Page 33 of Snowy and the Seven Doves
Snowy summarized Deffew’s rambling tale in one paragraph. “Richard Snowden, my stepfather, was told about my conversation with my brother. He beat Ned to get the details out of him, then beat him some more when Ned accused him of trying to have me killed. Deffew was a witness to the beating, and to Ned’s condition afterwards. He was in a bad way and has since succumbed to a fever. Deffew fears for his life. Snowden refuses to fetch a doctor to his son, and told Deffew that, if the boy dies, he’ll marry and get another.”
One who would not carry the blood of a traitor, Snowden had said. Deffew understood him to be referring to Snowy’s and Ned’s mother. What sort of a swine thought a mother was a traitor for trying to protect her child?
“You are going to rescue your brother,” Lady Charmain concluded.
“I am,” he confirmed. “Deffew and Snowden are going out this evening, and Deffew is leaving a door unlatched.”
“It’s too dangerous,” she said. “He could be making it all up.”
“Perhaps. I think he honestly fears for his friend. In any case, I mean to take the risk, for if Deffew is speaking the truth, my brother’s life is in the balance.”
Chapter Thirteen
Snowden eyed themirror and the man—the backward world man—within it. The late afternoon sun streaming in through the windows lit one side of his body, elegantly dressed for dinner and a ball.
He stood side on to admire his still-firm figure. Exercise was the key, and a healthy diet. Not for him the self-indulgence that strapped so many men of fashion into corsets.
Where had young Deffew got off to? “That boy is sulking,” he told his reflection.
Just because he had to chastise his son. “It is a father’s right and his duty to punish treachery and disobedience.”
Both boys were weak. Richard blamed the influence of their mothers. He sighed and watched his reflection’s chest heave with the effort. “In the case of Chalky, my affection for Madeline was partly to blame,” he admitted. “I indulged her and allowed her to indulge him.”
He had given the boy the nickname Chalky, taking pride that the child carried the family mark Richard himself had been denied by a cruel fate. The family mark, and the fact that Madeline was his at last and had given him a son, had briefly turned Richard’s mind. He could not otherwise account for allowing her to name the baby after his cousin, her first husband, Edmund the Perfect.
When he recovered his senses and forbade the household from referring to the child as Edmund, she had defied him by using the nickname Eddie. “I let it pass. But it was a symptom, Richard. It was a symptom.”
The man in the mirror nodded in agreement. It was a small rebellion that became covert warfare after Henry, Edmund’s boy, had died. And hewasdead. He had to be. There was no room for doubt.
Still, Snowden could see the letter on his desk. A very official letter. From the Lord High Chancellor and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. The hateful words were engraved on his memory.
Evidence that the son of Edmund Snowden still lives.“Lies! All lies, Richard!”
By an evil chance—evil for Chalky, that was—the letter was waiting for him at home on the very day Chalky spoke to the imposter and was seduced into believing him. “I would still have beaten him for disobeying my direct order,” Richard stated firmly.
The mirror man wore a slight smile. It was correct. “Perhaps not as hard,” he acknowledged, but who could blame him for losing his temper?
He turned at a knock on the door. “Come!”
His valet looked around the door. “You asked to be told when Master Deffew came in, my lord.”
Richard nodded an acknowledgement and a dismissal and turned back to the mirror.
“So much for Chalky being in a bad way. Would Deffew have gone gadding about all afternoon if he was really worried?”
The man returned the cynical twist of his lips. Of course not. Chalky would be up and about soon enough, and far more obedient to his father’s rightful authority.
Chapter Fourteen
Snowy told thedriver to stop around the corner from the Snowden townhouse, and he and Stancroft walked the remainder of the way.
Lady Charmain had insisted someone with social capital should be with him, in case things went wrong. Snowden might hesitate to act against such a person, she argued. She proposed herself, but Snowy absolutely refused to allow her to take the risk, afraid of what a person as volatile as Snowden might do.
Instead, he agreed to her counter proposal, to ask Lord Stancroft and Mr. Ashby for their help. Ashby was in the carriage with Lady Charmain, who would not be left behind.
A lantern burned at the front door and a dim light showed through the window next to the door. Otherwise, the house was in darkness. Snowy came to a halt outside.
Stancroft objected. “I thought the door Deffew was going to leave unlatched let on to the garden. Shouldn’t we go around the back?”
