Page 18 of Dishonorable Gentlemen (Bennet Gang #1)

Family Secrets

Elizabeth stared into the darkness above her bed, wishing sleep would come but knowing that wish to be futile. Jane had been so miserable during their call to Netherfield Park that afternoon. Her misery, more than anything else, told Elizabeth how deeply her sister cared for Mr. Bingley. Jane should not be spurning the gentleman.

But Jane was stubborn. The moment Mary had returned from the village with confirmation that Mr. Collins was paying Mr. Denny to skulk about Dovemark spying on them, that their horrible cousin had said he would do anything to keep Jane and Mr. Bingley apart, Jane’s mind was made up. She cared too much for Mr. Bingley to have him go the way of Papa Arthur.

How Elizabeth wished Jane wouldn’t cling to that guilt. Yes, Papa Arthur had died from a wound sustained while dueling for her honor, but Jane was not at fault. She had not asked to be accosted or for their cousin to spread vile rumors about her, or challenged him. She had not agreed to permit the elder Mr. Collins to act as a proxy. She hadn’t gone out that morning to duel him, and she most certainly had not shot Papa Arthur. These acts all belonged to others, to the men who had carried them out. Just because Mama blamed Jane for Papa Arthur being shot did not make his death Jane’s fault.

Elizabeth ground her teeth, wishing she could make Jane believe that as strongly as she did.

A light tap sounded at her door.

Elizabeth blinked. Had she been asleep? Imagined that sound?

The tap came again.

It wasn’t Jane or Mary. They had a secret sequence of knocks. Several, actually. One to summon each other in stealth. One to alert the others to danger. Others to indicate who was with them in the hall. And one, for their amusement, to signal that the moon was full and they should sneak up onto the roof to see it.

Wondering who was without, Elizabeth slipped free of her bed, her bare feet silent on the cold wood floor.

The tap sounded a third time.

Despite the lack of any of their codes, it must be Mary with more secrets to share. Mary, with her so-called informants all over the village, none of them aware that they did more than gossip with her. None of them realizing they dripped paint onto Mary’s canvas of information and secrets.

Elizabeth eased the door open.

Her blonde hair in a single braid, coupling with wide blue eyes and a stark white nightgown to make her appear younger than usual, Lydia stood without. She held a single, flickering candle and had one hand raised, as if she might knock yet again.

Elizabeth stepped back in surprise, gesturing for her sister to enter. Closing the door with a soft thud, she whispered, “Whatever are you doing?”

Lydia gave the room a quick glance, although who she might find in Elizabeth’s bedchamber aside from possibly one of their other sisters or a maid, Elizabeth couldn’t imagine. Turning to face her, Lydia said quietly, “I need to show you something in Papa Arthur’s study.”

Elizabeth frowned. “What is it?”

“I have no idea,” Lydia replied with a shrug.

“You do realize that makes no sense?”

Lydia smiled, adding to her youthful appearance. “Yes, I realize that, but I still have no idea what I mean to show you. Not truly. A letter, I suppose.”

Her mind tired from the strain of the day, Elizabeth retreated to sit on the edge of her bed, aware that dragging sense from Lydia could often take a while. “Please explain, and then I will decide if I should go creeping off into our stepfather’s study in the middle of the night.”

“It is not yet the middle of the night,” Lydia countered. “Only quarter past twelve. I had to wait until I was certain everyone was asleep before coming to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Elizabeth asked, annoyance flickering at Lydia’s lack of forthrightness. Usually, Lydia was too frank.

“When you all returned from your call earlier, and you, Jane, and Mary went out to garden or to ride or whatever it is you all do all the time.” Lydia stopped speaking to glare balefully at Elizabeth.

It troubled her that Lydia seemed not to believe in any of those activities, but Elizabeth met her gaze, waiting her out.

“Mama was in a mood,” Lydia finally continued. “She ordered Kitty to go paint, and she sent me and Thomas and Matthew to our schoolroom, even though it was Nanny Hill’s naptime. ”

Elizabeth nodded. She, too, had noted their mother’s sour mood. A mood she couldn’t quite believe rose only from the knowledge that another eligible miss, one with connections to the peerage, would soon be among them.

“Well,” Lydia went on, “I snuck down to get us some tarts because, really, they only go to waste if we have no callers, and I saw Mama in Papa Arthur’s study.”

“She went in there?” Elizabeth asked sharply. Their mother had ordered the room closed after their stepfather died, and nothing touched. She said it would all wait for Thomas. Four times a year, maids went in and dusted, but aside from that, the door was never opened.

Lydia nodded. “I don’t think the door was open when I went down, but when I came back, it wasn’t all the way closed and there was light in there, so I peeked and Mama was there. She’d opened the curtains, I guess so she could see, and she stood beside a drawer reading a letter, her face all white. Then she shoved the letter and something small back into the drawer and slammed it closed, and I hurried away on account of I didn’t want her to see me with so many tarts.”

Elizabeth nodded, although she suspected the spying would aggravate her mother more than the tarts. “It is odd for Mama to go in there, but I cannot see why that means that we must.”

“Because the drawer was on the side of the desk, where there is no drawer.” Lydia regarded Elizabeth with wide eyes. “It’s a secret drawer.”

Elizabeth’s pulse ticked up but she shook her head. “Surely not.” She and Mary had, one night, sneaked into Papa Arthur’s study and searched his desk and shelves for anything of use. They hadn’t found any secret drawers.

But they hadn’t looked on the side of his desk. They’d looked on the front, and inside the non-secret drawers, and underneath. Not on the sides.

“I am telling you, it was a secret drawer and something inside upset Mama, and we need to know what, because she looked…” Lydia balanced, lowering her voice to whisper, “She looked so scared, Elizabeth.”

That clinched it. Elizabeth would get Mary and go search the desk again, but first she must put Lydia at ease and send her to bed. “Even if she was, which she likely was not, I fail to see what we can do about it.”

“Whatever it is that you and Jane and Mary do about things,” Lydia replied with a shrug.

Elizabeth stared at her, uncertain what to say to that. Did Lydia know something? Had she somehow figured out that they were the Boney Bandits? “What are you saying?”

Lydia tipped up her chin, defiant. “Only that you spend a lot of time gardening and yet I never find you in the garden.”

Elizabeth frowned. This was getting out of hand.

“I am going down there to read that letter,” Lydia said firmly. “Even if I need a hammer to get that secret drawer open.”

Believing her, Elizabeth came to her feet. “We had best get Mary.”

“Mary? Truly?” Lydia’s eyes shone. “And I can come, too? You won’t shuffle me off or lie to me?”

The hope bright in her little sister’s eyes, suffusing her voice and mien, cut into Elizabeth’s heart. Lydia was a very social creature. It hurt her to be denied sisterly bonds, and the affection of a mother who would never forgive her for being the babe who sent Papa Thomas to die. Or, perhaps worse, for being born a girl, when a boy would have saved them from being cast out of Longbourn.

Impulsively, Elizabeth placed a hand on Lydia’s shoulder. She met her little sister’s gaze, still a bit startled at how far up she needed to look to do so, these days. “We will not shuffle you off or lie to you. You are coming with us, but you must be quiet.”

Donning her dressing gown, Elizabeth led the way from her room on silent feet. Outside of Mary’s door, she rapped out five soft knocks, the cadence alerting Mary to who stood without. By Lydia’s interested gaze, she noted the signal.

The door opened to reveal Mary, fully clothed but with her hair freed from the usual, deliberately severe chignon she usually wore. She took in Lydia standing beside Elizabeth and raised an eyebrow.

“Lydia has something to tell us,” Elizabeth said softly. “May we come in?”

Mary nodded and retreated into the room. Elizabeth didn’t miss how her sister casually dropped a shawl over the content of her writing desk before turning to face them. “What is so important at half past twelve in the morning?”

Lydia drew back her shoulders. “I saw Mama read a letter that she hid in a secret drawer in Papa Arthur’s desk, and she looked terrified, and I mean to go down and find out what the letter says, no matter what.”

Mary turned a questioning look on Elizabeth.

“Lydia thought she might employ a hammer,” Elizabeth said, trying to fight a smile.

“I see.” Mary studied their younger sister.

Lydia maintained her pose of defiance.

Finally, Mary shrugged. “I daresay a hammer will not be required.” She turned back to her writing desk, slipped open a drawer, and extracted a small bundle of tools, which disappeared immediately into her skirt pocket. Turning back, she said, “Come along,” and set out across the room.

Lydia let out the breath she’d been holding, grinned at Elizabeth, then followed.

They made their way down the wide, solid staircase, staying to the inner edge where they were least likely to encounter any creaks. Before each turn in the hallways below, Mary held up a hand, halting them while she listened. Mrs. Oakwood kept a candle burning in every corridor, and every few hours footmen patrolled the halls, but Mary knew their routine, and they encountered no one. For her part, Lydia seemed to realize not to talk, and her feet, while pattering on the floors like drumsticks on Elizabeth’s nerves, did not in truth make that great of a sound. Still, Elizabeth vowed to take the time to educate her younger sister on how to move with greater stealth.

When they reached Papa Arthur’s study, Mary carefully tried the door, only to find it locked. Lydia let out a huff, opening her mouth, but Elizabeth touched Lydia’s sleeve to capture her attention. When her little sister looked, Elizabeth put a finger to her lips to indicate silence.

Mary slipped her tools from her skirt pocket. The door yielded to her in moments. The locks commonly used in houses offered little trouble to Mary, and she’d picked this one before.

Lydia watched Mary return her lockpicks to her pocket, their little sister’s eyes round with interest and surprise. Ignoring her, Mary slipped into the room. Elizabeth gestured for Lydia to follow, then took a final look up and down the corridor before joining her sisters and closing them all in.

Mary turned to Lydia, her face ghostly by the light of their single candle. “Which side?”

“Here,” Lydia whispered back. She went to the right side of the desk to stare at the inlaid wood. “The drawer was open here.”

Elizabeth and Mary joined her, and Mary crouched down to study the side of the desk. After a moment, she ran her hand over the smooth inlay, frowning, then along the underside of that end of the desk. Elizabeth resisted the urge to start pushing and prodding the wood, giving Mary time.

Standing, Mary reached both arms out. She pressed a decorative carved floret on the front corner, and another on the back, hardly able to reach both sides of the large desk at once.

A drawer popped out.

Lydia gasped, then covered her mouth, her expression apologetic.

With care, Mary extracted a folded letter with a cracked open seal, a ring, and three sealed missives. She held the ring near the candle to reveal a sculpted, stylized tree in a circle of diamonds. Entwined in the branches of the tree was the letter O, a large emerald set in the center. Setting it aside, she took up the first of the three unopened letters, the wax of the seal rendered dull by age and imprinted with the signet engraved into the ring.

The missive was addressed to Robert Arthur Matthew Oakwood, Earl of Pillory, at his estate in Nottinghamshire. The second sealed missive held the same name, but was addressed to the earl’s home in London. Looking up from the letters, Elizabeth met Mary’s gaze. Her sister appeared as confused by them as Elizabeth felt.

Mary took up the third and final missive, this one very thick. The flickering candlelight revealed not another letter for the earl, but rather, To My Sons, Thomas and Matthew Oakwood , with the additional instruction penned under their brothers’ names of, ‘ To be delivered on Thomas’s twenty-first birthday.’

Elizabeth swallowed. To have left these, Papa Arthur must have feared he would die.

But why had their mother not sent the first two, and why had their stepfather left letters for an earl…one who shared Papa Arthur’s surname?

Mary held the unopened letters for a long moment, finally shook her head, and returned them and the ring to where they had rested in the drawer.

Finally, she moved her attention to the opened letter. Though the paper was heavy, the folds were worn through in places, as if the missive had been opened and read many times. The ink was faded, no longer a stark black. On the outside was written, ‘Francine Oakwood,’ giving Elizabeth a pang of guilt as Mary held the thick paper up for them to read. Not so much guilt, however, that Elizabeth didn’t lean in along with her sisters.

My Dearest Fanny,

You cannot know the sorrow I feel in writing this, for the only way you will know of the secret drawer in my desk is if your brother Phillips informs you, and he will do so only upon my demise. For whatever reason I have done so, I apologize for leaving you.

If the reason is my upcoming confrontation with Collins, I doubly apologize. I would not have accepted the man’s plea to stand in for his son had I any thought he could vanquish me on a field of honor. Even though your reading this points to that being the case, I still fail to comprehend how Collins could best me.

And poor, sweet Jane. If I should fall defending her honor, she will bear that burden to the depths of her soul, I fear. You must be gentle with her, Fanny. She is a delicate girl.

Elizabeth pressed her lips firmly together, fighting back fresh sorrow over the loss of Papa Arthur, and fresh annoyance with her mother’s treatment of Jane.

But perhaps it is far later and we have had many happy years, even decades, and I have simply had no cause to rewrite this letter. I shall hope for that, and hope that you will not be too dismayed by what I must herein impart to you.

You are familiar with my reluctance to speak of my relations. You are not familiar with the origin of that reluctance. You should know, and must fully believe, that my family is horribly corrupt and evil. I, who have served King and Country in battle for years, do not employ these words lightly, so permit me to explain.

I am the third son of the Earl of Pillory and, at the time of this writing, his heir, Viscount Scathelock. Yes, my love, you are a viscountess. Lady Francine Oakwood, Viscountess Scathelock, but you must never employ that title. In fact, you must mention this to no one.

Elizabeth snapped her mouth closed, uncertain when her jaw had dropped open. She rubbed her eyes, then reread her stepfather’s words in the flickering candlelight.

Their meaning did not change.

Beside her, Lydia, who did not apply herself to learning to read as well as she ought, let out a gasp. Ignoring that, Elizabeth returned to reading.

Our family has a deep history of villainy. We are unapologetic liars and murderers. The Oakwoods, along with the Hargreaves and several other branches of the family now extinguished at the hands of their relations, have long settled the ascension of each new Earl of Pillory through the most devious and vicious means possible. Both of my older brothers have already succumbed, with their murders hidden and hushed as always. I do not want myself, or you, or our sons, to follow.

“Hargreaves,” Mary murmured, exchanging a worried look with Elizabeth before returning to reading .

Therefore, I have hidden my heritage. I have caused fake documents to be made, indicating that I am but a distant relation with no hope of gaining the earldom, who happens to share the name General Oakwood with the earl’s third son. Mr. Phillips is in possession of these documents and has standing orders to supply them to anyone who comes to enquire after me. I will never make any attempt to claim my father’s title. I am more than happy for the earldom to enter into Hargreaves hands and to let that nest of vipers murder one another and leave us be. I refuse to expose our sons to their villainy.

I tell you all this so that you can be on guard, my love. I will do my best to teach Thomas and Matthew to be good men, and how to defend themselves and to fight, as I’ve been teaching our three older girls and will teach Kitty and Lydia when the time comes, but the best way to keep Thomas and Matthew safe is to prevent my father from ever finding them.

For he searches still. I may be content to let the earldom pass from the Oakwood line, but my father plotted and murdered just as all his ancestors, and he longs for an Oakwood to take his place, rather than a Hargreaves. He will not give up hope of finding me alive and with issue. If he does, he will use his influence and power to wrest Thomas and Matthew away from you.

So I beg you, my love, keep this secret. Keep our children and yourself safe from my family, and if ever you hear the name Hargreaves, be on guard. Do not trust them. If possible, do not know them.

Please believe that I miss you, my love. Know that I am so sorry to leave the life we have built together. I wish you many wonderful years in our home and with our lovely sons and daughters, but I am counting the days until you join me. I will be waiting for you.

With all of my affection,

General Matthew Rodrik Arthur Oakwood, Viscount Scathelock, heir to the Earldom of Pillory

P.S. If the Hargreaves do somehow find you, and if the situation becomes too dire to bear, send the letters addressed to my father. If he doubts you, show him my ring. Do this only under great duress, for he will take Thomas and Matthew from you. – M.R.A.O.

Silence hung heavy in the study as Elizabeth finished reading. The candle’s flame wavered, light and shadow dancing about the room. Slowly, Mary lowered the letter.

“I don’t understand,” Lydia whispered, but the fear in her voice told Elizabeth that she did.

“I cannot believe that Mama has known all this time that she is a viscountess and she has never once told anyone,” Elizabeth said, as shocked by that as by the rest of the letter, all of which was far more dire than their mother’s fickleness. None of which she felt able to dwell on yet.

Mary folded the letter with care, then replaced it in the secret drawer. That, she slid closed, her head cocked to the side until a faint click sounded. Dropping her hand from the side of the desk, she turned to Elizabeth with serious eyes. “This is not good. Not good at all.”

All Elizabeth could reply was, “I know.”