Page 37 of To Catch a Lord
The group of former Friends who had surrounded their idol had shrunk as far away as they could well go, pulling back even their garments as though contact with her would sully them. Amelia thought that if any one of them should be charged with knowing Lavinia, still less with having come here to support her and help her engineer another woman’s humiliation, they would play St Peter’s part and deny her with great emphasis, as many times as proved necessary.
‘It is preposterous to accuse me of murder!’ Lady Thornfalcon said, putting out her hands wide in a highly theatrical gesture and looking about her for confirmation, as if to say,I am beautiful, so very beautiful, and therefore, I must be innocent! How could a woman with such a face commit any sort of crime?
‘There’s no denying you got away with it for a good long while,’ said the Runner complacently, ‘but I have been down in Somerset doing a bit of investigating, and I believe I can make a case for the deliberate and premeditated killing by poison… of your own husband.’
The sound that ran around the huge auditorium was an extraordinary one: a sort of sibilant whisper of shock and disgust. Amelia too was astonished, and looked at her stepmother in sharp enquiry. Rosanna shrugged expansively and whispered, ‘I don’t know any of this part of it. Zeke plays his cards very close to his chest, and always has. But no wonder he didn’t want me getting mixed up with her. Murder, he says! I’m as shocked as you are.’
‘Now, I’m an officer of the law and not a canting parson,’ Pennyfeather went on loudly, clearly relishing his large, captive audience, ‘but when a moral lesson smacks you round the face, as you might say, it seems to me that others would do well to heed it. I dare say every married body here has had their moments of irritability with their life’s partner. I’m sure Mrs P, woman in a million as she is, has had many such with me, not to speak of my own sentiments. Little daily habits can grate on your nerves, as we all know. Snoring and the like. Jiggling of the legs, loud slurping of beverages. But as for murdering your loved one by putting something nasty in their tea, well, however much they slurp it, that’s a step too far, and is bound to get found out in the end. Because once a person starts off a-murdering, they most often find they can’t stop. If you’d called a halt at just one victim, my dear, it’s likely you’d have got away with it, because you’re a clever piece, as I’d be the first to acknowledge.’ He gave his prisoner a friendly sort of a shake. ‘But you couldn’t stop, could you? They never can, ladies and gents! They never can.’ And on that unanswerable remark, he and his colleagues led her away, with no more than a conspiratorial grin in the direction of Amelia and Rosanna. This was no time or place for explanations.
‘Good God,’ Amelia said blankly as the door closed behind them and the room erupted into excited comment. ‘Can it be true?’
‘If Zeke says it is, I dare say it is. Not that she’ll hang for it like an ordinary woman would. If I’d bumped your father off, for all his wickedness, I’d have been up swinging on the nubbing cheat for all to see within a bare fortnight. What a scandal that would have been for the Wyvernes! But this fancy bit won’t be paying that price, I’ll go bail. You wait and see if I’m right.’
‘I don’t know exactly what the nubbing cheat is, but I expect that doesn’t matter,’ Amelia said. ‘You didn’t murder my father, did you? I feel as though I ought to ask. He did die very suddenly, or so I understand.’
Rosanna laughed mirthlessly. ‘That I didn’t! He had a paralytic seizure, just like they told you. Whatever he was, and he was a proper bad lot, you know, a rakehell and a satyr and worse, I’d hardly kill the goose that laid the golden egg, now, would I? I was dependent on him, remember, for all that came with being a marchioness. All those fine things I thought I couldn’t live without. Jewels and silks and servants and such. Yes,’ she added impatiently, seeing what her stepdaughter was about to say, ‘I get a jointure now he’s dead. It’s very generous. But I couldn’t manage to live on it, and I’ve got into debt so deep, it’s hard to see how I can ever get out.’
‘We should help you,’ Amelia said impulsively. ‘You’ve helped me, and you didn’t need to.’
‘I’d bleed you dry and you’d soon regret it,’ was the cheerful answer. ‘You’re talking to me now, but you know you can’t afford to be seen with me in public. But I’m well blunted, just at the moment, because of what the murdering wench paid me, and I’ve a mind to go abroad and leave all my debts and my creditors behind. I’ve had enough of England, and it seems like England has had enough of me. You Wyvernes won’t be sorry to see the back of me either. Perhaps your precious reputations will recover in the end if I make myself scarce.’
‘I’m not sure it matters, really. Anything that can be destroyed so easily by baseless gossip can’t be worth much in the first place, it seems to me. But where will you go? We’re at war with practically everybody, and I should think that would make things rather difficult for you.’
‘It’s a shame and no mistake,’ Rosanna acknowledged wistfully, ‘because I quite fancy Paris. I’ve never been – your father had an unaccountable dislike of risking getting his head chopped off, even before the bloody wars started. Perhaps I should be bold and head for America instead.’
‘We’re at war with them too,’ Amelia said, suppressing an impulse to laugh.
Her stepmother waved this inconvenient fact away as a mere detail. ‘I’m sure there are ships slipping through the blockade every day of the week. There’s always smuggling to be done and profit to be had, and if I don’t have any connections down on the docks, I’ll wager Zeke does. He knows everybody. And I’m positive I could make a big splash in New York or Boston. I expect they have theatres – they must have. “The notorious Lady Wyverne appearing for the first time on an American stage!” Can’t you see it?’
‘I can,’ Amelia admitted. ‘I should wish you good fortune, then. Not that I think you need it. It seems to me that you can very well look after yourself.’
The older woman grinned at her wryly. ‘Well, I’ve needed to often enough in my life; I should be an old hand at it by now. Talking of which, how’s that sister-in-law of yours? She’s a cunning baggage and no mistake. I hired her as your old grandmother’s companion, when I was in my pomp, and before I could so much as blink, she was cosying up to your brother with designs on him plain for all to see. I bet she never told you about all that.’ There was just a faint trace of malice still in her voice, and though Amelia couldn’t help liking her, she wasn’t sure she was entirely to be trusted, and certainly not where Sophie – the new Lady Wyverne, her replacement – was concerned.
‘It’s none of my business how they met.’ It was also true that Amelia didn’t feel her own conscience was clear enough these days to want to sit in judgement on anyone else. ‘They’re very happy, and they have a baby son they both dote on. I can’t imagine anyone else who would suit Rafe half so well. He’s a different man since he met her – as though the weight of the world has been lifted off his shoulders. He was always worried and anxious before, and seemed much older than his years.’
‘If that’s to my account, there’s no need to rub it in. I’ve said I wronged him, haven’t I? I’m no hand at apologising – I don’t have a lot of practice at it – but will you tell him for me that I’m sorry? I doubt he’ll credit it, but I really am. Some of the things I did when I was married to your father don’t sit easy in my mind, and the way I treated him is one of them.’
‘I will tell him, ma’am, I promise.’
It seemed there was nothing more to be said, but then Rosanna added abruptly, as if against her will, ‘I can’t ever be a mother to you, or to anybody, God knows, the idea is ridiculous, and I dare say you’ve wished me at Jericho often enough since you’ve been old enough to know who and what I am. I know my existence by itself makes things harder for you. But when people tell you of all the scandalous things I’ve done, which I’m sure they will once you’re married and more fit to hear them…’ She stopped, and then said, ‘The gossip’s probably all true in my case; the most malicious old cat alive would struggle to invent things when what I’ve really done is bad enough. I can’t dodge the tittle-tattle – I expect it’ll follow me even to America and I’ll end up selling myself again, one way or another. But you don’t have to – not in the ways I have, and not in the ways so many society ladies do. One man or a dozen – you’d be surprised how little difference it makes if that one man’s cruel, and so many of them are. Don’t do anything because a man tries to make you, girl. Don’t do anything that hurts you just so you can keep him. It isn’t worth it. No man’s worth it, and a bad man’s worth less than nothing, no matter if he has a fancy title and riches and a bloody big house.’ And with these words of wisdom, she turned and melted away into the crowd, and in a moment, Amelia couldn’t see her any more.
She shook her head to clear it. The music had started up again, and many more couples had taken to the stage, keen to continue enjoying their evening. Others were gossiping hard, shocked faces outnumbered by gleeful ones. Had it ever happened before that a woman – a lady of quality – had been dragged by the Bow Street Runners from the middle of a masquerade at the Opera House? And the charge was murder. It would be a subject of scandal for days or even weeks, and these fortunate individuals could say that they had been here to see it, every thrilling moment of it. That was worth the price of admission by itself.
But nobody was paying Amelia herself the least attention, and she thought she should profit from it by leaving. She had to make her way across London – she hoped she would be able to hail a hackney, and that the driver of it would not take it into his head to murder her, or kidnap her for purposes she’d prefer not to contemplate. Having got her here – for she now knew that although Lavinia had thought she had been pulling the strings, the real author of the evening’s proceedings had been Mr Pennyfeather – she thought the Runner might have arranged that she should get home safely too. After all, it hadn’t been strictly necessary to bring her here to witness Lavinia’s downfall, except as some demonstration of the operation of justice. But it seemed that even a being as omniscient as he appeared to be couldn’t think of absolutely everything.
Amelia turned and began pushing her way through the crowd towards the exit. It was ridiculously difficult to get by the knots of avidly chattering people, and it seemed her way was blocked at last by a particularly solid body – a man, a very tall one, who showed no disposition to let her pass.Not now, please God,she thought,I’m really not in the humour to be accosted now.I just want togo home!She looked up, scowling, ready to stamp on a foot or drive a pin deep into someone’s groping hand.
But it was Marcus.
36
Marcus had had a thoroughly disagreeable few days, ever since the nightmare evening of Sir Humphrey’s dinner. He’d gone home from that event in a kind of daze and lain awake all night, prey to all manner of roiling thoughts. It wasn’t even the intense, almost painful sexual frustration he was experiencing that tormented him so. Nor even, really, the shame of the shockingly frank things he’d said to Amelia, though they brought a fiery colour to his cheeks as he lay in the darkness and remembered them in excruciating detail. He’d told her he wanted to… And God knows he had wanted to, and did still want to. All that he’d said and much, much more. But that wasn’t by any means the worst of it.
It was the knowledge that he loved her that had hit him like a thunderbolt. He thought himself an idiot for not realising it sooner when all the signs had been there. But when they’d been speaking of their speedy marriage, he had been almost overcome by a fierce desire to agree, to add his voice to those of Sir Humphrey and his wife, and demand that Amelia should become his without further delay. This week. Tomorrow! And it wasn’t, he’d realised a moment later, just because he wanted her in his bed. Though he did. It was because he needed the engagement to be genuine. He loved her, and he could think of nothing better than to marry her as soon as possible. What had started as a fiction had become a fact for him. For him, though not, he knew, for her.
She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman, though he’d spent no time at all before this moment puzzling out what that might be. He could easily have said,She is lively and clever, kind and caring and funny; she teases me out of my ill humour so that I cannot even remember why I was downcast. She is brave and beautiful and makes me want to be a better person for her. I want to make love to her so badly not just because I desire her, but because I want a deeper connection with her than I have ever had with another person. I want to know her utterly, and for her to know me. I want to grow old with her.This was all true. But it didn’t matter, none of the detail of it, beyond the plain fact that he loved her.
And she didn’t want him to. He could see that. He was attuned to her now, even for knowledge that would hurt him, and he knew that over the last few days, the words,I think we should break off this foolish engagement!had been trembling constantly on her lips. If they’d been alone at any point, she’d undoubtedly have said it, which was why he had made sure that they never were. He could see it in her lovely, stormy eyes: the false betrothal was making her deeply unhappy, and she wanted to put an end to it and take back her own life, free from the chaotic entanglement with his.
