Hero shook her head in confusion. “What do you mean? They came in through the service entrance, of course.” Seeing his puzzled reaction, Hero sighed. “Did Jennings tell you nothing at all? How do you think Dickson gets in here without you seeing him?”
Ian followed her to the far outside corner of his wardrobe and watched with surprise as she depressed a hidden panel and it swung outward, much as the tiny door of her mantel safe had. She pulled the door open and Ian looked inside to find a narrow, spiraled staircase within nestled into the thick castle walls. It was free of dust, well lit, and obviously frequently used. Bloody hell. All his precautions with locking doors and it had all been for naught.
Running a hand through his hair and over his face, Ian groaned in the face of his own idiocy. The home of his childhood had been much smaller, and it never occurred to him that a larger, older castle would have hidden passages built into the walls. He had thought that the two sets of servant’s stairs outside the servant’s hall on the opposite side of the castle near the kitchens and the ones just adjacent to his chambers were their main corridors. Never had he imagined anything like this. “How many of these stairs are there?”
Hero frowned. “They are only in the original parts of the castle. There’s yours, and I have one as well. There’s another to the State Room, and then at the two eastern corners of the castle, the Library up to the Blue Drawing Room and the Dining Room up to the Long Drawing Room.”
“And everyone knows of these?” he asked, thinking of the futility of his every action. He might easily have been killed in his sleep. “Everyone but me, that is? How could I be so stupid?”
“Goodness, Ian. It’s not your fault,” she said in practical tones. “Jennings is to blame for not giving you a proper introduction to your new home.”
It struck Ian then. Aye, that was how the intruders had slipped past the guards. There weren’t merely hired thugs at work; there was someone in his household assisting them. When Daphne had been in residence, he had assumed she was the one doing so, but there had to be another in her employ as well. Someone like Jennings. Jennings would have known that Ian was unaware of the passages. Perhaps he was assisting Daphne in her efforts to expunge him from Cuilean. Boyle had said that his steward had supported Daphne’s claim to the title. Perhaps she had promised the man much more than Hero had even insinuated in exchange for his help.
It might even be that the mysterious man the arsonist and Cravet had been hired by had been Jennings himself. It would explain the apparent foreknowledge of the attackers and how they seemed to know where he was and what he was doing. It would also explain why no alarms had been raised against strangers lurking about the castle until tonight.
A killer in their own ranks.
Ian bristled at the thought. Betrayed by one of his own. By someone he had trusted.
He would put Jennings and tonight’s intruder face to face and see whether Jennings was identified, Ian decided. Perhaps, all this could finally, truly end tonight. With a determined nod, Ian took a step into the staircase, only to have Hero pull him back.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I have to …” Ian’s brows rose at the look on her face. She had a look that his old nanny had once used on him that froze him in his tracks. Hero’s was just as effective. It was surprisingly daunting, and unexpected enough to lift away some of his frustration with a trace of humor. “I suppose you would like your explanation first.”
“Indeed, I would.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“So these accidents haven’t been inadvertent at all?” she said sometime later, after Ian had reviewed the long list of events that had occurred over the last week. The very thought that someone was targeting Ian sent a shudder of foreboding through her. He had eluded Death’s grasp again and again! Hero sank down on a chair near the small fireplace in astonishment. She might have lost him in a half dozen different ways and would never have known it was the result of deliberate malice. “Now I am the one who feels the fool. Why? Why would anyone want to harm you?”
“What else do I have but a title?” he asked simply.
Hero’s eyes widened. “You think Daphne did this? Is that why you sent her away? Because you thought she was trying to hurt us? You? Ah, I see, you think that Daphne was trying to kill you.”
“Don’t you?” Ian gestured to the bedchamber beyond the wardrobe door. “She essentially admitted that she had you run down in Glasgow.”
Hero slowly shook her head. “I can’t see it. You know I have little affection for her, but I can’t see Daphne doing anything so … well, messy.”
“Her methods would have left her with little blood on her hands,” he pointed out. “Taking you out as well would have left her with few people to point the finger at her. Besides, who else would benefit?”
Ian had a point there. With Daphne’s mother’s passing, she was the next in line for the title. Hero could think of no one else who would directly profit by Ian’s death. She thought again of Daphne’s reading of Villette. She had been passionate about the story and had vocally declared to her brother than she was taking control of her future.
That she was making things happen.
Is this what she had meant? Hero had thought Daphne was speaking of her pursuit of Ian’s person. She had planned to marry him to take the title, but with that option taken from her, would she truly resort to murder to get what she wanted?
Then she recalled the glint in Daphne’s eyes when she had looked at Hero. The jealousy. The hate. Hero wanted to deny it all but could see few flaws in Ian’s deduction. While she still didn’t think that Daphne was the sort to take a hands-on approach in enacting such a drastic solution, Hero could see that the detachment of hiring someone to do it for her might allow Daphne the buffer she needed to have it done. That sort of disassociation might allow her to think that her fate truly was to become the Marchioness of Ayr.
“Why not go to the magistrate?” she asked, and Ian told her about those trials as well.
Huddling into her dressing gown, Hero looked about her, not seeing just Ian’s wardrobe but the whole of the castle that had long been her home. She had always been safe there. Felt secure within the thick stone walls. Now she didn’t know what to think. “You should have told me, Ian,” she scolded, holding up a hand to halt his defense. “Yes, I already gathered that you did it to protect me, but that is not reason enough to keep something of this magnitude to yourself. You might have died and I never would have known the reason, never expected the truth.”
“I would do anything to spare you heartache, my love,” he maintained. “Anything to keep you safe.”
“The truth would accomplish either,” Hero insisted. “Promise me you won’t lie to me again.”
“Very well,” he said, then sighed at the impatient look in her eye. “I swear.”
Hero released a sad sigh as well, shaking her head. “So what now?”
“I plan to interrogate the man who was hired to set the fire,” Ian said simply. “I will need a confession for the magistrate to press charges. Daphne had help in this. He says there was another man who hired him as her agent. I think that man might have been Jennings.”
“Jennings!” Hero exclaimed in surprise. “Why surely …”
It seemed Ian could read her thoughts as clearly as she often read his, for he laughed humorously. “Aye, doesn’t come as much of a surprise, does it? It would be Jennings’s best bet for more freedom in ruling Cuilean.”
“Actually, I always rather considered her his worst alternative in the succession because she would want to rule with an iron fist,” Hero said, “but I can see where she might have been able to persuade him. What if the man doesn’t recognize Jennings?”
“Then we are back at square one,” Ian said grimly. “Though I don’t think I could keep Jennings on with any unresolved suspicions, if that were the case. Who else on the staff might have assisted her?”
Hero shook her head almost imm
ediately. “Most of the household staff have been here for almost a decade. They are loyal to the marquisate and to Cuilean; I know it.”
“And the others?” he asked. “What about Simms and Cooper?”
There was little to consider regarding her father’s nurses. “Both came with us from London, as did Mandy. They would have no reason to assist Daphne, even if she had opportunity to approach them. But what of these other men you have hired?”
“The magistrate personally vouched for them,” Ian said, dismissing the thought. “What of those on the grounds? How many are there?”
With a slow release of breath, Hero shrugged and considered the width and breadth of Cuilean and all it encompassed. “More than twenty in the castle, four in the laundry, six in the stables. Out on the grounds? The garden? The farm? A hundred, Ian. Easily.”
“That’s a broad pool of suspects,” Ian said grimly.
She nodded absently in agreement. “Docherty was about on the grounds late one night … ah, I see, he was searching the grounds for you.” Even if the groundskeeper hadn’t been out on the grounds at Ian’s command, Hero wouldn’t have been able to believe the man capable of this level of duplicity. She knew these people. They were her people, for all that she had left nine months before. Good, honest workers who spoke with her about their families and children. Who laughed and joked with her. She wouldn’t accept that the villain was one of her own.
Yet after what had happened tonight, she couldn’t deny that there was a murderer at Cuilean.
“I can hire more men to protect us,” Ian went on. “In the meantime, you stay close at all times, do you understand me? I dinnae want an argument from you, lass. I had thought you were no longer a target but this last has proven me wrong. Daphne is showing no reluctance in including you in her treachery.”
Hero nodded jerkily and rose to slide into his arms. She held him tightly, pressing her cheek against his chest. His heartbeat was strong and sure. “I don’t want to lose you, Ian.” The words were wrenched from deep within her. Surely, the utopian destiny Plato wrote of wouldn’t deliver a soul mate to her only to rip him away from her so soon, she thought, but fear for him held her firmly anyway.
Ian’s lips brushed the top of her head as his strong arms wrapped around her. “You won’t, my love. We will catch her, I promise you. You’re going to be stuck with me for a long while yet.”
His words weren’t meant only to reassure but to tease as well. Hero, however, could find no amusement in them. Despite Ian’s reassurance, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the danger wasn’t going to end anytime soon.
“Did I miss the campfire?” Beaumont asked from the doorway, wearing a blue silk waistcoat over his nightshirt and a pair of galoshes. The normally deep creases of his face were folded into even graver lines of disappointment.
Hero only rolled her eyes with a groan, unable to find the humor in her father’s antics as she normally did. This was more than a gray cloud hanging over their heads. It was dark and ominous, sending a shiver of foreboding down her spine.
Chapter Thirty-Two
A week later
Shrugging on his jacket, Ian made his way down the stairs, nodding to his guards as he passed. It had been a week since the fire. A week without further incident. While that was something to be glad for, Ian also knew that something would have to change soon.
Without the arsonist’s identification of Jennings as the agent who had hired him, there had been no progress made in finding conclusive evidence of Daphne’s culpability in the attacks. The week had been spent securing the grounds and vetting the estate workers. It vexed him deeply that they hadn’t identified Daphne’s accomplice. Knowing that a killer lingered in his home rankled, but short of firing the entire staff, Ian couldn’t come up with an absolute solution to that problem.
But the entire staff was also aware of the reason behind the recent questioning. They would be watching one another, and Ian’s hired guards were patrolling the castle at all hours now as well, keeping a watchful eye out for strangers and unusual movement. They would not be caught unaware again.
Such vigilance had rid them of any further incidents. There had been accidents, but nothing suspicious. While Ian was glad nothing untoward had occurred of late, he was also frustrated by the lack of progress in the investigation, by the need to lock his doors securely each night just to find a respite from the constant vigilance.
Life had become a series of watchful moments, of sickening anticipation.
He needed something to release them from the uncertainty that held the castle in its thrall. Everyone was walking on eggshells, including Hero, and Ian knew she was as weary as he of waiting for something to happen. Something to free them to live the life they were meant to live.
The worst of it was that there was something Ian was missing. He knew it but couldn’t put a finger on what it was. The answer to it all. It nagged at him like a distant voice calling at him, but Ian couldn’t understand the words.
And that frustrated him even more.
Following the sound of a piano being played, Ian turned at the bottom of the stairs and steered himself toward the music room. It was a mournful sonata that perfectly suited the dark mood of the castle. Hero had been subdued all week. Her worry for him was palpable. She feared for his life, fearing rightly that Ian would sacrifice his life for hers if need be. When they made love, she clung to him desperately. Her nights were tormented by nightmares.
The entire situation was quickly becoming intolerable. He had promised her happiness not this misery.
Pausing in the doorway of the music room, Ian was surprised to find not Hero but Beaumont at the piano. As lighthearted as the duke was, it was astonishing to see him play the somber work with such passion. His deeply lined face creased with emotion as his fingers worked agilely over the keys, and it was easy to see from whom Hero had inherited her talents on the pianoforte.
The last note sounded, lingering in the room, and Beaumont sat frozen for a moment, staring at the music. “Good morning, Harry,” Ian said softly. “Well played.”
Beaumont looked up with a sad nod. “It is … was … Valerie’s favorite work. I often played for her in the evenings before … Lately, I remember more and more. I cannot say I like it at all.”
Ian wondered what the duke meant by that. Had Beaumont’s “madness” merely been a way for him to cope with the loss of someone who apparently had meant far more to him than anyone had known? There was no way to tell unless the duke chose to share such confidences with Ian, but Ian knew he would never probe into anything so personal without Hero present.
“Where is Hero?” he asked. He had risen early to oversee the installation of a new gate door in the dungeons before the tides came in. Hero had promised to stay in the castle, but she hadn’t been above stairs when he had returned to change. Ian had thought she would be with her father. “Harry, have you seen Hero?”
“Yes, of course,” Beaumont told him as he began to poke out with one finger a more tawdry ditty. “We had breakfast together.”
“Where is she now?”
“She went shopping with her friends,” the duke told him. “The ladies do love to shop, don’t they?”
Ian came to attention in the doorway at that. Shopping? With her friends? He knew Beaumont wavered between reality and fantasy, but he didn’t usually round the bend into utter fabrication. Furthermore, Hero was well enough aware of the danger to either of them in leaving the castle unescorted. She wouldn’t have gone shopping. Surely not. “Which friends, Harry?”
“Lady Corbin? Lady Spears?” Beaumont shook his head. “It is hard to keep them straight.”
Shaking his head, Ian turned back into the hall to look for Hero himself or find another of sounder mind to provide him answers.
After breakfast that morning, Hero had gone to confer with Mrs. Potts over the menus for the day and see to the delivery of a new shipment of linens that she had ordered from France even before her original d
eparture from Cuilean almost a year before.
The diversion was a pleasurable one, following an unpleasant week. Thank God for her father, she thought. Without his good humor, Cuilean would have been a veritable mausoleum with everyone tiptoeing about as they were. The word was out among the staff, and everyone was on guard following the fire. The estate’s perimeter and gates were so heavily guarded she was surprised that this shipment had gotten through.
It was strange how quickly time flew. From her mother’s death, to Robert’s, to now. Just a year ago, Hero had sat with Jennings and the factory’s representative looking over their new line of bed and table linens edged with a new machine-made lace. They had been incredibly beautiful and made only for custom orders with silk embroidery and monogramming. When she had placed the order, Hero had had no way of knowing that she would lose her husband within the week and her home within months.
Now the order was delivered and she was once again at home and the mistress of Cuilean. It was curious how fate steered a person. “They are lovely, Monsieur Girard,” Hero complimented the agent as she ran her hand across the fine work Girard had laid out for her in Mrs. Potts’s office. “Just as you promised.”
“Again I apologize for the long delay in delivery, Madam Ayr,” Girard said in his light accent. “I must admit we had put the order on hold following your husband’s death. It wasn’t until your Monsieur Jennings contacted us several months ago on Miss Kennedy’s behalf that we continued. This castle has seen many troubled times, non?”
“You are quite right, monsieur,” she nodded. “I do appreciate you bringing them personally.”
“It was my pleasure, madam,” he said and bowed.
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