“And I will see how the other search progresses,” the vicar said.
The wind picked up, freeing locks of her hair and whipping them into her eyes. She trapped her escaped tresses with one hand at her temple, gazing back at the earl. A sudden reluctance to leave him behind kept her rooted in place.
Standing in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, he resembled a gentleman pirate with the wind molding fabric over his muscles, outlining the hidden strength beneath.
He nodded toward the woodland behind her. “Go.”
His soft command carried a note of tenderness that tangled with Catherine’s heart. What would she do if she found out this man was responsible for Jeffrey’s murder? She feared the answer became more complicated with every minute she spent in his presence.
She turned and followed the vicar from the clearing. Within seconds, the rain fell. Sharp, driving nails of water stabbed her face. She tucked in her chin and squinted her eyes. As she stepped under the canopy of trees, the rain eased but the wind kept up its relentless pace.
Unable to ignore the nagging voice in her head, she peered over her shoulder to check on the earl while keeping apace with the vicar. The earl stood alone, with his hand shielding his eyes, watching her.
She stumbled over a rut, propelling her forward. Her shin connected with something hard, and her world tilted downward. She braced herself for the impact. Rather than hitting hard soil, her hands sank into rich, pungent earth made soupy by the downpour.
Everything happened so fast, she didn’t think to call out or even shriek her alarm. She glanced up to see the vicar had veered to the left to avoid a low-hanging branch. Had she not been preoccupied with Lord Somerton, she would have followed him on the safer route.
As it was, she was literally elbow deep in mud. “Mr. Foster, I need your assistance.”
She clambered to her knees, or at least tried to. Her hands plunged deeper and deeper into the wet soil. And then her hand connected with something firm and round. A log, perhaps. When she made to push off, she realized it couldn’t be a log. The surface beneath her hand was too pliable. Too smooth.
Too familiar.
She stared down at her arm, where it disappeared inside a mound of too-fresh earth. “Oh, God.” Water rolled down her temples and streamed into her eyes. She blinked to clear her vision, only to have them fill up again.
“Mrs. Ashcroft, are you injured?”
Catherine heard the vicar’s voice, but her full concentration resided on her exploratory fingers. She didn’t speak. She daren’t breathe. Her fingers and her heart were the only things that moved.
When she came across an object that had the distinctive features of a hand, she screamed.
***
Sebastian was already racing through the relentless sheet of rain when he heard Catherine’s scream. He knew what it meant. Had heard that type of scream too many times to count. But once was enough to have it seared onto one’s brain like a brand scorching one’s flesh. Painful. Memorable. Permanent.
It was the sound of horror.
A sound dredged up from one’s most primitive core, when the sight before one is so heinous, so unexpected as to terrify one’s soul.
Catherine had found death in those woods.
“Mrs. Ashcroft, what are you doing?” the vicar cried.
“Help me!” she commanded.
Sebastian broke through the underbrush and took in the macabre scene with one glance. Catherine and the vicar were bent over a mound, scooping up handfuls of mud and throwing them to the side. Their frenzied movements told him all he needed to know.
He hauled her up and set her behind him, nudging her toward the meadow. “Do what you can to keep McCarthy away from here. He will likely have heard you.” He dropped to his knees and focused on what he hoped was the upper end. “Vicar, start praying.”
Neither Catherine nor the girl’s father should see death in such a horrendous form. No one should. Sebastian had feared this ending, though he had held out hope for something more palatable like an elopement. But his instincts could not ignore the signs of foul play anymore than a sailor can ignore a red sky in the morning.
A man’s roar of pain sounded from behind him. “Faster, Vicar.”
No sooner did he give the command than the side of his hand glided over flesh. He stilled, as did the vicar. More carefully, he scraped away the mud. Section by section, they revealed parts of the girl’s face. First, her mouth, open and full of wet dirt. Then her nose and cheeks. And finally, her eyes. They stared straight ahead, the rain rinsing them clean to reveal the vacant gray irises of death.
Too late. Too damned late.
“Mr. McCarthy, please don’t!”
Catherine’s entreaty was the only warning Sebastian had before the distraught father pushed him aside.
“Oh, Jesus, no.” Declan McCarthy stared down at his dead daughter. Anguish like nothing Sebastian had ever seen crumpled the rugged man’s face. “No. Not my Meghan. Not my baby girl.” He dropped to his knees and picked up where Sebastian left off, removing great heaps of mud, apologizing and promising retribution in the same heaving breath.
“Catherine, stay back,” Sebastian ordered when she made to move to his side. “McCarthy, allow me to do this for you.”
The brawny carpenter ignored him, shoveling away layers of mud and dirt until finally his daughter’s body was revealed. Meghan lay squeezed inside a shallow grave, with no visible wounds or signs of trauma. Only a small bump on her stomach, marking a second, much smaller grave.
“Sweet Jesus.” The scene was so horrific that even Sebastian had to avert his eyes. He looked for Catherine and found her several feet away, her mud-slicked hands covering her silent sobs. He wanted to go to her, wanted to wrap her small frame within the safety of his arms. But he knew in these situations that those involved needed to stay occupied in order to hold back the shock. He noticed she no longer wore the vicar’s coat.
“Catherine.” He drew her hands from her face, but she continued to stare straight ahead. He bent to peer into her eyes. “Catherine, I need Mr. Foster’s coat.”
She blinked once, then several more times in quick succession before her gaze cleared.
“Did you hear me?” he asked. “Please find where you dropped the vicar’s coat.”
“Yes.” She nodded and swiveled to find the fallen garment.
“Vicar, please relieve Mrs. Ashcroft of your coat once she finds it and bring it to me.”
“Yes, my lord.”
McCarthy bent to lift his daughter from her watery grave, and Sebastian laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’ll help you.”
The carpenter nodded and moved to grab Meghan’s legs.
Sebastian braced his boot on the opposite side of the hole and then burrowed his hands under the girl’s shoulders. “Ready.”
Together, they hauled her up, the action creating an awful sucking noise as the pit released the girl from its inky grip. That’s when Sebastian noticed the deep purple bruises circling her thin throat.
The vicar appeared at Sebastian’s side, using his coat to protect McCarthy’s memories as much as possible. They laid her on the ground and everyone stared at her ragged form in appalled silence. Sebastian broke the spell, intending to carry the girl to the cart, but McCarthy shook his head.
“I’ll be doing that, m’lord. I failed to protect her as I should. This will be my penance.”
Catherine opened her mouth to reassure the grieving father, but Sebastian shook his head. Words would not cut through the man’s grief and recriminations; only time would do that. A good deal of time.
He held his hand out to her, needing the contact. She came to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, burrowing her face in his chest. He kissed her sodden head, giving McCarthy time to cradle his daughter in his arms and set off for the meadow, with the vicar
leading the way.
Sebastian framed her sweet face, thankful the rain had gentled to a light patter. “I’m sorry you had to witness such evil.”
She grasped his wrists, turning tearful eyes up to his. “Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know, but I vow to find out.” He shifted her to his side, though he did not let go. “Come, let us be quit of this place.”
Several hours later, Sebastian drew Reaper to a halt outside Bellamere’s thick double doors, with Catherine snuggled in his arms. He hadn’t the heart to take her home, where her daughter would see her mother in such a disheveled state and would no doubt shower Catherine with difficult questions.
Although the driving rain had rinsed most of the mud off, their skin and clothes were still stained with bits of silt. Catherine’s blond hair hung in long, lanky clumps down her back, and her boots carried deep, ruinous gashes.
Grayson and two footmen appeared, rushing to Sebastian’s aid. “My lord,” Grayson said. “Is Mrs. Ashcroft injured? Should I prepare a room?”
“No and yes,” Sebastian said. “Please send word to Winter’s Hollow that Mrs. Ashcroft is fine, but will be staying the evening here. Leave two footmen over there as a precaution. And have Mrs. Fox draw us hot baths.”
Sebastian could not wait to be rid of his damp, abrasive clothes. He was certain Catherine felt the same, although she hadn’t spoken a word since leaving McCarthy’s cottage.
“My lord.” Catherine stirred, her voice raw. “What are we doing here? I must make sure Sophie and my mother are well.”
“I sent two footmen to stay with them,” he said. “They will see that clean clothes are sent over.” He skimmed the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “It’s best you stay here tonight. You’re in no condition to see your daughter.”
“But the killer—”
“He’s accomplished what he wanted and is likely long gone.”
The tension in her body drained away, replaced by a racking shiver.
“Here, let us get you out of the elements.” With Grayson’s support, Sebastian set her down. “Steady.”
He dismounted, handing the reins to his butler and offering an arm to the widow. “Grayson, please see what Mrs. Fox can find in the way of food. Mrs. Ashcroft has not eaten all day.”
“Nor have you.” She snaked her hand into the crook of his arm, leaning on him as they made their way inside. “Bath first, food later.”
Another footman arrived to relieve Grayson of his hostler duties.
“My lord.” Grayson entered the entry hall behind them. “I’m told the countess’s bedchamber is the only aired room. The maids are working on the rose room.”
“No need,” Sebastian said. “Mrs. Ashcroft can use the countess’s chamber.”
“Oh, no,” Catherine said. “I am happy to wait for the rose room.”
“You would have the maids go through all that extra work for no reason?” Sebastian knew she worried about the impropriety of sleeping in a bedchamber next to his, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He wanted her close.
She glanced from him to Grayson, as if the butler would help plead her case. Grayson, like most seasoned servants, learned long ago not to get involved in his employer’s business.
“No, I suppose not,” she said.
“Is there a fire in the drawing room?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
“We will wait there while Mrs. Ashcroft’s bathwater is drawn.”
Grayson bowed. “Very well, sir.”
They made their way to the drawing room, and Catherine held her hands out to the fire. Flickering red-gold light reflected off her face, revealing a classic profile but for the dark hollows beneath her eyes.
“What a horrible end to what would otherwise have been a grand day,” she said.
Given they had started the day off by making love on his table, he had to agree with her.
“You knew all along, didn’t you?”
“Knew what?” he asked.
“That we would find her dead.”
“Not with any great certainty.”
She snorted. “That’s what my husband would have called a clanker.”
Sebastian’s jaw clenched. How did this woman continually see through his mask? “She could have eloped.”
“But you suspected otherwise.” She sent him a sidelong glance. “Instinct? Or something else?”
Ice trailed down his spine. “Do you have an accusation you would like to share, madam?”
Her probing gaze lost its courage, and she shifted her attention back to the fire. “Of course not, my lord.”
Sebastian grappled with his temper. In his line of work, he was used to being an object of suspicion and the veracity of his words always suspect. But to have her question his integrity, especially over the murder of an enceinte girl, burned every nerve ending in his body.
Outside of explaining her husband’s role in the Nexus and the facts around his murder, Sebastian had been careful not to lie to her. Very careful.
“By your own admission,” she said, “you have enjoyed an interesting past. One that has more than a passing familiarity to the insidious side of mankind. I thought perhaps this incident reminded you of something that occurred in London.”
His nostrils flared around a deep breath. When he released it, a great weight drifted away as well. “Only one other occasion comes close to matching what I saw today. Neither image will lose its grip any time soon.” His mouth felt suddenly dry, and his thoughts turned to the decanters in his study. “But you are right in that my past has prepared me for days like today.”
“A past involving my husband?”
All the weight came crashing down on him again. “You are nothing if not relentless, madam.”
A shadow crossed her face. “I suppose I am,” she said. “Without the protection of a husband, it’s how I’ve survived living in Showbury all these years.”
Sebastian tried to swallow back the guilt that clawed its way up his throat, but his mouth had gone completely dry. Not a single drop of saliva to soothe the sensation of his throat being ripped apart. He grasped the mantel to hold himself in place.
“Won’t you tell me what you know about Jeffrey?” she asked, driving the pain deeper.
“I cannot.”
“Why can’t you? Do you not think I deserve to know the truth?”
He closed his eyes. “Of course I do.”
“Then why, my lord? I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t.” He pushed away from the fireplace and paced the small room. “And I can’t enlighten you.”
“Can’t, my lord?”
He whipped around. No one in the last decade had challenged him in the way this woman dared. Not his subordinates or his superiors. She poked and prodded and pried into places that could get them all killed. Did she not understand his silence protected her? And her daughter?
No, because he could not tell her. Not even that much.
But he could reveal the circumstances surrounding Ashcroft’s death. At least some of them. “You win, Mrs. Ashcroft.”
“I-I do?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I doubt your victory will be as satisfactory as you believe.”
“Then again, you might be wrong.”
A knock sounded at the door.
The widow’s eyes narrowed.
Sebastian sent up a prayer of thanks. “Enter.”
“Pardon, my lord,” the housekeeper said, peering around the door.
“Yes, Mrs. Fox?”
“Mrs. Ashcroft’s bathwater is ready.”
He looked to Catherine. “After you.”
She stopped in front of him. Fierce brown eyes settled on him. “I intend to hear more about this victory.”
Thirteen
<
br /> Catherine sat on the hearth rug in front of a low-burning fire, attempting to untangle the mass of knots that was her hair. It wasn’t going well.
Each time she tried to pull the tortoiseshell comb through a snarl, her wet tresses slapped against her bare arms and dampened her cotton chemise. Even though the hot bath had warmed her to the bone, the fire still felt heavenly against her now chilled skin.
Thank goodness her dear mother had thought to send along a few items to get her through the evening as well as a change of clothes for tomorrow. Everything she had worn today was beyond salvaging. And even if the maids had managed to clean her tattered dress, she couldn’t have borne to wear it again.
Each rip and stain would have been an awful reminder of today’s events. God forgive her, all she wanted to do was forget.
Her stomach took that opportunity to remind her of how little she’d eaten. Mrs. Fox had prepared a small tray of cheese and fruit for her to nibble on while in the tub. But instead of filling the hollow in her stomach, Catherine had concentrated on digging the dirt out from beneath her nails and picking the flecks of decaying leaves from her hair.
Abandoning her fruitless effort with the knots, she scrambled to her feet and padded over to the tray. She gobbled down two squares of cheese and four grapes before heading back to her place by the fire.
For what felt like the hundredth time, she flicked a glance at the door connecting her bedchamber to the earl’s. She hadn’t seen him since he’d nudged her inside the room with a pithy comment not to fall asleep in the tub. As if she could sleep with him lurking in the next chamber.
At times, she thought she heard him pacing back and forth, with intermittent pauses at her door. But the handle never turned and the door never opened. She put two more pieces of cheese in her mouth and willed him to check on her.
She wanted to finish their conversation. He had been about to reveal something important. Something that might put an end to this intolerable anticipation, this constant waiting for resolution. She was so tired of waiting.
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