Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [136]
Mr. Cranley gazed across my head at Sir William, and Sir William at Lord Harold. “She shall have to be told, my lord,” the magistrate said. And so the man I had thought a rogue pulled a chair close to my bedside.
“My dear Miss Austen,” Harold Trowbridge began, “I told you once that I was a dark angel, and you a light one. But I should better have said that we both used our wits to similar ends—only I bend mine to deceive, and you to illuminate.”
I raised myself to my elbows in protest. “You claim now to have no interest in the Countess's property? Or in the fortuitous death of her husband?”
“In her property, I remain as desperately interested as ever,” he replied, with amusement in the heavily-lidded eyes, “but for reasons that shall soon be made plain; and as for the late Earl, it has been many years since I have thought of Frederick as anything but a friend. I did not kill Lord Scargrave, Miss Austen; indeed, I should more easily have killed myself. For it was the Earl who directed my every movement.”
I confess to a confusion of the senses at this revelation. “You must speak more plainly, Lord Harold.”
He sighed deeply, betraying for the first time some emotion other than languor, and fixed his eyes upon my own. “A second son—even the second son of a duke—must have a profession, Miss Austen; and I have made mine what the French call espionage.”
“You are a spy,” I breathed.
“If you will. I work only for those whose sacred reputations forbid all mention of their names; I serve the Crown from time to time; and always I go where the law may not—or will not.” Trowbridge paused a moment for reflection, as if choosing his words to suit his audience.
“These many months past—for almost a year; indeed—I have been in the Earl's employ,” he resumed, “for the purpose of divining the true nature of his wife's financial difficulties. Frederick, Lord Scargrave, had long been a friend of her father, John Collins; and at that gentleman's death, he received a sealed letter from his solicitors, begging him to look after John Collins's only child. Isobel came to the Earl at her arrival in England; he was immediately enchanted with her beauty; and his duty to a late friend soon became the necessity of a man in love.
“In very little time he learned of Isobel's financial difficulties; and in her innocence of business, she told him much that caused suspicion in him. Frederick believed her to be the victim of duplicity within her own family, but could not determine how it was done; and I may plainly state that he also feared for her life, and thought to protect her most by offering marriage and himself as a champion for her cause. The late Earl would not see that he alone should prove the greatest threat to her enemies, though I made the point on several occasions; Frederick was possessed of much strength and resolve, and foolishly could not believe himself likely to fall victim to anyone.
“At the Earl's direction and with his funds, I purchased Crosswinds’ debt, then held in various hands about the Continent, and approached the Countess in the guise of her chief creditor, pressuring her to make over the property in my name in order to cancel her heavy obligation. It was the Earl's hope that my appearance should force her true enemies into the clear, and expose their purpose; and to my great chagrin, he was correct. I was summoned by him to Scargrave on the night of the ball; I made an obvious advance upon the Countess, in the hearing of her family and friends—and that night, her main protector was foully murdered.”
“Can it be possible?” I said, turning to Sir William.
My old friend answered me with a single look. “It can, and is,” he said grimly. “Lord Harold has papers in his possession signed by the Earl, vouchsafing his purpose and the means placed at his disposal; and furthermore, he has all the notes representing the Barbadoes debt—from which the Countess is now, happily, freed.”
“It was these matters, among others, that we discussed in my chambers tonight,” Mr. Cranley said.
“I only returned from France a few days ago,