How to Woo a Widow (6 page)

“Lord Tretham,” Jameson announced from the drawing room door.

Though he had been her most persistent suitor before Tony’s arrival on the scene, Portia had not actually seen Tretham in the past week or so. And she’d not missed him.

“Mrs. Daventry,” the baron said as he bowed over her hand. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”

As she gave a slight curtsy, Portia noticed that the circles beneath his eyes, which gave him the look of a particularly sad hound, were darker than usual. And the hand that held hers was shaking.

“Lord Tretham,” she said with a smile, “I trust you are well. You have been missed in town this week.” As soon as the words left her mouth Portia inwardly grimaced. It would not do to give the man false hope, she scolded herself. For though Lord Tretham seemed a nice enough gentleman, he was far too serious for her taste.

“My mother is away making calls this afternoon,” she continued, waving him into the chair opposite her own. “I will call my maid Molly to come offer us her chaperonage.”

Though she was a widow, and did not technically need a chaperon, Portia did not want to risk Lord Tretham proposing to her again. The last time he had done so had been awkward to say the least. And though she’d tried to cut his acquaintance, the man seemed not to notice her dismissals. Finally, worn down by his persistence, she’d decided to simply ignore him. He still sought her out at ton entertainments, but he had seemed at last to understand that she was not interested in him as a suitor.

Even so, she didn’t wish to tempt fate.

“There is no need to call your maid, Mrs. Daventry,” Tretham said, a pleasant smile on his careworn face. “No need at all.”

Really, Portia wondered, what had the man been doing to himself of late? He looked dreadful. She was about to resond when he glanced once around the room and stepped over to lock the door.

“I should prefer not to be interrupted, my dear,” Tretham said with a tired smile as he stepped closer to her. “I rode all night with just the vision of you to sustain me. Imagine my delight when I found you at home alone.”

“But surely there is no need to lock the door,” Portia said reasonably, though a shiver of apprehension trilled up her spine. “I’ll just unlock it and then we’ll have a comfortable coze.”

She walked briskly to the door only to feel a steely grip on her arm.

“I’m afraid I must insist, dear lady.” The very affability of his tone was more terrifying than if he’d ranted in derangement. “Here,” he firmly propelled her back to the chair she’d just vacated. “Do sit down so that we might have that chat. There is much I need to tell you.”

Portia’s breath caught in a gasp of alarm. There was something wrong here. Tretham had always been annoying, but she’d never been truly frightened of him before.

Thinking that her best course of action might be to go along with him, she resumed her seat and was reassured to see him take the chair opposite. Perhaps he only meant to propose again, she told herself. She had been rather quick to dismiss him the last time. Maybe he was simply ensuring that he was able to say his peace.

His next words, however, did nothing to calm her nerves.

“I’m afraid I will have to ask you to stop seeing the Earl of Leighton,” Tretham said, his voice all apology. “It will not do for you to be seen with a man of his reputation.”

Portia opened her mouth to object, but Tretham continued on. “Indeed, I had thought the man was finally out of your life, but like a bad penny he continues to turn up at the most inopportune moments. If I didn’t know better I’d think the man had nine lives like a cat.”

Though his very calm frightened her, Portia found herself becoming annoyed as well. What more could she possibly do to dissuade him?

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Lord Tretham,” she said without feeling sorry in the least, “but Lord Leighton and I are old friends. And though I do appreciate your concern, you really have no say over whom I may and may not associate with.”

“I’m afraid that’s not the case, Mrs. Daventry,” he said with an indulgent smile. “We are to be married. You must accept my guidance in all things. I fear that I’ve allowed you to go your own way for far too long now. I went to all the trouble to get Leighton out of the way so that we could be together and what must you do but elope with Daventry? And so soon after your brother’s death, too.”

Her annoyance quickly changed to shock. What was he saying? “I’m sorry, my lord, but I’m not quite sure what you mean. How did you get Leighton out of the way? He bought his commission on his own.”

“My dear foolish lady.” He shook his head sadly. “Surely you must remember the local assembly that summer. How Leighton looked at you. If I had not known you were head over ears for me, I’d have been jealous. But, just to be safe you understand, I tried to ensure that he’d be far away from you so that I might woo you properly as a woman of your beauty deserves.”

She didn’t recall Tretham being around that summer, but it was possible he’d been at the assembly. Far more worrying, however was the gleam she saw in his eyes, which had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with a mania that he had obviously been concealing for years. Glancing at the ormolu clock on the mantle she saw that it lacked fifteen minutes to four o’clock. Almost time for her mother to return home. Surely she could keep him talking until then.

Pretending an avid curiosity she did not feel, Portia squeezed Tretham’s hand. “Oh, you have always been so clever, Lord Tretham,” she said. “Do tell me how you managed to keep Leighton away. For I vow I cannot figure it out.”

For the first time, a flicker of unease shone in Tretham’s eyes. “Before I tell you, my angel,” he said. “You must first know that I did not intend for your brother to be hurt. I thought he’d be shaken up a bit, but certainly I did not anticipate my little trick’s outcome that day. I had hopes, you understand, with regard to Leighton—the man was trying to steal you away from me, after all—but it was never my intention to take your brother from you. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

He was responsible for the carriage accident that killed James. It was a struggle for Portia to keep from snatching her hand from his in order to slap his face, but somehow she managed.

“Oh, I do know that, sir,” she said, praying that none of the horror and anger she felt showed in her expression. Her hand trembled a little, but she hoped he would dismiss that as lover’s nerves. “But my brother did die that day. Shouldn’t you tell me the whole of it so that we may begin our life together with a clean slate?”

He must have believed her, for Tretham nodded, his downturned lips pressed tightly together. “I meant only for Leighton to get hurt. And even then I did not intend him to die. How was I to know that they would use his curricle to race to Brighton that day? I thought they meant only to go as far as The Pig and Whistle in the village.”

Tretham’s eyes pleaded with her for forgiveness but as Portia listened to his vile tale she could only think of the devastation her brother’s death had wrought upon her family. All because the man before her, whom she hadn’t even noticed that summer, had wanted her for himself. Had imagined something more than mere friendship between her and Tony. She closed her eyes at the sheer madness of it all.

“And I made sure to weaken the axle on the side Leighton favored,” Tretham continued, oblivious to her reaction to his tale. “I’d watched him all summer tooling that ridiculous equipage around with its bright yellow wheels. He never sat on the right hand side. But I suppose the physics of it—I’ve never been very good at science—meant that instead of dumping him to the ground when it broke, instead your brother was the one who was flung farther. They were fools to drive that fast on such a narrow lane. And it was simply the worst sort of luck that made your brother strike his head on that rock.”

Luck, Portia fumed. Luck had nothing to do with what had happened to her brother that day. Unable to look at the man who had just confessed to murdering her baby brother, Portia stood abruptly and walked over to the window overlooking the back garden.

When she reached the casement, she stared unseeing at the scene beyond. The limestone balcony, which straddled this small sitting room, and the study next door was one of her favorite features of this house. On brisk mornings she liked to step outside and gaze on the rather pretty flower garden her mother maintained. But the view was the last thing on her mind at the moment.

“My dear,” Tretham said from behind her—she could hear him approaching her. “Please say you can forgive me. I did it all for you. Every bit of it just so that we could be together.”

Unwilling to turn and look at the villain who had killed in her name, Portia looked westward toward the rose arbor, only to give a sharp intake of breath.

For there, standing just out of Tretham’s line of sight, stood Tony, the finger of his right hand pressed to his lips in the universal sign for “quiet,” the finger of his left hand on the trigger of one of Manton’s best dueling pistols.

Chapter Seven

When Tony had begun the week, he’d been determined to find a way to assuage Portia’s doubts about the viability of a match between them. Though it would be impossible for him to catch up to her age or for her to drop down to his, he did believe that there was a way to ensure all but the tamest of scandals surrounded their betrothal.

Because even after all these years there was still some speculation that he had something to do with James Bascombe’s death, Tony decided that clearing his name in that matter would go a long way toward calming the most vicious gossips.

From the beginning, though he’d been unable to remember anything after setting out in the curricle on their way to Brighton that morning, Tony had suspected that something had gone very wrong with the curricle itself. He had maintained his pride and joy with the tender loving care of a mother bird for her baby chick. And he had known every last inch of it down to the last bolt. When he had checked it for signs of wear and tear that morning he had seen nothing untoward. Unfortunately, after the accident, it had been so badly damaged that it had been broken up and used for scrap. And by the time he was in any shape to examine the wreckage, the parts were scattered to the four corners.

But something Tretham had said the other night at Almack’s had jogged a memory. He’d forgotten long ago that Tretham himself was staying in the neighborhood that summer as well. He’d been part of the party of young people who gathered for dancing and cards and parties before the school term began again in the fall. Like himself, Tretham had been sweet on Portia though she’d paid him even less heed than she had Tony. Daventry’s regiment had been stationed in neighboring Meryton and once she’d laid eyes on his handsome visage none of the other young gentlemen had stood a chance.

“It was just a bad bit of luck,” Tretham had said the other evening, speaking about the accident that had taken James Bascombe’s young life. “Who could have foreseen that the axle on your curricle would break like that?”

But the thing of it was—no one had ever known what caused the curricle to crash. The body had been so devastated by the impact that it was impossible to tell which part had actually failed to cause the accident. And during the past week, Tony had gone back and spoken with everyone who had been around that ghastly summer when his best friend had died, and they all agreed. The cause of the crash was unknown.

So how the hell did Tretham know unless he himself had been responsible for weakening the axle?

When he’d arrived back in town, eager to speak to Portia, he’d hurried straight away to the house on Berkeley Square. The burden of guilt that he’d not even known he carried with him all these years was gone, and in its place he found a desire to start living the rest of his life with Portia right this minute. Once they’d gone to the authorities about Tretham, there would be little reason for them to delay their wedding. Perhaps by next year there would even be a child. With her dark hair and his green eyes.

Whistling, he bounded up the steps of the Bascombe townhouse and rapped on the door.

With a haste that nearly made Tony leap backward, the butler opened the door his disappointment at the identity of the visitor apparent in his face.

“What’s the matter, Jameson?” Tony asked, “Were you expecting someone else?”

Jameson eyed the newcomer with a speculative gaze. “No. That is to say, you may be the very person for it, my lord.”

Taking Tony’s gloves and hat, Jameson explained, “Mrs. Daventry has been closeted with that Lord Tretham for the better part of an hour in the little sitting room. And when I went to deliver the tea tray the door was locked. When I knocked, Tretham just told me to go about my business. And Mrs. Daventry said she everything was fine. But I know Mrs. Daventry, my lord. Her voice didn’t sound right. And she kept asking if her mother had arrived home yet.”

“Dammit,” Tony fumed. He’d need to be smart about this. Tretham had already killed one man. He would probably be just as happy to kill again.

“Jameson,” he said. “Do you know whether there is a weapon in the house?”

The butler’s eyes narrowed with determination at Tony’s question. “Yes, my lord, the dowager keeps a pair of dueling pistols in the library. They were her late husband’s.”

Tony was already mounting the stairs two at a time, though careful not to make noise that would alert Tretham to his presence. “Good,” he told the butler. “Fetch me on of the pistols and tell me if there is another way to get into the little sitting room without Tretham seeing me.”