Page 99 of Miss Dignified
“Here!” was followed by a rapid thump of boots, then the man himself, slightly winded but as obnoxiously self-possessed as ever.
“Please escort the ladies to the coach and see them safely to your abode. The earl and I have matters to discuss in private. Old business that need no longer concern anybody else.”
Dorning’s brows rose, but before he could stick his oar in, Lydia marched up to Dylan.
“I know you have little enough respect for my brother,” she said, “but I love Marcus, and I love you, and I will not be forced to choose between the two of you. It’s both or none, Dylan. The human heart was made to love widely, as you love your men, your cousins, and your sisters. If you send my brother to bedamned Philadelphia, I will never again polish your perishingcandlestickor beat you at chess.”
Dorning’s expression was gratifyingly blank, while Marcus looked mystified and the countess bewildered.
“I love you too,” Dylan said, smiling because he could not help himself. “Very much, and I assure you, I will use every resource I possess to talk your brother out of remaining distant from his home and family.”
He kissed Lydia’s cheek for good measure, then Dorning was shepherding the ladies from the dingy little room.
“Now then,” Dylan said, closing the door and turning to Tremont, “tell me why you killed Aloysius Dunacre.”
“The problem with philosophers,” Marcus said, “is that they are too, well, philosophical. They haven’t much specific advice for when a fellow has nothing sensible to say. I do wish I could offer you a seat, Powell, but then I’d have to stand, which is awkward when I’ve this earldom about my neck, and I haven’t any port or brandy to offer you either. All quite lowering.”
Quite confusing, in fact.
Powell regarded him with an unnervingly serious stare. That stare should have qualified the captain to interrogate prisoners, but instead, Powell had always kept to the more dangerous task of reconnoitering.
The captain sat himself on the cot. “You killed Dunacre. I’d like to know how and why, though I promise you, not a word of this conversation will leave this room without your permission.”
How to put this, without insulting Powell? “You are a gentleman,” Marcus said, “though as for myself, I’ve grown heartily sick of gentlemanly honor. If I tell you the particulars, you will be duty-bound to report them to Horse Guards or the Lords, or whoever has the present privilege of stretching my neck. If you keep mum, you become an accessory or an accomplice or some sort of villain along with me. This is why I could not tell Mama or Lydia why I’m leaving. If they knew, they would be implicated, and also be even more disappointed in me than they already are. They would protect me nonetheless.”
To have this conversation with Powell of all people—conscience of the regiment, guardian angel of the former soldier—surely ought to qualify as a fitting penance.
“Then don’t admit anything to me. Just tell me why you did it.”
Part of Marcus wanted to tell the story to somebody—to anybody—and here was Powell asking for particulars.
“I always envied you,” Marcus said, though that had nothing to do with anything. “You always knew what to do. When Dunacre gave his stupid orders, when he insulted a man for simply trying to do his job, when he reported his staff for all manner of made-up infractions, you never wavered, never backed down.”
“While you,” Powell said, with a smile even more unnerving than his doom stare, “played the fool. The jester.”
“I am a fool.” Marcus lowered himself to the cot as well. The hard chair was at the moment just too hard, and it rocked on its spindly legs. Marcus felt a passing temptation to smash it, but instead, he sat beside Powell on the marginally less-hard cot.
“You are a crack shot,” Powell said. “Everybody notes this about you, and yet, I saw you nearly shoot your own foot.”
“I missed by a good inch. My boots were never in any danger. Dunacre found my incompetence hilarious, and if he was laughing at me, he wasn’t having anybody flogged, was he? If I bungled an order, he could not rage at the only earl on his staff, but he could ridicule me without limit and have a jolly fine time doing it.”
“So you bungled orders, and nobody demoted you for it.”
“Nobody sent me on patrols either, because in my case, they dared not trust such a one as I to read a map. I was fit only for staff duty—my handwriting is quite good—when all I wanted was to fight.”
“Because you felt guilty for supposedly killing Finchly?”
“Because I wanted to be respected forsomething. Everybody talked about you, Powell. You were a wraith, a ghost, a chameleon. You’d become a bent-over old woman one day and a drunken Spanish drover the next. You read signs of passing French patrols better than any sniffing hound could, and you took a demotion rather than put the men needlessly in harm’s way. I hated you, and I probably still do, except now I’m to swing for killing Dunacre, so what does any of that matter? Besides, the philosophers aren’t very keen on hatred.”
“They never took orders from the devil’s aide-de-camp.”
“Dunacre was rotten,” Marcus said, surprised that he and Powell could agree on even this much. “He was the type to have shoved little boys’ heads into the privy hole at school while the other small boys cheered lest they be next.”
“He probably used his slingshot to aim stones at birds too,” Powell said, “but he did something that even you, a man defined by your sense of duty, found beyond the pale. He offended your honor.”
Marcus knew vaguely that he was being cozened with this little soldierly tête-à-tête on the cot. Powell’s commiseration and understanding were in aid of gaining a confession, but Marcus had ceased to care. The commiseration and understanding were balm to his soul, and—not a detail—hehadkilled Dunacre, and—also not a detail—he did not want to run yet again for the convenience of a conniving cousin.
“I’d kill him again, if I had it to do over.”
