Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
The lamps in Greystone’s forecourt were already lit when their carriage rolled in, throwing steady circles on wet stone.
Louisa’s shout reached them before the footman opened the door.
Cordelia must have allowed her out despite the hour.
Then the hall filled with the familiar stamp of boots and the warm smell of coal and beeswax.
Adeline stepped down first, and Louisa flew into her skirts.
Cordelia stood behind them, thinner for the last week but straight-backed, eyes shrewd and relieved.
Winston followed, slower for the stiffness in his knee.
He took in the hall as a man checks a sentry line.
The banisters were polished, boots aligned, the air of a household that has held firm in a storm, and only then noticed the figure by the hearth.
Oswald stood there with mud to his knees, hat in his fist, and his face drawn with fatigue and the satisfaction of a man who has finished a list.
“I beat you to it, then,” Oswald said, voice rough with riding and smoke. He bowed to Cordelia, tipped his head to Adeline, and looked squarely at Winston. “I’ve brought what you asked for.”
Winston’s answer was half welcome, half warning. “And what I didn’t ask for?”
“That too.”
Cordelia’s glance moved between them. “You’ll both want food first. No good man talks on an empty stomach, not even a Duke. Louisa, the kitchen. Tell Mrs. Hardcastle two more places and a plate for Lord Duskwood, then straight back and no running.”
Louisa vanished like quicksilver. Cordelia turned to Adeline. “You’ll sit with me and tell me every dull detail of the journey so I can criticize it. Men who need to growl at one another may do it in the library.”
Winston caught Adeline’s hand as she passed.
The touch signified agreement, apology, promise.
Once he released his hold on her, he followed Oswald down the corridor, shutting the library door against the hum of the house.
Oswald didn’t wait for the ceremony. He went to the map table, braced his palms on it, and lifted his head like a man bringing bad news into a good room.
“I started in the county,” he said. “Clerks, magistrates, churchwardens. Then I rode to London. Grub Street, St. James’s, the clubs. I had a word with Fraser at Debrett’s.”
Winston drew his coat off and set it over the back of a chair. “Start where it hurts least.”
“It all hurts,” Oswald said, without dramatics. “Lord Harston is in disgrace. Not just rumor. Writs are out. He’s defaulted on notes to two bankers in the City and a moneylender in Holborn. No one will extend him another pound. His steward hasn’t been paid in three months.”
Winston felt the room tilt a fraction and right itself. “Debtors’ gaol?”
“A hair’s breadth away,” Oswald said. “He’s selling anything not nailed to the floors. He’s also been…creative.”
“How?”
Oswald’s mouth tightened. “There’s a pattern.
Quiet approaches to gentlemen of means. Widowers, men with estates to settle, men who keep their reputations neat.
Letters from intermediaries with references to Harston’s pure and private daughter.
She’s not on the market. They say she’s in retreat in the country.
They say she must be shielded from gossip.
Only a man of character will do. There’s always a reason meetings with the lady herself can’t be arranged.
Money is always required to secure the arrangement.
Settlements, dowry adjustments, a private debt to be cleared so the new life can begin unblemished. ”
Winston kept his voice flat. “Names.”
“A viscount in Sussex, Ashby. I saw him. He showed me the letter. There were others who wouldn’t own it, but the handwriting matched on three notes I managed to lay my hands on. A clerk in Harston’s attorney’s office helped with the drafts.”
Winston crossed to the sideboard and poured water to cool his throat. It tasted of iron. “And the daughter?”
“Never seen. Always promised. Always just beyond reach. When the gentlemen press, the offers sour. Harston grows offended. The money’s not returned. Nothing is provable without a trial none of them want.”
Winston took that in without speaking. The log in the grate shifted. The fire guttered and steadied.
Oswald went on. “You asked how Bow Street came into it. Harston hasn’t bought them.
They’re not so cheap, but he’s used their appetite.
He lays a charge, theft, fraud, against a woman he says wronged him.
He pays a fee. A runner sniffs. He baits the hook with a title and gossip.
It gives him the look of righteous pursuit when he comes calling for money. ”
Winston turned the glass in his hand. “And you think I’m his next mark.”
“I think you’re the one he finally got close to,” Oswald said.
“The difference this time is that the woman he has accused of thievery is his own, elusive daughter, Lady Adeline Warren. It makes the tale prettier and more dangerous. People might just believe it. Certainly, the gentlemen who thought they were going to be presented to Lady Adeline as possible suitors will think this claim has merit. After all, she could have stayed hidden from their view and taken their money. She could have…”
A growl of annoyance rumbled deep in Winston’s chest.
Oswald snorted. “I don’t say she’s in it. I don’t know. But the shape is the same.” He lowered his voice as if he were sure someone might be listening just outside the door. “How do you know that Lady Adeline has told you the whole truth now?”
“She has.” Winston lifted his chin stoically. “She was never engaged to be married or jilted. She ran from her father. She sought refuge with my mother. She…”
“But what of the suitors left behind in London?” Oswald tapped the stack of documents on the desk. “Could Lady Adeline have hidden at Briarwood with the Dowager because she was part of her father’s scheme all along? Could she have…”
“Adeline would never have it in her to engage in such deception,” Winston argued.
“Really?” Oswald arched an eyebrow cynically. “She lived with your mother for years under false pretenses. She caught my attention and earned my regard. She even took up a position in your household. Of what is Lady Adeline not capable of doing?”
Winston frowned. “I feel as though your question is rhetorical. You know something more, Duskwood.” He eyed his friend warily. “Do not keep the truth from me now.”
Oswald went to a drawer and took out the copy of Debrett’s that Winston kept at Greystone. He opened the page to a section blotted with ink.
“Care to guess which family has just been erased from the peerage?” Oswald said.
Winston stared. “How did you know…?”
“Upon arriving here, I plucked this volume from the shelves first thing. I needed to see how Lady Adeline had managed to fool both you and your mother for so long.” He paused, and his lips turned downward as something akin to a frown stole over his features.
“If you have any thought of…” Oswald’s eyes narrowed. “Winston?”
Winston looked up. “Of what?”
“Marrying her.”
Winston let the silence stand between them a beat too long. Oswald’s mouth changed, wariness, then understanding.
“God’s breath,” Oswald said softly. “You do.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to. I’ve known you since we were boys. You’ve got that look you had the first time you broke a colt, stubborn and calm as if you were standing on the edge of a river you meant to cross, whether it flooded or not.”
Winston’s temper came up fast, and he reined it in. “Your task was to find facts..”
I know she lied. It should be no surprise that she sought to protect the lie by destroying the evidence, here at least. Is it proof of the rest?
“My task was to keep you from walking into a noose with your eyes open,” Oswald said, not unkindly. “If there’s a scheme, step out of it. If there isn’t, better men than us will try to tell you there is, because it’s easier to distrust a woman than to admit a father can be a villain.”
Winston moved to the fire. He felt the heat on his shins and the cold along his back and thought, absurdly, of the hill where the spring ran and the way Adeline had looked when she’d said London felt like a fever dream. His knee ached. His ribs nagged. He didn’t sit.
“Give me the rest,” he said.
“Fraser at Debrett’s confirmed what you already know,” Oswald said.
“There’s no daughter for Clifford-Edge. There is an Adeline Warren for Harston.
He’s had letters from three people in the last fortnight asking whether Debrett’s erred, because they’ve met a Miss Wilkinson of Clifford-Edge at a certain Duke’s house.
He’s squashed it. He’s a decent man. But gossip moves faster than ink. ”
“Who wrote him?”
“A club bore with a taste for scandal, a lieutenant of Pike’s, and a lady who enjoys telling the truth when it hurts. I won’t give you the names until I must.”
“Thank you,” Winston said, bone-dry.
Oswald lifted a hand, a small apology. “I spoke to a runner I trust. He’s not been hired. If he is, he’ll tell me. He doesn’t like Harston’s smell.”
They stood in the room with its old books and the smell of smoke from a hundred winters.
Winston placed each piece where it belonged.
Harston was in debt. A pattern of approaches.
Pike at the edge of it. Debrett’s receiving whispers.
Bow Street sniffing. And Adeline, her hand on Louisa’s hair in the middle of a night that had pulled the color from Cordelia’s face.
Her steady voice cut through his pain in a carriage.
Her breath at his throat when the rain drowned the world.
A thought lodged where he couldn’t ignore it. If Harston were drowning, any boat would look like salvation. Even a boat he hated. Even a Duke.