He shot her an astonished look, but nodded.
"Tell me something, Isolde," he said after a time.
She frowned, wondering at his strange tone. "Yes?"
"How did your own father die?"
She stared at him. "He died in his sleep. Heart attack, they thought. He laid down on the couch in his study for a nap, and—"
"Was the study on the ground floor?"
"Why, yes."
"And was the door locked or unlocked?"
"Unlocked."
"The window open or closed?"
"French windows. Open. Merciful Heavens!"
"Our friend Howell has been a busy man indeed. I never met your father, but he had the reputation of being a fair man. If he had learnt he had been duped, he would have exposed the culprits, and admitted he was wrong no matter what the consequences."
She nodded. "Yes, he would."
"Come here and take some paper. Write out all you know for Alistair, including what happened with Francis, though you can leave out the part about the cut girth strap. Make a copy for the Bransons as well. I know them through Blake and his cousin Martin, and he is a close friend of Clifford Stone, who is a decent man in every respect, and will want to help.
"If Clarissa Dawson is still alive, we’re going to find her. If not, well, we can only hope her parents have kept her things all these years, and something might have been left behind."
She smiled in sheer relief. "Thank you. This is more than I could have hoped."
"No it isn’t. I’d like to think I’d do anything for my family to keep them safe."
"They don’t need to be kept safe from you!"
His pale blue eyes glittered coldly. "Please allow me to decide that for myself."
"All the same, we're going on an excursion to Cheddar George en famille for All Hallow’s Eve. We promised the children ages ago, but simply haven’t had the time. All the Rakehells are going too. So if you turn up with your family, perhaps the reunion will not be so awkward?"
He opened his mouth to refuse automatically, but his wife entered the room and stated, "Hallow’s Eve, did you say?"
"Yes, that’s right."
"The Celtic New Year."
"So you believe in the myths like Arabella?"
"And a few of my own Welsh ones," Bryony said with a laugh.
"I see. I’d like to learn more some time."
"You know all you need to know, my dear. We’ll think about the invitation. Thank you. But now you need to go. Your husband is looking for you. You need to find him, now."
Isolde stared at the couple for a moment longer, and then found herself hoisting her skirts well over her knees as she ran through the corridor and out the front door.
She shouted to the carriage driver to take her back to Barkston House as quickly as possible, shivering the whole way. For she could see it all in her mind’s eye now, and prayed she was not too late.
As she neared Brimley, she removed all of her petticoats and tucked her skirt through her legs and up into the sash of her gown. She wrapped her handkerchief around her face, and took the contents of the water carafe from the sideboard of the carriage and doused herself with it.
"Stop the carriage!" she commanded at the bottom of the drive.
She clambered onto the box, and grabbing the reins, ordered the driver to get down. "Run for help, and as much water as you can get."
"But Miss—"
"Just do it!"
The confused young man stared at her for a second, then began to run.
"Hiya!" she shouted as she whipped the horses up into a trot and headed for the stables at the back.
She could see black smoke pluming up over the lofty autumn foliage, and drove the team harder. She gave them a full head, and steered them straight for the barred double doors. Barred from the outside....
She hated doing it, but she was killing two animals to save dozens. And the man she loved…
At the last possible moment she swung down onto the side of the box, jumped and rolled. She tucked her arms around her belly and prayed the child within her would be safe. It was a risk she simply had to take to rescue Randall.
Chapter Twenty
Randall had awakened late and found his wife gone from their bed. Whilst he had been worried at her leaving without so much as a kiss, he knew he simply had to trust her.
He searched the house, checked on the children, helped with their lessons, and still she did not appear.
When Hopkins told him she had gone to Bath, he relaxed at last, for he was sure it was simply yet another shopping expedition for their growing brood. Though disappointed she would probably not be home for hours, he tried to subdue his restlessness with some paperwork.
After an hour at his desk, though, he was still feeling restive. He decided the day was too fine to stay indoors waiting for his wife. He decided he might as well finish the painting of their special spot at the old ruined monastery which he had wanted to give her as a gift. Call him sentimental, but it was the place he was certain their child had been conceived.
He changed his clothes himself, wondering why his valet didn’t come at his ring, until Hopkins arrived and reminded him that the servants were taking their half holiday that day.
Unwilling to make more of a fuss for his manservant than he already had, he went down the back stairs with his painting supplies and strode out to the stables himself.
He placed his canvas and paints on the grass outside, and looked around, marvelling at the sunlight dappling on the trees, the dazzling effect of light and shadow.
He walked the rest of the way to the stables, and entered. His back prickled with uneasiness, the terrible recollection of what he had seen, what he had done, or almost done, making him shiver.
Then the utter silence struck him. He looked around, called out. He knew most of the servants were out for the afternoon, but it still seemed odd that there were no grooms around to tend to the magnificent stallions and geldings.
He entered the first stall to saddle his horse. A movement behind him caught his attention, but before he could respond, the huge double doors were slammed shut behind him. He could hear the heavy wooden bar thunk into place in the metal supports outside. There was the sound of whispering, and then a shower of lighted flambeaux came down through the high windows. They were too high for him to stop them, or to climb out.
Then he noticed the strong smell of lighting oil as the torches landed and set the whole barn crackling to life.
Randall grabbed some horse blankets, dunked them in the water troughs, and began to beat at the flames. But try as he might to put out the small blazes, no sooner was one extinguished than another burst forth.
Choking on the smoke he shouted for help, tried to calm the now screaming horses, and attempted to find a way out.
He snatched up a discarded axe and tried to hack a hole in the door, but could feel himself growing more and more unequal to the struggle against the fumes.
Damn Howell, he had to have done this....
He wasn’t so sad about giving up his own life, were it not for the fact that he dreaded to think what would happen to Isolde without him.
But his resignation soon turned to fury. Damn it, he had never been more happy, the thought, giving the door a mighty blow.
And he hadn’t killed Francis after all. He smashed the axe against the wood again. And he was not just going to give up the ghost. He took another mighty swing.
Not when he had a wonderful wife to share his life with. A new baby on the way that he simply had to see for himself.
But despite the succession of blows, the door was still solid and unyielding. He had to come up with another plan, and quickly too.
He crawled low on the ground, and doused himself in one of the water troughs as flaming hay showered down onto him from the loft above. He might be able to climb out one of the windows if he ascended the ladder and tried to jump, but he felt like all the breath had left his lungs.
He knew that his best chance was to lie down, try to stop his clothes from setting alight, and try to find some good clean air from an opening in the stone walls. But he hated the thought of the death his family’s precious horses were going to endure...
What should he do?
"Isolde," he sighed, her name on his lips like a prayer.
He longed to see her, touch her once more. Surely this couldn’t be the end. Not when he had at last found peace. Not when he had so much to live for?
Just as he began to pray more fervently than he ever had in his life, the double door splintered inwards, shaking the building to its foundations. Randall could hear the team neigh in agony as the runaway coach careened into the barn with a tangle of legs, bone, wood and leather harness.
Randall was instantly up and running, pointing the pistol he had been debating using on himself or the horses if he was certain the end was nigh.
Now he discharged the two wounded animals with a single bullet to the head each, and began to heave the wreckage aside. His wife hove into view like a vision of heaven, shaking from head to toe, but otherwise unharmed.
He threw his arms around her for a moment, tugging down the kerchief over her face and kissing her ardently.
I love you.
I know. Me too, Isolde. Come, we need to save them.
He lifted his lips, and she pulled up her kerchief and made him tie his own around his face. Together they swung outwards the remnants of one of the heavy double doors. She snatched her discarded petticoats out of the ruined carriage and handed some of them to Randall.
Like a well-oiled machine they worked together, leading all of the mounts out one by one to run down the drive or into the paddock.
At the fifth stall she halted in horror, for there was their chief horse trainer Mac with his throat slit from ear to ear.
Randall!
He carried the body out, but it wasn’t long before she found the second and third, two of the hapless stable boys.
She lifted the smaller of the two and laid him out on the grass, then raced back in to free the rest of the horses who refused to come out of their opened stalls.
Blinkering them with her petticoats, she carried on leading them out until more help arrived from the house at last, and the rest of them were finally brought to safety.
Isolde sat on an up-ended tub wheezing. "We need to know how many servants are unaccounted for. It’s their half-holiday today. There are those three dead that I can be sure of, but we need to know for certain. I suspect there might be one or two in the loft, but you’re not going up there. The whole thing is about to collapse."
Hopkins and the others were still game to go in and try to put out the fire, but Randall ordered them to halt.
"No! My wife is right. It’s too dangerous. Just let it all go. Hopkins, please get the magistrates. It appears we have a murderer in the district."
Then he doubled over and began to vomit, and collapsed onto the ground in his wife’s lap, his ordeal overcoming him at last.
Chapter Twenty-one
Randall slept like the dead for hours. Blake told Isolde it was probably the emotional strain of the fire in the stables and the murdered servants that had taken its toll even more than the smoke he had inhaled while he had been trapped in the barn.
Eswara had examined her after her jump from the coach, and pronounced her fit and strong despite her ordeal. The older woman reminded her to come for regular visits now that her pregnancy was proceeding apace, and left her watching over her unconscious husband.
The following morning, with Randall still asleep, Isolde went out to join Geoffrey Branson the magistrate and his son Malcolm to sift through the remains of the burnt-out stables.
Apart from some melted bits of silver which had once ornamented the harnesses, and a couple of horse shoes and the anvil, nothing remained now except a burnt-out stone shell.
"Any word on Howell?"
"He had three witness who swear he was drinking with them in The Royal Oak in Barton. The landlord recognises him, but he can’t say for sure he was in yesterday or not, for he's a regular, and there was a local cricket game on. Many people were in and out."
"Drat the bastard. Always one step ahead, always so bloody clever. Calculating. Never makes a mistake. He knew it was the servant’s half holiday. He was just waiting for one or the other of us. Cold, cunning bastard," she muttered.
"I’m not so sure. This strikes me as a crime of passion in some ways, if the enmity you’ve accused him of is anything to go by. Yes, I’ve spoken with Michael," Malcolm told her in response to her surprised look. "Last night."
"What could Randall possibly have ever—" She laughed shortly. "Of course. Clarissa. But she eloped... Or was killed? Never came back. The last anyone saw of her, she was swiving Francis in these stables."
"What did you say?" Malcolm said, frowning.
"I said, the last they ever saw of Clarissa Dawson was here…" Her words trailed off as she stared over at the far end of the barn. The sunlight streaming in was illuminating a caved-in area of the floor under the place where the loft ladder would have once stood.
"Give me that shovel, will you?" she asked one of Geoffrey’s deputies, holding out her hand.
They protested, but she waggled her fingers imperiously until they gave in and surrendered it. She stabbed it into the ground and pushed down on the lug with her foot, and scooped up a bladeful of the hard-packed earth.
A fourth determined thrust of the tool yield a harsh scraping sound, and the unmistakable whiteness and curve of a pelvic bone swathed in tattered yellow silk.
"God in Heaven," she gasped.
Malcolm stared, and shouted to his men to come over and work more carefully.
Isolde handed the shovel back, and told them to come up to the house to report on what she had found when they were finished.
She saw Malcolm looking pityingly at her. She glared at him and shook her head. "We know who that is. Clarissa Dawson. But Randall didn’t do it. Howell killed Randall’s brother, I’m sure of it. He fancied the wench for himself. We need proof, though. A crime of passion, you said. Let’s pray to God he was careless."
"I can’t take your word for it though, Isolde. If we have any doubts, we will need to arrest Randall," he warned.
"Then take your time and be sure. Tell us how she died, and find something, a torn piece of coat, anything, to tell us who committed this monstrous deed."
"I’ll do my best." Malcolm patted her on the shoulder.
She headed back to her chamber to see if Randall were awake and to tell him the momentous news.
Randall looked near to collapse when she told him what she had unearthed in the stables. "Clarissa, dead. In the stables, all this time? She was wearing a yellow dress. I remember it distinctly. It fastened up the front, the better to futter with, I’m sure. Yellow silk, it was."
"If they don’t find anything damning against Howell one way or the other, they’re going to have to arrest you."
"But they have to arrest him too!"
"He has an alibi," she sighed.
"Well I certainly didn’t lock myself in the barn and set fire to it."
"I know. All in good time."
"Thank you."
She stared at him in surprise. "What for?"
"Not suspecting me."
"After you having confessed to killing your brother, I hardly think you would have neglected to mention killing her as well in a fit of passion."
"I might have if I was afraid of your reaction. Not wanted you to be terrified of me," he suggested as he leaned into her and rested his head on her shoulder.
She settled herself against him with her back snugly against the headboard of the bed. "It’s Howell, I’m sure of it. Listen, I wasn’t here yesterday because well, I went to see Thomas. Told him everything, just about. Asked the Rakehells for help to find out what Howell has been up to against us. They think, well—"
"What? What is it?
"Th
at my father was murdered by Howell. That he found out your father had been falsely accused, that he had been used, and was going to betray the real criminals."
"Are you sure of this?" he gasped, gazing up at her.
"Not sure. I only have suspicions and suppositions. But you need to know about your father. You were so overwhelmed with what you learnt about Francis that you weren’t able to hear the rest."
"The rest? Hear what?" Randall asked, growing more and more agitated.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection #4 Page 46
