Silver Splendor (26 page)

“Ahem. No, m’lady. But we mustn’t leave any stone unturned. Somebody might’ve noticed something, a detail that could help in our search.”

“Of course we’ll cooperate with the police,” Owen said. “‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth.’ This cowardly devil must be brought to justice.”

“Who might you be, sir?” asked Mulvey.

“Owen Hastings, Libby’s father.” He placed an arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders.

“Were you also with the family when the incident occurred?” the inspector asked.

“No, I was upstairs in my room, reading.”

Licking the lead of a stubby pencil, Mulvey jotted a note on nis pad. “Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

Owen shook his head. “No, but by God above, if I could get my hands on the villain who would frighten my Libby so…”

He tightened his arm around her slim shoulders; Elizabeth tilted her head and smiled at him. Their closeness touched Nicholas’s heart. Turning away, he went to a window and stared into the darkness. How could he ever convince Owen to tell her the truth? Yet Owen must tell her.

“My lord?”

Nicholas swung toward Mulvey. “Yes?”

“Was anyone else in the house at the time?” the inspector asked. “Anyone other than the servants?”

“My sister, Lady Cicely. She was at dinner with my aunt and me.”

“And where might the lady be?”

“Upstairs.” Nicholas recalled her vehement protests at being denied all the excitement, but he had no wish to involve her in this sordid matter. “I assure you, she cannot add anything to what we’ve already told you.”

His flatly uncompromising tone must have convinced Mulvey, for the inspector focused his trout eyes on Elizabeth. “Miss Hastings, can you describe to me precisely what happened?”

“There isn’t much to tell,” she said slowly. “I was working in the conservatory. Something caught my eye… a movement at the window, I think. Then I looked over and saw him, peering at me.” She shuddered visibly, fingernails digging into the ball of clay in her lap. “I recognized him immediately, of course. He was the same man who’d attacked me before.”

“Before?” Aunt Beatrice echoed, gray eyes widening. Whipping her attention to the earl, she demanded, “What is going on here, Nicholas? Did you know of this other attempt?”

He gazed steadily at his aunt. “I was aware of it, yes.”

“He saved my life,” Elizabeth said softly. “It happened near Covent Garden, where my father and I used to live. That awful man in the porkpie hat tried to strangle me, but Nicholas rescued me just in time.”

The admiration lighting her lavender eyes made Nicholas unreasonably warm. He told himself to look away, but couldn’t tear his gaze from her. He felt like a callow youth, enraptured by a girl for the first time, unable to control his intense reaction.

Aunt Beatrice shifted shrewd eyes from Elizabeth to him. “Oh? I’m beginning to see,” she said with a note of dryness. Directing a regal look at Mulvey, she said crisply, “Are you quite through with us, Inspector?”

“Yes, m’lady.” He bent into an awkward/ lumbering bow. “Thank you for your time.”

“Come along, Elizabeth,” Aunt Beatrice said, rising fluidly from the sofa. “Nicholas can handle the rest of this matter. You’ve had quite the fright.”

“Yes, my lady,” she murmured.

Like a dainty schooner trailing in the wake of an elegant yacht, Elizabeth followed Beatrice out the door. Elizabeth’s preoccupied expression caught at Nicholas’s heart. He wanted to go after her, to hold her close and soothe her fears. But the strictures of society and his own uncertainty denied him that satisfaction. Thank God his aunt had unbent enough to take Elizabeth in hand.

Mulvey shifted uncomfortably. “Ahem. Must run along now, your lordship. Got to check on my sergeant in the kitchen.”

“I want that man found — and quickly,” Nicholas stated, his glare pinning the inspector. “I’ll take up this matter with the commissioner if necessary.”

Mulvey’s fish eyes bugged out further. “We’ll do our best, your lordship. Indeed we will.” Swinging around, the porkpie hat still jammed under his arm, he scurried out.

Owen cleared his throat. “I wish to thank you, your lordship,” he said stiffly, “for taking such a personal interest in this case.”

He stood by the sofa, his stocky shoulders rigid beneath the rough tweed coat, as if the words of gratitude did not come easily. In spite of his anger, Nicholas felt a grudging respect. The response annoyed him; he could not forget Owen’s indirect role in this appalling turn of events.

“If I take a personal interest,” Nicholas said coldly, “It’s because I do not tolerate intruders trespassing on my land and threatening my guests.”

Owen’s hazel eyes clouded as he glanced away. “And rightly so, your lordship.” Hesitating a mere fraction of a second, he added, “If you would excuse me, I shall retire now.” Head bowed, he started toward the door.

“I know of Elizabeth’s relation to the Duke of Rockborough,” Nicholas said.

Owen froze. With the jerky movements of a puppet, he wheeled around. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said hoarsely.

“Don’t you?” Nicholas walked toward Owen, eyes fixed on the older man’s whitened, whiskered face. “My secretary, Thistlewood, has just returned from a fortnight’s stay in Yorkshire. He unearthed quite an interesting old scandal.”

Owen stared for a moment; then he crumpled into a chair, hands supporting his head. “So the duke coming here for tea wasn’t happenstance.”

“No. I wanted to see if he would recognize Elizabeth since she looks so much like her mother. Unfortunately she went out that afternoon.”

“God forgive me,” Owen choked out. “I dreaded this day. For so long, I hoped and prayed to somehow spare Libby… .”

Compassion stirred in Nicholas, a compassion he ruthlessly squelched. “Hoping and praying,” he snapped, “will not alter the fact that someone is determined to kill her. She deserves to know why.”

Owen raised his head, his eyes beseeching. “I meant to tell her when we arrived here in London. Truly I did. But when the time came, I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words. Libby’s always set such store on honesty. She’ll never forgive me.”

Giving vent to anger, Nicholas slammed his palm onto a rosewood side table. “Would you rather she died? Time and again she’s placed herself in danger because she refuses to believe someone would want to hurt her.”

“I’ll take Libby away from here, then,” Owen said wildly. “Home to New York, where she’ll be safe. I should never have brought her back to England in the first place. Never.”

Cold fingers of dismay squeezed around Nicholas. God! How could he bear for Elizabeth to leave?

“The killer could follow her,” he argued. “At least here Elizabeth has my protection. If she knew the truth, she could be on her guard until the culprit is apprehended.”

Closing his eyes, Owen kneaded his forehead. The lines of worry deepened on his face, making him look years older. “I know you’re right,” he muttered. “But I’m so afraid to lose her… my precious daughter.”

Reluctant sympathy welled within Nicholas. Yet first and foremost he must protect Elizabeth. “If you don’t tell her,” he said with quiet firmness, “I will.”

Straightening his back, Owen raised bleak eyes to Nicholas. “All right, your lordship,” he said heavily. “Tomorrow is my day off. I’ll tell her the entire story first thing in the morning.”

Elizabeth absently ran a finger over the polished Holland tiles of the mantelpiece. An embroidered fire screen concealed the grate; the cool summer night didn’t require a coal blaze. Like the rest of the house, her bedroom had been designed with tasteful elegance. Exquisite plasterwork adorned the ceiling and magnolia satin draperies hung from the windows and four poster bed. It seemed a sinful luxury to retire each evening to an immaculate room, to sleep on a mattress without lumps, to have a maid deliver warm bathwater each morning, to wear clothes of the finest quality.

But tonight Elizabeth felt too restless to take more than passing pleasure in her sumptuous surroundings.

Wandering to a window, she parted the curtains and peered into the darkness. Was that hideous man out there somewhere? Hiding in the shadows, staring up at her room, biding his time until everyone slept? Planning to steal inside the house and come searching for her?

Horrified, she remembered the brawny finger closed around her neck, cutting off her air, the pain searing her lungs, the tide of darkness rushing over her. She drew back sharply. Hands shaking, Elizabeth tugged the draperies shut and took a deep breath to quiet her racing heart. It was absurd let her imagination run wild. Nicholas would make certain the house was locked and guarded. He would keep her safe.

Dear God. Nicholas had been right from the start. No longer could she believe those other incidents had been unfortunate coincidences: the hansom cab nearly running her down, that man trying to strangle her, her lodgings ransacked. Incredible as it seemed, someone wished to kill her.

But why?
Why?

Clutching the sterling ring as a talisman, she paced the soft Axminster carpet, her white lawn nightdress swishing around her ankles. Nicholas had warned her to stay close to home, that the throttling incident had been no chance encounter.

Perhaps you should ask your father about that.

Nicholas’s cryptic statement in the park came back to haunt her. At the time she’d let him distract her, sure he’d only been making groundless talk to keep her from disobeying him. Now she knew her mistake. But what could her father possibly know about that disgusting man in the porkpie hat? Papa never kept secrets from her —

A crash of glass came from the next room; her father must have dropped something. Tossing a white cambric wrapper over her nightdress, Elizabeth tied the lace sash and then tapped on the adjoining door.

After a long moment she knocked again. The door opened and Owen Hastings stood framed against the yellow gaslight. He’d discarded his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

“Yes, Libby?”

“I’d like to talk with you, Papa.”

His eyes slid away from hers. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

He sounded so unwelcoming, so unlike himself. Curious… after that frightening incident in the conservatory she had expected him to be anxious to offer solace.

The scent of rye whiskey drifted to her. Peering past him, she saw on the jade marble hearth the splintered remains of a decanter lying in a pool of amber liquid.

“Papa! You’ve been drinking again.”

“Just a nip,” he said, but he didn’t meet her eyes.

The despondency she sensed in him aroused a twist of compassion. Not since he’d gotten his post at the Garforths had she seen him touch alcohol. Determined to comfort her father, she slipped into the bedroom.

“What’s wrong?” she murmured. “Have you been thinking about Mama again?”

He followed slowly and sank into an armchair, burying his face in his hands. “Yes,” he said, his words muffled, “I suppose I have.”

Saddened, Elizabeth gazed at his bowed, despairing figure. Nine months had passed since the death of Lucy Templeton Hastings, yet grief still overwhelmed him. Elizabeth’s own sorrow ached within her, but the passage of time had dulled the pain. She tried to imagine the loss of a beloved mate after so many happy years of marriage. How would she feel if she were to never again see Nicholas? A wintry wave of distress iced her insides.

Kneeling, she hugged her father. For an instant his back felt rigid beneath her fingers. Then he uttered a hoarse cry and his arms went around her, drawing her fiercely against him. His faint scent of rye whiskey surrounded ner like a comforting blanket.

“I love you, Libby,” he whispered. “I don’t ever want you to forget that.”

Elizabeth drew back and smiled, surveying his familiar hazel eyes, the unhappy grooves on his whiskered face. “Of course I won’t forget,” she chided softly. “I love you, too.”

Owen gripped her hands tightly. ‘“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also!’” he quoted. “You’re my treasure, Libby, all I have left of your mother. I couldn’t bear to lose you, too.”

“You won’t, Papa.” His melancholy mood troubled her. Giving his hand a reassuring pat, she straightened. “I came in here to talk about what happened tonight. That man must have tracked me here somehow. It sounds absurd, but Nicholas said you might know something.”

Her father regarded her with a strange, alarmed look; then he shot from the chair and paced the bedroom. “I don’t know his name, if that’s what you mean.”

His agitated manner disturbed Elizabeth. “What’s bothering you, Papa? From both you and Nicholas, I get the impression something is going on that I don’t know about.”

“I’m sorry, Libby,” Owen said, the words sounding dragged from his lips. “I’d planned to tell you all about it in the morning.”

“All about what?”

Hands balled into fists, he swung to face her, the harsh glow from a twin globed gas lamp throwing his craggy face into sharp relief. He sucked in a breath, then said quietly, “I’m not your natural father, libby.”

Sure she’d misheard him, Elizabeth blinked in bewilderment. “What are you saying?”

“Before we were married, your mother was companion to the Duchess of Rockborough. The duke seduced Lucy, and you are the result of that brief union.”