“You have caught me well and good on that score, madam.” His quiet scoff raked over her. “By the very dynamics of our relationship, it would serve us both if I removed myself from this case and walked away forever.”
She held her tongue, stricken by the fear he would do exactly that, yet knowing she had no right to ask anything from him. But she wasn’t prepared yet to lose her son. David had brought him back. She was beyond trying to rationalize her relief. “Can we please agree that we want the best for our son?”
“Mother?” Nathan bounded from the bookroom, holding Zeus with both arms. “May I see Peepaw?”
“I’ll take you to your grandfather,” David said, pulling his gaze from her.
“Lord Chadwick said I’m going to see Big Ben.” Grinning, Nathan bounced back on his heels. “We came home to see you and Zeus and Peepaw, too. And to fetch my pillow.”
Thrusting down sudden panic, Victoria looked at David. “You’re taking him to London?”
“A train leaves from New Haven tomorrow night. I’ve already made arrangements.”
What he didn’t say, but what was evident in his eyes, was that he had brought Nathanial here to say good-bye. So this would be the way it was between them? David had already made the decision. Even as a part of her recognized that Nathanial might be safer in London, she was not prepared for the knife-sharp pain in her stomach, and dropped to one knee in front of her son. How would she ever tell Sir Henry?
“I’ll visit the menagerie when it opens in the spring, Mother,” Nathan said. “And I’ll get to go to a school like Ethan Birmingham. He learned fencing last year.”
Victoria touched his cheek. Her son spoke with so much enthusiasm, that she could not bear to let him see her sadness. “You’ll need to pack more than your pillow, Squirrel.”
“I shan’t be gone forever, Mother,” he reassured her, suddenly sounding like the man of the house and not her baby. “All the boys go to school. And when I get back, Ethan Birmingham won’t be calling me a brat anymore.”
“I thought you, Ethan, and Robbie were best friends?”
“We were till Ethan went to school last year.”
She smoothed a lock of dark hair from his brow. “Mrs. Gibson pulled fresh tarts from the oven less than an hour ago. Why don’t you see if they are ready?”
With an exclamation, Nathan whirled on his heel. Her side hurt. She couldn’t stand. David’s steady hand was suddenly at her elbow. “Who is taking care of you?” he asked.
She withdrew her arm, and it was all she could do not to collapse on the stairs. “I don’t need anyone’s help. I can fight my own battles, David.”
“Bravo, General Faraday.” He stepped back, his smile hinting at amusement that did not reach his eyes. “I’m glad to know that your frail physical condition has not changed your disposition.”
“I’ll take my son to the cottage. There will be things—”
“I’ll see that he gets everything he needs in London.”
“Of course you will.” There was a dull thudding in her head. “Does that include a new mother as well?”
“Hell, it might.”
“If you divorce me, you’d have to actually admit in public you married Colonel Faraday’s treasonous progeny. There will be a terrible scandal. Even you would not survive unscathed.”
She watched in disbelief as he removed a cheroot from his pocket and stuck it between his lips. “Which is why I would seek an annulment,” he said, striking a match against his boot heel. “I believe I can still work the occasional miracle.”
Narrowing her eyes, she took a firm grip on herself. “When did you start smoking those awful things again?”
“It would have behooved me never to have quit,” he said, shielding the flame with his hand as he observed her flushed expression. “Do you want to know why?”
He waved out the match and dropped it in a brass pot beside the banister. “Even if you didn’t have high treason charges hanging over your head—not counting, say, the hundred thousand pounds’ worth of stolen artifacts and jewels still missing, the death of my partner, and my own brush with mortality at your hands—you and I would never be a family.” He dabbed ash off in the pot, and she followed the movement with her eyes. “But maybe if you’re nice, I won’t throw you out of this house upon my return. For you see, I still have tender feelings for you. Enough not to shake you where you stand.”
“Feelings?”
“I’ve done naught but think about you since I left. I have a son and I never thought it possible. In some bloody way, I even agree with what you did.” He moved toe to toe with her, the slight movement peeling away her meager temper. “I find myself admiring your courage in the face of defeat, unable to comprehend what you must have felt like all these years knowing that I betrayed you and my child. Asking you still to trust me. I don’t want to take Nathanial away from you. Tell me those aren’t feelings for stalwart fools to suffer?”
Entrapped as she was within his stormy gaze, she peered at him with watery eyes. “Sometimes, I find myself completely baffled by you, David.”
He gave her a mocking salute. “Likewise, madam. I baffle myself,” he said leaving her staring at his back as he shut the front door firmly behind him.
David leaned against the carriage boot as he finished the cheroot. His coat collar lifted against the icy chill, he wore a fur-lined hat to cover his ears and wondered irritably if he still wasn’t underdressed. He brought the cheroot to his lips, knowing he didn’t have an answer to the way he was feeling at that moment.
He should be downstairs in the kitchen with Meg and their son. He should be, but he wasn’t, and didn’t quite know what he’d say even if he were. So what did he do, but come outside to freeze his bum off?
His eyes narrowing against the smoke, he peered toward the distant church tower, then straightened as an old wagon crawled into sight. He recognized Mr. Doyle. A towheaded boy sat between him and the second man hunched at the reins.
Recognizing the Widow Gibson’s son from his visit to their homestead a few weeks ago, David dropped the cheroot to the ground and crushed it out with the heel of his boot. The wagon came to a jangling halt in front of him on the drive.
“Lord Chadwick.” Mr. Gibson wiped his hands down the front of his coveralls, then introduced his son. “This is my son, Robbie,” he said. “He used to spend much of his time here when I managed the estate. I’m glad to see you back. I hope you are here to stay.”
David remained silent in his reluctance to pursue this tack of conversation. Beyond having purchased Rose Briar as his side of an agreement with Meg, he held no other connection to this house or the land. Nor did he want to.
The door behind him flew open and Nathanial appeared.
Robbie suddenly came alive. “Nate!”
“We didn’t know the nipper was back,” Mr. Gibson said, his face lighting beneath his hat.
“May I see him, Papa?”
Mr. Gibson deferred the decision to David, who could not have stopped him if he’d tried. “You’re friends, are you?”
“The best, my lord,” the boy said as David stood aside in time to escape being trampled.
Robbie ran to Nathanial, who was halfway down the cobbled walk. David realized he knew nothing about his son’s life here, except what little he’d discerned on the trip back from Salehurst. His boy was bright, confident, and seemed popular wherever he went, a trait he’d not failed to notice.
David’s gaze touched Meg standing on the pathway as she said something to Robbie that animated both boys. They rushed inside out of the cold.
Wrapped in her cloak, looking very much the lady of the manor, Meg straightened and smiled at Daniel Gibson. Watching her, David felt as if someone had hit him in the chest with a staff. Meg wasn’t pretty in the traditional standard. She was extraordinary, like stepping into sunlight after years of living in a cave, and when she smiled, it took a moment for him to breathe.
She approached the two men in the w
agon. “Mr. Gibson. Mr. Doyle. I see you have been taking care of yourself.”
An icy gust whipped her skirts around David’s legs as she leaned into the wagon to adjust the blanket on the old man’s lap. “He didn’t want to come, mum,” Mr. Gibson said.
“Don’t you want to work in the orangery?” Meg asked, worriedly noting Mr. Doyle’s nervousness. “You love flowers.”
David followed the man’s gaze, listening for what it was no one would say. He seemed afraid of the house. “You will like that there are other people around to talk with,” he heard Meg say. “I’ve put you in the cottage the other side of the orangery. Mr. Gibson’s mother has already kindled a warm fire.”
Doyle’s forehead disappeared in a set of wrinkles. “There be no spirits in the orangery?”
“Not a single one. You’re safe,” Meg quietly said.
She stepped away from the wagon and stood next to David as it lumbered away. “I’ve never seen him like that,” Meg said, still watching the wagon—as David couldn’t help watching her—the extent of his discontent with her vastly abridged as he’d observed the ease of her affection for these folk. “I hope I’ve done the correct thing bringing him here.”
“Has Doyle said anything more about what he might have seen in the church?”
“No, but there are caves in this bluff. Sheriff Stillings confirmed it.”
“You went to see Sheriff Stillings?” He would bloody throttle Rockwell for allowing Meg anywhere near Stillings.
She looked up at him as if they’d been remotely civil to each other since his return, as if he wasn’t suddenly thinking of committing some spontaneous act of self-destruction with her—and something else very much like possessiveness flared inside him. Clad in a gown he had not seen on her before today, she presented a striking figure as she met his scrutiny with growing defiance.
“You have given orders that have made me a prisoner.” Her eyes locked with his. “But you did not order that I couldn’t talk to people or make certain decisions regarding the welfare of those for whom I feel responsible. If you haven’t noticed yet, I shall point out that I’ve not been idle.”
As if for the first time, David glimpsed a groom walking out of the stable to help Mr. Gibson. Of a sudden, he looked at the manor house, the clean mullioned windows and gardens cleared of weeds. Two chambermaids he didn’t recognize were outside beating a rug, their laughter carrying to him on a gust of wintry wind.
He returned his gaze to rest on her face. Both his eyebrows lifted in response, his state of awareness akin to the way he’d felt in the drawing room when he’d pressed her against the curtains and buried himself in her body. “You’ve been busy during my absence. Are you planning on staying for any length of time?”
Meg brought up the hood on her cloak to cover her hair. “Nathanial and Robbie are eating lunch. I sent Mr. Rockwell to the cottage to let Sir Henry know that I will be bringing Nathanial shortly. I need to be the one to do this. Until then, you’re welcome to join us for lunch,” she said from behind the bow of her perfectly shaped mouth. “Mrs. Gibson is an excellent cook.”
“What did you do with my cook?” he thought to ask her.
“Esma discharged him. He’s better with horses. No doubt most of your hirelings are spies, but I added some of my own. People who actually know how to cook and clean.”
The corners of his mouth softened. “I shall keep that in mind lest I’m tempted to take a meal here.”
“Truly David,” she chided. “Don’t fill my head with ideas.”
Dismissed like a servant just taken to task, he raked his gaze over her backside as she breezed past, their stalemate no longer intact. He was still staring at her when she turned and caught his gaze, his actions only adding to her bewilderment—and his.
Emotion banked the embers in her eyes. “Do you mind that I take Nathanial to the cottage?” she asked in a voice oddly vulnerable to him. “It is not my want to exclude you.”
He nodded to the carriage and said, “Use the coach and four. I will join you later.”
“David?” Their eyes locked, and he knew in that moment of reckoning that he was surely a fool for having granted her any wish at all—but for some reason couldn’t bring himself to care. “I promise I won’t instruct Mrs. Gibson to poison you. I’m over wanting to kill or maim you.”
David allowed a brief grin to form. He could read in her eyes that she wanted to say more. But it was one thing to loosen his grip on his son and an entirely different problem altogether to forgive her. Or forget where they stood with each other.
He might have been a priest at one time expounding eternal forgiveness upon all, but this was personal.
Yet it was precisely for that reason he had returned.
“Did you really ever want me dead, Meg?”
“No.” Her eyes held his. “I just wanted you. Period.”
David did not attempt to temper his reaction to her answer. Watching as the door shut behind her, he lifted one eyebrow in an incredulous arc, cognizant of how easily a single two-letter word followed by one substantial sentence could change the timbre of their discourse and touch the very fabric of their relationship.
Chapter 15
David reined in Old Boy just past the cemetery, peering up at the church tower as he rode into Doyle’s enclosed yard. As he tied the reins to a post, a familiar Irish hail greeted him from the direction of the burned-out church. “If it isn’t himself come ridin’ over the hill.” Ralph Blakely stood in the weed-infested churchyard wearing heavy leather boots and a thick woolen shirt. His gold tooth flashed upon David’s approach. “Will ye be stayin’ long, Mister Donally?”
David followed him into the rectory. Once out of the wind some of his body warmth returned. “Only tonight. I have business to attend in London. I’ll be back in a few days.”
“Ye told me not to be leavin’ the church till I found the tunnel.”
“Are we that fortunate?” Peering warily at the thick wooden beam overhead, he ducked to avoid a splintered shaft of wood and stopped beneath a blackened overhang that opened into the nave. A bright patch of blue sky appeared. Unlike certain members of his family, he wasn’t a structural engineer, but good sense told him this place was as close to collapsing as any dilapidated tenement flat, of which he’d seen plenty of in his lifetime.
Blakely shoved his thumbs into his waistband. “No, but the boys and I, we’ve done everything else you’ve asked. We found the hounds a few days back. They’re part of a pack someone let lose up here what roams these hills and kills the livestock. Seems to me someone ’as done his utmost to run off every tenant. Also found the vicar what used to work in this church.”
David pulled his gaze back to Blakely. “You spoke to him?”
“Wish I could say I had. He died a few months ago and is buried in Halisham. His missus said I wasn’t the only one what visited her askin’ questions aboot the old tunnels. Some months back, a dark haired-woman and a heavy man with white hair nosed aboot askin’ the same questions.”
“A white-haired man…”
Kinley.
The description fit, maybe too conveniently, and it was precisely that initial assumption that put the skids on his thoughts, that and the dark-haired woman. But Kinley was six feet tall and could fill the footprints David had found leading from this church the morning after the snowstorm.
A crisp breeze disturbed the dead leaves at David’s feet. His gaze touched the blackened stones, lingering on what remained of the chancel and pulpit. He felt an odd connection to this place. Meg and his son had attended services beneath this roof. Nathanial had been christened here.
David moved away from the stone wall and shifted his focus. He had never been in a church that did not hold tight to its secret vaults and chambers. Meg had confirmed there were caves beneath these bluffs. Yet chances were that most of the tunnel network had probably not been used in centuries and was unsafe, which would account for the locals not knowing much about them.
“Aye. He’s not returned from London.”
“I would prefer not to involve anyone else for now in our findings past or future,” David said. If he trusted anyone at all, he trusted the men he’d brought with him from Ireland. None of them worked for Kinley. “I will find a stonemason. In the meantime I want this room shored up completely before we begin taking out the walls.”
His attention moved to the belfry. If there was a way in or out of this place, he wanted it found and permanently sealed.
A few minutes later, David mounted Old Boy and met Rockwell coming up the small gravel path to the churchyard. It bothered him that his suspicion of Kinley transferred to Rockwell, by his very association with Pamela. For David had also found a woman’s tracks that day after the storm. Pamela had blond hair, but could have worn a wig if she had been with Kinley. Clearly, someone wanted him to believe that woman had been Meg.
Rockwell slowed at David’s approach. “You appear troubled.”
“What were you bloody thinking taking Meg to see Stillings?”
He looked affronted and amused at once. “You try stopping her from doing something once she sets her mind to a task.”
In no mood for musings, David nudged his horse with his heels only to hear Rockwell yell. “I wouldn’t go to the cottage just this moment, sir.”
He reined in Old Boy. “Why not?”
“Is that boy your son?” Rockwell asked. “Is that why you went to Salehurst? It’s already town gossip, Donally.”
Biting back an oath, David looked away. He had told only one person his purpose for leaving. “That boy’s name is Nathanial,” David answered shortly. Rockwell could figure out the complications on his own time. “I’m taking him to London tomorrow night and handing him over to my sister until…” Shaking his head, he crossed one hand over the other and glared across the cemetery. “Until I close this case.”
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