At Long Last

by Shirlee Busbee

  "I generally," Tony said mockingly, "try to provide some degree of comfort for my, ah, ladies."

  Arabella rounded on him. "Do you know that you are the most odious man it has ever been my misfortune to meet?"

  Tony laughed and pulled her against him. "Also, I trust, the most fascinating."

  Swooping down on her mouth, he kissed away the angry retort that rose to her lips, and it was several long moments later before Arabella managed to extricate herself from his embrace. Head spinning, pulse pounding, she put a distance between them, and muttered, "Oh, definitely fascinating, if you remember that one can find even a rattlesnake fascinating."

  He laughed again, and, putting out a hand, said, "Come, let us cry quits. I did not come here to be wounded by that sharp little tongue of yours. Let us see what has to be done to make our abode comfortable."

  It was easier to go along with him than argue, especially since that was the reason she had come to the lodge in the first place. They worked together quietly for several moments, Arabella remaking the rumpled bed while Tony finished sweeping the floor. He had brought some candles and pewter holders, and she placed them on the mantel for future use, and put a pair of long-stemmed glasses and a half dozen or so bottles of wine in the rough pine cupboard that sat on the wall opposite the bed. There was even a matching washbowl and pitcher sitting on the pine table, and her lips tightened: he had planned well. Picking up the silver-backed brush and the matching comb and mirror, she stared consideringly at them. Tony was either being thoughtful, or he was very practiced in arranging trysting places. The latter, she decided unhappily, remembering the night she had found him naked, here in this very place, on that very bed with an equally naked Molly Dobson beneath him.

  Tony caught sight of her expression and, setting aside the broom, crossed to her. His hands on her shoulders, he said perceptively, "Don't, sweetheart. Don't think about the past. Forget what lies behind us. Let us begin anew."

  She gave him a sad smile. "I cannot. I believed you once. I do not think that I ever shall again."

  "Then I shall just have to change your mind, won't I?" he said, his gaze locked on hers.

  "Do you think you can?" she asked, curious in spite of herself, angry at the leap of hope in her breast.

  "I only know that I am going to try my damnedest to do so," Tony vowed softly. He bent his head, clearly intending to kiss her, but he stopped abruptly, his gaze fixed on the wound on her neck.

  "What is this?" he asked, tracing the mark with one long finger. "If I did not know better, I would swear that it is a knife wound."

  Instinctively Arabella's hand, went to cover the nasty slash along her neck. When she had dressed that morning, she had arranged a soft scarf around her neck to hide the evidence of the previous night's horrifying attack; she had still been wearing the scarf when she had arrived at the lodge. During their lovemaking Tony must have tossed the scarf aside.

  Turning away from him, she said, "It is. Someone broke into Greenleigh last night and threatened me. He used a knife."

  Tony's hand closed painfully around her arm, and he swung her around to face him. The fierce expression on his face startled her, the look in his eyes making her mouth go dry.

  "Someone attacked you?" he asked with quiet savagery.

  Mutely, Arabella nodded, her eyes wide with astonishment. She had never seen him this way before, so dangerously intent, so full of grim purpose. There was a lethal air about him, the set of his chiseled lips and the inimical gleam in the depths of his dark blue eyes in stark contrast to his usual mocking, teasing manner.

  Aware of Arabella's astonishment, Tony fought with the blind fury that coursed through him at the knowledge that someone had dared harm her. He prided himself on his cool head and iron will, but where Arabella was concerned, he'd never had much control, never since the first moment he had laid eyes on her. To know that someone had threatened her, had actually harmed her, filled him with a volatile mixture of stark fear and cold rage. Someone, he thought fiercely, was going to be very sorry. Very, very sorry.

  Taking a deep breath and forcing himself to act rationally, Tony guided her to one of a pair of stout oak chairs in the lodge.

  "Tell me about it," he said as he settled her in one of the chairs.

  Arabella did, leaving nothing out. It was a relief to share her fears with Tony, to share with him the whole incredible story.

  By the time she finished speaking, most of Tony's initial rage had abated and he was able to view the incident with some, although not complete, objectivity.

  "It is a wild tale you tell, my dear," Tony admitted, as he paced the floor in front of her. "A tale, that were it not for the mark on your neck, I would have trouble believing."

  "Thank you very much," Arabella said dryly, irritated that it was only the wound on her neck that convinced him of the truth of her words. "You have as good as admitted that you would think me a liar."

  Tony winced. "That was not my intention. I only meant that it is such an unlikely happening, that it is difficult to believe that someone actually went to those lengths in order to retrieve something he claims you have. You have no idea what he was after?"

  Arabella shook her head. "None. Except for seeing Leyton and you on Tuesday afternoon, I have been nowhere except Highview and Greenleigh. I took nothing with me from Leyton's and"—she shot him a look—"I do not believe that it was you who held a knife at my throat last night."

  Ignoring the jab, Tony muttered, "Well, your unknown guest last night certainly wasn't Leyton."

  "What do you mean? How do you know that it wasn't Leyton?"

  Cursing his own clumsy tongue, Tony said bluntly, "Leyton is dead. He was murdered Tuesday night."

  Arabella paled. One hand at her throat, she asked, "And how do you know this?"

  "Because," Tony said wearily, as he threw himself down in the chair beside Arabella, "I saw his body."

  "You went to Oakmont after you escorted me home to Highview?"

  Tony nodded, pretending not to hear the accusatory note in her voice. "After what happened to you on the road, it seemed a logical move." At the expression on her face, he said hastily, "I wasn't going to harm him. I just wanted to assure myself that Leyton couldn't have been the man who tried to rob you."

  "And were you assured?" she asked sharply.

  Tony shook head. "No. In fact, what I found convinced me that my suspicion of Leyton had been correct."

  "You found proof that he tried to rob me?"

  "Yes," Tony admitted. "I found proof that Leyton, or at least someone from Oakmont, had been out that night and had returned not too many minutes ahead of my arrival there. One of the horses had obviously been ridden hard—the animal was still lathered and damp. And Leyton had a welt on his face, where you whipped him."

  Arabella frowned. She rather thought that she would have preferred some nameless individual who just happened to have tried to rob her on Tuesday night than to know that it had been someone she knew. Especially someone who was now dead. Uneasily, her hand went to the slash on her neck as another even more frightening thought occurred to her.

  In a small voice, she asked, "Do you think the man who attacked me last night might have murdered Leyton?"

  Grimly, Tony nodded. "I think it is a logical conclusion. While Natchez is noted for its criminal activities, most of them usually take place amongst the rougher element. I find it hard to believe that the attempted robbery, Leyton's murder, and your experience last night were unrelated acts of violence." He looked at her, the expression in his eyes hard to define. "You seem to be the key, my dear."

  "How could I be? I don't know anything."

  "Perhaps you know something or have seen something that is important, only you don't realize it," Tony offered.

  Arabella started to protest, then closed her mouth with a snap. "There was someone else at Leyton's when I came to call," she said slowly. "He was hiding, but I saw his boots protruding from beneath the curtains in Leyton's office
."

  Tony sat up with a jerk. His gaze intent, he demanded, "Are you positive? That there was someone there—it wasn't simply an empty pair of boots placed behind the curtains?"

  Arabella threw him a glance of scorn. "No, Tony, dear, it was not an empty pair of boots! Besides, Leyton was acting strangely. He was nervous, and he definitely wanted me to leave. I thought it was because of the nature of my call, but now I wonder. And of course, once I spied the boots, and knew that someone was spying on us, I wanted out of there immediately." She gave a delicate shudder. "It was unnerving."

  Liking what he was hearing less and less, Tony stood up and walked impatiently around the room. "We have to assume," he said thoughtfully, "that Leyton was in some sort of partnership with someone—your fellow with the boots—and that, for whatever reasons, they had a falling out and Boots, for want of another name, killed Leyton."

  "And they fell out," Arabella guessed, "because of something that Leyton had, something Boots wanted and Leyton wouldn't give to him—because once he did..." Her voice lowered in horror as she said, "Because once he did, he knew Boots would kill him!" She swallowed. "I must have interrupted their meeting, and after I left, Leyton got it into his head that I had taken whatever it was they were arguing over. Which is why he later tried to rob me—he needed to get it back in order to protect himself from Boots." She frowned. "He must have planned once he had it back to put it somewhere safe and hold it over Boots. Only he failed." Her face went white. "And Boots knew it!"

  "Which is why Boots paid you a visit last night," Tony ended grimly.

  Arabella leaped up from her chair, clearly agitated. "Oh, Tony," she cried, "do you think that is what happened? That this Boots person believes that I have whatever it was that Leyton had?"

  Pulling her into his arms, Tony sighed. "The tale hangs together, sweet. It makes more sense than to believe that none of the incidents are connected. That they were just coincidence."

  Her face buried in his shoulder, Arabella asked in muffled tones, "Then he'll be back, won't he? He'll try again, won't he?"

  Tony's arms crushed her to him. "Not," he said fiercely, "if I have anything to say about it."

  "But how can you stop him? We don't know who he is—or even what he wants!"

  "And that should be our first step—finding out what it is he thinks you have."

  Arabella shot him an irritated glance and reluctantly left the comfort of his arms.

  "I've already told you—I don't have anything!"

  "Let's just make certain, shall we?" Tony suggested with such reasonable calm that Arabella's palm ached to connect with his jaw.

  "And how do you propose we do that?" she asked acidly. "Take an inventory of all the contents at Highview and Greenleigh?"

  Tony smiled and shook his head. "No, nothing that drastic. The whole affair seems to start with your visit to Leyton's. We can begin there. So tell me again everything that happened."

  Succinctly Arabella did, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

  "So you see," she said exasperatedly, "there is no way that I could have taken something that wasn't mine from Leyton's."

  "Are you certain? What about when you gathered up the deeds from the floor? Could something of his have been amongst them?"

  Arabella started to say no, but considering the incident, she admitted, "I suppose it's possible—there were already several papers lying on his desk when I arrived. If it were something small or just a piece of paper, I might not have noticed it when I put everything away."

  "Where are the deeds now?"

  "At Mr. Haight's. I left them in the portfolio and returned them to him for safekeeping yesterday, before I came to Greenleigh."

  "It is too late to do it today, but I suggest that tomorrow you drive into Natchez and look inside that portfolio and see if there is anything mixed in with your papers."

  Arabella made a face. What Tony was proposing made sense, but she was getting rather weary of driving into Natchez and seeing Mr. Haight. Still, it would answer once and for all the question of whether she had anything that didn't belong to her in that portfolio. If they found something, the object should give them a clue about Boots's identity. If there were nothing amongst her papers, then they would have to rethink the situation. She really didn't have a choice, Arabella thought wryly.

  "Very well," she said unenthusiastically, "I shall do it."

  "Shall I escort you?"

  "If I say 'no', will it deter you?"

  Tony laughed. "Probably not."

  "Since I don't seem to have a choice in the matter," she muttered, "I shall be resigned to your company tomorrow morning."

  Having assured himself that Arabella had taken adequate precautions against another nocturnal visit from Boots, they made plans to meet on Friday morning. After a bit more tidying of the lodge, they left. Tony led his horse and walked beside her until Greenleigh came into sight. From the concealment of the forest, Tony waited, watching her until he knew she was safe inside the house. Only then did he turn his horse aside and begin the ride back to Sweet Acres.

  He was more worried about the situation than he had admitted to Arabella. None of it made sense, and he was aware that while their speculations held together, they could be mistaken. The events might not be connected. Worse, it was possible that they would find nothing in her papers that shouldn't be there. Which event, he thought sourly, would blow a very large hole in their web of suspicions.

  Hot, dusty, and irritated, Tony was in no mood for visitors when he arrived at Sweet Acres half an hour later. The sight of a neat bay gelding tied to one of the black-iron hitching posts at the front of the house made him swear under his breath. Now who?

  Entering the house, Tony brushed aside Billingsley's lofty announcement that a young gentleman caller was waiting to see him.

  "Whoever it is," Tony muttered, "can damn well wait until I have washed some of the dirt from me and changed my shirt."

  Ten minutes later, having refreshed himself, Tony descended the stairs.

  Confronting his beak-nosed butler, he asked, "Who is it? And where have you put him?"

  Billingsley sniffed, obviously put out by Tony's earlier brusque manner. "It is a Mister Jeremy Montgomery. I told him that you were out, but he insisted upon waiting for you. Having no idea," he said grandly, "where you had gone or when you would return, I placed him in the green saloon and provided him with refreshment."

  If Tony was surprised to find that Arabella's brother had come to call, it was not evident when he pushed open the doors and walked into the green saloon. But he was surprised. Very. And wary. Had young Montgomery found out about the infamous bargain he had forced upon Arabella? He sighed. The last thing he needed was to be issued a challenge by this young cub.

  The two men shook hands, introducing themselves. Tony had never met Jeremy; Arabella's brother had only been sixteen at the time of their aborted engagement and had not yet begun to join adult society. And since Tony had not been exactly welcome at Highview, despite Arabella's professed determination to marry him, there had been little interaction between Tony and the rest of her family.

  Tony was not at first inclined to like Jeremy—after all, the silly young fool had gambled away his inheritance and put his family in jeopardy. On the other hand, Tony admitted, everyone was entitled to their youthful mistakes. The Lord knew that he had made plenty of them—far more grievous ones and with fewer excuses for them than Jeremy. And, he reminded himself, he had Jeremy to thank for creating a situation that put Arabella in his arms once more. Taking that into account, Tony was inclined to give Jeremy the benefit of the doubt.

  Jeremy's handshake was firm and Tony was favorably taken by the honest and direct way Jeremy's blue eyes met his and the boy's overall manner. Motioning him to a seat, Tony took a comfortable chair covered in a dark green patterned silk opposite him.

  Having heard for years, tales of Tony Daggett's many excesses and the rampant gossip of murder and despicable acts that follow
ed the man, Jeremy was not prepared to like Tony. Most of the talk he might have brushed aside, were it not for what Daggett had done to Arabella—for that, Jeremy found himself unable to forgive the man.

  And yet, Jeremy found himself in a dilemma. Expecting to be confronted by a murderous, dishonorable, dissipated knave, he wouldn't have been surprised to find Sweet Acres a den of depravity, with Daggett roaring drunk and the house filled with all sorts of blackguards and lewd women. Instead he had found a gracious, well-run home and a neatly dressed gentleman whose manner and demeanor betrayed only good breeding and polite interest. Certainly the handsome, urbane man sitting across from him did not in any way resemble the ogre he had been anticipating. Reminding himself that Daggett had once disarmed Arabella and that appearances could be deceiving, he decided to withhold judgment.

  Nervously clearing his throat, Jeremy began, "You are no doubt wondering why I have called, sir."

  "The question had crossed my mind," Tony said easily, crossing one booted foot over the other. "The relationship between our two families has not been particularly, er, warm."

  Jeremy's jaw tightened. Although he had told himself he would not bring up the past, he could not help himself. His blue eyes burning with resentment for the way Daggett had treated Arabella, he muttered, "Under the circumstances, I think our stance is understandable."

  Tony sighed. Unless he wished to meet Jeremy on the dueling field, he had better pick his words with care. "I cannot argue with you," he said quietly. "It was a deplorable situation."

  It was on the tip of Jeremy's tongue to demand an explanation for Tony's previous cruel treatment of Arabella, but recalling that they were in debt to this man, he stifled the words.

  Contenting himself with a stiff nod, Jeremy said coolly, "I am not here to discuss what happened five years ago. I wish to talk to you about the agreement you made with my sister concerning the return of my vowels."