A Very Dishonest Scandal (The Hero Next Door Book 5)

by Rebecca King

  ‘Do you have their names?’ Luke asked.

  William grinned at him. ‘I was kind of hoping you might need to question Miss Tynesdale to get them off her.’ With a laugh, he wheeled his horse around, tipped his imaginary cap and began to trot toward town.

  Luke watched him go but found himself smiling ruefully as he made his way to the waiting carriage. He gave the coachman the address in town where he had left his horse and settled back in the seat. As he rode through the streets of Oakley Bridge, Luke was aware of many locals stopping what they were doing to watch the carriage pass-by. It was odd behaviour for an otherwise welcoming country village because it made everyone look guilty.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Later that night, Rosemary lay in bed but couldn’t sleep. She sighed and rolled over again but couldn’t get her thoughts to settle. Each time she closed her eyes, Luke hovered in the darkness like a beacon of hope. She could still feel his arms around her and see the gentle smile on his face. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. Curiosity compelled her to wander over to the window overlooking the back yard. Beyond it, trees and a narrow track led around the farmer’s field behind the property stretched out for several miles. Directly below the window, the yard sat in complete darkness. Shadows shifted and danced about but Rosemary couldn’t see what moved because there was no moonlight.

  ‘I have to get some sleep,’ she whispered, returning to her bed.

  With a shiver, she slid beneath the covers. It was difficult to think of anything but Luke. He had shaken her by helping her and turning her life on its head. In the few short hours that she had known him, he had made her feel more feminine than she had ever felt in her life. He had made her start to yearn for something more in life and not just a change of home, but a change of the people in it. Again, Rosemary wondered what he was doing, where he was, if he was at home. She stared at the ceiling in her bed chamber and tried to guess what kind of house Luke would live in but then wanted to know if she was right. Would he live in a town house somewhere, probably in Mirsley Ford?

  He said that he has just moved into the area. I wonder where he comes from. I wonder who his family are.

  Rosemary hadn’t heard of any Horcroft family living in the area so decided that he must have come from miles away.

  She was still contemplating Luke, and what impact he would have on her future, when she began to smell smoke. At first, she smelt nothing more than the faint whiff of burning wood. It took her a moment to remember that the fires in the house hadn’t been lit last night on account of the weather being so mild.

  Where is the smoke coming from then?

  ‘Who would be lighting a fire at this time of night?’ Rosemary turned over to look at the clock on the mantle and frowned when she saw that it was three o’clock in the morning.

  Her hands shook as she tugged on a robe and belted it. Her concern grew when the stench of smoke became stronger as she descended the stairs. Rosemary yanked the door to her father’s work room open and gasped when she saw that the room was full of thick, dark smoke. Horrifyingly, huge flames licked hungrily at the back door. Even from the opposite side of the room, Rosemary could hear the hissing and cracking of the wood succumbing to the heat.

  ‘Father!’ she screamed.

  Rosemary had no idea what to do. She flapped her hands and screamed again and didn’t stop until she heard her father’s pounding footsteps thundering down the stairs. Rosemary whirled to face him when he appeared behind her, his face ashen. When she pointed to the door, Rosemary realised that a thick plume of smoke was filtering steadily under the narrow gap at the bottom of the door and was spreading through the rest of the property. The hallway leading to the stairs was already foggy with cloying smoke.

  ‘Don’t,’ she cried when Thomas hurried to the back door and raised his hand to slide the bolt back.

  ‘Stand back,’ Thomas ordered.

  ‘No,’ Rosemary protested. ‘You will let the flames into the room.’

  Thomas uncharacteristically swore and turned to scowl at the room. ‘Go and get a bucket of water.’

  Rosemary hurried into the kitchen beside the workroom and fetched a bucket, but it was only half full of water. She doubted it would be enough to put a fire out that was large enough to consume a door. Stumbling outside, she hurriedly filled it from the well in the yard and returned to her father. It was disturbing to see that flames were already licking the inside of the door and frame. Her father was beating at the flames with a blanket. Rosemary hefted the bucket and threw its contents at the flames. While she was greeted by the welcoming hiss of the fire being extinguished, the room was filled with yet more black smoke. Both Rosemary and her father struggled to control their coughing. Rosemary forced her way back outside and sucked in deep breaths of crisp air, but it wasn’t enough to ease the aching in her chest. She coughed and coughed until she had to cling on to the side of the well to stop herself from falling over. Eventually, she forced herself to move because the smoke was now filtering out into the yard that she was in.

  ‘Father!’ she cried, hefting another bucket out of the well.

  ‘I’m here. You stay here and fill anything you can find with water. I’ll go and put the fire out,’ Thomas said around coughing fits.

  ‘We are both doing this,’ Rosemary cried. She shoved one bucket at her father before hurrying into the workroom. It was so dark and gloomy that it was impossible to see anything more than her feet, but Rosemary found her father near the back door, trying to open it to release some of the smoke.

  ‘The handle is hot,’ he growled.

  ‘Try this.’ Rosemary handed her father several polishing cloths and watched him bunch them up in his hand.

  Thomas swore when he slammed the bolt back and yanked the door open only to be met with a solid wall of unstoppable flames that were still eating the door frame as well as the outside of the door. Rosemary handed him bucket after bucket of water. The thickening smoke stung her eyes. Her lungs objected to the acrid stench of the smoke, but Rosemary refused to stop. She coughed repeatedly until her sides ached and the world started to recede. She knew then that they weren’t going to win the battle. The door was still alight, and the window frame beside the door was still smouldering, and the smoke was getting more cloying. With no help, there was no choice but to retreat to a safe distance and try to stay alive.

  ‘We have to get out,’ Thomas cried, grabbing her hand and tugging her toward the kitchen door. Unfortunately, the draft running through the building only made the flames worse, and with it the smoke thickened until neither of them could see the doorway. It was easy to become disorientated even in the place they were so familiar with because neither of them could see their hands in front of their faces.

  ‘I am sorry, Rosemary,’ her father cried. ‘We should have left when we were warned to.’

  ‘What do you mean when we were warned to?’ Rosemary demanded. ‘I know we were warned to get out, but you can’t think they were serious, can you?’

  Thomas didn’t answer. Rosemary knew then that he hadn’t told her the whole truth about what had been going on. More importantly, he hadn’t told Luke either. But she didn’t want to spend her last moments alive contemplating the truth. She wanted – something else. When Rosemary tried to think about what that ‘something’ was, she knew immediately that it was Luke. He was that special something, or someone, she wanted and needed right now, and it wasn’t just because he worked with the Star Elite. She felt a bond, a connection, to him that she had never felt toward any other gentleman before. He was special, although why she felt that way toward him was beyond her. She tried to warn herself that it was foolish to rely on her emotions given how much was happening, but amid the fear and chaos, Luke hovered over her as if guarding her and keeping her safe even when he wasn’t with her.

  When she would have sat on the floor and waited for the world to recede, Rosemary tried to put herself in his shoes. Luke wasn’t the type of man to give up on anything
. She knew that because he worked for the Star Elite. While she hadn’t said as much to him directly, she knew that the Star Elite had the finest reputation for ensuring that justice was served. Whatever investigation they were involved in always ended up with the criminals facing long gaol terms. Luke was a fighter. He wouldn’t give up. Moreover, he wouldn’t let her give up. She had to fight. For him if not for herself.

  ‘We are not going to give up,’ Rosemary snapped, more to herself than to her father.

  ‘I can’t,’ Thomas gasped, clutching his chest and staring at her with wide, sorrowful eyes. ‘I can’t see anything in there.’

  She couldn’t see her father properly either but suspected that something had happened to him when he had pulled the door open and been hit with that wall of flames. She knew he had been more severely affected by the fire because he had been closer. While he might not have the ability to do what he could to stay alive, she did. She wasn’t going to allow him to give up either.

  Before Rosemary could drag him to the kitchen doorway just a few short feet away, movement in the hallway heralded the arrival of help. Two men raced through the door and started to shout orders to more men in the yard. Rosemary was picked up and thrown over a man’s brawny shoulder, and promptly carried outside. Her last view of her father was of him being picked up as well.

  The gentleness of the man who lowered her to the ground brought tears to her eyes. When she expected him to release her, he hovered protectively before her to make sure that she wasn’t going to fall before slowly, carefully, guiding her to sit down. Once she was settled, he squatted down before her and held a cup to her lips that another man had given him.

  ‘Drink this. It will clear your throat. When you have drunk enough, wash the soot out of your eyes,’ he urged softly.

  Rosemary did as she was told. As she splashed water across her face, she was aware of the flurry of activity as a group of men worked to put out the flames. While not many orders were shouted, buckets were carried into and out of the house from which smoke escaped through windows and doors.

  ‘Is it gone? Has the shop gone?’ Thomas croaked from beside her after several moments of stunned silence.

  ‘No. Just the door and the window are ruined, and part of the workbench from the look of it. The rest has been doused,’ one of the men reported. ‘It’s salvageable.’

  Rosemary looked at each of the men but couldn’t see Luke. She wondered if these were the men the magistrate had said he was going to put on night watch and shared a relieved look with her father. Without them they both knew that they would be dead by now, or close to death. Rosemary made a mental note to thank the magistrate the first chance she got.

  ‘Were you warned to leave here again?’ she demanded of her father when she could speak.

  Thomas sighed. ‘We have had another note shoved under the door. I thought it was an idle threat, you know, sent by the gossips. It just repeated that we had to get out. When I received the first one, I didn’t think anything of it. It didn’t occur to me that it was a credible threat. Then the badger turned up. Then the window. Now this.’

  ‘Someone is trying to kill us,’ Rosemary whispered, feeling sick at the thought that someone could be so horrid. ‘Who? Who would do this? Who would want us dead?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Thomas replied dourly. ‘I have thought carefully about whether I have done something or said something to someone to warrant them being annoyed with me, but I cannot think of any living soul who would be this malicious.’

  The men who had been carrying buckets into the house had stopped what they were doing when Thomas and Rosemary had started to talk. With the fire out, and the smoke clearing, the emergency was over. It was interesting to hear what father and daughter had to say even though it only supported what Luke had told them earlier. Rosemary sighed, but before she could think of anything to say, the sound of running footsteps broke the silence.

  ‘Rosemary? Rosemary?’ Luke slammed the gate open to the yard at the back of Rosemary’s house and looked wildly around in search of her. At first, he couldn’t see her because of the smoke. When he could see, he swore when he saw two figures propped up against the wall beside the back door covered in soot and looking pale in the gloom. Luke hurried over to them and fell to his knees beside Rosemary.

  ‘They are both fine. Shaken and a little smoke damaged, but otherwise fine. Joshua has gone for the doctor,’ Roger assured him.

  Luke wanted to be able to haul Rosemary into his arms but couldn’t because her father was watching him warily. Luke had to touch her, though, and so reached out and held her hand.

  ‘I had no idea it would be this bad,’ he began.

  ‘Neither did we,’ she whispered.

  ‘You have to leave here,’ Luke ordered gently. ‘It is safe to say that someone wants you dead. This is attempted murder.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Rosemary cried, trying hard to keep her tears at bay.

  ‘I am sorry, but you have to face facts,’ Luke replied firmly, sliding a dark look at Thomas. ‘It is no longer safe for you to stay here. While I don’t agree that you should run away from this situation, you must do what is safest. Staying here is no longer a viable option. We can still investigate who has been targeting you but will do it while you are living somewhere else.’

  ‘You have to be under our protection,’ Roger said, his voice firm and no-nonsense because he could see rejection hovering in Thomas’s eyes. ‘I am afraid that you don’t have any choice in the matter now. Because this is the second time that someone has tried to murder your daughter, it is no longer safe for you to live here. You are now officially under the protection of the Star Elite.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Rosemary blinked at Luke. ‘Officially?’

  She looked around the yard at the grim-faced men who all looked as soot laden as she felt. She coughed and looked at Luke again. While his friends, and her father, were watching him closely, he reached out and tucked an errant curl behind one ear.

  ‘You have to come and stay in a safe house where we can guard you while we investigate what is going on here. I don’t doubt the three young women who targeted you this morning are involved in the sordid lies going around about you, but there is something else going on that is far more sinister. The person responsible for this is prepared to kill. This is no longer about gossips or trying to ruin your business. We are investigating a killer.’

  ‘But we are alive,’ Thomas grunted.

  ‘Yes, but whoever lit the fire intended to kill you. They had no idea that the fire would be found before it took hold of the entire property. They knew that the smoke would be thick enough to kill you while you were asleep in your bed if the flames didn’t burn you to death first,’ Roger warned. ‘We are going to annoy whoever is doing this by removing you from the property, but that doesn’t mean the killer will stop targeting you. Your reputation will follow you wherever you go, so they will keep trying to ruin your work as a master craftsman purely because it will be the only way they can get at you. The property is still at risk, especially once the arsonist knows you no longer live here. Luke is right in that this is going to get worse for a while and you need to be in a safe house.’

  ‘What we cannot do is allow you to keep having your life threatened while we catch the would-be killer,’ Daniel warned.

  ‘The back door was blocked by the flames. While you did have a way out of the property, there is considerable damage to the workhouse, and you personally. You both need to see a doctor and will need to rest for a few days. I think you, sir, have burns on your face and definitely on your hands that will need proper care,’ Dean said to Thomas.

  ‘It will soon be light. We will get you both back inside just as soon as the smoke clears, but only so you can pack a few things. For now, we will wait for the doctor to arrive. As soon as he has declared you fit to travel, we will move you. We will arrange for the contents of the house to be packed and moved for you once you are somewhere safe,’ Luke added.

&nbs
p; ‘But where will we go?’ Rosemary cried. ‘We don’t have anywhere to go.’ She looked at her father and fought the urge to cry again. Thomas was staring blankly down at his boots as if struggling to comprehend what was happening. ‘Father?’

  ‘We have to go, Rosemary. I am not going to stay here for another day,’ Thomas announced bluntly. He turned to Roger. ‘If you could arrange for everything to be packed up carefully, I shall tell you what needs to be done to ensure that the clocks can be transported safely. I have enough packing materials in the storeroom. After tonight, I am not going to stay.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Luke offered with a smile. ‘I shall make sure everything is packed properly.’

  Roger raked a hand through his hair and tried to think of somewhere their new witnesses could stay, but Luke beat him to it.

  ‘I have somewhere for you both to stay.’ When Luke mentioned the name of Rosemary and Thomas’s new home, he saw his friends turn to stare at him. They all knew it was his home, but now was not the time nor the place to explain to them why he was moving Miss Rosemary Tynesdale and her father into his new home. If he were completely honest, Luke couldn’t really explain it to himself. He just knew, deep in his heart, that was the right thing to do – for them all.

  Rosemary sat in the silence of the smoke-filled yard and stared blankly into the house she had called home all her life. The men still inside the building were quietly discussing what might have started the fire that had wrecked a large part of her father’s workshop. What struck her more than anything was that the only help her and her father had received had come from the Star Elite. None of the villagers had appeared. No lights were on above the neighbouring shops. Nobody had come running down the cart track at the back of the properties lining the main street even to see if her and her father was all right.