The Vaughns obviously had the same tendency toward ill-placed levity that their cousins the Wherlockes did, Brant decided. “What you are saying is that I must catch her with actual blood on her hands.”
“Perhaps not but all of this, no matter how fascinating, will not be enough. It is weakened by the fact that most of your witnesses are not of the right social class. The only one who is, is young Henry Understone and he is but five years of age. Not a good witness against a woman of your mother’s standing.”
“And ending my mother’s hold on my sister?”
“You would have to be a vicar for a few years to gain that because of your reputation. Or, your mother would have to have a quite spectacular fall from grace. I need a creditable witness. Well, perhaps need is not the correct word. It will make it easier to get what you want if we have a more creditable witness.”
“Not very hopeful.”
“No, but now that you have begun to gather such information, I may be able to use it to make the ones who gave her custody of your sister begin to change their minds. No matter how your mother has strengthened her place in society, you are still the earl and that will count for something.”
“It has not managed to open a single door for me yet.”
Andras opened his mouth to speak but frowned when there was a loud noise and shouting coming from outside the office door. He stood up and moved to open it. The moment he did so young Daniel ran inside and moved to put Brant between him and the harassed clerk who had followed him.
“That will be all, Carter,” said Andras. “The boy was expected.”
The moment Andras closed the door, Brant looked at Daniel. “Has something happened?”
“Lady O got hit in an alley. Me, Abel, and David saved her but she got a few hard hits,” Daniel answered.
“How badly is she hurt?” Brant began to don his coat and hat.
“Not too bad, but she will have a lot of bruises and they knocked her about a bit.”
“Go,” said Andras when Brant looked at him. “I will continue trying to find something we can use against her to break her power.”
Brant was hurrying out the door with Daniel at his heels a moment later. He knew the boy spoke true when he said Olympia had not been hurt badly but that did little to ease his need to see her as quickly as possible, his need to see for himself that she would be fine. By the time he reached the Warren he had regained most of the calm Daniel’s message had stolen from him. Then he walked into Olympia’s bedchamber and saw her.
She was asleep and Enid was just changing the cold pack upon Olympia’s face, revealing the deep bruising on the side of her face. Brant stepped closer to the bed to look at her and softly demanded Daniel tell him what had happened. When the boy repeated what one of the men had said, anger quickly became a hot flood in Brant’s veins.
“I will return shortly,” he said and walked out.
It was not until he had gotten to the door of the Mallam town house that he was able to grasp even the smallest shred of control over his anger. He pounded on the door and pushed past the butler when the man opened it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a footman run toward the small blue parlor his mother favored and, shoving the butler aside once again, he strode toward it.
There were several new and expensive pieces of furniture in the small parlor he noted as he strode in. Sitting on a settee covered in a rich deep blue, his mother looked at him. For one brief moment he glimpsed surprise and then a hint of fear in her expression, but she quickly regained her control.
“You have been banished from this house,” she said.
“’Tis my house, Mother. I but allowed you to bar me from it but that is not what I have come here to speak about. I will let my lawyers sort out such matters.”
“Say what you will and then leave.”
There was indeed a coldness in her voice, he thought. It went deep into the heart of her, although he had to wonder if she even had a heart. The cold had always been there, he realized. She had given none of her children any affection. Over the years that cold in her had grown worse, burrowed itself deeper into her heart, but it had undoubtedly been with her from the day she was born. Olympia was right. There was something missing in Letitia Mallam.
“You had Lady Wherlocke attacked today,” he said bluntly and saw only the faintest of reactions to his bold accusation, the merest flicker of an eyelid.