Regardless of the fact that it was an enormous sum of money, the marquess barely blinked. “And where do you suppose that leaves Margery? Your foster sister, promised to my heir on her father’s deathbed?”
“Free to marry Bennett Armstrong.” Rand sipped smugly.
The man’s face turned red as his fork clattered to his plate. “Bennett Armstrong?” he bellowed. “I’ve forbidden that name to be mentioned in this house!”
Seeing Lily shudder beside him, Rand reached to squeeze her hand.
It seemed Margery, however, was used to this sort of tirade. “Uncle William—”
“Don’t ‘Uncle William’ me, young lady. I’ve raised you like my own daughter, and I would think you’d have accepted by now that no amount of pleading on your part will make me consider marrying you to a murderer.”
Rand’s jaw dropped open. “Murderer?”
Margery turned apologetic eyes on him. “I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Bennett Armstrong is a murderer?”
“No!” Margery said at the same time the marquess snapped, “Yes!”
When Lily gasped, Rand tightened his hold on her hand. But his gaze was fixed on the marquess.
“He murdered my son and heir,” the man said. “And I intend to see him hang.”
FORTY-FIVE
“BENNETT IS NOT a murderer!” Margery burst out. “He did it in self-defense!” She turned to Rand, her eyes frantic. “Alban came after him in the first place.”
But all Rand could absorb at the moment was that the man Margery wanted to marry had killed his brother. The hows and whys were beyond him. And where does that leave Margery? the marquess had asked. Where, indeed? Even Rand could understand his father’s unwillingness to wed his ward to the man at whose hands his own son had died.
Lily’s money wasn’t going to solve all their problems, after all.
“My Alban,” the marquess said, glaring at Margery, “was not a man capable of killing. Your lover murdered my son in cold blood. Of course he would claim otherwise, and I’ve no doubt that a besotted, addlebrained female like you would believe him.”
“Alban would kill,” she shot back. “I saw him kill, time and time again. A rabbit, a lamb. My very own cat when she pounced on him as he was forcing me to kiss him.”
Lily hid her face in her hands, and Rand reached to rub her back.
“It’s Bennett who’s incapable of killing without just provocation,” Margery added.
“And he doubtless considered a man determined to wed his lover as ‘just provocation.’” The marquess pointed his knife at her, emphasizing each syllable. “Unfortunately, with only his word against a dead man’s, I don’t have enough evidence for an arrest. Yet. But I intend to get it.”
“He’s offered a reward for information,” Margery told Rand in a voice made high by rising panic. “A hundred pounds.”
Lily looked up at that. “A hundred pounds?”
“A hundred pounds,” Margery repeated, her eyes filling with tears. “Bennett’s as good as dead.”
Rand couldn’t find it in himself to disagree with her. To do so would be a lie. A footman wouldn’t earn a hundred pounds in ten years, let alone a groom or coachman or maid. For that kind of money, someone would come forward with damning evidence, honestly acquired or not.
The marquess wielded a lot of power in this small piece of England, and if he meant to see Armstrong hang, Rand had no doubt he would accomplish it.
Plainly seeing the truth in Rand’s eyes, Margery let out a pathetic moan and rose from her chair, rushing to kneel at the marquess’s knees. Her black gown pooled around her. “I beg you, Uncle William, don’t do this. I’ll have no will to go on should Bennett die. Let him live long enough for me to prove his innocence.”
“Impossible,” the man snapped, “given that he’s guilty.”
She gazed up at him, the tears overflowing, making tracks down her pale cheeks. “Then you’ll be killing me along with him.”
Just then, she looked entirely too capable of doing herself in, and Rand watched, amazed, as the marquess’s features softened with compassion.
But it wasn’t long before they hardened again. “He’s not dead yet, girl, but I mean to see him pay for murdering my son. In the meantime, should the two of you think to plan anything, I’ll be sending a contingent of men to keep the whoreson under house arrest.”
A bell sat by his elbow, and now he raised it and jingled it fiercely, as though venting his frustration on the sterling silver might help him obtain vengeance.
“Jerome!” he called, and the man rushed in.
In moments, it was done. A dozen men were on their way to surround Bennett Armstrong’s home.
An hour later, Rand, Lily, and Margery were on their way there, too.
FORTY-SIX
LORD BENNETT Armstrong’s house was smaller than Hawkridge Hall and Trentingham Manor, and from the mishmash of styles and the way the house sprawled this way and that, Lily surmised it was older than Hawkridge and Trentingham as well. Sections looked medieval, other parts Tudor, still other portions modern. But regardless of all that, it was obviously the home of a wealthy man.
Each of the three doors had one of Hawkridge’s men assigned to guard it, and two more men were posted on every side of the house—in case Lord Armstrong tried to lower himself from a window.
At first, the guard at the front door had no intention of allowing their party to enter. But Rand remembered the man, and soon he was pumping his hand and asking after his wife and children. Rand swore on his mother’s grave that he wasn’t there to break Lord Armstrong out, and—since the man had apparently adored Rand’s mother—in no time at all, they were ushered into the
