The only thing she could be certain of was that Graham was not an imposter. If someone intended to have Christopher replaced by another, then Graham’s return would have most certainly put a kink in their plans. As the younger son, he would have been given the title only after Graham was declared dead. All this time, they’d assumed he could be the villain when, in fact, he might very well be the next intended victim.
Even to her own mind, the plot seemed far-fetched, yet there was no other possible explanation for what she had seen. Implausible as it seemed, it was the only option that could account for all that had occurred thus far.
Beatrice rose, excitement buzzing inside her. “I have to find Graham. Oh, Betsy… bless you for saying such wildly inappropriate things! I believe I know exactly what’s going on in this house now!”
The maid shook her head in confusion. “Well, I certainly don’t know what’s going on and I think I prefer it that way! He went to Lady Agatha’s chambers, but I don’t know if he’s still there or not. But I don’t think you need to be running around these halls on your own, either. I know Mr. Edmund isn’t in, but there are still strange things afoot!”
“It’ll be fine. I promise… but I need you to do something for me.”
The maid crossed her arms. “What is it?”
“Has Christopher left his rooms yet?”
“He wasn’t in them,” Betsy replied in the tone she always reserved for scintillating gossip. “Not all night. I reckon that’s why Mrs. Blakemore had to wear out that poor footman. Mr. Christopher went into the village to spend the evening at the inn with Mary, the tavern wench. He’s been doing that a lot lately, come to think of it.”
Beatrice sank down onto the edge of the dressing table. If he was spending his nights in the village with the tavern wench, was it his doppelgänger that Eloise had been with in the tower? If so, why would she have spent the night with the footman? Unless her lover was absent as well. More questions than answers continued to arise, but her certainty about what was happening did not waver.
“If he returns, watch him. Watch him like a hawk… I cannot explain more except to say that there is someone else in this house who comes and goes through those very same tunnels that you and I used, who looks enough like Christopher to be easily mistaken for him!”
Betsy didn’t immediately gainsay her, which meant she knew more.
“Out with it. Do not withhold information now,” Beatrice urged her.
“How can that be, Miss? It’s the only thing that makes sense, I grant you. But there’s no family to resemble him. He’s only got the one brother and they are night and day!”
Unless they were not the only brothers. “I am going to check on Lady Agatha and find Graham. Be vigilant if Christopher returns.”
Chapter Nineteen
Graham had just emerged from Lady Agatha’s chamber when he felt the weight of an all too familiar form crash into him in the corridor. One arm snaked around her waist, both to steady her and to give him an opportunity to hold her softness against him for just a moment longer.
“You are certainly in a rush,” he commented.
Beatrice stepped back. “We need to talk… privately.”
“Where do you suggest?”
“Your chamber,” she answered and spun on her heel to head in that direction.
Graham followed behind her. Once again, he found himself admiring the sway of her hips. That admiration was only deepened by the fact that he knew precisely what was hiding beneath her prim skirts. The urge to have his hands on those hips again, to plunge into the soft heat of her body until he lost himself robbed him of any sense.
She reached the chamber first and opened the door. As she crossed the threshold, she glanced back at him over her shoulder. It was unintentionally seductive, but nonetheless effective.
Following her into his rooms, Graham forced himself to keep at least an arm’s length between them. Otherwise, he’d have her bent over the nearest piece of furniture and whatever it was she’d wanted to say to him would be forgotten.
“What is it that you’ve discovered?” he asked.
“I’ve discovered nothing, but some things have simply become clearer to me upon reflection.” She paused and then said in a rush, “I do not think Christopher is a villain. I think he is to be another victim.”
His brows shot upward. “How did you come by this conclusion?”
“Betsy said something to me, that if I wanted to be in a house full of servants that knew their place and behaved properly, we’d have to sack the lot of them and start fresh. It dawned on me then, as isolated as we are and as little as we’ve been in society, that no one would know if someone else, who looked enough like him, took Christopher’s place.”
“You’ll need to explain that a bit better.”
“You’ll think me utterly mad, but I need you to hear me out!” Beatrice insisted.
He stepped closer to her. “I have often thought you maddening, Beatrice, but never mad. Tell me what you are thinking and I promise you that I will give it all the consideration deserved by virtue of the source.”
He was too close, Beatrice thought, too overwhelming as the heat of him seared her. “I can’t think when you do that,” she whispered.
Closer still, he crowded her, his hands skimming over her hips as he tugged her close enough to feel the hardness of him pressing into her. Beatrice felt herself swaying, leaning into him, craving the rush of desire and the pleasure that he’d incited in her the night before. “It’s about Christopher,” she said, her voice breathless with need and the weight of anticipation. “Graham, this is unwise.”
“And yet I find myself both unwilling and unable to care,” he said, one hand cupping her neck until her head tipped back.
Looking up into the dark blue of his eyes, she felt herself falling, the importance of what she’d needed to say forgotten in the wake of the desire that seemed to consume her whenever she was in his presence.
A knock sounded at the door, but it was opened before they could bid anyone to enter. Betsy stepped inside, trembling and ashen faced. “I’m so sorry, Miss! But something awful has happened! You must both come at once!”
Disappointed and more than a little embarrassed, Beatrice stepped back. “What is it, Betsy?”
“It’s Mister Blakemore, Edmund! One of the tenant farmers found him, Miss!”
“Found him?” Graham demanded. “Is he injured?”
“Gravely, my lord,” the maid offered with a terrified nod. “I cannot imagine that anyone could recover from such a wound. You must come at once!”
“Has someone fetched Dr. Warner?” Beatrice asked. Whatever her feelings for Edmund, she did not wish him dead.
“Aye, Miss. The doctor is seeing to him now.”
As Betsy departed, Graham turned back to Beatrice and uttered, “This is not finished. Do not think for a moment that we will reverse course, Beatrice. We are only delayed.”
Beatrice had no intention of reversing her course. It seemed impossible at any rate, comparable to battling a force of nature. Now that she had ceased resisting, the only course of action left to her was to simply capitulate. She meant to enjoy him for as long as she could. “I will not, but let us see to Edmund first. I cannot help but feel this is related to the respective attempts on our lives!”
“If Edmund is as gravely injured as Betsy stated, we may have very limited time to ascertain if he can identify his attacker. Let’s go,” he urged.
Beatrice followed him from the room, dreading what was to come.
*
They found Dr. Warner tending to Edmund in a small room off the kitchen. The frenzy of activity gave further testament to Betsy’s assessment of the situation. Some of the older servants, those who might have known Edmund as a boy, wept. Others, maids who had undoubtedly spent the better part of their employment at Castle Black dodging his unwelcome advances, remained dry eyed. Graham could not fault them for it.
Entering the narrow room, E
dmund lay on a small cot, his face pale and his skin clammy. The blood-soaked bandages about his midsection told the truth of it. A wound to the gut was one of the more brutal ways to shuffle off the mortal coil, but shuffle off he undoubtedly would. What the bullet didn’t do, fever would.
“What is his condition?” Graham asked.
Warner turned back and shook his head, his silence speaking volumes.
From the bed, Edmund sputtered a cough and opened his eyes. They fixed on Graham immediately but, for the first time, they held no hostility.
Stepping forward, Graham squatted on his haunches next to the injured man, until they were eye to eye. “Who did this to you, Edmund?”
“Chris—” he broke off, a fit of coughing interrupting his speech. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth and Graham knew then that the other man’s lungs were filling with the substance. He would not be long for the world.
“Christopher,” Edmund finally managed to utter. Though the word was barely more than a whisper, it resounded in the small chamber like a pistol shot. The servants gasped in surprise, their shock clearly evident upon their stunned faces.
“Are you certain that it was Christopher?” Graham pressed. “Is there any doubt?”
Edmund frowned at him, then admitted in a voice that was growing ever weaker, “He sounded wrong. Thought it was the drink… not—not him… not like him.”
“Wrong how, Edmund? What did he say to you?” Graham persisted.
Edmund turned his head slightly and met Graham’s gaze more directly. Graham could see death in the other man’s eyes. It had already sunk its icy claws into him. Edmund’s lips parted, but not in answer. His last labored breath passed them on a sigh and then his chest stilled.
It wasn’t the first time he’d watched a man die. In truth, of those he’d watched take their last breath, he’d had less feeling for Edmund than most. But the dismayed sound from Beatrice, the tears that gathered in her eyes as she looked at the corpse of a man she’d known since childhood, struck a chord in him. She was hurting, though why he could not fathom given Edmund’s treatment of her. Yet, her pain was evident as was his complete inability to do anything about it.
He rose and nodded curtly to Warner. To Hammond, he stated, “You’ll see to the preparations.”
“Yes, my lord… it will be taken care of,” the butler answered gravely. “What of Mr. Christopher, my lord? What is to be done?”
Graham’s lips firmed. “I will handle that part of it, Hammond. The servants must say nothing to him when they see him. In fact, they should avoid him at all costs for now until I have a firm plan of action in place… if anyone sees him, take note of his direction and come find me immediately. Is that understood?”
“Certainly, my lord,” the butler answered quickly and with complete conviction. A chorus of agreement followed.
Graham offered Beatrice his arm. “Come. We must see to Lady Agatha before she hears the news of it elsewhere.” He needed to get her out of that room. He also needed to curb his own ridiculous jealousy of a dead man.
*
Beatrice brushed tears from her eyes as they left that small, dismal chamber and made for Lady Agatha’s suite. She did not weep for the man Edmund had become. Her tears were for the boy he’d once been and for the woman they were about to face. Lady Agatha had suffered the agony of a missing child for almost two decades. She’d buried her husband, a kinder man never to be found. Now, with her missing son returned to her, she would have to say her farewells to Edmund who had been like a son to her. It was too much for her to bear and Beatrice feared that it would trigger a setback in the woman’s recovery.
“Why do you weep for him?” Graham asked softly. “After all that he has done and all that he has threatened… why?”
“Because when we were children and I was afraid, he would tell me stories. Because when you were gone and Lady Agatha wept enough to fill the ocean itself, he would sit with her,” she answered. “He was different then, before Sir Godfrey’s influence tainted him beyond repair, before his own jealousy and envy, his awareness of the lack of permanence of his position as steward here, nurtured the meanness that Sir Godfrey planted in him.”
Graham stopped in the corridor and, since he held her arm, she was forced to stop as well. She looked at him then, evenly and without rancor. It was clear from his expression that he disapproved of her tears. Given what he knew of Edmund, she could even understand it. But in a joint history that spanned nearly two and a half decades, it was impossible to condense it down only to those unpleasant moments he had witnessed. “You do not have to mourn for him,” she said softly. “He was little more to you than a rude and ill-tempered stranger… but we’ve been living in one another’s pockets here for decades. The relationships built within these walls are complicated. You do not have to mourn him, but you must not judge me for doing so.”
They stood there in the corridor, silent for the moment. It stretched between them, fraught and tense, until finally he sighed heavily. “I have no right to dictate what you may feel and who you may feel it for. It is not my place.”
“Because you are not my husband.” And he never would be, she thought. It seemed she needed to constantly remind herself of the impermanence of their relationship. Failing to do so would only give rise to hopes that, when inevitably dashed, would only bring more pain. Yet she found herself wondering what manner of husband he would be to the woman he wed. Would he be the sort of man who attempted to control even his wife’s thoughts? Because marriage had seemed such an unlikely future for her, she’d grown accustomed to doing as she pleased with little thought to anyone else’s opinions or thoughts. She told herself it was just as well that their relationship would end because she could not imagine ceding control to anyone in that fashion.
“No,” he replied with another heavy sigh as he scrubbed his hand over his face. “Because it is not my right to tell any man, woman or child what they may feel. I may not understand how you can separate who he was as a boy from the disappointment of him as a man… but I also cannot understand how you can look past all of my many flaws. To exploit your generous nature for my own benefit while castigating you for it when it is applied to others would make me the worst sort of hypocrite.”
Beatrice hadn’t expected that he would so easily accept it, or that he would so willingly admit to error on his own part. At every turn, his behavior confounded and baffled her. She never knew what to expect from him. Electing to change the subject altogether and to focus on matters that required immediate attention, she pitched her tone low and whispered, “In your chamber, I came to speak to you because I have information that, given what Edmund said, is more imperative than ever… there is another man in this house, one who comes and goes at his leisure through the tunnels and passages, and who looks enough like Christopher to pass for him.”
He didn’t immediately discount the idea but his skepticism was obvious even as he replied in hushed tones to match her own, “I do not wish to believe that Christopher is responsible for this, Beatrice. I have only just discovered my brother and, while things are certainly tense between us, I had hoped to build a relationship—”
“I saw him, Graham! Yesterday afternoon when I was going downstairs to greet Dr. Warner and Mr. Eaves! I saw a man I assumed was Christopher at the end of the corridor making for the tower. Then, when I turned to descend the stairs, the real Christopher was walking up them,” Beatrice insisted. “And I’m not the only who has had such experiences here. I spoke with Betsy and she revealed that several servants have had similar experiences. While it seemed unlikely that he could traverse such distances even with the tunnels, that was the most reasonable explanation anyone had.”
He drew a deep breath, “If that is true… to what end?”
Beatrice sighed. “I do not fully understand it myself… I’ve only just been able to put together everything. But before you returned, it was almost a certainty that Christopher would eventually take on the role of Lord Bl
akemore. But he was sent down from school and even then maintained his innocence of the crimes he’d been accused of! What if he truly was innocent? What if his exile home was engineered as part of a greater plot?”
“This all ridiculously Machiavellian,” he said. “I’m not denying that it’s possible, but the degree of planning and strategy required is prohibitive. Why would someone do this?”
She was speaking in whispers, but growing more animated as the ideas and theories expanded in her mind. “I told you we are isolated here, our own secluded enclave. As young as Christopher is, his face is still changing, still transitioning from boy to man. In five years’ time, anyone who vaguely resembled him could return to London, claim to be Lord Blakemore and no one would bat an eye. All the people who would be able to gainsay him have been walking targets. You, Lady Agatha, and me. Now poor Edmund… but not Eloise who was meeting her lover in that tower! She is the key to all of this, Graham. I feel it to my bones.”
He was silent then, considering. Did he think her ready for Bedlam?
When at last he spoke, he stunned her yet again. “I cannot think how he would ever encounter someone who looked so much like him, or how such a plot would be hatched, but I cannot reason out any other scenario that fully encompasses everything that is taking place here, either. For now, we will proceed cautiously as if your hypothesis is accurate.”
“What are you not telling me?” she asked. It was clear to her by his expression that he was concealing something.
“Lady Agatha confessed to me that Christopher is my half-brother, sired by a lover she took while in France,” he said. “It is possible then that I am not Christopher’s only half-brother?”
The revelation was not as shocking as it should have been. In some ways, Beatrice realized, she’d always suspected as much. “What shall we do about Christopher and his double? It is clear to us what Edmund must have meant, but perhaps not to everyone else. How will we manage to capture or confront this madman when he slips in and out of the shadows?”
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