“He looked more like a play actor.”
“You mean the jacket?” Melanie smiled. “You’re not exactly dressed inconspicuously yourself.”
“Oh?”
“Well…you look like Mr. Darcy.”
“I am dressed like a gentleman, Melanie.”
“Is that what you—oh!”
Nathaniel had bent his head over her palm again and suddenly raised it to his mouth. His tongue found the splinter. Startled, she tried to pull away, but he was gripping her too tightly. White teeth closed on the protruding end of the splinter and pulled. It came out smoothly, and although Melanie hissed, the pain was minimal, and she was more surprised than hurt. Well, to be honest, she was shocked.
What he had just done seemed so…primitive.
Melanie couldn’t imagine any of the men she knew doing that; they’d be either too squeamish or too diffident.
Nathaniel Raven was holding her palm to the light, a frown between his brows as he checked to see whether or not there was any of the splinter remaining, and then, with a satisfied grunt, he released her.
Melanie automatically reached for the antiseptic and applied it. “Thank you. I-I was beginning to think I’d imagined you,” she said, screwing the lid back onto the bottle. She laughed nervously, in a girly way she hadn’t done for years. Oh God…She resurrected her no-nonsense look and fixed him with it. “Perhaps in a minute I’ll wake up at home in bed in London. What do you think?”
He had been watching her apply the antiseptic with interest, and now he took the small bottle from her, turning it over in his hands, examining the label. “No, you didn’t dream me,” he said, twisting the lid for himself and sniffing the contents with a twitch of his long, aristocratic nose. “I’m real enough.” He looked up and gave her a warm glance. “Do you want to feel me, Miss Jones?”
He was still flirting with her. Unbelievable.
Melanie had enough. “The situation is ridiculous, you must see that?”
“Well—”
“As I reminded you before you disappeared, you were a highwayman, a thief who died during a robbery. Your victim was protecting his property. Sad, yes, but not much of a surprise, surely? How can you deserve a second chance?”
Melanie thought she’d gone too far. The atmosphere became charged, tense, and he was using his superior height to look down at her with a glint in his eyes that was no longer humorous. No, he wasn’t laughing.
“I was murdered,” he said. “At least, I think so. If Pengorren didn’t kill me himself, then he arranged for it to be done. That’s one of the things I’m here to find out, and to prove, if I can. That’s why I have the unenviable task of asking for your help, Melanie.”
I was murdered.
The words hung between them. Melanie’s blue eyes widened in her pale face, and he wondered whether she was finally going to faint. He wouldn’t blame her—in his experience it was something women did when faced with any matter they found too overpowering. He would almost prefer it if she did faint because then he would have known how to handle her.
But Melanie wasn’t like the women he was used to.
She was already straightening her shoulders and gathering her thoughts. And then she said, in a tone of voice that made him think she would be just as good as his old company sergeant when it came to getting to the heart of a difficult situation, “Tell me exactly what happened the night you died?”
Nathaniel set the antiseptic bottle down carefully on the windowsill. For a moment he gazed out at the park, seeing it not as it was now, shockingly overgrown and neglected, but as it had been. His park, where he had played as a child; his house, where he had grown up; his family, whom he had left to go into the army and expected always to be the same. He knew now he’d been naïve, but at the time he’d been like any other young gentleman seeking adventure, seeing only what lay before him and not what he’d left behind.
“I need to go back farther,” he said.
“All right, as far as you like.”
Nathaniel bowed his head and smiled, as if to thank her for her permission, but there was no humor in his voice when he spoke again. “Major Pengorren was my commanding officer. We were leading a small group of soldiers on a patrol into enemy territory in Spain when we were ambushed. The men were killed. I survived because Major Pengorren managed to drag me to shelter while the enemy were distracted, thieving from the bodies. I was wounded, and for days we hid. I don’t remember much of it—apart from the heat and the thirst. I was delirious, and I used to ramble about Ravenswood, thinking I was back here. Evidently I made it sound like a heaven on earth.
“When it was safe, we made our way back to camp. At least Pengorren did; I wasn’t much use. I believe he carried me most of the way, although he always laughed and refused to take credit. But Pengorren saved my life, plain and simple. When I’d recovered enough I was shipped home. I invited Major Pengorren to visit me at Ravenswood, when he himself was able to return to England. I wanted to thank him in some way—I knew I owed my life to him. But I didn’t really expect him to take me up on it. And then one day he turned up, and that was that.”
“You mean he never left?”
“You make it sound as if we wanted him to go. We didn’t. He was the perfect guest, everyone loved and admired him. When my father died, it was a terrific shock, and perhaps it was selfish of me, but I was grateful Pengorren was there to help comfort my mother and sister, to share some of the burden. He was wonderful during those dark days. When he married my mother…”
He shrugged, as if trying to shake off something unpleasant.
“I didn’t feel resentful or pained on my father’s behalf. I knew it was very soon for my mother to remarry, but he was our friend; he had been so kind to us. He made it all seem…”
“Perfectly normal,” Melanie murmured. “What is it about some people? They can persuade you that black is white and vice versa, and sell you a car you know is totally unsuitable, but because they’re doing the talking, you believe them. Is that the sort of man Pengorren was? A nineteenth-century used-car salesman?”
He frowned at her, trying to decipher her strange words, and then gave up and looked away again, out over the grounds. “When I was with him, I couldn’t see anything wrong in what was happening. I still don’t know whether or not there was something I should have done before it was too late.”
“But you had your suspicions, yes?”
She was a good listener. So attentive as she took in what he was telling her. Her eyes were the color of forget-me-nots. With a start he remembered that Pengorren was able to do something similar; focus his formidable self entirely on you. Make you feel as if you were the most important thing in his world. It was very flattering. People were drawn to him, they loved him, because they thought he loved them back.
Nathaniel, you know I will look after you and your family. I accept I can never take the place of your dear father, but I will try to be his second-in-command.
Pengorren’s voice sounded in his head as if he were here in the room. Nathaniel shook his head to get it out.
“The thing is,” he said, “I find it hard to believe it of him, even now. Major Pengorren was my friend; he saved my life. He was a bloody hero, for God’s sake!”
“Come on, Nathaniel, there must be more to it. Why else would you bring his name up? There’s something you’re not telling me, and I need to know the full story if I’m ever to help you.”
He gave an irritable flick of his fingers. “It didn’t make sense, that’s why I’m finding it difficult to explain to you what I felt.”
“Try.”
He turned his head and met her eyes. He knew he wanted to tell her. He needed to unburden himself at last, after nearly two hundred years, and she was the one who had been chosen to listen.
“Whenever I was away from Pengorren…everything seemed to change. I was no longer sure of him. His words, comments that made perfect sense when I was in his company, began to appear in a differ
ent light. I started to think him capable of things…unspeakable things. I would make myself half-mad thinking them, knowing in my heart what a fine man he was, and yet I didn’t seem able to help myself.”
“What unspeakable things?” Melanie asked quietly, as if she had caught his own disquiet.
Even now, in some part of his being, he didn’t want to say them aloud. It seemed like a betrayal of Pengorren, a disloyalty to the man who had probably been more of a father to him that his own father.
“Come on, Nathaniel, tell me.”
“I couldn’t get it out of my head.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “That there was something wrong. Although I was certain I was imagining it, and at the time I was still recovering from my time in Spain. I had headaches, you see, unbearable headaches from the wound to my head…”
“Just stop mucking around and say whatever it is that’s worrying you.”
He laughed. “Do you talk to everyone like this?”
“Yes.”
He gave in. “After Pengorren married my mother, he stepped into my father’s shoes in other ways, becoming the district magistrate. He was scrupulously fair, everybody said so, but I couldn’t shake off my doubts. There were times when he seemed to favor those who could be of most use to him whether they were innocent or not. I found myself arguing the point with him for no particular reason. He was always so calm, so controlled; he never seemed to get upset or angry. I wanted to irritate him, and I began to believe that if I could find a way to upset him, shake him into losing his equilibrium, then I would finally know what really lay underneath Pengorren’s amiable surface.”
“And did you?”
He smiled mockingly. “There were moments when I thought I did, but no, not with any certainty.
“But you didn’t stop?”
“No. And then my mother died. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”
“Oh.” Melanie seemed genuinely shocked. “I’m sorry…”
“So the next night I held up Pengorren’s coach and made him stand at gunpoint while I rifled his pockets and stole his purse. I wanted to humiliate him. The look on his face…” Even now Nathaniel could not describe that look, but it had chilled him to the bone.
“But why did you want to humiliate him? I don’t understand. Nathaniel?”
The words burst out of him like a pistol shot. “Pengorren was with my sister.”
She blinked at him, puzzled, and he knew he’d have to explain. Say the words that even now sickened him to his soul.
“The night my mother died he was in my sister’s room, in her bed. She was seventeen.”
Melanie sat down abruptly on a chair, her hurt palm cradled in her other hand. “You don’t think your mother—”
“Killed herself? It’s a possibility, but not one that was ever spoken aloud in Ravenswood. My sister…she didn’t seem to have any shame. At my mother’s funeral she hung on Pengorren’s arm, gazing at him as if he was the only star in her sky. People said it was kind of him to take the time to comfort her, but he was in her bed! I saw them. And I wished to God I hadn’t. There’s something to be said for blissful ignorance, Melanie.”
“Did you tell Pengorren that you’d seen him with your sister? Did you confront him?” Melanie had regained her wits, and her blue eyes had that intensity he was coming to know well.
“Yes, I confronted him with it. He gave me a look—as if I’d let him down—and said I’d had a terrible shock—a double shock, with both my parents now dead—and I must be aware how hurtful and unfair I was being to him to make such accusations.”
Even now the memory made him feel nauseous, a greasy sick feeling in his stomach and a foul taste in his mouth. “But do you know what was even worse than his lies? The fact that I tried to persuade myself I believed him. Telling myself that I must have imagined it, even though I had seen it with my very own eyes.” He squeezed his hands into fists, feeling his anger roaring through him.
“You didn’t want to believe it,” Melanie said, but she was watching him warily. “What happened after that?”
“I took to highway robbery with a vengeance. I began holding up more and more coaches, and although at first I managed to keep my identity a secret, I knew it would leak out eventually—I was too well-known. After a month Pengorren took me aside and gave me a warning. He said he understood I was just indulging in ‘high spirits,’ but even a man in his position could not protect me forever from the full force of the law. I needed to stop, to consider himself and my sister. It was a very generous warning, considering the embarrassment I must have been causing him.”
“So despite his lying to you about your sister, he must have cared enough about you to try to keep you out of trouble until you came to your senses.”
He laughed savagely. “I held him up again straight after that warning, just to see what he’d do. I didn’t care what happened to me. I was half-crazy with grief and guilt, and there was a fear twisting inside me, telling me that this was all my fault, that I should have done something earlier to stop him, and I didn’t.”
Melanie hardly dared ask. “And then?”
“Within a week I was dead. And my head tells me that Pengorren was the one behind my death, although my heart still can’t believe it of him.”
She was unconvinced. “I heard you were shot robbing a coach. Was it Pengorren’s coach?”
“No.”
“Then how can you say he had a hand in your murder?” Melanie seemed determined to be devil’s advocate. “It’s a tragic story, yes, but is Pengorren really the villain of the piece? He might have been promiscuous—I sensed that when I saw him on the dais with your…the two women—but that doesn’t make him a murderer. Surely someone would have noticed if he was a homicidal manic? Someone other than you, that is, because you’re hardly the most reliable witness. Your own lawless conduct makes your testimony less credible. Where’s your proof?”
“So now you want proof.” He sounded bitter; he’d thought she’d believe him. But then why should she? No one else had.
“You’re saying that Pengorren decided you were causing too much trouble for him, and he set about getting you bumped off?”
“Bumped off?”
“Done in. Killed.”
“I was causing him trouble, yes. I had seen him with Sophie, and he didn’t like that. He tried to lie his way out of it—I think if he’d told the truth, begged my forgiveness, then I might have been inclined to think better of him for it. Instead, his lying made me wonder what else he was capable of, what else he might have done that he was concealing from me.”
“You mean was Pengorren responsible for the deaths of your mother and your father?”
Trust Melanie Jones to say the unspeakable aloud.
“Yes,” he answered, grimly. “Yes, Melanie, that is exactly what I am thinking.”
Just then Melanie’s cell phone began to ring.
Ten
Her mind was still off with Nathaniel, lying cold and dead on the road, Pengorren standing over him with the smoking gun. Fumbling the cell phone out of her pocket, Melanie took the call without checking the number—it was probably the office in London. She should have contacted them hours ago.
“Mr. Foyle, I’m so sorry, I—”
“Mr. who?” Suzie’s chirpy voice brought her wide-awake. “It’s me. Suzie. Your sister,” she added, when Melanie still didn’t reply. “Just wondering how you are down there in the depths of Cornwall.”
Nathaniel was staring at the phone in her hand as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Melanie turned away, hunching her shoulder and not allowing him distract to her.
“I’m fine, Suzie. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Aren’t I allowed to ask?” Suzie sounded oddly defensive for a woman who had once declared she never felt the urge to apologize for her actions. “I just wondered, that’s all. Had a feeling, if you must know.”
One of Suzie’s feelings. They always made Melanie feel uneasy, just as anything paranorm
al did. Though, scarily, they were often spot on.
“What sort of feeling?” she forced herself to ask. At least it gave her time to pull herself together. She stood up, stretched, and walked toward Miss Pengorren’s desk. Something pinged in her memory. Running her finger along the leather-bound spines, she found the diary she’d been reading earlier that morning and slid it out.
“Just a feeling. You’re not in some sort of trouble, are you? I was shivering when I woke up. Cold, damp, dark. Been in any places like that recently?”
She had, but she wasn’t going to tell her sister about it. “No. I’m fine, Suzie. There’s plenty to do down here. I’ve barely started yet. How are you?”
“Fine. Kids are with their father, so I’m all alone at the moment.” There was another pause, and Melanie realized to her horror that she was meant to fill that pause with an invitation. Come on down here, Suzie, and stay with me.
“You know I’m working,” she said sharply. “This isn’t my house.”
“All right. You don’t have to sound quite so gleeful about it. It was just a thought.”
Now Melanie felt guilty, but not enough to change her mind. “Look, maybe we can meet up when I get home? Have lunch?”
“Oooh, lunch, lovely.” Suzie sighed and brushed off her sarcasm. “Whatever. Just look after yourself, all right? See ya.”
The call ended, and Melanie looked at her phone. It was unusual for Suzie to call her like this, and she felt unsettled. There were just too many strange things happening today…
Nathaniel was staring out of the window again, so she made her check-in call to the firm. Mr. Foyle was out of the office, but she left a message to say everything was fine, then ended the call and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She brought the diary over to the window and held it out. Nathaniel glanced down at it and then back at her, doing that single eyebrow lifting thing again.
“This is the final diary of Miss Pengorren, the last owner of Ravenswood, the last of the Pengorren family. She died without heirs in a nursing home in London—that’s why I’m here, to sell the place.”
Immortal Warriors 02 - Secrets of the Highwayman Page 7