by Sophia James
‘Place your right hand on the Bible, Gabriel.’
He had done so, waiting for his chance to disarm her.
‘Swear you will love me for ever, in God’s name. I want to hear you say it now and mean it.’
He’d swallowed and hesitated. He wasn’t a man unable to use a lie for his own means even in a house of God, but there was something else at play here, something hidden and desperate.
‘Say it.’
As one hand had covered her belly in that certain protective gesture he suddenly understood.
‘You are with child?’
She had nodded, the gun lowering, but not forgotten.
‘Is it mine?’
Please, God, let it not be. If you ever do anything at all for me, my lord, please do not let this child be mine.
She shook her head and relief flooded through him. ‘But it’s not my husband’s, either. George Friar, my husband’s cousin, took me against my will and I could not stop him.’
She was crying. Loudly. ‘I think he would kill Randolph if he had the chance, too. Take me away with you, Gabriel, because you are the only one who has ever been truly kind to me. Say you love me and we can be free.’
And when he could not the candle was in her hand and then it was within the old curtain dividing the font from the chapel proper.
The horror must have shown on his face as the flame took, for she suddenly and simply stepped back into it, fire racing up her wide skirts and into her loosened hair.
He had tried to save her, tried to find the woman under the heat and bring her out, but the smoke had billowed, death tracing their skin with its blackness, the last echo of reason as he reached for the water in the font and poured it across them.
‘It was a month before I remembered anything again,’ he said softly as Adelaide’s hands traced the ravages of fire upon his thigh. ‘For a time I thought it was me who had killed her and then bits came back.’ Guilt made his voice hoarse. ‘We both betrayed each other, I think, her in love and me for the love of secrets. She was a means to an end and I deserved all that I have now.’ He sat up straighter and frowned. ‘But she gave me the names and I remember them now. George Friar is the one who killed Randolph Clements, the one we want.’
‘We?’
‘The Service. When Daniel was here he brought me a letter from Alan Wolfe that said Henrietta’s husband had been murdered. They found his body in a tavern near Oxford. Odds are it was Friar’s work for he has left his lodgings and disappeared.’
‘To go where?’
‘That’s what I plan to find out.’
‘I met him at an afternoon soirée in London just before we were married and he insinuated he knew about Kenneth Davis and the way he had attacked me. He wanted me to go with him as his wife back to the Americas, though it was my fortune he had his eye on. There is a side to him that he does not show often, a darker side.’
‘Is Davis in England, then?’ Gabriel tried to keep the fury from his tone.
‘No.’
God, could Friar come back here, then, to Ravenshill Manor where it had all started? Was he after some sort of twisted vengeance with Adelaide as the bait? He held his wife closer and kissed her hair, but the darkening sky outside looked more threatening than it had done before and the lack of manpower at Ravenshill needed redressing.
He did not want to worry her with this, but he needed to be ready just in case. Standing, he stretched, trying to look nonchalant, but he should have realised that Adelaide’s mind was turning as fast as his own.
‘Would he come here, do you think? Would he be after you next because of Henrietta Clements?’
He smiled. God, this is what it was to be married. You forgot about yourself and thought of the other person. The stakes heightened and a new fear rose. If anything ever happened to Adelaide he would not survive. He knew that with a certainty that took the breath from him.
‘We will be safe, sweetheart, I swear it.’
* * *
Gabriel sat at the window that night and looked across the land of Ravenshill before him. Bathed in the oncoming dusk he could see as far as the Barron Hills in one direction and the Scott River in the other. His land. Wesley land; land that had been in the family for generations and generations, wrought in pain and protected in blood.
He felt safe here, he thought, because he knew the lie of it, the hidden places and the valleys, the streams and the meadows. Oh, granted, Henrietta had surprised him once in the chapel with her madness and her delusions, but he was not the same man that he had been then. Now he had a purpose to live for, a reason for laying down his life and protecting his family.
Adelaide. They might never have children, but they would always have each other. His mind wandered to clever dark-haired little girls with smiles like their mother, but he shook the thought away. Even given his love for his wife his libido had not awakened. He swore beneath his breath, but softly, for Adelaide was asleep behind him, curled up in repose, and he did not wish to wake her.
‘Come on, you bastard,’ he whispered and his fingers curled around the barrel of his gun. ‘Show yourself to me so that we can meet honestly and finish this.’
But nothing moved as the sky lightened and the dawn broke pink over the lush green landscape that was Ravenshill.
Chapter Seventeen
Daniel, Amethyst and baby Robert Wylde came to the Manor the next morning, stopping in on their way back to Montcliffe.
‘Amethyst was fretting at Colton House and she wanted to be home, but we needed to tell you again, Adelaide, of how much we will always be in your debt. If there is ever any favour you wish from us...’ Daniel Wylde stopped and shook his head. ‘You would only need to ask and it shall be yours.’
‘I would like your friendship,’ she said and gave Amethyst a hug before taking the baby. He was small and beautiful with rosebud lips and a shock of dark hair. As unfocused blue eyes watched her own she smiled.
‘He is Robert after my father,’ Amethyst explained, her fingers stroking the downy head. When Adelaide looked up and saw her husband’s eyes on her holding little Robert she also saw what no one else ever would.
Loss.
It was scrawled across the gold with a flaring damage. Fleeting and then hidden.
Did he think it mattered so very much to her? Did he imagine he was less of a man only because he could not father a child? Crossing the room, she laid the baby in his arms, liking the way his bigness cradled the fragility. Their circle of progeny might be broken, but others could be formed. Others like this child, one small hand winding its way around her husband’s finger. Adelaide knew enough of life to understand the beauty of compromise.
‘We shall always be here for you, little one,’ she said softly. ‘In good times and in bad.’
‘Speaking of bad,’ Daniel suddenly said, ‘have you heard any more from the Service about Clements’s death, Gabe?’
‘I’m certain it was George Friar who killed him. Clement’s cousin,’ he clarified as Daniel looked puzzled. ‘He was the one who stood to inherit any money. Friar told Adelaide he needed cash to inject into a Baltimore project, and with Henrietta dead there was only Randolph in the way.’
‘But wouldn’t others suspect him?’
‘He set himself up an alibi with those who he’d been in cahoots with, men whose interest in politics did not quite reach to the shedding of blood for it. Friar undoubtedly was the one who did that and he chose his accomplices well.’
‘Do you have proof?’
‘Only the memory of Henrietta’s last words. She told me about Friar before she threw herself into the flames, but I had not remembered it until yesterday.’
‘A timely recollection, then. How dangerous is he, do you think?’
Gabriel ignored Daniel Wylde’s question and posed one
of his own. ‘When you go back to Montcliffe, would you take my wife with you?’
‘No.’ Now Adelaide understood. ‘I am going nowhere without you, Gabriel. We could both leave and then Lucien and Francis could help you, too.’
‘Daniel will bring them back once he has seen you safe. Please, Adelaide. I can’t think of you and Friar both and I am well able to look after myself here.’
Adelaide thought wildly. She could not ask Daniel to stay and assist Gabriel because he would want to be sure to shepherd his wife and baby to safety. And there would be a gap of hours that Gabriel would be all alone. She thought of the servants and knew they would be some help, but against a trained killer...?
‘You would return to Ravenshill immediately?’ This question she asked of Daniel.
‘I would.’
‘Then I will do as you ask, Gabriel.’ She thought that her heart might just break there in that room with the jagged thought of leaving.
* * *
‘Gabriel is the happiest I have ever seen him look,’ Amethyst said as the carriage swept through the impressive lands of Ravenshill. ‘Daniel says we should take to the game of matchmaking with more alacrity as we are undoubtedly successful at it.’
‘Where is your husband?’ Laughing, Adelaide glanced outside to see if she could see Lord Montcliffe on the horse he had mounted as they left the house.
‘He’s scouting ahead probably. Just to be certain that it is safe and that all...’
Her words died on the sharp crack of a bullet and then a second and third one. Any hope that there was a hunter nearby died with the slowing of the coach.
‘My God, where is Daniel?’ Amethyst Wylde’s panicked voice rose above the silence and she tucked baby Robert into his tiny bed on the floor and draped her skirts across him.
Protection.
Adelaide saw the look of it in her eyes even as she swallowed back her own fright.
The carriage door opened a few seconds later and George Friar stood there, a different man from the way he had looked in London with a bloodied bandage around his hand and in clothes like those worn by the countryside peasants.
‘Get out.’ The gun he had was pointed straight at her and without thought she did as she was told, shutting the door behind her once she was through it and hoping it was only she that he was after.
Please, God, do not let the baby cry, she thought as she walked away with Friar towards his horse. And please do not let Daniel ride over that ridge unarmed.
So focused on trying to keep the Wyldes safe she had forgotten about her own well-being, and when Friar brought his hand up and slapped her with all the force he could muster, she fell at his feet. Would he kill her here before she had the chance to fight back? Dizziness made her feel sick.
‘Get up.’ His mouth was a hard slash as he hailed her to the horse. ‘That is for slapping me at the ball and this is from Kenneth Davis.’ This time he punched her in the stomach, a hard indifferent fist that jammed the air from her windpipe and made her shake violently.
‘Now keep quiet and you might live awhile longer. It’s your husband I want. He killed Henrietta and he needs to pay for it.’
‘No. She...killed...herself...’
‘Liar.’
He hit her again across the cheek before hauling her up on the horse. Adelaide knew it would only be a matter of hours before Gabriel came to find her and she prayed to God that the mad and dangerous George Friar had not killed the Earl of Montcliffe.
* * *
Red-hot anger filled Gabriel’s head, anger that would not help anything.
The bastard had his wife. He had dragged her off out of the carriage and hit her. Hard. Amethyst had said so.
Daniel lay on the sofa with a bullet through his side, the kneeling apothecary trying to staunch the bleeding.
‘Friar caught me...as I came through a glade...of trees. Knocked me clean off my horse and...out cold.’
‘I found him after I had left the carriage. Our driver is dead and so is the other guard.’ Tears trailed down Amethyst’s cheeks and the grime of the day stained her clothes. Baby Robert had been taken upstairs, the housekeeper and two maids seeing to his every need.
‘So he took the track through the river?’ Gabriel asked again, already selecting guns and a knife from a cabinet in the corner.
It would be getting dark in a few hours. He had to find Adelaide before nightfall or else... Shades of what had happened to Henrietta Clements came to mind, but Gabriel pushed those away and barked out instructions to the few male servants he had kept on at Ravenshill after the fire.
‘Lock the doors after I go and don’t let anyone in, unless you can see it is me.’ He shoved a gun into the hands of his elderly butler and gave another to the footman. ‘Cover the house from each direction. If you see anything move, shoot first and ask questions later.’
Daniel had lost consciousness again now, his face pale and drawn.
‘Can you fix him?’ This was barked at Andrew McAuley, the local apothecary.
‘Yes. It is a surface wound. The bullet passed through the muscle on both sides, which explains the bleeding, but it is already stopping. But he mustn’t be moved for a good few hours until the blood sets.’
‘Very well. Amethyst, find some blankets from upstairs and make him warm. Get the housekeeper to make you a hot drink as well. You are shaking.’
And with that he left, the house behind him and the greying dusk in front.
Friar had gone to the old homestead near the quarry, he thought, as he mounted his horse brought to him by one of the stablehands.
‘I heard about your wife, sir, and I hope you find her soon. The building near the slopes of scree could be where he has taken her if the other lady was correct in her directions.’
‘My thoughts exactly. I want you to go up to the house and get the butler to give you a gun. If I am not back by the morning, tell Lord Montcliffe to organise a search party and send for the constabulary. Go and find Alex Watkins, too, and make certain he is armed.’
‘Very well, my lord,’ the other answered, holding the reins as he mounted and then handing them to him. ‘Good luck, sir.’
Then Ravenshill was behind him as was the growing, swirling wind. He’d have to be careful with that. If Friar’s horse smelt his one...?
He left that thought alone and thundered onwards.
* * *
Adelaide was tied to a tree, the bindings at her neck cutting off breath so that she had to sit up and tip her head backwards slightly just to gain air.
Don’t panic, she thought, as she watched George Friar. Don’t move, either. He had split her lip as he had hauled her from the horse and she had a pounding headache from where he had knocked her unconscious with the back of his heavy knife in order to tie her down.
She was expendable now. Gabriel would come and it did not matter if she lived or died. Friar had made that point eminently plain.
‘Do anything to annoy me and you are dead.’
The wind blew in steadily, a low and keening cry as it hit the tall pines and whistled through them. The sound of her heart kept the rhythm of the wind, too, thump, thump, thump, in her ears heavy and hard.
She felt sick and began to shake. If she vomited, she would be dead, the oxygen she took nearly too minimal to allow life even as it was. She swallowed back the bile as well as she was able and thought of Gabriel.
If he came straight through the path, that would be the end of it, but this was his land and he would know the traps. She prayed Amethyst had thought to see which direction Friar had struck out in as spots of white began to dance in her eyes, heat rising like flame across her.
A slow death. Unnoticed. Degree by degree. She could not even whimper for fear that Friar would kill her. Heavy dread gathered across pure hate and the
waste of everything spread over that.
To only just find happiness and then to lose it. She had finally understood what it was to be loved without reservation, without limits and now to have it snatched from her. No, she could not allow it.
Sitting up straighter, she tried to find the little air still left to her and clamped down upon her shaking.
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’
* * *
His wife was dead. He could see the whiteness across her face and the blood at her lip and eyes and head. The ropes had killed her, tightened by fear as a collar about her neck and from this distance he could see no movement and no breath. Her hands lay crooked at her sides like wooden marionettes in the Marais in Paris, abandoned after a puppet show.
Nothing mattered any more save to kill Friar. He came from the trees at the side with a guttural scream and fell upon the man before he had the chance to lift his gun.
One slice with his knife and another to the stomach; let him bleed out everywhere, his guts spilling on to the ground beneath him. A fitting end.
And then he was at the side of Adelaide, cutting the ties, loosening the ropes and laying her on the ground. Amazingly she took in breath, a huge gulp of air that changed her pallor from white to red in a matter of seconds and allowed her to lift one hand to his face, fingers shaking as she grasped his hair.
‘You are...here. I prayed to God...that you would come, but...’
He simply lifted her, away from the cottage, away from the stinking, bleeding body of Friar, away from the ropes and the reminder of what had been. She was recovering quite rapidly, her arms gripping his and her voice stronger. He thanked the Lord for it.
‘I love you, Gabriel. I knew you would come for me.’
When he sat her against the wall at the back of the house he began to laugh, the shock of escape perhaps, and the luck of it.
God. They were both alive and safe. She still lived and breathed and was. Alive.
The feeling of power hit him like a heavy blow right into the groin, taking the deadness and replacing it with pure and unadulterated lust. Vital. Quickened. Energetic. Any humour fled.
