Calvin looked toward us, ready to lay into his subordinate, but Cade stilled him with an uplifted hand.
“Stay calm, Cal. He’s got a gun to her side. He’ll kill her.”
“Very observant, Cade,” Dennis mocked. “Too bad you weren’t quite so in tune with your wife. Perhaps you could have saved her. At the very least, you could have saved the others.”
“Even if you kill her, you’ll never get away with it,” Cade promised him.
“Of course I won’t. You and Calvin will hunt me down, run me to ground, and shoot me. But it won’t bring Ophelia back.”
I knew it was hopeless, then. He had already decided he was going to kill me, despite the consequences.
“You’ve lost her again, Cade,” he said, before pulling me into the darkened interior of the lighthouse and barring the door from the inside.
As Dennis dragged me up the stairs, I could hear Cade yelling my name while he and the others attempted to break through the door.
Dennis pushed me onto the parapet, where I stumbled across the uneven stone and caught myself on the railing. The sky was the deep purplish gray of the pre-dawn hours, and the sound of the gulls flying over the bay wafted toward us. I wondered how often Desi had seen the world look like this. How often had she found solace from her loveless marriage here, as the rest of the world slept? I was sorry she had found the love she had sought all her life only at the end of it. I wanted her to know I loved her, and I had always imagined her as happily married. Despite my love for Cade, or maybe because of it, I would never have wished them the misery they had endured.
I closed my eyes as a soft wind brushed my face with coolness, and I made peace with my sister at last. I imagined I could hear her laughter on the wind and feel her arms wrapping me in a gentle embrace.
It was a beautiful morning, and if it was to be the morning I met my Maker, then I would do so with a heart free of bitterness and hurt.
“Your sister fought like a wildcat,” Dennis mocked as he grabbed me by the arm. “She was right. You are the meeker one.”
“Perhaps my sister wasn’t sure what her future held. I am.”
“She knew her future held death. You’re certainly smart enough to realize yours holds the same thing.”
I have no idea how I found what felt like a peaceful smile and, in spite of my terror, spoke in an amazingly calm voice. “Death is only a step into a new sort of future, Dennis.”
He grunted out his opinion of my lack of fear, as well as my faith, as he wrapped his fingers in my hair and forced my head down, over the railing, so I could see the rocks below. The world seemed to tilt crazily toward me, the sky and the ground spinning in tandem, but I refused to show him my fear. Instead, I dug my fingers into the cold hard stone, steadying my mind and my body with a force of will I hadn’t known I had.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” I asked, turning my face toward the man at my side.
He pulled me upright, his face mottled with emotion.
“Did she love you?”
His reserve broke then, and he seemed to deflate into the boy I had known during my first few days at Almenara.
“Yes, I loved her, and she loved me. Until Devlin came along, that is. Then she cast me aside like a broken toy.”
“That’s how she was, Dennis. She did it to me, to Cade, to you. It was her way.”
“She never loved Cade,” he bit out.
“But she pretended to. She made him love her.”
“No, she said even though he married her, he never loved her. He still loved you. That’s why she turned to me. She was so sad and alone, so hurt by the fact that he couldn’t love her.”
I shook my head. “She always knew what to say to get her way, Dennis. She always knew how to talk to men. Before Cade, it was my father she said didn’t love her.”
He jabbed my chest with the gun that was still in his hand.
“Don’t talk about her like that. Susan talked about her, you know. Said she was no different than any two-bit whore. Said it obviously ran in the family, because she’d seen you and Cade kissing beside Desdemona’s coffin.” He looked proud of himself when he added, “But I took care of her. She won’t be spreading any more of her filthy lies.”
“You killed Desi,” I told him. “You couldn’t have cared about her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I cared more than anyone.”
“Ophelia!” Cade roared from below us. “Show me your face!”
I tried to lean forward to let him see I was fine, but Dennis tightened his grip in my hair. “You let him sit down there and rot with worry. This isn’t about him!”
“Of course not. It’s about you, Dennis. How much you cared for my sister. How badly she hurt you.”
“Yes, that’s right. I did care for her. I didn’t mean to kill her.” He spoke quickly, erratically, panting as if his heart might beat from his chest at any moment. “I followed her up here one morning. I just wanted to talk, to make her tell me why she quit loving me, but she was so angry I was here, she yelled and screamed at me, told me she loved Devlin, and I was nothing but a child. She told me I had to leave. She said she never loved me at all.”
He took a deep shuddering breath and closed his eyes as if trying to block out the memory of that moment.
“I hit her, backhanded her so hard she lost her balance and fell against the railing. She screamed out Devlin’s name. Even then, when all her attention should have been on me, she yelled out his name, not mine. My handprint was on her face, and there was a trickle of blood from her lip where I’d hit her. She looked so young and scared. I went to her, trying to tell her how sorry I was, but she screamed again, and tried to run away from me. I caught her by the hair and dragged her back to me. She went crazy, then. She fought with all her might, but she wasn’t that strong. I was able to get hold of both her hands and pin her to the wall. She kept a few of Cade’s ties here to secure Tabby to her when they sat on the edge. She used the collars to wipe her face and hands. I swear I was only trying to stop her from fighting when I bound her hands with one of the cravats. I don’t know why I covered her eyes. I was only trying to make her calm down. It worked, too. She calmed down right away. So I pulled her against me, tried to hold her in my arms and tell her I loved her. But she said she hated me and swore she would burn in hell before she’d ever let me touch her again. I don’t remember throwing her over. One minute she was in my arms and the next she was gone. She didn’t even scream as she fell.”
He let go of my hair and looked over the railing. I stepped toward him, thinking if I could catch him off guard I could push him over. He was faster than I was, however, and had me back against him, the gun pointed at my head, in a heartbeat.
“I’m surprised at you, Ophelia. I didn’t know I could fill your kind, compassionate heart with enough hatred to want to kill. Self-preservation is a powerful thing, I suppose.”
Below us, I heard the door finally give way and booted feet pounded up the stairs. Cade burst through the door, stopping short when he saw the gun at my head.
“You’ve told me about Desi and Susan, but what about Kathleen and Eleanor? What could they possibly have done to make you kill them?”
“Kathleen was so certain she’d heard Desi crying in the night, so certain her ghost walked the corridors of Almenara. She came to the lighthouse looking for the answers it would take to put Desi’s spirit to rest. I was here courting demons of my own when she came through the door. She was dressed in a white gown, and with all that black hair flying about her face, I thought she was Desdemona come back to haunt me. I admit I was terrified, and when she started toward me, I panicked. She was on the rocks before I even knew what happened. It was her screaming that made me realize it wasn’t Desi, and by that time it was too late. Her screams alerted Devlin, and he came running onto the beach as she hit the rocks below. He wasn’t picking her pockets when the men found him, he was checking to see if she was alive.”
He e
xhaled wearily and relaxed his grip on my waist a bit. I wondered what would happen once he tired of talking. Would he shoot me or throw me over the edge? There was no way I would survive either alternative, so I tried to keep him talking.
“Eleanor?” I coaxed.
“Ah, Eleanor, sweet, romantic little Eleanor. She was so convinced Devlin loved her and if she could just get him safely away from here, they would live happily ever after. I caught them headed out of town. He was nearly unconscious, and she was so desperate to save him, she was practically carrying him on her back. I offered them a ride, and once I had them in the wagon, I brought them to the cemetery. He was too weak to do a thing about it when I left him lying there and dragged her away. I had every intention of killing her, just for the fun of it, actually, but nature beat me to it. She’d already worn herself out carrying him down the road, and I suppose this climb, as well as fear, took their toll on her. When we reached the top, her face turned a ghastly purple color and she collapsed in a heap. She wasn’t the most slender of girls, and it was a bit of an effort to toss her body over, but I managed it.”
He pressed his face against my cheek, his breath hot on my skin, just below the spot where the cold steel of the gun pressed against my temple.
“And you’re no different from the rest, wanting Cade despite thinking he killed your sister, kissing Devlin to get what you wanted, a little spy and a sniping gossip. You deserve to die just as they did.”
“Did you kill my dove?” Not that the dove was so important in the grand scheme of things, but I needed to keep him talking.
“Of course I killed it. I gave it to you and then I killed it. Desi had given Devlin Lorraine’s cloak to keep him warm, but she forgot to remove her brooch. I stole it from him while I played nursemaid this morning. That poor little bird hardly made a sound when I stabbed it through its heart. I knew you’d get the message.”
“Fee,” Cade said quietly from the doorway, and I locked my eyes on his.
Relief swept through me as I realized I had done what I set out to do. I had proven that Cade wasn’t a murderer. He hadn’t killed Desi or anyone else. He was free to live his life without suspicion.
“Ophelia,” he said sternly, his dark eyes never leaving mine, “it’s not over yet.”
“Oh, but it is,” Dennis said, pushing himself up and over the side of the parapet in one sudden movement. I screamed as my feet left the ground, and I was certain I was going over.
“No!” Cade lunged toward us, just as Dennis loosened his grip on me and hurtled toward the rocky ground below. Cade’s arm caught me by the waist and carried me to the stone floor beside him.
Breathing raggedly, we got to our feet, clinging to each other tightly as the men who had come up with him went back down to see to Dennis’s body.
“I thought I’d lost you again,” he murmured against my hair.
“Never again,” I whispered, lifting my face for his kiss. “I’m here to stay.”
Around us, a gentle wind picked up as the sun began to rise over the horizon, and Desdemona’s laughter blended with the call of the birds in flight. The past and present met in the familiar depths of Cade’s dark eyes, my regret fell away, and I faced my future without bitterness or regret.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Oh, Ophelia, you are a sight to behold,” Mrs. Dupree exclaimed as she straightened the white, handmade lace so that it lay perfectly over the silk underskirt. “Your father would be so proud of you.”
Dory pinned the last few wayward curls to the top of my head before securing my veil and stepping back to survey me.
“You’ve never looked more beautiful, Miss Fee,” she said, and I gave her a quick hug. Although Cade had wanted to dismiss her after learning her part in Dennis’ deception, I had convinced him Dory was a victim as well, and he had agreed to keep her on.
John Bailey waited on the church steps, and his wise old eyes welled up with tears when he saw me. I placed my hand on his arm as the doors swung open before us.
I scanned the sea of familiar, smiling faces. I had insisted Cade and I wait the appropriate amount of time before announcing our engagement, but he had agreed to wait only half of it. I needn’t have feared how his short mourning period would be perceived. It seemed everyone who knew us was ready to have us married by year’s end.
The servants were grouped together in the back few rows of the church, and I offered each of them a smile and nod as we passed. Mrs. Hartley’s stoic face was wreathed with a smile, while tears ran freely down her cheeks.
Nellie stood near the front of the church, her tiny blond daughter in her arms. At six months old, the child was a miniature version of Nellie but with Reverend Arnold’s solemn brown eyes and nearly bald head, and she studied me so intently I had to stifle a laugh.
Lorraine and Calvin were in the row in front of Nellie, their hands wound tightly together and half-smiles on their faces. Deeply distraught over Eleanor’s death, Calvin had given up his badge the day after her funeral and purchased a home far from the place his former wife and sister died. Although we had little contact with them, the tension between Calvin and Cade seemed to have lessened and they could be in the same room without any threat of altercation.
Feeling his eyes on me, I looked toward Cade, who stood beneath a flowered arch at the front of the church. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass window behind him, burnishing him with red and gold, like an ancient god come to collect his bride. My breath caught in my throat at the love burning in his dark eyes and the wild beat of the pulse at his throat.
I felt the blush that stole over my skin as I imagined pressing my lips there, feeling the steady rhythm of it against my mouth. In just a few short hours, I would be with him as I had never been with anyone before. Cade’s low chuckle told me he knew what I was thinking as John placed my hand in his and we turned to Reverend Arnold. Within minutes, I was no longer Ophelia Garrett, the spinster daughter of Reverend Garrett, and I faced the congregation a married woman.
Clinging to Cade’s hand, I followed him down the aisle, past the smiling faces of those who loved us, and into the bright afternoon sun.
The trees between the church and cemetery were in full bloom, and a bright blue swallow sat on the railing of the iron fence behind them. Twittering happily, it flew off to join a small flock already in flight, and I could well imagine the ghosts of Almenara being carried away on their wings and the soft spring wind.
A word about the author...
Gloria Davidson Marlow is the author of several romantic suspense novels. She resides in Northeast Florida with her husband, works as a paralegal at a local law firm, and spends as much time as possible with her three grandsons.
Previous Releases
SWEET SACRIFICES
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Flowers for Megan
Shades of Silence
The Butterfly Game
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