‘Sir Andrew appeared to think that I had the right to defend the honour of a lady and that Spurgeon – that’s the London man – had gone too far. They retreated to consider the situation and the moment they were out of sight I left. I don’t know what, if anything, you have discovered, but I am damned if I am going to sit at Felling and wait for them to turn up and drag me off in chains.’
Guin gulped a mouthful of brandy. ‘I have a very strong inclination to give way to hysterics,’ she said, wondering why she wasn’t.
‘We need a council of war,’ Jared said. ‘But you and I are going to bathe and change first. It is time to take control of this situation, to turn and set the hounds on our pursuers.’ He held out his hand to Guin. ‘Lady Northam? You have had a long and difficult day but I think you have it in you to join our council.’
‘Certainly, Mr Hunt.’ She let him draw her to her feet, feeling his strength and his anger flowing through to her. His instinct, his duty was to protect her, but he believed in her, that she had the intelligence and the strength of will to cope with this. I could love this man, she thought as they walked up the stairs leaving Theo pacing again. Perhaps I already do.
When they assembled again, clean and refreshed, Faith and Dover appeared, both saying that they too were revived and wanted to be involved. Jared waited for the footmen to deposit plates of food by each chair, poured wine all round and then, with no protest from Theo, took control.
‘We have two strands to this persecution. If I am correct, then both Lady Northam and the late Lord Northam – and by extension you, the new, Lord Northam – are targets.’
‘Me?’ Theo began, then subsided at a gesture from Jared.
‘Lady Northam unwisely eloped with, and married, Francis Willoughby, a man in need of money and completely unscrupulous about how he earned it. He thought his new father-in-law would give him funds, either to maintain the marriage or, perhaps, to buy him off. He was sadly disappointed, almost penniless and, I suspect, desperate because moneylenders were after him.
‘He brought his new wife here to Allerton because he expected to find help from the one person who would never let him down, however outrageously he behaved, his sister. I overheard the cook, Mrs Turner, speaking of how Master Frank had enjoyed her lemon tarts and how he had eaten them in company with the footman, Thomas Bainton, who used to work here and then, most conveniently, transferred his services to the new owner.’
‘And Frank is short for Francis,’ Guin said. ‘He had a habit, which very soon grated on my nerves, of saying, I will be frank with you, and then smirking at the pun.’
‘The headstone on his grave refers to his father Henry and his sister Elizabeth. Mr Quenten at Cross Holme called his wife Lettie, a shortening for Elizabeth, and their younger son, Hal. The older child, Charles, is named for his paternal grandfather and it seems logical that the younger is called after his mother’s father, Henry.’
‘So Mrs Quenten was Francis’s older sister and she blames me for his death,’ Guin said slowly. ‘Of course, she would have heard the rumours about it not being an accident, about Augustus’s intervention preventing the magistrate accusing me of causing it. She must have been in anguish when she realised that Francis had come to her for help and found none. I wonder why he did not know they had moved,’ she added, puzzled.
‘I expect that will become clear eventually,’ Jared said.
The relief of at last finding some logical explanation for this nightmare was almost overwhelming. ‘But nothing happened for months after I married Augustus.’
‘You were far away and I expect, at first, she was too deep in grief. Then, with time, she must have become obsessed and vengeful. But she had no agent for her punishment of you and, I imagine, no experience of hiring ruffians or criminals. Then you and Lord Northam came up here and Thomas, who had known Francis as a young man, was sent to ask for employment, to work his way into your trust. That is how the persecution moved to London. It must have been Thomas who put the firework down the chimney.’
‘And he took in the sweetmeats. He could time poisoning them to fit with Theo being in the house.’
‘Probably the staff at our London house knew him,’ Theo put in. ‘He’ll doubtless have delivered messages for my uncle. He could have got in unremarked, stolen the medicine and hidden the empty bottles for the magistrate to find.’
‘But the attacks on you were not very serious, my lady,’ Faith interjected. ‘I don’t understand that.’
‘Mrs Quenten wanted to torment Lady Northam, I suspect.’ Jared said. ‘They were trying different things, watching the effect on you. She aimed to torture, not to kill, because that would have been too final, would have ended your punishment too soon.?
??
‘But Augustus,’ Guin murmured. ‘What had he ever done to her? He even had her brother decently buried.’
‘I suspect the idea of inheritance had been growing in her slowly, perhaps almost unrecognised until she met Lord Northam for the first time, at her father-in-law’s funeral. It was brought home to her that Northam was an elderly man. The families had grown apart and if she had thought about it before then she would know that there were several people between her husband and sons and the title. But here was the reality, and he was a man she had no reason to love – he had, she thought, aided her brother’s killer. She must have investigated, found that his brother was elderly and ailing also. Just two old men between her family and a title, a rise to status and fortune.’
‘And one young man,’ Theo pointed out, indignant. ‘I am not ailing.’
‘So you must be suspected of killing your uncle and hastening the death of your father,’ Guin said, appalled. ‘Thomas would have reported back that you had money problems and that you ran tame in our house – and look how easily the rumours about you and me spread.’
‘If Theo is accused of murder and hanged then Elizabeth could have it all – a title for her husband and son and revenge on you, Lady Northam,’ Jared said. ‘She has never met Theo and I assume that by this stage she is too far gone in her obsession and her plotting to even consider what she is doing to an innocent man, one who is simply a name on a page to her.’
‘But can we prove it?’ Theo asked. He reached for a cake from the plate beside him, took a bite and washed it down with brandy without looking, then winced at the mixture.
‘We need to get our hands on Thomas, sir,’ Dover said. He passed Theo a tea cup and slid the brandy glass away. ‘Try that, my lord. We could get a confession out of him and hand him over to the magistrates.’
‘We have only circumstantial evidence,’ Jared pointed out. ‘And he has every incentive to keep quiet – the image of a noose is powerfully motivating.’
‘We could beat it out of him,’ Dover muttered. When Guin looked at him, shocked that for a moment her reaction had been approval, he added, ‘I suppose the magistrates wouldn’t like that.’
‘But how are you involved, Jared, except that Augustus employed you?’ Guin asked, realising the moment she said it that she had used his first name in front of everyone, then discovering that she did not care. ‘How can this connect to you?’