by Candace Camp
An annoying twinkle started in his eyes. “I cannot argue with that.”
Megan grimaced, refusing to share his amusement. “It isn’t as if we are friends.”
“Are we not?” The amusement grew, now tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I had hoped that we were. Then what you feel for me is solely animal attraction?”
Pink stained her cheekbones, and Megan shot him a fierce look. “That is not what I meant, and you know it.”
“I am afraid that I don’t know. You are being unaccustomedly unclear,” he responded mildly, still with that irritating amusement in his eyes that told her he knew exactly how she felt about him and was rather smugly pleased with it.
Megan narrowed her eyes, but Theo was spared her hot retort by the fact that the carriage pulled to a halt in front of Andrew Barchester’s redbrick townhome.
With a flash of a grin at her, Theo exited the carriage and held up his hand to help her down. She could not avoid taking his hand without obvious rudeness, so she put her hand in his and stepped down. Even through her glove, his hand was warm and she was more aware of it than she was of the ground beneath her feet. His fingers closed around hers with just the briefest of pressures and then were gone. Megan could not resist looking up into his face, and the warmth she saw there in his eyes left her a little breathless.
Foolish, she reminded herself. Dangerous.
Neither warning seemed to weigh much against the flutter of her heart.
Theo knocked at the door, and it was opened promptly by a haughty-faced manservant, whose expression changed subtly at the sound of Theo’s name. He whisked them into the same elegant drawing room where Megan and Deirdre had visited Barchester, then bowed out of the room and went in search of his employer.
Megan’s thoughts turned to her sister as they waited for Barchester to appear. She feared that Deirdre had become attached to Mr. Barchester, and that whatever they found out in the next few minutes would hurt Deirdre. Mr. Barchester had been, at best, careless—and at worst, villainous—in what he had told her family about Dennis’s death. For Deirdre’s sake, Megan hoped that they would find out that Barchester was innocent of any ill intent.
A few minutes later, Barchester strode into the drawing room, whatever surprise he felt at their visit carefully concealed behind an expression of polite welcome. Only his eyes as they went to Megan betrayed his curiosity.
“Miss, umm…” Barchester fumbled for the false name under which she had been introduced to him at the museum party.
“Mulcahey,” Megan told him, returning his gaze with a cool, steady examination.
“Uh, yes, of course,” he replied, though his face looked more bewildered than ever. “And Lord Raine. How do you do?”
“I am quite well,” Theo replied, his voice as hard and flat as his eyes. “And my memory, it seems, must be quite a bit better than yours.”
Barchester’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?” He glanced from Theo to Megan, then back.
“Lord Raine and I have been discussing the expedition you and he took up the Amazon,” Megan said. “And I find his version is significantly different from yours.”
He looked at her, faintly puzzled. “Yes, well, it would be, wouldn’t it?”
“What I am wondering is why?” Megan went on.
“Miss Mulcahey…” He frowned at her a little and cast a glance toward Theo. “I, um…”
“He knows what you told me,” Megan explained. “There is no need for any of us to dance around the matter.”
Barchester looked shocked. “He has gotten around you? He has made you believe him?”
“I didn’t ‘get around’ Miss Mulcahey,” Theo retorted. “And if you knew her better, you would realize that no one could make her believe anything. But she knew the truth when she heard it. What we are here to find out is why you lied to Megan and her family.” Theo’s face was dark with anger, and he took a step closer to Barchester.
To Barchester’s credit, he did not back up, but faced Theo squarely. “I did not lie, my lord.”
“You told them I killed Dennis.” Theo’s eyes flashed, and his fists knotted.
Barchester swallowed, but continued to stand his ground. “I did not lie,” he repeated.
“Bloody hell! How do you have the nerve to stand there and tell me to my face that that is not a lie? You were not even there!”
“No. I was not. But anyone could have seen that you were lying. You could scarcely get the words out. Every time I asked you about the details, you were vague and obviously uneasy. You avoided conversation. Hell, you avoided me. It was clear that you were lying.”
“You are a terrible liar,” Megan conceded, turning to Theo. “I knew last night that what you said about Dennis having an accident was pure poppycock.”
Theo’s mouth twitched in irritation. “All right, yes, I am not adept at lying. I admit it. Dennis did not die the way that we said. But why the devil would you make the leap from that to saying that I killed him?”
“Because Julian saw you!”
Theo’s jaw dropped.
“Ah, you didn’t realize that, did you?” Barchester went on triumphantly. “While you were struggling with Dennis, you did not see Julian come into the cave. He saw you stab Dennis, and he hid, afraid of what you would do to him if you knew that he had witnessed the whole thing.”
“Coffey told you I killed Dennis?” Theo asked carefully. “He told you that he saw me murder him?”
“Yes. I questioned him about the story you had told me, because it didn’t ring true. At first he tried to back up your version, but when I told him that I knew you were lying, he admitted what really happened. He thought you must have been delirious from a fever, that you mistook Dennis for an enemy or something.”
“I see.” Theo contemplated the other man for a moment, then said, “Interesting that neither of you did anything about this murder you think I committed.”
Barchester shot him a scornful look. “As if our word would have meant anything against that of a marquess!”
“You didn’t even confront me about it.”
“What good would it have done?” Barchester asked him, bitterness tainting his voice. “I asked you what happened, and you lied to me. Why would that have changed if I told you I knew the truth? You would tell any official I might go to the same lie. And we had no proof to back it up.”
“You could have given me the chance, instead of believing I was guilty!” Theo shot back.
Barchester’s mouth twisted. “I had thought you were different, that you weren’t the kind of aristocrat’s son that I had gone to school with. But then you lied, and I realized that whatever egalitarian facade you put up, it was only skin deep. Scratch, and the aristocrat came out soon enough.”
“I had thought you were different, too,” Theo retorted coldly. “I thought you judged a man on who he was, how he acted with you, not on the arbitrary matter of his birth. Scratch you, and your prejudices come out clearly enough.”
“You expect me to believe that Julian lied about it? Why would he do that?”
“You tell me. I will point out one thing, though, that you might think about with your intellect instead of your prejudice. You saw me when Coffey and I came back into camp. You saw how weak my illness had left me. I wasn’t even completely over my fever. How the devil do you think I was able to overcome a fellow like Dennis in my condition? Eh? And why did Coffey hide and watch instead of coming to Dennis’s aid? Two men against one feverish one? I would think they could have brought me down.”
Barchester’s eyes shifted away from Theo. “Madness can give people inhuman strength. Delirium would be the same.”
“No doubt you would like to believe that,” Theo responded tightly. He turned toward Megan. “I think it is time for us to leave.”
Megan nodded. She gave Barchester one last long look, then swept from the room, Theo right behind her. They said nothing until they were out of the house.
Megan looked up at Theo.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth? That Coffey is the one who lied about you?”
Theo shrugged. “It’s anybody’s guess. He seems convinced of what he says.”
“Yes, he does.” Megan frowned. “But why did he tell us without reservation that you did it? As if he had actually witnessed Dennis’s death? Why did he not say that he heard it from another?”
Theo shook his head. “I don’t know.” He handed her up into the carriage. Then he spoke quietly to the coachman and swung up onto the seat across from her.
The carriage pulled out into the street, went smartly down the road and turned left, then left again, coming up on the other side of the small park that lay across from Barchester’s house. The carriage pulled to a stop.
Megan, who was still ruminating on Barchester’s words, looked over at Theo questioningly. “Why are we stopping?”
“I think a little walk in the park would be of benefit to me right now.” He nodded toward the strip of greenery and trees that separated them from the street in front of Barchester’s house.
“We are going to spy on him?” Megan asked eagerly.
“I would suggest that I do it myself and send you back safely to the house, but I have a good idea what you would say to that.”
Megan grinned. “You are a smart man.”
She scrambled out of the carriage after him and took his arm to stroll into the park as if they were simply out enjoying the afternoon. They walked across the width of the park until they could see the front door of Barchester’s house.
“Let us hope that he has not left the house yet,” Theo said as he turned and began to walk parallel to the iron fence that separated the trees of the park from the street.
“Are you sure he is going to leave it?” Megan asked.
“No. But I think it is a strong possibility,” he replied. “If he was telling the truth—that Coffey is the one who lied about my having killed Dennis—then I would think he would go to question Coffey about it. It is certainly what I would do.”
“And if he doesn’t leave, then you think he was lying to us again? That the lie is his alone?”
“It seems more likely.”
“Unless, of course, they are in it together,” Megan pointed out. “Then he would go running off to see his partner in the lie.”
“True.”
They had reached the end of the park and stopped. Sheltered by the trees, they were able to look at a slant across the street and down to Barchester’s door without being seen themselves from his house.
“But what exactly is this ‘it’ they are in together?” Theo mused as he gazed through the fence railings. “What is the purpose of the lies?”
“I don’t know why they would be in it together,” Megan replied. “Or, indeed, why Mr. Barchester would be the one who made up the lie. While it is possible, I suppose, that Barchester could have done as Alex and Con surmised and followed your group, then killed Dennis, it seems an unlikely scenario. It makes more sense to me that Barchester simply accepted Mr. Coffey’s lie.”
“I agree. Which leaves us with only the question of why Coffey would have made up the lie.”
“It makes little sense for him to lie to Barchester if a villager killed my brother, as he told you. I would think that means Coffey lied because he killed Dennis himself.” Tears glittered in Megan’s eyes, and Theo put his hand over hers on his arm.
“I am sorry.”
Megan offered him a weak smile. “It is foolish, I suppose, for all this to make the wound fresher. But somehow it does. It seems so much more horrible that a man Dennis knew and trusted killed him.”
“I know. It is hard for me, too, to believe that Julian killed him.”
“The twins’ rationale makes more sense with Mr. Coffey,” Megan reasoned. “He came upon all that treasure with you. It wouldn’t have been strange for him to want some of it—many men would have. But Dennis opposed that. Perhaps Mr. Coffey tried to sneak some of it out and Dennis caught him.”
“He was stealing the treasure while dressed up in a priest’s garb?”
“Perhaps Dennis caught him in the garb and realized what he was doing—I don’t know.”
“Or perhaps I confused the scene with one of my dreams,” Theo admitted. “Aside from the delirium I suffered, I think that the healing tea they gave me to drink may have induced hallucinations. I read more about the Incas after I returned, and I learned that the priests often ingested plants that gave them visions. So I’m not entirely sure that what I saw was accurate. Dreams and reality could have blurred. It was all so vague and strange….”
“Mr. Coffey could have taken treasure out of the cave. You wouldn’t have known if he loaded some of the objects on your pack animals. You were too ill. But Dennis might have caught him. They fought, and he killed him. Then he lied to you about what happened. And when Barchester didn’t buy the accident story, he made up a different lie for him.”
“But why make up that second lie? Why not just stick to what he and I had agreed upon?” Theo pointed out.
“Well…” Megan thought for a minute. “Barchester, feeling that the story you two told was a lie, might very well have kept on questioning you, and after a while, you might have explained the truth to him. And in talking about it, one or both of you might have begun to see holes in Coffey’s story. The best thing to do was to keep the two of you from thinking about the story, from talking about what happened. If Barchester believed that you killed Dennis, he would not keep on questioning you.”
“That’s true. I wanted to put it out of my mind, but if Barchester had continued to plague me about it, I would soon have admitted what I thought was the truth. As it was, I closed it off. I avoided Barchester because of the painful reminders, and he avoided me just as assiduously. Moreover, he wrote to your father and repeated the lies, so your father never contacted me about it.” Theo grimaced. “And I fell right into the plan—not writing to your father again, being relieved when Barchester told me that he had done so.”
“Coffey must have thought that he had gotten away with it long since,” Megan agreed. “He wouldn’t have suspected that Dennis’s family would turn up after all these years, stirring up the whole matter again.”
“Look!” Theo interrupted, nodding toward Barchester’s front door. “His carriage is pulling up in front of the house. He is leaving.”
Megan turned to Theo, excitement rising in her chest. “Shall we follow him?”
A grin was his only answer as he took her arm and started back across the park toward their own carriage.
By the time they reached the carriage and climbed in, then circled around, Barchester’s carriage was almost a block ahead of them.
But it was easy enough for the coachman to keep it in sight, and they followed at a leisurely pace. Inside, Megan kept twitching aside the curtain impatiently to look for Barchester’s carriage.
“I can’t see it at all,” she grumbled.
“Neither can I, but we are headed toward the museum,” Theo told her, satisfaction in his voice.
Their suspicions were confirmed a few minutes later when they drove slowly past the Cavendish’s entrance. Barchester’s carriage sat in the driveway. On Theo’s instructions, their coach turned into the next street and parked at the corner, where they had an excellent view of the museum’s driveway.
“I would love to hear what they are saying to each other,” Megan mused, peering out past the edge of the curtain.
“Somehow, I suspect we could not sneak close enough to hear. But at least we know now that it was not merely Barchester lying. Either Coffey lied to him, or he and Coffey are in it together. There is no reason for him to go running to Coffey otherwise.”
“What shall we do now?”
“I think we certainly need to talk to Coffey. And another visit to Barchester might be in order.” Theo’s jaw tightened, and his green eyes grew cold and hard. “If it was Coffey who killed Dennis…All these years, and I did nothing….”
“You didn’t know.”
“I did not try hard enough to find out. I was too busy trying to escape my grief and guilt.”
“You are too hard on yourself.” Megan leaned forward and closed her hand over his.
His skin was warm beneath her palm, and suddenly she was very aware of the small, confined nature of the carriage. It was an intimate setting, shut away from the world by the closed curtains, cradled by the soft, buttery leather of the seats. Megan’s heart tripped in its beat.
Theo looked at her, his eyes dark and deep in the shuttered space. He turned his palm over, his hand curling around hers. Megan drew a shaky breath, reminding herself of all the reasons why nothing could ever happen between the two of them.
“I—we should probably go back,” she said quickly. “It is growing late.”
His eyes narrowed, but he released her hand slowly and said, “No doubt you are right. I think the best thing to do would be to set Tom Quick up to watch the museum—see if Coffey goes anywhere, what he does.”
Megan nodded. “Yes. No doubt.”
It was best not to think about what might have happened just then. Or why Theo had let the moment go so easily. Most of all, it was best not to consider why his letting it go engendered such a flat feeling of disappointment in her.
They rode home, speaking little, wrapped in their own thoughts. As Theo handed Megan down from the carriage in front of Broughton House, he clasped her hand for a moment longer than necessary.
“I did not hurt your brother,” he said fiercely. “Whatever it takes, I will prove it to you.”
Startled, Megan looked at him. “I know.”
“Do you? I wonder.”
“Yes,” Megan replied calmly. “I am certain of it.”
He gazed at her for a moment longer. “And if Coffey did, I promise you, he will pay for it.”
Taking her arm, he propelled her into the house.
* * *
MEGAN DREAMED that night.
She was in a cave, a vast, cavernous place with rough walls of stone. It was lit by torches shoved into iron braces spaced regularly around the walls. Torchlight flickered on the stone, uneven and gleaming with a dampness that had an almost satiny look. The ceiling of the cave was high, and if she looked up, she could see the faint glitter of rock that seemingly dripped down from the roof, barely touched by the light from the torches.