The Dowager Countess
When Julia went to sleep, Cal got out of bed quietly, got dressed and went out. He drove the Worthington Daimler to the Boar and Castle, parked outside.
Maybe O’Brien had cut the brake line to give Cal a warning.
The publican was still up, serving the last round. Cal found O’Brien with a glass of whiskey. “I wondered when you would show up after I met your wife. Do I tell the newspapers about your past or do I get my dough?”
“I gave you money to get the hell out of England. You’re not getting another penny from me.”
“Do you really want your pretty wife to read about you in the headlines?”
Cal was aware of the other few men in the bar staring at them, at O’Brien’s pale pink suit. In a low voice, he asked, “Did you cut the brake lines of my car?”
Kerry shrugged. “What if I did?”
Cal got up. He grabbed the bastard’s arm, twisted it behind him. “I’ll break your damned arm if you don’t promise to leave Julia and me alone. I’m willing to take care of you like we used to do it back in the Five Points Gang. Understand?”
“You wouldn’t. You’d be arrested—”
“I don’t give a damn. You almost killed my wife.”
He hauled O’Brien to his feet. Dragged him outside and sure enough, people looked at them, but no one said a word. Outside of the pub, he growled, “If you keep pushing me, you ain’t gonna live long enough to enjoy Jolly Old England.”
Once it wouldn’t have been an empty threat. But it was now. He prayed O’Brien didn’t figure that out.
O’Brien pulled out a knife, but Cal took care of that with a twist of the man’s wrist. “You sell the story to the newspapers, I’ll come for you. You do anything to hurt my wife, my family, or me, and I’ll get you. You know what I am capable of, O’Brien.”
His foe lost his bravado. “All right, damn it.”
Cal dragged Kerry O’Brien back into the public house and ordered him another drink. He paid for it. He was walking toward the door when O’Brien said, “I didn’t do it. Those brakes—that wasn’t me.”
He turned. “What?”
“I took credit for someone else’s work. I wouldn’t want to see you dead. Someone else wants that.” Sniggering, he tossed back his whiskey.
Cal went out the door, almost staggering. He’d thought that O’Brien had done it, which would mean it had nothing to do with the missing women or the attack on Julia. Damn. He drove back from the village to Worthington. The shortest route took him past Lilac Farm. It was faster, even though it was a rougher, windier road.
Something jumped in front of him. He slammed on the brake. The car screeched to a stop and his headlights illuminated a small hunched-over person. A woman, and she put her hands up to shield her eyes and let out a shriek.
Cal jumped out of the car. In the streams of light, Mrs. Brand huddled in a ball. He crouched beside her, trying to soothe her. He knew he hadn’t hit her, but she was terrified.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Brand?” Nothing looked broken, but as he tried to lift her to her feet, she struggled to scramble away, getting covered in mud. More forcefully than he wanted, he lifted her and drew her toward the car.
She took one look at his vehicle and screamed again. “The motorcar... You!” Frantic she shouted, “Sarah! I remember. The motor. It were here. What did you do with Sarah? I saw you!”
“I’m not the man who took Sarah,” he said, in a gentle voice. But she still screamed. He caught her and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. “I’m Cal Carstairs. The earl. I want to find your daughter, Sarah.”
“I can’t find Sarah. It’s too late. I told her to go away if she couldn’t behave. What have I done?”
“It’s not your fault.” Gently he got Mrs. Brand to the door. “This isn’t the car that Sarah got into,” he said. “That was a dark red car. This one is dark blue.” Then, he gambled. “It was John Carstairs who took Sarah. Or was it Anthony?”
“That night...” She stared helplessly ahead. “The lights were so bright. I followed Sarah to the road. Sarah got into the car and I shouted at her not to go. That she was being wicked. That she would have a terrible reputation. They drove away. But I knew the shortcuts through the woods. I found the car. It was going slow up the lane. It had its lights off. I saw it turn. I followed, trudging and out of breath. But I found the car. I saw Sarah—she were asleep. I heard—It was a spade I heard. And I saw—”
She started to scream again.
Cal pulled out the small flask he kept in his pocket. “Irish whiskey. Like medicine.” He forced her to take two swallows. She couldn’t cry out while swallowing and he took care to make certain she didn’t choke. “Who took Sarah?”
“He were all in black. Like a demon. Then the car went away. I ran down to the farm, but when I got there...when I got into the kitchen I felt all dizzy. I don’t remember...”
“It’s okay. I’m going to take you back to the farm. I’m going to find Sarah.”
He got Mrs. Brand to sit in the car. Pulling a rug out of the back rumble seat, he wrapped it around her. That gave her lucidity long enough for her to look at him in shock. “My lord? Whatever am I doing here?”
“You don’t remember?”
The question made her panic.
“You were out walking,” he said. “I’ll drive you back to the farm.”
“Thank ye, milord,” she whispered.
When he reached Lilac Farm he found Brand holding a lantern, calling out in panic for his wife. The man almost fainted with relief as Cal drove up and helped her out. He helped Brand get her to her bed. “Brand, I believe she saw the man who took Sarah. I found her on the road—”
“She always chases after cars, thinking Sarah’s in one of them.”
“I think she saw something, up one of the lanes. She saw the car there that night.”
“She never told me. I didn’t know she’d gone out that night. I found her in the kitchen.”
Mrs. Brand must have collapsed because her mind had been unable to cope with the truth. Perhaps seeing his vehicle had made her remember. Which meant they might have been near where Sarah had been taken by a man who’d used a shovel.
* * *
Julia was still sleeping when Cal got back to Worthington. He left her alone, crawling into his own bed. At about three, he dozed off. When he woke, the sky had lightened to the color of steel. It was daylight, but the day was cloudy. Cal got up, got dressed. He got his car—the brake line was now fixed—and was driving past the house when a figure rushed toward him. He hit the brake.
This time it was Julia. She wore a skirt and blouse and held a shawl that flapped in the wind. “I saw your light go on. Where are you going so early?”
“I think I know where to find Sarah Brand. I’m going now so I can be there when it’s light.”
“I am coming, too.”
“No, you’re not, Julia.”
“Yes, I am.” She pulled open the passenger door.
“All right. But you will have to stay in the car.”
As they drove he told her what Mrs. Brand had said. “I think she saw Sarah’s killer.”
“But why didn’t she ever say anything?” she asked.
“Maybe it was too much for her and the shock of it made her mind snap. I think seeing my automobile made her remember. You’d have to get a headshrinker like Sigmund Freud to figure it out.” He drove to the lane that led to Lilac Farm.
“It’s so awful to think she saw it,” Julia murmured.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I do—I have to.”
He admired her courage. He drove slowly, looking for—looking for anywhere that might make a good place for a grave. Or graves. It had to be secluded enough that the killer had felt he could carry a body and dig a grave and not be seen. It had to be close enough to the farm that Mrs. Brand had been able to catch up to him. Obviously the killer didn’t know Mrs. Brand had seen him.
On his left was a lane that crawled up a hill. Tall grass filled in the track and tree branches hung over it. The grass had been knocked down recently. Some of the branches had been snapped. Someone had driven up this relatively unused path in the past few days.
I saw it turn. I followed, trudging and out of breath.
If Mrs. Brand had followed the car up the hill, she would have been out of breath. Cal crept up the track. He saw the fear on Julia’s face.
The track ran out on the top of a hill. There was an outcropping of rocks.
Julia pointed at them. “There were legends that those were used for sacrifices. It is supposed to be haunted. All nonsense, of course.”
“But it could explain lights being seen here. Headlights,” Cal murmured.
He stopped the car as close to the large rocks as he could get. He got out, opened up the trunk and got out his shovel. He started walking around. Smaller stones were piled up—obviously by human hands. Behind those piles he scraped fallen leaves aside and discovered the ground was lumpier. The area had been dug up before.
He started to dig. Julia was getting out of the car. He called, “Don’t come over here, Julia. I don’t want you to see this. If I find what I’m looking for—it’s going to haunt you forever.”
The summer morning was cool, with gray clouds overhead—but he was digging hard and started to sweat. In the War, he’d dug graves for bodies—especially the bodies of pilots, if there was anything left to bury. He stopped digging, wiped his face. He was actually wiping his eyes, because he damn well felt like he could cry.
“Are you all right?” Julia called. “Oh, I’m sorry—what a foolish thing to ask.”
“I appreciate you asking. I thought I’d learned to be tough when I was growing up. But when I think about what it is that I’m doing right now, I want to be sick. Stay by the car.”
The earth was compacted, which made it hard to shovel with care. He pushed the shovel in and went deeper than he’d expected. And hit something.
He uncovered more and his gut clenched. He was looking down at the head that had almost decomposed to a skeleton, still with some black hair. He dropped down on one knee. Around the skeletal neck was a tiny silver locket. “Sarah” was engraved on the front. With initials upon the back. “J.C.”
John Carstairs? Cal carefully prized open the locket. A lock of black hair was inside.
He found another two piles of pebbles and figured that they probably marked the graves of the other girls who had vanished—Eileen Kilkenny and Gladys Burrows.
Julia walked toward him but he stopped her. “I’m taking you back home.”
“I saw your face, Cal. I saw the horror and torment in your eyes. You found one of them.”
He let the shovel fall. He went to Julia, wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. The wave of grief was staggering. “I found Sarah.”
“Oh—oh no. Poor, poor girl.” She let out a sob, then took a deep breath. “Is there any clue to who did it? Don’t spare me if you believe you know.”
“I don’t know yet, angel. But there’s a locket around Sarah’s neck with some black hair in it, and the initials J.C. It must be John Carstairs. God, there’s been so much tragedy here. Maybe they’re right and this place was cursed.”
“What do we do now?”
“Go to the police.”
“But we—I would like to go to the dowager countess first. I would like her to know, before the police come.”
“Why?” he asked, confused.
She touched his arm with that gentle, elegant way she had. “Plans must be made, because once the police constables know, there will be gossip. It can’t be stemmed.” She stroked down his arm, clasped his dirt-covered hand. “This has been awful for you. We will see the dowager and we will get you a cup of tea. That is the best thing for a bad shock.”
He couldn’t understand how Julia could be so cool and collected. His heart hammered and his eyes burned with tears of grief—even though he’d never met these girls—and his blood burned with outrage. John Carstairs would have thought of him as nothing—Cal knew that—and all along, he’d been a sick, vicious killer.
Then he looked at Julia and saw the tears streaking down her cheeks.
She wiped them away. “Falling apart does nothing. But I—” Tears came and he held her until they stopped. Then he took her back to the car. He drove to the dower house, a two-story brick building that looked huge for one woman. The countess was the only one who had gone to live there—he’d found it odd, but the countess told him the girls were to stay in the mansion until they married. They weren’t to go with their mother. Cal found this world strange.
He walked up to the front door and knocked on it, Julia following him. Upstairs, a curtain moved. He saw the countess’s frightened white face through the panes of glass. She let the curtain drop hurriedly.
He knocked on the door. Kept knocking. Finally it was pulled open. An elderly butler blinked at him. Cal didn’t know the man—he’d let the countess hire whatever servants she’d wanted. “My lord?”
“I have to talk to the dowager countess.”
“My lord, her ladyship attended a late party last night. I do not believe the dowager is awake.”
“She is. I saw her at her window.”
“I do not believe she is receiving. If you will kindly wait one moment, my lord...” The butler drifted away up the stairs, like a disembodied spirit. When the man returned, Cal could tell what he was going to say. “The countess is not well. She is not—”
“She had better see me. If she doesn’t, I’m driving right to the police station. I think she’ll know why.”
“Cal, what are you talking about?” Julia breathed.
When the butler hesitated, Cal pushed past him. He stalked up the stairs. Felt that graceful touch—Julia’s hand on his arm. “Cal, stop.”
“She saw me coming and she looked terrified. Why else would she be scared of me?” The burned picture. The car under wraps, the shovel, the scarf hidden there. She knew he was looking for the killer of Sarah Brand. “I think she knew, Julia. That’s why she’s been afraid of me.” He didn’t have proof of that, but instinct had kept him alive in New York and in the skies over France.
“She couldn’t—”
“I think she knew and she kept the truth hidden.”
“But—” Julia gasped. “Once I overheard her say that John had taken his own life. She believed—or knew—it wasn’t an accident. Oh, heavens, perhaps it meant...a guilty conscience.”
He doubted it. A man like Carstairs likely believed he could do anything he wanted. What it meant was that the former Countess of Worthington had left Cal’s parents to die and David and him to starve, while she knew one of her sons was a rapist and a killer.
He ran up the stairs.
Heavy footsteps followed him. Cal jerked around at the top of the stairs. Julia was behind him and the dowager’s butler was behind her, already wheezing.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” Cal said coldly. “Don’t give yourself a heart attack trying to stop me. I just want the truth. Finally, after all these years. I want her to admit that it’s her family that’s rotten to the core. And that she denied justice to innocent families.”
Julia touched him in her gentle way. “Cal, we don’t know this for certain yet.”
“We will soon.” It didn’t take long to figure out which room was the dowager’s. A door slammed down the hallway. He heard the click.
Reaching the paneled door, he ran his hand over the doorknob. Locked. He took a step back, lifted his foot and kicked the door open. With a splintering shriek, it flew open.
The dowager screamed. “Don’t kill me! You’ve come to destroy me!”
When he’d come here weeks ago, this was what he’d wanted. The dowager cowering from him. But now, all his rage just kind of ran out. He felt like a sputtering engine, trying to keep going, but failing.
She just looked like a terrified old woman. Not the devil he used to imagine in his head as a young starving boy. “Sit down,” he said gruffly. “I came here to talk about John. And Sarah Brand.”
She seemed to get older in front of his eyes. “I see. What is it that you think you know about John?” She lifted her chin and her blue eyes glittered with defiance.
For all the countess was no spring chicken, she dressed to the nines, even for bed. Her hair was bobbed, all silver waves. Her nightdress was embroidered silk, festooned with feathers and pearls. It screamed wealth. And she’d known her son had killed innocent women. He was sure of it now—sure she had known.
“My lady, should I summon help?” It was the butler, staring from the shattered door at his mistress.
“If you want to call the coppers, go ahead,” Cal said.
“We do not have coppers. We have the police, but we do not need to bring them here. Please leave us.”
“My lady, the American—I mean the earl—”
“Leave us now, Montrose. I do not see how I have not made myself clear.”
Montrose, the butler, left. The dowager gazed haughtily. “I should prefer we speak in my dressing room. The door there is intact. I do not want this spread as gossip.”
“All right.” He would give her that. She swept on ahead of him.
Julia clasped his arm. “Cal, you must calm down. You broke the door. You are rather terrifying.”
He’d scared Julia. But what did she want of him? He couldn’t behave like an emotionless English earl. If the dowager had known the truth, she’d let three women’s deaths go unavenged. She’d subverted justice. Three families had lived a hell for years, with no idea whether their daughters were alive or dead. All to save the lily-white arse of her precious, evil son.
Even now, what the dowager countess really cared about was the gossip. The scandal. The damn family.
And that made him mad.
She seated herself gracefully in a white chair in her dressing room. He took the one opposite.
“What do you wish to tell me about John? I presume you have unearthed a pack of lies?”
“I’ve found the truth. From your reaction, I’d say you know what he did. And you said nothing.”
“What do you believe my son is responsible for?”
“The rapes and murders of three young women.”
She flinched. She paled even more. In her eyes was the terror of self-preservation. But she said, “What evidence do you have to support such a vile accusation?”
“We both know it’s true,” he said softly. “In 1916, Sarah Brand disappeared. I found evidence she’d been in one of the older cars in the Worthington garage. I learned that a woman named Eileen Kilkenny also disappeared. And a maid named Gladys Burrows. Today I found Sarah’s body.”
She gasped.
“According to your former chauffeur, there weren’t many automobiles around here in 1916—but there was a red one at Worthington. Sarah had a crush on John’s older brother, and I figure John pursued her, taking his brother’s car. Maybe she was willing to go driving with John but I don’t think she was willing to sleep with him. So he drove her to a reasonably remote place, attacked her, killed her and buried the body.”
The countess shuddered. “Stop...stop.”
“Having an automobile made it easy for him, except he was careless. He left evidence in the car. Left the shovel in the trunk that he used to bury them. Left a woman’s scarf.”
“How can you know it is John?”
“I found evidence on Sarah’s body.”
“Where is this evidence?”
Her blunt, calculating question surprised him. “I’ve kept it somewhere safe.”
“So you have not gone to the police yet?” she asked.
“Not yet.” He leaned close, aware of Julia standing by the fireplace. “How did you know the truth? And how in hell could you keep such a secret? You let those families continue to suffer. Mrs. Brand wanders at night in her confused state, still searching for her daughter. She walked right in front of my car and I almost hit her.”
Tears dripped to the countess’s cheeks. “What was I to do? He came to me and he confessed,” she whispered. “It was just before his accident.”
“You could have spared those innocent families. You could have told the truth.”
“And my son would have been hanged! He didn’t mean to do it. He was always...not quite right. And the girls—they should have known better than to go out alone in a motorcar with a man. One of them gave him photographs of herself wearing nothing but her undergarments. They were no better than—”
“Don’t,” Julia said fiercely. “Do not blame the girls.”
“Your son was to blame, not them,” Cal snapped “I don’t care if Sarah paraded in front of him naked—he had no right to force himself on her. No right to kill her. Your son had every advantage—money, education, your precious bloodlines—and look what he was. He should have paid for what he did.”
He spoke low, fighting to keep his voice controlled, but she had drawn back into the chair. “Now that he is dead,” the dowager whispered, “he’s answered for everything he did. He paid with his life.”
“The families need to know—”
The dowager jerked in the chair. “No! People cannot know!”
“I don’t give a damn about protecting you from scandal. Not now.”
“It’s not me,” she cried. “Think of my daughters. They are innocents in this, but they will be punished. What gentleman would marry them after such a scandal?”
“Of course they’re innocent, so why shouldn’t someone marry them?”
She sneered. “You have no idea how Society works.”
“No. I can’t say I do. And I’m glad of it. It’s made me a hell of a better man.”
“She is right, Cal,” Julia said. “Cassia, Diana, Thalia will all be hurt by this. It will ruin their lives. They will be ostracized.”
“No man would want to tie himself to a family that is notorious,” the dowager countess cried. “The girls would be ruined by association. Spare them, at least. John is beyond punishment on this earth. He pays now in eternal damnation. I believe he took his own life. He deliberately drove off the ridge into the quarry.”
“Cal, there is nothing to be served by destroying the family. It will even hurt us—and it will touch David, also. Everyone will be ruined,” Julia whispered.
“There needs to be justice,” he growled. Then he realized...the countess had known he was looking for the truth. “Did you cut the brake lines of my car?”
“What are those? What are you talking about?”
He explained about the crash and she gasped. “I would never do such a thing.”
He now had the ultimate power to hurt the dowager. To do the worst thing that she could imagine: making her the object of scandal. When his mother had died, he had promised to hurt them all. But now he kept thinking of the dowager’s daughters, who were innocent. How could he let them be hurt by his actions?
“You won’t tell anyone about this,” the countess said quickly. “Or I’ll tell the world the truth about your mother.”
“What?” he growled.
“Do you know why I objected to your arrival so strongly?” she demanded.
“Why don’t you tell me?” He spoke smoothly. But inside his gut churned.
“We knew what your mother was. We had reports sent to us. She entertained men in her rooms—”
“That’s a damned lie.” Cal rose from his seat.
“You know it is quite true. Your mother was a prostitute. And she behaved scandalously before the marriage, having relations with your father and becoming preg—”
“Goddamn you,” he barked. “Goddamn you to hell. You paid for an investigator and had him spy on us, but you wouldn’t send any money when she was sick. Money that would have paid for a doctor and medicine. Money that would have saved her life. She sold herself for money to feed David and I. You forced her to do it. I’ve got the power now. I could destroy you. I could let you watch while Worthington Park is sold around you—”
He stopped, chest heaving. Julia had gone very, very white.
“Then what—you’ll tell the world about John?” the countess said. “And I’ll make sure no one believes you. I know all about your past, Worthington. I have been told about all of it. I am sure Julia knows nothing about—”
“You can tell her whatever you want. I’m going to lose her anyway when I destroy this place. And I’m damn well going to the police. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t get justice. Maybe nothing can be proved now, after nine years, but I want them to damn well try.”
Slowly, he met Julia’s eyes. He expected anger. Shock. She now knew one of the things he had been most ashamed of—that he hadn’t been able to prevent his mother from selling her body, doing something that tormented her to her soul.
But Julia whirled on the dowager countess. “How could you threaten such a thing?” she demanded of the dowager. “It is true that if the truth about John gets out, the girls will suffer in the stead of their brother. I understand your fear and I don’t want my friends—my family now—to suffer. But you cannot be so heartless. You were never like this. You were always kind.”
“I must protect the family I have left,” the dowager croaked. “Julia, this will touch you. If you have children, a scandal would hurt them. Is that what you want?”
Cal felt Julia look to him. He said, “We could leave this place, get rid of this cursed estate, travel the world. Live anywhere we want, keeping our children away from here, so they’d never be hurt by it. We could go to South America. Santorini. Venice—”
“I don’t want to run away, Cal, and leave everyone else to suffer. I won’t.”
* * *
With Cal she went to the police station. To Julia’s surprise, he did not tell them of John Carstairs’s confession to his mother. He told them he suspected John because of the car in the garage, the spade, the locket. After, as he drove them to Worthington, with rain pattering the windshield, she asked, “Why did you keep his confession a secret?”
“He didn’t confess to me. I don’t know what exactly he said to his mother. If there’s evidence, they’ll find it. Maybe, if they can’t prove anything, I’ll tell them. But even then, it’s not cold, hard, irrefutable proof. I know this is going to hurt my cousins. But you understand, Julia, that I couldn’t keep the deaths secret?”
“I understand,” she whispered. “I do want to go with you when you show the police sergeant the—the place.” Scotland Yard was to be called in, too.
“No. I don’t want you to see any more of that. I’m taking you home, then showing the police the graves.”
“Cal, are you really going to destroy Worthington now—because of what the dowager threatened? It was wrong. Unconscionable. But—”
“I don’t know. I—Hell, I want you to come away with me and I want to forget about Worthington Park.”
His heart was raw and she understood. But she had to fight for Worthington. Not for the estate—for Cal. He needed to finally escape the pain of his past.
At Worthington, Cal left her there, then returned to the police station. She went to the morning room. She didn’t tell the servants any of what had happened. She began a letter beseeching the dowager countess not to reveal a word about Cal’s mother.
“My lady?” A maid bobbed a curtsy, holding out a folded page. “This note was delivered for you. A young lad brought it to the kitchen door. Said it was dreadful important.”
Julia hurried to the maid, took the note.
The writing was shaky, terribly so. Julia struggled to read it. But when she did, an icy, sick feeling washed over her. It was from Lower Dale Farm. Their father was ill.
“I must go and fetch Dr. Campbell. Is the boy still here?”
“He ran off, milady.”
And Cal was gone—with the police. She must deal with this herself. She needed her vehicle. She would drive directly to the hospital to fetch Dr. Campbell. She would test the brakes. The garage was always locked now, and the chauffeur took great care, checking the vehicles each day. Surely she would be safe enough if she traveled directly to the hospital to get Dougal.
At the front door, she put on her coat. But as she stepped outside to go to the garage, the Duke of Bradstock drove up. He leaned out the open window. “Julia, I was coming to see you. I want to apologize for upsetting you.” His car purred as he shifted it into Neutral.
Then she had the perfect idea. “Would you be willing to do me a favor, James?”
“Anything, dear Julia. Ask me anything.”
Should she involve him? She must. “I need you to take me to the hospital and collect Dr. Campbell, then take us to Lower Dale Farm. We must make haste.”
* * *
Belowstairs, Tansy ran into the kitchen and burst into tears. Hannah almost knocked her bowl to the floor in her surprise. “Tansy, you must stop being so dramatic.”
“You were right all along,” the girl cried. “Oh, I’ve been so stupid.”
“Tansy, what on earth—” Then Hannah knew and she touched Tansy’s shoulder. “He had his way with you, didn’t he? I know you saw him last night. You gave in and he broke it off with you.”
Tansy shook her head. “I didn’t see him last night. I snuck out to meet him but he never came. I wouldn’t let him have his way—and I was afraid that’s why he didn’t come. And now I just saw him! With her! She’s so hoity-toity, and there’s her husband so much in love with her, but I saw her get into his motorcar just now. I saw the look in his eyes as he drove off. He’s in love with her. He looked right at me, because I was standing there, and it was as if he didn’t even see me.”
Hannah was all mixed-up. “Who do you mean? Who is ‘she’?”
“He came, and Lady Worthington got into his car. And the way he looked at her—well, he never looked at me that way. Never.”
“He’s probably a friend of Lady Worthington.”
Tansy moaned. “She’s his lover, more like. And I found out he didn’t give me his real name. She called him James.”