Page 28 of Her Impeccable Scoundrel
“I have plenty still.”
He refilled his own glass. “You told me the Risley steward is competent and a man of good character. I hope that’s true. I know so little about farming I’ll need to rely on him. I don’t know what this business with Jarrow is, and perhaps Jarrow the younger doesn’t know either. What I want you to tell me… I want to know what, aside from this business of the will, was going on at Risley Manor. What was my cousin doing?”
Awkwardly stated but open-ended enough as an opening salvo.
Blythe’s gaze skittered over the contents of the table and around the room, everywhere but at him. Whatever memories he’d stirred had not been peaceful ones.
He wouldn’t get the truth from her, at least not all of it. Not yet.
He was willing to wait.
Blythe sighed and looked up at him. “We were estranged. I lived at Bluebelle Lodge and visited the manor when… rarely. Archie employed women—nurses, he called them. He entertained gentlemen visitors quite frequently. He was an opium user, and that, eventually, became most important in his life.”
All of which accorded with what Morley had told him.
What had happened to the glowing young love he’d seen in Archie and Blythe at the wedding he’d reluctantly, resentfully attended? There were so many missing pieces to the puzzle.
“Mr. Stockwell held estate matters together. We did have one quite bad harvest when the crops were blighted. Archie bestirred himself to obtain a loan. We were able to refinance that loan last year with more favorable terms from Sawley’s Bank.”
We, she said. Not they, the steward and the solicitor.
“That would be the bank belonging to your friend, Lady Loughton?”
“I assure you it was business, not charity. We, er, Stockwell presented a sound plan for repayment. I’m sure he’ll be able to explain matters to your satisfaction.”
“I look forward to understanding the business of the estate. Tell me about Bluebelle Lodge.”
“Bluebelle Lodge,” she said, “is mine. Left by Mr. Davies, my guardian, and his wife, with the agreement that it would come to me upon Archie’s death. If you remember, when my parents died, I went to live with Mr. Davies and his wife, my former governess. You remember, don’t you, visiting me? And when Archie and I… when the marriage contract was being rushed through because of our scandalous…” she waved a hand, “interlude in the garden, the arrangement was made that Bluebelle Lodge would be mine. It was Mr. Davies’ idea. I suppose he suspected the sort of husband Archie would turn out to be.”
That little speech was a minefield of topics they would have to discuss sooner or later—the scandal he’d caused by seeing them and creating a stir; the rushed wedding; the suspicions about Archie which everyone except Blythe seemed to have seen before the nuptials.
“I was happy at Bluebelle Lodge. And I assure you, my lord, I won’t let you or anyone else surrender it to Diddenton without a fight.”
“I know,” he said nodding, but she was warmed up now and didn’t seem to hear him.
“I’m anxious to see the state of things. I haven’t been home in a while.”
She took a healthy swig of her wine while he pondered that. According to Morley, Blythe hadn’t been in London until the start of the Season. She herself said she hadn’t been residing at Risley Manor. What had Lord Vernon said? Something about her going to stay at some widowed lady’s home?
“You didn’t remain at Bluebelle Lodge during your mourning?”
“I went… I went to the home of a friend. Lest you accuse me of residing with a lover, there is a league of widowed ladies who keep a secluded home in the country for other widows who need… a place to stay. People like me.”
“Like you? But you had a home, three homes, plus a few outlying properties belonging to Chilcombe.”
Her mouth firmed. “Indeed. At the end, I didn’t love Archie, but I mourned the pathetic waste of a man’s life, the man he might have been, and I was furious, in a rage almost. There was… is, a persistent suitor who torments me. I found I needed to go somewhere and hide from him, and from my own desire to do him an injury.”
“Lord Vernon.”
“I am not a murderer.”
She tugged her shawl tightly and stormed out before he even had a chance to push back his chair and stand.
She wasn’t a murderer.
Someone, somewhere, had accused her of murder. Archie’s?
Or perhaps the suspected murder victim was the other fellow on the road, the one who’d cracked his head on a boulder. The one carrying the will to London.
