‘We have circumstantial evidence but no proof,’ Jared said, much, much later as they lay on the chaise and watched the sky darkening into evening through the turret window.

‘A confession would be very handy.’ Guin played with their hair, plaiting a lock of hers and two of his together, admiring the way the black offset the golden brown. ‘But even if we can lay hands on Thomas he would not be so stupid as to put his own neck in the noose by talking. He tried to lure me out for a ride in the gig, you know. Then he accompanied Faith and me into the garden – both times armed with a club. I can’t help wondering what he would have done if the gardener hadn’t arrived just then.’

Jared closed his eyes for a second. When he spoke his voice was harsh. ‘Don’t think about it. He is never going to be able to harm you again. What we need is a confession before witnesses. A magistrate or two, for example.’ When she relaxed he took the plait from her and used the tip of it to tease her nipples, then bent to lick the tense points.

‘Where are we going to get two magistrates from?’ She let her hand slide down over his chest, enjoying the sensation of hair on her palms, then over his admirably flat belly, dipping her finger into his navel until he caught her hand.

‘Witch. You should allow your poor exhausted lover to rest before making more demands on him.’

‘You are as exhausted as a racehorse that has been for a stroll before breakfast. Magistrates?’

‘My father is one. But we need more.’ He fell silent, thinking.

‘Jared.’ Guin rolled over so that she was lying on top of him, her hands crossed on his chest to support her chin as she watched him think. Although he wasn’t brooding solely on his sister-in-law. At least, she hoped not, because there was unmistakeable evidence of a renewal of interest. She took care not to wriggle. ‘Do you think your sister-in-law realises what her friend Elizabeth has been doing?’

‘I hope not. I imagine she knows that Mrs Quenten has been trying to make life uncomfortable for you, playing tricks. Bella might be amused by that.’ He shrugged, an interesting experience when he was flat on his back and she was on top of him. They were both silent for a moment, very still, enjoying it. ‘I was infatuated with her when I was seventeen: she could be the reincarnation of Lucretia Borgia now for all I know.’

‘She has certainly proved herself capable of lies and deceit to get what she wants, even at the cost of someone else. Did you see her at Ravenscar?’

‘No. I went in the back way, unannounced, and left by the same door. I do not believe that anyone but my father saw me. He will tell her though. I mentioned that I had encountered her in Whitby.’ Jared smiled again, although this time it held no warmth. ‘I wonder when he will tell her that he has invited us to stay.’

‘Us?’

‘I have explained to him that I have a obligation to you, that Lord Northam was poisoned and that the murderer is still at large. I cannot leave you and you cannot leave your houseguest, the new Lord Northam. Who, as my father so rightly pointed out, you should not be entertaining without a chaperone. You shouldn’t have me in the house without one, come to that.’

‘I know,’ Guin said, mock-mournful. ‘Look where that leads.’ She wriggled experimentally and was rewarded by a growl.

‘So we are all going to decamp to Ravenscar where you may be chaperoned by dear Bella and where Faith and Dover can insinuate themselves below stairs while Theo and I do whatever gentlemen do at house parties in the depths of Yorkshire.’

‘Haven’t you been to any house parties?’

‘Not conventional ones, no. At the only English one I have attended someone was killed by poison – an accident – and someone was shot. Also an accident of sorts, I am glad to say, and a non-lethal one.’

‘What a very exciting life you lead. But Theo? Aren’t we putting him in more danger?’

‘He’s an adult, he can look after himself and I need his help,’ Jared said, almost absently. He was off somewhere in his head, plotting and scheming, she could tell.

A woman should know when to surrender gracefully. Guin slid off the lean body and smiled to herself when his hands tightened possessively for a moment then relaxed.

‘I will go and tell everyone to pack their bags,’ she said as she poured water into the basin and began to restore her appearance to something as unlike a woman who has spent the afternoon enjoying the passionate attentions of her lover as possible.

Jared, his eyelids at half-mast hiding the thinking process, made a noise than she recognised, that vague masculine sound that means everything from, Of course that hat looks ravishing on you to I am sure your mother knows best, dear. It begged to be answered with something outrageous, just to see if it was repeated.

‘Did you know that there is a unicorn in the library?’ Guin asked, rolling on her stockings.

Jared opened one eye and grinned. ‘That’s nice. Be careful of the horn.’ He went back to brooding.

What am I going to do without you? She tightened her garter with a jerk. Manage just as I always have. Somehow.

 

Ravenscar was almost a castle, Guin thought, climbing down from the carriage four days later. For some reason the play Macbeth came to mind and she dismissed it with a shiver.

‘Welcome, Lady Northam, Lord Northam.’ The Earl of Huntingford stood at the top of the flight of steps just outside the great oak doors that had been thrown open in welcome. Behind him, in the shadows, a figure in black waited.

He is so clearly Jared’s father. She went up the steps and shook hands, smiled, said all the proper things. He was bulkier than Jared, but with muscle that had been built by tough country sports and riding his boundaries, whereas Jared’s physique was the long, lean muscle and sinew of the athlete. His face was lined, his eyes pouched with, she guessed, recent grief, but like his son, he could conceal deep feelings.

Theo was at her side, shaking hands too, smiling at the woman in mourning. Jared had told him something in confidence about the rift with his father and he already knew that Bella might be involved with his uncle’s murder, but none of that showed on his face. He was all charm, the young gentleman he had been before the deaths in his family: cheerful, sociable and, one might think, not terribly bright except at the card table and in pursuit of a pretty woman. He was already subjecting Bella to a discreet but appreciative appraisal.

‘My daughter-in-law, Lady Ravenlaw. Bella, Lady Northam, Lord Northam and, of course, you know Jack.’

‘It is so long since I answered to that name that you had best call me Jared if you want a response,’ Jared said. ‘Bella. You have grown even more beautiful with the passing of time. It hardly seems possible.’

She was lovely, Guin admitted to herself, even though the heavy mourning black did not suit her pale skin and light brown hair. The thin line of her lips as she looked at Jared and the faint frown lines between her brows were not flattering either. Had the Earl confronted the couple when he realised that he had been tricked and Jared wrongly blamed or did she still believe she had escaped blame for the cruel deception?

Faint colour came up over her cheeks. Yes, she knew and knew that Jared was aware his father understood the truth as well. ‘You were always easily impressed as a boy,’ Bella said, with a sweet smile.

They were in the hall now, a place that seemed a cross between a medieval baronial stronghold and a comfortable entranceway. There were rather too many suits of armour in corners and animal heads on the wall for Guin’s taste, but she approved the large fire and the pile of hats on the side table and the bridle tossed over a chair-back and the paintings of landscapes and horses.

Bella took her upstairs, Faith at her heels. ‘You are all in the guest rooms in the main wing,’ she said as they climbed the first flight of stairs. The staircase rose in two stages up the height of the hallway, the panelling hung with portraits and a display of weaponry. ‘I assumed the Earl would wish to install Jack – Jared – in my late husband’s rooms, but he appears to have some delicacy about that. Or perhaps he assumed that you would want chambers close together.’ The look she slid towards Guin was slyly insinuating.

‘Absolutely,’ Guin said earnestly. ‘As close as possible. Mr Hunt – Lord Ravenlaw, I should say – is my bodyguard.’

‘Oh yes. A servant.’ She reached one of a row of doors in a wide corridor, opened it and swept in.

‘Lord Ravenlaw is too much a gentleman to sit around bemoaning the injustices of fate and sponging off others to live.’ Guin looked around the room with a perfectly genuine smile: it was, after all, charming. ‘He does what it takes to support himself honourably.’ She laid the faintest emphasis on the last word and saw it strike home. Yes, I know what you did. But she would not show any overt antagonism, that was not the plan that they had hammered out over three days of discussion, letter-writing and speculation.

Now she kept the smile in place, moderating it towards sympathy. ‘It must be very hard to have to entertain guests while you are in mourning. How long is it since your husband died?’

‘A month. I am amazed that Jac – Jared did not know of it.’ Bella moved around the room shifting the position of a vase of flowers, aligning the edges of the books on the bedside table.

‘I doubt he scours the death notices – or any others, for news of Yorkshire,’ Guin said. ‘It must all have seemed very remote to him.’ Nor had she seen anything and she thought she would have noticed news of a death so close to Allerton, even though she did not know the family. The accidental passing of the heir to an earl who lived quietly in the country with no political ambitions was hardly something that would attract great notice.

Her conscience was troubling her, a little. If Bella and William had resorted to such an appalling subterfuge to wed, this had been a love match. ‘You must miss your husband very much.’

Bella shrugged. ‘One becomes used to marriage, of course. One grows up and becomes oneself, not a girl anymore. One sees that it is not all rose petals and champagne, does one not?’

She fell out of love with him and he with her. This is a woman who needs rose petals and champagne, not life on a windswept moor with a father-in-law who disapproved of her and a husband who did not deliver the fairy tale romance she had perjured herself for.

‘Your daughters must be a comfort to you. You have three, do you not?’

‘They are with my mother in Whitby. I saw no reason why they should be shrouded in gloom here.’

The gloom was within their mother, Guin thought. And within their grandfather, of course. No wonder Bella made friends with the Quentens when they arrived in the neighbourhood. Perhaps it had been almost a welcome distraction to support Elizabeth in her troubles – the family’s financial woes, her anguish over Francis. I am becoming all too sympathetic, she thought. Time for that once we have stopped these murderous games.

‘You do not wear mourning,’ Bella observed, her hand on the door.

‘No. Augustus did not like it.’

Bella made no observation on that, merely observing, ‘There will be tea in the Green Parlour in a short while,’ as she closed the door behind her.

What does she know, I wonder?

 

‘You want me to invite a murderer into my house?’ His father sat back in his desk chair with a grunt of disbelief.

‘I want you to invite your neighbours the Quentens and a complete stranger to join your house party and to set a trap. When I tell you the history of this I think you will agree.’

They would not be overheard, not with Dover taking a leisurely interest in the trophies of arms set along the passageway outside. Jared set himself to explain the history of Guin’s marriages and Theo’s inheritance.

When he finished the Earl sat up, thumped his fist on the desk. ‘The woman’s insane.’

‘She is certainly not in her right mind. Her servant, Thomas Bainton, is plainly in possession of all his faculties. Whether he is acting out of warped devotion to his mistress or for gain, I do not know.’

‘They have killed Northam, attempted to implicate his nephew and harassed Lady Northam in the most serious manner,’ his father summarised, suddenly looking like the magistrate he was. ‘These are people I have entertained in my house, neighbours my daughter-in-law is intimate with.’

‘I have no idea whether Quenten himself realises what is going on,’ Jared said. ‘No proof either way.’

‘And we need to entertain them again, offer hospitality under our roof.’

‘And give her the opportunity to murder.’

‘Is this what your life has been since you left?’ his father demanded suddenly. ‘Murder, treachery?’

‘Not so much. There were moments when I was travelling around the globe with Calderbrook when having one’s throat cut was a daily danger and there have been moments of some drama since, but I was settling down to perfect tranquillity as a swordmaster with my own salle d’armes and a prospect of peaceful respectability.’

There was a snort from across the desk. Jared found that he was beginning to like the man, which was a surprise. ‘To be accurate about these invitations – the complete stranger is already on his way and should be here tomorrow along with the Quentens.’

His father waved a hand in acceptance. ‘This is your home, invite who you wish.’ Then his gaze sharpened. ‘Am I making assumptions? Are you going to stay or are you leaving again, back to London and your alias and your swords?’

It was the question Jared had been avoiding asking himself, but he knew the answer. ‘I am staying.’ Not that he liked that answer but there was one thing he could not walk away from and that was a title that would always follow him and an estate full of people who relied on him for their livelihoods. And generations of history that were strangely compelling now the responsibility of carrying them was in his hands.

‘I’ll keep the salle d’armes as an investment and because I am interested. I’ll find a swordmaster to run it.’ And move my big carved bed and my copper bath into the Huntingford London house. He pushed away the worry that he was never going to see Guinevere in that bed. ‘I’ll use the Town house if I may, move between there and here.’

‘Good.’ There was the sort of pause that, with an English gentleman of a certain stamp signalled an outpouring of emotion, then his father cleared his throat. ‘Will the Quentens accept the invitation?’ the Earl asked.

‘I don’t see how they can resist – Guinevere and Theo under one roof.’ He found his fingers were on the hilt of his rapier and smiled.

 

Bella poured tea, Theo and Jared ferried cups around, Guin smiled brightly. They were all on their best behaviour and the tension was crackling like static electricity. Or perhaps she was the only one who could sense it. Jared seemed utterly relaxed, his father was being bluff and hearty, Bella chilly and Theo seemed determined to charm his cousin by marriage, Elizabeth Quenten.

Elizabeth sat next to her husband Julian, a polite social smile on her lips. Guin searched for some resemblance to Francis and found it only in her eyes, her one fine feature, blue and long-lashed in her oval face.

The more she saw of Julian, the more she could see the family resemblance to Augustus in looks. Intellectually he appeared rather dull, the kind of man of no great intellect or enterprise who was swept along on life’s currents. When things went wrong, as they apparently had with their finances, he would have no resolution and drive to get the family out of trouble, allowing them to sink in a welter of ineffectual lamentations.

He was a gentleman, therefore he could not work, but as a landowner he had no enterprise. Elizabeth, his Lettie, had that, clearly. Why not apply yourself to rescuing the family fortunes by some honest means, you foolish woman? Guin thought, accepting a biscuit from the plate Theo offered and nodding earnestly at the tale of how young Master Charles Quenten had mastered his latest Latin text.

‘His tutor must be an excellent instructor,’ she remarked.

‘He studies with the Vicar,’ Mr Quenten said. His wife cleared her throat. ‘A notable scholar in his time,’ he added hastily.

Beside Lord Huntingford sat the latest arrival, Sir Andrew Hewson. He had been introduced as an old friend of the Earl’s, travelling from Nottinghamshire to some business in Newcastle and breaking his journey for a few days. They were, Guin thought, most convincing with their occasional mentions of student life at Oxford and mutual acquaintances.

Sir Andrew seemed a trifle vague in manner, but the sleepy grey eyes showed some amusement when they settled on Theo and Guin found them uncomfortably assessing when she met his gaze for a few moment.

They had got through dinner the night before, and the day so far before the arrival of the Quentens, and then Sir Andrew, by the simple expedient of rigorously formal good manners with the widowed Lady Ravenlaw. No-one made any attempt to overcome Bella’s antipathy and now Guin watched for signs that she knew what was in her friend’s mind. There seemed nothing, no covert exchange of glances, no attempts to go off and talk more privately.

‘I understand that condolences are owing to both you ladies,’ Sir Andrew said suddenly. ‘I had heard, of course, of my friend’s tragic loss.’ He inclined his head towards Bella’s elegant black draperies. ‘But I understand from the newspapers that you too are recently bereaved, Lady Northam.’

Guin, who was wearing deep blue lustring with blonde lace and paler blue ribbons, guessed that this lack of tact was all part of the plan. Jared had been sparing with detail. ‘My late husband disliked ladies wearing mourning. I choose to follow his wishes.’

‘Lady Northam was hardly out of mourning for her first husband when she married Northam,’ Lord Huntingford remarked.

‘Lady Northam has been most unfortunate,’ Bella remarked. ‘I do feel for her.’

But what is it that you feel? Guin wondered, inclining her head in acknowledgment. ‘As we are amongst friends,’ she said with a complete disregard for the reality, ‘I can admit that my first marriage was a disaster from start to finish. I allowed myself to be seduced away from home by a scoundrel, made a Scottish marriage and then lost him to an accident.’

‘Dashed bad show,’ the Earl said, taking a large bite from a macaron. ‘But all for the best, eh? If he was such a shady cove, that is.’

‘Absolutely,’ Theo said, cheerfully heaping coals on the blaze. ‘The man sounds a complete wastrel, one of those charming types who prey on innocent young ladies. But if it hadn’t been for him then I would never have acquired such a delightful aunt, would I?’

Guin saw Jared shift in his chair as though to adjust the cushion at his back. He was looking at Mrs Quenten, she realised, and risked a glace in that direction.

Her former sister-in-law sat perfectly still, the picture of rather stolid respectability pretending to ignore the somewhat tactless comments of the gentlemen. Her eyes were blank, expressionless, and fixed on Guin.

Guin put down her cup and saucer before the instinctive recoil sent tea everywhere. That had not even been hate in those blue depths, only a nothingness, a horror of emptiness. Augustus had told her that he had once been on a ship when the sailors had caught a shark and hauled it up onto deck still alive. He had said its eyes had held nothing but the utter blankness of something devoid of conscience, devoid of anything but the instinct to kill. It had given him nightmares for a long time, he had said with a shudder.

This woman, so close she could touch her, had willed Augustus’s death, had harassed and frightened Guin, had schemed to see Theo hang for her crimes.