Page 89 of The Bridal Quest

"I am sure that—Owenby, is it?—will be quite happy to tell us what happened to your mother." Rochford said mildly. "Won't you, Owenby?"

"I didn't do nothing," Owenby wailed, his speech slipping a bit in his distress. "I didn't kill Lady Radbourne. I swear it!"

"I did not think you did," Gideon told him grimly. "My father killed her, I am sure. What I want is for you to tell me why. Tell me what happened."

"I don't know," Owenby told him, looking sullen. When Gideon clenched his fists and took a step forward, the valet cried out, "I don't! It's the God's truth! I wasn't there when it happened. He just—Lord Cecil told me—well, I heard the crash. I was waiting in his room to help him get dressed for bed. And I heard them arguing."

"About what?" Irene asked.

"I don't know. It's the truth. I could hear the voices, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. Except once, he shouted something about having her letters. And when I went in later, there were papers on the fire, burning. I think his lordship threw the letters in there. I think maybe she had tried to take the letters out of the fire, because the poker was lying there, and there was some ash and a coal on the hearth."

"What happened? Did you go in when you heard the crash?" Gideon asked.

"No, my lord. Not right away. It wasn't my place, was it? It was 'tween a husband and wife. It would have been more than my life was worth to have crossed him when he was in one of his moods."

"So you did ... nothing?" Gideon's lips curled in a sneer.

"That's right," Owenby retorted defiantly. "I just waited. It wasn't my place."

"When did you enter the room?" Rochford asked before Gideon could lash out at the man.

"Well, after she screamed," he said. "There was some more yelling, and I heard him tell her he'd never let her go. And then she let out this cry. Something like, 'No!' or 'Go!' or maybe it was just his name. I don't remember. Then she screamed and—and then there was this thud, and some ... more thuds. I didn't know what had happened, so I went to the door and, well, then he jerked open the door and saw me. And he pulled me into the room."

The small man hesitated, his gaze flickering from one man to the other anxiously. Finally he went on. "I saw her lying there on the floor. There was a chair turned over—I think that was the first thud I heard. And Lady Selene—she was lyin' on the floor, on her side, and—and I could see she was all limp. Her head—there was blood all over one side of her head. She'd fallen onto the hearth—her head, at least. The rest of her was on the carpet. But I could see that she was dead." He shivered a little at the memory. "She was staring straight at me, like."

"He had hit her with her clock?"

Owenby nodded. "Yeah, it wasn't very big. He must have picked it up and knocked her in the head with it. And then, I think when she fell, he—he hit her another time or two."

The valet crossed his arms in front of him and glared at Gideon. "It wasn't his fault!"

"Not his fault?" Gideon exploded. "He beat her to death!"

"She drove him to it," Owenby fired back. "She made him mad with jealousy. He knew she was sleeping with his brother—oh, yes, I knew it, too. It was clear the way they was always looking at each other."

"But Lord Jasper wasn't even there," Irene pointed out. "He had left for the army some months prior to that."

"I think it was his letters what set his lordship off. He must have been writing her, and Lord Cecil found them."

"So he killed her?" Rochford asked in disbelief.

"He didn't mean to," Owenby said staunchly. "He lost his head. He said to me, 'Owenby, I think I've killed her. I don't know what happened. I just picked this up and—'" He paused and repeated, "He didn't mean to do it."

"Well, clearly he meant all the rest of it," Gideon growled. "He was thinking well enough to come up with an elaborate plan."

"I thought of most of it, sir," Owenby corrected him, not without a hint of pride. "I told him he should just pretend that she ran away. But he said that would be too big a scandal, he couldn't do that. And—and then he said we could pretend she was abducted. So that's what we did. I wrapped her up in her dressing gown that was lying out on the bed, and I wrapped one or two of her petticoats around her head. And I cleaned up the blood on the hearth with some more petticoats. Then I wrapped up that clock in her nightgown, and we took her downstairs."

"You took her down to the caves?" Rochford asked incredulously. "All that way? At night?"

"Not then, sir," he replied. "There wasn't time. I carried her through the garden and out to the ruins. I stashed her body there, put a few rocks in front of it. And then I came back and took the boy. I took him—I took him to this man I knew."

"In London?" Gideon asked. "You took me to London?"

"No! Not all the way to London. Just to Chipping Camden. There was a chap there that took children you didn't want. And anybody else, either. He wasn't above knocking a fella on the head and taking him to an impress gang. So I took the boy there."

He did not look at Gideon as he said these last few words, as if refusing to look could somehow help him to separate the boy he had given to a child-thief from the man standing in front of him.

Owenby shrugged. "Then I came back, and we did what we'd planned. Lord Cecil acted like they had been kidnapped. And he pretended to give me that necklace and sent me off to deal with the abductors. But I—I went to the ruins instead, and got her and took her to the caves. And I walled her up, so nobody could stumble on her accidentally. And Lord Cecil, he forbade people going there whenever he could, said it was dangerous."