Standing there in the middle of the area once again reminded her that not every moment had been bad. Certainly, most had when it came to Duncan. But not every, especially when she’d been spending time with Duncan’s daughter, and that was the difference.
“Are you sure we can trust the gardener?” Alec stood solemnly watching her as she paced forward and backward, his eyes occasionally flicking over to the footpath that led to the main house.
“We can trust Mr. O’Shea. He was hired by Mrs. Morgan and has always been exceptionally kind to me.” Connie tried to reassure him, though she suspected she was reassuring herself, too. “He will get the message to Seraphina, and I’m confident he won’t inform the authorities.”
When they’d snuck onto the grounds of the estate and found Mr. O’Shea a short time ago, he’d been surprised to see Connie, but also delighted. Connie and he had, after all, shared many conversations in the past, discussing botany and the like. He was a very kind old man who, after the death of his wife, had devoted himself to horticulture and had been grateful to obtain the esteemed position of tending to the gardens of the Campbell town house.
“Very well. In that case, we’ll just have to hope Seraphina doesn’t alert the authorities,” Alec said. “Or send a message to Fergus.”
He didn’t seem perturbed by the thought, though Connie knew his nature was always calm and steady yet constantly thinking a step ahead. It was one of the qualities of his she admired. “I’m not certain,” she replied. “Though if she has alerted Fergus, Mr. O’Shea confirmed that he is thankfully not in the residence but instead out looking for me. So it will take a bit of time for him to be found, let alone return here.”
“A small mercy, I suppose,” he drolly pointed out. “As I doubt we can trust her.”
“No, I don’t think we can,” Connie agreed. “However, she’s always been an extremely curious person, so I’m certain our message requesting to speak with her out here will pique her interest, and she’ll attend simply to find out what we want.”
“Perhaps,” was all Alec would allow.
She could hear the hesitation in his voice. “I don’t know what Seraphina’s intentions are in this whole situation. But she was the one to assist you when you came to rescue me. And, though I don’t know what her purpose was in doing that, if she truly meant me harm, she never would have helped get me out of that castle.”
Alec still didn’t look completely convinced as he sat down on one of the stone benches, crossing his arms over his chest.
Connie halted mid-stride in her pacing, starting to feel rather dizzy.
Alec suddenly stood. “She’s heading down the path.”
Connie twisted around, and sure enough Lady Tarlington, or whoever she really was, was taking a leisurely stroll down from the house toward the greenhouse. She was dressed immaculately, as usual, in a perfectly tailored ruby red day dress, with her thick chestnut hair twisted up in a chignon. There was a slight, almost amused, smile on her face, which was an expression she wore often.
The lady was a bit of an enigma, and she seemed to enjoy cultivating such a facade within society, too. Little did anyone know the truth. Though Connie had had scant to do with her, she’d been intrigued by the lady. Seraphina was always so coolly confident, projecting the image that she cared hardly for anyone and was supremely assured in both her looks and abilities.
But there were some instances, when Seraphina hadn’t known Connie was watching her, that the woman would look at Fergus with such distaste, Connie had often wondered why she was with him in the first place. She’d assumed it had to be for the prestige of associating with the Campbells, and all that Fergus could provide, even though he wasn’t the duke.
What had surprised Connie even more, though, was the look of pure hatred that crossed the woman’s expression whenever she looked upon Duncan. It was only ever a subtle dark flash of her eyes and a tightening of her lips, but Connie recognized the expression nonetheless, as it was the same one she’d often used with Duncan.
Now Connie was beginning to suspect that there was a great deal more meaning behind the looks Seraphina had given Duncan. Particularly if it was Seraphina’s sister listed as one of Duncan’s missing mistresses.
It would certainly be interesting if Seraphina divulged why she had visited that club with a mysterious lady to ask about Duncan’s missing mistresses.
“How exciting,” Seraphina all but purred as she walked into the greenhouse and looked first to Connie before turning her attention to Alec. “A fugitive and rescuer in my midst.” She grinned at them both, her eyes skimming the length and breadth of Alec, keen interest in their depths. “Fergus will be so upset once he finds out he missed you both. He is rather desperate to catch up with you, you see.”
Connie felt like clawing the woman’s eyes out for looking at Alec like a cat eyeing a bowl of cream. She’d never felt so jealous before and had to calm her growing anger at the woman.
Not that she had any right to feel jealous, either, as she had no intention of any future with Alec. Her independence was her priority. It had to be.
“Enough with the games, Seraphina.” Alec sounded completely unimpressed, which made Connie feel slightly more charitable to the woman. “What the devil is your involvement in all of this?”
Seraphina placed a hand up to her heart, a look of hurt crossing her features. It was all an act, of course; Connie had seen her display such an expression too many times to be fooled by it.
“Is that all the thanks I get for assisting in her grace’s escape?” Seraphina glared at Alec, waving a dismissive hand in Connie’s direction. “I have a good mind to scream blue murder right now and raise an alarm, as punishment for your rudeness.”
“You’d have done so already if you intended to do that,” Alec replied, nonplussed.
“True.” She shrugged, an expression of nonchalance replacing the frosty glare. “And how are you my dear duchess?” She turned to Connie. “It must have been a hard few days having to put up with this one, even if he is easy on the eye.” She inclined her head toward Alec. “Though I imagine he treats you far better than the last man you had to deal with. Your husband was a rather horrid creature, was he not? Though, of course, you knew that better than anyone.”
Connie got the sense that Seraphina was toying with her and enjoying it. “I did.”
Seraphina’s smile turned brittle. “I don’t know how you stood it. Duncan Campbell, the Duke of Kilmaine, was one of the vilest men I ever had the misfortune to meet. And Fergus is not much better, considering he’s a spineless coward.”
“And yet you choose to be his paramour,” Connie remarked. “A rather odd choice, isn’t it?”
“Oh, have no fear, my dear Duchess, I intend to use dear Fergus for all he can give me, and then I shall dump him like a hot iron.” She wandered over to a potted plant and plucked a rose from its branches. “He shall be devastated, of course. They all are when I leave them. But such is life. Though I will have to wait for a few months before I do so, as it would be in very poor taste to leave him whilst he’s in mourning for his brother.”
“How very kind and thoughtful of you,” Connie remarked, though she doubted Seraphina had picked up the subtle sarcasm in her tone.
“I am nothing if not considerate. As you are, too.” The woman walked over to Connie and handed her the yellow rose. “To celebrate your husband’s death. The world is a much better place for it.”
“Do you know who killed him, Seraphina?” Connie asked.
Seraphina shrugged. “It matters little who did, just that the deed was done.”
“Why did you loathe Duncan so much?” Alec remarked. “Was it perhaps because your sister was one of Duncan’s missing mistresses?”
The woman gasped, and the arrogant confidence she’d been projecting vanished in an instant, only to be replaced by stark, unadulterated fear. Her
gaze darted back and forth between them, reminding Connie of the nervous eyes of a fox before a hunt. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Clearly, you have been extremely misinformed.”
“Does Fergus know about your sister? Does he know that you are actually Seraphina Donavon?” Connie asked her. “And that there never was any Lord Tarlington?”
Seraphina licked her lips. “Like I said…I don’t know what you are talk—”
“Enough with the lies.” Alec’s voice cut through her words like a whip. “We know the truth.”
She was silent for several seconds, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve. “How did you find out?” Her voice a breathy whisper, she dragged her gaze up to Alec’s and then Connie’s. “I thought I had covered my tracks well. Though clearly not so well…”
“The manager at the Hellfire and Hound club mentioned you had visited him, asking about Duncan’s mistresses,” Connie answered. “And combined with the information Doctor Howlett gathered on the women who had vanished, which included some of the women’s family details, it wasn’t too difficult to put two and two together.”
“And Seraphina is an unusual name,” Alec added.
“I knew I should have changed it.” Seraphina laughed, but the sound was without amusement. She sat down on the bench across from Alec and sighed. “However, I was told that when one changes one’s identity, it’s best to continue to use your real first name. That way you will always be quick to respond whenever someone says your name, and hence less chance of being caught out. Which is why I went against my instinct… What do you both intend to do with this information?”
“Nothing,” Connie replied.
Seraphina blinked. “Why?”
“Because you’re as much a victim of Duncan’s as I am.” She sat down on one of the chairs next to the bench where Seraphina sat. “He may never have hit you. But from what we can gather, your sister wasn’t as lucky.”
“The bastard killed her.” Seraphina’s eyes were fierce with anguish. “But I could never prove it, as much as I tried to.”
“Is that why you killed him?” Alec asked.
“I wish I had,” Seraphina replied. “I was meant to. But I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t go through with it.” She stared off into the distance, seemingly lost in her own memories. “He was lying on your bed next to you, both of you rendered completely useless, as we’d planned. Completely vulnerable. I had the knife in my hand… As much as I tried to coax myself to plunge that dagger into the heart of the bastard, I couldn’t do it. I left the knife on the bedside table and fled back to Fergus’s room, completely ashamed of myself for not being able to complete the mission I’d been tasked with, to avenge my sister and the others.”
Seraphina blinked several times before returning her attention to Connie. “The next morning, when I heard he’d been killed, I thought you must have awoken, seen the dagger lying there, and used it on him. You have no idea how happy I was in that moment, but then I was filled with sadness, because my sister was still gone, and I hadn’t had a chance to demand he tell me what he’d done with her body. But I reasoned that, as Fergus was still alive, I’d be able to force him to tell me.”
Connie nodded. “Fergus was always the one to help Duncan clean up his messes.”
“He was,” Seraphina agreed. “Which made him equally responsible for his brother’s actions. And the only reason I’m still here.”
“Are you saying, then, that Fergus was not responsible for killing Duncan?” Connie asked her.
“I suppose it could have been him,” Seraphina allowed. “Though there is someone else who had a much greater ax to bear against the duke.”
Glass shattered everywhere as the sound of a gunshot rang loudly in the air.
Alec dived toward Connie and dragged her onto the floor, covering her own body with his. An almost overwhelming sense of terror gripped her as more gunshots peppered the room, spraying glass across them and over the ground.
“Stay down,” Alec said, or at least that’s what she thought he said, as her ears were ringing from the noise.
She watched him push over the bench in front of them before crouching behind it and pulling out his own pistol. Quickly, he fired off two rounds toward where the other shots had come from, then crawled over to where Seraphina was lying on the floor.
Belatedly, Connie noticed the blood pooling under the woman’s head. She blinked her eyes closed as a wave of sickness ran through her. She started to feel shaky and couldn’t quite catch her breath properly, knowing what Alec would find.
Nothing but death.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“God damn it,” Alec swore upon seeing the mess that had been Lady Tarlington’s skull. The bullet had pierced through the back of the woman’s head, propelling her forward onto the ground. She would have been killed instantly, but whoever the gunman was had obviously wanted to be certain, if the subsequent shots were of any indication.
Or the gunman was trying to target both Connie and Alec, too.
“She’s dead, isn’t she,” Connie said, stating it as a fact rather than a question.
Alec nodded. “There’s nothing we can do for her, but we need to get out of here now.” Words he seemed to be repeating often today.
“But what about the shooter?” she asked.
There had been no shots for about a minute. “I doubt he’d be stupid enough to hang around.” Alec crawled across the glass on the floor, careful to not put his hands onto the ground and instead use the sleeves covering his forearms to scuttle over to the bench. Very carefully he kicked at one of the potted plants beyond the bench, rustling the leaves of it.
No shot rang out as a result.
But shouting sounded from beyond the path up near the house. Clearly the household staff had heard the shots and would be upon them shortly. “When I say go, Connie, we’re going to run as fast as we can, back the way we came.” He reached for her hand. “Do you understand?”
He could tell she was battling an inward fight to not fall to pieces, but nonetheless she nodded, and that determination of hers he’d always admired started to overcome the shock.
“I do.” She squeezed his fingers.
“Go!” Alec yelled, trying to cover the majority of her body with his own, while propelling her toward the back of the greenhouse. They ran as fast as they could past the shrubs and pots in the room and out the door, then down the path to the back gate.
There was no time to even look back, though Alec couldn’t hear anyone giving chase, and thankfully there were no further gunshots. He hauled open the gate door, and Connie and he slipped through. “Keep running,” he urged her.
They ran for at least ten minutes, randomly ducking into one alley and then another, until they were certain they weren’t being followed and were both so out of breath, Alec was sure his lungs were about to burst. He thanked his lucky stars when he noticed Milford’s tavern tucked away down a side street. He quickly diverted their course, heading straight for the establishment.
Wrenching open the door, Connie ran in ahead of him before he followed her and slammed the door closed. He stood there for a moment, leaning against the back of the door, unable to do anything but greedily gulp in lungful after lungful of air, as Connie did the same beside him.
Slowly, Alec felt his heart rate begin to normalize, and his breathing steadied. He scanned the front room, blinking as it took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the bright light of the day outside to the darkness within.
Nothing much had changed in the intervening time since he’d been a frequent visitor more than ten years ago. There were a few gas lamps lit, along with the usual thick layer of grime coating the windows, lending an air of privacy to the patrons within.
Not that there were many patrons. Two men sitting at a table in the far corner, sharing a pint of ale, and the barkeep was behind the
counter, drying a glass in his hand, unfazed by their sudden appearance.
“There’s a private room in the back.” The barkeep motioned with his head down the corridor to the back of the shop. “For a pound you can go an’ freshen up in there, an’ I’ll bring ye some drink each, and for another pound me eyes and lips’ll stay sealed, if any cove come lookin’ for ya both.”
“Tom Milford, are you still running this ill-kept establishment?” Alec asked him.
The barkeep glanced up from his task to stare intently over at him. It took a moment for the recognition to flare in the man’s eyes. “Well I’ll be damned! Alec bloody McGuiness, is that really you, you son-of-a-bitch?” But there was a grin on the man’s face to soften the insult.
“In the flesh, my friend.” Alec walked over and heartily shook the man’s outstretched hand with his own while patting him on the back with his other.
“So, you’re into mischief again, it would seem.” There was a sparkle in the man’s eyes that suggested he was rather happy about the fact.
“Aye, we are in a spot of bother.”
Tom nodded before looking over at Connie with interest. He leaned in closer to Alec. “The coppers have got ye friend’s face plastered on posters all over the city. I think ye’d best be heading into the back room before I get any more customers in here. Fred and Merve are as blind as bats, so they wouldn’t ’ave recognized her yet.”
“You’re not concerned about harboring a fugitive?” Connie asked him, walking over to stand beside Alec.
Tom took in her measure, staring steadily at her, but she didn’t budge an inch under his scrutiny. Considering Tom was the size of a brick house, with a massive scar down the left side of his forehead and a scraggly black beard, his appearance alone was usually enough to scare even the most stalwart of men. But Connie stood her ground.
Tom broke eye contact with her and glanced back over to Alec. “She’s a tough little miss, ain’t she?” He sounded surprised and impressed.
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