The Bridegroom

by Joan Johnston

  Her husband escorted her directly back to the door, where the butler returned her cape. Carlisle draped it over her shoulders and said, “I have brought my carriage to take you home.”

  “I have transportation of my own,” she replied.

  “I have sent Terrence home with your carriage. You will need to ride with me.”

  Reggie bit back the unladylike word that was trying desperately to get out and allowed Carlisle to escort her to his waiting carriage. Before she stepped inside, the elderly coachman, a retired army sergeant whose name she remembered was Dick Hobson, but who only answered to Sergeant, handed her something wrapped in linen.

  “Terrence left this for you, my lady,” Hobson said. “It is a piece of cake from the St. John’s Eve celebration. He was sorry he could not stay to give it to you himself, but he thought you might like to have it.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Reggie said. Terrence had surely divined, when Carlisle ordered him home, that she would not be allowed to stay and enjoy the festivities. The thoughtful gesture moved her almost to tears. She opened the small napkin and stared at the moist, fruit-laden cake.

  Her stomach suddenly rolled, and she knew she would never be able to eat it. She handed it back to Sergeant Hobson. “You enjoy it, Sergeant. I have no appetite now, and it will be better eaten fresh.”

  “Thank you, milady,” Hobson said. He picked up the square of crumbling cake from the linen and shoved the whole of it into his mouth. “Delicious,” he said, grinning wide enough to reveal mushed-up cake between his teeth.

  Reggie was afraid she might cast up her accounts and hurried to step inside the carriage door, which Carlisle held open for her.

  “Are you unwell?” he asked as he sprang into the carriage and sat down beside her.

  “I am sick at heart,” she retorted, though her stomach was none too steady.

  “We will be home soon,” Carlisle said.

  “Home?” she replied sharply. “I have tried to make it that. But so little light seeps in beyond the ivy choking the windows, that it remains a dark and gloomy place. Won’t you at least allow me to purchase windowpanes, my lord? I cannot bear the darkness,” she cried. “I cannot bear it anymore!”

  He lifted her onto his lap and held her close enough to hear his heartbeat, while she quivered with tears she refused to shed. It was Carlisle’s darkness she could not bear. His black soul that so desperately needed light. But she had found no way so far to free either of them—the house or the man—from the crippling wounds of the past.

  The carriage slowed and then stopped, but when Reggie looked out, she did not see any welcoming lights. “Where are we?” she asked. “Why did Hobson stop?”

  “I will find out,” Carlisle said, setting her back down on the seat next to him and then exiting the carriage.

  Reggie waited only a moment before she was out of the carriage behind him. She stepped to the front of the carriage and saw that Hobson was slumped sideways on the coachman’s seat. Carlisle was up on the seat beside him, his hand pressed against the pulse beneath Hobson’s ear.

  “What is wrong with him?” Reggie asked, alarmed.

  “He’s dead,” Carlisle replied. “His heart must have failed. I will have to drive us the rest of the way. Get back inside.”

  As Carlisle moved the coachman aside, the two lanterns on either side of the seat revealed his face. Reggie gasped. From the look on Hobson’s face, he had died an agonizing death. Suddenly, the napkin that had held Terrence’s offering slipped off the seat and onto the ground in front of her.

  Until that instant, Reggie had not imagined foul play was involved in the coachman’s death. But something about the look on Hobson’s face, together with the sudden reappearance of the napkin, made her wonder if the cake might have been poisoned.

  If it was, then you were meant to die.

  Reggie shivered. And felt nauseated again. But this time she was forced to turn aside, as her body betrayed her, and she lost what little food her stomach contained. She was aware of Carlisle standing beside her a moment later, handing her his handkerchief to wipe her mouth.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “When I saw his face …”

  “Come, let me help you back inside the carriage.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him about her suspicion that poison might have killed Hobson, but shut it again. There was no way to prove the issue one way or the other. And she was probably letting her imagination run away with her, suspecting plots where none existed.

  But Terrence had been on the beach with the boat that had been sabotaged. And now he had given Hobson the cake to deliver into her hands. Perhaps Terrence was the one in Mr. Ambleside’s employ, not MacTavish. She would have to question the scarred man about the cake and watch for any signs of guilt. Reggie had learned enough from her father’s experience to know she did not want to unjustly accuse anyone. Better to wait and be certain before she said anything to Carlisle.

  Tomorrow she would confront Terrence with what she knew.

  Chapter 19

  As soon as Reggie was safely in the house, Clay had sought out Pegg and asked him to come out to the stableyard and look at Sergeant Hobson. “I didn’t want to frighten Reggie, so I told her Hobson’s heart had failed. He is old enough for that to be the case. But I think the man’s been poisoned.”

  Pegg pried open Hobson’s mouth and looked at his tongue, then peeled back his eyelids—which Clay had closed so the man would not stare at him the entire way home—and peered into the sergeant’s eyes to study his tortured features.

  “Looks like poison, right enough,” Pegg said. “But why would anyone want to poison one of yer servants?”

  “The poison was intended for Reggie,” Clay said. “It was in a piece of cake Terrence left for her with Hobson. She wasn’t feeling well and told Hobson he could have it. Hobson ate it and died.”

  “Ye think Terrence knew the cake was poisoned?” Pegg asked.

  “I intend to find out,” Clay said. But when he and Pegg went looking for the scarred man, he had disappeared.

  “Terrence said this afternoon that his mother was ill, and he was spending the night with her in Mishnish,” Cook said, when she learned of Clay’s search for the missing servant. “I expect he will be back at work tomorrow morning.”

  Clay exchanged a look with Pegg. It was coincidental that the man was gone, and perhaps, if Reggie had died, he would not have come back. But the next morning he returned at dawn.

  When he was told that Hobson had been poisoned, Terrence expressed horror and regret, but no guilt. In fact, the scarred man exhibited none of the nervousness and anxiety that Clay would have expected, if he were actually guilty of Hobson’s murder.

  In the end, Hobson’s murder remained a mystery. But Clay was convinced his inquiries about Cedric Ambleside had made the man anxious enough to want to be rid of him. Murdering Clay’s wife was one way of doing it, since Clay would likely be accused of the crime. Hobson’s death, combined with the sinking rowboat and the slashed carriage traces, left Clay in no doubt that Ambleside was intent on seeing him back in chains. The attacks on Blackthorne’s family were especially effective in pointing a finger at Clay, because his animosity toward the duke, and the reason for it, were so well known.

  Clay redoubled his efforts to find the man, knowing that he must be close. He kept up his search during the rest of the spring and summer, but he found no evidence that Cedric Ambleside was still in the area. Clay gave the balance of his attention to farming the rich land Blackthorne had returned to him.

  In the three months since St. John’s Eve, Clay had overseen each step of the ploughing and planting. He had seeped the seed in water, following the precise instructions in his pamphlet. But he had also allowed his workmen to observe the traditional custom of placing the soaked seed in a basket on top of an egg and an iron nail, which supposedly ensured germination.

  He had listened to prayers for the land’s fertility and allowed the sowers to walk sun
wise and drop their seed from a triangular cloth. But he had also made sure the rows were spread generously with manure first, as his pamphlet advised.

  His corn had grown fast and tall and was already tasseling. His wheat was so heavy-laden that the stems bent and shimmered like green waves in the wind. His mangel-wurzels threatened to burst, they were so large. In short, his fields promised a yield greater than any other in the neighborhood.

  Clay should have been the happiest man alive. He had achieved the dream that had kept him alive during the five cruel years he had spent on Captain Taylor’s frigate. It was only now, when success was in his grasp, that Clay realized his dream meant nothing to him, compared to the thing he did not have: his wife’s love.

  Ever since Clay had gone to fetch Reggie from her father’s home on St. John’s Eve, she had kept her distance. It was no longer a matter of the bedroom door being locked against him. She had removed herself entirely from his company. If he came into a room, she left. If he joined her on horseback, she ended her ride. They ate at different times or in separate places. She never argued with him. She hardly spoke to him at all.

  And yet his house ran with a smoothness he had never imagined. His servants—there were too many of them to count—functioned with great efficiency. Reggie had even been there at each step of the ploughing and planting, in the background observing and helping in any way that would not bring her into his sphere.

  Clay wanted his wife back in his life. Especially since he had discovered she was in expectation of a happy event.

  He would never have known Reggie was pregnant if he had not caught her bent over the stone wall behind the garden one morning a week past, casting up her accounts.

  He had wiped her face with his handkerchief, and then demanded, “Did you get too much sun? You should wear a bonnet when you work in the garden. Although why you would need to dig in the dirt when we have two gardeners—”

  “I am expecting a child,” she had blurted.

  Clay felt his stomach pitch. “Are you certain?”

  “As certain as a woman can be,” she said, wavering unsteadily on her feet. “I have not yet seen a doctor—”

  “Sit down,” he said, “before you fall down.”

  He had lifted her bodily and set her on the repaired stone wall that separated the garden from the lawn beyond it. “Take a deep breath,” he instructed. She looked wan and pale and even a little thin. “You must take care of yourself better,” he said brushing the back of his hand gently across her cheek. She flinched, and he withdrew his hand. “Is my touch so repugnant to you?”

  She met his gaze and said, “Quite the opposite, my lord. But I will not be seduced. You know the price of my acquiescence.”

  “So now your favors are for sale?”

  Two angry spots of red appeared on her pale cheeks. “I want my child to know his grandfather. Will you make peace with my father?”

  “I have no intention of—”

  She jumped down from the stone wall so abruptly, she nearly fell. He caught her, and she jerked herself away. “Keep your distance, my lord.”

  He had watched her stalk away, her chin up, her arms akimbo, and wanted her desperately. But not on her terms.

  He had finally come up with a peace offering he thought she might accept. He had ordered new windowpanes for all the broken windows.

  Of course, Clay had not told her yet what he had done. He planned to have the broken windows replaced some afternoon when Reggie was out of the house visiting the Scottish Home for Orphans she had found in Mishnish and surprise her when she got back. He hoped it would work to melt the ice that surrounded her heart.

  Forgive her, father, and she will burn in your embrace.

  Clay had tried. He simply could not.

  He watched every day for the wagonload of windows. Maybe when the castle was full of light once more, Reggie could find her way to him.

  In the three months since St. John’s Eve, Reggie had not discovered which of her servants, if any, was in Cedric Ambleside’s employ. Terrence had pleaded innocence. MacTavish played least in sight. Meanwhile, Carlisle had not forgiven her father, Becky had not forgiven Mick, and she found herself unable to convince either one to relent.

  Reggie spent her days so agitated in heart and mind that her appetite suffered even more than it would have under the circumstances. She often felt too sick from her pregnancy to eat, and when she did, she could not keep anything down. She was tired of waiting for her father and Carlisle to make amends on their own. So she had sent a note to her father asking him to meet her this afternoon at a spot halfway between Blackthorne Hall and Castle Carlisle. The glen had a hazelnut tree for shade and a fallen log where they could sit and talk.

  She was going to make sure Carlisle met her at the same place a half hour later. Once the two men were face-to-face, with her to keep peace, of course, Reggie was certain they could be brought to some understanding.

  As she entered the barn to saddle a mount for herself—she had found Freddy a better job as an apprentice blacksmith in Mishnish—a man suddenly stepped out of the shadows.

  Reggie stumbled backward, tripped over a pitchfork someone had left on the ground, and would have fallen onto the sharp tines, if two strong hands had not caught her first.

  “MacTavish!” she exclaimed, when she saw who had rescued her. “What are you doing here? You scared me half to death.”

  “Ye asked me to meet ye herrre,” he reminded her.

  She shot him a chagrined smile. “So I did. I would like you to find his lordship and tell him to meet me at the glen halfway between here and Blackthorne Hall in half an hour.”

  MacTavish frowned. “Ye’rrre rrridin’ there by yourrr-self, milady?”

  “Don’t worry, MacTavish. I won’t be on my own for very long. I’ve arranged for someone else to be there when I arrive.”

  MacTavish’s beetled white brows rose to his absent hairline. “What trrrouble are ye brrrewin’, lass?”

  “Please do as I ask, MacTavish,” Reggie snapped. She was nervous enough about the coming encounter without adding MacTavish’s qualms to her own.

  Because he insisted, Reggie allowed MacTavish to saddle a mount for her and then to help her into the sidesaddle. She would have preferred to ride astride, but she had no intention of giving either man the opportunity to turn his wrath on her for something as paltry as how she mounted a horse, when there were much more important issues to be debated.

  Reggie could see her father’s gray stallion, almost the size of a medieval warhorse, grazing in the shade of the hazelnut tree as she approached the glen. Unfortunately, she could also hear pounding hoofbeats behind her.

  Reggie groaned. At the farthest hill, just heading into a concealing copse of trees, she saw Carlisle’s black stallion, Balthazar. She should have known better than to trust MacTavish!

  She kneed her mount, hoping to reach her father before she was overtaken by her husband. She had just reined her horse to a stop in the glen and was leaning forward so her father could lift her down, when a bullet zinged past her. If she had not leaned over, it would have struck her in the head.

  Her father yanked her down and threw himself protectively on top of her. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Were you hit?”

  He had landed on her with his full weight, which was enough to drive the breath from her lungs, leaving her unable to tell him she was fine. When she did not reply, he raised himself up enough to do a survey of her gold riding habit with its black military frogs, searching for a spot of blood red.

  “I am fine, Papa,” she managed at last.

  “I will kill him,” her father said.

  He leapt up from the ground and headed for Carlisle, who had just arrived in the glen, vaulted down from his horse, and was running toward where she lay on the ground, apparently oblivious to her father’s lethal intent.

  Reggie knew she had to do something immediately, or disaster would result. “Papa!” she cried. “No!”


  Her cry alerted Carlisle to her father’s attack and put him on guard, but the two men stood bristling a foot away from each other.

  “I want to see my wife.”

  “You’ve done enough harm today.”

  Reggie clambered to her feet and slid into the narrow space between them, a flat palm against each man’s chest to ensure they did not move a step closer. “Stop it, both of you!” she ordered.

  She angled her chin up toward her father and said, “You can see Carlisle has no weapon. Someone else must have taken that shot at me. Ask yourself who could want to harm both you and my husband? Who has a motive to want you separated from those you love most and to want Carlisle blamed for it? What common enemy do you both have, Papa? Think!”

  Her father frowned. “It cannot be Cedric Ambleside.”

  Reggie turned to her husband. “And you must long since have realized, my lord, since we both know you are innocent, that some evil force must be at work, the same force that set you and my father at odds twelve years ago.”

  “Cedric Ambleside,” Carlisle said.

  “Can the two of you not find some common ground on which to fight your common enemy?” Reggie asked. “For my sake?”

  “Ambleside is a ghost,” her father said. He started to speak, stopped himself, then said, “It cannot be Ambleside.”

  “But who else could it be?” Reggie said.

  She saw her father glance sideways at Carlisle. “No, Papa. It is not my husband.”

  “How do you know?” her father demanded. “He was out of sight in the trees when the shot was fired. Perhaps he set aside his weapon before he rode into the glen.”

  “You never believed the truth twelve years ago, when it was right before your eyes,” Carlisle snarled back. “Why should I expect you to see it now?”

  “Clay, please!”

  “Come with me, Reggie,” he said. “I have heard enough. I am through here.”

  “No, Clay. I—”

  “Either come with me now, or I am done with you,” he said.