by Lauren Royal
“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 and 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 b
ut 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 on 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.
“Oh, now I remember.” The dates, at least, weren’t encrypted. She turned pages, noting this one ran from mid-1668 to early 1669. “You got in trouble for breaking the codes, didn’t you?”
“Did he ever,” Kit confirmed with a wry grin.
“When I translate the latest diary,” Rand said, “it will get us out of trouble. Let’s find it.”
But though thirty-odd journals crowded the shelf, none of them were the most recent. They looked behind the books on all the other shelves, floor to ceiling, but there were no more journals to be found.
An hour later, when they’d closed the last cover of the last book in the small room, Lily dropped onto a chair. “What now?”
Rand’s jaw set. “We search the rest of the house.”
“It’s gigantic! And one small diary could be anywhere…if it even exists.”
“It exists,” Rand forced through gritted teeth. “My brother didn’t record his life for twenty-nine years and then suddenly stop.”
Lily felt as though her emotions were on a swing. Down and then up. Up and then down. Dejection settled in for now. “It could take days. We could still be searching when the priest shows up to marry you.”
“Lily.” Rand came over and took her face in both hands, raising it for a soft kiss. “We will find it, and we will be the two who are married.” He looked to Kit. “We may as well start here in the main library.”
That lofty, two-story chamber was easily eight times the size of Alban’s study. Lily took one look at the endless shelves and felt like weeping.
This would never do. She had to regain her spirits, had to do her share of this enormous task. Rand wasn’t giving up, and she couldn’t, either.
But after the excitement of the discovery and the disappointment that had followed, she couldn’t face starting over just yet. “I’m going to check on Rex,” she told the men. “I’ll be right back.”
Downstairs, she hugged the huge mastiff around his neck, tight, as though she could draw strength from his big, warm body. After all, he’d survived a harrowing ordeal and, from the looks of it, come out none the worse for wear. When he licked a slobbery path across her face, she laughed. “All right, then. I’m going to find that diary.”
Feeling immeasurably better, she rose, then froze, staring at the dog. “I wonder…” she whispered, then took off at a run, heading back to the library.
SIXTY-TWO
ETTA IN TOW, Margery ran into Bennett’s study and smiled when he bolted up from his desk. “What are you doing here?” he gasped.
They met halfway, his mouth dear on hers, the kiss wild despite her old nurse’s presence. Her fingers twined into his long dark hair, and his arms went around her to clutch her close. When he finally broke the kiss, she was breathless. “I told you I’d come to you again, didn’t I?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I’ve been combing the countryside for witnesses. Rand had promised to do that, but then he took off for Oxford and has yet to return.” She ran her hands up and down Bennett’s back, frantic to touch him, to feel the strong muscles beneath his thin shirt, to convince herself he was here, he was real, he wouldn’t die, that somehow they’d end up together. “I cannot just sit in my uncle’s house and pray anymore. I have to do something. I have to find someone who saw Alban come after you.”
His hands clenched on her waist. “I feel so helpless, stuck here in this house. All I can do is write letters.” His gaze flicked to the papers littering his desk. “Letters and more letters,” he said, looking back to her, his green eyes laced with despair. “But I know no one with influence greater than the marquess’s. No one who can save me.”
“Did you get my letter? The one where I explained Uncle William’s promise to spare your life if I marry Rand?”
The look in his eyes—misery—told her he had. “Do you suppose you could come to love him?” he asked, his voice so harsh she pictured each word being forced through his throat.
“Not like this. He’s my brother—”
“Then you cannot do it. I won’t allow you to sacrifice your life for mine. You’ll be unhappy all your days.”
“Not as unhappy as if you were dead.” She wasn’t going to let him argue this point. “I’m going back out—I just stopped here to tell you what I’m doing. God willing, I’ll find someone able to vouch for your innocence in this matter. Either way, I’ll be back tonight.”
“Tonight?” She saw his heart leap into his eyes.
Her own heart pounded at the thought of a night in each other’s arms. One precious night. She’d never thought to feel like this, hadn’t conside
red herself a woman driven by lust. Until Bennett.
“Yes, tonight.” She nodded toward Etta. “Uncle William thinks we’re staying overnight in Windsor. Ordering a wedding gown—as though I would care what I wore to wed Rand. Sackcloth would do.” She snorted. “For all his power, sometimes my uncle can be blind to a woman’s wiles.”
“He’s a man,” Etta put in with a nod of her curly gray head. “His wife could outwit him just as easily. A crafty woman she was, although she loved him too much to play him the fool very often.”
Margery had seen a loving side of Uncle William in the past, but right now she found it hard to summon loyalty. “Am I wrong, Bennett, for going behind his back?”
She’d warred with herself for days. Perhaps Rand’s mother had been the crafty sort, but Margery had always prided herself on her honesty.
Until now.
Now she was hiding a pregnancy and sneaking off to meet her lover, and she couldn’t find it in herself to feel guilt for either dishonest action. But she was also contemplating ruining two other lives to save Bennett’s, dooming both Rand and Lily to loveless futures…and that sparked enough guilt to make a nun dread the Day of Judgment.
One of her hands left Bennett’s body and went to her own belly as she prayed her child wouldn’t suffer for the sins of its mother.
Bennett’s gaze dropped to her middle, then flicked toward Etta.
“She knows,” Margery said. “She guessed.”
Etta’s big green eyes took on that wise-old-nurse look. “There are signs. Another woman would know.”
Bennett nodded. “No, you’re not wrong,” he murmured in answer to Margery’s earlier question. “The marquess is being unreasonable. He claims to love you, yet he plots to deprive your child of its father.”
One of his hands slipped from her waist to cover her fingers. She wished he could feel their child move, but even she hadn’t felt that yet. It was too early. Were it not for the signs Etta had mentioned, she’d have a hard time believing she even carried a babe.
And yet she knew in her bones that Bennett’s child grew under her heart. And she could only be joyful for it.
