Page 22 of The Case of the Curate

“In your capacity as a clergyman?”

“Not exactly,” Rupert said. “I held no position in the church at the time.”

“But you were an ordained clergyman?”

“I was.”

Lord Chadbon intervened. “And where exactly did you meet Dinah Fenn? Because it was not in my townhouse, where she was employed at the time.”

“No, it was not,” Rupert agreed. “I met her in the Red Lion.”

Chadbon blinked. “In a public house?”

“Precisely.”

Paxton spoke sharply from the fireplace. “Sir, were you the father of her unborn child?”

Kate bit back a groan of as much pain for Dinah as annoyance with Rupert, who didn’t even have the grace to try to look surprised by the question.

“No,” he said.

Rupert never lied. Or, at least, he never had in boyhood. This young man of the world, this cynical clergyman, was a stranger to her.

“But you knew of her condition,” Paxton pressed.

“It was what she wished to discuss with me,” Rupert said simply.

And that was not only plausible, it rang true. Kate breathed again.

“Why?” Remington asked. “What could you do for her?”

Rupert took a drink. “Nothing, as it turned out.”

“I suppose you were still in London in June of this year?” Paxton said casually.

Kate tensed, for it was clearly a trap. Rupert could deny being in Chadleigh this summer, but she knew very well that Chadbon, his wife, and his household had spent much of it in London, which was no doubt exactly where Rupert had been.

“Actually, no,” Rupert said.

Remington blinked. “No?” he challenged.

“No, I was not in London. I was in Brussels from late May until mid-July.”

“Brussels?” Chadbon sounded affronted. “What the devil were you doing there?”

“Oh, following my nose,” Rupert said vaguely. “Lots of my friends were there, so I tagged along for a lark.”

“Then you were there at the time of the Battle of Waterloo?” Chadbon said in open disbelief. “Was that a lark, too?”

“No.” Rupert’s gaze fell to his brandy glass. He swirled it once and sipped, before lowering the glass and meeting Chadbon’s hard eyes. “I’m not the father of Dinah’s child. I couldn’t be, could I?”

“Not if he was out of the country for all of June,” Paxton said reluctantly.

“Can anyone vouch for your being in Brussels?” Remington demanded.

“Lots of people,” Rupert said. “I celebrated my first weddings there, among the British visitors. That was a lark.”

Remington grunted and exchanged scowling glances with Chadbon. “Look, lad, I won’t lie to you. You have to be under suspicion. You knew the deceased better than a clergyman should. You were a guest at Chadbon Court, and you hung about after bidding your hosts goodnight in order to meet the deceased. You had ample time to take the dagger from His Lordship’s study. You claim to have been in the orangery, from where you would have had a clear view of the murder, and yet you say you saw nothing. And then you happened to find her body. And the butler finds you bent over her, your hand almost touching the dagger hilt. Had you just stabbed her? Giving the dagger a last twist to be sure she was dead?”