Anger cleaved through my fear. “You knew the others were blaming me.”
“And I would have been a fool not to use that hysteria to my advantage,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Just in case Gage never found the scissors or the shawls so that he could accuse my wife of the murder.”
“You were going to kill her,” I spat. “You were going to kill your wife and then marry Lady Godwin’s sister.” I was furious he had been playing us all against each other. “Except Lady Godwin found out. She sent a letter to her sister, you know. And then she confronted you about it in the maze.”
“The bitch threatened to tell my wife,” he snarled, squeezing my arm even tighter. “Like she told her about our affair and the bastard growing in her belly.” He sighed heavily, as if his display of anger had disappointed him. “I never intended to kill Lady Godwin or her child, but she simply had to be stopped.”
The extreme changes in his tone unsettled me. He said the last so lightly, as if he were telling me he had to stop the viscountess from painting her parlor pink, not warning her friend of his treachery. I worried what a man with such quicksilver alterations in mood could be capable of. He was thoroughly unpredictable.
“So you decided to implicate your wife,” I asked, leading him on, needing to understand as much as I needed to keep him talking.
“Yes. The murder of both my former mistress and my wife would have thrown too much suspicion on me.”
Lady Stratford stumbled ahead of us as she stepped onto the loose sand of the beach and righted herself.
“Careful, darling,” her husband called up to her. “We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself. Not yet,” he hissed under his breath.
Shaken by his comment, I tried to pull from his grasp, but he yanked me closer. I knew if he took us out in that boat, things could not end well. There would be nowhere to run, no way to escape. As we drew nearer, I realized this might be my last chance. I couldn’t climb into that boat. Not without knowing I had done everything in my power, short of dying, to avoid it.
I waited until we reached the point where the ground leveled to give myself the best footing and then whirled around to drive my knee into Stratford’s groin. My brother had told me, once upon a time, that it was the most vulnerable spot on a man’s body, and should I ever get into trouble, that was the place to aim.
Regrettably, my aim seemed to be off. That, or Stratford was quicker than I gave him credit for. My knee collided with his thigh, and though he dropped his grip on my arm when he flinched, he did not go down as I’d anticipated. He snarled and grabbed me around the waist before I took two steps. Spinning me around, he struck me across the face.
I landed hard on my side in the sand, and it knocked the wind out of me. I gasped for air, and my eyes filled with tears from the sting of the blow. My left cheek throbbed, and I was having difficulty focusing on what was going on around me.
Before I could right myself, Stratford yanked me to my feet and lifted me into the boat. I plopped down on the bench with all the grace of a falling rock and would have tumbled over backward into the bottom of the boat if Celeste had not reached out to steady me. The boat swayed beneath me. Then Stratford hoisted himself over the side and finished maneuvering the tiny vessel out into the water with an oar. Before I could understand what was happening, we were too far away from the shallows to risk jumping out of the boat.
“Now,” Stratford declared, standing over me. “I would like you to row, Lady Darby.”
He held an oar out to me with one hand while pointing the gun at my chest with the other. I glanced down at my bound hands and he tsked. “It doesn’t take free hands to row. Though I’m sure Celeste will have a much easier time of it.” He glared pointedly at the other oar, and the maid immediately picked it up. He forced the oar between my hands. “No sudden movements,” he told us as he backed up to sit down in the stern of the boat. His eyes settled on his wife at the prow of the vessel behind me. “And you, my dear, need only look pretty. As that is all you seem capable of.”
I tried to ignore the sting of my cheek and the panic surging through my blood, but the distance growing between the shoreline and me was not helping. The wind whipped across the water, stirring up foamy whitecaps on the waves below my oar. The sky had steadily begun to clear, offering lengthier gaps between cloud banks so that the moon could shine bright and nearly full upon the choppy waters of the sea loch. To the north I could see the hills of the Isle of Ewe rising up out of the middle of the loch. I knew the waters were shallower near its southern tip. I pulled hard on my oar, trying to turn us toward the isle, but Stratford was ever conscious of our direction.
“Straighten out,” he ordered, almost shouting to be heard above the wind. “We’re heading west, Lady Darby.”
Into the deepest part of the loch.
Fear and frustration bubbled up inside me, threatening to overcome my thin veneer of composure. I wanted to cry, and I wanted to scream, and I knew none of this was going to stop Stratford from killing us.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I exclaimed. “You de-cided to kill your wife simply because she has not been able to conceive a child?”
“I need an heir, Lady Darby.” He spoke slowly and carefully, as if I were stupid. “It’s the only reason I wed in the first place. But my wife has been unable to provide me with one.” He glared over my shoulder at the countess. “When I discovered Lady Godwin was carrying my child, I finally knew for certain just who was at fault for my wife’s lack of conception. She neglected to tell me how worthless she was before we married. She tricked me.”
I glanced back at Lady Stratford. Her eyes were icy in the moonlight. “I never knew I was barren. How could I? I was a virgin when I married you.”
“You knew.” His voice was laced with contempt. “You had to. It was no wonder your family was so eager to see you wed to me.”
“You’re an earl! That’s why they wanted me to marry you.”
My hands cramped from trying to hold the oar in such an awkward manner, and my muscles ached from the exertion. Even with her hands free, Celeste seemed to be having just as much difficulty. While Stratford argued with his wife, our progress across the lake had slowed considerably, and I consciously allowed our speed to drop even more. I hoped that by doing so, there would be time for someone to notice we’d gone missing and come searching for us.
“It doesn’t matter!” Stratford slammed his fist down on the bench below him, making the boat sway and all of us jump. “You were useless to me. I should have recognized that sooner. I needed an heir, and you couldn’t provide one. So you needed to die so that I could remarry.”
“And how did you intend to do that?” Lady Stratford replied with an amazing amount of daring. I feared her emotions were making her reckless. “Were you planning to slit my throat like you did Lady Godwin’s?”
Stratford’s eyes gleamed with relish. “Of course not, my sweet. Your death needed to look like a suicide.”
His wife stiffened.
“A little bit of laudanum and two slits to the wrists seemed more ladylike.”
“With my embroidery shears? You never would have gotten away with it.” Her voice was still clipped, but it was fading.
“Ah, but if everyone discovered that Lady Godwin was expecting my child and that you knew about it, it would be all too easy to understand how you could be so distraught.” The feigned sorrow in his voice was far more chilling than his anger. “Especially when I told them how I blamed myself for not being more sensitive to your distress over your barrenness.”
“You never loved me at all,” she accused, heartbreak and disillusionment stretching her voice. “Not even on our wedding trip. When we . . .” She broke off, unable to complete the sentence.
Stratford’s jaw hardened as he watched his wife struggle with her emotions
.
“All I was to you was a . . . a broodmare,” she spat accusingly. The boat shifted as if she intended to rise from her seat.
He swung the pistol around to point it at his wife. “Ah, ah!” he warned her in mockery. “Let’s not be too hasty.”
Lady Stratford thunked back into her seat.
“It matters not to me now how soon you die, so long as your body washes up on shore. But I assume you would rather prolong the matter.”
“You said you needed an heir, but why?” I blurted, trying to distract him before his wife provoked him into firing his gun. I still didn’t understand his obsession with having a boy child. “Why does it matter who inherits the title after you die?”
“Because the earldom would go to a bloody Frenchman,” he snarled, leaning toward me. His dark eyes glittered almost feverishly in the moonlight, sending a chill down my spine. “I spent five years fighting the sons of bitches in Spain and Portugal and then at Waterloo. I took a bullet in the shoulder and another one grazed my scalp. I nearly died at the Battle of Salamanca. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let one of those frogs hold the title to one of the most ancient and venerable earldoms in all of England.”
The man was crazy. He was willing to murder four women and a child just so he could remarry and father an heir. I could understand his continued animosity toward the French, but not his willingness to go to such extreme measures to keep his title out of their hands. Perhaps the bullet that grazed his scalp had damaged his brain somehow, for I could not believe that a man who was right in the head would do such a thing.
My body went cold at the realization that we were in a boat in the middle of a storm-tossed loch with a madman. A murderer was dangerous enough, but as long as he was sane, there was at least some chance of rationalizing with him. A madman was unreasonable and unpredictable. We had no hope. He was going to kill us and dump us over the side.
A whimper caught in my throat, and I felt tears of despair begin to flood my eyes. I blinked them back, determined not to show my panic to this lunatic. I would not give him the satisfaction of watching me fall apart.
I allowed the wind that had picked up almost to a howl to whip the loose strands of my hair across my face, shielding my struggle as I turned to stare out over the loch. The glint of something on the water caught my eye. At first, I thought it might be the way the moonlight was striking the waves, or a seal venturing into the shelter of the loch from the sea, but then I realized that it was a ship. My heart leapt in my chest. Please let them be searching for us, I prayed. Please let it be Gage.
I studied Stratford through the tendrils of my hair, knowing I had to distract him. I had to give that boat enough time to slip as close to us as possible without the earl noticing. Otherwise, he might panic and shove us all overboard before the others were near enough to help us.
“But why kill the baby?” I asked, drawing Stratford from whatever dark thoughts he was contemplating. He glared at me. “I understand why you killed Lady Godwin. You had to keep her quiet so that she wouldn’t warn your wife.”
Lady Stratford gasped, having not been privy to our earlier conversation on the beach.
“But I don’t understand why you took the child from her womb. Why would you do such a thing? What purpose did it serve?”
Celeste made a gagging sound. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she was going to be sick.
“It didn’t serve a purpose,” Lord Stratford replied. “Other than to tell me whether the bitch was telling the truth.”
I gaped at him in horror.
“I needed to know whether she really carried my child. And I was curious whether it was a boy.”
Lady Stratford choked on a sob behind me.
“Besides . . .” Stratford’s mouth curled into a chilling smile. ”It all worked out rather well for me in the end. Ripping that bastard from the womb made Mr. Gage believe that the motive was the child. It helped to convince him that my wife was to blame, since she wanted a child so badly and she couldn’t have one herself.” His tone mocked her.
His eyes returned to me, narrowed in anger. “Everything was working out so well, until you decided to go searching for more evidence. You couldn’t leave well enough alone.” I shrank beneath his glare. “What was it that made you doubt my lady wife’s guilt? Couldn’t believe a delicate, well-bred creature would be capable of such a thing?” he sneered.
I flicked a glance at the approaching boat, gauging its progress. It still seemed so far away.
“No,” I replied, keeping my voice even. “It was, in fact, the very same reason you believed we would suspect her in the first place—her desperate longing for a child.”
He scowled, clearly not liking my answer, and began to turn his head back toward Gairloch.
“You were the one watching me today,” I accused, frantic to keep his gaze away from the approaching vessel. The snap of the wind and the slap of the waves against our hull drowned out the sounds of the other boat’s pursuit, but I knew it was only a matter of time before Lord Stratford heard them.
His stare slid back to mine. “I’ve been watching you for quite some time. Since the night I returned to the castle to find Mr. Gage leading you and Lord Westlock back from the chapel. I knew then that you had been asked to assist him, and your actions since then have only confirmed my suspicions.” He shook his head as if in scolding. “You should have listened to my letters.”
I tensed. So he had written them. But of course he had. That seemed rather obvious now. “Was it you in the servants’ stairwell?” I couldn’t resist asking. I wanted to know just how many of today’s ominous occurrences had been real and how many figments of my imagination.
I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “What do you think?”
I scowled. “What were you planning to do? Hit me over the head?”
“Perhaps. You’re far too resourceful, Lady Darby. First you took the dogs with you on your little walk and made it impossible for me to get close to you without raising an alarm. Then you eluded me on the stairs.” My muscles tightened as he gestured with his gun, reminding me just how quickly he could end my life. “When Faye mentioned that you had been in Lady Godwin’s chamber today, I knew you were looking for something, and I couldn’t risk having you find evidence to implicate me. So when I saw you cross the stable yard toward the carriage house, I knew it was my chance to finish you both.” His gaze slid over each occupant of the boat, and he grinned. “It has worked out amazingly well. Perhaps I should thank Cromarty’s mare for dropping her foal last night. At the time, I cursed it for preventing me from getting to my lovely wife and her maid, but since waiting has dropped you into my lap, Lady Darby, and provided me with a wonderful scapegoat, I cannot be cross.”
I gasped. “You intend to blame me.”
His smile turned smug. “Whom do you think they will blame when you and Celeste have disappeared and my wife’s body washes up on shore with a bullet through her heart?”
My hands tightened around the oar.
“Tut-tut,” Stratford scolded me, aiming the pistol directly at the center of my chest. “No sudden movements with that, Lady Darby. My gun is liable to go off.”
I gritted my teeth, wanting to snarl at the man. How dare he threaten my life and plot to ruin my reputation, and that of my family, once and for all. What would Philip and Alana, and my nieces and nephews, have thought if he had succeeded? What would Gage? Would they have continued to believe in my innocence? Or be forever shamed by my memory?
I felt an absurd surge of relief that his plans were not to come to fruition. It was obvious now that the other boat was pursuing us, and whether or not I survived this ordeal, they would know I had not orchestrated it. Neither I, nor my family, would be blamed.
I was so absorbed by my conflicting e
motions that I failed to act quickly enough when Celeste gasped, obviously having caught sight of the boat. Stratford turned his head to see it. By this point, I could clearly see the prow of the ship slicing through the water toward us, closing the distance fast. My heart surged in my chest. I wanted to reach out and smack the foolish maid.
Stratford growled and leaned forward to yank the oar from my grasp. “Damn you!” He grabbed hold of the bindings around my wrists and pulled me toward him.
Crying out in pain, I tumbled to the floor, purposely trying to evade his grasp. A man shouted from the other boat.
“You saw them coming, didn’t you?” Stratford released the rope to tug on my arm. “Get up!”
I struggled against him, even though it wrenched my shoulder terribly, for I knew that if he managed to pull me to my feet, he would use me as a shield. Stratford had no more than two bullets in his double-barreled pistol, and without me for leverage, they would be nearly useless against the four or five men in the other boat. He might shoot two of them, but he would never get away. I cringed at the image of Gage or Philip taking those bullets.
“Get up,” Stratford snarled.
And then I saw it. Poking up out of his right Hessian boot was the knife—the blade he had used to cut the rope. The weapon I suspected had actually been used to slice Lady Godwin’s throat and abdomen. I glanced up to find Stratford’s gaze focused on the men in the boat, and reached out to grip the knife handle clumsily between my bound hands. As he jerked me upward, making the muscles in my shoulder scream in protest, the blade slid cleanly from its sheath.
Stratford whirled me around in front of him, wrapping his arm across my shoulders and pressing the cool muzzle of the gun against my temple. “Stop right there. You, too, darling.”
I closed my eyes, terrified for a moment that the pistol would go off. When my pounding heart did not stop beating, I cautiously opened my eyes to see Lady Stratford standing in the back of the boat gripping Celeste’s oar. Her icy eyes glimmered with fury. Her gaze met mine and briefly dipped to the knife between my palms, letting me know she had seen it. She did not give me away.
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