Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Catherine gazed out the window of the carriage.
She had managed everything as efficiently as she possibly could have.
She had enough clothes, enough money. She had even sewn coins into her cloak to thwart pickpockets in case of a crush getting on the boat.
She would write to Mary, Harry, and Arabella once she had settled somewhere on the Continent.
Likely deep in the countryside, in Brittany, far from Paris, far from where she might see anyone she knew.
She would be in Dover tonight and Calais by tomorrow.
She would have the child and leave it in France with a wet nurse, a woman who would take money for caring for the baby.
She would return to London and ensure Arabella had a good match.
Once Arabella was wed, then and only then, she would return to France for the child.
There would be whispers, of course, about her adopted ward, but with Arabella safely married, Catherine could withstand that.
And she would have left James an unhampered future. He would never know, and there would be no bastard to haunt him.
Or to make a future bride turn away from him.
She shuddered. She could not think on that hypothetical bride, that future Duchess of Middlewich, that virgin of the ton.
That beauty unmarked by age, that innocence unstained by evil.
How jealous she was of that imaginary girl already, that girl who would only ever know one lover in her life and it would be James.
Jamie.
But, no, she would not think on that girl. Or on James. Or on Roger and how she had killed him.
Despite her circumstances, a smile twitched at her lips. There were so many things on which she could not allow her mind to dwell that she was surprised she had anything left she could think about.
But she was Kate Cooksey, Catherine Cooke, Mrs. Edward Lovelock, and she was made of strong stuff. As Kentish villages and meadows moved past her carriage window, she conjured up all the good things that could occupy her thoughts.
A future love-match for Arabella. Harry’s improving health and her mathematical ambitions.
Mary’s ongoing wish for children with her husband.
And this child growing within her, this child that could not help but be beautiful since it was James’ child, too.
She would surround this child with so much love, he or she would never miss a father.
Catherine would think on these pleasant things, and she would close the door on that part of herself that had always been so intemperate, so difficult to control, so maddening.
So prone to fornication and violence. So weak, so unable to make decisions that weren’t influenced by lust. Yes, there had only been two men in her life who had brought that part of herself to the fore, but they were two too many.
And one was dead now. At her own hand.
She had lied to herself for so long, naming it as something apart from herself. But it wasn’t. Yet, she had to believe she could still excise it. From this time on, she would live as a nun, at least in respect to her desire. It was the only solution.
Besides Ophelia’s solution. And she would never undertake that. Never.
There would be no cold, dark water covering her over, smothering her breath, snatching her life away. Catherine Lovelock would die in bed of old-age, her hair silver, her face lined, her children and her grandchildren surrounding her.
James galloped up to Ffoulkes Manor. Something looked different about the house, but he couldn’t place it. He dismounted and ran up the steps to the front door. He pounded on it. No answer. He tried it. Locked.
He looked back at his horse, foamy with sweat, nibbling on some long grass on the side of the drive. That was what had changed. The grass was long, likely uncut the entire spring. Weeds were springing up through the gravel of the drive.
He went down the front steps and around the side of the house.
In the back, he found a recessed door and forced it open.
It was the servants’ entrance that led into a warren of rooms and passages, including a kitchen.
There was a foul odor here—yes, the damp Enfield had mentioned last autumn but also something rotten. There was no one about.
He found stairs and climbed them.
“Catherine?” he called out.
He discovered the large hall where he had carried her in, out of the wet, and the large main staircase where he had helped her both down and up.
“Catherine?”
He heard a noise. Plink. He went into the drawing room where he had drunk Madeira before dinner and played cards after dinner. It all seemed so long ago.
The room was desolate. The rugs were gone as were the curtains. The sofas, the chairs, the mahogany tables for the cards—all gone.
Mysteriously, the pianoforte was still here. And Sir Francis Ffoulkes was sitting on the bench, head resting on the music shelf, playing the same note over and over again.
“Sir Francis!” James strode across the empty room.
Sir Francis raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot. His Titus curls were flat and greasy. He had aged perhaps ten years since James had last seen him.
“Good day.” He stayed seated and bowed from the waist. “I would stand, but I would likely fall.” James could smell alcohol from where he stood.
“Is Mrs. Lovelock here?”
“Mrs. Lovelock?” Sir Francis gazed at something invisible across the room.
“Yes.”
“There’s no one here. Except me.”
Thank God. But where else would Catherine go in Kent?
Sir Francis’ eyes came to rest on James. “You!” He tried to stand. “You. You killed Roger. My friend.” He collapsed back onto the pianoforte bench.
“He broke into my rooms and shot me, Sir Francis. I am surprised you would call such a man your friend.”
“Well, he was. I told him to go get the painting. I gave him the key, and he went. And now he’s dead.”
Sir Francis had been behind Siddons’ invasion of James’ rooms. But why would Sir Francis care about the painting? Except that, of course, it was a painting of Catherine.
“How did you get a key to my rooms?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Sir Francis waved his hand. “I got it from René, if you must know. He was going to pay me a lot of money for the plans. But you took the picture away and we had to get the plans back. I mean, I wanted the painting, too. Badly. But the plans were worth a fortune.”
René DuBois. The conversation he had heard at the modiste’s shop between the Marquis DuBois de Laval and Madame Beauchamp came flooding back.
The bribing of the lady’s maids to get letters—Catherine’s lady’s maid must have been one of those bribed.
That’s why so many of James’ letters had gone astray, including his proposal of marriage.
And, of course, the letter containing a key to his rooms. James had also sent a letter to Catherine saying the painting was in his dressing room.
Siddons had known exactly where to search.
But why Catherine?
“What plans are these, Sir Francis?”
Sir Francis was silent.
“You said it didn’t matter. Why don’t you tell me?”
Sir Francis leaned over and vomited on the floor. When he sat up again, James stepped forward.
“What were the plans for?”
Sir Francis raised a bottle to his lips and swigged. “An underwater ship. Madness. René has been after me for a year to get him the plans out of the Navy Board archive. I got the plans, but . . .”
“But what?”
“I saw all the marines, and I thought I might be searched when I tried to leave the courtyard. I went into the Royal Academy. It was the first Varnishing Day, and there were artists everywhere . . .”
But not Roger Siddons. He had completed his painting twenty-seven years ago. No finishing touches for him.
Sir Francis looked down at the pianoforte keyboard. “I saw it. Roger’s painting. I knew he didn’t intend to sell it, so I thought I would put the plans behind the picture and when he took the picture home at the end of the Exhibition, I could get the plans back. And I wouldn't get caught.”
James said slowly, “But when I bought the painting, I took these plans.”
“Yes.”
James thought hard. When he and Catherine had taken the picture apart, they had found no plans.
“What did they look like, Sir Francis? The plans?”
“Oh, I folded them. They looked like folded papers. White papers. Long and thin.”
James shook his head. He had seen no papers. “Mrs. Lovelock has come into Kent today. Do you know why she would do that?”
“Kent is a beautiful place, Your Grace, as I am sure you are aware. Indeed, I will miss it.”
James had tarried too long. “I must go. Is there anyone here looking after you?”
“Just me, Your Grace. But you go on.”
James did. He felt a degree of worry and pity for Sir Francis, but he had to find Catherine.
He unlocked the front door and came out and found his horse still nibbling on the grass.
He took the horse around to the well outside the stable and pulled up several buckets of water for the horse.
James drank several dippers of water, as well.
He was about to lead the horse back out to the front and let the horse graze again when he heard riders and a coach coming up the drive.
He tied his horse to the well and walked back to the front of the house.
There were six riders, all armed with pistols, and a coach. The riders dismounted as the coach door opened, and Mr. Bulverton got out. Just as he was about to go up the steps, he saw James and paused.
“Your Grace.” Mr. Bulverton inclined his head.
The sound of a gunshot punctured the air. The dismounted riders had been standing on the steps, waiting for Mr. Bulverton, but now they ran through the front door of the house. Mr. Bulverton and James followed.
Sir Francis Ffoulkes was found on the floor of the drawing room, next to the pianoforte. A pistol was next to him. A bullet was in his brain. He was dead.