AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Eight
Lord Narborough sat quite still for a moment, the fragrant sprig in his hand. Then he dropped it back into its wrapper, gathered up his post and rose. He was pale, but steady, and Marcus, who had reached out a hand to take his elbow, dropped it away.
‘Excuse me, my dear,’ the earl said to his wife. ‘Would you join me in the study, Marcus?’
‘Of course.’ Nell, after her bright remark, had fallen silent. If she knew anything about this, then she was a good actress. He frowned at her, angry with himself for wanting to trust her.
The threat to his family, now that the initial shock of the rope was over, had strengthened his father, made him resolute, Marcus realized, watching the older man’s firm jaw. He set himself not to fuss.
‘As Miss Latham says, rosemary for remembrance,’ he remarked, closing the door. ‘Does it mean anything to you, sir?’
‘Oh yes.’ The earl sat behind the oak desk and waved Marcus to the chair in front of it. ‘That night, when Kit Hebden died, I found him and Wardale together, locked in each other’s arms just outside my study window. I told you.’ Marcus nodded. ‘There had been a great storm. A cloudburst. Everything was soaking wet, but the air was hot despite that and all the scents of the garden were intense. There was a big rosemary bush, under the wall just by the long
window.’
‘It is gone now.’ Marcus struggled to recall the planting in the town house garden.
‘I had it pulled out. They had crashed into it, the leaves were everywhere, we were all covered in them by the end. I could never smell it again afterwards without remembering.’ He lifted the sprig and held it to his nose as if to defy its power. ‘That and the scent of blood like hot metal.
‘I was expecting them both to meet me in Albemarle Street to talk about the search for the spy—the traitor in our midst—who we were pursuing together. Then I got a note to go to the Alien Office. Some clerk had made a mistake over a message that could well have waited until the morning. Or perhaps it was a deliberate ploy to lure me away—I have wondered often about that.’
‘You got back home, went through and found the long study window open.’ Marcus nodded. His father had told the tale before Christmas when Veryan had brought his new assistant to visit and the young man had asked about the old mystery.
‘Hebden died on the wet stone, in my arms. All he said was, Verity…veritas. It made no sense, he was rambling, Verity was a babe then. All Wardale could say for himself—standing there with the knife in his hands and the man’s blood all over him—was that Kit had been stabbed when he arrived and he had pulled the knife out to try and help him. He wouldn’t say where he had been earlier. I could guess. He had been with Amanda, Kit’s wife.’
‘The adulterer you spoke of at dinner was William Wardale, Lord Leybourne?’ His father had not repeated that piece of incriminating gossip before.
‘Yes. Hebden was no saint himself, of course. When he thought her barren, he had forced his wife to raise his own bastard son, which gives you some idea of his character. He was a clever devil, with a chip on his shoulder wide enough to make a refectory table. He was the one with the brains, but only a barony. We two earls, he was convinced, had the status but not the intellect to match his.’
His father shrugged. ‘Mathematics and codes were never my strength. But arrogant though he might be, and neglectful and inconsiderate of his wife as he most certainly was, he was our colleague, our friend. Wardale had no call to seduce Amanda.’
‘Perhaps she wanted comfort and he gave it to her,’ Marcus mused aloud, thinking of another woman entirely. ‘Was that enough motive for murder? One would have thought Hebden, the wronged man, would have struck the blow.’
‘If Wardale was the traitor, it could have been a motive,’ his father said slowly. ‘We both knew Kit was getting very close to cracking the intercepted coded letters. At least, that was what he would have us believe. And when he had done that, the man’s identity would be revealed.’ He held out the rosemary to the candle flame and it caught with a dry crackle, burning into scented ash. The earl brushed his fingers fastidiously. ‘We never found Kit’s notes or the letters after his death. The trail went cold and the spy ceased his activities.’
‘As you’d expect if he was in prison,’ Marcus commented.
‘Exactly. How could I defend Wardale? How could I not say what I had seen? He was my best friend—but he killed a man in front of me, he was apparently betraying his country. What should I have done?’
It was the old torment that had stolen his father’s peace of mind, his health; and it had never left him.
‘Nothing, in all honour,’ Marcus said, as he had said when he had first heard the story. And he believed it. ‘So. The silken rope a peer is hanged with, a sprig of rosemary from that last desperate fight. There is no doubt now that they refer to Hebden’s death, the search for the traitor and Wardale’s execution.’
‘But who is sending them—and why now?’ The earl ran his hands through his hair as though to force some answers into his head.
‘We’re back to Wardale’s son again, aren’t we? That’s the only way I can make any sense out of the timing—a child grows into a man, a long-held resentment festers into an obsession with revenge.’
‘And your Miss Latham is his accomplice? I find that hard to believe. She’s a delightful young woman.’
‘So was Lucrezia Borgia, by all accounts,’ Marcus remarked darkly. It was important not to let his guard down, not with his body telling him to trust her and his mind half inclined to follow it. ‘She’s hiding something, more than one thing, if I’m any judge.’
‘This wasn’t franked.’ The earl flipped over the folded sheet. ‘No postal marks on it at all.’
‘Hand delivered. It could have been her; we have rosemary growing all over the garden here. I’ll ask Watson about it.’
‘Marcus.’ He stopped, halfway to the door. ‘There is no need to let your mother know about this.’
‘Of course not, sir. Are you…all right?’
