An Infamous Betrayal Read online

  But Bea had not been interested in any bargains and neatly rebuffed the countess’s offer, an act that she’d expected would end their association. And yet the other woman persisted.

  It was a mystery.

  Was it enough of a mystery to keep her mind off the Duke of Kesgrave? She considered the question as she climbed the stairs to her bedchamber.

  At once, the image of his blue eyes laughing at one of her remarks flitted through her mind.

  Indeed, it was not.

  She needed something gruesome and overwhelming and thoroughly incomprehensible.

  Her thoughts turned now, as they had many times in the past few weeks, to the problem of finding just such a thing. She could think of no obvious path to locating a murder victim in need of justice. Naturally, the newspaper presented itself as the most logical place to begin, and she’d taken to reading the London Daily Gazette every morning as soon as her Uncle Horace relinquished the broadsheet. She’d adopted the habit with enthusiasm and vigor, but after three weeks of dedicated perusal, she was ready to abandon it. Day after day, it was the same tedious collection of political reports, theater reviews and shipping news. There wasn’t a single violent, suspicious or inexplicable death to be found on its pages. In the entire time she had been reading the paper, only one body had been pulled from the river and it belonged to a whisky-soaked sailor who had stumbled drunkenly off the bow of his ship and knocked his head against a floating plank. Five of his shipmates had witnessed the event so there wasn’t the slightest chance he was pushed.

  There were advertisements for information about highwaymen and stolen property, but Bea wasn’t interested in finding pilfered necklaces and missing snuffboxes. Her vision was grander than that, and her skills were more deserving of a larger challenge.

  Patently, she required another approach, one that was more enterprising in its methodology, but she had yet to figure out what that should be. Even with her newfound fearlessness, which allowed her to openly mock intimidating, blue-eyed dukes to their faces, she could not bring herself to frequent the poorer districts of the city alone or pay an unaccompanied visit to the docks. Such behavior would be foolish and dangerous, and as much as she was in want of a consuming occupation, she was not so committed to its acquisition as to court personal harm. Already, she had been attacked twice while in pursuit of justice: the series of blows that resulted in the two black eyes, of course, and being knocked on the head and trapped in a shed. The latter occurred during her investigation into Mr. Otley’s death in the Lake District and necessitated her breaking her way out of the ramshackle structure one wooden plank at a time. Fortunately, it was just dilapidated enough to make escape possible.

  No, the better idea was to befriend a Bow Street Runner, who would already be tasked with investigating a crime, and ply him for information. That method came with its own challenges, for she wasn’t exactly sure how to contrive such a meeting. Runners worked out of the magistrate’s office on Bow Street, so perhaps it was merely as simple as patronizing a tavern nearby where the men went for a pint of beer after a tiring day of capturing criminals.

  The scheme wasn’t wholly implausible, for she made a fairly convincing young man when she donned her cousin Russell’s clothes. As her aunt liked to point out, she had broad, masculine shoulders (“Ideal for fencing, my dear, which makes you only the more disappointing as a female”), a development that lent authenticity to the enterprise, and she was skilled at lowering her voice an octave so it sounded vaguely mannish. It was the timing, however, that presented a problem, for she could not sneak out of the house toward the end of the day. Nobody would notice if she was gone during the afternoon, but by early evening they would expect her to emerge from her room and join the family for dinner.

  But if she could somehow manage to contrive it—

  “Come now,” Flora said, her tone urgent as she entered Bea’s room without knocking. “Come right now before she realizes.”

  Bea spun around on her heels, confused as she looked at her cousin, whose hazel eyes were bright with excitement and mischief. “Come where?”

  “To the drawing room,” she explained, threading her arms through Bea’s as she pulled her from the room. “You have a visitor, but Mama doesn’t know yet, and if you get down there before she does, there will be nothing she can do. Just think of it, Bea, company! After all these weeks. You must be going mad with nobody but your family to talk to. I know I would be.”

  Bea smiled at her cousin’s hyperbole, for having the opportunity to read book after book without the onerous interruption of social obligations was hardly the sort of circumstance to undermine her sanity. Indeed, some version of her happiest life entailed her sitting alone in a cozy room filled with bookshelves and comfy chairs and plates of warm scones.

  And yet as she thought about her cousin’s words, she had to concede there was some truth in what she said. With each passing week, she had felt an increasing unease in her situation, an itchiness in her limbs that could only be described as restlessness. Something had been missing from her daily existence, and as she considered the problem now, she realized it was what one might call the society of others.

  Astonished by the prospect, she moved instantly to deny it, for if there was one thing in the world that Beatrice Hyde-Clare absolutely did not crave, it was company. She was an awkward creature, self-conscious to a crippling degree and inclined to stammer and stutter answers to even simple questions such as inquiries into her health. Even when she knew exactly what she wanted to say, when the words were arranged in orderly coherence in her head, she could not get them out without stumbling clumsily over her own tongue.

  She had been a disappointment to herself and her family from the very moment she had stepped onto the London social scene six seasons ago.

  But as true as that was, it was no longer the whole truth. Since the events at Lakeview Hall, her temperament had undergone a radical evolution and she found herself less likely to be intimidated by the august bearing of her betters. Standing across from Kesgrave in the Skeffingtons’ deserted library at two in the morning with Mr. Otley’s bludgeoned body between them had irretrievably altered something inside her. In that moment, when she believed him to be the murderer and bent on ending her life to remove a witness to his villainy, she’d discovered what true terror was, and the fear she experienced in various drawing rooms and ballrooms felt inconsequential in comparison. And surely she wasn’t so timid as to be afraid of an inconsequentiality?

  ’Twas an alarming discovery to make at the age of six and twenty—that one desired the company of others. Her entire career had been devoted to the principle of isolation, to the ethos of getting through each social ordeal in order to retire to a quiet room to read. No effort had been made to further her connection with other people, no attempt to actually find a man with whom she could enjoy the pleasures of lively conversation.

  Ah, she thought, cynically amused at herself, this was about the Duke of Kesgrave after all.

  Everything was about the Duke of Kesgrave.

  But no, a voice argued fervently, it was also about Viscount Nuneaton, another member of their little party in the Lake District and a charming dandy who made her laugh. It was even about Lady Abercrombie and her absurd scheme to render Bea fashionable.

  “Come on, you silly,” Flora insisted, tugging her across the landing to the staircase. “We have to get you into the drawing room before Mama finds out. Once you’re engaged with a visitor, she can no longer claim that your face is too bruised for company and you will be able to come to the Pemberton ball tonight and flirt with the Duke of Kesgrave.”

  Bea halted on the first steps, incapable of going forward as she stared at her cousin. “What?”

  Flora smiled. “You’ve been flirting with him for months. You skewer his self-worth, and he challenges your presumption. It’s the way you communicate with each other, and he enjoys it as much as you do. I see that now. I didn’t before because I was distracted by M
r. Davies, but once Kesgrave started calling every day to inquire after your health, I realized the truth.”

  What her cousin was proposing was so ridiculous, Bea could hardly breathe. She shook her head firmly and insisted he had not called every day. “It’s only twice a week.”

  Her cousin laughed softly as she gently pulled her down the stairs. “I trust you hear yourself, my dear. A duke is concerned enough about your health to come twice a week. Obviously, he’s smitten.”

  So many thoughts crowded Bea’s head at this preposterous statement, she didn’t know where to start.

  No, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly where to start—with the fact that the statement wasn’t as preposterous as it should have been. Although her experience with men was limited, she had spent enough time with Kesgrave to realize he felt something for her. It wasn’t love, of course, or even infatuation. But there was clearly some compulsion at work that kept bringing him back to her side. She knew he didn’t understand it himself, and even if he did, it would not matter. He was one of the most privileged men in England, raised to expect perfection in all things. He could not accept a mousy spinster as his wife. He would choose among Incomparables and settle on an elegant hostess who would adorn his estate with grace and beauty. As he was approaching thirty-three years of age, she could only assume he would make his decision any day now.

  “You don’t understand,” Bea said, her tone a little bit frantic as she thought about all the things her cousin couldn’t know, such as the truth behind his twice-weekly appearances. Whatever Kesgrave did or did not feel, the only reason he kept returning to the house was a sense of obligation to make sure she recovered from the pummeling he had all but witnessed. That was all. It wasn’t the result of an unbearable infatuation. “You can’t understand.”

  Her vehemence, however, only further amused her cousin. “All right, darling, we don’t have to talk about it now. But please do let’s hurry.” Again, she tugged on Bea’s arm to propel her forward. “I think I can hear Mama discussing tomorrow’s dinner menu with Mrs. Emerson. She can’t be very far.”

  Bea was so grateful for the change in conversation that she almost thanked Flora for her consideration. She held her tongue because such a comment would reveal a desperation she wanted to conceal as much from herself as from her cousin. And, indeed, the sound of Aunt Vera firmly assuring the housekeeper that nobody enjoyed watery blancmange grew closer every second they stood there at the bottom of the staircase.

  Conceding the urgency, she dashed with Flora down the hallway until they reached the threshold of the drawing room. There, they both stopped abruptly to ensure a dignified entrance, and Bea, suddenly fearful that her aunt’s contrivances had been sincere efforts and not self-serving machinations, worried that her face still showed evidence of her recent attack. She grabbed her cousin’s hand before she could open the door and said earnestly, “My face is healed, right? There aren’t faint traces that I couldn’t see in the mirror?”

  Flora laughed. “Your face healed ages ago. I know nothing of the standard progression of bruises from black to purple to yellowish brown, but you seemed to recover with preternatural speed. I assure you, my mother was desolate when she realized how swiftly you were improving. Now, come, no more dithering. We must go in at once or lose our chance to go in at all.”

  Bea nodded resolutely, and it was only as her cousin was opening the door that she realized the last few minutes had been too full of Kesgrave and mortification for her to wonder who her visitor was. And now, as she observed the handsome brown head of the Skeffington heir, she owned herself thoroughly confused.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Flora strolled smoothly into the room with an eager expression, as if greeting a long-lost friend.

  “My dear Mr. Skeffington,” she said, dipping into a curtsy as he turned from the fireplace mantel to observe her crossing the room. “This is indeed a lovely surprise. We are so glad you called. Please do take a seat. Dawson will be in at any moment with a fresh pot of tea. I do hope you have time to have a cup with us.”

  The young man, his eyes troubled as they darted a quick look at Beatrice, colored slightly and mumbled a reply that might have been yes or no or an observation about the weather. It was truly impossible to tell.

  Flora made herself comfortable on the settee, and Bea, one eye trained on their visitor, lowered herself slowly into an adjacent armchair. Andrew Skeffington considered his options, settled on a rosewood bergère and sat down. Then he grasped his hands tightly together and studied them carefully for several long seconds. Whatever his errand was in the Hyde-Clare household, he was evidently uncomfortable with it.

  Although Beatrice had excellent cause to take pleasure in his discomfort, she found herself oddly in sympathy with the young man who had hit her over the head with a wooden plank and locked her in a rundown shed to fear for her life. As she sat in that horrible shack, her head aching from the cut on her forehead, her mind racing with terror at the prospect of Mr. Otley’s murderer returning to snuff out her life, she had no way of knowing that the villain who had trapped her inside was under the impression that she herself was the villain.

  Having observed her in her secret investigation of the spice trader’s murder, Mr. Skeffington became convinced that Bea was the killer. It was, she decided, looking at the matter from his point of view, a perfectly reasonable conclusion. For one thing, he had seen her sneaking into his room to search it for information. For another, he had found incriminating evidence—a blood-speckled silver candlestick—ensconced in his room soon after she’d left it. Naturally, the young heir assumed she had been trying to make it appear as if he were the killer in an attempt to hide her own guilt.

  As she understood the motive for his behavior, she bore him little ill will for the attack. After all, his intention had not been to kill her but to merely restrain her in the shed while he fetched his parents from the house to witness his accusal. That the entire house party had accompanied him to the field, including her aunt and the duke, had not been part of his original plan, and she could not lay the whole of that mortification at his feet. If she had waited patiently for his return rather than scraping her way out, she would not have looked like a bedraggled wild creature when she finally emerged.

  What she could find it in her heart to resent was his supercilious attitude and his stubborn refusal to listen to anything resembling reason when she tried to explain herself. Instead, he had insisted that she had an improper relationship with the dead Mr. Otley, citing the story he had heard about the fictional Mr. Davies as evidence of her questionable morality. He also claimed that she and Kesgrave were conspiring against him while professing himself amazed by the duke’s interest and dismissing it as an act of country boredom. The precise term he used to describe her, if she remembered it correctly, was “freakish novelty.”

  It was every humiliation a young woman feared in a single, horrible speech, and that she found harder to forgive than the gash on her forehead.

  But watching him now as he stared at his clasped fingers, which were slowly turning white from the pressure, she discovered she could absolve him for even that awful scene. She recalled how he looked when the truth had finally come out. At four and twenty, he was hardly a child and yet when he discovered the depth of his parents’ cruelty and callousness, he seemed to wither into a baffled little boy. The last she’d seen of him, he had been led out of the drawing room by an unexpectedly gentle Viscount Nuneaton, who was a distant cousin.

  Although he seemed inclined to examine his hands indefinitely, he suddenly looked up and said with forceful vehemence, “I must apologize, Miss Hyde-Clare, for my atrocious behavior at Lakeview Hall in the fall. You must think me the worst kind of blackguard, trying to sully your good name when my own…when my own…” He trailed off for a moment as his knuckles grew impossibly white, then he resumed speaking as if undisturbed. “When my own is synonymous with betrayal and duplicity. I’m sure I cannot fix the situation now by speaki
ng honestly and plainly, but I’m determined to rectify the family legacy of disgrace by doing the right thing.”

  It was a dignified speech, full of ennobling sentiment, and even if Bea had not already forgiven him for his part in the affair, she would not have been able to withhold approval now. Before she could speak, however, Dawson entered the room with the tray, and Aunt Vera, immediately following on his heels, wondered what he could be thinking to deliver tea to an empty drawing room. Her brow furrowed when she spotted Mr. Skeffington in the rosewood bergère, then turned thunderous when she noticed her niece sitting across from him. Unaware of the undercurrent among the family, the young heir turned white as he anticipated a harsh scolding from the aunt of the woman he had previously abused. He jumped to his feet.

  Bea rose too and sought to put him at ease by drawing her aunt’s attention. “How wonderful that you were able to break away from planning tomorrow’s dinner to join us for some tea. I know you can spare us only a few minutes, as you still have so much to do before we go to the Pemberton ball this evening. I will pour, Dawson, so you may put the tea on the table in front of me. Mr. Skeffington was about to tell us his plans for the season. Will you stay for the whole of it?”

  Although Beatrice had never had an opportunity to play the gracious hostess before, she found the role easy to master and smiled soothingly in response to her aunt’s angry scowl. Cautiously, as if she was still unsure what was actually happening, the older woman walked into the room and sat down next to her daughter. Mr. Skeffington bowed awkwardly in her general direction before regaining his seat.

  “There,” Bea said as she poured the first cup of tea and offered it to their guest, “isn’t this cozy? I’m so glad you dropped by, Mr. Skeffington.”

  Bea knew it was wrong to gloat, but she just couldn’t stop herself, for she had cowered for years. For decades she had been silent and docile and terrified her aunt and uncle would throw her out on her ear at the first display of temper. She knew now it would never happen. Her aunt would move heaven and earth to see her leg-shackled to a man, any man, yes, it didn’t matter how low—the village blacksmith would do just fine, thank you very much—but she would never eject her husband’s brother’s daughter from the family. In the smallest corner of her miserly heart, Vera Hyde-Clare loved her niece.