As she walked down the path to the water meadows she reflected that she knew what her friends would be thinking. Because Laura and Alice and Lydia knew her well, they would not ascribe her damned independence, as her brother Monty had called it, to snobbery, which many people did. They knew she often chose to be alone because she had been accustomed to solitude since childhood. It had become a habit for her. She preferred it.
She skimmed a stone across the swift flowing waters of the River Tune and thought about Monty’s death. He had been the second worst brother in the world, after Tom, but she still wanted to cry for him because she had lost him; lost both the real Monty, weak and worthless, and the brother she had desperately wanted him to be.
She thought of Nat Waterhouse, too, as good a man as Monty Fortune had been a bad one. Many women would settle for what Nat was offering her. She knew that. Many would think her mad, bad and foolish to refuse him simply because the one thing that he could not offer, his love, was the one thing that she wanted most in all the world. Yet when she thought of marrying Nat and the possibility of losing him to another woman, to someone he could love, like Priscilla Willoughby, her blood ran cold. She could not bear the thought. She had seen her mother run mad because her father had withheld his love from her. Society had called Lady Scarlet a bolter, because she had run away from her marriage, disappearing in a perfumed rustle of taffeta and lace to Ireland with her horse-master. She had been condemned as a faithless wife but Lizzie knew it was not love but a lack of it that had caused her mother’s downfall. She had seen her mother, day after day, neglected and alone whilst the Earl had pursued his mistresses and his Town entertainments. Lady Scarlet had waited and waited for the Earl to love her and when he had not she had taken second best and run and been damned forever for it, lurching from affair to affair, from men to the brandy bottle, until she died.
So she, Lizzie Scarlet, would not make the mistakes her mother had made. She had sent Nat away now, before it was too late. It hurt to love him and to make herself give him up but that was nothing to how much it would pain her to lose him if they were wed. She would not make Lady Scarlet’s mistakes. Not now. Not ever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DESPITE DEXTER relieving him of any responsibilities in the investigation into Monty Fortune’s death, it was Nat who found Tom Fortune that afternoon in an advanced state of inebriation at the Half Moon Inn, some ten miles distant from Fortune’s Folly. Nat had not been able to sit idly by whilst his colleagues hunted Monty Fortune’s murderer. For Lizzie’s sake, if nothing else, he wanted to do whatever he could to help. He had seen her face, stricken and pale, when she had heard the news of Monty’s death. He knew how much she was hurting over the loss of her brother, even a brother as feckless as Monty had been. The scoundrel had not deserved a loving sister. It pained Nat that Lizzie would not turn to him in her misery and loss, but he knew that she had always been one to deal with her unhappiness in private. A girl who could also be spectacularly, publicly outrageous, Lizzie was nevertheless one of the most contained people he knew.
The landlady of Half Moon Inn, Josie Simmons, had just thrown Tom bodily into the courtyard when Nat arrived and Tom was shouting and swearing most horribly as the tapster, Lenny, poured barrels of cold water all over him in an attempt to sober him up. Nat looked down on Tom’s drunken and unkempt state and his heart sank. He would as lief leave Lizzie in Tom’s care as he would abandon her with a pack of wolves. Yet Tom was her guardian in law now-Sir Thomas Fortune, the squire of Fortune’s Folly.
“Take him away and good riddance to him,” Josie said as Nat hauled Tom to his feet and told him sharply that they wanted to question him over his brother’s death. “He’s been bragging all afternoon long about being Sir Thomas now and not a word of sympathy for his dead brother.” She rested her huge fists on her hips. “Not that Sir Montague deserves any sympathy, mind,” she added. “One’s as bad as the other, if truth be told. There’s terrible bad blood in that family. Makes me fair grateful we’re outside the parish here.”
Tom’s face had set in a mask of malevolence when he saw Nat. “Well, if it isn’t that worthy citizen the Earl of Waterhouse!” he taunted. He grabbed Nat’s lapels, almost lurching off his feet in the process, and stuck his face close to Nat’s own. His breath reeked of ale and smoke. “Don’t forget my money,” he slurred, turning Nat’s blood cold. “Did you get my letter? I’ll broadcast the truth about your sister, Waterhouse, unless you give me the twenty- five grand. I’ll go to your father. She’s a strumpet, Lady Celeste, and the world deserves to know her perversions.”
“I’ll get your money,” Nat said, through his teeth. He kept a tight grip on his temper. He had hated Tom Fortune long before the man had started to blackmail him over Celeste’s indiscretions. He hated Tom for the utter lack of care he had for Lizzie, for his dishonorable treatment of Lydia Cole and the fact that he was an all-round cad. He looked around to see if anyone had overheard Tom’s mocking words. He knew Lizzie’s brother could hardly be relied on for his discretion. If he spoke out, Celeste would be completely ruined.
“Don’t see how you’ll get my money now that Flora Minchin has thrown you over,” Tom sneered. “Keep away from Mary Wheeler. I have a fancy to wed there myself, though she is probably as frigid as a corpse. But you-” He prodded Nat’s chest, “You come up with the goods or Lady Celeste’s name will be bandied around through all the coffee shops in England. Men would pay good money to see what I saw. Perhaps they would offer her a job in a whorehouse if your father threw her out-”
Nat repressed a furious urge to hit him. He knew that Tom cared for nothing beyond money and now that he was squire of Fortune’s Folly he would be bound to extort all the taxes Sir Montague had charged and more. He would need it, Nat thought, to pay his drinking and gambling bills. And a little extra blackmail, holding the honor of the Dukes of Waterhouse in his hands, was an absolute gift to him.
“Give me one more month,” he said. He abhorred giving in to extortion, but with Celeste’s reputation at stake and no way out he knew he was trapped.
Tom laughed. “Two weeks,” he said. “I’ll give you two weeks, seeing as you are begging me. And then-” He laughed again. “I’ll go to your father and tell him all about his precious daughter and her sexual proclivities.” He put his head on one side. “That could be to your advantage, now I come to think of it. The news might kill the old man and then you’d be Duke of Waterhouse-”
Whatever else he had been about to say was lost as Nat’s fist made contact with his jaw and he fell over backward into the ordure from the stables. Josie and Lenny and half the occupants of the taproom, whom Nat was appalled to see had come out into the yard to watch the altercation, burst into a spontaneous round of applause.
“Nice one, Lord W,” Josie said. She lowered her voice. “Can’t pretend I didn’t hear about your sister, though. I’d kill him, if I was you. Never give in to blackmailers. That’s my motto. Kill ’em instead.” She slapped him on the shoulder in a blow Nat assumed was intended as encouragement and helped Lenny haul Tom back to his feet.
“You’re barred from Half Moon House,” she hissed to Tom. “I hope they convict you of your brother’s murder. I don’t care if you did it or not.”
Nat was of a similar mind himself. He was so blinded with impotent fury that it seemed the greatest pity to him in that moment that they had not been able to pin a single crime on Tom Fortune and rid the world of him, justice or no justice.
“Present yourself to the magistrate tomorrow morning or we’ll come looking for you,” he said to Tom, who now smelled of dung along with the drink and smoke. He ducked out of the way just in time as Tom tried to spit in his face.
From the Half Moon Inn Nat went to seek out Miles Vickery to report Tom’s whereabouts. As he rode he thought about what Tom had said.
Celeste had always been so gentle and frail. Nat still did not know what terrible error of judgment had put his younger sister in Tom Fortune’s power, for when he had tried to ask her about it she had broken down and he had feared for her sanity. He had known then that he had no choice other than to agree to Tom’s extortion, for it was unthinkable for the truth about Celeste to be revealed. Not only would it ruin her, but the scandal would almost certainly kill his father, who was old and infirm, and would devastate his mother. His entire family would be destroyed because of Tom Fortune’s greed. The only other alternative was to kill the man and Nat was very, very tempted. Tom Fortune was vermin, a blight on mankind. If it were not for Lizzie, Nat would have been even closer
