Consuelo gasped.
“What does that mean?” I demanded.
“Blenheim is the home of the Duke of Marlborough,” she whispered hoarsely.
James nodded. “Indeed. My father was first assistant to the house steward. My mother, the housekeeper’s assistant. Marianne was an upstairs maid.” He shot his sister a fond look. “She was about to be promoted to lady’s maid to the Duke’s sister, weren’t you, Marianne?”
She nodded slightly, her face sickly white.
“As a boy I had worked with the groundskeeper, but a few years ago I became a footman.” James’s expression darkened. “We were working hard, but going about our lives well enough until one day last autumn my father was accused of stealing and doctoring the house account books to cover his guilt. The Duke threatened my father with prison if he didn’t confess to the crime. My father was innocent, but—devil be damned—his word would never hold up against the Duke of Marlborough’s. Innocent or no, he’d rot in prison and the rest of us would be turned out to starve on the streets.
“So he confessed, and we were sacked anyway. All of us. Tossed out without references and nowhere to go. And do you know what happened then?”
I shook my head. Beside me, Consuelo trembled. Marianne sat with her head bowed, hands clenched around the arms of her chair.
“Winter set in,” he said matter-of-factly, almost amiably. “We’d gone to Oxford to search for work and found none. None that’d take us without references, that is. The four of us were living in a one-room attic with the sky showing through the gaps in the thatch. The rain came through as well, and then the snow. We fell behind on the rent, so the landlord threatened to send us packing. That was when our mother became ill. Pneumonia. She was dead within the fortnight.”
Marianne moaned, then bit down on her bottom lip and tightened her grip on the chair until her knuckles threatened to burst through the skin. She was so frail and forlorn, so defeated that, despite everything, I pitied her. I wanted to go to the woman and comfort her. I think Consuelo did, too. She looked down at Marianne but seemed to be holding herself back, perhaps debating if the Englishwoman deserved her sympathy, perhaps merely too afraid to move.
“Not long after, my father lay in the pauper’s grave alongside her.” James spoke more quietly now, as if the memories proved too much and the fight had gone out of him. “Hanged himself from the rafters one day when Marianne and I had gone begging for food.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Consuelo whispered through the hand she pressed to her mouth.
“Ah, but it doesn’t end there.” A smile dawned on James’s face—demonic and chilling. “With Marianne showing signs of consumption, I knew we wouldn’t last much longer where we were. England had become a hell for us. So I did anything I could—and yes, that included begging, cheating, and stealing—to scrape together enough money to book our passages to America. We arrived in New York early last spring.”
“Your story is a terrible one,” Consuelo said when he paused, “and surely you didn’t deserve what happened to you. I’m sorry for it. But why all of this? Why all of your lies?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Consuelo?” At the risk of tearing my gaze away from James and his speargun, I turned to her. “The Duke of Marlborough. Even in America, they found they couldn’t escape the man.”
She shook her head at me. “I still don’t understand.”
“Revenge.” I turned back to James. “Isn’t that right?”
James smiled shrewdly. “It was all too perfect. When I learned the bloody bastard was coming here to become engaged to Consuelo, I knew fate had arranged retribution in my family’s name. He needs your dowry to pay his debts and save his blasted estate. I intended to make sure he never got it—not one bloody cent. I moved us to Newport and soon enough learned that fate was even kinder than I had imagined. Pubs are a wondrous source of servants’ gossip, and I learned Consuelo wanted no part of this marriage. And then I met Miss Katie Dillon.” His brogue returned, dripping with mockery. “A bonnie lass, she is, and most accommodatin’.”
“You used her . . . and Emma . . .” Consuelo trailed off in a clear attempt to gather her thoughts. When she spoke again, her voice was clearer, stronger, her back straighter. “And me, apparently. But why murder Madame Devereaux?”
“Ah, an unplanned complication, that. Seemed the old boot was genuinely clairvoyant after all. Somehow she knew what I was planning. Knew I was going to spirit you away from Marble House, and she threatened to expose me if I didn’t pay her. So pay her I did.” His sister coughed, and James regarded her briefly. Then his gaze shifted to me. “I believe you found my coins scattered about the pavilion, Miss Cross. Aye, I didn’t have time to collect them, what with Mrs. Vanderbilt and her gaggle of quacking cronies waddling down the garden path. I’m afraid I had no choice but to leave a bit of a mess.”