbling in despair and very real tears filling up her eyes. “I shall have to g-go without you. And how I’m to g-get all the way to S-Stonehaven, and how I’m to g-go through the whole ordeal w-w-without you, I’m sure I d-don’t know!”

“Ordeal? What ordeal?”

Hetty shot him an alarmed glance. “N-nothing. I just m-meant that I’ve n-never been at the manor house without you, and it will b-be an ordeal.”

“You meant nothing of the sort. And you needn’t upset yourself, because I don’t intend to permit you to go without me.”

Hetty’s chin shook with a completely sincere quiver. “But, S-Selby, you d-don’t understand! I
must
go!”

“Hetty, have you been up to something? Are you concocting some plot involving Lady Rowle?”

At this, the tears spilled over. Hetty dropped her head in her hands. “Oh, S-Selby,” she sobbed, “I shall never do so again. N-Never. But I shall be in the m-most dreadful fix if you don’t let me go to S-Suffolk with G-Gwen.”

Lord Selby, who had frequently bragged about his ability to remain untouched by his wife’s artful use of tears, found himself unable to resist her now. To pursue the game he had been playing seemed almost cruel; she made such a pitiable, endearing sight, standing there before him with her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking. His heart quite melted. He reached up, drew her back onto his lap, and took her hands from her face. Brushing her tears away, he kissed her tenderly. “There, there, my dear, don’t upset yourself. I shall take you to Suffolk whenever you like, and you shall go through with your plans just as you wish, so long as you promise to consult me in the future.”

Hetty looked at him in misty bewilderment. “B-But your appointments … in the city…?”

Selby’s eyes wavered. “Oh, I’ll … cancel them,” he said hastily.

Hetty’s face brightened and her wet eyelashes flickered over eyes that shone in happy gratitude. “Oh, Selby,” she sighed, and nestled in his arms, “you are the best … the
very
best of husbands!”

Selby grinned as he rubbed his cheek against her curls. The trip to Suffolk would undoubtedly be a disaster, but so long as Hetty remained convinced that he was the very best of husbands, he might manage to make for himself a fairly pleasant time of it.

Chapter Six

O
F COURSE, IT WAS RAINING
. Wys, already made utterly miserable by the fact that he would have to enact a false and dishonest scene before the day was out in order to trick his closest friend into going to Stonehaven, found that he could fall to even lower depths of despair. He sat at the window of the small sitting room of his stylish hunting-box in Melbourn and looked out at the dismal scene before him. One expected such weather at the end of November or during December, but not on the last day of October. The rain was so cold that it formed little traces of ice on the few remaining leaves, and if one ventured outside, the wind sent the raindrops flying into one’s face, cutting like hundreds of little knives. One could neither ride nor shoot nor walk out of doors.

Wys glanced at his friend, sitting near the fire engrossed in reading a dusty copy of
Rasselas
which he had found on the mantel in his bedroom. Drew had been an ideal guest. Although the weather had been impossible ever since their arrival, he had not complained. He had made easy conversation, played cards by the hour, and had even spent an afternoon repairing a broken chair, all with apparent enjoyment. Most praiseworthy of all, when Wys’s chef, the talented Albért, had taken ill and a woman from the village had been hired to replace him, Drew had said not one disparaging word about the dreadful meals she had prepared.

The chef’s replacement was, in a way, the one lucky stroke Wys had had. Now it would not be hard for Drew to believe that Wys could be made ill as a result of her cooking. But how should he make the pretense? Should he groan? Double over? Quietly take to his bed? Hetty had made it sound so easy, but he didn’t know how to playact. The whole idea was downright deceitful, and how he was to face Drew when the masquerade was over, he did not know.

Wys turned back to the window and sighed.

“That’s the longest, most tragic sigh I’ve heard since I saw Kemble perform
Hamlet
. What’s wrong with you, Wys?” Drew asked, putting aside his book and looking quizzically at his friend.

“Nothing’s wrong. Only this cursed weather. I’m sorry to have dragged you from London to this siege of rain and boredom.”

“You have offered me this unnecessary apology several times already. I have assured you each time that you did not ‘drag’ me to Melbourn—I came quite willingly. Eagerly, in fact. I’ve assured you that I do not feel at all besieged, either by weather or by boredom. You must know without my saying it that I’m not bored by your company.”

“Yes, I know. You are the best of good fellows, Drew.” Wys smiled at his friend weakly and turned back to the window, hoping to see a sign of clearing somewhere in the leaden sky. There was none. He sighed again.

“There you go again. This air of depression is unlike you, Wys. I’ve suspected that something was wrong ever since we arrived. What
is
troubling you?”

Wys looked up at Drew standing before him and realized that he could not go through with the pretense. He could not repay Drew’s thoughtfulness and friendly cheer with lies! Hetty would probably never forgive him, and perhaps he would never forgive himself, but he would tell Drew the truth, and right now. “Drew,” he began, “there
is
something troubling me. I—”