“But this derringer—”
“It’s mine,” Samuel Grayson said. “I appreciate your returning it. And you’re quite right, sir, it is a lady’s gun. It belonged to my wife.”
Cole ignored him, his eyes hard on Ryder. “But what was she doing there?”
“I thought it was her home,” Ryder said, an eyebrow climbing upward.
“I will examine the body myself.”
“Fine. A man called Clayton is there. He is a Kimberly bookkeeper but he is overseeing things at Camille Hall. He will doubtless provide your men with shovels. It won’t be pleasant work, but I’m sure you know that. Good Lord, isn’t this heat something? I might add that Emile was rather green when he returned after getting it done. Several more hours have passed. Ah well, how much more unpleasant can it get? Go now, Cole, I’m tired, and speaking with you tires me even more. Good luck with your digging. The result, I daresay, will be even less pleasant than the process.”
Ryder turned away then and walked through the open doors onto the front veranda. He said nothing more, merely waited for Cole and his men to leave, which they did, Cole muttering threats under his breath.
“He was really stabbed?” Samuel asked.
“I have no idea. Emile didn’t say.”
“Are you saying that you just made that up?”
Ryder cocked an eyebrow at Samuel. “Why, yes. It makes for an interesting theory, doesn’t it?”
“I’m still worried, Ryder. Cole is determined. He’s a dangerous man, despite your contempt of him. We’ve just bought a little time, that’s all. He wants her badly.”
“She scorned him, you know. Struck him when he tried to kiss her.”
“He isn’t the kind of man to ever forget something like that.” Samuel shook his head. “Something must be done and soon. Ah, that poor child.”
“You mean Jeremy? I agree but he is young and adaptable. He will be just fine.”
“No! I meant Sophia.”
“Oh, her. I trust she’s kept to her bed?”
“Yes.”
Ryder said nothing more, merely walked back into the house and headed up the stairs.
When next he visited her, it was late afternoon. Sophie was wearing one of her nightgowns. She looked fresh and clean and very young. Her face was only faintly bruised now and she looked very bored. She frowned at him and said, “It is difficult to bathe and not get your feet wet.”
“It’s a sight I should have enjoyed witnessing. Perhaps you could bathe again this evening for my entertainment? I suppose that vicious snarl means I am to be denied. Well, it doesn’t matter. I have come to talk to you.”
“Talk, then.”
“Feeling restive, are we?”
“I want to go home. I heard that one of your bookkeepers is overseeing things at home. That isn’t right, Ryder. I should be there. Our people are perfectly capable of dealing with the problems themselves. I really must go home.”
“Well, you can’t just yet, so be quiet. As for Clayton, Emile says he’s a diplomat so you needn’t worry about lacerated sensibilities. Cole was here again after your lovely hide, but I told him that your uncle was just buried and it turns out he was stabbed, not shot.”
She stared at him. “You’re jesting.”
“Who knows? It got Cole out of here. But I will tell you true. I think Thomas really did kill him and that he was the one you shot. Of course, that means it wasn’t a mortal wound for he later spoke to Cole, giving his spurious evidence. But he’s gone to ground now. I want to find him and toss him into the mangrove swamp. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”
“He won’t return to Camille Hall. I really do want to go home, Ryder. There is so much to be done. There is no reason for Jeremy and me to remain here any longer. My ribs are much better now and my feet—well, I won’t walk much, all right?”
“And just what would you do if Mr. Sherman Cole arrived with his men to remove you to Montego Bay?”
She paled. He remained unmoved.
“Actually,” he said, looking beyond her right shoulder, “I’ve decided that we’re all going back to England.”
“You’re mad!”
“Quite possibly. Jeremy needs schooling. He will go to Eton.”
It was a dream come true, only Sophie didn’t want it to come true this way, no, not through him. “No,” she said. “I won’t allow it.”
“You have no choice at all,” he said and smiled at her.
“I do have a choice. I won’t be your mistress, Ryder, I won’t.”
“I don’t recall having asked you. At least not in the past three days.”
“I heard you! I heard what you said to Mr. Cole!”
“In that case, you must know that my ardor for your lovely self is quite in doubt now. After having examined you quite thoroughly I’m not sure at all that I am interested anymore. You are adequate for your environs, perhaps, but back in England? I don’t know about that.”
She picked up a heavy book of Shakespeare plays and flung it at him with all her might. He caught it square in his chest and grunted. Actually, she felt more pain in throwing the heavy tome at him than he felt at the blow. She paid it no mind. She threw a pitcher of water at him, a much easier shot, soaking the front of him.
There was nothing else to throw. She lay back against the pillows, panting and heaving, her forehead damp with perspiration. He hadn’t moved, even to wipe the water from his face. “That’s the second time you’ve attacked me,” he said mildly. “What do you think I should do about it?”
“You should stop trying to take over my life.”
“I want you to be well again.”
“So do I!”
“Ah, but my reasons for wishing it are quite different from yours. I want you well and thus able to fight me. I want to hear you yowl when I’ve bested you, which I will do. I want to hear you curse me. I want you to hurl yourself at me again and again, because I know you, Sophie, I know you don’t give up easily. When I have bested you, then you will get what you deserve.”
“I wish you had never come here.”
“Oh? And who should have come in my place? My little sister, Sinjun? I must admit that she would have found all this vastly amusing, but I’m not certain she would have dealt with you as well as I. She is very straightforward and honest, you see, utterly without guile. Or perhaps my pious younger brother, Tysen, who is right now at Oxford preparing himself for vicardom. He, I doubt not, will marry an equally pious girl who will be nauseatingly proper and good. Still and all, however, it’s possible that Tysen would have been the recipient of one of your drowsy-eyed smiles and stuttered himself off the island and quite probably drowned. Now, as to the earl, why, my dear girl, he would have eaten you for breakfast. He has no patience, not like I have. He doesn’t like games, either, not like I do. He doesn’t indulge wholeheartedly in the sport women usually provide, not like I do. No, he would have put a stop to you immediately and walked away, dusting his hands. So, all in all, I think you were very lucky I came here, and I do promise you, Sophie, I swear it, that you will be bested by me, but in my own good time.”
“A man’s threats—always violence, always bragging and braying about the pain you will inflict.”
“Oh no, I intend no pain.”
“Very well, dominance. It’s every bit as bad as physical violence. All men must know that they rule, even if it’s just over a single woman.”
“I believe we’ve been through similar charges before.”
“Go to the devil, Ryder. You and all men are despicable ! As for your repulsive family, I hope they all rot.”
“Even Sinjun?”
“If she is like you, then yes, damn you.”
Ryder wasn’t used to explosions like this. He frowned at the newness of it, the abruptness of it, although since he’d met her, she’d knocked him off balance more times than he’d experienced in his life. But this—well, what could he expect? Her uncle had beaten her, probably countless times, out of the demented fun of doing it and to make her perform as he demanded. “You don’t bore me,” he said abruptly. “Actually, I find you quite amusing and I haven’t even made—” He stopped cold in his tracks. No, he wasn’t about to tell her that he hadn’t taken her that night at the cottage when he’d drugged her. He had a clear flash in that instant of himself, staring down at her and how he’d wanted very much to touch her, to caress her, but he hadn’t. He wasn’t that cold-blooded.
“Well, Sophie, do you want to be my mistress for a time?”
“No.”
“Ah, you find Oliver Susson more to your taste? Really, my dear, he’s not at all a sterling specimen of manhood, although he is cooperative, which is a good thing for him. And that is the reason I haven’t been up to see you earlier. I rode to Montego Bay to visit with Mr. Susson. Let us say that he now understands very clearly what he is to do. He will work to see that my guardianship is handled immediately. He apologized profusely for his ethical lapse and assured me that he would perform these duties without financial remuneration.” Ryder paused for a reaction, but she held herself silent. She was well hidden from him, an act she was quite good at. He wanted to draw her, to bait her into fury, and thus continued in a mocking voice. “Naturally, the thought of losing you upset him dreadfully. He even went so far as to say that he would marry you, though he knew it would greatly affect his reputation in Jamaica. I thought there were actually tears in his eyes once he learned that he would never again enjoy you at the cottage.”
“He never did enjoy me. He did, but not in the way you think.”
“Oh? You say you were never at the cottage with him?”
“Yes, but I didn’t—” She stopped. It was no good. She said abruptly, “All you have to do is look at my face and my ribs, Ryder, and know that I did nothing with any of these men willingly.”
“Reluctant all the way, huh? Perhaps I believe you with a pathetic bastard like Sherman Cole. But with all the rest of them? I’m sorry, Sophie, but I do remember that first night with you and how you played the coquette to perfection. You didn’t turn a hair when I pulled your gown to your waist and fondled your breasts. Oh no, you handled me with great skill—ah, the promises, the anticipation you built up in me. I positively festered with lust.”
“Will you get me some bandages so I can wrap up my feet? I must get up, Ryder. I am so bored I want to scream and your conversation is rendering me nearly insensible.”
So much for goading her into an excess of bile, he thought, and simply nodded. He himself wrapped up her feet, pleased that they looked better than they had that morning. Nice feet, he thought, narrow, highly arched. He said as he studied her toes, “When I finished my conversation with Mr. Susson, I checked on shipping schedules to England. There are several ships due in from England very soon now. We will have time to tie up all loose ends. I firmly intend for the three of us to be on the next ship back home.”
“Sir, are you helping my sister again?”
Ryder slowly lowered her foot back onto the bed. He turned to see Jeremy standing in the doorway. He said under his breath, but Sophie heard him, “I really must remember to close that bloody door.” He grinned at the boy. “Come in, Jeremy. Your sister is flushed from the heat and I was just trying to amuse her. She is bored, you know, and wants for diversions.”
“You were holding her foot.”
“Yes. She had a cramp in her toes but it is better now. As you can see I’m also bandaging her feet again. She is bored.”
“I will read to her. Goodness, Sophie, whatever is the Shakespeare doing on the floor? You must be more careful. Some of the pages are twisted. Goodness, page four hundred and thirty is torn.”
“You’re right, Jeremy. She tore the second scene in
The Taming of the Shrew.”
“Go away, Ryder,” she said. “Just go away.”
He did, whistling.
Sophie didn’t know what had awakened her. At one moment she was dreaming deeply, and her mother was there with her, laughing and brushing her hair and talking about the future and all the fine young men who would want to marry her when they went to London upon her eighteenth birthday. The next moment, she was wide awake, jerking upright in bed, frozen still and listening.
The sound came again. Movement coming from outside.
Her heart began to pound, fast, shallow strokes. Slowly, she pulled off the single sheet covering her and eased out from beneath the mosquito netting. It was very late and very silent except for that other sound. It was a person and he was moving along the balcony outside, quietly but not quietly enough for her sharp ears.
She stepped onto the floor. Her feet were still bandaged but it had been two days since the fire at Camille Hall and the pain was nearly gone now. She walked slowly, tiptoeing to the open door and peering out. She heard nothing but the soft grating sound of a lone coqui. Then in the next instant, she saw a shadow, a long shadow, the shadow of a man, and he was moving stealthily around the side of the house.
She picked up the water pitcher beside her bed, the one she’d hurled two days before at Ryder, unceremoniously dumped the remaining water into the chamber pot, and walked out onto the balcony. There were no barriers. The balcony curved around the entire second floor of the house, a good eight feet deep with a twelve-foot overhang to protect from the sun. She crept after the man. Suddenly she was right behind him and she froze. He was silent, staring into a bedchamber.
It was Ryder’s room.
She saw him raise a knife in his hand. God, it was Thomas and he was going to kill Ryder.
She waited until he stepped into the bedchamber then ran quickly after him, the thick bandages on her feet silencing them. She peered around the open doorway to see Thomas now standing by Ryder’s bed. He had the knife raised. She saw a bulky bandage around his chest. She’d shot him, not her uncle. Ryder had been right.
But her aim hadn’t been good enough, worse luck.
Slowly, he pulled back the mosquito netting.
Sophie screamed and screamed again, yelling like a banshee, shrieking like a mad voodoo priestess. She ran toward Thomas, the pitcher raised high.