Page 39 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

“I was away at Oxford and then encouraged to remain in London. I preferred it, to tell you the truth. There was more…gaiety to be found in the city than the wilds of Yorkshire.” Gaiety meant rowdy gatherings, licentious women, getting drunk most nights. I’d earned my rakish reputation honestly.

She raised a brow but otherwise did not comment.

"During that weekend, my grandmother caught William making advances toward one of the maids. She put a stop to it. She believed that was the end of the matter." I paused. “Apparently, it was not."

Lady Larkspur's hands had gone still in her lap. She was watching me the way I imagined she read a poem—attending not only to what was said, but to everything that surrounded it.

"The following morning, Emily Driscoll was taken from the house. My grandmother did not describe the details of her departure. What she described was the conversation she had with William afterward." I could feel my jaw tightening, the old discipline of the regiment holding my voice level. "She confronted him. He did not deny it. He told her that Miss Driscoll had come to Everthorne to catch a title, and that she had got more than she bargained for."

Something passed across Lady Larkspur's face—not surprise, but a kind of recognition, cold and precise, as though she had heard such words before, or words near enough to make no difference.

"And then," I said, "my grandmother describes what my father did."

I reached for the brandy and drank.

"I had been at the gathering. I had drunk a great deal that evening—more than I should have, more than I can account for. I remember very little of the night." I met her eyes. "My father knew this. He came to me the following morning and told me that I would be made responsible for what had happened to Miss Driscoll. That I was to take the blame."

Lady Larkspur drew a sharp breath. It was the first sound she had made.

"I knew it was a lie," I said. "I knew I had not touched her. But I could not prove what I had not done, and I could not say who had. My father informed me that he would purchase a commission for me. I was to go and never return home. I left Everthorne that same day." I turned the journal over in my hands. "My grandmother never saw me again. She died shortly after she learned I had been sent to the Crimea."

The room was very quiet. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck the half hour.

“Your father enlisted you in the army, exiled you from your home,” Lady Larkspur said. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but there was nothing soft in it. "To protect William."

"To protect the heir," I said. "Yes."

She rose from her chair and crossed to the window. I watched the line of her shoulders, the tension held there—the fury of a woman who understood precisely what I was telling her, not only about my family but about the machinery of the world in which we both moved. A world in which a young woman could be assaulted, removed, and forgotten, and the man who did it could stand in his grandmother's drawing room and talk about what had been done to her without remorse.

When she turned back to me, her composure had reassembled itself, but her eyes were bright with anger.

"And now you know it was William," she said. "You have the proof."

"I have my grandmother's account. Whether that constitutes proof is another matter entirely." I looked at the journal—a small, cracked, green thing that had probably cost my grandmother many sleepless nights to write. "Who believes the private writings of a dead woman against the reputation of a rake?”

“I do,” Lady Larkspur said fiercely. “I bloody well do.”

Chapter

Seventeen

A Notebook Deciphered

“Iapologize,” I said. “I should not have expressed myself as less than a lady.”

It was not the sort of language a lady used in her own drawing room at midnight, with a gentleman seated opposite her. But the words had escaped me before propriety could intervene.

“Ladies swear, Lady Larkspur,” Thorne said. “I can attest to that.”

For some reason, the remark offended me. “Have much experience, do you?”

He bit back a grin. “Some.”

And that told me much about Thorne. Of course he would have women fawning over him. Not merely women—ladies.

But that was neither here nor there. We were not discussing Thorne’s liaisons. We were discussing what we had come across in our investigations. And what I possessed was a key component.

“I have something to confess.” I knew what I had to do. I had known, I think, from the moment he walked through my door. But knowing and doing are different countries, and the border is not easily crossed. “Wait here.”