Page 77 of The Hidden Heart

“You mean, did she help me look around your study? No. She rang a peal over my head the next day for doing so. We tried not to be seen talking much—we weren’t supposed to know each other, you know. But Bets came to my room after the fight and gave me a proper tongue-lashing about it. She was afraid I had endangered us. That we’d be exposed.”

“So that’s why you killed her?” Cobb interjected. “’Cause she told you off? Didn’t like that, did you?”

Radfield rolled his eyes. “Of course I didn’t like it. But I didn’t kill her over it. She’s said much the same to me many times before. In case you don’t have sisters, Mr. Cobb, I will tell you that younger brothers are accustomed to receiving tongue-lashings from elder sisters. Besides, she had the right of it. I shouldn’t have done it. It stirred things up. Made the duke suspicious. And, of course, Bettina had figured out that you were a Runner. She was a crafty girl.” His voice faltered, and he looked down at his lap.

“Why did your sister go to Lord Kestwick’s room the night she died?” Richard asked. “Did she tell you?”

“Lord Kestwick?” Radfield looked at him in amazement. “What makes you think she went to his room?”

“I saw her. And he admitted it. He said that they had had an assignation.”

The other man continued to stare at him. “I don’t believe it. You must be mistaken. Bets hadn’t been in the trade in years. Besides, the money she’d get for a night would be a pittance compared to what she had in her trunk in her room.”

“Perhaps she didn’t do it for money.”

“For what, then? Love? She’d just met the man.” Radfield sneered. “For pleasure? No. She didn’t get that out of it. She did it too long for hire, you see. Bets didn’t much like men, except for me. And she most certainly did not like them in that way. She once told me it was all business, not pleasure, and I have never known her to take up with a man since then.” He glanced with some embarrassment over at Jessica. “Begging your pardon, Miss Maitland.”

“Accepted.”

“And if by some strange chance she were to take up with a man, it wouldn’t be with a nobleman. She hated the lot of them. They were mainly the men she saw back then, you see, and she despised them. And Kestwick is the very worst of what she disliked—haughty, cold, full of himself, and caring for no one else. I cannot imagine anything that could have persuaded her to go to his bed.”

Richard looked at him thoughtfully. “Yet she went to his room. Why else would she have gone to his room in the middle of the night? Could she have had some other scheme? Perhaps to rob him?”

Radfield considered the idea. “She would have liked taking something from one like that. But she’d just raked me over the coals for entering your study, and all I was doing was looking. I can’t imagine she would think it was worth the risk, what you’d get off one gentleman who was traveling—I mean, maybe a stickpin, some watch fobs, cuff links. Minor stuff. Lady Vesey’d be a likelier prospect.”

“Yes, well, you were already pursuing that avenue, weren’t you?”

The other man had the grace to blush. “No. Not in the way you mean. I just thought—we were attracted to each other, that’s all.” He looked down for a moment, then said, “As I said, Bets and me, we tried not to talk to each other, to pretend to be strangers who only met on the coach. So I saw little of Bettina. But, thinking back on it, the last time I saw her, just when we were chatting a little like strangers before supper, there was something about her—she seemed a little excited or…or maybe upset. I’m not sure. But she…Bets was always a calm one. No matter what happened, she didn’t get flustered. But that night, she looked a little…nervous. I asked her if she was all right, and she said that she would be. And then someone came up, and we couldn’t say anything you wouldn’t say to a perfect stranger.”

“All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Addison. Mr. Cobb, I presume you plan to escort Addison to London once the snow has melted enough to leave?”

“That I do. I’ll take him into custody right now, sir. Lock him in a room right and tight—not the one he’s been staying in. Maybe the nursery, if that’s all right with you—no windows he can climb out of, and I’ll lock the door.”

“Very well. Speak to Baxter about it.”

Cobb went over and wrapped his hand firmly around Radfield’s arm, lifting him up from the chair and propelling him toward the door. Radfield, however, stopped halfway there and turned back to Richard. “Are you saying Lord Kestwick killed her? Is that what you think?”

“I frankly do not know,” Richard admitted. “All I know is that he saw her for a time before her death, but I also know that she left his room and went back to her own. I have no idea what happened after that. Where she was going or who, if anyone, was with her.”

“Will you—you won’t let it rest, will you?” Radfield asked. “I mean, because she was who she was? If someone killed her, you will keep after it, won’t you?”

“Yes. I promise you.”

The other man nodded and let Cobb lead him from the room.

“Well.” Richard looked at Jessica. “That was certainly unexpected. I never dreamed…I guess that collar makes an excellent disguise, doesn’t it? I never looked past it, even when I knew he had been entertaining Leona in his room. I thought he was a bad priest, but still, I thought he was a priest.”

Jessica nodded.

“You were right,” he went on. “I notice you have grace enough not to say it. But you pointed out the inconsistencies in his performance—his saying the prayer wrong, quoting Shakespeare instead of the Bible.”

“Yes. But I didn’t dream he was a thief masquerading as a man of the cloth,” Jessica admitted. “I don’t even know what it was I thought—only that he acted oddly.”

“Why do you suppose she went to Kestwick’s room—supposing her brother is right and she did not go there for the same reasons Leona visited him?”

Jessica shook her head. “I have no idea. It does seem a petty theft for her. Gentlemen don’t usually travel with a large amount of jewels. He probably had some money with him, but, as Radfield said, it doesn’t make sense, what with her admonishing her brother for attempting to steal from your study.”

“Perhaps she had different standards for herself than for him. Or perhaps he is lying about the whole matter. Maybe Cobb is correct, and he is the one who killed her, and he is simply trying to throw suspicion off himself onto Kestwick.”