The Husband List (33 page)

“I owe you an apology,” Caroline’s father said as he walked in the parlor door. This was the first time Jack had seen Maxwell looking worn down. Jack didn’t like it.

“You were right about Bremerton,” the older man said. He pointed to the wing chairs where they’d sat yesterday. “Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand, thank you,” Jack replied. “What have you heard?”

“Enough that I immediately sent word to Agnes to get back here. I expect them soon.” Maxwell shook his head. “I can’t believe how damned hard it was to get in to see Endsleigh. At home, people come to me.” He tapped his chest. “
Presidents
come to me. The old man’s staff made me sit in a long hallway for over an hour before I was allowed an audience. All that time, the dead dukes of Endsleigh were staring down at me. Even the damn paintings had a superior attitude.”

“It’s not such a rare thing,” Jack said, deciding to take that seat after all.

“We’re not like these people, Jack.”

He smiled. “And yesterday you were telling me that I wasn’t like you.”

Whatever Maxwell had planned to say in return was lost in the commotion of Agnes Maxwell rushing into the room. She pulled up short when she spotted Jack.

“What is he doing here?” she asked her husband while she unbuttoned her blue cape, shrugged it off, and handed it to a waiting footman.

“He’s my guest,” Bernard replied. “Where’s Caroline?”

“Still at Chesley House.”

Bernard shot from his seat. “What?”

“But only for a very short time,” she added. Her voice quavered in the face of her husband’s anger. “I am hoping you’ll return with me on the morning train. Caroline won’t accept the proposal without you there.”

“She won’t be accepting the proposal at all,” Bernard replied.

Agnes stiffened. “How can you say that, after all of my work?”

“Not another word,” her husband said.

She closed her mouth.

Bernard looked at Jack. “Endsleigh told me a few tales from Bremerton’s early youth that make me believe he not only harmed Edward, but has done worse. And since Bremerton stepped in line to inherit, his grandfather has learned more. Not only does Bremerton gamble money he doesn’t have, but he’s being blackmailed. The duke has no proof, but he suspects the blackmail has to do with the death of his grandson, Percy, as well as the death of Bremerton’s first wife, Adele. The duke would rather see the title extinguish than eventually go to Bremerton, but he can’t control that.”

“I should never have left Caroline there, not even for a short while,” Agnes said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Maxwell turned back to his wife. “Neither do I. There will be much more discussion about who and how my daughters may marry from now on.”

She nodded.

“Where, exactly, is Caroline?” Jack asked her.

“At Chesley House, outside the village of Arundel, southwest of here.”

“We need Caroline out of there tonight,” Agnes’s husband said.

“But there’s no train service past Petworth until morning. I checked at the station before coming home,” Agnes replied.

Jack rose. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said to the Maxwells.

“Where are you going, son?” Bernard asked.

“To Chesley House.”

TWENTY-THREE

What would a woman who spoke only French want in an English library? Caroline closed the door behind herself, pulled open the dusty gold curtains to let in the afternoon summer sun, and began trying to answer that question.

She sat behind the mahogany desk and started pulling open drawers. Other than a few worn pen nibs and the odd scrap of paper, the desk had been cleaned out. She moved on to the bookshelves. Someone many years ago had loved botany. A third of one wall was filled with old texts. If Adele had read Latin, she would have been in heaven. However, in Caroline’s circles, Latin-reading women were fairly scarce. And given Bremerton’s need to control, she doubted he would have wed a woman more intelligent than he. She laughed to herself when she realized what she’d just thought. Of course he would marry a bookish heiress. She was proof of that.

Caroline pulled a volume at random. It had been shelved for so long that its top was thick with dust. Holding in a sneeze, she replaced it and tipped out a few others to see if they, too, were long unread.

Satisfied that botany and Latin hadn’t been Adele’s lures, Caroline moved on. She’d nearly decided that the Frenchwoman had merely chosen the library for its out-of-the-way location when she came upon a small foreign language section.

“Yes,” she murmured to herself as she ran her fingers along the works of the philosopher Descartes, translated from their original Latin to French. Whatever the language, they remained heavy reading. Smiling Adele would have fancied something lighter. Caroline smiled, too, when she saw a copy of
Les Trois Mousquetaires.
Trying to think like Adele, she pulled the book from the shelf, dragged the desk chair into the sunlight, and began to read. She’d just gotten to d’Artagnan’s first skirmish with the Comte de Rochefort when Annie shot into the room.

“Here you are! You’d better hurry, or dinner is going to pass you by, too. Bremerton is gobbling his food just to be sure you go hungry.”

Caroline closed the book. Hesitant to leave a good story behind, she brought it along to the dining room. Bremerton looked up from his plate as she entered. All she could think was,
So this is what a murderer might look like. One would never know.
She decided to be as she always had been with him—somewhat south of polite. If she started fawning now, he would suspect something was awry.

“I didn’t know we were to dine early,” she said to the Englishman as she slipped into her seat and set her book on the table. “Then again, you didn’t tell me.”

“What is that you’re reading?” Bremerton asked.

“Alexandre Dumas,” she said.
“The Three Musketeers.”

“In French?”

“Well, yes,” she replied.

“You speak French?”

“Yes, and German. And I read Latin and some Greek, besides.”

He made a disinterested sound. Caroline nipped into her chicken while she could. Nerves had only increased her appetite. This was plain food, but after a day of going without, it tasted like ambrosia.

“We’ll be taking a ride tomorrow,” Bremerton said. “I thought you might like to see the countryside and perhaps visit with the Bentons before your mother and father arrive.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What?”

“Let me put that in British terms. I wish to never ride with you.”

His look of surprise quickly faded. “Your choice. Stay here, then.”

“I will,” she said before eating five green beans in quick succession.

Bremerton set down his fork. Charlie stepped forward and cleared the plate. He looked Caroline’s way before turning and walking at a snail’s pace toward a tray he’d placed on the buffet. Caroline was grateful for the brief reprieve. She bolted as much food as she could before Charlie returned and pulled her plate.

Bremerton, who had been watching her, said, “After that show, I’m sure you don’t wish for dessert.”

“I couldn’t eat another bite,” she lied cheerfully. “In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll retire to my room and read for the evening.”

“Of course. I’ll be by to check on your welfare later.”

“That’s quite unnecessary,” Caroline said as she rose and reclaimed her book from the table.

“But it will happen all the same,” Bremerton said.

Caroline left the dining room and found Annie waiting for her in the hallway.

“Did you get any food in?” Annie asked.

Caroline smiled. “An impressive amount. Thank you for the warning.”

They climbed the stairs, and once they were back in the bedroom, Caroline took a look at the cowhide couch and decided to forego sitting on that in favor of reading in bed. Annie settled onto the chaise with a piece of lace she was tatting. She said it was going to be for her wedding dress one day, if she was ever mad enough to marry. If all marriages turned out like poor, dead Adele’s, it would be madness. But Caroline still held out hope for Jack and true love.

The light in the room was growing dimmer. Caroline set aside her book to turn up the flame on the oil lamp she’d moved bedside. When she picked up the thick book, a folded piece of ivory-colored paper slipped out of the back pages.

“What have we here?” she said.

Annie looked up from her lace. “It looks like a piece of paper to me.”

Caroline unfolded the paper. She drew in an excited breath as she realized that the slightly crooked writing on the stationery was in French. Adele had been writing a friend named Dominique.

“Oh, no,” she said as she read Adele’s confession that she had lied to Bremerton about being an heiress.

“What is it?” Annie asked.

Caroline scanned the rest of the letter, which had never been completed. “This was written by Bremerton’s late wife. She’d lied to him about her wealth. When they arrived at Chesley House, she realized he was in financial straits and had likely married her for her money. She had just confessed to Bremerton when she’d written this. He had become enraged. She was hoping he’d come to love her and forgive her. She felt terrible about her deceit.”

“He killed her, didn’t he?” Annie asked after a stretch of silence.

Caroline hadn’t had time to share with Annie what she’d learned from Cora, so she quickly updated her.

“Money and pride are the two most important things in Bremerton’s life. Adele struck at both of those,” Caroline added. “And if he didn’t kill her, why would he be trying to hide both her life and her death?”

Caroline could feel Adele’s lingering presence so vividly that she understood how Lady Carew might see her. And Caroline felt danger, too. She set aside the letter and rose from the bed. “Is the Colt that Eddie gave me still hidden in the trunk below my corsets?”

“I didn’t move it,” Annie said. “That thing scares me.”

Caroline went to her trunk and carefully uncovered the revolver. It was nearly identical to the Colt Single Action Army her mother had confiscated, only this time Eddie had bought her one with a shorter barrel that he teased her by saying made for a more ladylike weapon. So long as it still shot bullets, it could be as ladylike as it wished. Caroline took those, too, from the trunk. She carefully loaded each chamber and set the hammer in the safety notch. Then she went to her dressing table and dumped all the jewelry from its case, placed the gun inside, and closed the top.

“Is that this season’s new accessory?” Annie asked.

“The most useful yet.” Caroline sorted through the jumble of jewels on the tabletop and selected a sapphire necklace. “This can serve a few purposes, too.”

She held it up for Annie to take. “We’re leaving tonight. I want you to go to the nearest house and bargain for the use of a horse and any type of cart. It doesn’t matter what, so long as it can get us to Arundel. We can’t trust that we’ll be able to get a horse from here.”

Annie shook her head. “I don’t want to leave you here.”

“And I don’t want both of us to be trapped here,” Caroline said. She waggled the necklace. “Take this and get moving.”

Annie did, but not without a worried backward glance.

“Don’t worry,” Caroline said. “I’ll do this as safely as I can.”

*   *   *

IT HAD all sounded so simple, Jack thought. Take a train to Petworth, find a horse, and ride like the wind to Chesley House. Except the train to Petworth had stopped in every village along its tracks, plus once for sheep across them. He had willed himself to be calm. From Bremerton’s perspective, everything was going just as he’d planned. He had his heiress and he was training her to be biddable. So long as those two facts did not change, Caroline was safe.

Even after Jack had made Petworth, the only horse he’d found was more about passing wind than letting him ride like it. It had been ten and more miles of hard, slow road, but he’d reached Arundel’s outskirts before sundown.

“Excuse me,” he said to a cluster of men lingering outside a pub. “I’m looking for Chesley House. Can you tell me where to find it?”

“Chesley House?” said one. “Never heard of it.”

“Yeah, you have, you fool,” said another. “It’s one of the Duke of Endsleigh’s places.” Except he’d said duke as though it was pronounced like book, which snagged up Jack’s attention.

“Oi,”
said a third man, waving a hand Jack’s way. “Did ye not hear my question? Are you a gennleman like the duke?”

Jack grinned. “Not on my very worst day.”

“That being the case, we’ll tell you. You need to stay on this road, south near all the way to Littlehampton,” the second man said. “You won’t miss the place. It’s a big pile o’ stone.”

Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out some coins. “Thank you,” he said as he tossed them to the men. “The next one’s on me.”

And on he rode, near south to Littlehampton, wherever the hell that was.

*   *   *

THE SUN had been down long enough for the stars to begin to show when Bremerton’s knock sounded at the bedroom door.

“Come in,” Caroline called from her seat at the dressing table. She turned and watched as Bremerton stepped inside.

“Where’s your maid?” he asked.

“You told me to have her sleep in her room, so that’s where she is,” Caroline replied before facing the mirror.

She picked up a diamond earring and held it as though deciding how it would look on her. As she returned it to the dressing table’s surface, she watched the Englishman walk a circle of the bedroom. When he was done, he stopped behind her and put both hands on her shoulders. For the first time, she managed not to shiver at his touch.

“It seems my stableman and maid have come up missing. Might you know anything about that?” he asked.

“No.”

“Interesting. I was certain you would. Mrs. Parker told me it happened just before dinner. You’d been around the house all day, and you have a way of stirring things up.” He paused. “Now Mrs. Parker and the waiter seem to have disappeared, too. Good help is so hard to find.”