Mary Balogh - Slightly Wicked

He held up a single diamond earring between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand.

The small swell of sound instantly died away again.

“Does anyone wish to say anything about these items?” Uncle George asked. “They were found in the same room.”

Branwell’s. Judith felt sick to her stomach.

No one wished to say anything, it seemed.

“Judith,” Uncle George said, his voice low and devoid of all expression, “the bag was at the bottom of one of your dressing table drawers. The earring was on the floor, almost out of sight behind the door.”

Judith suddenly felt as if she were looking at him down a long, dark tunnel. She felt as if her mind were still grappling to decode the sounds he had just spoken, to make sensible words out of them.

“Where have you hidden everything else, Judith?” he asked her, still in that flat voice. “It is not in your room.”

“What?” She was not sure any sound had come out of her mouth. She was not even sure her lips had formed the word.

“There is no point in even pretending that there must be some misunderstanding,” Uncle George said.

“You have stolen costly jewels, Judith, from your own grandmother.”

“Oh, you ungrateful, wicked girl!” Aunt Effingham cried shrilly. “After all that I have done for you and your worthless family. You will be punished for this, believe me. Criminals hang for less.”

“We should send for the constable, Father,” Horace said. “I do apologize to everyone else that we must be seen airing our dirty family linen thus publicly. If only we had known it was Judith, we would have hushed all up and waited until everyone had gone to bed before investigating. But how were we to know?”

Judith was on her feet without any memory of having stood up.

“I have not taken anything,” she said.

“Of course you have not. Of course she has not,” her grandmother said, grabbing her hand again. “There is certainly some misunderstanding, George. Judith is the very last person who would steal from me.”

“And yet,” Julianne said scornfully, “she does not have a penny to her name, Grandmama. Do you, Judith?”

“And her brother is deep in debt,” Horace said. “I must confess that I suspected him when Tillie first came here with her discovery. Did anyone else notice that he disappeared in the middle of the ball? It was, I fear, because I reminded him of a trifling debt he owed me. I really thought he had done something foolish, though I hated to say it aloud. But it appears that it was Judith.”

“Or Judith in league with Branwell,” Aunt Effingham said. “That is it, is it, you evil girl? That is why the jewels are not in your room? Your brother has made off with them?”

“No, no, no!” Grandmama cried. “Judith has done nothing wrong. That bag ... I-I gave it to Judith to keep some of her own things in. And that earring. Judith often takes them from me when they pinch my ears, just as she did these I am wearing now. She must have dropped one when she brought them back to me and we did not notice.”

“That is not even a very good try, Mother-in-law,” Uncle George said in the same flat voice. “I believe we should all go to bed now and try to sleep. Judith will be dealt with in the morning. No one will have to face the embarrassment of having to see her again. She will be sent home, I daresay, for her father to deal with. In the meanwhile we will have to have Branwell pursued.”

“Father,” Horace said, “I still believe a constable would—”

“We will not have Judith thrown into a cell and create a sordid sensation for the whole countryside to gossip over,” Uncle George said firmly.

Judith raised both hands to her mouth. This was all too horrifying even to be a nightmare from which she might hope to awake.

“I fervently hope my brother will take a whip to you, Judith,” Aunt Effingham said, “as he ought to have done years ago. I shall write making that very suggestion. And I hope you intend to lock her into her room tonight, Effingham, so that she cannot rob us all in our sleep.”

“We will not be melodramatic,” Uncle George said, “though this scene bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the worst of melodrama. Judith, go to your room now and remain there until you are fetched in the morning.”

“Grandmama.” Judith turned to her and stretched out both hands. But her grandmother had her own hands clasped tightly in her lap and did not look up.

“Branwell is in debt,” she said so quietly that no one but Judith could hear, “and you did not tell me. I would have given him some of my jewels if he had asked or if you had asked. Did you not know that?”

Grandmama believed it, then. She believed that Judith had conspired with Bran to rob her. It was the worst moment of all.

“I did not do it, Grandmama,” Judith whispered as she saw a tear plop onto the old lady’s hands.

She never afterward knew how she got herself out of the ballroom and up to her room. But she stood against the closed door after she arrived there for a long, long time, her hands with a death grip on the handle behind her back, as if the weight of her body was all that stood between herself and the universe crashing in on top of her.

It was really far too early in the day to be making a social call, Rannulf thought as he rode up the long driveway toward Harewood Grange, especially the morning after a ball. But he had paced his room rather like a bear in a cage from dawn onward and had not been able to settle to anything even after going downstairs, though there were letters to answer and another account ledger he needed to study.

And so he had come early in the hope of finding at least Sir George Effingham up and about and in the confident belief that Judith would not still be in her bed. Had she found sleep last night as difficult as he had? She surely could not have mistaken his meaning last evening. How did she feel about him? What answer did she plan to give him?

If it was no again, then he would have to accept it.

It was a gloomy thought, but he clung to the hope that he had not imagined that magnetic sort of pull between them last night. He surely could not have. But his heart pounded with unaccustomed anxiety as he rode into the stable yard, turned Bucephalus over to the care of a groom, and strode toward the house.

“Ask Sir George if I may have a private word with him,” he said to the servant who opened the door.

A minute later he was being ushered into the library, where he had very nearly met his doom last night.

Sir George was seated at a large oak desk looking glum. But then he rarely looked any different, Rannulf reflected. He was the picture of a man discontented with his family circle yet not quite content with his own company either.

“Good morning, sir,” Rannulf said. “I trust everyone has slept well after last evening’s revelries?”

Sir George grunted. “You are out early, Bedwyn,” he said. “I am not sure Julianne or the others are up yet. But your business is with me, is it?”

“Only briefly, sir,” Rannulf said. “I would like your permission to have a private word with your niece.”

“With Judith?” Sir George frowned, and his hand reached for a quill pen and fidgeted with it.

“I thought I might take her walking outside,” Rannulf said. “With your permission, that is, and if she is willing.”

Sir George put the pen down. “You are too late,” he said. “She has gone.”

“Gone?” He knew she was to be sent home, but so abruptly, so soon, the morning after a late ball?

Because of the way she had thwarted her cousin’s marriage scheme, perhaps?

Sir George sighed deeply, sat back in his chair, and indicated that his guest should take the one across from him. “I suppose there will be no keeping it entirely from you or Lady Beamish,” he said, “though I was hoping and still hope to keep the sordid details from the rest of our neighbors. There was some unpleasantness here last night, Bedwyn. My mother-in-law’s jewels were stolen sometime in the course of the evening and a search turned up quite unmistakable and damning evidence in Judith’s room. She was also seen hurrying out of her room at a time during the ball when she had no clear reason for being there, and soon after that, Branwell Law disappeared. He left Harewood in the middle of the ball without a word to anyone.”

Rannulf sat very still.

“Judith was confined to her room overnight,” Sir George continued, “though I refused to have her either locked in or guarded. It seemed somehow demeaning to my whole family to treat her like a prisoner. My intention was to send her home under escort this morning in my own carriage with a letter to her father.

This letter.” He tapped a folded, sealed paper on the desk. “But when I went up very early, with a maid, and knocked on her door, there was no answer. The room was empty. Most, if not all, of her belongings are still there, but she most certainly is not. She has flown.”

“You think she has gone home?” Rannulf asked, breaking a heavy silence.

“I doubt it,” Sir George said. “My brother-in-law is a stern man. He is not the sort to whom a woman in her predicament would run voluntarily. And her brother would certainly not go there, would he? I suppose they have a plan to meet somewhere and divide the spoils. Those jewels must be worth a very sizable fortune, yet my mother-in-law would never allow me to put the most valuable of them in a safe place.”

“What do you plan to do now?” Rannulf asked.

“I wish I could simply do nothing,” Sir George told him quite frankly. “They are Lady Effingham’s own niece and nephew and my mother-in-law’s grandchildren. But the jewels at least must be recovered. I suppose now they have fled and must be pursued it is too late to treat the matter with quiet discretion. I suppose they will have to be brought to justice and made to serve time in jail. It is not a pleasing prospect.”

“There will be pursuit, then?” Rannulf asked.

Sir George sighed again. “We will keep the matter quiet as long as we are able,” he said, “though with a houseful of servants and guests I daresay I might as easily attempt to muzzle the wind. My son will go after them tomorrow morning after seeing our houseguests on their way. He believes— and I must concur with him—that their only sensible destination is London since they carry jewels, not money, and jewels are not easily disposed of. He will pursue them there and apprehend them himself if he is fortunate—if we are all fortunate. It is more likely that he will be compelled to engage the services of the Bow Street Runners.”

They sat for a short while in silence and then Rannulf got abruptly to his feet.

“I will intrude upon you no longer, sir,” he said. “You may rest assured that no one else except my grandmother will hear anything of this through me.”

“That is decent of you.” Sir George too got to his feet. “It is a nasty business.”

Rannulf rode down the driveway somewhat faster than he had ridden up it just a short while earlier. He might have guessed that something like this would happen. He himself had come very close to being trapped into marrying Miss Effingham, yet he was probably not even the primary enemy as far as Horace Effingham was concerned. It was by Judith he would have felt most humiliated. She was the one he must be most intent upon punishing.

It was a nasty punishment he had chosen and was likely to get nastier.

His grandmother was in her private sitting room, writing a letter. She smiled at him and set her pen down when he answered her summons to enter.

“How delightful it is,” she said, “to see the sun shining again. It lifts one’s spirits, does it not?”

“Grandmama.” He strode across the room toward her and took one of her hands in his. “I must leave you for a few days. Perhaps even longer.”

“Ah.” She continued to smile, but something had turned flat behind her eyes. “Yes, of course, you have grown restless. I understand.”

He raised her hand to his lips.

“Someone stole Mrs. Law’s jewels last night during the ball,” he said, “and the blame fell squarely upon Judith Law. Evidence was found in her room.”

“Oh, no, Rannulf,” she said, “that cannot be.”

“She fled sometime during the night,” he said, “making herself, I suppose, look even more guilty.”

She stared at him. “I would never believe it of Miss Law,” she said. “But poor Gertrude. Those jewels have great sentimental value to her.”