The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter TWENTY-THREE


Nick’s imagination had made the dowager marchioness into something of a dragon. She had raised one of the least pleasant men Nick had ever known — Charles’s upbringing had to count for something. And the Claibornes’ longstanding refusal to acknowledge Nick’s family had continued even after all the other Claiborne men were dead, which meant the marchioness was just as stiff about class and blood as all the rest.

But when Nick and Ellie walked into the dower house, the elderly woman they found in the overheated, overstuffed drawing room matched her surroundings, not her station. She was so wrapped in shawls and scarves and lap blankets that her dress — black bombazine dripping with more jet beads than were strictly approved on a day gown — was nearly rendered an undergarment. She wore a ring on every finger and great drop earrings that emerged from foggy wisps of hair to bracket the pinched hollows of her cheeks.

“Lord Folkestone,” she said faintly, sniffing as she extended a hand to him. “Welcome to my humble home.”

She sniffed again as she said this. Nick didn’t know whether she was more upset that he had her dead son’s title or that she had been relegated to the dower house. Regardless, he bowed over her hand as though he were pleased to do so. “Lady Folkestone. Please accept my belated condolences on your loss.”

The dowager’s performance intrigued him. She let one of her shawls slip, and it fell away to reveal a braided bit of hair pinned to her dress. “My poor, dear Charles. In the prime of his youth, and yet he never experienced the marital happiness I had with his dear father. If only he had left an heir before he was taken from us.”

She hadn’t acknowledged Ellie — hadn’t even looked at her — but he knew the direction of that barb.

Ellie knew it too. Nick turned in time to see Ellie shrug. “If there had been a babe, it likely would have been a girl. You had three daughters and only one son. My odds might have been just as bad.”

The dowager glared at Ellie. “Impertinent as always, I see. If you can’t mind your tongue, you may take your leave.”

Ellie sat instead, choosing one of nearly a dozen chintz-covered armless chairs that had been squeezed into the room by some feat of organization that surpassed Nick’s abilities. She bumped one elbow on a side table and the other on a pedestal displaying a mismatched assortment of knick-knacks. But when she spoke, her voice was kinder than before. “Shall we declare a truce, Lady Folkestone? It has been a decade — surely we can be in the same room without incident.”

“With your reputation?” Lady Folkestone snorted, but her voice warmed to what seemed to be a familiar theme. “My only comfort is that Annabel and Clarabel found husbands that season and that Charles did not live to see the shame you brought to his name. My poor Christabel, though…no one will have her now.”

Nick cleared his throat. The women, upon resumption of hostilities that had simmered for years, had promptly forgotten him, but he tried to bring them back to the present. “We did not come to distress you with talk of Charles, Lady Folkestone.”

She squinted up at him, suddenly suspicious. “If you mean to turn Elinor out of the main house, she is not welcome here. My poor Christabel and I can hardly fit ourselves.”

“I shan’t come here,” Ellie vowed. “The light is too atrocious. Of course, more people and fewer chairs might be a welcome change.”

Nick saw the dowager take a breath. He rushed to fill the pause before she did. “I will not ask anyone to move. But I must ask you a delicate question.”

“Is it Christabel you’re after?” She eyed him appraisingly, then rang the very loud, very shrill bell that sat at her elbow. “Can’t say I think much of the match given your antecedents. But having the title back in the family is a benefit.”

Nick tried to interrupt as soon as she said the word “match,” but the dowager was nearly uninterruptible. “I am not here for Christabel,” Nick said forcefully. “I must ask you a question of a different nature.”

Her forehead wrinkled in confusion under her equally-confused monstrosity of a cap. “What can you possibly want from me, if you won’t have your cousin? You already have everything of value.”

“It has nothing to do with money,” Nick said.

Ellie coughed. “Everything has something to do with money, as much as we all like to pretend otherwise.”

He shot her a scowl, but she smiled innocently at him. He turned back to the dowager. “Lady Folkestone, have you observed or hosted anyone new to the neighborhood in recent months?”

The dowager looked like she wanted to glower, if glowering were possible when one looked so frail. “Where do you propose I might have met anyone beyond my family? The local gentry are not suitable for Christabel to associate with, not while they still accept Elinor. And since Elinor barred me from the London townhouse and my other daughters are too busy to host me, I’ve no access to better society.”

A woman strode into the room, preempting whatever Ellie might have said in response. “You rang, Mother?”

“Christabel,” Lady Folkestone exclaimed. “I wanted to make you known to your cousin, the man who now holds the Folkestone title. He is just arrived from India.”

“So I see,” Christabel said neutrally. Her voice was forthright, almost husky — nothing like her mother’s.

“Lord Folkestone, may I present my youngest daughter, Lady Christabel? She usually does not receive callers of Elinor’s ilk, but in the interest of familial harmony I suppose I shall allow it.”

Christabel curtsied to both Nick and Ellie. “Please forgive my mother. Too many years of us shut up here like a pair of pecking hens has turned her tongue to vinegar.”

Lady Folkestone gasped, clutching the braided hair brooch at her breast. “Christabel! Have you learned nothing of manners from me?”

“Not everything you would teach me, I’ll admit. But I trust our company will take pity on me, not hold me in judgment for it.”

The girl — more a woman at twenty-five, but still fresh-faced and wearing an old lavender pinafore that would have been appropriate for someone years younger — smiled at Ellie. It was gone just as quickly, leaving her face as it had been when she had first walked in — a direct gaze, a sharp nose, and a chin that was too stubborn for prettiness.

But if she had spent the past ten years with only her mother for company, Nick found it amazing she still looked like a handsome girl rather than a raving lunatic. He bowed to her, kissed her hand, and noticed the strong odor of herbs where other ladies might have smelled of eau de toilette. “Lady Christabel, I find your manners exquisite,” he said.

She grinned again, but he didn’t know whether her pleasure came from his comment or her mother’s scandalized gasp. “You are too kind, cousin,” Christabel said. “Now, what has brought you to our sitting room? No one has bearded the lionesses here in an age.”

“Christabel, if you cannot mind your tongue, you must return to the nursery at once,” her mother said sharply.

Christabel sighed. It wasn’t an exasperated sigh, though. There was too much pity in her eyes for exasperation. “Never mind, Mama,” she said, taking a seat next to her mother and adjusting the blankets around the older woman’s shoulders. “Let’s hear what our visitors have to say, shall we?”

A cloud passed over Lady Folkestone’s face, and her mouth crumpled in on itself. She blinked, twice, and when she refocused on Nick, she smiled. “Do you have any news from London, sir? Charles is so good about sharing the latest gossip, but with the snows his letters haven’t reached us.”

Christabel patted her mother’s hand, shaking her head at Nick and Ellie as she said, “They can’t have come from London recently, Mama, not with the roads the way they are.”

Nick looked at Ellie. She was staring very hard at Lady Folkestone, as though trying to read the story of the intervening years in the lines on her face. They had been enemies for so long — how would Ellie react if her enemy was no longer the woman she had once been?

Nick turned back to Lady Folkestone and Christabel. “You are correct. I have been in the neighborhood for some days. Have you noticed any other newcomers to the area?”

The dowager looked to Christabel, who took the reins. “We do not entertain very often beyond the occasional relative, as I’m sure you understand,” Christabel said. “I only leave the house to work in my gardens or run to the village. Mother frets if I leave for too long.”

“As I should. You are too young to be calling unescorted,” Lady Folkestone interjected.

Christabel ignored her. “Why are you asking about newcomers?”

“This may be a better conversation for later,” Nick warned. “We wouldn’t want to tire your mother.”

She shook off the warning. “Mama likely won’t bother herself over it above an hour. Please, do continue.”

Nick finally sat down, as near to directly across from Christabel as he could be in the crush of furnishings. “We have reason to believe someone poses a threat to the neighborhood.”

“What makes you believe that?”

Nick laid out the facts — the highwaymen’s attack, the burned shed, and the attempts on his life that he had faced in India. “We thought you should be aware of the danger, living on the estate as you are.”

Christabel frowned. “I’ve heard nothing of this from the servants. Surely a highwayman in the area would merit an investigation?”

“We were…delayed in reporting it to the magistrate. Snows, you know.”

Christabel turned that statement over, and she didn’t seem to like the conclusion she had reached. “Did you suspect my mother of being behind this?”

The question surprised him. “Of course not, my lady. This does not have a woman’s touch.”

Christabel leveled her gaze upon him. “A woman could do this, Lord Folkestone. We are not as weak as you men would rather believe.”

“Is that a confession?” he asked.

“No. I would not have hired highwaymen — poison is far more reliable than hired men.”

This roused Lady Folkestone, who had been fiddling with the fringe of one of her shawls. “Christabel, enough.” Her voice was sharp again, more lucid, and the distaste was back in her eyes as she swiveled her gaze between Nick and Ellie. “Do you have any other news to share that won’t upset my poor daughter?”

“I am not upset, Mama,” she said soothingly. Then she turned her gaze back to Nick — and this time, he saw a spark of humor there. “I am sure I am quite far down on the list of people who might have you murdered, my lord. An absentee landlord is better than a bad one.”

“But then Marcus might inherit. If you approve of anything that has been done the last decade, you have him to thank for it.”

“Not just him, I think.” She shifted her attention to Ellie. “The housekeeper gave me a tour last summer — it was odd to see everything so changed from when I was a girl there, but you have a lovely touch, my lady.”

“You are welcome to call anytime, Lady Christabel,” Ellie said. Her speed was impulsive — not the deliberate, distancing tones he heard her use with most of her guests. “Perhaps dinner tomorrow night? Or at least the fireworks display in the village afterward? We are having a house party at Folkestone, and you might like to become acquainted with my sisters. I regret not having thought to invite you before, but in my mind you are still sixteen and not allowed to call on me.”

Some stark yearning flooded Christabel’s face, almost vicious in how swiftly it rose and how irrevocably reality took its place. She had no chance to respond before Lady Folkestone interrupted. “Christabel isn’t out yet,” she said, as firmly as her mind was lodged in another time. “And if she was, you’re no fit company for a debutante, Elinor.”

Ellie closed her eyes. “I would have been a good daughter to you, Lady Folkestone. And a good wife to your son. But it wasn’t meant to be.”

“My son never should have married you,” Lady Folkestone spat out. Nick couldn’t determine whether her words were a memory or a current opinion, but either way, her voice was pure venom. “If you were a good wife, he wouldn’t have left your bed so soon. But you thought too highly of yourself to try to please him, didn’t you? You’re the reason he was cavorting with that…that woman when he died, instead of giving you an heir.”

Ellie turned pale, suddenly, as though she might be sick. “You can blame me for anything you wish. But Charles’s death was not my fault.”

Christabel patted her mother’s hand, but her focus was on Ellie. “I don’t think Mama believes that it was, not truly. But perhaps it would be best if you left now. She’s tired, and her…condition worsens when she is distressed. And really, there is nothing here that would help you with your search. I know everyone in the house at present, and none of them are murderers.”

Nick stood up. But when he offered his arm to Ellie, she slid away from him. Instead, she pulled a slip of paper out of her reticule.

It was a copy of the drawing she had made of the highwayman. She handed it to Christabel. “Take this, if you please. It shows the tattoos we found on the highwayman’s body. I know you wouldn’t have seen his arms even if he was nearby, but perhaps your servants may have.”

Christabel didn’t even glance at it as she set it aside. “If I hear anything, I will tell you. Thank you for calling, though. It was good to see you again after all these years. And to meet you at last, my lord.”

Ellie nodded back. “If you should change your mind about joining us, you are most welcome tomorrow night. No need to decide now — I will send a carriage at six, and you may take it or not as it suits you.”

Christabel’s face was expressionless. Her face was too strong to be expressionless — with no smile or frown, and no emotion in her eyes, she looked more like an ancient statue than a modern woman. But Nick didn’t think he imagined the longing in her voice. “Perhaps. I thank you for the invitation regardless.”

Ellie kissed her cheek and whispered something Nick couldn’t hear. Christabel’s face underwent the same transformation as before, as hope and excitement succumbed to the onslaught of reality. Then Ellie said goodbye to Lady Folkestone in a neutral voice that expected no answer.

She didn’t receive an answer, either. Lady Folkestone fiddled with a shawl and didn’t look up. So Nick took Ellie’s arm and pulled her out of the room, not letting her dwell in the past.

But if they didn’t dwell in the past, they would have to dwell in the present. And the present was nothing that Nick’s revenge had prepared him for.