by Eve Silver
“Do you think so? I thought it as well, and so I paid the new lord’s debts. Bequeathed a reasonable sum, in the guise of an ancient cousin who had died without issue. ’Twas my noble effort on behalf of the person I once was to save the family estate.”
Honorable. He was always so honorable.
‘“You do not sound happy about it,” she observed.
“I was very happy to give the money. Less happy when the fool went to his club and gambled the lot on a single hand of faro. Ten thousand pounds.” He shook his head. “I left him to his despair then. There are limits to my largesse. But I did manage to purchase my father’s unentailed London townhouse for a very good price.”
Ten thousand pounds. Dear sweet heaven. “You are wealthy.” She had supposed he was, but what he described was far greater than she could have imagined.
His smile was a flash of white teeth against golden skin. “Beyond your wildest dreams, sweet.”
She didn’t care about the amount. She would love him if he had nothing, if they took to the road like tinkers, rolling from town to town. But another question pressed her, so she stepped far beyond acceptable limits to ask, “How?”
His smile faded. “The man whose neck I snapped, the captain of a pirate vessel”—he paused, sent her a quick look beneath his lashes—“he fancied his whip and his cat-o’-nine. Almost as much as he cherished his bounty. He was a frugal bastard, and when I killed him, all that was his became mine. It was an easy matter to build on his fortune.”
She took a slow breath, appalled by his talk of whips and cats. “Piracy?”
“Actually, no.” He smiled. “Well... maybe a bit.”
“You told me that you are a smuggler.”
“I am. I enjoy the excitement of a run across the channel.” He looked positively wicked as he said, “There is a certain charm in evading the excise men, or running a narrow passage in the reef to escape a revenue cutter.”
“So your fortune is built on smuggled goods?”
“No. You could call that more of an… entertainment. My worth came by legal trade. I am now a very boring businessman. It was an avenue I had an uncanny knack for. Every cargo I invested in came to shore safe and sound, regardless of the odds. Every warehouse I purchased filled with an item in high demand. My ships weathered every storm.” He was silent for a moment, holding the reins easily in his hands, and then said darkly, “It seems that once I turned to murder, my luck turned to the better.”
Her breath slid from her in a hiss. “Do not say that.”
“What? That my luck turned?” He sent her a sidelong glance. “Or that I turned to murder?”
He was mocking her, his tone mordant. Pressing her lips together, she measured her response and could think of none fitting.
“Do you love me less now, Jane?” he asked softly, the words heavy with cynicism.
Ah. So that was the crux of it. Suddenly, she felt afraid, cast into unfamiliar territory. How was she to lead him through this maze when she was so very lost herself? And how was she to answer without risking her heart?
“Love has no conditions, Aidan,” she said, careful.
“Do you love me then, Jane?” The question was so low it was almost lost to the creak of the carriage and the steady clomp of the horses’ hooves. “’Twould be unwise.”
The pain in her heart was swift and terrible. He knew it, of course. She could not imagine he did not. But to tell him, to say the words, knowing that he was incapable of loving her in return....
She stared into the far distance wondering where this could lead, and how she would survive the journey.
“I would be a fool to tell you if I did,” she whispered.
“And you are no fool.” For a long while he said nothing more, and then, “I have killed only men, and each of them in self-defense. Their lives or mine. I chose to survive.” His charm and easy banter were gone now.
She sat frozen, her heart pounding, knowing that his words were a strange sort of concession, answers he had refused to give before but shared now in a convoluted expression of his regard for her.
“Never a woman. Never a child. Never one weaker or unarmed. A man with a whip was the first, my hands slick from my own blood running down my back and arms, my body weak but my will bolstered by my burning hate.” He flicked the reins as the horses lagged. “Once, a man who held a knife to my throat in a rather rude awakening from my slumber. There were more. Many more.” He looked at her obliquely. His lips flattened. “Once, on a moonlit road, a man who froze my blood and stopped my heart because he held a pistol to the one I—”
The one I love. She willed him to say it, certain he spoke of the night he had shot Gaby to save her life.
“—had no wish to lose.”
She had not known she was holding her breath until this very instant when it burst free.
They continued in silence then. The rocking of the coach lulled her and, feeling drained, she relaxed her body against his, their movements matching the pitch and sway.
A deep rut jarred both the carriage and her concentration, and Jane realized they had reached the main road of Pentreath, that they drew abreast of the Crown Inn.
Suddenly, her skin prickled and the fine hairs at her nape rose. She stared hard at the building as they rolled past. The sign above the door swung forward and back, caught by the wind, and the strident creak carried to her across the yard, above the scrape of the carriage wheels on the road and the jingle of the harness.
She shuddered.
Someone watched her. Someone...
There, the door of the inn was open, a dark silhouette filling the space. A man slouched against the wooden jamb, the build too tall and narrow to be her father’s. He stood in the shadows; she could not see his face. But she could feel the man’s eyes upon her.
From beneath her lashes she glanced at Aidan and found him staring ahead, his jaw set. She inched closer to press tight against him, and turned her head as the carriage moved on, unable to dispel the feeling that whoever stood in the shadows, his presence here in Pentreath boded ill.
As a cloud moved across the sun, the man stepped out from her father’s hostelry. He stood in the yard, watching, and she swallowed a gasp.
The man was Digory Tubb.
Chapter 15
It had always seemed to Jane that dusk on a rainy day was an eerie thing. She stood at the window in the library of Trevisham House, watching the sky slowly turn to bruised shades of smoke and pewter and, finally, blue-black. With the wind rattling the windowpanes, the heavy clouds hanging low and Aidan away from the house, gone on horseback an hour past, she felt anything but easy. There had been something in his manner, something wrong.
She had not asked his destination. He would not have told her in any case.
A strange melancholy dogged her, leaving her anxious and skittish. Turning from the window she went to sit in the chair by the desk and took up her quill as she set her attention to the columns of numbers that Aidan had asked her to review. She suspected he was perfectly capable of reviewing them himself, but he understood her, understood her need to work, to be of use. The light from a single lamp played across the page. She found she could not focus, and in the end she only sat and stared at the hearth, thinking on what a strange and peculiar thing her life had become.
She knew her mood, recognized it for the self-indulgent gloominess it was, and so she thought her imagination played tricks upon her when, from the very walls of the library, there came an eerie, echoing sound, a dull scraping, like stone against stone.
Her head jerked up and she froze.
The noise came again. Scrape. Scrape.
Only a very large rat, indeed, could scrabble so. A shiver crawled across her skin.
The sound ebbed and flowed. Jane rose and turned a slow circle. From the corner of her eye, she saw the glow of the dying fire in the hearth, almost completely ash now. She stood for a long while, listening, her muscles tense, and she imagined the echo in the wall too
k on the tone and character of footsteps at a distance, disembodied and ghostly.
Drawing her shawl tighter about her shoulders, she paced out the perimeter of the room. Here, next to the desk, she could hear almost nothing. Here, next to the fireplace, the sound was keener, and here next to the bookcase it was louder still. She pressed the flat of her palm to the wooden shelf, and her ear to the wall. It came again, the sound distant, echoing.
Mysterious passages, ghosts and fiends... she had the alarming recollection of the novel Aidan had given her to read at the New Inn. Almost in jest, she tapped the wall and pulled on the sconces. In truth, she had little expectation of discovering a panel that would swing open to reveal a dark corridor, damp and mildewed, festooned with cobwebs. She laughed nervously at her own improbable thoughts.
With a shake of her head, she turned away, and then there it was. Not a secret or hidden door, but merely a servant’s entrance, the portal flush with the wood-paneled walls, simple and unadorned so as to draw no attention.
It certainly had not drawn hers before now.
Taking up the lamp, she opened the door. Here was the passage from her imagination, dark as a cave, the air stale and musty. She almost closed the door once more and left off her ideas of exploration, but right then came the sound of hurried steps from somewhere below her, deep in the pure darkness. There was a muffled curse and a heavy thud, and then a gravelly voice that she had no difficulty recognizing.
Aidan. His tone was brusque, though his words were muffled.
An hour ago, he had pulled her hard against him and kissed her deep before he had ridden off. She knew he had gone for she had watched him cross the causeway. But it seemed he had returned.
She hesitated an instant, feeling a tingle of premonition, not exactly danger, but certainly a sense of wary reserve. Dark and light played across the walls and a draft caught the flame of her lamp, making it twist and bend despite the glass chimney.
Lifting her lamp, she stepped through into the passage. This was folly. She should not walk this path.
Then Aidan’s voice echoed from the darkness once more. She could not make out all he said, but she heard her name once or twice. His tone was easy, friendly, relaxed, and that gave her courage to venture forward.
But no amount of courage could make her pull the door closed behind her.
Each step took her in a gradual descent, lower and lower, and the murmur of conversation grew louder as she walked. She held the lamp before her, the paltry flame pulled by an unseen current. Flickering shadows touched the walls and floor, and cobwebs brushed her as she passed.
The way was narrow, with an arched ceiling and stone on all sides. Just as she wondered if it would take her all the way down to the ocean, the passage opened into a large, square room, with kegs stacked against the far wall. She stopped, a cold draft wafting across her skin. For an instant there was a peculiar stillness, an absence of sound that felt abnormal, even chilling, and then the wrath of the wind cut through the space, slicing the silence.
“Well look what the tide dragged in.”
Jane whirled and almost lost both her balance and the lamp as cruel fingers curled into her upper arm in a bruising grip. Digory Tubb peered down at her, his eyes narrowed. She jerked away, her heart hammering a frantic pace, but she could not break his grip.
“You’ve grown feisty,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Baiting the trap.” Digory offered up an oily smile. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “But beware. The trap might bite.”
With all her strength, she thrust her elbow against his belly, and as he grunted in surprise, she shifted to the side, beyond his reach. His head came up, his expression vicious, but he drew up short as Aidan stepped from the shadows. The glow of her candle touched his hair with gilt lights, and accented the hard, handsome planes of his face.
“Step away, Dig,” he said. His gaze flicked to Jane, cold, aloof. Suddenly, he was a stranger to her, dark and lethal. She realized she had stumbled upon a scene she had never been meant to see, and she felt like a fool. What had possessed her to follow his voice? The sound of his good humor? The way he said her name? How had she taken that as an invitation to join him?
There was something heavy and oppressive here, something strange and horrible that she sensed would end badly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should not have come.”
Aidan gave her no response. Instead, he said again, “Step away, Dig,” his voice soft, so soft.
“Or what?” Digory patted the knife hilt that stuck from his belt, but the nervous catch in his voice gave him away. “You know what I can do with a knife.”
“I do know,” Aidan said, his tone like splintered glass. “And I know now that you prefer to ply your blade on those who cannot defend themselves. I had not thought it of you, Dig. I am usually a better judge of a man’s character, but I allowed my fondness for Wenna to color my opinion.”
Digory scraped out a laugh. “Figured it out, did you? Well, I did it for all of us, didn’t I? Gin saw more than she should have, and didn’t like what she saw. She spurned me. Tossed me aside like a withered apple. Threatened to tell the law.” He stroked the hilt of his knife. “I took my revenge and plugged a crack, both. Saved us all from rotting away in a cage. ’Twas the easiest remedy.” He sighed. “But I do miss her.”
Jane recoiled, horrified by his words. Digory Tubb had killed Ginny not stop her from going to the law, but because she had rejected him. Because she had seen more than she should, seen what he was. What he’d done. And she had wanted no part of it.
But what exactly had Ginny seen?
Her gaze slid to Aidan as her pulse drummed an erratic rhythm.
Digory’s thumb flicked back and forth across the handle of his knife. His eyes darted about as though he searched for some escape as Aidan took a step closer, stalking him, prowling.
“Will you fight me with just your hands?” Digory asked, his voice edged in panic. “Your hands against my knife?”
No. Jane took a half step forward.
“Yes.” Aidan smiled. Gentle. Awful. “Shall I, Dig? You know how it will end.”
A heartbeat. Two.
Before her eyes, Digory Tubb seemed to shrink into himself. His hand fell away from the hilt of his knife.
“Ma would never forgive you. Never.” He licked his lips, a nervous flick of his tongue.
“True. And because of my esteem for good Wenna, and for the fact that she once tended my wounds, you yet live.” Aidan’s gaze raked Digory, his expression one of disgust. “You’ll leave here, Dig. Now. Sign on any vessel bound for distant climes, and do not return. If you do, I will know.” His lips curved in a chilling expression of menace. Monstrous. Terrifying. “And then I will kill you. Slow. A hard death, piece by piece. I’ll take your eyes first, like you did the girl’s.”
Jane pressed the back of her hand to her lips, stifling her horror. Here was the man Aidan had warned her he was, a cold, ruthless man.
Digory backed away, terror etched in his features.
“Oh, and Dig,” Aidan said, his tone devoid of inflection. “Ginny Ward was guilty of nothing save having some fond emotion for you. Her murder will require retribution. Not today. Not tomorrow. But some day in the distant future when Wenna’s laid to rest at the end of a long and happy life, Ginny will have her justice.” He paused. “Were I you, I would never stop looking over my shoulder.”
Digory Tubb backed away toward a shadowed nook in the far wall, his face a mask of hate and anger. The wind came through, chill and bitter, as he was swallowed by the shadows just as two other men appeared from that same recess.
Exhaling a shaky breath, Jane let her weight slump back against the cold stone wall. She sensed Aidan come close beside her, though she did not look at him.
The silence was a heavy yoke.
‘‘I understand, Aidan. I do. There must be a price for what he did. He killed her. He tore h
er eyes—” She choked off, unable to continue. “But the thought of you hunting him, I…”
“There are laws that deal with murderers,” he said.
She met his gaze, startled by his reply. “And how will the law find him? How will they know what he has done?”
“I will tell them.”
“But you said you would not. For the sake of his mother.”
“No. I said that for Wenna’s sake, I did not kill him here and now.” His tone was cold, hard. “I said nothing of guarding his secret.”
“But you let him think—” She broke off, studying his face. He looked a stranger to her, his eyes cold, his mouth hard. Here was the man of implacable resolve he had always described himself to be.
“It would have been better if you had not come here, Jane,” he said, his tone perfectly conversational now, and for that, it was somehow frightening.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the two men she had noticed earlier. They carried barrels through the door, and then returned for a fresh load. Oddly, their actions struck her as sinister.
“Those barrels, are they from the New Inn, the ones you stored at Wenna’s cottage? The smuggled brandy?” He had told her he was a legitimate businessman now. Had he lied?
“They are. Brought here yesterday by Digory at my instruction.”
“I saw him,” she blurted. “Digory Tubb. Yesterday, as we drove past. At my father’s inn.”
“Did you?” The glance Aidan slanted her made her wary.
“Did you send him to meet with my father?” she whispered, afraid that Digory’s presence had something to do with Aidan’s vengeance.
“No, I did not send him.”
“Is that the truth?”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Yes.” He shrugged. “Perhaps he merely stopped there for a pint of ale.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No, I do not.”
She looked away, at the stacked barrels—smuggled barrels—brought to Pentreath for what purpose? A dark and gnawing unease took her, and she knew that those barrels had something to do with her father.