A Gentleman's Guide to Scandal (23 page)

“But . . . If Marie was with child, she would have told us. She would have written,” Colin said. “Even if it ended in tragedy.”

“Unless she was not certain that the child was Hayes's,”
Elinor said softly. “If she was not certain that she could pass the child as his, if it was not.”

Colin closed his eyes. This was not how he wanted to remember his sister. Unfaithful to her vows. Keeping secrets from her own family. “She wouldn't have needed a dozen lovers, if he was the one she'd chosen. A relationship with that man—”

“Mr. Bhandari,” Elinor said, a bit crisp.

“—would have been dangerous for them both, even without the proof of a child. With the child . . . if Foyle knew of its parentage somehow, had proof, he might have asked anything of her, and she would have had to give it. Or risk exposure.” A child. His niece or nephew. It didn't matter, suddenly, whether the child had been Hayes's or Bhandari's or the Second Coming—he'd almost been an uncle, and he'd never known it. The loss, however far removed, seized in his chest.

“If that is what he used against her, I don't see how we can protect against the scandal of its revelation. It might not be the talk of the town, this many years after the fact, but it would do harm nonetheless,” Elinor said.

“Then there is nothing to do,” Colin said dully. “Nothing to do but leave, and hope that Foyle never chooses to deploy the weapon that he has. We should leave now, before Foyle or Beauchene can act against us.”

“Act against us? What are they going to do, exactly? Beauchene is far too interested in you to let you go, or scare you away. He'll want to find a way to get at you, first, at the very least.”

“He already has. Which makes you entirely too vulnerable,” Colin said. Elinor blinked at him.

“As far as he knows, I'm just a courtesan,” she said.

“Who I am obviously in love with,” Colin snapped, and then shut his mouth with a click of teeth.

Elinor rolled her eyes. “I will admit you displayed a remarkable protective streak, and I am grateful for that. But there's a world of difference between possessiveness and love—and I don't think Beauchene is the type to read the latter where it is lacking.”

He adjusted the buttons at his sleeve. “No,” he said. “I suppose he isn't.”

“Still, you're right. We should leave. But in the morning. There's a chance—a slim chance, but a chance—that I might know how to shut Foyle up for good.”

“Don't leave me in the dark,” he said. Leaving was the first sensible suggestion she'd had. And yet a part of him rebelled at the notion. When they left, he would take the sorrow with him, and leave behind their time together. However illusory that togetherness was.

“Beauchene collects information,” Elinor said. “I think Foyle is hardly the only blackmailer in this house. If Beauchene has something on Foyle, and I would bet anything that he does, we can use it just as well as he can.”

“Blackmail the blackmailer?” Colin asked.

“You may have noticed I have something of a talent for the process myself,” Elinor said with a faint smile.

He kissed her, swiftly, before he could think better of it. It felt like a good-bye. She blinked at him, surprised, when he was done. “One last night,” he told her. “Then I take you home.”

Lord Farleigh objected to Elinor's plan at first, once she'd actually laid it out in detail; she'd known he would. But she wore him down. They stayed secluded in their room through the evening, both of them tense with unspent energy, until the night wore on and the house settled into silence. Not everyone was asleep, but nearly everyone was abed. It was the time for mice to scurry and thieves to skulk, and tonight the two of them were thieves.

Elinor led the way down the halls, her feet slippered and silent. Lord Farleigh stalked behind her, still taut as a bowstring. They stole up the stairs together, and down the corridor to Beauchene's study. Elinor paused, checking the gap beneath the door for telltale light, then felt for the doorknob in the pale moonlight. Locked. She'd expected that, and pulled two heavy pins from her hair.

One of the advantages of having a thief for a sister-in-law was learning a number of unladylike tricks. Picking locks had been the first thing Elinor had insisted Joan teach her, and she'd proven talented. She probed carefully at the lock, smiling with satisfaction when she felt the resistance that told her she'd found the right spot.
You have to charm it open
, Joan had said.
Most people will go on about how it's like a
woman, but that's too obvious. Think of it like a conversation.
Elinor met point with counterpoint, and like a smooth change of the subject eased the lock open. She pushed the door, letting it swing on well-oiled hinges, and gave Lord Farleigh a triumphant look.

“Going to take up jewel theft next?” Colin asked. He sounded as if he was struggling to appear disapproving instead of impressed.

“Not tonight,” Elinor replied, and slipped in.

Here, they could not do without light. Colin had brought along a candle and tinder box, and in a few moments he had the candle lit.

“The desk first,” Elinor declared. Colin followed dutifully, keeping the light above and behind her, so that it could shed light without dripping wax down her back. She tried the main drawer first, and found that it slid open without resistance. The drawing lay on top of a slender ledger. Colin made a soft sound behind her, a grunt somewhere between approval and anger. A rather confused sound, she had to say. “Hm,” she said. She lifted the drawing free. “I rather like it. Don't you?”

“I'm not sure I should answer that,” Colin said. Elinor smiled to herself and set it on top of the desk. She picked up the ledger and paged through it, but it seemed to be simple household accounts, obviously tied to the expenses of the party. Unless
60 bottles Madeira
was a very clever code for something, it wasn't of use. She put it back where she'd found it and moved on to the other drawers. Two slid open readily, but she found only odds and ends—quills and inks, a ball of twine. The next contained personal correspondence of a very intimate nature between the Beauchenes. Her French was good enough to have her blushing by the second paragraph, though as she skimmed through them she noted a few particular promises and recollections that intrigued her. Perhaps before this was over, she and Colin could—

No. She and Lord Farleigh would leave directly, once they were done here. They had risked quite enough already. And they would have no more time for the more enjoyable side of their little deal.

She stifled a pang of regret. She was honest enough to admit she'd fallen rather foolishly into an infatuation with Lord Farleigh. She was also smart enough to realize that it had to end. When they left, she would simply train herself out of the feelings. Surely by the fall and Lord Farleigh's wedding, logic would prevail against the vagaries of sentiment. Though perhaps she should contrive to be ill that day; certainly the thought of sitting through the ceremony made her queasy.

She'd gotten one of the locked drawers open. It was empty. She frowned. “Why lock an empty drawer?” she asked.

“Oh, I know this,” Colin said. “It has a false bottom.”

She eyed it dubiously, and placed a hand at the top and bottom of the base. “There's only a narrow bit of wood,” she said. Then she reached back. The back of her hand brushed something. “Ah!” she said, and felt upward. A thick file was secured to the wood above the drawer. She worked it free and laid it atop the table.

It was not one file, she realized, but many—packets of paper, bound with string and marked with cards bearing initials. The first—
A.W.
—contained financial records of some sort. She could not see anything obviously amiss in them, but her eye was untrained. The next included a rather more obvious sin: letters,
signed
letters, between the wife of a prominent member of parliament and a member of the opposing party.

“Hm,” Colin said, reading over her shoulder as she paged through them. “That makes me worry for the breadth of the man's imagination. How many times can it be thrilling to read that your lover intends to—”

“Hush,” Elinor said, before he could utter the phrase in question. It was as straightforward a description of the procreative act as she could imagine, and it appeared at least twice in each letter. The woman's responses, carefully interspersed between the man's letters, were far more varied in their requests. And increasingly frustrated, as apparently he had no more imagination—or openness to suggestion—in bed than in his missives. The correspondence ended with a demand to
discover a better use for that tongue than droning on about taxation or do not bother showing up again.

“Probably not relevant,” Colin whispered, with a throaty chuckle. She bit her lip with a smile.

“But very entertaining,” she pointed out. She skipped past the next few—gambling debts, something about a parcel of land, another unwise (though less descriptive) affair. The next card read
E.F.
, and she halted. It was a thick packet, contained in a long, folded sheet of blank foolscap. She opened it with trepidation, and began to page through.

“Oh, hell,” Colin said.

Elinor's throat constricted. The pages added up quickly, telling a story worse than any she had concocted herself. There were letters from Foyle to Marie, professing his love. A single letter from Marie, insisting he leave her alone. Letters from solicitors regarding the refusal of Lord Hayes to abide by some informal verbal agreement and share his interests in the mine with Lord Copeland. The record of Hayes's death—not mysterious, it seemed; the man had a weak heart, and it had caught up to him. Forms and correspondence regarding the sale of the mines by Edward Foyle, after his marriage to Marie, to Lord Copeland for a paltry sum.

And then the worst of it. Records of Marie's death. Of an investigation begun—and promptly halted.

“God,” Colin said. “She didn't die of cholera.”

She'd drowned. Or at least, been pulled from the river. “This says . . .” Elinor trailed off.

“Mr. Bhandari was the suspect,” Colin said dully. “He was arrested. And then he was released, because suddenly she wasn't murdered. She died of cholera. And no one gets arrested because his lover died of cholera.”

She flipped the last page, her limbs numb. Mr. Bhandari couldn't have killed Marie. Could he?

But she could imagine it. A lover, forced to hide and conceal his feelings, not only because of her marriage but because of the cast of his features, the color of his skin, the language he spoke. When Lord Hayes died, perhaps he had entertained some hope that at least he would not have to watch her with another man. And then she'd married Foyle.

“Bhandari said that he owed Foyle,” she remembered. “Foyle
must have had a hand in hiding the manner of Marie's death—in clearing Bhandari's name.” Whether or not he was guilty, Bhandari's life would have been destroyed by the accusation.

“I should have killed Foyle when I had the chance,” Colin ground out.

“Don't be ridiculous. Then we wouldn't have found any of this,” Elinor said. She peered at the remaining items. There was a brief note, instructing an unnamed agent to ensure that the ‘usual payment' to one Mrs. Fincher was doubled, to make up for a missed payment the previous month, and then three letters from Foyle to a ‘Mister O—,' which seemed largely to concern the birds he'd seen on his travels and the state of the weather. Dull fare, but she lingered a moment over Mrs. Fincher. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she could not recall where she had heard it before. In any case, this was nothing terribly interesting, so why was it included in such a meaty collection of misdeeds?

A footstep sounded in the hall outside. Too near. If the nighttime wanderer meant to come in here, there was nowhere to go. No time to hide the evidence of what they'd done. On instinct, Elinor grabbed a few of the pages and rolled them swiftly into a tight tube, then shoved them down the front of her dress. Thankfully, her bosom and the ill fit of the gown concealed the odd shape. She scattered the remaining pages, praying it would be difficult to tell at first that anything was gone.

Colin seized her, drawing her down below the desk even as he blew out the candle.

The door opened. Elinor froze in Colin's encircling arms, trying not to move or breathe. Light spilled over the floor, the warm glow of a lantern. A laugh sounded from the doorway.

“Stand up. Let us be adult about this,” came Madame Beauchene's voice. Elinor looked at Colin, who nodded tightly. There was little point in staying crouched there when it was obvious someone was present, the evidence of their spying still spread across the desk. The two of them rose in unison. Elinor opened her mouth to speak, but was rendered mute by the sight of a pistol in Madame Beauchene's hand. “Well,” she said. “What a fascinating turn of events.”