Reckless Rules (Brambridge Novel 4) (35 page)

CHAPTER 35

The painting had to come down. Chantelle and Carruthers were right. Victoria had had enough of the hold her husband had had on her. She only had a short time left in the house anyway. She would have to visit Eustacia soon and find out who was the true heir to the estate. So much of it was blood money. It should have all ended with the death of Pablo and Pedro, but in all honesty, the problems just kept coming.

Victoria gazed with worry at her footmen that stood precariously on the hall table. Carruthers had insisted on helping too. “A little to the right,” she called as they pulled the enormous painting up off its hooks. “It might be easier if you continue to rotate it. It looks like the wire is caught.”

The footman to the left of the painting heaved upwards as Carruthers jumped off the hall table and caught the top right edge of the painting as it finally tumbled free from its hooks. He grunted under its heavy weight, the gilded frame nearly crashing to the floor.

“I would say careful,” Victoria said with a small smile. “But I have never liked the painting very much.”

Carruthers nodded, too breathless to speak as he waited for the footman to step down and help him set the painting upside down on the floor.

They all jumped as the knocker on the front door crashed down with more than usual force. Rubbing the dust from his hands, Carruthers gave Victoria a look of enquiry. She shook her head.

The knocker on the door crashed down again, followed by a large splintering sound. “I know you are in there, Victoria,” came an enraged shout. “You can’t just ignore me, I heard your voice.”

The footman jumped as another splintering sound emanated from outside.

“Are you sure you don’t just want to let him in, your ladyship?” Carruthers muttered. “You might get rid of him more easily that way.”

“I heard that!”

She had to get a thicker door in her next house… wherever that may be. Certainly by the time Bill was done kicking at
this
door it would need to be replaced. The new owners could do that. Carruthers gave her a pleading look.

“Oh, let him in.” Victoria threw her hands up in the air and turned to walk into the drawing room.

She had only just set a foot inside the door before Bill barreled angrily into the hallway followed by a very joyful Brutus and an even more delighted Ponzi.

“Good gracious,” she barely had time to say, before the big dog thrust himself up on his hind legs and placed his paws on her shoulders. “Brutus get down, Ponzi, tell Brutus to get down, ugh.” Brutus gave Victoria a very wet sandpaper lick and fell to the floor again. “Why is it your dog cannot be controlled?” she asked plaintively, wiping at her face.

Wordlessly, Bill handed her a handkerchief. Without thanking him, she pressed it to her face. “I am, however, pleased to see him alive,” she muttered. She was indeed, very aware that the big dog had tried to protect her in any way possible, just like his master who, if he hadn’t placed a guard on her house, wouldn’t have been able to rescue her from the despicable Heracles Club.

“As am I grateful,” she said as peacefully as she could, “for your aid in dealing with my little predicament.”

Bill snorted, his eyes riveted on her face. “Little predicament? Victoria, you were practically naked in front of a room of people. A room of awful people who incidentally will not discuss anything about yourself and say they will only answer to you in terms of what your wishes are. What did you do to them?”

Victoria shivered. She didn’t really want to talk about the book of secrets.

“We’ve found the rest of the girls that Pedro abducted and sold,” Bill said in the face of Victoria’s silence. “Freddie was a particularly help. Unfortunately it seems that whilst we managed to get to some of them in time, Pedro may not have been able to resist himself.”

Victoria clapped her hands to her ears, and pulled them down again. She had to hear what had happened to all of the girls. She had promised them silently a while before that she would do right by them.

“I’m afraid that Tessa Dunbar was a particular casualty.” Bill continued. “She never made it to the auction. Pedro was unable to change his ways. Her body was found in the Thames just a day ago.” Bill paused. “Pedro had left his own particular mark on her.”

Victoria shuddered, the memory of Pedro’s hand inside her bodice still vivid. She had had a lucky escape; thank goodness he had not in his own words wanted to ‘spoil the goods’.

“But I didn’t come here to talk about that. I wanted to talk to you.” To Victoria’s horror, Bill suddenly dropped to one knee.

“Bill, Bill, are you alright?” she cried, bending over. “What is it? Is it the knife wound? The blow to the head? How is your head?” Victoria could feel herself gabbling. She put out a hand to his shoulder.

“Oh, for once, do shut up!” Bill groaned. The intake of air in the hallway reminded them both that they still had an audience. Victoria looked round to see Carruthers and the footman staring at them with rounded eyes.

“Oh good. Witnesses,” Bill said with a smile. “Victoria Anglethorpe Colchester, whoever you are, would you do me the honor of…”

Victoria held her breath as he stopped. He knew that she would say no. That she couldn’t marry him. Not when she couldn’t offer him what he needed. Why was he asking her again? Why didn’t he just get on with it? She had to look at him, expecting him to be gazing at her. But he wasn’t. His head was turned away, gaze fixated on the upside down picture in the hall.

“Ponsonby, Ponsonby,” Bill muttered. “Victoria, what is the significance of page thirty-one to you?” he asked in a peculiar voice.

Victoria blinked. She could feel her face blanching. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said faintly. Page thirty-one was her business.

Bill swung his head back to look at her. “If it turned out that you really were married to Lord Colchester, would you marry me?” he asked earnestly. “If I said that I didn’t want your money, your standing, that all I wanted was to be with you? That you could give all your money away if you wished to whichever pauper establishment that you wanted? That you could be mistress of my house in Brambridge too if you wanted, redecorate it as you please. That I would no longer give…” Bill stumbled on the words, pleading, “help, to any other woman?”

“Of course, I would,” Victoria said. Of course she would. “But I wasn’t married to Lord Colchester. Without that you are marrying a… a false woman, someone whose place in the ton no longer exists. I thought that was what you always wanted, what I guessed you wanted.”

Bill shook his head furiously and got to his feet. “I don’t care about that.” He shook his head again. “I told myself that I did, to explain my attraction to you. To explain why I kept coming after you every time you knocked me down, to help myself feel better about my own uncertainty about where I belonged.” He took her hand in his. “Victoria, I love you. I’ve loved you from the first moment that I met you.”

Victoria swallowed. “I… I can’t let you marry me, Bill. I won’t have you joined to a tainted woman. I won’t do that to you. Even though I love you too.” She hung her head.

Bill tugged on her hand. “Follow me,” he said tersely.

Victoria allowed herself to be towed down the hall. Dimly she registered that Carruthers and the footman had long since disappeared.

“You know, Freddie remarked to me that there was something damn odd about this painting,” Bill said conversationally. “But I was too worried about finding Lady Vanderguard to pay attention. What painter, I ask you however, clearly marks out the page of a book with a large thirty-one, and starts the wording with ‘My dear Victoria’?

“It’s not a book, it’s a bible,” Victoria muttered.

Bill picked up the painting with his massive strength, and heaved it on the hall table. Dusting his hands, he pointed at the bible. “Look at it, Victoria, whatever it is, now that it’s not upside down. Look at it carefully. Read it, and give me your answer.”

Victoria barely dared look. Bill had the light of a madman in his eye. He brushed impatiently at her hair as she could not bring her gaze to the painting. Page thirty-one had haunted her for years. Was she finally about to find out the truth?

“If you don’t look at it yourself,
mon petit chat
,” Bill said softly, “Then I will read it to you.”

It was enough to force her eyes away from his face and onto the painting. Her face and
his
seemed so strange upside down. It was even more marked that Lord Colchester, Augustus, Ponsonby,
whoever
he was,
was
looking at her. She took a deep breath, and stepped closer to the painting, focusing on the lines of squiggles that crawled across the pages of the bible. The closer she looked, the more the lines resolved themselves into words, then sentences, and then—
oh good grief. After all this time
.

‘My dear Victoria,

I hope that this page, this letter reaches you before Paul Butterworth does. He tried to kill me before, and if he finds out I am still alive, I believe he will try again. You see, my only protection from him, is that he believes me to be his brother, Ponsonby Butterworth.

Ponsonby and I switched places for a while, I so that I could discover life without ties, Ponsonby so that he could experience life to which he always said he was entitled. We were half-brothers you see. But Paul, he was never my brother, but he knew our secret, Ponsonby and mine, and never let us forget it.

Paul went away for a while, and then came back, fleeing the wrath of a rich family whose daughter he impregnated. On his return, crazed by the snub of the rich family, he took it into his head that he would kill me, and force his weak brother into taking my place, from where he would loot the Colchester fortune in order to look after his child.

But he shot the wrong man, aided by his friend, a Mr. Cryne, a relative of the rich family, and an equally disgusting individual. He killed his own brother.

I hid for a year. A year in which I hoped that he would go away, especially if I sent him money, but threatened him on the life of his child. When it seemed like he wasn’t coming back, I emerged, to all intents and purposes, the same man. But my hair had turned white.

I never meant to hurt you, my child. I loved you as my wife. You were so young though, I could never bring myself to sully your innocence. What woman wants a seventy year old man pawing at her? I feel ashamed in the way I trapped you in marriage, but you see, after so long I convinced myself that I too needed happiness, even if it was at the expense of yours.

The rules… I couldn’t think of a way to break your melancholia. I thought some structure might help. Ask Eustacia about the rules. Ask her about everything, she knows it all. I hope you have found out about her, I hid her from Paul. You must find her now.

I wish you every happiness, my love. I hope I am still alive when you read this. I hope we at least have some time together without living these lies. No marriage should be entered into under the pretense of lies.

Your ever loving husband, Augustus.

Page thirty-one

“I think we need to go and see Eustacia.” Victoria gulped.

“That’s it?” Bill said incredulously. Victoria could feel him staring at her. “What about your answer to my question? Victoria, will you marry me? Will you marry me now that you know that you are Lady Colchester in truth, that you are who you always said you were?”

“I don’t, I don’t know,” Victoria wailed. “It’s the rules, you see. I can’t just give them up. Who will I be without them? Augustus said it himself… no marriage should be entered into under the pretense of
lies
.”

CHAPTER 36

The house in Stockwell was small, and contained more of that spindly furniture which all the females of Bill’s acquaintance loved so much. Eustacia cackled when she saw his predicament.

“Go down to the kitchen, young man, and fetch the large backed chair from there. That should take your weight. We don’t have many calls from young men these days.”

As Bill followed Eustacia’s maid to the kitchen, his ears burned. Eustacia had wasted no time in turning back to Victoria.

“Fine specimen of a man that you have there. No wonder you asked me if I was disappointed I never married.” Bill couldn’t hear the rest as he and the maid reached the kitchen. He picked up the chair and left the maid to make tea for the three of them. He longed for something stronger.

“So have you brought something for me?” Eustacia asked as he re-entered bearing the chair. Victoria and Eustacia were already cozily sat in two morning chairs.

“I’ve left the painting in the hall,” Bill said, placing the chair to complete a triangle with the old lady and Victoria. “I can fetch it if you wish to…”

“No, not the painting,” Eustacia said dismissively. “Victoria knows what I mean.”

Victoria smiled and drew out a brown paper parcel that Bill had seen her slip into her bag whilst he had been dismantling the picture from its frame. Her averted face had told him not to ask any questions. Not that he found it easy to speak after her continued refusal to give him a yes or no to his proposal.

“Here you go, Eustacia. Not Cuban this time, but my brother was kind enough to avert his eyes when I pilfered them from his house.”

“Good woman,” the old lady wheezed. “Hand them over.” Eustacia scrabbled at the brown paper, and finally managed to ease the packing off a small box. Bill was intrigued. He could not stop his gasp when Eustacia whipped out two cigars from the small box, and with practiced ease, snipped an end and lit both with a delighted look on her face.

After several puffs Eustacia handed a cigar to Victoria who, with visible enjoyment, put the cigar to her lips. As the room filled with smoke, Bill hunched in his chair. Neither of the ladies looked like they were going to offer him a cigar. Neither were they interested in talking. He was almost grateful when the maid returned.