Amanda nodded, wishing she could curse, too.
Lord Rexford had turned from gentle shepherd to the wolf that ate the sheep. He started pacing, while his dog watched from beside Daniel's chair. "The trial is set for almost a month away, but every day that passes makes the task of an acquittal more difficult."
"I… I see." Amanda saw the hangman's noose, the crowds coming to watch, the thick rope dangling, waiting. She clutched the blanket again.
"Stop, Rex, can't you see you are frightening the poor woman?"
He was frightening himself, too, to have her very life depending on him. "I apologize once more, Miss Carville."
"There is no need. I am aware of my dire straits and your uncomfortable position in assisting me."
"But you might not be aware that Sir Nigel despises my father and wishes to discredit him further for some reason. Embarrassing Lady Royce would suffice, I suppose, or dragging me into his vendetta."
"Then I am a mere pawn in his grudge? I would not be in this fix if two men were not feuding?"
"Sir Nigel did not put the gun in your hand, did he?"
"No, I did that."
"Very well. Let us begin there. The weapon was in your hand. Sir Frederick was shot. Did you shoot him? This is a simple question, answerable with no roundaboutation, if you please."
"No. I wished him dead many times, but I did not kill him. I did not!"
Rex looked toward his cousin who held his hands up, palms out. "No rash."
Rex nodded. "True-blue," was all he said. Everyone was silent for a minute, thinking.
Amanda was thinking that her saviors were crazy.
Finally the viscount said, "In a way it would have been easier if you had shot the lowlife."
"How could that be better for me?"
"Because then we could have pled self-defense, a threat to your life, extenuating circumstances. You might have thought he was a burglar. Anything. We might manage to have you sentenced to parole, perhaps in Lady Royce's care, or sent out of the country for your lifetime."
"Botany Bay?" she asked with a gasp. "Few men live through the voyage there, fewer women."
"No, I meant India or the colonies. Or even one of my father's outflung properties."
"But I could not live as your family's pensioner. Or subject your mother to social death here in London." She turned toward Daniel. "You saw what happened over your little faux pas. Lady Royce would be ostracized if she harbored a confessed killer." She raised her chin. "I am not guilty. I shall not confess."
"Very well. If you are not guilty, who is? Do you know?"
"No. I have been racking my brains, and I cannot think of a single person. I did not know my stepfather's associates. He seldom entertained at home, and whatever business he conducted would have been at his clubs. "
"What about the butler?" Daniel wanted to know. "It's always the butler, isn't it, except when it is a jealous spouse."
"Hareston is a fussy, sneaky sort, who would never have left the gun on the floor."
"Perhaps you surprised him and he panicked."
"But why would he shoot his employer, putting himself out of work?"
"Why indeed?" Rex asked, searching in the countess's escritoire for a pencil and paper. He ignored the small packet of letters tied with a blue ribbon in one of the upper drawers. They looked suspiciously like the twice yearly letters of obligation he had sent in reply to birthday and Christmas gifts. He slammed that drawer shut and found what he wanted in a lower one. "And we can leave your stepsister and her aunt off the list because I understand they stayed on at Almack's until someone sent for them, after the Watch arrived. Odd."
"No, I doubt they noticed I was gone."
"That caring of you, eh?" Daniel wanted to know, looking like thunderclouds. He would not have let his sister out of his sight in London.
"My stepsister was too excited about her first evening at Almack's, and her aunt, Miss Hermione Hawley, Sir Frederick's sister, was sitting with the chaperones, scrutinizing the eligible bachelors. Elaine cares for me."
"Yet she did not help you when you were arrested." That was a statement from Lord Rexford, not another question.
Amanda glared at him. "She is seventeen. What should she have done? And her father was dead, horribly. I think someone told me that she and Miss Hawley left London the next day, conveying the baronet's body to his family's cemetery in Hampshire."
"Very well, they are not suspects or witnesses. Why do you not start in the beginning."
"But I have told my story over and over again. Surely you have heard all the details from the newspaper and the servants and town gossip."
Daniel was nodding, but Rexford did not pay attention, making notations on his pad. "I need to hear it from your own mouth because proving innocence in this case is going to be far harder than proving guilt."
"But I did not commit the crime!"
"I know." He touched her hand, then jerked his away, as if he had not meant to touch her. "But think on this. What, say, if your pearls were in question? You can prove you have a set by the necklace itself, or a bill of sale."
"They were my mother's."
"A will, then, or a houseful of servants recalling them. Easy proof. But what if someone said you had a diamond necklace?"
"I do not. Sir Frederick sold it and my mother's other jewelry, to pay for her doctors, he claimed."
"Ah, but you could have sold the necklace, or tossed it in the dustbin. Then it would be your word against the prosecutor's case."
Amanda fingered the pearls at her throat. "I see."
He nodded. "The negative is far harder to prove, but it is not impossible. Now start at the beginning of the unfortunate events. No, start with your life with Sir Frederick and his household."
So Amanda told him about her mother's marriage, her fading away, and Sir Frederick's anger. She told about his misappropriating of her inheritance and stealing her dowry, and how she was relegated to a poor companion in the house.
Daniel asked, "Why did you not leave? My aunt would have taken you in."
"And left little Elaine to face her father's rages, his skimping on her clothes and education and even simple entertainments? I could not abandon her when she was so young."
"Admirable, I am sure," Lord Rexford said, "but then she grew up enough to enter the Marriage Mart."
"Yes, her father wanted her to marry a title. She liked the idea of becoming a marchioness or a duchess."
"Not likely, a filly coming from that stable."
Rex frowned at his cousin's interruption. "Go on."
"With Elaine grown and her father attending to her future, I hoped to marry myself. Sir Frederick swore none of my suitors was good enough. In fact, that very afternoon he admitted that he would never part with my dowry. I was not of age yet, and he would see it diminished to nothing by my twenty-fifth birthday. My inheritance was already gone, he said, for my upkeep." She ignored Daniel Stamfield's angry mutterings and watched Lord Rexford add another note to his list. When he looked up, she continued. "I thought a particular gentleman of my acquaintance would not care about the money. He was well-off, and had expressed his interest."
"Did you speak with him that night at Almack's? Was that why you left so precipitously?"
"Yes, and yes." Amanda bit her lip while the two gentlemen waited. She told them about Mr. Charles Ashway and her expectations. Her voice trembled when she spoke of receiving the cut direct from him.
Amanda swore the floorboards shivered when Mr. Stamfield jumped to his feet. "That cad. I shall call him out for you, Miss Carville. No gentleman leads a lady to await an offer, and then treats her so abysmally."
"He had his reasons. I demanded an explanation, you see." She blushed and stared at her hands, but she managed to whisper the slander Sir Frederick had told Charles.
"And he believed your stepfather's lies? Anyone can tell you are a lady, not any barque of frailty. I will not bother challenging the mawworm, then, I shall just pound him into the ground. Dueling is illegal anyway."