The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

Whose name and image persisted in her memory? Vere wondered.

No biddable young lady should have a clue how to escape a vigilant household, Grenville had said.

Anne Ballister had been closely guarded and sheltered.

How had she and John Grenville—a third-rate actor—ever crossed paths? How had he managed to get to her, seduce her into eloping with him to Scotland? Her father was a “pious hypocrite,” according to Dain. Acting troupes were not invited to Athcourt in Dain’s father’s time. Anne’s father wouldn’t have invited them to his home, either.

Vere had recognized, in hindsight, all the clues Grenville had carefully dropped into The Rose of Thebes. Carried away by the adventures, the readers had overlooked them. Only when Orlando’s perfidy was finally revealed did one discern the seeds, so cleverly sown throughout the preceding chapters.

He looked for clues in the little diary, but if they were there—as he was sure they must be—they were too cleverly concealed.

He returned the book to its place on the night table and went into his dressing room.

According to Beelzebub, the legal firm of Carton, Brays, and Carton were “a lot of driveling incompetents.” This was why Dain had dispensed with their services as soon as he inherited.

Beelz must have bestowed a stare more petrifying than usual in the process, because nothing seemed to have moved in the intervening nine years, including, most especially, the dust.

Mr. Carton the elder wasn’t in, “on account he’s barmy,” the law clerk informed Vere. Mr. Carton the younger was in Chancery, embarked on the process of going “barmy” himself. Mr. Brays was not engaged at the moment, but he was most certainly drunk, “as is his usual habit,” the clerk explained. “It’s a sorry state of affairs, is what it is, Your Grace, but it’s a place, and the only one I got at the moment, and I make the best of it.”

The clerk, by the name of Miggs, was little more than a boy—a tall, lanky one to be sure—with a very little fuzz aspiring to a mustache and a great many spots.

“If you do what I ask without your superiors’ approval, you’ll probably lose your place,” said Vere.

“Not likely,” Miggs said. “They can’t do anything without me. Can’t find anything, and when I find it for ’em, they don’t know what it means and I have to explain it. If I was to go, they’d lose every client they got, and that isn’t many, and most of them I got for them.”

Vere told him what he was looking for.

“I’ll see,” the boy said.

He went into a room and did not come out again for half an hour. “I can’t find a record,” he said when he came out. “But that doesn’t mean much. The old fellow kept everything in his head. Which explains why he went barmy. I’ll have to go into the catacombs, sir. It might take a few days.”

Vere decided to go with him. Which turned out to be very wise, for the “catacombs” was Carton, Brays, and Carton’s equivalent of a lumber room: heaps of boxes, filled with documents. They were simply stacked, one atop the next, according to no logical system whatsoever.

They worked through the entire day, only stopping at midday and late afternoon for ale and pies. Vere heaved the boxes, and the clerk quickly sifted through the contents, again and again, hour after hour, in a dank basement, while various insects and rodents scurried about, darting in and out of the crevices between boxes.

Shortly before seven o’clock that night, Vere trudged wearily up the cellar steps, out the door, and into the street. His neckcloth, now grey, hung limply from his neck. Cobwebs clung to his coat, along with miscellaneous dirt and debris. Sweat trailed through the grime caked on his face. His hands were black.

But in those grimy hands he carried a box, which was all that mattered, and as he set out for home, he was whistling.

To pacify the overly anxious group Ainswood had sternly ordered to look after her, Lydia had said she would take a nap before dinner.

This didn’t mean she intended to nap. She’d taken a book with her to the master bedchamber—and fallen asleep reading it.

A noise from the window woke her, and she caught her husband in the act of climbing through it.

She did not ask him why he couldn’t come in the door like a normal person. One glance told her why he’d eschewed the more public route.

This morning he’d told her he was going to meet with Mr. Herriard regarding the marriage settlements, and would probably be at it for hours. These negotiations had been delayed while His Grace searched for his wards. Dain had reminded his friend of the matter yesterday, before he left.

“I collect one of the settlement terms was your sweeping Mr. Herriard’s chimney,” she said as her glance swept over six and a quarter feet of human wreckage.

Ainswood looked down at the small box in his hands.

“Um, not exactly,” he said.

“You fell into a sewer excavation,” she said.

“No. Um…” He frowned. “I ought to get cleaned up first.”

“I’ll ring for Jaynes.”

He shook his head.

Lydia left the bed.

“Vere?” Her voice was gentle. “Did someone knock you on the head?”

“No. Let me just wash my face and hands. I can have a bath later.” He hurried into his dressing room, still holding the box.

She supposed the box contained the marriage settlements and there was something in them he didn’t think she’d like. She beat down her curiosity and waited, pacing.

He emerged from the dressing room a few minutes later, wearing a dressing gown and nothing else, and carrying the box. He drew up a chair near the fire and invited her to occupy it. She sat.

He settled onto the hearthrug at her feet and opened the box. He withdrew an oval object and laid it in her lap.

It was a miniature, of a young man, fair-haired and blue-eyed. He wore a faint smile.

It was almost like looking into a mirror. “He looks…like my brother,” she said. Her voice sounded thready to her ears. Her heart was thudding.

“His name was Edward Grey,” Ainswood said quietly. “He was a promising actor and playwright. His mother was a highly regarded actress, Serafina Grey. His father was Richard Ballister, your mother’s great-uncle. Edward Grey was the devil Richard Ballister produced, in his wild youth, on the wrong side of the blanket. Richard’s father was past sixty when Richard was born, of a second marriage.”

He took from the box a yellowed piece of paper. It bore a fragment of the Ballister family tree—Anne Ballister’s branch—and the names and dates were written in her tiny, precise hand. The second marriage, late in life, explained why Anne Ballister’s Great-Uncle Richard was only three years older than her father.

But Lydia’s gaze had already shifted lower, to where her name was written, below and between her mother’s—and Edward Grey’s.

She looked at the miniature. Then at the family tree her mother had so neatly drawn. Then at the miniature.

“This is my father,” she said softly, wonderingly.

“Yes.”

“Not John Grenville.”

“There’s no doubt of it,” he said. “Your mother made sure. Like a true Ballister, she had it all documented. My guess is that she intended the lot to be given to you when you reached adulthood. Something went wrong. John Grenville ended up with it and sold it to the third Marquess of Dain—via his solicitors. The receipt for the transaction is dated August 1813.”

“That explains where he got the money to go to America,” Lydia said. She met her husband’s gaze. “This explains a great deal.” It was Edward her mother had eloped with to Scotland, not the man Lydia had called Papa.

“The box contains love letters he wrote to her,” Vere said. “Two dozen at least. I hadn’t time to truly study and sort everything out.” His green gaze was soft and he wore his boy’s smile, half abashed. “Even the little I read told me he adored your mother. He was born on the wrong side of the blanket, but they were deeply in love, and conceiv