Someone had shot her. Why?
“How long have I been asleep?” Her words came out sluggish as she tried to coordinate her mind and her tongue.
“Most of two days.” The crinkles around his eyes deepened.
He had kept her sedated; that was why she felt so sluggish and incapable of thought. She tried to prop herself on her elbow. Sir Henry was suddenly beside her, his black jacket rumpled, and his expression determined in the light. He held a syringe in his hand. Liquid spurted from the tip of the needle.
“Don’t you dare give me that stuff again, Sir Henry—”
He showed not the least inclination to obey her. “I’ve cauterized that wound and I’ll not have you tear the flesh. Let the poultice work or you’ll be facing sepsis.”
“You’re a bully,” she whispered, knowing he was right.
“And you’re a poor patient,” he countered, equally resolved to see her bedridden, and gave her the shot.
“No worse than you,” she argued. In a test of wills, Sir Henry would win. She lay back on her pillow. “Where is David?”
“Lord Chadwick went to pay a visit to Mr. Doyle yesterday.” He set the syringe on the night table next to a vial of carbolic powder and picked up his pipe. “He hasn’t returned.” He folded his lanky form onto a chair beside the bed. “Do you want to tell me how you really know Chadwick? You asked for him in your sleep, Victoria.”
She tugged the down comforter to her neck. Unable to look Sir Henry in the eyes, she turned her head. “I knew him in Calcutta.”
“I thought so. If I were a gambling man, I’d wager you two know one another well.”
Sir Henry’s voice became distant as she began to drift away again. Of course I did, a whispery voice answered in her head.
I was in love with him.
That revelation engendered nothing new to her battered heart. Indeed, she had always loved him. They had made a child, the one good thing they had done together. David could protect Nathanial. Even as she recognized David could never be hers, she needed him. He was capable of giving her son a future when she was not. She recognized that now.
In her drugged and veiled state, she felt Sir Henry gazing down at her, perplexed for reasons he could not name, and worried for reasons he could probably name well enough if he set his mind to it. But someone had shot her, and she needed answers that only she could get. She had to get to the cemetery. She had to know the truth.
David returned to the churchyard well past the time he should have heeded the chill and found shelter. He had ridden the last few hours over a frozen landscape. Now, stomping the cold from his feet, he tied Old Boy’s reins to the fence and followed the glow of lantern light. No moon rousted the shadows tonight, but lay well-hidden behind heavy clouds. Snow fluttered in the air as if the weather had suddenly grown timid.
Watching the disembodied glow of lamps move through the decaying skeletal structure, David could understand why Mr. Doyle believed in ghosts. He pulled himself up through an opening and stood transfixed by the destruction surrounding him.
Fire had gutted the church one long ago day. Wooden benches sat askew against the opposite wall. The room stank of rotten timbers and animal offal, a strange juxtaposition to the downy white snowflakes floating around him.
“…people don’t bloody sprout wings and fly.” David heard the voices, and maneuvered through the debris toward the rectory.
“I’m not sayin’ the shot didn’t come from the church, Mr. Rockwell. I’m sayin’ if someone was in that belfry, he did not leave by way of any door or window.”
“We’re not dealing with ghosts,” David said from the doorway, despite Mr. Doyle’s claim that spirits haunted the church. “There is another way inside this structure.”
Eight men stood in the rubble. David looked at each of them before turning his focus on the mountain of a man standing amidst the group. Ralph Blakely, a longtime Glenealy, Ireland resident, was David’s sometime bodyguard, hailing from the days David first went to work in the shantytowns near Dublin’s ports seven years ago. Blakely was one of the few men he’d ever met who was as tall as he was.
David moved away from the stone wall and shifted his focus. This church looked to have been built around Cromwell’s era—a time of great political upheaval. Any priest knew a room such as this held a passage that would take him to safety in case of incursions, and he should have considered that possibility weeks ago when he’d realized the extent of the lucrative smuggling commerce that fed too many of the people around here.
He looked at Blakely. “Find the vicar who used to work and live on these grounds.”
“Did Doyle have anything to say?” Rockwell asked.
“Whoever he’s been watching in this church has been here for weeks.”
“Weeks?”
“Two of Sheriff Stillings’s men were found dead two weeks ago near the old drover’s trail. Go down there and look around.”
David stayed another hour before mounting Old Boy and taking the back trail to Rose Briar. After his initial visit to Meg yesterday, he’d remained at Doyle’s cottage. Now with another night upon him, he had not found a single piece of evidence that could point to a particular shooter. That, and the fact that someone would intentionally shoot Meg, who might or might not be the key to locating a stolen treasure, made no sense. The only thing that bothered him more was the fact that she had been wearing his cloak.
In addition, everything about his current state of emotions vexed him as he continued to refine his feelings toward his wife. No longer abstract, they had formed a permanent concrete seal in his thoughts, preventing reason from finding its way back into his head. He was no longer coming at the case as an investigator but as a husband—an impossible circumstance, he realized, especially when he was detailed with the job of turning her over to Kinley.
Snowflakes floated through the amber light cast by the lantern behind him as he rode into the stable and paddock. He did not intend to keep this property, but he had ensured the sanctity of his agreement with Meg by purchasing Rose Briar himself and putting everything in his name. But as David handed Old Boy’s reins to the groom, he turned up the collar on his coat and looked toward the house, a proprietary sense of ownership touching him. Meg’s bedroom faced the orangery. He could not see her window, but he felt her presence and recognized that he was thinking about more than just the land and this house. Everything from here to Alfriston belonged to him—including Meg.
How did a man throw something like that away?
Twice.
A young chambermaid had just shut the door to Meg’s room when he appeared. David recognized her as one of the girls Blakely brought with him from Ireland. She held a wicker tray topped with blood-soaked rags. “My lord. I didn’t see you.”
His gaze on the door, David removed his gloves and stuffed them in his coat pocket. “Is she conscious?”
“Oh, yes. Sir Henry asked me to bring her tea.” The chambermaid hurried away.
Sir Henry stepped out of the bedchamber, closing the door behind him as he saw David. “You’re back,” he said and, without preamble or temperance, handed David the spot of lead in his hand. “I forgot to give this to you yesterday. Whoever shot her was not hunting game, unless one uses an Enfield rifle,” Sir Henry said. “Old issue.”
His heart turning over in his chest, David closed his fist over the mini ball and considered the implication that a military-trained sharpshooter or assassin had fired the shot that took Meg down.
“Do you know anything about caves in this bluff?” he asked.
“They’ve been sealed for fifty years. Before I came to Rose Briar. I couldn’t begin to tell you what manner of fool would go inside the caverns as dangerous as they are.”
“Someone must know something. Someone familiar with this area.”
“Then maybe you know more than I do and can explain who would shoot Victoria,” Sir Henry said as David stepped around him to enter the room.
Rememberi
ng her brazen confrontation with Stillings, David used all his self-control to keep from naming off the first dozen names that popped to mind. “This place isn’t exactly a haven of morality, Sir Henry.”
“I’m not obtuse. I know the manner of men who ride these roads.” Sir Henry set his leather physician’s bag on the curiosity table beside the door and clipped shut the lock. “They are a useless lot. But Victoria has gone in the middle of the night to sew up their wounds. She has helped birth babies those men have fathered. Nursed their sick wives and sisters. No man-jack in this area would shoot her down as if she were an animal. Now she’s worried that whoever did this will go after her son.”
David let his hand slide from the door latch. “What are you talking about?”
“You tell me, Chadwick. At first, I thought you were here because you were related to her and genuinely wanted to help. But there is more to you than meets the eye. More to the both of you. A blind man would see it, it’s that glaring.”
“You need to speak about this to her—”
“I have been speaking to her. For two nights, young man. Morphine is an unwelcome bedfellow for those with secrets. She knew you in Calcutta, which explains a lot. She was in trouble there.”
Sir Henry pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his upper lip. “Victoria has worked hard to teach Nathanial values and to respect the land he was supposed to have one day inherited. She sent him to Bethany’s cousins so he can take part in the hops harvesting. But this year she kept him from returning home. I thought at first it was because of Nellis. I am now prone to believe that it is for an entirely different reason. Why is she so afraid of you? Why has she been waking up to nightmares for weeks? Now this.”
“Hell, I don’t know,” David said, wary of Sir Henry’s observations. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because you are connected to the same people she fears will go after her son.”
Before David could respond, a noise in the corridor dragged his gaze toward the stairway. Rockwell appeared on the landing, his cloak sweeping around him as he stopped, his presence snapping the tension like a tautly wound string.
No longer chafing beneath the older man’s verbal flagellation, David shoved his hand into his coat pocket and felt the photograph he had put there when at the cottage.
“I take it that man is no ordinary servant, either?” Sir Henry said, coughing into his handkerchief.
“He works for me,” David said.
“I see.” Glancing between David and Ian, Sir Henry took a step backward, almost self-consciously as he stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Then if you’ll excuse me, I will leave the two of you alone with your business.”
“Sir Henry?” David stopped the older man. “How old is Nathanial?”
Sir Henry stopped in his tracks. And turned. “Why don’t you ask her?”
A momentous silence rocked David.
Mumbling something about having tea brought up, Sir Henry whirled on his heel. Rockwell stood aside as the man hurried past him in the corridor. When David still had not moved, Rockwell gave him his full attention.
“What just happened?”
David swept past him. “I’m not sure.”
Descending the stairs, he led Rockwell to the bookroom, as far away as he could go from Meg’s chambers. He didn’t light any lamps.
“How is Lady Munro?” Rockwell asked.
“Alive.”
Without removing his coat, David walked to the window. He had not shaved in two days, and his reflection bore the hint of a man who had not slept.
Rockwell’s voice hesitated. “How alive?”
David met the younger man’s gaze in the glass. “Thank you for that bit of confidence. I haven’t murdered her if that is what concerns you, though I don’t know why it should. Did you find anything on the drover’s trail?”
“No one has been on that trail for days.”
“Then why aren’t you at the cottage?”
“Pamela wasn’t at the town house last night. I’m concerned. I should try to find her.”
David shook his head. “Her absence isn’t abnormal.”
“Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Dammit, Rockwell.” David said flatly, then cut off the rest of the sentence. “You knew what your job would be like before you married her. She would not appreciate your interference in whatever she is currently doing. Would she?”
Rockwell’s jaw tightened, but he said no more. The very mercenary trait that had once made David faultless at his job made Pamela a valuable commodity in the realm of British espionage. He recognized the attribute and, as he looked out onto an ice-encrusted, picture-perfect world, he knew a part of that man still thrived inside him—he felt it now—its dark presence lurking like a shadow just beneath the surface.
After a moment, he looked away from the window, knowing he had no right to lose his temper with Rockwell. “I’ll find Pamela tonight myself and have her send a message to Kinley. I’ll check on her,” he said.
“Is there anything else before I go, sir?”
If there had been, David had forgotten and, for a long time after Rockwell left, he stood at the window. The snow had stopped and moonlight fell in a crisscross pattern over the polished floor.
Finally, he withdrew the photograph.
Moving the image into the narrow beam of light, he studied the impression, peering at the child’s face.
His jaw clenched, and it was a labor to remember to breathe as he moved the image back and forth in the light. If Scott Munro had died in India, the child was too young to be Meg’s stepson.
The chambermaid he’d met upstairs appeared in the doorway. “My lord, I can light a fire. This room is chilled.”
David looked dispassionately at the fireplace, the rich paneled walls and ornate bookcases, and felt only the heat of a fast-growing anger. “No thank you,” he replied after a moment. “If I want a fire, I’ll build one myself.”
“Yes, my lord.”
His gaze paused on a rostrum. David had seen the Bible on that stand the first day upon his arrival. The Munro family Bible.
The one Meg didn’t want to place her hand upon and swear an oath of honesty to him.
He found a tinderbox in the desk drawer and lit the oil lamp beside the globe. David brought the book to the desk. He flipped the ornate cover open and peeled back page after page until he found the birth listings. He ran his finger down the long list of names and stopped when he recognized Meg’s handwriting.
Nathanial’s date of birth was the last entry. Born May 14, 1864, five months after Meg disappeared from Calcutta.
David’s body went icy cold.
Five months.
Bracing both palms on the desk, he closed his eyes.
Five bloody months. While he’d mourned her.
And returned to Ireland to take up the cloth, she’d given birth to his son.
He’d been a father for nine years.
“A man would have to be blind not to see the resemblance between you and my grandson,” Sir Henry said from the darkness behind him. “I thought you knew.”
His palms still braced on the stand, David glared at the ceiling and mentally cursed Meg’s lying, treacherous heart. Anger began to roll off him in a crescendo of comprehension. She would have let him leave here never knowing the truth.
“Victoria was just a lass, not even twenty when she showed up on my doorstep heavy with child and nothing but a gangly cat to her name,” Sir Henry said.
In no mood for benevolence, he faced Sir Henry. “As much as I’m sure this story—”
“That woman upstairs is a daughter to me. If my son married her for whatever reason…then he must have loved her very much.”
“Don’t count on that.”
“Victoria is the only mother Bethany has ever known,” Sir Henry said from the shadows behind the settee. “I love her as if she were my own blood. I love that boy. If they are in trouble—”
“T
rouble?” David spoke, furious.
Sir Henry moved nearer, an old man hunched with age and, for just a moment, David felt sorry for him. “Whatever she’s done in the past, she’s made a good life for herself and her son.”
“She has no bloody life,” David said, his growing wrath unchecked, even when he saw the man flinch. “And she’s in trouble. Buried in it up to her neck.”
Unable to stomach his own emotions, David stepped around the settee, his long stride carrying him toward the door.
“I don’t know who you are, Chadwick,” Sir Henry said from the darkness behind him, “if that is really your name. But whatever happened to her…whatever she was running from all those years ago, Nathanial was born a Munro. He legally belongs to my family.”
“You’re mistaken, Sir Henry. He belongs to me.”
Chapter 12
When David stepped into Meg’s room, he knew immediately that she had fled. He stood in the doorway, staring at the bed frame and the rumpled feather tick. He strode to the dressing room. Her nightgown lay crumpled on the floor. The clothes he’d brought for her and his heavy cloak were gone.
“Little fool!” he mumbled.
He left the room and collided with the chambermaid carrying an armful of linens. “When was the last time someone checked on Lady Munro?” he asked her.
“An hour ago, my lord.” She dipped her head. “I brought her tea and biscuits at Sir Henry’s request.”
“Was she in bed?”
“Yes, my lord. She told me she wanted to sleep.”
David descended the stairs three at a time. How far could she go in her condition? The chilly night air was as brisk as a slap to his face and stopped him on the stone steps outside. Retrieving his gloves from his pocket, he looked toward the drive. The snow had stopped, and the moon was a bright orb in the sky, clinging to the naked treetops and reflecting across the landscape like fine crystal. At first, he saw no tracks in the snow small enough to belong to Meg. Then some sixth sense made him walk up the drive. His boots squeaked in the hushed silence. Finally, he stopped, tamped down a grip of fear, and let his anger rule him instead. Switching directions, he returned to the stable and his horse.
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