Grave Consequences (Grand Tour Series #2) (38 page)

“Please,” Wallace said, reaching him and gesturing into a small salon.

“Have we not said all there is to say?” Will asked.

“Indeed we have not.”

Will frowned and followed after him. Wallace took a seat, but Will chose to remain standing by the fireplace.

Wallace sat back and studied him a moment. “I know that you must find all this devastating, but it had to be done.”

Will took a deep breath. “I stand behind my words, sir. I might never gain your blessing, but I intend to court your daughter. Just as soon as I settle my uncle’s debts, you can expect me.”

“No. You are to exit her life right now and never return. For her sake. Her parents’. And yours, too.”

Will shook his head. “I can’t promise that.”

“She’ll lose everything, McCabe, as will her parents. You would do that to her?” Wallace coughed and looked to the door and then back to him. “You and Cora both know I loved her mother. I did. And while it ripped out my heart to see her married to another, to send her off on that train, I did it because it was best for her and our child. Alma would never have been accepted in society as my bride, even if I’d chosen to divorce my wife and leave my children. I could not continue to subject her to a role as mistress. Not when I loved her. Do you love Cora in such a manner, William? In a way that compels you to sacrifice for her?”

“Well, of course, but I hardly see how my relationship with Cora compares with your relationship with her mother.”

“Truly?” Wallace said calmly. “Was not your love forbidden? Illicit? Explicitly against the contract written between me and your uncle?”

Will’s face burned. Well he knew the rules. Stuart had driven them into his head time and time again. “That was a contract signed by my uncle, not by me.”

“And yet assumed by you after his death, correct?”

“In a sense, yes,” Will said dimly, knowing he had little ground on which to stand.

Wallace pulled a packet from his jacket pocket. “I am giving you enough to get home to the States. Find a job. Pay your debts. Get back to the university if you can. But stay out of Cora’s life.” He paused, his blue eyes searching Will’s. “Come,” he said, more gently. “You know it’s the right thing. Do it, Will. If you love her, do it for her.”

Wallace pressed the envelope toward Will, and Will considered his options, one wild thought after another shifting through his mind. As much as he loathed it, he could see no way forward without a dollar to his name, and Wallace Kensington knew it. “I’ll pay you back, sir,” Will said, his fingers closing around the envelope. “Every cent of it.”

Wallace smiled, victory etched in the lines of his face, and Will quickly turned away, resisting the powerful urge to strike the older man. But as he left the mansion, his every thought turned to Cora.

And how he must somehow, some way, find his way back to her.

~Cora~

“Is he gone, then?” I whispered to Antonio, taking his arm as we left the baroness’s home for the last time. I felt as if I were stumbling forward in the dark, even though bright morning light flooded the front entry. How could we be separating? After so much time spent together, it felt impossible, like it would tear me in two.

“William might not be with us, but he is only as far from your heart as you choose.” He turned sad brown eyes toward me as my heart sank. “In time, it will make sense again, my young friend.”

“You’re certain?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“I do wish I had a bit of your confidence.” After a restless night’s sleep, I awakened feeling more dizzy and bleary-eyed than I had before. Had everything I thought happened really transpired? It seemed impossible. But still, I kept hoping against reason that he’d appear as we all said farewell to the baroness and drove to the train station. Did he understand why I had to do this? For my parents? To protect him? Or did he think me weak, giving up on him, us…walking away? Did he think I feared poverty? After all we’d shared?

We boarded a private train car, as dutifully polite and quiet as schoolchildren on an expedition headed by a stalwart headmaster, my father. Antonio was the only man my father chose to keep on, given his knowledge of Italy and her language. The rest had been dismissed and sent home, replaced with four new guards. Their unfamiliar faces only increased my sense of isolation.

I dodged as Pierre approached—clearly wishing to speak to me—with a shake of my head and mouthing the words
not yet
. It was too soon. I was too raw, and I feared I’d say things I’d regret. Gracious as ever, he gave me a little bow, pain in his pretty green eyes, and I retreated to the small cabin that I was to share with Vivian. I closed the door, sat down on one of the two berths, and with a shaking hand, withdrew the copy of
Life
from my valise. For the first time, I read every word. Art Stapleton had taken numerous quotes from all of us out of context, reporting them truthfully but skewing them to make them all the more entertaining for his readers. He set me up as a rags-to-riches heroine, drawn at one time to our young bear, then to the “Prince of Paris,” and back again. It was not entirely untrue. I knew it. But he’d made me out as mindless. Heartless, even. And the photographs were damning evidence to support his case.

I wept, then, in a swirl of painful humiliation and fury over his betrayal. I’d considered Art a friend and felt that loss keenly. Had any of it been real? His interest, his camaraderie? Or had it all been a ruse to become closer to me and the rest of the Kensingtons and Morgans? Had I simply been a dunce, through and through? It seemed impossible that I’d so misread him.

My eyes traced the photographs of Will’s earnest face, knowing he loved me. Not as an heiress, but as Cora Diehl, finding my way in my new world as a Kensington. Just as Pierre loved me, I thought, looking at his photograph, too; he pursued me before he even knew I had wealth of my own, after he knew of my mother’s indiscretions and my own base birth. Never had he hesitated. He was always so sure, so stalwart in his pursuit. It was hard not to be taken by that determination. I didn’t know why Pierre de Richelieu had set his sights on me, exactly, but he appeared to be in it to win my heart.

I reached into my valise for a fresh handkerchief, my old one now wet with tears, and touched another paper. Glancing down, I saw it was the sketch Pierre had made of us in the garden, entwined like young lovers. I had to admit we looked right together, as he envisioned us. Peaceful, playful. And something had shifted between us in the hours since I had learned that I was a partner in a sizable mine with Wallace and my parents. An heiress.

Even though my heart longed for Will, my life was now more on Pierre’s plain, the valley between us bridged. At least in terms of wealth.

An heiress
, I repeated silently. As if my life could not become more convoluted and confusing than it already was…I was now potentially very wealthy. As wealthy or even wealthier than my siblings and their friends. I could see the genius of my father’s plan. I was not taking any of my siblings’ inheritance; Wallace Kensington had engineered an inheritance that solely belonged to me and mine. There was nothing to divide me from my siblings in this; it would only bring us closer together. Just as the wealth gap was bridged with Pierre, so it now was with Felix, Vivian, and Lil.

I flopped backward to my pillows, feeling the walls of Wallace Kensington’s fortress close in around me. How was I to stop something that was irrefutably doing some good things, too?

~William~

Will had hovered in the shadows, unable to let Cora go without seeing her board the train for Venice. How he longed to run out, pull her into his arms, promise her he’d come for her soon. Beg her not to give up on them.
Please, Lord, let her know. Confirm that my heart is in her hands. That I am gone, but not forever…
Over and over he prayed such prayers as he steadily pursued two goals: to figure out who was truly behind the kidnapping attempts, and to track down Arthur Stapleton.

The man had disappeared sometime during the baroness’s ball, as if cannily aware that he was about to be exposed as a traitor. Interloper. Betrayer. Art had robbed him of precious weeks with Cora. Given her father reason to hate Will. And given Pierre de Richelieu a frustrating edge to win her back.

A butler told Will that a driver of the baroness’s had taken Art away last evening with his luggage packed. After Will watched the Kensingtons and Morgans depart—feeling every turn of the wheels as a screw tightening in his heart—he walked toward the stables, now converted to house three luxurious motorcars. It felt dreadfully wrong to be apart from Cora—from any of his clients, really. At the end of the season, he usually welcomed the separation, but here, now…had his uncle been alive, this surely would have killed him.

Ah, Stuart, how I’ve messed things up. I’m sorry, so sorry.
He felt the burn of shame on his cheeks, and he paused beside the stables, letting his head rest against the cool stones for a moment as he gathered himself. But anger gave him the strength he needed. Hadn’t Stuart himself made a mess of things, leaving his estate in disarray, his debts seemingly insurmountable? How had he continued to spend, giving Will so little, when he knew the bills on his bookkeeper’s desk?

But as soon as the bitter thoughts entered his mind, so did the tender memories of Stuart taking him in as an orphan, without hesitation, giving him everything he could. Raising him as his own. Leaving him the business, if he wished to take it—providing there would ever be another client.

Will’s only choice was to make it all right. And swiftly. Then and only then could he see the way clear to his future. A future he dearly hoped would include Cora. And it began with finding Arthur Stapleton. Somehow, he knew the man was the key.

He took a deep breath and turned to enter the stables. Three cars were inside, two of them beneath protective blankets, one with her hood folded back, a man turning a wrench around a bolt within. “Owen Goering?” Will called.

The man looked up and straightened a bit. “I am Goering,” he said in German.

“Good, good.” Will came closer, considered offering him his hand, but then saw the dark oil that covered the driver’s hand. “I am a friend and guest of the baroness’s, William McCabe.”

“Yes,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag. “I’ve seen you about, sir.”

“Last night, you took Arthur Stapleton away from here. I need to know where you left him.”

“The Hotel Sacher, sir.”

“The Hotel Sacher. Did you see him check in?”

“No, sir. But I handed his bags and trunks to a bellman.”

“Good.
Danke
.”

“Willkommen.”

Will left the stables, fighting the urge to run all the way to the grand old hotel. He planned as he went. He wanted word to reach Art that the Kensingtons and Morgans had fled and for Art to believe Will had gone with them. If Kensington had accomplished what he hoped, they’d reach the train with no word of their intended destination. If God would only grant them this one favor, winding through the Alps, they’d lose anyone who dared to pursue them.

Will prayed his plan to escape the kidnappers would work. Above all, he wanted Cora to be safe. And he could not wait to get his hands on one of the men who had hurt her—Arthur Stapleton. Then he would do his best to track down the man who dogged them and make sure he never took a step in their direction again.

Upon reaching the hotel, he went directly to the concierge and asked for a pen and card. Swiftly he wrote a note intended to draw Art out, and asked a bellman to get it to Arthur Stapleton’s room. “Within the next five minutes, if possible,” he said, peeling off another bill from the wad that Kensington had given him to get home.

The bellman scurried off, and Will sat down on a vast, curved, upholstered lounge in the center of the lobby to wait for him.

Ten minutes later, Art appeared, looking relaxed with his collar open at the neck, his jacket unbuttoned. He walked over to Will and kept his gaze. Will rose, fighting to keep his composure.

“You were our friend,” Will ground out.