That version didn’t include running away and leaving Tiny to do his dirty work. With irony, Grey agreed. “Well, right, my fault again. Obviously, my timing is bad. It all comes down to me.”
With Percy’s lunatic accusation, Grey shed years of guilt. He had broad shoulders and had willingly accepted the burden of death and injury all these years—but no more. Percy was caught in a fantasy he’d spun all on his own. “Only later, you had another look around for the book while Mort turned the couch over in search of coins, right?”
His maracas had been disturbed and El’s papers had been out of order when Grey had finally stumbled upstairs after his unwanted swim in the river.
Percy shrugged and didn’t deny it. Grey’s accusation went into the notes. He added one more. “Rafe, you might note the tear in the prisoner’s left coat pocket. It appears to match the scrap we found at the scene of Comfrey’s murder.”
Percy glanced guiltily at his torn pocket. Evidence, of a sort. Another nail in Percy’s coffin.
“The book is with my publisher,” Grey continued. “Stew is bankrupt and won’t be supporting your crimes any longer. It might go easier on you if you tell the captain just what he told you to do.”
Finally understanding that Grey’s heir was in no position to support his reign of terror anymore, Percy collapsed and confessed, most likely exaggerating. Still, Stew’s litany of criminal activities was long and scurrilous and Grey wondered why he hadn’t hanged his cousin years ago.
Perhaps because he’d been told since childhood that he was cursed, and his desire to keep his friends and family safe gave Stew what he wanted—and admittedly, gave Grey the freedom he preferred.
That irresponsibility ended now.
Forty-four
Eleanor
While waiting for Grey‘s return, El had taken a seat in the manor’s informal withdrawing room. After Percival was led back to his cell, Grey found her. His expressive lips were turned down in gloom, but he took the seat beside her with an air of. . . relief. Setting aside her book, she studied the new lines carved in his face and dared to sympathetically stroke his jaw with a finger. Surprisingly, he caught her hand and held it against his bristly cheek.
“I am a fool,” he said sadly, before releasing her.
“You are a man of intelligence and scholarly wisdom who does not understand fools,” she corrected. “You believe people are like you.”
“Which is foolish. You should go back to the house. Hunt is bringing in Stew next. Sutter has promised to lend his knowledge as a lawyer. This won’t be at all pretty—Percival spilled everything he knew. My heir is a lazy, privileged bounder.” He seemed weary beyond words.
Grey was never weary. He had the energy of a thousand suns. Eleanor desperately wished she dared hug him, but he was still a lord and she was a nobody. “You shouldn’t have to testify against your heir. Perhaps you could leave him to Hunt and Mr. Sutter and spend your time writing letters to your trustees and so forth about who is to take your cousin’s place?”
“I sent inquiries some days ago. I do remember how to write on my own.” His lips tilted wryly. “They tell me his debts exceed his trust fund and he has fraudulently endangered the estate’s reserves. I have agreed to pay the merchants and tailors because they do not deserve to suffer. But I have refused his gambling debts. He played with high-ranking nobles who have means well beyond his or mine. They are the reason he’s so desperate. His debtors are powerful men who are threatening to send him to prison. What he has done as a consequence. . .” He gestured helplessly. “Is appalling. I do not know the penalties for attempted murder and conspiracy to do so.”
Murder, his heir had attempted to murder him. El didn’t concentrate on this appalling fact but on easing Grey’s pain. “It is amazing how wicked people find each other. Unless they require your testimony, you do not need to witness this.”
She would do anything to wipe the desolation from his eyes and return the amazing resilience that had allowed this lonely man to travel and create a life without friends or family. “Thea says Mort has been released and is in an awful decline. Would you care to give him some encouraging words?”
He pondered it, but an uproar outside the door drew their attention. They rose to peer into the long hall.
Rafe hustled cousin Stewart, shouting obscenities, down the corridor from his cell. Eleanor wrapped her hand around Grey’s and held him back.
She had once thought his heir resembled Grey, but as they approached, she could see the dissipation in his cousin’s red-veined countenance. His stylishly trimmed mane was thinning and greasy from pomade. His once fashionable clothes had not held up well in the filth of the crypt, and blood stained his cravat from Grey’s blows.
Passing the entry where they stood, Stewart saw them, shot them a baleful glare, and spit like an animal in Grey’s direction. Rafe dragged him on before he could spew more spite.
“You do not need to hear more of that,” El declared firmly. “Let us give solace to a starving artist. Might you buy his painting that shows your view from the attic? You could take it with you when you leave.” Saying that wounded her right down to her smallest toe, but she was trying to be realistic.
Grey was hurting and in turmoil. Clinging to her hand meant nothing.
“Yes, I think you are right,” he said after a brief hesitation. Apparently laying some of his demons to rest, he continued more determinedly, “Hunt can have my written statement if he needs it. He might pry more sense from the lackwit without my presence.”
With a brisk step, Grey led her down the wide central hall toward the front. “Arnaud also has a piece I’d like to consider.”
At the white marble stairs in the entry, they ran into a small crowd gathering around the manor’s ancient tall case clock as it bonged the hour. Two young boys, a rather polished young man who must be their tutor, and Major Ferguson crouched about the windowed case, watching the pendulum. Thea was observing from the bottom of the stairs.
“What is happening?” Eleanor whispered, because they seemed to be concentrating very hard on the old timepiece.
Thea smothered a laugh. “Those ornately engraved brass pendulums contain strange lines the boys believe are a map to the mad earl’s treasure. But they have been unable to decipher it. They are now looking for patterns in the clock movement.”
