A Kiss to Remember

by Rebecca Minto

  Daphne nodded sadly. “I wish you wouldn’t go,” she muttered pointedly.

  He tenderly cupped her face and kissed her, a slow apology.

  “I swear I’ll make it up to you,” James vowed. “You do know I hate to displease you.”

  Daphne bit her lip. If he hated to displease her so bloody much, he wouldn’t go meet that woman. She inhaled sharply, cherishing one last taste of her heaven. He was leaving her to see his mistress. She could not go with him. She had to stay behind and just accept it.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist as her heart shattered into thousands of little pieces. She had tried to win him over, but it was too late now. She had failed. Tears filled her eyes.

  “I love you so much,” she choked against his chest, just above his heart.

  He jerked her back abruptly, staring into her eyes. It was the first time since she’d said it aloud outside of their passion. It wasn’t until then, when his heart warmed and swelled that he had realized how very desperately he had wanted her to say it.

  “When I get back, I am taking you to bed,” he told her fiercely. “I want you to say it again. Oh, sweetheart, do you have any idea how happy I am right now?”

  Daphne jerked away. How could he… how could he dream of even suggesting a thing to her. Abruptly, she turned her back so he could not see how deeply he had just injured her.

  “You’ll be late,” she said icily.

  James shoved his pistol in the pocket of his coat. “I wish I had the time now, Daphne.”

  She nodded. James opened his mouth, wanting to tell her just how much she meant to him. He shook his time at the futility of it all. Time, he needed more time with her right now. Sighing, he shoved it aside. He had to think of the meeting. It was a great deal more important than the affairs of his heart.

  “I will be back soon, sweetheart,” he promised on his way out the door.

  * * * *

  There was only one place in the world a girl wanted to go when her heart was utterly destroyed. When she had lost everything that mattered, and her life lay before her in an empty abyss of pain, a girl wanted to go home.

  Shivering beneath her light cloak, Daphne saddled a light-footed mare. James would be more than just a few hours. She should know, being accustomed to his insatiable passions herself. It would be quite late when he returned.

  Her stomach twisted as she saddled the horse. It shied, sensing her indecision. She took a deep breath. She had never broken her word before. But this was drastic. She couldn’t just sit here and wait for him.

  Tears spilled down her cheeks. She wanted to go home. No matter what anyone said, this would never be her home. Mounting without difficulty, she headed east.

  To Lilac Manor.

  He hadn’t even responded when she’d told him that she loved him, she thought miserably. It didn’t matter to him at all. She didn’t matter to him at all. She was just that fat little girl who’d plagued him for too many years. Anna’s best friend.

  Oh, God, the pain.

  The wind tugged at her hair until the pins went flying. As the crisp air slashed at her wet cheeks, they burned. She inhaled the chilling air, reveling in the dropping temperatures. It would be winter soon. As cold and bleak as her life was certain to become.

  Seeing Lilac Manor again, yet so different, was a pain all its own. She stared silently at the dead gardens, the dead grass. It was the same, but…different somehow.

  This isn’t home, she realized, startled. It was just another house—one she used to live in. One that no longer had anything to do with her life.

  She dismounted slowly. She glanced at a barren oak. She remembered when Papa had helped her decorate it with little bows for Christmas one year. Her heart softened. The memories didn’t hurt so much now. They were a warm comfort.

  She would go inside, she thought. She would talk to Elliot. Perhaps he would allow her to walk around. She would like to bid her old home a fond farewell. Elliot would take his own wife, fill the house with his own children one day. He would make new memories. Perhaps he would tell his children and grandchildren about their great-uncle who had once lived there.

  Timidly, she knocked on the front door. She waited for several long minutes. When there was no answer, she tried the knob to find it unlocked. Peering inside, she called his name.

  “Hellooo,” she shouted in the empty, echoing abode. “Elliot?”

  It was freezing. Cupping her elbows, she looked around. It had been stripped down. There were no carpets to soften the wooden floors, no portraits hanging to warm the stark emptiness. No inviting settees to curl into. If anything could cure her longing for this manor, it was seeing it like this. There was nothing at all left to remind her of home.

  Surely he would not mind if she looked around, Daphne thought. Shivering slightly, she headed up the stairs. Her footfalls echoed in the barren place. It was eerie, being alone this way. Home had always been warm and bright, full of servants and sometimes guests. When she was a little girl, Uncle Jon had been there with Elliot. Daphne had driven him daft, chasing him about.

  She wondered if she would ever have a child. If… But she would not think upon that just yet. If she did, her heart would break anew. And she could not take it. She simply could not bear to think of it…of him.

  She stepped into her room. It was not the feminine, sun-brightened abode of her youth, but another empty chamber. Sighing, she moved down the hall, into her father’s old room. It was empty, barren as the rest of the place, but there was something peculiar…

  Just my imagination, Daphne thought wryly. She had not come here all that much, and seeing it so empty… But wait, she thought, narrowing her eyes. Papa had always kept a life-size portrait of her mother on the western wall. She stared where it had once rested, at the thin, nearly indecipherable hinges that now rested in that spot. It was a hidden chamber, she realized as all the blood drained from her face.

  Everything was stripped, Daphne told herself as she ripped the small door open. It wasn’t a hidden room, but just a small, hidden cupboard. She peered into it as she realized this had not been emptied. There were boxes that lay unopened, from a jeweler, she surmised, and a few forgotten treasures: a clip of her hair from when she’d been a baby. A bouquet of dried flowers she guessed, from the decorative ribbons still clinging to the stems, to be from his wedding. A terrible picture Daphne had drawn when she was very young and a locket with reddish-gold hair.

  And a dusty, leather-bound diary.

  Daphne gingerly lifted it into her quaking fingers. She slid down the wall and sat on the floor, eyes wide. Wondering what she would find, she opened the first page. Her father’s swirling penmanship was unmistakable. It was dated many, many years before.

  “It all started on Daphne’s birthday.”

  Her heart thudded. It all began on her birthday? What did he mean?

  “I fear I have made a deadly enemy this day. Cassandra Saint James is a lovely woman, yet I sense her beauty shields a treacherous heart. Her vindictiveness has extended to her son. Poor lad, I fear it is too late to redeem him. Perhaps it is not yet too late for the child. Still a bairn, this Demelza. Ah, but I fear what will come of this tragedy. I fear for my own daughter now that Cassie’s desires have been revealed.”

  Daphne inhaled sharply. Papa had started this personal recollection the day of her birthday party. The day cousin Jarad tried to kill her.

  The day James had saved her life.

  * * * *

  “Where is my wife, Anna?”

  Annalise sent her brother a fulminating look. “Whatever should it matter to you?” she sniffed.

  James sighed. “What are you angry about this time?”

  She glared, setting aside her book. “You went to see her,” Annalise spat scathingly.

  James scowled. How was it
that Anna seemed to know every single move he made.

  “I suppose you told my wife I was engaging in a torrid affair, didn’t you?”

  Annalise sent him an unfathomable look. “Actually, she was the one who told me.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “What do you mean?”

  “Daphne told me about your leman staying at the inn in the village,” Annalise explained quietly. “And about your letter. She knew you were meeting her today. She said…”

  “What did she say?” he demanded harshly.

  He looked like a man on the verge of tears. Annalise softened in her regard. He was her brother, after all.

  “You should have stayed with her, James,” she told him gently.

  He closed his eyes. Daphne had known all the while? How? Damnation, what she must think of him!

  “Where is she?” he asked heavily.

  “She left,” Annalise told him simply.

  James gawked at her. “What do you mean, she left?”

  “I mean she left. Daphne could not bear to stay here, so she told me she was going home. I suppose she’s visiting Lilac Manor. She said it wasn’t far from here. Of course, I begged her not to go. She promised she’d not take unnecessary chances with the invest—” Annalise broke off, horrified with what she’d just revealed.

  “Investigation?” James thundered.

  Annalise gulped. “I must have been mistaken.”

  He leaned over her, eyes flashing with violence. Annalise gawked at him. She had never seen James so upset. Indeed, she often wondered if he was capable of feeling, so calm and controlled was he.

  “You will explain to me about this investigation,” he snarled. “You will explain to me why you might think my wife is in danger. You will explain this now!”

  “Y-yes,” Anna gasped, terrified. “I… Well, the investigation is…or was… We haven’t actually done too much. There aren’t enough clues, see and…” She sent him a worried look. He wasn’t at all calm. “Well, we don’t really know who killed Baron Davernay yet—”

  “Killed him?” James breathed. A great deal was beginning to make sense to him.

  “Y-yes. Daphne discovered his body—on her birthday.”

  It crushed him. His heart squeezed painfully, imagining what it must have done to his bright, gilded butterfly, finding her father on that most special of days. Dead. He pushed emotion aside. He would deal with it later…when he knew she was safe.

  “How was he killed?” he ordered.

  “Gunshot. Straight through the center of his head.”

  James nodded. He could see it. A gruesome sight for a sheltered young girl to face. A horrifying reality.

  “You realized the attacks were aimed at Daphne?”

  Wordlessly, Annalise nodded.

  “Neither of you abysmally foolish girls thought to mention any of this to me?” he thundered.

  “Well, we didn’t know who we could trust,” Anna squeaked.

  He sent her one, piercing look. She blanched.

  “I will deal with you later,” he snapped, turning on his heel.

  Annalise jumped up and ran after him. “Where are you going?”

  “To get my wife. You,” he added meaningfully, “will stay here while pondering the phrase of ‘foolish little chit’.”

  “No, take me with you. If Daphne is in danger—”

  “Annalise, I am not taking you. It could be dangerous. You don’t know the first thing about how to handle violence.”

  Annalise lifted her chin. “I have a gun.”

  James stared at her, shocked.

  Her shoulders slumped beneath his intense look. “Chrys gave it to me. I wish I’d used it on that Darcie. I wanted to, but I didn’t have proof.”

  “Get it,” he snapped. “Meet me in the stables.”

  He prayed Annalise did actually know how to use a gun, he thought wretchedly. Demelza Saint James had not been at the inn for their meeting.

  Which meant, of course, that a crazed killer wandered about the countryside, trying to kill off Daphne and what remained of her family so she could lay claim to the fortune. Until she was caught, all of them were in danger.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Daphne snapped the book shut with cold finality. Finally, everything began to make sense.

  Placing it carefully inside the little hidey-hole, she repaired the door. She was helpless to lay weakly against the wall.

  Aunt Cassie had thought to lay claim to Lilac Manor. Papa had argued with her during that last visit, refusing to wed her, even when she tried to sneak into his bed. He’d said there had been something foul about Cassandra Saint James, something he feared.

  Daphne had never realized why Papa refused to even consider forgiving her aunt for that day. Now, she did, with painful clarity. Apparently, Aunt Cassie had threatened to kill off every member of the family, one by one, until she was the only one left to inherit. Jarad had not tried to drown her from jealousy, as Daphne had always presumed, but because he had been ordered to.

  Daphne had expected her father to forget the experience, as she mostly had. But the long journal told of his attempts to keep tabs of every single member of the Saint James clan. Cassandra had died from a painful wasting sickness. Jarad had been killed at sea.

  It was Demelza Saint James who had become her father’s obsession. He had followed her, from her very first position in an earl’s household, up to the last few years. His very last entry had been telling. Daphne wished she could ask him what he meant by that very last line.

  “I now know Demelza is no different from the rest of her clan.”

  Frowning over all she had discovered, she started down the stairs. She needed to get home. She wanted to tell Annalise all she had discovered. Perhaps she should take the journal with her. She would send a note to Elliot in a few days time, she thought. Perhaps they could arrange a trade-off.

  Daphne gasped when she saw the door to the study, slightly ajar. It was warmed by a soft, glowing light. She made her way slowly down the remaining stairs. An image flashed across her mind, a nightmare of blood and death. She stubbornly shoved it aside, refusing to dwell on the bad memories.

  “Elliot?” she whispered, pushing the door open.

  Daphne stumbled over something hard, falling to her knees and hands with a soft whoosh of air. She blinked, her mind refusing to accept what was laid before her. Only as her mind sent signals to the rest of her frozen body did she realize she was kneeling in a puddle of hot, sticky blood.

  She stared up at the lone figure pointing a gun directly at her shattered heart. She stared into a living nightmare.

  She stared into the burning green eyes of her father’s murderer.

  * * * *

  James rolled out of his saddle, falling without aplomb to his knees. He crouched, staring around at the dark foliage, looking for threats.

  It was eerily silent, shadows neither moving nor hulking in the distance. He crept forward, keeping down. Daphne’s horse was munching on the dead grass, apparently at ease. He nodded, relieved. If there was a threat, the skittish mare would sense it at once.

  Annalise was still a league behind him. He shook his head at her abysmal riding skills. He made a silent note to arrange for some lessons. That was one area he had never thought to educate his intellectual sister.

  He wanted to rush in and find his woman, carry her off and make love to her, shake some sense into her, and then love her again. His belly tightened as he thought about what all could have happened to her should Miss Saint James find her first.

  Still, the danger wasn’t over yet. Perhaps he should wait for Anna, he thought irritably, should he find his wife in an illicit position with her striking cousin. He growled, low in his throat. Slowly, he crept forward. He didn’t want the
m to hear his approach.

  Slowly, he made his way to the front steps. The door was slightly ajar. Frowning over that, he slipped inside, careful not to make any noise. It was chilled and dark, an unwelcome place. What the devil possessed her to return here? He stood up, pressing against the wall. He noticed a thin light coming from a room down the hall. The door was shut.

  Careful not to make a sound, barely daring to breathe, he moved along, coming closer and closer until, at last, he was perched right by the door. He heard the sounds of voices coming from inside. He frowned thoughtfully, struggling to make out words.

  There was a harsh, feminine chuckle, a terrifying sound of wickedness. It was not Daphne’s voice.

  Then he heard Daphne’s response, a muffled sob, a plea.

  Oh, hell, James realized. His wife was trapped inside with the madwoman.

  He dared not wait any longer. With cold finality, he removed his pistol from his coat pocket. There was no help for it.

  He slowly cocked his gun.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Hello, cousin.”

  The beautiful woman slowly lowered the pistol, her eyes narrowing with wariness. She tilted her head to the side, silky silver-blonde hair spilling over her shoulder.

  Demelza Saint James was a beautiful woman, Daphne realized painfully. Beautiful and trim with almond-shaped eyes of such a pure and luminous green, it was difficult to believe she was capable of treachery.

  Daphne had certainly trusted her. At every chance, she had refused to believe Darcie capable of this level of foulness. Even when all proof pointed to her guilt, Daphne had refused to believe that she had acted alone.

  “So,” Daphne inquired nonchalantly, “was the red hair a wig? Is this your natural hair color? Or are you still pretending to be something you’re not?”