Page 9 of To Save a Scoundrel’s Soul

“About that,” Fitzsimmons agreed. He seemed nearly as distressed as Ashington. “Bloody Talybridge. I should wring his neck.”

“If one strangled everyone deserving of it,” Rossingley murmured without glancing up from his cards. “One would scarcely have time for anything else.”

“What does the Marquess of Talybridge have to do with it?” Tommy demanded. “Except that he’s about to marry her?”

“That’s what I want to find out!” Ashington bellowed. “Who knows? No one ever got to the bottom of it. But…our grandmama’s parure disappeared after that blasted shooting party, and now it’s draped around the neck of a bloody American.”

Willoughby emitted a small whimper.

“A beautiful, and no doubt entirely innocent, young lady,” Ashington corrected.

“Tell me the little information you have about this shooting party,” Tommy pressed, eyeing Ashington anxiously.

“Yes, do,” added Rossingley, intrigued. “Start at the beginning.”

Fitzsimmons made a harrumphing sound. “That’s the trouble. We know next to bugger all! Our damned parents refused to speak of it. Any knowledge we’ve ever gleaned has come from our butler, Hawkins. He was a youthful second footman at the time.”

He sent his brother a questioning look as if checking whether he could continue. The duke nodded miserably. “As we said, there was a shooting party at the Ashington estate. All very grand, thus Grandmama wore the parure. Much champagne was consumed, there was a lake, swimming, larking about. You know the sort of thing. Grandmama died, and the damned set disappeared.”

“Into the lake?” queried Rollo.

Fitzsimmons winced. “If only it was that simple. The baubles were never found, and they’re bloody hard to miss. One can see them from up in the heavens, they blaze so bright. No wonder Willoughby instantly spotted Miss Amelia; the damned parure entered the ball last night a good five minutes before its wearer.”

Mickey was intrigued. Why were the details of this salacious tale apparently news, including to the likes of Rossingley? The earl was a walking, talking almanac. “You said it wasn’t simple,” Mickey prompted, forgetting he normally let others speak first. Perhaps sparring with Beauregard had given him courage.

Fitzsimmons answered. “On the final day of the party, our grandmother was discovered down by the lake by one of the footmen. Dead.” Once more, his grim gaze flicked up to his brother. “She’d been shot. We believe, through snippets pieced together, that she was with child—and not our grandfather’s. Apparently, she had been having liaisons with one of the guests. There were also rumours of a duel with pistols, earlier that morning, between my grandfather and a male guest. Whether it is true or not, or merely idle gossip, I cannot say. But our grandfather was a first-class shot. I doubt he’d have missed.”

“And the parure?” Rossingley leaned forward, card game forgotten.

“Not around her neck when her body was brought up to the house,” the duke replied. He paced between the window and his bookshelves. “Mud was flung, as you can imagine. In anger and in every direction. Naturally, the whole thing was hushed up; the theft glossed over. The keepers of law and order certainly knew nothing of it. My grandfather hated his family being the subject of rumourmongering, even more than I. And doubly, I imagine, if there was a hint he was being cuckolded, though theirs wasn’t a love match. Twelve hours later, Grandmama’s death was attributed to a stray shotgun bullet, nothing but a tragic accident and never spoken of again.”

As the room fell silent, Mickey marvelled at the story. These nobles were made of something else, he thought, picturing a bloodless duke calmly ordering that his wife’s murder never be mentioned again in order to protect the family name. He’d not heard anything like it. Poor, poor woman.

Frowning, Kit Angel was the first to speak, addressing Fitzsimmons.

“Earlier, you mentioned the current Marquess of Talybridge? Why? Was he at the party?”

Fitzsimmons shrugged. “Probably. He would have been twenty or so at the time. But his father certainly was. Until that dreadful weekend, the old marquess and my grandfather were great chums.”

“And now the parure has appeared around his betrothed’s neck,” mused Rossingley. “Gadzooks. It sounds like a hell of a weekend bash. When did we all become so staid?”

“I, for one, enjoy staid,” Ashington responded tartly. “Needless to say, my grandfather never hosted guests at Ashington again. In fact, he became rather a hermit and died not that many years after. My father always said appearances and upholding the Ashington title meant everything to him. Which is why no one, including my father, ever spoke of the scandal beyond the walls of Ashington.”

“And explains why this story never reached my ears.” Rossingley nodded. “The family has hushed it up splendidly.”

Briefly, Ashington paused patrolling the room to exchange grim, guarded looks with Fitzsimmons.

“Indeed. And I trust no one here will speak of it.” Fitzsimmons voice was stern. “We’d have preferred this unedifying tale to have stayed tucked away in the closet, never to see the light of day again.”

“And it would,” Ashington’s pacing started anew, “If that blasted girl hadn’t been festooned in our priceless family jewels.”

“Regrettably,” Rossingley observed with a sigh, “There is something about a closet that makes one’s family skeletons so terribly restless.”

“How can you be certain the parure is one and the same?” queried Tommy, a question Mickey had thought of himself but building up the courage to ask. “I accept it was striking—I’ve never seen jewellery quite like it, but—”

“Because,” the duke interrupted, “for the last five years, every time I look up from my desk, I come face to face with a bloody picture of it!”

Seven pairs of eyes trod a trajectory from Ashington’s sturdy oak desk, positioned under the study window, to the panelled wall opposite, adorned with a solitary oil painting. Mickey blinked rapidly.