“Yes,” Lord Landry said, “I really was.”
Seeing the look of confusion on Winsome’s face, Lady Edith said, “Lord Landry consumed an ill-advised portion of greasy potatoes that came back to haunt him, in private, if you get my meaning.”
Winsome nodded slowly. She supposed she got Lady Edith’s meaning. Lord Landry had experienced a stomach complaint?
“As you may know, these things can run very unpleasant,” Lady Edith said.
“I was just trying to get away and blame somebody else!” Lord Landry exclaimed.
Winsome pressed her lips together. Now she did see rather more clearly. “So there was no other lord there.”
“Nobody,” Lord Landry said. “At least nobody I saw. I did think I heard a sound at the door, two times, but I never saw anybody. Oh, except for St. John. He was in the ballroom.”
Lord St. John? The lord Mr. Wicket’s letter warned about. The lord who had done some ridiculous pressing on the idea of Winsome relocating to Brazil.
Could he have done it? Could he have locked her in and then started that rumor? If he had, it would have been done to ruin her chances with Lord Manderbey. Did he imagine it would increase his own chances?
Could he really be so devious? Or perhaps it was revenge? Lord Manderbey owed him a gambling debt. But would he really go to such lengths to express his ire over not being paid?
And then, Lord Landry had heard a sound at the billiards room door twice—had it been that door being locked and unlocked, as hers had been? Had Lord Landry simply not known because he’d been…indisposed? If St. John had seen Lord Landry go into that room, which she now knew he had, then he likely also saw Winsome enter the retiring room. Perhaps he’d seen the situation and thought how he might use it to his advantage.
“St. John,” Lady Edith said. “I do not like that fellow. Smarmy, for one thing. For another, I don’t trust him and I’ve got very good instincts. I look at a person and I know what I’m looking at. He’s got to be at the bottom of it.”
“St. John, though?” Lord Landry said. “Why would he do it?”
“Perhaps he is angry that Lord Manderbey has not paid his debt to him?” Winsome said. “Perhaps he noted that Lord Manderbey…paid me certain attentions? Perhaps he wished to stir up trouble for that reason?”
“But that cannot be,” Lord Landry said. “How could Manderbey owe St. John money when it is always St. John needing moneyfromManderbey?”
Winsome wrinkled her brow. “I do not understand,” she said. “I had thought Lord Manderbey had got himself in deep with gambling and Lord St. John was one of his creditors.”
“No, no, that cannot be right,” Lord Landry said. “Manderbey is forever dunned by his relations. He jokes that they come out of the woodwork, trying to drain him dry. Now, I did think he’d informed all of them that are in the habit of gambling too much that he would no longer fund their debts. Whatever the situation, Manderbey certainly does not owethemmoney.”
Dunned by hisrelations? Not dunned by creditors? Was that why Lord Manderbey had laughed it off whenever she’d mentioned gambling? Is that why he’d never seemed embarrassed nor claimed to have any hope of the situation improving? It was never him? It was hisrelations like Lord St. John?
“So,” she said slowly, “Lord Manderbey does not have a gambling problem?”
