So Enchanting

by Connie Brockway

  She continued with relentless logic. “But most important, there is no one in Little Firkin who has any reason to want you dead. And you are the only one in Little Firkin who has a motive to leave here—one way or another. Besides myself.” She closed her eyes. “Which I am sure Sheffield is beginning to realize, if he hasn’t done so already.”

  The thought of cool, self-contained Fanny going to such lengths for…well, anything brought a tiny smile to Amelie’s lips. “No one would suspect you, Fanny,” Amelie said.

  Fanny smiled weakly in return.

  “What am I going to do?” Amelie whispered, her head bowed over her folded hands.

  “I suspect you should begin by telling Lord Hayden.”

  Amelie’s head snapped up. “What? No. No! He’ll hate me.”

  “No, he won’t, Amelie.”

  “Yes. He’ll hate me for lying to him.”

  “So,” she said after a moment, “you prefer to punish him.”

  “What? No. What do you mean?”

  “He is in agony, Amelie, thinking your life could be forfeit any minute and not knowing where the danger is coming from. This is torture for him. I know,” she said. “It was torture for me just wondering if someone was trying to hurt you, and that was before there’d even been an ‘attempt.’ I can’t imagine what he’s going through now.”

  Amelie buried her face in her hands, too ashamed to meet Fanny’s eye. She’d known, of course. She’d tried to reassure Fanny. She’d done everything to point out that the threat shouldn’t be taken seriously. But she still knew how it had worried Fanny. She’d just been so selfishly in love, so relieved that Hayden, at least, had accepted her assurances, so willing to ignore the pain she caused others.

  “And Mr. McGowan and Lord Sheffield and even Violet. All of them were concerned.”

  “I know. I am so ashamed. I am not a very good person, Fanny.”

  “You are. And a very young one. And a very heedless one. I understand. I know how easy it is to close your eyes to suffering you’ve caused. But now what are you going to do about it?”

  “I can’t tell him. I am not as brave as you.”

  Fanny flinched.

  “Someday I will. I swear it.”

  “Amelie, you cannot build a future on lies.”

  Guilt and desperation made her sharp. “How would you know? Are you an expert on romantic relationships?” The expression on Fanny’s face made her immediately regret it. “I’m sorry, Fanny. I have to be sure of him first.”

  “And when will that be? Next week? Next year? A decade from now?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Trust him.”

  Fanny didn’t understand. How could she? She’d been married so briefly, and she wasn’t in love. She didn’t know to what lengths a woman would go to be with her beloved.

  She grabbed Fanny’s hand, clinging tightly. “It’s my life,” she said. “Promise me you won’t tell him.”

  “This is a mistake.”

  “My mistake.”

  “I can’t persuade you?” Fanny asked miserably.

  “No. Promise.”

  Fanny released her hand with a small distressed sound. “Yes, yes. I promise.”

  “You’ll help me?” she asked pitifully.

  Fanny raised her face to the ceiling, as though looking for answers. “I’ll try,” she finally murmured.

  Relief washed through her, bringing with it tears. “Oh, thank you, Fanny! Thank you. Things will turn out. I’ll marry Hayden and leave here…I mean we’ll leave here. All of us. You’ll see. There’ll be happily-ever-afters all around.”

  Fanny regarded her somberly. “No, Amelie. There won’t.”

  Grey went to the terrace to look for shell casings, thinking that the most likely place from which to shoot. Any shell casings would tell them the make and brand of the gun used, and from there provide a possible lead to its owner. He made Hayden come with him.

  The boy was a mess. His late arrival on the scene preyed on his mind, making him feel impotent and ineffectual as both suitor and protector. It was useless pointing out that the shooter might not have even made an attempt on Amelie’s life had Hayden been present, or worse, might have shot them both. Hayden didn’t even hear him.

  His miserable gaze kept returning to the house. “She didn’t want me to hold her. She blames me for not being here to protect her.”

  “Nonsense.” Grey might as well not have spoken.

  “I should have been there,” Hayden castigated himself. “I knew the threat was serious. I knew I should be on guard.” He glanced irritably at Grey. “There was someone on that balcony, but I allowed myself to be persuaded differently.”

  Ah, yes. A little sharing of blame. Grey didn’t care. If it made the lad feel better, he could lay the whole matter at Grey’s feet. He wasn’t sure he didn’t deserve it. But there’d been a reasonable suspect—a cat—and rather than concentrating on Amelie’s phantom menace, he’d focused all his attention on another.

  “I should have listened to you,” Grey said.

  “Yes,” Hayden clipped out, “you should have. Next time I will keep my own counsel.”

  “Always wise,” Grey mumbled, barely listening. There was nearly as much glass outside on the terrace as had been spread beneath the drawing room window. He looked up. From the pattern of glass strewn on the flagstones, there was no clear indication from what direction the culprit had taken aim. Odd.

  He moved farther along the terrace, his gaze on the soft ground beyond the pavers, looking for footprints, shell casings, anything that could help him discover who was responsible for the attack.

  “What did you do with the gun?” A voice drifted down from an open window above, stern and reprimanding. Her voice. Fanny’s.

  All the breath left his lungs. What was she talking about?

  “He’s bound to discover it there. You’ll have to rid yourself of it. Toss it in the river.”

  No. Please, Fanny. No.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, straining to come up with some alternative meaning in her words.

  “All right. What else?” he heard her ask, as if to herself. “We must manufacture a would-be assassin. Someone whom we can imply was mad and then… Not mad. Someone from your father’s days in India, perhaps.”

  There was no alternative explanation.

  He’d always suspected she’d written that letter. He was very good at interrogating witnesses, and he knew she’d been hiding something. But when he’d accused her of doing so and she’d looked him straight in the eye and sworn she hadn’t, he’d believed her.

  “No, no, and no,” she was saying now. “That will never convince Sheffield. I’ll have to think of something else.” She paused.

  She sounded stern and eminently practical. The woman who owned a voice like that would be devastatingly competent, formidably intelligent, and immeasurably desirable. A woman like that could make even a rude, unvarnished cynic fall in love. Could make him absurd.

  And had.

  Not surprising, really. When all was said and done, he was his father’s child. As gullible and romantic and ridiculous as his parent.

  “I’m sorry. I told you I had to improvise,” he heard Amelie’s voice, broken and tearful. “It was the only thing I could think of to convince him the threat was real so he would take me with him when they left. Lord Sheffield said himself that if something terrible occurred he’d take me with them.” There was a pause. “I mean, take us with them.”

  Take her with him. So that had been the initial inducement, after all. It should make him feel better. At least Fanny’s motives had not been entirely self-serving. It didn’t make him feel one whit better.

  This wasn’t about motives and reasons, good or bad, whether she’d lied for her own purposes or for the sake of another; it was about his heart. He’d trusted her, and she’d lied to him. How could he ever trust her again? What if her excuse was reasonable, her motive pure? Next time it might not be so pure, or so no
ble, and the next even more impure and ignoble. How would he know?

  He’d spent his life unmasking liars and exposing deceptions, cleaving to the truth like a lover. It was the one thing he’d always revered, could always depend on, immutable in a shifting moral landscape, definitive in a murky prospect, his compass in a tumultuous sea. It was as simple as that.

  “This is not going to work.”

  “It will!” Amelie declared. “Hayden loves me. He’ll never leave here without me.”

  “Grey?”

  He turned. Hayden stood a few feet away, his face tilted up toward the open window.

  “What did she mean?” Hayden asked in a voice Grey had never heard before from his nephew. But it was all too clear he understood. The expression on his face dissolved any impulse toward pity Grey felt for Amelie.

  No matter how much Amelie Chase regretted her part in Fanny’s plan, it was not enough.

  Chapter 34

  “There’s a mistake,” Hayden told his uncle.

  “No.”

  “She wouldn’t do this.”

  “She was under the guidance of another.”

  “I cannot believe it.”

  “You are not the only one deceived.”

  “If she did—”

  “She did. They did.”

  “If she did, there must be extenuating circumstances.”

  “The circumstances are simple. I am her means out of here, and when that plan did not work, you became the means out of here. It did not hurt that you are the heir to a barony.”

  “No.” Hayden shook his head, slowly at first, then gaining in force. “No. No. I cannot believe it of her. She loves me.”

  “You are not the only one who was deceived.”

  So it went for half an hour. Hayden paced up and down the drive leading into Quod Lamia. His uncle had been unable to convince him to go any farther from the house.

  Try as he might, Hayden could not make any sense out of the words he’d heard Amelie say and for which Grey kept assuring him there was no other interpretation than that he and his nephew had been manipulated.

  “We should go, Hayden,” Grey said. “There is nothing for either of us here.” He sat on the ground at the side of the drive, his back against a hoary old oak, his forearms resting on his knees. He did not look triumphant, as he had in the past when he’d exposed some shady plot. He looked grim, like a seasoned Roman centurion pondering his last battle.

  The lines in his face, the weary slouch of his shoulders, even the hollows beneath his brilliant eyes only made him look even more like a ruffian fisticuffs champion than usual, and yet, rather than stay and fight, Grey kept arguing for them to leave without confronting the woman who’d so nearly duped him…

  Hayden stopped pacing, squeezing his eyes shut. The pain was more than he could bear. Amelie had duped him.

  Her face appeared like a vision behind his closed eyes: her blossoming coquetry, her glossy red hair, her pretty eyes and neat little figure. She’d duped him with her unaffected manner, her unexpected bookishness, her infectious eagerness to experience everything he took for granted, her laughter, and her sweetness.

  Amelie had duped him?

  Inconceivable. He simply did not believe it.

  With a roar, he punched at the air with his fist, swinging around to face Grey. “No. I will not leave until I’ve talked to her. She owes me that much, at least. You owe me that much.”

  “I?” Grey said.

  “You. You invited me up here.” He didn’t care that he was being unfair. Being unfair was his due. “Had I not come, my heart would not now be breaking; my world would not now be shattered.” He paused. “If it is shattered.”

  “Uh-huh.” Grey blew out a deep breath and pulled himself to his feet, dusting his trousers. “Well, if you must, you must.”

  “I must.”

  Amelie lay on her stomach on the grass beside the river into which she’d tossed the gun and sobbed. She’d fled here, to her favorite spot, without thinking, unconsciously hoping to find some peace. She hadn’t.

  She was a coward and a liar. She was purposely putting Hayden through agony because he loved her, truly, deeply loved her, and when you loved someone you could not bear the thought that they were in danger.

  Or pain.

  She knotted her fists into clumps of spring grasses. If she loved Hayden she shouldn’t be able to bear the thought that she was hurting him! But she was. How long could she allow him to believe she was in danger?

  A week? A month? A year? Wasn’t that exactly what Fanny had asked? Even if no one ever discovered her scheme and she and Hayden wed…how long before the constant upkeep of lies exhausted her and something slipped out? She’d kept this secret for only a little over two months and she was already worn out.

  If only she could figure some easy way out of this… She went very still. There was a way, of course.

  She could simply confess all. Fanny might be right. If Hayden truly loved her—and he did—it would not matter when she told him, today or a year from now; he would still forgive her. And if he didn’t? Well, in that Fanny was right. If Hayden didn’t forgive her, he hadn’t ever really loved her in the first place.

  She recalled what he’d said that night on the terrace when he’d first told her he loved her. She’d described her connection with animals, and when he’d believed her and she’d expressed her amazement, he looked at her so tenderly and said, “That’s what people in love do, believe in one another.”

  She couldn’t let him suffer any more. She gathered her resolve and had just gotten up and started forward when a midge flew into her eye, causing her to stumble. She heard the loud sound of a branch snapping as she fell, tumbling down the bank. She came to a stop and rubbed the gnat from her eyes—

  Crack!

  She froze. That was no cracking branch. She’d been raised in a British outpost on the frontier of India, and she recognized that sound. It was the report from a rifle blast. Her heart began thudding thickly in her chest as a flash on the mountainside caught her eye. Someone was shooting at her.

  Grey opened the door and led Hayden into Quod Lamia without bothering to stop and knock. Violet and Miss Oglethorpe were still gone, and he’d seen Ploddy disappear into the carriage house with a large bottle of whiskey. He didn’t expect him to emerge until much, much later.

  The door hadn’t been locked or he’d be forced to break it down. Which, right now, he would be very happy to do. He would dearly like to destroy something. But he didn’t. He kept his composure for Hayden’s sake. He didn’t want to be a poor example for the lad. One didn’t go breaking down doors because one happened to be in a stew.

  It wasn’t working. Disparaging the situation as melodramatic or belittling his feelings with words like stew did not make it easier. He didn’t want to destroy anything. Except his memories of her. Those he wanted obliterated. No. Those he wanted never to lose a single detail of: the cant of her eyebrow, the husky timbre of her laugh, the graceful way she held a teacup, the black-bramble hue of her hair…

  “No one’s here,” Hayden said.

  “Yes, there is.” He didn’t question how he knew; he just did. He headed down the hall to the drawing room. It was empty, the breeze from the open French windows lifting papers from the overburdened tables and scattering them across the floor. The drapes billowed. The air felt chill.

  “Fanny,” he called. “The jig, my love, is up.”

  “I’m out here.” There was no hesitation, no covert movements on the terrace. She sounded resigned, tired. He followed her voice out onto the terrace, Hayden at his side.

  Her eyes met his. She looked ineffably weary, her shoulders bowed and her eyes clouded. She smiled sadly. She already knew they’d been found out. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No more than I,” he answered.

  “Where is Amelie?” Hayden demanded.

  Reluctantly, her gaze turned to Hayden, who was exhibiting all the youthful outrage and hot-blooded
thirst for confrontation Grey so notably lacked.

  “She’s left.”

  “Where did you send her? To do what?” Hayden snarled.

  She recoiled at the venom in his voice, and Grey reacted, jerking forward.

  “It’s all right,” Fanny said, holding up one hand. She looked at Hayden. “I didn’t send her anywhere. She left. I don’t know where she is.”

  “We’ll be leaving in the morning,” Grey said. “One way or the other.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” Hayden demanded, quivering with indignation. “Is that all you have to say? Yes?”

  She regarded him somberly. “What would you like me to say, Lord Hayden? It is obvious you have discovered that…” She hesitated.

  Grey’s eyes narrowed. She was editing her words, he realized, picking carefully. But then, lies required care.

  “You have discovered that the letter asking for assistance came from her,” she said, “and that there is no threat to Amelie’s life. What more is there to say?”

  “I want you to tell me why!” Hayden lurched toward her, his face red. “Why?”

  Grey seized the boy and dragged him back. “For God’s sake, Hayden,” he growled, shaking the younger man. “Remember yourself.”

  “I want to know why,” Hayden said plaintively. “I have a right to know the truth. If she’s capable of it.”

  The blood drained from her face.

  “I want to know how you coerced Amelie into agreeing to lie to me.”

  She clenched her hands at her waist and replied in a preternaturally even voice, “She is very young, Lord Hayden. And she wants to leave Little Firkin very much.”

  “You mean you want to leave Little Firkin very much, enough to use anyone and any means at your disposal. I heard you. I was just the alternative plan.”

  “No,” she said. “No—”

  “Yes!” All of Hayden’s hurt filled that single word. “I heard her say that once Grey decided to leave she had to figure out a way to make us take her out of here.”