“I’m sorry, Madelyn. I’m asking for a united front. Can you do this?” David asked.
Maddy nodded and answered, her voice thick with pain and, Rob suspected, bad memories. “It has to be done.”
David gave his sister a one-armed hug. “I need you to make it clear that the district magistrate has summoned her and not her son. That we, none of us—” His glance drew in Rob and Lucy “—will be bullied. That she can’t divide us to conquer. She must answer for what she’s done.”
Maddy nodded. “I know. The horror of it just struck me for a moment. I won’t back down.”
“Do you want me to come?” Lucy asked.
Maddy shook her head and left with Gibbons.
Rob studied his brother, seeing backbone and determination. “What are you going to do to her.”
“Get a confession if I can. Even if I can’t, she will be confined.” David peered up at him uneasily. “I can’t have her jailed or hanged, you must see that.”
“The house in Northumberland? We’ll need to hire caretakers.”
“Prison guards?” David asked ruefully. He didn’t wait for an answer. “You said ‘we.’ It isn’t yours to do, Robbie, it’s mine, and I have no choice. She’ll ruin my children’s lives eventually if I continue to let her run amok. She’s already ruined mine, hurt my sister, and damaged your life, as well.”
The countess’s cruel voice the morning he left Ashmead echoed in Rob’s head. “Damaged, but not destroyed,” he said. David nodded and turned away.
Lucy had taken in every word. Her sad eyes touched him deeply. “The army didn’t kill me,” he said, reaching over to touch her cheek, unable to help himself.
She leaned into his hand with a sigh, and heat ran up his arm. His heart began to pound. “She’s a horrible woman,” Lucy said.
“She is that. This will soon be over.”
The well of sadness in Lucy’s expression stunned him. He would have looked for triumph. “What is it?”
She lifted her head away, and his hand dropped. “I’m sad for Maddy,” she murmured. “But I’m glad it’s over, and I can get on with my life. So can you.”
Rob could hear the earl giving orders behind him—setting the stage. It wasn’t the time or the place to ask her what she meant—or to give voice to his newly born hopes. He had little time and less privacy to speak with her about it. A disturbance in the hall drew their attention.
Instead of the countess, Eli and Brynn Morgan, led by a footman, stood in the doorway gaping at the scene, and the sight sent a surge of affection through Rob. He shook his brother’s hand and gave him a firm pat on the back.
“I gather you caught them,” Eli said irritably. “You might have sent word. I wouldn’t want to miss the denouement of the drama. If Morgan here hadn’t brought news, I might have missed it all.”
“I’ll fill you in on what you missed later.”
Morgan held up a folded sheaf of paper. “Account numbers, amounts, banks. She’s been a busy lady for a very long time.”
Rob pulled him toward David, still arranging the room for the coming confrontation. Morgan handed the earl the papers, and David met Rob’s eyes in silent communication. They had the last bit of evidence.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Dowager Countessof Clarion swept into the estate office ahead of her daughter and Rob’s lieutenant, dressed for battle, arrayed in peacock blue silk with a matching turban, ostrich feathers flowing upward. She wore what Lucy recognized as the Clarion emeralds, a parure she had refused to surrender to Marjory as the heir’s wife.
The countess tossed her head and scanned the room with practiced arrogance. Lucy drew breath to calm her nerves at the sight of the woman who never bothered to notice her except to utter an insult. The countess had humiliated Lucy’s sister throughout her marriage, in spite of David’s efforts to protect Marjory, and Lucy learned to avoid being in the same room with the woman for fear of her biting tongue.
She treated Rob worse. But to order destruction and harm to people? To cause the death of Lieutenant Robbins?Can she have gone that far?It seemed inconceivable.
The countess raked Lucy with a cold disdain, and all sympathy fled, even when Lucy watched the old woman flinch at the sight of Higgins, gagged and bound to a chair. Rob’s solid presence next to her, so close her shoulder touched his arm, gave her strength.
David had rearranged the room, transforming the cellar into a mock courtroom. A desk and chair had been dragged in from the estate office and lifted onto a platform raised a foot higher than the brick floor. The raised area’s normal purpose was to store dry goods above the damp floor. Light streamed in from the windows that opened toward the stable yard, bits of grain and dust motes floating in the beams over David’s head. Lucy wondered vaguely where the bins and barrels had been moved to.
The earl sat behind the desk, and Goodfellow and the burly groom who stood guard turned Higgins to face him. Lucy suspected they deliberately waited until the countess came in so she would see that bit of business. Goodfellow leaned on one of the grain sacks they had stacked by the window, half sitting, his eyes on Higgins. Two empty chairs had been placed next to the surly butler.
Gibbons went to the storeroom door, and, at David’s gesture, led Miller, who was still gagged, and Spangler to the empty seats. Spangler glanced around frantically and opened his mouth to complain. When he saw the countess, he shut it and sat.
