“No. Thatithn’t—” Lucy slapped the coverlet despairing she’d ever get her words out. “No.”
“Don’t despair, Mrs. Estwood. I wanted Marsden and my ironworks. You fulfilled most of your bargain. I suppose expecting you to uphold the rest of your promises to me was a bit of a stretch. I’m nothing but a low-born mongrel, after all.”
“Only you care about the matter of your birth,” she stuttered. “I never have.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I don’t believe you. You and Waterstone can have a good chuckle once more, showing me my place. Or Dufton. I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’m on my way out, at any rate.”
“Where?” she managed to say, stricken to the very core of her being.
“Anywhere but here, Mrs. Estwood.”
He wasleavingher. Hewouldn’tlisten.
“Harry, I love you,” she said clearly. Loudly. So furious at him for believing the worst, Lucy threw one of the pillows at him. How could he think her capable of murder, let alone his?
“Excellent aim, as always, Mrs. Estwood,” he said as the pillow hit his shoulder. “Dufton should have just put a pistol inyourhand.” A caustic chuckle left him as he started towards the door. “I don’t wish tohear youanymore.”
Lucy flinched. “Sally needed money.” The lisp disappeared the more furious she became. “She is with child. My brother or sister. What else could I do? You called in his markers,” she flung at his departing back. “After you promised you would not.”
Harry didn’t answer. He flung open the door and slammed the heavy wood behind him without so much as another glance in her direction.
Lucy stared at the spot where he’d been, chest heaving, tears streaming down her cheeks. Loyalty meant a great deal to Harry. He had no tolerance for deceit or betrayal. Lucy had expected his anger when she admitted to aiding Sally, no matter how warranted. But to accuse her of conspiring with Dufton of all people to have him murdered? For money?
“How could you, Harry?” she whispered. “How could you?”
29
Harry’s London house was cold without Bartle and his wife. Thankfully, there was a footman, a groom, and a maid in residence, all startled out their wits at Harry’s sudden return. They’d flown about the house, ripping sheets off furniture and making up his bed. Food was another matter. Poor Betsy wasn’t much of a cook. Which didn’t matter because Harry had little appetite.
He stared out the window of his study, watching a carriage roll past on the street outside, before returning to review Pryce’s notes. Three withdrawals had been made by Lucy, totaling roughly ten thousand pounds. A small fortune. Scopes, his man at the bank, assured Harry that nothing else would leave the account, even if Mrs. Estwood demanded it.
Cold comfort. The damage had already been done. Some of it caused by Harry himself.
He’d considered his wife quite a bit during the journey to London, far more so than any thinking he’d done while swilling that bottle of scotch and accusing her of attempted murder. But after leaving the bank that day in Middlesbrough and seeing theindisputable proof that the drafts had all been made out to Sally Waterstone, Harry hadn’t been thinking clearly. Or at all.
In fact, he hadn’t come to his senses until waking up alone in the enormous bed upstairs, shivering because no fire had been lit and Lucy wasn’t beside him. Amazing that what had seemed entirely plausible after an excellent bottle of scotch was now patently ridiculous when one was sober.
I love you.
It wasn’t the first time she’d said so. He’d heard Lucy whisper it to him the day he had gifted her the kittens. Could see it in her eyes when she looked at him. Every touch of her fingers on his body and heart spoke the words.
He was a fool. Pure and simple.
Looking down at the newspaper on his desk, he reread the paragraph announcing the Earl of Dufton’s betrothal to Miss Clarice Ritton. Harry knew the family. The Rittons were from Sheffield and involved in mining. Clarice’s father had a bad habit of losing at faro. And no matter how depraved Dufton happened to be, he couldn’t wed both Clarice and Lucy.
Which left Waterstone as the lone culprit. Honestly, Harry should have known. Dufton would have hired a more competent band of thugs.
He had no desire to pay a call on Waterstone, but at the very least his father-in-law deserved a reminder of what would happen should he bother Lucy again or attempt to have Harry murdered. All Waterstone’s debts would be called in. Harry would take his stupid horse farm, his house, and whatever else he could find.
Once the point was made, Harry would return to the house in Ormesby and try to—come to terms with the mess he’d made of things. Allow Lucy to explain her reasons for giving money to Sally. Retract his horrible accusation that she would have him murdered.
Maybe ease the ache in his heart from missing his wife.
An hour later,Harry was seated in Waterstone’s drawing room. He took note of the spaces on the walls where paintings had once hung. The lack of rugs covering the floors. The signs of approaching poverty seemed strange given the enormous sum Lucy had given her father on top of what Harry had paid for Pendergast.
“What do you want?”
Gerald Waterstone walked into the drawing room, lip curled in disdain. His face was puffy with a yellowish cast to it, and he’d lost weight. But he was hardly ill or bedridden as Lucy had claimed.
