“I know she deserves…” began Edward. “I know strong measures must be taken, but she is my mother. I can’t send her to the gallows, for God’s sake.”
“She is a murderer!” Alec pointed out.
“I know! But if it all comes out, the scandal wouldn’t stop with her.”
“Your difficulties seem to be of your own…”
“I’m mostly worried about Anne,” said Charlotte. Startled, Alec turned to her. “Her come-out would be a disaster if Lady Isabella were publicly accused and tried.”
She paused, and Alec saw the whole dreadful picture as her words sank in.
“There’s Lizzy and Frances, too. It would be awful for them. And not fair; they haven’t done anything wrong.”
“The Earntons,” added Edward in a frightened murmur. “My God, Amelia Earnton would skin me alive.”
Alec couldn’t argue with that. “We must do something. Aunt Bella cannot be left to… to go on as she has been.”
“No. I’ve been thinking of little else, you may believe. And I have a… proposal.” Edward drank from his glass. “You have some kind of place up in Scotland, don’t you, Alec?”
“A lodge near Inverness,” he agreed.
“I was thinking we could send Mama up there, with suitable… helpers. Not Martha.”
Alec considered the idea.
“I know it belongs to you, and she is my mother. Perhaps you think I should keep her here at my house…”
“No!” He did not want the newly revealed Aunt Bella for a neighbor. “I’ve never used the place. Grandfather bought it thinking he would hunt there, I believe.”
“Or get away from Grandmama,” Edward offered, some of his customary humor surfacing.
“It’s rather rustic, I understand.” He couldn’t imagine Aunt Bella in such a place. But did that really matter? No.
“Right at this moment, I don’t care,” was his cousin’s reply. “The farther it’s buried in the hinterlands, the better.”
Alec nodded. “Very well. We… you must find some trustworthy… staff.”
“And that fellow St. Cyr will have to be squared away,” answered Edward.
“I shall leave it all to you.” Now that the matter was settled, Alec wanted Edward out of the way more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. “Can we end this now? It’s late and we are all tired.” Charlotte looked exhausted.
“Yes, all right.” Edward rose, stumbled on the edge of a carpet, and sank back down into the sofa cushions. “Can I have a bed for the night, Alec? I’m half soused, and anyway I don’t want to go back. She’s sent all the servants off on ‘holiday’ except Martha and some ghastly old crone.”
Trapped, Alec went to ring the bell.
“I’m going to bed,” said Charlotte, standing.
Alec almost protested aloud. He had to talk to her.
“I’ll make arrangements to return to London in the morning,” she added.
“No!” The others looked at him, startled. Alec nearly cursed aloud. There was nothing he could say with Edward lolling so annoyingly on his library sofa. They were still staring at him. “I… I would be happy to… do that for you.”
With one wide-eyed look at him, Charlotte slipped away. Why had he said that? Damn, damn, damn.
“Trouble in that quarter, cuz?” his cousin smirked.
Alec spoke through clenched teeth. “If you start in on me now, Edward, you will be very, very sorry.”
For once in his life, Edward shut his mouth.
Alec stood by the bellpull, all that he had heard tonight churning in his brain. Without meaning to, he spoke the question aloud. “Do you ever worry that there is some… thread of instability running through our family? A temperamental imbalance? Our grandmother, and now your mother…”
“Hogwash!” Edward sat up straight and scowled at him. “Instability? My father was as stable as a clod of earth. Yours was dull as ditchwater. I didn’t know your mother well, but if she was anything like her sister Earnton…!” He shivered. “My mother lived under Grandmama’s thumb for the first thirty years of her life. You have never made any allowances for that.”
“I know it was difficult for…”
“Difficult! She was terrorized from earliest childhood. This does not excuse what she has done, of course, but in my mind it goes some way toward explaining it. That and Martha’s ‘medicines.’ We’re not under some… curse, Alec. My God, you’re as steady as your parents. More! And whatever you may think of me, at bottom I’m quite… level-headed.”
The footman arrived, and Alec gave the order for a room to be prepared. When Edward had gone, he stayed, contemplating the idea that the parent he’d modeled his life around could be seen as dull