Chapter Nineteen #2
“Salter, sir, late of the 95th. You might have seen me in court when the magistrate let me off with a fine.”
Rupert let out a hiss of laughter.
“Miss Nye killed Dinah Fenn?” Chadbon said in astonishment. “And shot at you, Lady Ambrose?”
“Of course I did not,” Miss Nye wailed, tears streaming down her face. “The curate did it and tried to kill me! Lady Ambrose is in on it—she’s always sneaking off to meet him.”
“Stop, Sophie,” Nye said, with more weariness than anger. “It’s over. I should never have allowed you to deal with that girl. It never entered my head you would…would—”
“Oh, Colin, don’t be so weak and lily-livered,” Miss Nye said. “She was expecting your child! She had to go.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Rupert said.
Miss Nye spared him a look of acute dislike. “I suppose it was yours, then.”
“Actually no.” Mechanically, Rupert took the flask from his pocket and unscrewed the stopper. Since Chadbon and Sir Colin were both speaking urgently and intensely to Miss Nye, he offered it in friendly spirit to Gilbert.
With inexplicable guilt, Kate saw that it was not Rupert’s own flask, but the one she had passed to him in his cell. Gilbert’s flask, in fact.
Uh-oh.
Gilbert was clearly about to brush Rupert’s hand away in disdain, then blinked and took the flask. “Where did you get this?” he asked sharply.
Kate sighed. “I lent it to him.”
“In the clink,” Salter added, anxious to be a witness to Rupert’s innocence.
Gilbert’s jaw was dropping.
Kate smiled brightly.
Chadbon said, “But this is terrible! How can we ever keep all this from coming out? She’s your sister, Nye, and this is my house. Both our parties will suffer and your bill will be lost, Ambrose.”
Rupert, dragging his somewhat regretful gaze from the brandy, which he clearly wasn’t getting back, said, “She’s not quite sane, Nye.”
“I know,” Sir Colin said hoarsely. “I’ve been shutting my eyes to it.”
“No longer,” Rupert said. “She can’t be free. She’s too dangerous. She has killed at least one young woman and possibly more. But if you deal with that, get her the care and the security she needs, then I’m sure it can be covered up just as easily as—er…previous arrests for this crime.”
Chadbon frowned, thinking and then slowly nodding. He exchanged long glances with Nye, and with Gilbert. Then he said, “You’re a good man, Grande. A very good man.”
“I’ll take her away tonight,” Nye said. “If Ambrose is here, then the roads are passable at last. Come on, Sophie, time to pack. It’s all sorted out now.”
“Is it? Are you safe? Am I?”
“Yes,” sighed Nye.
But Dinah isn’t. Kate thrust aside the bleak thought while Nye and his sister shuffled out of the room.
“I’d still lock your door,” Rupert murmured.
Kate nodded, then caught sight of Gilbert’s outraged face and quickly took his arm. “Come, sir, we have both had a long day. Shall we retire? Have you eaten? You must tell me all about your journey.”
She did not dare look back at Rupert, though she felt the tug of regret and injustice. He deserved thanks and praise, not to be ignored. Oh well, tomorrow was another day.
Tonight was for placating her husband.
*
So that is Ambrose. Quite a distinguished-looking fellow, a man of presence, not yet forty years old.
Medium height, clever, serious. Rupert rarely disliked anyone, and he wasn’t about to start with Kate’s husband, but he did not care for the lack of humor in the man.
Nor did he like that Ambrose’s first shocked reaction had been to blame Kate.
But even that was unfair, Rupert acknowledged as the pair left the room together.
Ambrose had only seen Kate hurling herself at an apparently frail older lady, the sister of a respected parliamentary colleague.
He would not have seen the gun at first, wouldn’t have understood the reasons behind his wife’s attack.
In fact, now that Rupert thought of it, the whole scene was pretty funny. Yet as Kate took her husband’s arm and walked toward the door, asking lots of bright, interested questions, her entire attention on him, Rupert did not laugh. Not even at Salter still leaning through the open window.
Was Kate placating Ambrose? Or was she just overjoyed to see her beloved husband? Certainly she did not glance back even once as she left the room.
Rupert found himself rubbing absently at his chest, as though at some pain. Surprised, he dropped his hand and moved toward Salter.
“Thank you, sergeant,” he said. “You’d have been spot-on if they hadn’t moved.”
“She—Lady Kate—came out of nowhere. I could have killed her.”
Was that a tremor in Salter’s one hand? Rupert gripped his shoulder briefly. “You didn’t. She took us all by surprise, including Miss Nye! She does that. Give me five minutes and we’ll head back to the vicarage. You’ve earned your supper tonight.”
Although Salter’s eyes were still troubled, he raised a grin, ducked back out of the window, and closed the sash.
Chadbon appeared beside Rupert and deliberately locked the window. He blinked at the hole in the glass.
“It was only for this one hour,” Rupert said apologetically. “I might have needed Salter’s help.”
“You trust him that much?”
Rupert didn’t point out that the country had been content enough to trust him and his ilk through decades of war, but Chadbon seemed to grasp the matter anyway, for he gave a slightly embarrassed cough.
“You’re an odd fellow, Grande, but we all have cause to be grateful to you. Except poor old Nye, possibly… Though if Sophie is indeed mad, I suppose this is the best for him, too. And for her. Only…will you explain what happened here? Why the devil should she have murdered our housemaid?”
Rupert explained in a few succinct sentences, which had Chadbon’s jaw dropping.
“Good God.”
“Nye will see that she is confined, won’t he?” Rupert asked, holding the older man’s gaze.
“What? Oh yes. I’ll make sure of it. But he’s not a bad fellow, Nye—wouldn’t have his sister on the loose with murderous intent, you know.”
Again, Rupert refrained from pointing out that was exactly what had been happening.