‘What the hell was Hanley doing there?’
Hawk began to laugh. ‘He was out on the town with a group of friends, but your question precludes other more pressing ones, Nat. If, for example, your lady was not present you might have asked if he was crazy to be so mistaken? As a judge, I would infer from your words that the accusation was true.’
‘Cassandra Northrup is hardly my lady.’
His mind whirled as Stephen continued to speak. ‘The ruination of her reputation might only be a minor concern when stacked up against such a killing.’
‘Do people believe Hanley?’
‘I’d like to say no, but I think that they are beginning to. Reginald Northrup has made no attempt at silencing his friend either, which is telling. I took it on myself to find out a little of the Northrups and if Reginald himself stands to gain anything from any discrediting of the brother’s family. One daughter is almost deaf, the second one is married and living in Scotland and the son is still a minor. Cassandra Northrup’s ruination is irrelevant for I am certain Cowper would have made a will stating his preferred guardians for Rodney and for the trustees of his estate.’
‘Is it the title he wants? From all accounts the Northrups are not as rich as he is.’
‘No, not that. Just the influence, I am presuming, for the title is more than safe. Rodney is the direct heir, but there is another more pressing fact that you should know, Nathaniel, given your recent championing of the youngest Northrup daughter. Cassandra Northrup may not be the lady that you think she is. She is reputed to take many more risks than she should.’
‘Risks?’
‘She does not seem to give much account to her reputation. It seems she is not averse to wandering the same streets the prostitutes do in order to save some of them. Kenyon Riley was touchy when I asked him further about it.’
‘You saw Riley?’
‘Yesterday at White’s. He bought rounds for all and sundry and I had the feeling some personal celebration was in the air. He spends a lot of time with the Northrups so perhaps he has finally decided to offer for one of the daughters.’
The wheel turned further and further. Cassandra Northrup had become the beauty Nat had predicted she would all those years before and even encumbered with two failed marriages she was...unmatched.
Swearing, he poured himself another drink.
She ransacked him with her beauty. That was the trouble. The history between them had also had a hand, their marriage, their trysts around Saint Estelle and the small villages before Perpignan, hours when he had imagined her as his forever wife safe at St Auburn and providing timely heirs for a title steeped in the tradition of first-born boys.
Lord, what groundless hopes. In every meeting thus far she had never given him an inkling that she hankered for more between them other than the safe keeping of hidden secrets arising from betrayal.
And now a further problem. She was innocent of the murder of the man at the brothel, but could he just leave her to fight the accusations herself? He knew that he could not.
‘Is our membership in the Venus Club complete, Stephen?
‘Yes?’
‘When do they meet again?’
‘This Saturday. I thought to go there after making a showing at the Forsythe ball.’
‘I will accompany you then. I would like a chat with Christopher Hanley.’
‘So you will still be involving yourself with Cassandra Northrup’s plight?’ The laughter in his friend’s eyes made Nat wary. Sometimes Stephen had a knack of finding out things from him that he did not wish to divulge.
‘There may be no one else to help her.’
Hawk raised his glass. ‘Then I drink to an outcome that will be of benefit to you both.’ Nathaniel wondered what Stephen might have made of the fact that they had once been married and that high up on the foothills of the Pyrenees their troths had been consummated with more than just a nominal effort. He wished he might speak of it now, but there would be no point in the confidence. Sandrine had chosen her pathway and it had wound well away from his. Still, he would not want to see her made victim for a crime she had not committed.
He swallowed, for his logic made no sense. She had betrayed England and then carried on with her life with hardly a backward glance. He should not trust her.
A ring of the doorbell brought his butler into the library.
‘There is a Miss Maureen Northrup here to see you, my lord. She will not come through, however, but would like a quick word in the foyer.’
Standing, Nat looked at Hawk, who lifted his glass with a smile. ‘A further complication?’
Outside, the same dark-eyed girl at Albi’s ball stood, her maid at her side and her hands wringing at the fabric in her skirt. Underneath a wide hat he could see her face and she looked neither happy not rested.
‘Miss Northrup.’
‘Thank you for seeing me, Lord Lindsay. I will be as brief as I can be. Is there a room where we might have a moment’s privacy?’
‘There is.’ He opened the door to his left and shepherded her into the blue salon, wondering at all the conventions being broken for an unmarried woman to be alone here. He did not shut the door.
‘I wish to know what your intentions are regarding my sister, my lord?’ She did not tarry with the mundane.
‘I have none.’
He thought she swallowed, and she paled further at his reply.
‘Then I want you to stay well away from Cassandra, sir. She does not need your dubious threats.’
‘Threats? She told you I had been threatening her?’
‘Not in as many words. But unless you have some hold upon her I cannot see why she would have been willingly in your bed in that house of disrepute off the Whitechapel Road for any other reason.’
This Northrup daughter was as brave as her sister, her eyes directly on his face and no blush at all upon her cheeks.
Her voice was strange, he thought, the diction so precise. Then he saw her glance upon his lips and he remembered. She was deaf. Deaf and brave, he corrected, and trying with all her might to protect her family.
‘I was helping her. A man had been murdered in the room opposite and San...Cassandra would have been implicated had she been found there. I bundled her into my bed and pretended...’
He could not go on. This was the strangest conversation he had ever had with anyone before.
‘Pretended...? You said “pretended”?’ She mulled the word over, the light coming on in her dark eyes as she did so. ‘I see, my lord. I had thought...’ Again she stopped. ‘Thank you for your time, Lord Lindsay. I do appreciate it.’
With that she simply glided out through the door, gesturing to her wide-eyed maid to follow and was gone, the clock in the hall ringing out the hour of one in the afternoon. The butler looked as puzzled as he did.
‘If Miss Northrup returns, do you wish to know of it, sir?’
‘I doubt she will be back, Haines, but if she comes send her through to me.’
Stephen still sat where Nat had left him and from the look on his face he had heard the whole thing.
‘If Cassandra Northrup was with you, Nat, I should imagine your intentions are nothing like those you regaled the oldest Miss Northrup with? You have not taken a woman to bed in years.’
A reprimand. Given with the very best of intentions. He could no longer lie to Hawk.
‘Once, Cassandra Northrup and I were married. In France.’
By