No, she mustn’t think of that. It would surely show on her face.
She glanced at the clock—it was nearly nine-thirty, and she still had to get to the lodge. She gulped some tea, then rose. “Well, I’m off. I’ll see everyone later.” And before anyone could stop her, she tied her bonnet on over her morning cap and headed out the door.
The woods teemed with birdsong as she walked briskly down the path. Taking a horse would have been quicker, but that might have been noticed. Walking aimlessly about the estate was less suspicious, though if anyone saw her this far afield, they might find it odd. She generally kept to the gardens.
As she approached the lodge, her heart faltered. The horse tethered by the door told her that Giles had already arrived. Since he wasn’t out here, he must have found a way inside. Given his propensity for picking locks, that wasn’t surprising.
But that wasn’t what made her hesitate. She was here again. Here where her parents had been killed.
She stood there a long moment, gathering her courage. She’d lied to him yesterday when she’d said that no one had come here in nineteen years. She had come here a few months ago, after Oliver reopened the estate. Some compulsion had led her to see if she might spot the “ghost” the local populace talked about. To see if she could sense the presence of her parents.
But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to go inside. The idea of being alone in there, of possibly seeing some . . . specter of them in the throes of death had kept her frozen in front. After staring at the entrance for twenty minutes, she’d fled.
She couldn’t do that today. Not if she wanted answers.
There’s nothing to worry about, she told herself. Giles is inside, ready to dispatch any spooks with his logic. Really, it’s just an ordinary little lodge, made to accommodate sportsmen. There’s nothing threatening about the place itself.
Giles’s horse snorted, making her jump. Good Lord, she was being ridiculous. There was no such thing as ghosts. This was what came of writing about them all the time. One began to believe one’s own fiction—a dangerous tendency for someone with stories as dark as hers.
She forced herself to enter and walk toward the drawing room, where she’d been told her parents had died. Halting on the threshold, she glanced inside, looking for Giles. He wasn’t there. And something about the cloth-shrouded furniture and stifling air made panic well up inside her.
“Giles?” She headed back toward the foyer, feeling her heart pound harder with each step. “Giles, where are you?”
“Up here!” he called down the stairs. “In the master bedchamber!”
Oh, thank heavens. Holding her hand to her chest to steady her heart, she climbed the stairs. She found him standing in the middle of the marquet floor of what had been her parents’ room whenever they stayed here.
He was standing by the window he’d apparently opened, for a balmy breeze ruffled his hair. His air of normalcy helped soothe her agitation. He was tapping his hat idly against his thigh, his brow furrowed in thought. Dressed in buckskin riding breeches and a jaunty green riding coat, he looked carefree and just a tiny bit wild.
When he turned to her, his eyes held the same native intelligence that had always attracted her. “We know one thing for certain already.”
“Oh?”
“The constable’s report, which mostly contains your grandmother’s tale of what happened, can’t possibly be true.”
She blinked. “You saw the report? However did you manage it when Pinter couldn’t?”
He cast her a self-satisfied smile. “I gave the current constable a letter from your grandmother authorizing me, as her attorney, to look at it. I told him I needed the report to figure out certain matters concerning the inheritance.”
She gaped at him. “But Giles, how did you get Gran—”
“I didn’t. I’ve been poring over her will for weeks—it was a simple matter of copying her signature.” He grinned at her. “Unlike Pinter, I’m perfectly willing to break the rules to get what I want. He has no leverage, since he’s investigating behind your grandmother’s back. I, on the other hand, made sure that I appeared to be on her side, and since she’s well respected in this area, the constable was more than willing to hunt up the report.”
“You wicked devil!” she said, impressed and shocked at the same time. “One of these days someone is going to catch you doing these havey-cavey things, you know.”
“I doubt it. The only person who has ever caught me is you, and I don’t mind when you catch me, darling. Especially if I get a kiss out of it.”
There he went again, calling her “darling.” She wished he wouldn’t do that. She liked it entirely too much. And the way he was looking at her . . .
Faintly embarrassed, she turned to glance about the room that she hadn’t entered in years. The furniture here was covered with cloths, too, giving it an unreal appearance.
As a child, she’d come here often. Mama had liked to escape the oppressive grandeur of Halstead Hall from time to time, and Minerva often begged to come along. Mama had let her, because she’d known Minerva would sit quietly and read, unlike her brothers, who always ran roughshod over the place. She and Mama would cuddle in the bed and read together for hours.
Tears stung her eyes. She’d forgotten entirely about that.
Fighting back the memories, she forced her voice to sound light. “So what did the report say?”
“Not much. Most of it goes right along with what I understand is the public account of what happened—your mother was awakened by the sound of an intruder, went downstairs, and shot him, then shot herself while grieving over what she’d done.”
“Most of it?”
“I learned a few new things. According to the report, she used a loaded pistol that her husband kept in a bedside drawer in this very room for protection.”
“Where’s the pistol now?
“The constable has it. And it’s not a multibarreled pistol, so she would have had to reload it before shooting herself. Unless your mother was a markswoman—”
“As far as we know, she wasn’t. And Celia has already pointed out how unlikely it was that Mother knew how to load a pistol.”
“There are more inconsistencies than that in the account, I assure you.” Giles walked toward her. “I’ve been up here listening for you for the past few minutes. I didn’t hear the door open or close, and I didn’t hear you enter or walk around. I heard nothing until you called out my name, and that was faint at best.”
He strode over to the wall and knocked on it. “These are very solid, and this room is at the end of the hall. No one, especially someone sleeping, would hear a person sneaking in downstairs.”
“Perhaps Mama was sleeping in another room.”
“And she came in this one to get the pistol? Why would she take the time? For that matter, why would she confront an intruder with a pistol at all, when she could have just gone down the servants’ stairs and out the back door for help?” He returned to the window to look out. “And there are other inconsistencies.”
She followed him over and looked out herself.
“The stables are close enough to this window that anyone would easily hear a horse being stabled,” Giles went on. “And what intruder stables his horse? The minute she heard someone doing that, your mother would have assumed it was your father or some other member of the family.”
“Unless he’d walked here. I walked today.”
“The report said that both their horses were in the stables.”
“Oh.”
“You see? Too many inconsistencies.” Clapping his hat on his head, he walked toward the door. “And another thing.”
She followed him out into the hall.
“Even assuming that the story is correct, your mother would have had to creep down this hall to get to the stairs.” He took a step, and a board creaked loudly. “Your father should have heard this—it lies directly over the drawing room, and you can’t go from any of the bedchambers w
ithout passing this way.”
“Perhaps she stepped around it?”
“Roused out of a dead sleep, she thought to grab a pistol and step around a creaky board? Does that sound logical to you?”
“No, none of it does.” Minerva sighed. “And that means Oliver might be right that she killed Papa on purpose. That she laid in wait for him here.”
Giles’s gaze narrowed. “Why would he think that?”
“I-I can’t tell you—he would never forgive me. All I can say is that Oliver argued with Mama and gave her good reason to be furious at Papa.”
“Ah. Jarret seems to think that Desmond might have shot them both.”
“I know.”
Giles pinched the bridge of his nose. “The trouble with that theory is that Desmond had no motive for killing them. He wouldn’t have inherited anything.”
“Perhaps he didn’t do it for money.” She much preferred believing that Desmond had killed them to thinking that Mama had lain in wait to murder her husband. “Perhaps he had some personal reason for killing them.”
“I considered that.” He headed for the stairs, and she followed him. “I just can’t imagine what it would be.”
When they got downstairs, he walked toward the drawing room. Reluctantly she followed.
“I only wish I knew more about how they were situated when they were found,” Giles said. “I mean, I know roughly how they were, but—”
“You do? How?”
He entered the drawing room. She hesitated before going in after him. You wanted this, remember? You asked him to come here and do this.
But she hadn’t thought it would be so difficult. She’d never seen the scene, yet she could well imagine it—Mama facing Papa, Papa’s shock as the pistol was leveled on him.
“One of them fell here,” Giles was saying as he walked to a bare stretch of floor.
She hadn’t noticed before, but a rug had been pulled aside.
Giles knelt down to tap the wood. “When I first arrived, I went through this room. The blood has been cleaned away, but one can never get it completely clean. Blood that sits a while stains the wood, so I looked for any spot that might have been covered, and I found this. It tells me that one of them fell here.”
He rose to go to another part of the room, but she was no longer listening. She could only stand there, staring at the wide patch of wood that was a ruddier brown than the rest of it. Seeing the stain made it all more real somehow.
Images rose in her mind that she’d struggled all her life to banish from her imagination: Mama firing the gun at Papa, shattering his face . . . him falling to the floor as Mama fumbled to reload the pistol . . . Mama putting the pistol to her chest . . .
“Giles . . .” she whispered as her vision started to narrow, and sweat broke out on her brow.
He was talking, not paying attention. “It was probably over by . . .”
“Giles . . . I think . . . I think I’m going to . . .” She felt her knees buckle, then the room faded to black.
Chapter Thirteen
Giles turned just in time to see Minerva crumple. Alarm gripped him as he hurried to scoop her up. Cursing himself for being oblivious, he carried her outside. While he’d been spouting off about Lewis and Prudence Sharpe’s deaths like some pompous fool, he’d forgotten the most essential thing. They were her parents. It had been her tragedy as much as anyone’s.
Much too late, he remembered the nine-year-old Minerva balking at entering the chapel for fear of what she would see there. And he’d just made her think about all of that again. What an idiot he was.
The sight of her insensible in his arms did something terrifying to his insides. She looked so fragile in her thin white muslin, like an angel shot down by some errant hunter.
God save him, he was spouting poetry again. He was getting in much too deep with her. And he couldn’t seem to stop.
She stirred, her eyes fluttering open to stare up at him in confusion. “Wh-what happened?”
“You fainted,” he murmured, his heart still in his throat. “I’m afraid I got carried away talking about your parents’ . . . um . . .”
“Deaths. You can say it.” Her voice was a little steadier. “Put me down. I’m all right now.”
Reluctantly, he did as she asked but kept his hands on her waist. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s ridiculous, really. I’ve never fainted. I don’t know why I did.” Her words tumbled out of her too quickly to be normal. “It’s been nearly twenty years, and it’s not as if I’d been there to see it happen or anything, and I’m not—”
“Shh, darling.” He urged her down onto the entrance steps and sat beside her. After fumbling in his coat pocket, he pulled out his handkerchief to mop her clammy brow, no easy task with that enormous bonnet she was wearing. “Steady now. Breathe deeply. Do you have smelling salts?”
She shook her head. “As I said, I’m not the fainting sort. It’s just that being there, in the place where they died, knowing how they died and seeing the blood . . .”
“It’s not your fault,” he said, folding her hand in his. “I shouldn’t have been so blunt. I got caught up in solving the puzzle and forgot how much more it means to you.”
“But I wanted to be there and hear what you noticed. I can’t believe I behaved like such an idiot.”
“There’s no shame in fainting, Minerva.” And she was the only woman he knew who’d be embarrassed by it. “There’s certainly no shame in balking at seeing the place where they died. Your reaction is perfectly rational.”
“But you don’t understand.” She gripped his hand as she stared down at her lap. “I-I write about these things all the time. I shouldn’t—”
“It’s not the same. You write about them from the safety of your secure home. They’re not real.”
“That’s not true. They’re real to me.” Her voice grew choked. “Sometimes I wonder if . . . well . . . there’s something wrong with me. Why do I revel in the blood?” She frowned. “No, I don’t revel in it. It’s just that I feel compelled to create it, to write about it, to . . . to lay it out in all its horror.”
“And then to destroy it. Don’t you see? You control the violence. You dictate what happens to whom.” As awareness dawned, he squeezed her hand. “Perhaps that’s why you do it. Because in writing, you have power over monstrosities. You can banish them with the stroke of a pen. You can gain justice for its victims in your books.”
She stared up at him, wide-eyed. “I’d never thought of it like that. Still, you’d think that with my parents dying so horribly, I would balk at describing such things.”
“Actually, I think it’s just the opposite. Children are impressionable, especially at the age you were when your parents died.” He rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “You heard about their horrific ends, and you couldn’t get it out of your mind. So you found a way to deal with it, to regain the power that was ripped from you in life. That just shows how strong you are.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
With a grateful smile, she released his hand. “I-I think I can manage now. We can go back in, and you can finish what you were showing me.”
“No need.” He would cut off his right arm before he forced her to relive the horrors again. “It’s not cowardice to avoid those things that will damage your ability to cope.” He debated whether to say more, but her haunted expression decided him. “I haven’t set foot in the library since my father shot himself there. I was a grown man at the time, yet I still can’t bring myself to go in.”
Compassion flooded her features. “You weren’t the one to find . . .”
“No. I almost wish I was.” His voice hardened. “Mother got there first after we heard the shot. She was still screaming when I ran in.”
He glanced away, remembering the scene. “I happened to be visiting at the estate when Father received the news that—” He’d lost everything to th
e schemer Sir John Sully. No, he shouldn’t tell her that. It would lead to other questions. “Father received some bad news. My brother had been called away to town, so it was just Mother and I.” He fought for control over his voice. “I was the one to contact the constable, to deal with the coroner, to make sure that the library was cleaned up properly afterward.”
“Oh, Giles,” she whispered as she took his hand in hers once more. “That’s why you know about bloodstains.”
“Yes. There was one in our library. Mother had the floor redone, but I’ve never seen it. I don’t . . . go in there. I let David or a servant do it.” A breath shuddered out of him. “I tell myself that I’m being foolish, that there’s no reason to avoid it, that it’s not as if his ghost haunts it, and yet—”
“You see it all again in your mind’s eye, and you don’t want the image to plague you any more than it already does.”
“Exactly.” He softened his voice. “It was wrong of me to expect you to do what I couldn’t manage myself.”
“You didn’t expect it. I asked you to do it. And I still want you to—”
“There’s no point. I’ve seen all I can for now, anyway. I need to know more before I can explore further.”
She nodded. “I remember. You said something about . . . needing to know what position the bodies were in when they were found?”
“That would tell me a great deal. Unfortunately, given your grandmother’s involvement, I can’t trust that the constable was allowed to see the scene exactly as it was. The only person who knows the truth about how they were is your grandmother, and your brothers are reluctant to involve her as long as they suspect Desmond. I gather she’s had some illness, and they don’t want to upset her with baseless theories.”
“Actually . . .” She bit her lip, as if trying to decide whether to tell him something. Then she let out a long breath. “Actually, Oliver knows how Mama and Papa were positioned. He was the one to find them.”
Giles narrowed his gaze on her. “He was?”
How to Woo a Reluctant Lady Page 16