It Takes a Hero (25 page)

And with Rafe, she suspected she was merely a means to an end. Before she trusted him with her life, with her heart, she needed to know that once all this was over, he'd still return to steal a kiss.

The bell rang a half hour later, and Rebecca dashed for the door, half expecting to find Rafe standing on the steps, having realized that he forgot something… namely a kiss. But to her dismay it was the Gadbury sisters and Mr. Kitling.

"Oh, Miss Tate, you are home!" Miss Honora said, bustling inside without an invitation. Alminta and Kitling followed and were in the library settled on the sofa for a cozy visit before Rebecca could utter a word of protest.

Heaving a sigh, she followed them inside. "How nice of you to come by."

Miss Honora patted the empty seat beside her. "I thought you might not be receiving visitors today, especially after last night's humiliating dinner. I don't know what Lady Finch was thinking. If I were her I would declare Major Harrington unfit for company and see those upstarts ruined. Striking the poor colonel like he did." She paused for a breath, but before Rebecca could interject a comment Alminta was off and running.

"And the way that Miss Harrington giggled about you wanting a Season. Of course you are too old, but what business is that of hers?"

Rebecca forced a smile to her lips. Despite their wayward manners and less than circumspect speech, she knew the Gadbury sisters held her in good opinion and hadn't a malicious bone in their identical small frames. "Actually, now that you mention it, I may be going up to London for the Season."

"You don't say?" Sydney Kitling asked, leaning forward. "How unexpected! I mean to up and leave for town just like that."

"Oh, yes, quite!" Honora exclaimed. "Do tell!"

"I don't have the specifics yet," Rebecca said, "but I am quite sure I will be leaving very shortly for town and enjoying the remainder of the Season."

Alminta glanced at her sister and frowned. "Oh, that would never do!"

Honora nodded in agreement. "Certainly not! Not proper in the least."

"Why not?" Rebecca dared to ask.

"My dear, you can't travel to town unescorted. You need a proper chaperone," Honora whispered so as not to spread the disgraceful notion too far.

Shaking her head, Rebecca smiled at the concerned pair. "I wouldn't be going alone," she explained. "The colonel will come with me and we will be staying with a lady of some means and social influence. It is all quite proper."

"If you say so," Miss Honora said, though sounding completely unconvinced.

Rebecca decided it was the better part of discretion not to mention Rafe's involvement. For she wasn't so sure herself that she didn't need a very diligent chaperone to keep her safe from the man's all-too-tempting kiss.

Rafe woke bolt upright the next morning as frantic shouts echoed down the halls of Finch Manor. After having sent Cochrane on his errand to London, Rafe had spent the rest of the night outlining the facts of the Codlin case to Jemmy and Lord Finch in hopes that they might see a connection he'd overlooked.

Then he'd sought the peace of his solitary bed, only to find himself dreaming of India and a slight, redheaded minx in a crumpled bonnet and brilliantly woven shawl standing on the edge of a great precipice.

Don't move, Rebecca. I can't lose you, I love—

The rising shouts wrenched him from a confession that not even he was willing to admit. Even in a dream.

He glanced down to the nightstand and there lay
Miss Darby's Reckless Bargain
. Shaking his head, he snapped the book shut. Last time he was going to fall asleep reading one of her novels.

Certainly not when he found himself cast as Lt. Throckmorten in his own dreams.
Why the man is a self-important, preening twit and I'm
…

An idiot, he realized, digging in his valise for a white linen shirt that wasn't too wrinkled. A new volley of shouts caught his attention and he hastened to pull on his breeches and boots.

He didn't need to get downstairs to discover the news, for his door opened and Jemmy Reyburn came limping in.

Besides appearing exhausted from climbing the stairs—his face white and drawn and his mouth set in a line of grim determination—he looked as if he'd just walked off a battlefield.

"Rafe, my father wants you to come straight away," he said. "There's been a murder."

«
^
»

You have but to ask for my aid, Miss Darby, for you already possess my heart.

Lieutenant Throckmorten to Miss Darby

in
Miss Darby's Reckless Bargain

T
he next morning, Rebecca knew something was wrong the moment she opened her eyes.

Downstairs someone was moving about. Mrs. Wortling was up? Before she had to be nudged and prodded to do her job?

That was an ill-sign indeed.

Whatever could the woman be doing at this early hour?

Rebecca tossed on her wrapper and padded her way downstairs, only to discover the housekeeper struggling out the front door with her well-worn valise in one hand, and a Wedgwood vase in the other.

"Mrs. Wortling! What is the meaning of this?"

"I ain't staying here," she declared. "Not when there's murder about. I'm a decent, law-abiding woman and I won't be killed in my own bed."

Decent and law-abiding? While she was in the process of stealing Rebecca's sole remaining possession from her mother?

But then the rest of the woman's words stopped her.

Murder?

"What are you talking about?"

"Murder! And it is coming here," she declared.

"Someone was murdered?" Rebecca asked. Dread filled the pit of her stomach.

Rafe!
Hadn't he said he was going to confront Harrington? Given the major's temperament, anything could have happened.

"Yes, killed most foul. Got it from Mrs. Benton across the way. Her screeching woke me up."

Rebecca reached over and caught her arm. "Who? Who was killed?"

Mrs. Wortling shook her loose. "Major Harrington, that haughty, tightfisted fellow. He was found this morning on the south road." She blew out a long disgruntled breath, as if to say,
serves the pompous fool right
. "Not that it wasn't bound to happen eventually, him being so mean-spirited and all, but lawks, I don't think you need to gut a man to get your point across."

"Gut?" Rebecca gasped, feeling her stomach drop. Just like Codlin…

"Uncle!" she cried out. "Oh, dear heavens."

She raced past Mrs. Wortling, theft and employment issues aside. Up the stairs she flew, down the hall, and into her uncle's room.

She came to a breathless halt before his bed. To her relief, he lay fast asleep, his chest rising slowly and evenly. "Uncle," she whispered in a little sigh of relief.

He stirred, and she quietly and quickly backed out of his room.

Downstairs the hallway was empty and the front door wide open. And the candlesticks on the sideboard were now missing as well.

Drat and hellfire on the woman.

Wrapper or not, Rebecca sped out the door and caught up with the miscreant housekeeper at the gate. "Where do you think you are going?"

"I don't rightly know," the woman said. "But I know one place I ain't stayin'."

"Mrs. Wortling, you can't just quit like this."
Especially not with nearly every valuable we possess in your valise
.

"I can."

"Then hand over the candlesticks and the vase."

"I am owed wages," the woman said with a righteous indignation she had no right to possess.

"The candlesticks alone are worth ten years of your salary, so hand them over."

The housekeeper shook her head. "Hardly all that. They're just plate, not full silver. Not even worth a year's pay at what I git here."

"I paid you your quarterly wages last week. And considering the amount of brandy that has gone missing over the past year, I would be more inclined to believe you owe me."

"Harrumph. Don't see that that's the point," Mrs. Wortling huffed. "More important is that I won't be killed in my bed. Murdered with the lot of you." She glanced at the colonel's window. "He's next, and I don't aim to be here to clean up the mess."

"Next?" Rebecca's gaze narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

The woman's jaw worked back and forth, her gaze fixed on the ground before her. "I know there was a note left here yesterday morning. Someone was in the house. He got in and left the note on the front table right under our very noses. Could just as well slit our throats, and I don't aim to stick around and find out if he's gonna."

She gathered up her belongings, and those that weren't, before she continued out the gate. "And yes, I heard you and the colonel talking about it. Not ashamed to say I was listening at the door, but a person can't be too careful. Too many strange doings around here. Packets from London, Letters always coming and going. I won't be part of this." Her eyes narrowed. "I should be the one going to the magistrate what with how deep you and the colonel are in on that Codlin fellow's death." She shoved the gate open and set off, her bony nose stuck in the air.

"Why you—" As stunned as Rebecca might have been, she wasn't about to let the thieving, snooping housekeeper leave. Not just yet. "The vase and the candlesticks, Mrs. Wortling. Return them immediately or I will have Constable Holmes called and see that you are dealt with most severely."

The woman froze. "I'll tell everything, miss. Everything I know."

"You do that, Mrs. Wortling and I'll tell them about the mark on your shoulder."

The housekeeper's mouth fell open.

" 'Tis a brand, isn't it? For stealing?"

"It is no such thing. 'Twas an accident when I was just a bairn."

Rebecca crossed her arms over her chest, unwilling to listen to the woman's bluff. "Do you prefer hanging or transportation?"

Mrs. Wortling made a low growling noise.

"I believe a second offense is worthy of either," Rebecca said, "and I'm sure the magistrate, who you must realize is the colonel's cousin, would be inclined toward leniency by sending you to Botany Bay."

Mrs. Wortling shook a bony finger at Rebecca. "Oh, you're an uppity one. You ain't so nice as everyone says. That handsome Mr. Danvers won't be none-so-pleased when he discovers yer shrew's tongue." Her eyes narrowed. "But then again, mayhap he already does and doesn't care. Just as happy to take his pleasure and leave like the other one did."

Rebecca's cheeks grew hot at the woman's vulgar suggestion. She held her ground, inclined to show the housekeeper just how shrewish she could be. "Give me the candlesticks and vase now, Mrs. Wortling, before the magistrate has another murder on his hands."

The housekeeper stood for a few moments longer, before she started grumbling and digging into her valise. She produced the candlesticks and the vase and tossed them onto the grass at Rebecca's feet.

"Not like you'll have need of them for long, not if that note is right," the woman said. "And then I'll be back to get what is owed me. What I'm due." With that the woman trudged down the road toward the village, lugging her valise along.

Rebecca suspected that the only reason Mrs. Wortling had given up the candlesticks and the vase was because she'd probably taken enough other valuables to finance her flight from Bramley Hollow.

She'd send a note to Lord Finch immediately and he'd see that she didn't get very far.

Seething with anger, she stormed back inside the cottage, returning the vase to the mantel and the candlesticks to their rightful place.

Yet her fury was soon overridden as she realized just why the housekeeper was fleeing.

Major Harrington was dead? Murdered?

She tried to breathe, to tell herself that they were safe, but her body began to tremble with well-deserved fear—the kind that reached all the way down to her toes. She caught hold of a chair and dropped into it, feeling faint and nauseous and terrified all at once, for it seemed their time of reckoning had finally come—and there was nowhere that was far enough to save them this time.

But, Rebecca thought, as she looked out the window and at the road to London, it didn't mean she couldn't try.

Rafe stood over Major Harrington's body and shook his head.

It was Codlin's murder once again.

On the far side of the road, Lord Finch was bent over the ditch retching.

Poor fellow
, Rafe thought. Hardly a regular day in his orchid house.

The Harringtons' Indian servant, Mahesh, approached. The same fellow who'd shut the door in his face with stony resolve.

"
Sahib
," he said, addressing Rafe now with a more revered tone. "I understand you have knowledge of the other one… the one such as this."

Rafe nodded. "I've been looking into Sir Rodney's murder, yes." If ever there was a suspect for the case, it was this Mahesh. The murderer was obviously proficient with a sword, as well as a knife.

Both of which Mahesh wore tucked into the belt wound around his robes. It would be easy to point a finger at the foreign fellow and be done with the matter, but Rafe wasn't looking for an easy solution. He wanted to solve this crime. Put an end to these killings. Especially now that he knew Rebecca and Colonel Posthill were connected to both victims.

"I did not do this," the servant told him in carefully enunciated English. "I can see in your eyes that you have your suspicions about me."

Rafe didn't say anything and for a time the two just stared at each other. He did have his suspicions, but in his gut he doubted Mahesh had anything to do with this.

The servant bowed slightly. "You leave me to fill the silence. Well done. Not all English are so canny. So I will say it again: I did not murder the major. I would never defile myself by touching such as this." He shuddered and looked away. "Does it not bother you as well?"

Rafe sighed and glanced away. "Yes. It does. But I was in Spain for most of the war, and have seen this and far worse, so perhaps I am not as shocked."