by Candace Camp
* * *
THE REST OF the day was spent in celebration: showing off the contents of the box to the other residents of the house, retelling their story time and again, laughing and talking, dreaming with the twins and Olivia about what they would do with the money. True to his word, Philip had given the Verreres the entire contents of the strongbox.
When Cassandra protested that half of it was his, earned by his efforts many times over, he had simply shaken his head and smiled, saying, “No. ’Twas your scheme from the very start. I would not even believe you at first. If it had not been for you and your persistence, that box would have lain in the ground forever, unless some lucky farmer happened to plow it up one day. Besides, it was the Verreres’ treasure to begin with. Margaret did not marry a Neville, and I cannot see that the Nevilles have any claim on it.”
“Margaret wanted it divided between the two families.”
“Margaret wanted the rift healed between the two families,” he corrected. “She thought that the only way to do it was to split the treasure. But you and I will heal the rift by marrying. The money is unnecessary.”
“You are a kind and generous man,” she told him, going up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
He smiled, placing a hand on her back to keep her close. “I am glad you think so. I fear that when you are Lady Neville, you will cease such accolades.”
Cassandra felt a warmth stir deep inside her in response to the gleam in his eyes as he gazed down into her face. “Indeed? Do you intend to be such an ogre of a husband that I shall stop thinking you are kind?”
“Not an ogre.” His grin broadened, and he leaned closer by degrees, whispering, “Just very demanding.” His lips brushed hers, leaving no mistake as to his meaning.
“Philip!” Cassandra put her hands between them, flat against his chest. “Your mother could come in at any moment.” They were in the sitting room downstairs, unexpectedly alone for the time being.
“Then she would be shocked.” He kissed her again, more lingeringly. “However, I think she already suspects that I cannot keep my hands off you.”
Cassandra could not deny a thrill of pleasure at his words. Philip was quite open about his desire for her, and his passion both stirred and pleased her. However, she could not help wishing that his desire had a basis in love. Passion, she suspected, could easily die, probably would, in fact, and then what would be left between them? Would Philip resent her then? Would he wish that he had never married her? Cassandra did not think that she could bear it if Philip turned away from her. She was falling more and more in love with him by the hour.
She had not told him, of course, except once or twice, when he had fallen asleep. She was scared to say it to him, afraid that he would think she was pushing him, trying to coerce him into responding that he loved her, too—but even more afraid that he would not say the words in return.
The lack of Philip’s love was not the only worry that niggled at her that day. After all the initial excitement had died down and the treasure had been stored away in the study safe, after Philip had set off for the village to inform the constable about Simons’s wrongdoing, Cassandra had begun to reflect on the events of the past few weeks. One thing kept recurring: it made no sense for Simons to have had her locked in the windmill.
She simply could not see how hurting or killing her or even delaying them for several days could have helped Mr. Simons. Until she and Philip came to London and told him about the book they were searching for, he had had no idea where the second map was. Delaying their search in that way would have gained him nothing. Besides, there was the fact that had made her suspect Philip of having locked her in there—the note had told her to meet Philip at the abbey. How would Mr. Simons, who had never even been around them, have known that their favorite destination on their rides was the ruined abbey? It made no sense, and things that didn’t make sense bothered Cassandra.
Like a tongue to a sore tooth, Cassandra’s thoughts kept returning to the illogical attack on her. It bothered her so much, in fact, that the next morning she set out for the village herself, heading straight for the jail. It took a little persuading, but finally she cajoled the constable into letting her see their criminal.
“Ah, Miss Verrere,” Mr. Simons said, smiling just as if they were meeting on the street or in his shop. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”
“Mr. Simons.” She stood for a moment, looking through the bars at him, wondering how to begin.
In the end, it was he who started the conversation. “I trust you realize, my dear, that it was never my intention to harm you.”
Cassandra looked at him in some astonishment. Apparently, he had forgotten the fact that he had held a shotgun aimed at her the day before.
“I have always been fond of you,” he was saying. “And your father, too.” He sighed. “It was greed that was my downfall, of course. Once I had read about the dowry, I simply had to see it, possess it. I hope you will forgive me.”
“I hope I will, too,” she replied levelly. “But at the moment my feelings are a trifle too fresh.” She paused, then continued, “If you did not intend to harm me, then why did you have me locked up in the windmill?”
The older man stared at her blankly. “I beg your pardon? The windmill? My dear Miss Verrere, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I’m talking about the fact that you had someone knock me over the head, drag me into the windmill and lock me in. It was sheer happenstance that anyone found me.”
The book dealer looked at her in dismay. “But my dear…how could you possible think that I had anything to do with that?”
“You seem to be the only possibility,” she replied bluntly.
He continued to gape at her, unable to come up with any sort of argument. It was his stymied look that convinced her more than anything. He was very good at creating trust where it was not deserved, of course. In proof of that, she had his seeming kindness toward her when all the while he was plotting behind her back to steal the Verrere treasure. Still, she could not believe that his astonishment was feigned. It seemed to her that he knew nothing about the windmill incident.
Her mind buzzed all the way back to Haverly House. If Mr. Simons had not locked her into the windmill, who had? And why?
Surely Joanna or Aunt Ardis could not have been so jealous, so afraid of her spending time with Philip, that they would have hatched up this scheme to stick her out of sight for a while. Greedy they might be, and definitely foolish, but Cassandra did not want to believe that either of them was wicked enough to have done that to her.
She came up to the house through the side garden, so deep in thought that she was almost upon Sarah Yorke before she saw the woman walking toward her through the garden.
“Miss Verrere!” Sarah cried in delight and hurried forward. “I had just called at the house and was so disappointed to find that you were not there. I had been hoping to talk to you.”
“Really?” Cassandra did not feel like talking to Sarah or, indeed, anyone, right now, but she tried to put a good face on it. She did, after all, like the woman.
“Yes. I—” Sarah glanced around, almost as if she were looking for something. “Why don’t we take a walk? Would you care to stroll through the garden?”
Cassandra sighed inwardly, but said only, “Of course, if you would like.”
“Yes, I think that sounds like an excellent idea.”
They turned and started across the garden, moving past the fragrant roses and down into the lower part of the garden.
“What did you want to talk about?” Cassandra prompted when the other woman did not say anything more.
“What?” Sarah glanced at her blankly.
“You said that you had hoped to talk to me. I thought you meant that there was something in particular…”
“Oh! Oh, no, nothin
g in particular. That is, I was hoping, you know, that we might have a chance to chat, to—to get to know one another better.”
It struck Cassandra that Miss Yorke was acting in a most peculiar manner. Her speech was vague, and she kept darting looks around her, as if she were hoping to see—or avoid—something. She seemed unusually nervous, and Cassandra thought that her eyes had a rather odd, wild look to them.
“Miss Yorke…is something the matter? Something that I can help you with?”
“Help me!” Sarah whirled on her, her eyes flashing, and Cassandra took a step backward. “Help me! How can you say that?”
Cassandra stared at her, puzzled and rather alarmed by the young woman’s odd demeanor. She didn’t know what to do, but she was aware suddenly that she did not want to walk any farther away from the house with the woman.
“Why don’t we turn back?” Cassandra suggested, starting to follow her words with action.
“No!” Sarah grew even more agitated. “No! We can’t go back. It’s too late!”
Suddenly everything fell into place in Cassandra’s mind. “Sweet Lord in Heaven!” Cassandra breathed. “It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who locked me in the windmill!”
“Yes! Yes!” Sarah hissed, and, taking Cassandra completely by surprise, she stuck her hand into her reticule and pulled out a pistol. She pointed it straight at Cassandra.
It occurred to Cassandra that she was growing quite tired of having guns pointed at her. “Miss Yorke, please, why don’t you put that thing away, and we can talk? There is no need to tell everyone that you were responsible for the windmill incident. I am sure you regret it.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Sarah agreed earnestly. “I liked you. I truly did.” She waved the pistol at Cassandra, motioning her forward. “But we have to walk. You have to walk.”
The pistol in Sarah’s shaking fingers made Cassandra exceedingly nervous, so she did as the woman asked, starting once more down the path.
“You have to turn down there and go out to the trees,” Sarah instructed, once again motioning with the firearm.
“Of course, if that is what you want.” Cassandra strolled along as slowly and as calmly as she could. The last thing she wanted to do was to set Sarah off. She needed time to try to figure out how she was going to get out of this nightmare. “But, you know, it really would be more comfortable to talk in the house. We could have a cool drink. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t condescend to me,” Miss Yorke snapped.
“No, I would never…”
“Yes, you would, you all would—although you seemed better than the others. Like that cousin of yours, Miss Moulton.” She made a noise of disgust. “I thought it was she whom he liked when you first arrived here. She was so pretty, and she hung on his arm, as if he were her property.” Jealousy dripped from every word. “She looked at me as if I were nothing, a worm, not even worthy of her notice. I knew she would take him away from me.”
“Joanna is like that,” Cassandra admitted. “However, she is like that to everyone. She thinks herself so beautiful that everyone else should fall down in admiration.”
Sarah let out a small, twisted smile. “She fell all right. I thought if I pushed her in, she would get scared. That she would go back where she came from. It didn’t hurt her. She wouldn’t even have gotten so wet if she hadn’t floundered about. But then she just got him to carry her out of the water, and she leaned against him so brazenly and flaunted her body in those wet clothes, and I thought that I had just made it worse.”
She paused as they reached a path leading away from the garden and into the more untamed reaches of the estate. Cassandra was reluctant to go, but Sarah motioned impatiently with the gun, and Cassandra started along the path.
“Then I saw that I had been all wrong. It was stupid of me, really. I should have know that Philip could not be interested in a vain, feather-headed chit like that. Whenever I was there, I could see that he avoided her. But he was spending all his time with you!” She glared over at Cassandra.
“We were working on something together,” Cassandra tried to explain. “It wasn’t preference for my company, it was just the project. We were trying to find the Spanish Dowry, you see.”
“Stop it! Just stop it! Do you think I’m feebleminded? Of course, it was a preference for you. He is marrying you!”
Cassandra realized that Miss Yorke had a point. There was little possibility of convincing this jealous woman that Philip did not care for her when he had proposed marriage to her. She decided to keep her mouth shut on the subject and hope that Sarah would move on to something else more easily dealt with.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Sarah rambled on. “I liked you. You seemed much nicer and more intelligent than other young ladies of quality. You took an interest in Silverwood, too. The boys liked you.”
“Thank you. I like them, as well. And I like you, Sarah. Don’t you think that we could be friends?”
“Friends! How can we be friends? You have everything I want. I can’t stand by and watch you marry him!” They walked a little farther, and Sarah said again, “I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t mean to. I knew that they would find you at the windmill in a little while. If they hadn’t, I would have come and let you out. I just wanted you to get scared, to decide to leave Haverly House. Why couldn’t you simply have left? Then we would never have had to come to this point.”
“We still don’t have to come to it,” Cassandra soothed.
“Yes! Yes! You wouldn’t leave. You wouldn’t leave, and now the only thing to do is to stop you from marrying him.”
Cassandra didn’t want to ask how Miss Yorke planned to stop her. “You know, Miss Yorke, just because you get rid of me, it doesn’t mean that you will have Philip to yourself.”
“But I would! He would have turned to me sooner or later, I know he would. He would have come to see that I loved him more than anyone else possibly could. He was so good to me, so kind to give me the position at Silverwood. I know it must have indicated some degree of affection on his part. Don’t you see?”
“Yes. I am sure that Sir Philip is very fond of you. But he won’t be if you—if you—” She balked at the words.
“He won’t know!” Sarah crowed. “That is the beauty of it. It will look like an accident. No one will ever know.”
“Of course they will. Someone is bound to have seen us from a window of the house. They will know that we left together, that you were the last person to see me.”
“Shut up! Shut up!” Sarah shrieked, and Cassandra wisely did not say anything. It was obvious that the woman’s control was hanging by a thread.
They continued walking, but they did not say much now. Cassandra hoped that someone had indeed seen them from the window, but it would be sheer happenstance. She could not count on it. And even if someone had seen them, they would think nothing of it, just that the two of them were going for a walk.
“There!” Excitement filled Sarah’s voice, and Cassandra glanced around for whatever object had occasioned it.
She saw nothing except a stand of trees and, off to one side, a well. Sarah motioned her toward the well.
“Over there. Go stand over there.”
Cassandra did as she said. She understood now how Sarah intended her death to look like an accident. She would somehow force her down the old well, and people would assume that she had fallen in by accident. Although… She looked at the well as she came to a halt beside it.
“Sarah, this is not going to work,” she began reasonably. “This well is covered, and it stands almost waist high. It would be very difficult to fall into it accidentally.”
“It will work,” Sarah insisted obstinately. “You take off the cover.”
“No.” Cassandra faced her calmly, crossing her arms across her chest
.
“What? You have to. I’ll shoot you!” Sarah waved the gun for emphasis.
“Go ahead. However, you can rest assured that if I am shot, no one will think it was an accident. Everyone will know that I was murdered. I can also guarantee that Philip will find out who did it. He won’t rest until he knows who murdered the woman he was about to marry. The woman he loves.” She spoke each word separately and loudly, pushing them into Sarah’s face. She wanted to make the other woman mad, wanted to put her in such a rage that she would do something foolish.
“Stop it!” Sarah came forward a few steps, her entire body rigid with rage. “Don’t say that. It’s not true!”
“Why else would he be marrying me?” Cassandra asked. “Everyone knows that the Verreres have no money. Only love would bring him to marry me. And when Philip loves, he is unshakable. You know that. He loves me, and he will always love me. Only me. No matter what you do, you can never make him love you.”
Sarah came closer, her eyes wide and furious, her hands shaking so badly that Cassandra was afraid she would set the gun off accidentally. Cassandra swallowed, hoping that she would not push the woman so far that Sarah simply dropped her with a shot. Taking her courage in her hands, she added, “When he finds out that you are the one who killed me—as he will surely do—he will hate you forever. Go ahead, Sarah, shoot me. See how long it will be before Philip knows all about you—and despises you forever.”
Sarah snapped. With a wild shriek, she rushed at Cassandra, raising her hand to bring down the pistol on Cassandra’s head. Cassandra ducked and lunged forward, hitting Sarah in the chest and knocking her backward. They staggered back, then forward, swinging and kicking and fighting for purchase. Cassandra dug her fingers into the other woman’s arm and hung on, struggling desperately to keep her from bringing the pistol down and firing it. The gun went off, the noise reverberating in the air, but the bullet went harmlessly upward.
Cassandra was bigger than Sarah, but the other woman was more muscular from years of having to physically deal with rambunctious young boys, as well as cooking pots and desks and chairs—and she seemed possessed of an almost superhuman strength. Cassandra could understand now how Sarah had been able to haul Cassandra’s unconscious body onto a horse and then into the windmill.
