Page 20 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
Lord Quinton-Thomas was striding across Old Palace Yard toward Westminster, his head down and a sheaf of papers tucked up under one arm, his slightly rumpled greatcoat open and billowing behind him in the wind, when Sebastian fell into step beside him. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, yes; of course,” said the Baron without breaking stride, his bootheels clattering on the ancient yard’s paving stones, his gaze fixed firmly on the old medieval palace before them. “But now is not a good time. I’ve a meeting with Brougham in less than half an hour and first I need to—”
“You didn’t tell me you were once betrothed to Lord Preston’s sister. Or that they sued you for ten thousand pounds. And won.”
Quinton-Thomas drew up abruptly, his features going slack as he swung to face Sebastian. “That was a long time ago,” he said, leaning forward and keeping his voice low.
“How long ago?”
“Sixteen years.”
“Ten thousand pounds is a lot of money.”
“Not for some, perhaps,” muttered the Baron, casting a quick glance around the largely deserted space. “But for me, yes. I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt, because it did. Had to sell off every piece of land that wasn’t entailed, just to pay the bloodsuckers. But then, that was the point, wasn’t it? They wanted to ruin me. I was lucky; they asked for fifteen thousand. That truly would have broken me.”
“Why did you cry off?”
“Why?” Quinton-Thomas huffed a low, bitter laugh. “What’s the proper expression? Ah, yes: ‘We didn’t suit.’ Isn’t that it? We didn’t suit. And the reason we didn’t suit is because I finally realized Hester has the soul of a Spanish Inquisitor and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in hell—which is what marriage to her would have been.”
Sebastian found himself trying to envision the neat, exquisitely dressed, repressively conservative Lady Hester agreeing to marry this big, untidy, passionately radical man, and could not. “So why did you offer for her in the first place?”
“Why?” A wistful, faraway look crept into the Baron’s hazel eyes. “You might not think it to look at her today, but she was beautiful when she was younger. Oh, she was serious and a bit on the joyless side, but I thought she was simply reserved. Shy.” He gave a disbelieving shake of his head. “Except of course she wasn’t shy. Women who are shy feel awkward around people, maybe worry that others are evaluating them poorly. But no one has a higher opinion of herself than Lady Hester. No one.”
“You asked her to marry you because she was beautiful and serious?”
Quinton-Thomas puffed out his cheeks and blew out a long, slow breath. “I wasn’t the same man sixteen years ago that I am today. I liked the fact that she was serious. I saw myself as serious. I was terrified that what had happened in France was going to happen here, and I thought the only way to stop it was not to reform things but to suppress any and every suggestion of reform. I not only agreed with Burke and Reeves; I thought the Seditious Meetings and Treason Acts didn’t go far enough—that the only thing standing between civilization and chaos was ‘right-thinking people,’ and we were the right-thinking people.”
“So what changed your mind?”
“About reform? Careful thought and maturity, I suppose. About Hester…” He was silent for a moment, the misty wind blowing his wild hair around his face as he turned his head to stare toward the river, now as gray as the sky above. “Honestly? I think it was a cascade of little things that just kept piling up, one after another, until I couldn’t ignore the implications of it all any longer. She and Preston both genuinely believed that they were wealthy not because they were lucky but because God loved them more than he did other people. And when you convince yourself of that, it follows naturally that poor people must be poor because God hates them. And because God hates them, he’s obviously punishing them—that’s why they’re suffering, because they deserve it. As if a tiny orphan starving to death in a workhouse could possibly be guilty of anything that would justify that. We actually had that argument one day. That’s when I realized I couldn’t go through with the wedding and walked out.” He paused. “I suppose it should have occurred to me that they’d sue me, but somehow it didn’t. I still hadn’t realized just what nasty, insufferably self-righteous hypocrites they were. It was a revelation to me.”
“When did you last see Lord Preston?”
“I don’t remember exactly. I’ve generally tried to avoid the two of them as much as possible.”
“Except when arguing against Lord Preston’s proposals in the House of Lords?”
“Well, yeah; except for then.”
“Do you know if Lord Preston had anything to do with Lancelot Plimsoll?”
Quinton-Thomas looked vaguely surprised by the abrupt change in topic. “You mean that canal builder who’s always going on and on about fossils and stratigraphy?”
“Yes.”
Quinton-Thomas frowned. “I vaguely recall hearing about some sort of dustup between them, but I couldn’t begin to tell you what it was about. Lord Preston argued with a lot of people. He was an arrogant, opinionated—” He broke off as the bells in the Abbey began to toll, sounding the hour.
“I must go,” he said quickly, shifting his hold on his papers as they started to slip.
“One more question. Where were you last Saturday evening around seven or eight?”
Quinton-Thomas stared at him, his mouth going slack. “I was at my club, damn you. And then I went home. You can’t think I killed the bastard! Because he milked me out of ten thousand pounds sixteen years ago?”
“No,” lied Sebastian. “But you must realize that the question will come up.”
The Baron’s tongue darted out to lick his suddenly dry lips as his gaze drifted sideways. And Sebastian thought, Oh, hell; he wasn’t at his club that night.
Or at least, not the entire time.