Swept Away

by Candace Camp

  “Perhaps that was because Lady Armiger never knocked her husband out and tied him up!”

  Julia could not think of any reply, so she simply glared at him. They stood for a moment, scowling. Then Deverel got up and walked away, going to the window and looking out at the rose garden.

  “I am sure,” he said in a careful, even voice, “that Selby loved his wife and son. His having a mistress doesn’t mean that he did not love them.”

  Julia grimaced. “Don’t condescend to me. I believe I knew my brother better than you. I know that he had mistresses before Phoebe, but he did not have one after he married her. Had you ever heard him speak of this woman? Had Varian? Or Fitz? Was there gossip about it in the clubs?”

  “No, I heard no gossip. As for Fitz, or any of Selby’s other friends, I don’t know what they knew. Varian seemed surprised, I think, when he read the note, but, then, we were both so shocked by his death that I’m not sure whether he knew about the woman or not. Selby certainly did not tell me, but I was not as close to him as either Walter or Varian. We had been better friends when we were younger, but over the years we had drifted apart. After Walter died, I frankly did not see him much.”

  “Even so, don’t you think it’s strange that if Selby had a mistress no one had heard about it?”

  “I don’t know that no one had. Julia, you are building a case on thin air. You have no proof of anything, only unsupported beliefs and suppositions. Against that we have a letter in Selby’s handwriting saying that he did it.”

  “There are other things. One is that he hardly mentioned Phoebe and Gilbert, just a brief sentence to say that he loved them. Selby would have said far more than that. And I almost never heard him call her Phoebe. He always, always called her by a nickname, usually Fee. Sometimes Delight.”

  “Really, Julia, I think you are reaching. This was his last statement to the world. It is likely to be more formal. He wouldn’t use a pet name.”

  “Selby would have. He always made up nicknames for people, and that is what he called them. He called me Jule or Julie. He called Gilbert Jin-Jin, because that was the closest Gil could come to saying his name when he was learning to talk.”

  Deverel shrugged, obviously unconvinced.

  “All right. No doubt you will discount this, too, but I find it significant. That note made no mention of me whatsoever.” At Deverel’s skeptical expression, she hurried on. “Yes, yes, I know. A man isn’t going to remember all his relatives in his suicide note. But Selby and I were very close. I was his only near relative, except for Phoebe and Gilbert. Our parents are both dead. He wrote me a great deal when he went away to college, and when he was a young man and living in London, before he married and settled down. Even since his marriage, when he’s been away, he has either written me or, in his letters to Phoebe, he has written a line or two to me, or asked her to tell me that he loved me. He would not have left me out when he was facing death. I know it.”

  “Julia…”

  “If my knowledge of my brother is not enough, there’s another, tangible proof. Look at the seal on this letter.” She handed the letter to him, pointing to the pieces of red wax where the letter had been folded and sealed.”

  Deverel looked at the wax, then up at her. “Yes?”

  “You see the imprint in that wax. That is Selby’s signet ring. He used to use it to seal his letters. But at the time of this note, he did not have the ring.” She paused to let the significance of this fact sink in. “He had lost it a month or two before. I know that because he had everybody turning the house upside down looking for it. It was very important to him.”

  “The ring was on his finger when we found him. He must have left it at his hunting lodge earlier, that’s why he couldn’t find it. Then, when he returned to the lodge, there it was.”

  “Oh!” Julia bounced up. “You are so maddening! You already have your mind made up! You won’t listen to anything I say!”

  He gave her a quizzical look, and Julia realized with a start that she had been arguing with him over this letter, trying to convince him of its falsehood, as if he were an impartial observer. But that was ridiculous. Obviously, if he was the one who had done the embezzling, he already knew that the suicide note was false.

  “Oh.” She plopped back down in her chair, feeling very odd. “Of course. Why am I telling you all this?”

  “Julia, have you thought about what you are saying? Do you realize that if this suicide note is a fake, if the same person forged it who wrote the other letters, then that person must have killed Selby? Why else would he have written a suicide note?”

  Julia felt faintly sick at her stomach. Of course he was right, although she had not really thought about the implications of her argument. She had only been interested in clearing Selby of the suicide and of the things that were said in the letter. But now she saw that if the suicide note was false, then her brother had been murdered in cold blood by the person who had written it.

  “Julia, I understand how little you want your brother to be guilty, how much you don’t want to believe that he committed suicide. But you have advanced nothing but wild theories. You have no solid evidence to back up anything you’ve said.”

  “I know Selby.”

  “People change. They make mistakes. Sometimes, just for a moment, they act in ways that they would not normally.” She regarded him with stony silence. He went on. “If you are right, that would mean that someone imitated your brother’s handwriting so well that even he admitted that it looked like his. They wrote several letters in his handwriting getting the money, and they used ‘Jack Fletcher,’ all to make it look as if Selby was the embezzler. Then they stole Selby’s signet ring a month or two before they killed him, forged the suicide note, and stamped the seal with his ring. Then they found out that he was staying at his hunting lodge instead of at home and went there, killed him, laid the false note on the desk and wrote another note in his hand to me to get me to come discover the body.”

  “When you put it that way, it does sound farfetched,” Julia admitted.

  “What other way is there to put it? That is how it would have had to happen for you to be right.” He paused. “I have found over the years that the simplest and most obvious solution is generally the correct one.”

  “You would say that,” Julia replied darkly and got to her feet. “I see now that it was useless trying to talk to you about it. You are determined not to believe it.”

  She turned and started toward the door. His voice stopped her. “Julia!”

  Julia turned and looked back questioningly at him.

  “Do you actually think that I did all this? That I embezzled that money and laid the blame on Selby? That I went to his hunting lodge and killed him?” His handsome face was bleak.

  Julia wavered. Did she believe that Deverel had robbed the trust and killed Selby? Only minutes earlier she had caught herself trying to convince him that Selby had not written the note, which implied that he did not already know that. And there was that nagging question that had recently popped into her head: Why would the man who did those things then conceal the suicide note that would have made everyone believe that Selby had been guilty? Most of all, there was an odd feeling in her chest, a painful feeling, that cried out against the idea that Deverel was a murderer.

  “Someone did it,” she answered bitterly, and turned and walked out of the room.

  Deverel watched her go. He supposed that her vague answer had been an improvement over her earlier accusations. Still, he found that his chest was filled once again with the same curiously cold and empty feeling, as if there were a hole there that could never be filled.

  It seemed as if every succeeding thing that happened with Julia was worse than what had come before. First there had been her betrayal, the sickening realization that she had played him for a fool, lying to him with every kiss and caress. That had been followed by finding out that she was convinced he was an embezzler who had laid the blame on her innocent brother.
Now the part she had assigned to him was that of a murderer.

  His hands clenched unconsciously, and he was aware of an enormous desire to hit something. Why was she so bullheaded? So damnably devoted to Selby? Yet he knew he could hardly have wished her otherwise. Where she loved, she loved with all her heart and soul. It would be a sweet thing—if only one were the man she loved. He pulled his thoughts back from that dangerous territory. He did not want Julia Armiger’s love. She was treacherous and deceitful.

  Yet even as he thought the words, he knew that she had acted as she did only because of the strength of her convictions. She would not lie for her own gain or to hurt someone—unless, of course, they had hurt her or hers.

  But it didn’t matter, he reminded himself. He had less chance of receiving that love than any man he could think of. She hated him. She did not even want to marry him when circumstances dictated that it was the only thing she could do to save her good name. She had told him quite flatly that she would rather live and die in shame than be married to him. She could hardly have been plainer in her dislike.

  He told himself that he was a fool to keep insisting that she marry him. Of course, after he had told that witch Pamela St. Leger that they were already married, he could hardly do anything else. He probably should have kept his mouth shut and let Julia stew in the mess she had made. It had been an idiotic notion on her part, anyway.

  But as he thought about it, he could not suppress the faintly rueful smile that touched his lips. No other woman, he knew, would have dreamed up such a scheme, risking everything in a desperate attempt to salvage her brother’s name. It had been foolhardy, of course, but, still, she was full of heart and courage. And the way she had kissed him…it was hard to believe that she was an inexperienced young woman of proper upbringing. Yet he had no doubt that she was; if there had ever been the slightest hint of scandal about Julia’s virtue, Pamela St. Leger would have told everyone.

  His thoughts strayed from memories of Julia’s false kisses to thoughts of their marital bed, and his loins tightened. It annoyed him that he could still feel desire for her after the tricks she had played on him, knowing how she felt about him. Yet yesterday, stuck in the carriage with her all day, his thoughts had been consumed by her. He kept stealing glances at her breasts and thinking about how they had felt in his hands, full and soft, the nipples pebbling beneath his touch. Interspersed with such thoughts were memories of their kisses, of the softness of her long throat, of the little breathy sighs she had murmured as his lips explored her body. And this afternoon, when she had started to cry, at first he had just moved instinctively to comfort her, but it had taken only feeling her soft body pressed against him to turn him pulsing with desire, his mouth seeking hers. How galling that he could control himself no better than that!

  It was even more galling to think that Julia must realize it, too. He had broken his constraints and kissed her twice since he had found out about her treacherous pretense of desire. How could she not realize the effect she had on him? Just as surely, of course, he had no effect on her. She had coolly, calmly manipulated him, after all, using her kisses, her body, her touch, to lure him into confessing. That was certainly not the mark of a woman who had any interest herself in their lovemaking. No, while he had panted with desire, she had been calculating how to bring him to his knees. Deverel’s jaw tightened at the thought.

  And yet…this afternoon she had responded to his kiss. Surely that had not been mere pretense. She had been weakened by her tears, rocked by reading her brother’s suicide note; he could not believe that she had been capable at that moment of engaging in any manipulation. And did that not mean that gradually, as time wore on, he might be able to breach her defenses? That she might, with familiarity, come to feel something for him?

  Deverel let out a low growl, disgusted with himself for the turn his thoughts were taking. That was not why he was marrying her, after all. He was marrying her because it was what duty and honor called for. It was what a gentleman would do. It had nothing to do with desire.

  He returned to his seat behind the desk, and his eyes fell upon the suicide letter still lying there where Julia had placed it. He picked it up and perused it thoughtfully. All of Julia’s points, he thought, strained credulity. Only a loving sister could still maintain Selby’s innocence in the face of this damning letter. To do so, she had had to paint Deverel black. If he were a kind person, he thought, he would let Julia continue to believe that Selby had not been guilty. But he knew he was not that good. He was growing exceedingly weary of seeing the suspicion and dislike in Julia’s eyes when she looked at him. One way or another, he thought, he was going to prove to her that he was no criminal, even if it meant helping her conduct a full-blown investigation of the whole crime. Painful as it would be for her, he would make her see that her brother had indeed embezzled the money—and that she was wrong in her harsh judgment of himself.

  Julia went down to dinner in the same dress, which she was growing thoroughly tired of. She thought that when she got her own clothes, she would throw this dress in the fire. Lady Stonehaven’s dresser had come into her room late in the afternoon with one of her ladyship’s dresses, which she had done her best to make over for Julia. But even after she had let out its hem full length, the dress was still short on Julia, ending comically above her ankles. Even her old dress was better than that.

  She was grateful to see, when she went downstairs into the drawing room where they gathered before dinner, that Lady Stonehaven, with her usual kindness, had not dressed up for dinner, either, but was wearing a soft gray day dress. Lady Stonehaven, Julia thought, was quickly developing into one of her favorite people. She could not understand how such a woman could have turned out a son like Deverel.

  They were just about to go in to dinner when there was a loud knock on the front door. “How odd,” Lady Stonehaven commented. “I wonder who that could be.”

  Stonehaven stepped out into the hallway, where he had a view of the front door as the footman went to answer it. “Good God!” he exclaimed. “Pemberton!”

  “Who?” Lady Stonehaven asked, puzzled.

  “What!” Julia shot up from her seat and ran into the hall to join Deverel.

  Sure enough, there, standing just inside the front door, was Geoffrey Pemberton. “Cousin Geoffrey!”

  He glanced down the hall and saw her. “Julia! You pesky child. I told Phoebe there would be nothing wrong with you, and, of course, here you are, looking healthy as a horse.”

  Julia started down the hall toward him, trailed by Deverel and his mother. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? Chasing after you, my dear cousin. And damned uncomfortable it was, too, I might add. Had to go back and get something that silly nurse forgot, and then we found it after all in the bottom of a trunk. It was his favorite toy, too. I ask you, why would you bury that in a trunk when you knew he’d start howling for it right away?”

  “Who?” Julia asked, staring at him blankly. “What nurse? Who was howling? What are you talking about?”

  “Why, your nephew, that’s who. I expect you may not realize it, but the lad’s got a dreadful temper.”

  “Gilbert?”

  “Yes, of course, Gilbert. Who else were we talking about? I say, Julia, are you feeling all right? First you write that dashed odd note to Phoebe and get her all in a pucker, and now you don’t know who your nephew is.”

  “You mean, Gilbert came with you? Gilbert and Phoebe are with you?”

  “Of course. Don’t think I’d come up here on my own, do you?” Geoffrey looked shocked. “Phoebe took it into her head that you were in some sort of danger, and she talked me into going with her.” He glanced toward Deverel and Lady Stonehaven, and looked abashed. “Silly, of course. I can see that now—you were just paying a visit, I daresay.”

  Julia ignored his speech, saying, “Where is she?”

  “Out in the carriage. Thought I’d better knock first and see how the wind blew, y
ou know.”

  “Oh, Geoffrey, that’s wonderful!” Julia gave him an impulsive hug, startling him, then ran out the front door. “Phoebe!”

  The carriage door opened, and Phoebe hopped out, her son right behind her. Julia ran down the steps toward them.

  “I’m so glad you’re here!” Julia enveloped Phoebe in a hug.

  “I knew it!” Phoebe cried softly. “I knew you needed my help. What happened? Did he kidnap you? I was so worried when Nunnelly told me that you had vanished and Lord Stonehaven had escaped! And there was that strange note from you. Then Varian came to call and said that Fitz had told him you were already married to the man. Is that true?”

  “No. Not at all. I have no intention of marrying him. But he didn’t kidnap me—well, not exactly. I mean, he did at first, but then, when he found out who I was, well, I went with him in order to get away from Pamela—he probably would have forced me to go even if I hadn’t wanted to. He is a very stubborn man. Then I thought I could learn more about the embezzlement if I came….”

  She paused, remembering that she had decided not to tell Phoebe about the suicide note. After all, she was sure it was false, and showing it to Phoebe would only hurt her for no reason. However, she would have to tell her something, for she had written in her note to Phoebe that Stonehaven had “important information.”

  “But it turned out to be nothing,” she went on slowly, her mind racing. “He, uh, he had a note that he had received from Selby, you see, asking Stonehaven to meet him at the hunting lodge. He thinks that proves that Selby committed suicide. But it proves nothing. It was forged, just like all the letters.”

  “Aunt Julie! Aunt Julie!” Gilbert, tired of being ignored, exclaimed, tugging at her skirts. “I lost a tooth. See?” He grinned widely to expose a gap in his front teeth.

  “My goodness, so you did! When did that happen?”

  “On the way here,” Phoebe said, a giggle escaping her. “Poor Geoffrey—I thought he was going to be ill when Gil showed him the prize, still decorated in blood.”