by Sandra Dubay
Justin bathed Dyanna's cut gently, fearing to cause her more pain. But she did not stir, did not moan, did not seem even to breathe. Her stillness and her deathly white pallor, frightened him beyond measure, but he would not allow himself to consider that she might be any more than merely unconscious owing to the blow to her head.
The foyer outside the parlor was suffused with the bleak, grey light of the cloudy day as Bertran bustled in followed by a short, balding man and by Charlotte, who was still weeping.
"This is Dr. Stowe, my lord," Bertran said.
Justin moved away from Dyanna's side. "She was thrown from a carriage," he told the doctor. "She has not moved since. Her head struck a rock as she fell."
Bending over Dyanna, the doctor probed the cut. "It is superficial," he pronounced.
"Then why won't she awaken?"
Frowning through his spectacles, the doctor pressed his fingers to the side of Dyanna's throat. Bending, he pressed his ear to her breast.
"Doctor," Justin prompted, "if her wound is superficial, then why . . .?"
"The cut is superficial," the doctor corrected. "The woundthe blow to the head . . . I'm sorry, my lord, there is nothing to be done."
"Nothing . . . You can't mean . . ." Justin's normally ruddy complexion had gone nearly as white as Dyanna's.
"I'm sorry, my lord," the doctor repeated. "The lady is dead."
Chater Twenty-One
The short and somber procession wound its way toward McBride Hall along tree-shaded lanes, a closed, black coach followed by two silent men on horseback, making their way through the countryside.
Bertran, riding alongside his master, followed behind the coach that carried Charlotte and the satin-lined coffin containing Dyanna's body. He watched Justin closely. He was worried for his masterworried over the taciturn blackness of mood that had settled over him since the doctor in Newington had pronounced Dyanna dead.
Burning for revenge, his golden eyes glowing with bloodlust, Justin had ridden to Patterton Park determined to kill Geoffrey
Culpepper. He had been met by Lady Culpepper and a host of Patterton footmen and told that Geoffrey had fled, his destination unknown. Whether it was the truth or not, Justin had no way of knowing. He had ridden away from Patterton, no less determined to be avenged on the man he blamed for Dyanna's death, but willing to defer his vengeance until Dyanna had been laid to rest.
Returning to the village, Justin had procured the finest coffin readily available, of black lacquered oak with silver fittings and a lining of tufted white satin. He had purchased a large black traveling coach, large enough to carry the coffin and Charlotte, who would not, even then, be parted from her mistress.
They had set out at first light riding toward McBride Hall where the great, grey stone family chapel that Rakehell had built to honor his wife waited on a hill behind the manor house. It waited now to receive Dyannathe last of the McBrides.
Since thensince they had ridden away from Newington, taking with them their precious, tragic burdenJustin had not uttered a single word. He merely rode behind the coach, staring straight ahead, his full, sculpted lips set in a rigid line. And Bertran, before many miles had passed beneath their horses' hooves, had begun to worry for his master's sanity.
He hoped that once their unhappy business was completeonce Dyanna had been laid to rest in the family mausoleum at McBride HallJustin would return to his senses and take up his life where he had left off those months ago when the fateful letter from his solicitors reached him at Portsmouth.
He was relieved when they left the main road and passed between the vine-shrouded, rusted gates guarding McBride Hall.
But as they emerged into the overgrown clearing surrounding the hall, Justin reined in his mount and stared at the ruin that was Dyanna's ancestral home.
Though faithfully cared for by trusted servants left by the Earl of Lincoln after he had come to take his young granddaughter away to Blakling, those servants had left after the old earl's death, when it had become clear that Rakehell McBride had no intention of paying his father-in-law's millions. Years of neglect, years of abandonment to the elements and to hoardes of squatters and vandals had followed, and had reduced the once proud gabled Tudor manor to a crumbling hulk. It's once sparkling, diamond-palled mullioned windows were, in large part, gaping holes in which only jagged shards of glass and fragments of lead remained. Much of the lead roofing had been stolen and the ancient stone lions that had guarded the iron-bound front door since the house was built had been decapitated. Tall, tangled weeds crept up the stone steps and ivy, wild and trailing, had wound its way up the walls and into the broken windows.
Dismounting, Justin walked up the broken steps and shoved open the door, which creaked a protest at having been awakened from its long, unbroken sleep. With Bertran following, he entered the once-beautiful hall, where the fine oak paneling had been carved by knivesinscribed with the names and sentiments of regiments of vandals, squatters and gypsies. The remnants of broken furniturethose pieces left when the rest had been smashed into kindlinglittered the chipped marble floor with its tattered, moth-eaten wool carpet.
"I can't leave her here," Justin muttered, his eyes following the rise of the rickety stairs toward the dark, unpromising second floor.
Bertran sighed, daunted by the prospect of continuing their macabre pilgrimage across the countryside. Where would he decide to take her next? Blakling Castle? That would be another two-day ride, considering the speed at which the lumbering black coach moved.
"You would not be leaving her here, milord," he reminded Justin gently. "She would be in the crypt, beneath the chapel. With her parents."
"If the house has been ransacked this way," Justin replied. "Who is to say the chapel has not been similarly despoiled?"
"Perhaps, milord, as executor of Miss Dyanna's estate, you can see to it that no further vandalism comes to this place. Prevail upon her heirswhoever they may beto take better care of the estate in future."
"I suppose that is possible," Justin agreed, much to his valet's relief. "We will go and look at the chapel."
Leaving Charlotte and the coachman with Dyanna, Justin and Bertran rode out through the overgrown park to the mausoleum built by Dyanna's father to house the remains of his beloved wife.
The chapel, built above a crypt intended to be the final resting place of generations of McBrides, was a rotunda of dressed sandstone. A colonnade of Doric columns surrounded it and an enormous funerary urn stood as a finial high atop the soaring, domed roof.
Justin and Bertran let themselves in through the unlocked, iron-work door. Within, Bertran was relieved to see, the chapel was relatively untouched. The beautiful plaster-work was unbroken, the mahogany altar and pulpit unmarked. Even the fine, cherrywood pews were intact. There was an air of incompleteness about the place, Bertran reflected, owing, he supposed, to the sudden abandonment of the project when Rakehell McBride had thrown himself back into his life of reckless hedonism.
''It is a beautiful chapel," he told Justin hopefully.
"It should be finished," Justin decided. "There was still work to be done when Rake-hell left for London."
"It could be finishedand quite simply."
A small, wan smile quirked the corner of Justin's mouth. "Are you trying to influence me?" he asked the valet.
"I admit that I am, milord," Bertran admitted. "So long as the chapel is in good order, there seems no reason to take Miss Dyanna any further. It will do none of us any good."
Justin sighed. "I suppose you are right. It will not bring Dyanna back and this"he scowled in the direction of the ruined manor house "this is her family home. Come, let's look at the crypt."
Bertran held his breath as they descended the stairs, which were guarded by a carved wooden rail and gate. At the bottom of the stone steps a filigreed iron gate opened into a chamber into whose walls niches had been made to receive the coffins of succeeding generations of McBrides. Two of the niches were filledone with the beaut
iful rosewood and mother-of-pearl coffin of Lady Elizabeth McBride and the other with the plain, unadorned wooden casket of Raburn 'Rakehell' McBride.
Justin ran a hand over the plain coffin with its simple lead fittings. "It seems that the
executors of Rakehell's will wasted little money and less care on their client's funeral. I would they had waited until I could make the arrangements."
"There has been much unhappiness in this family," Bertran said softly. "Miss Dyanna's mother, estranged from her father because of her marriage; Lord McBride and Lord Lincoln, losing the wife and daughter they both loved; Miss Dyanna, losing her mother, abandoned by her father"
"Yes," Justin agreed. "Too much unhappiness. There is much many could have done to make Dyanna's life a happier one."
Bertran stole a sideways glance at his master as they left the crypt and climbed the twisting stairs to the chapel. He thought he understood what Justin was feeling. Remorsethat he had not shown Dyanna the depth of his love for her. Guiltat having kept her a near prisoner at DeVille House for the last months of her life. Helplessnessat being unable to alter the fate that ultimately awaited her. He wondered if it would comfort his master to know that Dyanna had loved him in return, then decided it would only compound Justin's heartache. The knowledge of the time and opportunities lost would serve only to drive the cutting edge of grief more deeply into his heart.
Returning to the house, Justin ordered the coachman to help him take Dyanna's coffin to the chapel, where it would rest overnight. In the morning the local clergyman would be fetched from the village and a funeral service would be held to lay Dyanna to rest with her parents in the crypt.
As afternoon gave way to evening, Justin, Bertran, Charlotte and the coachman worked to assemble enough furniture to allow them to pass the night in relative comfort in the crumbling hall. Once they had gathered together the best of what was left in the dust-shrouded rooms and coaxed a fire into life in the only parlor downstairs still possessed of intact windows, Justin dispatched the coachman and Charlotte to the village with orders to procure food for them all and to deliver a letter to the local clergyman containing Justin's request for his services in the morning at the chapel of McBride Hall.
Those errands run, Justin left the others and walked out across the park to the chapel. Darkness was gathering overheaddarkness caused not by the lateness of the hour but by the thickness of the deep grey clouds piling in the sky above.
Justin entered the chapel. What scant light there had been beforeadmitted through the half-dozen stained-glass windows set into the curving wallswas gone now. The chapel was deeply shadowed and eerily silent. Dyanna's coffin, resting on a makeshift bier that was, in fact, an ancient trestle table brought up from the house, stood before the altar.
Unable to restrain himself, Justin lifted the lid, which he had not been able to allow to be nailed in place. It was but a temporary measure, this black lacquered coffin. He would see Dyanna laid to rest in the finest mahogany, her beauty cushioned by the softest velvet, the finest lace. He would see her dressed in silk, adorned with jewels. There had not been time for such considerations before, but he would see them attended to before the crypt was sealed. She was, after all, the last of the McBrides. No other would be laid to rest in the crypt beneath the chapel. He would see the door bricked up after Dyanna was interred. The house and the chapel itself might be torn to ruins by the human jackals who preyed on such abandoned estates, but they would lay no hands upon Dyanna. That, he told himself, was the least he could do.
Gazing down at her pale skin, scarcely darker than the creamy muslin of the gown she wore, Justin felt his heart ache within his chest. He touched her cheeks with reverent fingers. The flesh, though still supple and soft, was disquietingly cool. Her lashes lay like sooty fans on her cheek, and Justin wished passionately that they might flutter and lift, that he might gaze once more into those aqua eyes that had the power to wreak such havoc inside him. Her eyes, her beauty, had always had overwhelming power over his senses. From the first moment he saw her, when he believed her no more than a simple tavern maid, he had been under the spell of her beauty. He had never been so enchanted by a womannever been so enraptured by the simple act of gazing at her, nor ever desired a woman with such a ravening, relentless hunger. It had frightened himhe had spent his life running from such entanglements. He had avoided attachments of the heart, the way others avoided contagion. It had driven him from his home, driven him to immerse himself in the rigors of the season. He had paid casual court to a dozen young ladies, but not a one of them had been able to touch his heart, his senses, the way Dyanna had. He found himself at balls, surrounded by giggling young beauties and longing for nothing more than to get home so that he might tiptoe into Dyanna's room and gaze at her as she slept.
He felt a renewed twinge of guilt at having immured Dyanna at DeVille House. He had shut her away from society, away from the eyes of those eligible young men who might have been suitors for her hand, because he could not bear the thought of watching her courted, wooed, perhaps won by another man. He had driven her to Culpepper. His tyrannical selfishness had sent her fleeing into the arms of that cowardly fop.
A surge of hatred, a desire for revenge, flared in his heart but quickly died. Was he not as much to blame for Dyanna's death as Culpepper? He shared the responsibility for her deathperhaps even bore the brunt of the blame. Had he not intervened, Dyanna would be Lady Dyanna Culpepper, alive and well, instead of the late Miss Dyanna McBride, lying there in her coffin before the altar of her family mausoleum.
Bending, Justin brushed his lips across hers. A teardrop, warm and glistening, fell onto her cheek and lay there, unheeded, as he turned on his heel and left the chapel.
Chater Twenty-Two
Night had fallen and with it the rain that had been threatening all afternoon. Outside the hall, where the fire in the parlor grate did little to dispel the chill and damp that had settled over the great, hulking ruin of McBride Hall, the overgrown garden bowed beneath the weight of the rain that fell, not heavily but steadily, and promised to do so all night long.
Inside the parlor, having finished their meager supper, Charlotte, Bertran and the coachman exchanged sympathetic glances as Justin rose. Lighting a candle from the flame of another that burned in a plain, tin candlestick apparently deemed unworthy of theft by any of the vandals and robbers that had called the hall home, he left the parlor and disappeared into the cavernous depths of the hall.
"It ain't ealthy," the coachman declared once he judged Justin to be out of earshot. " 'E's pinin' fer that gel. Pinin' too 'ard, if ye ask me."
"Well, nobody asked you," Charlotte snapped, then added, "But he does seem grieved beyond what I'd have expected from him."
"Why should he not grieve?" Bertran wanted to know. "He has a heart, after all."
Charlotte compressed her lips in a tight white line. Bertran would defend him, she supposed, for he was Lord DeVille's servant and owed him loyalty. But she could not help but believe that if cruel fate had delayed the earl for but another quarter hour, her beloved Miss Dyanna would be Lady Culpepper now, alive and safe at Patterton Park, lying in her marriage bed rather than in a coffin alone in a chapel in a rain-drenched park.
To the horror and discomfort of the two men, the maid broke into loud, disconsolate sobs which she buried in the folds of her white muslin apron.
Above, having braved the rickety staircase with its broken treads, Justin had found a window seat cushioned with tattered velvet. Extinguishing his candle, he sank onto the seat. Outside the great oriel window in which he was. framed, rain poured down. Justin watched itwatched the rivulets course down the window, stared at the rustling branches of the trees in the park outside. Further off, beyond the tangled garden where once Dyanna had toddled, chased by her nurserymaid, the chapel stood silhouetted against the cloudy night sky.
Dyanna was there, he thought. Alone in the cold, dank darkness of the chapel. A desire to go to her washed over hima longi
ng to touch her again, to gaze at her beauty once more, perhaps to hold her small, chilled hand between his own. Such thoughts were not healthy, he told himself. Dyanna was dead.
There! He had put the unthinkable into words. She was gone and would never return. Tomorrow she would be laid to rest. Perhaps he would abandon his plans for another, more splendid funeral. After all, what difference did it make? What difference could it make? Surely none to her. After tomorrowafter the servicehe should mount his horse and ride away. He should leave the disposal of her estate in the hands of the solicitors and let that be an end to it.
Rising from the window seat, he started back downstairs, meaning to try to forget the chapel and the treasure it contained. But as he turned, his eyes darted toward the window for one last glance at the temple on the hilltop beyond the garden. It was then that he saw the glimmer behind the stained-glass window.
Frowning, he placed one knee back on the window seat and leaned closer to the glass. His breath clouded it. With one hand, he wiped the obscuring mist away. Was there? Yes! There was a glow emanating from within the chapel. It had not been his imagination. It was there. There was no lightning with the rain to account for the light, nor was there a moon whose silvery glow might seem to illuminate the window when seen from a certain angle.
There was someone there! Someone in the chapel! But who? What? Not being of a superstitious nature, Justin did not, as some might, imagine a ghost to be roaming the night. No, this light was of no unearthly origin. It was all too real and it warranted investigation.
Not bothering to try to relight his candle, Justin carefully retraced his way down the stairs. In the hall, he clapped on his hat and donned his coat. Tucking a pistol beneath it, he threw open the door and ran out into the rainy night.
"Milord?" Hearing the commotion in the hall, Bertran came to the parlor doorway just as Justin flung open the front door.
"There's a light in the chapel," Justin shouted back. "Someone's out there."