The Bride's Rescuer

by Charlotte Douglas

  “I heard him plain enough,” Noah said, “but you’re right. Mr. Alex couldn’t harm nobody. It was just the liquor talking.”

  Wrestling with the horrible suspicion Noah had planted in her mind, Celia walked back to the house. Then guilt joined her distrust, and she castigated herself for considering for even an instant that Cameron could have murdered Clarissa and Randolph. Had Cameron been on the island, she would have confronted him with Noah’s tale and begged an explanation, but he would be gone the entire day, perhaps even into the night if the fish were running, and she couldn’t bear the agony of uncertainty that long.

  Remembering the newspaper clippings she’d found in his desk weeks ago and hoping to purge her suspicions, she hurried to the study. Fortunately, Cameron had left the key to the drawers on the desk surface. Her hands shook as she unlocked the top one and removed the folder of yellowed clippings from the drawer and spread them across the desktop.

  What she read made her ill.

  According to the various newspaper accounts, Clarissa and Randolph had been bludgeoned to death in their Devonshire mansion. Cameron, too, had been injured and found unconscious beside their bodies, his scalp almost lifted from his head by the force of a cutting blow. He had hovered near death in a hospital for weeks after the murders, and when he recovered, claimed to have no memory of the night they died.

  Details of the police search for the killer revealed a cold trail with no leads or suspects. Then the articles began to raise questions about who would have had motive for such a crime. Nothing had been stolen the night of the tragedy, and no one had been found with a vendetta against the family. Gossip had begun to circulate in London that Cameron himself had murdered his wife and son in order to inherit her fortune, left by her recently deceased father. Rumormongers hinted that Clarissa had injured Cameron in her efforts to protect herself and her son. The last clipping in the file stated that the police had taken Cameron in for questioning, then released him for lack of enough evidence to prosecute.

  Celia replaced the articles in their folder and shoved them into the drawer. The clippings had only fueled her suspicions. Conflicting emotions surged through her, a longing for Cameron to return mixed with fear of what he might tell her. The Cameron she knew couldn’t have committed such a heinous act, but how well did she really know the man she’d married so hastily? Had she allowed herself to be bedazzled by his good looks and the paradise in which he lived? Was the secret self she’d sensed within the man she’d married really a killer?

  Unable to endure waiting for Cameron, she confronted Mrs. Givens in the kitchen.

  “Hungry already?” the housekeeper asked.

  “I’m too ill to eat.” Celia slumped in a chair beside the stove.

  “Not the fever!” Mrs. Givens hurried to feel her forehead, but Celia brushed the woman’s hand aside.

  “Heartsick about Cameron. I’ve just read the newspaper accounts of the murders of Clarissa and Randolph. Some suggest that Cameron killed them.”

  A collage of emotions crossed the older woman’s face. “And what do you think, m’dear?”

  Celia rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, as if trying to erase the confusion in her mind. “My heart tells me he couldn’t have, but my head— I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Givens went to the stove and, following her prescription for every occasion, filled the teapot. In maddening silence, Celia watched her pour a cup for herself and one for Celia. When the housekeeper had handed Celia her tea and taken the chair across from her, Celia could stand it no longer.

  “Did Cameron kill them? You must tell me.”

  “Only Mr. Alexander can answer that question, and you must ask him if you wish to know the truth.”

  “Are you telling me that you don’t know?”

  Mrs. Givens shrugged her plump shoulders. “I have never asked him, and he has never said. But I do know the Cameron I raised from a babe is incapable of such violence.”

  Celia knew the man she loved was incapable of it as well, but she wondered if the other side of Cameron, the side he had hidden from her, might be inclined to such horrors. She recalled his insistence on not leaving the island, his blocking her attempts to signal for help, his refusal to speak of Clarissa. Were those the workings of a guilt-free mind?

  Then she remembered his words to her the day they had picnicked on the mangrove island: “You must run from this place as fast as you can, flee for your life…for your own safety.”

  Had he feared he might harm her as he had his wife and child?

  Celia knew too little to draw reasonable conclusions.

  “You must tell me what you can,” she begged. “God knows, I want to believe he didn’t do it.”

  Mrs. Givens sipped her tea and scrunched her face into a frown. “There’s little enough I can tell. I wasn’t there.”

  “But I thought—”

  “It was my yearly holiday. From the time I first worked for the Alexanders, every year when they went down to the Devon estate, I’d spend that first week visiting my sister, God rest her soul, in Liverpool. A woman from the home farm took my place during the day, and Clarissa cared for Randolph at night.”

  “So the family was alone when it happened?”

  “Normally the servants would have been below stairs, but there was a festival in the village that night, and Mr. Alexander had given them time off to attend. The upstairs maid discovered the bodies when she came home in time to turn down the beds.”

  “And nothing was stolen?”

  “Not a thing. Mrs. Alexander—Clarissa was still wearing her jewelry when they found her, Mr. Alexander’s wallet was full, and the house intact.”

  “Why would someone want to harm them? Did Cameron have enemies?” The more Celia learned, the more puzzling the whole affair became.

  “Mr. Alexander was a shrewd businessman, and he had keen competitors, but he was honest and fair, so none could be identified with reason to wish him harm.”

  “But if someone believed he had cause—”

  “Aye, there’s always that. And there’s the possibility of sick minds that simply kill for the sport of it.”

  “But you’re speaking only of possibilities. No one was ever charged?” Celia held her breath, dreading to hear that Cameron might have run from the law.

  “No one. Captain Biggins brings us the London papers, and I’ve watched for years to see if the killers have been caught, but nothing new has been reported.”

  “And Cameron,” Celia asked, “what does he say about all this?”

  “Mr. Alexander doesn’t speak of it, and he has requested that I not mention it to him. You are the only person who’s heard the names of Clarissa and Randolph cross my lips since I set foot on this island.”

  Mrs. Givens drank the last of her tea and set her cup aside. “It’s as I told you, m’dear. You must ask him—but do not forget that he is the man you love and married, no matter what he tells you.”

  Her words were no comfort to Celia. If anything, they caused more turmoil in her heart. Everything she learned raised more questions.

  “There is one thing you can tell me.” Celia hesitated to ask, because she dreaded the answer. “Did Cameron love Clarissa?”

  The tortured look on Mrs. Givens’s face gave her answer before she spoke. “Cameron came as close to hating Clarissa as he did to hating anyone,” she said with obvious reluctance.

  “But why? She was his wife.”

  The housekeeper twisted her apron in her hands, an outward sign of her agitated emotions. “Cameron had never been in love. His was a marriage of convenience made to cement a business partnership.”

  “I can’t believe that Cameron—even in his youth—would be so callous as to marry for money.”

  “He believed his partner. The man had been like a father to him since his own had died. Clarissa was a beautiful woman, and her father convinced Cameron that love would grow—with time.”

  “But it didn’t?”

  Mr
s. Givens shook her head. “Things grew worse, if anything.”

  “I still don’t know why.”

  “That is another thing only Mr. Alexander can tell you.”

  “You must have some impressions of Clarissa, besides the fact that she was beautiful.” Celia knew that fact for herself. Clarissa’s loveliness radiated from the portrait over the mantel.

  “I didn’t like her, but I thought I was biased, thinking no one was good enough for Mr. Alexander. Now I know better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m very fond of you, m’dear, and think you make him a very good wife, so it must have been Clarissa herself that I didn’t approve of.” She reached over and squeezed Celia’s hand. “You must have faith in him, and remember all things work to the good.”

  Celia wished she shared the housekeeper’s optimism, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of disaster that enveloped her. She longed for Cameron’s return, for the reassurance of his arms around her, and his explanation that would cleanse the doubts that weighed on her mind.

  She refused Mrs. Givens’s offer of lunch and returned to the study, where she reread every clipping, searching for some clue of exoneration but finding nothing but more doubts. Suddenly the walls of the house seemed to close in on her, and she fled to the beach to walk the length and breadth of the island as if devils pursued her. The entire time she kept watch for the first glimpse of Cameron’s sail.

  She paused at the site where they’d spread their blanket the night before to study the heavens, where they’d melded their bodies and their hearts in an ecstasy of passion before falling asleep in each other’s arms. The images calmed her until she remembered that Cameron had joined with Clarissa in such an embrace, and Randolph had been the result.

  Now both Randolph and Clarissa were dead.

  Celia stripped off her clothes, wishing she could rip the suspicions from her mind as easily, and dove into the gulf. She swam to the farthest sandbar and back to shore, then out again, until she had exhausted herself with the effort. But her mind would not rest, turning over and over, examining and reexamining what had happened to Clarissa and Randolph, and trying to assess Cameron’s part in all of it.

  She dressed and lay down on the hot sand, buried her face in her arms, and longed for peace.

  She didn’t know how long she slept, but suddenly she was swept up in strong arms, and Cameron held her close.

  “Good God, Celia, you gave me a scare. You looked as if you’d washed up on the beach half-dead.”

  She heard the anxiety in his voice and lifted her arms to return his embrace, but all her suspicions returned in a rush, and she pushed away from him. “Set me down. I must talk with you.”

  He placed her on her feet and lowered his head to her neck, nuzzling her throat with his lips. “Talk? Not now. I have thought of you—and last night—all day.”

  “Please, don’t.” She jerked away and began walking up the beach.

  Cameron followed her. “What’s wrong?”

  She turned, taking in the face and body she loved and wondering if the mind and heart they contained could have deceived her by sheltering a monster.

  “Clarissa,” was all she said.

  She watched the blood drain from his face and his muscles go slack as he slumped to sit on the sand. “How did you find out?”

  “The newspapers in your desk.”

  “You searched my desk?” Anger flashed in his amber eyes.

  “That was wrong of me, but not as wrong as your not telling me the truth,” she lashed out at him.

  “The truth?”

  “Did you murder her, Cameron, and your son?” Celia fell to her knees before him in the sand and watched every nuance of his expression, hoping to hear an explanation, an answer to the puzzle that had tormented her all day.

  “I wish I knew the truth.” Cameron’s words poured forth in a groan of agony.

  “How can you not know? You were there.”

  He clasped his head as if it ached. “But I was drunk. Falling down drunk.”

  The implications of his words stunned her. If Cameron didn’t know the truth, there was no one who could tell her, no one to ease the torture of not knowing. “Surely you remember something!”

  He raised his head and looked at her, and the bleakness in his eyes terrified her. “I have only one memory of the events of that night, a memory I have shared with no one. But I won’t keep it from you, even though your knowing might kill the love you have for me.”

  Celia held her breath, and his eyes bored into hers, hypnotizing her with their pain.

  “It’s a strange memory, a recollection of sensation rather than a visual image.” Tears filled his eyes and slid down the sharp angles of his cheekbones.

  “What kind of sensation?”

  “The crunch of bones beneath my knuckles. That is all I can remember.”

  She sank back on her heels, staring at him in horror, not knowing whether to gather him in her arms or run for her life. “You remember hitting Clarissa?”

  “I remember hitting someone, but I don’t know if it was Clarissa.”

  Cameron grasped her shoulders and pulled her toward him. “When you think of the torment you have suffered today, not knowing my guilt or innocence, compound this day by three hundred and sixty-five and that by eight years, and you’ll know what I’ve endured, not knowing what I’ve done.”

  She tried to harden her heart against him. “But if you are guilty—”

  “I deserve every moment of the torment—and more. But if I’m not?”

  “How will you ever know?”

  “I hope my memory of that night will someday return.”

  “But it’s been eight years. Shouldn’t you go back to London and try to prove your innocence?”

  He shook his head slowly, like a wounded animal. “If there had been witnesses—besides the killer—they would have come forward by now. The police, who are trained to solve such crimes, are perplexed, so what good could I do on a trail eight years cold?”

  His eyes chilled her like cold fire, and she shivered in the heat.

  “There are many in London,” he added, “who believe I must have done it. I don’t want them convincing me, too. And there is someone who believes so strongly that I’m guilty, he’s tried to take justice in his own hands. Twice before I came here, there were attempts on my life.”

  Celia twisted from his grasp and moved down the beach in an attempt to gather her thoughts from the conflicting emotions swirling inside her. She loved Cameron, but she knew only the man he had allowed her to see. Had he hidden a part of himself from her?

  “Cameron.” She turned back to him. “Don’t you know whether you are capable of murder?”

  “That is one of the puzzles I’ve tried to solve during my exile on this island, but I’ve reached no conclusions. There are too many factors.”

  “Like what?”

  “I had been drinking heavily earlier that evening, and people have been known to lose their reason under the influence of alcohol.”

  “Alcohol releases inhibitions against natural inclinations, but I can’t believe it would have made you a murderer if you weren’t inclined to be one.”

  He ran his hands over his close-cropped hair. “Inclination. That is the other factor. I’ve spent hours reading and studying, questioning myself, trying to ascertain whether a thought is always the father of the deed.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He lifted his head and met her eyes unflinchingly. “I wanted Clarissa dead.”

  Celia felt as if he socked her in the stomach and all the oxygen had been drawn from the air. Mrs. Givens had said that Cameron almost hated Clarissa, but most people used hate as a relative term, spanning the spectrum from mild dislike to intense vindictiveness. “Did you hate her enough to kill her?”

  “It’s a very long story, one I should have told you before I asked you to marry me.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  The
pleading in his eyes leeched the anger from her heart. “Because you had made me so incredibly happy, I didn’t want to spoil it with talk of Clarissa. But I’ll tell you everything now, if you’ll hear me out.”

  Celia sat on a log of driftwood half-buried in the sand, and Cameron sat in front of her with his arms clasped around his knees. The beauty of the gulf and the island sparkled around her, contrasting painfully with the agony in her heart.

  “Clarissa’s father, my business partner,” Cameron began, “suffered from a weak heart that could have killed him at any moment. Clarissa was his only child, although he had treated me like a son since my own father died. Nothing seemed more natural than the two of us marrying, binding together our families and our families’ fortunes. I was only twenty-one and had been a very sheltered young man. My business had left me little time for socializing. My mother had died when I was young, and I knew little of women or domestic life.”

  “You had Mrs. Givens.”

  “Yes, and she’s stood by me through all of this, God bless her.”

  He gazed across the gulf toward the horizon where the sun was setting in a blaze of pink and orange, shot through with gold. Celia remembered their wedding on the beach and the flash of green at sunset.

  “Clarissa and I were happy enough at first,” he said. “She complained because I spent too much time at work, but that work also supplied her with ample clothes and allowances for her parties and other social activities, which were the focus of her life. I thought I was happy.”

  “But you weren’t?”

  “I never knew what true happiness was until you came to me. Clarissa and I moved through life like two trains on parallel tracks. We shared neither interests nor friends, and our paths only crossed at mealtimes.”

  “But there was Randolph.” Celia doubted he’d been conceived during dinner.

  “Poor little Randolph. He’s the reason I hated his mother.” Cameron hid his face on his folded arms, unable or unwilling to look at her.

  Celia recalled the boy’s keepsakes packed carefully away in the top of Cameron’s closet. “Are you saying you didn’t want a son?”