Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Having completed her preparations for bed, Elizabeth found herself feeling restive and thought she would not be able to sleep, despite the late hour.
By her appearance, she was all that Lady Courtenay should be. She smiled, she laughed, and she conversed well in society. She showed her love for her husband, and she paid no heed to the silly rumours and gossip that continued to surround them. All was as it should be.
Inside, her mind was quite different. There, she lived in a world where she was still married to Darcy, reliving their old conversations and inventing new ones. They carried on with the happy life they had known all too briefly. It was the colliding of those two worlds that left her feeling odd.
This is why I have relinquished the friendship with him. This will pass once I no longer see him, wish for him, and think of him.
Elizabeth was sitting with a book and a cup of tea when Henry entered.
He was looking well, she noted disinterestedly.
He had recovered a better complexion after leaving the mines, and he had gained weight as well, appearing more muscular.
His hair was longer and curled, and he had ordered many new, fashionable clothes.
Yet she did not want him. The notion of kissing him, holding him, or permitting him to touch her still sickened her.
Nevertheless, she knew she would need to permit it, and soon.
The night he had requested her service thankfully had not been repeated, but it was a respite and not a cessation, and she did not fool herself into thinking otherwise.
“I hope I do not disappoint you when I say that we shall not go to Warrington by Easter.”
“May I enquire why?”
“My business here is taking longer than I had foreseen. There are some people I must meet that I have not yet been able to.”
“I am sorry to hear it. I know you are eager to be in the country.”
“I am. It is far too long since I have seen my home.”
“I do hope the actions taken by my advisers and me in your absence have not caused undue problems.”
“No, no,” Henry reassured her immediately. “Ah, but my limitation in mathematics and science hinders me! I have never had the mind for the study of investments or the science of plantings and so forth. It is tedious stuff, and being away from it has only confounded me further.”
A memory pricked at her mind and without thinking, she said, “I thought that you excelled in mathematics and science.”
He smiled. “Those were subjects for my brother. I have always enjoyed history and politics.”
He departed, leaving Elizabeth with her thoughts.
She clearly recalled that young Henry had written in his journals that mathematics and science were his favoured subjects while Francis was interested in history and literature. Now he claimed the opposite.
Was it significant? She believed Henry had been only twelve or thirteen when he had written those words, still a schoolboy at Eton. It was entirely possible that a younger Henry believed himself excellent in those subjects only to have later study discourage him.
Gooseflesh rose on her arms and she rubbed them absently.
The writings of a young boy in his journal are nothing to what a young man of nearly four and thirty says pertaining to the running of his estate.
Sums on a slate have nothing to do with the enormous interests of the Courtenay family or the management of Warrington.
As Henry matured and better understood his responsibilities in Parliament and the running of his estate, topics such as politics and history had likely become more interesting to him.
Yes, that is surely the explanation.
Within Darcy’s study, the night drew on as Hanley continued relating his astonishing tale.
“There is a legend of a fortune buried in the underground of Warrington Castle. Who can know whether it is true? It dates to the time of the Civil War when the Earl of Derby used Lancashire as his position.”
Hanley drained his drink and set the glass firmly on the side table as Darcy leant in closer. “Elizabeth told me of this once.”
“The good citizens of Warrington, which even then was a thriving market town, were devoted Royalists, first to last, and when Derby thought he might rather burn the town to the ground than surrender it to Charles’s enemies, there was no opposition.
The rumour is that before Derby did his deed, all the money from the markets went into the walls of the castle for safekeeping.
“Like most tales of buried treasure, there was a map with a cipher that had been lost. It was said that Henry and Francis’s father had found the cipher, but it confounded him, and he knew not where the fortune was hidden.
Henry, having succeeded his father, had access to the cipher, and when he was gone, it went to his widow. ”
Darcy nodded. “She did have it and told me that she and her father had spent many nights puzzling over it. However, when they eventually solved it, it led them to nothing. Surely, whoever hid the treasure must have retrieved it?”
“That is possible, or perhaps someone else managed to find it in the two hundred years since. However, it is notable that, in the time Mrs Darcy has had control over the Courtenay fortune, she has managed to add substantially to the family coffers.”
“Has she? How?”
“If what Francis has told me is true, she has done very well in these years past—well enough to raise his suspicion over where the money came from. He has not a head for numbers and believes she found the hidden treasure and diverted it into the household accounts.”
Darcy shook his head. “No, Elizabeth would not have lied to me. If she says she did not find it, then she did not.”
“I agree.” Hanley shifted in his chair. “I think it more probable that her uncle assisted her in making investments that proved successful. I gave it no more than a cursory look, but the origins of the increase seemed to lie in that direction.
“In any case, as of 1809 when the feud was reaching its most bitter point, Francis wanted Henry at the castle to obtain the cipher and codes to find the fortune hidden within the castle.”
“And therefore, a Henry dead on the road to Crewe would have done him poorly,” Darcy concluded. “There are so many twists and turns to this.”
“It was the double plot that has always vexed me, and I have spent many a sleepless night turning it over in my mind. I could not determine any reason for Francis to arrange a murder when that would have buried the cipher forever, and not when another perfectly laid plan was in place at the castle with a far more able—and more costly—assassin than George Wickham.”
“Oh?”
“A man called Joseph Richmond Blunt. Frightening man, surrendered to the mean streets of London at the age of seven by his mother.
He survived by stealing and, when he was older, doing odd jobs for criminals: a theft here, a beating there, probably even murder when it was needed.
He went to gaol for the first time when he was twelve, which was likely more of an education than a punishment.
He was not caught again, but his name has turned up on occasion for various evil deeds.
Francis Warren paid him three thousand pounds and his passage to the Indies up front, with the promise of another two thousand pounds when the deed was done.
“That is certainly a far cry from the twenty-five pounds George Wickham received,”
“Mr Blunt would have finished his job,” Hanley remarked wryly. “It also lends more weight to my belief that it was Mr Blunt who was truly hired to kill Henry. Any able assassin would want passage for killing a peer.”
“Truly?” Darcy was curious.
“From what I have learnt, Mr Blunt has killed others who were not peers and was paid a thousand pounds or less, and clearly, passage was not provided.”
“Mr Blunt wished to leave for good then,” Darcy mused.
“And I do believe he did. He either received word or independently concluded that the situation had gone awry. He vanished, and nothing has been seen of him since, either in Lancashire or London.
“Clearly, Henry never had any intention of going to his castle, not until everything was settled.
However, Mr Wickham inadvertently foiled the entire plan by failing to be an assiduous assassin.
I believe that when Henry, masquerading as Francis, fled the scene of the murder, he knew that Francis was not truly dead.
“What ensued was a hiding game. Henry hid from the Crown and from Francis, Francis hid from the Crown and from Henry. Henry was the first to run out of luck when he was captured by the king’s men and tried for treason.
He was discovered based on some anonymous information.
I have wondered whether Francis was responsible, but I have no proof.
Regardless, Francis surely wished for George Wickham to be disposed of before coming out of hiding. ”
“Would not Henry have made his identity known when he was captured in Francis’s stead?”
Hanley shook his head. “The Courtenay legacy was important to Henry. He still wished for his son to have his legacy, and if he died as a traitor, the title would be revoked. So much effort had been expended continuing his line that to have the Crown seize it would have been tragic. Henry wished for power, if not for himself, then for his legacy. Dying as Francis preserved that for him.”
“You have put this baffling story together very well,” Darcy mused. “But you say no one else supports this. Why?”