Patricia Rice (24 page)

She knew. Harry ran his hand over his hair and grappled with regret.

He didn’t mind Christina believing in ghosts and falling castles, but he had hoped to protect her from learning of living villains. Leave it to Christina to take his apprehension one step further and decide the villain was after her. That new fear clutched at his throat.

Harry set aside his brandy and turned to take the full brunt of the blow her family would deal him after Christina’s revelation.

If Harry had any instinct for people at all, he’d say thunderheads had just formed and were rapidly spreading to cover the ceiling. The women had a way of expressing their mood without a word.

He’d been so intent on relating the accidents to the missing money, even he hadn’t considered that the incidents were more than the villain chasing intruders away from his treasure—perhaps because it made no logical sense to believe anyone would single out Christina.

It made more sense than ghosts, but not by much. If anything, they ought to be out to kill him… or his family.

A gaping hole developed in his midsection as logic leaped three steps forward, and he recalled her mention of parapets. “Are you saying that my father’s and Edward’s deaths may not have been accidental?” he asked, surprised to hear the deadliness in his voice.

Christina reached up to touch his arm, and sincerity softened her response. “I cannot say, Harry. I simply don’t think a house has the ability to target one particular person as it has targeted me. The general showed me a shadow of a man sitting at a desk. I think that means something.”

Carthage!
Did the damned merchant want the estate badly enough to kill for it? Appalled at thinking anyone would murder for land, Harry staggered beneath the enormity of the possibility before realizing he’d just accepted Christina’s ghostly vision without question. He must be as mad as the rest of her family.

Or so desperate for explanations, he didn’t care if they made sense.

“Do you think we have enough people for a manhunt, Harry? This is a very large place.”

“Not tonight, love,” Harry said wearily. “It’s late and we’re likely to lose any evidence and half our party in the dark. I’ve already organized a search for tomorrow. If anyone is hiding there, we should be able to drive them out.”

The room fell ominously silent. Harry glanced around and discovered everyone watching him with various degrees of caution and anticipation. What the devil did they expect of him? He was a duke, not a magician.

Christina stood up and bit back a wince when she came down the wrong way on her injured leg. Instantly, Harry grasped her waist to hold her weight off her knee. She leaned on him as he needed her to do right now. He had to believe he was in charge here despite all evidence to the contrary.

“You must consider that it’s someone who lives here, Harry,” she said quietly. “It would seem very odd for a stranger to live in hiding.”

The impact of that possibility nearly crushed him. Would someone he knew hate him so much that they would take away all that he held dear in the world? What could he have possibly done to justify that?

“I prefer to believe the house is at fault,” he said stiffly, leading her across the long floor to the doorway Aidan blocked. “And that accidents happen.” Sadly, he knew better. When accidents began to pile up into unbelievable coincidences, he could no longer delude himself.

“You are certain you don’t mind if we take a look around?” Aidan asked, stepping aside to let them pass.

In resignation, Harry shook his head. “No, I would appreciate it if you stayed and searched the Abomination from top to bottom as we planned.”

***

Christina was silent as Harry led her upstairs to the card parlor in the new wing where the staff had efficiently moved their belongings. She smiled at the Elizabethan bed—sans draperies—with which he’d chosen to replace their broken one.

“It is a very grand bed, Harry.” She admired the towering mahogany head and footboards and the carved wooden canopy with cherubs and apples and fig leaves. “However did they move it so quickly?”

“Rob showed them how to dismantle it, and Aidan and the boys carried the heavier bits.”

She could tell he was disturbed by her theory and his own conclusions, but beneath his anger and sorrow remained the underlying regard and reliability that she loved in Harry.

She loved him.

Looking at him with eyes opened by wonder, Christina absorbed the impact of discovery. In the light of the candle, his hair gleamed almost golden. A lock had fallen loose over the sharp jut of his cheekbone, and his wonderfully honest eyes were hidden in shadow, but Harry’s aura glowed with integrity. She knew he would stand by her and protect her until his last dying breath, and that devotion awed and humbled her.

“Don’t ever give up on me, Harry,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and standing on her toes to touch her lips to his. “I really do mean to make you the happiest man on earth.”

If he was surprised or flattered or grateful, she couldn’t tell. She closed her eyes so she might derive the greatest pleasure from the exquisite hunger of his kiss.

His tongue offered promises his words did not, and she believed them, because this was Harry, her chosen.

Beneath his skilled fingers, her gown and petticoat slid to the floor, but she scarcely noticed their absence. She pushed at Harry’s coat and vest and untied his cravat to reach the warm flesh and muscle of his chest. The pounding of his heart beneath her fingers fed the rhythm of her own.

“You are the one treasure in my life, Christina,” he murmured, unpinning her hair until it fell loosely over her bare shoulders. “I couldn’t bear to lose you. Please, let me take care of you.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to watch over me night and day, Harry.” She pulled the shirt from his breeches so she could slide her hands up his hard abdomen and chest, testing the flexibility of the muscles there, loving his response to her touch. “I am not a child in need of advice and watchful eyes. Accept that I’m responsible for my own fate, just as your father and brother were. You cannot save the world.”

“Let me believe I can save my small corner of the world, or I’ll go mad.” Lifting her, he carried her to the bed, laying her down so he could remove her slippers and stockings and rub his hands up her calves to her garters. “Without Jack here to guide me, I am feeling singularly useless as an estate steward. Let me be your lover and protector.”

“My gallant prince,” she agreed, reaching to pull him down to her, reveling in his hard body as he half covered her. “For tonight, we are safe in our ivory tower.”

“Without ghosts,” he added, half jestingly as he bent to take her breast in his mouth.

“No ghosts,” she promised, knowing her friendly spirits preferred the old manor. “This bower is all ours without a wicked witch in sight.”

“Or even a meddling one to hear us.” With that, Harry suckled her aching nipple until she screamed with pleasure.

He made her scream several times that night. Since they possessed the only bedchamber in the new wing, there was no one about to hear her cries. She loved having Harry to herself.

The next morning, Christina was forced by her promises to Harry not to leave the safety of her family while he interviewed the tenants, and the rest of the company searched the castle. She sat on the floor of the makeshift nursery with her four-year-old nephew Alan, helping him hide miniature dragons and faeries amid the flowing draperies. She felt frivolous sitting here while the men ransacked the castle looking for someone they would never find without her help.

As if sensing Christina’s frustration, Ninian intruded upon her thoughts. “Drogo arrived a little while ago. I believe he is helping Harry go over the ledgers while they talk with his tenants. Perhaps he can find the discrepancies. Drogo is very good with money.” Ninian bounced her infant daughter, Margiad, on her knee. “Your duke seems to be quite relentless in his search for the source of the estate problems.”

“I’m glad he has Drogo, but that is no reason not to let me help too. I’m sure the general could tell me who is responsible for the accidents if I could just be allowed to seek him.”

“Your general has had any number of opportunities to tell you more and has refrained from doing so. It’s very possible he isn’t even aware of the danger. He may only see the world through your eyes.”

Struck by her cousin’s insight, Christina considered that possibility, then shook her head. “No, the general seems to be abrupt and disagreeable, but I think he protects his home. He’ll know if there’s a danger here.”

“Then he should have told you so. It is most ungentlemanly to test you this way.” In a swirl of petticoats and flutter of scarves and shawls, Hermione swept into the room. “I have no patience with uncommunicative men, even dead ones. You really cannot stay here, dear, if there is some danger.”

Christina snorted inelegantly but merely pushed Alan’s toy duck in his direction. Its flapping wooden beak rattled loudly enough to express her opinion and provoked the boy’s laughter.

“Is it not odd that we have all discovered the depths of our abilities while living in the country?” Christina had thought about this ever since she’d first seen the general. She’d never had a ghost attempt to communicate with her in London. Now she even had one who could
speak
.

And they wouldn’t let her talk with him.

“I think it may be that the city with all the people about is much too distracting,” Lucinda said, looking up from her sketching.

“Or you found your focus in your husband,” Ninian pointed out. “Grandmother taught me how to use my gifts when I lived in the country, but once I married and moved to London with Drogo, I learned far more of their use because I had a husband and child who needed the very best I could give.”

Amazed by these admissions, Christina settled the toddler on her lap to read him a book, but her mind raced along the more important subject.

In London, she’d been a child playing games with ghosts, and she hadn’t been much better since arriving in Harry’s home. But now that she knew her gift had a real purpose, that she could not only see auras, but communicate with ghosts and use them to help her understand people, she might save Harry and his home.

She was discovering abilities well beyond her imagination. Who would have ever thought she could
see
the general? Or bring him out of a mirror? There had to be more use she could make of that. She’d found out about the rents, after all.

She was a Malcolm. She had to explore the extent of her gifts and use them as they were meant to be used. To love Harry as he deserved, she would have to disobey him.

***

Christina was certain General Rothbottom lurked in his castle home, dropping panels and swords on all the Ives and Harry’s engineer friend scouring the nooks and crannies for a villain. Undoubtedly, the abandoned castle was the most likely hiding place.

But the shadow the general had shown her wasn’t necessarily in the castle. Someone needed to search the old manor with its odd stairs in wardrobes and windows that opened onto nothing.

She had told her family that she had to use the necessary. She’d avoided her maid by darting into an unoccupied bedroom. Now that she had reached the darkened chamber that had belonged to the late duchess, she studied the mirror where she’d seen the general before.

This time, he was waiting for her, lurking in the shadows behind the glass. He must have been quite a dandy in his day, as well as a pirate and a scoundrel. Wearing a felt hat with curling ostrich plumes brushing the rich velvet of his tunic, the general scowled at Christina from the reflective glass.

“If the caperwits you’ve sent to disturb me would use their noggins for something besides battering rams, they’d realize the villain and the money are together,” the general said with undisguised irritation. “You would think my noble descendant would notice his cousins dress more richly than he does.”

“You think Harry’s cousins stole from him?” she asked incredulously. “I cannot believe that.” She hadn’t seen thievery in their auras. Or even real guilt. Their auras weren’t perfect, but an evil as large as the general hinted at should be more obvious. Perhaps knowing people as well as she did could be beneficial in dealing with capricious spirits if they were inclined to sweeping generalizations and petty insults—just like real people.

“They are puling milksops like the rest of his family,” the general said dismissively. “Blood weakens to water over the generations. If your duke can’t figure out what’s right in front of his nose, he deserves to lose it all.”

The apparition in the mirror began to fade, and Christina panicked. “Don’t go yet! What about Harry’s father? How did he die?”

But the general was gone. She didn’t know whether he came and went deliberately, or if he had only enough energy to appear for short periods of time.

She turned to catch Lady Anne’s aura hovering in a corner, twisting the ghostly aura of her hands together. “Do you know where the villain hides?”

She thought the lady shook her head, but she disappeared so rapidly that Christina couldn’t be certain whether she meant that negatively or if she was just warning her not to find out.

The general had confirmed the house contained a villain. Now she had to use her talent for exploration to find out who and where.

Christina decided ghosts must have their own purpose on this earthly plane, and it wasn’t necessarily to help her. She might long to make them her friends, but that was a child’s foolishness. She needed love and life to fill her days. She had a wonderful, supportive family for that. And Harry.

Heart thumping erratically at knowing she was on the track of something beyond her experience, she longed to race off to the castle to search as she once had done.

But she no longer had to work alone. She had Harry to help her. Even if he didn’t believe in ghosts, he believed in
her
. She cherished the knowledge that a man as smart and worldly as her husband believed in someone whom all society thought a loose screw.

She discovered Harry in his father’s study with Ninian’s husband—Drogo, the Earl of Ives. The tall, black-haired earl was an imposing man of many accomplishments, but even he wore an expression of puzzlement as they pored over musty accounting ledgers. A tenant waited in front of the desk, worrying at the felt brim of his hat.

She hated to disturb them, but this matter was too urgent to wait. “Harry, I must speak with you. It’s quite important.”

He looked a little distracted when he glanced up, but the warmth of his smile reflected the intimacies they had shared. Her lonely heart found reassurance in that smile. They were too much man and wife for him to ignore her plea.

“Could it not wait a moment?” he suggested. “We’ve just discovered an important discrepancy, and I’d like to track it down before I lose my train of thought.”

But the general’s warning could not wait. She hesitated, and Drogo politely removed himself from the desk so she might lean over to whisper confidentially in Harry’s ear. “General Rothbottom says Meg and Peter dress too richly. He says blood weakens to water over the generations, and that the money and the villain are together. What can he possibly mean?”

Looking tired but very dignified behind his broad desk with its ducal seal, Harry shook his head. “I cannot begin to imagine what he means. Peter is searching the castle with the others, but I believe Meg is in the kitchen overseeing the menu for our guests. Why don’t you speak with her? I’m just beginning to grasp the rent problem, and I have men waiting on me.”

This wasn’t at all as she’d planned it. The general’s information was
important
. Desperately, Christina tried again. “The general is
right
. Meg even makes me look a positive frump.
They
are not bankrupt. What can that possibly mean?” she murmured as quietly as she could.

“That they wisely invested our grandfather’s funds?” Harry asked. “That Jack is a better provider than my father? Please, Christina, we can discuss this later. It’s not proper to air the family linen in public.”

With his hair neatly clubbed, his jabot white and starched, and a noble expression of disapproval written across his jaw, Harry portrayed the image of the stern duke he must be to rule an estate as large as this one. Even his aura bristled with responsibility. His firmness would have deterred people far stronger than she.

Diverted by his mention of Meg and Peter’s father, Christina refused to bow before his authority. “Do you know when your steward will return?”

Harry tapped his quill against the ledger. “I’ve sent for Jack, but he’s in the wilds of Scotland and my message may not reach him for days yet. It could be another week before he can travel the length of England to return. If the general is concerned about my cousins’ clothing allowance, we can ask about it when Jack comes home.”

Angry at his dismissal, hurt that he was more concerned with what these men thought than the warning she had brought him, Christina plastered a smile across her face and performed her best curtsy. “Of course, dear. How foolish of me to interrupt. Excuse me, gentlemen, I must go stir some soup.”

She dashed out, leaving Harry to face the curious stares of his guests. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair to fight back his need to race after his wayward wife. Stir some soup! Christina had never stirred a soup in her life. She had just flung a challenge at him, and now that he was finally getting to the root of his problems, he wasn’t in a position to pick it up.

“Now, gentlemen, where were we?” he asked. “I’m showing that Jack has recorded receiving the rents for the Bryant farm last October in the amount of fifteen pounds, three shillings, the same as was paid every year for the last ten, if I do not mistake. I cannot locate any further payment or sign of an increase in last year’s books. Do you say my father raised the payment and did not record it?”

“I paid that sum in October to Mr. Winchester and placed the same amount on that very desk again in March,” Bryant declared angrily. “Just as I have for these five years past. I’ve been taking odd jobs to make that double payment. It’s hard to pay rent before the spring planting.”

Uneasiness stirred in Harry’s midsection, but he couldn’t let the others see it. Instead, he jotted a note on a paper he kept at hand as if he merely recorded an error. Bryant wasn’t the first man this morning to claim he’d paid twice the rent showing in the books.

He knew his father hadn’t been quite sane. But his father had never been a cheat.

And as far as he was aware, his brother had been not only sane, but too blunt to be anything except honest. Still, if Edward had discovered their father was collecting cash payments that their steward didn’t know about, might he keep the cash? That was a good possibility. Edward wouldn’t know how to hide cash in the books, and he wasn’t likely to argue with their father’s actions, but he would do what he could to repay their debts. Harry simply didn’t understand why his father would cheat his tenants. And if Edward returned the money in the form of debt payment, why were they still in debt? Why would they have debts at all if the income had doubled?

“Did my father by any chance give you a receipt?” Harry asked in desperation.

“He gave all of us receipts, written in his own hand. If we bring them to you, will you believe us?” the farmer demanded.

“I will have to.” Could his father have handed out receipts without actually having received the cash and the tenants were taking advantage of Harry’s ignorance? Or his father’s insanity? He despised that thought. He didn’t want to believe his father had been that insane or that his tenants that dishonest. “If you have written receipts, I will record them in the books as payment in full for this year.”

Which would mean he would have no rent income this fall, when Carthage expected the balance of his debt. The harvest wouldn’t touch a sum that size. A chill shivered down Harry’s spine.

He watched in despair as Drogo led the tenant out of the study, leaving Harry to return to his books alone.

He had a vague recollection of his father sitting behind this desk, collecting the tenant rent, talking of crops and families, and depositing the receipts in a cash box for Jack to record later. It was a comfortable memory, not one fraught with deceit.

Perhaps he’d better have a word with his cousins, after all. Could his father have been passing the cash box on to Meg or Peter, and they failed to tell their father about it? Besides his brother’s possible involvement, that was the only other reason Harry could see that the money wasn’t recorded. The books proved Jack was meticulous in his record keeping.

Record keepers had been known to keep more than one set of records…

Jack? No! Harry shook his head. It made no sense. Jack was loyal. He’d kept the income-producing part of the estate running efficiently. He’d come to Harry with the problem as soon as he could legally do so. In any event, Jack was in Scotland.

Perhaps Peter had thought the money was part of their allowance. That might make sense.

Now that Christina had planted the maggot of his cousins’ income in his mind, he couldn’t let it go. He wasn’t certain that Peter was in direct line to the dukedom—their relationship was a distant one. But could there be some resentment there?