Chapter Four The Rookwood Shame #4
“How convenient to have had so little responsibility for the money that reached you.”
This time Ashmont did not laugh.
A silence opened.
Marianne looked up just enough to see Ashmont’s gaze sharpen. For one instant, the graceful decay vanished and something hard looked through.
Then he sighed again. “You have been speaking to Lady Theodosia’s people.”
Sebastian did not answer.
Ashmont’s gaze slid to Marianne. “She had a troublesome habit, dear Lady Theodosia, of collecting strays and grievances.”
Marianne made her pen hesitate like a woman embarrassed by harsh speech. Inside, every thought stilled.
He knew.
Not merely of Lady Theodosia in society. Of her habits. Her collection. Her grievances.
Sebastian heard it too. “You knew Lady Theodosia concerned herself with Evangeline?”
“All London knew Lady Theodosia concerned herself with matters that did not concern her.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Then take it as a warning.” Ashmont’s tone remained pleasant, but the pleasantness had thinned.
“Dead women’s papers are dangerous companions.
They cannot be questioned, only interpreted, and interpretation is often a mirror for resentment.
Evangeline, poor soul, was too emotional to understand documents.
I would not like to see her remembered now through the ambitions of women who enjoy making martyrs of the unstable. ”
The word struck the room like a glass dropped on stone.
Sebastian stood so abruptly that the chair behind him shifted.
“Take care,” he said.
Ashmont looked up at him. “I have always taken care. It is a habit I recommend.”
For several seconds neither man spoke.
Marianne watched Sebastian’s face. The anger there was not the anger of denial now. Not the defensive fury he had shown in Lantern House when accused. This anger rose in defence, not of his pride, but of Evangeline. It was dangerous, raw and nearly uncontrollable.
And because Ashmont saw it too, the faintest satisfaction touched his mouth.
He wanted Sebastian angry.
He wanted him rash.
Marianne lowered her pen.
“Your Grace,” she said quietly.
Both men looked at her, though Ashmont did so with irritation at furniture speaking.
She kept her gaze upon the papers. “You asked whether the figure in the lower margin had been carried from the prior page. I believe it has. The discrepancy may therefore be copied from an earlier calculation rather than created in this document.”
Sebastian stared at her for half a second.
Then he understood.
She had given him a rope out of fury and back into work.
His hand flexed once. “Thank you, Miss Vale.”
Miss.
Ashmont heard that too. His attention sharpened further, though his contempt remained. “Miss Vale, is it?”
Marianne inclined her head. “My lord.”
“Secretary to Halgrave now?”
“No,” Sebastian said.
Marianne answered at the same moment. “Assistant to Miss Vane of Lantern House.”
Ashmont’s smile returned. “Ah. Lantern House. How industrious.”
He rose. “I see I have intruded upon business. Forgive me, Halgrave. My only wish was to spare old pain unnecessary disturbance.”
Sebastian’s expression was stone. “Pain is not spared by burial.”
“Perhaps not. But reputations often are.”
Ashmont bowed. “Good day.”
When the door closed behind him, the room seemed to exhale.
Sebastian crossed to the bell and rang it sharply. The butler appeared almost at once.
“See Lord Ashmont out. Then inform the porter that Lord Ashmont is not admitted again without my express order.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
When they were alone, Sebastian turned toward the door as if he might follow Ashmont into the street after all.
“No,” Marianne said.
He looked back. “You do not know what I intend.”
“I know precisely what you intend. That is why I said no.”
“He came here to threaten us.”
“He came here to anger you.”
“He succeeded.”
“And now you must deny him the satisfaction of proving it.”
Sebastian’s eyes flashed. “Do not presume to manage me.”
“Then do not make yourself so easy to predict.”
He crossed the room, not toward her but toward the fireplace, where he gripped the mantel and stared down into the flames. “He spoke of her as though she were an inconvenience he survived.”
“Yes.”
“I should have thrown him from the house.”
“That would have pleased him.”
“He deserves worse.”
“Likely.”
“Then why do you stand there counselling patience?”
“Because men like Lord Ashmont survive by making angry people look unstable. That is what they did to Lady Evangeline. If you storm into his club, challenge him in a drawing room, strike him, accuse him without proof, or drag his name through society before we can show the pattern, he will make this another Rookwood embarrassment. The cold duke unhinged at last by his sister’s old scandal.
The women of Lantern House feeding his obsession. The paid companion encouraging him.”
His head turned sharply at that.
She met his gaze. “You know it is true.”
He looked away first.
Good, she thought. Not because she wished to win, but because truth had entered where pride might have stood guard.
“He knew Lady Theodosia had evidence,” Sebastian said after a moment.
“Yes.”
“And he knows we are looking.”
“Yes.”
“He will move whatever remains.”
“Almost certainly.”
“Then patience may cost us the proof.”
“So may haste.”
He laughed once, without amusement. “You have an answer for everything.”
“No. But I have seen women destroyed by men who acted first and explained afterward.”
The words quieted him.
After a while, he said, “You are right.”
Marianne’s thoughts faltered.
It was so unexpected, and said so plainly, that she almost asked him to repeat it. Fortunately, good sense and dignity intervened.
“About Ashmont?” she asked.
“About Ashmont. About anger. About giving him the shape of scandal he wants.”
He turned from the fire. “I dislike it intensely.”
“I assumed you would.”
“That does not make you less right.”
She inclined her head. “Then we should continue before Lord Ashmont’s visit succeeds in wasting the afternoon.”
For another hour they worked, but Ashmont had changed the room.
His words moved among the papers like smoke.
Too emotional to understand documents. Strays and grievances.
Dead scandals. Reputations often are. Every phrase, meant to belittle, had revealed the habits of his mind.
He knew what documents could do. He knew what women’s testimony could be made to sound like when stripped of proof.
And he knew that society would often prefer a neat lie to a troublesome truth.
By late afternoon, they had found enough to make Marianne’s head ache and not enough to make justice possible.
Payments from Evangeline’s trust, disguised.
Entries bearing Blackwood notations. Legal expenses routed through Mordaunt.
Ashmont’s initials too often near sums that should never have touched him.
But not the original ledger. Not the missing little leather book Evangeline had carried. Not the final proof.
Sebastian rang for tea because Mrs Finch was not there to insist upon it and because, he said, men with responsibilities ought not to require housekeepers to remind them of basic human maintenance.
Marianne suspected this was meant as an olive branch.
It was an oddly shaped one, but she accepted tea.
As the tray was laid, the library door was opened by a maid rather than the butler, and through the gap Marianne caught sight of the corridor beyond. Evangeline’s portrait was not visible from here, but its absence from the gallery now felt like another document waiting to be interpreted.
“Where was Lady Evangeline’s sitting room?” she asked.
Sebastian, who had been stirring sugar into tea he did not drink, stilled.
“Why?”
“She may have kept papers there before they were removed. If she mistrusted the formal rooms, she might have hidden something in her own.”
“My father had her rooms cleared.”
“Cleared is not searched.”
“It was years ago.”
“Then anything found will have had years to wait.”
He looked at her. “You believe furniture keeps secrets?”
“I know it does.”
He set down the spoon. “Very well.”
Evangeline’s sitting room lay on the second floor, overlooking the garden at the back of the house.
Unlike the lower rooms, it had not been kept fully prepared for use.
Sheets covered the furniture. The curtains were drawn back only halfway.
Dust lay thinly on the mantel, not from neglect exactly but from uncertainty; the servants had cleaned enough to prevent decay, not enough to suggest welcome.
Sebastian stopped at the threshold.
Marianne saw it and pretended not to.
“This was hers?” she asked.
“Yes.”
It had once been a pretty room. One could see that even beneath the dust and Holland covers.
The walls were papered in faded blue. A small pianoforte stood near the window.
There was a worktable, a bookcase, a low sofa, and a writing desk with delicate inlay, feminine and French.
Above the mantel hung no portrait, only a pale rectangle where something had once been.
“What was there?” Marianne asked.
“A watercolour of our mother.”
“Removed by your father?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
He looked at her sharply.
She did not apologise.
The room smelled closed, but not dead. Lavender lingered faintly in the drawers. Old paper too, and the ghost of perfume. Marianne crossed first to the writing desk. It was locked.
Sebastian took a key from the ring the housekeeper had provided and opened it.
Inside were expected things. Dried ink. Blotting paper gone brittle. A stick of red sealing wax. Two invitations from some ancient Season. A ribbon faded to silver-blue. Nothing that proved anything.
Marianne ran her fingers along the interior edges, then the underside of the small drawers. Lady Theodosia had once shown her how ladies’ desks were often made with more compartments than their husbands knew, because women had always required places to put thoughts not approved for display.
“There,” she murmured.
“What?”