Oh, Roger. The warmth of his kisses still lingered on her lips. He was fond of her, but afraid he would hurt her. No doubt he would if he kept toying with her in this wanton manner! He was lustful, which was obviously true of her as well. But he had told his father that he preferred to consort with women who could match him in vice. He had an “evil temper” and an “empty heart.” And the good Lord only knew what treachery he was mixed up in with Francis Lacklin.
Damn him! In comparison, Will had been the soul of courtesy and good humor. I’ve hardly even mourned him, she thought guiltily. Staring down into the ditch where Will had fallen, she tried to revive his image, so recently dead, so soon forgotten. But all she could see was Roger’s comely, sardonic face.
Next you’ll be saying that I murdered Will. I’m astonished you haven’t accused me already.
If I had a scrap of evidence, I wouldn’t hesitate to accuse you.
Uninvited, the thought crept into her mind that Will’s death and Roger’s homecoming might somehow be linked, after all. Cain’s crime. Roger had insisted that he had been out of the country when his brother had died, but his assertion had sounded like a lie.
Why had Will Trevor ridden breakneck down the Whitcombe road at midnight on that dark night in June? Why had he, a nondrinker, been crazy-full of wine? And why had his horse thrown him here, at the only place on the lane where the encroaching forest offered shelter to malefactors?
A perfect place for an ambush, she had said on the day he had returned. Roger hadn’t disputed it. Neither had he shown any emotion while standing before his brother’s tomb. His voice had been light and careless as he’d said, I trust nobody had a grudge against Will?
Solid, even-tempered, cheerful Will. Everyone who had known the man had liked him: servants, tenants, his friends. Nobody had borne him a grudge. Nobody had had a reason for wanting him dead. Nobody, except one man, had benefited from his death, although as Roger had said, it was difficult to kill a man in the north of England from the quarterdeck of a trading vessel in the Middle Sea.
But what if Roger hadn’t been at sea on the day of his brother’s death? How did anyone know exactly when he’d reentered his homeland? He could have returned secretly to England months ago. He was in league with Francis Lacklin, entangled in a web of treason and intrigue. No doubt he had sufficient reason for keeping his movements in and about the country confidential.
Suppose he had come home secretly and sent a message to Whitcombe Castle, claiming to be in some sort of trouble and begging Will’s assistance. When Will had rushed to his aid, Roger could have stretched a rope across the road… or flung rocks to scare the horse… or…
Sickened, she tried to stop the breakneck flow of her thoughts. Roger might be a liar and a traitor, but surely it was impossible that he could have had anything to do with his brother’s death? Surely it could not have been he who had lured his brother into a deadly ambush? Surely a man with ships and riches of his own in the exotic East could have no ambition to succeed to a barony in the northern wilds of England?
But it was a prosperous estate, she reminded herself. And Richard, Roger’s father, was no longer a healthy man. What if Roger were not as affluent as he appeared to be? What if he needed the wealth and resources of the barony for whatever skullduggery he was engaged in with Lacklin? Treason, no doubt, was costly.
No. It could not be. However much he might have changed, however hard and unprincipled he had become, Roger wasn’t capable of such evil.
Resolutely she rose to return to Westmor, determined to think no more disloyal, suspicious thoughts about her oldest, dearest friend. But as she stood, her feet slipped in the damp, rain-sodden earth, and she found herself sliding down into the ditch, landing clumsily on her hands and knees. As she pushed herself, cursing, out of the mud, one of her fingers was scraped by something hard. She reached down for the thing that had cut her.
It was a small piece of metal, about five inches long, jagged at one end and curving in a shallow crescent to a point at the tip. A blade. As she stared at it, her heart seemed to contract. With stiff, uncooperative fingers, she yanked Ned’s knife hilt out of her girdle and compared the jagged end of the blade to the broken end of the strangely-carved hilt. They fit together perfectly. She had found the other half of Ned’s broken dagger.
Alexandra dragged herself out of the ditch and collapsed on the side of the road. The afternoon sun soaked into her hair and scalp. Looking back into the ditch, she remembered the way Roger had jumped down there on his first day back.
It was here that they had encountered Ned, here that Roger had attacked him, here that she had seen the first signs of the terror that had apparently been plaguing the boy ever since. “Aye, he’s been actin’ real scared,” the head cook had confirmed when she’d asked about Ned at noontime. “When he gave the mistress that broken old dagger, he was shakin’ all over. He probably stole it like, and now he’s afeared he’ll be hanged for a thief.”
Anxiety gripped Alexandra, sending cramps ripping through her belly. Something was forcing itself up from deep within her. She was on the verge, she felt, of discovering something terrible, something she could not bear to face. A thrush flew over her head, calling to its mate. The wind raked the trees behind her, and from the distance came the tinkle of cow bells. All her senses were sharp and clear, and her brain was working fast, furiously spinning out a wild, incredible chain of events. If she was right, if the ideas flooding her mind were in any way related to the truth, she knew the connection between a broken dagger, a mute boy’s fear, and her old friend Roger Trevor. Jesu! She knew.
The knife had been in the ditch. Ned had found it there, where Will’s murderer had dropped it. And the poor half-witted boy had run from the place in terror on the day of Roger’s homecoming because he had recognized Roger as the stranger who had been lurking about the spot on the night of Will’s fall.
It seemed impossible, yet it could be true, couldn’t it? The carved hilt and curved blade were not typical of English weapons, but the dagger bore an undeniable resemblance to the much larger curved Turkish scimitar that Roger had drawn on Ned that day in the ditch.
The broken dagger wasn’t proof. But she had remembered something even more unsettling. Roger had lied about being on his ship in the Middle Sea at the time of Will’s death. His own words condemned him; words she hadn’t reflected upon until now because he had spoken them at the same moment as he had indicted her own dear father for adultery:
I saw him in a tavern in London on May Day with a wench on each arm, Roger had told Francis Lacklin in the great hall at Whitcombe. May Day was the first of May. Will had suffered his fatal accident on the 12th of June.
Roger Trevor had indeed been back in England at the time of his brother’s death.
Chapter 7
Alexandra lay propped up in her bed at Westmor Abbey, sneezing and feeling sorry for herself. For five days she’d been laid up with a feverish cold, which none of Merwynna’s remedies had been able to cure. Alan sat on a stool on the far side of her bedchamber, taking frequent sniffs through a scented handkerchief. “You don’t mind if I sit over here, do you?” he had asked upon entering her room. “I don’t want to take sick.”
“I’m surprised you came at all,” she’d responded with unusual testiness. Alan’s efforts to cheer her up were unsuccessful. The possibility that Roger Trevor had murdered his brother had darkened her soul.
During her fever she’d had nightmares about curved daggers and bolting horses, and hands that closed around her throat. Once she woke sobbing so hard that her mother had had to comfort her. Until the fever broke on the second day, everyone in the household had been worried about her. It was unlike Alexandra to be so dispiritedly ill.
“Would you like me to read to you? No? A game of chess, then? I’ll surrender a pawn to you at the start.”
She smiled faintly. “You don’t defeat me that often.”
“Where’s the chessboard?”
�
�I’d rather not play, not this morning.”
He pulled his stool nearer her bed. “Your mother said your fever was down. Why are you still abed? You’re acting damned odd, Alix. Is it to do with Roger?”
Her eyes jerked open. “Why do you think that?”
Alan’s eyes had narrowed and his nostrils flared. “What passed between you out there on the moors the other day? If he’s hurt you…”
Hurt her? No. She vividly remembered the thrilling caresses he’d subjected her to. She felt a pulse in her loins and cursed her rebellious body, which still seemed to desire Roger, no matter what he’d done.
“He didn’t come home until late that night,” Alan went on. “He wouldn’t have come home at all, I suspect, were it not that Francis Lacklin was leaving the next day. They proved friends, after all, despite their differences.”
“So Lacklin’s gone?”
“Aye. Father feels the loss of him the most.”
“Doubtless. Without him there, Roger will probably have your father in his grave within the month.”
Alan looked at her in surprise. “So you’ve finally stopped defending him?”
Alexandra’s fingers worried a long lock of her hair as she avoided Alan’s eyes.
“You must have given him a formidable lecture out there,” Alan went on slowly. “In spite of Father’s best efforts to engage him in verbal combat, Roger hasn’t allowed a nasty remark to pass his lips in days.”
Alexandra sat up straighter. “I don’t believe it.”
“‘Tis true. He still sharpens his claws on me, but he’s been leaving Father alone. Whatever you said must have impressed him.”
“You overestimate my powers. He was hostile. I certainly didn’t expect him to pay any heed to my words.”
Alan shrugged. “Why not? He’s not Malice Incarnate, as you said. He doesn’t want to be Baron of Whitcombe at the expense of anybody’s life.”
Alexandra responded with a violent fit of coughing. Ever since recalling the words with which Roger had betrayed his presence in England, she’d been trying with all her heart to smother her suspicions. Over and over, she had assured herself that there was no real evidence against him. There was no proof that the dagger was his. As for Ned’s excessive fear of Roger—what could one expect? Roger had threatened the lad with a sword.
She still hadn’t talked to Ned. Until she did, she told herself, she shouldn’t jump to wild conclusions.
The door to her room opened and Alexandra’s mother entered, saying, “The two of you are no longer so young that you can visit indiscriminately in each other’s bedchambers. You’ve been here long enough, Alan. I want her to rest.”
“He’s doing me good, Mother, and you know full well there’s no harm in our being together.”
“I know nothing of the sort. Your father will be most displeased to learn of your habitual lack of decorum.”
Alexandra noticed the paper in her mother’s hands. “My father? Is that a letter from him?”
“He has decided to honor us with a visit. He will arrive within a day or two, he says; my only surprise is that the letter reached us in advance of his own party. He usually employs such incompetent messengers. I certainly hope he doesn’t come today. The cooks are ill-prepared for a crowd of travel-starved retainers.”
Alexandra clapped her hands in the first gesture of enthusiasm she had shown for days. “Oh, Mother, I’m glad!”
“I thought you might be. Not that Charles deserves your slavish devotion—he never even takes the time to write to you. But perhaps you’ll consider rising from your sickbed now and throwing off this unaccountable gloom.”
Alexandra reached for the letter and perused it rapidly. “He says nothing about my returning to London with him. I wonder if he’s arranged a position at court for me.”
Lady Douglas pursed her lips. “He is certainly supposed to have done so. I do hope he’s given some thought to your predicament—a woman grown and still unwed. ‘Tis a disgrace.”
“She’s still young,” Alan objected. “No one thinks a man must be wed at eighteen. There’s been no talk of my marrying.”
“I wish there’d been no talk of mine,” said Alexandra, blowing her nose. She gave her mother a belligerent look. “You and he ought not to expect me to marry on command. I won’t, you know. I intend to have some say in the matter this time.”
“Indeed? You are a willful child. Whomever you wed, he’d better have some mettle in him or it will be a most uneven match. Which reminds me, you’ve had another visitor, but I sent him away. I refuse to permit you to entertain that scapegrace in your bedchamber. Anyway, I didn’t suppose you would care to receive him after the way you were raving about him during your fever.”
Alexandra’s breath caught and she coughed violently. “You mean Roger? He came to see me?”
“Roger, of course. He was annoyed that Alan was allowed in and he was not.”
Alan looked smug until Lady Douglas added, “I told him Alan was just leaving.”
“What did he want?”
“How do I know? To wish you well, I imagine. I told him you would be quite well as soon as you roused yourself from a fit of black vapors. He looked rather guilty, I fancied. Did you and he quarrel? Is it going to be like the days when he was the only child who could ever make you cry?”
“He never made me cry.”
“He most certainly did. I remember the time he knocked you down in the stables because you’d overheated his favorite horse. You hit your head on the stall and ended up with a lump the size of an apple. He gave you a black eye on another occasion.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You ought to. That boy was a menace. I never liked him.”
“Oh, Mother, of course you liked him.” She didn’t want to think about anything from the past that confirmed Roger’s wildness or bad temper. So what if his games had been a little rough? All children were cruel to each other at times.
“He can be obliging when he tries, I’ll admit that,” Lucy went on. “He was willing to make himself useful by going after Ned.”
Alexandra had begun sliding down in bed to a more comfortable position, but now she jerked upright again. “What do you mean, going after Ned?”
“Your precious halfwit friend. He came round to the kitchens again, asking for you. Much against my better judgment, I decided to bring him up, since you’d made such a fuss about it the other day. I’d shown him into the hall while I was talking to Roger, but the ridiculous creature took fright again and ran off. I asked Roger to go after him and bring him back, at sword point if necessary, so you could question him about that wretched dagger you’ve been sleeping with night and day. What the devil is the matter with you, girl? Are you ill again?”
Alexandra could feel the blood draining from her face and neck. “You told Roger I wanted to question Ned about the dagger?”
“Yes, of course. I was about to let a halfwit in to see you when I had just refused the heir of Whitcombe. I had to tell him something. I explained that the entire business had assumed an undue importance in your mind, and that you were raving about Ned in your fever, Ned and his blasted dagger.”
“Oh, Mother!”
Lady Douglas frowned. “I see I’ve committed some sort of indiscretion. My dear child, I wish you wouldn’t make such a secret of your affairs. Is it Roger the boy’s afraid of? I thought he was running away from me because of all the times I’ve threatened to have him whipped.”
Alexandra had bitten off the tip of one of her nails in her agitation. She could hardly think because of the way her heart was pounding.
“What’s this all about?” Alan asked. “What has Ned to do with Roger?”
Alexandra threw back the bedclothes and hopped out of bed, her red hair flowing down her back as she ran to the mullion-paned window. She had a view of the road that led down to the front gates of the manor. “I don’t see either of them.”
“They’ll be in the woods by now. Get back i
nto bed immediately. You’re not even decently clad. Alan, please leave us.”
But Alan followed Alexandra to the window, where she stood barefoot in her shift. “You’re hiding something from me. I want to know what it is. What’s this dagger you’re talking about? And how does Roger know the village halfwit?”
She turned to him. “I’ll explain, but not now. The most important thing is to stop him. Alan, ‘tis a long tale, and most of what I know, I’ve only guessed, but it’s possible that Roger means harm to Ned. We’ve got to go after them. You start. I’ll dress and catch up with you.”
“What do you mean? What sort of harm?”
“Please, Alan!” She ran to her cupboards and began pulling out a gown, but her mother snatched it away from her.
“Alan may do as he pleases, but you’re not going anywhere. I’ve never heard such folly. One minute you’re lying there half-dead, and the next you’re proposing to plunge into the damp forest in pursuit of a pirate and a halfwit. No, I said. I’m still your mother, and until you’re wed, you’re bound to obey me.”
As she tried to argue, Alexandra was again seized with a fit of coughing. Her mother pushed her back into bed and said to Alan, “Go on, lad, humor her. You see how distressed she is. I’ve never known her to behave in such a manner. May the good Lord curse that brother of yours!”
Still looking doubtful, Alan went to the door. “I probably won’t be able to find them. Which way did they go?”
“Down the road toward the forest,” Lady Douglas answered.
“Take one of the horses,” Alexandra ordered. “And be careful, Alan. If you find Roger, don’t tell him anything.”
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