Lady Notorious (Royal Rewards #4) Read online

  She described her placement in Lord Deverell’s household. “I knew I recognized you!” exclaimed Lady Deverell.

  Then came the familiar events: the fall of the footman—unidentified in Cass’s retelling—from the trellis. The attack on Lord Deverell, discovered soon after. The note implying he would die of his injuries.

  “But he didn’t,” said George, recognizing this to be unnecessary since Lord Deverell, very much alive, was seated only a few chairs away from him. “And he chose to hide the fact of his attack. Which allowed Miss Benton, as Mrs. Benedetti, to infiltrate the ton and determine whether the rest of you were concerned about your safety, or curious about the fate of your old compatriot.”

  Angelus looked pleased. “Infiltrate. A good word.”

  “Enough of this,” said Mrs. Knotwirth in a tone as sharp and brittle as broken glass. “Who killed my husband?”

  “And my son,” added Lady Pollard.

  “My brother.” Francis Lightfoot’s elder brother sat taut as a bowstring, waiting.

  “I didn’t know that at first,” explained Cass. “And even now, it’s only a guess. But I know who stabbed Lord Deverell. Because I know who slashed the Duke of Ardmore, and who shot Lord Northbrook with an arrow. Those acts made an entirely new pattern, and the culprit was clear.”

  “Well?” Deverell folded his arms, his face flushed red with drink or strain—or both. “Who was it, then? Name the blackguard at once. We’ve a magistrate here to see him settled.”

  Cass looked at George for a moment. He nodded. Then her clear brown gaze held Lord Deverell’s. “It was you.”

  George had never been in battle, but he imagined this was what happened when a bomb exploded: the detonation, then a ringing silence, then a rain of chaos as dust fell and began to settle. Thus it was when Cass accused Lord Deverell before his peers and friends and the greatest gossips of the ton. And a magistrate from Bow Street, for good measure. Complete quiet followed for at least fifteen seconds; then no one could say enough at once.

  Lord Deverell shook his head. George could read the movement of his lips: Madness. The girl’s mad.

  “That’s not possible,” said the Duke of Ardmore over the sudden clamor. “Deverell could not have fit through the window of the coaching inn to slash my arm.”

  “He had help, of course, from his wife.” Cass looked as cool and unbothered as if she were drinking champagne at a ball.

  Another silence, as if all talk were smothered by a blanket.

  “It took me too long to realize it,” Cass said. “Even after the, ah, footman communicated that Lady Deverell sometimes climbed down the trellis outside her bedchamber. Even then, I wasn’t certain until I saw the trellis at Deverell Place had been cut and mended.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything except that I care about maintaining our property,” sniffed Lady Deverell. She looked waxy and hard in the warm, gleaming room, like a candle unlit. “These accusations are a scandal, and I intend to see them answered in court.”

  “You want to go to court?” Fox looked interested. “I’d be happy to hear the case at Bow Street. But maybe you’d like to hear the rest of Miss Benton’s evidence first.”

  As Lady Deverell gaped, a feeling of satisfaction stole through George. Look at how they all listened to Cass; look at how Fox believed in her skill and judgment.

  Cass continued. “Who knew that this footman liked to climb trellises? Who would have guessed that tampering with a trellis would remove the footman from his post indefinitely?”

  Lord Deverell waved this off, then slid a finger into his cravat to tug it from his perspiring neck. “Someone would have had to know that the footman was a Bow Street Runner. And we didn’t know that until after I was attacked.”

  “Someone would have had to know only that the footman could be used as an excuse,” Cass replied. “It was very well planned. You have a fondness for injuring people, and not, perhaps, caring whether they would be killed. Fortunately the footman will be all right as soon as his broken leg is mended, and he will be back to his true post at Bow Street.”

  Lord Deverell was sweating profusely now. “I tell you I had nothing to do with that! I was in my study alone, and—asleep.”

  “It was very well planned,” Cass repeated. “In fact, I suspect Lord Deverell planned the whole thing. Beginning a few years ago, with the deaths of Mr. Whiting, Mr. Lightfoot, and Mr. Knotwirth.”

  “Ridiculous.” The earl moistened his lips with his tongue. “Madness. These are wild accusations. I had nothing at all to do with the death of Lightfoot.”

  Too late, he realized what he had said. Too late for denial; too late for his wife’s composure. She spun from her chair, making a desperate dash for the door—only to be blocked by the same excellent servants who had given her the food and drink she had been so happy to consume shortly before.

  “That’s not what I meant,” tried Deverell. “Of course I had nothing to do with their deaths. Any deaths. Any attacks—any . . .” He trailed off, looking alarmingly red. As footmen came to flank his chair, someone pressed a glass of water into his hand. He took a sip, then dashed it to the floor.

  Angelus watched this as if an observer at a play. “Be kind to the carpets. They are very expensive. Ah—Miss Benton? Lord Northbrook? Perhaps you’d like to fill in the remaining gaps in our tale. It is so edifying.”

  “It all comes back to money, I suppose,” said Lady Isabel. “So many cases do.”

  And indeed this one did. Delicately, Cass communicated that it must have become clear to Lord and Lady Deverell about two years before that there would be no more children of their marriage. “His lordship had a daughter of his first wife and two of his present lady, but he has no heir. He must have become worried about money, that he’d leave his family with nothing.”

  “And there sat a fortune in the unworthy hands of a crime lord,” Angelus intoned. “It was easier to eliminate a few of your friends than ask me to unwind the tontine, wasn’t it, Deverell? Though you got to that point eventually.”

  “A fifth share now is better than the whole thing in the future,” blustered Deverell as beefy footmen held him down in his seat. “That’s all I admit to. Wanting to unwind the damned tontine.”

  This was not convincing. Ardmore leaned forward, his eyes ice. “You stabbed me!” The words seemed to astound him as soon as they left his mouth. “You . . . had me stabbed? You?”

  “And had your son shot,” George pointed out.

  “Only with an arrow,” tossed back Ardmore.

  “Lady Deverell slashed your arm, Your Grace,” said Cass to the duke. “If she could manage the trellis at her house, she could manage the climb outside the inn. And she could have fit through the small windows.”

  Now the duke’s nostrils were flaring. He looked like one of his hounds, bristling and growling. “You sent your wife to kill me?”

  Deverell cringed back, now using the silent footmen as shelter. “No, not that. Never that. I was horrified when I heard you were near death.”

  “I think,” Cass said, “he needed you to perceive danger connected with the tontine. He needed you to want to dissolve it. That was the reason for the failed attacks upon both you and your son—and himself.”

  “What about me?” Gerry said in his dry little voice. “I’d have had to agree. And Cavender, and Braithwaite.”

  Cass regarded him gravely. “I am very sorry, sir, to say that I think you might soon have suffered a fall if you did not agree. It would appear an accident.”

  “It would fit the pattern,” George mused. “The first pattern. The original pattern.”

  Cass nodded. “Anyone who didn’t agree would be—I don’t know how to put it.”

  “No need to be delicate now,” said Braithwaite. It was odd to see him without a touch of humor on his big square face. “They’d have killed us off. A man we’ve known since boyhood, and he and his wife would have killed us for money.”

  “People do,” said Callum Jenks
. “They so often do. And it is never right.”

  Augustus Fox cleared his throat. “There’s no proof here. Nothing but coincidence and likelihood and inference. I believe it all, but there’s nothing here the law can act upon.” He heaved himself to his feet. “If you don’t mind, sir”—this he addressed to Angelus—“I’ll have a bit of a walk. Let you all sort this out. When I return, you can let me know what you’d like me to do—if there’s anything I can do, as magistrate.”

  And George understood: the stern old fellow was giving them a chance to end this situation as they saw fit. Because justice and the law weren’t always the same, and the law could do little to a peer, even if he were caught with blood on his hands.

  Once the servants at the door had stepped aside, letting Fox exit, Lady Deverell crept back to her place in the circle of chairs.

  “None of us here represent the law,” said Angelus. “Not officially. A lady of society need never be tried or imprisoned. But should there not be some punishment?”

  “The victims’ families would have to prosecute,” spoke up old Lady Pollard. The evening’s events seemed to have diminished her. “I do not wish to spend my final days fighting with criminals.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Braithwaite, “Deverell’s share of the tontine could be split and distributed to the victims’ families.”

  “That is like putting a price on a life,” protested Mrs. Knotwirth.

  “It is,” said Angelus, “and that is the whole purpose of a tontine. It is a damnable arrangement. I recommend you dissolve it at once, especially since you all arranged it as twenty-year-olds. You hadn’t the right to sign a binding contract. If I’d chosen to embezzle your funds in the intervening years, you’d have had no recourse.” His smile was vulpine.

  “Fine with me,” Cavender said. “Split the money evenly and be done with it.”

  “What about the shares of the members who’ve died?” George asked.

  “I’m not a moral compass,” said Angelus. “You must find one of those yourself.”

  “And their punishment?” Lady Teasdale, powerful and blunt, pointed a finger at Lord and Lady Deverell. “How much of this are we to allow to circulate outside of this room?”

  “I should think word will get out,” Cass said. “It always does. Lord and Lady Deverell might want to live abroad from this time forward.”

  “A good shunning, that’s the answer.” Cavender sounded cheerful. “The law can’t touch you, but no one else will either.”

  “The punishment will fall on our daughters,” cried Lady Deverell. “It should fall on ourselves alone.”

  George cut a glance at his father. “Children often suffer because of their parents’ actions. I regret that yours will be no different.”

  Angelus stood, making a graceful, sweeping gesture with his arms. “Have the magistrate brought back in,” he called to no one in particular. Instantly, three servants left the room to do his bidding.

  Cass, too, jumped to her feet. “It was George who solved this,” she blurted. “I mean—Lord Northbrook. He saw the pattern and arranged everything. My investigation. This gathering. He . . . saved his father’s life, and his own.”

  George could no more have made sense of her words than if she were speaking French. He’d never been an outstanding student. Couldn’t be bothered to try hard, because what was the point? He’d be a duke one day no matter what.

  His wasn’t the only puzzled face as he looked around the circle. “I didn’t do anything,” he replied. “I hired you.”

  Cass shook her head so earnestly that a lock of fiery hair fell from its pins. “That’s something, isn’t it? You didn’t know what to do, so you hired an expert.” She pulled a face. “Sort of an expert. You wouldn’t expect to cook your own food; you hire an expert. You saw there was a danger. No one else saw that, and if you’d done nothing, more people might have died.

  “And besides,” she added, “you did a great deal more than hire me. You housed me and planned with me and gave me the resources and protection of your name.”

  A flame that had gone out within George when she’d left Ardmore House flared into existence again. Sparked. Glowed. Grew. “I thought you considered me lazy.”

  “No! You just don’t spend your time as other people do. But that’s not a fault; that’s a choice and a skill.”

  She looked around the circle, only now appearing to notice the curious stares of everyone present. “So,” she stammered, lacing her fingers together, “that’s all I wanted to say.”

  She dropped into her chair and slouched against the back.

  And George . . . George smiled.

  He’d been wrong about so much.

  He’d helped to build his own cage and hadn’t even realized it. He’d been content with what he thought was due him, when he hadn’t thought of what he could do. Until chance, and Cass, and the thread of a pattern snagged his notice.

  And in the end? There was a reason, a purpose to it all. Life itself. And the truth, and knowing it, and seeing wrongs righted.

  Cass was holding his gaze, and her eyes were more beautiful than amber. Warmer and brighter than the ring he’d slid onto her finger without knowing why it mattered, very much, that he carry out that part of the charade himself.

  It really had mattered, in the end.

  Well. How about that.

  When Fox returned to the drawing room, the rest was all coda. Angelus informed him that Lord and Lady Deverell were planning an extended trip to the Continent for their health. “I think they ought to leave within the week, don’t you all?” he asked the room at large.

  Mrs. Knotwirth marched from her seat to glare in the faces of the earl and countess. “A week? I’ll give them forty-eight hours.”

  “A woman of spirit,” Angelus approved. “Forty-eight hours it is. Oh—and while I have you all gathered, might I make it known that I would prefer no one accept vowels from the Duke of Ardmore anymore? Consider it . . . more than a suggestion.” Again, that vulpine smile.

  Everyone was starting to stand, and mill, and whisper, and prepare to leave. This didn’t prevent the duke from jumping to his feet and snapping, “You can’t treat me like a child whose purse you can take away.”

  Angelus lifted black brows. “I can, for you’ve no more sense than a child. Even with a fifth share of the tontine paid to you, you’ll have tens of thousands in debt. And you owe most of it to me.”

  “He’s right,” said George. “And you will leave it to me. It might take me most of a lifetime to discharge all your debts.”

  “Not much of a legacy to leave your son,” Angelus said. “Well, you must do as you like.”

  “He does, always. No one has a hold over him,” replied George. “No one can touch his influence or take his title.”

  The duke was too dignified to say I’m right here, but his eyes burned them.

  “Father. If there were something you cared about—” George shrugged, hoping the gesture communicated both I wish there were and Damn you at once.

  Ardmore was silent.

  “That’s that.” George turned away. “Thank you, Mr. Gabriel. It has been most satisfying to work with you on this case.”

  Angelus nodded. “Ah, and here is Miss Benton, who skulks about and listens at doorways. Have you arranged a meeting time?”

  Cass slipped to George’s side, ticking on her fingers. “Gerry and Cavender will return at noon tomorrow. Braithwaite will be here no more than a half hour later. Your Grace, perhaps you can join them as well? It will be time to dissolve the tontine.”

  “Of course I’ll be here,” grumbled the duke. “And . . .” He shuffled his feet, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “I should like to see it split eight ways, if the others agree. Some for Knotwirth’s widow and Whiting’s mother and Lightfoot’s brother.”

  “And the eighth share?” Angelus sounded skeptical.

  “Those girls of Deverell’s,” said the duke gruffly. “They’re just children. Not sure if
they’ve got a dowry, but when they return to England . . .”

  Something softened in their host’s manner. “If the others agree, I will see it done. And even if the others do not agree, I will see the girls dowered. Though I am rather good at getting people to agree with me.”

  “That will make all the difference to Deverell’s daughters.” Cass’s gloved fingers, unadorned by jewelry, laced before her. “Scandal without money is insurmountable. Scandal plus money means notoriety. They might do very well once the time comes for them to marry, some years from now.”

  “I’m glad,” George said to his father, “that you will not allow those children to suffer for the wrongs of their parents.”

  That seemed about all there was to say to him, and George turned away again. Cass joined Augustus Fox, drawing the older man into a conversation.

  “Wait. Angelus.” The duke spoke up as if the words were ripped from him, unwilling. Yet his voice came.

  “Ye-es?” Their host’s response was slow.

  “Would you care to buy any more of my paintings? To decrease my debt?”

  Slowly, George turned back to regard his father. The duke gave a curt nod. It meant . . . something. Apology, maybe? Maybe. Maybe that was what it was.

  George nodded back. There. Maybe the duke would take that as forgiveness. Maybe he’d assume George had a crick in his neck. It was all the same to him. He wouldn’t believe Ardmore was ready to change until his behavior altered—and stayed that way.

  Cass was saying something that had the magistrate nodding his heavy head, then looking grave. To George’s surprise, Fox took her in his arms and gave her a tight squeeze, then a pat on the head. It looked more than anything like a father bidding a beloved daughter farewell.

  “Everything all right there?” George asked when Cass again made her way to his side.

  “Yes. I think so.” Cass looked back at Fox, biting her lip. Her eyes were a little teary. “I told him I wasn’t planning to work with Charles anymore, but that Janey would. And I told him he ought to pay her, even if it meant taking part of Charles’s salary away from him and giving it to his wife—soon-to-be wife—instead.”