Beauty and the Duke (28 page)

“Because he loves you, Becca. Because you have been holding a deep burden inside you. But whatever it was you saw that night, it was not your brother.”

She wiped her nose and babbled into the handkerchief. “But it
was
, Christine. It was Erik. I saw them together. I saw them…!”

“What did you see?”

“It was near dark. I was sitting in the gazebo overlooking the lake. I heard Lady Elizabeth shouting at someone—a man. And so I followed the voices. The man wore a dark cloak with a hood on his head. Lady Elizabeth was upset about her sister. She struck the man. The hood came off.

“When it did…I saw his profile. It was Erik.” Becca sobbed against Christine. “After that, I was too frightened and ran away. Erik didn’t return for months. I never saw Lady Elizabeth again.”

“Did the man you saw strike Lady Elizabeth?”

Becca shook her head. “No.”

Christine looked at the countess. “Why would this condemn him in anyone’s eyes?”

“Because my son told everyone he had not spoken to his wife after he’d left Sedgwick. He lied.”

Christine’s hands tightened on Becca’s shoulders. “It must have been difficult for you all these years. You thought you were protecting your brother?”

Becca nodded. “I didn’t want the rumors about him to be true. I could not have borne it. I told myself, I dreamed it.”

“And yet you must have told someone about that night, else the constable would not have asked you these questions. Whom did you tell?”

She shook her head vigorously. Standing behind her daughter, the countess met Christine’s gaze. “She told me.”

“
You
?” Christine rasped, taking a step away.

“I told only my son what Becca told me.” The countess’s hand tightened on Christine’s arm. “He is ready to have done with this, Christine. You must understand…”

Boris suddenly stood in front of her. “Mum,” he said. “The countess is right. It has to be this way. Do not let him see you like this.”

They are all mad!

The door in front of her opened. The noise in the corridor abruptly halted as Erik appeared, flanked by two burly men. He stopped when he saw her.

Behind her, the corridor grew quiet as the servants fell away and opened a path for their master. Boris, too, stepped to the side in deference. Erik said something in a flat, emotionless voice to the two men beside him, and they stepped away to give him room.

With a sob, Becca flew into his arms and clung to him. He pressed his cheek against her hair and said all would be well in time. His eyes on his mother told her to take his sister. The countess led Becca away. He spoke to Boris and then Hampton. Suddenly, Christine was the only one left standing in front of him. She was stepping into his arms. Tension gripped the corded muscles of his arms.

“I have failed you,” she said. “I never found the answers for which you were searching.” The words sounded faint. “Tell them you have done nothing. Tell them your sister was wrong. That it was not you she saw.”

The palms of his hands were warm against her back.
“Shh.” He pressed his cheeks against her hair. “I will be traveling in my coach with my own outriders.” He placed a finger against her lips as she started to protest. “Look at the brighter side. No one can claim Elizabeth is responsible for sending any of those letters and then accuse me of killing her seven years ago. You have not failed me, Christine.”

He scraped the hair from her face and held his palms to her cheeks. “I will welcome the truth that comes out in the next few days,” he said softly. “But right now Erin and my sister need you.” Gently, he caught her chin. “And understand this,” his voice was as intent as his gaze, “I
will
be back.”

“I just came from the library. These are old topographical survey maps.” Joseph dropped three parchment rolls on the table behind where Christine stood in front of the tower windows overlooking the moonlit lake.

With her arms folded, she shifted her gaze from the lake to the hills, where a single star glittered like a drop of amber above the crag-lined horizon. Erik had been gone a few hours. He would reach Dunfermline tomorrow afternoon. Shortly after he’d left, the countess had also departed.
Good riddance
, Christine thought, swiping at the tears on her face.
Mothers are supposed to love their children. All of them
. “He wouldn’t let me go with him.”

“Christine…” Amelia said. “You must take your mind off your problems and come over here and sit down. “Joseph has something to show us.”

Christine had come into the tower to get away from everyone. But it had proven impossible.

Joseph and Amelia were staying in the lower rooms. Becca was in the next room, still so distraught that Mrs.
Brown sedated her that evening with a sleeping powder. Erin had been tucked in an hour ago, into Christine’s bed, where she had fallen asleep. Beast had been lying on her sill or twining about her legs and tripping her. Even Aunt Sophie had been here earlier, the only person at supper with enough spit and vinegar to tell everyone to quit moping and snap to. Joseph had done exactly that.

“I know you have a more current map,” he was saying, “but I was hoping to find something older. A lot can change in a hundred years. I found this in the library.” He pulled the lamp nearer to where he was working. He laid the older map across the table. It looked antique. “These maps show old roads and trails no longer in existence.”

Christine’s interest piqued. Her gaze had lifted in the glass and now she turned as he smoothed the corners of the map, inviting her to return to the table and see for herself. “This map was made forty years ago when some astute chap attempted to map the roads and trails in the hills.”

Christine could read better without her spectacles, and removed them. “You were right that this kind of rock formation is ideal for an underground aquifer,” he said. “Clearly the railroad opened something and it was that initial wash that swept through any lava tubes and abandoned caverns taking out the weaker stratum. This region has also had an overabundance of rain in the last few years.” He shifted his stance and looked up at her. “I used to live in Edinburgh. Remember?”

She remembered.

After a moment, he picked up Becca’s fossil tooth, assessing the discovery. He didn’t know yet about the bigger tooth. She had not told anyone.

Joseph’s expression sobered. “What happens if we find this Elizabeth person, Chrissie? What if the evidence does not bode well for his grace?”

“His grace will be exonerated,” Amelia said.

“He came to me in London for answers, Joseph,” Christine said. “He trusted me.”

“We will find her. Then you will find this beast, Chrissie.” Joseph pressed the tooth into her hand. “This is your dream. You will be famous.”

She looked down at her hand then dropped onto the stool.

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” Joseph asked.

“Of course this is what she wants,” Amelia said. “Isn’t it?”

Since Amelia had removed the ring months ago, Joseph’s statement roused her. “Are you both happy?”

Amelia blushed. “Yes.”

Joseph laid his hand atop Amelia’s. “Even if I am just a simple professor. Who knows?” He looked at the map. “Maybe I will prove to be a better geologist than I ever was a paleontologist.”

“The museum made a mistake canceling the expedition to Perth,” she said in his defense. “You would have made an excellent team leader.”

His mouth crooked with chagrin. “That must have hurt for you to say.”

She drew in her breath. “Surprisingly, no.” She wiped at her eyes with the tip of her thumb, for her thoughts were never far from the man she loved. “Now help me save my husband.”

Joseph thumped his finger on the map. “We will begin here at first light. The Dragon’s Lair,” he said. “The name of this waterfall—” his finger tapped the falls depicted by a single blue swirl of color on the faded vellum. A hundred years ago, it was barely a stream.

“Dragon’s Lair?”

Written in script next to the falls was the name
Dragon’s Lair
.

Christine turned the aged map and stared in disbelief. “There used to be a connecting bridge of stone to the upper falls,” she said, wiping her eyes, remembering what Erik had told her about parts of the cliff crumbling away.

She had searched the wall of stone behind the falls but never sixty feet above the ground.

Christine studied the map more intently. Then looked up at Joseph and Amelia, already having made her choice and knowing what she was about to give Joseph. Her only goal now was to find Elizabeth and free Erik from his past. She had no doubt that what she wanted most in the world she would give up everything else to have.

“I have a better place to begin our search,” she told Joseph. They would begin where she’d found the second tooth. “
Then
we go to the falls.”

“T
hey are inside waiting, your grace,” Attenborough said. “The countess is with them.”

“And Johnny Maxwell?” Erik asked. “Did my men find him yet?”

Attenborough shook his head. “No.”

Erik had arrived at the Royal Burgh courthouse early. It didn’t matter that he had been incarcerated in comfortable quarters; the last three days of inaction had not been easy to endure for a man who never allowed anything to chance.

But he’d had enough of the legal system and laws twisted to suit the interpretation of whichever bloody magistrate was hearing a case. In the end, he’d decided to fight Robert Maxwell in the only way he knew how—cease the fight. Surrender. If he could not confront Elizabeth’s father one way, then he would do it in another.

Erik had known that, if Christine discovered what he was planning, she would never have allowed him to do this alone. And this was something he needed to do alone. He disliked having to deceive her, disliked even more putting Becca through hell, but as his mother suggested, the authorities needed to hear the story from her to make this work. Erik only knew his sister
desperately needed to unburden her soul. It hadn’t been until the incident at the river, and Christine’s bringing up Becca’s nightmares, that everything hit him with clarity.

After he’d begun to recover his memory and remembered more of the events of that day at the river, he began to do more than question Becca’s memory. He knew now, Lara had saved his life. She had been no dream. To have known where to find him, she would have had to have seen him go into the river, which meant she’d either been the one to cut the rope on that ridge or she had followed the person who had.

If she had saved Erik’s life, then he was counting on her to do the same thing now. If his gut was wrong…then he had just allowed his sister to condemn him.

Attenborough opened the door to the magistrate’s office and Erik swept inside. The bailiff stood next to the door. Lord Eyre and Lady Lara were also present as was his mother. This morning Erik had received notice that Robert Maxwell’s brother had stepped down as Lord Advocate and the magistrate who had been charged with hearing Erik’s deposition had been replaced.

“Your grace,” the new magistrate said, introducing himself as Sir Pritchard Wilson, the man now in charge of the case.

After thanking Erik for his time in coming to Dunfermline to close the case of one Lady Elizabeth Maxwell Boughton, he asked Erik to sit, which he was not inclined to do as he faced Robert Maxwell from across the space of carpet separating them.

Erik glanced at his mother, dressed like royalty in emerald-green velvet and a wide-rimmed hat cocked slightly to the left. “Lord Eyre has agreed to withdraw his petition to the Commisionary Court to see your
marriage invalidated,” she said.

“I am here of my own accord,” Eyre said. “Lara told me of the letters Johnny has been writing. Though I am still not entirely convinced this is not some elaborate scheme to clear your name now.” His voice wavered. “She has always shouted your innocence to the rooftops.”

“Why is that do you suppose?” Erik demanded.

“You promised to listen, Robert,” the countess said.

Lara’s head lowered and she murmured tearfully to her father that she was sorry, but that she had tried to tell him the truth and he would not hear it. Erik looked at Lara’s blond hair knotted at her nape. The shape of her face and eyes. “Tell him everything, Lara.”

She looked at him and knew that he knew the truth.

“When your hair is down, you look like your sister,” Erik said. “Why did you allow people to think you were Elizabeth, Lara?”

She lowered her head. “In the beginning it wasn’t on purpose. But people noticed me. I could be beautiful when I was her.”

“Lara,” Eyre whispered.

“Have you no idea what it is like being her older sister? The beautiful Elizabeth Maxwell. The poor put-upon Elizabeth Maxwell. The daughter to whom you gave everything, including the past seven years? Johnny and I have been forced to watch and I have grown to hate you.”

“Enough to make him believe your sister still lived?”

“Papa wanted to believe she was still alive.”

“Just as someone wanted him to believe that Erin was not my child?”

“I cannot help what he thinks—”

“Just as you could not help that Elizabeth believed I was in love with you and carrying on an affair with
you, her own sister?”

Lara blanched. “You
were
in love with me. If she had never made you look away from me, I would have been your wife.”

“You must have hated her.”

Lara’s wet luminous eyes dropped to her hands. “I never hated her, Erik. I only wished I could have been her in your eyes. She was a silly child who refused to see the gifts she had been handed. I tried to tell her. The night you two argued so horribly…she was an utter fool.”

“Did you do something to Elizabeth?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Did Johnny?”

“No.”

Erik knelt in front of her chair. “At the river, you gave me a blanket and kept me from freezing. You did not want to see me die, did you, Lara?”

Her eyes wide, she shook her head. “I never wanted to see you die.”

“Are you the one who cut the rope at the river?”

She shook her head. Erik’s eyes remained on Lara’s downturned face. She had not convinced him of her repentance and he had expected to be convinced. “You and I both know that it was not me Becca saw that night with Elizabeth. Have you told your da whom you have been protecting all these years?”

“Johnny didn’t kill our sister. He didn’t kill Elizabeth.”

“What happened, Lara?” Erik asked.

Lara pressed her hands to her head. “He was furious with her for believing that you and I had an affair. He wouldn’t let her leave Sedgwick. Her place was as your duchess.”

“What are you saying, Lara?” Eyre asked. “That
Johnny was the man Lady Rebecca saw with Elizabeth?”

Teary eyed, she beseeched her father to understand. “They argued. He left her there. He told me he left her there. She must have tried to follow Johnny.”

Erik stood. “And you believe Elizabeth tried to walk alone ten miles around the lake to Eyre House at night wearing only her cloak for protection through hills where a twisted ankle could mean serious injury or even death if she could not get help? Wouldn’t she have at least ordered a carriage brought around, Lara?”

“Johnny did not kill her. Why would he? She was his closest link to the duchy should she bear you a son or should you die. Either way, he would have had Sedgwick Castle in his hands.”

If something had happened that night and Elizabeth
had
been killed, hiding her for seven years would do exactly what Christine had said to him once. If someone wanted to play into the curse and Erik died before his thirty-fourth birthday, the entire ordeal would be chalked up to Old Angus Maxwell’s curse. How many people expected him to die in the next few weeks?

It suddenly bothered him that he did not know where Maxwell was. “Do you know where your brother is?” Erik asked, but she wasn’t listening.

“He told me people would try to spread lies about him. And that I was not to speak to anyone. That no matter what anyone said, he was innocent. He pleaded with me. He was up at the river that evening because he had been following Lady Sedgwick. He did not cut the rope. I was there, Erik. The rope just snapped. He was frightened people would believe he tried to kill you.”

“Yet, knowing all this, you came here today.”

Her gaze fell on the countess. “I went to the lake house but the countess found me and told me I needed
to come forward and tell everything. That if I loved Erin, I would do everything in my power not to see her father harmed. And so I went to Papa, and we came here at once.”

“Why the letters?”

“Johnny needed people to believe Elizabeth still lived. He couldn’t take the chance that the curse might kill you and leave a son to inherit the duchy.”

“Lord Sedgwick.” Eyre rose. “In the name of all that is merciful, we don’t know that Johnny murdered Elizabeth or the circumstances behind her disappearance. If he is guilty—”

“
Guilty?
” Erik demanded in utter disbelief.

Lara stood. “He is only guilty of defending what he believed should have been ours.”

“Lara!”

Eyre stepped between Erik and Lara. “Your grace, if my son is guilty of murder, he will face judgment, but let it be from me, not from you. I ask that you allow me to bring in my son. I have been a bloody fool. Let whatever it was that tore apart our two families long ago end now.”

For a space of a minute, an oppressive sense of tension filled the small white-walled office. Erik looked from Eyre to the countess. Erik knew when he walked into this room today, he’d been prepared to hunt down Johnny Maxwell and kill him for what he had put his family through for seven long, bloody years. For what Becca had suffered.

His mother had remained out of the proceedings and stood aside now, allowing him to make his own decision. He owed her a debt of gratitude for what she had done for him this day, in her way, giving him back his future by clearing his name once and for all. A future he wanted very much to own. Now that it was within
his grasp to do so.

Months ago, he would have destroyed the entire Maxwell family as he had done to countless others who had betrayed him or trod on his toes, and would have relished their demise as justice owed. He had purchased more than one man’s allegiance in such a manner. But thirty-four years had taught him the wisdom of looking before leaping into the fire. Three months with Christine had given him a reason not to leap at all. A second chance to begin life anew.

Yet there was something in his mother’s eyes that told him she understood justice did not always favor the just or the right. She would support whatever decision he chose to make—and they would never speak a word of it again.

He shifted his attention to Eyre. “If my men find Lord John he will be brought to Dunfermline. If I find him near my family for any reason, I will not promise restraint. So, I suggest you find him first.”

Sir Pritchard cleared his throat. The bailiff folded the papers on the desk and handed the sheaf to Erik. “You are free to leave, your grace.”

Erik stared at the papers. Just that fast?

After seven years of hell? He was free to leave.

“Erik—” His mother’s hand touched his arm. “You will tell your wife, I meant you no ill harm?”

Despite his need to get back to Christine now, he remained a moment longer with her. “I will tell her.”

“If you don’t mind, I will return with Robert and Attenborough. I am sure you will not wish to dawdle with us on the road.”

As Erik strode out of the courthouse and into his waiting coach, he only knew that he needed to get back to Sedgwick Castle—to Christine.

Erik rode through Sedgwick’s arched gates near dusk the next evening. He was already swinging off his horse before Boris appeared on the topmost stair. His butler came down the stairs murmuring his welcome and relief to see him. To Boris, Erik knew he must have looked like some highwayman of lore, unshaven and ragged, missing only a cocked hat and flintlock to complete the archaic picture.

The inner courtyard remained silent. No liveryman came to get his horse. He could see people atop the battlements with spyglasses and telescopes. “What is happening?” Erik demanded.

“They found her,” Boris said. “Lady Sedgwick and Mr. Darlington believe they found Lady Elizabeth.”

“Where is Lady Sedgwick now?”

“Her grace and Mr. Darlington have been up at the falls for three days. Lady Sedgwick has been working to bring out the remains they found in the cavern. Her grace did not want to tell anyone. She was concerned that you needed to see the body first.”

“Clearly everyone bloody knows.”

“No, your grace. Most everyone has gone into the hills or up to the battlements to watch the dig, hoping to glimpse the monster Mr. Darlington unearthed.” Boris lowered his voice in excitement. “A creature that is surely not from this world. The people are terrified.”

“But not so terrified that they haven’t all run to watch the dig.”

Erik was already walking toward his horse, his long strides eating up the distance in seconds. Mounting, Erik swung the horse around. “Where are my daughter and my sister?”

Having chased Erik across the courtyard, Boris grabbed each breath. “Mrs. Whitman is with your daughter. I…Lady Rebecca is with Lady Sophia.”

Twenty minutes later, Erik was mounted on a fresh horse and riding toward the hills. Another hour to arrive on the crowded scene at the crest of the road. An hour of hell, he thought.

He passed the place where the carriage Christine had been riding in upon her arrival crashed in a rut and the place where he had gone into the river. He slowed his horse to a walk as he turned off the road. Dozens of people stood huddled beneath overhanging tree limbs and pine boughs in an effort to stay dry in the thickening drizzle. No one looked in his direction as he dismounted. All eyes were anxiously looking down the trail.

Erik saw at once the object of their fascination. Lying atop a sheet of oilcloth was an elongated stone skull similar to that of a crocodile on display in the London historical museum. Only this one was larger, with more than a hundred huge, jagged teeth visible in its fossilized head.

He saw his engineering foreman at the trail’s head just as the man looked up and spied Erik almost in the same instant. Startled, Hodges stepped forward in a fluster. “Lord Sedgwick.”

All at once, others turned. The glade grew silent as people moved away from the trail to open a path for him. “We did not receive word you were returning,” Hodges said.

“Where is Lady Sedgwick, Hodges?”

“Inside the cavern. We have done our best to keep people away. But you must understand everyone is curious. No one has ever seen the like of what has been found here.”

There was no easy way to reach the falls. The ground around this part of the cliffs was treacherous and slippery. A small path had been carved in the side of the rock, and a narrow rope bridge affixed to one side of the overhang just beneath the falls, which took him beneath a wall of water and into a narrow cave hidden by the falls. One could not get inside without becoming soaked.