Chapter 6

"Ithink I've gotten larger," Diana lamented, staring down at her protruding stomach which currently had a small plate of biscuits balanced atop it.

"You have absolutely gotten larger," Frances said matter-of-factly. The three friends were alone in Diana's parlor which meant that Frances' personality had emerged. No matter how long she'd known her, Emily never failed to be tickled by the capacity for bluntness that hid behind Frances' typical retiring demeanor.

Diana pouted mightily. She'd gone through various stages of moodiness in her pregnancy, including grouchiness, weepiness, and a strange combination of hunger and anger. Fortunately, this pout seemed to be primarily for show.

"I don't think you're meant to say that to me," she said to Frances.

Frances shrugged and applied herself to nibbling the frosting off a biscuit. "If you can't ask your friends for the truth, who can you ask?"

"Not your husband," Diana said sourly. Perhaps her bad mood wasn't just for show. "He said I looked beautiful." She said it like she'd never heard such an insult in her life.

"The gall of him," Frances said dryly.

"In fairness," Emily said, "you do look beautiful. Just also quite round."

This was true; Diana was one of those women who had bloomed in pregnancy. She looked almost as though she were glowing.

But yes, she was also very, very round.

And a bit feral, given that she responded to this by biting a biscuit like it had offended her.

When she was done, she heaved a sigh.

"Oh, goodness, don't listen to me; I'm a mess. Everything is uncomfortable, and I know I'm being perfectly intolerable. Distract me. Distract me, please. Emily, tell me, have the terror twins gotten up to anything interesting?"

Emily shot her friend a baleful look. "Don't even mention it!" she complained. "I know they're half a city away, but they'll hear you and get ideas." She rolled her eyes while her friends snickered. "But no—and I'm certain to be cursing myself by saying this, no doubt—but they've been relatively well-behaved since the incident with the Earl of Moore."

Frances and Diana exchanged a glance that suggested they had many thoughts that pertained to the Earl of Moore.

"Well, Em," Diana said cautiously, and Emily felt that it was quite rich indeed for Diana to act as if Emily were the volatile one in this room, "you were a bit harsh on the man the other night."

Emily's mouth dropped open. "His mother's lover shot your husband!" she exclaimed.

Diana narrowed her eyes in a clear invitation for Emily to listen to herself.

"True," she allowed, "but the Earl of Moore, by all accounts, had nothing to do with that. And while I suppose it's not impossible that he was involved, it seems highly unlikely that he and the criminal liaising with his mother were on speaking terms."

That was…annoyingly reasonable.

"Fine," Emily huffed. "But that wasn't even the incident in question. The incident," she repeated with the correct level of gravitas, "was when he called upon Amanda the following morning."

Her friends were not suitably impressed.

"Yes, he did say he was going to," Frances observed.

"Yes," Emily scoffed, "but then I forbade him from doing it."

"Right, but you were being insane," Diana opined.

Emily opened her mouth to argue with this blatant assassination of her character but was halted by Frances' thoughtful look.

"You were being insane," Frances observed as if this somehow had more meaning coming from her. "And that's very unlike you, Emily."

"Thank you," Emily said, eyes narrowed as she did not trust this compliment.

"Which rather makes me wonder why you were acting so strangely," Frances continued, proving that Emily should always trust her instincts.

Diana gasped so sharply that Emily feared, for a heart-stopping instant, that her friend was going into labor. But Diana merely sat up straight (with some difficulty) and pointed an accusing finger at Emily.

"You," she said dramatically, "have a tendre for the Earl of Moore!"

Emily felt quite convinced that the look on her face was one of abject horror.

"Have you—" she paused, her head whipping around to look at Frances, who seemed to be struggling with the urge to laugh. "Have both of you lost leave of your senses?" She pointed at Diana even as she addressed Frances. "I can imagine such a thing coming from her—the other day she wept because she had ‘lost' her favorite hatpin when she was holding it in her hand?—"

"That was an isolated incident, and it's very rude of you to bring it up," Diana said primly. "I am in a delicate condition."

"—but you, Frances?" Emily went on, exasperated. "You're meant to be the sensible one."

"Am I?" asked Frances, seeming flattered. "Well, that's quite nice."

Emily simply could not take it anymore. She let out an incoherent sound of pure frustration. This proved too much for her friends, who lost themselves to helpless laughter. After a long moment of glaring at them furiously—which only led them to laugh all the more—Emily found her irritation dissipating until she, too, was chuckling at her own overblown reaction.

"Very well," she allowed. "Perhaps I was a tad less polite to him than I could have been." Frances snorted delicately. "But he was very rude to me first and therefore deserved it," she finished with a decisive nod.

Diana shrugged. "Well, Andrew terrorized him a bit after you ran away—walked away elegantly," she amended when Emily shot her an aggrieved look. "Your earl looked quite flustered over it."

Emily declined to object over fashioning the Earl of Moore her earl as it seemed only likely to open her up to further teasing.

"If Andrew terrorized me, I would faint," Frances muttered.

"It's not as bad as you think," Diana said with a dreamy sort of sigh that made Emily and Frances exchange alarmed looks. Diana caught the exchange and let out an embarrassed little cough. "Sorry."

"Right," Frances said. "So back to Emily." Diana nodded eagerly. "Is he still courting Amanda, then?"

The question made something twist in Emily's stomach. Annoyance, probably. That was probably what that feeling was.

"I suppose so," she said. "He hasn't come to call again, but he sent some flowers. Respectable, neither too paltry nor too flashy," she added before either of her friends could ask. "But… Oh, I don't know." She tossed up her hands. "He just isn't right for Amanda. I know it."

Frances' mouth was twisted thoughtfully. "Perhaps you're right," she said absently, fidgeting with the remnants of her biscuit. "Perhaps he isn't the right match for Amanda at all…"

As their conversation turned to other matters, Emily wondered if she'd imagined the emphasis Frances had placed on her sister's name…

While it was traditional for heirs to a title to attend Oxford, it was also traditional that they make an utter hash of their studies. The things future earls had to learn weren't found in a university lecture hall; they were taught by their fathers, their father's stewards, and by other titled gentleman who spent their lives running sprawling estates. Despite this, Benedict had taken a first in math. He'd always had a head for math.

Which was why it was ridiculous that he could not make the bloody expense ledger add up.

"What in the fresh hell is going on," he growled at the book, as if swearing were likely to accomplish what several accountings of the figures had not.

He was half tempted to chuck the bloody thing into the fire. The earldom wasn't in debt. He had enough money. Who cared if he knew how much?

Benedict cared. Stupid, wretched sense of responsibility.

With a sigh that just skirted the edge of self-pity, he flipped back several pages through the ledger. Perhaps seeing what had gone right the previous year could help him understand what was going wrong this year.

The idea, he realized only a few minutes later, had considerable merit.

Unfortunately, that didn't make him feel any better.

He checked the numbers twice more.

"Mother," he huffed, frustrated already, "what are you up to?"

The ledgers told a confusing story; his mother was spending absurd amounts of money, far more than she ought to be spending. And yet…the bills didn't seem to be coming out of Benedict's coffers. The bills had come to the house, yes; that's how they'd ended up in the book. And they'd been marked as paid.

But he wasn't the one paying for them.

Which meant whatever money the Dowager Countess was spending, it wasn't the money he had given her.

He scoured the numbers one final time in a vain hope that the books would yield more answers, but alas, none were forthcoming. He needed to discuss the issue with his mother, it seemed.

She was, unfortunately, far less likely to be honest than a book of numbers.

He shoved aside the ledger and got to his feet with a reluctance so marked, it practically weighed down his feet.

It was midafternoon. At this hour, the Dowager Countess was likely to be at home and awake; it was too late for her to still be abed, but too early for her to have gone out for the evening's entertainments. This meant she was most likely to be found in the Countess' drawing room.

Like most aristocratic London homes, Moore Manor had a parlor that was for the personal use of the lady of the house. When Benedict married—and on that note, he thought, he should send another posy or something to Miss Amanda Rutley—the parlor would become the domain of his wife. But until then, the Dowager Countess had no challenger for her preferred room in the house.

Benedict wasn't sure if his mother liked the room itself or merely liked that it was the space in the manor over which she held the most definite claim. He could only imagine that asking her would not bring him peace.

"Mother?" he asked when he reached the door. It was slightly ajar.

No answer.

He rapped his knuckles lightly against the heavy oak door which swung inward at his touch.

"Mother?"

He looked inside; she wasn't there.

Benedict was already half turned to leave, to search for her elsewhere, when the scattered papers on the table caught his eye. God help him, if these were further bills…

He pulled the topmost paper towards him.

Theodore, it read.

It's been far too long since I've heard from you. You know you cannot leave me waiting like this?—

Benedict had already half recoiled—he did not wish to see his mother's love letters to a dead murderer, and he did not wish to know why his mother had left them out on this table—when the next phrase caught his eye.

--without consequences.

He blinked. What?

Meet me at our usual place, or else I shall have to have a conversation that I daresay you shall be less than pleased with. Don't push me, dear Teddy. You know things are so much better when you behave. And you have not yet seen how poorly things can go when you do not.

Benedict's head swam. This was… This was a threat. His mother had been threatening Theodore Dowling.

And Dowling, apparently, had not reacted well to it, if the scrawled response at the bottom of the parchment, carved in a man's rough scratching, was any indication.

Fine. This time. But I won't be bullied. Watch yourself.

Benedict reread the letter as if it would make what he was seeing make more sense. What did his mother have to threaten Theodore Dowling with? Yes, the man was involved in all sorts of nefarious acts, but his mother hadn't known about them…

…had she?

Torn between needing to know more and desperately not wanting any confirmation of his worst fears, Benedict paused, fingers hovering over the paper. There were more letters here. Should he read those, too?

In the end, the decision was taken out of his hands. He heard, from closer to the front of the house, his mother's cheerful trill as she addressed one of the members of the staff.

Frustrated at being interrupted, he left the paper where it lay and bolted from the room. He wasn't ready to confront his mother about what he'd read.

Not yet. He needed to figure out what he thought about the letters before he let her get into his head with her explanations and obfuscations.

Even so, he cursed his shortsightedness in not taking the letters with him. Was his mother going to accuse him of theft? In his own bloody house? Although, knowing her entitlement, she would probably try…

He slipped up the servant's staircase to avoid her, making for his own bedchamber where he would not be disturbed. If he'd had a bad feeling about the mysterious money, it was nothing compared to the way he felt about this newest discovery. His mother had never cared much about other people, that much had always been obvious. But he'd never thought that this would extend into outright criminal activity such as blackmail. For one, he would have thought she'd lack the initiative. Why bother with such a mess when there were men to seduce, pointless trinkets to buy, and sons to annoy?

But this newest discovery suggested that maybe he'd underestimated the extent of his mother's selfishness—and the lengths to which she was willing to go in order to get the things she wanted.

He dropped into his armchair, feeling frustrated, confused, and so bloody furious. His mother was a constant thorn in his side, but this felt like more than that.

Something, he feared, was very much not right.