Chapter Twenty-Three
There was indeed a good-sized table in the back, but only Selena and Jane pulled out chairs. The men were too wound up to do ought but stand around the table glaring at each other.
Finally, Selena slumped into a seat. If she was going to try to do the impossible, she may as well be comfortable.
“Herr von Richter,” she said, trying not to flinch when he turned to her.
“I do not know how I can convince you that I had nothing to do with your brother’s disappearance,” she said.
“I have no proof I am innocent. However,” she said, when Johann looked as though had just won the argument, “I am certain you have no proof that I am guilty. There could be no such evidence as I am not.”
“My brother did not simply vanish into thin air, Mrs…MacLaren, is it now?” he said with a slight sneer.
“Very soon to be Lady Lockhaven, so mind your tone,” Edward reminded him with that growl in his voice that sent delightful shivers up her spine.
Johann’s lips pinched together but did not argue back.
“If I may?” Mr. Travers said, raising a finger.
He waited for Edward to nod before he took a seat. The rest of the men likewise sat, though they did so more warily, watching each other like they expected someone to attack the moment their backsides hit the seat.
“Lord Lockhaven, as you know, your mother hired me to look into…” He paused, glancing nervously at Selena.
She sighed. “I am aware of your instructions, Mr. Travers. Please do not hesitate to be candid on my account.”
He nodded with evident relief. “First, I had to discover if there actually had been multiple marriages. Which is not so daunting a task as it might seem. Servants know far more than most people realize. A few well-placed coins and I had most of the information I sought.”
Selena blinked in surprise. Who would have betrayed her?
Though, while she knew all the staff at her parents’ home, she wasn’t well acquainted with them all.
There did tend to be the regular bit of turnover amongst the lower staff, but anyone who had been with her family for a few years would know everything that had transpired.
And it wasn’t as if they had been keeping the information secret, so betrayal was likely too strong a word.
That lessened the sting a bit. But not entirely.
Mr. Travers, however, had noticed her surprised start and nodded sagely.
“Oh yes. It always surprises me how little attention people pay to those who serve them,” he mused.
“Such a wealth of information, just ripe for the plucking. Do you know,” he asked, leaning an elbow on the table with a conspiratorial smile, “I once discovered that a certain duke’s mistress had had a secret child with His Grace’s brother simply by bribing the man’s valet?
” He chuckled. “Truly, you would be astounded at—”
“That is all rather fascinating,” Edward said tightly, “but perhaps we could return to the matter at hand.”
“Oh, yes, of course. My apologies. Now, I thought I would need to travel to the home countries of all these men to interview their families. Which would have presented quite a bit of trouble considering the distances involved. Though I can still do so if I’m given more time. And funds, of course.”
“Of course,” Edward said, his voice implying the eye roll he somehow managed to keep contained.
“However, as luck would have it, I needed only travel to the home of the first. Umm, a Mister…” He began shuffling through his papers, and Selena let out a sigh through her nose.
“Monsieur Louis Dampierre,” she said.
“Yes,” Mr. Travers said with a grin. “Very good. Thank you. Monsieur Dampierre. In Paris. He perished in a terrible carriage accident. Caused quite a stir at the time. Stumbled into the path of the carriage because of…” He squinted down at the paper.
“A flock of geese?” He shrugged. “In any case, it was reported on in all the papers and gossip columns for quite some time. And even the subject of a few cartoons I was able to find. Mostly due to the sudden disappearance of his newly wedded wife.”
Selena’s cheeks grew hot. His news was both unexpected and decidedly unwelcome.
She had assumed there might be some tattle about Louis’s death in the gossip columns, but it had never occurred to her until that moment that her disappearance afterward might have caused comment.
Though…now it seemed a foolish thing not to realize.
Louis had been popular at the French court.
The younger brother of a minor noble, so no one of importance politically, perhaps.
But a jolly fellow who was well liked and well connected.
However, when his family voiced no objection to her leaving, she had thought nothing of it and accompanied her father to Italy where he planned to peruse some newly discovered ruins hoping for a few bits of crockery for his collection.
That her departure added to the rumors over Louis’s death, over all her husbands’ deaths, made the entire affair even more soul-wearyingly dreadful.
Edward again took her hand, bringing it to his lips.
His gaze held hers as he pressed a kiss to her skin and remained on hers as he lowered her hand.
One brow quirked up slightly, as if he were asking if she were all right.
The tension that had taken up residence in her shoulders eased, and she gave him a grateful smile. She could do this. He was by her side.
She turned back to Mr. Travers, who had continued prattling on about the fascinating tidbits one could pick up in a gossip column, completely oblivious to Edward and Selena’s little interlude, or the rest of their audience’s growing agitation.
Edward cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, Mr. Travers. That is all well and good. You have told us what you discovered about Monsieur Dampierre. Do you have anything else to report?”
“Oh yes! As I was saying, there is a wealth of information in the gossip columns. One in particular, as it mentioned interesting stories not only from Paris, but a few from other locales as well. As I did have an idea of timelines, it then just became a matter of finding columns, cartoons, and newspaper articles from the correct dates. As luck would have it, some enterprising soul had heard rumors from multiple courts and wrote a column about Lady Death—”
“Lady what?” Selena exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in her seat.
“Lady… Death,” Travers repeated. “I had thought it rather clever, but yes, I can see where that might be, well, where you might find that…” He cleared his throat, growing more nervous and fidgety by the second the longer Selena stared at him in dumbstruck horror.
“There,” Johann said, jabbing a hand toward Mr. Travers. “Just as I said.”
“A few gossip rags are hardly grounds for condemnation,” Edward said.
“Lady Death,” Johann snorted. “Putting on airs even as a murderess.”
“She will be a duchess someday so wouldn’t Duchess of Death be more apt?” Anthony suggested.
“Oh, now that does have a nice alliterative ring to it,” Travers said.
Edward glowered at them both, and Anthony held his hands up and apologized with a chuckle. He sobered when he caught Selena’s narrowed gaze and cleared his throat.
“And were you able to find information on all of Mrs. MacLaren’s husbands?” Anthony asked, getting back to the task at hand.
“Yes.” Mr. Travers gave them all another delighted grin. The man was positively glowing with pride in his work. Which was, in all fairness, rather impressive.
“And?” Johann prompted impatiently.
“Oh, yes, well…” He shuffled more papers.
“How does it say these men died?” Johann insisted.
Mr. Travers gulped and glanced at Selena, clearly not wanting to answer. “Poison.”
“Oh, this is ridiculous.” Selena sat back, crossing her arms with a grumble.
Jane patted her arm and shot a glare at Mr. Travers for good measure. God bless the woman.
“It is only, the deaths are so strange, so naturally people are prone to provide an explanation for how such things could occur.” Mr. Travers said, looking at his papers again.
“Well, not so strange perhaps in occurrence—accidents do happen, after all. But in sheer quantity, certainly. People assume so many accidents befalling the husbands of one woman, surely she must be facilitating such mishaps in some way. Poison is always a popular theory.”
“Surely,” Selena echoed, not bothering to hide how insultingly preposterous she found that argument.
Mr. Travers glanced at her two or three times but wisely chose not to respond. Instead, he continued on with his story.
“Your second husband, madam, Francesco Fiorentino, died from a fever after a falling in the canal. There was quite a bit about him, as he was a very popular painter. As well as about Marius Albescu, a composer who died after an unfortunate incident involving a horse. And Mr. MacLaren I have not yet looked into, having assumed, as his sister is an obvious champion of Mrs. MacLaren, that his death, at least, was not under consideration.”
“Correct,” Jane stated firmly.
“So, while they did all die,” Lord Goodwin said, “all the deaths were legitimate—if unusual—deaths. No murder. Pure bad luck.”
“Bad luck?” Jane scoffed.
“Yes. Tragically extreme bad luck, but still, bad luck all the same. Not malicious murder.”
“Is he always this helpful?” Selena muttered to Edward.
“You grow accustomed to it,” he murmured back.
“Unfortunately, Mrs. MacLaren,” Mr. Travers said, “while I do understand why you may have wanted to hide away after everything that occurred, it was your disappearance after each death that caused the most stir.”
She let out a sigh, having suspected as much. Yet, at the time, she couldn’t bear to do anything else.
“But,” Travers continued, “I did speak to the physician who examined Monsieur Dampierre. He confirmed that the death was accidental. No signs of poison or anything other than the injuries sustained in the accident. I must assume the other deaths were similarly ruled accidental, though I would need more time to prove so conclusively.”
Selena nodded with a grateful smile. At least now she had proof for anyone who wanted it that she wasn’t what the rumors claimed.
She turned to Edward with a smile, and he lifted her hand to his lips once again.
“That is all very fascinating,” Johann said with a scowl, “but you have told me nothing of my brother. Nothing that would cause me to withdraw my objection. She may not have killed these other men,” he said, waving his hand toward Mr. Travers’s stack of papers, “but that does not mean she did not harm my brother. Or perhaps they did, indeed marry, and then she left him. Which would render her equally ineligible to marry again.”
“Ah, yes.” Mr. Travers thumbed through a few more pages. “I confess, this one was a bit more difficult. I feared I would not find the information in time, however…”
He pulled a letter from his stack of papers with a flourish.
“What is that?” Johann leaned forward, squinting at it.
“It is a letter for you, from your brother.”
“What?” Johann shouted and jumped up, startling Selena enough that she jumped as well. As did everyone else at the table.
“Where did you get that?” Johann leaned over and snatched it from Mr. Travers, who seemed confused as to why there was such commotion all of the sudden.
“I called at your residence yesterday evening—”
“I was not at home,” Johann grumbled, dropping into his seat so he could read the letter.
“Yes, as I discovered. However, your footman did offer to let me wait a bit if I wished and placed me in the salon. I confess after a time I did grow quite bored and, well, I may have engaged in a small bit of snooping. Hazard of the trade, I’m afraid.
There is quite a lot of mail on the desk in your study that has yet to be opened along with a rather urgent piece from your solicitor—”
“You stole this letter from my desk,” Johann thundered, causing Mr. Travers to yip in fright and duck behind Lord Goodwin who gallantly stood to defend the man.
“I borrowed it!” he said, peeking out from around Goodwin’s broad shoulders. “It was vitally pertinent to my investigation. I would have brought it back this evening. And now I don’t have to. Isn’t that fortunate?”
Johann growled and made to reach for the man again, but Edward held up a placating hand.
“What’s done is done, and I’m sure Mr. Travers is very sorry for his transgression.
” He glanced at Travers who appeared to be not only thinking about the truthfulness of that statement but seemed ready to deny it.
Until he caught Edward’s look and nodded with the enthusiasm of a man trying to save his skin.
Johann grumbled but seemed, for the moment, more intent on reading his letter than murdering Mr. Travers.
Edward rubbed at one temple with a finger and nodded at the investigator. “The damage is done, Travers. At least share with us what you found.”
“Oh, yes. Well, it seems that Herr von Richter—err, Herr Otto von Richter, that is—left the evening before his nuptials to Mrs. MacLaren due to…well, to put it kindly, a lack of desire to engage in any marital responsibility and a healthy fear of falling afoul of Mrs. MacLaren’s curse.”
“That’s kindly?” Jane muttered, making Selena snort softly. She’d heard worse, certainly. But if that was Travers’s idea of kind, she didn’t want to hear him be cruel.
The investigator continued, oblivious to their commentary.
“Apparently, while in the tavern not long before the wedding, someone shared with him the rumors regarding Lady Dea—err, Mrs. MacLaren’s past marriages, and rather than risk his life for a life of responsibility he did not want, he decided to go on an extended holiday. ”
Selena listened to this all with growing agitation. The nerve of that man, leaving her as he did without any regard to her feelings or reputation, over a few tawdry rumors. Of all the… She blew out a sharp breath and narrowed her eyes at Mr. Travers.
“And where has my erstwhile fiancé been all this time?”