All they wanted was one piece of evidence. The rifle would be nice. It would still hold the scent of its discharge. Barring that, perhaps there was something in his library or correspondence that gave a clue as to why he would want her dead. It still seemed unreal to her. Until a few days ago, she’d been weaving girlish daydreams around the handsome banker. Now he wanted her dead.
“There’s a lock around the chain here,” Hayden whispered from the gate.
“I have a key,” Amelie said. “Bernard has us on standing orders to save his stamp collection in case of a fire when he is away.”
She almost laughed. It sounded so absurd. Could dear, stodgy, stamp-collecting Bernard really want her dead? She unlocked the gate and slipped inside, Hayden at her heels.
“I will be watching those beasts like a hawk, Amelie. Should one of them so much as twitch wrong, promise me you’ll run out of the house,” he said commandingly.
“Yes, Hayden.”
“I mean it, Amelie. While I trust your belief in this…empathy you have with animals, I am not certain every living creature knows it has one with you.”
“They do,” Amelie returned confidently.
And then they were at the door, peering through the unshuttered windows into a long hallway devoid of furnishings or ornamentation. At the far end slunk the gargantuan black silhouettes, heads lowered and hackles raised. The dogs had already heard them.
“You were right. Bernard isn’t here,” she said excitedly, then explained, “Bernard doesn’t ever allow the dogs in the house when he’s home. I think he’s a little afraid of them.”
“Well, I bloody well would be,” Hayden murmured, his gaze riveted on the enormous beasts milling uncertainly at the end of the hall.
All she needed to do was shepherd the dogs into one of the smaller, unused rooms and shut them in. Then they could begin their search in earnest.
“Brutus! Caesar!” she called through the door. The dogs froze, Brutus, the larger, cocking his head toward her voice.
“That’s it, boy. It’s me, Amelie.” She turned the knob and the door slid noiselessly open.
“He doesn’t keep it locked?”
Amelie turned. “Bernard once told me that locks were more a psychological barrier than a real deterrent, and the dogs were both.”
“I see.”
“Wait here.” She slipped into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. “Brutus? Caesar. It’s me.”
The dogs still hadn’t moved. Caesar was audibly sniffing the air, and Amelie, despite herself, began to feel uneasy. A low rumbling issued from the dogs’ vicinity, they knew she was uneasy. That had to be it. She had to master her uncertainty; it was making them uncertain.
She straightened her shoulders and smiled. “There, now, lads. What is all this grumbling about?” she said softly as she walked toward them.
Brutus’s head lowered. Caesar’s lips curled back, and in the chancy light of predawn, she saw the gleam of wickedly sharp fangs appear.
“Come back here, Amelie,” she heard Hayden say. “Now.” He must have opened the door. No wonder the pair was reacting so aggressively.
“Shut the door,” she said, without taking her eyes off the dogs. They’d begun to prowl closer, the light catching their black eyes and lending them fire. “They’ll attack you.”
“Amelie.”
“Trust me.”
She heard the door click, and relief made her knees go weak. She expelled a long, slow breath, smiling tremulously. “There. He’s gone.” She took a step forward, holding out her hand. “Come on now. We’ll all go in the—”
One moment they were on the far end of the hall; the next they were bolting toward her, snapping and snarling, long ropes of saliva streaming from their open mouths, their nails clattering like a runaway train across the bare wood floor.
No! They couldn’t be attacking. Not her! Animals loved— She stumbled around, amazed and horrified. Too late! Already, she could almost feel the damp heat of their breath. She flung up her arms to protect her face and was snatched out of the air and shoved aside.
She fell, sliding across the floor as she saw Hayden careen into the path of the dogs. He’d wrapped his jacket around his forearm, and Brutus’s jaws tangled in it. Caesar fishtailed in midair and fell heavily as he skittered wildly, trying to come to the aid of his companion.
“Get out!” Hayden roared, pummeling the dog with his free hand as it savaged his arm. “Amelie. Get—Ah!”
Brutus’s thrashing had torn through the cloth layers to Hayden’s flesh. With a crash Hayden fell to his knees, rolling as he clutched Brutus’s throat, holding the snapping maw bare inches from his face.
“Hayden!” she screamed. “Hayden!”
“Brutus! Caesar! Here! Now.”
At the whip-crack sound of the male voice, the two dogs froze. Brutus’s head wrenched around in Hayden’s grip and he whimpered, scrambling with his back legs to free himself. Caesar flung himself to his belly and crept into the shadows.
Bernard McGowan emerged from the stairwell, his face carved into lines of grave concern. He was carrying a bolt-action rifle.
“Good Lord,” he murmured, his eyes traveling to where Hayden sat, his back against the wall, the jacket in shreds around his bloodied arm. “Look at all that blood. Can’t have that. My house must be free of evidence. Which means I have some cleaning up to do.”
Hayden was breathing hard through his nostrils, his chest heaving up and down, his hair tousled, and his face glistening with sweat. Without thinking, Amelie ran to him and fell to her knees at his side. Hayden clasped her close with his good arm.
“Hayden, your arm!”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” He gave her a wan smile. “Or at least, as I assume it looks.”
He shifted, grimacing as he tried to rise, but Bernard’s voice forestalled him.
“Please do not further complicate matters by making me shoot you.” Bernard pointed the rifle at them, illustrating his point.
Hayden turned a glowering gaze on their captor. “We thought you were gone.”
“As I should have been,” Bernard agreed mildly. “I should have been miles from here by now, but Miss Chase’s unfortunate clumsiness has delayed me. Although I blame myself for missing the second shot. I am clearly out of practice. And now I am in the unenviable position of having to improvise another plan.”
He sounded merely pettish, like a librarian who’d found tea spots on a book jacket. It terrified her. “Why are you doing this, Bernard?” she whispered. “I thought you cared for me. I thought we were friends.”
“I do. We were.” He sounded surprised. “But as Mrs. Walcott was so instrumental in pointing out, friendship was as far as our relationship would ever go. Even if this young man hadn’t come into your life. Unfortunately for you, a short time ago something else came into mine, too.”
“What is that?”
“A Two-Hump Yellow Wrong-Kneed Camel.”
Neither she nor Hayden could think of what to say to this.
“It’s a stamp,” Bernard said primly. “The stamp. The stamp that will complete my collection, the work of my life.”
“Aren’t you a mite young to have completed your life’s work?” Hayden asked with something of his uncle’s caustic irony.
“No.”
“When did this stamp show up?” Hayden asked. He was trying to buy them some time, Amelie realized.
“Months ago. That’s the way with stamps. First there’s a rumor, then a substantiated viewing. Then rumors of bids and counterbids… The proceedings can go on for months. Even years. I thought there would be plenty of time to woo Miss Chase, secure her guardian’s consent, and acquire the beauty.”
He was not speaking of her.
“But then…well, I am a realist. I saw the way things were going. So I began to make other plans,” he said.
“Happily, Miss Chase, you had already laid the groundwork for me, claiming two attempts on your life that would hav
e been impossible for me to have made, since I was in New York City on one occasion and on a ship in the mid-Atlantic another.”
She’d forgotten her fear by now. She could not fathom how this man could be something so different from what she’d assumed. So cold. So calculating. But still just as pleasantly correct. “But how can my death benefit you, Bernard?” she asked.
“The Art Workers Guild,” he said patiently. “They’ll pay handsomely for the land Little Firkin sits on. It’s not as much as your inheritance would have been, but with a loan or two, it will suffice for me to buy the Two-Hump Yellow Wrong-Kneed Camel.”
“But you don’t own…” She began shaking her head in confusion, but then it all came suddenly clear. “If the residents default on their loans, you’ll own all their property.”
“Oh, they already have. Nine-tenths of Little Firkin lives on credit. Credit extended to them. Sometime after your death—not too soon, of course—I shall insist they repay their loans. Since they will not be able to, their houses, and the land they sit on, will become mine.”
“Why not demand they repay you now?” Hayden asked. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he still managed to sound reasonable, calm.
Bernard shrugged. “There are any number of people who would be willing to take over their debt on the merit of their future prospects. But with no future prospects, no one would be willing to extend them aid. And I own their land as collateral for their debts. Do you see now?”
“But that will take months.”
“The crockery chap has already offered to lend me a great deal of money in exchange for co-ownership of the mortgages I hold on the land here.” He smiled again, apologetically. “Now, then. Up you go, both of you.”
Amelie’s fear rushed back in. “What are you going to do with us? You can’t just kill us. People will be looking for us.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Bernard said. “Not at once. Especially since as soon as I leave here I will take the liberty of sending Lord Sheffield a wire, purporting to be your Lord Hayden, telling him that the two of you have eloped.”
“He won’t believe it.”
“Oh, I think he will. After all, the poor devil is looking for any excuse to leave.”
“What do you mean? Why do you think he wants to leave?” Amelie asked, more to buy time than because she was interested in his answer. She knew why Lord Sheffield wanted to leave: He loathed her as a liar.
Bernard screwed up his face, studying her as though trying decide whether she was affecting ignorance or not. “Mrs. Walcott,” he finally said.
His answer caught her off guard. Sheffield might despise her, but why would he hate Fanny? “What about Fanny?”
“He can’t bear to be near her.”
“Why?”
“What?” Hayden said.
Bernard looked taken aback. “You mean you two really didn’t know? How could you not?” He shook his head ruefully. “Can there be a more self-involved creature than a young person in love?” He sighed.
“Lord Sheffield is in love with Mrs. Walcott,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “But his nature is fighting against his heart for precedence in the matter, and he will not allow his heart to win. Having recently experienced something of the same problem myself,” he said modestly, “I am most sympathetic to his plight. My heart, however, won out.”
He was talking about the stamp again. Comparing it to Sheffield’s love. Sheffield’s love? The world grew more surreal with each passing moment.
“Now,” he said, “we’ve chatted long enough. I’ve things to do, arrangements to make. Later, after night falls, we’ll all take a walk over to Quod Lamia and pay a visit to the handsome Mrs. Walcott. Until then, you’ll be my guests here.”
He was going to kill Fanny, too. Because Fanny would never accept that Amelie would leave her without saying something to her, nor would she believe Amelie’s death was accidental. Not after all that had transpired. Fanny, Hayden, everyone she loved was going to die because of her lies.
And a stamp.
She burst out laughing.
Bernard scowled. “Now, now. No hysterics,” he cautioned.
She lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction,” she said. “I was laughing at how ridiculous you are, killing people for a stamp.”
He nodded, his expression pained. “I quite agree,” he said. “Indeed, I have thought exactly the same thing myself. ‘This is ridiculous, Bernard! Have you lost your mind?’ But then I think of that blank spot between the red camel and the blue and it doesn’t seem to matter.” He shrugged. “Now, into that room.” He pointed the rifle into a small antechamber, which was unfurnished, like much of Bernard’s house.
“And lest you think of trying to leave…” he added, snapping his fingers. Brutus and Caesar, lurking in the shadows, leaped forward, their massive chests rumbling. “Please recall that the dogs will be waiting outside the door.”
Without another word, Amelie wrapped her arm around Hayden’s waist and helped him in. Behind them, Brutus and Caesar growled.
Chapter 37
“Where are Hayden and Amelie?” Grey asked. He stood on Quod Lamia’s porch, his hat in hand, and drank in the sight of Fanny like a man dying of thirst drank clear, cool water.
Except there was nothing clear or cool about her. The ultra-composed woman of a few days ago had vanished. She looked as exhausted as he felt. Dark circles bruised the delicate flesh beneath her eyes. Her hair settled like an ebony cloud on shoulders bowed by fatigue. Her skin held a grayish cast and her eyes were haunted.
“Fanny,” he said more gently still. “Where did they go?”
“Go?” She sounded confused. “Amelie is still in bed I… What do you mean, ‘Amelie and Hayden’? Why would you ask that?” She pinched the skin on the bridge of her nose, as though she were having trouble concentrating.
Wordlessly, Grey handed her the wire message. She bent her head over the single sheet, sweeping her hair back with one hand in an unconsciously elegant gesture. As forceful and opinionated as she was, there was still something of the woodland sylph about her, an otherworldly grace, an aura of fragility that everything else about her belied.
She looked up. “This says that Hayden and Amelie have eloped.”
“Yes,” he replied to her tone more than her words. “I don’t believe it, either. Even if he doesn’t care whether or not he is disinherited by his father, Hayden has too much regard for the girl to jeopardize her reputation by eloping with her. I assume they are hiding here somewhere, waiting until I leave to reveal themselves. I also assumed you would know where they are.”
She flushed. “No. I know nothing about this. But I intend to find out.”
She turned, her hair whipping around lightly, her vibrancy returning as she strode along the corridor. He followed her, weaving through the cluttered hall, up the staircase, down another equally cluttered hall to a closed door. She pounded once on this portal. When no one answered, she opened the door. The room was empty. The window was closed, its drapes drawn, and the bed had clearly not been slept in.
Fanny looked, her expression concerned. “I don’t know where they are. I swear it.”
He didn’t know what to think. His thoughts were too colored by emotion to trust them. Part of him wanted to believe she was as surprised and dismayed by this empty room as she seemed. The cynic in him suggested that her reaction had been prettily orchestrated to convince him she was telling the truth. The truth. It always came down to that.
“I don’t care,” he heard himself say. “Far be it from me to interfere with whatever ruse you have plotted. Whatever it is, I am convinced Hayden is complicit. If he wants to stay here, so be it. He’s of age. About the rest, I don’t give a damn.”
It was a lie. A terrible lie.
“Tell my nephew I wish him well.” He began to turn away, but her voice stopped him.
“Wait. This is no scheme,” she said. “At least, not to my knowledge.”
“So, you
are saying that McGowan really shot at Amelie yesterday?” he scoffed.
“No. I know Amelie made up the previous attempts upon her well-being and wrote that letter.” She frowned. “And I don’t think McGowan has done anything. But then, I also thought she was through lying before she said it.”
“I don’t care whether you know their plans or not. If Hayden is foolish enough to elope and the girl is foolish enough to agree, then good riddance to them.
“Who knows?” he said. “Were I younger, had I less knowledge of the world, and my history bore fewer abject lessons in deceit, I might have done the same thing in his situation.”
He was speaking of her. Of them. And she understood. It was there in her eyes.
“Would you?” she whispered.
His tone, having begun harshly, dissolved into regret. “Yes. Oh, yes.”
“But those days are long past,” she said, watching him closely.
He wanted to deny it. Instead, he said, “Fanny? Aren’t you tired? I am so tired of wondering what is and isn’t the truth.”
“I haven’t lied to you. Not once since you’ve arrived.”
Disappointment welled up inside him. “For the love of God, Fanny—”
“No,” she broke in forcefully. “I haven’t lied to you The letter and the rest, it was all Amelie’s doing. I just found out myself. And I didn’t lie about anything else.” Her gaze did not waver. “I cannot explain everything. There are things I haven’t told you and things that are mine alone to reveal, but I have not lied.”
He turned away from her, his reason and his heart estranged from each other. He raked his hair back from his temples with both hands, closing his eyes, trying to concentrate.
She’d claimed she hadn’t written the letter to Collier. Had Amelie? But Fanny hadn’t corrected Hayden’s charge that she had coerced Amelie into being part of a scheme she’d devised. She hadn’t substantiated it, either. Had she been protecting Amelie? Why wasn’t she now? He had never wanted to believe anything so much.
And now, finally, he understood his father’s mania, his obsession, and how wanting a thing could separate a man from his reason and make him a fool. And, dear Lord, he would gladly, happily give anything to become a fool for her. To make a leap of faith and trust his heart.
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