“Preston, what are they talking about?” Lady Holt demanded, finally turning to her son. “Why are they telling these lies about you, in front of all these people?”
Lord and Lady Jackson and the Duke and Duchess of Mildenhall watched the scene unfold, having been warned that something of this kind could occur.
“I don’t know, Mother.” Lord Holt scowled, unable to meet her eyes. “I’ve never trusted Cecily, and it seems I was right not to. Now that she has her Duke and her money, she thinks to wash her hands of us and leave us to our ruin. I did my duty, and where has it gotten me? Nowhere.”
“Cecily is just like her father,” Lady Holt agreed. “Charles always thought he knew everything and felt he was right. He had no respect for my opinions and married his frivolous wife against my advice. Once he was married, there was only his wife and daughters, and the rest of us might have disappeared for all he cared.”
“My father was a good man, a good husband, and a good father,” Cecily insisted. “You were taken care of, Grandmother.”
“He sent me to live in the dower house!” Lady Holt said indignantly. “Not like dear Preston, who has always kept me near him.”
“My brother was selfish and self-serving,” Lord Holt added. “He could not even pay off a few gambling debts for me—his own brother, his own flesh and blood.”
“Why should he?” Nathaniel challenged. “He’d paid them off several times before, and you were a grown man. It was time that you stood on your own two feet and stopped spending money that ought to be kept for his children.”
“That’s what Charles said, damn him!” Lord Hold snapped. “That’s exactly what he said before he set off in that buggy with his damned weeping wife.”
“He knocked you down, didn’t he?” Nathaniel goaded.
Lord Holt nodded, too far gone now in drink and anger to see how he was being led.
“I didn’t stay down,” he raged with the memory of his humiliation. “He didn’t get the better of me that easily, but ran off like a coward. I got my horsewhip, and I chased him. Damned Alice told him to ignore me and drive away, but I’d left Ashworth holding my horse, and I rode straight after them.”
Cecily’s hands clenched into fists as she listened, even though she had already learned some of it from the documents she read that morning. How frightened her poor mother must have been, chased by her drunken, raging uncle with a horse whip while her father was only trying to get her to safety.
“You rode after them?” Nathaniel prompted.
“Oh, I rode like fury,” Lord Holt affirmed with a laugh. “And I would have caught them, too. I could see one of the wheels on their buggy was coming loose and knew they couldn’t go on, but then… The damned fool wouldn’t stop, would he? The whole contraption came apart, and they were thrown right into that tree at the crossroads.”
“You told me that you rode out to find your brother after he failed to meet you,” Lady Holt interjected, bewildered. “You said you found them both there, dead in the wreckage from the accident. You said?—”
“Well, I did,” Lord Holt cut her off belligerently. “It wasn’t my fault they died. Charles should have just paid off my debts, and he shouldn’t have run away. He’s the one who crashed his buggy and broke his damned neck.”
“We’ll see what view the law takes on all that, will we?” Nathaniel drawled, folding his napkin and laying it on the table. “A magistrate, a solicitor, and two constables are waiting in the drawing room. In addition to Lord Holt’s confession before four witnesses, I have a signed statement from Lord Ashworth, who was with Lord Holt on the day of the accident and has confirmed key details.”
“Preston!” Lady Holt cried. Cecily almost felt a pang of sympathy for her. “Tell me this isn’t true. I refuse to look at these spurious documents or listen to this wicked man. I know that Charles wasmean to you and should have paid off your debts, but tell me it was only an accident.”
“What?” Lord Holt sputtered, looking around the table, not quite grasping that the game was up and he had lost. “What are you saying, Your Grace?”
“I am saying that luncheon is over, Lord Holt,” Nathaniel pronounced, rising to his feet. “For everyone’s sake, including your own, I suggest that you cooperate.”
Cecily watched her husband with love and admiration as he escorted her swearing and stumbling uncle out of the room, Lady Holt following and wringing her hands in their wake.
CHAPTER 32
“What will happen to him?” Mary whispered to Cecily a few nights later as Lilian began playing her third piece on the pianoforte, this time a song, which Miss Osborne sang with her. “To Uncle Preston, I mean.”
Cecily sighed, hoping that Mary was not feeling soft-hearted after everything their uncle had put them through and the revelation of his role in their parents’ deaths.
“Well, the solicitors advised that there wasn’t enough evidence to try him in court for causing Father and Mother’s deaths after all these years,” she replied. “Still, there’s enough to ruin him, and we’re prepared to do that. If he signs over your guardianship without a fuss, maybe Nathaniel will let him leave England.”
She glanced inquiringly at her husband beside her, perched on the arm of her chair. He had been out for much of the day, and there had been little chance for private conversation since he returned to Greyhaven Park, keeping his promise to be here for dinner and then for Lilian’s pianoforte recital.
“It is already done,” Nathaniel confirmed, meeting her eyes with a nod, and leaving it in her hands how much to tell Mary beyond the basic facts. “I have the paperwork in my pocket, and I watched Lord Holt’s ship leave for South America on this morning’s tide.”
“Thank God,” Cecily breathed, closing her eyes. “What of our grandmother? Was she there?”
“Lady Holt came to see him off and then went back to Kent,” he told them.
