Angel In My Bed (24 page)

She didn't believe Nellis. She did not know all that David had done in his service to the crown, but she did not believe him capable of assassination no matter the cause. David couldn't be a cold-blooded killer. Or maybe he was. But she had seen him fight Stillings's men. He could have killed any one of them and had not. And he'd gone into the priesthood, hadn't he?

“On top of everything else, ten years ago, his notable service in Calcutta won him a life peerage. His other honors and citations span two pages.”

“His service in
Calcutta
won him his peerage?”

“Didn't you live in Calcutta before coming here?”

A mocking undercurrent chilled her. “You know I did.”

“Then the question that begs to be asked is why a known assassin is here watching over someone as saintly as you. If I listen to rumor, Nathanial is his son. Is this true, Victoria? Have you allowed yourself get taken in by a notorious spy? Twice?”

Nellis came to his feet, and she involuntarily pressed back into the chair. He saw the movement, and his lips smiled, raising the fine hairs on the back of her neck as he left her with the disconcerting thought that he knew exactly who she was. That he had known for months. “I will not let you blackmail me,” she whispered.

“I merely asked if the rumors about the boy were true,” he said. “Though I've looked high and low for a marriage document between one David Donally and Victoria Munro, I have yet to find one. As a consequence, should something happen to Chadwick, heaven forbid, as Sir Henry's legal male heir, I would be responsible for the boy and Bethany.”

Uncertainty made her light-headed. How would he know these things? Was he in collusion with her father then? Or did someone from the foreign secretary's office contact him in the course of the investigation? Or perhaps both?

She started to put down her saucer and stand when she noted the second cup of tea on the tray remained untouched. She looked down into her own half-empty cup then forced herself to meet Nellis's gaze, a chill going down her spine.

“I am surprised you came today to see me.” He walked behind her and placed his hands on the back of the chair. “But then I never doubted you had courage.” The tenor in his voice darkened. “Now, you are probably asking if I have done something to your tea. Do you still have the fortitude to fly at the face of danger now, Victoria?”

Nellis had been menacing to her before, but until now, she had never truly been afraid of him. “I am not afraid of you,” she whispered.

Returning to his desk, Nellis folded his arms over his chest and observed her silence in triumph. “Then do I tell you the tea is poisoned and take away the suspense? Or do I let you discover the truth on your own? Either way, I fear you are doomed in the end.”

Struggling not to react, Victoria set the cup on the table at her knee and rose to her feet. “Is there anything else, Nellis?”

“Ah, Sheriff Stillings,” Nellis looked at the doorway, and Victoria almost fainted in relief.

“My lady.” Stillings wore a heavy woolen cloak the color of his brown eyes. He grinned at her charmingly. “I was unaware that someone of your distinction was present.”

“Sheriff Stillings works for me, Victoria,” Nellis said, turning his best magistrate's gaze to the other man. “Don't you?”

Stillings cleared his throat. “Did you want to see me for any particular reason?”

Nellis continued to look at her. “I believe she was just leaving,” Nellis said.

As if on cue, a harness and jingle heralded the arrival of Nellis's stately black carriage. It rumbled into sight of the bow window and rolled to a stop in front of the town house. “I would be remiss if I didn't see you properly escorted back to Rose Briar.”

She struggled with her gloves. “I would not be seen dead in your carriage.”

“Nonetheless, we'll tie the reins of your horse to the boot. You'll take the carriage.” Nellis aided her with her cloak, but she snatched it away before he could touch her. “Cheer up, Victoria.” He laughed, speaking in a museful vein. “I may be more valuable to you than you know before everything is over. Perhaps if you consider the idea, you may come to believe we can be allies as well as friends. Isn't that the way of it, Stillings?”

Victoria stepped next to the sheriff.

“See that she takes the carriage back to Rose Briar,” Nellis spoke firmly to Sheriff Stillings. “And Victoria,” he called after her and laughed, inordinately pleased with his victory. “The tea is my favorite blend with just a hint of mint.”

 

“Stay away from Nellis Munro,” Sheriff Stillings spoke as the carriage wheels rattled across a narrow bridge and climbed the drive toward Rose Briar.

Pressed as far away from Tommy Stillings as she could go within the close confines of the carriage, Victoria had buried herself in her cloak and kept her eyes on the window where twilight had darkened the sky. For the past hour, she'd sat unspeaking on the leather bench next to him, now the anxiety
that had plagued her since leaving Rose Briar that afternoon returned tenfold as she came within sight of the bluff.

With his less than subtle mental warfare, Nellis had homed in on her greatest weakness, her faulty instinct at being able to read human nature and thus his intent. He wanted her to doubt David's integrity and thus herself.

Her father had been just such an expert at manipulation, subduing her will by creating self-doubt, for it was the one way he could control her. The only way he could beat her. She should have taken a shiv to Nellis's bollocks and been done with his arrogance. The urge to do so now rose and swelled on a crest of fury, building in momentum until she folded her hands into a fist, until it grabbed at her chest.

Turning her head, she found Stillings watching her with something resembling concern. “Why do you work for him?”

“Because I do.” His smile came back. “My apologies if I gave you the impression that I am anything but what Nellis wants me to be.”

Victoria narrowed her eyes, trying to read his in the darkness. “You're afraid of him.”

Sheriff Stillings regarded the rigid set of her spine with a degree of admiration in the touch of his eyes. “Annie would not appreciate it if I broke your neck, my lady.”

The carriage slowed to a stop, rocking on its springs. “Would you have killed me if Nellis so ordered?”

Sheriff Stillings opened the door and stepped down. “Get out, my lady.”

Ignoring his extended hand, she departed the carriage and strode past an astonished half-dozen men gathered at the gate, leading up the path to the door. If David were anywhere on the bluff, he would have seen the carriage approach. Apprehension filled her. She didn't want to face
him until she could rein in her emotions, didn't want to look into his eyes and see the truth in Nellis's accusations about his past or question her trust. She didn't want to ask him why he had taken her son away today, the same time he'd arranged a secret meeting with someone from the Foreign Office.

“What do you want me to do with the horse, Doc?” Stillings called after her, his voice no longer amused or mocking, but angry.

Victoria whirled to tell him he could go to the devil, but an icy wind gust caught at her skirts and snatched the breath from her lungs. She clutched the hood of her cloak.

“I'll take my own bloody horse.” Mr. Rockwell appeared at her side, an expression of discontent evident in his eyes. “Since he does belong to me.”

Her hands no longer steady, she clutched the cloak against her throat, and watched the carriage pull away. William Shelby and Mr. Gibson were standing among the men gathered around her. “Mr. Rockwell?” Victoria grabbed his arm, the movement startling him. “Is Nathanial back yet?”

“He is with his father. Someone rode out to try and find Donally and bring him back,” he said, taking the reins of the horse from one of his men. “I hope you enjoyed your little outing, my lady. It cost us all a lot of time and labor.”

“You would know if he wasn't coming back…I mean if something was wrong?” Nellis had subtly threatened David's life. And her son was with him. “You would know? Right?”

His gaze dropped to her fingers clutching his sleeve. “What happened between you and Mr. Munro?”

She pulled her hand away, curling her fingers into her palm. No longer sure of anything, she clutched the hood of her cloak, whirling on her heel toward the house. Mr. Rock
well called her name but she didn't stop. The main door opened.

Bethany appeared backlit by the foyer lamplight. “Victoria?” Tears in her eyes, she stood aside as Victoria swept past her into the foyer. “We've been worried about you.”

“I can take care of myself, Bethany.” She had not meant her voice to sound so harsh when she was so glad to see the girl; she had not meant her anger. “Please…” She cupped Bethany's tender cheek. “Just go home to Sir Henry.”

Victoria strode up the stairs, her skirts billowing out around her like unfurled sails in a growing storm. By the time she reached the second-floor corridor, she was running to her room.

A
fire burned in the hearth. Victoria lay in bed, one hand beneath her cheek as she stared listlessly into the dying flames. She'd tried to remain awake in hopes of seeing David, but it was already after midnight and he had yet to return. Her dinner tray remained untouched where Mrs. Gibson had set it on a small table earlier. Bethany had knocked on her door earlier, but Victoria could not talk to her and had turned into her pillow to sleep. A green vial of chlorodyne drops sat on her bedside table and she closed her eyes, Nellis's conversation replaying on her consciousness as she fell into a restless slumber and dreamed about a cloaked figure in the night.

She stood amid the swirling mist rising from the cemetery, wearing her mother's locket and looking across the grave markers to the church.

Should something happen to Chadwick, as Sir Henry's heir, I would be responsible for the boy and Bethany.

You can take that first step with me, Meg.

Have you allowed yourself get taken in by a notorious spy? Twice?

And still, he came into her dreams, an angel in her bed, taking her into his arms and holding her, vowing to love her in health and sickness until death.

The cloaked figure following her faded with the shadows, and she opened her eyes, swept into the swirling sensation of her dream, running through thick, black smoke. But she was not Victoria. She was Meg Faraday. She could hear the steamer chimney bellow three times. A fire had spread into the engine room and panicked passengers were flowing onto the decks. Screams. Children crying. People shoving and clawing at one another to reach the quarter boats on deck. But she was trying to get back inside the companionway. No one would let her. Someone hit her shoulder and she went into the water just before the engine room exploded. Indistinct memories formed shapes against the flames, smells of the oil-filled sea swallowing her within its depths and the sound of the dying ship sinking into the sea. She clung to debris, and somehow found a barrel floating in the sea, begging God not to pull her down and take her child with her, promising Him her soul if He would only let her live.

It had been the first prayer she'd ever remembered saying in her life. And when she'd again awakened to sunlight and the destruction around her, she was alive.

“
Maaaaaggie?
Where are you?”

The vivid dream shoved her straight up in bed, her heartbeat pushing blood through her veins. Only her father called her by that name. Gasping air into her lungs, she blinked away the confusion in her brain. Sanity returned in slow degrees. Her bed was empty. Tangled in her blankets, she col
lapsed back into the pillows. She'd only been dreaming. Lord in heaven, she'd only been dreaming.

Hands trembling, she stretched across the mattress and fumbled in the darkness for the table clock set on her nightstand. The low-burning fire cast the only light. Her room was ice-cold. Last night she'd taken only a few drops of chlorodyne to help with the stiffness in her body. The narcotic effects were worse because she'd not eaten. She was barely coherent. The little hand on the clock's face was on the four, but that was all she could read in the darkness.

She flung off the blankets and splashed cold water on her face. Remaining barefooted, she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her wrapper and, ignoring the tenderness on her side, belted it at the waist over her shift.

Nathanial was not in his room, which meant David still had not returned. Uncertainty turning to worry, she shut her son's door and, after a moment's hesitation, made her way to the studio, where she lit the fluted oil lamps that lined the walls.

Lifting one staff off its place on the wall, she turned it over in her hands, tucked it beneath one arm, and proceeded to work through the soreness in her body.

Nellis had enjoyed his little game with the tea yesterday. He had enjoyed telling her about David, and, at her most vulnerable moment of confusion, she had let Nellis slip through the cracks in her mind and poison her with self-doubt.

And as she worked her way across the room, instead of melding mind and body to create balance, she felt only growing frustration. Wasn't this what Nellis had intended? Yet, the more determined she was not to believe the worst, the more her mind gave in to doubt. The circle only fed upon itself and, by the time she worked her way across the floor, she felt
only a need to impale the bloody staff through David's nub of a heart. Outside, the sky remained dark, enclosing her until she could barely breathe.

Sweeping her leg around into the next set of steps, she swung the staff over her head, turned, and came to a complete stop.

“David!”

He stood not two feet from her. Wearing his heavy coat and riding clothes, he looked as if he'd been dragged out of bed. Stubble heightened the dark look in his eyes, but it was not all anger she saw.

He lifted a dark-gloved hand and eased the staff away from his skull. “My horse threw a shoe about five miles from here,” he said. “Nathanial and I were staying at the inn outside Alfriston. I didn't get Rockwell's message until two hours ago.”

“He shouldn't have been so quick to summon you.”

“What the bloody hell were you thinking, going to Nellis?”

Ignoring him, refusing to fall in to the volatility of her emotions, she straightened her neck and stretched out her left arm, looking over her shoulder as she bent at the knee. She stepped into the exercise, moving the staff with slow, precise movements. In nine steps, she reached the wall, pulled the second staff from its place next to the fencing foils, turned, and tossed it to David. He caught it midair.

“He knows,” she said. “He knows who you and I are. He knows about Nathanial.”

“Did Nellis threaten him?”

He threatened you
, she wanted to shout. Calmly, she said, “He implied that if something should happen to you then as Sir Henry's legal heir, he would become Nathanial and Bethany's guardian.”

“That won't happen, Meg.”

She knew that she dared tell him no more. A part of her recognized the danger of telling David about the telegram he'd received from Lord Ravenspur for fear he would violently confront Nellis. Especially when she suspected that was exactly what Nellis wanted. Yet he'd succeeded in making her question David's loyalty. Even as he'd subtly threatened David's life.

“Nellis told me how you earned your title and a page full of other accolades. You neglected to tell me how well you'd been rewarded for all of your dedicated work in Calcutta. He told me you are a killer. An assassin. Are you?”

David said nothing in his defense. But a darkness descended in his eyes and he was a split second late in raising the staff against her attack. “What are you doing, Meg?”

“Fight me, David.”

He evaded her next move. “I'm not dressed for this.”

“Then undress. It isn't as if I haven't seen everything already.” She swung her staff and cut only empty air.

“The first rule.” His grin warned that she tread dangerous ground. “You don't fight angry. Angry will get you killed.”

“And you are so adept at survival.”

The sconces around the room provided scant light, but enough to show him that she wore barely anything at all beneath the robe. “I fear you have the advantage, dear.”

“Oh!” She lunged.

Stepping to her left, he countered her every movement as if he was making love to her, with masculine precision to detail, guiding her every thrust toward ultimate surrender, and she missed her mark again, stumbling forward in a turn.

“Why did you go see Nellis?” he asked.

“It doesn't matter.” She gripped the pole with both hands and pushed against his. “I found what I was looking for.”

“Take it slower,” he warned.

“I can't.”

She wouldn't.

“Fight me, David.”

“Why do you think I haven't pressed you about the treasure?”

“Fight, damm it!”

David held up his pole if only to counter the force of her attack. His eyes glittered over hers, warning her that he was perfectly capable of retaliation in kind. But he did not fight.

She swung the staff in a wide arc. He caught it with his hand, stopping her forward momentum with the same force of slamming against a wall. The contact jolted every muscle in her body. She bent over her legs, resting one hand on her side.

“You're hurting, Meg. Let me help you.”

His tenderness served to disarm her. She recognized what he was trying to do for her. But he couldn't continue to carry her on his shoulders. Bethany was right in that regard. She couldn't hide behind people anymore. She had to do this for herself.

“I have nothing more to say.” She yielded the staff to him, but he grabbed her arm before she could walk away. “Let go of me. I'm not like you, David. I can't dismiss the pain and make believe it doesn't exist.”

He dragged her to the wall with one hand and mounted both staffs beside the foils with the other. “You
will
allow me my say, Meg.”

“My name is Victoria. Why can't you just remember the name?”

“Jesu, Meg, Victoria—”

“Why can't you just let Meg Faraday die?”

He pulled her into his arms and, gripping her shoulders, placed his mouth a hairsbreadth from hers. “Because I love you, and you bloody ask the impossible of me.”

In her agitated state, his words were the very last thing in the world she expected him to say. “I have loved you always.” He leaned his forehead against hers and said with ferocity, “Don't you understand that, yet?”

She swiped a knuckle across her cheek. “No, I do not.”

Cupping her face, David pulled her into a kiss. It was easier to kiss her than to convince her of his affection. He angled his head, opened his mouth over hers, and tasted only bliss. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, as if awakening from a deep sleep, rose on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck, and the kiss burned into something erotic. Just like that, he caught fire. He strained to pull her closer, to climb inside her, but the groan in his chest did not rise from pleasure. Sheer frustration targeted every nerve in his body and saved him from the consequences of his lust.

“Can you please not try to kill me anymore?” he rasped, his forehead pressing against hers. God grant him self-control. There was much he had yet to say to her and, his exhaustion notwithstanding, he would have his say. “I'm not going to leave you. Not ever again. You have to believe me.”

Meg pulled back, and he looked deeply into her eyes. He wanted to tell her he'd already taken steps to seek a pardon for her. But he couldn't. Not yet. He was afraid of building too much hope, then dashing it on the rocks, knowing that such a task would practically require a miracle. But no one had ever spoken up for Meg before, or defended her, or of
fered her a chance. “I'm not pressing you about the treasure because I need you to trust why I am here. If you tell me you don't know where it is. I'll believe you. I'm doing everything in my power to help you. Do you trust me?”

She nodded.

“Then say the words.” He pushed his fingers into her hair and forced her to look at him. “Tell me you trust me to see you and Nathanial through this safely. That I know what I'm doing.”

“Time is on the other side,” she whispered. “Not ours. I only want to put an end to this. And I don't know how. If I could find my father…”

His palms tightened on her shoulders, and he moved her to arm's length. “
Then what
, for bloody sake?”

“Then I will never have any more nightmares, David. I could end this for everyone. I would be free. I only want to be free of him and my past. I don't care how anymore.”

Finally, he knew. He understood. He watched her eyes become luminescent with tears that never fell. “Is that why you went to see Nellis?”

She walked to the wall and plopped down on the leather mat, but not so distracted that she didn't adjust the robe to cover her bare feet. “He's connected in some way to this case, but I'm not sure how.”

He squatted on his calves in front of her, spilling his coat on the floor around his feet. “Tell me why you believe that?”

“Everything started six months ago. His interest in the land. His obsession with me. Someone must have come to him. He knows too much about us, and he didn't care that I knew that. It was as if he wanted to make sure I told you everything.”

He smoothed back her tumbledown hair, knowing that he was ten seconds from walking out of this room and going after Nellis. “Did he hurt you?”

Shaking her head, she did not meet his eyes. “Sheriff Stillings brought me home. No one laid a hand on me.”

“A person doesn't have to strike another person to cause pain. Something else must have happened if you're afraid I might ride over to his residence and knock in his teeth.”

“Where did you go yesterday?” she asked.

David relented to the change of topic. “I found the stone mason who once worked on the church. Mr. Gibson gave me his name. The man will be here tomorrow, and I will see how many others follow his lead. I put the word out tonight that I am hiring people interested in honest employment.”

“You did that?”

“I need people who are not afraid of the dark. Someone willing to hunt rats in caves. People willing to fight for themselves, and for a change.”

He didn't know how he could make anything change at all, when he didn't know where to begin. But he knew this place and these people mattered to Meg. Or maybe she just mattered to him enough that he would give her anything. “Do you know what Sir Henry told me yesterday?” He tilted her face with the palm of his hand. “He believes that most of the people in this town will stand by you.”

“But no one comes up here anymore.”

“Do you think that may be a direct cause of my presence here more than any fault of yours?”