When Ninian had insisted they all stop and say farewell to her son in the nursery, and the one-year-old had lofted a ball straight into the air for longer than the laws of gravity allowed, Dunstan had exchanged looks with Leila but hadn’t said a word. So what was bothering the damned man now?
“It would make more sense to reassure you that you’re far more intelligent and gifted than Ninian,” he continued, but even his unexpected flattery sounded brusque.
The closer they came to London, the more distance he set between them. She had tried chattering about friends and family. He withdrew further into brooding silence.
Leila leaned her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and tried to read his scent, but she knew how he smelled far too well by now, and found no surprises. “Ninian can heal people,” she answered with a sigh of frustration. “I can only make odd perfumes and smell things.”
“Leila, you haven’t any idea what you can do,” he said angrily. “You’ve only just figured out that perfumes or smells give you odd insights. Ninian had her grandmother to teach her from childhood what she could do. It’s all a matter of education.”
Well, at least she’d elicited some response from him.
“You needn’t shout.” She glared out the coach window. “And you needn’t speak to me of education. If it’s your worry over how to go on in society that has you growling, then you’re no better than I am. You need only a little experience and you’ll have the silly sheep fawning all over you.”
“I don’t give a damn about sheep,” he muttered.
“Then tell me what you do give a damn about!” she shouted, her own nervousness nearly equaling his as they drew closer to their destination.
“Hanging,” he said bluntly. “Leaving you and Griffith and our child alone with my black reputation to ruin you.”
“You didn’t kill Celia. Surely you know that.”
“That doesn’t mean I can prove it.” He leaned back against the seat and crossed his arms defiantly.
Giving up on improving his mood, Leila leaned forward. “Then tell me what happened that day. Maybe there is something in the tale that can help us.”
“You think Drogo hasn’t already thought of that?” Shadows cast his face in darkness, but an errant light from the window caught the worry marring his wide brow.
Leila reached across the space between them to touch his knee and remind him that he had her now. He didn’t have to face the investigation alone. “Drogo isn’t me. If we’re to work together, then I must know everything you know.”
His queue fell over his shoulder as he turned away from her to glare out the window. “If I knew anything, don’t you think I would have done something sooner?”
“Tell me,” she demanded, refusing to take “no” for an answer. “Start with George Wickham.”
Closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead, Dunstan spoke as if the devil tortured the words from him.
Surrey, 1751
“What the deuce do you think you’re doing?” Dunstan demanded.
Climbing over the stile to reach the horse pasture, he glared in disbelief at the drunken fop who was attempting to round up two skittish carriage horses. One of the tenants had alerted him to the theft, but he hadn’t believed any thief could be stupid enough to operate in broad daylight.
The young robber’s chin lifted defiantly from the folds of his disheveled neckcloth as he grabbed one horse’s harness. “I’ve come to retrieve Celia’s horses.”
Dunstan remained on top of the wall and crossed his arms to hide the pain at the mention of his adulterous wife’s name. Which one of her many lovers was this? Judging from the richness of the silk coat, he’d say one of the wealthy, aristocratic ones. Celia liked titles. “They’re not Celia’s. They belong to the earl.”
The young man shrugged. “The lady says they’re hers. My pair went lame, and she offered these.”
“The lady lies.” Dunstan tried not to bellow and frighten the high-strung animals. “If the horses are hers, why does she not come to the door and ask for them?”
The mare flung her head, and Celia’s drunken victim nearly fell over his feet to maintain his hold. Recovering, he grimaced. “The lady is afraid of her husband.”
Fury flooded Dunstan’s reason. The fool lordling didn’t even know who he was.
He didn’t know whether his anger was directed at himself for the lack of sophistication that failed to distinguish him from his tenants, or at Celia for her treachery. It scarcely mattered since the result was the same.
“Apparently Celia isn’t afraid that her husband will hang you for a horse thief,” he answered cynically.
Stepping down the other side of the stile, Dunstan began crossing the pasture, debating whether to collar the fool and heave him into a steaming pile of horse shit or kick him all the way back to Baden and Celia.
To his annoyance, the young man produced a pistol from his coat pocket. “Don’t come near me! I’ll report you to the authorities.”
This close, Dunstan recognized the shivering idiot as one of the fast set Celia used to invite to Ives—George Wickham, heir to an earldom.
At the same time that Dunstan remembered him, Georgie Boy saw past Dunstan’s rough clothes and flushed with recognition. “Ives! I should think even an ignorant hayseed would have sense enough to keep his distance when his wife asks for what’s rightfully hers.”
Ignorant hayseed! Dunstan’s temper soared. Stalking across the remaining distance, he rolled his fingers into fists.
Panicking, Wickham dropped the horse’s reins and gripped the pistol with both hands. “For my lady’s honor, I challenge you to meet me.”
Honor. As if Celia possessed a shred of it. Eyeing the shaking pistol with disdain, Dunstan calculated his chances of disarming the drunken rake to be fairly good, but he wasn’t much interested in contracting lead poisoning if he could avoid it. His fingers itched to remove Wickham’s empty head from his noble shoulders, but his rage was directed more at Celia than her latest victim. “Go back to Celia and tell her to buy her own damned horses.”
“I’m challenging you to a duel!” the lad screamed. “You cannot treat a lady as you have and not expect to die for it.”
Impatiently, Dunstan approached the armed thief. No one deserved to die over Celia, but he would send the nodcock back to her smelling like the horses he would steal.
“I’m warning you, Ives! You cannot beat me as you do her. Produce your weapon, sir.” Wickham retreated another step.
Beat her! Dunstan snorted at the ridiculousness of the lie. “If I’d beat the damned woman, she’d not be alive to torment either of us now.”
Rather than argue further, Dunstan lunged for the lunatic. Wickham dodged, and Dunstan’s fist grazed his weak jaw. Caught off balance by the blow, Wickham lurched backward. Heel sliding in a pile of fresh manure, he shrieked as he slipped and tumbled over—falling on his gun arm.
The weapon discharged, smoke filled the air, and to Dunstan’s horror, the Honorable George Wickham lay sprawled in a pile of horse shit, his life’s blood seeping from a gaping wound in his side.
“Out, damn spot!” Dunstan muttered, as he sat on the marble steps outside his brother’s rural mansion, staring at the damning iron-red spot crusted on his boot.
Dipping his handkerchief into the tankard of ale beside him, he attempted to rub the offending blot from the muddy leather. “Macbeth,” he grunted. “I’m not an ignorant hayseed.” Wickham’s insult still rankled, but his adversary was no longer alive to hear his argument. The horror of that pool of blood formed a blank wall of denial beyond which Dunstan couldn’t see.
“Sir?” the sheriff’s assistant inquired uneasily while the sexton and a field hand loaded the body of the once Honorable George onto a cart.
Dunstan raised his glower from his boot to the young man, who was shaking in his. Dunstan had no weapon except his fists, but that was all he needed to frighten the boy.
Why the hell had Celia sent
George Wickham to steal Drogo’s horses? Dunstan couldn’t send the frightened assistant into the devil’s den to ask.
He closed his eyes and let the deputy off the hook. “It hath been often said that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible. I always liked Fielding’s satire.” Boot cleaned, he drained the tankard of ale, rose from the stone stoop, and glared at the sheet-covered body in the cart.
“The grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.” But quoting poets wouldn’t answer the question at hand, he knew. “Guess I’d better find the bitch, tell her she’s not embracing the Honorable George anymore.” He dreaded the confrontation. An entire barrel of ale wouldn’t numb him sufficiently to make it bearable.
The sheriff’s deputy looked mildly alarmed. “Sir, I know it was a matter of self-defense, and your brother is the magistrate, but perhaps you should let someone else speak with the lady . . .”
Dunstan watched the cart carrying the body rumble down the lane, away from the estate, and shook his head. “Affection is enamour’d of thy parts, And thou are wedded to calamity. Calamity, she should have been called.”
Celia could drive a man to murder.
When a footman arrived with a silver tray, tankards, and a pitcher of ale, Dunstan poured a fresh cup of fortification. “Liquid courage, it is.”
The deputy glared at the footman. “He should be taken to his chambers. A man just died here. This is a serious matter.”
The footman shrugged. “He don’t quote poetry ’cept when he’s cup-shot. Ain’t seen him like this”—the liveried lad wrinkled his nose in thought—“since the mistress left him back a year or so ago.”
Dunstan glowered at the loquacious footman, set the empty tankard on the tray, and stalked toward the stable muttering, “Of comfort no man speak: Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.”
Not being one to stick his head in a noose, the deputy dismissed any further attempt to stop him the moment Dunstan ripped the stout oak bar from the stable and flung it halfway across the yard.
Dunstan didn’t remember much of how he’d reached the inn in Baden, but once there, the landlord confirmed what Dunstan had already known. His adulterous wife was waiting upstairs for the return of her lover. No amount of ale could erase that damnable tiding.
“Celia!” Dunstan bellowed as he pounded the wooden door of her chamber. “I need to talk with you.”
She laughed, the light, tinkling laugh that had once caused his gut to clench with desire. She always laughed at his bellows. Or yelled back. That last time, she’d run away.
Mind reeling, Dunstan rubbed his aching forehead and steadied himself. He was a big man who could handle his liquor. He’d never passed out from drink before. Of course, he’d never watched a man die either. Maybe he had drunk a wee bit more than usual, but he was thinking straight enough to know it wasn’t seemly to shout his news about George from the hall.
Contemplating the stout door standing between himself and his faithless wife, Dunstan allowed his rage to build, replacing the guilt and shame of watching a weak young man bleed to death for no good reason at all.
Celia had told George Wickham that Dunstan beat her. She’d sent him to steal horses she’d known weren’t hers. She knew Wickham carried a pistol. She knew Dunstan didn’t even own one.
The callousness of her behavior filled Dunstan with such rage that he ripped the chamber door from its leather hinges with one good pull.
“You meant for George to kill me!” Dunstan flung the door down the stairs and strode into the room.
Beautiful, sophisticated Celia stood in the room’s center, laughing, undismayed at his crude entrance. “Of course, dear, but I figured you had even odds. George isn’t very smart. How is he?”
In a moment of crystal clarity, Dunstan comprehended the enormity of his wife’s duplicity. She’d drained him of every penny he possessed, run up debts in his name far higher than he could pay in a lifetime, and knowing she no longer possessed the power to twist him to her wishes, she must have decided he was expendable. She had hoped Wickham would kill him and free her to marry another.
That poor pitiful creature back there had paid the price of her scheming. Without wondering why she was willing to sacrifice her lover, Dunstan let his last flickering ember of affection for her die into ashes. “George is dead, may you rot in purgatory,” he declared.
He reached for her, staggered, and blacked out.
“And that’s the last I remember.”
Sick to his stomach, Dunstan watched out the carriage window rather than look at the lovely woman seated across from him. He held his breath in fear of her scorn.
“You passed out,” she said without a shred of doubt.
His breath expelled in relief. He didn’t understand why or how, but she believed what he could not. “I didn’t drink enough to pass out. They found Celia dead and me sleeping in the hall outside. I must have staggered there somehow.”
“Then we must discover who entered Celia’s room after you left.”
“No one,” he asserted now that they were on familiar territory. “The sheriff and Drogo and my hired investigator have all inquired about the inn’s occupants. It was the usual assortment of farmers and shopkeepers she never would have acknowledged. None of them stirred themselves to go upstairs to her rescue while I bellowed at her. They only discovered us when one of them stumbled over me in the dark later.”
“Someone she knew was there,” Leila replied firmly. “Who would have benefited from her death? Or yours?”
Dunstan blinked. “My death?”
“Of course. Letting you take the blame for Celia’s murder would certainly remove you from society and, with luck, see you incarcerated and hanged. For all we know, someone may have encouraged Celia to want you dead.”
“I have nothing anyone could gain, dead or alive,” he protested. “Celia was the only one who would benefit.”
“We’re almost there.” She glanced out the window at the Ives town house.
“I ought to see you home first,” he argued, upon discovering their route.
“No, it is better if my family does not see us together tonight. They are all in residence this time of year.”
Guilt swamped him again as he realized she could not be seen with him in front of her family.
“If your mother suspects about the child,” he said cautiously, “you may tell her I stand ready to do the proper thing whenever you ask it of me.” Swallowing a lump of apprehension so large that it threatened to choke him, Dunstan offered all that he owned, his very tarnished name.
Leila cast him a sidelong look. “I thought you said we couldn’t marry.”
Setting aside his towering uneasiness for Leila’s sake, he reassured her as best he could. He’d done nothing else but think of these things for the last hours. “We can do whatever we choose to do. You are the one who would sacrifice the most, and I refuse to ask it of you. But if your family forces the issue, and you would feel better for it, I’ll gladly offer my name.”
She nodded, but he couldn’t read her expression in the heavy gloom. Until recently, he had thought he might suffocate did he ever say the word “marriage” to another woman, but he seemed in rather good condition now, all things considered. He took a deep breath, and found that everything functioned fine.
“You are right,” she agreed, to his relief. “I’d lose my land, and you would not be happy living in town on my money. I have no wish to marry again. We must be circumspect until we return to the country.”
Dunstan didn’t think it would be as easy as all that, but he would let her fool herself for a while longer. She hadn’t laughed at his offer, but treated it logically, as he did. He liked the way her mind mirrored his. “Once we’re back at your estate, I’ll be but a stone’s throw away,” he said. “You will have your land and your roses, and I’ll take measures so Staines cannot threaten either of us.”
The viscount had promised him the tenant farm if he m
arried her, but Dunstan didn’t think Leila would appreciate living in a cottage or losing her gardens. Her wishes came first. Besides, he didn’t trust Leila’s spoiled nephew to keep his word, especially if he remained in the decadent company of men like Henry Wickham and Lord John Albemarle. Leeches like that would part the lad from his money in one manner or another soon enough.
The coach rolled to a halt in front of the aging Ives town house.
Leila leaned across the seat and pressed a kiss to Dunstan’s cheek. He caught her chin between his fingers and placed a more lingering kiss on her lips. Brushing a stray tendril of hair from her forehead, he released her. “I’m not a man of fancy words, Leila, but you have only to send for me, night or day, and I’ll come. I wish I could promise more.”
“That is all the promise I need,” she murmured. She patted his cheek and straightened her shoulders. “I am my own woman now. I make my own decisions. Give my regards to Drogo.”
Dunstan shook his head but didn’t argue as he climbed out. He knew their future would be far more complicated than she anticipated.
And first, before he could do anything about Leila and the child she carried, he must find a killer.
Twenty-three
The witches arrived the next afternoon, sooner than Dunstan had thought they would.
Arms crossed, leaning against the upstairs window overlooking the narrow street below, he impassively watched the scurrying of footmen and passersby as the Duchess of Mainwaring and the Marchioness of Hampton, Leila’s aunt and mother, respectively, stepped from their carriage to the cobblestones.
He’d given Leila’s family a whole day to amass weapons and outrage. He’d known Leila couldn’t keep the child a secret from her unnaturally perceptive family.
In most worlds, two middle-aged ladies would not constitute a military force, but in his world, they had the power of an arsenal, two battalions of soldiers, and untold cavalry. Even the bystanders stood back and watched as the women ordered parasols and shawls retrieved from the interior, berated a young boy for not aiding his mother with her packages, called for their driver to check the lead horse’s leg, and handed what appeared to be silk sachets and a lecture to a bedraggled young woman clinging to a toddler.
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