Once Upon a Scandal (30 page)

“I wish we’d been able to learn more about my father and the reason why he died. Did you see anything in his papers to offer a clue?”

“Possibly. But it will require a trip to Luton.”

Benjamin should never have kept the truth of it from her.

• • •

The thatched-roof cottage was a tidy one, set in the shade of a large poplar tree on the outskirts of Luton. Its whitewashed walls served as a pretty backdrop for window boxes in full bloom, and its neat picket fence was freshly painted. He’d sent a note ahead to Althea Mortimer, asking for permission to visit, and as they disembarked from his carriage, the front door opened. A petite woman near Jane in age swept forward, clad in a black mourning dress with a pleated apron. “Lord Marworth, Madame Fauchon. Won’t you please come in?”

“May I offer my condolences on the recent passing of your mother?” he asked. “I was sorry to hear of it in your reply.”

“She’d been sick for some time. I’m happy to say she’s in a better place now, and that his lordship’s visit allowed her to make her peace. I was shocked to hear of his death so soon afterwards.”

They were ushered into a front parlor, comfortable with cushioned chairs and needlepoint lace, a tea service at the ready on a table beneath one of the windows. “Was your mother always from Luton, Miss Mortimer?” he asked as they took seats. In the English countryside, an ongoing tryst with an aristocrat from London would not have gone unnoticed.

“Yes, my lord. We’ve lived here all our lives, though we occasionally traveled into the City before Father died.”

Could an affair with Fitzsimmons have begun after a chance encounter? It seemed unlikely with a small child in tow. Not to mention a husband. Had he leapt to a logical conclusion, only to overlook another?

“You are so kind to meet with us,” Jane said as she accepted a cup of tea. “
Monsieur le baron
and myself, we are trying to learn why Lord Fitzsimmons came here. Did he know your mother well?”

“Not at all. They’d only met once, before the marriage ceremony,” Miss Mortimer replied. “She was helping to ready Miss Charlotte, the poor girl. The whole situation broke Mother’s heart.”

“Miss Charlotte?” Jane asked, her cup of tea paused in midair.

“Sir Aldus Rempley’s ward. My mother was her governess at his country home, not far from here. Loved her like a daughter, she did. Cried until her dying day that she’d never guessed it. That she hadn’t kept her safe.”

Suspicion trickled through his veins, clenching in his gut. He hesitated, not wanting to ask the question but knowing he must. “Nearly ten years ago, your mother paid a visit to a shop in London. One that specialized in relieving women of an unwanted pregnancy.” Jane’s head swiveled towards him, her eyes wide. “She purchased several potions. Who were they for?”

Miss Mortimer pulled a handkerchief from her apron pocket. “Miss Charlotte, I’m afraid. But Mother couldn’t go through with it. She’d recognized the signs, but the poor girl didn’t even know she was with child. And her so young, just sixteen.”

“Was it a boy from the village?” Jane asked, clearly shocked.

Miss Mortimer shook her head, her eyes welling with tears.

“Gerard Montford then?”

Taking refuge behind her handkerchief, she shook her head once more, apparently unable to utter the name.

There were long moments of silence before Jane’s teacup fell from her limp fingers and smashed on the floor. “Before the wedding, did my … ” She gasped, her hands curled around her midsection, as if defending herself from a body blow. “Had Lord Fitzsimmons been told?”

“He knew she was pregnant. Everything had been hastily arranged with Montford. But he didn’t know who the father was. Not until he came here, just days before his death.”

• • •

That evening, Jane went alone to Fitzsimmons House. The front door was already draped in mourning, and black cloth covered the mirrors in the hall. A waste, when the man’s death should instead be celebrated, like a national holiday, his likeness burned in effigy while children danced in the streets.

Was it a sin to hope that at his judgment, Sir Aldus had met not with God’s forgiveness but His fury? His death had been too quick. The man should have been roasted on a spit and then drawn and quartered while his heart still beat.

On the long ride back to London, she’d not been able to stop the words from raining down. Shock. Horror. Revulsion. Hatred. They’d spewed like a vein sliced open, while Benjamin sat quiet, listening to her, his fists clenched for the whole of the journey. And yet Charlotte’s pain at Sir Aldus’s passing was obvious as they sat together in the family parlor.

“I don’t know what to say,” she hiccupped. “It was so sudden, without warning. It was not like Uncle Aldus to be so careless.”

That she would grieve for him, when he’d abused her so terribly. And the awful truth was, even now, as a woman grown, she didn’t seem to understand the crime he’d committed against her. After all, she’d been just a small child when she’d fallen into his clutches.

“I feel such pain for you,
ma pauvre
. And who can ever explain why such things happen? Perhaps God was eager for his return home.” So He could cast him into the depths of hell. Jane hoped the devil had lit a very special bonfire in Sir Aldus’s honor. “Your husband will see you through this, and your darling daughter, too.”

“Poor Violet. How he doted on her.”

Was that how she’d survived it and stayed sane? By pretending to a world in which the man had doted on her child? One in which he’d been an avuncular guardian instead of a loathsome creature?

“Would it be wrong, do you think, if I don’t dress my daughter in blacks? The color makes me so sad.”

“Of course not. You shouldn’t wear it either.” Society be damned.

“It reminds me of such dark days,” Charlotte continued. “My parents … both so young.”

“I’d heard of it. I am sorry.”

“Mother and I used to spend hours together, playing with my dolls. It’s one of the reasons I still like them so much.”

“And no doubt why Violet does, as well. I envy you the gift of your child.” But not the way in which she’d been conceived.

“You’d make a wonderful mother,” Charlotte sniffed. “You’d love your children. You’d never leave them alone, would you?”

She wanted to weep. “Your parents didn’t want to leave you. They’d come back from the dead if they could.”

“Oh, I know that now. Although when I was younger, I sometimes blamed them for it.” Charlotte was fiddling with her skirts, smoothing the fabric with her hands. “Blamed them for giving me to a person who didn’t want me. Although he did take an interest once I began to mature, and it made me so happy, to be noticed at last. Uncle Aldus admired my beauty.”

Her stomach roiled. “You have more value than your beauty, Charlotte. Never forget it.”

“And he was such a help when it came to understanding how things would be later, when I married. Although the lessons were terribly awkward … ”

Jane fought the urge to fly screaming from the room. She wasn’t sure she could hear this without becoming violently ill.

“I don’t know how I would have survived that first night, Gerard and I so newly met, without knowing what to expect. That there would be pain. And tears.”

An arranged marriage forced upon her to disguise the depths of Sir Aldus’s depravity. And Jane’s own father, unintentionally complicit.

How earnest Charlotte looked, like a child hoping she’d not admitted to a sin, not really knowing the crime. Jane swallowed against a rush of bile, forcing her voice to be calm. “How young were you when his lessons began,
ma chère
?”

“Fifteen years, six months, and twenty days. Isn’t it strange? How some dates stick in one’s memory?”

Dear God in heaven, how had she ever mourned her own state? How had she ever believed she’d earned the right to feel aggrieved, or discomforted, or disgraced?

“Does your husband know about your lessons?” she asked. But she already knew the answer.

“Oh no,” Charlotte replied. “Uncle Aldus said it must be our secret.”

“Of course,” she said. “Of course he did.”

She would not cry.

Gerard entered the room moments later, a bottle of spirits clutched in his hand, his feet unsteady. Very likely drunk, given what he’d witnessed just three days ago. If Gerard had known what Jane now knew, he’d have done the deed himself.

“Lord Fitz—Simmons,” she said, her tongue faltering over the appellation, so long her father’s. “My sympathies for the accident claiming Sir Aldus.” Lies heaped upon lies.

“Such a string of tragedies.” How flat his tone was as he spoke. “First, the other Lord Fitzsimmons, the one who was Jane’s father. And then Jane’s loss, so unexpected. And now this. Charlotte’s dear guardian, so like an uncle, dead without issue. Never knowing the pleasures of a family. The joys of a child.”

For some reason, the words sent a shiver through her.

“I tried to see you today,” he admitted, falling into a chair across from her, reeking of gin. “But you’d gone missing. I wanted to ask you about the papers. Do you remember I asked to look at them first? They’re quite private, after all. Jane should have left them to me.”

“I shall send them tomorrow,” she said slowly, as hairs rose on the back of her neck. “I haven’t reviewed them personally, but I agree,
monsieur
. Jane must not have realized their sensitive nature.”

The letter, for instance, leading to Althea Mortimer.

The note Benjamin had shared on their return from Luton. The one from a Madame La Farge. Had he shied away from revealing it earlier because the nature of her business was so dark?

Apart, the letters were nothing of import. Together, though, they were so very damning.

Not just to Rempley. But to Gerard.

Though his head had lolled to the side of his chair, his eyes were steady upon her, unblinking. “Charlotte, my dearest, I’ve a few words to say to Madame Fauchon in private.”

She should leave this very instant. Every instinct screamed it. But she must maintain her façade. When Charlotte kissed him on the forehead and turned from the room, she nearly begged her to stay.

But Charlotte was gone too quickly, and just as suddenly, she was alone in the room with Gerard.

Our first mother was betrayed by the pride of knowing.—
Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women

“What a nasty business,” Greystoke said, tossing back a stiff brandy. “Who could have guessed at Rempley’s true nature?”

Winchester, too, seemed shaken. “I defended the man in front of you. In front of the prime minister. To think of the secrets he had access to, someone so unsteady … ”

“It’s all too convenient, don’t you think?” Benjamin asked, unable to forget the horror on Jane’s face. “Everything has been wrapped up with such a tidy little bow.”

“We have our villain in the piece, cold as a block of ice.” Torrington was absently tracing an abstract shape on the table. “The documents back, no harm and no foul. No evidence, really, that Rempley ever intended to sell them. So why take them to begin with? Why blame Fitzsimmons?”

At that, Benjamin set aside his own brandy. Because something unsettling had just occurred to him, his mind still grappling with its implications. “What if he didn’t take them?”

“What do you mean?”

“The dossiers were laid out on his desk, neat as a pin. So was the letter from Grillion’s. What man, on the verge of suicide, is so tidy?”

“Would you describe the scene again?” Greystoke asked.

“Rempley was dead on the floor, a pistol in his left hand, his eyes still open. His face was bruised, but that would have been attributable to the scene at Lady Marchmain’s. His jaw was wrapped in a cloth that went round his head, set by a doctor that morning.”

“A man planning to kill himself called for a doctor about his jaw?” This from Torrington.

“And Rempley was right-handed,” Winchester said. “I watched him sign any number of documents during our meetings.”

No man, having plotted such a demise, would aim the pistol with his weaker hand.

“Montford and the butler found him?” Torrington asked. “He read the notes on the desk and panicked, sending for you?”

“Yes.” Keeping those papers neat and orderly, when Montford had barely been able to function.

Benjamin leapt to his feet, his chair clattering on the floor behind him.

“Where are you going?” Greystoke leaned in to the table to make room as he ran past.

“It was Montford all along,” he cried over his shoulder. “I have to find Jane.”

• • •

Montford’s mouth had twitched into something like a smile. “So have you come to judge me, Jane?”

She stilled, hoping she’d misheard him. “
Je m’excuse, monsieur
. You are distraught, your thoughts clouded. I am not Jane, but Lillianne.”

He speared a finger in the air, wagging it unsteadily. “For shame. I’m not so easily fooled. Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry,
monsieur
. I don’t understand you.” But she did. And this was a Gerard she’d never seen before. A dangerous one.

“I’ll not deny you’ve done an excellent job of it, the accent, the manners, all that. But when on the fringes of Society, trying to fit in, I made quite a study of people. The so proper Jane Fitzsimmons. The so perfect Lord Marworth.”

“Perhaps I should leave,
monsieur
.” There was a wildness to him, unpredictable and quite possibly unhinged.

“Carry on with your pretense, if you like. But you’re not going anywhere. Do you know why?”

She shook her head, trying not to panic.

His face was devoid now of expression, the effect terrifying. “Because I am vengeance. Like the Archangel Michael, I have weighed the sinners’ souls on my scales and condemned them.”

Dear God. Definitely unhinged. What had he done?

“But now I must myself be judged. Isn’t it the way of things?” He took a long draught of gin. “You must decide, Jane.”

“I think you must rest. You are not yourself.”

“I will never be myself again,” he bit out. “Have you any idea how happy I was, the day I married my Charlotte?”