“BENNETT IS NOT a murderer!” Margery burst out. “He did it in self-defense!” She turned to Rand, her eyes frantic. “Alban came after him in the first place.”
But all Rand could absorb at the moment was that the man Margery wanted to marry had killed his brother. The hows and whys were beyond him. And where does that leave Margery? the marquess had asked. Where, indeed? Even Rand could understand his father’s unwillingness to wed his ward to the man at whose hands his own son had died.
Lily’s money wasn’t going to solve all their problems, after all.
“My Alban,” the marquess said, glaring at Margery, “was not a man capable of killing. Your lover murdered my son in cold blood. Of course he would claim otherwise, and I’ve no doubt that a besotted, addlebrained female like you would believe him.”
“Alban would kill,” she shot back. “I saw him kill, time and time again. A rabbit, a lamb. My very own cat when she pounced on him as he was forcing me to kiss him.”
Lily hid her face in her hands, and Rand reached to rub her back.
“It’s Bennett who’s incapable of killing without just provocation,” Margery added.
“And he doubtless considered a man determined to wed his lover as ‘just provocation.’” The marquess pointed his knife at her, emphasizing each syllable. “Unfortunately, with only his word against a dead man’s, I don’t have enough evidence for an arrest. Yet. But I intend to get it.”
“He’s offered a reward for information,” Margery told Rand in a voice made high by rising panic. “A hundred pounds.”
Lily looked up at that. “A hundred pounds?”
“A hundred pounds,” Margery repeated, her eyes filling with tears. “Bennett’s as good as dead.”
Rand couldn’t find it in himself to disagree with her. To do so would be a lie. A footman wouldn’t earn a hundred pounds in ten years, let alone a groom or coachman or maid. For that kind of money, someone would come forward with damning evidence, honestly acquired or not.
The marquess wielded a lot of power in this small piece of England, and if he meant to see Armstrong hang, Rand had no doubt he would accomplish it.
Plainly seeing the truth in Rand’s eyes, Margery let out a pathetic moan and rose from her chair, rushing to kneel at the marquess’s knees. Her black gown pooled around her. “I beg you, Uncle William, don’t do this. I’ll have no will to go on should Bennett die. Let him live long enough for me to prove his innocence.”
“Impossible,” the man snapped, “given that he’s guilty.”
She gazed up at him, the tears overflowing, making tracks down her pale cheeks. “Then you’ll be killing me along with him.”
Just then, she looked entirely too capable of doing herself in, and Rand watched, amazed, as the marquess’s features softened with compassion.
But it wasn’t long before they hardened again. “He’s not dead yet, girl, but I mean to see him pay for murdering my son. In the meantime, should the two of you think to plan anything, I’ll be sending a contingent of men to keep the whoreson under house arrest.”
A bell sat by his elbow, and now he raised it and jingled it fiercely, as though venting his frustration on the sterling silver might help him obtain vengeance.
“Jerome!” he called, and the man rushed in.
In moments, it was done. A dozen men were on their way to surround Bennett Armstrong’s home.
An hour later, Rand, Lily, and Margery were on their way there, too.