Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“Alone?” Lord Vernon crowed from the chair where he sprawled. “You continue to surprise me, Blythe. Where is Chilcombe, your new protector? Or am I mistaken? Is it young Jarrow who has won your favors?”
His eyes glittered with what she once would have attributed only to the poison. But now she knew it wasn’t just the laudanum. There was an evil inside him that made him gloat when he thought he had a weaker creature in his grasp.
She tore her gaze away and surveyed the room. The furnishings, carpets, and curtains were of a quality that might grace a slightly shabby Mayfair drawing room. The chair where he sprawled was upholstered in faded blue damask, matching the curtains and the long sofa where another woman reclined.
Clad in a colorful man’s banyan printed with tropical flowers, her head wrapped in a turban, Lunetta Casale offered a weak smile. Jaundiced and drawn, she couldn’t be long for this world.
“Thornsby told me you called this morning,” she said, her voice raspy, yet her tone was seductive.
“Thornsby?” Blythe asked.
“That would be me,” the woman she thought of as Madame said in an unaccountably cheery voice. “And now you’re back. And Lord Vernon has deigned to call on us as well.”
Ah. The cheery tone was meant to defuse Lord Vernon.
“Alas, I am not here by invitation, sweet Blythe,” he said.
“I had to inquire here and there to find Thornsby’s pied a terre, and a charming one it is.
Gifted her by one of your former protectors, was it not, Thornsby?
So your butler was not lying this morning when he said you weren’t at home.
Slipped out without Chilcombe noticing, eh?
And where was the impeccable new earl this morning? ”
She held her breath, fixing her gaze on him so she wouldn’t glance at the women and give away the fact that they must have lied to him.
“I shall send a doctor to help you, Lunetta.” She reached behind her and opened the door.
Lord Vernon leapt from the chair and braced his hands on either side of her, slamming the door shut in the process. “Not so fast,” he growled. “Where is that will?”
“I don’t have it.”
“No? Lunetta said she gave it to you this morning.”
“Did she? Well, I don’t have it now.”
“Bitch.” He punched at her, but she ducked, and his fist connected with the high crown of her bonnet. She tore at the tie and spun away, her hair falling loose from its pins.
“Where is it? If you destroyed it…” He turned a glare on Lunetta. “Or, did you lie to me, Lunetta? Yes, I believe you did, or Blythe wouldn’t have returned this afternoon.”
Lunetta struggled to sit up, too weak to stand. “Go away, Vernon.”
“Why you…” He stepped closer and drew a pistol from his pocket. “Give it to me.”
“It was wrong what you did.”
“I want that will.”
“Drugging Archie so he would sign it was wrong. Leaving his lady with one pound was wrong. All so you could get your hands on her.”
The villain laughed. “The way she ignored her husband’s needs, she deserved it. I cannot wait to, as you say, get my hands on her. Blythe’s such a pleasurable handful. When she screams it’s real, not an act like you and the other whores put on, Lunetta.”
Blythe inhaled sharply and edged close to the door, groping for the knob.
Thornsby reached for a stick near the hearth, and Lord Vernon flashed the pistol her way. “Where is it, Thornsby. You of all people wouldn’t let go of something that valuable.”
“And that’s not all,” Lunetta said, drawing his attention away from her friend.
Blythe felt the knob turn under her fingers and moved out of the way as the door opened and Graeme slid silently into the room with Jarrow behind him. Both men had drawn pistols.
“I saw you putting powders into Archie’s medicine bottle, making the dose ever stronger each week until—”
“It was you who fed him that medicine, Lunetta. Not me.”
“I cut it back,” she said. “Gave him less, and then nothing at all.”
“Ah. So that’s why he lingered. And here was I thinking he had an iron constitution. You merely killed Archie more slowly.”
“’Twas you who killed him. And you’ll swing for it.”
“Shut up.”
“Bragged about the opium your father could get you,” Lunetta said.
“Bet your pa hoped you’d take too much yourself and he’d be done with you.
But you were too smart for that, weren’t you Vern.
You convinced him there was a way to get vengeance on the man who killed his favorite son.
You found a surveyor you could bribe in your pa’s name and then you blackmailed the old man into going along with your scheme. ”
Lord Vernon laughed. “There was no blackmail. He thought it was a grand idea.”
Nerves tingling, Blythe held her breath watching Graeme and Jarrow edge closer.
Lord Vernon eased back the hammer on the gun.
“He drugged you too, Lady Chilcombe,” Lunetta said. “That night. I saw him.”
“And I’m sorry for all that happened, my lady,” Thornsby said. “I didn’t know you were with child.”
“I know,” Blythe said, hoping to draw his attention her way. “And I knew the drink was drugged after the first sip.”
Lord Vernon glanced away from Lunetta, though his gun still pointed at her.
“Don’t do it, Falfield,” Graeme said.
Lord Vernon whipped around and two sharp cracks resounded.
A chunk of plaster whizzed past Blythe’s cheek.
Lunetta collapsed back on the sofa while a pistol skidded across the floor.
Blythe looked up to see Lord Vernon clawing at the leather cords curling around his wrist and arm from the whip held by Thornsby.
Lord Vernon lunged for the woman and Graeme and Jarrow hurled themselves at him, knocking him to the carpet and pinning him there.
The sound of glass breaking in the room beyond stirred a baby’s cries, and then Morley and Bobby ran through the door from the back room.
Hands shaking, Blythe picked up Lord Vernon’s discarded pistol, wincing at the heat of the barrel and almost dropping it.
She silently handed it to Graeme, who’d yielded his part in restraining Lord Vernon to Morley.
“Pistols,” she said. “I never thought…” She shook her head to clear it. She was babbling.
Graeme pulled her close in a hug. “Let’s get you out of here.”
She pushed him away and went to Lunetta. “Were you hit?” she asked.
“No,” she said breathlessly. The baby continued to squall and the look of distress on Lunetta’s face told Blythe it was her child.
Thornsby was busy untangling the fronds of her whip.
Blythe hurried through the connecting door into an inner room that was a kitchen with a table. A black pot dangled from a jack on the old-fashioned hearth and a kettle stood on a trivet. She passed them and went to the large basket where the baby lay crying.
“At least you are warm in here, little one,” she said, lifting the downy-haired bundle out carefully. The crying stopped and blue eyes gazed up at her, eyes the same pure cerulean blue as Coralie’s.
She shoved down a too familiar anger and held the precious bundle close. The child needed comfort, and probably feeding, and definitely a change of clouts. The pouty lips smacked together a few times, and Blythe looked around.
“There’s gruel here.” Graeme had followed her in and was checking the pot over the hearth. “Still warm.” He scooped up a bit with his finger, tasted it, and then went to retrieve a dish and spoon.
She settled on a chair by the plain deal table and began feeding the babe, who smacked its lips some more and grumbled hungrily.
Graeme circled the room and then disappeared through another doorway, returning in minutes.
“That’s the bedroom,” he said. “One large lavishly appointed bed and a small one tucked into the corner. No desk or papers that I could see. I suppose they’d have those hidden.
” He came to stand near her. “About what—six months, eight months?” he asked. “It’s the image of Coralie.”
“Yes.”
“Archie’s?”
She nodded, tightly. “Probably. I cannot hold it against the babe.”
“I know you cannot, my love.”
He squeezed her shoulder, and she shuddered. My love, he’d said. Had he not heard the conversation between Lunetta and Lord Vernon about that night?
She shook off the unsettling emotions the memory inspired and put her attention to her task. One spoonful and then another, and then another.
She had almost reached the bottom of the bowl when the baby scrunched up its face and turned away. She set the spoon aside and wiped its mouth with a corner of the swaddling.
He chuckled. “Full now. He—or she—was hungry.”
“And wet.” She lifted the child. “And now I am as well. Fetch me some of those cloths from over there and I’ll change him. Or her. We shall know soon which it is.”
As she unwrapped the swaddling, Graeme stood so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, followed by his lips as he dove in for a quick kiss.
“A girl,” he said. “Coralie has a baby sister. Don’t bring her into the sitting room until Morley and his men have hauled Lord Vernon off to Bow Street. ”
And then he was gone, and she felt… a trifle bereft. The genuine affection in that quick kiss and been worth a trunkful of letters from a dutiful lover.
One week later
A hack arrived at Grosvenor Square and Morley stepped out carrying a small valise with an even smaller one tucked under his arm. Then he helped Radley juggle the baby she was holding and climb down. Blythe, Coralie, and Nicholas stood at the drawing room window watching.
Graeme came to join them, setting one hand on Coralie’s shoulder and the other on Nicholas’. “You’ll have no peace in the nursery now,” he teased.
“A nursery is not a spot for tranquility, Lord Chilcombe,” Lady Hermione called from her place on the sofa where she sat knitting a shawl for the baby. Only Will was missing. He’d needed to make an appearance at Horse Guards that day.
Blythe smiled back at Graeme, thinking about the meeting they’d had with the children only a short while earlier, telling them the news.