A Woman of True Honor: True Gentlemen Book Eight Read online

  She was silent for a moment, then she pulled the covers up over them both. “Who knows? I am surprised to find I am actually tired enough to take a nap. You will think me a terrible fiancée, Valerian, but might I close my eyes for a bit?”

  He patted her shoulder. “Have a rest, and I’ll do likewise.”

  The intimacy was real and precious, and yet… this was not what Valerian had planned. Not at all. Married life was, according to Casriel, a series of adjustments, but what sort of besotted couple was too preoccupied to take advantage of the present opportunity?

  Emily either fell asleep or feigned slumber, while Valerian held desire at bay, for of course, now that they weren’t to make love, the flesh was once more willing.

  The parlor sessions had been a disappointment, true, and Emily’s situation with Briggs and Osgood sounded vexing as well. Had this cuddle turned into something different, Valerian might also have found a way to tell Emily that instead of a special license, the post was bringing him rejections of his manuscript. Some terse, some polite, each more disappointing than the last.

  And at the edge of all that fretting, he was also still wondering about that Addison Topsail fellow. Why ride a distinctively impressive horse if subterfuge was the objective? Why lie so clumsily about a name?

  This last annoyance Valerian could at least investigate. If Addison Whoever was still in the area, Valerian, as the magistrate, had the authority to get some answers out of him. On that decision, he drifted off and dreamed of a light-filled house made entirely of glass.

  * * *

  “This is a disaster, I tell you.” Caleb paced the confines of the library, his boots thumping annoyingly on the carpet. “You should have foreseen this, Tobias. You claim to be the superior tactician of the two of us, and you let that bumpkin yokel Dorning waltz off with my Emily.”

  Caleb had been ranting all morning, ever since Osgood had explained to them that the bumpkin yokel was to be his son-in-law, a situation about which Osgood had seemed quite pleased.

  “Dorning is the son and brother of an earl,” Tobias replied, “and he’s a local landowner, apparently. Had you bothered to acquaint yourself with those facts, you might not be in such a pet now.”

  Caleb tossed himself into a reading chair. “I’m not in a damned pet.”

  No eight-year-old could have sounded sulkier. Tobias poured two brandies, though the hour was barely past noon.

  Caleb accepted the drink with a wan smile. “I’m not in a pet, damn you to blazes, but thanks for the brandy. What can Emily be thinking?”

  “I don’t know as her brain is the organ making the choice, but if you’d consider the situation rationally, you’d see that her upcoming nuptials work to our advantage. The happy couple is to be married by special license, by the way.”

  The brandy was merely mediocre, probably the last of the stores that had conveyed with the Pepper Ridge property. Emily would never have laid in such unimpressive stock.

  Caleb paused before taking a sip. “How could you possibly know about a special license? Briggs has acquired the silence of the tomb lately, and she doesn’t care for either of us enough to let such a detail slip.”

  “So you do occasionally notice what’s right in front of your face. I account myself impressed.”

  “I could dash this drink in your impressed face, Tobias. Emily rejected you too, you know.”

  This point apparently consoled Caleb as indifferent brandy could not. “Osgood was the party we courted,” Tobias said, “more or less. Between Emily’s inherent discernment, the limitations imposed on her by polite society, and the threat of old scandal, she wasn’t about to find a husband among the fortune hunters and younger sons in London.”

  “She’s marrying a perishing younger son, you dimwit. By special license, if your intelligence is accurate.”

  “But she’s not taking any settlements with her into that marriage, Caleb. The whole pot remains in Osgood’s clutches, and that does not bode well for Emily’s prospects as an heiress, does it?”

  Caleb put his drink aside and sat up. “I beg your pardon? One of the foremost heiresses in the realm is going into her marriage with the clothes on her back? Has Osgood gone barmy?” Caleb rose and paced the length of the carpet again. “I’ll not have it, Tobias. Emily is dear to me, and while I’d like to shoot Dorning off his horse at close range, I won’t see Emily humiliated like that.”

  He strode for the door as if he had every intention of telling Osgood Pepper to fritter away a quarter of a million pounds for the sake of paternal duty.

  “Stop, Caleb, or it won’t be Dorning coming off his horse. The whole point of wooing Emily’s favor was to secure her fortune.”

  “Not the whole point, Tobias. Never the whole point. I couldn’t do that to her.”

  Truly, there was no greater impediment to common sense than romantic notions. “While I applaud your tender sensibilities, I applaud even more Osgood’s shrewdness. If Dorning is a fortune hunter, he’ll abandon Emily at the altar. Then she will be used goods, furious with her father, and even more in need of a husband.”

  Caleb stalked back across the carpet. “Don’t call her used goods. No gentleman refers to a woman in those terms. If Dorning cries off, Emily is the wronged party, and the fault will lie with Osgood for not seeing Dorning’s motives before the situation became an engagement.” He resumed his seat and finished his brandy in a single gulp. “Vile stuff.”

  “We are still clerks at heart, aren’t we?” Tobias said, eyeing his own untouched glass. “We drink Osgood’s brandy because it’s free, even when we know the difference between quality spirits and hog swill. Osgood did more than refuse to fund Emily’s settlements.”

  “How do you know these things?” The look in Caleb’s eyes said he was calming down, regathering his focus on his perennial lodestar—his own self-interest.

  “This old house has seen many renovations,” Tobias said, “and will likely see many more. Just off the formal parlor is a closet that served as a warming pantry when the formal parlor was the formal dining room. When Osgood received Dorning—”

  “You declared that you were peckish and would take an early tray for luncheon. You bounder, you went to eavesdrop.”

  “I gathered intelligence. Osgood was plainspoken with Dorning. He said Emily could marry Dorning with her father’s blessing, but without a penny of his money. Dorning was satisfied to have Osgood’s approval of the match.” Which ludicrously romantic gesture was proof everlasting that the aristocracy was daft.

  “You can’t eat a blessing,” Caleb observed. “Can’t use it to keep warm of a winter night. I hope Emily knows what she’s getting into.”

  “If the marriage ever comes about.”

  Caleb leveled a look at Tobias that suggested the lovestruck-suitor, hotheaded-young-fellow, and conscientious-man-of-business roles were all just that—roles that Caleb put on and took off like so many well-tailored jackets.

  “Whether or not the wedding happens is no business of mine, Tobias. I will not be a party to any more of your schemes. That business with Adam beggared my peace and put me in fear of eternal damnation. If I did not know that Adam thrives handily in the Antipodes, I’d be unable to sleep at night.”

  “Life is spectacularly unfair, and we are to attribute that great truth to the will of the Almighty.”

  Caleb picked up both glasses and took them to the sideboard. He poured Tobias’s untouched drink back into the decanter and set his own glass far enough away from the tray that nobody would mistake it for clean.

  “Life was unfair to a pair of overworked clerks, but Osgood Pepper has been more than fair to us.”

  “And we have toiled for him more conscientiously than any pair of clerks ever tended their ledgers,” Tobias said. “Adam is once again proving to be a problem. Osgood warned Dorning to speak with Emily about her brother. Briggs has confirmed that no letters have come from Adam for months, and I have reason to believe that Adam has returned to England.�
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  Caleb turned slowly, making a fine picture in this elegant old room, surrounded by books and brandy. Emily might one day wish she’d not been so dismissive of Caleb Booth, not that Tobias could afford to speculate on that possibility now.

  “How the hell could you know what Adam Pepper has got up to?”

  “I am nearly certain I saw him striding out of the livery yesterday, as bold as the 15th Hussars on parade.”

  Caleb’s expression became uncharacteristically serious, while somewhere in the house a door banged closed.

  “Adam can only be here to make trouble, Tobias. He’ll hurl accusations at Emily, impart entirely unacceptable theories to Osgood, stir up all manner of scandal. We can’t have that.”

  “No,” Tobias said, feeling genuine regret and even more genuine determination. “We certainly cannot have that.”

  * * *

  Adam was packing what few belongings he’d brought, ready to admit that returning to England had been a mistake. Well intended, but a serious mistake, and he’d overstayed his planned visit for no good reason. Emily would ignore his summons, because what could she possibly gain by admitting the truth now?

  To continue lurking in the hedges was risky, and by tomorrow night, Adam could retrieve his luggage from Helen Thelwell and be on a boat for—

  A soft tap on the door had him reaching for the knife he kept in his boot at all times.

  “It’s me,” said a female voice. “Open the dratted door before half the village comes to gawk.”

  Adam sheathed the knife and opened the door to find Emily standing in the corridor, heavily veiled and radiating impatience.

  “You came.”

  “You are my brother. I will always come. I cannot stay long, and you were an idiot for breaking your parole, but I don’t want you thinking that I’m—”

  He snatched her into his arms and kicked the door closed. “I should not have surprised you at Pepper Ridge,” he said, hugging her to him. “I lacked the patience to arrange a meeting, and I hadn’t planned to find you in the garden, but there you were.”

  She hugged him back, though Adam sensed hesitance in her embrace.

  “Had you arrived five minutes earlier,” she said, “you would have come upon me with my intended. What possessed you, Adam? And why are you still here?”

  She let him go, pinned back her veils, and treated him to a pensive perusal, and that was all wrong. She had no smiles for her long-lost brother, no tears of joy—also no apologies.

  “I wanted to make peace with Osgood,” Adam said, “and also with you.” Emily had played the part of the loyal sister, sent letter after letter, probably in defiance of Papa’s orders. Every one of her epistles had hit the perfect notes of concern, reassurance, family news, and hopeful wishes. He’d replied in the same light, because a convict’s mail was seldom private.

  Now they could be honest with each other.

  “I have been so angry,” Emily said, “angry with Papa, angry with Tobias and Caleb for stepping into your shoes, angry with myself for being unable to reason with Papa. I have missed you, Adam. You could talk sense to Papa and to me, and the past five years have been very long without you.”

  She didn’t know the half of what a long five years could be. “Is Papa truly on the mend?”

  “For now. If he takes his medication and uses common sense, he’s in quite good health. He’s back to yelling and threatening lately, when for months he was appallingly meek.”

  “And your fiancé deals well with Osgood?” That mattered, because once Adam left England this time, he could not return, not after having broken his parole.

  “Papa looks at a situation and asks, ‘How can I gain from this?’ Valerian’s approach is, ‘Where can I be of service here? Who needs aid? What needs doing?’ Papa has no idea what to make of Valerian, but Valerian is exquisitely competent at managing Papa. I will learn from Valerian’s example, and I wish I’d met him much sooner.”

  Osgood Pepper’s outlook was simply that of competent businessmen. Adam had learned to despise them as a class, for they exploited convict labor without mercy and saw the colonies as so much booty waiting to be plundered—while never missing divine services, of course.

  But Adam could not hate his own father, not even now. Osgood had done what most any parent would have done in the same situation.

  “Does your Valerian know the details of my conviction?”

  Emily had not taken a seat, though the room boasted both a reading chair near the window and a chair behind the writing desk. She instead began inspecting the contents of Adam’s valise.

  “Valerian knows the generalities. Papa’s approval of the match came with two conditions. This is a very well-made shirt.”

  “Italian.”

  Her smile brought to mind the younger Emily. “Tuscan silk, Adam? From one of our mulberry orchards?”

  “I have established a commercial venture with some of Papa’s contacts in the Italian states.”

  Her smile disappeared as she refolded the shirt. “You’ll compete with Papa?”

  “No, I will handle mulberry seeds and mulberry seedlings. Certain parts of the world can’t get enough of either.”

  She sat on the bed beside his open valise. “Certain parts of the world far away. I wish I knew who signed that bank draft, Adam. I would set the law on them before you could say Adam Smith Pepper.”

  She sounded so forlorn, so sincere. “Emily, you need not dissemble with me. Caleb explained the whole of it before the trial began, though he was delicate about the details.”

  “What whole of it?”

  “I know you signed that bank draft. If I had raised that defense, I’d have your transportation or possible demise on my conscience. As it is, I am in a position to assure you that you would not have fared well at all in Botany Bay. Women are scarce there, and their—”

  Emily was off the bed in the next instant. “Caleb told you that I signed that bank draft?”

  “He didn’t put it in plain English, but he puzzled it out. I have to say, I’m glad he shared his suspicions with me. I’d otherwise think that Papa brought charges simply to get rid of me.”

  “Adam, what are you talking about? I had no motive to steal from anybody. Papa insisted I handle my own pin money, and I had more than ample funds. I would no more have signed a bank draft for my own use than I’d strut naked down the Strand. Has the southern sun baked your wits?”

  Her consternation was real, as far as Adam could tell. “Please keep your voice down.”

  “You accuse me of a hanging felony and tell me to keep my—” She paused and let out a breath. “I did not sign that bank draft, and even if I had, why did you cash it?”

  “Because I did the Friday banking. The bearer draft was with the stack of notes I was to deposit or cash, the same as I did every Friday. I assumed Papa wanted to add to the cash in the safe.”

  Emily sank into the chair behind the desk. “I don’t like this, Adam. I don’t like it at all. For five years, I’ve told myself that you were caught up in a terrible mistake, that Papa forgot he’d signed a draft, or he’d signed it months previously and mislaid it. Anything, rather than believe the worst of you or Papa. I had no idea I was among the suspects. Caleb never hinted, and he’s not that good at keeping secrets.”

  Adam took the place she’d vacated on the bed. “He’s apparently very good at keeping secrets—possibly for selfish reasons—though this development changes nothing. Perhaps it’s as you said, and Papa simply laid aside a signed draft, and some clerk added it to the banking. I’m still a convict who broke my parole, and Papa still believes I’d embezzle from my own father.”

  A considering silence ensued. Beyond the window, the sound of hoofbeats clip-clopping along the high street punctuated the jingle of a harness and the music of an English village going about its business.

  “Is Caleb the culprit?” Emily asked, rising and wandering to the window. “Tobias? A clerk who took you into dislike because you s
colded him for tardiness? Did one of Papa’s competitors connive to see you sent away? Papa claims everybody spies on everybody else in the cloth business, and sometimes I think—”

  “Emily, no.” Adam gently drew her away from the window. “You cannot wade into this like some avenging angel of justice. Caleb saw you in Papa’s office.”

  “Any number of people frequented Papa’s office, Adam. That is hardly conclusive evidence of guilt—mine or yours. Caleb spends nearly his whole day in Papa’s office of late, as do Tobias and a pair of clerks. The footmen are in and out of there. A maid cleans first thing of the day. Caleb should have known better.”

  And yet, Caleb’s theory had made such perfect sense to a man in jail. Caleb had been so convincingly hesitant to share his theories, so reluctant to point any fingers, so careful to deal only in hints and innuendo.

  “If you are innocent,” Adam said slowly, “then I didn’t know better than to blame you. The idea that Papa would set the law on me rather than on you explained the whole business. Papa could not cover up the theft entirely—the bank records showed the money withdrawn—and the next day, I was still in possession of the funds. At the trial, I put on what defense I could without implicating you.”

  Emily crossed her arms. “Meaning you didn’t implicate Tobias, Caleb, the clerks, or Papa himself. You didn’t hint that Papa and his associates always have spies in one another’s warehouses. You became the victim of a nasty scheme and thought you were heroically saving your larcenous sister in the bargain.”

  “You suspect Papa?” In thousands of miles of brooding, in years of revisiting the facts, Adam had never considered that possibility.

  “If Tobias hadn’t noticed the discrepancy, by Monday morning, you would have put that cash into the safe, where Papa could have removed it without anybody the wiser.”

  “Why steal from himself?”

  Emily went back to wandering the room, the best the inn had to offer and still quite modest. “Stealing from the business to use the money for personal gain isn’t the same thing as stealing from himself. He has partners, Adam. They are silent investors, true, but it’s their money too. I thought to come here to say good-bye to you. Now I have a headache to go with my heartache.”