Instantly the two men stared at her from several arm-lengths apart. Nobody spoke as they stared at the tear-covered face of the betrayed woman. No one could guess what Eliza was thinking. They wondered whether she would shoot her brother or her lover.
“Is what they are saying true, Curtis? Were you the highwayman who hurt Rebecca? Were you going to kill Nicholas and Clarisse as well? I followed them here tonight, because I wanted to help capture Sims’ murderer. Was that you, Curtis?” When he hesitated, she pulled back on the hammer. “Tell me the truth.”
He grinned charmingly at her. “Eliza, you know I love you. I wanted only the best for you.”
“No,” she said softly, as tears flowed along her cheeks, “you don’t love me, Curtis. You never did! You only used me. You hurt my family and friends. I loved you. I trusted you.” She drew the hammer back farther.
Rebecca whispered, “No, Eliza, don’t do this!” Eliza would be haunted all her life if she killed Curtis.
Her words were lost in the explosion. The men on the other side of the chasm fell to the floor in fear. Their leader clutched his chest, where a deep-red stain was expanding in the center of his coat. For a second, he wobbled on the edge of the cliff. Then, with a scream that would echo through all their nightmares, he fell backward.
As she sobbed, the weapon fell from Eliza’s fingers to the stone floor. Rebecca rushed to enfold her in her arms. Into her wet hair, she murmured over and over that it was all right, that they were all safe, that there was nothing else she could have done.
Nicholas peered once over the edge of the wide crack in the floor. Turning, he picked up the gun Eliza had used and threw it into the crevice. He wrapped his arms around his wife and sister. Feeling other eyes on him, he asked, “How are you doing, Clarisse?”
Wryly, she smiled. Knowing there was no hope of love between them, perhaps it was time to be the friends they had been too many years ago. “I have done much better and much worse. Let’s go home.”
Triumphant laughter filled his eyes as he swung his sobbing sister into his arms. Over his shoulder, he called, “Gentlemen, enjoy your last night as free men. I will arrange for the sheriff to pick you up at low tide in the morning.” Lastly, he turned to Rebecca. “Shall we go home, sweetheart?”
“To our home?” she teased, reminding him of the time when she had refused to accept that she was his wife. It was not easy to joke, but she wanted to banish the wicked darkness Curtis Langston had brought into their lives.
“Most definitely to our home, my darling Rebecca!”
Epilogue
Rebecca walked into her husband’s study. With a tired smile, she sank down onto a padded settee. She watched as he finished the letter he was writing. Melting wax, he affixed the seal of Foxbridge Cloister at the bottom.
When he was done, Nicholas asked, “How is Eliza?”
“She’s better. The shock is beginning to wear off a little. Once it does, she should be able to mourn much more naturally. It isn’t easy to kill the man you love.” She shuddered. The thought of facing the man who sat at the desk and having to choose between his life and her family’s was too horrible to consider.
He rose and sat next to her. Taking her hands, he brought them to his lips. “I will never betray you, my love. You know you needn’t worry about that.”
“I don’t, Nicholas.” She grinned impishly as she said, “Now that Clarisse has announced her plans to marry Richard Carter, I don’t have to worry about you inviting her to take my place again.”
“You will never let me forget that, will you?” He laughed, his dark eyes sparkling. “It might have worked, if I hadn’t had such a resourceful wife who managed her own escape.”
He drew her close as he placed his lips over hers. His arms tightened around her. He would never be able to forget how near he had come more than once to losing this lovely, loving lady. The endless horror of those two days when he had known she was in the hands of a sadist would remain in the corners of his heart until the time he closed his eyes in eternal sleep.
“I love you, Nicholas,” she whispered.
“And I love you.” He leaned her back against the seat cushion so he could feel all of her beneath him.
She reached up to push an errant strand of hair back toward his queue. “We should do something for Eliza. A change of scenery or some sort of excitement that would take her mind off what has happened. She needs a chance to start over again without the cruelly curious glances of people who know she shot her fiance.”
They all needed a different type of excitement than had been going on since before the masquerade ball, when more had been revealed beneath the masks than the identities of the revelers. The Wythes needed a chance to laugh again as once had been normal. Even if things went back to the way they had been before the tragedy, Rebecca would have preferred it. Lady Margaret seemed to accept her, but it was not worth what it had cost to gain that acceptance.
The coroner’s inquest and the probe by the sheriff had been brief. The evidence was self-explanatory. With the story of the highwayman spread throughout the shire and the witnesses to the kidnapping of Clarisse Beckwith, there was very little need for further investigation. Langston’s cohorts had been duly tried and duly hanged with the efficiency of a vengeful public.
A few changes had been made to the truth so as not to cause more injury to the innocent. Both Lady Margaret Wythe and Lord Foxbridge had testified under oath that Clarisse Beckwith had been informed of Nicholas’ plan to delude the highwayman. Without that slight perjury, Clarisse might not have been able to accept Richard’s proposal. Instead of being shamed, she had basked in the reflected glory.
In the two months since the abduction, Eliza had remained secluded. The local gentry had left already for the winter season in London, but the Wythes stayed at Foxbridge Cloister. To take Eliza to the familiar spots where she had been courted by her heartless lover would have been too pitiless. Rebecca kept the nosy and inconsiderate away from her heartbroken sister-in-law, but the time had come to help Eliza put her life back together again.
Rebecca had made sure that the letter from the solicitors was destroyed before anyone but Nicholas could read it. Doyle had learned that Curtis Langston was the most current alias for a one-time actor who had been the lover of more lonely women than he could determine. In his role as Eliza’s suitor, he had aspired to his greatest part of all: becoming the owner of Foxbridge Cloister. In a way, that news did not surprise her. Curtis had watched the others and reacted as if reading a script. He had been so many different persons to each one he met that he would have had to be a consummate actor to assume all those identities.
When she had shown Nicholas the letter from London, she had had to explain her reasons for her unease. It was not difficult, for they knew that she had been correct in her intuition. Knowing that she had been right was no consolation for the pain they had suffered simply because she had not been at Foxbridge Cloister to receive her letter when it arrived the day after her abduction.
Nicholas looked down into her eyes, which were nearly violet with her horror as she recalled those hours of torture. Softly he mused, “I have been thinking of taking her away, too. How about a trip? You, me, Eliza, and Mother, if she wants to go.”
“Where?”
He smiled secretively. “I was considering a sea voyage. It is so peaceful at sea. Unless, of course, you are traveling with a woman who refuses to admit she loves you.”
“Enough of that aggravating teasing, Nicholas!” she reprimanded with a laugh. “If you want to know the truth, I didn’t fall in love with you on the Neptune’s Prize.”
“And when did you fall in love with me, my stubborn wife?”
“I don’t know exactly. Now it seems like I have always loved you. I know that I was worried that I loved you the day I had the accident in the copse. By the time of the church fair, I could not doubt that I adored your obstinate, thick-headed British ways.” She laughed. “Maybe it was when you had pat
ience with all the mistakes I made when I was learning to ride and spent more time on the ground than on Blossom’s back. I knew if you wanted me then, you must be someone very special.”
“That was before you heard from Hart.”
She smiled as she combed her fingers through his hair. When his lips touched the curve of her throat, she whispered, “Of course it was. I was just trying to fight my love the rest of the time. Sometimes it is fun to lose, my love.” She put her hands on his cheeks and drew his face back so she could look into his eyes. “You haven’t told me where we are going.”
“How about those colonies that have the audacity to call themselves the United States of America? I have been thinking it’s about time to visit my in-laws and introduce myself in a little bit less sensational manner.” He kissed her cheek. In a more serious voice, he asked, “How would you like to go home for a visit, my love?”
Softly, as she pulled his mouth over hers, she said, “I am home, Nicholas. Wherever you are, that is where I am at home.” The rest of her reply was lost in the soft murmur of love from his lips against her skin.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Foxbridge Legacy
Chapter One
“Lady Mariel! Lady Mariel! The reverend is here to see you.”
Sparks of blue fury snapped in her narrowed eyes as the woman turned to see the maid coming toward her. She stood and clapped her ash-coated hands together. A sooty cloud rose to dim the raven lights of her hair. She tugged irritably at the fashionable silk gown now marred by fingerprints and a rip on the left side of the pink skirt.
“The reverend? Why in the blazes would I want to talk to Reverend Tanner now?” She glanced around in disbelief. A fire-weakened beam creaked ominously overhead, and she stepped quickly out of what once had been the cell of a fourteenth-century monk. “Tell him I’m too busy investigating the extent of the damage to the Cloister.”
“But, Lady Mariel—”
“For God’s sake, Grace, just tell Reverend Tanner I’m too busy today. I’ll see him next Tuesday about the society fundraiser.”
“But, Lady Mariel—” She paused when she saw that Lady Mariel Wythe had turned back to her grim task. Grace shivered as she glanced at the destruction around her. The once-magnificent original section of Foxbridge Cloister had been reduced to smoking ruins. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. The place stank of damp, scorched wood. Even the strong breezes from the sea could not cleanse it.
She wondered why Lady Mariel had come out here. Lord Foxbridge would not be pleased to learn his niece had done something so dangerous. He would not want her poking about among the shattered glass and unstable stone walls. Even though he delighted in queer explorations, he wanted Lady Mariel to have, as he said so often, “a normal life.”
Knowing it would be futile to argue with the chatelaine of the Cloister, she picked her way back to the “new” section. Built in the sixteenth century, it postdated the original monastery by nearly four hundred years. Fortunately, it had suffered little damage in the fire.
Mariel swore under her breath as she tripped on a fallen timber and scraped her shin on a stone bench in the center of the narrow hallway. Why the wide seat had been moved to obstruct the corridor, she could not guess.
With a sigh, she sat on it and gazed sadly around her. Sorrow pulsed stronger than anger within her. She had been born at the Cloister twenty-six years before. Memories of her childhood brought to mind scenes of playing games in these passageways and attending special family services in the now-decimated chapel at the end farthest from the “new” Cloister.
The fire had been an accident. How and where it had started, no one knew. Nothing could change it. Still, she longed to steal the gentle images from her heart and make them reality. No other children would play among the empty cells and dare the ancient spirits to awaken. All they would see was the empty-eyed stare of the glassless windows in the sections of wall still standing.
Tears burned her eyes as she gazed at the sky. The lead roof, which had survived King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, the religious rage of the Civil War, and the Restoration, lay melted in great, cannon-ball-sized blobs on the stone floor. Her right forefinger still smarted from foolishly touching one of the hot masses.
A crunch made her whirl on the bench. Silk protested with a sharp rip, but she ignored it. If Phipps had not made her so furious, she would have changed before coming here. She had liked this tea gown. Now it probably was ruined beyond repair.
Her suddenly clear eyes met those of a stranger. She noted with minimal interest his sea-green eyes and dark hair. As he stepped closer, a flash of auburn blared as the sun struck his hair. His perfectly tailored morning suit was littered with ash.
“Lady Mariel?” His voice resonated richly through the remains of the long corridor. As he moved toward her, she saw he depended on a cane to walk.
Irritation overcame her instinctively courteous reaction. She had not slept since the fire started two nights ago. Fatigue lowered her barriers to release her true feelings.
“Who are you?” she demanded sharply. “What are you doing tramping through here? You could get hurt.”
His professionally serene smile dimmed as he kept himself from retorting as curtly. He viewed her tattered gown and the streaks of dirt crisscrossing her face in the dried paths of tears. Her defensive stance reminded him of a medieval lady standing in the ashes of her ancestral home. It urged him to speak gently.
“My lady, I am Ian Beckwith-Carter, the new pastor at the church in Foxbridge.”
“New pastor?” She scowled as she sought in her mind for an elusive memory. A cold smile settled on her lips. “Oh, yes, I remember hearing Reverend Tanner was retiring.”
“Remember hearing? I assume you are not a regular churchgoer, Lady Mariel?”
Her hands settled on the bench as she struggled to remain calm. She grimaced as the coarse soot ingrained in her palms cut into her skin. Ignoring the aggravating pain, she stood.
“Reverend, if you have come to Foxbridge Cloister to lecture me on my laxness in attending church, you chose the wrong day. You are new here. When you’ve been in Foxbridge a while, you’ll learn, as everyone else has, that it is too late to save the souls of those crazy Wythes.” She brushed off her hand and extended it to him. “Good day, Reverend.”
He refused to accept her dismissal. “My lady, I make it a practice to call on all my parishioners, and—”
“Consider that obligation fulfilled.” She turned to walk away. When he called after her, she paused. With a sigh worthy of a martyr, she said, “Very well, Reverend. I see you are less easy to dispense with than that old fool Tanner. I will meet you in fifteen minutes in the front parlor. We shall chat as you wish.” Her eyes swept the littered hallway. “There’s nothing more I can do here now.”
He watched as the fierce martinet transformed into a pretty woman whose heart was shattered by the destruction of her home. That image lasted only a second before her stern expression reasserted itself. He stepped back hastily as she brushed past him to return to the undamaged section of the Cloister.
“Fifteen minutes,” she called over her shoulder.
With a smile, he wondered if that was also the amount of time she would grant him for this reluctant interview. He did not move until she was out of sight amid the rubble. His eyes twinkled as he imagined the confrontation to come. He had been warned, but that made him only more anxious to meet the fiery, opinionated Lady Mariel Wythe.
Picking his way back the way he had come to find her, Reverend Beckwith-Carter anticipated their meeting in the fabulous house. From his small home in the village, he had seen Foxbridge Cloister perched majestically near the sea cliffs. It overlooked the land it once had controlled. Although most of the land was owned by the families of the onetime tenant farmers, he guessed the Wythes had lost none of their imperious attitude. He suspected he would be sure of that when this meeting was completed.
By the time Mariel rea
ched her rooms on the second floor of the Cloister, she was livid. Reverend Tanner had been bad enough, with his bigoted ideas of where women fit into the scheme of the world. His continual, far from subtle hints that she should find a husband and raise a brood of children to repopulate the Cloister irritated her. She was sure he wanted only to stop her interference in village affairs. More than once he had denounced from the pulpit the law that allowed women to vote in local elections.
His retirement should have come as a relief, but instead she would be saddled with this new, more irritating minister. That she had backed down during this first encounter must not have any bearing on their future meetings. She was so exhausted and was burdened with the task of writing to her uncle to inform him of the damage to his home. Otherwise her usually sharp wits would have found a way to send the new parson back to town after ordering him to leave her in peace.
She stormed into her room. It was situated across the hall from the master suite where her uncle slept when he resided in the Cloister. Her rooms were almost as grand, for she had had all the suites of the massive house to use in shopping to select the furniture she wanted.
The sitting room, in its pale shades of blue, was empty as she swept through it. She ignored the quiescent fireplace and the shelves of books. Too often had she seen the comfortable chairs and large desk to notice them when she was lost in her outrage.
Her bedroom overlooked the ocean on the western side of the house. She loved this room because she was never without the changing temper of nature. Wind, rain, and sun struck uncompromisingly on this side of the house. She reveled in the difference of each day.
Throwing her hat on the clean covers of her tester bed, she caught her reflection in the cheval glass and scowled. Stamping past her dressing table and the couch where she often read late into the night, she glared at her own dirty face. That she had met the new minister while she looked as if she had been cleaning chimney pots added to her fury. She rubbed some of the ashes from her cheek, but succeeded only in making a wider streak across her face.
Rebecca Page 39