The Lady Risks All (44 page)

Bone crunched, and Lucius dropped like a felled log.

“Thank
God
!” Stepping closer, her eyes raking Roscoe’s face, Miranda gripped his arm. Then she looked down at Lucius and confirmed he was unconscious.

Roscoe dragged his gaze from Miranda’s face, then kicked the pistol to Roderick; given what he’d deduced, he didn’t trust himself with the weapon. Lucius Clifford had laid hands on her, and even though she appeared physically unharmed, the compulsion to use the pistol to beat the man to death was strong.

Sarah, standing beside Roderick and gripping his arm, stooped, picked up the pistol, and handed it to Roderick.

In the chair nearby, Miranda’s aunt wheezed, struggling to take in air. Sarah murmured to Roderick, then patted his arm and went to help the aunt.

Shaking out his hand, massaging the bruised knuckles, Roscoe remained standing over Lucius Clifford. Given how much fury had been behind his blow, he doubted the man would wake any time soon, but he needed the moment to rein in said killing fury.

He glanced at the terrace—just as someone started pounding on the room’s main door.

Standing beside Roscoe, Miranda had been staring at him as realization crashed through her, washing away all uncertainty, leaving everything—
everything
—startlingly clear. Following his gaze, she saw Mudd and Rawlins barreling across the lawn from the side gate; they must have been in the alley and heard the pistol discharge . . . Roscoe had bluffed about them being near enough for Lucius to see. She looked at Roscoe. “Shall I let them in?”

He nodded. “Please.”

Drawing her hand from his arm, she went to the French door.

Sliding the pistol into his pocket, Roderick had already limped across the room to open the main door and deal with the inevitable staff crisis. After admitting Rawlins and Mudd, leaving them to confer with Roscoe, Miranda went to help Roderick, but after confirming he was successfully reassuring Hughes, Mrs. Flannery, and the rest of the staff, who, brought running by the shot, had crowded into the corridor, she went to help Sarah with Gladys.

While instructing Mudd and Rawlins in how he wished Lucius Clifford restrained, Roscoe tracked Miranda with his eyes; hauling his gaze from her took too much effort, and he’d given up trying.

Her aunt had succumbed to full-blown hysterics. While Sarah and Miranda dealt with her, Roderick, having at Miranda’s request dispatched the staff to fetch water, smelling salts, and anything else that might help the hysterical woman, limped across to stand beside Roscoe.

Leaning on the aunt’s cane, which he’d appropriated, Roderick looked down at Lucius Clifford, then shook his head. Under cover of his aunt’s breathless shrieks, he said, “If he needed money, I would have lent him some—he only had to ask.”

Roscoe realized Roderick didn’t yet know the truth of Lucius Clifford. “I came to tell you and Miranda what I’ve discovered about Kirkwell.”

Alerted by his tone, Roderick glanced at his face, then looked down at Lucius Clifford with even greater revulsion. “Lucius was Kirkwell?”

“He switched identities with Kirkwell on the battlefield.”

Roderick took a moment to work it out. “So . . .” He dragged in a huge breath. “Lucius is a deserter?”

Roscoe nodded grimly. “And that puts an entirely different light on things—especially on what needs to happen with him.”

A glass of water and some smelling salts had arrived, along with several burnt feathers, and the aunt’s hysterics were gradually abating. Roscoe finally dragged his gaze from Miranda; she was moving without any detectable stiffness and was alert and focused. A weight lifted from his chest. He looked at Roderick. “What did you tell your staff?”

Leaving Lucius Clifford gagged with his own cravat and with his hands trussed behind him, Mudd and Rawlins stepped back, taking up positions by the wall nearby and doing their best to become invisible. For such large men, they were very good at that; they’d had plenty of practice.

Roderick was still staring at Lucius Clifford. “I told them the pistol going off was an accident—which in some respects it was.” With the toe of one boot, he nudged Lucius Clifford’s shoulder. “But this . . .” His jaw firmed. “Obviously we’ll need to summon the constables—”

“No.”

Lifting his head, Roderick blinked at him. “No?” He was incredulous. “But . . .” Roderick glanced at Miranda, then, face flushing with anger, he lowered his voice. “He attacked Miranda.”

“Yes. I know.” Roscoe glanced again at the evidence of that—at her badly crushed skirts, at the many tendrils of hair that had come loose from her chignon, itself askew. Once again he quashed the lethal urge the sight provoked. “That’s precisely why we have to act to ensure that Lucius Clifford does no further harm to her, or to the rest of your family. That he and his machinations pose no further threat to them.”

Roderick frowned. “I don’t follow—how is he still a threat? How can he hurt us further?”

“Because of the scandal.” The other sounds in the room had ceased. Roscoe looked across and saw that the aunt had recovered. She was still breathing shallowly, but together with Miranda and Sarah, she was now listening to his and Roderick’s conversation.

And staring uncomprehendingly at him, whom she’d never met.

He inclined his head to her. “Ma’am.” He glanced at Miranda, then Roderick, then looked back at their aunt. “If you’ll permit me to explain, perhaps we can decide how best to deal with this situation.”

The old lady stared at him, then waved weakly. “If you can help us get clear of this without any scandal, then by all means, sir.”

He looked down at the man at his feet, who was finally stirring. “From what we’ve pieced together, Lucius Clifford was in an infantry troop that took heavy casualties on the field at Waterloo. Many were killed. Several deserted. Lucius deserted, too, but before he did he planted his diary and his watch on a fallen comrade and took that man’s name—John Kirkwell. So Kirkwell was thought to be the deserter, while Lucius Clifford was pronounced dead. At some point, and we don’t think it was recently, Lucius returned to England.”

Roscoe glanced at Roderick. “For obvious reasons, he didn’t contact his family, all of whom believed him dead. To resume his identity with people who knew him would have risked identifying himself as a deserter, and everyone knows what the army does with deserters. Whenever he wished to, he used Kirkwell’s name, but otherwise simply avoided anyone who’d previously known him. However, Lucius presumably took due note of his father’s death two years ago. Sometime after that he realized that if inheritance was passed strictly through the male line, then if you died, he, now your nearest male blood relative, stood to inherit at least some of your wealth. While your will would presumably leave most of your fortune to Miranda, any wily solicitor would have informed Lucius that he stood a reasonable chance of being able to claim at least a portion of your estate on the grounds that your wealth stems from your grandfather, and therefore, in the event of you dying without a male heir, your grandfather’s brother—Lucius’s grandfather—could have pressed for a portion of what was originally your grandfather’s estate.

“I’m informed that such a case would be messy, with the outcome depending on the language used in various wills, and even more on the prejudice of the judge rather than on the relative merits of any legal arguments—and strong arguments might be made either way, to grant Lucius a part of your estate, or not. Regardless, to Lucius, penniless as he was, the chance was worth taking. But, of course, before he could mount any legal challenge to your will, you had to die.”

Roderick, his gaze again on Lucius, shook his head. “On the chance that he
might
be able to claim a portion of my fortune, he set out to kill me.” He made a disgusted sound. “That’s why he hired Kempsey and Dole, and sent them to murder me.”

Roscoe nodded. “But when that didn’t go as planned—”

“When you stepped in and saved me.”

“When Miranda and I stepped in and saved you, after that, Lucius pulled back and regrouped. Rethought.”

“He said something before,” Miranda put in, “about hearing that Roderick was giving the bulk of his fortune to charity.”

“What?” Miranda’s aunt looked from her to Roderick. “I thought he was touched, but what’s this? Giving away your funds?”

“Not that much.” Roderick waved the point aside. “But clearly Lucius thought it was more.”

“Ah.” Roscoe nodded. “That makes sense. He thought you were about to give away a lot of your wealth, so he felt impelled to act—first with Kempsey and Dole, and then, when that scheme went awry, to come at you again, but from a different angle.”

“Through me.” Miranda looked coldly at Lucius, who was almost certainly conscious now and listening. “And for that I’ll never forgive him.”

“In deciding how best to deal with your cousin,” Roscoe smoothly went on, “it might help to catalog his crimes. Today, he attacked Miranda, but Roderick and the rest of you foiled him in that. Subsequently, he attempted to extort money from Roderick at pistol-point—”

“But you foiled that,” Roderick said.

“Yes. And prior to that, he attempted to kill you by hiring Kempsey and Dole to do away with you, but Miranda and I foiled that.” Looking down at Lucius, Roscoe observed, “Through all those attempts, beyond Roderick’s injuries and Miranda’s nerves, his actions haven’t caused any real damage. No lasting damage. But that leaves us with his most serious and heinous crime. Desertion in the face of the enemy. The authorities view it as one of the greatest crimes, with good reason. In his case, however, he compounded his villainy by leaving another man, and that man’s family, to bear the ignominy of his desertion. Although he switched identities purely to evade capture, in doing so he saved the Cliffords from the scandal of having a deserter in the family.”

“Oh, my heavens!” Gladys raised a hand to her bosom.

“No palpitations,” Miranda warned. “We don’t have time for them.”

Gladys blinked, then looked at Roscoe as if expecting him to rescue her from impending distress.

As if taking up the challenge, he responded, “At this moment in time, Lucius Clifford is ours to dispose of as we deem fit. We need to consider what will happen if we hand him over to the constables, and weigh that against what will transpire if we hand him over to the army instead.”

“Can we do that?” Roderick asked. “Hand him directly to the army?”

Roscoe nodded. “I can arrange it, yes.”

Miranda drew breath, forced her mind to function. “If we hand him to the constables, we’ll have to press charges, won’t we?” She looked at Roscoe.

“Yes. And in order to prosecute the case, you and Roderick will need to appear in public court, and the earlier attempt on Roderick’s life will need to be explained, too, and all the details of how that played out, with Kempsey’s and Dole’s testimonies and those of all others involved, and in the end, because any such case will inevitably attract the attention of the entire ton, let alone the news sheets, the fact of Clifford’s desertion will come out, along with his use of Kirkwell’s identity, and that will cause a scandal of quite stunning proportions. It will be the sort of trial that’s remembered and talked of for years.”

“
No
.” Gladys’s voice rang with adamantine refusal. “I will
not
countenance that.” Her face set in belligerent lines, she looked at Miranda, then Roderick. “View it as you may—and Lord knows,
I’m
not a Clifford—but even I will say:
don’t do it
. You cannot possibly wish to blacken your family’s name.” She looked down at Lucius Clifford, immobilized on the ground. “You cannot wish to allow that blackguard to take the entire family down with him.”

“I agree.” Roscoe inclined his head to Gladys. “To my mind, there’s no sense in going down that road. Admittedly, Clifford will be found guilty and hanged, but all that will be achieved by giving him a public trial will be to cause irreparable damage and irretrievable harm to the Clifford family, to all its branches. As we all know, society will not differentiate. You’ll all be tarred with his brush.”

Miranda and Roderick exchanged a long glance; for the first time, she sensed her own violent sibling protectiveness reflected back at her. But it wasn’t just the two of them involved. It wasn’t even only Cliffords involved. There was Sarah, and the dowager, the duchess, Henry, and above all Roscoe himself; he hadn’t mentioned himself or his family, but in any court hearing he, too, would be called, would have to front the galleries, and put his carefully guarded identity, and therefore his family’s name and reputation, at risk.

Which would result in the scandal to end all scandals.

Drawing breath, she looked at Roscoe. “What will happen if we hand him to the army?”

At their feet, Lucius Clifford writhed, futilely testing his bonds.

His gaze on their captive, Roscoe replied, “I know several people in positions of power. I understand the army will be very glad to lay their hands on one of the last deserters to have escaped justice. I believe that, in return for his family surrendering him to them, the army will be perfectly prepared to deal with him through their own courts and in their own ways—all of which can be done out of the public eye.” He paused, then said, “The army will inform Kirkwell’s family that he was listed as a deserter in error, that instead he died serving his country, and suitable reparation will be made to the Kirkwells to right the wrong done Kirkwell’s memory and his family’s standing. So that aspect of Lucius Clifford’s wrongdoing will be righted as well as it can be. As for Lucius Clifford, once he’s in the army’s hands, I seriously doubt we’ll hear anything more of him.”

For several moments, Roscoe, Roderick, and Miranda stood looking down at Lucius Clifford, lying bound, gagged, and helpless at their feet.

Then Miranda drew breath and nodded. “We’ll hand him to the army.” She sounded like a judge handing down a sentence.

No one demurred.

Roderick shook himself, then asked, “How?”

Roscoe took charge. He gave orders for Lucius to be taken to his house and held in the cellar there until the army had been notified and came to fetch him. Mudd and Rawlins hefted Lucius to his feet; desperate, he tried to kick, so they tied his ankles as well, then between them lugged him out of the morning room, across the terrace, and set off over the lawn toward the side gate.