‘The maid ordered refreshments?’ He sounded quite steady Jared noticed with the part of his brain that still seemed to be functioning normally.

‘Yes, sir. The girl will be along directly.’

He went back to the private parlour, scratched on the door, and, when Faith opened it, waited until the servant brought a loaded tray.

Guinevere was pale, but she ate, making inconsequential conversation, apparently for her maid’s benefit, or perhaps so that she did not have to talk to him about anything that actually mattered.

They finished the meal, still both painstakingly polite to each other, then Jared enquired whether Guinevere wished to walk up the long flight of steps to the church and abbey. ‘The view is very fine.’

‘Perhaps another day. I believe I would like to go home now.’

They walked back to the carriage in silence to find the coachman, groom, both footmen and Dover lounging around it finishing off pies and gossiping. There was a concerted scramble to stand and brush off crumbs and generally look as befitted the escort of a titled lady, but Guinevere said nothing to them, simply got into the carriage.

‘Ride inside,’ Jared ordered Dover and unhitched his horse from the back. On horseback he did not have to speak to anyone.

‘Excuse me, sir, but may I stay and visit my old mother in the town?’ Thomas stood looking up at Jared, hat in hand. ‘I can catch a ride back with the carrier’s cart this evening.’

‘Why didn’t you ask before?’ He felt like snapping a negative – why not make everyone’s day as bad as his was? But there would still be five men left. ‘I suppose so – ask Lady Northam’s permission first.’

Without Thomas they trundled along the quayside and followed the River Esk to Aislaby and the bridge where they crossed. As they began to climb out of the valley on the Pickering road Jared made himself relax in the saddle, his eyes scanning before and behind them, watching for trouble even as his mind struggled with the fact that William was dead. And had left no sons.

A battered fingerpost pointed back the way they had come. Someone, aiming to save time or paint, had abbreviated the name to A’sl’by, the opposite arm read Pick’ring.

He let the surface of his mind drift over that as they traversed the flat moorland. What would a complete stranger make of A’sl’by, what might he construct from that? He had been unimaginative himself when he had adopted his new name and hardly abbreviated at all. He could have called himself Jack, for his first name, James, or Jamie, come to that.

Hell. Under him the horse snorted and sidled as his hand clenched on the reins. Abbreviations. He knew who Willoughby’s sister was.

In front of him the carriage jolted as the road dipped sharply at the beginning of the short drop to the Ellerbeck with its treacherous bend just above the stream bed. It was going too fast and that rear wheel was surely wavering – Jared spurred forward, shouting. ‘Stop! Now! Rein in, damn you.’

The coachman pulled up to a sliding stop, the horses backing and restless on the unstable road surface. ‘The brake’s not right, not holding, sir. Johnny, get down there with the shoe – now.’

The groom was already vaulting down, reaching to unhook the metal shoe from the side of the carriage and thrusting it under a rear wheel. Jared rode up to the carriage door. ‘Get out, all of you. Hurry.’

Faith tumbled out, then Dover, holding up his hands to help Guinevere. She took one look at the plunging team, the sliding coach and pulled Faith up the bank out of danger.

Paul, the large, stolid footman, ran to help the groom calm the horses as Jared swung out of the saddle and began to jam stones under the wheels. At last the horses steadied, the carriage settled against the makeshift blocks and the coachman got down to look at the wheel.

‘That’s been interfered with. The pin’s been sawn part through.’ He traced back the brake mechanism that acted from a lever by his hand to the sabotaged wheel. ‘And look here, sir. Some bugger’s slackened off half the joints then smeared dirty grease over to hide it. No wonder it wouldn’t hold.’

Guinevere slid down the bank and came to look. ‘Another attempt. On these roads, with these steep banks and endless becks, this could have been fatal.’

The coachman swore again. ‘Begging your pardon, my lady.’

‘Not at all. I quite agree.’

‘When has the carriage been unattended?’ Jared demanded.

‘At the house we called at, sir. We left it in their stableyard and went in to have a drink in the kitchens. Then in Whitby Thomas stayed with it while we went to buy pies and a jug of ale.’

Jared nodded and drew Guin aside. ‘And now we know who is behind this.’

‘Thomas?’

‘He has been the agent for all the attacks on you, I assume. Lord Northam’s murder, I am not so sure about. But I know who Willoughby’s sister is.’

‘Who? No, we cannot talk about it here. What do we do now? Will you ride for help?’

‘You and I will take my horse, with Dover and Faith on one of the carriage horses. We will send help back to the coach from the next village – Lockton, if I remember rightly. I want you home, Guinevere.’

‘I thought you would never call me that again.’ Her smile was a sudden flash of happiness before she was serious again.

The coachman, a practical man, agreed that the best thing to do was to get the women safely off the moor. ‘We’ll need a wheelwright, and a blacksmith to fix this brake, no point in all of us sitting around here, sir. We can drive back with just the three. I’ll try leading the horses down to the bottom now they’re calm, which’ll be safer than having the carriage on the slope. It should be all right with the weight out and just at a walk.’

They shortened the reins on the steadiest of the horses and Jared boosted Faith up behind Dover, then Paul helped Guinevere up behind him. ‘It’s the Quentens, isn’t it?’ she said as they set off. ‘Thomas has worked for them since he was a boy.’

‘Yes,’ Jared agreed. ‘Hold on tight, I want to get you home fast.’

 

It took them two hours, including the stop to despatch wheelwright and smith to the stricken coach. Guin was so stiff when they cantered up the drive at Allerton that she thought Jared would have to lift her down, bent into a sitting position.

As it was he threw his leg over the pommel, slid to the ground and held up his hands to her and she simply fell into his embrace and clung.

‘I am sorry to be such a feeble creature,’ she mumbled against his shirt front. ‘All I want is to curl up in a darkened room and put my fingers in my ears and hum loudly until this all goes away.’

‘That sounds exceedingly tempting, with the addition of several bottles of best brandy.’ Jared sounded amused, the darkness seemed to have lifted for him, if only for a while. ‘But we must not give way to temptation, not now we have our blindfolds off and we know who it is that is our enemy.’

‘Ours?’ She leaned back in his embrace to study his face.

‘I am beginning to have my suspicions – ’

‘My lady.’ Porrett stood on the step. ‘Lord Northam is in the drawing room.’

‘Who?’ Guinevere blinked at him. Was this some kind of dream and Augustus was not dead at all? She must be losing her mind.

‘What the devil is he doing here? I thought he understood that he needed to keep his distance,’ Jared said, cold anger in his voice. ‘This is the last thing we need.’ When she stared at him he snapped, ‘Theo.’

‘Oh. Theo. Of course.’ Guin gave herself a little shake. No ghosts. ‘When did he arrive, Porrett?’

‘An hour since, my lady. I have prepared the Chinese rooms for him.’

‘He should have the master suite by rights, but I suppose he will not mind for one night. I really cannot face the upheaval of moving now.’ She stepped away from Jared and mounted the steps. ‘Ask the maids to draw us all hot baths, including for Faith and Dover. And send up tea trays. I will greet Lord Northam. Faith, you and Dover go to your rooms, bathe, rest.’

She was conscious of Jared on her heels as she went down the hall to the drawing room door. Surely now he did not suspect Theo of anything?

Her nephew by marriage was pacing up and down the room but he turned with an audible sigh of relief when they entered.

‘Theo, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘Escaping the law, I suspect,’ he said grimly. ‘No sooner had the funeral guests gone than that da – that confounded London magistrate turned up at Felling Hall along with our local man. He was waving an anonymous letter that had advised him to search in the clothes press in my dressing room in London. He’d bullied his way in past the staff and was unsurprised to find two empty bottles that had held my father’s medicine hidden in a pair of old boots.

‘There was easily enough gone to have killed Uncle Augustus if boiled down to a syrup and then mixed with marchpane, apparently. I asked him why, if I was a parricide, I had not removed the bottles from there? I enquired if I appeared to be a complete idiot. He advised me not to take that tone with him.’

Theo stopped, took a deep breath and continued rather more calmly. ‘I enquired – in much the same tone – who was supposed to have written the letter. I produced my valet, and Perkins pointed out that with the house in turmoil during my father’s last days and death half the Household Cavalry could have trooped in and out concealing bottles and not been noticed.

‘Sir Andrew Hewson, the local magistrate, who had the benefit of hearing the tale fresh from beginning to end and having no axe to grind, pointed out that what I said had some merit. His colleague then demanded to know whether you had access to my dressing room, Guin.’

Jared said something savage under his breath and Guin discovered that cold fury had a remarkably energising effect. ‘What did you say to that?’ she enquired.

‘I hit him. Quite a good left hook, actually.’ Theo’s grim expression was at odds with his tone.

‘And why are you not under arrest for assault on a magistrate, if nothing else?’ Jared enquired. ‘Lady Northam, do sit down, you must be exhausted.’ He stalked over to the sideboard, poured a glass of brandy and brought it back to her.

‘Sir Andrew appeared to think that I had the right to defend the honour of a lady and that Spurgeon – that’s the London man – had gone too far. They retreated to consider the situation and the moment they were out of sight I left. I don’t know what, if anything, you have discovered, but I am damned if I am going to sit at Felling and wait for them to turn up and drag me off in chains.’

Guin gulped a mouthful of brandy. ‘I have a very strong inclination to give way to hysterics,’ she said, wondering why she wasn’t.

‘We need a council of war,’ Jared said. ‘But you and I are going to bathe and change first. It is time to take control of this situation, to turn and set the hounds on our pursuers.’ He held out his hand to Guin. ‘Lady Northam? You have had a long and difficult day but I think you have it in you to join our council.’

‘Certainly, Mr Hunt.’ She let him draw her to her feet, feeling his strength and his anger flowing through to her. His instinct, his duty was to protect her, but he believed in her, that she had the intelligence and the strength of will to cope with this. I could love this man, she thought as they walked up the stairs leaving Theo pacing again. Perhaps I already do.

 

When they assembled again, clean and refreshed, Faith and Dover appeared, both saying that they too were revived and wanted to be involved. Jared waited for the footmen to deposit plates of food by each chair, poured wine all round and then, with no protest from Theo, took control.

‘We have two strands to this persecution. If I am correct, then both Lady Northam and the late Lord Northam – and by extension you, the new, Lord Northam – are targets.’

‘Me?’ Theo began, then subsided at a gesture from Jared.

‘Lady Northam unwisely eloped with, and married, Francis Willoughby, a man in need of money and completely unscrupulous about how he earned it. He thought his new father-in-law would give him funds, either to maintain the marriage or, perhaps, to buy him off. He was sadly disappointed, almost penniless and, I suspect, desperate because moneylenders were after him.

‘He brought his new wife here to Allerton because he expected to find help from the one person who would never let him down, however outrageously he behaved, his sister. I overheard the cook, Mrs Turner, speaking of how Master Frank had enjoyed her lemon tarts and how he had eaten them in company with the footman, Thomas Bainton, who used to work here and then, most conveniently, transferred his services to the new owner.’

‘And Frank is short for Francis,’ Guin said. ‘He had a habit, which very soon grated on my nerves, of saying, I will be frank with you, and then smirking at the pun.’

‘The headstone on his grave refers to his father Henry and his sister Elizabeth. Mr Quenten at Cross Holme called his wife Lettie, a shortening for Elizabeth, and their younger son, Hal. The older child, Charles, is named for his paternal grandfather and it seems logical that the younger is called after his mother’s father, Henry.’

‘So Mrs Quenten was Francis’s older sister and she blames me for his death,’ Guin said slowly. ‘Of course, she would have heard the rumours about it not being an accident, about Augustus’s intervention preventing the magistrate accusing me of causing it. She must have been in anguish when she realised that Francis had come to her for help and found none. I wonder why he did not know they had moved,’ she added, puzzled.

‘I expect that will become clear eventually,’ Jared said.

The relief of at last finding some logical explanation for this nightmare was almost overwhelming. ‘But nothing happened for months after I married Augustus.’

‘You were far away and I expect, at first, she was too deep in grief. Then, with time, she must have become obsessed and vengeful. But she had no agent for her punishment of you and, I imagine, no experience of hiring ruffians or criminals. Then you and Lord Northam came up here and Thomas, who had known Francis as a young man, was sent to ask for employment, to work his way into your trust. That is how the persecution moved to London. It must have been Thomas who put the firework down the chimney.’

‘And he took in the sweetmeats. He could time poisoning them to fit with Theo being in the house.’

‘Probably the staff at our London house knew him,’ Theo put in. ‘He’ll doubtless have delivered messages for my uncle. He could have got in unremarked, stolen the medicine and hidden the empty bottles for the magistrate to find.’

‘But the attacks on you were not very serious, my lady,’ Faith interjected. ‘I don’t understand that.’

‘Mrs Quenten wanted to torment Lady Northam, I suspect.’ Jared said. ‘They were trying different things, watching the effect on you. She aimed to torture, not to kill, because that would have been too final, would have ended your punishment too soon.’

‘But Augustus,’ Guin murmured. ‘What had he ever done to her? He even had her brother decently buried.’

‘I suspect the idea of inheritance had been growing in her slowly, perhaps almost unrecognised until she met Lord Northam for the first time, at her father-in-law’s funeral. It was brought home to her that Northam was an elderly man. The families had grown apart and if she had thought about it before then she would know that there were several people between her husband and sons and the title. But here was the reality, and he was a man she had no reason to love – he had, she thought, aided her brother’s killer. She must have investigated, found that his brother was elderly and ailing also. Just two old men between her family and a title, a rise to status and fortune.’

‘And one young man,’ Theo pointed out, indignant. ‘I am not ailing.’

‘So you must be suspected of killing your uncle and hastening the death of your father,’ Guin said, appalled. ‘Thomas would have reported back that you had money problems and that you ran tame in our house – and look how easily the rumours about you and me spread.’

‘If Theo is accused of murder and hanged then Elizabeth could have it all – a title for her husband and son and revenge on you, Lady Northam,’ Jared said. ‘She has never met Theo and I assume that by this stage she is too far gone in her obsession and her plotting to even consider what she is doing to an innocent man, one who is simply a name on a page to her.’

‘But can we prove it?’ Theo asked. He reached for a cake from the plate beside him, took a bite and washed it down with brandy without looking, then winced at the mixture.

‘We need to get our hands on Thomas, sir,’ Dover said. He passed Theo a tea cup and slid the brandy glass away. ‘Try that, my lord. We could get a confession out of him and hand him over to the magistrates.’

‘We have only circumstantial evidence,’ Jared pointed out. ‘And he has every incentive to keep quiet – the image of a noose is powerfully motivating.’

‘We could beat it out of him,’ Dover muttered. When Guin looked at him, shocked that for a moment her reaction had been approval, he added, ‘I suppose the magistrates wouldn’t like that.’

‘But how are you involved, Jared, except that Augustus employed you?’ Guin asked, realising the moment she said it that she had used his first name in front of everyone, then discovering that she did not care. ‘How can this connect to you?’

‘My family comes from this area. In fact now they are close neighbours of the Quentens. When I was growing up Cross Holme was simply a farm called, I think, Crossholes. They obviously attempted to gentrify it when they had to move. I suspect that my sister-in-law and Elizabeth Quenten are friends. I cannot imagine that Bella is part of the plot to attack you, Lady Northam, let alone murder your husband, but Mrs Quenten could well have engaged her sympathies, convinced her that you had killed Francis. Thomas would have reported my name to his mistress.’

‘But you changed it,’ Guin pointed out. ‘You told me you had.’

‘Not well enough, I think.’

‘She was looking for you in Whitby, wasn’t she? You were taken by surprise, but she was not. She was confirming a suspicion.’ Jared stayed stubbornly silent, but Guin kept thinking, working it out aloud. ‘When I sat down in the Quenten’s parlour the chair was warm. Someone had only just left it. If it had been your sister-in-law then she could have been observing us, looking at you. She thought she recognised you, but was not certain.’

‘So she followed us down to Whitby to make sure, face to face,’ Dover said.

‘So who is she?’ Theo asked. ‘Who are you, come to that?’