Chapter Four The Rookwood Shame
Sebastian Rookwood did not speak until the carriage had passed out of Chancery Lane and turned into a broader street where the crush of traffic loosened and London began, by slow degrees, to remember that it had houses as well as offices, pavements as well as mud, and people whose business did not require them to keep old secrets in dusty rooms above print shops.
Marianne did not prompt him.
She sat opposite the Duke with Mrs Alderley beside her, the latter having recovered from the near calamity with the admirable resilience of a woman who had survived marriage to a general, three campaigns of correspondence from military relatives, and forty years of London coachmen.
Mrs Alderley had demanded to know whether anyone had seen the face of the villain driving the carriage, declared that she herself would have taken down his number had she possessed younger eyes and a more obedient bonnet, eaten two of Mrs Finch’s biscuits, and then fallen into a light doze with her ear trumpet balanced precariously on her lap.
Marianne wished she could do the same.
Instead, she remained aware of every jolt of the wheels, every flick of the Duke’s gaze toward the window, every tightening of his gloved hand around the scrap of paper they had found on the carriage floor.
Blackwood meets Thursday.
Three words, and yet they had altered the air between them more decisively than pages of legal irregularities.
Until that moment, Blackwood had been a shadow, a word half-remembered by Sebastian from some old masculine circle of his father’s, a name attached to hints of dining rooms, tokens, wagers and private understandings.
Now it had shape enough to meet. Shape enough to threaten.
Shape enough to send a carriage down a narrow street and make it look like accident.
Sebastian looked at the scrap again, though he had already read it too many times for reading to change anything.
“You will come to Halgrave House,” he said.
Marianne’s attention shifted from the wet window to his face. “I beg your pardon?”
“You will come to Halgrave House. Today. The Rookwood ledgers must be compared with the scrap in Lady Theodosia’s packet, and there are family records too large and too sensitive to be moved through London on the strength of guesses.”
“I do not dispute the need to compare records.”
“Good.”
“I dispute the verb.”
His eyes lifted. “The verb?”
“Will.”
A small silence followed, disturbed only by the rumble of wheels and Mrs Alderley’s soft, dignified snore.
Sebastian’s jaw set in the manner that usually preceded command. Marianne recognised it now. He had been raised to expect that if he put sufficient certainty into a sentence, opposition would feel vulgar. Unfortunately for him, Lantern House had made a habit of surviving vulgarity.
“You object to assisting in an investigation you insisted was necessary?” he asked.
“No. I object to being summoned like a maid sent for clean linen.”
“That was not my intention.”
“It was your grammar.”
His gaze narrowed. “You have an uncommon talent for making small matters obstruct urgent ones.”
“On the contrary, Your Grace, I have found that large injustices often enter by small doors. A word here. An assumption there. A woman is ordered rather than asked, included rather than consulted, protected rather than trusted. By the time the harm is visible, everyone insists it was only custom.”
For a moment, irritation was the plainest thing in his face.
Then something more unwilling moved beneath it — recognition, perhaps, or the memory of his own words in the Lantern House passage, when he had ordered guards as though a female household had been waiting helplessly for masculine sense to arrive with his carriage.
He looked down at the scrap once more, then folded it with care and placed it in his breast pocket.
“Miss Vale,” he said, with a formality so exact that even Mrs Alderley stirred beside her, “will you consent to come to Halgrave House this afternoon to examine certain family ledgers and papers relating to Lady Evangeline Rookwood, under such conditions as Miss Vane considers proper, and in your capacity as Lady Theodosia Vane’s representative? ”
Marianne should not have found satisfaction in the words.
She did, a little.
“Provided Miss Vane agrees,” she said, “and provided it is understood that I come neither as your servant nor your employee.”
His eyes held hers. “Understood.”
“And that no document I examine is to be withheld once opened under the terms of our agreement.”
His mouth tightened. “Provided the document concerns Evangeline.”
“Or the Halgrave ledger.”
“Or the Halgrave ledger.”
“Or Blackwood.”
At that his expression closed. Not in refusal. In resistance to naming what they did not yet understand.
“Or Blackwood,” he said.
Marianne inclined her head.
Mrs Alderley opened one eye. “Have we won?”
“No, ma’am,” Marianne said. “We have merely been invited to another battlefield.”
“Splendid,” Mrs Alderley replied, and went back to sleep.
By the time they returned to Lantern House, the afternoon had darkened into that peculiar London greyness which made every window appear to conceal either warmth or conspiracy.
Helena received their report in Lady Theodosia’s study, where the japanned box had already been locked away and the household had resumed its watchful order.
Marianne gave the account of Mordaunt’s office, Mr Pryce’s admission, the fresh ink, the burned papers, the missing ledger, the man with the black rook pin, and finally the near accident in the street.
She did not linger over the moment Sebastian had pulled her back from the carriage, though she felt his gaze once when she omitted the part where his arm had held her against him long enough for his heartbeat to become something she knew.
Helena listened without interruption.
When Marianne unfolded the scrap and laid it on the desk, Helena’s composure changed in a manner that would have been invisible to anyone less familiar with its seams.
“Blackwood,” she said.
“You know the name?” Sebastian asked.
“I know that my aunt wrote it in a margin once and crossed it out so violently the paper tore.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only answer I possess.”
Sebastian looked ready to press, but Helena turned to Marianne.
“Halgrave House?”
“His Grace has requested my assistance in comparing ledgers.”
“Requested?”
Marianne glanced at him. “Eventually.”
Helena’s mouth almost softened. “On what terms?”
Marianne repeated them. Helena added more: Mrs Alderley was not to be asked to endure another expedition after the Chancery Lane incident, but Tom would accompany Marianne as far as the door and remain at Halgrave House until she departed; one of Helena’s own notes would be carried by Marianne, specifying the nature of her attendance; and she would return before dark unless unavoidable circumstance, properly witnessed, prevented it.
Sebastian endured the conditions with the stiff patience of a man being fitted with shackles made of courtesy.
When Helena finished, he bowed. “Agreed.”
Marianne looked at him sharply.
He noticed. “Would you have preferred me to argue?”
“I am surprised you did not.”
“I am capable of learning from repetition.”
“Then the day has not been wasted.”
For the first time in their acquaintance, the corner of his mouth moved as though amusement had approached and been refused entry only at the last moment.
Marianne looked away before she could decide whether she had caused it.
An hour later, after Mrs Finch had insisted upon food, dry shoes, a warmer cloak, and a lecture on the unreliability of gentlemen’s carriages, Marianne found herself once more in the Duke’s carriage.
This time Mrs Alderley did not accompany them.
Tom rode outside. A Halgrave footman sat beside the coachman.
The proprieties had been arranged as carefully as papers upon a desk, and yet Marianne was conscious throughout the drive that she and Sebastian occupied the same enclosed space with no elderly widow between them to absorb or misinterpret the tension.
He did not speak for the first several streets.
Marianne folded her gloved hands in her lap and told herself silence was preferable.
She used it to review the day’s discoveries: Mordaunt’s old office searched two days before them; Mr Bell absent and afraid; a gap on the shelf where a ledger might have stood; fresh ash in the grate; Blackwood meets Thursday; the near accident; the rook pin; the Duke’s signet.
She told herself also not to look at that signet again.
Naturally, she did.
The ring sat on the smallest finger of his right hand, heavy and old, gold worn smooth at the edges, the seal dark where the engraved stone caught no light.
The crowned rook with its raised wing was unmistakable.
Not merely similar to the mark on the ledger scrap.
The same design, unless fear had made her too certain.
Sebastian noticed the direction of her gaze.
“You have looked at that ring three times since Chancery Lane,” he said.
Marianne lifted her eyes without embarrassment. “Four.”
“Then there is some purpose in it.”
“Yes.”
“Which you do not intend to share?”
“I have not decided.”
His expression cooled. “Miss Vale, if you have discovered another clue, withholding it helps no one.”
“That depends entirely on whether the clue is also an accusation.”
The carriage rolled over a rut. The lamp strap overhead swayed gently.
His gaze sharpened. “You think the ring connected.”
“The rook on your signet matches the mark on Lady Theodosia’s ledger scrap.”
“I am aware.”
That startled her despite herself. “You are?”
“I examined my own ring after you looked at it yesterday as though it had confessed to murder.”
“I was less obvious than that.”
“No.”
Marianne absorbed this with irritation. “Then perhaps you might have said something.”
“You had already formed the suspicion. I wished to see whether you would speak it.”
“That is not cooperation.”