Page 63 of Unmasked by the Marquess
She took another swig, enjoying the burn down her throat. “I did it for Louisa. She was only a child, and a Selby.”
“You were a child when you came here, and you’re a Selby now.” Keating was leaning forward in his chair, his hands on his knees. He ought to have left weeks ago. She was a losing bet.
“It’s not the same.” She cringed at the whining note she heard in her own voice.
“So you keep telling me. Here’s what you can do. Save every farthing of income from Fenshawe, put it in the bank, and leave it to the cousin when you die.”
“He wants to marry me.”
“The cousin?”
She would have laughed if the circumstances were any different. “No, Pembroke.”
He stared at her for a moment before letting out a long, low whistle. “Well, I don’t suppose he can marry you as Robert Selby.”
“He can’t marry me at all. I’d disgrace him. Besides, I can’t put on a gown and be a lady.”
“No, I can’t imagine you would. Nor would I. So, then. What’s it to be? Where are we to go?”
That made her look up sharply. “We?”
“You planning to run off with someone else?”
She almost smiled at that. The gin had taken the edge off and she felt less tragic than she had upon entering the house. “India?”
Before Keating could respond, Charity saw a flicker of movement over his shoulder.
“Well, I hate to interrupt,” Maurice Clifton said, emerging from the shadowy passageway that led to the larder. “This conversation has been so entirely illuminating.”
Chapter Twenty
“What are you doing here?” Charity managed to say, her voice a mere whisper. Keating was already on his feet, his hand poised over his coat pocket in a way that suggested a pistol might be concealed within.
“I knew something wasn’t right when I saw you in London,” Clifton said. “I didn’t know who you were, but I knew you weren’t Robert. You’re too clever by half. I came here to Fenshawe to see my cousin and ask him what in damnation is going on. But I find the place shut up, and when I ask any of the villagers they tell me that Robert Selby is in London with his sister, or they slam their doors in my face.” He took a step further into the room. “What I want to know is whether you killed him.”
“Oh my God.” Charity clutched the edges of her chair. “No, he died of influenza two and a half years ago. The same year Louisa had it. He’s buried beneath the rowan tree on the south end of the property.” Keating had been quite right that she planned to leave some flowers on it before departing.
“I feel that I’ve walked into a melodrama. You—a woman, I gather—simply decided to hide my cousin’s death and assume his identity. I scarcely know what to think.” Clifton looked on the verge of swooning.
“Sit down, you,” Keating commanded, his voice gruff.
Clifton sat, but otherwise paid Keating no attention. His gaze was fixed on Charity, as if he hoped to find answers written on her face. “You stole Fenshawe out from under my nose.”
She knew it would be useless to protest that she had done it for Louisa, that she had meant to give it back. If he had overheard her conversation with Keating, he already knew that, and he didn’t care.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Oh bloody hell,” Keating protested, but she couldn’t imagine what else he expected her to say. There was no use denying it.
“Going to India isn’t good enough,” Clifton said. “Even if you managed to disappear, it would take years to have my cousin declared dead. What happens to Fenshawe in the meantime? I want a death certificate and I want it immediately.”
“I know.” She felt like she was hearing this conversation from the bottom of a lake.
Keating slammed his fist on the table, bringing her briefly back to the moment. “For God’s sake, Charity!” He never called her that, she dimly thought.
“He doesn’t mean my dead body, Keating. It’s a woman’s body, after all, and wouldn’t get him Fenshawe.”
“Otherwise you’d throw yourself off the nearest cliff? You don’t have to do what this man says, goddammit!”
