Chapter 50
J asper fought the bonds of the ropes, and when they did not budge, he used his weight to rock the chair back and forth, scooting it across the floor. Although smoke was billowing into the room, he did not yet hear the crackle of fire. He hoped it was still far enough away that he could make it to the window.
His heart pounded against his ribs as he inched across the floor, praying he would not topple himself over. He had to get to Frankie and Cecelia. He had to protect them from Evelyn and her father.
He blinked as a figure appeared in the smoke, a black silhouette walking through it as if in a dream. The female shape grew larger, and Jasper wondered if Evelyn had convinced her father to let her turn back and finish him after all. Then the woman emerged through the white cloud, and Jasper saw with both elation and horror that it was Frankie.
Coughing, he shouted, “Fire! Get out, Frankie!”
Instead she ran to him, dropped to her knees, and threw her arms around his waist. “Oh, Jasper, are you all right? I was so frightened. Did they hurt you?” She rubbed her palm over the stubble of his chin, having discarded her gloves at some point since the ball. Her hands smelled both sweet and salty and singed by flame. Satisfied that he was uninjured, she leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth.
“As much as I love this, Frankie, there is a fire in the corridor.”
“Oh that?” She waved her hand. He noticed for the first time that she was carrying a sharp folding knife. “That is a controlled chemical fire made to produce a lot of smoke.” She began sawing through the ropes around his ankles. “Fidelia found saltpeter in the shed.”
“Fidelia?” he asked as the ropes frayed. “Your sister? She is here?” The last strands snapped. Frankie quickly moved around the chair to his wrists, and when his hands popped free, Jasper did not waste any time rubbing them; he grabbed Frankie’s hand and they ran outside.
“They’re gone,” Fidelia exclaimed, appearing around the corner of the house with another woman at her side. “The carriage took off like a bat out of hell.” She scanned Jasper from boot to brow, and her lips formed a little O shape. “I am Fidelia, Frankie’s sister. You are my future brother-in-law? Holy King E, Frankie. I suppose we are both full of surprises, are we not?”
One might be forgiven for thinking Frankie’s sister was her identical twin, but Jasper immediately spotted a number of differences: Although each woman wore a pair of spectacles far too large for her face, Frankie was slightly taller, her hair straighter, and her eyes a deeper blue. Fidelia’s smile, although beautiful, did not compare to Frankie’s slow-blossoming sunshine smile.
“I have a feeling I have missed something important,” he muttered as he and Frankie jogged to her horse.
“Sorry!” Frankie shouted over her shoulder to her sister. “We need to ride back to the Houndsburys as fast as possible! Jasper’s niece may be in danger!”
Jasper vaulted onto the horse and pulled Frankie up behind him, and with her arms tight around his waist they set off for the Houndsbury estate.
“How did you find me?” he shouted back to her.
“Cecelia discovered your pocket watch on the ground, and Lady Evelyn was the last person to be seen with you. I followed her here and that’s where I met Fidelia. How could we have been so stupid, Jasper? She is the ringleader!”
“No,” Jasper said, “her father is.”
Frankie squeezed his waist, and Jasper urged the horse to go faster. They had a lot they needed to say to each other, but there would be time for that later. Now they needed to reach Cecelia before Evelyn or her father did. Lord Elmsdale had promised he would not hurt Cecelia, but Jasper did not trust him, nor did he trust that Lady Evelyn would not take matters into her own hands once again.
When they reached the Houndsbury estate they slid off the horse and hurried toward the ballroom. Jasper squeezed between lords smoking outdoors, all while holding tight to Frankie’s hand and not caring when more than a few rude comments were muttered in their wake. Music and muted chatter drifted on the evening air, but knowing that a monster hid within the innocent ambiance only pushed him to move faster.
They were running by the time they burst through the ballroom doors. Jasper anxiously scanned the crush of flush-faced gentlemen and laughing ladies. “Come on, Cece, where are you?”
He spotted Madam Margaret, sitting in a chair against the wall, eyes glazed as she enjoyed the double quartets. Theoretically, that meant Cecelia shouldn’t be too far—
“I see her!” Frankie exclaimed, and she plunged into the crowd. Jasper dashed after her. Cecelia was half-hiding behind a potted palm like a storybook spy, but the moment she spotted him the tension in her face dissolved, and when he reached her, she threw her arms around him and squeezed him tightly.
“Uncle Jasper! You are all right!”
Jasper thought he had aged ten years in the past two hours.
Cecelia’s voice was muffled in the fabric of his coat. “I was so worried.” She peered across his chest at Frankie and said, “I knew I could count on you to rescue him.”
Frankie wrapped one arm around Cecelia and one arm around Jasper, and they stood there holding one another, a trio of misfits. His family of misfits.
Several moments later his instincts whispered that he was being watched, and when he turned, he found Lady Evelyn and Lord Elmsdale burning holes into his back. The lady’s eyes were black with fury, but it was her father’s flat, emotionless countenance that made Jasper’s skin crawl.
Lady Evelyn touched her father’s sleeve, and her eyes darted toward the terrace doors.
“Oh no they do not,” Frankie hissed, having followed the direction of his gaze.
“No,” Jasper agreed. “It ends tonight.” He released Frankie and Cecelia and strode forward to do the one thing he’d always tried to avoid: draw attention to himself in a room full of nobility. Standing in the center of the ballroom, an immovable pillar around which the dancers eddied, he roared, “PARDON ME!”
The dancers closest to him stopped and stared at him in shock. Again, he hollered, “PARDON ME!”
Lord Houndsbury frowned, and with a sharp gesture from him the strings fell silent. The guests murmured as they glanced at one another and then at Jasper, who had become the center of their scrutiny in the middle of the ballroom. From the corner of his eye, he spotted Lady Evelyn and Lord Elmsdale begin to edge toward the open doorway.
“If you will please halt Lord Elmsdale and Lady Evelyn’s exit,” he said. A wave of chatter went up from the crowd, and it only grew louder when, after a brief hesitation, the duke nodded toward the male guests closest to Elmsdale. The men exchanged awkward looks, but encircled the earl to escort him and his daughter forward.
Jasper felt the itchiness of hundreds of eyes on his face. His cravat was too tight, and the room was insufferably hot. Then, a blond head appeared by his side, and he found Frankie standing resolutely next to him. His heart rate slowed. She did not care about this display of ill-bred behavior that would no doubt become the most gossiped-about moment in the history of the ton. She did not care about the fallout to her reputation for associating with him. She cared only about him. She was there for him.
He did not need to hear her say she loved him. Her actions said it. She had saved his life, and she would stand by him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Elmsdale asked as he and his daughter were marched forward. His authoritative voice was the picture of genteel indignation.
Jasper opened his mouth, but at Frankie’s light touch, he paused. “Let me.”
He did not want her to make the accusation. He did not want her bearing the brunt of society’s disbelief and displeasure when she denounced an earl for wrongdoing. He would do anything but stand by and watch as they dragged her name through the mud. He and Frankie had no proof that linked Lord Elmsdale to the scheme—casting suspicion was the only weapon they had, and he was determined to be the one to wield it and suffer the consequences of doing so.
Except it seemed there was one thing that could make him step back, and that was his respect for the woman at his side. He had a chance to prove to her that he would never hold her back no matter the circumstances. That he would support and respect her decisions, and that he would be there for her through it all. He gave her a terse nod.
Frankie smiled up at him, that brilliant, devasting tilt of her lips, and turned to address the crowd. With a clear, loud voice she said, “Two years ago, twenty peers invested in the Scott Silver Mining Expedition and lost their fortunes.”
There were murmurs, as the gossip from two years prior returned to the forefront of the ton ’s memory.
“They would have been ruined, but one man in this room saw an opportunity. Lord Elmsdale paid off the papers to keep them from speculating about the lost fortunes, and then promised to help each man find a wealthy wife to replenish his loss. In order to accomplish that, Elmsdale entrapped innocent young women in compromising situations.”
There were shouts of disbelief, and Lord Elmsdale shook his head with grave sadness. “I am an upstanding member of the peerage, and my family has served England for generations. How dare you make such horrid, unfounded accusations, madam?”
“It is true!” Lady Elizabeth Scarson broke into the cleared circle around them, breathing hard from the horse ride there. There were gasps as the peerage recognized one of their own. Mrs. Turner clapped her hands over her mouth as she spotted her daughter, Fidelia, hovering behind Lady Elizabeth. “I was maneuvered into a compromising situation with Lord Pierson. I was a victim of this man’s scheming.”
Lord Elmsdale’s facade did not so much as flicker. “I have far more important matters to deal with, such as running this country. I have neither the time nor the interest for meddling in women’s affairs.”
“That is because you did not meddle in their affairs.” Jasper turned to the woman standing beside Elmsdale. “Your daughter, Lady Evelyn, arranged the compromising situations. And when one of those compromising situations did not work out—such as it did not with Lord Devon and Miss Turner—she killed him.”
A wave of voices swept through the room. One woman screamed, another fainted. But the most common expressions were anger and disbelief.
“You are a rotter, Jones!” one man shouted. “Accusing a lady of murder! I shall pull my membership from Rockford’s expressly.”
“Please do,” Jasper said in a flat voice.
“Why would Elmsdale go to such trouble?” Lord Houndsbury asked thoughtfully, his eyes traveling over the father and daughter in question. “What was the motive for Elmsdale saving the investors’ reputations? Why would he bother securing them wives with large dowries?”
“Because,” Jasper replied, lifting his voice so that even those in the back could hear, “they repay Elmsdale in the form of votes in the House of Lords.”
If he’d thought the reaction before had been loud, this one was nearly a roar. Jasper spotted one of the seven Scott Silver investors, and smiled at Lord Collins, whose face was waxy and shining with perspiration. “Tell them, Lord Collins,” Jasper taunted. “Tell them who has been forcing your vote.”
Houndsbury whipped around to stare at Lord Collins. The thin man’s eyes darted between Houndsbury and Elmsdale, his jaw visibly quaking. It would be fair to say he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Lord Houndsbury was a massively wealthy, massively powerful duke. Lord Elmsdale was an earl and an influential figure in the House of Lords, and he was glaring at Collins now as if he could spear him with his eyes.
Collins pulled a handkerchief from inside his coat and mopped at his forehead. Before he could answer, a man with padded shoulders and a monocle slapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. Jasper had watched the man with the monocle work his way toward them through the crowd over the past minute. Behind him stood a number of men wearing the uniform of the Metropolitan Police.
“Buck up, Collins,” the man with the monocle said cheerfully. “Today is your lucky day. You shall not be required to grow a spine.” He turned toward the Duke of Houndsbury and inclined his head in greeting. “Your Grace.”
“Mr. Wright Davies, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police,” Lord Houndsbury returned dryly. “I am so pleased you could join in the madness. I know my man delivering news of the murder could not have made his way to London yet, so to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
Mr. Davies gestured to the men behind him, who quickly surrounded Lord Elmsdale and Lady Evelyn. A constable clicked iron handcuffs around Lord Elmsdale’s wrists. “Lord Elmsdale, you are under arrest for blackmailing members of Parliament and for swaying the vote. We have a dossier of evidence from an anonymous source, as well as a written statement from Lord Pierson, who has recently seen the need to confess to his misdeeds.”
Lady Elizabeth Scarson looked surprised at that news about her husband. Elmsdale, however, received it with all the stoic grace of his generation. He did not bluster nor shout, but allowed the constable to lead him toward the ballroom door, all while maintaining a dignified lift of his chin.
“As for you, Lady Evelyn,” Mr. Davies said solemnly, “you have been accused of murder.”
“You cannot prove that,” she snapped.
“Check her reticule for a derringer,” Jasper said. “I saw her stash it there when she and her father threatened to shoot me earlier tonight.”
“And a sapphire-blue handkerchief,” Frankie added. “It will be an exact match for the one Jasper found at the scene of my attempted murder yesterday.”
Houndsbury’s eyes sharpened at that, and Frankie’s fingers gripped Jasper’s forearm as a constable took Lady Evelyn’s reticule from her. First, he withdrew a sapphire-blue handkerchief, and Jasper watched as Houndsbury’s lips flattened. Then, with two fingers, he lifted out a shining, silver-plated derringer.
The faces of the ton in that moment would have been comical if it were not all so tragic, Jasper thought, as Lady Evelyn was also led, red-faced, toward the exit.
When she neared Frankie she halted and with cruel delight said, “I locked myself in that room the day we played sardines. My only regret is that Lord Devon didn’t get the chance to teach you your place.”
Frankie was unmoved. She simply adjusted her spectacles and said, “Lady Evelyn, I think you should be more concerned about the place you’re going.”