Authors: Eleanor Kuhns
By the time he reached the Carleton estate, the sun was out although the air remained cool. He parked Bessie in front and regarded the mansion. An addition had been added to the imposing brick structure built by King Carleton and a circular drive laid out in place of the narrow lane. Rees saw several new outbuildings as well, mostly stables; and in the yard to the side grooms were busily exercising one horse after another. One groom was struggling with the excitable black horse and from the animal’s wildly rolling eyes, failing in his efforts to calm him. That must be the wild black stallion described by Fred Salley.
Rees pounded upon the front door. A man—so much shorter than Rees, he had to tip his head back—opened the door. Except for his white shirt and stockings, the servant was dressed entirely in black. He examined Rees disapprovingly, his eyes lingering particularly on the old much-patched linen coat.
“Mr. Carleton, please,” Rees said.
“Mr. Carleton is not at home,” the servant said in the clipped tones of the upper-class servant.
“Hmmm. Tell Jimmy, Will Rees is here to see him.”
“I told you—” Before the refusal was out of his mouth, Rees brushed past him and into the house.
It had been many years since he’d set foot in this house, and he’d never been on this side. The back door must now be buried inside the addition. Rees paused, looking down the long hall to the staircase at the end in consternation. Several doors opened off this hall, and he could not even guess which one he would need. The servant took advantage of Rees’s sudden hesitation and almost pushed him into a small sitting room on the left.
“I’ll inform Mrs. Carleton of your arrival,” he said.
Rees stopped inside the door, not daring to go any farther with his muddy shoes. A fine Chinese carpet covered the floor, and the delicate furniture around it appeared too frail to hold his weight. The walls were covered in a bright paper, Chinese again. Rees removed his shoes and padded into the room. A door located in the back wall gave access to the next room; when Rees tried it, he discovered it was locked. Heavy silk drapes covered the window next to the fireplace. He tweaked them away and peered outside. A long porch stretched across this side of the house. And at one end, in a pale pink gown and with her hat in the chair beside her, sat Elizabeth Carleton. Rees glanced around but saw no entry to the porch, so he threw up the window sash and squeezed his large body through the opening.
Elizabeth turned to stare at him in surprise. She held an open book upon her lap but was not reading. “Who are you?”
“I’m Will Rees,” he said.
She smiled. “Oh, Richard spoke of you.” Shrill screaming erupting from the lawn below drew her to the porch rail. “Stop fighting!” she shouted to her sisters.
“I wanted to ask you a few questions,” Rees said, inspecting her carefully. She smiled at him, her full lips soft and pink. “If you don’t mind, that is.”
“I don’t mind. Richard said you might. Anyway, I want to thank you for demonstrating his innocence. As soon as you determine his father’s murderer, we’ll marry.”
“You will?” Rees couldn’t keep the astonishment from his voice.
“Oh yes. My father has given permission. Only Mr. Bowditch did not favor the marriage.” Her face clouded. “I thought he liked me, but he would never agree to the union.”
“I understand your mother is not enthusiastic either,” Rees said.
Elizabeth laughed. “That’s true, but that is only because she wants me to marry a title. I prefer to wed Richard and I will.” Her soft brown eyes hardened with determination.
King Carleton, it seemed, had passed his insistence upon having his own way down to his granddaughter.
“How long have you been seeing Richard?”
“Just since I came home from school.” She smiled shyly.
“And how old are you?”
“Sixteen. My father took me out of school a little early. He held a ball to welcome me home. Richard attended and as soon as we saw one another, we knew we were meant to be together.”
From his advanced age of thirty-six, Rees could only try to remember what such certainty felt like.
“He began courting me.” Remembered pain shadowed her expression. “And when his father discovered it, he forbade us to see one another. Richard didn’t want to deceive his father, but it was necessary.”
“Your father did not protest?”
“No. He encouraged it, from the very beginning.” She smiled reminiscently.
“And Mr. Bowditch never told Richard why he did not approve?”
“No.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “He just didn’t like me.”
Rees could not believe Nate’s reaction was so simple. “The night Mr. Bowditch was…” He didn’t continue, unable to find a word that did not sound too harsh in the face of this pink and white perfection.
“Richard was with me. We met at an abandoned house. He left me about five, and went home, determined to persuade his father to approve our union.”
“You’ve been meeting him since, haven’t you?”
Although she didn’t reply, her self-conscious expression told Rees the truth. No wonder no one had found the boy. He’d been moving from cottage to cottage on the Carleton estates.
A sudden hard slap cracked through the air, sharp as a pistol shot, and someone began to wail. Leaping to her feet, Elizabeth sped to the porch rail. “I’m going to tell,” cried the younger girl in the piping treble of a child. Rees peered over Elizabeth’s shoulder. Her sisters had been playing bowls and disagreed over something. Now the younger girl’s cheek bore a bright red handprint.
“Really, Sofia,” Elizabeth cried. “You’re almost a young lady. You should know better.”
“But she said I—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Elizabeth said. “You both know better. Lawks, what are you going to do when I’m no longer here to separate you?”
“That won’t be for many years,” Sofia declared.
“Sooner than you think,” Elizabeth said with a secret smile. “Both of you, come up here right now. Mother would be so disappointed to see you quarrelling. And the grass is too wet anyway. Look at the hems of your gowns.”
As the two girls shrieked their protests, Rees said good-bye and climbed back through the window into the morning room. No one seemed to have detected his absence. He sat gingerly upon the settee but within a few minutes he jumped to his feet again. No refreshments beckoned him—and, in fact, if that arrogant servant had come in and found him missing, a great hue and cry would certainly have gone up. He’d been forgotten.
Chapter Twenty-two
Rees slipped on his shoes and stepped out into the hall. He looked around at the doors and the stairs at the other end. Where to go? He began walking down the hall, his feet silent upon the carpet.
He glanced through the open doors as he passed them and saw no one but maids too busy to notice him. None were fitted out as offices: a large parlor decorated again with chinoiserie; a dining room with a table and chairs for twelve; and at the back, another small sitting room, this time in shades of blue. Mrs. Carleton owned the first floor.
Rees looked at the stairs. King Carleton’s office had been located on the second floor; it made sense that James used it now. Rees climbed the stairs and turned left, toward the side of the house where he thought the office might be located. Everything looked different and very confusing. At the end of the hall and up a small flight of steps was another door. Loud and angry voices penetrated through it to the hall outside.
“I don’t care what … reasoning … Elizabeth … marry a title.”
“But Richard … large landowner … maintain … ruin.” James’s low rumble caused Rees to strain to hear.
“Then I’ll take the girls to London.…” Charlotte’s knife-edged voice sliced through her husband’s bass. Rees paused. Should he knock? Suddenly the door was wrenched open and Mrs. Carleton stormed out. Scowling ferociously, she brushed past him as though he were invisible.
James hesitated in the door. “Charlotte, please.” Today his waistcoat matched his wife’s pale blue gown. He glared at Rees. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk to you for a few moments,” Rees said, his voice soothing. “Women, huh?”
“Indeed.” James glared after his diminutive spouse, his expression mutinous. He was terrified of her.
Not surprising, Rees decided, since the dainty appealing package disguised a stiletto.
Carleton turned and stomped into his office. “What do you want?” he snarled as Rees hurried after him. “I didn’t murder Nate. Why would I? We were friends. Good friends.”
“That friendship puzzles me,” Rees said, sitting down in a scarred chair.
James put his booted feet upon his desk. He wore riding boots again, but these were old, battered, and hard used. “Make yourself at home,” he grunted sarcastically. But when he pulled the green glass bottle of whiskey from his drawer, he brought out two glasses. “I don’t know why you should be puzzled,” he said as he poured. He drained his glass, not his first by the look of it, and poured another. “You were gone. And Nate and I had much in common.” He threw back the second whiskey and shuddered. “More than you can imagine.”
“You played cards,” Rees said, stung by James’s claim to Nate’s friendship.
“So? We played often. Usually Corny Hansen joined us, and sometimes George Potter.”
“And you lost. I found a chit for twenty dollars.”
James stared at him, perspiration beading his forehead. “Nate was a lucky devil, that’s true, but I certainly didn’t kill him over twenty dollars.”
Rees deflated. Put like that, even the suggestion sounded ridiculous. Carleton’s waistcoat cost more than that. “You played at the cottage?”
“Usually, yes. At the table in front of that diseased plant. I don’t know what Potter told his wife, but Charlotte—” He stopped abruptly.
No question who ruled the roost in this household. “Did anyone lose heavily?”
“Not really,” James said with a shrug. He poured another glass of whiskey, his trembling hands spilling the amber fluid upon the desk.
“You better ease off,” Rees said.
“Don’t you start now,” James said, tossing the whiskey back with a defiant flick of his wrist. “I get enough of that from my wife.”
“Does she know about Augustus?”
“Augustus? Augustus who?” James stared at Rees in perplexity.
“The blacksmith in town. Son of Rachel, the cook for Nate.”
“What does he have to do with anything?”
“He’s your half brother.”
James burst out into a loud guffaw. “He is? Well, damn.” He continued to glance at Rees. “But it makes sense. How well do you remember my father?”
“I remember our fight,” Rees said carefully.
Carleton nodded. “You probably won’t believe this, but I fared worse than you did. First you beat me and then my father horsewhipped me for losing and sent me away to London.” A reminiscent smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Of course, I loved it in London so he did me a good turn without realizing it. Never wanted to come home.” Swinging his feet off the desk, he leaned forward. “My father hated losers. I was a great disappointment to him. He expected to have everything he wanted. I have bastard sisters all over town, probably all over the state. First time I heard of a brother, though.”
“You never guessed about Augustus?” Rees asked.
James shook his head. “None of us knew. I’m sure my father didn’t either. By his lights, he was honorable. He married the girls off and if that failed paid for the schooling for their children.”
“No doubt he felt that unnecessary for a slave,” Rees said with a frown.
“He would have taken an interest in a boy,” James said. The laughter died suddenly from his eyes. “Nate thought that lad was his. He was proud of him. I’m glad he never had to know the truth.…”
Rees said nothing. Rachel said she had told Nate, so he had known the truth. He’d chosen to keep it a secret from everyone. Even James. He and Nate had not been as good friends as he thought.
James suddenly chuckled again. “I understand now. You thought I might have murdered Nate to keep that secret safe? Really, Will, how foolish. Why would I care? And my father, if he knew, everyone would know. He had that damn-your-eyes attitude and cared nothing for public opinion.”
“And Charlotte?” Rees demanded, knowing his question was cruel.
James looked at him. “You heard that foul rumor linking my father and my wife? Even King Carleton would not go that far.” He laughed. “Anyway, it wasn’t my father who got himself murdered. It was Nate. Maybe it’s his secrets you should be uncovering.” His loud mocking laughter brought on a fit of coughing.
Rees rose to his feet. “What secrets?” he asked James.
“You’re sticking your nose into everything; you find out.” He added nastily, “I see you and Nate weren’t such good friends after all. Now get out before I have you thrown out.”
Rees looked at James’s hand, trembling next to the bell rope, and left. But as he climbed into his wagon and turned Bessie toward home, he realized that James Carleton, for all his laughter and his mockery, was terrified.
* * *
Lydia did not return until midafternoon, and when she came inside and hung her bonnet on the hook she moved slowly with fatigue. Rees stirred up the fire and pushed the kettle over the flame. “Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked.
“Thank you, yes,” she said, looking at him in surprise. “Did you speak to Rachel?”
“Yes,” he said, turning to look at her. Something was wrong, he could feel it. “Augustus’s father was not Nate; it was King Carleton. But it’s a dead end. James didn’t know it, but he didn’t care either. He laughed me out of the room.” Realizing he was rambling, Rees stopped talking. He and Lydia were alone and for the first time in many days there was no crisis. This might be his best chance to make things right with her. “You must know there’s nothing between Rachel and me?”
She inclined her head but said, “And what is between you and me, Will?”
He stared at her, his stomach clenching. “I thought … you needed time, too. Didn’t you? Because of Charles?”
“Yes. I needed some time to accept Charles’s murder.” She looked up at him, her eyes filling with tears. “But Will, I followed you here. And I’ve been waiting … through everything. Surely that must reveal my feelings.”