Page 2 of The Truth About Lord Stoneville
“Enough!” she snapped. “It’s been a long, hard trip, and I’m tired. I need a hot cup of tea and a good nap. I’m in no mood to involve myself in your parents’ quarrels.” At his look of desperation, she softened her tone. “If she hasn’t returned by nightfall, I promise I’ll go after her. You’ll see—she’ll be back long before then, full of apologies, and this will all be forgotten.”
But his mother never returned. That night at the hunting lodge, she shot his father and then herself.
And Oliver’s life was never the same.
Chapter One
Ealing
1825
Oliver stared out the window of the library at Halstead Hall. The dreary winter day further depressed his spirits as he fought to shove his painful memories back into the stout strongbox in which he kept them. It was so much harder here than in town, where he could lose himself in wenches and wine.
Not that he could lose himself for long. Though the scandal was nineteen years old, there were still whispers of it wherever he went.
Gran had told the guests that night that Mother had gone to the hunting lodge to be alone and had fallen asleep. Awakened by sounds of what she thought was an intruder, she’d panicked and shot him, only to discover that the man was her husband. Then, in her shock and grief, Mother had turned the pistol on herself.
It was a flimsy tale at best to cover up a murder and a suicide, and the whispers never quite subsided since theguests had been eager to speculate on the truth. Gran had ordered him and his siblings not to speak of it to anyone, even each other, from that day forward.
She’d said it was to stifle the gossip, but he’d often wondered if it was because she blamed him for what happened. Otherwise, why reverse her decree in recent months to question him about the quarrel between him and Mother that night? He hadn’t answered, of course. The very thought of telling her turned his stomach.
Whirling away from the window, he paced beside the table where his siblings sat waiting for Gran. This was precisely why he avoided Halstead Hall—it always put him in a maudlin mood.
Why in God’s name had Gran asked to have her blasted meeting out here? He’d kept the place shut up for years. It stank of must and rot, and was chilly as the Arctic besides. The only room lacking dust covers was the study where his steward did the work of running the estate. They’d had to remove the covers in here just to have this meeting, which Gran could have held perfectly well at her house in town.
Normally, he would refuse her request that they troop out to his neglected estate. But ever since his brother Gabriel’s accident three days ago, he and his siblings had been skating on thin ice with her. That was made more than clear by Gran’s uncharacteristic silence about it. Something was afoot, and Oliver suspected it wouldn’t be to their liking.
“How’s your shoulder?” his sister Minerva asked Gabe.
“How do you think?” Gabe grumbled. He wore a sling over his rumpled black riding coat, and his ash-brown hair was mussed as usual. “Hurts like the devil.”
“Don’t snap atme.I’m not the one who nearly got myself killed.”
At twenty-eight, Minerva was the middle sibling—four years younger than Jarret, the second oldest; two years older than Gabe; and four years older than Celia, the baby. But as the eldest girl, she tended to mother the others.
She even looked like their mother—all creamy skin and gold-streaked brown hair, with ivy-green eyes like Gabe’s. There was virtually no resemblance between those two and Oliver, who’d inherited the coloring of their half-Italian father—dark eyes, dark hair, dark skin. And a dark heart to match.
“You’re lucky Lieutenant Chetwin pulled back in time,” Celia pointed out to Gabe. She was a slightly paler version of Oliver, as if someone had added a dollop of cream to her coloring, and her eyes were hazel. “He’s rumored to have more bravery than sense.”
“Then he and Gabe make a good pair,” Oliver growled.
“Lay off of him, will you?” Jarret told Oliver. Closest to being a blend of their parents, he had black hair but blue-green eyes and no trace of Oliver’s Italian features. “You’ve been ragging him ever since that stupid carriage race. He was drunk. It’s a state you ought to be familiar with.”
Oliver whirled on Jarret. “Yes, butyouwere not drunk, yet you let him—”
“Don’t blame Jarret,” Gabe put in. “Chetwin challengedme to it. He would have branded me a coward if I’d refused.”
“Better a coward than dead.” Oliver had no tolerance for such idiocy. Nothing was worth risking one’s life for—not a woman, not honor, and certainly not reputation. A pity that he hadn’t yet impressed that upon his idiot brothers.
Gabe, of all people, ought to know better. The course he’d run was the most dangerous in London. Two large boulders flanked the path so closely that only one rig could pass between them, forcing a driver to fall back at the last minute to avoid being dashed on the rocks. Many was the time drivers pulled out too late.
The sporting set called it “threading the needle.” Oliver called it madness. Chetwin had pulled back, yes. But Gabe’s rig had caught the edge of one boulder, breaking off a wheel and subsequently turning the phaeton into a tangle of splintered wood, torn leather, and twisted metal. Thank God the horses had survived, and Gabe had been lucky to get out of it with just a broken collarbone.
“Chetwin insulted more than just me, you know.” Gabe thrust out his chin. “He said I wouldn’t race him because I was a coward like Mother, shooting at shadows.” Anger tinged his voice. “He called her the Halstead Hall Murderess.”
The familiar slur made the others stiffen and Oliver grit his teeth. “She’s been dead for years. She doesn’t need you to defend her honor.”
A stony look crossed Gabe’s face. “Someone’s got to. You won’t.”
