Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden. Nicola Cornick
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only interested in erudite subjects and chose to have no small talk. Most young men were afraid of her, bored by her, or both. She was known as the Simple Ton by those society fashionables who deplored her bookishness and her lack of social graces.
Such insignificance made it far easier for her to live as she wished, pursuing an interest in all manner of scholarly activities on the one hand and working for Tom on the other. If her sisters had known that she worked for a living they would probably have had the vapors. If they had known she was employed by an inquiry agent the strongest smelling salts would not have been able to revive them. And if they discoverd that sometimes she stayed out at night to do her work and invented fictitious friends to cover for her … But then, Merryn thought, they never would find out. They would not guess because such thoughts were unthinkable.
Except … except that she had made a mistake last night. It was the sort of mistake that could lead to the unmasking of what she liked to think of as her secret life. She had committed the cardinal sin of being caught, and by Garrick Farne, of all people. If there was one time that she should have been particularly careful, it was when she was working against the man who had killed her brother and ruined her family. But it was too late now. Farne had seen her. Farne had kissed her. A little of ripple of disquiet, mixed with something more deep and disturbing, edged down her spine.
“Are you coming in or are we to talk out here?”
Tom was holding his office door open for her, his head tilted inquiringly to one side, eyes bright, a smile curling his lips. He was cocky, but Merryn liked him for it. Tom, the son of a stevedore who had worked on the Thames loading ships, still kept his offices within a stone’s throw of the river. He was one of the most successful inquiry agents in London, finding everything from missing heirs to servants who had absconded with the family silver. She had worked alongside him for the past two years.
Merryn uncurled herself from her seat and preceded Tom into the office. There was a chair but she knew from experience that it was uncomfortable so she remained standing. Tom propped himself against the edge of his desk.
“So did you find any papers relating to the duel?” Tom said. “Any servants paid off around that time, any proof of a cover-up, anything suspicious at all?”
“I’m very well, thank you, Tom,” Merryn said tartly. “How are you?”
Tom grinned, his teeth a flash of white in his face. “You know I have no manners.”
“Clearly,” Merryn said. She looked at him. No one would mistake Tom Bradshaw for anything other than what he was: the self-made son of a working man. The well-cut clothes could not conceal his innate toughness.
“No,” she said. She turned her face away. “I didn’t find anything.”
Three weeks previously Tom had come to her with some information that he had said he thought would interest her and when she had read it the shock and outrage had gripped Merryn like a vise. Tom’s information had been a tiny entry from an obscure local Dorset newspaper. He said that he had found it quite by accident when he had been working on a different case. The paper was twelve years old and there, between references to pig rustling and theft at a country fair, had been the report of an inquest into the death of Stephen Fenner.
Merryn could remember the piece word for word. She thought she would never forget it.
“The coroner at the inquest into the death of Stephen, Viscount Fenner, reported that there had been two bullets in the victim’s body, one in the shoulder and one in the back …” And then, farther down the page: “Daniel Scrope, gamekeeper on the Starcross estate, reported hearing an altercation followed by the firing of three shots …”
Merryn shook a little now as she remembered how she had frozen where she had sat, her gaze riveted to the tiny shred of news that contradicted all the official reports of her brother’s death. Before he had fled the country to escape the exigencies of the law, Garrick Farne had left a statement giving details of the duel. He had sworn that it had occurred over the elopement of his best friend, Stephen Fenner, with Kitty, Garrick’s wife of only a month. Two shots had been fired, Farne had maintained, one by Stephen, who had missed, and the other by himself, which had proved fatal. The doctor and the two men’s seconds had supported his statement. Farne’s second had even claimed that Fenner had fired early, an unforgivable piece of cowardice further blackening Stephen’s name.
The case had never gone to trial and public opinion had been very sympathetic to Garrick Farne. He and Kitty had been married for barely a month. Stephen Fenner had clearly played his best friend false, seducing Garrick’s wife, trying to entice her to run off with him and compounding his deceit by attempting to kill Garrick by firing before the flag was dropped. Besides, a duel was an affair of honor and society understood the rules that governed such cases. Garrick Farne was generally felt to have acted regrettably but understandably.
That had been appalling enough to Merryn, unforgivable, heinous, but when she had discovered that there had been three shots and two bullets in Stephen’s body, she had been consumed with grief and anger. Garrick Farne had lied, there had been no duel, only an execution, and he should have hanged for murder. She had hated Garrick before, hated what he had done, despaired over the way his actions had wrought such unhappiness and ruin on her family. Now, though, her anger was transformed. If the truth had been buried she would dig it out. She would show the world that Garrick was a liar and a criminal, and she would strip him of all honor and respect. She would find the proof that would mean his life was forfeit.
Merryn had searched like a woman possessed to find any other evidence such as the original inquest report, the findings of the doctor who had conducted it, the original witness statements of the seconds who had allegedly been present at what she now suspected was a fictitious duel. She had drawn a blank. All papers were lost. All witnesses had vanished. Merryn had been disillusioned but hardly surprised. She knew that the Dukes of Farne were rich enough and powerful enough to pay their way out of such a scandal. But she could not give up now. If there were the slightest chance that she could prove that Garrick Farne had killed her brother in cold blood then she would expose him. She wanted him to lose everything that had been built on his lie. She had lost so much when Garrick had killed Stephen. She wanted him to understand how that felt.
“You found nothing,” Tom repeated. He was looking annoyed, so irritated, in fact, that Merryn wondered if he might secretly have a client interested in her findings. It seemed unlikely but not impossible.
“You did search everywhere?” Tom persisted.
Merryn frowned. “Of course I searched everywhere. I’m not an amateur. I looked in the study, the library, the bedrooms—”
“In the bedrooms?” Tom said.
“I thought there might be papers concealed in a book,” Merryn said.
Tom gave her a quizzical look. “I repeat, in the bedrooms?”
“People read in bed,” Merryn said, a shade defensively.
“Do they?” Tom seemed surprised. “I don’t. I have more exciting things to do.”
Merryn rolled her eyes. “You and Garrick Farne both.”
Tom raised his brows. “What?”
“I was under the bed,” Merryn said, “when the Duke had a visitor. A voluptuous and eager lady called Harriet.”
Tom pursed his lips on a soundless whistle. “Harriet Knight, his late father’s ward?”
“I have no idea,” Merryn said tartly. There was a squirm of something in her belly that felt disconcertingly like … jealousy? “They were obviously beyond needing surnames,” she added.
“Poor you,” Tom said. “There’s nothing worse than voyeurism.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Merryn said. “Fortunately he threw her out before things became too embarrassing for me.”
Tom started to laugh. “Farne threw an eager seductress out of his bedchamber?” he