by Dara England
“Of course,” she said. “But then you met Celeste. Your father did not stand in the way of your marriage at least.” It was an attempt to bring the subject around to the present situation. She was uncertain why she wished to press him on the subject of her friend. What did she want? For him to admit to her, as he had to his father, that he had married poor Celeste for her wealth? She did not know. She only felt a certainty that she must continue in this vein.
Absalom snorted. “Why should my father have prevented my marriage? It was precisely what he wanted.”
She stepped nearer. “Why should that be so?” she asked with raised brows.
Abruptly, he seemed to realize he had strayed onto unsafe ground. “Well, isn’t it what all fathers want?” he answered vaguely. “To see their children well married and respectably settled down?”
He brought out his watch. “Ah, I see it is growing late. Perhaps I’d better check in with Father. He wanted to discuss some funeral arrangements with me. I trust you can find your way back to your room?”
Drucilla knew it was his way of letting her know he would not discuss Celeste further.
Chapter Eleven
Drucilla did not return to her room immediately. After Absalom had left her, she drifted downstairs and let herself out into the rose garden. In the privacy of the outdoors, she drew out the rumpled page from the poetry book she had discovered in Celeste’s room.
There, on a stone bench beneath the fading light of day, she read the brief, haunting tale of a new bride spurned by her husband and ruined in the worst way imaginable until at last the only solution she could see was to run away.
By the time she had finished reading, Drucilla had tears in her eyes and her hands were trembling with rage. Because she knew, she knew at last, what had really happened to poor Celeste and why this poem had meant so much to her.
And now there was someone she must confront.
***
“You are a married man, Lord Absalom,” she stated bluntly.
Around the dinner table, faces looked up in surprise, causing Drucilla to reflect that perhaps she had not chosen the best moment for this battle.
Across the table, Lord Absalom looked perplexed. “Yes, of course I am, Miss Winterbourne. Or was. But of course my title has changed to that of ‘widower’ since the death of Celeste.”
“I am not referring to your union with Celeste, Lord Absalom, but to your marriage with your true wife. Mrs. Portillo, as she calls herself.”
There was a moment’s silence and then Aunt Bridget, who had made a full recovery from her morning illness, burst out with, “Drucilla, don’t be absurd! This is a house of mourning and no place for tasteless jests.”
The old lady appealed to Lord Litchfield at the head of the table. “Please forgive my niece. As you can see, Celeste’s death has affected her deeply.”
“It has,” Drucilla cut in. “But I assure you I’m not speaking out of either ill-considered humor or hysterical grief. I retain my senses. Which is more than can be said for Lord Absalom when he first entered into his secret marriage.”
Lord Absalom’s laugh sounded forced. “Now I’m sure this is a joke. Who put you up to this? Southorn? Do you know what she’s talking about?”
But no one looked to Southorn. Drucilla believed they were all absorbed, as she was, in watching the color drain from Lord Absalom’s face. His long-fingered hands played nervously with his table-knife.
Drucilla was relentless. “After your imprudent match, you must have been very afraid of your father’s displeasure. So you concealed it from everyone, conniving instead to have the Spanish beauty you had married installed here as housekeeper. You knew it would be suspected she was your mistress but who would guess at the real truth which, to your family, would be far more shocking? You realized your father would accept his son’s foreign mistress of common origins much more easily than he could accept the same woman as his daughter-in-law and future lady of Blackridge.”
Lord Absalom’s cool façade was beginning to crumble. “I never heard such rubbish in my life. Where would you get such outlandish ideas?”
He looked bewildered.
She said, “I got the notion from no other source than yourself, sir. First, when I overheard you and your father discussing the intimate nature of your relationship with another woman. And again this afternoon, when you mentioned how you had been abroad in Madrid. It was not difficult to guess this was where you formed your initial connection with ‘Mrs. Portillo.’ Questioning one of the servants confirmed the timeline of the new housekeeper’s arrival coincided suspiciously with your return from Spain. Still, I concede you were clever in your deceit. Even I wouldn’t have guessed the truth.”
“But for what?” Lord Absalom asked, voice strained. “What gave me away?”
Drucilla thought of the love poem, still tucked inside her pocket. “A message from beyond the grave.”
He frowned. “What nonsense. You call that proof?”
“No, alone it wouldn’t be. But considering everyone at this table just heard you all but confess, I shouldn’t think any stronger evidence needed.”
His face fell.
But if Lord Absalom was prepared to give up his claim to honor with hardly a fight, his father was not so inclined.
“Absalom,” Lord Litchfield demanded. “Tell this young woman how wild and unfounded her accusations are.”
“No,” his son responded. “No, perhaps Miss Winterbourne is right. Maybe the time for half-truths is at an end.”
Drucilla leaned forward, eyes shining. She had hoped for but hardly dared expect a full confession.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Lord Absalom said. “In fact, I suppose I owe an apology to everyone at this table for my deceit.”
“The one your actions have harmed most is not present to give her forgiveness,” Drucilla murmured, thinking of how poor Celeste had been fooled into loving this man.
He misunderstood. “You’re right, I fully mean to beg forgiveness from Evita, er, ‘Mrs. Portillo’ as well. But the truth is, I never meant the pretense to go so far. I was in love, I acted on the impulse of the moment, and didn’t think of anything else until after the marriage took place. Only then did I consider what my family would say. What everyone would say. So I concocted the scheme to bring Evita here, to have her near me, even if no one could know what we were to one another. It didn’t seem such a terrible thing to do at first. After all, who did it affect but ourselves?”
“But then Celeste entered the scene,” Drucilla prodded.
“Yes. I met Celeste and father began pressuring me to court her. He threatened to cut off my allowance. More importantly, he knew there was something between Evita and me and he swore he’d throw her out of the house if I didn’t marry where he chose.”
He glanced at Lord Litchfield but appeared too weary to summon any emotion beyond defeat. “But the ultimate deceit was my own. I can blame no one else for it. In the end, it was I who acceded to my father’s wishes. I fooled poor Celeste into loving me and I married her. Only it wasn’t a true marriage in the legal sense because…”
“Because you already had a wife,” Drucilla supplied. “One who was still very much alive.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, quite.”
There was something else she had to know. “When did Celeste discover the truth?”
He looked startled. “Why, she never did, so far as I know. On my word, I might have treated the girl less than honorably but I would never have been beast enough to let her know the true situation. She would have been horrified. Humiliated.”
Drucilla worried her bottom lip. “Nevertheless, she did discover the true state of things somehow. I’m certain of it.” She was thinking of the poem.
“If she did, it wasn’t me who informed her,” Lord Absalom insisted.
She was surprised to find she believed him.
“Very well, it wasn’t you. But it was you who shoved her off the roof when you found
out she was planning to leave you.”
“What!” cried Lord Absalom.
At the same moment, his father slapped the table and shouted, “How dare you, young woman? Do you call my son a murderer as well as a bigamist?”
Drucilla struggled to keep her composure. “I believe he has already confessed to the latter. As to the former, that is my accusation, yes.”
Lord Absalom swore, sounding more shocked than angry.
Drucilla risked a glance at Southorn, but there was no support to be found in that direction. He sat back watching the scene unfold before him with as much apparent amusement as if it had been contrived entirely for his entertainment.
And a grim sort of entertainment it was.
Lord Absalom spoke with a marked effort at controlling his emotions. “Miss Winterbourne, I can understand your low opinion of me after the way I deceived Celeste. I have earned your disgust. But I beg you never to believe me guilty of directly harming Celeste in any physical way. It’s true, I didn’t love her. But she was a good, innocent girl and I would never have hurt her. I’m a deceiver, not a monster.
“Besides, you know of my attachment to Evita. So why should I have tried to prevent Celeste leaving me, if indeed she ever had such a plan?”
Drucilla looked into his earnest eyes, looked at all the questioning faces around the table. And she realized she had made a terrible error. She had forgotten the one thing no amateur sleuth should neglect: Motive. Lord Absalom had none.
She felt suddenly ill. She had dragged Lord Absalom through the mud, had unearthed secrets that could be of no help to anyone at this late date. And why? She had gained nothing and had probably done a great deal of damage to this family.
“Forgive me,” she mumbled through lips that felt numb, as she shoved back from the table. She was suddenly in desperate need of air.
She fled the dining room, ignoring the consternation that erupted behind her, and ran through the hall and up the stairs.
Bypassing her guestroom, she took another flight of stairs that led up, up to the roof.
Bursting through a heavy door and out onto the deserted rooftop, she ran to the railing and leaned her head over the edge. She felt as if she was about to be violently ill.
Wrong. She had got it all wrong. How could she have been so blind?
It had to be the father. She saw that now. The son had no reason to kill Celeste to prevent her leaving. He felt no affection for her and had no fear of scandal.
But there was one person in this house who had already demonstrated his hatred of scandal, one person who had gone to great lengths to see Celeste’s money came to the family and that Celeste herself never left it.
Despite a strong, cold wind sweeping across the roof and whipping her hair around her face, Drucilla began to sweat.
Then the door opened behind her. She was no longer alone on the rooftop.
“Not who you expected, am I?” asked a familiar voice.
She spun around and her heart seemed to freeze.
Chapter Twelve
“Southorn?” she asked. “I don’t understand. It couldn’t be…you?”
“Why shouldn’t it be? As the insignificant younger son, always shoved aside, never taken seriously, I had little to lose. Celeste alone understood me. She was the only one who had the sense to fear me.”
Drucilla’s thoughts raced. “So you taunted her and dogged her steps. You were the ‘ghost’ she spoke of.”
“Clever girl. In some ways, you’re actually much quicker at figuring things out than she was. She was wary of me but that didn’t stop her from meeting me on the roof that night. We were alone, just like now, with Father and Absalom quarreling in a distant part of the house and no one near enough to see or hear anything. There was a storm brewing. Like this one.”
He indicated the forks of lightening streaking the dark sky in the distance.
“Yes,” he continued, “this is much like that other night. Who is to say it will not end just as dramatically?”
Drucilla saw all too clearly the direction this conversation was going. Unfortunately, he saw where she was going, as she inched nearer toward the door and he moved to position himself in her path.
“Save your efforts,” he said, as she looked around her wildly. “There are only two ways off this roof. The way we both came up…or the way Celeste went down.”
Backing away as he advanced, Drucilla tried to remain calm.
“Why did you do it?” she asked, stalling for a miracle. “Celeste never harmed you or anyone else. Why should you kill her?”
“You amuse me, Miss Winterbourne—or Drucilla. May I call you that? As the man who is about to end your life, I feel we’re practically on intimate terms.” He didn’t await an answer. “You can be so clever at times and on other occasions so terribly unimaginative. For instance, you assume Celeste would have to lay a finger on me to harm me. But she didn’t need to do that, don’t you see? Her very existence hurt me. Because she was my brother’s wife, or so the world thought. And she was carrying his child. A child that would be his heir, if it were born male.”
“A child? I had no idea.”
“Neither did my brother. Funnily enough, I was the only one around who kept his eyes and ears open enough to learn the truth. As it turns out, ladies talk to their maids and some servants can be induced to confide those secrets.”
Drucilla recalled the chatty maid, Rosie, and Absalom’s remark about Southorn’s penchant for tormenting the servants. She couldn’t blame the maid for being bullied into giving information.
She said, “So you learned of Celeste’s condition before anyone else. I still fail to see your motive. Child or no child, there remains another heir to stand in the way of you becoming master of Blackridge. In order for you to inherit, something would also have to befall…”
She trailed off, realization dawning.
He smiled, crookedly. “You begin to comprehend. My plan was to dispose of Celeste in such a way as could be believed accidental. Railings grow old after all. Why shouldn’t one collapse when a lady leaned against it? I told myself after Celeste I’d wait a length of time to allay suspicion before removing the final obstacle in my path: My brother. I would have done that particular deed more carefully, of course. Poison or some such subtle means. I still will when the time comes. Do you want to know why? Because there will be no one to stop me.”
While he was speaking, he had begun removing his silk neck cloth.
Drucilla didn’t want to find out what he planned on doing with it. “But why the taunting of Celeste,” she asked. “Why the ‘ghostly’ charade?”
His eyes glinted with dark amusement. “You’re trying to put me off. But that’s all right. I don’t mind taking a moment to satisfy your curiosity. Unlike you, I’ve got all the time in the world.”
He tipped his head to the side and appeared to consider her question. “In the beginning, I was only watching her to learn her habits, to discover her weaknesses, while I plotted the least obvious method of removing her. But after awhile, it became a sort of game between us, I the hunter and she the prey. There’s something thrilling in watching your victim, knowing you’re going to kill them. What power could be greater than holding another being’s life in your hands?”
Her expression must have shown her disgust but he did not appear to mind the lack of appreciation.
“The ghost costume was a precaution,” he continued, “in case anyone should witness me stalking her about. The fact she mistook me at first for a real specter was unintended but entertaining. Rather like when I arranged for her to discover ‘Mrs. Portillo’ was Absalom’s real wife. I had known the truth there for some time but didn’t see any hope of convincing others of it. Perhaps I lack your impressive skills of persuasion.”
“So it was through you Celeste learned about the secret marriage? Why? What advantage was there to be gained?”
“I briefly entertained the idea of undermining my brother with a denounce
ment. Allowing the truth to be known, that his current ‘marriage’ was invalid, would make the child Celeste was bearing him an illegitimate heir. I thought I could use Celeste as a tool for bringing that about but it didn’t happen as I’d hoped. She didn’t confront him publically, didn’t even tell him she knew, apparently. And so I was forced to find a different solution to my most pressing problem, the little heir-to-be.”
He paused. “And that catches us up to our current dilemma. You proved surprisingly perceptive in sniffing out my brother’s secret. I knew then I couldn’t risk your delving into my own little mystery. And so it must end.”
She shuddered but maintained a brave façade. “Surely you don’t intend throwing me off the roof too? That has been done, after all. You don’t think it would seem a trifle suspicious for two women to die by the same ‘accidental’ means within mere days of one another?”
“Come, you must give me more credit than that, Drucilla. I am not stupid. No, I’ve chosen an entirely different method of removing you, one that will actually serve a dual purpose. Perhaps you can take comfort in that, the knowledge that your death will be particularly useful to me. You see, I’ve been looking about for a method of removing my brother and you have now provided it. As many witnesses as were present during that unpleasant scene at the dinner table, there will be no question that Absalom has an excess of motive for revenge.”
“You would frame your own brother for my murder?”
“Do not look so surprised, Drucilla,” he chided. “I thought we had already established the lengths of my ambition.”
She swallowed, throat tightening as it became clear how conveniently she had played into his hands. She said, “You’re insane.”