“Damn. They found her,” Gabriel said. He and Stratton had carried the brandy to the morning room from where they could see the garden through the window. “It is inexcusably bold of them to go searching in my garden without my permission.”
“I expect they are concerned for Miss Waverly.”
“They are all looking for a reason to hang me, is more likely.” He looked down at the glass in his hand. “I should call for champagne so I enjoy a final glass before I go to the scaffold. Remind the ladies that as a peer I am entitled to a silken noose.”
“Clara says Miss Waverly is nothing if not capable. She will not give them cause to hang you,” Stratton said.
“I doubt Clara is so perceptive as to determine that with the briefest of conversations in a theater box.”
“They met before that. When Miss Waverly began helping out with the journal. Did you not know about that?”
Amanda was involved with that journal too. “I did not.”
Stratton shrugged. “Ah, well.”
“Ah, well?”
“I think Clara was surprised, but not shocked, to learn you have a liaison with Miss Waverly. She is not a hypocrite.”
“It will not be she who dons the black cap, but that dark figure of doom. You would think I had seduced her daughter, she was so incensed.”
“She may have seen her secretary in that light.”
“I expect now she will write another essay and title itRibald Rues of the Nobility, and feature me as the prime example. I expect you to use your influence to see that does not happen.”
“As Clara explained, they do not censor each other.” Stratton poured more brandy in Gabriel’s glass.
“Well, they should censor that woman. If your wife owns the damned journal, she could have refused the damned essay.”
“You were not named. It read like a general upbraiding of the nobility.”
“When you first read it, did you think,Oh, dear, Lady Farnsworth’s pen is scolding the entire nobility? Or did you think,I’ll be damned, that sounds just like Langford?”
Stratton smiled down at his brandy.
“This amuses you, I can see. You would not find it so clever if you were the subject of that essay, and the whole world knew it.”
“I was in another part of that journal, and so was Clara, and wewerenamed, if you remember.”
That took the umbrage right out of him. He realized the fuller implications of what had just been revealed in the drawing room. “She allowed that? She agreed to fully air that scandal on those pages?”
“She wrote it. She wanted the truth out in the world, so there would be no misunderstanding of what had occurred. It came at a great cost to her.” He paused. “She did it for me. So do not expect me to sympathize too much if Lady Farnsworth’s little essay cost you a bit of your pride.”
“You have succeeded in calming the storm better than I thought possible. Let us join the ladies. Amanda will never forgive me for leaving her alone with them.”
“I think it wiser to let them chat.”
Gabriel did not think it at all wise, but he relented. “Then we must occupy ourselves here for a spell. Sit, and tell me how your son fares.”
“That bores you.”
“Not at all. Not at all. Tell me everything. He is what, a month old now? Has he started talking yet?”
* * *
“The earlier drafts are stacked by date, most recent first and oldest at the bottom. They are in the second drawer.”
Amanda finished explaining the very logical way she had left Lady Farnsworth’s papers. Lady Farnsworth sat at a writing table, making notes. A sheet with similar notes could be found in the library desk’s top drawer, left for Lady Farnsworth should she go looking for reminders of the explanation given to her on Amanda’s last day.
