Remy shook his head, but not in denial. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir. But you made it dead easy to do.”
Gabriel nodded grimly. The owner of the hell, embittered over the loss of the girl, would have reported with a skeptical leer that Gabriel claimed to have found her a place in a milliner’s shop and rented her a respectable room—truth, but the sort of truth that was easily twisted. And Lord Steyne would have been only too happy to tell anyone who would listen that Gabriel had made Adele Vallon his mistress—a lie, but that mattered precious little now.
Any supposed evidence against Adele was likely fabricated too. She was merely convenient to his uncle’s purpose. Another victim of Lord Ash’s reputation.
“When we met him the other day…” Fox’s eyes narrowed. “You suspected something of this nature.”
Gabriel said nothing. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to his uncle embroidering on his misdeeds. Now, however, the man had begun to fashion them out of whole cloth, it seemed. And Gabriel rather feared he had planted the suggestion in his uncle’s mind with his mocking words: Killing a king is of a piece with my past crimes against the nobility.
“I think he must’ve done, Mr. Fox,” Remy answered on his behalf. “You sent me right out to see which way the wind blew, my lord. Remember? Didn’t take long to discover that Lord Sebastian had been making the rounds among your enemies and stirring up discontent.”
“And as you say, I made it dead easy.” Gabriel’s enemies were legion. He had bested too many men at the tables for it to be otherwise.
“You did, at that,” Remy agreed grimly. “But it took a bit more digging to find out about the girl. And then Mr. Fox said—”
His friend readily took up the story. “Dalrymple told me that if Havisham’s tale has even a grain of truth to it, you’ll likely be charged with treason.” Another man would have shied away from revealing it; Fox had been his friend too long to be anything but blunt. Still, the words brought him to his feet, and he paced as he spoke. “There’s talk of a writ of attainder.”
“Attainder?” Remy repeated uncertainly, his eyes following Fox.
Gabriel was not surprised at his servant’s lack of familiarity with the term; the charge was rare. “Corruption of blood,” he explained. “It’s a fairly obscure provision of the law used to eliminate perceived threats to the monarch. All rather neat and tidy, actually. I need not even be convicted of treason—merely condemned for it. If attainted, I would be stripped of the marquessate, left a commoner, subject to all the punishments from which the nobility are usually protected.”
Fox stopped and folded his arms across his chest. “Including execution.”
Remington paled. “What sort of monster would destroy his nephew, his own flesh and blood?”
But the answer to that question was too obvious to require an answer.
For twenty years, Sebastian Finch had been railing against a patricide that had gone unpunished. Now, he meant to give Gabriel’s peers another chance to convict. His father’s death had eventually been dismissed as an accident. But he could not count on being forgiven for his crime the second time around. Especially in these dark days. People would take a rather dim view of an English nobleman who was said to have consorted with French assassins.
“What can he hope to gain by it?” Fox demanded.
“Everything,” said Gabriel simply. “He must hope that once he has disposed of me, the king can be persuaded to allow the title to pass to another branch of the family, rather than die out entirely.”
“To him, you mean. A sort of reward for his…loyalty.”
Gabriel nodded. It had been disconcerting enough to think of Stoke falling into his cousin’s hands. But if it somehow fell into his uncle’s first…? The thought did not bear completing.
“Remy, it’ll be down to you to help the girl. There must be some way to prove she’s innocent. But my hand must not be seen to be behind any of it, or it will only go worse for everyone involved.”
One crisp nod. No hesitation. And Remy was gone.
“Surely you can muster an ally in the Lords?” Fox suggested when they were alone. He did not add, though he might fairly have done so, that the task would have been easier if Gabriel had ever taken his own seat there. “My father, perhaps?”
How like Foxy to overlook the problem posed by the Earl of Wickersham’s infrequent assumption of his own seat as his years increased and his health declined. How like Foxy to ignore his father’s patent distaste for his son’s choice of friend.
Gabriel’s gaze fell on his desk. A towering stack of books awaiting crating. Topmost was the battered guide to the peerage. “I have another candidate in mind,” he said.
“Merrick.” Fox’s gaze must have followed his own. “You cannot mean to go ahead with your scheme to wed Lady Felicity?”
If the attainder were successful, it would touch his wife and any child of his she bore. He had no business marrying now, when he might condemn an innocent woman to life as an outcast, a sort of social death.
On the other hand, Merrick’s desire to save his daughter’s pretty neck would ensure he’d do his damnedest to see that the charges against Gabriel came to naught. And perhaps, when presented with the possibility of destroying a blameless young bride rather than Gabriel alone, his peers would turn a deaf ear on Lord Sebastian Finch’s complaints.
In a long career of dastardly deeds, he had done worse than marry Felicity Trenton.
But not by much.
He had not realized he had risen to his feet until Fox faced him, toe to toe. “God forbid your uncle’s plot succeeds, and you are…” This time, he could not seem to bring
