The Handbook to Handling His Lordship (33 page)

“No hurry.” Jack snatched the cup of tea from the butler’s hands, then gestured the servant to follow his fool of a master into the house. He took a sip. Barely warm, but an expensive brew, fine and earthy to his taste. “She isn’t going anywhere.”

Once the front door slammed he turned his back to the house. Only then did he allow himself a brief, genuine smile. Most people were bloody fools. Nate still seemed to hold out a small degree of hope that better hearts and better minds would win the day, but Jack wagered on the cleverer man every time. And fortunately, between Stokes and Ebberling, Nate was the cleverer man.

His smile faded again. Even clever men had to pay, from time to time, and Nate’s bill was about to come due. Jack only hoped the damned chit was worth it. His friend certainly seemed to think she was, but if Stokes turned out to be wrong about her, well, he would still be just as dead. And dead and heartbroken was a bloody poor way for a man to spend the rest of his life.

Chapter Seventeen

Some poet—ironically named Lovelace, as she recalled—had once written that stone walls didn’t make a prison, or iron bars a cage, but at the moment Emily had to disagree. She felt very much as if she was trapped in a small cage within a large prison, and no promises or protestations could ever make her other than utterly terrified.

They’d finally stopped howling in the cell next to her, but the quiet was even worse. The drip of water from the damp, moldy ceiling, the clank of chains and rattle of bars—if she never had a sleep free from nightmares ever again, she would know precisely why.

How long had she even been down here? Logic said an hour or so, but even so it already felt like days. It already felt like forever. How long would they wait? What if Ebberling decided simply to let her rot there? What would happen then?

The door at the far end of the crumbling old lower ward screeched open, and immediately the howling began again, louder than before. She wanted to cover her ears at the bloodcurdling, mad screeching and yowling and barking. At the least, she didn’t have to feign her misery and fear; she was cold and wet, and would likely perish from being in such close proximity to whatever it was that rotted in the corner of the cell beside her.

Underground as they were, there weren’t even any of the tiny windows she’d glimpsed on her way down to these neglected cells. Orange torchlight, uncertain and flickering, provided the only illumination as the trio of men emerged from the doorway and approached her cell. Two were plainly dressed, while Jack Rycott still wore his fine, if disheveled, evening attire. From twenty feet away she recognized the guard who’d locked her in earlier, but all of her attention was on the third man.

Lord Ebberling walked as if he was half convinced that corpses waited just beneath the floor to rise up and grab his ankles, but he’d come. And as he saw her huddled in the far corner of her iron-bar cage backed by the old stone walls of the main prison at the top and bottom and back, he smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, either.

“Well, Rachel,” he drawled as the three of them stopped before her cell door, “who would have thought either of us would be here? Not I, certainly, and I wager you, even less.”

“Go away,” she spat, shivering.

Ebberling angled his chin toward the far door. “Yes, you two may go. I want to chat for a bit.”

The guard nodded. “Pound on the door when ye want out, then.”

“I’ll be just on the other side, there, waiting for my payment,” Rycott seconded, blowing Emily a kiss before he sauntered off. The door closed a moment later with a creak and a heavy thud, echoing in the large chamber like the crack of doom, itself. Whose doom, remained to be seen.

The marquis leaned forward against the bars separating the two of them, and not for the first time Emily wished her cell had been a bit larger. She shifted backward against the cold, damp stone. “I know what you did,” she stated, her voice smaller than she intended.

“Yes, so do I,” he returned, sending an annoyed glance at the mad rabble in the common cell adjoining hers. “Do they ever stop making that noise?”

“They quiet down a little when the guards aren’t here, but that awful Rycott said they were amusing. He said they would keep me company.”

“I imagine they will, and for a very long time, poor mindless brutes.”

“I’m not the one who belongs in here,” she attempted again, raising her voice to be heard over the yowling.

“Say that as often and as loudly as you like,” the marquis commented, smiling. “I doubt they care. And your voice seems to … excite them.”

Indeed, several of the filthy lunatics were reaching through the bars for her—or for Ebberling. “Why are you doing this?” she asked him, pushing stiffly to her feet. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“But you did, Miss Newbury. Or is it Miss Smorkley? A very unfortunate name, really.” His grin deepened at her wince. “You were very chatty with Colonel Rycott, it seems.”

“I hoped he might listen to me. And I told him everything, so he knows you killed Katherine.” Tears welled in her eyes, and fell down her dirty cheeks as she blinked. “Did you tell him to kill Nate, too? He was only trying to help me get away from you! I would never have told, if you’d just left me alone!”

“I had no idea the colonel would kill Lord Westfall. I think we’ve already established that you did it, however. Just as you’ll admit that you killed dear Katherine.”

“I won’t!” she screamed. “You killed her!”

“Hush now, my dear. You’re beginning to sound as mad as your companions, here.” He pushed still closer to the bars, so that she was grateful he hadn’t asked to be allowed into the cell with her. “And if you don’t want to spend the remainder of your natural life right here, you’d best admit to both killings, Rachel. Or whoever you are. You tricked Katherine, didn’t you? You lied and said you were a well-practiced governess, and she hired you. She even thought you were friends.”

“We
were
friends,” Emily shot back. “And she told me how you liked to hit her.”

“Only when she misbehaved.” He cocked his head at her. “I think you would have improved your own character after being corrected in the same manner.”

“‘Corrected!’” one of the lunatics repeated, giggling, then resumed picking at the lice in his hair.

“Well, isn’t that unsavory?” Ebberling commented, making a face and miming an ape’s dance at the ill-washed madmen, then laughing when two of them lunged against the bars toward him. They laughed back at him.

“You hit her when she misbehaved?” Emily retorted, drawing his attention back to her. “What did she do to warrant you pulling her off her horse and strangling her?”

He shrugged. “She threatened to tell her father. It wouldn’t have worked, because no grandfather would cut off funds that went to support his grandson. But she threatened me. What husband would stand for his wife spewing such filth at him and not react?”

“She said something of which you didn’t approve, so you killed her?” Emily repeated incredulously. “It wasn’t the threat, but the fact that she threatened?” For the past three years she’d thought it had been because Ebberling feared what his father-in-law might do. But it had only been because Katherine had dared to speak up. And only because Emily—Rachel—had encouraged Katherine to do so. “It
was
my fault,” she said aloud, half to herself, her stomach roiling.

“Ah.” He gazed at her for a moment. “Then you won’t mind terribly much saying that to a judge. You will leave off the other bits, and just stay with ‘it was my fault,’ if you don’t mind. Surely a swift hanging would be preferable to a lifetime in here.”

“I don’t know,” she returned, hearing a faint, high-pitched squeak as the door to the lunatics’ cell swung slowly open. “Would it be? That’s something you’ll have to decide, my lord.”

“Good. Then you should definitely confess, my d…” Ebberling trailed off as he caught sight of a pair of the lunatics shuffling toward him, out of their cell. “My God,” he hissed, stumbling backward and hurrying away, toward the main door of the ward. The solid wooden one. “Get away from me!”

By now most of the madmen were in the corridor, and Emily belatedly noted how very quiet they’d become. She’d been so absorbed in convincing Ebberling to speak that she hadn’t noticed before. She supposed the marquis could say the same, but he didn’t seem in the mood to chat any longer. Rather, he was pounding on the wooden door, swearing at the lunatics and screaming for Rycott to come open the door. The six-inch-thick oak didn’t budge.

He swung a punch at the closest of the lunatics, but the tall, raggedy man dodged the blow with deceptive speed and instead lurched beneath the swing to grab Ebberling by the shoulder and fling him face-first into the door. Before the marquis could straighten and push away, the lunatic yanked his right arm backward and pinned it between himself and Ebberling’s spine. “That’s enough of that,” Nate’s low voice came, hard and clipped.

“W-Westfall? What the devil is—let me go! Rycott! What is—”

“Shut your damned mouth, Ebberling,” Nate growled. “We’ve all heard quite enough from you now.”

“You? And those lunatics? And that lying chit? Who cares what you’ve heard? No one! That’s who! Rycott, open this door!”

Reaching back with his free hand, Nate knocked three times on the door. “Jack, open up.”

The key turned in the lock, and the door swung open as Nate shoved Ebberling upright and out of the way. The marquis would have sprinted through the opening, but Rycott was there to block him. “Not so fast, m’lord,” he drawled in a soft Scottish accent. Was that his own? Emily wondered briefly. “A few of these fine fellows would like a word with ye.”

“You can’t lock me up in here!” Ebberling said shrilly. “No one will believe a pair of spies and a common chit! I’m a marquis!”

“And I’m a duke,” Greaves’s low voice came, as one by one the lunatics began shedding their rags and hats and wild wigs for the far more conservative clothes and neatly trimmed hair beneath. “I win.”

“I believe a Wellington trumps a Greaves,” another deep voice announced, and Emily couldn’t help smiling at the expression dawning on Ebberling’s face as the Duke of Wellington stepped out of a pair of ragged, oversized trousers.

“And I believe a prince beats a pair of dukes.” Prince George shed a large jacket to reveal a fine blue, equally large jacket beneath it. “Well done, Colonel Rycott. I’ve not had so much amusement in ages.” He chuckled, then let loose a particularly fine howl.

“Your Majesty. I believe the thanks should go to Lord Westfall. It was his idea, mostly. I merely called in all my favors to accommodate.”

Arm in arm with the Duke of Greaves, Prince George left the ward, while the rest of the witnesses, which included a judge of the Old Bailey and Mr. Danders, Ebberling’s almost father-in-law, and Lord Garrity, his former father-in-law, shoved the marquis out the door ahead of them.

Once only Wellington and Rycott remained behind, Nate took the keys Jack proffered and walked up to Emily’s cell. “Well done, Emily,” he murmured, unlocking her door and yanking it open.

She threw herself into his arms. They were both ragged and disheveled and dirty, and she didn’t care. He’d said he would save her, and he had. “Prince George?” she exclaimed, and then couldn’t talk any more because he was kissing her.

“I was meeting with him when Jack’s note found me,” the Duke of Wellington said, sketching a slight, stiff bow. “He insisted.”

“I do apologize, Yer Grace,” Jack drawled, “but we had little choice.”

“When did you become Scottish?” Emily asked, eyeing the colonel.

“When I was born in Glengarry,” he returned with a grin, then looked past her toward the ward door. “If it isn’t Madamoiselle Poof-Poof,” he said, his smile deepening.

Emily turned as best she could with both Nate’s arms still close around her. Jenny pranced through the doorway, then curtsied elegantly at Wellington. “Your Grace. I had no idea stupid Rycott would bring you into this mess.”

“I owe stupid Rycott and stupid Stokes—Westfall—one less favor now, my dear,” he said, lowering his head over Jenny’s hand. “And Nate is about to owe me one.”

Emily looked from the duke to Nathaniel. Something was afoot, something neither man was surprised over, but from Nate’s hard expression she couldn’t imagine that it was anything pleasant. “What are you talking about, Your Grace?” she asked.

“You’re going to have to come up with another name,” Nate answered, sliding his hand down to grip her fingers. “There will be a trial, because Ebberling will not lose his title or his income or his standing without one. He has no incentive to confess. Which means you—”

“I will have to testify as to what I saw,” she finished, that cold lump in the pit of her stomach stirring again. “As … myself. Everyone will know that I’m common.”

“I find that there is nothing common at all about you, my love,” Nathaniel said.

She whipped back around to face him. “Stop humoring me, Nathaniel. I
am
common, and I
will
have to leave the Tantalus. No peer wants to knowingly flirt with or play games at the table of a common chit. Especially one who will be speaking in court against one of their own.” Warmth ran down her face, and she wiped at it, angry that she was crying. “I hate that man. He’s ruined everything.”

“Perhaps,” Nathaniel returned. “And perhaps not. We’ve worked one miracle here tonight. Perhaps we can manage another.”

Whatever he was thinking, it would be for her benefit rather than for his own. “You’ve done enough for me, Nathaniel. More … more even than you know. But I can’t stay here. Not without hurting all the people who’ve helped me.” All the people who’d loved her, she’d almost said, but for heaven’s sake, the Duke of Wellington was standing there watching her. She cleared her throat. “Jenny, will you see me back to the Tantalus? I’ll need to gather my things and then find a place to stay until this is finished with.”

“Em—”

“No,” she broke in, putting her fingers over his mouth. “Just stop it. I may have attempted to bend reality to my will, but that time is past. I need to accept who and what I am.”