Читать книгу The Complete Regency Surrender Collection - Энни Берроуз, Louise Allen - Страница 31

Chapter Twenty-One

‘Justine! Oh, my God. Justine!’ He had been hatching a plan to get clear of her and wrestle the gun from Montague. He had not been paying attention to her. That had been Montague’s problem as well, he was sure. Neither of them had given her enough credit. Nor had they expected her to spring like a tiger for the throat of the man who had persecuted her.

God help him, there had been a shot. His head was still ringing with it. The foolish girl had given no thought to her own safety, throwing herself at an armed man. She might have been injured, even killed. If she had been lost because of his slow reflexes...

He was at her side in an instant, rolling Montague’s inert body to the side so that he might tend to her. ‘My darling, are you all right?’ Was she his darling? He hadn’t thought so, this afternoon. But why else would she risk her life to protect him? ‘Justine?’

She stared blankly up at him without answering. Had she been shot? There was a prodigious quantity of blood, but it did not seem to be hers. He ran his hands carefully over her body, looking for tears in her garments, or the flinch and cry as his fingers accidentally probed a wound. But she could not seem to feel them at all. Her flesh was impassive at his touch, cold, but whole.

‘Justine.’ Then he remembered the shot, so near to her ear. ‘I think you have been deafened by the gunshot, love. Do not fear. It will be better soon.’

Perhaps she had heard that, for she closed her eyes, as if to shut out the scene.

It was just as well. If she was not already aware of it, he did not want her seeing what she had done. Now that Will had moved him, Montague lay on his back, eyes wide and sightless, the blood pooling behind him, the ice pick buried to the handle in his chest.

He must warn the servants, before some maid wandered down to fill an ice bucket and frightened herself witless. And a man must come to take care of the corpse in the ice house. Although, until he could be buried, this was the best place for him.

And, of course, someone must be sent to the big house to get the duke so that he might swear a statement, or whatever one did when a crime occurred. There would be no question of self-defence, for the gun Montague had threatened them with was still clutched in one lifeless hand.

The little bag that held the loose stones lay just at the edge of the spreading pool of blood. Will scooped it up and dropped it in his pocket. Then he gathered up the real treasure: the body of his precious Justine. She was limp in his arms and so very cold. Was that the fault of the ice around them, or was it shock?

It was no trouble getting her back down the tunnel, through the kitchen and back up the stairs to her room. Once there, he did not bother with the maid, but stripped the bloody gown over her head and threw it into the fireplace, shifting the coals and poking it until he was sure it would catch and burn.

From behind him, he heard her soft voice. ‘You oughtn’t to have done that. It is probably evidence of some kind.’

He turned to see her staring into the fire. Her expression was still frighteningly blank, as though she could not quite understand what she was seeing. But he was relieved to see some colour returning to her face. ‘My word to my brother will be evidence enough, I am sure. You will not be forced to sit like Lady Macbeth, covered in gore.’

‘I do not think the blood on her hands was real,’ she said, staring down in puzzlement at her own hands, which were quite literally stained.

Will filled the basin and brought it to her along with a towel, that she might wash. When she made no move to do it, he helped her, wiping away every last trace of what had happened. He took the basin away again, dumping it in the yard so there would be no trace of the pink-tinged water. Then he brought a dressing gown, wrapping her tight so that she would not take a chill, and a glass of brandy from a decanter he kept in his room. He added a few drops of the laudanum the doctor had left for his headaches and swirled the liquor in the glass. While he normally did not believe in the need for soporifics, his head wound was nothing compared to what she must have suffered in the last day. He pushed the glass into her limp hand, wrapping the fingers around the stem, and said, ‘Drink.’

She refused at first. But he would not release her until she took it and coughed it down. ‘You do not have to wait upon me, hand and foot,’ she said, rising as if to prove it and sinking weakly back on to the bed.

‘And you did not have to save my life,’ he said. ‘All the same, I am glad you did.’ He lifted her legs to swing them up on to the bed and covered her, fluffing the pillows behind her head. ‘Rest.’

‘But I must speak to someone, to explain... And I need to tell you...’ Her brow creased as though she could not think what it was that she meant to say.

‘You will do that in the morning,’ he assured her. ‘For now, I will call Margot to sit with you, in case you need company in the night.’ He kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘And then you will go to sleep, Justine. No arguments.’

‘Yes, Will,’ she said softly and closed her eyes.

* * *

Justine woke the next morning, her mind woolly, her thoughts confused. Most notably, she was surprised to be waking, for it meant that she had managed to fall asleep. As Will had carried her into the room, she had half-feared that she would never be able to close her eyes again, much less free her mind long enough to get any rest.

Perhaps he had put something in the brandy he had given her. Or perhaps it was the sight and sound of her sister, sitting beside the bed and struggling with the thread and bobbins in the dim candlelight, as though attempting to prove that she had any interest in the skills Justine had been trying to teach her.

‘You needn’t bother,’ Justine had told her, gently.

‘I know that,’ Margot had answered, frowning down at the lace in a way that would have seemed very bad tempered of her, had Justine not seen the expression on her face almost since birth.

‘The things Mr Montague said about my trying to keep you from your place in the shop...’

Margot had looked up at her with the same direct, no-nonsense expression she often wore. ‘Mr Montague was a villain. He is gone now and we needn’t worry ourselves about what he did or did not say. In fact, I recommend we do not think of him at all.’ Then she smiled more softly. ‘It is just the two of us, Justine, as it has always been. The two of us and your Lord Felkirk, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Justine said, dutifully, thinking that it remained to be seen whether she had a Lord Felkirk or not. Will had been very gentle with her, as he had put her to bed. He could just as easily have left her in the ice house and called for the duke. Perhaps he was merely grateful for the action she had taken to defend him.

As he’d carried her, she had felt the tear in the shoulder of his jacket that the bullet had made as it had flown past his head. Only a few inches down, or to the left, and it would have struck him. It did not matter what happened to her now, as long as she knew he was safe and Montague could not hurt him again.

It would be nice if he had forgiven her, even in a small way, for concealing the truth from him. But there was a limit to how much a man could forget, especially one who had been trying for weeks to remember the past.

She had done an awful thing to Mr Montague. But perhaps it was mitigated since she had prevented him from doing something even worse. And though murder was by far the most serious of crimes, she had done many horrible things already. No matter how hard she had tried, she simply was not a very good person. She was a murderer, a schemer and a fallen woman. All the good behaviour from this moment on would not erase any of it.

It shocked her even more to know that she did not regret what had happened with her guardian in the ice house. If she had been the sort of proper woman that Will deserved, she would have been distraught over what she had done. It had been awful. But every moment she’d spent with Montague had been nearly as terrible. There was a strange peace in knowing that, having done the worst thing possible, she would not see him, ever again.

With no particular plan, she got up and woke Margot, who was dozing in a chair beside the bed, a trail of tangled silk threads trailing from the pillow in her lap, the lace pins scattered on the carpet at her feet. Justine kissed her lightly on the cheek and sent her back to her own room to get some rest. Then she called for the maid and dressed with care in her simplest of muslin gowns, a pale yellow patterned with tiny oak leaves. The maid finished by pinning her hair up beneath a plain linen cap.

Justine looked at herself in the cheval glass. She declared the look suitable for a morning walk to either the wood, or to prison. Was there a prison within walking distance, or would she be driven there? She imagined herself in the back of a cart, driven down the high street of the village, displayed before all as a criminal.

She smiled and turned away. With such a dramatic imagination, she should be writing novels of her own. This one sounded like the sort where the fallen woman died in jail, after writing lengthy apologies to God and man for crimes which were caused by the actions of others. Family and friends, and the handsome hero all mourned her loss, though none of them had done a thing to help her when she was alive and with them.

While she had no objection to confession, she would offer no more apologies. Had she been forced to live her life again, it would most likely have gone much the same. Many of the choices had been forced upon her. Others, like the decision to come to Wales and give herself to Will Felkirk... No matter how wrong it had gone in the end, she could not bring herself to regret it. She reached up and plucked the cap from her head, dropping it to the floor beside the bed. Then she left her room and went down to meet her fate, head unbowed and uncovered.

She found Will and the duke in the study, a light breakfast on the desk between them. The diamond pouch lay there as well, leaning casually against the sugar box as though loose diamonds were but one more thing that the aristocracy sprinkled into their tea.

At her entrance, both men rose and Will said, ‘Will you join us, Miss de Bryun? And close the door behind you,’ he added, glancing towards the hall to make sure no one had heard.

Miss de Bryun. That was her name. But she could not think when she had heard it pronounced in that particular tone. Perhaps this was what she’d have heard in that imaginary meeting between herself and a pleasant young man in a shop in Bath.

‘My lord,’ she said, closed the door and curtsied. ‘Your Grace.’ She had done that wrong. She should probably have acknowledged the duke before his brother. But there had been no duke in her fairy-tale meetings. Nor had she needed to plead before one for life and liberty.

Will got a chair and pulled it up to a corner of the desk, then seated her and passed a third plate and the toast rack. There was a third teacup as well. They had expected her and had not wanted to disturb the conversation with the comings and goings of servants.

‘My brother has given his version of the morning’s events,’ the duke said, sipping his tea with no sign of anxiety. ‘Since I trust him, we will spare you the repeating of what must have been a most traumatic event. For the purpose of the inquest, I will say that an intruder threatened you both and met with an unfortunate end. Since he was also responsible for a murder on the property some years ago, and an earlier attack on my brother, we have been saved the price of the rope needed to hang him.’ He gave her a pointed look. ‘And that is all that will be said about that.’

‘Thank you, your Grace.’ Was it really to be so easy as that? She deserved some sort of punishment for taking Mr Montague from the world, even though it was a great relief to think that she would never see him, or hear his voice again.

‘Did the man have family?’ Bellston asked. ‘Was there any that we need notify?’

‘None but my sister and myself. He was our guardian, when our mother died, and in charge of our affairs.’

‘Your guardian,’ the duke repeated, clearly appalled.

‘He was not just my father’s partner, but his oldest and dearest friend. In Father’s will, he was charged with the keeping of the business and of our family. And when my mother died...’ She swallowed. ‘We went to him, hoping he would be like a father to us. That was not the case.’

Beside her, Will cursed beneath his breath.

‘When you came of age,’ the duke said, regaining his composure, ‘why did you not leave?’

Will gave a warning growl in the direction of his brother. Clearly, he did not like the line of questioning. The duke held up a hand. ‘Silence, William. I have other questions about recent events involving Miss de Bryun. I mean to have them answered to my satisfaction.’

Justine gave them both an encouraging nod. It had all been very polite and rational so far and not the barrage of shouted accusations she had imagined. ‘When I came of age, there was still my sister to consider. Until she came of age as well...’ She busied herself with the marmalade pot, trying not to think of all the horrible things that might have occurred ‘...I could not leave her alone in his care.’

‘And when you came to my home under false pretences and lied to Penelope and I, pretending to be my brother’s wife?’

‘Lord Felkirk was bleeding and near death. But he had not yet expired and I did not wish to be an accessory to his murder. If he could be healed, I would attempt it. But if he was to die, it would be better that he did it in the presence of his family. Lying about our relationship was a bad idea, but on the journey here I could not manage to think of a better one.’

The duke sat quite still for a moment, thinking. ‘Nor can I,’ he said. ‘Considering all the evidence, I have no real desire to prosecute you. Saving my brother’s life on at least two occasions tips the balance in your favour. As to some of the more unsavoury parts of this story, I will leave them to you to explain or conceal from my wife and friends, as you see fit.’

‘Thank you, your Grace,’ she said, rising as he rose and curtsying again.

Now that business was done, Bellston seemed to relax again into the more brotherly figure she had grown accustomed to seeing. ‘I will leave you and Miss de Bryun alone now, Will. I am sure you have much to talk about.’

‘We do, indeed,’ Will said and rose to walk him to the door.

Once they were both gone from the room, Justine relaxed back into her chair, surprised to find her hands trembling as they raised her teacup. She had avoided prosecution. At one time, it was all she had hoped for. But who knew there would be so much to lose?

Will returned to the room and took his chair beside her again, putting his hands on his knees and sighing in satisfaction. ‘That went well, I think,’

‘Better than I’d hoped,’ she said, setting down the cup, careful that it did not rattle against the saucer as she did so.

‘Now that Montague is gone, you and your sister are free to do as you like.’

Free. Justine rather liked the sound of the word. But it bothered her that he could be so cavalier about her freedom. Had her dependence on him been such a burden?

‘My brother has agreed to help with any legal matters concerning the transfer of the shop to your full ownership. He will take the guardianship of your sister upon himself, until she is of age. The diamonds are yours, as well,’ he added, sliding the pouch across the desk to her.

‘Mine.’ This was what she had wanted from the first. Why, now that she had achieved her goal, did it seem valueless?

‘Well, in truth, they likely belong to the insurance company. Montague would not have gone to the trouble of trying to take them if he had not meant to file a claim. But even after they are reimbursed, you may see a considerable profit from their increased value.’ Will was talking quite sensibly of things that would have interested Margot far more than they did her. The details of the transfer were probably important. Perhaps focusing on them would relieve the feelings of panic at being alone with the man whom she had tricked.

‘What am I to do with a jewellery shop?’ she said, baffled. ‘I know how to purchase and grade the stones, of course, but Montague was the designer and goldsmith. And there are the books to be kept, employees to pay, customers to please...’ There was so very much work. And it was all a very long way from Wales.

‘You could always sell it,’ he suggested. ‘Or hire a manager until your sister is ready to take control.’

‘I suppose it is too much to hope that she will forget her plan and find a husband,’ Justine said, staring into the bottom of her empty cup.

‘She seems very set on the idea of keeping it. In any case, you may settle it between the two of you,’ Will said softly. ‘It is your decision, and yours alone. But I suspect, what with a successful business and a safe full of jewellery, that you are now a wealthy woman, Miss de Bryun.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You shall have your pick of young men, should you wish to marry.’

‘Marry.’ Did he really need to remind her of the fact that they were not attached? Each time he called her Miss de Bryun, it was as if he hammered nails into her heart. What good would it be to finally have control over one’s own life, when one could still not have what one truly desired? ‘I will not marry,’ she said softly. After Will, she could not bear the thought.

‘It would be a shame if you did not,’ he said.

‘Now that you know my past, you must understand that it would not be possible.’

‘I am part of that past,’ he reminded her.

He was. But if he was the past, then what point was there in finding a future?

He cleared his throat and shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘No matter what you choose, I do not wish the events of the last few weeks to weigh too heavily on you. You are free, just as I said before.’

Was this what freedom was? To be alone and heavy hearted? If so, then she did not want it after all.

‘If a child results, of course I will claim it.’ He was talking quickly, as though wanting to get through all the difficult words that would separate them, before she could raise an objection. ‘For my part, I would be willing to forget the whole affair. No word of it shall ever pass my lips.’

‘You mean to forget me?’ Perhaps it was all the talk of freedom going to her head. She had expected a dismissal. She had even been prepared for it. But now that it was here, she could not manage to go meekly. ‘How convenient for you, William Felkirk, that you have such a porous memory. If you insist on forgetting anything, why could it not be everything that had happened before the last two weeks?’

‘You misunderstand me,’ he said hurriedly.

She ignored his interruptions. ‘You were quite happy to lie with me when you could not remember how we had met. But now that you know of my past, which was no fault of mine, you would forget me, as though I was never here. I was a fool to allow myself to believe, even for a moment, that a wonderful man like you might love me, in spite of what had happened. I—’

Suddenly, he pulled her out of her chair and into his lap. Warm, strong lips on hers cut off any desire to argue. As it had been for some days, during their kisses, they were in total agreement with each other. One of his hands cupped her bottom and the other plucked at the pins that still held her hair, eager to touch it now that there was no cap in the way.

He pulled back and shook his head in wonder at how out of hand things could get with a single kiss. ‘It was so much easier, when I thought you were my wife. Then I simply assumed that you would obey me and commanded that you come to bed. But now I have no right to hold you.’ To her surprise, his face was suffused with a schoolboy’s blush. ‘When I look into your eyes, I can barely find the words...’ He smiled. ‘Now that I have your attention, may I be allowed to speak in my defence?’

She nodded cautiously, afraid that if she moved too much, he would come to his senses and return her to her own chair.

‘As I have been trying to tell you, the decision is yours, just as it should have been from the first. You did not come willingly to my house or my bed. I will not force you to stay here, if you would prefer to be elsewhere. And I am hesitant to even offer this, for it is quite possible, when the accounts are totalled, that you will be worth more than I am. I would not want to be thought a fortune hunter. Nor would I press my advantage to force you into a union that might disgust you...’

She kissed him back to prove that she was most definitely not disgusted. In fact, his words were so sweet she was trembling in his arms. Or else she was finally giving in to the terror she had felt over the last twenty-four hours, when she was sure she would lose him.

In answer, his hands became less demanding and wrapped loosely around her, offering protection and support, as his kisses soothed her brow. ‘It is all right,’ he whispered. ‘You are safe now. If you stay with me, I promise you need never worry again.’

‘My past.’

‘You have none. Nor do I.’ He buried his face in her throat, pressing his lips to her skin. ‘My life began when I opened my eyes and saw you leaning over my bed.’

‘Suppose we met, just as I imagined,’ she said dreamily. ‘Quite innocently, in a shop in Bath?’

He smiled. ‘I would have been struck mute by your beauty and would probably have embarrassed myself by talking nonsense as I did just now.’

‘I’d have thought it charming,’ she said.

‘But you’d have been too proper to respond,’ he replied. ‘From what I have seen, you are a very reserved young lady, with your prim dresses and your silly caps.’

‘I would not have been wearing a cap,’ she reminded him. ‘They are for married ladies. It is why I no longer wear one.’

He stroked her head. ‘Then I am glad that you are unmarried, for I do love to touch your hair.’

‘I would not wear one, if my husband wished otherwise,’ she said. ‘You must realise by now what an agreeable wife I would be.’

‘Wife,’ he said, purring the word into the skin of her neck. ‘That is what I wish you to be. I had grand plans to court you slowly and properly, so you might come to me by your own choice. But it seems I am just as impulsive as you made me out to be, when you invented our elopement. Come away with me, Justine. We will go to Scotland this very day and marry over the anvil. We will bring our families this time to witness it. Other than that, it will be just as you imagined it.’

She would be married, just as she had dreamed. And it would be to the man she loved, more than life itself. ‘Almost as I imagined it,’ she reminded him. ‘In my story, we were forced to marry because you could not contain your desire and seduced me.’

He smiled and she felt the hand on her hip tighten, ever so slightly. ‘I had forgotten,’ he said, pushing her from his lap so that he could stand. And then, before she could protest, he has scooped her up in his arms and was carrying her towards the door. ‘Let us retire to my chamber, Miss de Bryun, and I will show you just how it happened.’

* * * * *