The Truth About Love

by Stephanie Laurens

  Sadness, and more, too many swirling feelings for him to distinguish; one part of him, the polite gentleman, recoiled from intruding on her grief, another part, the painter, noted and cataloged, while the private man wanted to gather her in his arms and comfort her, to soothe and reassure.

  He blinked; looking down, he set his cup on its saucer. He couldn’t recall such an impulse to comfort afflicting him before, not with such poignant force, with such sharp and clear empathy. Empathy was a necessity for an artist, yet it had never before had such a personal edge.

  Never pressed him so keenly to act, to share the burden if not make it his.

  From beneath his lashes, he glanced at Jacqueline. If he acted, how would she respond?

  He hadn’t forgotten that moment in the studio, dramatically interrupted though it had been. They’d moved on, taken a definite step forward together, so where did that leave them—he and she, and what lay between them—now?

  She finished her tea. Without glancing at him, she rose. When both he and Barnaby rose, too, Millicent broke off and looked up; Jacqueline smiled fleetingly, distantly. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll retire for a while. I’m rather fagged.”

  “Yes, of course, dear.” Millicent set down her cup. “I’ll look in on you later.”

  With a nod, a wan smile and a fleeting glance at him, Jacqueline turned to the door. Gerrard watched as she walked out; he didn’t like the empty look in her eyes.

  He turned back to Millicent and Barnaby.

  Barnaby caught his eye. “I’m off to walk the path Thomas must have followed.”

  He nodded. “I’ll come with you.” He needed air, and he needed to think.

  Leaving Millicent in the drawing room, they walked out onto the terrace. They retraced the route Thomas and Jacqueline had taken more than two years before, then went on, turning down the path along the northern ridge, confirming that all Jacqueline had said was true; she wouldn’t have known if someone had met Thomas at the junction of the paths, nor could she have gone so far with him, not with her mother expecting her back.

  They walked on through the gardens of Demeter and Dionysius, Barnaby speculating that, if the crime had been committed along the path, given Thomas’s height, it would have occurred at the steepest stretch, where the path dipped into the Garden of Hades. Using Gerrard as a model, Barnaby concluded the murderer was at most three inches shorter, a man Thomas had known well enough to be comfortable having close at his back.

  Barnaby pulled a face. “I must engineer a meeting with Lady Entwhistle. Mothers always know who their darlings are consorting with. She’ll know who Thomas considered a close friend.”

  They rounded a bend in the path and looked up at the spot where Thomas’s body had lain. “Looks like they’ve taken the body away.” Only Wilcox and Richards remained, the former leaning on a shovel.

  Barnaby led the way up the steep slope, clambering over the thick roots of the cypresses clinging to the incline.

  Wilcox and Richards straightened as they neared and touched their caps. Gerrard nodded in greeting.

  Barnaby dusted his hands. “I was just wondering…you were both here when Entwhistle disappeared, weren’t you?”

  “Aye.” Both men nodded.

  “Do you recall any gentleman being near the gardens about the time Entwhistle left the house?”

  Wilcox and Richards shared a glance, then Richards volunteered, “We’ve all been scratching our heads, trying to remember. Near as we can recall, young Mr. Brisenden was out walking along the cliffs, like he often does. Sir Vincent Perry, another local gentleman, was here calling on Lady Tregonning and Miss Jacqueline—he left the house when young Entwhistle arrived, but he didn’t come to get his horse until sometime later. Howsoever, he often walked down to the little bay—not the cove in the gardens, but the one down past the stables—before he came to fetch his horse. As for others…” Richards looked at Wilcox, who took up the tale.

  “Both Lord Fritham and Master Jordan often walk in the gardens—we’re never sure when we’ll see one of them about. And there’d a’ been plenty of local lads out that day—fishing, hunting, it were the season for both. While they don’t normally come into the gardens, they sometimes cut through. Everyone hereabouts knows the paths over the ridges, and how they connect. Fastest way from Tresdale Manor lands across to the cliffs to the north.”

  Barnaby pulled a face. “Why would any local lads want to kill Entwhistle? Was he well liked?”

  “Oh, aye—very amiable young gent, he was.”

  “We was all hoping he and Miss Jacqueline might marry—everyone knew that was the way things were heading.”

  Barnaby’s gaze sharpened. “So there’s no known reason for anyone to kill Entwhistle, other than, just possibly, jealousy over Miss Jacqueline?”

  The two older men exchanged a glance, then nodded. “Aye,” Richards said, “that’s true enough.”

  Gerrard looked down at the mound of freshly turned earth. “Did you find anything more?”

  “Not anything from the poor lad, but”—Wilcox pointed up the slope—“I’d be surprised if that rock there wasn’t what had done for him.”

  To the side some yards upslope lay a heavy rock, roughly rectangular and close to the size Barnaby had postulated.

  Barnaby scrambled up and across. He hefted the rock, using both hands, then glanced at Gerrard. “This would have done the trick.” He looked around. “That suggests he was killed here, or close by…” Noticing Richards and Wilcox exchanging looks, Barnaby stopped. “What is it?”

  “Well.” Richards waved around them. “There aren’t many rocks hereabouts, not big ones like that. It’s the trees knit the bank together—the soil’s not all that rocky.”

  “Only place you find rocks like that is up top of the ridge.” Wilcox pointed up the slope. “Up there, it’s all rocks, just like that one.” He indicated the rock Barnaby set down. “We was thinking if young Entwhistle and the blackguard who killed him had climbed to the ridge, then when Entwhistle was struck down, well, he’d roll down to here, most like, and the rock with him.”

  “Easy enough then to cover him with old cypress needles.” Richards kicked at those underfoot. “There’s always a carpet of them here. In time, he’d become just part of the bank.”

  “Nothing much for my lads to do up this way,” Wilcox added. “The trees look after themselves, and the needles don’t need to be raked.”

  Gerrard stared up at the ridge; it rose to a point, an outcrop of weathered rock that crumbled away to the edge of the sea cliffs. “Why would any gentleman go up there?”

  “Ah, they all do. A bit of a scramble, it is, but all those who grow up hereabouts know—from there you can see the blowhole. When the sea’s turned just right, it’s a grand sight.”

  “Aha!” Barnaby’s eyes lit.

  It didn’t take much persuading to get Richards and Wilcox to show them the way—the only way—up to the top of the ridge. From there, it was apparent that the head gardener and head stableman’s conjecture had merit; a body falling down the slope would indeed land amid the cypresses.

  “And,” Barnaby said, his eagerness barely contained as, parting from Wilcox and Richards, they strode back to the house, “it accounts for the one point that stumped me—how did the killer bend down and pick up a huge rock without Entwhistle noticing?”

  Gerrard glanced at him. “The killer would still have had to pick up the rock, even if they were standing on the ridge…” He broke off as a picture of two men on the ridge formed in his mind.

  “Yes, but it would have been easy.” Barnaby’s voice held a note of triumph. “One, Entwhistle was absorbed, watching Cyclops. Two”—Barnaby caught Gerrard’s eyes—“Entwhistle wasn’t standing. You saw the area—what’s more natural if you were chatting with a friend and looking out into the distance than to sit?”

  Gerrard’s mind raced. “That means the killer doesn’t have to be tall.”

  “No—any height at all.�
�� Barnaby frowned. “Damn! That increases our list of suspects dramatically.”

  “But he still has to be a he—a man.”

  “Oh, yes. The size of the rock—and there’s a good chance it was that very rock—makes that certain. Even with Thomas sitting down, a woman would have had difficulty picking it up—and with a lady, Thomas would have noticed. More, manners would have ensured if she stood, then he would have, too. No.” Barnaby shook his head. “It couldn’t have been a woman.”

  They reached the steps to the terrace; with a fleeting grin, Gerrard took them two at a time.

  “What?” Barnaby asked, eyeing that grin.

  Gerrard glanced at him. “There’s another, even more definitive reason why the murderer wasn’t a lady.”

  Barnaby scrunched up his face, cudgeling his brains, then sighed. “What?”

  “Getting onto the ridge—we only just managed without serious damage.” Gerrard pointed to a scuff mark on his boot, and a smudge on his trouser leg. “As Wilcox said, it’s a scramble. No lady in a tea gown could have managed it, then returned to the house without being in the sort of state that would have created a furor. Everyone would have remembered that.”

  “Excellent point,” Barnaby conceded. “It definitely wasn’t a lady.”

  “Therefore,” Gerrard concluded, his jaw firming as he led the way into the house, “not Jacqueline.”

  She didn’t come down to dinner.

  “She asked for a tray in her room,” Millicent said in response to Gerrard’s query. “She said she needed a little time alone to absorb the shock.”

  He murmured an “Of course,” and pretended to accept it, but his mind, his imagination, churned.

  As always, dinner was a quiet meal, leaving him plenty of time to think. With a few stilted comments, Lord Tregonning made it clear he considered the subject of Entwhistle’s death closed. Barnaby shot Gerrard a questioning look, clearly asking whether they should challenge that; almost imperceptibly, Gerrard shook his head and mouthed, “Not yet.”

  His first priority was Jacqueline.

  After dinner, increasingly restless, he joined Millicent and Barnaby in the drawing room.

  “This latest nonsense,” Millicent declared, “will simply not do! It’s dreadful for Jacqueline, and poor Thomas, too. While people assume it’s her doing, the real killer goes free!”

  He and Barnaby assured her they had absolutely no intention of letting the matter rest. Mollified, Millicent confirmed that, although her friends in the neighborhood had always kept her apprised of local happenings, she’d never heard of any dispute involving Thomas, not of the sort that might have led to murder. Dismissing that as a motive, they turned to the other plausible reason, that someone had killed Thomas because he was about to offer for Jacqueline’s hand, and would most likely have been accepted.

  Gerrard looked at Millicent. “Is that correct—that he was about to offer, and would have been accepted?”

  “Oh, yes. The match was a favorable one on all counts.”

  “So who,” Barnaby asked, “were the jealous hopefuls Thomas’s success with Jacqueline threatened?”

  He suggested Matthew Brisenden, but Millicent dismissed that idea out of hand. She was adamant, even though Barnaby pressed.

  “No, no—he’s cast himself in the role of her protector—a knight errant. His duty is to serve, not to marry her. You shouldn’t take his attitude to mean he has any serious matrimonial interest in her—I’m sure he hasn’t.”

  Reluctantly Gerrard confirmed that Jacqueline had said much the same.

  “Indeed.” Millicent nodded. “I don’t think you should imagine Matthew was jealous of Thomas.”

  “Nevertheless,” Barnaby said, “Brisenden might have had some reason to view Thomas as a danger to Jacqueline. That’s an equally strong motive for him to attack Thomas, and he was known to be in the vicinity.”

  Millicent pulled a face. “I hate to admit it, but that is a possibility. However, a better bet would be Sir Vincent Perry—he’s had his eye on Jacqueline for years.”

  So Sir Vincent, whom Gerrard and Barnaby had yet to meet, went on their list, along with unknown others yet to be identified let alone discounted. The exercise left them disheartened. Barnaby admitted proving who killed Thomas might not now be possible. On that somber note they retired.

  They parted in the gallery and went to their respective rooms.

  Gerrard spoke with Compton; he’d heard nothing useful.

  “They’re a bit shocked. In a day or so, as they mull things over, someone might remember something. I’ll keep listening, you may be sure.”

  According to Compton, the staff had never imagined that Jacqueline was in any way involved with either Thomas’s disappearance, or her mother’s death. “Doesn’t seem to have occurred to them at all.”

  Dismissing Compton, Gerrard stood before the windows; hands in his pockets, he thought of what they knew about both murders. If people viewed the facts rationally, with an unclouded mind, Jacqueline’s innocence shone like a beacon. But people hadn’t, and wouldn’t, because someone had clouded the issue. Deliberately.

  Someone had, with malice aforethought, cast Jacqueline as a scapegoat.

  Something dark within him leapt, all gnashing teeth and sharp claws. Muttering a savage curse, he suppressed it; now was not the time for that sort of action—he couldn’t see the enemy yet.

  He looked out at the dark gardens, at the black and purple sky, at the roiling clouds forming fantastical shapes as they blew in from the west; a landscape artist’s dream, he barely saw them.

  Rescuing Jacqueline was now critical to him. Not just for her sake, but for his, too.

  How she felt, how she was. That was his immediate and all-consuming focus; since Barnaby had told them of the body, the question hadn’t left the forefront of his brain. He was worried, concerned, about her—anxious, with his heart uncertain and his gut tight.

  Part of him wanted to pretend it was just his painterly instincts wanting to observe her in an emotional state, but that was balderdash. He cared for her in the same vein he cared for Patience, and other females like Amanda and Amelia…that was closer to the truth, yet still not all of it.

  His imagination was too active not to create visions of her alone in her room, grieving, yes, but more—feeling her aloneness, feeling helpless. Thomas would have been her champion once, but he’d disappeared, left her alone—at least now she knew it hadn’t been deliberately.

  But he was her champion now.

  He swung from the windows and paced, frustration growing. The clock struck eleven; he glowered at it, at the reminder of how many more hours he would have to endure before he saw her again, before he could reassure this insistent and strangely vulnerable part of him that she was whole, still well…still willing to explore what lay between them with him.

  That last part of his motive was there, to be sure, but somewhat to his surprise it wasn’t the predominant element; knowing she wasn’t weighed down with grief, worry, and especially fear, was.

  He wasn’t going to get much sleep, not until he knew she was all right. Could he find out now, tonight?

  He’d feel ridiculous knocking on her door and asking her outright, not at this hour…

  Creative imagination was a wonderful thing. Inspiration gleamed; within seconds, his mind had filled in the details.

  He didn’t stop to think. Turning, he strode to the door, opened it, and closed it quietly behind him.

  9

  He only needed to see her, to speak with her. To reassure himself that she was all right.

  He didn’t meet anyone on his way to her room, hardly surprising given the hour. Stalking to her door, he glanced down. Strong light showed beneath it. Grimly encouraged, he rapped on the door. Half a minute passed, then Jacqueline opened it.

  Her eyes widened; she stared at him.

  He tried not to stare back. She was wearing a fine lawn nightgown with a gauzy robe thrown over it. Her hair was down,
a rich brown veil rippling over her shoulders—it was transparently clear she hadn’t been abed.

  With the lamps blazing behind her, that wasn’t the only thing transparently evident.

  Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

  Jaw clenching, he reached for her arm and moved her back. Stepping into the room, he shut the door.

  “What…?” She was still staring at him.

  The light now reached her face. He noted her pallor; her stunned, lost and off-balance expression wasn’t solely due to his arrival. “I want to look through your wardrobe.”

  Scanning the room, he saw a large armoire positioned along the side wall. He headed for it.

  “My wardrobe?” Her tone incredulous but growing stronger, she flitted in a flutter of fine fabrics after him.

  “I need to look over your gowns.”

  “My gowns.” Not a question; her tone suggested he’d taken leave of his senses. “You need to see my gowns now.”

  “Yes.” He pulled open the wardrobe doors, revealing a full length of hanging space filled with gowns. “You weren’t asleep.” He reached for a creation in amber silk.

  She tried to peer into his face. “What are you about? Why this burning need to look at my gowns?” She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s after eleven!”

  He didn’t look at her. “I need to gauge what will look best on you.”

  “At night?”

  Holding the amber gown before him, he shot her a sidelong glance; arrested, his gaze lingered. “Indeed.” He drank in the way the lamplight flowed over her skin, gilding it with the softest of gold washes. He drew in a shallow breath. “I might very well paint you in candlelight. Here—hold this.” Thrusting the amber gown into her hands, he dived back amid the rest.

  “This”—he pulled out a bronze silk sheath and tossed it at her—“and this.” He added a gown in figured green satin to the pile growing in her arms. “Although”—he glanced back at the last gown—“that might be too dark. We’ll see.”

  Returning to the wardrobe, he flipped through the contents, making more selections. “I have a certain look in mind—the color and style of your gown will be critical.”