Betrayed Countess (Books We Love Historical Romance) (38 page)

“A few friends. I like the horses. We have fencing, too. That isn’t so bad. But we aren’t allowed any points on our swords yet. I wish you were teaching me French, instead of the grumpy old man they have.” Frederick kicked pebbles over the oak’s gnarled roots. “He’s not even French.”

“
Vraiment
? I am flattered.” Bettina leaned against the bumpy tree trunk; more rain pattered and dripped from the leaves high above. She wrapped her cloak around herself. “Frederick, you do not mind if your uncle and I marry, do you?”

“No, I would like that.” He smiled up at her. “Could we go back to Cornwall then?”

She touched the top of his hat, relieved. “You need to go to school. You will be prepared for university, and all the background a young gentleman needs.”

“I suppose.” The boy leaned beside her, swinging one leg back and forth, his toe scuffing over a root. “My mother used to walk with me all over London. Before she got sick.” He sighed. “Has
… uncle ever told you about my mother?”

Bettina studied the boy’s leaner face as he bit his upper lip, his blond-lashed eyes clear and serious. “Of course, his sister Clare. He loved her very much.”

“She was always coughing … then she died. My father warned me not to cry, but I did.” His voice held steady, yet had a plaintive quality with frustration simmering beneath. “I asked God not to take her, but it didn't matter.”

Bettina pressed her hand on his shoulder. She’d never heard him speak of his mother's death before—or his father at all. “Sometimes people have to pass on and there is nothing we can do. I lost my father a few years ago.” She pushed down the raw, upset over his disputed reputation and manner of death. “God must have needed them both beside Him.”

“Only babies cry. And when I go to church, I don’t pray anymore….” Frederick broke off and she saw the struggle on his brow. “I … I think my father is a bad person.”

“I could not blame you for feeling that way about him. But remember, if he is not the father you wanted, it is his fault, not yours.” His shoulder stiffened under her fingers. “Frederick, please do not stop praying. Your mother can hear your prayers up—”

“I don't want to talk about it anymore.” The boy pushed away from the tree, his rigid back to her, reminiscent of Everett when he was perturbed. She knew the discussion was over.

The urge to keep him beside her and not send him back to the school festered up, but she had to allow him to grow apart.

* * * *

The fire started in the parlor grate began to warm the empty apartment. Bettina hoped she’d allayed Frederick’s unhappiness about having to stay at school. Yet she’d encouraged him to pray, when her own piety had disintegrated. She plopped on the settee. The boy’s sadness added to her feelings of loss. What could her father have done to interfere with money, and what must have been the rebels? What other people had grown too strong?

The door opened and she jumped up. Everett walked in with his informant, the man she thought of as the pirate.

“We’ve nabbed him, darling. Or rather the Bow Street Runners did.” Everett removed his hat, his smile broad.

“Nabbed him?” Bettina’s head swam. “Hollis is captured?”

“Aye,
ma’am.” Pete crumpled a Monmouth cap in his large hands. “The scoundrel’s in Newgate now.”

“Have you questioned him? I cannot believe it.” Her heart swelled. She stepped up against Everett, wanting to embrace him. Pete’s presence deterred her. “What is a Newgate?”

“It’s the prison, ma’am.” Pete smiled, showing his missing tooth. His small chin bristled with gray hairs; the gray hair on his head looked wispy like a trampled thistle. He smelled like the smoke from the tavern he frequented.

“I’ll question him after he’s settled in a cell.” Everett walked to the fire and warmed his hands. Then he went to the sideboard and poured claret into three glasses.

“With a barrister, as you call it, I hope.” Bettina accepted a glass. She almost sagged with relief.

“None for me, sir.” Pete surveyed the apartment with his one keen eye. “Just wanted to see you in proper. I’ll take you to the prison on the morrow.”

“I must go too.” Bettina stared at them both. “I want to meet Frederick’s father.”

“Nay,
ma’am, it ain’t the proper place for a lady.” Pete’s gentle manner belied his rough exterior.

“Pete’s right. You can see him in court.” Everett sipped from his glass. “Hollis’s greed undid him. I can’t wait to put this behind me.”

She joined Everett before the fire and clinked glasses with him. “I am so happy it is over without anyone hurt.”

“Right you are. I’ll be on my way now. Good afternoon, sir,
ma’am.” Pete nodded and exited the door.

Everett bent forward and kissed her. “It’s not over yet. Hollis is defiant, probably beyond redemption. But at least he’s contained.”

“Do not leave me out of anything, please.” Bettina returned the kiss. She pressed her cheek against his shirt. Her head swam with this news. Dare she believe that marriage waited close by?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Newgate prison, at the west end of Newgate Street, jutted up austere, an ugly block of stone. Bettina’s pulse thrummed in her throat as she stared out the coach window, but she kept her comments to herself after insisting on her inclusion.

“I knows the turnkey,” Pete said when the coach stopped. They alighted and walked up to a huge wooden door like the entrance to a castle.

A cloying miasma of rotting offal rose up from the street’s gutter and a hog rooted in a trash pile near the gallows. The gallows were moved from Tyburn to here several years before, Everett had told her.

“This is where one of the Roman gates led into the city, when it was completely walled.” He clasped her arm, still unhappy with her demand to come.

“Gloves, I has gloves to sell for cheap.” An emaciated woman ran up with a basket. Weeping sores marred her cheeks. Three barefoot children rustled like mice around her shabby skirt.

Everett dropped a few coins in her basket and she scurried off.

“Those deprived children,” Bettina murmured.

The giant door opened as Pete spoke to a man and waved them inside. “This here is the common area for the poorer prisoners,” he explained.

Inside, the stonewalls closed around them. They walked a dingy corridor. Only a dim light entered through an inner courtyard. Men shouted from cells, reaching out hands through the bars. Everett held her tight beside him.

The turnkey stopped at one cell, and Pete nodded.

Bettina approached the cell with Everett. Almost twenty men were crammed inside, some playing cards. The room stank of urine.

“Come to visit me, dear brother-in-law?” A man emerged from the shadows.

Bettina stifled a gasp at his resemblance to Frederick—his high forehead under curly blond hair. A larger, jaded version of the boy, in well-cut clothes now faded from wear.

“Hardly a social call. I want to know the whereabouts of Miriam, Prescott.” Everett glowered at him.

“And who is this?” Hollis moved up to the bars and scrutinized Bettina. She forced herself not to lurch back. “Your new doxy, Camborne?” He may have been dressed better than his cellmates, but smelled of gin and decay.

“Leave her out of this.” Everett stepped closer. “You tried to extort money on my wife’s behalf. I demand to know where she is.”

“I have no idea.” Hollis smirked and preened his broad-chested frame. “I admit Miriam had no part in this. I tried a scheme and it didn’t work. Why do you need your errant wife, when you have this little sweetheart?”

Bettina swallowed down her disgust. “Tell us the truth about Miriam Camborne.”

“Oh, French and frisky, are we?” He slanted his blue eyes, which held none of the warmth of Frederick’s, over her. “She’s probably a courtesan in the sheets, eh, Camborne?”

Everett gripped a bar, cheeks florid. “Cease your foul comments. I want to contact Miriam to arrange a divorce.”

Bettina stepped away, now aware she hindered Everett’s mission by accompanying him. Meeting this reprobate increased her sorrow for Frederick.

“Confess, Prescott, you unworthy scum,” Pete said. “Friends can be brought in to make sure you do. You done something to Mrs. Camborne.”

Hollis shrugged. “I’m perfectly happy here. We have gambling, plenty of juicy whores. I don’t have to pay that old witch Sally O’Brian any rent.”

A rat scuttled over Bettina’s foot, but she didn’t flinch.

“Just give me an address for Miriam. I know you were in touch with her here in London,” Everett said, his voice as clenched as his fists.

“Years ago. I don’t know where she sauntered her wanton self off to. A heartless bitch, that one.” Hollis’s glare turned icy. “I hope you have better luck with your French moggy here.”

“You French refugees takin’ all our poor money.” A slack-jawed man gripped the bars to the left of Hollis. He winked at Bettina. “Was just us Irish starvin’ here before.”

“Mon Dieu.” Bettina fought the urge to walk away. Her stomach roiled. She understood how fortunate she was to work for Maddie, to have a warm bed and people who’d cared about her.

Hollis elbowed the man aside. “Shut up, this is my show. Though the curtain is about to fall.” He sneered at Everett. “You wear on me. I’ll tell you nothing more. And this place won’t break me after residing in the bowels of St. Giles.”

“I grew up in St. Giles, and ain’t afraid o’ the likes of you,” Pete said. “Full of cockalorum words won’t get you nowhere before the magistrates.”

“I’ll denounce you in court.” Everett clasped Bettina’s shoulder, turning her to leave. “If you refuse to cooperate.”

“You swindled me out of my inheritance, what did you expect?” Hollis seemed to force his airy tone now. “A man has to exist, doesn’t he?”

Bettina’s anger simmered. She whirled back around. “You never once ask about your son.”

“Clare wanted children, not I. I did fancy that winsome girl, so delicate and pretty. It didn’t hurt that she’d inherit a small fortune.” Hollis’s grin sardonic, he stared up as if remembering. “But maybe the brat isn’t even mine.”

Everett raised a fist, but pulled it back. “That’s enough, let’s go.” He dragged her away from the cell. “He isn’t worth this bother.”

“How can he deny Frederick, they look so much alike.” Bettina’s head started to ache. “I am sorry I insisted to come. You will be better talking to him without me.” She breathed deep when they stepped back into the sunlight.

“Well, you’ve seen the beast. Of course, he wasn’t this awful when he first courted Clare. Or I’d have chased him away with a blunderbuss.”

“Your poor sister. And Frederick too.” Bettina wanted to rush to the school and embrace the child, protect him from harm. “I hope the courts—”

“Mrs. O’Brien said Hollis bragged of an accident with your wife.” Pete lumbered out, squinting in the light. “He stopped paying her, and his other cohorts, so she’s willin’ to talk some.”

“An accident.” Everett jerked open the coach door, mouth in a grimace. “It’s as I suspected. Miriam has to be dead and he probably had something to do with it.”

“But if he will never confess, what do we do?” Bettina climbed into the coach, relieved to be away from the ‘beast’. “He is a deplorable person.” She wanted to soak in a bath to wash him out of her skin.

“I’ll stay here and nose around, don’t you worry none.” Pete waved and turned back to the prison.

“We’ll see what the courts manage, then speak to a barrister.” Everett climbed in beside her and the driver shut the door. The coach moved away. They leaned into one another in silent support.

* * * *

Snowflakes speckled the bow window. Bettina took a deep breath and sipped her morning tea. Her stomach gurgled. The liquid swished around and threatened to come back up her throat. She rushed into the bedchamber, snatched the chamber pot and retched. Her insides heaved.

She glanced up to find Oleba watching her. “I think I have had too much holiday feasting.” She wiped the bitter taste from her lips, her stomach still churning. Twelfth Night just passed and she and Everett had attended a soiree at a merchant friend of his the previous evening.

“No, miss. This is the third morning this week you’ve been sick. By afternoon you always feel better.” Oleba’s dark eyes assessed her. “When did you have your courses last?”

Bettina sat on the bed and rubbed her belly. “I
… with all this upheaval, I cannot remember.” She sucked in her breath. “
Pardieu
.”

Oleba picked up the pot and gazed at her in sympathy. “It seems to me, miss, that you might be expecting. I remember my former mistress having such ailments when breeding.”

Bettina tasted the bile again. She turned her face toward the wall, wishing Oleba would hurry out the stinking pot. “I was afraid of this. I have ignored the signs.” She dragged herself from the bed. “Please, bring me a warm wet cloth. Then go down to the offices and tell Mr. Camborne I need to speak with him.” Her pulse rattled at the idea. How would Everett react? Even if he wanted her to get rid of it, she knew she could never follow Kerra’s example.