The Postilion (The Masqueraders #2) - S.M. LaViolette Page 0,125
close to her on the settee as he could without actually pulling her onto his lap.
“Better, I think. She is less anxious and not so easily frightened.”
“I am glad you brought her to live with you.”
“And you won’t mind having her with us … after?”
“You mean when we are married?” he teased. “Go ahead, I want to hear you say it.”
Her cheeks tinted pink. “You don’t mind having her with us when we are married?”
“I look forward to having a bigger family. You won’t mind having two nieces living with us?”
“I miss them both,” she said, simply. “How are they managing after the countess’s death?”
“They had so little of her before she died. Only after Cadan’s death did Claire take any notice of them.” He grimaced. “I know it sounds callous, but I’m glad—for their sakes—that they did not know her better.”
“I’ll never forgive myself for buying her the very drug you were trying to ween her from, Jago.”
“Don’t blame yourself, darling, you weren’t to know. Besides, it didn’t matter what either of us did because Ria kept her well-plied with laudanum. It still sickens me to think that Ria all but poured it down Claire’s throat to manipulate her.” He cut Benna a grim look. “It worked, too; just not the way Ria hoped it would.”
“Do you think she wouldn’t have done what she did without the drug?” Benna asked.
“Clearly we can never know, but I think Claire’s courage to confront Fenwick came from a bottle that night.”
“I’d always thought laudanum made people lethargic.”
“It does, but it can also cause brief periods of extreme euphoria, which are always followed by melancholia.”
Jago reached into his coat and took out a folded rectangle of paper. “This is a very long, convoluted tale. You should read this,” he said, handing the letter to Benna, “it explains the first part of the story far better than I can.”
Jago silently read it along with her, even though he’d read it at least a dozen times:
Jago,
You will know what I tried to do if you are reading this. I can only hope that I succeeded.
I simply cannot continue to live this way and killing Fenwick is the only way to end it.
I am sorry that I could never bring myself to tell you the truth, Jago, but it was all so sordid—so endlessly sordid—that I was ashamed.
Cadan did a foolish thing, a long time ago, and we have been paying for it ever since. Your brother hated me from the first, but even he could not keep the truth from me once matters became truly dire.
I only know what little Cadan told me. He and Brian got involved with the smuggler Bligh and his men. One among them—they never knew who—sold information to the French. The government sent an agent to investigate and Bligh caught, tortured, and killed the man. Still they learned nothing. But, somehow, the dead agent’s diary fell into Viscount Fenwick’s hands—the one before the present viscount.
The older Fenwick bled us dry for years.
Cadan sold the London house, the hunting lodge in Scotland, the manor in Buckinghamshire that your mother left him, and even the industrial properties my father left me. He sold the Trebolton rubies—the set in the vault is paste—and then he sold all the rest of the jewels that were worth anything. He sold at least a dozen paintings—including the Holbein—your father’s illuminated manuscript collection, his string of hunters, the carriages—all except his curricle and that broken-down old boat of a coach—and on, and on, and on.
Then, after five years of hell, that bastard died and the torment stopped.
Only to start up again six years ago, when his brother discovered the diary and began putting it all together.
Apparently the diary contains detailed information about Cadan and Brian’s involvement in the smuggling, complete with the agent’s opinion that all three men—with Bligh as the ringleader—knew about the spying.
I don’t believe Cadan knew anything about that, Jago, but he certainly knew what Bligh intended to do to that poor man.
The new Viscount Fenwick was far less greedy. At first.
And then, a few years ago, the demands began to come faster. Finally, two months before Cadan’s death, Fenwick asked for an enormous amount of money. He gave his word that that would be the last time and he would hand over the journal.
Your brother actually believed him. To pay him, he took out the three loans. I argued with him, but of course he didn’t listen to me.