Chase Family Collection: Limited Christmas Edition

by Lauren Royal

  Lily reached for the dog’s mouth and pried it open, ignoring all the foamy saliva that dripped from the canine’s black lips. Rand struggled to hold the animal still while she pulled out its long tongue.

  “Up!” she yelled, her fingers moving the tongue this way and that. “I need to see!” Kit leapt to help, angling the mastiff’s head toward the sun while Lily peered down its throat. “I knew it!” she ground out through gritted teeth, calm and determined although she was clearly furious.

  Heedless of the animal’s sharp teeth, she reached back into its mouth. But she couldn’t grasp whatever was choking the poor creature.

  Only a whimper betrayed Lily’s distress. After that, she was all action. She stood and, leaving the dog’s front paws on the ground, went around to lift him from behind. Though the canine was easily twice her weight, she managed to raise both his legs. But she was too short to get them up high.

  Rand and Kit both jumped to help, taking one hind leg each while Lily knelt again by the dog’s head. “Come on, Rex,” she pleaded. “Cough it up. Shake him!” she told the men.

  They did, holding him up like a wheelbarrow, but though the dog jerked and made choking sounds, the object still remained lodged.

  “Dear God,” Lily moaned, panting as though she could breathe precious air for the animal. “Set him back down.”

  With the flat of her hand, she administered three sharp blows between the huge creature’s shoulder blades, but nothing happened. Finally she leaned over its back, wrapped her arms around its middle, and squeezed so hard her face turned red, pressing up on its belly with both fists.

  All at once, a slobbery red apple came shooting out of its mouth.

  “Oh, Rex!” The dog collapsed to the ground, and she hugged him around the neck, laying her cheek against his sweaty coat. Tears poured down her face. “I thought we were going to lose you!”

  The other dogs came closer to investigate, barking loudly and poking at Rex with their noses. Though he was clearly exhausted, Rex turned his head and licked Lily’s face, a big wet swath of love.

  She laughed, and Rand smiled, his own eyes embarrassingly damp. His legs felt shaky, as if he’d run miles. He was speechless.

  Kit spoke for them both. “That was incredible, Lily.”

  She hugged Rex even harder. “It was only what had to be done.”

  “No,” came another voice, one filled with admiration. “It was an amazing display of quick thinking.” Rand turned to see his father unlocking the gate. The man walked right over to Lily and reached down a hand. “Thank you for saving Attila. I need to get rid of that apple tree.”

  Lily was too nice to say she’d told him so, but her lips curved in a smile that melted Rand’s heart. She unwound her arms from the hound’s neck and allowed the marquess to help her rise.

  As soon as she moved away, the other dogs pressed even closer. Lily brushed at her less-than-pristine riding habit. “Perhaps, my lord, you should take him into the house for a while. He needs some time to recover, and out here he will get no rest.”

  “My dogs are not allowed in—” the marquess started, then apparently had second thoughts. “An excellent suggestion, Lady Lily. Will you come with us and help me get him settled?”

  Rand watched, aghast, as his father and Lily headed for the house, the dog walking gingerly between them.

  After a moment, he and Kit exchanged glances and began following. “He didn’t even ask what she was doing here,” Rand whispered.

  “He didn’t notice me at all,” Kit said dryly. “He had eyes only for your lady.”

  “He’s grateful at the moment. It won’t last.”

  Kit shook his head. “She’s won him over.”

  “Perhaps,” Rand conceded, although it seemed more likely his father was temporarily bewitched. Lily, after all, was very good at casting spells, especially where Nesbitt men were concerned.

  But regardless, he’d best not forget that nothing had really changed. “This doesn’t mean he’ll assent to my wedding Lily instead of Margery.”

  “No,” Kit agreed. “We still need to find that diary.”

  In the back parlor, Lily settled Rex-Attila by the fireplace and requested a blanket. Without questioning her, the marquess rang for a footman and asked for one to be brought. Lily knelt by the dog, murmuring soothing nonsense while the marquess looked on, a bemused expression on his face.

  When he finally looked up, his features hardened. “Christopher,” he said, apparently noticing Kit for the first time. “It’s been years.”

  Kit nodded an acknowledgment. “Since Rand left for Oxford.”

  “What brings you here now?” the marquess asked rather suspiciously.

  Before Kit or Rand could answer, Lily spoke up from where she knelt on the floor. “We’ve come to find Alban’s diary,” she said clearly, although they had all agreed they would claim they’d come to discuss Rand’s marriage and then perform their search on the sly. “Rand is of the opinion that it could clear Lord Armstrong’s name.”

  To Rand’s surprise, the man didn’t respond with one of his characteristic explosions. “My son hadn’t kept a diary in years.”

  Rand’s heart dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of his knees, but Lily seemed undaunted. “Are you certain, my lord?”

  “I knew my son,” he said shortly.

  Rubbing his dog’s back, she gave a graceful shrug. “Well, it couldn’t hurt for us to look, could it? You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

  Her tone could melt butter in a snowstorm, not to mention a man’s heart. In his current mood, Rand’s father was no exception. “Go ahead,” he said. “But it’s a waste of time. Even should you find my son’s writings, I’m certain there will be nothing in them that would exonerate Margery’s lover.” His gaze on Lily was almost apologetic. “My lady, I appreciate your care for my dog, but you cannot marry my heir.”

  “I understand, my lord,” she said softly. But as she rose to join Rand and Kit near the door, her eyes looked as determined as ever.

  Rand appreciated that determination more than words could say. As they turned to leave, he took her arm. “We’ll get Margery to help, too.”

  “She’s not here,” came his father’s voice behind him.

  More than a little concerned, Rand swung back. “Where is she?”

  The marquess waved a hand, apparently unaware that his son had assumed the worst. “In Windsor, with Etta. They went to choose fabric for her wedding gown.”

  As the vision faded of Margery locked in a dank dungeon somewhere—not that Hawkridge Hall had one—Rand’s shoulders slumped with relief. “They’ll return soon, then?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning.”

  “They’re staying overnight to choose fabric?”

  “And fittings or some such. They were to visit a seamstress. I gave them leave to stay the night at an inn, since they seemed to think it would be dark by the time they finished. I know nothing of these womanly things.”

  The man knew nothing of Margery at all, Rand thought incredulously. His foster daughter wouldn’t care what she wore to be wed against her will. Rand would lay odds Margery was spending the night with Bennett Armstrong—and he wasn’t surprised her old nurse had conspired to arrange it. The two had always been thick as thieves, females in a household run by men. In fact, Margery was likely the reason Etta had decided to stay after her nursemaid days were finished.

  The men standing guard over Bennett had all been at Hawkridge for years, and Rand imagined they were as loyal to Margery as Etta. While they wouldn’t go so far as to allow an escape—they’d doubtless face death for a betrayal of that magnitude—he suspected they’d turn a blind eye to an overnight visit.

  By all appearances blissfully unaware, his father stroked the dog’s head. “Now be about your business. The sooner you give up on finding this diary, the better. You need to prepare for your wedding. To Margery,” he added with a glare.

  Refusing to rise to that bait, Rand turned a
nd walked away. There was no point in arguing now.

  When he’d found what he was looking for, it would be a different story.

  Sixty-One

  THE MOST logical place to start, of course, was Alban’s suite.

  Unlike the single small chamber that had been Rand’s refuge during his childhood, the marquess’s heir had had three rooms to call his own. They began in his bedchamber proper, a darkly paneled room that sat between the other two and provided entrance to them all.

  “Cluttered as ever,” Kit remarked when they walked in.

  “Nothing’s been touched.” Rand paused on the threshold. “It’s as though he still lives here.”

  “He hasn’t been gone that long,” Lily said gently. She skimmed a hand thoughtfully over the unmade bed. “Perhaps his death is still too fresh for the housekeeper to deal with.”

  “I doubt that.” Rand crossed to his brother’s dressing table and opened a drawer. “I cannot believe Alban changed enough to ingratiate himself with the staff, even in fourteen years. He was ruthless in both his expectations and treatment of them. I suspect they’re as relieved to have him gone as I.” Finding nothing but a neatly folded stack of cravats in the drawer, he slid it closed and opened another. “If this room is undisturbed, it’s my father’s doing.”

  Ignoring a frisson of unease, Lily inspected a pile of books on Alban’s night table. “What did his diaries look like?”

  “Nothing in particular, at least back in the day. Whatever blank books he could find.”

  All the books on the table had titles on their spines, so Lily assumed they weren’t journals. Just to make sure, she began opening them.

  “I remember this,” Rand breathed, pulling something sparkly from a drawer full of stockings. “My mother wore it all the time.”

  Lily moved closer to see. It was a beautiful oval pendant made of white gold, with many small diamonds set into a delicate filigree design accented with black enamel. “Goodness, it’s really quite lovely. Do you think your father gave it to her?”

  “Maybe,” Rand said as he slipped it into a pocket. “I wonder if he knows Alban had it.”

  Rather than checking the obvious places, Kit lay down on the floor and stuck his head beneath the red brocade bed skirt. “There’s a box under here,” he said, pulling it out.

  It was long, large, and shallow, made of wood with a heavy, locked hasp. “The diary must be in there,” Lily said, amazed that they’d found it so easily. “Where do you suppose we can find the key?”

  “Where would you keep a key?” Rand asked, almost to himself. Or perhaps he was addressing his brother’s ghost.

  “Behind the headboard?” Lily suggested.

  Rising to his feet, Kit rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe under the mattress.”

  “No,” Rand said. “Alban was more clever than that. It will be in this room, but not anywhere that typical.”

  He began methodically lifting objects while Lily checked the headboard and Kit looked for a key tucked into the ropes that supported the mattress. Both of those places revealed nothing.

  “Aha!” Rand set down a Blue Willow jar that he’d found on the mantel. He held a wad of cotton that had concealed the key inside.

  His fingers shook as he worked the lock.

  Please, Lily prayed silently, let this be it.

  But when Rand raised the lid, the box wasn’t filled with books. Instead it held an astonishing array of various knives.

  Lily stared in horror. “Some of them have dried blood on them.”

  “Alban never was very tidy.” Rand’s gesture encompassed the general condition of the room. “Frightening, isn’t it?”

  Lily nodded and swallowed hard, her gaze still fixed on the jumble of sharpened steel. Curved blades and straight, serrated and smooth, double-edged and honed to a deadly point. “Perhaps we have no need to find the diary now. This should convince your father that his eldest son had no good in mind.”

  A short, harsh laugh rent the air. Kit’s. “I expect not. Alban’s love of hunting was well known.”

  Rand nodded. “He rarely carried a firearm, either. Alban liked to kill with his hands. I’m surprised he even tried to shoot Bennett, although I suppose that goes to show his desperation to see the man dead.” He released a pent-up breath. “No, I’m afraid this proves nothing except that my brother was fascinated with knives. I doubt the marquess will find that to be startling news.”

  “It seems he was fascinated with killing, too.” Lily shivered, imagining all the creatures that had died at his hands. While she’d never objected to hunting for food, somehow she knew he’d had other reasons. She looked up and met Rand’s eyes. “I believe Bennett. The man who owned this collection wouldn’t hesitate to murder.”

  “We still must find his journal to prove it.”

  But a careful, exhaustive search of the bedchamber revealed nothing. They spent an hour combing Alban’s dressing room—reaching into his pockets made Lily’s skin crawl—and another turning his sitting room upside down.

  Nothing.

  Kit plopped into a red-and-gold-striped chair. “We’re missing something.”

  “There’s no desk in here,” Lily said. “Where did he write?”

  Rand began pacing. “In his bedchamber. At his dressing table. Didn’t you see the quill and ink?”

  “But the drawers there were filled with accessories, not paper.”

  “Alban didn’t write letters,” Rand said peevishly. “He wrote only in his journal.”

  “No,” Kit disagreed. “I think Lily is on to something. Perhaps at sixteen, when you left home, Alban wrote only in his journal. But he died at thirty. Surely he was handling some of the estate work by then. Did he not have a study?”

  Rand gave a weak shrug—a shrug that alarmed Lily, because it suggested he might have given up. Could Lord Hawkridge have been right that Alban had stopped keeping a diary? The thought was so disturbing she was afraid to voice it aloud.

  “This is the sum total of Alban’s rooms,” Rand said dully. “Perhaps he shared the marquess’s study.”

  But Rand’s father was in his study when they went there to search. He looked up from his paperwork, impatiently tapping his quill on the desk as he swept all three of them with a cold gray gaze. “I can assure you,” he said curtly, “you will find nothing of Alban’s in here.”

  Lily deliberately smiled, a smile she suspected would have done Rose proud. “My lord, I’m certain that your son, as your heir, would have assisted you in the task of running your estate—”

  “Of course he did. He was never a man to shirk his duties.” Lord Hawkridge’s eyes swung toward Rand, as though to say he was one to shirk.

  Lily felt her hackles rise. Rand had had no choice but to make his own life—not if he’d wished to survive. And though his life would be changing now, he certainly deserved time to grow accustomed to the idea.

  Besides, she could see no need to rush. Lord Hawkridge appeared almost indecently healthy for a man of his age, not that he was elderly to begin with. Fifty-two, Rand had said. And for all they knew, he could live to be a hundred and two.

  She forced her lips to remain curved in that smile. “Did Alban do that sort of work with you here in this study?”

  “Of course not. I told you, there’s nothing of Alban’s in here. He converted part of the library into a study for himself.” With that, he looked down and scribbled something on one of the papers in front of him.

  “Converted part of the library,” Rand muttered as they trooped upstairs. “I suppose his own three rooms weren’t large enough.”

  Their footsteps sounded muffled on the woven rush matting that covered the floor of the long gallery. Gilt-framed family portraits lined the lengthy chamber, hung on dark, gilt-trimmed panel walls. Noticing one in particular, Lily stopped.

  The painting showed a younger Lord Hawkridge standing behind his seated lady, who held a white kitten on her lap. Her blue eyes looked kind, and Lily liked her o
n sight. The marquess’s eyes looked…happy, she decided in surprise.

  He must have been very much in love.

  Lady Hawkridge wore a lovely pink dress and the beautiful diamond pendant Rand now had in his pocket. “I see your mother did love that necklace,” Lily said with a soft smile.

  Rand nodded. “Maybe this picture is why I still remember it.”

  Beside that portrait, another young man gazed from a canvas, a man Lily guessed to be Alban. He resembled Rand, except his hair was darker, his expression cooler. His eyes, however, of indeterminate color, looked so cold as to make his smile seem warm in comparison.

  There was, of course, no portrait of Rand.

  “Professors do not rate paintings,” Rand said dryly beside her, apparently reading her mind.

  She looked back to the picture of his parents. She could almost see the woman’s graceful fingers stroking the silky, purring cat. “She looks very loving,” she said of his mother.

  “She was. The only love I ever received.”

  “Not the only,” Lily said quietly, and Rand squeezed her around the shoulders.

  Kit had gone ahead through the library and into a small room beyond, where a massive desk took up most of the space. Upon entering, Rand immediately moved behind the desk and began opening drawers.

  Kit was already pulling books off the shelves. “These are deep,” he said. “There’s another row of books behind the first.” He gestured to the opposite wall. “Lily, you can start over there, and we’ll meet in the mid—”

  She was heading over to do as he suggested when she heard his indrawn breath. She swung back. “Have you found them?”

  “I think so.”

  Behind the books he’d removed sat a long row of multicolored spines, none of them marked with titles. As he drew one out and opened it, a grin spread on his face.

  “Yes, this is a diary. An older one, from 1664. Now we just need the most recent.”

  Her heart racing with renewed hope, Lily pulled out another and flipped open the cover. “I cannot read it.”

  “It’s in code,” Rand told her, standing over her shoulder.