“Given the fact that I have been envious of each of them at this stage of their existence, madam,” he said, “perhaps I can be forgiven for indulging a little spite.”
She laughed.
•••
LadyVerney wished to discuss her health and inquire after that of each of Ashley’s houseguests. Barbara Verney conversed about London and the entertainments of the Season in which she and her brother had participated. Sir Henry Verney sat silent except for uttering the barest of courtesies. Ashley turned to him at last. He, after all, was the object of this visit.
“I wonder if I might have a private word with you,” he said, “on a matter with which I would not wish to bore the ladies.” He smiled at them and felt rather sorry for the insult to the intelligence of Miss Verney that his words had implied. She was a lady he liked and respected.
“La, if ’tis business you wish to discuss, Lord Ashley,” Lady Verney said, “Henry will take you out into the garden or into the study. Such matters give me the headache.”
Sir Henry suggested the garden, since the day was sunny and warm. They strolled along a secluded path that took them about the perimeter of the small park. A couple of dogs—a collie and a terrier—were soon ambling at their heels and making the occasional detour among the trees to sniff at roots.
“It is the dogs who are the main attraction for Eric Smith,” Sir Henry said. “There is one more in the stables with a litter of puppies. The boy scarcely moved from them yesterday.” It was his first attempt at conversation, though he was making no great effort to ingratiate himself, Ashley noticed. He was glad there was no pretense of friendship between them.
“Yesterday,” he said quietly. “You were early at Binchley’s cottage. Did you encounter anyone on your way there?”
Sir Henry looked at him consideringly. “It is no idle question, is it?” he said. “I cannot remember without giving the question concentrated thought if I met anyone or not. Is it important that I go through that process? Perhaps you would like to tell me whom you suppose I met.”
“Lady Emily Marlowe,” Ashley said. He watched his neighbor closely and despite himself felt sorry that he had come to Penshurst so burdened. If he had known nothing about this man before he came, they might have been friends. But then he might have been deceived in the friendship. Something had happened to Emmy yesterday.
“Ah.” Sir Henry said no more for a while. His voice was decidedly chilly when he did speak. “I understand, Kendrick, as I understood when we were in London, that you are a jealous and a possessive man. I do not know if your claim to Lady Emily’s affections is real or imaginary, but either way, the lady has my sincerest sympathy. Have you confronted her too? Expressed your displeasure or your cold disapproval to her? Do you imagine that because I was abroad early and because she presumably was out too, we must therefore have enjoyed a clandestine meeting? And would my denial make any difference to these suspicions of yours?”
“Are you denying it?” Ashley asked.
“No,” Sir Henry said. “Nor am I admitting it. Unless you can assure me that you are betrothed to the lady, Kendrick, or married to her, I do not recognize your right to question either her movements or mine in relation to her. I was prepared to welcome you to this part of Kent with all the courtesy and even amiability due a neighbor and possible friend. I believe that you absolved me of any such obligation the last time we met in London.”
They were trading civil insults. The thought of becoming openly uncivil was markedly unpleasant, especially in broad daylight and in the civilized surroundings of Verney’s park. But Ashley had come for answers. He remembered the night before and the desperation in Emily that had drawn him into a repetition of his indiscretion at Bowden. “I am neither married to Lady Emily nor betrothed to her,” he said. “But I will protect her, as I hope I would protect any lady, from harm and from terror. Moreover, she is a guest in my home. I mean to discover what happened to her yesterday morning. I need to know to what extent you assaulted her.” It was as well to call a spade a spade.
“Terror? Assault?” Sir Henry had stopped walking and stood facing Ashley, with a coldness and a tension in his manner to match Ashley’s own. “I am a gentleman, sir. By my life, instinct directs me to slap a glove in your face, since clearly you believe I have been responsible for both. Good sense, however, tells me that perhaps I should answer your earlier question after all. No, I did not meet or even set eyes on Lady Emily Marlowe yesterday morning. I have not seen her since I walked in the garden with her at Lady Bryant’s ball.”
Ashley stared hard at him while the dogs circled them, obviously eager for them to move onward. Dammit, Ashley thought, he believed the man. And yet he surely could not expect an instant admission even if he were guilty. Verney’s open, honest face was perhaps his greatest asset. Alice must have trusted it, after all. “I must accept your word as a gentleman,” he said.
“But with the greatest reluctance,” Sir Henry said, lifting one eyebrow, “and with only a grain of trust. Very well, then. But I am sorry in my heart that something appears to have happened to upset Lady Emily. If she is unable to tell you the cause of her terror, then I can understand your concern. I can even perhaps excuse the conclusion you appear to have jumped to, since Iwasout riding early and was alone until I took Eric up with me. But I did not see her. Perhaps it will help you to know that my affections are otherwise engaged and have been—to the same lady—since I was a boy. And that at last it appears I may be having some success in engaging the lady’s affections.”
Ashley’s head went back, almost as if he had been struck. Zounds but the words were wicked. Deliberately so? Verney had loved another woman since boyhood? He had never cared at all for Alice? Well, he had come for answers and he would not be diverted. “Why did you treat my wife so badly?” he asked.
Sir Henry stared back at him before breaking eye contact and bending to pat one of his panting dogs on the head. He began to walk onward and Ashley fell into step beside him.
“I have regretted the harshness with which I spoke to her and the coldness with which I treated her during that final month before she left for India,” Sir Henry said. “I was perhaps unjust. Certainly I was hasty. I should have taken more time for consideration. Undoubtedly she was devastated by the power of her own feelings, and my words only made matters worse for her. At the time I did not care. Any fondness I had ever had for her was forgotten. I cared for Katherine—and for myself. And yet a part of me, a guilty part of me, could not help being secretly glad of the gift Alice had presented to me. And so I lashed out at her to cover my own guilt. I am sorry—woefully inadequate words. Did I do her lasting damage?”
“I believe,” Ashley said, “your question must be rhetorical, Verney.” He had abandoned her—apparently quite abruptly and quite cruelly—for Katherine Binchley. And Katherine in her turn had abandoned him in order to marry Smith. It seemed hardly just that Verney was now having a second chance with her.
Sir Henry sighed. “The answer is apparently yes,” he said. “Your coldness to me is understandable, then. But I cannot help but wonder if any permanent damage to Alice’s happiness was not caused more by personal guilt than by anything I said to her.”
Guilt? Guilt at having lain with her seducer, the man she had loved? The man she had been unable to forget? Ashley knew what it was to see red at that moment. His fist beneath one side of Sir Henry’s jaw caught the man unprepared. He reeled backward and only just kept his footing. His hands balled into fists and he glared with anger. But he did not use his fists, Ashley was disappointed to find. He would have welcomed a good fight.
“She was your wife,” Sir Henry said, breathing hard. “I must remember that. I am sorry. Sorry for the whole sordid mess and for your doubtless painful attempts to come to terms with it. But perhaps ’twould be as well, Kendrick, if we kept our distance from each other in future, maintaining merely a distant courtesy as neighbors.”
“Perhaps,” Ashley said coldly, “it would. Answer one more question for me before I take my leave. Did you kill Gregory Kersey?” The question hung between them almost like a tangible thing. But he would not withdraw it if he could have, Ashley thought. Verney was correct: Ashley was trying to come to terms with the past, though he doubted that knowing the full truth would help ease him of his own guilt. Perhaps he felt somehow honor-bound to understand the wife he had been unable to save better than he had ever understood her while she lived. Had she known that her lover was also her brother’s murderer? Had that knowledge added to her torment?
Sir Henry blanched and the hand that had been rubbing at his jaw stilled. “Did I kill Greg?” he said in little more than a whisper. He closed his eyes. “Oh, God. Is that what she told you?”
“’Tis a possibility that has struck me,” Ashley said. “Did Kersey find out the truth? Did he confront you?”
“He had always known,” Sir Henry said. “We quarreled bitterly over her, yes. There was a marked coolness between us up to the time of his death, though we had been close friends for too long and were still too close as neighbors to be fully estranged. We were shooting together that morning—along with several other neighbors.” He paused to draw a deep breath. “No, I did not kill him. I wonder if Alice believed I did. She never accused me of it. But if she did believe it, then that would mean... Ah, who knows? The past is best left in the past, buried with the two of them.”
“Why did Ned Binchley retire so abruptly after the death of Gregory Kersey?” Ashley asked.
