Tempest

by Sandra Dubay

  Frowning, she followed the sounds to a little-used path, no more than a trail, that snaked through the forest to the tower.

  There, cushioned by the carpet of leaves and undergrowth, Charlotte lay. Her face was ghastly pale, her lips blue. Her simple calico gown was stained crimson with the blood that flowed from a wound in her side.

  "My God!" Caro breathed. She went to kneel beside the fallen girl.

  Feeling Caro's hand on her cheek, Charlotte opened her eyes. Tears welled in them, trickling down her cheeks and falling on the leaves beneath her head.

  "I tried to stop him, Miss Caro," she breathed, her every word harsh and gasping. "I didn't know . . . I swear I didn't know . . .."

  "Stop who, Charlotte? Who did this to you?"

  "Lord Geoffrey, Miss. I thought he loved Miss Dyanna. That's why I helped him. But I didn't know . . . I swear I didn't know what he meant to do. Now he's taken her . . . forced her to go with him. Oh, Miss Caro, I know he means her harm?"

  Caro hesitated, torn between running on to catch up with Dyanna and Geoffrey and running back to Wildwood to fetch Justin and help for Charlotte. Finally she decided in favor of the latter.

  Pulling off the long coat of her crimson riding habit, she covered the shivering girl.

  "I'll be back, Charlotte," she promised. "I'll bring help for you and for Dyanna. Don't you worry, now."

  With a last, comforting caress of the girl's alarmingly cold cheek, Caro lifted her skirts and ran back through the forest, following the trail that would take her back to Wildwoodback to Justin. Surely he would know what it was the girl was talking about. And surely he would know what to do to help both Charlotte and Dyanna.

  Chater Thirty-Eight

  Summoned by Caro, Justin, Bertran, Mrs. Stour, and two footmen retraced Caro's hurried steps to the place in the forest where Charlotte lay.

  "She's not . . . Justin, is she . . . ?" Caro whispered when they found the maid lying unnaturally still on her bed of leaves.

  Justin pressed his fingers against Charlotte's throat. "She's alive," he announced, to the relief of all. "But just barely."

  Mrs. Stour, aided by Bertran, opened Charlotte's gown and inspected the wound left by Geoffrey's sword.

  "It's deep, my lord," Bertran told him. "But I don't think it's pierced anything vital."

  "We'll take her back to the house," Justin decided, "then send for a doctor."

  As they prepared to lift her, Charlotte moaned softly. Her lids fluttered, then opened. She raised pain-filled eyes to Justin.

  "My lord," she whispered. "Forgive me, I . . ."

  "Charlotte," Justin said soothingly. "You should not speak too much. Just tell me where Dyanna has gone."

  "She is with Lord Geoffrey, my lord."

  "Culpepper!" Justin spat.

  Charlotte trembled. "I'm sorry, my lord. I helped him from the first. That is why my Lord Summersleigh sent me to DeVille House with Miss Dyanna."

  Justin's golden eyes narrowed angrily. For months he had harbored the instrument of his betrayal beneath his own roof. "But why, Charlotte? Are you so loyal to Lord Summersleigh? To Culpepper?"

  "I thought he loved her, my lord. He told me he loved her, he told me you meant her harm. That's why I helped him." Tears glittered in her eyes. "But it wasn't true! He didn't love her! He meant to do her harm. Sweet Jesus, I think he means to kill her!"

  "Where are they, Charlotte!" Justin demanded. "Do you know where they've gone?"

  "I thought he meant to carry her off to be married, my lord," the maid gasped. "When I realized . . . when it became clear what he really intended . . . I tried to stop him. He ran me through. I shall die with Miss Dyanna's blood on my hands!"

  Justin resisted the impulse to shake the girl. "You're not going to die, Charlotte. We're going to get you a doctor. Now tell me. Tell me! Where is Dyanna!"

  "The tower, my lord. He's taken her to the tower."

  Sword in hand, Justin left them, running off into the forest, determined that the matter would end today one way or the other.

  Halfway up the worn, winding stone steps of the ancient tower, Dyanna clung to one of the iron rings set into the wall. The rust ground into her hands, her whitened knuckles ached, but still she braced herself, resisting

  Geoffrey's efforts to force her farther up the stairs.

  "Damn you!" Geoffrey hissed. "Let go of that ring and get up those steps." He brandished his sword before her eyes. "Or do you want some of what that damned, meddling maidservant got?"

  The memory of Charlotte brought the tears flooding back into Dyanna's eyes. Unable and unwilling to release the ring to wipe them away, she shook her head and tried to wipe them away on her sleeve.

  "You killed her, you bastard!" she hissed, lashing out ineffectually with one foot.

  Geoffrey shrugged indifferently as he lifted

  Dyanna's skirt and wiped Charlotte's blood on it. "She should not have interfered."

  "She tried to help you!" Dyanna argued. "She's always been on your side! It was only when she realized you meant to kill me that she tried to stop you."

  "Therein lay her mistake," Geoffrey snarled. "Her fatal mistake! It is one she will not make again."

  His smirk infuriated Dyanna beyond bearing, beyond good judgment. Pulling the ring free with one hand, she brought it slashing through the air, flat against his cheek, staggering him back.

  With a roar of outrage, Geoffrey seized the moment and forced her up a few more steps with sheer, brute strength she would not have suspected he possessed.

  Desperate, Dyanna caught the next of the rings. But it was weak, rusted through, and snapped off in her hand. Off balance, she fell, gasping as she struck the edge of the stair on which she landed.

  "Damn you, Geoffrey," she cried, gasping at the pain in her side and her shoulder. "I hate you! Hate you!"

  "Get up," he ordered, jerking her to her feet without regard for any injuries she may have suffered.

  His larger body against hers, he forced her farther up the stairs until she managed to catch hold of yet another of the rings.

  "I am losing what little patience I had for this business!" he growled.

  "You mean to kill me anyway!" she cried, beyond fear, feeling a giddy recklessness come over her in the face of certain death. "Why don't you just run me through the way you did poor Charlotte and be done with it!"

  "I've another plan for you," Geoffrey told her. "I mean for you to be found at the bottom of this tower. Just as your precious DeVille's mother was found there."

  Dyanna felt the blood run cold in her veins. "You can't be serious!" she hissed. "You can't really think anyone would believe I took my own life!"

  "Can't I?" He smiled, a cold, pitiless smirk that sent a shiver down Dyanna's spine. "Think about it, Dyanna. You eloped with a married man. You run around London at night dressed in boy's clothes. You are obsessed with books about ghosts and curses and adventuresses. Don't think that sort of thing is not remarked upon, discussed with great relish, among the servants. They like nothing better than to sit in the servants' hall and rake their betters over the coals. Any peccadillo of anyone residing abovestairs is eagerly seized upon. You may take my word for it, dear Dyanna, the opinion belowstairs is doubtless that your brains were addled when you fell from the carriage in Newington and hit your head on the rock."

  ''You're mad!" Dyanna screeched. "Mad! You're the one whose brains are addled!"

  "Am I? I am the one who will walk away from this tower. Not you."

  "You may well walk away," she admitted, for though she had racked her brains, she could not begin to think of a way to overcome his superior strength and escape. "But you will not get away with this. When they find Charlotte's body, they will knowthey will knowthat she was murdered!"

  "You're quite right, of course. But I have thought of that." Geoffrey flicked his thumb across the sharp edge of his sword. "I will leave the sword near your poor, broken body. Everyone will think you murdered your maid. Perhaps she
tried to stop you from seeking your own demise, brave girl, and you ran her through for her trouble. There, now Charlotte will have died a heroine's death. Does that make you feel better?"

  "My God! You really are mad!"

  Seeing the gleeful light in his eyes, Dyanna fought against the rising panic inside her. She was afraid of dyingshe harbored no foolhardy pretenses to a bravery she did not feelbut even more, she hated the thought of being branded a madwoman, a suicide, and a murderess.

  "Why are you doing this to me, Geoffrey?" she hissed. "You must hate me! Once you said you loved me . . ."

  "I do love you, dear Dyanna," he cooed, lifting back a lock of her tumbled hair with the point of his sword. "I love your beauty. I love your spirit. But most of all, I love your fortune!"

  "My fortune! You love my fortune, so you are killing me? that makes no sense. You cannot have my fortune if I am dead!"

  Geoffrey opened his mouth to reply, but the voice that filled the twisting stairwell was Justin's.

  "Yes, he can, Dyanna.

  A wave of purest bliss washed over Dyanna as she saw Justin in the stairwell below them.

  "Justin! Justin, help me!" she whispered.

  With a vicious shove, Geoffrey took advantage of her inattention to push her up the remaining stairs to the square, wind-swept room at the top. She sprawled on the rubble-strewn floor as Geoffrey turned to face Justin, his sword clenched tightly in his blood-stained hand.

  "Yes, DeVille," he taunted, "help herif you dare! I would as soon kill you as well."

  "You're not man enough to kill me, Culpepper," Justin taunted. "No, you're only man enough to kill women and old men."

  With a scream of purest rage, Geoffrey rushed down the stairs that separated them and steel met steel as their duel was begun.

  Chater Thirty-Nine

  Up and down the tortuous, winding steps, Justin and Geoffrey fought, each grimly determined to overcome his adversary or die in the process. The sounds of their battle echoed in the narrow stairwell. The clanging of steel on steel, the ringing as one of the other of them sent his weapon smashing into the stone wall, was deafening in the confines of the twisting passage.

  At the top of the stairs, in the square, wind-swept room at the apex of the ancient tower, Dyanna sat, crouched in the farthest corner, longing to help Justin but fearing to do anything that might break his concentration and give Geoffrey, even for a moment, a temporary, but potentially lethal, advantage.

  She held her breath, drawing her knees close up under her chin, as Geoffrey appeared in the doorway. Pursued up the stairs, he backed into the chamber, his eyes fixed on his adversary who was still out of Dyanna's line of vision. With a ferocity Dyanna would not have expected to find in Geoffrey, he fought on. Their battle was a dazzling, deadly dance, a lethal, graceful melody of feint and parry, lunge and thrust that could end at any moment with the death of one or the other.

  A moment's indecision, an instant's inattention and the blade would drive home; a single mistake would cost a life.

  Dyanna watched, pulse pounding, nerves taut, waitingwaiting for the moment she knew would come. It was upon them before any of them realized it. Geoffrey, stepping back, missed his footing and fell. But before Justin could move upon him, he had scooped up a handful of the dust lying on the floor and thrown it into Justin's eyes, blinding him.

  For an instant, Justin's guard fell. Dyanna saw the flash of Geoffrey's blade and screamed as it sliced through Justin's coat, his shirt, his flesh . . . .

  Justin reacted instantly, recoiling, falling to one knee, his hand pressed to the place in his side where the dark, crimson blood was already beginning to well.

  Like a deadly predator in the deepest jungle, Geoffrey sensed weakness in his opponent. He had drawn Justin's blood and it had whetted his appetite for more. Swiftly, sword raised for the coup de grâce, he was on his feet and closing the short distance between them.

  And then, in an instant, it was finished. From below, Justin drove his sword upward. It pierced Geoffrey's chest, impaling him, its bloodied point emerging through the back of his black coat.

  Eyes staring, mouth agape, Geoffrey staggered back. He stared, unbelieving, as Justin's sword drew free of his body. His eyes, huge, glassy, saw the scarlet blood on the cold blue steel.

  Before Dyanna's horrified eyes, he stumbled back toward the window. Before she could rise, before anyone could move, he fell, disappearing out the window, falling to the rubble-strewn ground so far below.

  Dyanna clasped her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of his screamto block out the sickening thud as his body hit the ground.

  Across the chamber she saw Justin push himself to his feet. He loosely clasped his sword in one hand. With the other, he tried to stem the blood flowing from the wound in his side, which oozed up between his fingers at a frightening rate. "Justin," Dyanna breathed.

  "Oh, Justin!"

  She ran to him and, heedless of his wound, embraced him, weeping with relief that he was safe, knowing, even though Geoffrey's sword had pierced his body, that he would live.

  "We've got to get you back to Wildwood," she told him. "I'll run back and have Bertran come with a horse and cart."

  Justin chuckled, then winced at the pain in his side. "I can make it back on my own," he insisted. "It's only a flesh wound."

  Dyanna looked askance at the blood that seemed to be flowing too fast. "Are you certain? Perhaps you should wait here and I'll bring back a doctor. I"

  "Dyanna," he said sternly, the soft fondness in his eyes belying his tone, "if we stand here arguing about it, I'll no longer need a doctor. Now come, help me down the stairs. With any luck, the doctor has come to help Charlotte and he can treat me at the same time."

  "Charlotte!" Dyanna stared up at him. "She's not dead?"

  "No." Justin gasped as they started down the steep, winding staircase. "Caro found her in the forest. She told us where Culpepper had taken you. You have her to thank for your life."

  "And you," Dyanna murmured.

  Justin smiled wanly. "And Culpepper's poor swordsmanship. He could land a thrust, but his aim was damned bad."

  She shot him a quelling glance. "How can you laugh about such a thing?" she demanded.

  He chuckled, then groaned at the pain it caused him. "Carefully, my love," he teased. "I can laugh very carefully."

  Back at Wildwood, the doctor who had dressed Charlotte's wounds saw to the cleaning, stitching, and bandaging of Justin's wound as well. When he'd left, Justin sat in the morning room with Dyanna.

  With one finger, she traced the stark white bandage across the tanned, golden-haired expanse of his lower chest.

  "You knew Geoffrey was still alive, didn't you?" she asked. "They must have told you when you went to speak about Lord Rawley's death." She frowned when Justin nodded. ''But why didn't you tell me? Geoffrey made a joke of it. He said you probably didn't want to worry me. Why didn't you tell me?"

  Justin grinned. "I didn't want to worry you."

  "Wretch! But what I still don't understand in all this," she went on, "is how Geoffrey thought he could get my fortune by killing me."

  Justin nodded. "I wondered about that as well. It didn't make sense for him to gull you into that false marriage. You could have exposed him and reclaimed your inheritance. The marriage would have been declared invalid in any court in the land. He was not so stupid as to think you would merely sit at Patterton Park and let him ruin you in London. There had to be another motive. There had to be something he knew that we did not."

  "What could it be?" she wondered. "Have you figured it out?"

  "I think I have." He gestured toward the table on the opposite side of the room. "In the drawer of that table, you will find a packet of papers. Bring them to me, will you?"

  Obediently, Dyanna went to the table and brought back the papers he desired. Curious, she watched while he shuffled through them, searching for the clause he had noticed earlier.

  "What this is," he told her at
last, "is a copy of your grandfather'syour mother's father'sLast Will and Testament. Have you ever seen it?"

  Dyanna shook her head. "All that was handled by solicitors," she told him. "My grandfather's will and, I suppose, my father's as well."

  "Well, your father cannot have been too pleased if he saw it. You know your maternal grandfather, old Lord Lincoln, detested your father. He was determined that Blaykling Castle and the other properties and monies should never fall into your father's hands."

  "As they would have if I had died before my father," Dyanna commented.

  "Indeed. Your grandfather inserted a clause bypassing your father if you predeceased him. If you died without issue, the properties and income belonging to the Earldom of Lincoln, were to pass, in their entirety, to"

  He handed the paper to Dyanna, one finger pointing to the relevant clause.

  "To" Dyanna read. "To Lord Geoffrey Culpepper, grandson and heir of Horatio Culpepper, the Marquess of Summersleigh, my oldest and most beloved friend . . ."

  "If you died without children," Justin told her. "Geoffrey inherited everything."

  "But I don't understand," she insisted. "Why the sham marriage? Why didn't he just kill me and be done with it?"

  "Too risky," Justin told her. "The greatest fortune in the world will do him precious little good if he's hanged for murder. It had to be in a remote place, out of London. How else could he get you to go away with him but with an elopement?"

  "But he went to all the trouble of procuring a special license and"

  "Did you see it?" Justin inquired.

  "No," she admitted.

  "And I'll wager it never existed. No, what he needed was a remote spot with no witnesses. His mother, I suspect, knew what he was about. But I have no proof of that. The Reverend Mr. Tuttle was as duped by Culpepper as you were, I expect. He, no doubt, thought he was being asked to perform a legitimate marriage. And, within a short time, he would have been asked to perform a funeral serviceyours."

  Dyanna shivered. As she gazed out the window, she saw a cart bearing Geoffrey's body to the village, where it would be prepared to be sent on to Patterton Park for burial. Without feeling either regret or remorse at Geoffrey's death, she turned away.