Marguerite Kaye - Regency Surrender - Scandal And Deception

‘Justine.’ Then he remembered the shot, so near to her ear. ‘I think you have been deafened by the gunshot, love. Do not fear. It will be better soon.’

Perhaps she had heard that, for she closed her eyes, as if to shut out the scene.

It was just as well. If she was not already aware of it, he did not want her seeing what she had done. Now that Will had moved him, Montague lay on his back, eyes wide and sightless, the blood pooling behind him, the ice pick buried to the handle in his chest.

He must warn the servants, before some maid wandered down to fill an ice bucket and frightened herself witless. And a man must come to take care of the corpse in the ice house. Although, until he could be buried, this was the best place for him.

And, of course, someone must be sent to the big house to get the duke so that he might swear a statement, or whatever one did when a crime occurred. There would be no question of self-defence, for the gun Montague had threatened them with was still clutched in one lifeless hand.

The little bag that held the loose stones lay just at the edge of the spreading pool of blood. Will scooped it up and dropped it in his pocket. Then he gathered up the real treasure: the body of his precious Justine. She was limp in his arms and so very cold. Was that the fault of the ice around them, or was it shock?

It was no trouble getting her back down the tunnel, through the kitchen and back up the stairs to her room. Once there, he did not bother with the maid, but stripped the bloody gown over her head and threw it into the fireplace, shifting the coals and poking it until he was sure it would catch and burn.

From behind him, he heard her soft voice. ‘You oughtn’t to have done that. It is probably evidence of some kind.’

He turned to see her staring into the fire. Her expression was still frighteningly blank, as though she could not quite understand what she was seeing. But he was relieved to see some colour returning to her face. ‘My word to my brother will be evidence enough, I am sure. You will not be forced to sit like Lady Macbeth, covered in gore.’

‘I do not think the blood on her hands was real,’ she said, staring down in puzzlement at her own hands, which were quite literally stained.

Will filled the basin and brought it to her along with a towel, that she might wash. When she made no move to do it, he helped her, wiping away every last trace of what had happened. He took the basin away again, dumping it in the yard so there would be no trace of the pink-tinged water. Then he brought a dressing gown, wrapping her tight so that she would not take a chill, and a glass of brandy from a decanter he kept in his room. He added a few drops of the laudanum the doctor had left for his headaches and swirled the liquor in the glass. While he normally did not believe in the need for soporifics, his head wound was nothing compared to what she must have suffered in the last day. He pushed the glass into her limp hand, wrapping the fingers around the stem, and said, ‘Drink.’

She refused at first. But he would not release her until she took it and coughed it down. ‘You do not have to wait upon me, hand and foot,’ she said, rising as if to prove it and sinking weakly back on to the bed.

‘And you did not have to save my life,’ he said. ‘All the same, I am glad you did.’ He lifted her legs to swing them up on to the bed and covered her, fluffing the pillows behind her head. ‘Rest.’

‘But I must speak to someone, to explain... And I need to tell you...’ Her brow creased as though she could not think what it was that she meant to say.

‘You will do that in the morning,’ he assured her. ‘For now, I will call Margot to sit with you, in case you need company in the night.’ He kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘And then you will go to sleep, Justine. No arguments.’

‘Yes, Will,’ she said softly and closed her eyes.

* * *

Justine woke the next morning, her mind woolly, her thoughts confused. Most notably, she was surprised to be waking, for it meant that she had managed to fall asleep. As Will had carried her into the room, she had half-feared that she would never be able to close her eyes again, much less free her mind long enough to get any rest.

Perhaps he had put something in the brandy he had given her. Or perhaps it was the sight and sound of her sister, sitting beside the bed and struggling with the thread and bobbins in the dim candlelight, as though attempting to prove that she had any interest in the skills Justine had been trying to teach her.

‘You needn’t bother,’ Justine had told her, gently.

‘I know that,’ Margot had answered, frowning down at the lace in a way that would have seemed very bad tempered of her, had Justine not seen the expression on her face almost since birth.

‘The things Mr Montague said about my trying to keep you from your place in the shop...’

Margot had looked up at her with the same direct, no-nonsense expression she often wore. ‘Mr Montague was a villain. He is gone now and we needn’t worry ourselves about what he did or did not say. In fact, I recommend we do not think of him at all.’ Then she smiled more softly. ‘It is just the two of us, Justine, as it has always been. The two of us and your Lord Felkirk, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Justine said, dutifully, thinking that it remained to be seen whether she had a Lord Felkirk or not. Will had been very gentle with her, as he had put her to bed. He could just as easily have left her in the ice house and called for the duke. Perhaps he was merely grateful for the action she had taken to defend him.

As he’d carried her, she had felt the tear in the shoulder of his jacket that the bullet had made as it had flown past his head. Only a few inches down, or to the left, and it would have struck him. It did not matter what happened to her now, as long as she knew he was safe and Montague could not hurt him again.

It would be nice if he had forgiven her, even in a small way, for concealing the truth from him. But there was a limit to how much a man could forget, especially one who had been trying for weeks to remember the past.

She had done an awful thing to Mr Montague. But perhaps it was mitigated since she had prevented him from doing something even worse. And though murder was by far the most serious of crimes, she had done many horrible things already. No matter how hard she had tried, she simply was not a very good person. She was a murderer, a schemer and a fallen woman. All the good behaviour from this moment on would not erase any of it.

It shocked her even more to know that she did not regret what had happened with her guardian in the ice house. If she had been the sort of proper woman that Will deserved, she would have been distraught over what she had done. It had been awful. But every moment she’d spent with Montague had been nearly as terrible. There was a strange peace in knowing that, having done the worst thing possible, she would not see him, ever again.

With no particular plan, she got up and woke Margot, who was dozing in a chair beside the bed, a trail of tangled silk threads trailing from the pillow in her lap, the lace pins scattered on the carpet at her feet. Justine kissed her lightly on the cheek and sent her back to her own room to get some rest. Then she called for the maid and dressed with care in her simplest of muslin gowns, a pale yellow patterned with tiny oak leaves. The maid finished by pinning her hair up beneath a plain linen cap.

Justine looked at herself in the cheval glass. She declared the look suitable for a morning walk to either the wood, or to prison. Was there a prison within walking distance, or would she be driven there? She imagined herself in the back of a cart, driven down the high street of the village, displayed before all as a criminal.