The Secret to Seduction (43 page)

“In a moment. You’re still too pale.”

She smiled slightly; her brows went up at his effortless way with an order. But then Richard Lockwood had been a military man, too. He imagined she was familiar with the type.

In the quiet that followed, a bird sang an aria. Rhys began to feel the heat at the back of his neck.

“You say you’re Sabrina’s husband?” she ventured softly after a moment.

“Yes.” He still wasn’t certain how to tell her what he’d come to tell her. He suspected he was postponing filling in the years. Postponing the moment when she would begin to hate him.

There was another silence.

“My Sabrina,” she whispered. A ghost of a smile. “She was . . .” Anna paused. “How is . . .”

She stopped. And then slowly, before Rhys’s eyes, Anna’s face crumpled, and her hand fumbled up to her face, as if to ward off the sudden delayed rush of feeling. But she could not. She took in another long ragged breath. And when she exhaled, her body was shaking with racking, near-silent sobs.

Oh, tears. He never knew what to do about tears.

Gently Rhys lowered her feet to the ground. And then he took his wife’s mother in his arms, and held her while she wept against his cravat.

“Well?” Geoffrey was impatient.

“We’ve traced the deed of the house to a Mr. Embry,” Mr. Barnes told him evenly.

“And?” Geoffrey said.

“We’ve been unable to determine whether or not he was an associate of Mr. Morley’s. The timing of the sale was as you said it would be, but the proof ends there.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Mr. Barnes.”

“Perhaps.” Barnes looked bored.

“I can sell the story to a scandal sheet.”

“For a good deal less than what we’ll pay you.” Mr. Barnes was entirely unconcerned. “And it’s entirely possible no one will believe a word of it. Of course, it all depends upon your motive for selling the story, Mr. Gillray. And it might very well be worth your while to wait.”

Geoffrey swiped surreptitiously at his temple. A bead of sweat had begun to form there. The money he’d asked for from Mr. Barnes would allow him to leave the country, abandon his debts here forever. But he was afraid to be in London. He’d had his life threatened. The scandal sheets were looking more and more appealing.

“Why are you so concerned, Mr. Gillray? Is it selling your family name that is making you a bit nervous, or is it something else?”

Geoffrey began to hate Mr. Barnes.

When Geoffrey said nothing, Mr. Barnes spoke again. “If the story is indeed true, I shall publish it and support it, for I enjoy selling newspapers, and intend to sell a good deal more than my predecessor. But my
own
reputation, and that of the
Times,
has no price, Mr. Gillray. So you will wait for corroboration, or you may sell your story to the scandal sheets. It is your decision to make.”

Geoffrey knew this smug man, who had no title or family name, who was very close to being common, despised him. Even as he intended to make use of him.

And so they had that in common.

But Morley was on trial now, and who knew when they might decide upon his guilt with the evidence they had at hand, and how sentencing might actually take place? It might be all for naught if they hung the man before the information Geoffrey had to sell reached the public.

But thinking of Morley, Geoffrey suddenly had a brilliant inspiration. And it would deprive this smug man of his story.

“Thank you, Mr. Barnes, but I won’t be needing you anymore.”

Mr. Barnes merely shrugged.

Rhys and Anna now sat in her tiny villa at a rough wood table. He’d poured a drink of cool water for her; he’d poured water for himself. She’d laid a plate of bread and soft cheese on the table before him. Rhys sipped his water while Anna arranged her cut roses in a vase, a simple one of etched glass. The vivid blooms lit the room almost as surely as lamps.

It was tiny but comfortable, her home. There was a small kitchen, and a stove that burned wood both for heat and for cooking. A sitting room with a settee the color of cognac and two wooden chairs, as though every now and then she’d received company. Nothing like she’d been accustomed to, he was certain, when she was under the protection of a wealthy man like Richard Lockwood. But from what he’d learned about Anna Holt, she was resilient.

He told Anna, as simply as he could, how he’d found her: about Santoro, and the windows in the church. He told Anna that Kit Whitelaw had more or less managed to prove her innocence, and that Mr. Morley was on trial in England, and was expected to be convicted of the crime of treason at the very least.

But then they sat in silence. The history, the questions, the missing years, lay in a great tangle between them. Neither of them seemed to know where to begin tugging in order to unravel the story. And so haltingly, he told her simple things, the outline of the things that she needed to know: the girls—Susannah, Sylvie, and Sabrina—were alive, and well, and beautiful, and married. And happy.

Well, except for one of them.

“Miss Holt—”

“Anna. Or Mother if you prefer.” Her eyes sparked up at him, and in that moment he thought it was both a shame and a relief for the men of the world that there weren’t more Holt women in it, for men didn’t stand a prayer against any of them.

He smiled a little. “Anna…Sabrina was raised by a vicar. I married her this year. And now she won’t speak to me.”

Her eyes rose up to his in question. “You came to find me to help resolve a quarrel with my daughter?” She quirked her brows.

“I came to find you, Anna, because I’m in part the reason you’re here at all.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

R
HYS TOLD HIS tale without interruption, without embellishment, but with fact and feeling, beginning with his father’s death and concluding with Geoffrey’s threat to expose the secret to all of England, and it took surprisingly little time given how profoundly the story had colored his entire life. He made himself look at Anna the entire time, watching her eyes. So like his wife’s eyes in shape. But she gave him nearly nothing. He once saw a tightening about her jaw; he once heard her draw in a deep breath, bracing herself against some emotion—anger or anguish, perhaps. He, who was so good at assessing everyone, simply couldn’t tell.

In the wake of the story, the silence in Anna Holt’s little villa was dense.

Anna studied him, her expression unreadable, her eyes as unblinking as Sabrina’s could be.

Bravely, he met her gaze. Allowed her to arrive on her own at any conclusions she saw fit. It was one of the harder things he’d ever had to do.

“Did you come here for absolution?” Anna finally asked. Her voice was a little distant. Reflective. She sounded genuinely curious.

“No. I came here to take you back to Sabrina.” Unequivocally said. “And I thought you should know what sort of man intended to take you back to your daughter.”

She looked at him a moment, eyes widening.

And then, to his amazement, she smiled, as though something he’d said pleased her.

She leaned forward, absently touched one of the roses, fingered the petals very gently. She seemed to be deciding what to say.

She took a breath before she spoke. “I’ve my own measure of guilt to bear, Lord Rawden. I wrote letters to James Makepeace years ago inquiring about the welfare of my girls, but I knew it was a selfish thing to do. I knew doing so endangered James and the girls and myself, but there were days I would have happily died for word of them. But I never risked a return to England. I always wondered whether I ought to have tried harder, you see…but I was afraid, and I didn’t know what else to do. And so the years passed. I did manage to read London papers once or twice, but I didn’t actively seek them. I didn’t want to call attention to myself. I did sense that the search for me seemed to have subsided. But still I feared. And when I never heard from James, I feared the worst.”

She paused for a moment.

“What I’m trying to say, Lord Rawden…we all make the decisions we feel we need to make at the time. You didn’t kill Richard. In many ways, you were just as much a victim of Thaddeus Morley as Richard or I.”

Rhys was stunned. He turned his head away from her briefly to disguise it.

But perhaps he should not have been surprised. The same sort of wisdom and generosity of spirit lived in her daughter. And it wasn’t precisely absolution, but it was better. Anna Holt, of all people, understood why he’d done what he’d done.

“Do you love my daughter, Lord Rawden?”

He paused. “Perhaps.” When he said the words aloud for the very first time in his life, he wanted to say them to Sabrina alone.

She studied him a moment longer, and then a faint smile appeared on her lips. Again, something about him seemed to satisfy her.

“Well, I find recrimination dull, on the whole, don’t you? And now, Lord Rawden, why don’t you take me home.”

Morley squinted in the light that came through narrow slits.

The king had indeed seized his properties. Mr. Duckworth was informative that way, bringing him little bits of news. But Morley, little did anyone else in the government know, with his instinct for self-preservation, had squirreled evidence of his activities in places the authorities would never find. He might have hung twice over, if they’d found it.

“I’ve had a fascinating correspondence with a Mr. Geoffrey Gillray, Mr. Morley. He’s the cousin of the Earl of Rawden.”

The name made Mr. Morley turn to look at Mr. Duckworth for a long moment.

“Is there something we should discuss before the trial? Your day of sentencing approaches, as you know.”

“Does it really?” Morley said lightly. “How time flies.”

“If there’s something you’d like to share with me, this would be an excellent time to do it.”

Morley had indeed reviewed his rolls of associates. He did indeed know of one particular earl he could easily hand over to His Majesty. But he very much wanted to hear what Mr. Duckworth had to say first.

The correspondence from Geoffrey Gillray was interesting. Morley had met the lad once years ago. Handsome, dissolute, weak but not in an interesting or particularly useful way. Not worthy of his interest, really…until now.

“You may find it interesting that the Earl of Rawden is married to a woman who is rumored to be Anna Holt’s daughter. Miss Sabrina Fairleigh.” Duckworth sounded mildly bemused by this. He’d encountered stranger coincidences in his profession.

Morley went still. And then a peculiar little smile touched his mouth and quivered there.

What odd, exquisite symmetry there was in the universe, he thought. How had the Earl of Rawden responded when he’d learned his wife was likely Anna Holt’s daughter? How on earth had the marriage come about?

Morley believed in symmetry, but not coincidence. He was a strategic sort, and planned his moves accordingly, but he recognized and enjoyed the poetry of proper conclusions, too.

“Do you believe in my innocence, Mr. Duckworth, or do you merely have a professional interest in the outcome?”

“Does it matter, Mr. Morley?”

Morley smiled. Once upon a time, he and Mr. Duckworth might have done business together successfully, he suspected.

“Does Mr. Gillray hope to benefit monetarily from his correspondence with you, Mr. Duckworth?”

Mr. Duckworth said nothing. Which was an answer in and of itself.

The poetry of proper conclusions.
And as Morley continued to contemplate this concept, he knew precisely what his next move would be.

“I prefer to do this with a bit of flair, if you don’t mind,” Morley said almost briskly. “Please inform interested parties, including Mr. Geoffrey Gillray, that I shall make an announcement on Tuesday before sentencing.”

As it turned out, Mr. Duckworth, who was not at all averse to publicity as it no doubt would mean more business for him, was amenable.

And when word got out, Westminster chambers would be overflowing with the curious.

“I trust you’ll be able to support with evidence whatever it is you intend to announce on Tuesday, Morley?”

“Naturally.”

“I shall tell the hangman he needn’t come in to fit your noose, then.” A dry parting remark from Mr. Duckworth.

Morley simply turned toward the arrow slits and watched the sunlight again, a ghost of a smile at his lips.

Tom handed the scandal sheet to Kit. “Read here.”

“Rumor has it that a certain earl has fled the country to avoid being implicated in one of the greatest scandals in English political history. All will be revealed on Tuesday in Westminster chambers.”

“Where did you get this, Shaughnessy? You don’t normally read this sort of nonsense.”

“All manner of things are left lying about The Family Emporium. But since I’m purportedly related to Rawden through Sylvie, someone saw fit to put it right in my hand. We’ll attend the sentencing tomorrow of course?”

“Of course.” Kit wanted to see the judge don a black cloth for Morley. He’d never take pleasure in the death of another man; he would, however, derive a certain amount of grim satisfaction in justice being done, and justice was typically meted out by rope or deportation. No one convicted of treason would ever breathe free air again, unless the circumstances were extraordinary. It was simply the law, and in his own fashion, he had served the law for more than a decade. But now . . .