‘He has
been the agent for all the attacks on you, I assume. Lord Northam’s murder, I am not so sure about. But I know who Willoughby’s sister is.’
‘Who? No, we cannot talk about it here. What do we do now? Will you ride for help?’
‘You and I will take my horse, with Dover and Faith on one of the carriage horses. We will send help back to the coach from the next village – Lockton, if I remember rightly. I want you home, Guinevere.’
‘I thought you would never call me that again.’ Her smile was a sudden flash of happiness before she was serious again.
The coachman, a practical man, agreed that the best thing to do was to get the women safely off the moor. ‘We’ll need a wheelwright, and a blacksmith to fix this brake, no point in all of us sitting around here, sir. We can drive back with just the three. I’ll try leading the horses down to the bottom now they’re calm, which’ll be safer than having the carriage on the slope. It should be all right with the weight out and just at a walk.’
They shortened the reins on the steadiest of the horses and Jared boosted Faith up behind Dover, then Paul helped Guinevere up behind him. ‘It’s the Quentens, isn’t it?’ she said as they set off. ‘Thomas has worked for them since he was a boy.’
‘Yes,’ Jared agreed. ‘Hold on tight, I want to get you home fast.’
It took them two hours, including the stop to despatch wheelwright and smith to the stricken coach. Guin was so stiff when they cantered up the drive at Allerton that she thought Jared would have to lift her down, bent into a sitting position.
As it was he threw his leg over the pommel, slid to the ground and held up his hands to her and she simply fell into his embrace and clung.
‘I am sorry to be such a feeble creature,’ she mumbled against his shirt front. ‘All I want is to curl up in a darkened room and put my fingers in my ears and hum loudly until this all goes away.’
‘That sounds exceedingly tempting, with the addition of several bottles of best brandy.’ Jared sounded amused, the darkness seemed to have lifted for him, if only for a while. ‘But we must not give way to temptation, not now we have our blindfolds off and we know who it is that is our enemy.’
‘Ours?’ She leaned back in his embrace to study his face.
‘I am beginning to have my suspicions – ’
‘My lady.’ Porrett stood on the step. ‘Lord Northam is in the drawing room.’
‘Who?’ Guinevere blinked at him. Was this some kind of dream and Augustus was not dead at all? She must be losing her mind.
‘What the devil is he doing here? I thought he understood that he needed to keep his distance,’ Jared said, cold anger in his voice. ‘This is the last thing we need.’ When she stared at him he snapped, ‘Theo.’
‘Oh. Theo. Of course.’ Guin gave herself a little shake. No ghosts. ‘When did he arrive, Porrett?’
‘An hour since, my lady. I have prepared the Chinese rooms for him.’
‘He should have the master suite by rights, but I suppose he will not mind for one night. I really cannot face the upheaval of moving now.’ She stepped away from Jared and mounted the steps. ‘Ask the maids to draw us all hot baths, including for Faith and Dover. And send up tea trays. I will greet Lord Northam. Faith, you and Dover go to your rooms, bathe, rest.’
She was conscious of Jared on her heels as she went down the hall to the drawing room door. Surely now he did not suspect Theo of anything?
Her nephew by marriage was pacing up and down the room but he turned with an audible sigh of relief when they entered.
‘Theo, what on earth are you doing here?’
‘Escaping the law, I suspect,’ he said grimly. ‘No sooner had the funeral guests gone than that da – that confounded London magistrate turned up at Felling Hall along with our local man. He was waving an anonymous letter that had advised him to search in the clothes press in my dressing room in London. He’d bullied his way in past the staff and was unsurprised to find two empty bottles that had held my father’s medicine hidden in a pair of old boots.
‘There was easily enough gone to have killed Uncle Augustus if boiled down to a syrup and then mixed with marchpane, apparently. I asked him why, if I was a parricide, I had not removed the bottles from there? I enquired if I appeared to be a complete idiot. He advised me not to take that tone with him.’
Theo stopped, took a deep breath and continued rather more calmly. ‘I enquired – in much the same tone – who was supposed to have written the letter. I produced my valet, and Perkins pointed out that with the house in turmoil during my father’s last days and death half the Household Cavalry could have trooped in and out concealing bottles and not been noticed.
‘Sir Andrew Hewson, the local magistrate, who had the benefit of hearing the tale fresh from beginning to end and having no axe to grind, pointed out that what I said had some merit. His colleague then demanded to know whether you had access to my dressing room, Guin.’
Jared said something savage under his breath and Guin discovered that cold fury had a remarkably energising effect. ‘What did you say to that?’ she enquired.
‘I hit him. Quite a good left hook, actually.’ Theo’s grim expression was at odds with his tone.
‘And why are you not under arrest for assault on a magistrate, if nothing else?’ Jared enquired. ‘Lady Northam, do sit down, you must be exhausted.’ He stalked over to the sideboard, poured a glass of brandy and brought it back to her.