Chapter Twenty-Three
“I expect there was a good reason you told me to meet you here.” Beth spoke before he even greeted her. She did not look at him, but at some tiny shoots of growth under a tree, heralding the coming spring. “Was a long ways for me to come just to chat.”
Meet me at the same place, when you go out to shop. That was the note he had slipped her after breakfast. Her empty basket rested on the grass at her feet. Her face, round and wrinkled, appeared very sober.
“I didn’t tell her you wanted to speak with me,” she said. “No reason to.”
“Just as well.”
“She told me you’ve a man who has told you she killed that husband of hers. I suppose that means there is still some danger for her about that.”
“Some. Not too much, I think.”
He could barely see her face with the way she looked down and with her cap’s long ruffle obscuring her profile.
“There was a decision about all of that. One that excused her of any blame,” he added.
“I never trusted that. More a matter of maybe putting the pot to the back of the hearth, away from the flames, but close enough to grab if one had a need for it. Could that happen? If they decide this duke was killed, could they look back to that and not only think she might have done it, but even start digging into that worthless brute’s death again?”
“They could. It wasn’t like being found innocent in a trial. The matter can be reopened.”
“I’ll be counting on you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I can make no promises, I’m afraid. She knew the risks, but decided to brave it out.”
Beth did not move or look at him. She just stared at the ground, her thick body bent a little from her heavy thoughts.
He picked up the basket. “Walk with me.”
They ambled along the perimeter of trees that surrounded Portman Square, both of them silent.
“I saw the marks on Jeremy’s shoulders,” he said. “He must have been very young when someone laid those down.”
She walked a little taller at that, and gazed straight ahead. “Thirteen years. The first time.”
“Finley?”
She nodded. “I should have known it would happen. Such a stupid, little man. He took pleasure in cruelty. His horse, his wife—I should have known eventually he would go after my boy too.”
“If he tried again, after you left his house, if he came upon Jeremy anywhere, in the street or on his property—he wasn’t a boy anymore. A few years older and he might have refused to take it. No one could blame him if he decided to allow no one to do that again.”
A deep breath entered her, and a deep sigh left. “Is that what you think? That my son killed him? Are you thinking to swear that information in order to spare Minerva?”
“I don’t intend to swear anything. I have nothing to swear. I only have a sum I added up in my head, with no facts to back it up.”
She crossed her arms and looked him in the eyes. “You added wrong. Jeremy would never do that.”
“In the right circumstances, any man might do it. That is how wars get fought, after all.”
“I’m telling you he didn’t do it. I know he didn’t.”
He did not say that she couldn’t know. That even if we are sure of someone, we can’t be totally sure. He did not say that as a mother, she of course would believe her son incapable of such a thing, no matter how justified the act might have been.
“I know for certain he didn’t kill that poor excuse for a man,” she said firmly, as if she heard his thoughts. “I know because I shot Finley myself.”
* * *
“He took after him again. I never saw Jeremy so angry. There comes a time when a boy isn’t a boy anymore, and won’t stand for it. You had that right.” Beth told her story while they continued their stroll in the park. “I figured it was only a matter of time before Jeremy did something about it. Then he’d end up either hanged or transported, even though he was provoked to it.”
