"You will never get away with this," Iphiginia vowed. She was clearly frightened, but still self-possessed. "You'll hang, Mr. Hoyt. If not for this, then surely for the murder of Mrs. Wycherly."
"You reasoned that out, did you?" Herbert smiled his jovial, ingratiating smile, but his eyes were as hard as glass. "Very clever, madam. I always did admire your intellect. So much so that I tried to keep you out of this, but you would not he warned off."
"It was you who locked me in the sepulchral monument in Reeding Cemetery, was it not?" Iphiginia demanded.
"I thought a good scare might persuade you to mind your own business, but I was wrong."
Marcus kept his coat hooked over his shoulder. "Why did you kill Mrs. Wycherley?"
"Ah, yes, Constance Wycherley," Herbert said — in a musing tone. "S was the one who began it all. Her little blackmail business operated quite innocuously for years. In exchange for a plump fee, she convinced any number of the governesses and companions she placed in certain households to give her interesting items of information concerning their employers."
"And then she blackmailed those people?" Iphiginia asked.
"Yes. It was a rather brilliant scheme, but I saw at once that Mrs. Wycherley lacked the vision to make it fulfill its true potential. She kept her demands very modest and stuck to blackmailing only the lesser members of the ton. She was afraid to pursue the more powerful names on her list."
"For fear that they would discover her identity and take action to stop her?" Marcus asked.
"Precisely. She didn't care to take chances, you see. Very conservative type. But I insisted that we broaden the scope of the business. She was quite nervous about it." Herbert shrugged.
"How did you convince her to take you on as an accomplice?" Iphiginia asked.
"I, merely threatened to expose her. Actually, we worked together rather well for awhile, although she became increasingly anxious. Unfortunately, after Iphiginia's man of affairs called to make inquiries about a certain Miss Todd, she panicked and demanded we halt the scheme entirely. I was forced to kill her before she ruined everything."
"And then you ransacked the place in order to make it appear that she had been murdered by one of her victims?" Iphiginia asked.
"Or a thief. I was not particularly worried about what conclusion was drawn. After all, no one could connect her death to me."
"How did you learn of her blackmail scheme?" Iphiginia asked.
"My mother was a governess. She sold information to Mrs. Wycherly for years and in exchange the Wycherly Agency kept her employed in some of the best homes." Herbert's mouth twisted bitterly. "Until my mother was seduced by one of her employers, that is. A fine gentleman of the ton got her pregnant. She was turned off immediately, of course."
"And Mrs. Wycherly refused to place her in any more posts after that," Iphiginia whispered.
"How did you know?" Herbert's voice, which had been almost jovial until that moment, suddenly rose in fury. His arm tightened around her throat. "Bloody hell, how did you know that?"
"It was merely a hypothesis," Iphiginia whispered. Marcus tensed. "You're hurting her, Hoyt.
"Don't move." Herbert kept the gun pointed at Marcus. "You are correct, Iphiginia. Mrs. Wycherly wanted nothing to do with a governess who'd been so stupid as to get herself pregnant by one of her employers. My mother was forced to fend for herself."
"You were the babe she carried, were you not?" — Iphiginia asked with surprising gentleness.
"Yes. I was her bastard son. The son of a viscount, but a bastard, nonetheless. Mother had some money, thanks to the fees Mrs. Wycherly had paid her for information over the years. And she was clever. She set herself up as a widow in a small village in the north. No one ever learned the truth."
"How did you learn it?" Marcus asked. "Two years ago on her deathbed, my mother told me the entire tale. I came to London to find Constance Wycherley."
"And your father?" Iphiginia asked very softly. Once more Hoyt's expression turned violent. "He was dead, damn his soul. He broke his neck in a phaeton accident five years ago. I never even got the chance-"
Herbert stopped abruptly and took several deep breaths. "I went to the Wycherly Agency and introduced myself to the old hitch."
"I see you've expanded your business empire from blackmail to fraud," Marcus said.
"Yes." Herbert indicated the premises of the museum with the nose of the pistol. "You would not believe how much money certain gentlemen of the ton will pay to regain their manly vigor, especially those who have not yet managed to produce an heir."
"I suppose there is a certain irony in your choice of business enterprise," Marcus said. "The illegitimate son of a titled gentleman engaged in defrauding other gentlemen.
"They are always so bloody concerned about begetting their legitimate heirs, are they not?" Herbert asked. "Their bastards can rot, of course. It's only the legitimate offspring who count."
Iphiginia stirred in his grasp. "Mr. Hoyt, please listen to me."
"Silence." Herbert's arms tightened ominously once more around her. "At one time I had hoped that you and I might become more than friends, my dear Iphiginia. We had so much in common. I wanted you to comprehend that, but you never did."
"What on earth do you mean?" Iphiginia asked. "You and I are two of a kind, m'dear. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. I realized that from the first moment we met. You were so utterly outrageous. So clever. I knew I had to find out more about you. Your close friendship with Lady Guthrie was the clue, of course."
"All you had to do was examine Mrs. Wycherley's offices to discover that she had two nieces, one named Iphiginia Bright and one named Amelia Farley," Marcus said.
',Mrs. Wycherly kept excellent files," Herbert said. "Once I realized that Iphiginia was her niece, I knew she was also a fraud. One thing led to another and soon I had it A sorted out."
"What made you think we had a great deal in common?" Iphiginia demanded.
"It's obvious, is it not? We had both carved out a place for ourselves in the highest levels of Society by virtue of our own cleverness and determination. We had deceived the Polite World, convinced it to accept us as one of its own. I thought that we were made for each other, m'dear. But you insisted on setting your sights on the Earl of Masters."
"You thought she had entered Society in order to form a connection with me?" Marcus asked.
"I did not discover that she was trying to find her aunt's blackmailer until the night she went to Reeding Cemetery. Until then, I thought it was you she was out to snag. I could not blame her for aiming high Indeed, I admired her nerve. But I feared it would not end well."
"You intended to he there when her grand schemes came to naught, is that it?" Marcus asked.
"Yes. Damn you. Who could have foreseen that the legendary Masters would abandon all of his rules to marry his mistress?"
"You tried to destroy our attachment the night you sent her here to discover me with Lady Sands, did you not?" Marcus kept his gaze on Iphiginia, willing her to ready herself.
"Everyone, including Lord Sands, I think, believed that you and Lady Sands had been conducting a quiet affair for years. I expected I could convince Iphiginia of that, also."
"But why did you send Lord Sands here that night?" Iphiginia asked.
Marcus raised his brows. "Hoyt no doubt hoped that Sands would kill me when he found me with his wife."