Page 48 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

‘Won’t you come into the library, Captain? Akshat, bring wine.’

‘There’s no need,’ Gabe said curtly, not at all pleased at being robbed of his chance to have a go at the butler. ‘I’ve come on business, and it will not take long.’

Hebden inclined his head. ‘As you will.’

He escorted Gabe into the room, a modest space with a modicum of leather-bound books on mostly empty shelves behind a large desk. ‘I take it this visit does not indicate a desire to invest in diamonds?’

‘No.’

‘Clever of you to have tracked me down. You come on behalf of Lady Honoria Carlow, you said. Just what is your connection to the lady?’

‘I should rather ask you that. I met her in Sennlack under the name of Miss Marie Foxe.’

He had the pleasure of seeing surprise flicker on Hebden’s face before the expression of amused hauteur settled over it again. ‘Marie Foxe? Posing as a relation of old Miss Foxe of Foxeden? How interesting.’

‘Perhaps, though I’m more interested in the part you played in sending her there. What happened the night of Lady Dalrington’s ball? Who hired you to assist in luring Lady Honoria into the garden? I’m willing to pay for the information—or beat it out of you.’

Hebden wrinkled his nose in distaste. ‘Please, Captain, your offer of payment is insulting. I’m not a common tradesman. And I’m no man’s hired lackey.’

The Gypsy’s last comment struck him. ‘If you weren’t hired to assist at the ball, why were you there? Did one of Wardale’s kin put you up to it?’

‘Ah, you know about the scandal? Perhaps I underestimated you, Captain. Something others have often done of me, to their eventual sorrow.’

He looked at Gabe condescendingly, the self-satisfied smugness of his expression making Gabe yearn to plant him a facer. ‘The plan was such a marvel of perfection, I see no need to deny my part in it. Indeed, I wasn’t approached by Wardale or anyone else; the design was entirely mine from the start.’

‘Entirely yours?’ Gabe asked incredulously.

‘You have difficulty believing that?’ Anger flashed in Hebden’s eyes. ‘I see I shall have to explain. It all began with my father’s murder.’

‘So you are Framlingham’s lost son!’ Gabe cried.

Hebden inclined his head. ‘Yes. Hebden’s Gypsy brat, his half-breed by-blow. The son who, upon his father’s brutal murder, was ripped from everything familiar and sent to a foundling home. Have you any notion what life is like in a foundling home, Captain?’

‘Far less comfortable than in a nobleman’s house, I imagine,’ Gabe replied.

Hebden laughed shortly. ‘Far less comfortable.’

‘I thought the building burned to the ground, killing everyone within it,’ Gabe said.

‘A few of us escaped. There followed some edifying years living on the street, then the voyages to foreign lands that led to my trading in gems. But always, I knew one day I would fulfill my mother’s destiny by punishing those who caused my father’s death.’

‘Your mother cursed all the families involved,’ Gabe remembered.

‘And everything is now unfolding as she foretold. Guilt is eating them alive. Have you met Lady Honoria’s father, the earl?’ Hebden asked, malice in his eyes. ‘In very poor health—as well he should be. And, as my mother predicted, the children will pay for the sins of their fathers, till justice destroys the wicked.’

‘Justice!’ Gabe cried. ‘What kind of justice is it when someone entirely innocent is made to pay for her father’s supposed crimes? Lady Honoria was but a child at the time!’

‘As was I, when the Herriards cast me out!’ Hebden retorted. ‘The symmetry is quite perfect, do you not agree? In return for a Hebden son losing his home and his place, a Carlow daughter loses hers.’

‘And you arranged this?’ Gabe asked, incredulous that any sane man could justify such a travesty.

Looking pleased with himself, Hebden nodded. ‘I was at the jeweller’s the day she quarrelled with her fiancé, Lord Readesdell. A spoiled, selfish chit already known to be wild to a fault! The merest slow-top could have predicted she would seek to punish him. Quite amusing to involve Lord Barwick, who’d been sniffing around her skirts for some time and been roundly snubbed for his efforts.’

‘How did you involve him?’ Gabe asked, trying to control his rage long enough to ferret out the truth.

He’d thought he might have to coerce Hebden into revealing it, but with pride in his tone, the man replied, ‘Quite easily! Wardale, formerly Lord Leybourne, was hanged with a silken rope, the usual practice for convicted peers. ’Twas another reason to choose Barwick, whose amorous perversions were well known. A silk rope dispatched along with a note on Carlow letterhead, requesting that he meet Lady Honoria for a little, ah, restrictive love-play, and it was done. All that remained was to hire a footman to give first him, then her, a message to meet in the garden and arrange for them to be discovered. Very neatly handled, if I do say so.’

‘How could you coldly ruin an innocent girl—you, who know what it is for the guiltless to suffer!’

‘Oh, she wasn’t so innocent. If she hadn’t already made herself a byword for behaviour just short of scandalous, Barwick wouldn’t have believed she sent the note, nor would her sanctimonious brother Marcus have imagined her capable of arranging the rendezvous. A just God, whose instrument I am, ensures that only the guilty come to harm.’

Hebden laughed, further incensing Gabe. ‘Did the jade feed you some pathetic falsehood about her purity?’ Hebden made a scornful noise. ‘The hot-blooded wench probably enjoyed Barwick’s attentions!’

The memory flashed into Gabe’s head—Honoria, jerking out of his embrace, white-faced and trembling. The anguish in her eyes as she haltingly described what Barwick had done to her.

With a growl of rage, he charged Hebden, fists raised.

But before he could land the first blow, Hebden doubled over with an anguished cry, both hands clutching at his head. While Gabe halted, puzzled, Hebden staggered backward, stumbled blindly into a chair and went down.

Gabe stared at him, mystified and disgusted. Much as he thirsted to feel the Gypsy’s face bleeding under his fists, there was no way he could strike a downed man.

In the next moment, the library door burst open. Dagger raised, the Indian charged in, a murderous gleam in his eyes, two more men following on his heels.

Gabe wheeled to meet the butler’s attack, arms up to deflect the first slash. From the corner where he’d fallen, Hebden moaned, ‘No…Akshat. Just get him out.’

The butler checked his blow, while the other two cornered Gabe and grabbed him roughly by the shoulders.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll leave in peace,’ Gabe told him. ‘Who gave you the power to judge anyone’s innocence or guilt, you contemptible muckworm? You can’t right a wrong by perpetrating further injustice! I’d be careful about trying to strip vengeance from the Almighty’s hands, lest that righteous God you claim to represent strike back at your kin!’

Jerking free of the two men restraining him, Gabe gave Hebden one last disgusted look and stalked from the room.

As he exited the town house, he noted that it was barely past noon. Possessed now of all the facts, with plenty of day light left to track down his final quarry, he vaulted into the saddle and directed his horse toward the Carlow residence on Albemarle Street.

The butler who answered the door tried at first to fob him off, saying that neither Lord Narborough nor Lord Stanegate were receiving visitors. But when Gabe curtly told him that he came on business related to Lady Honoria, the servant’s manner abruptly changed. Escorting Gabe to a small ground-floor receiving room, the butler told him he would inform Lord Stanegate of his presence.

‘See that you do,’ Gabe said, barely repressing the rage simmering in him.

As he waited for Honoria’s brother to appear, Gabe paced the room restlessly, noting the handsomeness and quality of the furniture and hangings. Finally he halted by the window, which overlooked a small back garden, where roses were blooming.

A melancholy longing pierced his restless anger. Vividly he recalled the day he’d met Honoria, approaching her aunt for an introduction and then audaciously bearing her off to view the roses in the vicarage garden. From the first moment he’d seen her striding into the waters of Sennlack Cove, she’d captivated him. His Miss Foxe.

But this was the domicile of Lady Honoria. The room—nay, the entire building—had the look of understated elegance and impeccable taste that spoke of distinguished pedigree and old wealth. Here she’d walked the halls; strolled in that garden, received her admirers—gentlemen of birth and fortune who had doubtless been escorted to the main reception rooms.

His certainty about the rightness of his bond with Honoria wavered. What made him think he could offer her anything to equal what he saw all around him, the opulence and comfort she’d enjoyed her whole life?

The door opened and a tall, well-muscled man walked in. Gabe scanned his face, looking for echoes of Honoria’s countenance, and found little resemblance. Where in her eyes grey mingled with a laughing blue—like the sea in shadow and in sun—Lord Stanegate’s were dark grey and cold. The golden strands that reflected the light in Honoria’s hair were entirely absent in her brother’s thick dark locks.

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