A minute passed, then two, and suddenly his eyes opened one last time. “Tell him!” he cried, and breathed his last.
There was a moment of stunned silence and then Mrs. Birrel leaned over and very gently placed her fingers on his wrist. She looked at the squire and said, “He is dead. Murdered.”
Chapter 19
The news that Colonel Denning had been murdered on a quiet country lane, and that his murderer had been seen by two local farmers, scorched like wildfire through the area. From the highest to the lowest, the colonel’s shocking death was the topic of conversation wherever people gathered, in their homes, in the fields and in every tavern and inn in the neighborhood. No one could stop talking about it.
A member of the gentry murdered in broad daylight on a public road! Shot! There’d been nothing like this in the area for decades—except when wealthy landowner Mr. Lockheed’s sister ruined herself twenty years ago by falling in love with and running away with a local smuggler. Oh, how the tongues had wagged then, but everyone agreed that a runaway match, no matter how shocking, didn’t compare to the colonel’s murder. Even Vincent Beverley’s tragic death over thirty years previously was dragged out and gossiped over once again. Of course, young Beverley’s death had been only mildly suspicious while Denning’s death had been cold-blooded murder!
Because of the events surrounding his demise, Colonel Denning’s funeral attracted a far larger crowd than it would have under normal circumstances. His face tense and grim, aware of the looks and the whispered comments of the avid onlookers as his stepfather was laid to rest in the village cemetery, Asher growled under his breath to Juliana, “Have they nothing better to do? Than gawk and stare?”
She calmed the growing rage she felt within him by laying a hand on his arm and murmuring, “They mean no harm. Your stepfather was a popular man in the neighborhood. People liked his bluff manner. Many would be here even if he had not been murdered.”
He took a deep breath and nodded, tamping back the helpless fury that seared through him. His gaze swept over the anguished faces of his brother and his two sisters standing across the grave from him and the feeling of helplessness and fury only increased. For as long as he could remember he had protected them, but their grief, their loss was something he could do nothing about and it only added to his feeling of impotent rage. Though they’d sent notification to Robert, fighting God knew where on the continent, they’d known that even if he was granted leave, highly unlikely, he would be unable to be with them, and Asher suffered for him, too, having to bear this terrible pain alone. Losing their father, so suddenly, so violently, had been a horrid jolt for the entire family. And moodily Asher admitted that for all his faults, in his fashion, Denning had loved his children. They would all miss him, his jovial presence and his easy affection.
To his surprise, Asher found that he, too, mourned the passing of a man he had been so certain that he despised. He may have resented Denning, may have harbored ill will against the man for the pain and despair he had carelessly inflicted upon Asher’s mother and his lack of concern over the future of his children, but even in Asher’s blackest moments, he had never wished the man dead. Changed. Different. More responsible, yes. But never dead. And never murdered.
Denning’s death hit him hard, devastated him, and as the days passed, he understood for the first time that underneath all of his resentment and contempt for the man, he’d loved him in his own fashion. Aware that Denning had also loved his children in his own fashion, his lips twisted. Perhaps there was little difference between himself and his stepfather, after all.
The funeral behind them, the family faced the reading of the will. Denning’s will had been simple and, drafted just a few days after he had purchased Rosevale, held few surprises. As John and Asher had known, Rosevale was to go to Robert. Never having much more than two coins to rub together, with his daughters comfortably settled and John established at Apple Hill, Asher always able to fend for himself, Denning had stipulated that the remainder of his belongings were to be divided amongst his children and his stepson. Asher had been touched that Denning had seen to it that Jane’s desk had been specifically designated as going to his stepson. There was one surprise: an addition to the will signed and witnessed the day before Denning died, left his small library to Asher. Being no great reader, Asher was puzzled by the bequest, but he shrugged it away. He’d never understood his stepfather in life, why should he in death?
Martha and Elizabeth along with their husbands stayed at Apple Hill with John for a few more days after the reading of the will. Along with Asher and Juliana, they helped go through Denning’s belongings and generally consoled each other. On a Monday morning some eleven days after the colonel’s murder, Denning’s two daughters tearfully departed for their homes with their husbands. Asher, with Juliana, Mrs. Manley and John standing beside him in the driveway at Apple Hill, watched them ride away in the big traveling coach with mixed feelings. He was relieved that he would no longer be faced with sad faces, tears and woeful questions…questions without any answers about Denning’s death, but there was a part of him that ached to see them go.
When the coach disappeared around the bend and there was only a cloud of dust to indicate its passing, the four of them slowly walked back into the house. There was not much conversation between them as they wandered into the front parlor of the house and each one drifted to either a chair or the horsehair sofa covered in rich brown and fawn figured velvet.
Her face tired and drawn, Mrs. Manley summed up everyone’s feeling. “I am certainly glad,” she said in her forthright manner, “that horrible ordeal is behind us and we can begin to move forward now.”
“I cannot believe that he is gone,” John said huskily, his gaze dull and wounded. “I keep thinking I’ll hear his horse and he will come striding through the door, with some quip or story to relate.”
Mrs. Manley nodded. “I felt that way when your mother left us. I kept thinking I’d hear her voice or her laugh and she’d walk into the room eager to tell me some prank one of you children had pulled…or how clever you had been.” Her expression kind, she said, “I know that it isn’t much comfort now, but just as it did after your mother died, the pain does gradually fade and there will be a time that you can think of him without this terrible empty ache in your heart. You’ll always miss him, just as we all still miss your mother, but time really does heal the wound.”
“Will you be all right?” Asher asked, searching his brother’s face.
John flashed him a crooked smile. “May I remind you, though I know you think differently, that I am a grown man and that I don’t need my big brother to coddle me?” At Asher’s wry smile, he added, “I shall be fine. I do think, however, that once I have assured myself that the farms can survive without me for a few weeks, I might go to Brighton and watch the antics of Prinny for a while.”
Asher nodded, thinking that it would be good for John to be away from Apple Hill—and the avid looks and rampant gossip.
At present it was the general opinion of officialdom and the neighborhood at large that a stranger, perhaps a passing highwayman, had killed the poor old colonel. The region had its share of miscreants, but everyone was convinced that no one local could have done such a wicked deed.
During the time following his stepfather’s murder, to the exclusion of just about everything else but his wife, Asher had been deeply involved with consoling the family and all the usual arrangements and business connected with the death of a loved one. But with the departure of his sisters, he felt he could now turn his full attention to the task of avenging his stepfather’s death.
The minute Asher learned of his stepfather’s murder, he’d known as if he’d seen it happen that Ormsby had murdered Denning. He wasn’t leaping to conclusions either. From everything he knew about the relationship between Denning and Ormsby, it was an inescapable conclusion that Denning had been blackmailing Ormsby. Being the victim of blackmail, Asher reasoned, gave Ormsby a powerful
motive to want Denning dead. And from his own experience with the London thugs, he knew that Ormsby was capable of murder. With a bone-deep certainty he was convinced that Ormsby had killed Denning, and if he’d needed another prod to kill Ormsby, which he didn’t, Ormsby’s murder of his stepfather definitely gave it to him.
Bitterly aware that it would never occur to anyone else to consider that the Marquis of Ormsby would have had a hand in anything so sordid as murder, he hadn’t been surprised that Ormsby’s name had never arisen in connection with the colonel’s death. Which bothered him not a bit—he had his own plans for the marquis and he had no more qualms about killing him than he did a rat in a grain bin.
Ormsby had been noticeably absent from all the various functions arranged in connection with Denning’s death, and Asher had noted it. Guilty conscience? Asher doubted it. But the thought of a guilty conscience pricked his own conscience and he decided that it was time he made some overdue visits.
The squire and his family and the Birrels attended all of the functions connected with Denning’s death and expressed their condolences. But to Asher’s mystification, the squire and Mrs. Birrel both sent him private notes, requesting that he call on them, but busy with everything else, Asher hadn’t yet gotten around to it. With family duties taken care of, he rode over to the squire’s house that afternoon.
His face somber, Squire Ripley said heavily, “You need to talk to Mrs. Birrel. She was actually in the gig with him when he died. He spoke to her. I couldn’t make any of it out…except that he wanted you told something. He kept repeating, tell Asher. But talk to Mrs. Birrel.” He shook his head. “This is a terrible thing to have happened. You know that you and your family have our deepest sympathies. Anything we can do for you, say the word.”
This was the first he’d learned that Denning had still been alive when Mrs. Birrel and the squire found him. His curiosity aroused, Asher swung into the saddle and rode directly to the vicarage. Shown in to the comfortable sitting room at the front of the vicarage, Mrs. Birrel greeted him warmly, saying, “Oh, my dear boy! I am sorry for your loss. Such a tragedy.”
Brushing aside her sympathy, he said, “I am sorry that I could not come sooner. You wanted to speak privately with me?”
She nodded. “I should have simply told you when we came to call just after your stepfather’s murder, but I hesitated to burden you with what I’m afraid is utter nonsense at such a painful time.”
“Tell me what he said,” Asher said quietly.
“Saucerboo poem?” Asher repeated incredulously, when Mrs. Birrel repeated the colonel’s dying words to him. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Birrel said unhappily, “but he was most insistent that you be told. ‘Tell Asher.’ Those were his final words.” She frowned. “He also said that he wronged you—at least, I believe that’s what he meant.” She looked miserable. “I don’t think that he was in his right mind because the rest of it was just fragments and I’m sorry to say that with the shock of it all, I don’t remember exactly what he said. I know he muttered something like ‘or’ or ‘by’ but the one thing that is very vivid in my mind is that he most desperately wanted you to know something.” She blushed faintly. “The vicar and I discussed it and we saw no need to tell the constable. It was just nonsense.”
“You’re right,” Asher muttered, “it is nonsense.” He questioned her at length, but beyond the fact that Denning wanted him to know something and it had to do, she thought, with whatever “saucerboo poem” referred to, he learned little. Eventually, he thanked her and rode away. None of it made sense, but he puzzled over the colonel’s strange words, racking his brain to find some clue in “saucerboo poem.”
Neither John, Juliana or Mrs. Manley could deduce anything from Denning’s dying utterances either and the consensus was that he had been out of his mind and that the words meant nothing. The colonel’s last words were just one more element in the mystery surrounding his death.
On Tuesday, without his sisters’ calming influence and irritated by the lack of progress, John suggested that they hire a Bow Street Runner from London. It took all of Asher’s tact and delicate persuasion to guide John away from such an idea. Committed to killing Ormsby himself, the last thing Asher needed was to be stumbling over a Runner.
Unknowingly Mrs. Birrel had given him damning evidence that Ormsby killed his stepfather. At first he dismissed as gibberish what she had related, but lying in the bed the previous night, going over the conversation with Mrs. Birrel for perhaps the hundredth time, the words “or” and “by” leaped out at him. All that was missing, he thought savagely, was the “ms” from the middle. Add “ms” between “or” and “by” and you had Ormsby. A fierce exultation rose up within him. I have you now, you murdering bastard, he swore to himself, and I’m coming for you.
Asher’s diplomatic steering away from John’s notion of a Bow Street Runner did not go unnoticed by either his grandmother or his wife and both women studied him intently. Juliana knew that he was grappling with some inner torment; she was constantly aware of a preoccupied air about him—an air that only disappeared, she admitted with flushed cheeks, when he made love to her. Since his stepfather’s murder, she had the feeling that while he listened and talked and appeared to be paying attention to events around him, that his mind was elsewhere. At first, she’d assumed it was merely grief and shock that weighed on him, but lately there was something about him, something about the inimical gleam she sometimes glimpsed in his eyes that made her increasingly uneasy.
No less than Juliana was Mrs. Manley anxious about Asher’s state of mind. His grandmother knew him best of anyone alive and she was perhaps the only one who suspected that there was a deeper, darker side to her eldest grandson. Upon occasion, in particular when he had returned from one of his long absences, she had detected an aura of violence about him, an icy glitter in his eyes that transformed him into someone she didn’t recognize, a hard-faced stranger who frightened her…. And then in a split second, as if recalling himself, all sign of that dangerous stranger would be gone and her oh so charming scamp of a grandson would be laughing down at her, his gaze warm and affectionate. Worriedly, she studied his face. That dangerous stranger was peering out of his eyes too often of late for her liking and she was afraid for him.
On Thursday afternoon Mrs. Manley came to share a light meal with Asher and Juliana. The invitation had come from Juliana with the intriguing notation that she wanted to speak privately with her. The moment Mrs. Manley had arrived, Juliana had glanced over her shoulder and, seeing no sign of her husband, whisked her away to the small room at the side of the old farmhouse that was her temporary office.
Shutting the door behind her, she looked at Mrs. Manley. An uneasy smile on her pretty mouth, Juliana said, “I know you think that I’m acting mysteriously, but I wanted a word with you before Asher arrives—he’s been looking at cattle this morning with Wetherly—and he’s due back at any moment.”
Mrs. Manley took a seat in one of only two chairs in the whitewashed room and asked, “Is there something wrong? Asher?”
Juliana’s smile fled and, her face the picture of anxiety, she nodded. “I do not know what is wrong with him, but something is. He is so…absentminded…. No, that’s not it. It’s as if he’s here, but not here. I thought at first that it was his stepfather’s death, but with every passing day, instead of abating, his odd mood seems to be getting worse.” Baldly, she said, “He frightens me. There is a remoteness, a wall that I cannot seem to breach and I don’t know what to do about it.” She bit her lip and glanced down at the wide-planked oak floor. “Yesterday a note from Wetherly arrived and I carried it to Asher’s office. He must have been lost in thought and he didn’t hear me enter the room. I think I startled him.” Juliana swallowed and her eyes met Mrs. Manley’s. “He was standing, looking out the window, but when I spoke his name, he whirled around and the look he gave me….” She sank down onto the chair opposit
e Mrs. Manley’s, her hands twisting in her lap. “It was as if I faced a stranger. His expression was so cold, so hard, so, so violent—as if he could commit murder, that I actually stepped backward and screamed.” A flush stained her cheeks. “Of course, he laughed at my reaction, kissing me and smiling at me in that charming way he has and telling me it was my imagination. Oh, but Mrs. Manley, it was not my imagination!”
Mrs. Manley sighed. “No, it probably wasn’t. I’ve been worried myself lately about him.”
“You, too!” exclaimed Juliana, feeling the knot of anxiety that had been lodged in her chest loosening. Instantly, she no longer felt alone—or that she was going mad, imagining things. “I do not know what to do,” she admitted. “Ever since his stepfather died, he has been preoccupied and when I press him or try to talk to him about it, he simply smiles, changes the subject and pushes me aside.”
“What do you want me to do?” inquired Mrs. Manley helplessly. “You are the center of his world now. If you cannot get him to tell you what is bothering him, what do you think that I can do?”
Looking glum, Juliana shook her head. “I don’t know…. I guess I was hoping that you could give me a hint how to banish the terrible well of blackness I sense within him.”
A rap on the door startled both ladies and, leaping to her feet, Juliana rushed to open it.
“Ah, here you are,” said Asher. “Hannum told me that my grandmother had arrived and I wondered where the pair of you had vanished.”
He dropped a kiss on his wife’s cheek and walked over to his grandmother and bowed gallantly over her hand, pressing a kiss on her fingers. Straightening, a teasing gleam in his dark blue eyes, he glanced from one woman to the other. “I am indeed a lucky man—I have two beautiful ladies to grace my table this afternoon.”
Not by one word or one look, did Asher betray anything but real pleasure in the company of his wife and grandmother during the entire afternoon. He talked easily about the cattle and his plans to improve the herds of the farmers who leased his lands, sent his compliments to the kitchen for the tasty repast before him, expressed interest in Apollo’s preference for Mrs. Manley’s silk slippers and inquired warmly into his wife’s day. Anyone observing him would have decided that the concerns of his wife and grandmother were pure folly.
Passion Becomes Her Page 30