Unmasking Deception, page 24
“You were all so busy going after poor old Minton that you forgot about me,” Jarvey said conversationally. “I always watch his back. And you lot trailing after him was just a tad suspicious.”
“They’re saying I killed Crawley!” Minton cried out. “You know I didn’t!”
“Au contraire, my dear chap, au contraire,” Jarvey said, almost jovially. “I might have told you to do it, but you did it. Unlike his lordship, who merely looked at me as if I had horns when I suggested it.”
“Did I?” Dominic said savagely. “Clearly, I should have killed you.”
“Why the ill-nature? Your family got you off. I knew they would.”
“His family,” Rampton said ruefully, “would have got him transported if he hadn’t legged it from Newgate.”
Dominic’s gaze flickered not to him but beyond Viola and her captor to the doorway. “So, what did you do? Kill him in his own house, then dump the body and some false evidence at my door?”
“More or less,” Jarvey said. “And now, it is time for Minton and me to depart for foreign climes. If you wish to see the little dove again, you should stay exactly where you are.”
“If you want to live,” Dominic countered, taking a step closer, “you had better release her within the next two seconds.” Again, his gaze flickered to the doorway.
Jarvey laughed, the sound vibrating through her unpleasantly. “I’m too old a hand to fall for that schoolboy trick, my lord. I expected better of you.”
“What, like this?” Dominic asked, just as something swiped through the air with enough force to stir Viola’s skirts and vibrate through her body. As if something had been brought up hard between her captor’s legs. At any rate, she didn’t wait to ask, merely threw up her arms at the same time as his body tried to bend double. Her elbow connected hard with something both fleshy and bony—the side of his face?—and she spun out of his reach.
Lord Richard Gorse pointed his useful walking stick at the floor and leaned on it.
Barnaby Smith, meanwhile, had released Minton to deal with the more dangerous enemy, and Minton barreled clumsily across the room to his friend, screaming, “Run! Run!”—just before Dominic back-heeled him in the knee, and he went down like potatoes.
In almost the same fluid movement, Dominic lunged at Jarvey and hit him hard in the face. A long, wicked stiletto fell to the floor. Viola darted in and seized it while Dominic all but barged past her.
“No one touches that little dove!” he raged. “No one!” He followed Jarvey menacingly, one fist already raised while his other hand reached down to haul the man up—presumably to make him easier to hit.
Viola caught his arm. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t.”
His rage-filled eyes swung on her, and for the first time ever, she was truly frightened of him. But his breath caught on a trembling gasp. He flung one arm around her and swallowed hard.
“Richard, my thanks,” he said in a voice that shook only slightly. He glanced around the others. “My thanks to all of you. Might I trouble some of you further to help Mr. Smith with this pair? Viola and I are going to…to…listen to music.”
“The harpist is very good,” Richard said, standing aside to make way.
Still holding Dominic’s arm, Viola walked with him into the sunshine. It felt gloriously like freedom.
Epilogue
Three months later…
Viola—now Lady Dominic Gorse, though it was still strange to think herself as such—hummed to herself as she gazed out of her drawing room window. They were expecting a visit from her family, and she was eager to show them her new home.
This was Dominic’s own house on his small estate. It turned out that poverty was relative, and “having nothing” meant different things to different people. No doubt if one was brought up on the Wennings’ massive estates or the Sedgemoors’, this pleasant house with a mere six bedchambers and modest acres of land, was nothing.
To Viola, it was a delight. She and Dominic had been married in London by special license and spent a blissful month in Scotland, among the achingly beautiful hills and lochs of the west Highlands. Fresh air, long walks in the rain, fun, and passion had sunk her ever deeper in love with her husband. Every day with Dominic was a revelation—of the character beneath his surface careless charm, of the intelligence behind his humor, and the compassion beneath his amiability.
And in those weeks, seeing herself through her husband’s eyes. Viola had felt herself relax and open up. “Like a flower,” Dominic said, “willing at last to be adored.”
She knew she blossomed, and by the time they returned south to take possession of their new home, she was ready for all challenges.
There were not many, in truth, except a few domestic changes. She had been used to managing her mother’s household for years, and this was little different. The servants had grown somewhat lax, perhaps, with their lord seldom in residence, but they were willing to take orders and eager to please.
She no longer worried about her family’s penury or her responsibility for it.
“They will never be destitute,” Dominic had told her flatly. He had spent long hours before the wedding, talking to Lord Wenning’s man of business about marriage settlements, so he now knew the true lay of the land. “Wenning has a tidy sum set aside for all of you in perpetuity, whether or not any of you marry. And my father has been induced to contribute. Your mother might not like being dependent, but there is no reason for any of you to marry money just to save the family.”
“She married beneath her for love,” Viola had admitted.
“So did you,” Dominic had interjected, making her smile.
“No, I did not.”
Memory of the breathtaking interlude that had followed drove her from the window and the drawing room, in search of Dominic.
She found him in the cozy library, where a fire had been lit against the autumnal chill of the late afternoon. Sprawled in a chair, he had his feet up on his desk, smiling over the letter in his hand, a gleam of new excitement in his expressive eyes.
Glancing up, he jerked his feet off the desk and sprang up to meet her. Dragging her into his arms, the letter crushed against her back, he waltzed her around the library. “This is from Chris Halland, the radical member of parliament. How would you feel about going into politics?”
She had always known of his determination to have the appalling conditions of prisons reformed. His spell in Newgate had opened his eyes to many things. Poverty and injustice that had always been on the periphery of his vision had been brought into sharp relief. On his return from Scotland, he had written a blistering, very personal article on prison conditions and how to better them, which had caused quite a stir, for he had published it under his own name, much to the annoyance of his family. This had led to his corresponding with a Quaker lady called Elizabeth Fry, who was working for many of the same things and brought him to the notice of reforming politicians, including Christopher Halland, whom he already knew slightly.
“I would feel proud,” Viola said at once. “If that is the route your heart wishes to follow.”
He bent and kissed her without pausing the exuberant dance. “My heart and my head. My family name might as well be useful for something. Halland tells me there will be a by-election in the spring that I have a good chance of winning with the party’s support… If you like the idea. If you don’t, I’ll find another way.”
She tried to be practical. “Can we afford a house in London as well as this place?”
“Well, my father already offered us a townhouse. It’s not in a terribly fashionable area and seems to have come into the family by convoluted means many years ago. But if you are willing to live there half the year, it will cost us nothing but upkeep.”
“Then I think you should try for election. And I shall help in any way I can.”
This kiss was much more enthusiastic and did involve the waltz slowing almost to a standstill. A brief knock on the door caused Dominic to release her lips though not her person.
Napper walked into the room. He was an erratic servant. In fact, Dominic called him his assistant. The mysterious Mr. Ludovic Dunne, the solicitor who had been largely responsible for Dominic’s release, had also arranged for all charges against Napper to be dropped. In the process, Napper had done some work for Mr. Dunne while Dominic and Viola had been in Scotland. Even now, he tended to disappear without warning, and the household wasn’t quite sure where he stood in the hierarchy. For the moment, they allowed him respect and even liking. Up to a point.
“Doves flying up the drive,” he reported. “And that Pup is now the size of a pony.”
Viola laughed. “He’ll cause havoc, too.” She slid from Dominic’s embrace but retained his hand. “Shall we go and welcome our guests, my lord?”
“Yes, my lady, we shall.”
About Mary Lancaster
Mary Lancaster lives in Scotland with her husband, three mostly grown-up kids and a small, crazy dog.
Her first literary love was historical fiction, a genre which she relishes mixing up with romance and adventure in her own writing. Her most recent books are light, fun Regency romances written for Dragonblade Publishing: The Imperial Season series set at the Congress of Vienna; and the popular Blackhaven Brides series, which is set in a fashionable English spa town frequented by the great and the bad of Regency society.
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Lancaster, Mary, Unmasking Deception
