The Swordmaster's Mistress: Dangerous Deceptions Book Two(80)

Lettie lunged for her as the room seemed to fill with light. She heard Jared swear at someone as she blinked, dazed in the glare, then threw the sifter straight at the blade.

There was a scream and she saw Lettie Quenten flail her arms, scrub at her eyes one-handed. Jared moved towards her, rapier out, blood running down over his sword hand. As Lettie went for him he reversed the weapon, brought the pommel in his clenched fist up under her chin and hit her, sending her backwards into a sprawling fall.

Guin scrambled after the knife the other woman dropped but Jared was already rolling the limp body over, tying Lettie’s hands with some of the red document tape from the library table.

She went down on her knees beside him.

‘Did she touch you?’ He let Lettie fall back onto her back without ceremony and caught Guin by the shoulders. ‘Guinevere, my heart. Hell, you frightened me.’

‘I’m all right. Theo?’

‘Bruised jaw and a bang on the head from where I pushed the screen on top of him.’

‘He was acting, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. He caught Sir Andrew on his way down here, told him what he intended. Apparently he is quite capable of lip-reading enough in a mirror to have an idea of what we were planning to do about the sitting room door.’

‘Thank goodness. I believed in him, but that gave me a nasty moment.’

‘My evening has been a series of nasty moments,’ Jared said with feeling. ‘Finding you behind me when I thought you safe in your chamber, hearing Theo’s heroics, seeing that door slam on you and this creature.’

‘You are hurt. Take off your coat, let me see your arm.’

‘It’s nothing, a clean cut.’ Jared sat back on his heels and let her pull off the coat, rip the tear in his shirt until she could look at his forearm. Guin swallowed. Hard.

‘See? A nice tidy slash.’ Jared pushed the edges of the slice together with thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand. ‘That will stitch up easily enough. Guinevere?’

He caught her as she slumped inelegantly towards the floor. ‘I almost fainted,’ she said as she was pulled to her feet and planted unceremoniously in a chair. ‘I never faint.’

‘It is almost a relief to discover that you are not perfect after all,’ Jared said as Dover came through the door at a run, stopped dead and huffed out a breath. ‘Are you hurt, my lady?’

‘No, but Lord Ravenlaw is. His arm is slashed’

‘The Earl has sent for the doctor already, my lady. What with Lord Northam seeing double and Bainton’s broken nose – Lord Northam has a punishing left – and Sir Andrew getting hit on the shoulder by the screen falling it’s like a battlefield hospital in there.’

‘Is my father all right?’

‘Yes, sir. If you’ll excuse me saying so, he’s having the time of his life.’

‘What on earth is going on?’ Bella stood in the doorway, a robe covering her nightgown and her hair in a plait over one shoulder. ‘Is that Lettie tied up on the floor? And Jared, your arm. You are bleeding all over the rug.’

‘Everyone is all right,’ Guin said. ‘But Lettie had Bainton murder Augustus and she was behind the attacks on me because my first husband was her brother. Sir Andrew is a Justice of the Peace and so is the Earl, of course, so they are arresting them both.’ She held out her hand to Bella. ‘I know she is your friend, and this is all going to be horrible now, with a trial. I’m sorry, Bella.’

‘You are sorry?’ Bella came into the room and sat down on a chair next to Guin. ‘I’ve known her for almost two years and I never realised. Those poor children. And her husband. He isn’t the brightest of men, but he was devoted to her.’

‘I know. We will have to help them somehow.’





Chapter Twenty Six


Eventually, after the doctor had stitched and bandaged the wounded and the constables had come and taken the two prisoners off to the village lock-up and Julian Quenten was sedated and sleeping, the house party assembled in the drawing room with brandy and hot chocolate and pots of tea.

‘All Lettie and I had in common was that we weren’t happy,’ Bella said, her hands curled around a glass of brandy as though for warmth. ‘I was lonely and I wanted someone to be miserable with, I can see that now.’

‘That Thomas is besotted with Mrs Quenten.’ Dover was treating his brandy in a more straightforward manner. ‘He’d been with her and her brother since they were youngsters, so they say in the servants’ hall here. He’d do anything for her. Looks like he’ll hang for her too.’

‘Will they hang Lettie?’ Guinevere asked. Her hands were clasping hot chocolate that Jared had laced with brandy. He was watching her closely, but she seemed to be coping remarkably well.

‘Conspiracy to murder?’ Sir Andrew said. ‘It will all depend on whether they find her fit to plead. If she is not in her right mind she will be confined. If she is fit to plead she may be transported. It will depend on the judge.’

‘Poor woman,’ Guinevere said. When they all stared at her she shook her head. ‘She was so unhappy, so angry, so obsessed. There must have been some point, somewhere, when she could have been stopped, could have been saved. And those little boys. One day they will find out what their mother did, what became of her.’