The Sleeping Partner (38 page)

Miss Tolerance shook her head. “I do not think he can be now. I think he told himself that you did not know his part. Perhaps with time?” She did not much believe it, but if the girl could, the better for her.

Henry Thorpe and his brother helped their sister to her feet, and together they guided her up the stairs to the little sitting room. Henry settled her in a chair. John Thorpe pressed a glass of wine on her. Then he and his brother stood back with Sir Adam, all of them watching Evadne helplessly. Tears slipped down her cheeks and watered the wine she sipped. Lady Brereton knelt by her sister’s chair, stroking her hand. As they sat so, Lord Lyne’s voice carried to them from the hallway, demanding that his daughter come down, come back, speak with him, listen to him. After a moment of this Mr. Henry Thorpe left the room. When he returned his face was grim but resolved; the rake subsumed in the elder brother.

“I told the old man not to waste his breath; he gave up all claim to authority when he let Evie answer for his cowardice. Let him sulk in his office.”

“I will take you back to Godwin’s house, Evie,” John Thorpe said.

“Or anywhere else you like,” Henry Thorpe added.

Sir Adam, who had said nothing downstairs, stood just as silent now, watching his wife anxiously. Miss Tolerance had done what she could; it was time she left.

“May I call on you tomorrow, Lady Brereton? Thank you. In the meantime, if there is any way I can—” She was not able to finish the sentence.

A noise, a sound unmistakable to Miss Tolerance’s ears, echoed in the hallway. Without thought she ran for the stairs, with John and Henry Thorpe just behind her. The door to Lord Lyne’s office was closed; Wheeler and the other footman, Pinney, stood before it indecisively. Henry Thorpe pushed past them, dismissing them with a nod, and opened the door.

Miss Tolerance smelled black powder even before she walked in, and saw curls of smoke against the sunny window.

Lord Lyne sat behind his desk, his head thrown back, a part of his head disfigured with blood and gunpowder, half of his spectacles dangling from one ear. Blood spattered the curtain behind him. The pistol in his hand fell to the floor as his sons approached him. Miss Tolerance waited in the doorway, trembling, although she had been certain what they would find.

“Almighty ever-living God,” John Thorpe murmured. He leaned forward to close his father’s eyes. His hand came back bloodied. “Maker of mankind, who dost correct those whom Thou dost love, and chastise every one whom Thou dost receive: We beseech Thee to have mercy upon this Thy servant visited with Thine hand—”

Henry Thorpe stood before the desk, looking about him blankly as if the horrid revelations of the past hour had at last overwhelmed him. He picked up a piece of paper that lay centered on the desk. One word was written there, which Miss Tolerance could not read from where she stood.

Thorpe returned the paper to the desk, turned away from his father and pushed past Miss Tolerance to leave the room. She heard him in the hall issuing instructions to the servants.

His prayer finished, John Thorpe wiped absently at the blood on his hand with a pocket kerchief. When his hand was clean he took up the paper, read it, then offered it to Miss Tolerance

Centered, in a hand she recognized to be Lord Lyne’s, was the word
Thankless.

She looked at John Thorpe. “Burn this,” she suggested. “Do not permit your father the last word.”

He took the paper back, crumpled it into a tight ball, and pocketed it.

Miss Tolerance turned her back on Lyne’s corpse and returned upstairs to tell his daughters what he had done.

Evadne had dropped her glass and sat, wine soaking into the pale muslin of her dress, as if the shot her father had fired had slain her too.

Miss Tolerance told them, in a few words, what had happened. Clarissa Brereton, standing by her sister, began to weave where she stood. Sir Adam caught his wife, seated her beside him on the sofa, and without regard for the others in the room put his arms around her. Lady Brereton lay on her husband’s breast, ashen, her mouth trembling.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

Sir Adam murmured shushing sounds. “You need do nothing, Clary. You’ve had a great shock. Just sit still; I’m here.” He stroked his wife’s fair hair, dropped a kiss on her brow. “You need do nothing, my love. Leave it all to me.”

Miss Tolerance was amazed and touched by a side to her brother which was entirely new to her.

Evadne Thorpe spoke. “I did not want this.”

The words emerged almost as a growl. The girl was not weeping; her eyes glittered. She was furious.

“I did not want this,” Evadne said again. “It is too easy. I did not want Father dead.”

“Too easy?” Even as she echoed the girl’s words Miss Tolerance apprehended their meaning.

“I wanted him to admit what he did to me. I wanted him punished.” Evadne’s hands curled in her lap. “I did not want him dead.”

It was useless, in this moment, to deny the girl her rage. “It may be better for you all this way,” she said gently. “Whatever hurt you hoped for him, it would have hurt your sister and your brothers as well.”

She could see Evadne consider it, see the moment when her hands relaxed. She did not answer by word or gesture, but the tension seeped slowly from her.

Miss Tolerance could think of nothing more to do. The family must find a way to heal itself. She took her leave, offering as she did that if Evadne wished to speak to someone… The girl nodded unseeingly. Over his wife’s head Adam nodded as well.

At the front door Henry Thorpe stopped her. “I sent for the Watch. I suppose that is the thing to do?”

“I have never encountered such a circumstance,” Miss Tolerance said. “I think your father must have been of disturbed mind—”

Thorpe bridled. “You would add madness to my father’s…crimes?”

“My lord,” Miss Tolerance said gently, “under law, a man who takes his life with cold calculation forfeits his property to the crown. I do not know if your father intended such a thing.”

Henry Thorpe, the new Lord Lyne, met Miss Tolerance’s eyes. “
Thankless,
” he murmured.

“Precisely so,” Miss Tolerance said. “A man who takes his life while deranged is not responsible for the suicide, and his family is not punished. I think your family has been punished enough for your father’s sins, my lord.”

“My lord,” he repeated. “God, I am head of the family now.”

“Exactly so, sir.”

Chapter Twenty

Young Harry was sitting by Miss Tolerance’s cottage door when she returned to Manchester Square. His knees were drawn up almost to his chin; he was weaving young branches from a birch tree into a rustic mat, working to square one corner, his brows drawn down and his mouth pinched in concentration.

“That’s clever,” she told him. She hoped there was not further trouble at Mrs. Brereton’s—she had had enough strife today, and more than enough.

“My sisters used to make baskets and such.” He smiled and got to his feet, unfolding like a spyglass until he towered over her. “I came to say thank you. For all of us at Mrs. B’s, I suppose, but for myself in special.”

“All I did was stand and lend you my countenance; you and the others faced down Mr. Tickenor. I am very glad to see the last of him.”

“A bad man,” Harry agreed. “He’d have hurt Mrs. B.” With no fear hanging over him he was more confident; the suggestion of a stammer was gone and his eyes no longer shifted warily as he looked at her. “Your aunt had me in this morning and rang a rare peal over me for not coming to her direct with what he was doing. Then she told me I needn’t ever feel anxiety for myself here so long as the gentlemen continue to give good reports of me. I’d no idea they’d done. Even Lord Holyfield who talks so much about the last boy—”

“Matt,” Miss Tolerance supplied. “Matt Etan.”

“Even Holyfield—good reports, even though I’m not Matt.”

Miss Tolerance unlocked her door. “Matt had one way about him—a little rough around the edges—and you have another. But my aunt has an instinct for such things, and she chose to hire you. That should give you some ease. Now, is there anything more you need from me, Harry?”

The boy shook his head. “Only to say thanks.” He held the mat out to her. “Would you like this? It’s handy for putting a hot kettle on.” He looked, in his way, as appealingly boyish as Matt had done. Miss Tolerance took the mat.

“Thank you, Harry. Perhaps another time you’ll come take a cup of tea with me as Matt used to do.” The boy ducked his head, acknowledging the invitation, and long-legged it back to the house.

For four-and-twenty hours Miss Tolerance attempted to banish Lord Lyne from her mind. The last image she had of the baron, head thrown back unnaturally and face disfigured with black powder and blood, was grisly. The man’s mad, self-serving justification for giving his daughter into the hands of a villain was, if anything, worse. To erase these thoughts she distracted herself with gossip and cards with her aunt. Mrs. Brereton appeared to have erased her engagement with Gerard Tickenor from her memory, as well as the anxiety and unhappiness it had caused among her staff. The most she said of the matter was, “When you reach a certain age, Sarah, the idea of a partner with whom to face old age becomes… appealing. I should be careful not to let such feelings render me pathetic.”

“That is a word I should never have thought to apply to you, ma’am.”

Mrs. Brereton was unwavering. “What else would you call a woman of my years who behaves like a chit with a first beau? Sad. Pathetic.”

“Is it not possible that a man of similar years—a man not Mr. Tickenor—might find the same attraction in the idea of a partner?”

“But it
was
Mr. Tickenor. I should have known better.”

“How should you have, aunt?” Miss Tolerance had thought very similarly before, but now found herself disposed to pardon her aunt.

“Because I knew Gerard of old, and would not have married him when I was thirty. He is what he is. Men don’t change, my dear.”

“Women do?”

“Only to become more foolish, it seems. I believe that is my trick, Sarah.”

“Indeed, ma’am, it is.”

When she returned to her house in the afternoon Miss Tolerance found a note from Sir Walter Mandif. Abner Huwe, arrested for murder and attempted murder, had been making strange statements. “Indeed, I find it difficult to credit his accusations.” Still, the statements required investigation into matters with which Sir Walter thought Miss Tolerance might be acquainted. Might Miss Tolerance call upon him to discuss the matter? He added that he would be at home in the evening if Miss Tolerance could see her way to join him for a glass of wine. In that way the matter could remain unofficial.

Had she been foolish to assume that Abner Huwe would refrain from dragging Evadne Thorpe and her father through the mud, merely to save himself from further charges? The last service she could do for her client was to explain to Sir Walter the desirability of suppressing Lord Lyne’s involvement, or at least Miss Thorpe’s. At dusk Miss Tolerance dressed for a visit and asked Cole to procure her a carriage for Gracechurch Street.

Abner Huwe had confessed to a parade of crimes in the hope, Sir Walter told her, of dragging his associates down with him. “He is one of those men who tars everything he touches,” the magistrate said. “I don’t think he cares for his own fate, as long as he can ruin another man.”

Or woman.

They sat again in Sir Walter’s parlor, ranged as they had been on her other visits. Michael had greeted Miss Tolerance as an old acquaintance and fetched in glasses and claret. Miss Tolerance was conscious of a pleasant domestic feeling to the setting and the conversation which was both satisfying and disturbing. Sir Walter poured wine for her and sat with his own glass.

“What has Huwe said? In his accusations.”

“He paints with a broad brush, and the burden of his song appears to be that other parties were the instigators of his crimes. Indeed, he insists he would not have attacked you had he not found you standing over his employee’s bloodied body.”

“Doubtless not.” Miss Tolerance tasted her wine. “Had I been gone two minutes sooner he’d not have known who had been in his office, and thus would not have felt it necessary to kill me—until Mr. Worke came to his senses and told him of my visit. Who are the other parties he accuses?”

Sir Walter raised an eyebrow. “You will make me tell you my tale before you tell yours?”

“My tale does not belong to me. When I know what you know, Sir Walter, I can decide what will not be a breach of discretion.”

“Huwe accuses you of provoking the attack upon yourself. He says, both that John Worke killed Tom Proctor without his authority, and that Tom Proctor invited his own death by betraying him. He says—” Sir Walter tilted his head. “He claims that a very well connected man, a peer in fact, was his partner in a shady business, and that this man
forced
him—forced Huwe, that is—to take his daughter—the baron’s daughter—captive in order to put a stop to the business.”

“Does he say so?” Miss Tolerance felt reluctant admiration at Huwe’s wholehearted twisting of the truth. “Does he name the peer? Or the daughter?”

“He does. What I was hoping was that, if indeed this is a matter about which you know something, you might help me teaze out the truth from Huwe’s statement—if there is any truth at all. If I must lay charges at his partner’s door—”

“That is no longer possible. The man is dead.”

“Dead? From his manner I do not think Huwe knows it.”

“It happened only yesterday, after Huwe’s arrest. The peer took his own life. I believe he feared that everything would be known.”

“So Huwe’s story is true?” From Sir Walter’s expression he had not suspected it.

“He is telling a version of the truth, a very self-serving one, and one likely to do a great deal of damage to the family the baron left behind. A family already suffering much.”

Without giving the peer a name Miss Tolerance related the whole: Lyne’s speculation in cinchona bark and Huwe’s part in its distribution; Huwe’s desire to continue the project and Lyne’s refusal; the kidnapping of Evadne Thorpe—unnamed by Miss Tolerance and Sir Walter both.