The Counterfeit Gentleman Read Free Page B

guardian and is sponsoring me this Season—insists that I have been making a fuss about nothing. To her way of thinking, the accidents were the result of mere happenstance, and if my imagination had not been overly stimulated by the reading of too many lurid novels, I would never have indulged in such flights of fancy.”
    Miss Pepperell scowled and thrust out her lower lip. “She went so far as to tell me that if I continued to cast as persions on the character of such honest, upright, God-fear ing men as my mother’s cousins, who are in every way respectable, then I myself belonged in Bedlam.”
    “I would say that being thrown overboard by two men who openly admit that they were paid to kill you rather re futes any suggestion that you might be imagining things. But tell me more about the other supposed accidents.”
    There were now subtle differences in the sound of the sea, which meant they were approaching the shore.
    “Well, to begin with, after one evening party I became quite ill. Tainted oysters, my aunt said. But no one else was the least bit indisposed, and even though I knew it was far fetched, I suspected poison.”
    “Were your cousins present at the party?”
    “Yes, and they each at one time or another brought me something to drink. I was sick for several days and weak for quite some time afterward. Then, only a sennight after I began to go out in society again, I rode out to Hamp ton Court with a group of friends. On the way home, the cinch on my saddle broke, and I was saved only because my escort was right beside me when it happened, and he managed to catch me as I was falling.”
    “And had the cinch been cut?”
    “No, it was merely old and rotten, so there did not appear to be anything sinister about the accident. But our groom insisted it was not the same cinch that had been on my sad dle when I left our stable. I believed it to be a second at tempt on my life, but Aunt Euphemia insisted that the groom was fibbing in order to protect himself from being turned off for failing to do his job properly. She discharged him over my objections.”
    “And your cousins? Were they at Hampton Court when you were?”
    “Who is to say? We spent an hour or so wandering through the maze, and anyone could have come and tam pered with my saddle and still been well away from there by the time we emerged from the shrubbery.”
    “And were there any other suspicious incidents?”
    “Not only suspicious, but nearly fatal. A few days later, when I was shopping with my maid, someone tried to shove me under the wheels of a heavily loaded brewer’s wagon. My aunt insists someone merely jostled me acci dentally, and of course I have no evidence—nothing to prove that she is wrong in her opinion. And yet in my own mind I have not the slightest doubt that the blow was delib erate ... and that the attempt came within a hairsbreadth of being successful.”
    “Has it ever occurred to you that your aunt herself might be aiding and abetting one of your cousins?”
    Miss Pepperell laughed. “If you knew my aunt, you would know how preposterous that idea is. To begin with, she is my father’s sister, and so could not, under any cir cumstances, inherit anything from my grandfather, who was my mother’s father.”
    “One of your cousins might be paying her.”
    “She does not spend all her income as it is, and she has frequently told me that I am her heir. She has been most generous to me in the past, and I see no reason to doubt her on that score. But the real reason I cannot suspect her is that the rules of etiquette do not cover the subject of ridding oneself of a superfluous niece. As a child, my aunt learned how one should comport oneself in society, and I do not think she has ever deviated from the proper path.”
    Digory had met similar people, not only among the haut ton, but even in the little village in Cornwall where he had been raised, and he was forced to conclude that Miss Pep perell was undoubtedly correct