Henry slowly released his tight grip on his father’s leg and looked at the food on the table. “Scones and clotted cream. May I have one?”
Pleased with the diversion, for the man’s heartfelt gratitude, the tears in his eyes, made her a little uncomfortable, Olympia smiled at the boy. Henry had his father now and, in his child’s mind, all would be right again. There would be wounds that needed healing but she could see the love between the two and knew that would be what would slowly ease the child’s lingering fear and hurt.
“Only if your Papa says you may,” she said.
It did not surprise her when, after one pleading look from the boy, the marquis nodded. As Henry clambered up on the chair next to her and helped himself to a scone and a lot of the clotted cream, the marquis retook his seat. She made sure the marquis had a fresh cup of coffee and waited for what he would say. It was easy to see by the way his expression grew serious and a little stern, that the man wanted more information. Olympia glanced at Brant as he sat down and he nodded, silently agreeing that there should be no secrets kept even though it would mean revealing his mother’s part in it all.
“Who was the woman who planned to hold him for a reward?” he asked.
“My mother,” said Brant and shrugged when the marquis stared at him in surprise. “She likes money and has no qualms about how she obtains it.”
“She had to know that I would have paid but also that Henry is too young to have kept silent about her part in it. Once that was known she would be destroyed in society.”
“Very true.” He nodded when the marquis frowned in thought for a moment and then paled. “I fear my mother is not well. Lady Wherlocke believes she is ill or just missing that part of one which tells you something is wrong and that you should not do it.”
“And what do you plan to do about her?”
“Destroy her.”
Although the marquis nodded in agreement, Olympia watched Brant. She could see the cold determination in him but had to wonder how this would affect him. His deadliest enemy was his own mother. Could he, when it came to it, do what needed to be done to end her threat to him and innocents like the children and young women she so blithely sold to the flesh peddlers? And if he could, how would he be once it was all over? She shook aside the thoughts, knowing there would be no answer until it was ended. All she could do was pray that he came out of it all with heart and mind not too badly scarred.
“She has been telling some rather horrific tales about you,” the marquis said to Brant. “Although I go out into society very little, even I heard the whispers. I wondered but I could not actually bring myself to believe them as it seemed too great a change in a man who had never before been the subject of such tales. She was making sure that what she said was spread far and wide.”
“I know. All doors are closed to me now. It is making it very difficult to get what is needed to end her malicious games.”
“No doors are closed to me.”
Olympia joined Brant in staring at the marquis who just smiled and then sipped his coffee, making a soft noise of appreciation for the brew Enid was so skilled with. “But, are you not in mourning?”
“I should be.” He sighed. “But, when she told me what she had done, as I said, the last vestiges of what had made me shock society by marrying her, died a swift death. The fact that she ended her own life,” he added in a soft voice, “will be enough to excuse me for not mourning her.”
“That and the fact that you are a young marquis who is now without a wife,” drawled Brant.
“True, although no matter whom I might meet, I believe I have had enough of marriage for a while. Also, it will take awhile for the news of her death to reach society as the people at Understone Hill are loyal and suicide is something so scandalous they will attempt to keep it a great secret. I am not worried that I will shock society too much if I wander through a few salons and ballrooms for a little while.”
“Thank you,” said Brant. “We need all the information we can get to bring her reign to an end.”
“Do you try to make her fall from grace as quiet a one as possible?”
“For the sake of my younger siblings, yes. They should not be punished for what she has done. But, I also know that could be impossible. It will not stop me.” He looked at where Olympia gently bathed clotted cream from Henry’s face with a napkin she had dampened in the finger bowl. “I cannot allow it to matter for she cannot keep doing the evil things she has been doing. Too many are being hurt.”
“Yes, they are.”
When the marquis and Henry were gone, Olympia moved to sit next to Brant and kissed his cheek. “It may be good to have his help.”
“It will be. The scandal about his wife will break soon no matter how loyal his people are, but I do not believe society will care much that he is not following a proper mourning period. He married so far beneath him that they did not recognize his wife anyway. I suspect many will believe the woman deserves no mourning.”