Chapter Twenty

A dam could hardly credit his own ears when his butler told him who was in his foyer. He hadn’t seen Alice since breakfast, and he didn’t want her to run into this nasty bit of goods in her own home.

“Send Fairclough to me directly. Don’t let him linger anywhere, and if you see Lady Diamond, divert her until I get him out of the house.”

“Yes, my lord,” Mr. Lewis answered and spun about on his heel to do his duty.

In two minutes, Adam was facing Gerald Fairclough across his desk. He didn’t sit, nor did he invite the man to do so.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Not much of a welcome,” Fairclough said. “I hear you Diamonds are known for drinking fine brandy.”

“We are, but since you are not welcome here, I won’t be offering you any. Let me be frank. I don’t like you. I don’t want you in my home. I don’t want you near my wife. Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

Fairclough simply shrugged, making a face of utter disinterest. Adam hadn’t known Richard Fairclough, but he simply couldn’t see how his loving wife had ever thought him a rum-duke, nor let him kiss her. He was reputed to be worse than his brother, and this Fairclough was odious enough.

“We do have a matter to discuss. Lady Fairclough —”

Adam felt his blood boil instantly and circled the desk to stand in front of the unwanted visitor.

“Lady Diamond,” he corrected. “And you shall speak respectfully of my wife, or I will send you back against the wall with another facer.”

“You can try, I suppose. You got lucky last time because you caught me off guard. I couldn’t conceive of you behaving like a pugilist in a drawing room. Nevertheless, I didn’t come here to fight. I came to warn you.”

“About what?” Adam’s hand was fisting, ready to punch him.

“Your wife is not what or who she seems.”

Since he’d known her first as a governess and secondly, as a lady, Adam believed he knew her as well as anyone.

“You are speaking in riddles. Pointless, petty riddles. Get out.”

“There is no way to tell you of her past without speaking disrespectfully since she wasn’t respectable when I first knew her. She was flirtatious in the extreme. My brother was vulnerable, having had his heart broken. And then blowsy Lady Alice came along —”

Adam didn’t let him say anymore. In a heartbeat, he pressed him against the wall, but instead of a planting a facer, Adam had his arm across the man’s throat, making it so Fairclough could barely breathe.

As his adversary turned red, Adam told him, “Your brother took advantage of an innocent young woman who had no protection because of negligent parents. Then he gambled away all he had before he died. The only noble thing Richard Fairclough ever did was die young before he totally ruined her life with the French pox, or worse!”

“She was there. She killed him,” Fairclough managed to croak out the words. “I can prove it.”

“Liar.” Remarkably, Adam wasn’t shouting, simply stating what he knew in his heart to be true. He wouldn’t dignify the ridiculous accusation with a single request for proof.

Fairclough signaled he couldn’t breathe, and Adam finally eased up the pressure.

“I ask again, why are you here?”

Fairclough rubbed his neck before undoing the perfect knot of his cravat.

“My estate is bankrupt. Someone needs to pay my brother’s debtors. His widow should have done it sooner. Just because she has married you, it doesn’t excuse —”

“Get out,” Adam repeated. “Or I shall not be held responsible.”

“Very well.” Fairclough went to the door and yanked it open. “When you finally regret your marriage with that shrew, when you are wondering why you have no heir because her womb is as empty as her soul, then you won’t be able to say I didn’t warn you. Man to man. Regardless, I shall discuss this next with a magistrate. Either my brother’s debt is repaid, or his murder is avenged. You must choose.”

As soon as Alice entered her home on Arlington Street, she sensed something was wrong. Mr. Lewis wore an odd look upon his face, and Adam came to greet her immediately after the butler told him she was home.

“Let’s have a cup of tea in the drawing room,” he suggested.

“I just had enough cups of tea with your mother to float the Royal Navy.” But she accompanied him anyway and took a seat. He sat opposite, rested his elbows on his knees and looked at her.

He didn’t immediately speak, so Alice told him something that had struck her that day.

“Your mother and I went for a stroll. We ended up in Regent’s Park. Have you seen the sheep there?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Have you noticed you can tell which ones have been in London for only a little while and which have been grazing for longer?”

He frowned, shaking his head.

“Their fleece changes color, from natural creamy-white to sooty black. Compared to how I feel at Stonely, I believe London’s soot and smoke — or rather, its society and some of its people — can color us as well, even taint us.”

“That’s a strange way to put it, my lady, but I take your meaning. Perhaps it is true.”

She thought he sounded melancholy. “Is something wrong?”

He nodded slowly. “Fairclough showed up today.”

Alice couldn’t help flinching “Every time you say his name, I think for a moment that you mean Richard. For a horrible instant, I imagine he is still my husband and has the legal right to reclaim me.” She shook off the nightmarish thoughts. “What did Lord Fairclough want?”

“Don’t you know?”

She glanced at him sharply. “What do you mean? I assume he wants what he always wants — money for his brother’s debts.”

“He did, but he also said you were with your husband when he died. Were you?”

She gripped the arms of the chair. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Adam’s tone was harsher than she’d ever heard directed at her. “I thought he was with his mistress.”

“He was. I followed him one afternoon.”

“Followed him?” Adam repeated. “That’s seems risky.”

“Does it?” She thought about that day. “It was not yet dark. I had a maid at the time who traveled in the cab with me. I knew on Thursdays Richard went to her home, if that’s the correct word for a place where light-skirts entertain men. Sometimes he stayed away until Monday. Anyway, I followed him.”

“Why would you do that?” Adam asked. “For what purpose?”

Alice wished she hadn’t. “I was half-lunatic at the time. Humiliated and angry, I wanted him to cease his blatant behavior. Have a mistress if he must, but I didn’t want him parading her around, going places with her that I wanted to go. Suddenly, she had the life I previously had, attending balls and dinners, and with the man who ought to have been at my side.”

“I understand your feelings, but what did you hope to gain by catching him with her?” He was questioning her like a lawyer, and she hated that he doubted her.

“Would you believe me if I said I thought common decency would make him stop if I confronted him?” She couldn’t help her bitter tone. “I forgot he didn’t have any. Besides, it all went wrong. I sent word through her man-servant who I was and with whom I wished to speak. Not her, by the way. I had no interest in seeing her at all. Then Richard came to the top of the landing and looked down at me in the foyer. He was talking gibberish. How dare I follow him and ruin his fun! He would teach me a lesson, he said. And then he took the first step and came tumbling down.”

Adam ran a hand through his hair. “He fell down the stairs?”

“He did, like a rag doll.” Alice remembered how slowly Richard seemed to fall. She’d watched it, with time to put her hand over her mouth in horror. “He was so limp from the start. I didn’t think he would even be injured except for a little blood at his temple. But at the bottom, he broke his neck. I heard a scream and thought it was my own until I looked up and saw his mistress staring down at us.”

Adam nodded. “What is her name?”

His cobalt blue eyes were intense, and she knew its importance. The woman was the only witness who could prove without a shadow of a doubt that Alice had nothing to do with Richard’s death.

“I don’t know.”

Adam’s jaw clenched while his gaze bore in to hers. Then he sighed. “But the present Lord Fairclough knows, I warrant.”

She shrugged. “When Gerald started threatening me, saying I had pushed Richard to his death, I returned to where he died, looking for Richard’s mistress to bear witness to my innocence, but she had moved away. It is my word against Gerald’s. Thus, I left London.”

Under his breath, he emitted what Alice could only describe as a feral growl. Adam was irritated and exasperated because of her, making the pit of her stomach ache.

“I asked you before if there was anything else I should know,” he reminded her, “if there was something more you had to tell me.”

Alice swallowed the regret. “Since I did not murder Richard, I had nothing else to confess except for being too flirtatious. That was stupid and irresponsible but not a crime.”

“Agreed on that point, my lady, but you ought to have confided in me about the strain you were under and the real reason you didn’t want to return to London.”

She nodded but still defended herself. “I have become used to keeping my own counsel and handling my problems.”

Adam leaned back. “Or rather, not handling them. Instead, you ran away,” he pointed out. “Besides, as my wife, your problems are now mine.”

That was what she dreaded. “I don’t want my troubles to affect you in any way. But I shall confess something else I have kept from you. Recently, Lord Fairclough accosted me outside your parents’ home.”

“What?” Adam was on his feet within the span of a heartbeat, towering over her. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Alice lowered her head. “He is now demanding I get money from you. Otherwise, he will go to the magistrate with his accusations against me.”

“But you didn’t come to me asking for money.”

“No!” she declared, lifting her gaze to his. “I never would.”

Adam crouched down in front of her. “Alice, Alice.” He took her hands in his. “We are bound together in matrimony, in the eyes of the Church and Crown. You are mine to look after, and I am yours.”

“I know, but I never want any of my past to —”

“It’s too late for that,” he interrupted. “Don’t you understand, Wife? I will do whatever it takes to help you and free you from Fairclough’s threats.”

Adam meant well, but she knew Gerald, just as she’d known his relentless brother. Whatever they sank their teeth into, they didn’t let go, whether it be gaming, whores, or even tormenting her.

“I love you,” she whispered. Silently, she added, Thus, I cannot let you become involved in this.

She’d seen the type of men Fairclough had sent to throw her out of the Gloucester Street home she’d shared with Richard. They were undoubtedly the same lowly creatures who’d gone to Stonely Grange. If any of the owners of the gaming hells to whom Richard owed money found out Adam was willing to pay a single farthing, those same rough clowes and sneaky dambers would be at his Arlington Street door.

She shuddered. Only she could prevent it and protect her sweet husband and her new family. Only she could keep their snowy fleece untainted by London’s soot.

Adam wanted to lounge and appear as relaxed as Alexander Hollidge appeared, but he couldn’t. If there was any possibility Alice could be charged with anything, then this was not a brandy-and-cigar moment. Not yet. But after consulting with them the night before, he knew this afternoon, they had good news.

“Fear not, Brother-in-law, your lady wife is safe as a baby bird in a nest,” Matthew Foxford quipped. “Once I realized the dead wretch you were speaking of was Fairclough, locating his mistress was easy. Isabelle Janey. Not that I’ve ever had the pleasure of this particular light-skirt,” he added, when Adam gave him a hard stare.

After all, this was Purity’s husband. If he’d been tupping the same whores as Fairclough, it had better have been in the long-ago past.

“Foxford is correct,” Lord Hollidge said. Clarity’s husband had a law degree, although he rarely practiced, preferring to spend his time studying plants and traveling with his wife and two children. “Although I don’t think the nest image is entirely accurate.”

Purity’s husband laughed at Hollidge’s more staid manner. Adam didn’t feel like laughing any more than he wanted to celebrate with brandy.

“That same mistress saw her in the vicinity,” he reminded them. “If Fairclough has her testify that Alice was there at the top of the stairs.” He trailed off with a shake of his head.

After finally escaping from a miserable marriage, Alice’s husband might reach out from the grave to strike her down with his brother’s help.

“Why was Lady Diamond there?” Hollidge asked. Although drinking brandy, he was still jotting down notes.

“She was trying to find Fairclough,” Adam explained. “Naively, she hoped confronting him with his courtesan would make him either cease his public affair or divorce her.”

“Thanks to Foxford, Miss Janey and her man-servant will testify to Fairclough’s inebriated state and that Lady Diamond was at the bottom of the staircase when he came tumbling down,” Hollidge said, setting down his pen. “Thus, there is no doubt to her innocence and not a chance anyone will even investigate, never mind bring charges. The current Lord Fairclough has just been blowing smoke before darkened mirrors, trying to scare your wife.”

“Trying to wring every last penny because he can’t stand that his own brother was such a useless toad. It makes him feel better to blame Alice. But it will stop now,” Adam vowed.

“It will,” Hollidge agreed. “A letter signed by the mistress should be sufficient. She had been duped by the Faircloughs three times,” he added. “For one thing, the deceased brother cheated her out of her regular allowance during the last few months of their association, always with the promise of paying her once he won at the gaming tables or through one of his outrageous wagers.”

“Yet he never won. And the second?” Adam asked.

Foxford finally poured Adam a glass of brandy and pushed it toward him. “Unlike us, the man was a grand piss-maker, sucking the monkey from midday till sun up. And that was the only thing that was up. Apparently, Miss Janey grew tired of his whinging about his lobcock.”

“Let us drink to Fairclough’s lobcock,” Adam said, feeling infinitely better about the situation, knowing the man hadn’t been able to tup Alice regularly. Thus, he raised his glass, and they all drank. “And what is the third deceit?”

“Gerald Fairclough moved Miss Janey out the following day after his brother died,” Hollidge explained. “He said he would pay for her new lodging if she testified against your wife, whom everyone would plainly see was not the grieving widow. Of course, he used every penny he got from selling his brother’s London house and from the sale of your lady’s country-house inventory to pay not only his brother’s debts but a few of his own. When Foxy found Miss Janey, it turned out Fairclough hadn’t paid her rent beyond the first month.”

Adam chuckled. “And thus, the new Lord Fairclough left the old mistress high and dry, as they say.” He imagined the woman was beyond fed up. Knocking back another sip, he asked, “How could my Alice pretend to mourn that fuddled, groggy whore’s bird? It would have taken a stellar actress such as Isabella Glyn to convince anyone she felt one whit of grief.”

Hollidge refilled his glass. “What is it about that family and their lack of integrity with money?”

“A lack of integrity in general, I warrant,” Foxford quipped.

With that last piece of information, Alice was truly out from under Fairclough’s lies.

“Here’s to the Fairclough’s lack of integrity,” Adam said. They all drank again. His brothers-in-law had successfully reassured him there was no danger to her anymore, and he couldn’t wait to tell her.

When he got home, dashing from room to room, however, Alice was nowhere to be seen. It was already dark out, and she hadn’t told him she was going anywhere in particular that afternoon. Besides, where could she be so late in the day?

With each empty chamber, Adam’s stomach sank a little more and his anxiety rose. Finally, he called his butler to him in the library, the place he’d thought sure to find her.

“Mr. Lewis, where is Lady Diamond?”

“Lady Diamond has left, my lord. She and Jillian took the train to Reading with the intent of residing at Stonely Grange.”

Alice had fled. Again! Just as she had done on a whim from Bath, she had hopped the twig to Caversham.

“Dammit!” He nearly sent his fist through the library wall. “How long has she been gone?”

“At least four hours, my lord.” Then the man drew his watch out of its small pocket, with its chain dangling from his fingers, and consulted it. “Closer to five actually.”

Adam slid his fingers into his hair, making a noise of sheer exasperation before throwing himself down in the high-backed, well cushioned reading chair.

Realizing he was displaying bad behavior in front of his head of household, Adam dismissed his butler. But it didn’t stop him from telling the books that surrounded him, “I am going to wrap that woman in a fishing net and tack her to the floor when I get her back.”

As soon as the shock wore off, he decided to wait until the morning train. After all, knowing what she would find at her old home, he didn’t feel quite so badly about her residing there. If only Alice had learned to trust him and could have let herself depend upon someone besides herself.

The next morning, he sent word to Hollidge to write the lawyerly letter to Fairclough mentioning the sworn testimony of Miss Janey, and then Adam took a hansom cab to Paddington station for the trip to Stonely Grange.