Julius's Passion (Regency Club Venus #4) - Carole Mortimer Page 0,44

older man felt about anything. Metford was a murderer and a charlatan, and he fully deserved every morsel of Bethany’s contempt.

“What? How dare you!” A red-faced Metford attempted to stand, only to be pushed back down again by Julius. “Have you taken leave of your senses, child?” he demanded of Bethany.

“Not at all,” she dismissed in a hard voice. “Would you like to know how I am so certain you are responsible for the attack on James?”

“What I should like is for you to return to your bedchamber, and I will send for Dr. Harrington,” her uncle snapped. “You are obviously unwell.”

“I am perfectly well, I assure you,” she scorned.

Metford looked at Julius. “You seem to be encouraging these delusions, if not wholly responsible for them.”

“Because they are not delusions,” Julius answered mildly. “Would you like to know why I am also absolutely positive of that?”

The older man looked fit to explode, the color deepening in his cheeks, his eyes glittering as if with a fever. “I would like you both to remove yourselves. You, to your bedchamber until you are feeling more yourself.” He glared at Bethany. “You, Andover, to taking yourself from this estate completely.”

“And how about me, Uncle Adrian? Would you like me to remove myself too?” James stepped into the room, gaze fixed upon the older man as he continued to walk toward the desk. “That would be a pity when I have only recently arrived.”

Adrian Metford’s eyes widened with shock, becoming even wider with each step James took toward him. The color, which had been so high in Metford’s cheeks just seconds ago, had all drained away, leaving his face white as candle wax and that manic, almost demented gaze, fixed upon the nephew he believed was dead.

He turned that crazed gaze upon Bethany and Julius. “Can you see him too?”

James chuckled as he leaned casually against the front of the desk. “I am not an apparition, Uncle Adrian,” he mocked before sobering. “If I were, you can depend upon it I would have haunted you long before this. For the beatings you regularly gave me for no reason. For hiring men to kill me.” He snorted. “Be assured, the only thing which has saved you from my wrath before now is the love and protection you have given my sister all these years, when I was unable to do so.”

Bethany stepped to his side and slipped one of her hands inside his much larger one, the two sharing a warm smile, before she turned to look at her uncle, her gaze cold with contempt. “How could you do such a thing? Why would you do such a thing?” she demanded to know.

“You have no proof I have done anything,” he challenged.

“Of course we have,” Julius stated not quite truthfully. “Letters. Documents. I have no doubt we could find a witness or two if we dug deeply enough. Now tell me.” His voice hardened. “Why did you have a sixteen-year-old boy killed?”

“Because the title should always have been mine and not that lily-livered sop who was my older brother.” Metford spat the words contemptuously, obviously goaded beyond what he could tolerate.

Bethany gasped. “My fa—David Metford,” she corrected huskily, “was a kind and loving man.”

“He had no backbone,” his brother dismissed. “I tried to talk to him, to persuade him round to my way of thinking regarding buying property in London. But he never had listened to me, was always the cautious one.”

“So what did you do?” Julius prompted softly. “Did the idea to murder Henrietta and David come to you before they had the influenza, or was their ill health too good an opportunity to miss?” He heard both James’s and Bethany’s indrawn breaths, but his gaze remained fixed upon the older man. He had not found opportunity to discuss this other suspicion with the brother and sister before now.

Metford looked up at him. “I would never have harmed a hair upon Henrietta’s head. I loved her. Unfortunately, the influenza took her from me,” he said bleakly.

“And David?”

“I felt no qualms about helping him on his way,” Metford stated coldly. “Disposing of the brat too, and ensuring I inherited the title as well as took control of the Metford fortune. How did you survive?” He looked at James accusingly.

“Sheer luck and previous good health, I expect,” James scorned. “You killed my father?”

“I…might have given him a little too much of the medication on one of my visits, which the doctor had left to ease his