Chapter 22

Benedict was grateful that, in the end, he did not have to order his mother to be bodily hauled from the house. He would have done it—he could not remember ever being so angry in his entire life as when he saw that handprint written in stark red against the pallor of his wife's shocked face.

But he was grateful that the need did not arise. He'd had more than enough conflict with his mother for a lifetime.

And yet, it seemed unlikely that conflict was at an end, given what he and Emily had discovered the day prior in his mother's papers. They'd sat up late into the night, discussing what to do from there.

"I do wish you'd let me go with you," Emily fretted now as he shrugged into his jacket and accepted his hat and walking stick from the butler.

"I know," he said gently, transferring his affects to one hand, so he could reach out and stop her from anxiously twisting her fingers with the other. "But there truly isn't a rational reason that I could offer. Coming to Graham myself for a business meeting makes sense—we aren't opposed to one another politically, and he's a big name. But if I brought you along with me, he'd know I was there for something else before we even got in a room together, and I don't want him to be prepared. I want to see how he genuinely reacts when I ask him about the letter from my mother."

"I know," she returned, abandoning her handwringing to nibble at that plush bottom lip of hers. "I do know, really. We discussed it all. It's just?—"

"Worrisome?" he offered when she cut herself off. She nodded miserably, and he smiled. He was a cad, no doubt, for enjoying it while his wife was clearly so distressed, but there was no denying that he was flattered by her concern on his behalf.

"There's nothing worrisome about it," he reminded her. "If anything, Graham is the one you should be worried over. He's about to learn something that will doubtless shock him terribly."

"I suppose that is true," she allowed, not sounding terribly convinced. "But you will be careful, won't you? And you will come back at once and tell me everything?"

"Of course," he assured her. Returning to her had quickly become the very top of his list of priorities. It had come upon him almost without his noticing, but he trusted her implicitly, and that was so comforting—so safe—a feeling that he wanted to have it as much as possible.

He'd realized it when he'd seen the altercation between Emily and his mother and known, in an instant, without the vaguest doubt, that Emily was not to blame. She hadn't even needed to deny it. Her face said everything, and she hadn't ever lied to him—not by word or by deed.

In fact, he thought with an inward chuckle as he kissed her swiftly goodbye, his initial complaint against her had been an excess of honesty, particularly regarding how she felt about him and his attitude.

Even as their interactions had grown less fraught and more pleasurable, she'd not gotten any less forthright, not even when she was angry with him. She'd not been vindictive, either. Instead, she'd laid her concerns simply and plainly at his door. And she'd been right to make those complaints, by and large. He had been holding his mother's actions against all the members of her sex. He had been ungenerous when initially refusing to help chaperone her sisters.

It was annoying to admit, but it was true. Or, rather, he found it didn't even annoy him that much, not when he saw the gratitude in his wife's expression when she thanked him for his apologies or when she praised his willingness to rethink his perspective on things for her benefit.

Emily's sweet smiles made it all worth it, he'd found.

He spent the short ride over to the Duke of Graham's residence thinking about his wife's smiles—and the other delightful expressions she made while he pleased her in their bedchamber—finding such musings infinitely preferable to the task he was set to undertake.

It was only when he arrived at the Millers' home and presented his card to the butler that he forced his mind back to the subject at hand.

It was not Frederick, the Duke, who first greeted Benedict, however; it was his son, Evan.

"It is you!" Evan exclaimed, crossing the parlor where Benedict had been instructed to wait so he could clap his friend affectionately on the shoulder. "When Dobson said you were here, I couldn't believe it, let alone when he said you came to see my father. Were you actually looking for me? How did you even know to find me here? I just stopped in for tea."

Benedict swallowed hard, certain his smile looked more like a grimace. Evan, like many young noblemen whose fathers were in good health and unlikely to shuffle off this mortal coil any time soon, preferred not to abide indefinitely under his parents' roof and instead let a small suite of rooms in the boarding houses maintained for the bachelors of the ton who lacked their own properties.

"I'm afraid the rumors are true, Ockley," Benedict said, striving for lightness in his tone but not quite managing the thing. "I'm here to see your father. Matter of business."

He cursed his stupidity at not considering that Evan might be here. Telling the Duke that Priscilla had possibly been involved in his daughter's death was bad enough—but telling his oldest and dearest friend that a member of Benedict's family had led to the loss of his beloved little sister? It was unthinkable.

A shadow crossed Evan's usually affable face, and for a moment, Benedict feared that he'd somehow given himself away. But the flicker was only passing.

"Right," Evan said, early ebullience notably muted. "Of course. I just— Do be careful, Benedict," he said, the rare use of his given name making Benedict take note. "Politics can take over one's life if you let it." He smiled, clearly trying to force his joviality to return. "And Emily's a grand girl, but I don't know that she's cut out to be a political wife."

"You'd be surprised," Benedict returned without thinking about it. "And don't call her by her given name, you blackguard. Show some bloody respect."

This made Evan's grin shift, the coercion leaving behind an effortless entertainment.

"I knew it would be like that," he said smugly.

Before Benedict could push his friend to explain himself—and before he could argue with the voice in his head that said he knew exactly what his friend meant—the Duke of Graham entered the room, an air of immovable confidence surrounding him. This sense of his, the notion that the man in front of Benedict could accomplish anything he set his mind to, had made Graham an unparalleled politician, one who had more access to the Crown than any other parliamentarian save the Prime Minister himself.

"Lord Moore," he said, inclining his head briefly, his voice smooth and unbothered by the unexpected intrusion into his home from a near stranger. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Evan's expression had, once again, grown strained. "I'll leave you two to it," he muttered, already making his way toward the door. The Duke scarcely acknowledged his son and heir. Benedict allowed that it likely could not be easy to live with a man whom the whole of Britian regarded as a force to be reckoned with.

But now was not the time for Benedict to fret over his friend; he had graver matters to attend to than the troubles that went on between fathers and sons. Not when his own parent had caused as enormous wreckage as she'd apparently done.

"Your Grace," he said with an exacting bow, "thank you so much for seeing me on such short notice."

"Of course, of course, my boy," the Duke said affably, waving Benedict over to a seat. Benedict tried not to wince at being called a ‘boy' at his age; perhaps it was natural for the Duke, given that he had a son who was Benedict's contemporary. "What can I do for you? Have you a bill you're planning to put forth this session?"

Benedict inclined his head slightly, offering a faint, apologetic grimace.

"I'm afraid that I'm here on rather a more personal matter, Your Grace," he said. The Duke raised a curious eyebrow but did not otherwise react. "Am I correct in saying that you know my mother?" he asked, aiming for delicacy. As this was not his natural way of doing things, the words felt clumsy in his mouth.

No doubt it was because he was a consummate politician that the Duke did not react to any detected awkwardness.

"Priscilla Hoskins? I do know her," he allowed casually, no hint of discomfort in his features. "Though I cannot say I know her particularly well. I know her more in the way that one knows a contemporary; we travel in the same circles, have attended many of the same parties, but have no close personal acquaintance."

Oh good, Benedict thought sardonically. He had so hoped to be forced to explain every sordid detail.

"Well," he said, feeling as uncomfortable as he ever had in the whole of his life, "you are aware that she was, er, associated with Theodore Dowling?"

At the mention of the dead villain's name, a shadow of pain crossed the Duke's face. He turned aside for a moment, as if he needed to pause to collect himself. When he spoke, however, his voice was steady.

"I did hear of that," he said. "I gather she was taken in by the rogue. Poor thing," he added, indicating that he truly didn't know Priscilla as nobody who knew her—not even those who liked her—would refer to her as a poor thing.

The Duke turned back to face Benedict fully. "I am afraid that I don't see why you have brought this to me, Sir," he said, not unkindly, though his voice was stiffer than it had been previously. "As you may imagine, I still find it…difficult to discuss the terrible events that took my daughter from us."

"Of course," Benedict murmured. "And do let me express how very sorry I am to drag this matter back into the present. I know that Lady Grace's loss is extremely painful for your family. Ockley still speaks of her fondly and often."

The Duke's expression flickered, too quickly for Benedict to fully parse his reaction. Again, he wondered what was going on between father and child that would make a mere reference discomfit this polished man.

"Forgive me for indelicacy, but—do get to the point, My Lord."

"Yes, of course," Benedict said again, clearing his throat. "The thing is, I have uncovered letters between yourself and my mother that are…indelicate."

The Duke's brows arched in the picture of surprise. "Do you know what?" he muttered, eyes darting as he thought. "I had nearly forgotten about that." His gaze cleared, became piercing. "Yes. There was an incident, several years ago. Your mother—and I beg your pardon for speaking so unflatteringly about her—approached me for a liaison. I rebuffed her. She did not take kindly to the rejection."

Benedict huffed a humorless laugh. No, she wouldn't, would she?

"May I assume," the Duke went on, "that this is the indelicacy to which you refer?"

"I do not relish speaking so frankly," Benedict began. He really, really did not. He would have preferred almost any conversation under the sun to this one. "But, to clarify, the letter we found was more threatening than, ah, intimate."

The Duke's brow furrowed. "Yes," he said. "I remember such a thing. ‘You'll regret turning me down' and the like?" Benedict nodded, and the older man sighed. "She did send something like that; after the first missive, I returned the others, unopened. Eventually, she stopped sending them, and I assume she'd moved on…" He trailed off, then looked at Benedict with wide, wide eyes. "And she did. To Dowling. I remember being relieved at seeing them together as I thought it meant that she had forgotten all about me. And I quickly moved to other concerns because it was only a month or so after that when Grace—" He broke off, clearing his throat violently.

There was a long, painful moment where the Duke remained silent. He was uncharacteristically hoarse when he spoke again.

"I never thought the two incidents were related, but… Well, we assumed it was Hawkins, you see? And then by the time we learned it was Dowling, learned that we'd all been tricked by him, it had been so long since I'd heard from Priscilla, so I never thought…"

This time he trailed off so slowly that Benedict wondered if the other man had forgotten he was not alone. Benedict was just about to stammer an awkward apology and leave when the Duke whipped his head back around.

"But you think," he said, a faint note of accusation in the words. "You think she had something to do with it. With my daughter."

Benedict sighed. "I don't know," he admitted. "I suspect. I have learned that my mother was apparently blackmailing Dowling, and when we discovered her letters to you as well…" This time it was Benedict's turn to trail off. "The coincidences seemed too great," he finished.

The Duke's laugh was shockingly bitter. "Coincidences," he echoed. "Coincidences and clues and hints. It was supposed to be over," he said savagely. "With Hawkins. They hanged Hawkins, and we were meant to have time to heal—not that a parent can ever come back from that sort of thing, you understand. To lose a child at all is an unspeakable tragedy, but to lose a daughter like my Grace—a shining example of a girl who had been protected and coddled and adored by all—to have that child snatched out from under your nose when she it meant to be safe?" He shook his head. "It defies comprehension."

Benedict understood how the Duke had gotten such an ardent political following. Even his regular conversation carried the cadences of a rehearsed speech. The man was visibly bereft and utterly sympathetic.

"I am sorry," Benedict said. "Not just for speaking of this painful matter, but for my mother. I should have?—"

"No," the Duke interrupted gently. "You are not responsible for what others do. You are your own man, Moore. That is all you can be."

"You are too generous."

The Duke shot him a bittersweet smile. "For all that I have suffered great tragedy, I have been blessed enough to see generosity from a hundred different sources. It is no recompense for what I have lost, of course, but the sympathy of others, their kindnesses, has proven a great solace in hard times."

It was painful to watch an upright man like this one relive the most dreadful thing that he must have ever experienced. Benedict, certain he would get no more answers from this avenue, felt suddenly desperate to leave, to hold his wife close to him and offer prayers of thanks that she had not been snatched away.

"I'm going to confront my mother," he promised the Duke. "I'm going to find out the truth."

The Duke's eyes flashed a warning. "Do be careful," he cautioned. "Someone who could commit such a hideous crime, someone who could manage to hide it for years, leaving two men dead for a crime they never committed…someone like that would be very, very dangerous, indeed."

This seemed, to Benedict, to be an expression of grief leeching through Graham's good sense. Benedict was going to confront his own mother, after all, not a madman wielding a cutlass. Even if she was guilty of these dreadful sins against Lady Grace and her family—and he suspected she was—she'd not dirtied her hands herself.

But correcting the Duke seemed pointless as well as unkind, so Benedict let the matter lie. He stood, offering a polite bow.

"I thank you for your concern," he said. "I apologize again for intruding on your day; I shall be happy to see myself out."

And then he left, finding himself counting the seconds until he saw Emily again.