Mists of Moorhead Manor Page 16

  How far? Robert had not been gone long, so surely . . .

  The cold intensified; the stone walls around me glistened with moisture. I shivered. I wanted to think it was only from the chill, but I knew better. I was doing something dangerous. Forbidden. Something that could mean the loss of love. Though that love was all too one-sided, as it became apparent Robert’s interest in me was ephemeral, easily buried under the exigencies of family honor.

  I rounded a corner, and my feet simply stopped moving, as if frozen to the floor. From Portugal to France I had seen bodies piled on bodies in bloody, misshapen heaps. But I had never before seen a skeleton. Two skeletons. Entwined in death. I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath, and took a second look. In that moment Papa would have called me “an arrogant little fool” for my presumptions. For Robert was right. This was a sight that should be kept forever private.

  I was not naive. No one who lived twenty years with an army could ever be that. I was only eleven the first time I had stumbled across a couple copulating in the bushes. And on the Peninsula—though I never mentioned the sights I’d seen to my parents—I had received a rather broad education on the intimacies between the sexes. Solely as an inadvertent witness, I hasten to add. And just when I thought I’d seen it all, I had been thoroughly shocked one day when I caught a glimpse of two troopers indulging in something extraordinary in an empty stall.

  So even in skeletal form I recognized the position. Lady Rothbury and Quenton Ridgeway had been caught in flagrante. Killed where they lay. There would be no telltale pistol indicating suicide, of that I was now certain.

  I finally unfroze myself and looked anyway. That, after all, was why I had come. It would be more than foolish to assume I could take one look and be confident I had interpreted the scene correctly.

  I searched diligently and found only the one bullet Robert had mentioned. Perhaps Lord Hycliffe had strangled his wife. Or a single bullet had killed them both. There was no pistol anywhere near the skeletal remains, though I confess I did not search the far reaches of the cave.

  After crawling around the stone floor on my hands and knees, cautiously circling the pile of bones, I sat back on my heels, blew out a whoosh of air, and attempted to accept the reality of what I found.

  Murder. It had to be.

  Unless the killer arranged the bodies after death . . .

  Thus proving it was murder.

  Unlikely. As well as impossibly distasteful. I shuddered.

  Why could I not be some flibbertigibbet idiot female without a thought in her head? A female who never questioned the allegedly superior reasoning of the males of the species? A female who minded feminine things—gowns, bonnets, household matters, the latest on dits?

  Ha! As if really wished to be such a namby-pamby creature! The truth was, Lord Hycliffe was the most likely suspect by far. Could Robert have followed his mother to her tryst that day? No, I was almost certain he was genuinely shocked by what he discovered inside the cave. Nor could I even imagine him killing his own mother.

  But, oh dear God, what to do now?

  I finally dragged myself to my feet, picked up the lantern, and headed back down the passage. I had done what I thought was my duty and now realized I was quite likely a self-righteous little twit who should have had the sense to stay out of it.

  I rounded the slight bend in the passage and my feet simply stopped moving as I stared into the darkness ahead. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. No swirling mist, no sign of anything but utter blackness.

  I kept going even though I knew what had happened. The door was closed. The door that could not have closed by itself.

  Sure enough, the passage ended against the unyielding stuccoed wall that encompassed the garden. I pushed, pried, attempted to find some knob to slide. I knew the wall opened out, away from the cave, but nothing I tried—including sheer force, a furious conjuring of will-power, and a hearty application of prayer—budged that door so much as a fraction of an inch.

  I had been aware that knowledge of the contents of the cave put me in danger, and yet willfully, blindly, I had come anyway. I fought panic, grasping at the logical. When I did not appear for dinner, a search would be made. And Robert would know where to look.

  Unless he decided my silence was more important than my life.

  I sat on the stone floor, turned down the lantern wick, and waited. I had left the house at around half one. As much as two hours had passed, but my wait would be a long one. Would the lantern last? Did it matter? I would be as alone with it as without it. And just as dead if no one ever came.

  Determined not to be overcome by fear, I forced my mind to the more recent murders. Had Lord Hycliffe done those as well? Or did we have a second madman on the loose?

  Could I call the earl a madman? There probably wasn’t a jury in Devon who would convict him for killing an errant wife. No . . . he would be tried by a jury of his peers. In London. And it was likely they too would find him not guilty. So I was what is called “fair and far out” when I sought to know the truth. I’d been headstrong and foolish and was suffering the consequences.

  Which still did not explain who killed Mary, Nell, and Sal.

  And there, at least, I found the justification for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. If the next murder could be prevented . . .

  Was it possible killing his wife and her lover had precipitated Lord Hycliffe into a madness where he took all women in dislike . . .

  He certainly had not treated me so, I amended swiftly. And he cared about Vanessa and was fond of Lady Emmaline. He had treated the Durrant ladies with graciousness, to the point of promoting a match between Robert and Lady Daphne. None of which made sense if he had become a true misogynist.

  Misogynist! An understatement for a man who had killed three women.

  The Ridgeways, father and son? I could see no reason why either would feel they had to kill a brother or uncle. And it was doubtful they had any knowledge of the cave. And besides, Nell Ridgeway had been one of the victims. Kenrick? He could be vitriolic, but he was also lazy. I could not possibly see him strangling Mary, pushing Nell off a cliff, or most particularly, exerting himself to beat poor Sal to a pulp. Huntley? I’d as lief suspect Allard, the butler.

  David?

  David had a myriad reasons to hate women, including something I should not know about but did. Frustration. Although there had been some recent improvements, life with Vanessa was never easy. It was not far-fetched to think David had looked for satisfaction elsewhere—he was both charming and stunningly handsome. And if a girl said no . . . Or if she did not, and he was overcome by guilt . . .

  I shied away, not liking this train of thought. Devon was a large county. There were all sorts of men out there. The murderer did not have to be one of our own.

  Yet I swear as I sat huddled by that elusive door, the bodies in the cave called out to me, demanding vengeance, accusing me of cowardice, of taking the easy way out if I accepted Robert’s dictate about keeping the cave’s contents a secret.

  I prayed. To God and, blasphemous as it might be, to Robert to come and rescue me.

  The hours dragged by, the lantern went out. Blackness covered me like a shroud. The cold penetrated all the way to my bones. And then I heard it, the creak of the door. I gasped as the sudden influx of cold night air rushed in and Robert’s face was illuminated by the glow of the lantern he was carrying.

  He bent down, shoved the rock against the door, and then he was holding me tight, and I was sobbing as if I’d taken all the mists of Devon inside me and had to pour them out before I could say a word. Yet even as he held me, I could feel his anger, and when I had finally reduced my waterfall of tears to sniffs and an occasional hiccup, he let his feelings be known. “How could you?” he said in deadly tones. You betrayed me, endangered your life, and all because of some misguided notion that you know best how to handle the affairs of my family.”

  “Did you do it?” I roared back, suddenly reenergized
. “Did you shut me in here to teach me a lesson? Leave me frightened half to death in this horrible place because I ignored your order to hide a crime?”

  “What?” Robert rocked back on his heels and stared at me. “You think I shut you in?”

  “Who else? Do you actually think your father was wandering around in the gardens in the fog? And besides, surely you did not tell him I was with you when you found the bodies?”

  “Of course not.” He frowned. “The door must have slid closed by itself.”

  “It was propped open with the same rock you just used. Believe me, that rock did not roll away of its own accord.”

  “You don’t believe me,” he said flatly.

  “Who else knew of the cave? Who else knew I might well investigate on my own, come my half-day?”

  “Someone else had to be out here.”

  I scrambled to my feet, shaking off Robert’s aid, only to discover my legs were cramped and fear had taken its toll. I would have crumpled where I stood if he had not caught me, pulling me into his side, maneuvering us through the door. Still keeping a tight hold on me, he kicked the rock aside, shoved the door shut with his shoulder, and guided me back to the house.

  Déja vu. Except this time he escorted me all the way to my room, where he set me in a chair and built up the fire. “I’ll have a tray sent up from the kitchen,” he told me, “but before that I must reassure my sister who is certain you are the latest murder victim, and then see the search is called off.” He scowled at me and repeated what seemed to have become his favorite phrase. “You are a great deal of trouble, Miss Ballantyne.”

  And then he was gone, leaving me at sixes and sevens with absolutely no idea whether I loved him, hated him, or feared him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hours of terror, a waterfall of tears and the death knell of love had drained every drop of energy from my body, yet I could not sleep. A myriad thoughts churned through my mind—tantalizing sparks of reason swiftly doused by fragments so fantastical I could only pound my pillow and wonder if I were going mad. At one point I even suspected Vanessa was deceiving us all, taking to her bed to divert the accusations of anyone who might accuse her of murdering her mother.

  Absurd, I know, but reason plays no role when a heart is broken and unnatural death hovers like a giant storm cloud above us all.

  Had Hycliffe killed his wife and her lover? Had he killed Mary, Nell, and Sal? Or were the girls’ deaths totally unrelated and a madman stalked the land?

  And so went my night, as every single person I had met since stepping off the stagecoach into the mist became a threat. Even the vicar, included solely because I so heartily disliked him. I finally settled on a more immediate problem, one localized to Moorhead Manor and surely easier to solve. If Robert did not shut me into the cave, who did?

  Only Hycliffe and Robert knew I was party to a deadly secret. And what other reason could there possibly be?

  Yet in all fairness . . . who knew I had left the house? The kitchen staff, which meant that anyone in the house might have found out. Kenrick knew where I liked to walk. He had followed me once . . .

  David?

  David was my friend. David would never hurt me. Yet he might well have sensed the secrets suddenly tainting my mood, the silences, the distraction, the whiff of fear. His Celtic ancestry stretched back to long before the Conquest, and I often felt he could sense, and understand, nuances no one else noticed. He, too, might have followed me to the garden, but shut me in? That made no sense at all. He had no reason to silence me. Unless he felt I was a rival for Vanessa’s affections. Or . . . did he fear the progress she was making, knowing any effort she made toward independence brought her closer to the day she would no longer need him?

  Which totally belied the encouraging words he’d said to me.

  And then I recalled that one of the assistant gardeners was more than a little slow in the head—good enough for tidying up debris, yet not competent enough to know a weed from a flower. Could he have come along, “tidied up” the rock, shoved the portal shut, and gone about his business, not being bright enough to realize the significance of what he had done?

  Relief rushed through me. Surely that was it. Not Robert, not Hycliffe, not a plot to murder me. Just the sad result of a sluggish mind.

  As the gray light of predawn peeked around the edges of the draperies, I finally slept.

  I woke to Alice Ord delivering breakfast in bed. Though mortified to find myself being treated as an invalid once again, I had to admit the sight of her cheerful face elevated my spirits. “Lord Exmere sent word to let you sleep, miss,” she told me. “Said you’d had a mishap on the moor and come back late.”

  “How kind,” I murmured, at a loss for anything more cogent. And what a vague but clever way to explain my absence at dinner, resulting in search parties being sent out to find me. I opened my mouth to say I’d merely lost my way when I realized I had no idea what details Exmere had invented. He could scarcely admit he had never taken Zeus from his stall, never gone near the moor, but I supposed Dobbins would corroborate any tale Hycliffe’s precious heir wished to spin.

  Words from Scott’s Marmion flitted mockingly through my mind: O what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive.

  When I joined Vanessa and her eager helpers for our morning routine, David even deserted his post long enough to place a blanket over my lap before handing me the English translation of the Odyssey, which, I must admit, seemed to be taking us as long to read as it did Odysseus to return to his Penelope.

  Over the next few days, I embraced routine—the panacea of troubled minds. In addition to reading, painting, and embroidery, punctuated by moments of song, we had added massage of Vanessa’s legs and exercise of her upper body to our daily schedule. Twenty or thirty minutes twice a day. At the beginning of our bouts of exercise, Maud and I had taken turns, with David banished to the sitting room. But propriety soon gave way to reality. David’s hands were stronger, and besides Vanessa positively blossomed at his touch. She not only cooperated, she actually attempted to move muscles that had lain dormant for years.

  Yet another secret to keep, as Maud and I stood sentinel and watched David strive to bring Vanessa’s legs back to life. If my thoughts sometimes strayed to wondering how it would feel if Robert were massaging my legs . . .

  Maud cast a few knowing glances my way when she caught my blushes.

  The days passed, with Sunday bringing a surprise request from Lady Emmaline. Now that the Durrant family’s visit had revived the custom of the residents of Moorhead Manor attending church, she would like to continue the tradition. “So much sorrow,” she murmured. “I feel the need.”

  So naturally I went with her, with Huntley and Kenrick—grumbling over what he called his mother’s eccentricity—providing our escort. Robert, however, joined his father in his continued conspicuous absence from hallowed ground.

  In spite of our hopes for solace, all we received for our efforts was yet another boring, self-righteous sermon from Mr. Aylworth, though the experience was somewhat enlivened by the surreptitious glances cast from one parishioner to the next as they made no secret of wondering who among us was capable of murder. Of savagely beating a young barmaid to death.

  After dinner, served at one o’clock on Sundays, I felt the urge to go for a walk—though I doubted my feet could ever be coaxed into taking me back to the walled garden. The cliffs? But who would go with me? Both Hycliffe and Exmere were adamant about no female walking alone outside the house—a rule, I had told myself, that did not apply to the gardens. To my misfortune.

  Or perhaps that wasn’t true. Perhaps I’d had an escort after all, an unseen one?

  No! I had been shut in the cave by ignorance, not deliberation. No one was trying to kill me. Really.

  But I would not request Exmere’s escort. I had angered him enough. Therefore, when I reached the front hall, I asked Allard if there was a footman available to accompany me on a walk.

&
nbsp; “Will I do?”

  Startled, I looked around to see David standing in the corridor that led to the green baize door that marked the way to belowstairs. “I thought you always spent Sundays with your family,” I said.

  “I returned early and am not expected upstairs for an hour or more.” He smiled and any doubts I harbored fell away. This was David. Friend and fellow sufferer in the cause of improving Vanessa Wetherington’s life.

  “Splendid,” I said, and off we went, though I had the distinct impression Allard did not approve.

  The day was partly cloudy, with a weak sun attempting to warm the brisk November air. But as soon as we walked under the Gothic arch that graced the entrance to Moorhead Manor, I put my head down and turned into the stiff breeze blowing off the ocean. I welcomed the challenge, needing it to clear my head. David, hunched into his short coat of boiled wool, doggedly kept pace. I’d wanted an opportunity to speak privately with him, but the wind seemed ready to pounce on any words, tearing them out of my mouth and tossing them away like chaff.

  And then, suddenly, as we crossed the coaching road and approached the cliffs, the wind died. Perhaps the tide had changed, for even the boom of the surf seemed quieter.

  “There is something—” We both spoke at once. Then laughed.

  “You first,” David said.

  And now the moment was upon me, I was tongue-tied. Which could not be allowed—yet my resolution wavered. “David,” I said at last, treading as carefully as a scout behind enemy lines, “I can, of course, have no idea what you are truly thinking . . . what you feel about Vanessa. But sometimes I think I see devotion beyond what is good for either of you.” I held up my hand to keep him from interrupting. “But if you truly care for each other, as I think you do, then there is only one solution. One I have already mentioned to Vanessa, which is why, I believe, she is trying so hard to be mobile again.”