So Wild A Heart

by Candace Camp

She could not believe it. There had to be some other explanation. Elizabeth could not be evil. Perhaps the man had been hired by someone else and he was here pretending to be a gardener so that he could be near Miranda and find an opportunity to kill her. In that case Elizabeth would have known only that he was a gardener. Or else…Well, she could not think of another possibility at the moment, but surely, if she worked on it, she could come up with something. Veronica’s mother could not be a would-be murderess. Her father could not be married to a killer. It was clearly absurd.

  She sneaked a glance at Devin. She wanted to tell him her thoughts, but she knew that she could not. He would immediately assume that her stepmother was trying to kill her, and he would do whatever he had to to stop her. Miranda could not bear the idea of Elizabeth’s being exposed as a criminal and sent to gaol. It would kill her father, and the shame of it would dog Veronica the rest of her life. She knew that she would simply have to settle the question of Elizabeth’s guilt by herself.

  “Until we can figure this out, we have to do something to make you safe,” Devin was saying, and Miranda agreed absently.

  “You have to promise me that you will not leave this house alone,” he went on. “I intend to stay by your side every possible moment, but if I am not here, then you must not ride out alone—or even go for a walk in the garden. Agreed?”

  Miranda nodded. “Agreed. I shall wait for you inside like the frailest of females.”

  “I need to get you away from here. There are so many possibilities of attack in and around Darkwater. Obviously the fellow has no problem gaining entrance to the house. I think we should leave for Apworth Mountain as soon as possible. There is no way anyone can come at you without my knowing it out there.”

  “But how can we find the person responsible for the attacks if we are stuck out there?” Miranda argued reasonably.

  “You have a point.” He studied her, his face falling into thoughtful lines. “Perhaps…perhaps we can lay a trap for our culprit.”

  “A trap?” Miranda brightened. The thought of doing something active to find the killer appealed to her much more than passively hiding out. Unless, of course, the killer they trapped turned out to be Elizabeth….

  “Yes.” Devin smiled faintly, warming to his idea. “If we tell everyone that we are going on a trip to Apworth, to get away by ourselves after your ordeal in the cellar, then the killer will think that we are out there alone, vulnerable, unsuspecting, and he might come after us. Try to kill us with no witnesses around and make it look like another of his accidents. Except we won’t be alone or unsuspecting or vulnerable. We will be waiting for him. I can arrange for the gamekeeper and his son to meet us there. I trust both of them with my life. They can stand guard secretly, and when the killer comes, they will spring the trap.”

  “All right,” Miranda agreed.

  She only hoped that things would turn out so that they needed to use Devin’s plan. But first, tomorrow, she intended to have a little chat with Elizabeth.

  19

  To Miranda’s surprise, she found her stepmother waiting for her when she walked into the library the next morning. She paused on the threshold, hastily rearranging her plans.

  “Miranda!” Elizabeth popped to her feet. Her face was white and set, determined. “I—I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Good,” Miranda replied. “I wanted the same thing.”

  Looking at her stepmother, it was difficult to believe any of the thoughts that she had entertained last night. Still, there was no getting around the fact that Elizabeth had been talking to the man who had attacked her and Devin.

  “I know you will not want to hear this, but I have to say it,” Elizabeth began resolutely.

  “All right.” Miranda walked over to the library table and sat down, her eyes fixed on Elizabeth’s face.

  Elizabeth swallowed. “I—I hope that yesterday made you think again about what I said to you the other day. About your safety.”

  “Yes. It made me think a great deal about my safety.”

  “Someone lured you into the cellar, where you could have broken your neck. Or lain broken and bleeding for days—for who knows how long!” Elizabeth’s voice caught, and she paused for a moment, struggling visibly to gain control of her emotions.

  “Yes, I know.” Miranda forced back the instinctive pity she felt for Elizabeth and faced her coolly.

  “Do you believe me now? Do you see how Ravenscar is—”

  “Yesterday did not make me suspicious of Devin,” Miranda said pointedly. “After all, it was he who led the search party for me.”

  “No doubt he assumed you were already dead from the fall, or near death, and he would cast suspicion off himself by seeming to be looking for you frantically, worried about where you were.” Elizabeth paused, then added, “And that wasn’t the only attempt recently. The other day, when I drank your cup of chocolate, do you remember? I was terribly ill and sleepy afterward. I was so sleepy that I could barely keep my eyes open. I almost fell asleep walking up the stairs to my room. It was not natural. I didn’t know what to think. But yesterday I began to put two and two together. I realized that that had been another attempt on your life. Someone had put something in your chocolate, but their plan was foiled because you gave that cup to me.”

  A chill ran through Miranda as she considered her stepmother’s words. She remembered how they had tried to awaken Elizabeth but had been unable to, and how she had worried that Elizabeth was ill. However, she also felt a stirring of hope. If her stepmother had been drugged, then she could not be the person responsible for trying to kill Miranda. Or perhaps Elizabeth had really been ill, and she had seized on it as a means of throwing suspicion off herself.

  “But you just slept,” she pointed out. “I mean, you felt bad, I realize, but it obviously did not kill you. It was a soporific…if anything.”

  “Perhaps he intended to do something with you when you were in a drugged state. Also, you know I have a weak stomach. If you remember, I regurgitated most of what I had drunk, to be indelicate about it. So perhaps there was not enough left in my stomach to kill me. You, on the other hand, might have been able to keep down the whole dose. It might have been enough to kill you.”

  “Elizabeth, Devin did not try to kill me. I know it.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth cried in an impassioned voice. “Because he told you so? Don’t be deceived by him. He is a liar. A deceiver!”

  Miranda stared in astonishment as Elizabeth began to pace the room in an agitated way. Her hands were clasped tightly together at her waist, her face twisted, and she seemed to be struggling with some sort of inner demon as she walked.

  “Elizabeth, stop this.” Miranda said harshly, going to her and taking her by the arm, turning her step-mother to face her. “You have been against Devin from the very beginning. You tell me that he is bad, a deceiver. But I think that it is you who has something to answer for.”

  “What?” Elizabeth backed up as far as she could, looking at Miranda uncertainly. “What are you saying?”

  “I saw you, Elizabeth,” Miranda said flatly. “I saw you with that man in the orchard the other day. At first I could not place him. I only knew that he looked familiar. But last night I remembered where I had seen him before. He was the man who attacked Devin and me in London.” She gave Elizabeth’s arm a shake. “What were you doing conversing with the man who attacked us?”

  “No!” Elizabeth cried out in horror. “Not you! He wasn’t supposed to attack you!”

  She realized as soon as she said it how she had given herself away, and she stopped abruptly, the blood draining from her face.

  Miranda dropped her arm, staring at her stepmother as if she had never seen her before. “Then you did hire him? You sent him?”

  “I didn’t mean for him to frighten you,” Elizabeth said agitatedly. “Certainly not to attack you. I would never harm you—you must believe that. It was only Devin.”

  “Only Devin?” Miranda repeated. “Elizabeth!
Why?”

  “I was trying to keep him from marrying you! The first time he was just supposed to keep Ravenscar from appearing that night. I knew how charming he was. I was afraid if you met him you would agree to marry him. So I found Hastings. He said he could keep Ravenscar from showing up at his mother’s house for supper. Then, the second time, I knew I had to do something more. Hastings was supposed to frighten Devin, tell him that he had to stay away from you or he would die. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I just wanted to keep him from marrying you!” Elizabeth cried.

  “Oh, God!” She clapped her hands to her temples, tears spilling from her eyes. “I have been so stupid. I’ve made such a horrible mess of it. I was wrong, so wrong. I should have told you earlier, but I was too scared! I couldn’t bear for you and Joseph to know the truth. And now it’s almost gotten you killed. And now you think that I—that I am the one who has been trying to kill you.”

  “So you are saying that you hired this man to…frighten Dev away, but he is not the one who lured me into the cellars yesterday?”

  “No! No, of course not!” Elizabeth raised her head, her hands dropping away, and she stared intently into her stepdaughter’s face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wild, and for just an instant Miranda felt a flicker of fear. “I told you, I would never hurt you. You are as dear to me as Veronica. I was only trying to protect you from Ravenscar. The reason Hastings is here at Darkwater is because I hired him to protect you after those two ‘accidents.’ He has been watching you—obviously not well enough, given what happened yesterday.”

  “But why?” Miranda asked gently, reaching out a calming hand to her stepmother. “I don’t understand.”

  “No. You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. You have no idea what I’m really like. What I’ve done.” Her stepmother drew a long, shuddering breath and stiffened her back.

  Looking straight into Miranda’s eyes, she said, “Everything I have told you is a lie. My entire life is a lie. I am not really Roddy Blakington’s widow. Indeed, Roddy Blakington never existed. I was not married before I met your father. Veronica is—she is illegitimate. And her father is Devin Aincourt.”

  Miranda felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Her mind whirled, and she could think of nothing coherent to say. After a long moment, she managed to say faintly, “What?”

  Elizabeth sagged and sat down abruptly in a chair. “I never wanted anyone to know,” she said softly. “I am so ashamed. I was not loose…I swear I was not. But one day I met Dev, and…I wasn’t the same person after that. I had lived a sheltered life. I had never met anyone so urbane and charming, so witty and—and handsome. I lost all good sense. I felt madly in love with him, and then I was so foolish and wanton as to sleep with him. I thought…I thought he loved me as I loved him. I did not realize that I was just a plaything to him, a brief fling while he was summering in Brighton. When he learned that I was pregnant, he tossed me aside like a used shoe. He refused to marry me.”

  Miranda pressed a hand to her temple. “I—I cannot believe…”

  “Are you saying that I am lying?” Elizabeth asked fiercely. “Do you think that I would reveal something like that about myself just for fun? The man is wicked!”

  “No, of course I don’t think you are lying,” Miranda protested. “It is just—there must be some other explanation. “This is all—”

  “Constance!” Dev’s stunned voice came from the doorway to the library, and the two women swung around to face him.

  “Dev!” Miranda had not heard him come in. She wondered how long he had been standing there. It was obvious that he had heard at least the last part of their conversation, for he looked stunned.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth replied, lifting her chin a little and looking him in the face. “I am Constance. I had been afraid that you would recognize me. I tried to stay out of sight.”

  Miranda remembered how often her stepmother had pleaded sick instead of coming down to dinner, and how when Dev was around she usually seemed to fade into the woodwork. She rarely even looked straight at him. It had never occurred to Miranda that her stepmother had been acting the way she had because she knew Dev and was afraid he would recognize her.

  Elizabeth went on in a bitter voice. “But clearly I need not have troubled myself. I was not important enough for you to remember.”

  “But—how can—you are dead!” he finally blurted out.

  Elizabeth’s brows lifted. “Perhaps that is what you hoped.”

  “No! Good God.” He turned to Miranda. “This is the woman I told you about—the girl whom I got pregnant, who killed herself and left me a suicide note.”

  “What?” Elizabeth exploded scornfully. “Is that the story you told this innocent girl?”

  “It is what happened! Why did you write me that note? Why did you run away and pretend to be dead? Why didn’t you come to me and—”

  “Just a minute.” Miranda turned to her stepmother, whose eyes were lit with an unholy fire. “Did you know that old man, Elizabeth? The one who came to visit me a few days before we left London?”

  “Yes, of course. It was…” Elizabeth’s voice roughened. “It was my grandfather. He raised me after my parents died, and then I shamed him before the world. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he didn’t come after me. I had destroyed all his trust in me. I was a fool to think—”

  “Wait. That man came to tell me not to trust the Earl of Ravenscar. And the reason he gave was because Ravenscar had seduced his granddaughter and she had killed herself.”

  “What?” Elizabeth blinked, confused.

  “That is what he told me. He believes that you are dead, too.”

  “You left notes, Elizabeth!” Devin came closer to her. “I—You wrote me a note telling me that I had ruined your life and you despised me. You said that you would rather die than live with the shame of bearing an illegitimate child. You disappeared. They searched for your body for days. And I was so…so furious that you had not even come to me and told me about the child. Do you honestly think that I would not have married you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Elizabeth stood, and her voice rose hysterically. “You refused me! You denied that the child was yours. You said you would bring witnesses against me to prove that I had been promiscuous if I tried to force you to marry me. You—”

  “I did not! How can you say that? You never even told me about it!”

  “Of course I did!”

  “When? Where? I was often drunk, but I know I could not have completely forgotten that.”

  “I did not tell you face-to-face. I hadn’t the courage. I was afraid, ashamed. And you had—you had stopped coming to see me. So I wrote it in a letter and gave it to Leona to deliver to you.”

  “Leona?” Devin’s face went white. “You gave it to Leona?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes. She was my friend, as well as yours.”

  “The only letter she gave me was the note you left saying that you were going to throw yourself into the sea to avoid the shame of what you had done.”

  There was a long silence. Elizabeth’s mouth began to tremble, and she crumpled more than sat back down in her chair. “Dear God.”

  “How did you learn that Dev rejected you and your child?” Miranda asked pointedly.

  “Leona…” Elizabeth’s voice was barely above a whisper. “She was my friend. She had been so kind to me from the moment she came to Brighton. She was dazzling and sophisticated, and I was thrilled that she even took any notice of me. I was just a country nobody. I couldn’t tell my grandfather about my pregnancy. I couldn’t face Dev. So I went to her and told her all about it. She said that she would deliver a note to Dev if I wrote it, so I did. The next afternoon she came back and sat down in the music room with me. I remember I was practicing the piano. And she told me very gently that Dev had read my note, then had torn it up and thrown it into the fire. He said he was going to leave for London, and I was not to follow. He said that—the things I told you, that he would deny and s
hame me if I pursued the matter. I was devastated.”

  “Of course you were.” Miranda went to her stepmother and knelt down beside her, taking her hands in hers. “Anyone would have been.”

  “I didn’t know what to do, and she said that the only course left to me was to leave. She suggested that I go to America or India or some other colony, where no one would know who I was. She gave me money because she was my friend and felt sorry for me. And she said that in a new country no one would know who I was. I could change my name, I could pretend to be a newly bereaved widow, and no one would ever know the difference. She was so kind. She helped me to pack and to leave. She even hired the post chaise for me, and sent her maid with me to help me.”

  “More likely to make sure you didn’t change your mind and decide to come back,” Miranda corrected. “And to steal a shawl to leave beside the sea.”

  “I—I suppose so. My God…” Tears formed in her eyes and spilled over. “Even after all this time, it hurts. I thought she was my dearest friend, and she betrayed me.”

  “She betrayed everyone.” Miranda’s voice was hard with anger. “Your grandfather has been nearly driven mad with grief. He has mourned you all these years. Everyone thought you had died. People blamed Devin for your death. It was a terrible scandal, and Dev’s father disowned him. Leona recklessly destroyed three lives.” Miranda stood up, her gray eyes like steel. “And I know why. She wanted Devin for herself. He had been pursuing her, and she had been teasing and putting him off, but she always meant to have him, I’m sure. However, when you told her you were pregnant, she knew that he would do the honorable thing and marry you. She would lose him, and she did not want that. It would ruin her plans. So she lied to you. And she lied to him. She lied to everyone.”

  Miranda stood up and turned in Devin’s direction.

  He was pale with emotion, and there was a stunned hurt in his eyes that tore at her heart. Miranda thought that if Leona were there right at that moment, she would have gone straight for the heartless woman’s throat.