by Jane Goodger
“It’s the duchess herself.”
To say that Marcus was taken aback would have been a massive understatement. This man thought he was marrying the Duchess of Weston? He was either delusional or drunker than Marcus had thought.
“You don’t believe me,” Munroe said, then let out a cackle. “It’s true, though. She’s a lively thing, she is. And to think she was married to that whoreson Weston. Makes my stomach crawl, it does. You don’t know half. No one does, what that man did. He deserved what he got and more. Too bad about Silas, though. Just too bad.”
Munroe, who had been laughing not five seconds prior, looked about to cry, and Marcus very much regretted his decision to sit with the man. Perhaps he’d make his excuses and have his meal brought up to his room after all. He turned to indicate as much to Peter, but the barkeep was nowhere in sight.
Munroe was a fidgety sort of fellow, and Marcus couldn’t imagine that he could have attracted the duchess. He was wiry, with close-set eyes and a mop of curling hair that gave his head a bit of a pointed look. His clothes were expensive and well-tailored, and had a look of newness to them, as if he’d walked out of the haberdashery just that day with his new wardrobe. Even the man’s bowler, lying on the worn wooden table by the bottle, looked as though it had never been worn. Yet his fingers were ink-stained, marking him as a man who worked as a secretary.
Theresa, if he recalled, was a pretty little thing, a smaller version of his own wife.
Munroe’s bleary eyes took on a contemplative look as he took another sip. Marcus cast another look about, hoping to see Peter.
“I remember your sister,” Munroe said abruptly. While they talked, Munroe had taken an object out of his pocket, brought his hand to the table, and begun picking up and dropping the object over and over, making a staccato beat and driving Marcus a bit mad with the motion. But when Munroe dared mention his sister, Marcus slammed his hand on top of Munroe’s, stopping the irritating noise immediately. “Hey! You’ll break it.”
“You are not to discuss my sister in a public place, Mr. Munroe. Do I make myself clear?”
Munroe rubbed his hand, leaving behind on the table the annoying something he’d been playing with. Marcus had a good mind to take it up and throw it from the—
There are times in life when it seems as if every clock stops ticking and every heart stops beating. As Marcus looked down upon the object on the table, it indeed seemed as if time had stopped.
“A worry stone.” Marcus picked the object up, fingering its smooth surface. “I saw one just like it recently.” On Constable Conroy’s desk. Next to the file on Weston’s murder marked CLOSED. It could be a coincidence; it could mean nothing at all that this man who worked for Weston had the same type of stone found near another man’s body. Marcus schooled his features as quickly as he could when he realized he could very well be sitting across the table from a murderer. Or perhaps not. But he realized he should do nothing to alarm Munroe, and so he placed the stone back on the table as if he’d lost interest in it.
“Nah, you couldn’t have seen one like this. My grandpappy got that in Turkey for me. You can’t find them around here. Used to have two but . . .” Munroe let his voice trail off and gave Marcus a hard look. Marcus smiled blandly as if politely interested in his story. “I lost that one years ago. Years.” He looked at his drink and fiddled with the glass for a time. Finally, he cleared his voice. “I’d like to find another one like it. Did you see it in a shop? I would like to purchase another if I could.”
“I don’t recall where I saw it,” Marcus said. “And now I recollect, it was a different type of stone altogether.” He heard a noise behind him and turned, grateful to see Peter coming from the kitchen with a steaming plate in his hands.
“On second thought, I think I’ll take my meal in my room, Mr. Riordan.” He turned to Munroe. “I do hope you don’t mind. I’m terribly tired and very poor company.”
Munroe smiled and lifted his glass. “It was lovely chatting with you,” he said grandly, then took another drink. Marcus figured he’d be sleeping at his seat within the hour. In the morning, he might send word to Constable Conroy about the stone, though he doubted anything would come of it. They had a man’s confession, after all.
Chapter 19
Lilian awoke the next morning, her eyes gritty from crying, but it took a few seconds before she remembered why she’d been crying, and when she did, she pulled the covers up over her head.
“Mama. My lady.”
So that was why she’d woken. Pulling down the covers, she peeked out to see Mabel standing next to her bed, her hair all bed-messy. “Where is Papa? He promised to take me to see the swans today.”
Lilian pulled the covers back up, unable to face Mabel and her questions so early. Mabel giggled, thinking she was playing a game. “He had to leave on business yesterday. It was an emergency and he didn’t have time to say good-bye. So your visit to the swans will have to wait. Unless you want me to take you?”
“I’ll wait for his lordship,” she said. It was something she did now, interchanging my ladies and my lords with Mama and Papa, and Lilian thought it was the sweetest thing. She had Sadie to blame for this. When talking to Mabel, she always referred to Marcus as Papa and herself as Mama. And now, mostly, Mabel also referred to them as Mama and Papa, which almost broke Lilian’s heart. No doubt it would tear Marcus to pieces.
Though Lilian had prayed for Marcus’s return, he had not come back to Hallstead Manor, and Adam had promised late the prior evening that he would go out and find him. And drag him home.
“I should have gone with him,” Lilian had said. “He was so upset. I don’t know what I was thinking, letting him go.”
Georgette had held her hand throughout the evening, telling her that all would be well and that of course she couldn’t have left Mabel, that she’d done the right thing.
“He’s like a wounded bear trying to run from his pain,” Adam said, which only made Lilian want to cry even more. For Marcus was hurt, terribly so, not only by Stephen, but now by her. But what should she have done? Abandoned Mabel?
Worse, her sister was never far from her thoughts. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d sat with her sister, her stomach large with pillow. Theresa had seemed so fragile, on the verge of some terrible breakdown, and Lilian felt helpless knowing she could do nothing to help her. Lilian felt torn in too many directions.
“Marcus cannot continue to run away every time something goes awry with his life,” Georgette had said.
And Adam, who rarely disagreed with his wife, shook his head. “This is not something going awry, this is finding out your brother betrayed you. Georgette, you cannot know how much that must have hurt Marcus. If you had done the same with Stephen, I think I’d be as far away from him as I could possibly go.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” Georgette said stubbornly.
“Of course not. But what would you have him do? Shake Stephen’s hand and offer forgiveness?”
“Yes,” Georgette said with a nod, seeming completely sure of herself. Then, a sigh, and “No, I suppose not.”
“Be damned if I would. As it is, I cannot stand to look at him and he did nothing wrong to me.”
And so it had gone on for several long minutes, Lilian not listening, thinking only of how Theresa had acted the last time she’d seen her.
* * *
“You’ve broken her heart, you know.”
Marcus groaned, immediately recognizing Adam’s voice, and pulled the pillow over his head. He needn’t ask how Adam had found him so quickly, for in a town as small as Cannock, word that Lord Granton was staying at the Cow and Plow when he lived not two miles away had no doubt caused a stir in the village.
“Drink too much, brother?” Adam asked, chuckling.
“Not a drop,” came the muffled reply. He hadn’t needed to drink; he’d just needed sleep, still did. “Sod off and leave me alone.”
“She’s outside the door, Marc.”
“No. Not this time.” Adam was sitting comfortably on a chair, one leg propped on the other. “And if you truly wanted to be left alone, you wouldn’t have stopped in Cannock. You’d be halfway to Merdunoir now. Or in London.”
Marcus rubbed at his day-old beard and scowled at his brother. So frightened was Adam by that look that he laughed out loud. Damn brothers. And then the day’s previous revelations hit him like some rogue wave, and he felt like crying. It had been there, of course, that deep sadness that made him feel as if a large weight was in his chest instead of a beating heart, but just thinking the word “brothers” made him think of Stephen and what had transpired.
“Mabel wanted to know where her papa was,” Adam said with brutal cruelty.
“Don’t.” Marcus pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He would not weep again. He. Would. Not. But when he took his hands away from his eyes, they were wet.
“Hell, Marcus, I know it’s difficult. Actually, I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to have a wife who doesn’t love you, who cuckolds you. I don’t know what it’s like to find out you have a daughter who isn’t truly your daughter but whom you love enough to die for. But I do know what it’s like to have a wife who loves you. And now you do, too. Don’t ruin this, Marcus. Don’t throw it away.”
“Christ, Adam, are you trying to make me weep?” he asked, and indeed two tears slipped from his eyes. “Why in hell did she start calling me Papa?” He shouted this at the ceiling, as if God would have some answer for him.
It was a rhetorical question, but Adam answered it anyway in a way he must have known would either break his brother’s heart even more or put it back together. “Because she loves you.”
Marcus looked away and squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing convulsively. “Stephen.” He barely managed to get that one word out.
“Feels like hell. As you might expect. Looks like hell too, thanks to you. And he doesn’t want her, Marcus. She’s your daughter.”
“She’s—” He was about to say Mabel was not his daughter, but he could not because, in his heart, she was. Marcus might have lied and said he didn’t want Mabel either. But he wasn’t a man who was given to lies, so he remained silent. “Let me get my clothes on,” he said wearily, and scowled when Adam gave him a brilliant smile.
* * *
Lilian paced back and forth under the watchful and bemused eyes of her new sister-in-law. Every once in a while, she would stop and bite her thumb, look at Georgette as if she was going to say something, then continue her pacing. Thank goodness Mabel had been kept occupied in the nursery with her cousins.
Following breakfast that day, a footman had appeared and discreetly called Adam over. Within minutes, Adam was out the door and headed to Cannock center, promising not to return without Marcus. Lilian couldn’t help but think that was a promise Adam might not be able to keep, and told him so.
“If Marcus truly wanted to disappear, he would have,” he said. “He’s in Cannock. He didn’t get any farther than Cannock.” Adam had grinned, and even though she’d thought the two brothers didn’t look alike, at that moment Lilian’s heart had wrenched, for that grin was so much like Marcus’s.
And Lilian had been pacing ever since.
* * *
It seemed like a lifetime ago when Marcus had sat beside Miss Cates and learned the terrible truth about his brother. As he rode in the carriage on the way back to Hallstead Manor, Marcus flexed his right hand, realizing for the first time that it was slightly swollen from striking Stephen’s hard head.
“Stephen’s eye is swollen shut,” Adam said, obviously noting Marcus’s perusal.
“He’s lucky that is all I did. If the ladies weren’t in the room, I daresay I wouldn’t have stopped with a single punch.”
“He’s devastated, you know. And gone to London, at Father’s behest.”
Marcus sighed. “If this is an attempt by you to mend fences, you are wasting your breath,” he said darkly. “At least for now.” This last was said begrudgingly, though in his heart he knew he could not remain at odds with Stephen indefinitely. In truth, he regretted his punch and his words; Stephen had been little more than a boy and Marcus had no doubt who the aggressor had been. Still, the betrayal smarted and it would take longer than a single day for him to come to grips with all that had happened. For now, he wanted to go home and hold his wife. And bring Mabel to see the swans as he had promised before he’d left to talk to Miss Cates.
Adam gave him an innocent look. “I’m thinking of Mother. She was hysterical all yesterday, fearing she would never see her eldest son again. I knew better, though.”
“Did you.”
His brother grinned. “You’re my brother, and I’ve never seen you so idiotic over a woman in my life. Reminds me of me.”
Marcus widened his eyes in mock horror. “Never say that.”
Adam chuckled, and the two brothers shared a moment of companionable silence, exchanging curious looks when the carriage stopped midway between Cannock and Hallstead Manor.
“I’ll see what’s happened,” Adam said, then opened the door to stick his head out.
It happened so quickly, Marcus wasn’t certain what had occurred even when he saw Adam slump over, then tumble from the carriage.
“Adam!” he shouted, lunging to try to stop Adam from hitting the ground. And then, a searing pain in his chest and the sickening sound of his flesh being pierced to the hilt by a knife. Stunned, Marcus fell back, glancing off his seat and ending up in the narrow space between the carriage seats. He stared blankly, first at the knife, and then at the man standing outside the carriage and smiling.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” John Munroe said cheerfully.
Marcus tried to get up, but he lacked the strength to pry himself from between the seats and the pain the action produced was excruciating. Munroe frowned, as if he was sorry to see him in such agony. Marcus looked down, his vision swimming, to see a heavy stream of blood coming from his wound, his hand thickly covered with it.
“Funny, it gets easier with every one. I vomited after His Grace, but Silas was easier, and this, well, this has been very nearly a pleasure.”
“You’ll hang,” Marcus said, struggling to remain conscious. He looked down at the gruesome wound, saw the blood pouring from him, and knew he was going to die. Adam lay unmoving on the ground in a heap, perhaps still alive, and he could do nothing to save him, nothing to save himself. Ah, God, Georgette and the children. It could not end this way, he thought, and yet with each breath he felt weaker until it was a struggle to keep his eyes open. He would never hold his wife again, never tell her how sorry he was, never make love to her with the sun shining sweetly on her pale skin. Mabel would grow up without him, perhaps might even forget the man she’d thought of as papa for such a short time. Oh, God, it was too much to bear.
Munroe watched him for several long minutes, his head tilted a bit to one side as if fascinated by the process of death. After a time, he let out a sigh. “I suppose I should go now. I am curious, though, whether Lady Granton was with you when you saw that worry stone. Not that she can tie it to me, of course, not with you dead, but one can never be too careful. There’s a thought to take to your grave.” And then he chuckled softly, and Marcus’s eyes widened in horror.
“Do not touch my wife,” he growled. The effort of saying those five words cost him dearly, and his vision turned momentarily black. It seemed impossible to draw a breath.
“Touch her? I don’t have to touch her at all,” Munroe said, as if explaining a simple lesson to a child.
Marcus found the strength to attempt to sit up, but Munroe laughed and shoved him back down with ease. “You cannot save her, you know. Just think. You’ll soon be reunited! Good day, sir. I do apologize for leaving so hastily.”
; After Munroe left, Marcus tried to move, but he felt so weak, so tired, and his last thought before he slipped into unconsciousness was that Lilian was in terrible danger, and he could do nothing about it.
* * *
“What could be taking so long?” Lilian asked, biting her thumb again.
“Adam hasn’t been gone all that long. Marcus probably needed to get dressed, perhaps break his fast in the inn.”
“What if Marcus has already left? What if he refuses to return? I should have gone with your husband.”
“Please do not worry, Lilian. I’m sure everything will work out.”
Lilian wasn’t quite so certain. She would never forget the look on Marcus’s face when she’d begged him not to make her choose between him and Mabel. But what was she to do? Abandon Mabel, forget that for one brief time she’d had a daughter? It had been an impossible choice to make so quickly.
Finally, the two women heard a carriage, and Lilian froze in place. “He’s here,” she breathed, then smoothed down her skirts. Lilian gave Georgette a wide-eyed look. “Where is Stephen? He—”
“He left right after breakfast for London.”
“Good, good.” Lilian worried her bottom lip. Would Marcus be terribly hurt that she had stayed behind? Would he be angry? “I can’t wait a second more.” Lifting her skirts, she ran out of the room and flew down the stairs, her feet beating a quick staccato on the marble steps. If Marcus was angry, she’d make it so he was not; she’d let him know how much she loved him and how very sorry she was for letting him leave without her. And then she’d tell him that he was never allowed to leave again and certainly not without their daughter. Oh, Lord, she didn’t know what she was going to say to him. Not that she loved him, because she was uncertain how he would react to such a proclamation, given he had told her not to expect love from him.
She stood in the foyer, hands clasped in front of her so tightly it hurt, and stared at the door. When it opened, she screamed.
Adam stood there swaying, his face covered with blood, so much blood that as he stood there, a small puddle formed at his feet. “Call the doctor,” he said, right before his ability to stand deserted him. Thankfully, a footman caught him before he fell and laid him carefully on the hard marble floor. Behind Lilian, she heard Georgette’s shout of anguish, her hurried footsteps on the stairs.
