by Rebecca King
“How do you know?” Jasper demanded.
“Why in the Hell didn’t you tell Aaron before he left London?” Oliver asked.
“Just what in the Hell is going on then? Where is he? What the Hell does he think he is doing to his sister?” Niall interrupted.
“Where is the blackguard?” Jasper demanded.
“Is it him trying to break in here? Hasn’t he caused his sister enough upset?” Oliver snapped.
“Do you know where he is now?” Aaron asked far too quietly.
“He had better be in the damned grave because if he isn’t I will damned well put him there myself for all the bloody trouble he has caused,” Jasper snorted.
“Does it have something to do with Frederick and Voss?” Aaron asked.
Sir Hugo stood and dug around in his cloak pockets. Rather than show everyone what he held, he nodded to Aaron.
“You had better look through those letters of yours. There should be some that are thicker than others. Thomas said he was going to send you the letters he had received because he wanted you to see what he kept receiving in the last weeks before he came to see me,” Sir Hugo warned.
Aaron immediately began to rifle through the packets in the saddle bags. He tore several open and eventually found one with Thomas’s writing on. Carefully, he unfolded it.
My dear Aaron,
Your time is precious, I know. However, Elspeth needs your help. She is under threat, and so am I. Should you receive this packet it will be because something has happened to me that has left Elspeth in danger. You need to look at Frederick and Voss, but I warn you now there is no proof of their involvement in any of the threats I have received. I have taken measures to make sure Elspeth is protected as much as possible, but she needs you, Aaron. You will know what to do better than I. There is nothing more I ask of you than you do whatever it takes to keep Elspeth away from Frederick and Voss. The letters I have received are enclosed. They have been accompanied by several gruesome physical warnings the likes of which are now buried in the farthest corner of the garden beneath the old oak tree. Don’t tell Elspeth because she will be scared. Keep her safe, Aaron. I know if anybody can it shall be you.
Stay safe,
Thomas.
Aaron dropped the note onto the table and opened the letters Thomas had enclosed.
“Death threats,” he whispered.
He handed one to Oliver who had stepped closer to read over Aaron’s shoulder.
“They are all death threats,” he muttered several minutes later when all the letters had been opened and were being read and passed around the stunned group.
Elspeth dropped the note she read back onto the table and ran her fingers down her skirt as though wiping off the distinct memory of the horrible words the threat contained. It detailed minutely everything the sender would do to her to draw the life out of her.
“God, how vile,” she whispered.
“It’s only designed to scare you,” Jasper assured her.
“How can you say that? Why would anybody send this just to scare someone?” Elspeth cried. “How sick can you get?”
“They want to frighten you, that’s all,” Aaron persisted.
“How do you know?” Elspeth asked with a shiver.
“If a professional, or determined killer was after you they wouldn’t be faces at a window. They would have found a way in by now, and you would be dead. You were in this house for a good month between Thomas’s disappearance and my arrival, weren’t you?” Aaron bit out.
Elspeth stared in horror at the awful notes on the table.
Aaron clasped her chin and tugged her around until she read the calm certainty in his eyes.
“Weren’t you? You were here all by yourself,” Aaron persisted.
Elspeth nodded when her gaze met his.
“Nothing happened to you, did it? You were here, alive and well.” Aaron sighed. “I know your circumstances were horrible, and brought you hardship, but Thomas had no idea it would take so damned long for me to receive news of his death and reach you.”
“Where has he been? Where is Thomas now?” Elspeth asked of Sir Hugo.
“He came to see me in London and told me of the death threats. He asked if Aaron could help him. I told him that Aaron was working deep undercover on the investigation into the kidnappings, which was the truth, but that I would help him. I have, of course, since investigated Voss and Frederick’s backgrounds. I have knowledge that will help prove they have been working together. I also have knowledge that they are fraudsters, who have no qualms about how they rob or defraud someone so long as they obtain money that doesn’t belong to them.”
“Have they done it before; tried to frighten someone out of their home?” Jasper asked in astonishment.
Sir Hugo nodded. “I have heard that Voss likes the high life. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any direct source of income. It appears that he has been living way beyond his means but has been getting his money from somewhere. Given Thomas had been visited on several occasions by Frederick, who had made it clear he is determined to get his hands on this house no matter what it takes, it stands to reason that Frederick is willing to commit crimes to get what he wants.”
“But Frederick doesn’t need the money, surely?” Elspeth replied.
“I am afraid Frederick also has expensive tastes, and has been living with a distant relation, an elderly lady he has an acquaintance with. Whether he is there willingly or has forced his way in, though, is unknown at present. What I do know is that his bank account is empty. I have sent word to the local group who works this area to keep an eye on the pair of them but have yet to meet with them to find out what they have uncovered.”
“Where is Thomas?” Elspeth whispered.
“I don’t know,” Sir Hugo replied sadly. “I am sorry, my dear. I strongly suspect that he isn’t in that grave, though.”
“What is in that grave then?” Niall demanded. “I mean, Elspeth went to the funeral, did she not? What the Hell did she bury?”
“Three thousand pounds,” Sir Hugo announced into the silence of the room. “I have no idea where Thomas is now. He made it clear to me that he was going to have to take drastic measures if Aaron couldn’t be found in time to help. He was distinctly worried because he had found a dead fox carcass on the doorstep with another death threat against Elspeth.”
“Fox?” Elspeth gulped.
“Wily, a predator, someone who has a fierce reputation but can still be ripped to shreds by the hunting hounds,” Sir Hugo murmured.
Elspeth clutched at Aaron’s hands as she battled a wave of sickness that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Thomas should have told me what was going on,” she whispered. “Why did he not tell me? Why did he let me go about my life without a care in the world? Anything could have happened to me.”
“You said yourself you don’t go into the village much. You were content to stay here and bake and look after the house,” Aaron murmured.
“When I did go into the village Thomas insisted on walking with me. He said he wanted exercise,” Elspeth whispered. “I didn’t stop to think there might be another, more sinister, reason for his company.”
“He was staying close. It is quite understandable that he grew worried for your safety in the last few weeks given the contents of these notes,” Aaron murmured.
“You all seem so calm and matter-of-fact about this,” Elspeth whispered. “How could he let me believe he was dead? I mean, I grieved for him. Does it not matter how much devastation that has brought me? There are people in this village that think he is dead. We held a funeral service for him, for God’s sake.”
The more Elspeth spoke, the more her fury began to burn. She was livid, not just with Thomas, but with Frederick and Voss for creating this mess. She was angry with Sir Hugo for not being willing to contact Aaron with Thomas’s concerns. She was angry with herself for not having had the slightest suspicion that something was so seriously wrong in the hous
e she had been living in. It had been going on right under her nose and she hadn’t had a single clue.
“God, you wait until I get my hands on him,” she hissed.
“Frederick?” Aaron asked, leaning back in his chair, at a safer distance from the bundle of feminine fury beside him.
“Thomas. I am going to give him a piece of my mind, I can tell you,” she ground out.
Aaron’s lips twitched as he fought a smile. He struggled to contain it. While he could understand her anger, to see her with her pale cheeks flushed with colour, a defiantly furious sparkle in her eye, and a positive vibration of disgusted temper reverberating through her, she looked so vibrantly full of life that in that moment, if he hadn’t been already, he would have fallen deeply in love with her. The reaction he had expected was for her to cry, wail and moan about how much grief she had been through. What she was instead, was coldly furious at the people who brought her so much misery. She wasn’t cowed by it either. Aaron had no doubt Elspeth would give Thomas a lambasting when he eventually did make an appearance, but he could find no sympathy for Thomas for any discomfort he faced.
God only knows what she will do with Voss and Frederick if they do happen to show their faces again. Aaron almost relished the chance of being nearby when that happened.
“Get in line,” Jasper grunted.
Sir Hugo looked at each of them. “I warned Thomas against doing anything illegal, but he refused to listen. He said someone had to do something because if the War Office and the Star Elite weren’t prepared to help he had to capture the fraudsters himself. He left in a temper, I can tell you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then that he had been?” Aaron demanded.
“You were in St Magdaline. I went to see the regional group to get them to start to investigate Voss and Frederick because that was considerably more important than trying to find you. You must understand, men, that trying to find you when you are undercover is damned near impossible even for me. It is a testament to just how good you are at what you do if even I can’t find you, damn it. When you did resurface there was the dire situation with Charity and Angus that had to take precedence because Charity was fighting for her life. There was, however, no physical threat toward Elspeth at that time, except for the letters.”
“Letters that threatened her life,” Jasper muttered.
“But she was still alive and well,” Sir Hugo argued.
“Nobody had actually tried to kill her,” Aaron admitted with a heavy sigh.
“Exactly. What we have is low-level, insignificant attempts to bully. Cold-bloodied killers and kidnappers must be considered more important to get off the streets than some local oaf who is nothing more than stupidly sending sick notes to people,” Sir Hugo reasoned. “When Thomas told me that he was going to take matters into his own hands, I had no idea he was planning something like this or I would have stopped him. I would certainly have put more importance on his situation. The letter you received about his death was just as much of a shock for me as it was for you, Aaron. As soon as you had left, I immediately set about trying to find Voss and Frederick. I have frozen their bank accounts and have also spoken to the bank about Thomas. He did take the money out, but interestingly, there was someone else in the bank on the day Thomas withdrew his fortune. Voss.”
Everyone cursed.
“That’s what Voss’s nephew told me,” Aaron muttered.
When everyone looked askance at him, Aaron told them all what had happened when he had arrived at home.
“Is there nothing they won’t do?” Elspeth cried in horror.
“Voss thinks the money is in this house?” Jasper frowned.
“When you think this through, if they looked through the window and saw wood stocks low they would consider that Elspeth was physically incapable of gathering wood, they wouldn’t put any importance on the fact that she might not have any money to purchase supplies.”
“Unless they got into the house to rummage through the cupboards, they would have no idea she was barely surviving,” Aaron said.
“But if Thomas intended to stage his death, why didn’t he make sure Elspeth had enough to live off?” Oliver demanded.
Aaron shook his head in confusion. “Maybe he wanted Elspeth to write a note asking for my help? If she did that she would get me here just as fast as I could reach her.”
Elspeth’s heart flipped as she studied him. Aaron betrayed so much in that brief statement that it brought tears to her eyes. For the first time in a long time, Elspeth started to wonder just what everyone else seemed to know that she didn’t.
Aaron dug around in his pocket and withdrew the note he had received informing him of Thomas’s death. He read it again before he handed it to Elspeth.
“What is it?” she whispered. She read and sighed in dismay at the thought that Aaron had received it only for it to be a lie. “Why would he do something so horrid to us?”
“He felt desperate,” Aaron replied. “It has been staring me in the face all along.”
“What has?”
Aaron tapped the note. “It says here that Thomas died in a carriage accident.”
“Yes, that’s what I heard,” Elspeth whispered.
“So how come when we questioned Frederick, he said that Thomas had ridden out of here – on a horse? Did he use a carriage or a horse?” Aaron snorted.
Elspeth looked at him blankly for a moment.
“A horse,” she whispered. “Our carriage is still in the shed out the back.”
“He might have used somebody else’s,” Niall suggested.
“Whose?” Aaron asked sharply.
Nobody knew.
“If he left on horseback, why was he in a carriage when he supposedly had this accident? Where did the damned thing come from? Whose was it?” Aaron asked.
“Nobody’s,” Sir Hugo grunted. “Thomas is still alive.”
“Who did I bury then?” Elspeth cried.
“From the sound of it, nobody,” Aaron replied.
“What about the body? Was a body found?” Jasper asked Sir Hugo.
“This all stinks of a set-up. I wonder if Thomas has a friend who is prepared to lie for him, with the right monetary reward, of course.” Sir Hugo ran a weary hand through his hair. “Who knows? Without Thomas here to ask, we have to work on supposition.”
“What about Callum?”
“He has not come back yet. He has gone to find out if Thomas met with any of his friends, but God knows what he has found,” Oliver sighed.
Sir Hugo shook his head in disbelief. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Thomas has gotten connections to lie for him.”
“I don’t think he knows any doctors,” Elspeth murmured. She dabbed at the tears in her eyes. “But then I didn’t think my brother was the kind of man who would put me through this for a lie.”
“He wasn’t even injured, was he?” Aaron asked the room at large.
“Doesn’t look like it.” Oliver’s voice was rife with disgust.
“Damn him,” Elspeth hissed. “How did he get a doctor to be so deceptive?”
“Maybe he knew someone who would sign a death certificate,” Oliver suggested. “I mean, a doctor could recommend the coffin wasn’t opened because of the state of the body and nobody would think to question it.”
“We have obtained an exhumation order for Thomas’s grave,” Phillip informed them. “At first light, the gravediggers are going to go and dig up the coffin. The doctor is on standby to examine the body – if there is one, but I don’t think it will be necessary now.”
“From the sound of it, Thomas is alive and out there somewhere, and he has been back to check on his sister,” Niall said.
“Why, then, once he saw us in the house, didn’t he make his presence known?” Elspeth cried.
“Because he might suspect we would go back to our investigation, and lambast him for wasting our time,” Aaron warned. “He has lied to get me here, don’t forget.”
“He knew you would
feel duty-bound to help,” Elspeth whispered.
“I would help you anyway,” Aaron assured her. “He didn’t need to create this mess.”
“But you were always busy,” Elspeth warned.
“I think we have to call off the doctor until we can be certain there is a body in that coffin,” Sir Hugo murmured, hoping to change the subject away from the brewing argument.
“It was Thomas I saw the other night, wasn’t it?” Elspeth asked Aaron, her eyes silently pleading with him to be honest with her.
“Looks like it,” Aaron sighed. “While I am glad he is alive, I will not accept there was no other way he couldn’t have resolved this matter that wouldn’t create the distress his actions have caused us. I will never forget the moment I received that note informing me of his death. God knows what you must have felt, Elspeth.”
“Grief,” Elspeth snorted. “God only knows why I should give a damn, though.”
Sir Hugo’s face remained grave.
“What are they?” Niall asked, nodding to the papers Sir Hugo held.
“I want you all to look at these drawings. I have had a sketch artist draw them for me.”
Everyone studied the eight pictures Sir Hugo placed across the centre of the table.
Aaron rested a hand on Elspeth’s waist while he looked at the drawings. His concern grew when he noticed Oliver and Jasper looking at the pictures then at Elspeth then back at the pictures.
“See the resemblance?” Sir Hugo asked carefully.