Chapter Two The Duke Who Came Demanding #2
Miss Vane’s voice cooled by several degrees.
“Miss Vale was my aunt’s most trusted assistant.
She knows Lady Theodosia’s papers more thoroughly than I do.
If you wish to understand why my aunt preserved any document concerning Lady Evangeline, you will require Miss Vale’s knowledge.
If you wish only to demand and condemn, then you may do that from the pavement. ”
Mrs Finch made a small sound of approval from the doorway and disguised it badly as a cough.
Sebastian looked at Miss Vale again. Her eyes were lowered now to the papers, her face perfectly composed. The wound, if wound it had been, had closed before anyone could claim to see it.
That unsettled him.
His world, for all its coldness, had been built upon visible distinctions.
A duke knew who stood above him, which was nearly no one; who stood beside him, which was a narrow and frequently tiresome category; and who stood below.
The arrangement was not always just, but it was comprehensible.
Lantern House seemed to operate by another ordering altogether.
Women who should have been humble were guarded.
Paid companions were defended. Housekeepers stood like sentries.
A dead lady’s study held more authority than half the clubs in St James’s.
And he, who had come to reclaim possession, had been made to wait like a petitioner.
“I require the return of my family property,” he said.
“And I,” Miss Vane replied, “require assurance that returning anything would not bury Lady Evangeline’s truth a second time.”
The words struck with equal force because they were not Miss Vale’s. This was not one woman’s bitterness. It was the house itself speaking.
Sebastian drew a slow breath. “What do you believe you know?”
Miss Vale lifted Evangeline’s letter from the packet but did not hand it to him. “We know Lady Evangeline claimed she did not sign the document attributed to her.”
His hand tightened once at his side before he controlled it. “Claimed?”
Her gaze met his. “Would you prefer begged?”
He did not answer.
Miss Vane said, “Perhaps we should begin with what you know.”
It was the sensible course. Sebastian disliked it.
He disliked the whole room, the old shawl over the chair, the black box on the desk, the faint scent of lavender and sealing wax, the women who watched him as though his dukedom were a coat he might remove and be judged without.
Most of all, he disliked the letter in Miss Vale’s hand.
It drew his gaze despite every effort of will.
Evangeline’s hand. Or so he thought. He had not seen it yet. He only knew the shape of the possibility, and it was enough to make the past stir like an animal long believed dead.
He had been twenty-six when Evangeline fell.
Old enough to know better, young enough to believe knowing better was the same as acting better.
Their father had still been alive then, hard, exacting, immovable.
Evangeline had been nineteen, beautiful in the careless, sunlit fashion of girls who do not yet know beauty can be used against them.
She had laughed too loudly, danced too often, preferred admiration to caution, and treated warnings as though they were evidence that life had at last become interesting.
Sebastian had scolded. Their father had commanded.
Evangeline had promised reform and then escaped to the next ball with brighter ribbons in her hair.
Then Ashmont had appeared.
Lord Peter Ashmont, younger son then, later heir through the convenient deaths of others, charming enough to be forgiven for debts, handsome enough to be believed when he lied, and polished with the expensive ease of a man who had never paid the full price of anything.
Sebastian had mistrusted him from the first. Evangeline had called him severe.
Their father had called Ashmont suitable enough if the settlements were correctly drawn.
And because the world had always valued a woman’s fortune more carefully than her judgement, solicitors had been summoned.
“I will tell you the official facts,” Sebastian said at last.
“Official facts,” Miss Vale repeated. “A useful phrase.”
He ignored that. “My sister formed an attachment to Lord Ashmont. There was discussion of marriage. Nothing had been announced publicly, but settlements were drafted. Evangeline possessed a considerable portion from our mother’s family, to be secured upon marriage under terms my father considered adequate.
Before the marriage could be formally agreed, documents appeared suggesting that Evangeline had consented to advance Ashmont a large sum against the settlement. ”
“Documents appeared,” Miss Vale said.
His jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“From where?”
“From the office of Mr Silas Mordaunt, solicitor.”
“Your family solicitor?”
“Not principally. He acted for Ashmont’s family and had some dealings with ours concerning the draft settlement.”
“Convenient.”
“Many legal arrangements are convenient. That is their purpose.”
“For whom?”
Miss Vane gave Miss Vale a look, but did not stop her.
Sebastian continued. “When confronted with the transfer, Evangeline denied signing it. Unfortunately, letters were then produced that suggested an improper correspondence between her and Ashmont. She denied those too, or portions of them. Her behaviour became…” He stopped.
Miss Vale’s stillness sharpened.
“Became?” she asked.
“Erratic.”
The word tasted stale. It had been used often then.
By his father. By Ashmont. By Mordaunt. By the physician who had recommended quiet, seclusion, no excitement, and above all no public contradiction.
Erratic. Hysterical. Overwrought. High-spirited girls often became so when disappointed.
He remembered those phrases lining up like witnesses against her.
Miss Vale’s eyes did not leave his face. “What did erratic mean?”
Sebastian looked at her, irritated beyond measure because he could not dismiss the question. “She cried. She raged. She refused to see certain people. She accused Ashmont of theft and my father of betrayal. She attempted to leave the house without permission.”
“Was she a prisoner?”
“No.”
“Was she permitted to leave?”
He said nothing.
Miss Vale’s mouth compressed almost imperceptibly.
He hated that she made silence feel like confession.
“At length,” he said, more coldly, “she was removed from London for her health. She refused to see me before she left.”
“Did you ask to see her?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“That is not relevant.”
“It may be the only relevant thing in the room.”
“Miss Vale,” he said softly, “you are very free with questions concerning griefs that are not yours.”
“And you are very careful with answers concerning a woman whose grief appears to have inconvenienced everyone.”
The anger that rose in him then was clean and violent. He could almost welcome it. Anger was simpler than the other sensation beneath it, the old sick lurch of not knowing whether the next question would open a door he had nailed shut himself.
“I went to her room,” he said. “Twice. She would not admit me. I wrote. She returned the letter unopened.”
“Who told you she would not admit you?”
“My father.”
“And who gave you back the letter?”
He looked away.
Miss Vale did not press. She did not need to. The question remained in the air with the patience of a creditor.
Miss Vane moved, perhaps to redirect the exchange, perhaps because even she felt the air had grown too sharp. “And after she left London?”
“She lived first in the country, then under another name in a house near Bath. I was told she required quiet. Later, I learned she had gone abroad for her health, though I found little evidence that she did. Within two years, she was dead. Fever, according to the certificate.”
“According to whom?” Miss Vale asked.
This time he did not resent the question. He had asked it himself.
“A physician who has since died.”
“And Lord Ashmont?”
“The proposed marriage ended, naturally. He married another woman three years later.”
“With your sister’s money?”
“No,” Sebastian said, though not as firmly as he wished.
Miss Vale noticed. Of course she did.
“I have seen the transfer,” he added. “The signed transfer. It was not completed as first intended, but funds were moved. Ashmont claimed repayment for advances made and losses incurred after Evangeline’s withdrawal. My father settled something privately to avoid court.”
“To avoid scandal.”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“I was not Duke then.”
“But you were her brother.”
There it was again. Not shouted. Not even cruelly said. If anything, her voice was quieter than before. That made it worse.
Sebastian turned on her. “Do you imagine I do not know that?”
For the first time, Miss Vale’s expression changed. Not fear. He might have borne fear. Something like grief crossed her face and vanished.
“No,” she said. “I imagine you know it very well.”
The room went silent.
Outside, a carriage passed in the square, wheels hissing over wet stones. From somewhere below came the faint sound of a woman’s voice, young and strained, then Mrs Finch’s lower murmur. Lantern House continued its work while this old wound reopened above it.
Miss Vane drew Evangeline’s letter gently from Miss Vale’s hand. “Your Grace, you say you have seen a signed transfer. Lady Evangeline says she did not sign it. We have no intention of using her name lightly. Nor, I think, do you.”
The last sentence was not quite trust. It was an opening narrow enough to be withdrawn.
Sebastian’s gaze fixed upon the letter. “That is her hand?”
“Yes,” Miss Vale said.
“May I see it?”
A very small pause followed. He heard in it every reason they might refuse.
Then Miss Vane handed him the letter.
He took it with more care than he had intended to show.