She struggled but couldn’t grasp it.
“Relax, Love,” he entreated her. “Imagine you’re standing there listening to what they’re saying. Think only about their words.”
Bethany bolted to her feet to pace back and forth while her thoughts roamed. Considering what she’d learned from Locke’s conversation with Lord Hannaford and her cousins, it all made more sense than she liked. She paused when that terrible vision enveloped her, feeling nearly disembodied, as if she were hovering above the men and watching them do their wickedness. Slowly the finer details began to fall into place.
“They wanted me to admit my father and brothers were spies. I couldn’t fathom such a thing.” She hadn’t known it was true then, even if she knew it now. “Father and Lord Christian were peers of the realm, and Mr. Collin had bought his commission and was with the army in Portugal. The monsters demanded I give them the information my father had sent from Europe for His Majesty. I’d received nothing from him beyond simple letters of love and encouragement. How could I tell them something I neither knew nor believed?”
She paused to inhale a shuddering breath. To listen to those faraway shadow-voices.
“One of the scoundrels sounded disenchanted, muttered to the gentleman that he believed I was telling the truth. The gentleman told them to go after my mother then; she must have the information if I didn’t. The second scoundrel laughed, insisted there was no possibility ‘a woman so inclined to gossip as Lady Whitton’ would be trusted with such important matters as—” Bethany halted, the words clinging to the tip of her tongue.
Of a sudden, the words burned their way through her mind like flaming arrows. She remembered! And if what she’d heard was true, then—.
“A list! A list of men who were close to the Prince Regent ... but wanted him.” She gasped. “They want him dead! Lord Locke, that list, wherever it is, unveils a plot against Prince George!”
Locke obviously hadn’t expected this revelation. She knew from his conversation with the Camerfield men he’d thought the conspiracy involved Bonaparte.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “If the list was lost, weren’t they free of discovery? It’s been sixteen months since they kidnapped me. Why would they come after me again now?”
“I’ve no idea. However, one fact about subterfuge is true. Conspiracy only works if the conspirators remain anonymous and forever silent. Perhaps one of them threatened blackmail over the others. Mayhap new evidence arose that again endangered them or made them believe you had the information after all.”
Bethany’s mind still whirled. “I recall something else. Before the gentleman left me to them, he threatened the others, told them ‘keep their traps shut,’ reminded them that the people on that list were paying them and they dared not forget it. Then he added, ‘The One’—and he emphasized it that way, as if he were referring to the man in charge—‘The One has spent years building a reputation that will protect him and the plot from discovery. No one would ever suspect him and therefore the rest of us, unless you fools grow loose tongues. And if you do, you’ll pay for it. Now, get it done.’”
“But they couldn’t,” Locke murmured, rising slowly to his feet, “because you didn’t know what they thought you knew.”
Locke’s voice faded from Bethany’s awareness, her thoughts pulled again into the past, hating that gentleman for walking off and leaving her to animals who’d done unspeakable things to her.
“What else is there, dear heart?” Locke searched her face, challenging her to let it all out.
Bethany swallowed hard. He would shun her if she told the truth. Society would expect it of him. They would do worse to him if he didn’t. She turned her back to the man she had no right to love, the man she couldn’t allow to love her.
Locke drew her back against him, wrapping his arms around her and whispering over her shoulder, “You can tell me anything, my love. If you are not strong enough to bear it, I will share the burden. Tell me what happened next.”
“I—I fainted, after all they’d done to me. Lady Camille said the kidnappers took me to the Whitton townhouse stable afterwards, although I don’t remember it, but I faintly recall her taking care of me in what I realized later was an inn. She and the twins were doing their best to protect my reputation—or at least to pretend that I had one to protect. I was delirious and needed a place to recover where others wouldn’t overhear what they called ‘my fevered rantings’ and where I could heal enough to go home without having to admit the debacle to my mother. They say I healed, and I have scars to prove it. But in my heart....”
“You’re courageous, my sweet. And nothing less. When I get the chance, I’ll hunt down the swine and skin them alive.”
A grim smile touched her lips.
“But I know that isn’t what’s troubling you the most. You’ve left some of the story untold. Infection festers inside of us, dearest, and only if we lay it open do we have a chance to heal. If you cannot say the words, then perhaps you can let me say them for you.”
Bethany trembled and tears again burned her eyes. “I don’t think I can stand it.” She choked when flashes of grotesque images assailed her, the fear and anger roiling in her gut. She heard her own voice, floating through the distance from past to present, begging them to stop, to let her go.
“They hurt you in the worst way a man can hurt a woman, didn’t they?” Locke said gruffly, and Bethany could hear tears in his voice. He knew that she was tainted, ruined.
“No man will ever want me,” she whispered. “How can I blame them?”
His hands turned her around and she found his incredible dark blue eyes not only filled with tears, but also brimming with a wondrous blend of compassion and love.
“I cannot pretend it doesn’t trouble me, Sweetheart, but these were evil men. Evil men do evil things and leave behind broken hearts and a broken world. The ones injured are not the guilty parties. I love you, you know, and want to share my life with you.”
Her tears turned to quiet sobs, and he wrapped her in his arms and held her gently. When her cries calmed, he offered his kerchief and smiled as she dried her face.
“You’re beautiful even when your nose is red,” he said, chuckling with her.
“I love you so much it hurts, my lord, but I have no right—”
He stopped her with a kiss, at first gentle and then more insistent. Her heart swelled, glorying in the feel of it.
“You are my wife, my dearest Bethany,” he murmured against her lips. “You have every right. I am your husband, and I want you, I need you, and if you will allow it, it is my right to love you back. It is our right, and no one else has the power to take it from us. Everything I have, everything I am, is yours forever if you will take it.”
Could she believe it? Did she dare? She was hardly whole.
The hope in his eyes captivated her. There was nothing anyone else could do to take that away from her. It would take time for her heart to heal but she could. It would take patience, but nothing could mend her wounds better than the love of an understanding man. The love of this man.
Everything about him enticed her. His beautiful dark blue eyes, the dimples that framed his heartbreaking smile. The breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his arms, the faint masculine scent of his skin and his soap and his cologne.
She pressed her lips to his, glorying in the taste of his kiss, first tender, and then moving over hers with a hunger that set her every nerve ending on fire. His hands enchanted her body, sending heat racing over her skin and filling her with a passion that throbbed deep within her core and demanded satisfaction. His hope became hers, and it reassured her that tonight they would fill each other’s needs, and it would be the most beautiful, most wonderful night of their lives.
* * *
The Countess of Locke spent two glorious nights and one day with her beloved husband before he again journeyed to London.
The nights that followed left Bethany alone and victim to her old nightmare
s. On the third night, she awoke with a start, having to light her lamp to chase away the demons. Catching her breath and wiping beads of perspiration from her brow, she propped herself against her pillows and pondered the dream. Unlike those night terrors that had tormented her before marrying Locke, these newer ones had teased her about the identity of the cultured man who’d given her over to her kidnappers.
Tonight, however, her imagination had riveted on the other man in the shadows of Almack’s veranda. She wondered if he had more to do with her abduction than she’d realized. Despite the briefness of the tête-à-tête between the two men, she was beginning to question whether he’d masterminded the whole thing. Unfortunately, no matter how long she mulled over the details, she couldn’t see the man’s face.
Sighing, she threw aside the covers and paced the room. Praying for inspiration, she pondered what message her father could have given her—and how? She’d put all of her belongings away after the vandalism and couldn’t see that searching through them again would make any difference. Besides, her jewelry box, the likeliest object she believed might contain some secret, had been left in London along with most of her more valuable jewelry or baubles.
She paused when she thought about everything she had brought home, most of which had come from her father. How could she figure out which one, if any, was the answer?
Wandering to her dressing table, she pulled the key from its hiding place behind the mirror and unlocked the drawer in which she’d placed the jewelry. She considered the few pairs of earrings and necklaces, a couple of pins and broaches lying there. Some she’d had for years. The most recent gift?
Her gaze settled on the charm bracelet her father had supposedly sent from Belgium. From Portugal, instead? She’d not had the courage to confess her eavesdropping on the conversation between her husband, cousins, and uncle in London, something she was determined to rectify when Locke returned, as well as asking questions of her own.
Most of the correspondence she and her mother had received from Mr. Collin in those last few months had come to Bethany, with individual sealed missives addressed to others tucked inside the main envelope. The bracelet Lady Katherine had handed to her after opening a missive from Lord Whitton, saying he’d wanted Bethany to enjoy the trinket. Bethany knew nothing about the piece. Her father normally gave her documents that signified the history, the designer, and the value of his gifts, and it was odd that he hadn’t done so with this one.
She lifted it and toyed with the charms, remembering her amusement at the idioms her father had had inscribed on them. The pictures, simple sketches really, had never made sense to her. They were curious but had nothing to do with either the wording on the opposite side or anything related to Bethany’s interests.
Taking it to her lamp, she painstakingly examined each charm. With no connection between picture and word, she grew even more puzzled.
She tried reading the words both forwards and backwards, or jumping every other word as Collin had taught her when they’d written secret messages to each other as children. Twice she had an odd feeling she was on to something but couldn’t quite bring it together, which, of course, persuaded her to believe she must be grasping at straws.
“Alright then, what about the pictures?”
That made less sense, with no two of them having any similarity. Then she paused, leaning closer to the light. On the charm she was examining, she could see that each portion of the sketch of a crown was made up of a string of numbers. The number six.
Was there a message here after all? Her stomach clenched from both excitement and fear. But how to sort it out? She had no key to solve it, if it were.
Unfastening it, she laid the bracelet on her lamp table, directly under the lamp’s yellow light. She faced all of the charms with the pictures upward. Her pulse sped up when she noticed that of the dozen charms, every other one had a string of numbers on it, like the crown, but they weren’t in numerical order. The crown was in the center, the number one to the far right, the number two the second to the left of the crown. Still, on those charms, every tiny, engraved picture bore a string of numbers. She couldn’t imagine what it would have taken to create any one of them, let alone twelve of them pleasing to the eye.
She yawned, fatigue dampening her curiosity. Flipping the charms over, she read the idioms, but again found no clue to what they meant beyond their obvious messages.
Still, something about the bracelet unsettled her. Considering all she had suffered, she wouldn’t take chances. She would show it to Locke as soon as he returned from London.
Replacing it in the drawer, Bethany climbed into bed and doused the lamp, grateful to at last find peace in sleep.
* * *
Lord Locke arrived home the next day, and Bethany felt as if she could breathe again. When the servants were not about, the earl took advantage and kissed his wife until her toes curled. When they were nearby, he and his countess chattered enthusiastically about the estate’s undertakings in his absence, Locke’s activities in London, and about news of the outside world.
“I’ve something to share with you,” she said at last, when she was sure Locke wouldn’t mind humoring her. “Please come to my room.”
“Most willingly,” he grinned, laughing when she pushed his arm in censure.
“The servants might hear.”
“Let them. I’m not concerned they might decide we like each other.”
Bethany laughed and scurried upstairs, Locke trailing. When she turned back from her dressing table, she handed him the bracelet. Puzzled, he draped its featherweight over his fingers as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“Come to the window. You need to see this.”
With the lighting better there, Bethany pointed out what she had discovered. Her smile faded as she saw the look of shock that passed over her husband’s face.
* * *
Locke stared at the evidence before him, his heart taking leaping bounds in his chest. Why had he not paid better attention to this bracelet before? Careful perusal assured him he had neither the time nor the expertise to decipher the code, but it was, surely, a code.
“You said your father sent it from Belgium, did you not?” He suspected it was what Whitton had sent from Portugal, of course.
“That’s what my mother told me. It puzzled me that she gave it to me. My father and brothers had been sending their packages to me for some time, to deliver to the rest of the family. But Father had just left for Belgium and I didn’t understand why he would send something for me to my mother. For some reason, I’m persuaded that this may be what my kidnappers were looking for.”
Locke laced his fingers into his forelock and pushed it back from his brow, his mind spinning with all the ramifications.
“I think you may be right, my dear. Might I borrow it? Not for long, but I’m acquainted with someone who could look it over for me.”
Lady Bethany hesitated, and he knew that while she wanted the mystery solved as much as he did, she dreaded having to give up this last reminder of her father. Then she nodded.
“Of course. If it’s the evidence they were looking for, I’d rather it serve its purpose—and that it not be on my person.”
“Thank you, my darling,” he said, dropping the bracelet into his jacket pocket. He would have Seaworth take it to his London connection as soon as he could saddle a horse.
Noting a troubled look on her face, he offered her his arms and hugged her gently. “Something else is on your mind,” he said. And it had nothing to do with sweet kisses and words of endearment.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I have … I have another confession to make.”
His heart tripped over the meaning of those words. “Remember you can tell me anything.”
“Yes, I know. But that doesn’t mean you’ll like it.”
He chuckled. Put that way, he probably wouldn’t. Then she began, painting a picture of her standing outside his London library door, listening to the discussion betwe
en her husband, her cousins and her uncle about how her father and brothers had died … and everything that went with it.
* * *
Warm kisses awakened Bethany, forcing her eyes to open and adore the sweet smile that greeted her.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. I’m shocked you’ve let the rooster beat you out of bed again.”
Bethany giggled. “Not by much, and he didn’t spend the last week sharing my bed with you.”
“I hope not,” Locke said. “I wouldn’t have enjoyed that at all. I’ve some news, sweetheart. Are you awake enough to hear it?”
Bethany blinked at him warily. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Simply a message. The twins are bringing Lady Camille to spend the next couple of weeks with you.”
Bethany’s smile vanished. “You’re leaving again.”
“Not right off. I just thought you might prefer to greet our guests in something other than your nightdress.”
Bethany grabbed her pillow and hit Locke hard with it, squealing when he chased her across the bed and out of it, following her around it until he caught her.
“They’ll arrive in two hours,” Locke said between toe-curling kisses. “Melissa has your bath ready for you.”
“Thank heavens. I need a bath more than I need clothes.”
He laughed and kissed her again but insisted she take advantage of both the bath and her wardrobe.
When Lady Camille arrived, it was a joyous reunion, although Bethany resented that irksome, silent request the twins sent Locke. They needed a personal audience with his lordship. Again. She was grateful her sweet husband insisted they all admire the nearly-completed manor first—which they did with alacrity—and afterward share tea.
They’d barely finished when the contractor’s wagons arrived for their final day of work on the manor and to deliver the materials for Lady Bethany’s room. Locke and the twins headed off to Locke’s study, while Bethany and Lady Camille retreated to the cool of the rear veranda. Lady Camille made a great show of leaning into Bethany’s face and squinting at her.
“You seem different,” she said. “What’s happened?”
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