by Colleen Ladd
Portia froze. “You need not concern yourself, my lord,” she said, pity gentling her voice. “It’s broad daylight. Why would anyone harm me at a time when he would likely be seen?”
“Likely is not the same as certainly. You might easily vanish into the home wood with no one the wiser.” Ashburne lifted Portia off his lap and set her on her feet as if she were a doll. Her skin burned with the imprint of his hands. “Overgrown as it is, your body mightn’t be found for years. If ever.”
Portia went cold. Why, she wondered in a strange distant part of her mind, had the murderer not done the same with Lady Amelia? The home wood would not have been so overgrown then, of course, but there were all the Ashburne lands on which to hide a body. Not to mention Ransley’s, or even Courtland’s, both of which abutted Ashburne’s property. Why leave the body where it would so easily be found? Unless someone wanted it found.
Ashburne dragged a hand through his hair. “You’re not listening to a word I say.”
“Of course I am, my lord.”
“Then you’ll cease this foolishness. Stay inside where it’s safe and stop nosing about the neighborhood for clues.” His glare made it clear he was not asking but ordering, and Portia might have said nothing—though she had no intention of obeying—if he hadn’t added, “And leave Lady Clarissa to her uncle.”
“Of course I won’t!” Portia blurted, forgetting that it was now more important to stay on Ashburne’s good side than to teach Clary how to comport herself. If Ashburne could be convinced to let her stay at Rosewood, Portia might limp along on her small income. If he could not, then Portia would find herself in straits from which even Clary’s influence could not rescue her. But she’d promised the chit, and she wouldn’t abandon her now. “The poor girl is in desperate need of assistance and her uncle hasn’t the first idea what to do, or even that something must be done. I can’t—”
“You can’t bring her into the Hall.”
“She’s already been, on three occasions, with no one the wiser. I don’t see what—”
“Portia!” Startled, she glared at him for his presumption, and he pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “What you do not seem to see, my lady,” he said with the careful diction of someone on the verge of raging, “is that you’ve already cost me nearly a fortnight. I have spent,” he went on over her protest, “the better part of the last two weeks skulking in the shadows to avoid you rather than doing what I came here to do.”
“I fail to see what harm having a young lady here a few hours a day will have.”
“No? When the young lady is Ransley’s ward? When he’ll roar like an Atlantic gale if he finds out she’s even set foot in this house? When the barest intimation that I’m still alive, let alone at the Hall, will bring him down on this house like the hand of God?” He stalked to the second bookshelf, took down the books from the next-to-highest shelf without need of the library stairs and pulled out the brown leather satchel she’d hidden there. “Take it,” he said, shoving it at her. “Buy whatever fripperies you can’t do without. I’ll pay for the surgeon, the roof, and anything else that comes up. You do whatever you like with this; it’s the last monies you’ll get from me. Don’t even think of trying to pawn my silver again.” When she didn’t take the bag, he tossed it on the library table, knocking over a silver candlestick.
Portia snuffed out the candle before it could damage the table. She did not turn around until the burning in her cheeks subsided. “It’s your money, my lord,” she said stiffly. “I wouldn’t dream of—”
“I said take it. Take yourself off to the modiste or the milliner or what you will. Just get out.”
Portia unclenched her teeth far enough to say sweetly, “I thought you didn’t want me to leave the house.”
“Hell and damnation! Take your maid, take the main road, stay out of the home wood, and stay away from Ransley. And Courtland.”
Shaking so hard she could barely stand, Portia watched him remove books from the case he’d already half-cleared, taking them down a few at a time and stacking them by a chair. Much as Portia wished not to, she saw how he favored his left arm, the painful hitch in his movement whenever he forgot, and pity and curiosity got the better of her anger.
“What are you looking for?”
“I told you to get out.”
Portia gritted her teeth. “Perhaps I could help.”
“You’ve done enough, madam.”
“For which you are most welcome.” His shoulders twitched, but he did not otherwise respond. Portia stepped up to relieve him of the next armful of books. He watched her put the books with the rest, then went back to removing volumes from the shelves. “You are looking for something, of course.”
Ashburne knelt to sweep up an armful of books bound identically in burgundy leather, dumped them next to the other stacks, and went back to the shelves without vouchsafing Portia an answer. She didn’t let it put her off.
At first, Portia’d taken the mishandling of the books for a gambit like the rest, an unsettling trick designed to drive her out. But that theory went by the board after Mr. McFerran was injured and Mrs. McFerran did not have the time to engage in so useless an exercise. Yet it happened anyway. Portia knew then that, unless she really did have a ghost, there was some purpose behind removing the books greater than simply annoying her. It couldn’t have taken all night to clear a single bookcase, yet only once had he taken down more than one. In the three day gap when none of the bookcases appeared to have been touched, he’d simply been returning the books as he went, leaving the cases looking the same, if less dusty. Then, frustrated at his slow progress, he’d taken down two cases at once and left her with an even larger mess than usual. Obviously removing the books was the least of it. “What precisely are you looking for?”
Ashburne turned with the last armful of books, his eyebrows lowering when he found her already seated in his chair. He put the volumes down and stood for a moment glaring at her before pulling a chair up for himself. Portia reached for the book atop the nearest stack and fanned the pages gently.
“A note, obviously,” she said. Ashburne picked up a book and began going through it with painstaking care, even going so far as to hold the book by the spine and give it a gentle shake. She could see why it had usually taken him a whole night to go through a single bookcase. “I doubt pressed flowers would help your case.”
When he didn’t answer, she searched the book she held again, more carefully, and set it aside, then reached for another. She trusted she was right about the note; if not, surely he’d have told her what to look for.
Portia discovered the aforementioned pressed flowers and the occasional butterfly or moth, which had either found itself within the pages by accident or been shut up there by some schoolboy. The first time she found a folded square of paper, Portia’s heart kicked hard against her ribs. She saw Ashburne’s hands slow and stop on his book as she teased open the thin folds of the letter. The disappointment when she found it was to “Dearest Matilda” from “your loving Randolph” was deep enough to bleed all the breath out of her. Even not knowing quite what she was looking for, she had no doubt that this was not it. Portia reminded herself that there were plenty more books, and no doubt plenty more notes, and put the earnest and tender letter back where she found it. Ashburne’s hands began to move again and Portia fought off a fit of the dismals at the thought that this rush of hope, and the crushing disappointment that followed, was a familiar thing to him already.
When the silence had stood between them long enough that Portia’s ears had become accustomed to the whisper of paper and the soft cadence of his breathing, Ashburne spoke.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“She was beautiful. A china figurine of blue and gold.” Portia glanced up, but Ashburne’s eyes were on his hands, and she returned to her task. She nearly looked up again when he said, “And I let myself believe she could find it in herself to consider me... acceptable.” The letters she should
never have read rose into her mind (I would worship at you as at an altar, bringing myself as offering.) and it was suddenly as impossible to look at him as to speak.
“I knew, when the rumors first reached my ears, brought by someone who thought he was doing me a kindness, that they could not be true.” Ashburne’s voice remained quiet and steady, and Portia could not tell if he still felt all the pain and grief of Lady Amelia’s betrayal and subsequent death or if it had faded in him, as pressed rose petals faded to pale shadows, hardly more substantial than the stain they left upon the page. “And so I told him, and anyone who dared voice the gossip in my hearing. I thought at first that, despite my best intentions, denial of the rumor merely fed it, but came eventually to understand that it had other meat to grow on. She was young. She wanted....” He stopped. Looking sidelong at Ashburne, Portia saw him trace the embossed title of a book bound in burgundy leather, an expensive edition of Romeo and Juliet. “I am not a pretty fellow. I could not give her the pretty words she wanted.”
Portia savagely bit her lip to prevent herself speaking. It was he, of course, who had removed the letters from his desk. And perhaps—pray God it was so!—he did so without knowing she’d already read them. Whether he knew or not, he would certainly not thank her for speaking of them. It came to her, with a pain that filled her chest, that she had been right in thinking the letters had never been sent. And that was as great a tragedy as the death of the woman to whom they were written. She forced herself to take the book he held.
“Perhaps, if I had, she would not—” He stopped himself, making a curt gesture with his left hand that must have hurt his shoulder, for he took in a quick breath.
Portia found another letter and opened it, her fingers trembling though it was too time-stained to be anything to do with an event only ten years gone, and found the paper covered in lines of close, crabbed, utterly illegible handwriting. Silently, she handed it to Ashburne, who looked briefly at it and handed it back.
Portia returned the note to the book and closed it. “How old is this library?”
Ashburne made a small sound, perhaps of amusement. “Some of the books are as ancient as the Ashburne name itself.”
“So we may yet find a note from Queen Boadicia?”
The sound was definitely amusement this time, short and soft. “Mayhap we will.” It was several minutes before Ashburne spoke again, and when he did, his voice had lost the soft reflective cadence of a man speaking to himself. Though Portia regretted breaking his mood, she was relieved. The gathering weight of his words had filled the library with a tension like the thick heat of a summer storm. He would tell her less now than he might have, but at least she could breathe. “The day of the ball, one of the footmen handed Amelia a note from her lover after breakfast.”
“How can you know it was from her lover?” Assuming she had one, which Portia seemed alone in questioning.
“When I came into the library some minutes later, I found her here, where she’d slipped away to read it in private, a book in her hand to excuse her presence.”
“Come, my lord, such light evidence! I’ve often come in here for a book, and I have no secret lover.”
Ashburne gave her a hard look she couldn’t understand. She found herself strangely reluctant to meet his gaze. “You have an appreciation for books Lady Amelia sadly lacked. She had no use for my library.” Portia mechanically set aside one book and took up the next. “No, she picked up the book so she’d have an excuse for being here should anyone come in. Had she merely wanted somewhere quiet to read a blameless letter, she wouldn’t have bothered. The ruse showed a guilty conscience. The note was from her lover.”
“Granted that,” and Portia had to admit his reasoning was convincing, “why look for it here?”
“She had a book open under her nose when I entered the library. When she saw me, she jumped a mile and snapped the book closed.”
“You think she closed the note up in the book.”
“I would stake my life on it.” He paused over the book in his lap and gave another of those unamused laughs. “I have staked my life on it. That billet doux set up an assignation. Amelia met her secret lover that night and it was he who killed her. With that note, I may yet be able to prove my innocence. I will, at least, know whose hands are stained with her blood.”
“But how can you possibly know he killed her? How can you know she didn’t just meet up with some dastard?”
“She would not idly have left the Hall, already gowned and coiffed for the ball, less than an hour before it was to start. Not her own ball, an event she’d planned for weeks.” Ashburne idly turned a few pages of the book, but his eyes were not on it. “She was wearing her dancing slippers when I found her.” He took in a harsh breath and turned his penetrating eyes on Portia. “No. She went out to the picnic green because her lover arranged to meet her there, out of sight of the house but close enough she might easily slip away.”
“The assignation, if there was one, need not have been made in writing,” Portia pointed out. “She might have left the house with someone. No one saw her leave.”
“I did. I told no one. Not then—what purpose would it serve but to expose her perfidy? Though I could not bear to attach myself to a woman who would betray me even before we were wed, I would not betray her. Once the house party was over, I meant to go to Ransley. Between us we could arrange the end of the engagement with the least damage to her reputation. Later.... I did not dare reveal that I’d seen her leave and could have followed. It would only have put the noose more snugly about my neck.”
Portia teased apart two pages stuck together by the flower pressed between them. She didn’t particularly expect to find a note affixed there as well, but it gave her something to do as she said, “Do you truly think— I’m sorry, my lord, but can you honestly believe she left that note in the book, in your library, under your very nose?”
“It would have taken a chit more brazen than Amelia to remove that note from the book in front of me, or even to have walked out with the book, knowing what was in it. What if I asked her what she was reading?”
“Guilty conscience,” Portia murmured.
“She couldn’t know that I wouldn’t have questioned her.” Ashburne gathered up the set of burgundy-bound Shakespeare folios and went to put them back on the shelf. “The last thing I wanted was to force her to face me with it. I still hoped to sever the connection without further harm to her reputation. I could not forgive what she’d done, but... I did not wish her to suffer.” He’d finished reshelving the Shakespeare, but he continued to kneel with his back to her. “If I’d been the sort of man she wanted, the sort to give her pretty words and prettier things, perhaps she would not have gone with him. If I’d confronted her that day, in this room, she would not have died.”
Portia stared at him for some moments before finding her tongue. “You cannot know that, my lord.”
“Perhaps not.” Ashburne returned to his seat and took up the top book off the next stack.
“If he was determined to kill her, he would have done so whatever obstacles came between. Another day, if you thwarted him that one.” Portia smoothed a wrinkled page and closed the book. “But what reason did he have?”
“That she was marrying. That she would no longer be his. That she could betray him.”
“His reputation would not suffer so much as hers.”
Ashburne gave an awkward one-shouldered shrug. “Who else could have killed her? Who else had reason?”
Courtland had said the same of Ashburne. “Surely if she left the book here then you must know which it was, or at least which shelf she put it on. Why search the library from one end to the other?”
Ashburne was shaking his head. “I began where I believed it to be the first day I arrived. It was not there. I got through that wall,” he said, gesturing at the shelves that bracketed the windows, “before you came, with no luck. I was not perfectly attending, I admit.” He snorted. “In fact, I deliberately
turned my head so she could put the book someplace she thought safe. So I would not know where it was. I suppose I did not want to face the temptation to read it. If I’d known how important it was....” He shook himself. “At any rate, she had no opportunity to retrieve it. There were too many people about, too many activities in which she must, as hostess, take part. It’s still here, somewhere. And it’s my only chance to clear my name.” He looked at the bookcases stuffed full from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. “And so I find myself in the unenviable position of finding a teardrop in the ocean.”
“Why not ask the footman who gave her the note? Surely he knew who sent it.”
“Assuming he didn’t find it on the hall table, that he wasn’t bribed not to tell, that he can even still be found? He could be anywhere in the world. No, merely knowing her lover’s name will not serve. I must have proof he arranged to meet her at the time and place she died.”
Portia picked up another book. “I have heard it said, my lord,” she said delicately, “that you caught them together, and killed her after her lover left.”
His head came up sharply. “If I can find the man and shove his own billet doux under his nose, I promise you, my lady, I will make him confess his crime.”
It seemed to Portia an awfully thin thread to hang his salvation on. “Can the note still be here after so many years? Roger—”
“Never bothered to step foot in this room while I was master of the Hall. Why disturb it once he was viscount?”
“He might have sold off all the books.”
“He had no reason to.” Ashburne’s jaw shifted. “He ought to have had no reason to.”
“But why wait all this time? You might have cleared your name years ago.”
“If, at the time, I could have found a single, quiet moment to think, to understand the significance of that note, perhaps I might. But the hounds were too hot upon me and it was not until I was well away that I realized what had been under my nose the whole time. It seemed to me then, freshly escaped from both Ransley and the sea, a faint and threadbare hope, not worth putting my neck back into the noose for. I determined to make a new life.” Ashburne’s shoulders shifted. “I won’t pretend I’ve never regretted that choice. But Roger had stood by me, helped me escape at great risk to himself.”
