Page 55 of My Deceitful Duchess
“The butler,” she said. “He was—kind to me. I think he felt sorry for me. I woke him first, and charged him with clearing the servants’ wing. And then I escaped, before Julian could find his way through.”
“Why have you never mentioned Patterson before now?” he asked, and when she chewed her lower lip and glanced away, he said, “He still works for them.” She’d kept her silence to keep the man safe in his position. “I need you to write me a list,” he said. “Every single member of the staff that you can recall. I’ll be discreet with it, but it’s imperative that I have it.”
“Why?” she asked. “They can’t tell you anything.”
“Servants witness more than you realize,” he said. “Onestatement given might not be enough to sway any minds, but several could. And if I’m right—which I suspect I am—your husband’s was not thelastmurder they’ve committed.”
∞∞∞
“What do you mean?” Jenny asked, her hand flying to her throat.
“I mean I have yet to divine the source of the Amberleys wealth,” Sebastian said. “I imagine few would have looked too closely into their finances, given that everyoneexpectsa duke to be wealthy. But prior to Julian Amberley’s ascension to the dukedom, he had been rather deeply in debt. He began to sell off lesser, non-entailed properties nearly immediately. I wonder that he maintained his lavish lifestyle, considering that his income from the ducal estates would have been substantially reduced.” He jotted a couple of notes onto a sheet of paper that had been laid out at the table before him, bending at an awkward angle to do so. “In fact, thelargestasset—Venbrough Manor—was thoroughly destroyed. As I understand it, nearly everything of value to the late duke was there, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, clearing her throat. “Yes—he preferred it to his ancestral estate. Some things, I’m sure, were at his London townhouse. But he never brought me to London, so I cannot provide an accounting of them.” In fact, the late duke had rarely gone there, preferring the isolation of the countryside, most especially after his humiliating last journey to London.
“Not to worry,” Sebastian said. “The late duke’s man of business was only too happy to provide an accounting of his assets. It seems the man was relieved of his position rather abruptly, and while he might have owed theformerduke his discretion, he had no such obligation to the current duke. And since the former duke isdeceased, well—a dead man can hardly bring suit against him.”
“You’ve spoken to—to the late duke’s man of business?”
“I’ve spoken to nearly everyone I thought might help me build a case against the Amberleys,” he said. “I have been doing so for some time.” He fixed her with a look, one that she suspected was meant to conveysomething, though she could not imagine what. “I had to build out the image a bit, to see the full scope of what they had done, what they werewillingto do, and how they might accomplish it. Even when I believed you might have been guilty, I was trying to find something—anything—that might have offered a mitigating circumstance or cast enough doubt upon the crime to make it impossible to satisfy the burden of proof. But you would not speak to me.”
“You had me jailed. You accused me of murder. And you expected I would speak with you?”
“I expected you would saysomethingin your own defense—something I might have been able to use to free you, or to absolve you.” He swiped his hand over his face, and she heard the rasp of his palm against the short whiskers he’d neglected to shave. “I am not…skilledwith personal relationships,” he admitted. “You know that much already. And I was ashamed that you were—somethingotherthan what I had expected, and that I had missed it. With situations like these, I am inevitably the objective observer. Detached. Uninvolved. Clear-headed.”
Was he? She had witnessed so muchangerwhen she had been in jail.
“With you, I couldn’t be any of those things. I was too close to be objective, too involved to be logical, reasonable. It—infuriated me. I did what I thought I was supposed to do, what I hadalwaysdone when necessary, and I reported what I knew to the authorities. But it wasagony, and I was furious with you, both for the crime I thought you had committed, and for making me regret doing what I believed to be the right thing.”
“Do you think it should please me to know you suffered pangs of conscience?” Where was that tight, cold voice coming from? She heard it almost distantly, and it didn’t so much as quaver, though her chest jerked with her uneven breaths.
“I think it should please you that even when I believed you to be guilty, still I could not wash my hands of you. Still I fought to free you, however it had to be done. I compromised my principles for you, even believing the worst. I think it should please you that I would have sacrificed anything necessary to save you.” With quick, deft motions he folded the paper he’d scrawled across and tucked the sheet into the pocket of his coat. “Always I have striven to do what wasright, what wasjust, and before now, the two have never been in conflict. I owed you a conversation before I spoke to anyone of what I knew,” he said. “And I couldn’t give it to you, because I knew—IknewI would have done something terrible.”
Her heart stuttered in her chest, a ripple of fear spiraling out until the whole of her had gone stiff and cold. “Like what? Beat a confession out of me?”
“Christ,” he said roughly, and a self-deprecating laugh eked from his throat. “No, though I suppose I’ve given you reason enough to think so.” His fingers threaded through his hair, disheveling the already-tousled golden locks. “Like running off with you,” he said at last. “Stealing you away before anyone else could make the connection that I had. I couldn’t trust myself not to. I stayed away because I thought I had no other choice. What I did—the law might deem itjust, but it wasn’tright.” He lifted tortured eyes to hers, forcing himself to hold her gaze. “If I had told you what I knew, if I had asked you to go away with me—would you have?”
The air had grown stagnant in her lungs. “It’s impossible to say,” she said, and it would have been a wonderful parting shot—if it hadn’t sounded so very, very sad.
Chapter Twenty Five
Sebastian hadn’t set eyes on Lord Clybourne since the day the man had offered to plant him a facer in his wife’s stead. Now he sat across a massive, ornate desk done up in intricately carved frills and vines, and endured a steady, twenty secondstare, made all the more unpleasant for the fact that Sebastian found it impossible to meet that gaze for more than a second.
“Were you aware, Mr. Knight,” Lord Clybourne said in a dangerous tone, “that Jenny recently asked my wife to take guardianship of her child?”
Sebastian had not been certain what to expect from this meeting—Jenny’s friends had ceased to conform to his expectations since the moment Clybourne’s gently-bred wife had blackened his eye—butthathad certainly not been it. It was as if the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. An entirely new kind of terror formed where it once had been; a seething ball of anxiety, of worry. “She doesn’t want the baby,” he said, and he had intended for it to be a question. Instead it came out a flat statement, as if his brain had arrived at a conclusion before his mouth.
Clybourne gave a one-shouldered shrug, but that steady gaze never wavered. “I couldn’t possibly say what Jenny wants. She won’t talk about it. Not even to Lottie and Harriet.”
“That seems…unusual.” Ladiestalked. And he would wager everything he had that these particular three were closer than most.
“It’s my wife’s theory that she…wishes to avoid forming an attachment to the child,” Clybourne said, and his fingers steepled in a contemplative manner, knuckles flexing.
Sebastian felt his brow furrow. “For what purpose?”
“She doesn’t believe she’ll live long enough to know it.”
Christ. Sebastian closed his eyes, drew in a shuddering breath. “I’ve told her—”
