‘It is almost a relief to discover that you are not perfect after all,’ Jared said as Dover came through the door at a run, stopped dead and huffed out a breath. ‘Are you hurt, my lady?’
‘No, but Lord Ravenlaw is. His arm is slashed’
‘The Earl has sent for the doctor already, my lady. What with Lord Northam seeing double and Bainton’s broken nose – Lord Northam has a punishing left – and Sir Andrew getting hit on the shoulder by the screen falling it’s like a battlefield hospital in there.’
‘Is my father all right?’
‘Yes, sir. If you’ll excuse me saying so, he’s having the time of his life.’
‘What on earth is going on?’ Bella stood in the doorway, a robe covering her nightgown and her hair in a plait over one shoulder. ‘Is that Lettie tied up on the floor? And Jared, your arm. You are bleeding all over the rug.’
‘Everyone is all right,’ Guin said. ‘But Lettie had Bainton murder Augustus and she was behind the attacks on me because my first husband was her brother. Sir Andrew is a Justice of the Peace and so is the Earl, of course, so they are arresting them both.’ She held out her hand to Bella. ‘I know she is your friend, and this is all going to be horrible now, with a trial. I’m sorry, Bella.’
‘You are sorry?’ Bella came into the room and sat down on a chair next to Guin. ‘I’ve known her for almost two years and I never realised. Those poor children. And her husband. He isn’t the brightest of men, but he was devoted to her.’
‘I know. We will have to help them somehow.’
Chapter Twenty Six
Eventually, after the doctor had stitched and bandaged the wounded and the constables had come and taken the two prisoners off to the village lock-up and Julian Quenten was sedated and sleeping, the house party assembled in the drawing room with brandy and hot chocolate and pots of tea.
‘All Lettie and I had in common was that we weren’t happy,’ Bella said, her hands curled around a glass of brandy as though for warmth. ‘I was lonely and I wanted someone to be miserable with, I can see that now.’
‘That Thomas is besotted with Mrs Quenten.’ Dover was treating his brandy in a more straightforward manner. ‘He’d been with her and her brother since they were youngsters, so they say in the servants’ hall here. He’d do anything for her. Looks like he’ll hang for her too.’
‘Will they hang Lettie?’ Guinevere asked. Her hands were clasping hot chocolate that Jared had laced with brandy. He was watching her closely, but she seemed to be coping remarkably well.
‘Conspiracy to murder?’ Sir Andrew said. ‘It will all depend on whether they find her fit to plead. If she is not in her right mind she will be confined. If she is fit to plead she may be transported. It will depend on the judge.’
‘Poor woman,’ Guinevere said. When they all stared at her she shook her head. ‘She was so unhappy, so angry, so obsessed. There must have been some point, somewhere, when she could have been stopped, could have been saved. And those little boys. One day they will find out what their mother did, what became of her.’
‘I’ll do what I can
for them,’ Theo said. He was restricted to tea on doctor’s orders after the blow to the head and was not happy about it. ‘Until I have children of my own, their father is my heir. We have to get this back to being a normal relationship, somehow.’
‘Are we sure he didn’t know?’ Jared queried.
‘He is trying to blame himself,’ Sir Andrew answered. ‘I had a few words before the sedative took effect. He forbade Lettie sending any more money to her brother – that had been one of the contributing factors in the Quentens’ financial crisis – and he did his best to stop her writing to him. He says he made her desperate. I genuinely believe he had no notion of what she was doing.’
‘At least that solves the mystery of why Francis thought he would find his sister at Allerton Grange,’ Guinevere said. ‘He was not receiving letters from Elizabeth.’
They talked on, unwinding from the tension and danger. Jared realised Guinevere had fallen silent. He wanted to go and take her in his arms, carry her off to bed, but that wasn’t what either of them really needed now.
She was looking from face to face, a slight smile on her lips, quite clearly thinking about something more pleasant than what had just happened. I almost lost her. If she hadn’t been strong and brave and determined, he might have done. Wherever you go, I go, she had whispered and she had meant it. Lord, but he’d been a fool, proposing marriage because it was the honourable thing, because she was a lady. That wasn’t what Guinevere needed to hear, it wasn’t the truth that had finally bludgeoned its way into his thick skull. Tomorrow, he promised himself.
Guinevere woke with the dawn and lay there watching the thin, cool light gather and strengthen until the shadows began to fade and the colours of the hangings in her bed chamber became clear.
Somehow she had slept last night, what remained of it. Now she was awake again, however much her body protested that it really would like another six hours, at least.
She climbed out of bed, her bruises complaining, and went to the window. Jared was down below, half-sitting on the wall that edged the steepest drop, looking out over the landscape as the sun rose, shaping and colouring the hills. That was what had woken her, she realised, his presence out there, calling to her. She had reached a decision last night, now she had to discover whether his thoughts had changed also. As she watched him he looked round, up, and saw her. Strange how a look can be a touch. I feel it too, when he watches me.
Jared lifted a hand and she nodded. Wait for me.
Guin picked her way through the wreckage of the little sitting room and out into the terrace, slippers on her bare feet, a warm cloak over her nightgown, her hair loose down her back. Quite shocking, she thought, smiling as she saw Jared’s expression.
‘Are you well?’ he asked. Being Jared he was dressed, his rapier at his side, no sign that his left arm was stitched and bandaged.
‘Stiff, shocked still. Almost empty inside now all that suspicion and fear has gone. You?’