And then she would tell him what she had done. Show him she had his cherished prize. And he’d understand at last what lengths she’d go to win back his love, to get his attention.
He would be so stunned and thrilled, he couldn’t help falling in love with her again. Filled with relief and joy, he would take her in his arms and kiss her. They would come back together and be just as they were in the beginning. They would take long walks and talk the way they used to. Intimate, close walks. They’d make love. It had been so long since she’d felt his arms around her.
But it had all unraveled before she had a chance to catch her breath.
She inhaled, straightened. She had to get this over with. “Do you have it?”
He gave her a curt nod. “It’s in here.”
She followed him into the sitting room, watched him stroll to the cupboard, open a drawer. He took out a long black velvet bag. The kind you kept expensive jewelry in.
He handed it to her. “Here.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say. She took it from him and slipped it into her purse.
“Davinia, I beg of you. Take that thing and toss it in the Thames. Sell it yourself. I don’t care how you do it, just get rid of it. Get rid of him. He doesn’t love you. I’m the one who can make you happy.”
She opened her mouth and stared at him, saw his cobalt eyes were turning dark with tears. Slowly she shook her head. “I can’t, Sebastian. I simply can’t.”
He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “You can’t take the blame for this.”
“But I am to blame.”
“Don’t say that.” There was desperation in his voice now as it broke with the words.
His handsome face lost all its ardent expectation. She was crushing him, and she hated herself for doing it. How had she ever let herself get caught between two men? One who’d grown to love her but couldn’t have her, and one who had her but didn’t love her any more.
Once more he reached for her, took her hand in his, gently this time. “Stay with me, Davinia. Please.”
It would never work between them. She’d been lying to herself all this time. She’d never really wanted it to.
She pulled her hand out of his and strode to the door. With her fingers on the handle for the very last time, she turned back to him. “I’m sorry, Sebastian. I can’t stay with you. I have a daughter-in-law to bury this afternoon.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Sir Neville sat alone on the rear portico of Eaton House, staring out at the gardens without seeing them.
He didn’t hear the warblers singing in the hawthorns, didn’t notice the gardeners trimming the hedgerows. His tea and late breakfast sat before him on the table getting cold. His heart was far too heavy to eat.
Ruminating over the recent events, he ran a hand over his face and felt dizzy with grief. So much had happened. So much tragedy, he thought. So much pain. So many people had been hurt. George, Trenton, Gabrielle. Oh, poor, foolish, foolish Gabby. And Lionel, who was now crushed to powder by her death.
And the phone call he’d received this morning from Inspector Wample. Three of the Stingers gang found dead in an auto repair shop in Tottenham. Including the leader, Scorpion. The man Trenton had dealt with. Including the man named Malcomb Shrivel. The vile hoodlum who had murdered Gabrielle.
And his good friend Russell Parker, kidnapped by those very men and beaten within an inch of his life. And Miranda, who had found him and called the police in the nick of time.
All because of that blasted dagger. All because he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t let the police handle it. No he’d had to call in his friend’s son to find the thing. And now?
Russell was still alive, but he hadn’t woken up yet. What if he didn’t?
It was all his fault, Neville told himself. Every bit of it. He bent his head and pressed his hands to his face, wanting to weep. But there were no more tears left in him.
He’d rung the hospital as soon as he’d heard the news, asked to see him, but they’d told him no visitors. He’d go later, he told himself. Russell would be awake then. Later this afternoon. After…the funeral. The thought of Gabby’s burial brought a fresh round of tears.
Apparently he wasn’t done with them after all. He took out a handkerchief and let himself mourn anew.
But after a time, he could weep no more.
Putting the handkerchief back into his pocket, he checked his watch. They would be heading out in an hour. He should get ready. He took several steadying breaths to pull himself together.
He had just risen to his feet when he heard footsteps. He turned in time to see Davinia step onto the portico.
She was dressed in stern dark blue, but the silky fabric of her dress made the classic shape of her body as elegant as ever. Her dark hair piled atop her head revealed that graceful neck he would forever adore. Around it she wore a simple string of pearls. Under her arm she carried a matching bag.
Her face was lined with sorrow. She’d been crying.
“Neville, we have to talk,” she said quietly.
He closed his eyes. Oh, dear Lord, not now.
He reached out for the back of the chair to steady himself. He’d been preparing himself for this speech for longer than he could remember. He’d always known one day she’d come and tell him it was over between them.
But why now? Didn’t he have enough grief to bear? Didn’t she? He ran a hand over his face. No, it didn’t really matter, did it? What was one more sorrow in this battalion of them?
He drew in a tight breath and braced himself. “I suppose we do.”
She took a hesitant step toward hm. “I feel…I know…we haven’t been quite honest with one another.”
His eyes flashed. Honest? Had there ever been a more dishonest couple? He would show her honesty. He would tell her exactly how he felt about what she’d done to him.
As he opened his heart to her his voice was low and full of accusation. “Davinia, you were the love of my life when we met. I thought I had found my perfect match. My soul mate. We used to stroll these very grounds and discuss everything we loved. Rodin and Michelangelo and Etruscan art and the Great Sphinx of Giza. I couldn’t have been happier when we were first married. And then—”
She blinked at him in shock. “And then?”
Did she have to ask? “And then you began…” he waved a hand, searching for the words, “burying yourself in social affairs. Dinners and parties and flower shows. There was always something. We were never alone.”
Her mouth opened and she turned a little pale. “What on earth are you saying, Neville? I did all that for you.”
“For me? For me? How can you say such a thing?”
She took another step closer. “Don’t you remember the vicious things Lionel said when we told him we going were to be married? That you were below us, that you’d never be one of us?”
“Of course I do.” Why was she bringing up old wounds? Weren’t the fresh ones enough for her?
“It cut you to the quick. It did me, too. I could see how deep that wound went. You felt unworthy of me.”
He stared at her. She’d seen how he’d felt?
She turned away and moved to the edge of the portico, rested her hand on its classical banister as she gazed out at the gardens. “The truth was, many of my friends agreed with Lionel. I was determined to prove them all wrong. I held my head high and attended as many social affairs as I could. They would all see I was not ashamed to have you at my side, to call you my husband. On the contrary, I was proud to be Mrs. Neville Ravensdale.”
Proud to be his wife? When he’d thought she’d been ashamed of him? He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he should believe her.
Now her words took on a bitter tone. “But you…you turned away from me, Neville. You were the one who buried yourself in your work. You spent more and more time at the museum. I can’t tell you how jealous I grew of that place. We hardly saw each other, except when I nagge
d you into attending a party or the opera with me.”
“Because you didn’t want me. Because you’d stopped loving me.”
She spun around, her face full of disbelief. “Is that what you thought?”
“That’s what I know.”
She stood for a long moment, fighting for composure, her eyes growing moist, her chest heaving. He was about to beg her forgiveness for the remark when she regained the ability to speak.
Her eyes shimmering, she half smiled at him. “I have something to show you.”
She drew the bag from under her arm and opened it. Divorce papers. He knew it. It took all his strength not to fall to pieces right there in front of her and beg her not to go on.
Out of the bag she drew a long black velvet bag. Odd thing to carry legal documents in. But perhaps she’d been hiding them from Lionel.
“I want you to understand I never meant to hurt you, Neville.”
He was already hurting. Wounded beyond repair. He would never recover from this blow.
Slowly, with her long, delicate fingers she undid the drawstring.
He wanted to stop her. Wanted to go back in time to when they had first fallen in love. But no, he wouldn’t fight her. How could he? What good would it do? He’d never make her love him again.
She put her hand into the bag and drew something out of it. It wasn’t papers, but he couldn’t make out what it was. His eyes were suddenly filled with tears.
All at once his resolve crumbled. He broke down, became a sniveling, begging fool before her.
He took her by the arms. “Oh, darling Davinia. Can’t you still love me just a little? Couldn’t we try to find what we once had together? Please, don’t leave me.”
“Neville.” She stared up at him as if amazed beyond all comprehension. “Are you saying you still love me?”
“How can you ask that? I never stopped.” Something flashed through the watery haze of his vision. A golden handle. “What is that?”
She held it up to him with both hands. “Oh, Neville. I’m so sorry.”
He wiped the back of his hand against his eyes to stare down at what she was holding. He was suddenly unable to breathe.
There in his dear wife’s palms lay the Marc Antony dagger.
Slowly he let go of her and lifted the relic. Its golden blade gleamed in the sunlight. He turned it over, studied the hilt, ran his fingers over the imprint of its colorful design. And finally he examined the quillon, read the ancient hieroglyphics engraved there so long ago. ‘Be victorious in every battle, my love.’
It was real.
“You took it?”
“Someone did it for me. We replaced it with a fake. The fake that was stolen.” The fake that killed Gabrielle.
“Oh, my Lord.” He handed it back to her, sank into a chair.
Davinia rushed to him, laid the bags and the dagger on the table and took his hands in her own. “I wanted to…get your attention, Neville. You were ignoring me. I had to do something drastic. Take something you loved more than me. It was a test. I—I suppose I’m the one who failed it.” She knelt beside him, stroked his hair. “Will you send me to prison? Will you hate me forever?”
He looked into his wife’s lovely, yearning face and for the first time in years saw what was truly in her eyes. She wasn’t lying. She did love him.
He kissed her hands. “Oh, Davinia. Do you really still care for me?”
Now the tears fell from her eyes to her cheeks, dripped down onto his lap. “Of course I love you. I love you with all my heart.”
Reaching out he took her in his arms and felt the closeness he’d yearned for so long. And he kissed her. The lips he hadn’t tasted in years were sweet and wonderful as she kissed him back.
He couldn’t believe it. Didn’t know how it had happened. She loved him. He loved her. It was that simple. He didn’t know what was going to happen now. He didn’t know if the police would arrest her for what she’d done.
But no matter what, all they needed to do was remember that their love was as real as that dagger.
Chapter Fifty
Miranda slouched in the hospital chair, half-formed visions of tire irons and rumbling motors flitting through her dreams.
She felt something tug at her. She moaned and tried to turn over. She felt it again. Get away. Something was pulling at her hand.
Wishing it would stop, she opened her eyes—and sat straight up.
Parker was squeezing her hand, looking right at her. “Good morning. Or is it afternoon?”
“Parker. Parker. Are you really awake?” She hoped she really was, too.
“I believe so. The doctor was just in here. I believe he said I’m going to be all right.”
“Really? Really?” The stab of relief and joy she felt was almost painful.
“But I have a very bad memory of being in a repair shop. You were there.” He looked at her as if he’d just recognized who she was. “You rescued me, didn’t you?”
“Damn straight, I rescued your ass.” Now that he could talk, now that she knew he was going to be okay, her temper started to flare. “You went to Tottenham without me. What the hell were you thinking, Parker?”
“I’m not sure at the moment.” He tried to move and winced. He still looked awful with his bandaged head, his bruised and swollen face, the tubes sticking out of him.
She backed off, but only a little. “You could have been killed. You really pissed me off.”
“I’m aware of that.” He tried a dignified nod but couldn’t manage to move.
She almost let out a laugh. He was probably the only man in the world who could make a slur from a fat lip and pain killers sound sexy.
Refusing to give on this one, she sat back in the chair, folded her arms, tapped her foot on the floor. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself, mister?”
He studied her a long moment with his good eye. Then he spoke. Slowly, so the words were clear and undistorted. “I haven’t been wrong many times in my career. But I have to admit this was one of them.”
Her mouth fell open. The great and successful Wade Parker was admitting he’d been wrong? On a case?
She began to nod as her lips curved into a smile of victory. “That’s more like it.”
He reached for her hand again, ignoring the pain the movement caused him. “I’m so sorry, Miranda.”
She jumped up and leaned him back in his bed. She didn’t want him to hurt himself. Taking his hand again, she shrugged. “All in a night’s work.”
His sexy gray eyes twinkled at her. Well, the one she could see.
She sat back down, turned his hand over and traced a finger over his palm, thrilling at the feel of it and the giddy knowledge that he was alive and awake.
He was alive. He was going to be okay.
But she had to get her thoughts off her chest. “We have a problem, Parker.”
“Oh?” He tried to rise up again.
“Lay back for Pete’s sake or I’ll never get this out.”
“Very well.” He lay back on the pillow.
“When I rescued you,” she cleared her throat to emphasize the point. “You were unconscious. I rode with you in the ambulance, but when we got here to the hospital they took you away, and nobody would tell me where you were or how you were doing for hours and hours.”
He didn’t speak but she could see emotion on his face.
“And then they put you in this room and told me you weren’t awake, and they didn’t know when you would be. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t stand it. I felt like I was going insane.” She stared down at his hand. The one she’d held onto for all those long, lonely hours.
“And?” he said softly.
“And I realized what you must have gone through when I was the one in a coma. I finally understood why it upsets you so much when I snub you and go off to do things on my own.”
She heard him draw in a breath of shock. She must be astounding him.
“And now, you did the same thing to me.”
There was a long pause. At last he said, “I suppose I did.”
“We can’t go on like this, Parker. We can’t have a real partnership if we can’t trust each other.”
There was another long silence. “What do you propose?” he finally said.
“I propose…” she took a deep breath and laid out her game plan. The one she’d come up with this morning. “No more lying to each other. No more hiding things from each other. Not you. Not me. We agree not to separate, not to go off alone again. From now on, we stick together, no matter how much we disagree. We back each other up.”
He pretended to consider the idea, turn it over in his mind as if weighing the pros and cons. Then his one eye twinkled again. She could tell he wanted to smile but it hurt too much.
“I agree,” he said. And he gave her hand a very businesslike shake.
Miranda let out a long breath of relief. He’d agreed. He didn’t want to dissolve the partnership as she’d feared he might. They could work together. They could do it.
“Oh.” She bounced to the edge of her chair as she remembered. “In the spirit of our new agreement, I have something else to tell you. I was walking the halls this morning, thinking about the case, going over all that’s happened and everything came together. I figured out who took the dagger.”
She grinned at him with pride. Then she saw him struggle to look expectant. “Who?”
Her shoulders slumped. “You knew?”
He looked away.
“Didn’t we just make an agreement?”
He sighed. “I figured it out before we left the hotel for Camden.”
That was when he’d made the arrangement to meet Shrivel, no doubt. She shook her head and laughed. “Guess that’s what happens when you’re hitched to an ace investigator.”
“Guess so.”
She leaned in, let him pull her into a half embrace and dared to plant a kiss on his swollen lip. He didn’t wince this time. He would wear his wounds like the warrior he was.
Heart Wounds (A Miranda and Parker Mystery) Page 22