Adored In Autumn

by Jess Michaels

  She lifted her gaze to him and her eyes were filled with panic and terror. He wanted so much to help her, to ease it.

  “Then how did he die?” he asked, her demeanor making him fear the answer. Dread it.

  “I…I killed him,” she finally said on a low and broken sob that cut through him as deeply and as thoroughly as any knife would have done. “And someone may know it.”

  Chapter Four

  Felicity had been forced to repeat her story several times since the truth came out a month ago. To her brothers and John Dane, with more details so that they could understand better, with specific parts given more weight as Dane took page after page of notes.

  Every single time she repeated it, it felt like she relived it. Every single word she said felt like it tore away a tiny extra piece of her soul.

  But none of those times had ever been as difficult as when she said those two little sentences to Asher. He was staring at her now, his handsome face pale and lined with shock and disbelief. But slowly it gave way to the thing she’d never wanted to see from him.

  Pity.

  She spun away so she didn’t have to see it and paced to the fire where he’d been standing when she entered the room. The flames were hot but did nothing to take the chill from her bones.

  Suddenly she felt his presence behind her, followed by the gentle touch of his hands on her arms. She nearly collapsed with it. He hadn’t touched her since that night on the terrace all those years ago. His hands cupped her elbows with gentle pressure and he turned her. Now she was almost in his arms.

  And it was torture.

  She stared up at him, memorizing the lines of his face from this miniscule distance. Remembering how he had felt the last time they were so close.

  He reached up and traced the line of her cheek with the back of his hand. “What happened?” he asked.

  Her breath left her lungs in a sob and his thumb drew along her jaw gently. Tears blurred her vision, but she refused to let them fall as she gasped out, “Must I say it?”

  “If I’m here because of this, then I fear the answer is yes,” he said.

  She should have moved away from him, but there was such comfort in his nearness. In the feather-light brush of his hands along her skin.

  With another shuddering sigh she slowly explained that horrible night and the attack on her, followed by the murder and the subsequent cover up. She saw his jaw tighten as she explained it all, saw a fire enter his eyes that she’d never seen there before. It was pure rage.

  “I assume that wasn’t the first time he put his hands on you,” he finally ground out when she was finished.

  She blinked. She had expected him to ask her more about the killing, to press her on details of after and why he was here. Instead, he dove backwards, through the awful years of her marriage.

  She shook her head slowly. “No. It was an unhappy union from the start and he often displayed his displeasure with his fists.”

  Asher spun away, depriving her of his warmth, his soothing touch. He stalked across the room and slammed open the lower door on the sideboard, drawing out a bottle of scotch that was kept there. Without a word, he drew away the top and swigged a gulp.

  “It’s too early,” he grunted as he set the bottle back and slammed the cabinet shut. “But I needed something to burn out the taste in my mouth.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry my story causes you disgust.”

  He moved toward her in three long steps and his eyes were wide. “Not you, Felicity. My God, I’m glad you defended yourself. If he had struck you down, it would have…I would have never been the same.”

  The pain on his face stopped her in her tracks and she lifted a hand, wanting to trace the line of his jaw, let her fingers touch his lips. But she caught herself before she did something so foolish and jammed her hand back down at her side.

  “I thought I’d covered everything,” she said, backing away from him. “That my servants would remain silent. But there was one who wasn’t, it seems. Have you heard of the Duke of Kirkford?”

  Asher’s face twisted. “I’m not in your circles by birth, Felicity, but I work in them in London. Not to mention he married Elise, who was also a friend of mine. So of course I know of Kirkford.”

  Felicity frowned. “Of course. I’m sorry. Well, have you ever wondered how exactly it was that he married Elise? How he convinced her to end her engagement to Stenfax?”

  Asher shifted. “There were…rumors.”

  She shook her head. “Lies. Created by Kirkford. In truth, he found out my secret and he used it to blackmail Elise. All those years our family despised her and Stenfax was broken, it turns out she was actually trying to save me.”

  “What?” Asher’s shock was clear. “My God.”

  “What she suffered for me…” She swallowed hard. “I could never begin to repay it. I’m only comforted by the fact that she and Stenfax have found their way back to each other. They’re very happy now.”

  Asher’s expression softened. “I’m glad to hear of it. But I’m confused. If it was Elise’s late husband who was the blackmailer and he is long dead, how are you threatened now?”

  She lifted her gaze toward the ceiling and tried to calm her racing heart. “Kirkford kept a book of all the secrets he had on others. Including mine. When he died, it disappeared, but his successor was searching for it.”

  “The next Kirkford. Who was murdered by his cousin, yes?” Asher asked.

  She nodded. “Who took the book. And all the evidence it contains that I am a murderer who should be sent to the gallows.”

  He stiffened. “When did this happen?”

  “Last month. The only reason he hasn’t already done something with it is that the book was encoded. If we can get to it before he breaks that code, we can destroy it.”

  “And you’ll be safe,” Asher finished, his tone breathless now.

  She hesitated. Safe. She’d be physically safe, perhaps, but she wasn’t certain she’d ever feel completely comfortable again. It had been three years since Barbridge breathed his last on her chamber floor and she still lay awake at night, analyzing every creak of every floorboard, every shadow that moved across her wall.

  Safe? She wasn’t certain that was possible for her.

  “What can I do?” Asher asked.

  She blinked away her troubling thoughts and forced herself back to this moment with this man. “Stenfax and Gray are working to find where the book and the man who took it, Roger Beckford, have gone. They want to find it before the guard finds him and it all becomes more…complicated. They have help. Rosalinde—that is Gray’s wife—her sister is married to a former agent for the War Department.”

  Asher’s eyes went wide. “I see.”

  “He’s good at a lot of things, but he welcomes help with tracking the financial trails.”

  “You think Kirkford and his cousins have blackmailed others with the information he collected,” Asher said.

  “It’s a possibility,” Felicity said with a shake of her head.

  “I do have some experience with that,” Asher admitted.

  “And will you…will you help me?” she asked at last, holding her breath as she waited for him to abandon her just as he had abandoned her all those years ago.

  His brow wrinkled and he moved toward her. He slid a hand across her jaw, cupping her face gently. “Felicity, with all we once were to each other, do you really think I would ever answer no to that question? That I wouldn’t do everything in my power to protect you?”

  His breath was warm on her skin and he was so damned close that she swore she could feel his pounding heart, throbbing in the same rhythm as her own. Her lips parted and she stared up into his face, his utterly beautiful face, and was lost.

  His pupils dilated, and there was a moment when everything in the room, in between them, shifted dramatically. His gaze became heated, hooded, and slowly he began to lean in toward her.

  He was going to kiss her. Right here in her
brother’s office, like no time had passed. Like he was picking up a book he’d stopped reading on the terrace all those years ago and turning the page.

  And she wanted him to do just that. She wanted to pretend the intervening years hadn’t happened and to open herself to him. To let him in.

  Only she knew how that would end. He’d walked away once with no trouble. There was no reason in the world to believe he wouldn’t do exactly the same thing again.

  She ducked her head before his lips could touch hers and pulled back. He released her immediately, watching wordlessly as she turned away from him.

  “Stenfax will want to see you now that you know the truth,” she managed to whisper in a broken voice that felt so hollow and foreign. “I’ll fetch him. Excuse me.”

  Somehow she didn’t look back as she walked away, even as she felt Asher’s stare burning a hole through her back. Somehow she managed to breathe as she stepped into the hallway and toward the front parlor where she was certain her brother was waiting.

  Somehow she managed to pretend that everything was fine and normal and not turned upside down. But it wasn’t. Asher was here, Asher was still everything she’d ever wanted…and Asher was the one thing she’d never have. She couldn’t let herself even dare to want him.

  It was too dangerous.

  Asher stared at the stop in the door where Felicity had just walked away and tried to control the sting that worked through his body after her rejection. He understood it on some level. After what she’d been through…

  He muttered a curse and fisted his hands at his sides. The two years Felicity had been married, Asher had tried his level best not to think of her and what her life was like. When he did, though, he pictured her happy, well taken care of, loved, because of course any man who spent more than ten minutes with her would love her.

  Now he knew how wrong he was. How terrifying and painful and brutal that time had been for her. Obviously that horrible time in her life still affected her.

  Even if all that wasn’t true, the fact remained that Asher was no more than a servant’s son to Felicity. This wasn’t a night on a terrace when she was a girl. His father was right that Asher didn’t belong. His time as a solicitor had proven that to him. His friendship with her and her family had always been tenuous at best. They saw him as a servant first. That night…what had happened after the kiss…proved it.

  So it was no wonder she turned away from him. He’d been foolish to think to kiss her. It was not a mistake he would repeat, for both their sakes.

  The door behind him opened and he turned as Stenfax and Gray entered, followed by another man. Stenfax and Gray both grinned as they crossed the room to him.

  “There he is,” Stenfax said with a laugh. “Asher!”

  Asher held out a hand to shake, but Stenfax bypassed it and Asher was surprised when his old friend and employer dragged him in for a brief hug.

  “Good to see you,” Stenfax said, stepping aside.

  Gray was smiling too, but he held out a hand rather than embraced Asher. “This brings back memories, for certain,” Gray said. “Do you remember that time when we stole Father’s phaeton and—”

  Asher laughed and interrupted, “Don’t! My backside still stings from the tanning I got after that. I couldn’t sit for a week.”

  Stenfax chuckled and then turned toward the other man, the one Asher didn’t know. “Let me introduce you to John Dane. Gray’s brother-in-law.”

  Asher stepped forward and held out a hand as he examined the man. He looked so…normal for someone who he now knew had once been a spy. He was tall, with dark blond hair and a beard. But there was no mistaking the intelligence in the other man’s eyes, nor how he was reading Asher as he shook his hand.

  “A pleasure,” Dane said.

  As Asher pulled his hand away, he looked at the three men and his smile fell. “I appreciate the pleasantries, of course, and I do want to catch up, but I think we all know why I’m here.”

  Gray let out a low sigh and all the troubles in the world seemed to descend upon him and Stenfax. “So Felicity told you the truth.”

  “She did.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “And I admit I’m utterly overwhelmed by what she said. I had no idea she was being abused and threatened. Or that Elise was dragged into it and blackmailed.”

  Stenfax shook his head. “We knew some of it, of course, but not that Felicity was driven so far as to kill her husband. That didn’t come out until Elise came back to me and was forced to reveal the blackmail that separated us.”

  Asher’s eyes went wide as he stared at the brothers. When Felicity confessed her story, he had assumed her family had been in the dark about her marriage.

  “You—you knew Barbridge was hurting her?” he repeated.

  Gray’s jaw set. “Some bruises she couldn’t hide. And her demeanor told the story. The bright and bubbly girl she once was faded further and further away the longer she was married to him. She was reluctant to admit it, but at last she did.”

  Rage flooded Asher as he moved toward Stenfax, a fist clenched at his side. “Why the hell didn’t you help her?”

  Stenfax’s eyes went wide and Dane moved forward as if to intervene, but the earl held up a hand to stop him. “Steady, Asher. You know I love Felicity and I would do anything to protect her. But nothing I tried could circumvent the law, which labeled her as little more than property of Barbridge, to be kept in line however he saw fit. Nothing I did could free her of his control.”

  Gray’s face was pale. “I assure you, Asher, if we could go back, we would. We would change a great deal.”

  Asher opened his mouth to argue, but Dane stepped forward. “Gentlemen, none of us can go back and change the past. I suggest we not waste time deciding who was most to blame in the torment of Lady Barbridge. We must instead move forward if we hope to protect her now. Otherwise, in a few months, we will be arguing who failed her most when it comes to her secrets being revealed.”

  Asher flinched at that assessment and the room went deathly quiet. At last Stenfax spoke. “You are wise, as always, Dane. I’m happy to have your more detached advice.”

  “Don’t misread me,” Dane said. “I am not detached. Could I, I would go back in time and rip that bastard apart, for I have a great deal of respect for Lady Barbridge. But I know from experience that wishing the past could be different is not helpful.” He faced Asher. “I assume she told you what I am…what I was.”

  Asher nodded. “She said a spy for the War Department.”

  There was the barest flicker across Dane’s face, like he was reliving a life in a blink of an eye. “Yes. Which means I can work on the code, as well as any connections between the victims of this book of secrets. What I need to know is if you can work the money angle. I think Kirkford was blackmailing people around him with the information. We were able to obtain some of Elise’s husband’s paperwork in the chaos after the next duke’s death, and with her help I can see that he was receiving strange sums of money. But those kinds of patterns are not my specialty.”

  Asher took a long breath. “They are mine. So yes, if you give me what you have, I can most certainly do my best to decipher them.”

  Dane looked at each man in turn, his face serious, his jaw set. “Then I suggest we begin as soon as possible. Roger Beckford murdered his cousin and absconded with the book almost exactly a month ago. That’s a long time, even with as complicated a code as the book was written in. We’re already behind in our investigation. For Lady Barbridge’s sake, we must not get distracted.”

  Stenfax went behind his desk, pulling out piles of papers as Gray rang for tea and breakfast to be brought. As everyone went about their business, Asher stepped away from the action. What John Dane said was true, of course. To help Felicity, he would need to keep himself from distraction.

  And the biggest distraction of all was the lady herself.

  Chapter Five

  Felicity sat in the library, a cup of tea going cold by her side and a b
ook sitting unread in her lap. She found herself staring out the window, watching the leaves turn from summer green to autumn gold and red. Such beauty should have been a succor to her soul, but it wasn’t.

  Probably because her mind kept turning on her encounter with Asher the day before. He’d nearly kissed her, and no matter how she told herself that was not all right, she still found herself wishing she’d let him.

  But she hadn’t, and instead had hidden in her room with a false claim of a headache. She had skipped lunch, supper and breakfast, all trying to avoid him. Trying to avoid her own heart and all the silly things it insisted on desiring.

  “Felicity?”

  She jerked her head up in surprise at the sound of her name. It came from inside the room. She hadn’t even heard the door open, so lost in her reverie was she. She found it wasn’t one intruder on her hiding spot, but three. Rosalinde, Elise and Celia now stood at the door, all watching her.

  She got to her feet. “Goodness, I was so engrossed in my book, I didn’t hear you.”

  None of the women looked that convinced by her words. Not that she could blame them considering she hadn’t even had her book open and she had no idea how long they had been standing watching her.

  She blushed. “Come in. Join me. There’s tea on the table by the window. Taylor brought enough for a small army. Apparently even the servants are bound to treat me like I’m a broken child.”

  Elise’s brow wrinkled as she moved to the table and began to pour the tea. “No one thinks you’re broken, Felicity.”

  “Please,” Felicity said with a sigh. “I see the looks on all your faces when you think I’m not aware. I can practically read your thoughts.”

  Celia leaned forward. “You lay your own thoughts on us, then, for none of us pity you or see you as damaged.”

  “On the contrary,” Rosalinde said with a shake of her head, “I personally consider you the strongest woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.”

  Felicity blushed at the kind compliments and watched as the ladies each took a place near her.