How the Scot Was Won by Caroline Linden

13

Felix hadn’t wanted to worry Agnes, but he was uneasy for Mrs. Ramsay.

He feverishly dug about for more information. It was the first thing St. James would want when he roared back into town, and Felix was determined to have something to tell him. He began haunting Agnew’s, waiting for Oliphant or any other criminal lawyers to turn up and share what they’d heard. He even chatted up two sheriff’s officers he knew, to no avail. All anyone knew was that Fletcher had disappeared, and while the man’s sister and daughter claimed no knowledge of his actions or location, rumors were flying around town that they knew more than they were admitting.

When Agnes asked him, he jumped at the chance to call on Mrs. Ramsay and see for himself how she was faring—which was, not well. The sparkling, beguiling woman he’d known at Stormont Palace was gone, replaced by a quiet woman with guarded eyes.

“I thank you, sir,” she murmured in response when he asked what he could do to help. “But I don’t know what there is to be done.”

Agnes was all but vibrating beside him. Felix tried again. “I heard the sheriff has been here more than once. Perhaps, out of an abundance of caution, it would be wise to retain counsel.”

Thanks to a loose-lipped sheriff’s deputy, Felix knew they had searched her house. He’d expected that, but it was still a bad sign. And yet Mrs. Ramsay only shook her head and repeated that she had no need of an attorney.

Agnes was distraught when they left. “She’s miserable,” she exclaimed. “What can we do?”

“Remain a steadfast friend,” he said for the tenth or twentieth time.

“Stop saying that!”

“What do you want to hear?” he demanded.

She stopped walking, flushed and angry. “Something else! Anything else. There must be something—“

“If there were, I would tell you,” he cut in. “She’s not been arrested. She’s being watched, but we can’t stop that. Control the gossips? Only God could, and I give even Him only half a chance in this town. You can’t force aid upon her.”

Tears glittered in her eyes.

Felix gentled his tone. “There’s no indication the sheriff thinks she was involved in the robberies, only that she might know where her father has gone. She says she doesn’t and they can’t prove otherwise. I know it’s hard to bear, but she’s safe in her home. What she needs are friends, to keep her spirits from flagging.”

A muscle in her jaw trembled. “I am her friend,” she said at last, in a quiet, controlled voice, “but holding her hand and drinking tea with her isn’t enough. She had to sit in silence during that dreadful trial last year, when everyone whispered that she’d had an affair with that—that horrid Englishman, and that’s why he killed her husband. People called her a Jezebel and a whore, did you know?”

“I heard,” he admitted, rubbing his neck. “But that was only gossip—“

“Gossip wounds!”

“She’s got to ignore it!” he exclaimed. “She must. Anything she does will only appear to confirm it and make everything worse.”

Agnes flinched as if he’d struck her. “You would make her a helpless rabbit, paralyzed in the middle of an open field for fear of attracting the notice of a hawk who is already circling overhead.”

“She’s not a rabbit,” he said tightly. “But it is difficult, even impossible to prove a denial. Sometimes the best you can do is not lend credence to the accusation.”

“And in the meantime, she must simply suffer all manner of slurs upon her entire family.” She shook her head. “It’s too much to ask a person to bear. I wish you could understand that.” She turned and headed toward her house.

He caught her arm. “If there were more I could do, I would. I swear it, Agnes!”

She looked at him with unreadable eyes. “I understand. You cannot do anything. I need to think of how I can help my friend, because someone must.” She pulled loose. “Goodbye, sir.”

Felix stood on the step for several minutes after she went inside, alternating between impatience at Andrew St. James and anger at the sheriff’s men. They were hounding Mrs. Ramsay, because they had no other leads on finding Deacon Fletcher, and only St. James, with his Carlyle connections, might be able to stop them.

He let out his breath. It had been several days since he sent the messenger to Fort George. St. James would surely be back any moment now, ready to take the action Agnes yearned to see.

Felix didn’t know what that would be. But if it were Agnes in trouble, he knew he would risk life and limb to get to her side, and do everything and anything in his power to protect and comfort her.

Anything in his power.

He closed his eyes. There was one source he hadn’t tried—one source he never tried. He had made a vow not to, to avoid the slightest hint of impropriety. He had always been determined to be his own man and make his own way.

But this time, it wasn’t his interest at stake. He turned and headed toward Parliament Square. A clerk waved him in, and Felix closed the door.

“Has she accepted? Is the wedding date set?” Lachlan—a Lord of Justiciary who heard criminal cases from the bench and signed warrants for arrest—glanced up, a half-smile on his face.

Once raised to the bench, he had refused to discuss one word about any case that might come before him until the case was concluded. Lives and liberty are at stake, he would say. No man should gain advantage over another because of his connections.

“Not yet,” said Felix. “I need to know what evidence Sheriff Cockburn has against Mrs. Ilsa Ramsay in the matter of William Fletcher.”

Agnes rackedher brain for ideas.

Felix wasn’t wrong, but she couldn’t do nothing. Holding Ilsa’s hand and murmuring empty phrases about hope and solace wasn’t her way; nor was it her friend’s. Felix said she was safe at home, but Agnes knew that the longer this dragged on, the tighter the vise holding Ilsa would become: always suspected, unable to clear her name, hearing her father reviled from one end of town to the other but unable to defend him for fear of bringing more suspicion upon herself.

There might be little she could do, but that little she would do. She went to see Sorcha White and encouraged the other girl to defend Ilsa in every drawing room she visited. In the shop, she gossiped freely about the thieves and robberies, asserting to all that Ilsa knew absolutely nothing about anything, especially her father’s actions, whatever those might be. She told her sisters to do the same with their friends. They might not be able to turn the tide of rumor, but they could muddy it up.

But she realized that eventually one of two things would happen. Either Deacon Fletcher would come home to face the charges, or Ilsa would break under the strain and go looking for him. Given the clandestine way Fletcher had left, Agnes thought it was more likely to be the latter.

Ilsa’s butler didn’t want to let her in. Agnes asked, she pleaded, she hectored. Finally the man hesitated long enough to allow her to slip past him and run up the stairs, where she found Ilsa in the drawing room.

The sight made her stop in shock. Pale, thin, nothing like her merry self, Ilsa was simply sitting alone in the room, the drapes pulled shut. “Agnes,” she murmured. “How are you?”

“What are you planning?” she demanded.

Ilsa didn’t flinch. “What do you mean?”

“I saw it in the papers, that your father contacted you. Was it really a confession?”

“Of course not. He’s innocent.”

Agnes nodded. “I know. But I also know you, Ilsa. What are you going to do?”

Ilsa looked up, a tiny spark in her eyes.

It took some persuading, but in the end she tacitly admitted that Agnes had guessed correctly. She was going to go after her father, because no one and nothing else had come to her aid.

Agnes indulged in a moment of fury at her absent brother. Where was Drew? He’d been gone for weeks. “Let me go with you,” she begged.

“Absolutely not.”

Agnes despised this helpless inactivity. “When are you leaving?”

Ilsa said nothing. A shaft of sunlight pierced a gap in the draperies and illuminated her face, stark white and bereft. Her anguish was almost palpable in the still room. Agnes thought again of her beloved father, of the blow she’d suffered when he died so suddenly and left them in such bad circumstances. People had whispered about Papa’s failings as their family plummeted into poverty. It must be similar for Ilsa, but with the added torment of facing it all alone.

Agnes flung her arms around her friend. “Promise you’ll be careful.”

Ilsa nodded. “Would you look in on Robert? It would be a great comfort to me.”

She had promised to do anything to help her friend, and here it was: walk the pony. Tearfully she nodded. “Of course! We shall walk him out every day and spoil him with apples and carrots.”

When she left, she walked aimlessly. Mama and her sisters would be at the shop. Agnes knew she should go there, too, but instead she found herself in front of the Exchange.

Agnew’s coffeehouse was busier than ever. She caught sight of Felix in a small group of men standing around a table, cups in hand. They were arguing; Felix slashed the air with his hand, making some point with force. One man was shaking his head, while another, familiar-looking fellow periodically nodded in agreement.

She stood staring at him. All this time, he’d been right. Be a steadfast friend, he’d said. That had been the most important thing all along. She’d spent days worrying about what she could do, trying to convert the women who came to the shop, when she ought to have been with Ilsa to buoy her spirits. She ought to have asked Ilsa how she could help, instead of thinking she might somehow divert a criminal investigation or shout down the gossips. And if she had listened to Felix, she would have done all that.

Felix must have felt her gaze upon him. Mid-argument, he glanced her way. Agnes’s throat tightened. She hadn’t seen him since their rather frosty parting a few days ago. Never taking his eyes off her, he strode through the crowded coffeehouse to her.

“Has something happened?” he asked.

Her lip trembled, and then she reached for him. With a quiet oath he pulled her into his arms, holding her tight. Heedless of the scandalous public display they were making, Agnes clung to him, hiding her face against his shoulder.

“There, love,” he whispered.

“You were right,” she managed to say. “You were right and I was wrong. Oh Felix, what are we going to do?”