“Then I expect Lord Holt’s most recent letter to me will come as much of a surprise to you as it did to me,” Nathaniel said lightly.
“What are you talking about?” Lord Ashworth queried uneasily.
“After attempting to extract money from me by other means, Holt wrote this very morning, offering to withdraw the allegations inSalacious Society Stories,and any further attempt to regain custody of Mary, if I pay him a sum I believe to be greater than you were offering for her hand.”
“He was meant to write and tell you to return her home by noon tomorrow,” Lord Ashworth blurted, glancing uneasily toward Patrick as though even this oblique mention of Mary might set him off again.
“Oh, he did that too. I have the letter here. Let me read it to you.”
After producing Lord Holt’s missive from his pocket, Nathaniel opened it and read it aloud to the small audience in the hallway.
“He sent the same message to Cecily,” Patrick commented.
“That was not what we agreed on!” Lord Ashworth complained, evidently feeling very hard done by. “To the devil with that drunken, money-grubbing, double-crossing old weasel. Preston killed his own wretched brother and sister-in-law through drunkenness and money lust. I was there to see it, and now he wants to drag me into this…”
Nathaniel cast a sharp look at Patrick, silently ordering him not to interrupt.
“A man who chased his own brother down the road after drinking a whole bottle of whiskey, all for money to pay off his gambling debts. I should never have trusted such a man!”
“Quite,” Nathaniel agreed affably, putting the letter back into his pocket and hiding his surprise at the unexpected revelation about the death of Cecily’s parents. “Let this be a lesson to you. Still, you might yet have your revenge on Lord Holt, if nothing else. Alternatively, I could have you both charged as blackmailers and give the scandal sheets something to really talk about.”
“You wouldn’t!” Lord Ashworth gasped. “Your own name would be dragged through the mud with ours.”
Nathaniel laughed aloud, although his smile did not reach his blazing blue eyes. “I do not care, Lord Ashworth. The list of what I care about is very, very short indeed. If you knew that one thing about me before you started down this foolish road, you might have saved yourself a great deal of bother and humiliation.”
“What do you want?” Lord Ashworth asked in a sulky voice, after a moment.
“Two letters. The first one would be a signed statement about everything Lord Holt promised you and all your conversations and schemes against the Duchess of Greyhaven and Miss Mary Holt. Remember, it may exonerate you of blackmail.”
“And the second?”
“An accurate account of what occurred on the day the former Baron and Baroness Holt died.”
“It was a long time ago,” Lord Ashworth muttered.
But Nathaniel was not so easily deterred.
“Then it’s lucky that your memory is good, Lord Ashworth, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly, but with an edge to his voice. “You can protect yourself or protect Lord Holt. You can’t do both.”
“You shall have your statements, damn you, Greyhaven,” Lord Ashworth grumbled, rising from his chair. “Take them and do what you will with Lord Holt. He will not be welcome in my house again.”
CHAPTER 30
“Papa, Papa, you must tell Cecily not to go!” Lilian barreled down the stairs and threw herself at Nathaniel the moment he walked in through the front door. “Don’t let her go!”
The child must have been watching for them from an upstairs window, but what did she mean?
Patrick had walked off already, muttering that he had to find Mary.
“Tell who not to go, Lilian?” Nathaniel asked, crouching down to his daughter’s eye level.
“Cecily! I heard her talking to Mary about leaving and going to Rome and America and to faraway places, but she can’t. I don’t want her to leave me. She will leave just like Mama, and she will never come back…”
As she gabbled, her angry little voice descended into a wail and then into sobs.
“I don’t want Cecily to go, Papa. Is it my fault that she’s going? Is it my fault that no one stays? I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
Her pain lanced through him, taking him back more than thirty years to when he was a little boy crying for his own parents. Her distress echoed his own, and her words were mirrors of those he had once cried.
