Page 59 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
That bothered Jack, too. “Perhaps she knew something of Lewis. In any event, when she saw you creeping through the corridors last night, she thought you were paying a visit to her daughter, possibly to demand money. So, she shot you.”
“Good God. I’m quite a blackguard.”
Jack grinned. “That’s about the lay of the land. I’ll talk to Mrs. Durbin and make sure she sees the error of her ways. Maybe ask her to marry me. It’s not every woman who contemplates shooting an aristocrat. I’ve had the urge myself. Surely that’s enough to build a life on.”
Oliver did not look amused, however. He glanced from Jack to the packed valise and sighed with what looked like resignation.
Mrs. Durbin was already dressed, standing by the window of her bedchamber as if she had been expecting Jack. She was stout and wore unrelieved black despite having been widowed over a year ago. Her hair was covered by a monstrous white cap, her face lined with age. She looked so thoroughly innocuous that he understood why Oliver hadn’t believed her to be capable of violence. But her small gray eyes were sharp, her jaw firm.
“The letters, please,” he said by way of greeting. “If you’d prefer to throw them into the fire yourself I won’t object. But they need to be burnt and I’m not leaving this room until it’s done.”
“Who the devil are you to tell me what to do with them?” She didn’t deny knowing what letters he referred to, which only increased his opinion of her.
He had to give the woman credit. She had seen that her daughter was about to do something terrible and simply did what it took to prevent that from happening. Her reasoning was faulty and her methods were flawed—pistols were decidedly excessive—but he admired how she simply was not going to let her daughter cross the line from good to evil. Jack had to admire a parent who thought along those lines, when his own manifestly had not.
“I’m the man you shot last night.” He gestured at the sling Oliver had fashioned out of one of Oliver’s cravats. “Your daughter hired me to find her letters.”
If Mrs. Durbin was surprised, she didn’t show it. “Silly girl. I’d like to know why the fool didn’t come to me for money if she needed it so desperately and didn’t want to go to her husband. Why blackmail? I wouldn’t have thought her capable of it.”
“Maybe she was afraid you would rub her nose in her disaster of a marriage, and remind her that you were right to warn her against it.”
“And wasn’t I? Right, that is? Only look at them.” She shook her head in derision. “Pride,” Mrs. Durbin said acidly. “In addition to blackmail.” But she retrieved a packet of letters from the inside of a scuffed and disreputable-looking ankle boot—a much better hiding place than a jewel box, he was pleased to note.
Wordlessly, she passed the letters to Jack. He quickly thumbed through the sheaf, taking note of Lewis’s coarse language, descriptions of— “Good God, have you read these letters?”
The old lady actually blushed. “Only the most cursory glance.” She sounded defensive, as well she ought to, Jack thought.
“At the time you were ready to marry your daughter to this man, had you any notion he was so . . .” Lewd? Obscene? Casually pornographic? It would be one thing if the girl had liked getting that sort of letter, but she had repeatedly asked that he confine his correspondence to more genteel topics.
“Of course not!” Mrs. Durbin sniffed. “He seemed such an upstanding lad.”
Jack wondered if any son of Mr. Durbin’s business partner would be considered upstanding. Both families would have gained a lot by that marriage.
The last letter was dated immediately before she had left for Brighton. No wonder she had thrown herself at Wraxhall instead. Now that was not a man who would burden a lady with unwanted amateur pornography. Again, Jack remembered the scullery maid’s two pairs of boots.
Instead of throwing the letters into the fire, he tucked them into his coat pocket and went in search of the lady of the house. He found her closeted in her dressing room. She was perched nervously on a divan, wearing a wrapper, curling papers still in her hair. Toast and an egg sat untouched on a tray before her.
“Mr. Turner.” Mrs. Wraxhall’s voice hovered between confusion and hope. She could not have expected to see Jack here in Kent, but he could tell that she was desperate enough to overlook that irregularity and many more if only she had her letters returned to her. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Let’s pass over all that,” he suggested. “And I’ll pass over the matter of how you lied about receiving a blackmail note. That fib made things a good deal more complicated.” He took the letters out of his pocket and handed them to her.
“Thank God,” she said, her voice grave. She did not look pleased, only relieved, as she flipped through the packet. “You have no idea how much this means. Mary said you’d be able to manage it, and you did.”
“Those are nasty letters, Mrs. Wraxhall.” He thought he knew what was going on here, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“Awful,” she agreed, flicking a wary glance in his direction.
“Your husband found them—although I don’t know what he was doing in your jewel box.” Snooping, most likely. “He thought you kept them out of sentiment.”
“Oh no.” Her face went even paler. “That explains why he can scarcely look at me.”
“Your mother then found the letters in your husband’s desk. She thought you planned to use the letters to blackmail Lewis. I confess that I was under the same impression until I read them.”
Her fingers wrapped tightly around the packet. “That’s not far off the mark.”
“But it’s not money you sought from Lewis.”
Now she was holding the letters with both hands, as if she were afraid Jack would take them back. “No, not money.”
