Page 58 of Weave me a Rope
A familiar voice spoke from the door. “Dee-Dee? Spenhurst? What has happened here? Cordelia, are you hurt?”
Spen helped Cordelia rise so she could see the newcomer but kept his arm around her. “She is unharmed, Mr. Milton, thank goodness.”
“Uncle Josh, what are you doing here?” Cordelia asked.
“We are always pleased to see you, sir, of course,” Spen added. “And thank you for the men you sent.”
“Yer own seem to have managed well enough,” Mr. Milton conceded. “Though I’d like to know how they allowed that villain into the same room as my niece.”
“A fire in the kitchen,” Marsh growled. “By the time we realized it had been set, the earl was inside.”
“He has been watching the house,” Cordelia offered. “He saw you riding away, Spen. I wonder if he made the hole in the fence as well?”
“It seems he may have. And then when I took two of Marsh’s men with me,” Spen acknowledged. “He saw his opportunity.”
“He must have signaled his accomplice,” Marsh mused. “The kitchen boy. He admitted it all when he realized the danger our countess was in. Yarverton had told him it was a joke. That he was a family friend come to give the lady a surprise.”
Cordelia shuddered. “I was certainly surprised.”
Mr. Milton opened his arms to his niece and Spen reluctantly released her to hug her uncle. He was inordinately comforted that she kept holding his hand.
“You knew he was here, sir?” Spen asked.
The man sighed. “He should not have been. I was having him watched. When those lies about the pair of ye came out, he eluded my watchers, and we have been on the hunt for him ever since. Then, yesterday, we found out he had left London.”
“You guessed he would come here,” Cordelia said.
“It seemed logical. He had no way of knowing where Lady Daphne was, and he was seen talking to Deerhaven just before he disappeared. I take it, Spenhurst, yer father knew ye were here?”
Spen nodded. He assumed so. After all, he had made no secret of it. “I suppose we can expect a visit from the marquess next, but meanwhile, we should get a doctor and the local magistrate to look at the earl.”
“What are they going to do against an earl?” Mr. Milton grumbled. “Yer sort gets away with violence of our sort every day.”
“That is shamefully a fact, but he didn’t threaten one of your sort with a knife,” Spen pointed out. “He threatenedmycountess.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The local magistrateseemed somewhat intimidated by the rank and prominence of the earl but was horrified by the man’s actions. “He will need to be held in custody,” he agreed. “Perhaps as a guest in my house, on his word of a gentleman, he will not try to escape?”
“Would a gentleman have threatened to kill a woman with child?” Spen asked. “One who is, furthermore, my countessandthe daughter-in-law of the Marquess of Deerhaven?” Invoking his father’s title was a risk, and when the magistrate made it clear he had read the London newspapers, Spen thought it had been a risk too far.
“I understand he might have had some reason to believe the lady was not your wife, my lord.” He bowed to Cordelia, flushing a little. “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”
“When I convinced the man I was Lord Spenhurst’s legal wife,” Cordelia told him, “he lifted his knife and said that I must die, so your mitigating argument does not stand, sir.”
“I would not accept his given word,” Spen said. “And I am the one whose wife is in danger.”
The magistrate reluctantly agreed to keep the earl locked up. “In a room in my house, however, as is appropriate for his status.”
The doctor approved the earl’s removal to the magistrate’s house. Apparently, the man had some kind of a heart condition,though he wouldn’t discuss it with the doctor. “I do not think the head injury is serious, but the man’s pulse is running far too fast, and his ankles are very swollen. Any extra worry or overactivity could kill him.”
So, the earl left, under guard, and Spen was pleased. He did not want him in the same house as Cordelia. They still had to decide what to do about him, though. Mr. Milton was in favor of negotiating a banishment. “I think we can convince him to leave England permanently,” Mr. Milton argued. “If the case goes to Lords, the scandal might destroy him, but it will also dirty the twain of ye. Besides, it will become political, and justice flies out the window when politics comes in the door.”
Spen thought the earl should be treated like anyone else, which Mr. Milton said was morally true, but that Spenhurst should not expect life to behave as he would like. The earl would be treated like an earl, and that was that. “If he has any sense, he will negotiate,” Spen’s uncle-in-law insisted.
“If he had any sense, he would not have broken in here with a knife,” Cordelia pointed out.
In the end, it didn’t matter. The earl was sent back to London, to be imprisoned in his own house pending trial. He died a couple of nights later. Mr. Milton, who had returned to London as well, found out his London physician had been expecting it to happen for some time.
