“I should hope so.” Lady Sterling grimaced. “Thank God that my brother—your grandfather—was convinced not to invest in their stock. Anyone with a grain of sense could see that the value of the company was built on thin air.”
“And yet, a great many intelligent people were blinded by greed,” observed the earl.
The dowager nodded. “Aye, greed is a powerful emotion.”
“That it is,” whispered Arianna.
“Even so brilliant a man as Sir Isaac Newton was caught up in the trading frenzy,” added Saybrook. “It’s said that he lost twenty thousand pounds, and later remarked, ‘I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.’ ”
“Yes, well, no matter how often the lesson is taught, it doesn’t seem to sink in,” remarked Lady Sterling. “People have very large appetites and very small memories.”
Arianna swallowed a bitter laugh. Oh, how very true.
“Thank you for the history lecture,” said the earl.
“Don’t be impertinent,” scolded his aunt. Turning to Arianna, she gave a brusque wave. “Go dance with my great-nephew. My mouth is now dry and my feet are aching, so I wish to sit down and enjoy a cup of negus with my friends.” Patting the snowy white plumes of her headdress into place, Lady Sterling marched off to join a group of matrons seated near the entrance to the card room.
Saybrook offered his arm. “Seeing as the waltz affords a modicum of privacy in which to talk, let us not waste the opportunity.”
“I agree—the sooner we have a council of war, the better,” murmured Arianna, once the lilting notes of the melody swept them into motion.
“Has something happened?” he asked quickly.
“Aside from having that watchdog Grentham sniffing around my skirts?” Expelling a harried sigh, she pushed aside her fears about abstract numbers to concentrate on a more real threat. “It is a good thing that plans are progressing quickly—at least on my end. The minister seems to suspect that I am not quite what I seem.”
Saybrook’s mouth thinned to a grim line. “It appears that he, like us, doesn’t put much credence in coincidence. Apparently the timing of your arrival has set off alarm bells.”
“Why is he so interested in your family?” she asked. “The comings and goings of various relatives shouldn’t ordinarily attract much notice.”
He ignored the question to pose one of his own. “How much do you know about your father’s business dealings before he left England?”
“Why do you ask?”
He hesitated, moving with careful steps through a box turn before answering her. “I did a bit more digging into the past this afternoon. Your suggestion of illicit dealings involving military supplies reminded me of an old rumor I had heard—”
“But now we know that ‘sword blade’ refers to something else,” she protested.
“Perhaps.” His dark eyes turned more opaque. “Be that as it may, I have reason to think that your father’s cleverness with numbers was used for more than playing cards.”
Try as she might, Arianna couldn’t keep a tiny skip out of her voice. “W-what do you mean?”
“My research has uncovered a business venture, one involving the supply of munitions to the Duke of Brunswick’s army during the First Coalition campaign against the French revolutionaries. The duke was advancing on Paris and the French should have been no match for his veteran forces. However, at the Battle of Valmy, Brunswick was forced to retreat in the face of superior artillery fire.”
She frowned. “I assure you, my father wasn’t the least bit interested in politics or warfare.”
Again the earl hesitated. “No, but he was very interested in money, wasn’t he?”
Her throat grew painfully tight.
“There seem to have been some serious questions concerning the company’s bookkeeping,” he went on. “Nothing was proved, but in reading over the records of the case, I learned that one of the investigators thought that there appeared to be a complex and cleverly designed formula in place, one that allowed the partners to profit handsomely while leaving the British army short of cannon shells.”
No, no, no! Would the lies of others forever haunt her life?
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
Saybrook’s mouth thinned to a grim line. “Because the names of the company’s investors included not only Lord Concord and Lord Hamilton, but also Richard Hadley, the Earl of Morse.”
Arianna felt her stomach begin to churn. Fear, trepidation, denial—a hot mix of emotion that burned like acid at her very core. And then suddenly all her pent-up anger surged upward rather than inward. “How dare you!” she whispered. “My father would never have betrayed or cheated his country. Never.”
“We are often the last ones to see fault in the people we love,” said the earl gently.
She saw a stirring of sympathy in the depths of his chocolate-dark gaze, which only goaded her to greater fury. Pity was the last thing on earth she wanted from him.
“You pompous prig,” she hissed. “You just said yourself that there was no proof, yet you show no shame in repeating such scurrilous rumors. Oh, how easy it is to blacken the name of someone who isn’t able to defend himself.”
“Smile,” he warned under his breath. “The other guests will get the wrong impression.”
“On the contrary, we want them to think that I find your company odious,” she said tightly.
“I know this must be hard for you,” he murmured. “But if we don’t explore every possibility, we shall never find the truth—”
“The truth? You don’t care about the truth,” she said bitterly. “This is simply a cerebral challenge for you. A distraction to draw you out of your own morbid musings. A body here, a scandal there—you may tell yourself how very, very smart you are when you piece it all together. As for what lives are ruined in the process, well, for a veteran officer, that’s simply the casualties of war.”
“Have a care about making your own unfair accusations, milady,” responded the earl.
“What about the revelation we just learned from your great-aunt? That seems far more explosive information than some vague twenty-year-old charges against an obscure company,” challenged Arianna. “Do you intend to pursue Lady Spencer as ruthlessly as you have my father?”
“Yes, you may be assured that I won’t spare anyone.”
Nor will I, she thought, as the whirling dervish blur of numbers in her head began to slow and form a more solid shape.
The music must have ended, for on looking up, Arianna saw that the earl was steering their steps for a secluded spot between the marble colonnading and a display of tall potted palms. Grateful for a moment of respite, she took shelter in the leafy shadows.
“I regret that my words caused you pain,” began the earl after a moment of awkward silence.
“You must understand that my father was a dreamer, and in many ways naïve to the ways of the world,” interrupted Arianna. “He was generous, and trusting—perhaps to a fault.” The echo of a rich, baritone laugh danced unbidden across her consciousness. “If there is any truth to what you just told me, it would be because he was manipulated by his friends.”
Innocent, innocent—his dying words reverberated in her head.
“In fact,” she said slowly, “certain things are beginning to make more sense.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Saybrook. Though bladelike shadows cut across his face, making his expression impossible to discern, his voice was sharp with skepticism.
Don’t react, she warned herself. But the words, bitter as bile, had already escaped her lips. “Because he was murdered, sir. Stabbed in a dark alley in Kingston Harbor and left to bleed to death in the filth and garbage. He managed to crawl back to our tavern room, but . . .”
“I am sorry. I didn’t know that.”
Aware that she had already revealed far more than she meant to, Arianna remained silent.