Chapter 31
“Iknew you would come to your senses in the end, Cecily,” Lady Holt said with a supercilious smile as she descended from the carriage with the assistance of the driver and offered her cheek to her granddaughter to be kissed.
“I see you are wearing your best clothes, Grandmother,” Cecily replied coolly, not stepping forward to provide the expected embrace. “Didn’t that ruby necklace belong to my mother and her mother before her?”
“Where is Mary?” Lady Holt snapped, irritated both by Cecily’s assertion about the necklace and uncomfortable at being left standing in such a foolishly expectant posture.
At this instant, Cecily had little care for her grandmother’s emotional comfort. In the list of her priorities, this was presently very low.
Two letters had arrived by express messenger at Greyhaven Park that morning. The first was her uncle’s somewhat smug acceptance of the invitation to luncheon. The second was longer and had arrived only half an hour earlier.
While Nathaniel hadn’t tried to hide it from Cecily, the information and documents it contained were extensive and disorganized, leaving no time for full explanations.
From a quick reading, Cecily could see that the documents included the official account of the carriage accident that had caused her parents’ untimely death.
There were also other eyewitness accounts and testimonies, most only partial and leading to no clear conclusion.
It was only after she read those that Nathaniel passed her the newer statement from Lord Ashworth, bringing everything into sharp focus.
“Mary is inside,” she answered in a neutral tone. “She will be at luncheon.”
“Of course she will,” Lord Holt said, stepping around the other side of the carriage. “I trust you both know your duty to your family, even if you have to be reminded of it now and then.”
The pinkness of her uncle’s face and the wetness of his lips made her think he had probably been at his brandy flask during the journey.
Giving him a cold nod, she offered her arm to her grandmother, feeling sympathy for her advanced age, if not her character or their shared blood.
“Come, Grandmother, I will help you up to the front door.”
Standing at the top of the steps, Nathaniel watched the scene with his arms crossed and a blank expression on his face.
For Cecily, he appeared as a pillar of strength, and she felt no fear of her uncle and grandmother while he was there.
These wicked, greedy, foolish people could no longer harm her or Mary.
“What could be more fitting than a family luncheon on such an occasion, Your Grace?” Lord Holt chortled as he approached Nathaniel. “I’m glad we can finally see things in the same light.”
Acknowledging his guests only with a nod and ignoring Lord Holt’s words and proffered handshake, Nathaniel turned and led them all toward the dining room.
Mary was already in there, pale-faced and dressed in white, and Patrick stood at her side in his full uniform. He looked rather like a guard, a role he quite possibly saw himself in today.
Lord and Lady Jackson and the Duke and Duchess of Mildenhall were talking quietly among themselves by the sideboard, but fell silent and took their assigned places as Nathaniel entered the room.
Lord Holt stopped in the doorway and regarded the other guests with unhappy surprise.
“I did not realize this would be a larger party,” he said crossly while Cecily led her grandmother to her chair.
“It is always best to have witnesses in certain cases,” Nathaniel answered with unflustered authority, gesturing at the same time for a footman to fill the wineglass at the only empty place at the table, clearly intended for Lord Holt.
“Oh, yes, I see what you mean,” Lord Holt relented, taking his seat and reaching for his wine without waiting either for food to be served or for the other guests to receive their own drinks. “When an exchange is made, it ought to be seen to be done fair and square.”
“Quite,” Nathaniel said with an inflection of subtle contempt that was entirely lost on the man. “Well, let us begin.”
As the first course of watercress soup was served, Nathaniel and Cecily exchanged a glance of understanding and nodded to one another.
Allowing Lady Jackson to start a light conversation about the London theatre program, they barely ate, drank, or spoke, although Nathaniel regularly directed the servants to refill the plates and glasses of his guests, especially Lord Holt.
“You’re lucky that you only have sons, Lady Jackson,” Lord Holt commented after Lady Jackson mentioned her plans for her eldest son’s Grand Tour next year. “Girls are far harder to raise.”
“You had a very hard time, didn’t you, Preston?” Lady Holt sympathized, though no one else encouraged him on this undiplomatic path. “You’ve had no peace at all since you took your nieces under your roof.”
As they spoke, a footman entered the room and went to Nathaniel, whispering something in his ear and eliciting a nod of understanding.
“Put them all in the drawing room,” Cecily heard her husband murmur to him.
“No peace, and no gratitude from anyone,” Lord Holt agreed, draining his wine glass again.
Cecily watched him carefully, holding herself in check a little longer.
“These two were both impossible, especially Cecily. I speak with affection, of course, but I’ll be more than glad to see both of them happily married and out of my way.
That day can’t come soon enough, can it, Mary? ”
Mary could not help giving a frightened little gasp.
Patrick visibly bristled, looking ready to leap from his chair and throw the older man out of the door.
“Patrick,” Nathaniel said warningly, fixing his brother with a stern look. “Be calm.”
The brief apprehension on Lord Holt’s face vanished, replaced by alcohol-fueled overconfidence again.
“Yes, keep your guard dog under control, Your Grace,” he jested with a side glance at Patrick.
“The young man doesn’t appreciate the full situation, I assume.
Well, there are questions we haven’t even settled between ourselves, aren’t there?
For example, is Mary leaving with me, or are you ready to come to terms in some other way? ”
Mary looked so terrified now that Cecily was tempted to remove her from the room, despite the plans she had made earlier with Nathaniel.
Alcohol, the proximity of his valuable ward, and the lure of triumphing over Cecily and Nathaniel were all essential components in leading Lord Holt to his destruction.
Heedless of propriety, Patrick reached out and took Mary’s hand on the tabletop, in full view of the entire party. Cecily blinked as she noticed the gleam of a new ring on her sister’s finger. It was just a slim silver band set with a single blue stone, but she immediately guessed its significance.
“Mary!” Lady Holt scolded. “Let go of that young man at once! What do you think you are doing? What will these people think of you?”
Cecily looked again at Nathaniel, and he nodded.
“I dare say they’ll think no worse than if they’d read the wicked rumors you tried to spread about Mary in a scandal sheet, Uncle,” Cecily said evenly, pleased to see Lord Holt’s eyes bulge.
“Although any right-thinking person would think worse of you for smearing your own nieces and trying to blackmail my husband.”
Now, Lord Holt had turned nearly purple and started to splutter as he struggled to reply. The eyes of all the other guests were fixed on him. He was not a quick thinker even when sober, a state that was now very far away.
“How can you speak so rudely and ungratefully to your uncle, Cecily?” Lady Holt chided. “All these years, he has given you everything and asked for nothing in return. The two of you might have starved on the street without his charity.”
“Charity? Is that what you call it?” Cecily retorted.
“For twenty years, I was made to feel like a burden, like every mouthful we ate was begrudged and like every mistake we made could result in punishment. For twenty years, I was the one who cared for Mary and raised her, although I was only a child myself. I am grateful to my uncle for nothing.”
“Preston took you in, sheltered you, protected you,” Lady Holt insisted. “Yes, he also chastised you when you were ill-behaved, but children need such guidance.”
“Shelter? Protection?” Cecily laughed scornfully. “You think I knew either of them with you? Do not even talk to me about what guidance you imagine is provided by a grown man beating children with his belt. Only one man has ever sheltered or protected me, and he sits at the head of this table.”
“You’re hysterical, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, duchess or not,” Lady Holt told her, not backing down.
“Before you abuse my wife further, Lady Holt,” Nathaniel interjected in a most dangerously calm voice, “you should know that what Cecily has said about your son trying to smear his nieces in the scandal sheets is true, as is the talk of blackmail. It’s all witnessed and documented.
Would you like to see? I plan to share it with everyone here. ”
“Preston, what are they talking about?” Lady Holt demanded, finally turning to her son. “Why are they telling these lies about you, in front of all these people?”
Lord and Lady Jackson and the Duke and Duchess of Mildenhall watched the scene unfold, having been warned that something of this kind could occur.
“I don’t know, Mother.” Lord Holt scowled, unable to meet her eyes. “I’ve never trusted Cecily, and it seems I was right not to. Now that she has her Duke and her money, she thinks to wash her hands of us and leave us to our ruin. I did my duty, and where has it gotten me? Nowhere.”
“Cecily is just like her father,” Lady Holt agreed.
“Charles always thought he knew everything and felt he was right. He had no respect for my opinions and married his frivolous wife against my advice. Once he was married, there was only his wife and daughters, and the rest of us might have disappeared for all he cared.”
“My father was a good man, a good husband, and a good father,” Cecily insisted. “You were taken care of, Grandmother.”
“He sent me to live in the dower house!” Lady Holt said indignantly. “Not like dear Preston, who has always kept me near him.”
“My brother was selfish and self-serving,” Lord Holt added. “He could not even pay off a few gambling debts for me—his own brother, his own flesh and blood.”
“Why should he?” Nathaniel challenged. “He’d paid them off several times before, and you were a grown man. It was time that you stood on your own two feet and stopped spending money that ought to be kept for his children.”
“That’s what Charles said, damn him!” Lord Hold snapped. “That’s exactly what he said before he set off in that buggy with his damned weeping wife.”
“He knocked you down, didn’t he?” Nathaniel goaded.
Lord Holt nodded, too far gone now in drink and anger to see how he was being led.
“I didn’t stay down,” he raged with the memory of his humiliation.
“He didn’t get the better of me that easily, but ran off like a coward.
I got my horsewhip, and I chased him. Damned Alice told him to ignore me and drive away, but I’d left Ashworth holding my horse, and I rode straight after them. ”
Cecily’s hands clenched into fists as she listened, even though she had already learned some of it from the documents she read that morning. How frightened her poor mother must have been, chased by her drunken, raging uncle with a horse whip while her father was only trying to get her to safety.
“You rode after them?” Nathaniel prompted.
“Oh, I rode like fury,” Lord Holt affirmed with a laugh.
“And I would have caught them, too. I could see one of the wheels on their buggy was coming loose and knew they couldn’t go on, but then…
The damned fool wouldn’t stop, would he?
The whole contraption came apart, and they were thrown right into that tree at the crossroads. ”
“You told me that you rode out to find your brother after he failed to meet you,” Lady Holt interjected, bewildered. “You said you found them both there, dead in the wreckage from the accident. You said—”
“Well, I did,” Lord Holt cut her off belligerently. “It wasn’t my fault they died. Charles should have just paid off my debts, and he shouldn’t have run away. He’s the one who crashed his buggy and broke his damned neck.”
“We’ll see what view the law takes on all that, will we?
” Nathaniel drawled, folding his napkin and laying it on the table.
“A magistrate, a solicitor, and two constables are waiting in the drawing room. In addition to Lord Holt’s confession before four witnesses, I have a signed statement from Lord Ashworth, who was with Lord Holt on the day of the accident and has confirmed key details. ”
“Preston!” Lady Holt cried. Cecily almost felt a pang of sympathy for her. “Tell me this isn’t true. I refuse to look at these spurious documents or listen to this wicked man. I know that Charles was mean to you and should have paid off your debts, but tell me it was only an accident.”
“What?” Lord Holt sputtered, looking around the table, not quite grasping that the game was up and he had lost. “What are you saying, Your Grace?”
“I am saying that luncheon is over, Lord Holt,” Nathaniel pronounced, rising to his feet. “For everyone’s sake, including your own, I suggest that you cooperate.”
Cecily watched her husband with love and admiration as he escorted her swearing and stumbling uncle out of the room, Lady Holt following and wringing her hands in their wake.