Page 53 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“In Bedfordshire, my lord?”
“Correct.” Alistair stared at the documents, hardly believing what he read.
“I had, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, some indication of why you required information about the gentleman,” the solicitor ventured.
“You did?” Now Alistair was fully stunned, if Nivins had any inclination of his relationship with the person known as Robert Selby.
“I had called on Mrs. Allenby several days ago to settle the details about a trust she’s setting up for her daughters, and Mr. Selby was there, tête-à-tête with the eldest Allenby girl. I took the liberty of inquiring into the gentleman’s background. It would be a tolerable match for both of them, even though it certainly isn’t my business to say so. Butbigamy, my lord. That’s quite another story.”
“Indeed it is, Nivins. Indeed it is.” Alistair balled up the paper Nivins had given him and threw it angrily into the fire.
Chapter Seventeen
As soon as Mrs. Potton woke from her nap, refreshed and ready to sit with Louisa, Charity stealthily dressed herself in the clothes Alistair had brought her that morning, borrowed one of Mr. Trout’s caps, and slipped out of the farmhouse unobserved.
She didn’t need a lantern; years of rising before dawn to fetch water from the well, or even to sneak back into her rooms at Cambridge after the gates were locked, had taught her how to get by with little light. The lane was muddy but it was straight enough and she arrived at the Duck and Dragon without any mishap.
There was no sign of Alistair in the taproom, of course. It would take any self-respecting innkeeper only a single glance to know that Alistair needed to be put in the private parlor.
“I have a message for Lord Pembroke,” she told the barmaid, guessing that he had messengers and parcels coming and going at all hours.
The girl looked up too quickly, an avaricious gleam in her eyes. “If you give me the letter I’ll bring it to him myself.”
Charity bet she would. According to the maid Alistair sent to the Trouts, Alistair was giving out shillings like they were farthing pieces. “I have instructions to only give it into his hands.”
The barmaid shrugged. “Have it your way, then. He’s still in the parlor.” She pointed to a door on the other side of the room.
She found him sprawled in a wing-backed chair near the fire. The parlor was otherwise empty, it being late and the Duck and Dragon not being so lofty an establishment as to have more than one patron who merited the private parlor. He turned to face her at the sound of the door snicking shut.
“Robin,” he said, and his voice sounded so much wearier than it had only a few hours earlier.
“I wanted to see you.” She moved to sit in the chair opposite his, but then thought better of it and sat on the footstool before him. “What’s the trouble?”
He brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. “Why did you do it, Charity?”
She knew from the seriousness of his expression—not anger, only a sad sort of gravity—that he wasn’t asking why she came tonight. “It depends on what you mean. I’ve done a lot of things.” And wasn’t that God’s own truth?
“Why did you conceal Robert Selby’s death?”
She had a sick sense of foreboding. “I’ve already explained. The estate was entailed. Louisa would have had nothing. It was the best idea I could think of.”
He reached for her hand and held it on his knee. “I have a copy of Selby’s will.”
She shook her head quickly. Robbie’s will ought to have been locked up at the solicitor’s office in Alnwick, the only other copy in the study at Fenshawe. But she supposed marquesses could get whatever they wanted. “Then you’ll know he left her nothing.” Her voice sounded high and tense.
“In the event that he was married at the time of his death, his widow was to have a thousand pounds.” He pressed her hand and looked into her eyes with an expression she could not read. “Why did you give it up?”
She moved to pull her hand away but he held it fast, stroking the underside of her wrist with his thumb. Now he knew the most serious of her deceptions. There were no secrets left; he knew the entirety of her, and still he held her close. “Because there was nothing for Louisa,” she repeated. How could she have taken that money and left Louisa—a child of sixteen—homeless and penniless, with scarcely a relation in the world or a friend to her name? Few knew better than Charity what that fate was like. Robbie had done badly by his sister, and Charity knew she had to make it right. “It was my duty.” Duty not only to Louisa as her only relation, but also to Robbie, and also to herself. She didn’t know how to put those ideas into words Alistair would understand.
He was looking at her with something like perplexed wonder.
“Besides,” she continued, thinking to appeal to his practical side, “what would a thousand pounds do for her? That would give her forty pounds a year, not nearly enough to keep a girl who had been brought up to be a lady.”
The silence stretched out, the only sound the fire crackling in the hearth. “It would have been more than enough for you.”
As if that had ever been an option. “Maybe if I had a few more weeks to think about it, I could have come up with a better idea, but it all happened so fast. He died suddenly, and Louisa was still sick, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“And you were grieving, I think?” He said it so gently. It would have been so much better if he had thrown this in her face, if he had been angry or even disappointed at her deceit and her secrecy.
