Blood Lust (27 page)

How could this woman invent such an outrageous tale when both of them knew exactly what happened? Watching her now, he clamped down on an urge to hit her. He had never hit a woman before, but he itched to leave the imprint of his hand across her cheek.

“So you were frightened, too terrified of my brother to tell the truth,” he taunted.

“Yes.”

“But you’ll tell the truth now, won’t you Jane? Because you know that if you don’t you will hang right alongside Benjamin.” He ran a finger along her jaw line.

She leaned toward him, slid her arms around his neck and pressed her heavy breasts into his chest. Her nipples were rigid, she was aroused by his anger. She wanted this tougher, stronger version of himself that she had never seen. And she wanted the control over him she had had before.

“Benjamin is an animal. I loathe the very sight of him.” Her hand slid down to the front of his breeches. “It is you I love.” She cupped his sex and began to stroke him, but his fingers caught her wrist and pulled her hand away.

“Those days are long past, Jane. Right now all I want from you is the truth. I intend to set up a meeting with the judges. I’ll send word of the date and time, then come for you myself. I’ll expect you to tell them it was Benjamin who killed my father. You’ll do that, won’t you, Jane?”

When she hesitated, he squeezed harder on her wrist.

“I’ll tell them.”

“If you try to leave London, the judges will take that as a presumption of guilt along with Benjamin’s. If you try to warn Benjamin in any way, I’ll see you pay equally for the crime he committed.”

He gripped her arms, dragged her up on her feet, and shook her hard. “Do you have any doubt that I mean what I say?”

Jane looked into his eyes. They were as cold as death itself, and a cold shiver of fear ran through her. “No.”

“Then I shall count on your incomparable sense of self-preservation, Lady Cromwell, to ensure you abide by your word.” He started toward the door, then stopped and turned.

“One more thing, my love.”

“Yes, William?”

“Should you, for any reason, decide to cast your lot once more with Benjamin, it will not be a naïve young duke you’ll be facing, but a man who will track you to the ends of the earth just to squeeze the life from your lovely body.” Turning, he stalked out of the room.

At the alley, his carriage was gone. He walked to the corner and spotted it. He climbed in. At last something was turning in his favor. With Jane to testify in his behalf, proving his innocence would be certain. His lands would be restored, his good name returned.

For the first time since he had returned to England, the tension drained out of him.

Then the carriage rounded the corner, rolling past the front of the house. He spotted Katherine’s family crest on the door of her black coach, and the tension knitted in his stomach once more.

Katherine had never been to Lady Cromwell’s house. From the outside, the narrow structure varied little from the others packed in along the tree-lined street. The inside of the house was another matter entirely.

The residence had been done in a sophisticated French design, the profligate gilt and silk-upholstered furnishings interspersed with Oriental pieces that looked slightly out of place in their surroundings. The resulting mix might have been bearable had there not been so much of it. As it was, except for a small open area in the middle of the drawing room, scant inches stood between the mix of expensive objects.

The butler looked in her direction. “Her ladyship awaits you upstairs, Lady Hunt. She wishes you to join her for tea in her private drawing room.” He turned and started walking, expecting her to follow.

As she trailed him up the corridor, she noticed there appeared to be an odd lack of servants, just the butler and a serving maid moving through the empty halls.

The sense of unease she had felt earlier when she left the house returned as she approached the door to the duchess’s private suite. When the butler opened the door to the drawing room, eyeing her with an air of disapproval, it settled in her stomach like a cold hard stone. Perhaps today she would uncover some bit of information that would prove helpful to William.

Katherine sat down on a rose colored brocade sofa and surveyed the room, as overdone as the rooms downstairs. She fidgeted, trying to get comfortable in her stiff panniers and wondered why the duchess kept her waiting.

The door leading into Jane’s bedchamber was closed, yet Katherine startled at the sound that came from within.

Furniture moving, the muted sound of voices. A scraping noise and something heaving hitting the floor. What on earth was going on in there?

She crossed the carpet, straining to make out the dull mix of sounds coming from behind the wooden door. Moving closer, she pressed her ear against the door, but noises stopped.

Katherine, curiosity mixing with concern bit her lip. Perhaps the duchess had fallen and was injured. Imagining the anger she might well face on the opposite side of the door, Katherine turned the silver knob and eased it open, then leaned forward and looked inside.

“Good God!” The breath wedged to her chest at the sight of Jane Roberts sprawled across her bed, her skin as pale as the sheets. Katherine rushed toward her, just in time to see a man’s tall figure moving out through the French doors onto the balcony. As large as he was, he traveled swiftly, climbing over the rail and making his way down the trellis. She raced to the window only to see that he had disappeared behind the hedges in the maize at the front of the garden.

Katherine gripped the bedpost, her breath coming harsh and erratic. She could see the duchess wasn’t breathing. There wasn’t the least rise and fall of her chest. A survey of her face, her lifeless eyes. Dark bruises were already forming, indentations of the horrible work done by a man’s powerful hands.

Her hold on the bedpost grew tighter, her entire body shaking. Dear God, the duchess had been murdered, and she had seen the man who had done it. Who was he? Why had he killed her? And what should she do?

Turning away from Jane’s lifeless body, she fought to gather herself together. Images of William rose in her mind, a tall man, dark haired and incredibly strong.

The killer was as big as William, perhaps even larger, and his hair was dark, perhaps even black.

It couldn’t have been William. Surely not. William would have never killed her. Her trembling worsened and her head felt so light she thought she might faint.

A noise at the door kept her on her feet. She turned in that direction and saw William’s tall frame outlined in the opening. He stood rigid, unmoving, his eyes wide in an expression that mirrored disbelief. His face was as pale as hers.

“My God, what has happened!” he strode into the room, not stopping until he reached the foot of the bed. He stared a moment at the limp and lifeless body, then looked in Katherine’s direction. He noticed how pale she ws, saw her sway unsteadily toward him, and caught her as her legs went limp beneath her.

If she swooned it was only for a second. “I’m all right. I didn’t mean to do that. I can stand on my own.”

He just kept walking. “I’m taking you out of here. You can tell me what happened to Jane, then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”

They didn’t leave by the front stairs as she had expected. Instead William carried her down the servants’ stairs at the rear. His carriage was waiting in the alley behind the house. He loaded her aboard, then ordered the driver round front, stopping only to send Katherine’s coach back home.

“How did you know where I was?” Katherine peered up at him from the seat beside her, but William didn’t answer. He was staring out the window, lines of distress making him frown.

“William?”

He turned at the sound of his name, seemed to gather his concentration. “I’m sorry. You asked me how I knew you were there.” He scowled down the length of his nose. “I cam to see Jane. I hoped to convince her to tell the truth. I saw your carriage as I was leaving. I figured I had better go back and see what mischief you were up to.”

His features strained, the skin taut across his cheeks. “What happened, Katherine? What were you doing in there?”

Katherine leaned back against the seat of the carriage, which rattled along the crowded streets, the noise of the wheels absorbed by the rattle of carts and wagons.

“Lady Cromwell invited me to tea,” Katherine said. “She promised to give me all the latest gossip on Benjamin’s marriage. She thought that would interest me, since we were once betrothed.”

“Go on.”

“When I got there, the butler said she wished me to join her in her suite. I thought it rather odd, but since I was there for a purpose, it didn’t really matter.”

“So it was you she was waiting for. I thought she was planning a lover’s tryst.”

Katherine’s cheeks grew warm with embarrassment. “I was wondering, it sounds rather silly, but is it possible, could Jane possibly have had those sorts of designs on me?”

William’s hand slammed down on the windowsill. “Good God, Katherine, I told you to stay away from her! The woman was completely immoral! The thought of you exposed to a creature like that makes my skin crawl. I can’t imagine what the devil I ever saw in her. I can’t believe I was ever fool enough to fall prey to a woman like that.”

“She was beautiful, William,” Katherine said softly, unable to get the image of Jane’s lifeless figure sprawled across the bed out of her head.

He sighed heavily. “Tell me the rest,” he said.

“I waited in her private drawing room, but she never appeared. Then I heard noises coming from her bedchamber. I opened the door and found her, lying on her bed, just as you saw her. That’s when I saw the man. . .”

His head whipped around. “You saw him! You saw the man who killed her?”

“I got a glimpse of him.”

“And I suppose he saw you.”

She had been trying not to think about that. “Yes.”

“I told you to stay away from her! I was afraid something would happen. Bloody hell, Katherine, don’t you ever do a single thing I say?”

She straightened on the carriage seat, drew herself up. “Not when I have a chance to do something that might help you. I had to go William. Can’t you see? I wanted to help you. If Jane hadn’t been killed I might have discovered something useful.”

William held her gaze for several moments, then turned to stare back out the window, resting his head against the back of the seat. “It was Benjamin, wasn’t it.”

“No.”

His gaze swung in her direction, darker now. “If it wasn’t my brother, then who. What did he look like?”

“In truth, he looked a great deal like you.”

“Me! You think I am the one who killed her? Jane was the only hope I had of clearing my name.”

“I said he looked a lot like you. I didn’t say it was you. His height and build were the same. He might have been bigger. His hair was darker than yours. I never saw his face.”

The muscles tightened beneath his dark brown coat. “But you aren’t sure, are you? You think I might have been the one who killed her.”

“You said you went there.”

“I decided it was time to face her. Time was running out. I had hoped I could pressure her into telling the judges the truth.”

“And?”

“Jane agreed, not that it matters now.”

Katherine reached for his hand, felt the tension, the bitter frustration running through him. The muscles across his cheekbones stretched his dark skin taut. Thin lines etched his forehead.

“I know you didn’t do it. If I’d had the least bit of suspicion it would have been put to rest the moment I saw your face. There was no doubt you were a surprised to see her dead as I was. And even if that had not happened, I do not believe you are capable of murdering a defenseless woman.”

Something clicked in his eyes, the darkness that was constantly with him, a glimpse of something grim and forbidding she had seen in him before.

“You might be surprised, Katherine, what a man will do, given the right circumstances.” He shook his head and some of the darkness subsided. “But no, I didn’t kill her. Benjamin may have arranged it. Perhaps he has learned I am alive and meant to ensure her silence, or perhaps he was simply tired of paying her off.”

“Or perhaps there is no connection at all. Perhaps she had other enemies that we know nothing about.”

William stared out the window. “My instincts say no, that Benjamin is the man behind this. Anyway, the woman is dead and with her any chance I had of clearing my name.” His shoulders seemed weighted down. His eyes looked bleak and defeated. “To make matters worse, the killer has seen you. He knows that you can testify against him. There is every reason to believe he will come after you.”

Katherine’s fingers gripped his arm unconsciously. “I’m frightened for both of us, William. What are we going to do?

“I won’t let him harm you. I promise you that I’ll hire men to guard the house. I’ll see that someone is with you wherever you go.”

Katherine did not argue. “What about the murder? The butler must have found her by now. If he hasn’t, he will very soon. He knows I was there. I shall have to report the murder, and it would probably be done sooner than later.”