Highlander Undone (26 page)

Y
ou’ll excuse me, Mrs. Hoodless,” Sherville said, bowing in Addie’s direction.

She barely took note of his leaving, staring after the spangled netting on Zephrina’s gown. “I swear, Ted, if you don’t kill that girl, I will,” she growled without thinking.

“Shall we flip for the pleasure?” he asked.

“Of all the hoydenish—”

“Here,” he broke in, offering her his arm. “Let’s find some privacy before you vent your spleen.”

“I do not have a spleen,” Addie exclaimed, too loudly, and then, noting the interested looks turned on her, took her brother’s arm and allowed him to escort her to a pair of chairs set in a secluded corner of the conservatory.

“Green becomes you, Addie m’dear,” Ted said as he seated her.

Addie pleated the rosy, silk-shot tissue of her skirt between her fingers, her eyes averted from Ted’s. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“This is your doting big brother, Addie. I know you better than anyone in the world—with one possible exception.” He spared a telling look at Jack’s broad, ebony-clad back as it disappeared through the glass doors leading outside. “Miss Drouhin has succeeded in creating an even more outrageous persona than the one you have been so busily fashioning this past month.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You are being redundant—as well as transparent. Look at this dress. I blush to think of a model of mine wearing so scandalous a piece of frippery.”

Addie raised a challenging brow.

“Well,” Ted conceded with a rueful smile, “maybe not blush. But it is outré. How do you keep the thing up? Glue?”

“My womanly charms can withstand the challenge, thank you very much,” Addie replied primly.

Ted snorted. “Just don’t make overuse of the pepper mill at dinner tonight, my dear, or I may be obliged to use my cane on some poor, overly interested man if you sneeze. Although Jack will have already positioned himself for the defense.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Really, dear. Look about. You must realize the sensation you are causing, have caused with your hoydenish behavior. Do you honestly think people still receive you because of your grandfather’s title or my talent with a brush?”

“Drat it, Ted, stop being so oblique.”

“Jack.” Ted’s light manner evaporated. “Any snickers, any coarseness, any impertinence aroused by your antics and he is there, making sure it never reaches your ears or goes any further.”

“How?” Addie’s brows inched together in a scowl. “With threats?”

Ted looked honestly surprised. “Good God, no. He does it by being a gentleman himself. His very bearing and address reminds any titterers that they, too, have pretensions to good breeding. Good manners are a very effective deterrent to coarseness.”

“I didn’t know.”

“No,” Ted said. “I don’t expect you did. But now you do. And what I want to know is simply this: How long, Addie? How long are you going to demand perfection from this man?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Yes. I do. It’s you who doesn’t understand.” Ted sounded both frustrated and disappointed in her, and he seldom had been either. Worse, she had the terrible sense that she deserved both. And more.

“Sooner or later you will finally manage to trip him up, provoke him to the point where he loses his temper, perhaps even upbraids you. And you’ll richly deserve it. But then what? Having won—what will you have lost?”

Her eyes filled with sudden tears. With a sigh, Ted took hold of both her hands in his. “Addie, Jack isn’t perfect. He has a temper and if you search long enough, you’ll find it. That doesn’t mean he’s a bully, or a brute. Or like Charles.”

He shook his head remorsefully. “I look at you and I am filled with regret that I didn’t kill that bastard. I only wish I had had the opportunity.”

“No!” she cried. “No, you mustn’t. You would have ended up spending the rest of your life in prison. Charles already took too much from our family. I’ll never forgive myself for what he did to you, Ted. To your poor leg. Never.” Her hands trembled in his and he clenched them tightly.

“It’s all right. What’s done is done,” he said. “And were I to have it all to do again, I would do it the same.” A wry smile curved his perfect lips. “Except, perhaps, I’d have ridden up the drive rather than walked.”

“Please, don’t make light of it,” she begged.

“Listen to me, Addie. The point I want you to understand, the thing you must realize, is that I was going to that house with the express intention of beating the living hell out of Charles.”

She dashed the tears from her eyes, studying him in confusion.

“Even though you think me a gentle man, by my own words, you know I am capable of violence. Almost anyone, man or woman, will protect those he loves by whatever means necessary. That is certainly the case with Jack.”

She rubbed at her temples. “I don’t know. I don’t. Oh, Ted, I don’t know anything anymore.”

“You trust me. Can’t you trust Jack?”

“I know you!”

“You know Jack.”

“I thought I knew Charles,” she countered.

“You did. By the time he died, you knew Charles far too well. Ask yourself this question: Is Jack Cameron anything—anything at all—as you remember Charles?”

“No,” she answered, surprising them both with the vehemence of that single word.

Ted smiled.

“Oh, Ted. I’m confused. I need to think. Please.”

“Of course. I’ll have the carriage brought round at once.”

“I . . . I wish . . . I wish I were someone else. Someone who had never known Charles Hoodless. Someone who could love Jack without equivocation.”

He squeezed her hand. “Jack doesn’t.”

Her breath caught at that. No, Jack didn’t.

“I’ll tell him you’ve left,” he assured her as he stood up. “And then, I’ve a few things to tell Miss Zephrina Drouhin.”

Paul Sherville grabbed his coat from the stiff-lipped butler and ordered a cab be called immediately.

Addie Hoodless had found it. Somewhere, somehow, the little bitch had found that damned photograph.

In the past weeks, when no demands had been forthcoming and Addie Hoodless had made no intimation of its existence, he had all but become convinced the photograph had disappeared and no longer posed a threat. He had relaxed, allowing himself to become complacent. But it had all been a ruse, a cat-and-mouse game the little bitch had been playing.

She declared herself tonight with those thinly veiled taunts about a person being “obliged to pay for their past mistakes,” and the “past is clearly visible for anyone to see,” all while staring him dead in the eye.

Well, the gypsy-looking bitch wouldn’t have her “evidence” long. Tonight, while she teased and tempted all those bloodless fools at the Merritts’, he would search her house until he found that photograph. He had hours in which to do so. The men he’d sent to find the photograph had said that Addie did not keep many servants and those she did were wont to flee the house as soon as their mistress’s back was turned. It would be hours before her brother’s reception ended.

A cab pulled up at the entrance and the butler dogged his heels down the flight of stairs. He flipped the old man a copper, then waited impatiently while the coachman placed the stepping stool. At least thanks to the would-be thieves, he knew where the photograph wasn’t. It wasn’t in the lower rooms. On that score Hal had been adamant. It must be in Phyfe’s studio. Clever puss.

He allowed himself a self-congratulatory moment. She wouldn’t expect him to take such expedient action. She didn’t know the mettle of the man she was dealing with. But she would. Once he had Charles’s blackmail material, she would see who had the upper hand.

His lips spread in a narrow smile of anticipation. God, he could see the attraction of bringing a piece of haughty tail like her to heel. She had been appealing as Charles’s fearful little wife, her constant apprehension having its own piquant allure. But this bold and haughty woman she’d become! The thought of breaking her spirit, of bringing her to her knees, made him grow hard with lust.

And with that thought, he climbed into the cab, shouting the Hoodless address up to the coachman.

Wheatcroft clenched the coin Sherville had tossed him in his jacket pocket, his gaze tracking the retreating cab. Major Paul Sherville was the man Captain Cameron suspected was ultimately responsible for his nephew’s death.

What possible business could he have at Mrs. Hoodless’s home with neither she nor her brother there? For months, he and Captain Cameron had been searching for some proof that would see the bastard in front of a firing squad. But for all their work, there didn’t seem to be any solid leads, let alone proof of Sherville’s treacherous activity.

Now, Sherville was bound for Addie Hoodless’s empty house. Captain Cameron said Sherville had had the Hoodless house robbed by thugs. But though the robbers had been surprised in the act, he didn’t know whether they’d found what they’d come for. He’d suspected they had.

But now Paul Sherville was going back. Wheatcroft could not ignore the implication that Sherville had discovered the whereabouts of that elusive piece of evidence Captain Cameron believed existed.

He briefly considered finding Captain Cameron, but, by the time he might find him in the crush of over five hundred guests, Sherville may well be there and gone. It might cost
Wheatcroft
his place to leave in the midst of the party, but there were some things more important than one’s position or pension; family was one of them.

Quickly, he dashed inside, returning a few minutes later in his overcoat, his pocket bulging, and, once outside, hailed another cab.

“You can stop now. We’re well out of Ted’s earshot,” Jack said, not unkindly.

Zephrina composed her face into a mask of pretty confusion. “I’m sure I don’t understand, Captain Cameron.”

It was one thing to play this game when there was an audience, but tedious when there were only the two of them. Poor Zephrina; she wasn’t quite as fast as she wanted so desperately to appear. As soon as they’d entered the garden, she’d withdrawn from his side to a completely unexceptional distance. Only her conversation continued to be flirtatious.

“Ted. He isn’t here to impress.”