Page 30 of A Lady’s Guide to Murder

CHAPTER 29

A Ballroom Confrontation

Enough moonlight filtered through the thin curtains for Henrietta to ascertain she’d entered a large ballroom. Smooth parquet floors and a ceiling so high it was lost to darkness. The wall across from her displayed full-length portraits of previous Marlows in court robes, with the present viscount in the centre, his arrogant features murky with shadow. Below the portraits, busts stood on pedestals, perhaps counterparts to the painted faces above. Along the two sides, floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined the walls, with chairs sitting primly below. Behind her, marble statues stood between the French windows, like ghostly soldiers.

She tightened her grip on her pistol and prepared to cross the room. There were mirrored doors to the right. Through them, she’d likely enter either the formal dining room or a drawing room; from there, she could find her way into the main part of the house. She suspected Eliza King would be aiming for Marlow’s bedchamber.

She took more steps forward, as silently as she could in Mrs Ford’s heavy boots.

Then the door behind her slammed shut, so that she nearly jumped out of her skin.

She began to turn, to see if wind or human had closed it, but the cold laughter of Viscount Marlow filled the space from the other direction. With her heart pummelling her chest, she turned her attention back to the wall of portraits and busts.

One pale visage, almost consumed by shadows, wasn’t a bust at all. It was the viscount, his skin and blonde hair nearly as white as the marble in the moonlight.

She lifted her pistol, aiming it carefully at his upper thigh. If she had to shoot, she couldn’t kill him. Not when she needed proof of his guilt. ‘Don’t move, Marlow. I can shoot the spade off an ace at twenty paces. My brothers taught me that.’

The laughter stopped abruptly. ‘Well, well,’ he said, his slurred voice echoing in the emptiness. ‘I mistook the identity of my guest. You are not who I was expecting, my lovely duchess. The Runners are inept fools, but I assumed they’d be capable of catching two people as bumbling as you and your lover. Where is Hawke, by the by? Lurking in the shadows, ready to swoop to your rescue if you find yourself in a spot of bother?’

Marlow’s accurate guesses threatened to unnerve Henrietta, and the realisation that it was Marlow, rather than Désirée du Pont (a.k.a Eliza King) who had informed on them added to her confusion. But more pressing matters demanded her attention. She stepped closer, keeping her aim.

‘By now, Hawke is no doubt in a holding cell on Bow Street,’ she said, the lie inspired by her interaction with Theo on the way to the manor. ‘He confessed to Edmund’s murder to allow me freedom. First thing in the morning, he will be dragged into the magistrate’s court and he’ll be at Newgate soon after. His lovesick obsession proved useful, but I’d rather Edmund’s true killer hang.’

Marlow snorted. ‘My dear, you are either a liar as well as a tease, or you are more devious than I realised. Either way, I find my old attraction resurging, especially with you dressed like a streetwalker who has stolen her lover’s clothes.’ He took a swig from a bottle she hadn’t seen he was holding and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Which might be closer to the truth than not. Tell me, do you enjoy my half-brother’s fucks?’

Ah, so then Marlow knew of his relation to Theo. His manner caused her stomach to roil, but she couldn’t give in to her revulsion. Facing down a murderer required focus. Engaging him in conversation when he was at least half drunk might be the best way to extract a confession.

‘Immensely.’ She inched across the parquet. ‘But why such an intimate query?’

He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he studied her from the corner of his eye and took another drink. ‘Given your affinity for broom-boys and nancys, I suppose it’s no wonder I didn’t get up your skirts years ago.’

‘Don’t insult what you can’t understand, Marlow,’ she replied, defending Edmund.

‘What do you imagine I can’t understand? Buggery?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t understand love.’ She hadn’t realised Marlow knew Edmund’s secret, but she found herself unsurprised. After all, her father, her brother, Bishop Babcock – all members of Parliament, in either the Upper House or the Commons – had seemed to understand when Perceval hinted at the will reading that Edmund had never consummated their marriage. ‘You used that against him, didn’t you? You whispered it in other politicians’ ears, over the years.’

Marlow lifted his shoulders. ‘A raised eyebrow here or there at opportune moments. I can’t be blamed if people understood subtleties, for I certainly didn’t say anything. It’s not the sort of thing a gentleman speaks aloud, as I advised Perceval Percy years ago when he told me.’

Henrietta saw red. ‘I knew you were a thorn in Edmund’s side, I just didn’t know the extent.’

‘I wasn’t half the thorn in Edmund’s side that he was in mine.’

‘How so? He was never cruel to you. In fact, he cautioned people to be considerate, since you grew up with such a vicious mother.’

‘My mother was a saint for what she put up with,’ he said. ‘It was my father who was the vicious one, unable to keep his prick out of any fanny he could find.’

‘As if you are any different, Marlow?’

‘But I am different.’ He put a hand, splay-fingered, to his chest. ‘ I recognise that I could never be faithful to one woman and that is why there’s no current Lady Marlow. My father did not show my mother the same consideration.’

‘Edmund always said your father was a good man.’

Marlow glanced at the bust to his right, running his hand over it like Hamlet with the skull of Yorick, and Henrietta supposed it to be the late Lord Marlow’s likeness. Perhaps it bore a resemblance to her Theo.

‘Yes,’ the viscount said at last. ‘Edmund would say that. My father and his father were the same man.’

Henrietta stepped back. Her grip on her pistol loosened and her arm fell slack to her side. At first, she wanted to protest … Edmund’s father was the sixth Duke of Severn, the round-faced, pink-cheeked nobleman whose portraits hung throughout the homes where she’d been mistress for half a decade. But then she thought again. Perceval resembled the sixth Duke, whereas Edmund had looked nothing like him. Meanwhile, Edmund and Marlow had always looked more like brothers than cousins. And then there was Edmund’s mother’s oddly insistent claim, that Edmund had been eleven months in the womb … Had that been a lie to cover an indiscretion?

She cocked her head at Marlow. ‘Your father and Edmund’s mother?’

He drank from his bottle. ‘Were first cousins, as you know. Evidently in love with each other since childhood. But she was a great beauty with little fortune, and, at the time, he was a third son, years from his majority, so their fathers withheld consent. Then the old Duke of Severn cast his eye upon her for a second wife after his first had died childless, and, well, no sensible parent allows an impoverished daughter to reject a duke for a third son, who is her first cousin to boot. So off she went, a girl of seventeen with her almost sixty-year-old husband. When she gave birth to Edmund nearly a year after her husband’s departure on a diplomatic voyage, she claimed she’d carried the babe overly long in the womb and upon the old man’s return, he celebrated the birth of his son and heir, rather than throwing his cuckolding bride and her bastard out on the street.’

Ah, a noble action on the duke’s part and for all one knew, perhaps a sixty-year-old, childless aristocrat was thrilled at the birth of a healthy son to bear his name and give joy in his twilight years, no matter who had sired the boy.

‘If the sixth duke accepted Edmund as his own son, then so he was,’ Henrietta said firmly. ‘Anyway, why should you care? It’s not as if Edmund stole anything from you. He inherited the title and lands of the Duke of Severn, to which you have no claim by birth or by blood. You inherited your mutual father’s name and wealth.’

‘Ah, but he did steal from me. He stole our father’s love. By the time I came along ten years later, our father already had his golden son, seemingly perfect in every way. What did I matter, then? How could any child, even a legitimate heir, compare to the brilliant, beautiful Edmund Meredith Percy, future seventh Duke of Severn? Yet why did Edmund need my father’s love, when his legal father was devoted as well? That bastard spent his childhood basking in the adoration of a gentle mother and not one but two fathers—’

Marlow stopped abruptly.

‘While you had none of that?’ Henrietta said. ‘And so you hated him?’

Marlow waved a dismissive hand. ‘Bah, that matters not. I was not the first unloved child in this world and I shan’t be the last, either. I hated Edmund for many reasons. I hated him for his smug perfectionism. I hated that he could make people adore him so effortlessly. I hated him for that noble mien he always displayed, while in truth he was nothing but a criminal, doing utterly unnatural things with men.’

‘And so you killed him?’ She lifted her pistol again. Marlow’s motive was even greater than she’d assumed. Forty years of venomous jealousy had festered in his veins and when Edmund had seemed on the cusp of his greatest achievement yet – party leadership – Marlow’s hate had consumed him until he’d enacted the ultimate revenge. ‘You pretended to come to an arrangement with him to put him off guard, but then you murdered him.’

Marlow chuckled. ‘Is that the conclusion you’ve come to, my pretty one?’

‘It’s what happened,’ she said.

‘No, I assure you I was quite pleased with the arrangement your husband and I came to – for it involved you , my dear. I was to get you in my bed at last, if I simply promoted him as the next Whig leader to my dear friend, the King.’

Henrietta’s blood ran cold. ‘That’s not true. Edmund never agreed to that.’

‘He suggested it and I agreed readily. He said he needed an heir, as Perceval simply wouldn’t do, and as he and I were … cousins , and he himself appeared … infertile , would I do the deed with his comely wife?’

Henrietta faltered. Marlow could not have chosen any method of attack that would disarm or hurt her more. But fortunately, that thought saved her from despair – because that might very well be exactly what Marlow was doing …

‘Tell me,’ he said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Would you have welcomed me into your bed, had your husband insisted upon it? Would you have obeyed him, as you vowed before God?’

She considered, and the answer was devastating when it came to her. Yes, she would have. She might have cried all the way through but had Edmund absolutely and with finality insisted that she take a certain man to her bed, even Marlow, she wouldn’t have refused.

Because all her life, she’d been a pawn to powerful men. Her father, her brothers, her husband. They had meant well, but they had dictated her choices, controlled her actions and concealed truths from her.

But she wouldn’t be a pawn any more.

She was taking charge of her life. And she would survive.

She narrowed her eyes as she gazed at Marlow over her pistol. ‘It doesn’t matter what I would have done. That life and those choices are as dead as Edmund.’

‘I never intended to promote him for ever .’ Marlow continued after a pause, still attempting to hurt her. ‘Only until I tired of you, which would have been well before the next election.’

Then and there, Henrietta made the choice not to believe Marlow’s tale. Likely, he was trying to poison her thoughts, knock her off-kilter. And even if it were true, what did it matter? Why should one lapse of judgement on Edmund’s part cloud the many wonderful memories she had of her husband? Had not she herself made an error of judgement when she encouraged the proposal and agreed to the marriage? Edmund had forgiven her, because he was a good and kind man. He would never have made such a deal with Marlow – but if he had, Henrietta loved him enough to forgive him.

She only fell in love with good men.

Two good men, specifically. Who happened to be half-brothers.

And though the third brother seemed eaten up with hatred and malice, Henrietta cherished the close relation between Edmund and Theo. It explained why they fitted so companionably into her heart, her feelings for one never at odds with her feelings for the other. Theo and Edmund were different men, yes, but at the core they shared the attributes she valued most highly. Kindness, honour and a deep concern for the affairs of all people.

But those were thoughts to ponder and cherish another time.

Now, she must deal with a murderer.

She aimed her pistol more carefully at Marlow’s thigh. ‘I know you’re lying. You disliked whatever deal Edmund offered and so you poisoned him.’

He chuckled. ‘Silly child, I am not Edmund’s killer. I would never kill in such a gauche manner. When I’ve killed …’ He paused, staring at her intently. ‘Pardon, I mean if I were to kill, you would find no traceable evidence. There are many ways to make a murder look like a suicide.’ He observed his bottle. ‘Or an accident,’ he said, taking a swig. ‘A drowning accident, for example, such as ended my poor father’s life when I was only twelve.’

‘You killed your father?’ Henrietta asked, horrified.

Marlow’s smile was vicious. ‘My, how sordid your imagination is. Did you not hear me say his death was an accident? It happened here – in the River Enberry, at the foot of the tiered gardens – about five months after your broom-boy was conceived.’

Marlow was as evil as the very devil. ‘You are hinting at it without saying it, wanting me to know you killed your father. And so, I know you killed Edmund as well.’

He shook his head. ‘Not Edmund. With Edmund, I merely engaged in self-preservation. If he died as a consequence, I am not to blame.’

The hair rose on Henrietta’s arms. ‘What do you mean?’

He nodded at her pistol. ‘I’m tired of staring at that toy of yours. Put it down and we can talk more.’

‘Not a chance.’

He watched her steadily as he swigged from his bottle. ‘Then I suppose you must be made to obey.’

‘Go ahead and try.’ She was a skilled markswoman, confident of her aim, her willingness to shoot to maim, if it came to that, and of her physical strength against a drunk Marlow. ‘I have five elder brothers, so I learnt long ago how to best any man in a fight.’

He licked his lips slowly. ‘I didn’t say anything about a man .’

And before she could absorb his meaning, a looped rope fell over her head and down to her extended arms, and then was yanked so hard she had to drop her pistol to the floor to keep the noose from strangling her. With not a split second to spare, she managed to pull it past her shoulders, but then it tightened so securely around her torso she could barely breathe.

She turned to face her attacker.

And stared straight into the black, black eyes of Désirée du Pont.

‘You are Eliza King!’ But the moment she said it, she knew it couldn’t be. Eliza King would never attack her before Marlow, who was the enemy of her causes and the killer of their champion.

Yet if Désirée du Pont wasn’t the radical leader, why was she at Enberry Abbey?

And where was Eliza King?