A Bride by Moonlight (17 page)

“Oh, Good Lord! He said it to anyone who would listen,” declared the viscount. “Claimed Cordelia was trying to kill him! Some days it was smothering, some days poisoning. He had gone round the bend, I tell you.”

“But Lady Hepplewood?” Napier’s tone was surprisingly matter-of-fact. “Why would your sister wish to kill her husband?”

Lisette noticed that Duncaster was no longer looking directly at either of them. He seemed suddenly smaller, and more drawn, as if he were shrinking in the massive black chair.

“She wouldn’t,” the viscount finally responded. “Cordelia can be a sharp-tongued shrew, I’ll grant you. And God knows they had their troubles. But she always worshiped Hep.”

“What sort of troubles?”

Duncaster glared at him. “The kind married folk have,” he said evasively. “But if my sister wanted to kill her husband, she wouldn’t have dragged him down here to do it.”

Lisette found it interesting that Duncaster had not declared Lady Hepplewood incapable of murder, but merely that the facts did not add up.

“Aunt Hepplewood told me he suffered from senility of the mind,” said Napier. “Did he seem vague to you when he first moved to Burlingame?”

Duncaster seemed honestly to ponder it. “No, sharp as a tack for a good while. Had to be, to survive those government vultures he worked with.” The mulish look returned. “But Hep and I were best friends, so if you think I’d let anyone treat him ill under my roof—even that high-handed sister of mine—you may think again.”

Napier shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t think that,” he said. “But what I cannot understand is how he deteriorated so rapidly as to be incoherent within a matter of . . . what, weeks?” Here, he looked to his grandfather for confirmation.

Duncaster nodded reluctantly. “Well, months,” he said, “but not a great many.”

“And how could such an intelligent man take it into his head he was being poisoned, or whatever it was he imagined?” Napier pressed.

The old man gave a gargoyle smile. “Old men tend to flights of fancy,” he said. “I, for example, imagined my grandson was coming home to do his duty.”

Irritation sketched over Napier’s face. “Sir, has it ever occurred to you that this
is
my duty?” he said. “It is my duty to the Crown. And if something were amiss, wouldn’t you want to know?”

“I . . .” Duncaster lifted both shoulders. “Well, yes, of course.”

Lisette watched, mesmerized, as Napier leaned forward in his chair, his elbows propped now on his knees, his hands loosely clasped between them. His eyes had gone dark again, his expression intent and utterly focused, like a hawk scanning a field for prey—but this particular hawk, Lisette was sure, had no interest in something so insignificant as quail.

“It is his words to Sir George that I find most telling,” said Napier. “He wrote that Burlingame was choking the life from him. That the walls were closing in and he could not breathe. What did he mean by such a metaphor? I intended to ask him, but by the time I arrived . . .”

“He said a lot of things.” Duncaster had clearly tired of the subject. “Well, go on to Underwood’s, then, if it pleases you,” he said, flinging a dismissive hand in the direction of the open French windows. “Someone down at the stables will saddle you a mount.”

Napier hesitated a moment, as if wondering whether to press further, then apparently thought better of it. “Thank you, sir,” he said, rising from his chair. “I don’t mean to tire you, or press you to the point of aggravation.”

Duncaster did not look happy. “But you have done both,” he grumbled. “And in recompense, I shall require four hours of your time tomorrow. If you mean to accept my hospitality, then you will turn at least one eye to this estate. Tomorrow, specifically, you’ll begin riding around the tenanted farms with Craddock and me.”

Lisette could see Napier was torn; torn between his duty to the Home Office, and the duties that were, inevitably, to fall upon his shoulders.

As to Lord Duncaster, he was putting on a resolute face, but the toll, both emotional and physical, was plain to anyone who truly looked. Lisette did look, and she saw a tyrant who had become petty and childish in his twilight, but in part, perhaps, from grief. It was worth remembering he had buried a wife, all his children, and his best friend.

She rose, and looked at Napier. “Might I walk with you as far as the stables?”

“But of course, my dear.”

A few minutes later, they were going up the mossy terrace stairs, following the gamekeeper’s path. The stables lay beyond the west pavilion, some distance from their end of the house, and were reached through an apple orchard. Together Lisette and Napier made their way through the expansive rear gardens, which were lush and exceedingly formal.

“Your grandfather is vigorous,” she remarked, “for his age.”

“Yes.” Napier’s tone was wry. “But at his age, most men have been dead for a decade.”

“Ah,” she said quietly. “We do not need to have this conversation, do we? You see what is inevitable. And it’s hardly my place to warn you.”

Napier shrugged. “As to your place—”

“Yes?” she said.

He seemed to hesitate. “Never mind,” he answered as they passed a tall, travertine statue—a Greek goddess pouring water from a ewer into a twelve-foot marble pool shimmering with flashes of gold. They were fish, she realized.

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” he remarked. “The wealth and the opulence shine upon us even outdoors, like the very sun itself.”

Lisette murmured her assent for the remark seemed rhetorical. But the sun was indeed warm on her shoulders, the air rich with roses and new-mown grass. As her shoes crunched softly on the pea-gravel path, she felt increasingly aware of Napier’s warmth and powerful male presence by her side. She glanced again at his arresting profile.

He seemed deep in thought, his mood inscrutable.

“I begin to understand what brought you here,” she said quietly. “I wish for your sake that Duncaster understood it, too.”

Napier gave a dismissive grunt. “He understands only that his iron will is being thwarted,” he replied, “which to him is as unforgivable as murder.”

“So you do fear there’s been a crime?” she pressed. “That someone wanted Hepplewood dead? And perhaps Saint-Bryce?”

“I hardly know what I fear,” he replied, “other than having this pile and all its duties dumped on me.”

After a time, they entered a long, vine-covered pergola that seemed to lead from the formal gardens into something more wild and natural. At the center was a wrought-iron bench, angled away from the house and stables so as to take in the view of the ornamental lake to the east. On the hill above it, one could see the towering stone folly rising from the trees.

“Napier,” said Lisette, “there’s something I wish to say to you.”

He stopped on the path and paused. She sensed something was troubling him—something besides his quarrel with his grandfather—and she suspected what it might be.

“Duncaster after all?” he asked. “Or something more dire?”

“Something more dire.” With a withering smile, she motioned to the bench. “Will you sit with me a moment?”

Though she could see he fairly chomped at the bit with impatience, he nodded. After settling onto the bench, Lisette looked down the rolling expanse of green, all the way down to the lake, so crystalline and smooth it threw up the cloudless blue sky like a mirror. What a pity all of one’s choices and decisions weren’t as clear.

As if urging her from her reverie, Napier touched her arm and she flinched. He drew back his hand at once.

Lisette turned to face him. “I’m sorry.” Oddly, she found herself reaching for his hand, and took it between her own. “It isn’t you. I was lost in thought.”

He dipped his head as if to better see her, his hand warm and heavy in hers. Lisette knew what she owed this man. The truth. And she knew, too, the questions it would lead to. Questions she really did not wish to answer. So an apology must suffice.

“Elizabeth,” he said softly, “what is it?”

She released his hand, and forced herself to press on. “I begin to see how seriously you take your duties with the police,” she said. “That, I’m sure, is part of why Sir George turned to you when he was worried about matters here.”

“I can’t speak to Sir George’s views. But in mine, there is no higher calling than police work. At least not for me.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I’ve no talent for medicine, and I think we can agree I’d be ill suited as a priest. But Elizabeth, did you really pull me onto this bench to discuss my career?”

She cut him a rueful glance. “No, I did it so I might apologize.”

“Apologize?” At last she had surprised him.

Lisette drew a steadying breath. She wanted to have done with it. “Almost two years ago,” she began, “I . . . I barged into Whitehall and accused you of being incompetent. I believe I may even have called you venal, and suggested you could be bought. I think none of that was true. I think you care deeply.”

“Do I?” Almost pensively, Napier forked a hand through his heavy, dark hair. “After a dozen years in this business, I hardly know.”

“Those who work hard at things which truly matter are often worn down by them,” she said evenly. “And I think you must be very good at what you do. There’s a distance in you, yes, but I wonder if one could otherwise survive in your world. It was wrong of me to malign you. I misjudged your character . . . and even
that
was not my worst mistake. I was wrong about the whole business. About everything.
Everyone
.”

To her shame, her words ended a little tremulously.

“Elizabeth,” he said chidingly.

She made a sound—a cross between a sob and a laugh—and threw up one hand. “Now be sure, Napier, that I am not putting you on,” she said. “I am, or so you imagine, quite an infamously good actress.”

“Well,” he said quietly, “you do owe me an apology. But you’d do better to worry about Lazonby. He’s powerful and probably vindictive, and I am n—”

“What, you are
not
?” Lisette’s smile was wry.

His expression darkened. “I’ve exacted my pound of flesh by dragging you here,” he replied. “I said I’d protect you from Lazonby should it become necessary, and I will.”

“I . . . I think you will.”

“I
will
,” he said gruffly. “But there is something else, Elizabeth, that I need you to do for me.”

She lifted her gaze to his, troubled by the sudden edge to his words. “Yes?”

He watched her warily for a moment, his eyes gone dark as a thunderhead. They had looked the very same just before he’d kissed her, and for an instant, Elizabeth’s breath caught.

But kissing her seemed the farthest thing from his mind.

“I need you to tell me,” he finally said, “
exactly
what you heard Sir Wilfred say in the dairy the day he died. I’m not asking you to tell me more or concede anything. I just want to know, beyond a shred of doubt, what was said.”

Lisette knew what he was asking. “About your father.”

His jaw flinched. “Yes. About my father.”

Inwardly, she sighed. Yet another discussion she did not wish to have—she now counted about four since breakfast. And to do what he asked required her to step carefully indeed.

Lisette licked her lips. “You know I attended the garden party,” she began uneasily. “All the volunteers from Hannah’s—Lady Leeton’s—charity school did. It was Prize Day for the girls. I . . . I gave the Grammar Prize.”

“Yes,” he said patiently. “I believe Lazonby said as much. But now you bring it up, Elizabeth, I confess I’ve never understood just how you ended up volunteering there. Especially when you claim you knew nothing of Sir Wilfred’s involvement in your father’s death.”

Lisette had often wondered the same. “I think . . . I think I just wanted to see Hannah again,” she finally answered. “I wanted to think of what might have been had Papa’s life not gone so wrong. To me, Hannah was always so beautiful, like a fairy queen. And I had always hoped someday she would come to . . . well, to
like
me.”

“Hannah
—?” he said. “Lady Leeton?”

Lisette shrugged lamely. “I was a little afraid she might recognize me,” she confessed. “So I went to the school on a sort of pretense—the wig helped, of course—and then I just got . . . got caught up in my own lies, I guess.”

She glanced up to see a puzzled expression on Napier’s face. “But Lisette, why
would
she know you? Why might she recognize you?”

Lisette looked at him blankly. “Because of Papa,” she said. “Because they were lovers—serious lovers—long before she married Sir Wilfred. Did you not know? That the three of them were all bosom beaus?”

Napier shook his head. “There was nothing in the old murder file about Hannah Leeton,” he said, “though Lazonby did suggest there was some competition for the lady’s favors.”

“It went beyond that. Hannah adored Papa and wanted to marry him.” Lisette’s voice dropped to a raw whisper. “But now I know the truth. That Sir Wilfred wanted Hannah—and her money—for himself.”

Napier’s brow was furrowed. “I didn’t grasp that,” he said. “I thought Sir Wilfred was just a hired killer for some gaming syndicate. Or so Lazonby said.”

“Oh, he was,” said Lisette, “and well paid for it. The syndicate wanted rid of Lazonby; he was too good a card player. So they paid Sir Wilfred to get rid of him—and they didn’t care how.”

“And Sir Wilfred confessed to all this?” Napier still looked dubious. “In the dairy?”

“Y-yes,” said Lisette. “As I said that day, he bragged about it. He claimed he chose Elinor’s rich fiancé as his victim, not just to set Lazonby up, but so that Papa might be driven to panic when the marriage settlements fell through. He wanted Papa to flee his creditors and head for the Continent. To abandon Hannah so that he—Sir Wilfred—might console her.”

“Dear God,” said Napier under his breath.

Lisette steeled herself against the unexpected press of tears. “How could anyone be so vile? So utterly scheming?” she said, this time aloud. “Sir Wilfred said . . . he said that he saw a way
to kill two birds with one stone.
To take the syndicate’s money and rid them of Lazonby, then have Hannah in the bargain.”