Undoing of a Lady (11 page)

“I am relieving you of your part in this investigation, Nathaniel,” Dexter said courteously. “You must see you have a major conflict of interest.”

Nat said something very sharp and to the point that made the ladies wince again and stalked over to the edge of the terrace.

“Lady Elizabeth,” Dexter said, turning to her, “I don’t think we need trouble you any further at the moment. Thank you for being so honest with us.”

“I don’t think Lord Waterhouse gave me much option,” Lizzie said bitterly.

“I will escort you back to Fortune Hall to start making the arrangements for Sir Montague’s funeral,” Nat said, coming forward.

“No,” Lizzie said. The panic clutched at her again. She did not want to be alone with Nat, not now that he had made their association public and would surely use it to press her to marry him. “No, thank you. I would rather do things alone.”

This time Nat swore aloud. “For God’s sake, Lizzie, must you always reject my help?”

They stood staring at one another as though the others were simply not there.

I cannot,
Lizzie thought. I cannot take your help, Nat, I cannot rely on you as I want to, draw comfort from you, trust in you,
love you
as I want to do because it hurts too much. I will always want more than you can give.

She stood looking at him, seeing the puzzlement and the frustration in his face, seeing how much he cared for her and how that very deep concern and protectiveness only served to emphasize that he did not love her as she loved him. The pain of it felt like a red-hot coal against her heart. She had to send him away before he hurt her all the more, unknowing but none the less painful for that.

“Thank you,” Lizzie said again, wrenching her gaze from the burning demand of his, “but I would rather be alone.”

Nat swore again and walked off and Laura got ponderously to her feet and put a hand on Lizzie’s arm. Lizzie knew Laura must be able to feel her shaking.

“Lizzie,” Laura said gently, “would you like to come inside out of the sun for a little? You may lie down if you wish, or have a cool drink, perhaps…”

Miles kissed Alice’s cheek. “I will see you later, sweetheart,” he said. “We must try to find Fortune now.”

Lizzie realized with a shock to the heart that he
meant Tom. Now that Monty was dead Tom would be Sir Thomas Fortune. She could think of no one less appropriate to be the squire of Fortune’s Folly. Worse, she would not even put it past Tom to have murdered his brother for the title and the potential riches that the Dames’ Tax and the other medieval laws would afford him. She shuddered at the thought. Then she saw Lydia’s face. It was a tight, white mask of misery. Lizzie felt dreadful. Lydia had been betrayed twice over by Tom. Bad enough for her that Tom had returned to Fortune’s Folly and was lording it about the place with his whoring and his gambling and drinking. Now he was Sir Thomas he would be intolerable.

She went across to Lydia and put her arms about her friend. “It will be all right,” she whispered, though she hardly believed it herself.

They went into the cool darkness of The Old Palace and Lizzie sank gratefully into one of the chairs in the drawing room. Alice poured her a glass of brandy and brought it over to her, pressing it into her hand.

“I know it is probably the last thing you want,” she said with a smile, “particularly if you took too much wine last night, but you probably need it.”

Lizzie forced some of the spirit down, recognizing as it bloomed inside her, hot and strong, that she
had
needed it. She shivered and Alice grasped her cold hands in her own.

“Lizzie,” she said. “Why do you not want to marry Lord Waterhouse?”

“You don’t have to tell us,” Lydia hurried to add. “We only want to help you and to be here if you want to talk…”

“And none of us will moralize,” Laura said. She looked down ruefully at her hugely swollen belly. “Goodness knows, I shall be producing what the matrons euphemistically call a seven-month baby which we all know was conceived before Dexter and I wed, and Alice was the talk of Fortune’s Folly when Miles seduced her—”

“And I am ruined twice over,” Lydia finished, “so who are we to criticize? We are the most scandalous ladies in the village.”

Lizzie tried to smile. It came out very lopsided. “Nat wants to marry me because he…because we…”

“We guessed that bit,” Laura said dryly. “You made love on the night before his wedding to Flora.”

“Yes,” Lizzie said dully. “We made love.”

Except that they had not made love. She knew that now. Oh, she had slept with Nat, had sexual intercourse with him; she had
fornicated
with him, as her old nurse, Mrs. Batty, would probably have put it, in her deeply disapproving way. But she had not made love with him because although she had loved him—and all the terrible hurtful things that he had said to her about wanting him for herself had been so shamefully true—he had not loved her in return.

“I asked Nat to come to me that night because I wanted to talk to him,” Lizzie said. “I told myself that I wanted to save him from making a huge mistake in marrying Flora, but the truth was that it was because I loved him and could not bear for him to marry someone else.”

“I remember that you were quite vehement on the subject of Lord Waterhouse’s betrothal when we discussed it a few months ago at the spa rooms,” Alice murmured.

“Then you will also remember that when we spoke of it you told me that if I had feelings for him I should do something about them before it was too late,” Lizzie said.

“I scarcely meant that you should seduce him,” Alice said wryly. “Perhaps you took me a little too literally.”

“Oh, I am not blaming you,” Lizzie said hastily. She knitted her fingers together, pressing hard. “I know that this whole affair is no one’s fault but my own. Not even Nat’s, for I goaded him beyond endurance and provoked him and made him exceptionally angry with my interference and all the time I was pretending that it was for his own good.” She sighed. “Anyway, it was a disastrous mistake, for he does not love me.” She looked up and saw Alice watching her with nothing but gentleness in her blue eyes, and saw Laura’s sympathy and Lydia’s kindness and wanted suddenly to cry.

“I am not naive,” she said. “I understand that men and women come together for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with love and in our case it was frustration and fury and lust—” She stopped and shrugged a little hopelessly.

“But you do love him,” Laura said softly.

“Yes,” Lizzie admitted. “I do. I love him so much…” She hesitated. “If you had asked me even two weeks ago I think that I would have denied I loved Nat,” she said. “I was trying to fool myself as well as everyone else.” She made a brief, impatient gesture. “Oh, it does not matter how I feel! What matters is that for one stupid, deluded moment I thought that Nat might love me, too, but the truth is that he does not, and that is what hurts.” She pressed her hand to her heart in an unconscious gesture. “I have been so foolish,” she said starkly, “but I will not compound my stupidity by marrying Nat when he does not love me.”

“But he cares deeply for you—” Alice began.

“Would you want to be married to Miles if he merely cared for you?” Lizzie said bitterly. “If you loved Miles, adored him as you do, with every fiber of your being, and in return he
cared
for you?” She saw Alice’s stricken look and felt terrible. “I’m sorry, Alice,” she said remorsefully. “But it would be such an unequal match. It would break my heart each and every day.”

“But love can grow,” Alice argued.

“And if it does not?” Lizzie said. She thought of her mother again. “What if you wait and wait and that never happens? What then?” She shook her head. “It would be the worst match in the world,” she said. “You all know that Nat and I simply would not suit.”

No one contradicted her and that, Lizzie thought, rather proved her point.

“So you are saying that Nat has proposed simply out of a sense of honor,” Laura said slowly, “and because he cares for you and wants to protect you? That sounds good enough to me.”

“I do not deny he is a good man,” Lizzie said.

“But you want more than that,” Lydia said.

“I do when the whole of the rest of my life is at stake.” Lizzie shrugged, uncomfortably aware that Lydia, betrayed by her parents and her lover, would probably feel she had nothing to complain about. “I could not bear it if Nat fell in love with someone else after we wed,” she said honestly, “someone like Priscilla Willoughby. Better to lose him now, when he is not truly mine, than to another woman after our marriage.”

“But if you were to have a child,” Lydia began hesitatingly, her hand resting protectively on her own stomach, “then surely it would be better for it to have a loving father?”

Lizzie felt humbled. There was a huge lump in her throat and a raging anger inside her for her feckless, libertine brother and what he had done to Lydia.
“There won’t be a child,” she said. “It was only once and anyway I do not feel in the least bit pregnant—” Her voice broke a little.

“Oh, Lizzie,” Lydia said, reaching out to her. Lizzie could see pity in her eyes. “Don’t be afraid. Everything will be well—”

The fear and the misery fused in Lizzie’s chest in one tight, hot ball. She wanted to take comfort from her friends but she did not want them to see her cry. She had always preferred to be alone with her misery, ever since she had been a child.

“Please excuse me,” she said. “I must go back to Fortune Hall now. There is so much to be done.”

Alice put out a hand. “Would you like me to come with you, Lizzie?”

Lizzie shook her head. “Thank you, but no. I will manage quite well on my own.”

As she walked down the path to the water meadows she reflected that she knew what her friends would be thinking. Because Laura and Alice and Lydia knew her well, they would not ascribe her damned independence, as her brother Monty had called it, to snobbery, which many people did. They knew she often chose to be alone because she had been accustomed to solitude since childhood. It had become a habit for her. She preferred it.

She skimmed a stone across the swift flowing waters of the River Tune and thought about Monty’s death. He had been the second worst brother in the
world, after Tom, but she still wanted to cry for him because she had lost him; lost both the real Monty, weak and worthless, and the brother she had desperately wanted him to be.

She thought of Nat Waterhouse, too, as good a man as Monty Fortune had been a bad one. Many women would settle for what Nat was offering her. She knew that. Many would think her mad, bad and foolish to refuse him simply because the one thing that he could not offer, his love, was the one thing that she wanted most in all the world. Yet when she thought of marrying Nat and the possibility of losing him to another woman, to someone he could love, like Priscilla Willoughby, her blood ran cold. She could not bear the thought. She had seen her mother run mad because her father had withheld his love from her. Society had called Lady Scarlet a bolter, because she had run away from her marriage, disappearing in a perfumed rustle of taffeta and lace to Ireland with her horse-master. She had been condemned as a faithless wife but Lizzie knew it was not love but a lack of it that had caused her mother’s downfall. She had seen her mother, day after day, neglected and alone whilst the Earl had pursued his mistresses and his Town entertainments. Lady Scarlet had waited and waited for the Earl to love her and when he had not she had taken second best and run and been damned forever for it, lurching from affair to affair, from men to the brandy bottle, until she died.

So she, Lizzie Scarlet, would not make the mistakes her mother had made. She had sent Nat away now, before it was too late. It hurt to love him and to make herself give him up but that was nothing to how much it would pain her to lose him if they were wed. She would not make Lady Scarlet’s mistakes. Not now. Not ever.

D
ESPITE
D
EXTER
relieving him of any responsibilities in the investigation into Monty Fortune’s death, it was Nat who found Tom Fortune that afternoon in an advanced state of inebriation at the Half Moon Inn, some ten miles distant from Fortune’s Folly. Nat had not been able to sit idly by whilst his colleagues hunted Monty Fortune’s murderer. For Lizzie’s sake, if nothing else, he wanted to do whatever he could to help. He had seen her face, stricken and pale, when she had heard the news of Monty’s death. He knew how much she was hurting over the loss of her brother, even a brother as feckless as Monty had been. The scoundrel had not deserved a loving sister. It pained Nat that Lizzie would not turn to him in her misery and loss, but he knew that she had always been one to deal with her unhappiness in private. A girl who could also be spectacularly, publicly outrageous, Lizzie was nevertheless one of the most contained people he knew.

The landlady of Half Moon Inn, Josie Simmons, had just thrown Tom bodily into the courtyard when
Nat arrived and Tom was shouting and swearing most horribly as the tapster, Lenny, poured barrels of cold water all over him in an attempt to sober him up. Nat looked down on Tom’s drunken and unkempt state and his heart sank. He would as lief leave Lizzie in Tom’s care as he would abandon her with a pack of wolves. Yet Tom was her guardian in law now—Sir Thomas Fortune, the squire of Fortune’s Folly.

“Take him away and good riddance to him,” Josie said as Nat hauled Tom to his feet and told him sharply that they wanted to question him over his brother’s death. “He’s been bragging all afternoon long about being Sir Thomas now and not a word of sympathy for his dead brother.” She rested her huge fists on her hips. “Not that Sir Montague deserves any sympathy, mind,” she added. “One’s as bad as the other, if truth be told. There’s terrible bad blood in that family. Makes me fair grateful we’re outside the parish here.”

Tom’s face had set in a mask of malevolence when he saw Nat. “Well, if it isn’t that worthy citizen the Earl of Waterhouse!” he taunted. He grabbed Nat’s lapels, almost lurching off his feet in the process, and stuck his face close to Nat’s own. His breath reeked of ale and smoke. “Don’t forget my money,” he slurred, turning Nat’s blood cold. “Did you get my letter? I’ll broadcast the truth about your sister, Waterhouse, unless you give me the twenty-five grand. I’ll go to your father. She’s a strumpet, Lady Celeste, and the world deserves to know her perversions.”

“I’ll get your money,” Nat said, through his teeth. He kept a tight grip on his temper. He had hated Tom Fortune long before the man had started to blackmail him over Celeste’s indiscretions. He hated Tom for the utter lack of care he had for Lizzie, for his dishonorable treatment of Lydia Cole and the fact that he was an all-round cad. He looked around to see if anyone had overheard Tom’s mocking words. He knew Lizzie’s brother could hardly be relied on for his discretion. If he spoke out, Celeste would be completely ruined.

“Don’t see how you’ll get my money now that Flora Minchin has thrown you over,” Tom sneered. “Keep away from Mary Wheeler. I have a fancy to wed there myself, though she is probably as frigid as a corpse. But you—” He prodded Nat’s chest, “You come up with the goods or Lady Celeste’s name will be bandied around through all the coffee shops in England. Men would pay good money to see what I saw. Perhaps they would offer her a job in a whorehouse if your father threw her out—”

Nat repressed a furious urge to hit him. He knew that Tom cared for nothing beyond money and now that he was squire of Fortune’s Folly he would be bound to extort all the taxes Sir Montague had charged and more. He would need it, Nat thought, to pay his drinking and gambling bills. And a little extra blackmail, holding the honor of the Dukes of Waterhouse in his hands, was an absolute gift to him.

“Give me one more month,” he said. He abhorred giving in to extortion, but with Celeste’s reputation at stake and no way out he knew he was trapped.

Tom laughed. “Two weeks,” he said. “I’ll give you two weeks, seeing as you are begging me. And then—” He laughed again. “I’ll go to your father and tell him all about his precious daughter and her sexual proclivities.” He put his head on one side. “That could be to your advantage, now I come to think of it. The news might kill the old man and then you’d be Duke of Waterhouse—”

Whatever else he had been about to say was lost as Nat’s fist made contact with his jaw and he fell over backward into the ordure from the stables. Josie and Lenny and half the occupants of the taproom, whom Nat was appalled to see had come out into the yard to watch the altercation, burst into a spontaneous round of applause.

“Nice one, Lord W,” Josie said. She lowered her voice. “Can’t pretend I didn’t hear about your sister, though. I’d kill him, if I was you. Never give in to blackmailers. That’s my motto. Kill ’em instead.” She slapped him on the shoulder in a blow Nat assumed was intended as encouragement and helped Lenny haul Tom back to his feet.

“You’re barred from Half Moon House,” she hissed to Tom. “I hope they convict you of your brother’s murder. I don’t care if you did it or not.”

Nat was of a similar mind himself. He was so
blinded with impotent fury that it seemed the greatest pity to him in that moment that they had not been able to pin a single crime on Tom Fortune and rid the world of him, justice or no justice.

“Present yourself to the magistrate tomorrow morning or we’ll come looking for you,” he said to Tom, who now smelled of dung along with the drink and smoke. He ducked out of the way just in time as Tom tried to spit in his face.

From the Half Moon Inn Nat went to seek out Miles Vickery to report Tom’s whereabouts. As he rode he thought about what Tom had said.

“I’ll go to your father. She’s a strumpet, Lady Celeste, and the world deserves to know her perversions…”

Celeste had always been so gentle and frail. Nat still did not know what terrible error of judgment had put his younger sister in Tom Fortune’s power, for when he had tried to ask her about it she had broken down and he had feared for her sanity. He had known then that he had no choice other than to agree to Tom’s extortion, for it was unthinkable for the truth about Celeste to be revealed. Not only would it ruin her, but the scandal would almost certainly kill his father, who was old and infirm, and would devastate his mother. His entire family would be destroyed because of Tom Fortune’s greed. The only other alternative was to kill the man and Nat was very, very tempted. Tom Fortune was vermin, a blight on mankind. If it
were not for Lizzie, Nat would have been even closer to murdering him, but he knew that for Lizzie’s sake he could never do it. She had the same desperate regard for Tom as she had had for Monty, an affection that was immune to sense or reason, a desperate need for family. Nat’s heart ached for Lizzie that she so longed to have about her a family she could love when all she was left with was Tom, who was an utter bastard, and a distant cousin who did not give a rush for her. It seemed monstrous unfair.

As it was, Lizzie was the one who would rescue them all. She did not know it, but she would save him and Celeste and his family. Nat’s only hope now was to marry her. Lizzie’s money would buy Tom’s silence. There was some irony in that, Nat thought. But Lizzie must never, ever know about Tom’s blackmail. Nat knew he had to protect her from this latest proof of Tom’s villainy. Monty’s death had hurt her profoundly. To show that her other brother was even more of a criminal than she suspected would devastate and disillusion her.

Nat rode into the stable yard of Drum Castle, left his horse with the groom and sought Miles out in his study. Although Miles was no longer Marquis of Drummond now that his errant cousin had been found still to be alive, he and Alice had taken a lease on the castle in order to stay in Yorkshire.

When Nat went into the study, Miles and Alice were standing in the window together and talking,
their heads bent close, their voices low and intimate. Nat hesitated a moment on the threshold, because they looked so loving that he felt like an interloper and did not wish to interrupt them. But then Miles looked up and invited him in. Nat stepped forward into the room and noted wryly that Alice’s blue gaze was flinty and less than welcoming as it rested on him. He knew she was thinking of Lizzie.

“Lord Waterhouse.” Alice’s tone was almost as cold as the look in her eyes. She looked from Nat to Miles. “I will leave you to talk business,” she said.

“Lady Vickery,” Nat said. “Please…” Alice paused and Nat pressed his advantage. “You know that I wish to marry Lady Elizabeth,” he said. “If you have any influence with her…”

He thought Alice almost smiled. “You know as well as I do that no one can influence Lizzie once she has set her mind to a thing,” Alice said. Her voice softened. “I wish you good luck, though.”

She went out and Miles gestured Nat to a seat beside the fireplace. There was a fine carved wooden chess set on the games table between the two fireside chairs. The room was warm and smelled of beeswax and flowers. It felt like a home, Nat thought, remembering the cold emptiness of Drum before Alice had married Miles. Alice had wrought that change in the castle, and an enormous change in Miles, too. Marriage, Nat supposed, could be like that but it was a far cry from both the cold distance of the arrange
ment he had contemplated with Flora and the fiery quarreling he was already anticipating with Lizzie.

“I found Tom,” Nat said, without preamble. “I’ve told him to report to the magistrate and to you and Dexter in the morning. He’s too drunk to talk sensibly now.” He sighed. “Not that he is likely to be much more sober on the morrow.”

“Do you think he murdered his brother?” Miles asked.

“No,” Nat said. “Unfortunately not.”

“He had a strong motive,” Miles pointed out. “The baronetcy, the prospect of wealth under the Dames’ Tax. Everyone knows that Monty kept Tom on a tight allowance and Tom hated him for it.”

“Too many people had a motive to kill Sir Montague,” Nat said, shrugging, “though I will allow that Tom’s is one of the best. I imagine,” he added, “that he will be able to claim he was with someone last night.”

“A woman,” Miles said, nodding.

“Or several,” Nat said, ironically. He sighed. “Lady Elizabeth’s motive is less strong.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Miles said, laughing. “In point of fact she was better off with Sir Montague alive.”

“Quite.” Nat shifted. “ Miles, I have a problem. You know that Lizzie is only twenty and therefore requires her guardian’s permission to wed?”

Miles nodded. “And her legal guardian is now Tom Fortune.”

“Precisely,” Nat said. “Tom will never give his consent, because he would thereby lose out on claiming half of Lizzie’s fortune under the Dames’ Tax. In two months’ time he can take her twenty-five thousand pounds.”

Miles grimaced. “I see your problem.”

“What can be done?”

“You could elope with her to Gretna,” Miles said, “or apply for a special licence and swear on oath that the guardian had given his consent, knowing full well that he had not.”

“I would have to perjure myself,” Nat said, nodding.

“Effectively, yes.” Miles moved a chess piece idly. “Or, if the guardian was clearly a man—or woman—of dubious moral stature, you might find another reputable family member who could give their consent.” He shot his friend a look. “In Lizzie’s case we know that her guardian is a blackguard, but she also has an irreproachably respectable third cousin in the current Earl of Scarlet.”

“A man who has taken not the slightest interest in her welfare since he inherited from her father,” Nat said a little grimly.

“He would take an interest soon enough if he heard his cousin would one day be Duchess of Waterhouse,” Miles said, “and he would, I am sure, do all in his power to assist the match.”

Nat smiled reluctantly. “You are so cynical, old chap.”

“But also so very correct,” Miles drawled. “Scarlet Park is less than a half day’s ride to the west of here,” he added. “It would be a simple matter to sound Gregory Scarlet out.”

Nat shifted. “One further complicating factor…If I cannot persuade Lizzie to accept me…”

Miles laughed. “I suspect I should be offended that you think me the expert, albeit theoretically, on the carrying off of unwilling brides.”

“I remember you once contemplated carrying Alice off,” Nat murmured, “before you resorted to blackmailing her into marriage, of course.”

“Touché,” Miles said. “Abduction is the answer. You would also need to bribe a crooked clergyman. Not ideal, especially for one of your rarefied moral principles,” he added sardonically, “but it depends on how much you want the prize.”

There was a short silence. “I want the money,” Nat said, after a moment. “I need it very urgently.” He had toyed on more than one occasion with the idea of telling Miles and Dexter of his predicament, but in the end he had kept silent because he knew that both of them would advise him to tell Tom to go to hell and take his blackmail with him. They could not approve—how could they when they all worked for the Home Secretary to protect against criminal activity and he was contradicting every principle that
they held sacred? Yet moral dilemmas were seldom so easy to resolve, Nat thought bitterly. He appreciated that now.

“You want the money but not the bride who goes with it?” Miles’s expression was suddenly sober. “My advice? Don’t do it, old fellow. A lifetime is a hell of a long time to be tied to a woman whom you don’t love.”

“The ultimate irony,” Nat said, “is that you, the most cynical amongst us, are always preaching to marry for love, Miles.”

Miles shrugged elegantly. “What can I say? I am a convert.”

“I care for Lizzie,” Nat said slowly. “I may not love her the way that you love Alice, but I care a damn sight more than Tom Fortune does for her as a sister. Is that so bad?”

He saw some expression change in Miles’s face. “I cannot answer that, Nathaniel,” Miles said slowly. “Only you and Lady Elizabeth can resolve that between you and I think you have already made up your mind.” He stood up and Nat had the strangest feeling that Miles not only knew something that he did not but also that he had, in some way, disappointed his oldest friend. He struggled with the thought. In his day Miles had been the most ruthless of fortune hunters, prepared to take risks that Nat would never contemplate. Miles was no hypocrite, so why would he disapprove of Nat marrying for money?