The Silent Governess(70)

“She saw nothing?” he asked, selecting a cigar from a wooden box on the table and idly rolling it between his fingers.

“Do you mean, did she see my father strike you? Sadly, no.”

“Miss Keene,” Edward interrupted. “I do not see what . . . this cannot help your father.”

“I only want the truth to be revealed,” Olivia said. “Does not the truth set one free?”

“Yes, but—”

Sir Fulke interrupted, “My own memory of those events—head injuries being what they are—is vague, Miss Keene,” he said dismissively. “When I awoke, I found myself rather in a fog. I thought Mrs. Atkins told me I had fallen down stairs, but I may have mistaken the matter. I later learnt I had been unconscious for more than a day.”

With the help of copious amounts of laudanum, Olivia thought.

“It must have been as you said,” Sir Fulke said, warming to the notion. “Your father found me in his home, assumed the worst, and struck me down like the coward he is.”

Olivia grimaced. “But do not forget, sir, you gave your attacker just cause.”

Again those muddy eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You see, the reason someone struck you from behind—I do not deny that part—was because when this person entered our home, he or she found you violently strangling my mother.”

“Preposterous!”

“I agree it sounds so,” Olivia said calmly. “And in fact, for the longest time, I believed this fiend, bent on destroying my dear mamma, was my own father, to my shame. But it was not. He was in Cheltenham, in the company of your own steward.”

The seventh man, the one she had not recognized, nodded his agreement. “That’s right, miss.”

Sir Fulke’s lip curved in a feline smile. “Miss Keene, your tale-bearing astounds me! You ought to be a writer of novels. You have missed your calling with all that arithmetic nonsense.”

Olivia sighed. “If only it were a fiction. But for me it became a nightmare that has haunted me for months.”

“If not your father, who?” Sir Fulke asked. “Do you claim some passing tramp or thief struck me?”

She stole a glance at Edward. “I have been mistaken for both in the past. But, no.”

“Who, then?” Mr. Smith asked, while the magistrate leaned forward in his chair, watching her closely.

“I stayed late at Miss Cresswell’s that evening, tutoring two pupils who had fallen behind. I came home to find chairs overturned and glass smashed against the grate. I heard my mother call out in panic and ran to her bedchamber. It was quite dark, but light enough to see a man with his hands around my mother’s throat, squeezing hard. I know what that feels like now. Sharp pain, lungs burning, the surety of death any moment . . .”

“Rubbish, the lot of it!” Sir Fulke exclaimed.

“I did not think. I only knew I must stop the man and save my mother. Before I knew it, I had grasped the fire iron and struck for all I was worth. I thought I might have killed the man. But I did not. He breathed still.”

“I was not that man,” Sir Fulke said, with a pointed look at the magistrate. “You said yourself the room was dark and you suspected your own father. He must have heard your mother was entertaining gentleman callers. I had certainly heard the rumor myself, though I, of course, did not credit it.”

Olivia said coldly, “You lie.”

“And you would do anything, say anything, to try and spare that vile father of yours. Spin all the tales you like, my dear. But you have no witness save yourself.”

“I am afraid I do.” She nodded to Edward, who opened the door. Dorothea Keene walked in, regal in striped gown and hat, head held high.

Every head turned. The constable gaped like a beached fish.

Sir Fulke instantly paled. “Dorothea!”

Mr. Smith stammered, “Mrs. Keene, we thought . . . after you disappeared, well, everyone thought the worst. I told ’em Keene would never harm you, but few believed me.”

“You were right, Mr. Smith,” her mother began. “But Sir Fulke would and did. He tried to strangle me. And I was terrified that when he came to, he would try again—and take revenge on whoever struck him. I felt I had no choice but to send my daughter away that very night and to flee the village myself the next morning, though injured.”

Sir Fulke’s face was beetroot red. “What lies! Preposterous, the lot of it! The whole family is in on it. I know our magistrate and constable are wise enough to see the truth.”

Mr. Smith looked like a confused boy. “Why would Sir Fulke mean you any harm, Mrs. Keene?”

Dorothea Keene took a deep breath and faced the constable and magistrate. “Because I refused his advances. Not once but over and over again for several months. He became . . . obsessed . . . with me, though I never gave him any encouragement.”

“You did!” Sir Fulke exclaimed, ignoring his solicitor’s staying hand and whispered warning.

Her mother continued, “He began coming to our house for his wife’s needlework in her stead. I was quite uncomfortable with his calls, but he would not stop. He tried to push himself on me that night, and when I fought back, he . . . he . . . nearly killed me.”

“Nonsense! Smith, it is all nonsense!”

Mr. Smith looked flabbergasted and uncertain how to proceed. Sir Fulke’s steward sat silent, as did the magistrate, who watched the proceedings in calculated detachment.

Herbert Fitzpatrick rose. “I believe her,” he said.

“Shut up, boy!” his father snapped. “Turn against your father, will you? Always were a weak, useless lad.”

Herbert flinched, but when he spoke, his voice was calm and cool. “I did not witness the events of that evening, but I was aware of my father’s increasingly frequent calls on Mrs. Keene, and my mother’s distress because of it. It would not be the first time my father has pursued another woman, though I had never known him to pursue anyone so doggedly before.”

“Shut your trap, boy. You are hereby disinherited. Davies! I want a new will.” Sir Fulke turned toward the door.

“We are not finished here, Sir Fulke,” Olivia said.

“Yes, we are,” he said, jaw clenched.

“There is the matter of the embezzlement charge. I have reviewed the books, and my father did not embezzle from you.”

“Right,” Sir Fulke sneered. “Who did, then?”

Olivia looked at the young man beside the solicitor, his pale face framed by the blackest hair. And in his wary green eyes, she saw once more the dread of disappointing one’s father that she recognized in herself, that she recognized from a boy in the Crown and Crow all those years ago. Would, could, this boy, grown now, dare disappoint his father? Own up to the truth which would surely earn his father’s wrath and rejection a hundred times over what a lost contest would have done?

The young man looked at her then. Really looked. And whether he recognized her or something in himself, Olivia could not know, but he stood up the straighter for it, and his eyes lit with a strange determination, like a soldier marching into certain, but resigned-to, death.

“No one embezzled from you, Father,” he began. “But I took it, to keep you from wasting the family’s last shilling on gaming and women. You have not given Mother and me enough to live on these last years, so I felt within my rights to take what was needed to pay the bills and keep my mother in the comfort she deserves. Disinherit me if you like—here stands your solicitor at the ready. I have invested wisely. From the interest earned, I can now support Mother and myself—if not in grand fashion, respectable at least. Which is more than I can say for you. Your affairs are in a sorry state indeed, and it does not take an accomplished clerk to figure that out.” He turned to Olivia. “Though it did take an accomplished young woman to discover I did it—and to give me the courage to own up to it.”

“But . . . ! How dare you,” the older gentleman blustered. “I shall disinherit you indeed. Cut you off!”

Herbert said dryly, “Disinherited twice in a single day. How extraordinary.”

The steward cleared his throat. “Sir, if I may. The sum your son invested is all that is keeping the family from debtors’ prison. Perhaps leniency is in order?”

“He shall never lay his thieving hands on my money.”

“What money, Father?” Herbert said. “We have already established your debts outweigh your assets and the investors are dropping like scales off a rotting fish.”

Sir Fulke glowered. “And whose fault is that?”

“Yours, sir.”

“These rumors and now charges of embezzlement have done it. It is on your head. Yours!”

Herbert looked at his father coldly. “So be it. But Mr. Keene goes free.”

“Why should he?”

“Because he is innocent,” Olivia’s mother said. “And because if you drop all charges, the rest of this sordid business will remain our secret.”

The constable objected. “Mrs. Keene, are you sure you want to let him off? I could have him—”

“Quite sure, Mr. Smith.” She turned cold eyes on Sir Fulke. “That is, unless he ever comes near me again.”

Herbert Fitzpatrick offered Olivia his arm and escorted her from the room while the magistrate, Mrs. Keene, and Sir Fulke sealed the bargain, with Edward, the steward, and the solicitor acting as witnesses.