Page 45 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

H alf an hour later, with Dora having finally cried herself to sleep with the aid of some laudanum, and Mrs. Barnes stationed on a chair in her room to keep careful watch over her, Richard and Atkins repaired to the scene of the crime.

Richard found Marcus’s decanter of brandy, which someone had refilled in the intervening period, and a couple of glasses, and poured two large measures. He handed one to Atkins. “I think you’d better sit down.”

They both sat and, for a moment, neither spoke, but the brandy was consumed. As Atkins set his empty glass down, without saying anything, Richard refilled it. They both needed its fortifying properties after today’s events.

Richard sighed. “This is a pretty pickle we find ourselves in, my friend.”

Atkins bowed his white head. “I must apologize for my part in this, Your Grace. I had no idea it would go this far or cause such trouble. In fact, I cherished a hope that it was all done and dusted.” He sounded old and exhausted.

And he looked it. “You must understand that none of us could say anything to you about how the duke died. We would never have betrayed Lady Dora.” He shook his head in despair.

“And yet look at how she is now. I don’t know how we can help her.

I really don’t. Perhaps it would have been better to have admitted she shot him in defense of the duchess.

I just don’t know. But it’s too late to change our story now, I fear. ”

Richard sighed. “If it weren’t for the infernal tenacity of Lady Dangerfield, I doubt that it would have mattered.

She hates Isabella with a vengeance, and is determined to see her punished for a crime she wants to believe she’s committed.

Even if it means sending an innocent woman to the gallows.

Her jealousy is the root cause of this, mark my words. ”

Atkins frowned. “That woman, if I may be so bold as to refer to her in such a way in front of you, is a bad lot.” He licked his lips.

“I have had occasion to encounter her many times. Your predecessor often brought her here when Her Grace and Lady Dora were in Town. Sometimes when Lady Dora was actually present.” He downed the second brandy with the look of a man convinced he needed extreme fortification.

“If Her Grace goes to trial for this, I fear for what it will do to Lady Dora’s sensibilities. ”

“I think I know most of it now,” Richard said, setting his own glass down only half consumed. He needed to keep his wits about him and formulate a plan if they were all to escape from this unscathed, or as unscathed as it was possible to be. It was going to have to be a good one.

Atkins wiped a rheumy eye. “I’m so sorry we had to keep this from you, Your Grace. It wasn’t my secret to reveal. Her Grace was of the opinion the fewer people who knew, the easier it would be to contain.”

Richard sighed again, wishing that nagging headache he’d had all day would go away.

The brandy probably wasn’t helping any. “Please stop calling me ‘Your Grace’ every time you speak, Atkins. I was Master Diccon to you for long enough. Think of me as that lost boy if you can. We must work together here, and rank counts for nothing.” He paused. “If it ever did.”

“Thank you, Your—Master Diccon.”

Richard managed a taut smile. “We’ve known each other a long time now. So please don’t be offended if I have to ask you a question you might not like.”

Atkins bowed his head.

“Who was it put the pistol in Marcus’s hand?”

“I did. Lady Dora still had it in her hand when I came into the library. Her Grace was on her knees on the floor near the duke’s body.

I could see he was dead. No one could have survived a wound like that.

” His voice shook as though he were recalling what must have been a horrific injury.

“He was lying in a pool of blood from a bullet wound in the right side of his head.”

“In the right side of his head.”

“Yes.”

“That ties up with the sketch Colonel Jarvis’s man showed me. With the pistol lying close by Marcus’s right hand.”

“That was where I put it after I’d taken it from Lady Dora’s hands, and Mrs. Barnes had arrived.

We could both see what had happened, so I helped the duchess to her feet and told Mrs. Barnes to take them upstairs and put them to bed.

It was obvious they were both suffering from shock.

We had to get them away from the body. Lady Dora was hysterical. ”

“You put the pistol beside his right hand?”

“I did…” Atkins’s voice trailed off. Was realization dawning at last at the terrible mistake he’d made?

Richard held his gaze. “Marcus was left-handed in everything except eating. He shot his bow left-handed. He fired his guns left-handed.”

Atkins, his face even paler now, smacked his hand against his forehead and groaned.

“How could I have been so stupid?” He hesitated, raising anguished eyes to meet Richard’s.

“But what else could I have done? The wound was in the right side of his head. That was where she’d shot him.

It seemed to play into our hands. It looked like a self-inflicted wound.

With a little adjustment of the scene, we could make it look as though he’d done it himself.

I put the pistol in that hand because I could see where the wound was.

” He shook his head. “I didn’t think. It was automatic.

I know no one but His Grace who is left-handed, and I forgot.

” His hand went to his mouth. “Do they know? Is that some of the new evidence they’ve discovered?

I was so relieved when the colonel declared it an accidental death.

I believed we’d come through it safely.”

This was not a question Richard could answer.

He shrugged. “I don’t know what they know or what they could’ve guessed.

The Dangerfield woman was quick to claim they have an actual witness ready to swear they saw Isabella pull the trigger.

Which we know is a lie, but we cannot refute it without condemning Lady Dora.

And we can’t do that. You say you’re certain there were no witnesses, and you and Mrs. Barnes found the pistol still in Dora’s hand.

No one could have seen Isabella do anything.

It all has to be a pack of lies concocted by those two women who hate her.

” He shook his head. “And they must hate her far more than anyone could have guessed.”

Atkins’s lined old face had gone from waxy pale to an unhealthy gray. “Might I trouble you for another glass of brandy, Your Grace, just to steady my nerves? I can feel my heart fluttering.” He put his hand to his chest as if to feel its beat.

Richard obliged. He didn’t want the old man dying of a heart attack before they’d sorted out this problem.

If it was possible to sort out. The real fear that it might not be loomed large.

Isabella might not be responsible for what she’d confessed to, but Dora was.

That Isabella was protecting her sister-in-law was obvious.

But what could they do about it? He felt as if he’d entered a dead-end street and was up against the blank wall at its end.

He needed time to think, to work out what to do, but he didn’t have any.

This, the trial of a duchess, was a crime local magistrates would not want to touch.

That man Barker would be sending for the Bow Street Runners forthwith, if he hadn’t already done so.

Isabella had to be saved before she found herself incarcerated in some terrible London prison and dragged before a hanging judge.

He leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on the desktop.

“I will be blunt, old friend, and this is strictly between the two of us. Marcus undoubtedly deserved to die for his sins, and I’m not sorry he’s dead.

He was drunk, and possibly also under the influence of opium when he attacked Isabella.

We’ll never know that for sure, though. Dora had spent her life subjugated and bullied by him, and witnessing Marcus about to kill his wife, she snapped, as any human being would have done.

Somewhere other than the library, she might just have attacked him with her fists to save Isabella, but that didn’t happen.

A pair of loaded pistols lay on a table where she could see them.

She picked one up and shot him before she had time to think about it.

It was an almost involuntary reaction to seeing him kicking Isabella so viciously.

” He paused. “I strongly believe, as Dora must have, that he would have kicked Isabella to death had she not intervened.”

Atkins nodded. He was starting to look bleary eyed. Probably didn’t often drink three large glasses of brandy one after the other on an empty stomach.

“Did Mrs. Barnes examine Isabella for bruises?”

Atkins nodded again. “She did. It was Her Grace’s own idea.

She’s a brave one, and was not as shocked by what she’d seen as Lady Dora.

Mrs. Barnes said she wasn’t even crying.

Just calm and cold and practical, as though she’d distanced herself.

When she and Mrs. Barnes had got Lady Dora upstairs and into bed, she asked Mrs. Barnes to help her take off her ruined gown.

It was torn and she’d knelt in some of the duke’s blood.

” He seemed, despite the influence of the brandy, to have realized the importance of any evidence they could find.

“She was anxious her bruises should be witnessed. She showed them to Mrs. Barnes again on the following day, when they’d darkened.

She was heavily marked, but not on the face.

His Grace was usually careful not to mark her where the bruises would be seen.

I myself saw the bruises on her arms where he’d grabbed her.

Mrs. Barnes can vouch for the truth of the story. ”

Of course, they would have faded to nothing by now, but at least she was alive. For now.