A little scandal

by Patricia Cabot

  “You’re lying,” she whispered, staring up at him, oblivious to everything—the pain in her arm, the cold, the stench of his cigar—all of it. None of it mattered. None of it mattered at all. All that mattered now was the truth. And the truth, at last, was going to come out.

  “You know perfectly well you were there,” Kate hissed. “I saw you. You stood there and watched them burn.”

  Her gaze had become unfocused. Suddenly, she was no longer standing on a hotel terrace, but instead in the smoke-filled hallway of her childhood home, having just flung open her bedroom door and found, to her horror, that flames were leaping from her parents’ open bedroom door.

  “You were standing there,” she repeated, not struggling at all now to free herself from him. “Just to one side of the stairway. And you were holding something. A canister of some kind. And there was a smell—a horrible smell, worse than the smoke. Kerosene. I thought Father had accidentally knocked over his bedside lamp. But even that wouldn’t have caused flames to reach that high, that fast. Everything, everything was in flame. You must have soaked the bed curtains, the carpet, everything, with kerosene. And then I was trying to go to them, and you ... you reached out. And stopped me.”

  As if he wanted to wake her from whatever trance it was she’d slipped into, Daniel released her wrist, threw the cigar away, and grasped her by both shoulders and shook her.

  “It wasn’t supposed to have happened like that,” he said, and now there was something she had never seen before in his face. Desperation. “You and your mother—you weren’t even supposed to have been there. You were supposed to have left London. Your father wanted you both in the country for the duration of the trial, to protect you, to shield you.”

  “Of course,” Kate whispered. “But Mother refused to go. She said it would look cowardly, like we were running away.”

  “And so she died,” Daniel said fiercely. “She wasn’t supposed to have been there, and neither were you. I had to stop your father from testifying. He found proof, you see. Proof that I’d known all along the mine was dry. I couldn’t allow that, now, could I? But I never meant to hurt your mother, and I never wanted to hurt you. You weren’t supposed to have been there.”

  He accompanied each syllable with a shake. Kate, limp from spent emotion, could only stand there, numb. That was all she seemed capable of feeling. Just a numbness. Here was her parents’ murderer, standing in front of her, confessing ... confessing at last. She wasn’t mad. She hadn’t imagined it. She had seen him—seen Daniel Craven—in her house, the night of the fire that had killed her parents.

  “I thought you were unconscious,” he went on, in tones of what sounded—curiously—like despair. “I thought you’d fainted. But just to be safe, I went away. Seven years I was gone. Seven years, Kate, in that miserable hot country. I had to come back. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I thought surely, after seven years .... But no. Oh, no. You remembered. Like a bloody elephant, you remembered. And you blamed me.”

  What was it he was trying to say? That it had all been an accident? Yes, he’d meant to do it, but not to both of them. Only her father. He’d only meant to kill her father. He hadn’t meant to burn both of her parents alive in their bed.

  That was when the numbness wore off. When she looked up again, her eyes were blazing more hotly than any fire.

  “Did you honestly expect me,” she asked in an icy voice, “to forgive you for what you did? For taking their lives, and destroying mine?”

  Now the fingers on her shoulders tightened, and he said with a laugh, “Good God, no. Do you think I’d have gone to all this trouble—dragging that chattering little chit of Traherne’s halfway across the country—if all I wanted was your forgiveness? Certainly not.”

  Kate blinked at him. “Well, then, what—”

  “Oh, I intend to kill you, too, of course,” he said lightly.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “I should,” he informed her, as she stared up at him in horror, “have let you die that night along with your parents. But I was foolishly sentimental back then. I saved your life, instead of taking it. But then I return to London seven years later, thinking I had nothing to worry about, that the fire would have long ago been forgotten, only to find that you not only haven’t forgotten it, but are still quite openly blaming me for it—”

  “As well I should,” Kate declared vehemently. “You started it! You started it, and then you went off, and let it look as though my father killed himself, and took Mother with him. Do you have any idea what it was like, Daniel? Any idea what it was like to live through that? Through the funeral, the investigation? My God, I almost wish you had let me die. It would have been easier. But no, you ran off. You ran off, like the money-grasping coward you are—”

  “Now, you see,” Daniel said, “it’s that kind of attitude right there that I simply don’t have patience for.”

  More quickly than she would have thought possible, he’d pulled her against him, his arm wrapped tightly about her neck. She threw up both hands in an attempt to pry the rock-hewn limb from around her throat, but quickly realized such an attempt was futile. She struggled, instead, with her feet, kicking back at him with her heeled slippers, and elbowing him as hard as she could in the stomach. The result was that he only squeezed harder with his casual grip.

  “You know, Katie, I’m actually doing you a favor,” he remarked, as she felt the breath being pressed from her throat. “You oughtn’t to think so ill of me.”

  Kate’s vision began to swim. Her frantic efforts to break free quickly grew more sluggish.

  “What kind of life have you had lately?” Daniel asked. “Slaving away as chaperone to insufferable society misses like Isabel Traherne. That’s hardly what I’d call a life. You should be thanking me for putting you out of your misery. Well, little Isabel will undoubtedly be sorry she gave you so much trouble, when tomorrow you’re found with your neck broken at the bottom of this courtyard—”

  She regretted that she hadn’t told Daniel she was pregnant. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference, but he’d spoken so regretfully over having killed her mother, maybe, just maybe, he’d have spared her ....

  “They’ll probably think,” Daniel was saying, “you were sleepwalking. That’s what I thought you were doing, Kate, that night you stepped out into the hallway, into all that smoke. You looked so white, like a ghost. Then you started screaming, and I knew—”

  Stars. Kate saw stars, and not overhead, either. Bright pinpricks of light danced before her eyes as she choked for breath. But it was impossible. She was dying. She knew she was dying ....

  And it was all her own fault. She had seen the trap—oh, yes. From the very first moment the name Daniel Craven had fallen from the marquis’s lips that day in Lynn Regis, she had seen it. And yet she had walked right into it, knowing full well that there was no way—no earthly way—Daniel Craven would ever actually elope with Isabel Traherne. She had known full well why he’d done it.

  And yet she’d gone with Burke. She’d gone with him because he’d asked her to.

  Stars, floating before her eyes. She was dying. It wasn’t so terrible, dying. Like falling, really.

  And then, suddenly, miraculously, she was free.

  Free and falling forward, the world suddenly turned upside down as air, sharp and cold, poured into her lungs. Something hard bit into her knees and palms, scraping them, and then she was lying on cold, wet stone, gasping, gasping for breath.

  Behind her, she heard a loud scuffle. What were those noises? If only she could see. The stars had disappeared into inky blackness, which was only just now starting to fade. Was someone dancing? It sounded like someone was dancing. Only there was no music.

  And then Kate smelled it. It burned her lungs, the same lungs into which she’d been so gratefully gulping the sweet autumn air. Smoke. Again.

  And not tobacco smoke. No, not this time. This was the acrid scent of something burning that was never meant to burn.

&nb
sp; And then she saw it, just a ruddy glow before her swimming eyes, but coming more and more swiftly into focus. The curtains. The curtains to the French doors of her hotel room were on fire. When Daniel had thrown his cigar away, he must have tossed it toward the doors, rather than away from them. And now the curtains were on fire.

  And Isabel. Isabel was inside.

  Kate turned her head. She could see now. She was lying on the balcony floor, her hands and knees scraped raw from the stones, her throat aching terribly. And not five feet from her was Daniel ....

  Only not just Daniel. No, he wasn’t alone. He was being held in a grip very similar to the one in which he’d been holding her, only he was being held there by Burke. Burke was on her balcony. How, Kate wondered hazily, had Burke gotten there?

  Then she smelled the smoke again, and remembered Isabel, sleeping so peacefully inside. Isabel. She had to save Isabel from the fire.

  Staggering to her feet, using the balcony railing to pull herself up, Kate stumbled toward the French doors. The curtains weren’t the only things on fire. The carpet was smoldering, as well. Reaching up, Kate gave the flimsy cloth a tug. The curtain came away from the rod that had supported it, and fell to sizzle on the wet terrace floor. She did the same with the other curtain, then hurried to stomp on the smoldering carpet. When it continued to smoke, she seized the water basin from the stand in one corner of her room, and poured it over both the carpet and the curtains, outside.

  Dense grey smoke filled the night air. Through it, she was only dimly able to see that there was only one figure—besides herself—left on the terrace. He was silhouetted in the moonlight, and she could not see his features, but she realized, in one panicked moment, her head finally clear, that something might have happened to Burke, that it might be Daniel approaching her ....

  And she smashed the china water basin against the side of the doorframe, and held one jagged piece of it in the air threateningly.

  “Stop,” she said to the man coming at her through the smoke. Or at least that’s what she tried to say. Only what came out of her mouth was a croak. Her throat hurt too badly to say another word. Certainly not what she wanted to say, which was, “I’ll kill you, Daniel, I swear I will, if you come any closer.”

  But it turned out she didn’t need to say a word, because a voice she recognized, a voice she dearly loved was saying, “Kate, it’s me. Are you all right?”

  And then she found herself snatched up into the warmest, most comforting embrace she could imagine.

  “Burke,” she said. Or tried to say. What came out sounded nothing like his name.

  “Are you all right?” He took his arms away from her, but only so that he could thrust her away from him and examine her. “My God, Kate, I thought he’d killed you.”

  She found that she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She plucked at the lapels of the dressing gown he wore, trying to get his attention as he flipped over first one of her palms, and then the other, peering down at the scrapes on them.

  “This isn’t too bad,” he said. “Not even bleeding. How about your throat? How does it feel? My God, your fingers are like ice. We should get inside.”

  “Burke,” she croaked urgently, tugging on a lapel. “Isabel.”

  “Oh,” he said, looking down at the smoldering curtains as if noticing them for the first time. “Isabel’s not here. When she woke and heard a man talking on the balcony, she ran to fetch me. She didn’t”—Kate felt a shudder run through him—“realize it was Craven.”

  Relief coursed through Kate’s veins, warming them as no fire ever could. Poor Isabel! When the truth came out, how horrible it was going to be for her!

  And then Kate looked around the terrace questioningly.

  Burke read her unasked thought.

  “He’s gone, Kate,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly hard, seeing as how it was accompanied by a tender gesture, as he pushed some of her tumbled hair from her eyes. “He won’t be bothering you ever again.”

  But that wasn’t enough of an answer for Kate, and so, reluctantly, he showed her. Daniel’s body lay where hers would have, if he’d had his way, crumpled at the bottom of the courtyard. His head was tilted at an odd angle, revealing all too clearly the cause of his death.

  Kate quickly looked away, regretting that she’d asked. But Burke, holding her, said, in the same hard voice, “He killed your parents, Kate. And he’d have killed you, too, not to mention our child. I wasn’t wrong to have done it, Kate. I won’t say I’m sorry for it, either.”

  “No,” she said, against his chest. “No.” She found that she could say no more. Her throat was much too tender.

  Without another word, he swept her up into his arms, and carried her from the smoke-filled bedroom, and out into the hallway, where his daughter and the inn’s proprietor stood, with any number of servants, holding candles and looking concerned.

  “It’s all right,” Burke said, in his usual brusque tones. “Miss Mayhew is all right.”

  “Oh, Papa!” Isabel, still dressed in the rumpled gown in which she’d fallen asleep. “I was so worried! Are you sure—”

  “Everyone can go back to bed now,” Burke said firmly. “Except you.” He gazed meaningfully at the hotel’s owner. “There’s a mess in the courtyard you’ll want to have someone clean up. And you’d best send someone for the magistrate in the morning.”

  The innkeeper seemed to take this in stride, but his wife, who evidently was not aware of the nature of the mess in the courtyard, peered worriedly at Kate.

  “Perhaps we ought to send for the surgeon right now, though, for the young lady—”

  At Kate’s adamant head shake, Burke said, “Miss Mayhew doesn’t need a surgeon. If you could see to the Lady Isabel, however—”

  This the woman appeared only too eager to do, though Isabel seemed markedly unimpressed by her kind attentions, and reluctant to leave Kate. She was finally compelled to go back to bed—in her own room, this time—when Kate assured her, in a hoarse whisper, that she was perfectly all right. The corridor emptied even further when Burke snapped, with typical authoritativeness, “Everyone go back to bed. Now.” Burke Traherne was not master of this house, and yet his orders were obeyed with an alacrity that would have made a general jealous. The hallway cleared, and Burke conveyed Kate into his room, a chamber furnished in rich masculine tones. The light from the fire in the hearth revealed a large four-poster, the bedclothes thrown back, as if in haste.

  It was onto his own bed that he lowered her, and in its comforter that he wrapped her, until she felt quite stifled by the heat of both the bedclothes and the fire, upon which he heaped multiple logs in an attempt to warm her.

  She tried to protest, but he would hear none of it. He had said he would see to her himself, and he had meant it. Her scrapes and bruises were bathed by his own hands, her throat eased by tea he offered her himself. He was as attentive as any lover, as caring as any husband, and yet ....

  He had to know. He had to have figured it out. That it was all—all of it—her fault: Daniel’s seducing Isabel—well, more or less—and leading them on this mad, cross-country chase. It had all been her fault. If he had not hated her before—and God only knew, he had reason to, the way she’d treated him—he must surely hate her now.

  She certainly deserved that hatred. And yet she couldn’t let him go away thinking she wasn’t sorry for what she’d done.

  All she had to do, she realized, was say it. Just come out and say it.

  She took a deep breath, and opened her mouth.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “I,” Kate began. This, she realized, was not going to be easy. It was extremely difficult to think rationally with that penetrating gaze on her.

  “I,” she said again. “Am.”

  Good. That was a good beginning. Her voice was stronger now, thanks to the tea.

  Now, what came after that?

  “Sorry.”

  There. Perfect.

  Except that B
urke only sat there, looking at her expectantly. Perhaps it hadn’t been so perfect. Kate took another deep breath.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “about Daniel, Burke. What happened between him and Isabel was all my fault, you see.”

  He cocked his head, as if he weren’t sure he’d heard her properly. “Your fault,” he repeated.

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Daniel realized that I’d seen him—really seen him—the night of the fire, and I suppose he thought I’d tell someone, and so he decided he couldn’t let me live. Only he didn’t know where I was, of course, so he figured that if he eloped with Isabel, I’d—”

  Burke interrupted. “But you did tell someone. You told a lot of people.”

  “I—Well, of course I did. Seven years ago. Only no one believed me.”

  “But Craven didn’t know that.”

  Kate, considering this, knit her brow. “No, I suppose not. But the truth is ... well, I wasn’t quite sure I believed it, either. I mean, I knew my father hadn’t started the fire. And I knew I’d seen Daniel there. But in a part of my mind, I suppose I always thought there was a chance Freddy was right—that I had only imagined seeing Daniel that night, because ... well, that would have been better than admitting the truth. At least what everyone else thought was the truth.”

  He studied her. The confusion was gone from his face. Now he wore no expression whatsoever.

  “So you are vindicated,” he said softly.

  “Vindicated?” She raised the eyebrows that had been knit together a split second before. “Me?”

  “Certainly. All those people,” he said, “who turned against you when it first happened. You’ve proved them wrong. It was Daniel Craven, and not your father, who absconded with their money and started the fire, as you maintained all along.”