His at Night (24 page)

“Oh, now I feel such a bumpkin,” she moaned.
And don’t wring your hands. Leave them still and relaxed on your lap
. “It never occurred to me that I would be treated differently by mentioning your name. How imbecilic of me.”

“You are young; you will learn,” said her uncle. “And your new husband, is he a good man?”

“The best,” she avowed fervidly. “So very kind and considerate.”

Her uncle rose from his seat and walked to a window. “I hardly know what to make of all this. My little girl, all grown-up and married,” he said thoughtfully.

She clenched her toes in her kidskin boots. Her uncle sounding thoughtful always chilled her. This was the tone in which he said things such
as I do believe there are too many useless books in my library
or
Your aunt would not say it, bless her gentle soul, but she was most terribly in need of your company this afternoon, when you were away from the house. You should think more of her, and not always so much of your own pleasure
. The former
pronouncement had preceded the purging of the library that had made her cry in her bed, under the covers, every night for a week, and the latter had turned Elissande almost as housebound as her aunt.

Tea was brought in. Elissande poured, breathing carefully so that her hand would not shake. The footman left, closing the door quietly behind him.

Her uncle approached the table. Elissande offered him his tea. The surface of the tea barely rippled: Her years under his tutelage were standing her in good stead.

She saw the teacup flying from her hand before she understood the burning pain on her cheek. Another slap came, even harder this time, and sent her careening from her chair. She lay where she’d fallen, stunned. She’d always suspected that he did unspeakable things to her aunt, but he’d never before raised his hand against
her
.

Her mouth tasted of blood. One of her molars moved. She could barely see for the liquid swimming in her eyes.

“Get up,” he said.

She blinked back the tears and raised herself to her knees. Before she could get to her feet, he grabbed her by her collar, dragged her across the room, and slammed her into the wall.

Suddenly she understood that her skeleton was quite fragile. It was made of bones. And bones cracked under sufficient duress.

“You think you are so very clever. You think you can walk out of here with my wife—
my wife.”

His hand clutched her throat, shutting down her windpipe.

“Think again, Elissande!”

She would not. She was gladder than ever that she had finally taken Aunt Rachel away from him.

“You will return Mrs. Douglas to me and you will return her soon. If not—”

He smiled. She shuddered—she could not control it this time. He loosened his hold on her neck slightly. She gulped down air. He tightened his grip again.

“If not,” he continued, “I fear something terrible might befall the handsome idiot you claim to love so much.”

Her heart froze. She ground her teeth together so they would not chatter.

“Think of the poor overgrown dolt. You have already exploited him shamelessly, inveigling him into giving you his hand and his name. Does he truly need to lose an arm—and perhaps his eyesight—for you?”

She wanted to be haughty. She wanted to show him that she’d spit on his threats. But it was awfully difficult to appear strong and powerful when she could scarcely breathe. “You wouldn’t dare,” she managed to choke out.

“Wrong, my dear Elissande. For love, there is nothing I do not dare. Nothing.”

For him to speak of love—the Devil might as well speak of salvation. “You don’t love her. You have never loved her. You have only shown her cruelties great and small.”

He drew back his hand and slapped her so hard
that for a moment she feared her neck had snapped. “You know nothing of love,” he bellowed. “You know nothing of the lengths I’ve gone to—”

He stopped. She swallowed the blood in her mouth and stared at him. She had never, in her entire life, heard him raise his voice.

His outburst seemed to have surprised himself too. He took several deep breaths. When he spoke again, it was hardly more than a murmur. “Listen carefully, my dear: I will give you three days to bring her back. This is where she belongs; no court in the land will disagree with my prerogative as her husband.

“Bring her back, and you may enjoy your idiot for the rest of your days. Or you can look upon his blinded, maimed person for as long as you both shall live and know that you have been responsible for his mutilation. And remember—no matter what you decide, I will still have my wife back.”

To mark his point, he put both of his hands on her throat. She struggled weakly. She must breathe. She wanted desperately to breathe. To be in the middle of a cyclone, high and loose in the sky, surrounded by nothing but air, air, and more air.

Air came as her husband yanked her uncle off and threw him—literally lifted him and flung him down. A plant stand crashed loudly: Her uncle skidded across the floor and knocked it over. Her husband pulled her into his arms. “Are you all right?”

She could not answer. She could only hold on tight—any port in a storm.

“Shame on you, sir,” Lord Vere said. “This is your
niece, who has given up her youth to take care of your wife. Is this how you repay her devotion after all these years?”

Her uncle laughed softly.

“We left our honeymoon to call on you. I see now it was a mistake: You are not worthy of either our time or our courtesy,” said her husband heatedly. “You may consider yourself cut from our acquaintance.”

He kissed her on her forehead. “I’m sorry, my love. We should not have come. And you need never return here again.”

Vere had trouble calming himself enough to think properly.

He had sent three cables from the telegraph office: one to Lady Kingsley, alerting her to keep track of Douglas’s movement at all times; one to Mrs. Dilwyn at the Savoy Hotel, for Mrs. Douglas’s removal to Vere’s town house; and one to Holbrook, requesting protection outside the house.

It would appear that he’d done all that was required of him at the moment. But something tugged at the back of his mind—something that just might yield an important connection if only he could clear his head for half an hour.

Which was exactly what he couldn’t do. He turned around to look outside the window of the telegraph office, where the victoria sat with its hood up and his wife huddled inside the enclosure.

When he’d come upon Douglas with his stranglehold on her, he’d known, rationally, that Douglas was not going to murder her then and there—it did not fit with the man’s style of careful planning and even more meticulous execution. But rage had nevertheless exploded in him, and he had needed all his restraint to not pummel Douglas to within an inch of his life.

A very old rage that had never found its proper outlet.

He left the telegraph office and climbed back into the hooded victoria. She had her veil down; her fingers, white-knuckled, twisted her gloves. He lifted her veil and quickly lowered it: Her face still bore the imprints of Douglas’s hand.

“I cabled my staff,” he said by way of explanation. Turning to the coachman, he instructed, “The train station, Gibbons.”

A few minutes later they were on the platform of the train station, out of hearing range of possibly curious servants.

“Does your uncle always do that?” he asked at last.

She shook her head; the pale gray veil fluttered. “He has never raised his hand to me before. I’m not so sure about my aunt.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He’d rather enjoyed dragging her back to Highgate Court against her wishes. He’d even enjoyed the panic that she’d done her best not to betray: She ought to suffer a little for what she’d done to him.

Now he felt awful. He had not forgiven her by any means, but his earlier glee had sharply evanesced.
Even that night in the green parlor he had not understood quite so vividly the true extent of her fear and desperation.

Her hands, now gloved, twisted a handkerchief. “He wants me to return my aunt to him in three days.”

“And if you don’t?”

She was silent a long time.

“He didn’t promise to harm you or Mrs. Douglas, did he?” he prompted.

She began winding the twisted handkerchief along her index finger. “He promised to harm
you
.”

“Me?” He was a little surprised to be dragged into this. “Hmm, I’ve never had people threaten harm to me before. I mean, ladies do occasionally kick me in the shin when I spill my drinks on them—and I don’t blame them—”

“He said he would have you pay with a limb and your eyesight,” she said flatly.

He was taken aback. “Well, that’s not very nice of him, is it?”

“Are you afraid?” She certainly seemed to be. The way she was going, nothing would be left of the handkerchief but a few frayed threads by the time they reached London.

“Not afraid, precisely,” he answered honestly for once. “But it hardly makes me happy that he chokes you one instant and menaces me the next.”

She wrenched the handkerchief ever tighter—her finger must be blue inside her glove. “What should we do?”

He almost smiled—hard to believe the mightily
clever Lady Vere sought her idiot husband’s advice. He reached for her hand and unwound the handkerchief. “I don’t know, but we’ll think of something. And you don’t really think I’m so easy to harm, do you?”

“I pray not,” she said. She was already twisting the handkerchief again. “But he is both cruel and subtle. He can harm you without leaving a trace of evidence—I’ve never been able to ascertain what it was he did to my aunt to make her so terrified of him.”

Suddenly, the not-quite-thoughts in the back of Vere’s head coalesced into a concrete theory. Edmund Douglas’s ruthless finesse. The death of Stephen Delaney, so like Mrs. Watts’s yet so removed from the current case. The decline of Douglas’s diamond mine and his need for income, given both his insatiable appetite to prove himself in other avenues of investment and his dismal record.

He rubbed his hands together. “You know what we should do?”

“Yes?” she asked with both surprise and hope in her voice.

He almost hated to disappoint her. “We should not be hungry, that’s what. I don’t know about you but I’m a smarter and braver man when my stomach is full. You stay here. I’m paying a visit to the bakery. Anything I can bring back for you?”

Her shoulders slumped. “No, thank you, I’m not hungry. But be careful if you do go.”

He went back to the telegraph office and sent out a fourth cable, this one to Lord Yardley, whom Holbrook half jokingly referred to as his overlord—the
Delaney case had been before Holbrook’s time and Holbrook had always been more interested in the new than the old.

He asked only one question of Lord Yardley: Did Delaney’s scientific inquiries have anything to do with the synthesis of artificial diamonds?

Lord Vere slept.

He seemed to have a special affinity for sleeping in trains, since he’d slumbered heavily on the way to Shropshire as well. But it mystified Elissande how anyone who had been threatened with such grievous harm could be so unconcerned about it—the way he’d reacted, as if she’d told him he stood to lose a cravat, instead of crucial body parts.

At least he hadn’t blurted out that Mrs. Douglas was at the Savoy Hotel instead of Brown’s. Perhaps he’d forgotten already at which hotel they’d spent the night, just as he seemed to have forgotten his earlier unhappiness about marrying her.

She rubbed her temple. Her uncle, ever insidiously clever, had chosen the perfect target for his threat. Elissande and Aunt Rachel knew the danger they faced in him; they were prepared to do everything to save themselves.

But how did she protect Lord Vere, who did not understand his imperilment? And yet protect him she must—it was only because of her action that he was embroiled in her troubles.

He’d returned with a box from the bakery just before they boarded the train and offered her the box’s contents. And she’d shaken her head vigorously in refusal. But now she moved beside him and opened the bakery box. He’d left her two currant buns and a small Vienna cake.