Now that he was talking, it seemed Connor wished to confess all. Margaret wished she was not alone in hearing it.
“When we arrived at Penenden Heath, we tied our horses and Lewis looked for his challenger. I gave Mr. Upchurch one of the pistols, and said I was he. I told him to face me man to man, but he refused. ‘Dueling is only forgentlemen,’ he says.” Connor spit out the word like a vile thing. “And apparently as a valet, I am barely even a man, let alone a gentleman. And Laura’s honor not worth risking his life over, not worth anything at all, beyond the few trinkets he’d given her.”
“Who is Laura?” Margaret whispered, fearing she already knew the answer.
“My little sister. Dearest creature God ever made. Only sixteen.”
Margaret did not know which act sickened her more.
“To see his smirking face, when he spoke of sweet Laura. It was beyond me to endure.... I pointed the gun and told him to stop laughing, but he would not stop. He said he knew I could not shoot him, thatIknew I could not shoot him.”
White-faced, Connor swallowed and whispered, “He was wrong.”
Margaret slowly, gingerly pulled the pillow from his grasp, as though a loaded pistol. “Did you intend to kill him?”
He inhaled deeply. “I was angry. I wanted to stop him. To punish him for hurting her, using her. I didn’t think past that. But later... Later I saw how stupid I had been. I tried to throw suspicion on Saxby, even that Poet Pirate fellow. No one suspected me. But Lewis knew. If he lived... I would hang.”
She asked gently, “You shot him but could not suffocate him?”
Connor shook his head, expression bleak. “I would do anything to save Laura. But not, it seems, to save myself.”
If you have a bad servant
part with him, a diseased sheep
spoils a whole flock.
—Joseph Florance, celebrated French chef, 1827
Chapter 31
Nathaniel and Helen sat in chairs pulled near Lewis’s bed in his own room at last. Lewis sat propped up with pillows. Though still weak, he had quickly regained his senses once Connor wasn’t there to administer large amounts of laudanum.
Helen raised the teacup to his lips, recalling the doctor’s admonition to give him plenty of liquids.
Lewis sipped, then shook his head. “To think I trusted him.”
Helen bit her lip, then whispered, “As his sister trusted you?”
He glanced at her, then away. “She wasn’t complaining.”
“She issixteen, Lewis. You must have seemed a god to her. Wealthy and handsome. And old enough to know better.”
He slanted her another glance, then looked at Nate. “So what have you done with him? Has he gone to prison?”
“Connor is on a ship bound for Barbados as we speak.”
Lewis frowned. “What?”
“Nathaniel and Mr. Hudson procured a place for him with an acquaintance returning to the West Indies,” Helen explained.
“But he shot me, tried to—”
Nathaniel cut off his protests before Lewis could work himself into a lather. “Prison means a trial, Lewis. A trial in which your part would be made quite public. In Connor’s mind it was a duel for his sister’s honor. In all truth, I cannot say I completely blame him. If someone treated Helen the way you treated that poor girl”—Nathaniel’s voice shook—“I might very well have done the same.”
Disgust filled him, but he would not lash out at his brother when he was still so weak. He inhaled deeply to calm himself. “Even so, we thought you might sleep better knowing the young man was out of the country.”
Their stillroom maid had begged to go with Connor and would soon be his wife, but Nathaniel did not think Lewis would appreciate the concession and didn’t mention it.
