“Fear not, Brother-in-law, your lady wife is safe as a baby bird in a nest,” Matthew Foxford quipped. “Once I realized the dead wretch you were speaking of was Fairclough, locating his mistress was easy. Isabelle Janey. Not that I’ve ever had the pleasure of this particular light-skirt,” he added, when Adam gave him a hard stare.
After all, this was Purity’s husband. If he’d been tupping the same whores as Fairclough, it had better have been in the long-ago past.
“Foxford is correct,” Lord Hollidge said. Clarity’s husband had a law degree, although he rarely practiced, preferring to spend his time studying plants and traveling with his wife and two children. “Although I don’t think the nest image is entirely accurate.”
Purity’s husband laughed at Hollidge’s more staid manner. Adam didn’t feel like laughing any more than he wanted to celebrate with brandy.
“That same mistress saw her in the vicinity,” he reminded them. “If Fairclough has her testify that Alice was there at the top of the stairs.” He trailed off with a shake of his head.
After finally escaping from a miserable marriage, Alice’s husband might reach out from the grave to strike her down with his brother’s help.
“Why was Lady Diamond there?” Hollidge asked. Although drinking brandy, he was still jotting down notes.
“She was trying to find Fairclough,” Adam explained. “Naively, she hoped confronting him with his courtesan would make him either cease his public affair or divorce her.”
“Thanks to Foxford, Miss Janey and her man-servant will testify to Fairclough’s inebriated state and that Lady Diamond was at thebottomof the staircase when he came tumbling down,” Hollidge said, setting down his pen. “Thus, there is no doubt to her innocence and not a chance anyone will even investigate, never mind bring charges. The current Lord Fairclough has just been blowing smoke before darkened mirrors, trying to scare your wife.”
“Trying to wring every last penny because he can’t stand that his own brother was such a useless toad. It makes him feel better to blame Alice. But it will stop now,” Adam vowed.
“It will,” Hollidge agreed. “A letter signed by the mistress should be sufficient. She had been duped by the Faircloughs three times,” he added. “For one thing, the deceased brother cheated her out of her regular allowance during the last few months of their association, always with the promise of paying her once he won at the gaming tables or through one of his outrageous wagers.”
“Yet he never won. And the second?” Adam asked.
Foxford finally poured Adam a glass of brandy and pushed it toward him. “Unlike us, the man was a grand piss-maker, sucking the monkey from midday till sun up. And that was theonly thing that was up. Apparently, Miss Janey grew tired of his whinging about his lobcock.”
“Let us drink to Fairclough’s lobcock,” Adam said, feeling infinitely better about the situation, knowing the man hadn’t been able to tup Alice regularly. Thus, he raised his glass, and they all drank. “And what is the third deceit?”
“Gerald Fairclough moved Miss Janey out the following day after his brother died,” Hollidge explained. “He said he would pay for her new lodging if she testified against your wife, whom everyone would plainly see was not the grieving widow. Of course, he used every penny he got from selling his brother’s London house and from the sale of your lady’s country-house inventory to pay not only his brother’s debts but a few of his own. When Foxy found Miss Janey, it turned out Fairclough hadn’t paid her rent beyond the first month.”
Adam chuckled. “And thus, the new Lord Fairclough left the old mistress high and dry, as they say.” He imagined the woman was beyond fed up. Knocking back another sip, he asked, “How could my Alice pretend to mourn that fuddled, groggy whore’s bird? It would have taken a stellar actress such as Isabella Glyn to convince anyone she felt one whit of grief.”
Hollidge refilled his glass. “What is it about that family and their lack of integrity with money?”
“A lack of integrity in general, I warrant,” Foxford quipped.
With that last piece of information, Alice was truly out from under Fairclough’s lies.
“Here’s to the Fairclough’s lack of integrity,” Adam said. They all drank again. His brothers-in-law had successfully reassured him there was no danger to her anymore, and he couldn’t wait to tell her.
When he got home, dashing from room to room, however, Alice was nowhere to be seen. It was already dark out, andshe hadn’t told him she was going anywhere in particular that afternoon. Besides, where could she be so late in the day?
With each empty chamber, Adam’s stomach sank a little more and his anxiety rose. Finally, he called his butler to him in the library, the place he’d thought sure to find her.
“Mr. Lewis, where is Lady Diamond?”
“Lady Diamond has left, my lord. She and Jillian took the train to Reading with the intent of residing at Stonely Grange.”
Alice had fled.Again!Just as she had done on a whim from Bath, she had hopped the twig to Caversham.
“Dammit!” He nearly sent his fist through the library wall. “How long has she been gone?”
“At least four hours, my lord.” Then the man drew his watch out of its small pocket, with its chain dangling from his fingers, and consulted it. “Closer to five actually.”
Adam slid his fingers into his hair, making a noise of sheer exasperation before throwing himself down in the high-backed, well cushioned reading chair.
Realizing he was displaying bad behavior in front of his head of household, Adam dismissed his butler. But it didn’t stop him from telling the books that surrounded him, “I am going to wrap that woman in a fishing net and tack her to the floor when I get her back.”
As soon as the shock wore off, he decided to wait until the morning train. After all, knowing what she would find at her old home, he didn’t feel quite so badly about her residing there. If only Alice had learned to trust him and could have let herself depend upon someone besides herself.
