Dear Sir,
It has recently come to our attention that Mr. Douglas has been reported missing. Neither his method of escape nor his current whereabouts have been determined. But the authorities would like to alert you to his fugitive status and request your assistance in returning him to custody.
Yours, etc.,
Filbert
“He was the vagrant,” said Lord Vere, inexorably. “He must have instructed your aunt on how to meet him.”
A vise closed over Elissande’s chest. She could not breathe. Four days before his trial, her uncle had hunted down her aunt in broad daylight.
And what had Elissande been doing? Wearing her heart on her sleeve in a ruined castle, trying to woo her unfeeling bastard of a husband.
The same husband pressed a glass of whiskey into her hand. “Drink.”
The whiskey burned a trail down her throat. She tilted back the glass again. It was already empty. “I need more.”
“Not now. You don’t have much capacity for liquor.”
She rubbed the empty glass against her forehead. “I don’t understand—none of this makes sense. She was not alone. My uncle did not grab her by the throat and abduct her outright. Why did she leave to meet him of her own volition?”
“He must have threatened your safety or mine, possibly both.”
“He is a fugitive. He has the law after him. He can’t do anything to harm any of us.”
“You don’t know him as she does.”
She resented his assumption. “I’ve lived with him my entire life.”
He gazed at her a long moment, as if she were some creature about to be led to slaughter. “Would you care for a seat? There is something I need to tell you.”
He had something he needed to tell her. About her uncle?
Suddenly the events of the past few weeks flashed before her eyes. Hundreds of rats finding their way into Lady Kingsley’s house, a very clever man coming to Highgate Court disguised as an idiot, skulking all around, and barely days later the police in possession of enough evidence to arrest her uncle. What were the chances that these had all been random events?
She sat down. Or perhaps her legs simply gave out from underneath her. “You had something to do with it, didn’t you? You didn’t come to my house because Lady Kingsley had a rat problem; you came because you were looking for evidence against my uncle.”
“I see we may skip right over that part,” he said lightly.
“Do you work for the police?”
He raised a brow. “Of course not—marquesses don’t work. Although I might occasionally assist the police.”
She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “What was it that you wanted to tell me?”
“Are you familiar with their courtship?”
“To hear him tell it, it was much charity and compassion on his part. He was a very rich man coming back from South Africa. She was a damsel in distress whose father had died in poverty after his bank failed and whose sister had run away to become a whore. My uncle, of course, swept in and rescued her from a life of drudgery and despair.”
“They might have been introduced only after he returned from South Africa, but I believe he’d been fixated on her since long before.”
Something in her tilted dangerously at his revelation. She had thought for certain that she knew everything she needed to know about her aunt and her uncle. “Why do you think so?”
“The paintings at Highgate Court. Freddie tracked down a sister painting, done possibly in the late sixties. Yesterday I went to Kent to see it. It too had an angel and a man: The angel was all in white and the man on his knees in rapture. The angel had Mrs. Douglas’s face. The artist, whom I believe to be your uncle, sold the painting to finance his trip to South Africa.”
“He went to South Africa for her?”
“Perhaps not for her, but it appears she loomed large in his mind. It was something close to an obsession.”
She rose; she could remain seated no longer. “And then what happened?”
“He failed—your uncle lacks either luck or acumen in business, or perhaps both. But someone he knew found a rich vein and boasted to everyone who would listen. This man was going to voyage to England and glory in his newfound wealth. His name was Edmund Douglas.”
The ugliness he implied—she did not want to hear any more. Yet she must know everything. “Go on,” she croaked.
“I have cause to believe that your uncle murdered the real Edmund Douglas en route from South Africa to England. Upon his arrival in England, he established himself as Edmund Douglas, used the dead man’s letters of credit, and married your aunt under false pretenses.”
She had thought that she was prepared to hear the worst. But the whiskey glass still fell from her hand. It thudded softly onto the rug and rolled away.
“Inquiries have been sent to South Africa. People who knew Edmund Douglas before he left the mines remember him as a man who spoke with a strong Scouse accent, and had a scar slashing through his left eye from a pub fight gone wrong when he was still in England.”
“Why—why has no one else ever suspected my uncle of being an impostor?”
“He is clever. He lives in a remote area and socializes rarely; he has never returned to South Africa; and it’s possible he also murdered the real Edmund Douglas’s sole remaining relative in England.”
She shivered.
“But I think your aunt found out.”
She gripped the back of a chair. “Are you sure I can’t have any more whiskey?”
He fetched a new glass and poured her another finger. She downed it so fast she barely felt the burn. “How did my aunt find out?”
Her husband glanced at her. “I don’t know. People find out all kinds of things in a marriage.”
“That’s your entire explanation?”
“That’s my explanation for why your uncle behaves as he does. He believes himself a romantic hero, willing to go to any lengths for love.”
She shivered again. “He said that to me when we were last at Highgate Court.”
“So he committed the ultimate crime, possibly more than once, for the woman he considered his angel. He impressed himself. And yet once she discovered what he had done, like any sane person, she was not only not impressed, she was horrified and appalled. That was what he considered the angel’s betrayal; that she had no appreciation for the sacrifices he’d made for her, and instead recoiled from him. That was why he painted her fleeing from him, having run him through with a sword.”
“And that is what has driven his cruelty all these years,” she murmured.
“I wouldn’t have told this story to someone with less steely nerves—but you can handle it. And you need to know, so that you understand why your aunt is so frightened of him even when he is a fugitive. So that you recognize what we are dealing with here.”
She pulled at her collar. “Will the police be any help?”
“We will, of course, need the police for his apprehension. But until then, I’m hesitant, especially to involve county constables—hostage rescue is not what they are trained to do. Besides, we have no evidence whatsoever of his involvement. As far as anyone knows, Mrs. Douglas has taken off by herself to London, which she is at perfect liberty to do.”
She dropped into a stuffed chair and pressed her hands into her face. “So we just wait?”
“Your uncle will contact you.”
“You sound very sure of it.”
She heard him take the chair next to hers. “Would you say your uncle is vindictive?” he asked softly.
“Yes.”
“Then trust that he is not finished yet. Merely getting his wife back is hardly vengeance enough. He will want to inflict something on you too.”
She emitted a whimper. “How long will we have to wait?”
“My guess is you will hear from him by the afternoon post. After all, time is not on his side.”
She didn’t want to, but she moaned again in fear. She be
nt over and hid her face between her knees.
* * *
To Vere’s relief, she did not remain hunched in defeat for long. She rose, walked the length and the width of the room, ignored the luncheon Vere asked to have brought in for her, stirred her tea without drinking it, and looked out the window every minute or so.
He’d dashed out several cables and had them sent. He’d had his luncheon and his tea. He even glanced through some of the other letters that had come for him in the morning. And now he, too, had nothing left to do, except to watch her in her agitation.
“Why do you keep a book in your underthings drawer?” he asked.
It was better to keep her mind from the worst possibilities for the remainder of their wait.
She’d been picking out and putting back random items from the mantel. At his question she spun around. “What were you doing mucking about in my things?”
“I had to search every room in the house. Yours was no exception.”
But of course hers had been an exception. He’d rifled through any number of women’s unmentionables in the course of his work, but he’d never lingered as he had among her soft, pristine linens. And that was after he’d already learned that her smiles were but tools.
“Just so you know, I didn’t find anything of interest—except, as I said, I’d never seen a travelogue among a woman’s undergarments before.”
She sat down on the window seat, her entire person stiff and tense. “I’m delighted to have provided you a moment of diversion. And just so you know, the travelogue was only carelessly placed among my undergarments when my uncle was away. When he was in residence, it stayed hidden in a scooped-out volume of something Greek, on a shelf with three hundred other books in Greek.”
He read five languages other than English and had thought nothing of the dearth of English books in Douglas’s library. But to someone who had not been educated in continental languages, visiting that library must have been as tormenting as dying of thirst in the middle of an ocean.
Underneath every detail of her life was a history of oppression. And yet she’d emerged not only with her spirit intact, but with a capacity for joy that he had only begun to understand. That he would now never truly know.
The thought was a stab in his heart.
“The book in your drawer was a guide to Southern Italy. It had something on Capri, I imagine?”
“Not very much. There was a better book, but I lost it when my uncle purged the library.”
Memories of the night came unbidden: her arms holding him, her lovely voice speaking of her faraway island. He realized he’d never given any thoughts as to what his milk-and-honey companion would do when faced with his nightmares. He had simply assumed they wouldn’t exist anymore when he had his gentle, pure paragon.
She’d been looking out the window, but now her face turned toward him. “Why did you make me listen to you sing? You are a horrendous singer.”
“There was a safecracker working in your aunt’s room. Had to keep you away.”
“You could have told me. I would have held the light for him.”
“I couldn’t tell you. You looked very pleased to be living in your uncle’s house.”
“More fool you. You could have saved yourself the ordeal of this marriage.”
He tapped his pen against the desk. Suddenly all he could remember were the moments of surprising joy. Their nap together on the train; her outrageously erroneous soliloquy on jam making that had made him smile half the next day as he walked and walked; last night.
“I wouldn’t quite classify this marriage as an ordeal. It’s been more of a burden.”
She threw a small potted plant clear across the breadth of the room. The glazed terra-cotta container shattered against the mantel. The soil and the orchid growing from it fell to the floor with a resounding wump.
“You have all my sympathies,” she said. “And my sincere condolences.”
His ideal companion did not know what anger was. Her voice would never drip with sarcasm. And, of course, since she was not real, it was easy for her not to have strong emotions, to be only smiles and cuddles and wholesale perfection.
He gazed at the very real woman on his windowsill, battered but unbroken. All her emotions were strong: her anger, her disillusion, her despair—and her love.
He picked up the plate of sandwiches on the desk and approached her. “Don’t starve yourself. It won’t help you and it certainly won’t help your aunt.”
She grimaced as if the plate were full of live scorpions. But just when he thought she’d knock it to the floor, she accepted it. “Thank you.”
“I’ll ring for a new pot of tea.”
“You don’t need to be so nice to me. I won’t appreciate it.”
Of this he knew better than she. “Wrong: I’ve never met a woman more grateful for a little kindness.”
She glowered and turned her shoulders more firmly toward the window.
* * *
The afternoon post brought a letter from Aunt Rachel.
Dear Elissande,
On my way to London, I met an old school friend of mine on the train. Imagine my delight! We have decided to stop at Exeter and take in the sights. Mrs. Halliday desires to meet you. She suggests that you take the 7:00 from Paignton tonight and detrain at the Queen Street station. Call for us at the Rougemont.
Your loving aunt
P.S. Come alone, as she is not fond of strangers.
P.P.S. Wear your best jewels .
Elissande handed the letter to Lord Vere. “I have no jewels.”
It was the ultimate irony, as her uncle had made his fortune in diamonds. Jewels were an easily portable, highly liquid form of wealth; of course her uncle would not want her to have any.
“I have some of my mother’s pieces. They should do.”
She rubbed her temple. She hadn’t even realized it, but her head had been throbbing for quite a while. “So I present myself at the Rougemont and meekly hand over your mother’s jewels?”
“Not you, we. I’ll be there.”
“You saw what the note said. I’m to go alone.”
“You will seem alone to him, but I’ll be there. I’ll watch out for you.”
“But if we travel together—”
“You will take the seven-o’clock, as he instructed. I’m going to take an earlier train to Exeter and see what arrangements I can make.”
She hadn’t expected him to go before her. She did not want to be alone now. She wanted—she needed—never mind what she wanted. If there was anything he could do in Exeter to help her retrieve Aunt Rachel safe and whole, then he must go to Exeter.
“Right.”
He touched her lightly on her sleeve. “If anyone can handle him, you can.”
“Right,” she repeated, pushing away the memories of what had happened the last time she was alone with her uncle.
He looked at her a moment. “I have a few minutes before I must go. Let me help you prepare.”
Chapter Nineteen
Elissande exited Queen Street station at two minutes past eight o’clock. Exeter was probably a nice, ordinary place. Tonight, however, its unfamiliar darkness harbored an all too familiar evil. And she wished nothing more than that she could run back inside the station and take the next train home.
She looked about, hoping to see her husband, her ally. But among the steady stream of people going into and coming out of the station, there was no one who had his height and size.
Then her heart seized. There, by the second lamppost from her, her uncle stood squinting at a rail schedule in the orange light. His brown lounge suit had been sized for someone two inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier. His hair had been dyed entirely gray, making him look ten years older. And he had a mustache when he had always been clean shaven before.
But she knew him by the way her blood congealed.
If anyone can handle him, you can.
She couldn’t, but she must. She had no choice.
She looked around once more for Lord Vere—no sign of him. She uttered a silent prayer and walked toward her uncle.
“Pardon me, sir. You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find the Rougemont?”
The man she’d known her entire life as Edmund Douglas stuffed the rail schedule into his pocket. “Good evening to you too, my dear Elissande. Did you truly come alone?”
“I would have liked to think I had a few more friends in the world. But you have seen to it that I have no one besides my aunt, sir.”
“And what about your much adored husband?”
“Does it amuse you to see me married to an idiot?”
Her uncle laughed softly. “I can’t deny there is, shall we say, a certain je ne sais quoi to the situation—he is no doubt the biggest cretin since Claudius himself, and you shall have a passel of moronic children. But other than that, I am delighted to see you so happily and profitably settled.”
“You certainly do look pleased. The fugitive life seems to agree with you.”
He looked faintly surprised by her biting tone. Then his expression hardened. “To the contrary, it irks me a great deal. I’m too old to be constantly on the move, and your aunt likewise—we should be settled down in peace and comfort. And this is where you will play your dutiful role, my dear niece, and supply us with that dignity that at our age we cannot do without.”
“That would depend.” Her unyielding tenor astonished even herself. If anything, she’d thought she would fall back on her falsely smiling ways. “Is my aunt well?”
“Of course. And overjoyed to see me.”
“I very much doubt that. Shall we go see her then?”
Her uncle’s gaze turned harsh; his voice grew even softer. “Such concern. You need not worry: Who could better care for a woman than her devoted husband of twenty-five years?”
She said nothing, her fingers clutching hard at her reticule.
“Do let us go someplace more cordial to talk,” murmured her uncle.
* * *
The Rougemont was practically across the street from the railway station. But Edmund Douglas hailed a hansom cab. They drove away from the center of the city, descended toward the River Exe, and turned onto a bedraggled-looking street.
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