The Sweet and Spicy Regency Collection (96 page)

“I’ve also sent Joshua for Doctor Pryor.” His voice was as gentle as a caress. “There is no need to worry. I’ll make sure you remain safe, dove.”

She wanted to reach out to him and brush away the tension straining his jaw. But old fears were hard to forget. Despite how she was growing fond Nigel, the thought of marriage
to anyone
still chilled her. Her hands in her lap, she let her gaze wander again to the lonely man standing at the edge of a precipice in Dionysus’s painting hanging on the wall. Perhaps the painting wasn’t a self-portrait, as she’d originally thought, but a portrait of Nigel. He kept himself apart. Even at this house party, he seemed to keep a wall around him, not fully including himself in any of the activities, not truly enjoying himself…except when the activity involved her.

“But what about that bloody crazed maid? It was
her
maid, was it not?” Lord Purbeck shook a crooked finger at Elsbeth. “I don’t trust the situation, boy. I don’t trust
her
.”

“I have already told you, Uncle Charles, that topic is not open for discussion.” Nigel took Elsbeth’s hand in his warm, strong grasp in an obvious show of affection. Elsbeth welcomed it. “Besides, we have a murderer to find.”

“You already know who he is,” Charlie said.

“Perhaps…” Nigel appeared uncertain. Was Charlie thinking of George Waver?

Mr. Waver had seemed genuinely afraid for his life at Nigel’s hands. And he’d mentioned that Nigel was already growing suspicious of his actions. But Mr. Waver had appeared truly surprised when she’d insisted that she didn’t know Dionysus’s identity. And if
he
wasn’t Dionysus, he wasn’t the killer. Thanks to her recent investigations, she was beginning to know something about the smuggling going on at the estate…and the murder attempts.

“Guthrie, your footman,” she said. Mr. Waver had suspected Guthrie was an accomplice. And it did make sense. He had been the one guarding her door. It would be easy for him to slip in sometime during the night and carry her away. “I wish to speak with him.”

“What? Speak to—? No, Elsbeth, I don’t want you involved any more than you already have been. This affair has nothing to do with you.” Nigel paused. “Not really. The men who attacked you did it in an attempt to hurt me. I won’t allow you to get further involved. I cannot.”

“My lord,” she said, her voice sharp enough to slice glass, “perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I am sure the confusion is entirely my fault.” She drew a long breath. “I wasn’t asking for your permission. I was asking for you to arrange for me to speak with Guthrie. If you don’t, I will arrange it myself.”

The room fell into a shocked silence. Olivia’s jaw dropped open. So had Lord Purbeck’s. Lady Dashborogh was sputtering. Elsbeth was feeling fairly surprised herself. Never, not in all the years she’d been married to Lord Mercer, had she stood up to her husband quite so forcefully. Doing so should have left her quaking in her slippers. But Nigel had promised that he would never hurt her. And, despite all her efforts not to, she was learning to trust him.

However, confronting him in such a public manner probably wasn’t going to help their relationship. Hoping to soften the blow, she flashed Nigel a quick smile, one filled with challenge and a touch of an apology. She felt slightly lightheaded by her boldness, and by her body’s reaction to him. More often than not, when they verbally sparred, he usually ended up kissing her. She leaned forward, her lips more than a little hungry for his touch.

“I am but your servant, my lady wife,” he said. He rose from his crouched position beside the sofa. He didn’t look happy. No, he looked as if he was on the verge of strangling someone. Surprisingly, she refused to back down or let his dark mood cow her. She tilted her chin up and matched his hard glare. Again, her cheeks felt flushed and butterflies danced happily in her belly as she thought about kissing him.

After a long, heart-pounding moment, he sketched a stiff bow and left the room for a second time to speak with the servant stationed outside the door. He returned in short order with Guthrie. The burly footman was grumbling, moaning, and holding his head as he stumbled toward the sofa a few steps behind Nigel.

“Guthrie,” Elsbeth said sternly. She’d been trained to manage servants from a very young age and had honed those skills during her marriage. Lord Mercer had rarely taken the time to deal with such matters himself. “What has happened to your head?”

“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Purbeck barked.

The footman growled and turned a pleading eye to Nigel who only said, “Answer Lady Edgeware.”

“I got knocked but good on me noggin, m’lady.”

“You did?” While most servants were honest almost to a fault, there were always a few who could spin a yarn so tangled the truth never had even a flicker of a chance of seeing the light of day. She suspected that Guthrie, with his intense interest in gold sovereigns, fell short of being trustworthy.

She struggled to sit up straight on the sofa. Her side burned as if hot coals had been pressed there. The exertions that evening must have put a terrible strain on the wound, not that she would have changed anything that had happened with Nigel in the master suite. That was a memory, she suspected, she’d remember for a lifetime…even if their sham of a marriage ended in the next couple of days.

“Come over here, Guthrie.”

The footman hesitated until Nigel gave him a none too gentle shove.

“Bend down and let me take a look. Head wounds can be tricky, you see. They should never be left unattended.” All of which was true. If he were telling the truth, Dr. Pryor would be tending two patients instead of just one.

“M’lady, this is not—”

“Guthrie.” Her voice was sharp, though not quite sharp enough to cut through glass this time. “Do as I say.”

With Nigel’s hand pressing on the footman’s shoulder, Guthrie had no choice but to kneel down in front of her and lower his head.

She pushed aside his greasy hair and felt his scalp for bumps and tender areas. At first she was exceedingly gentle. Guthrie moaned and groaned and cried with pain even before she’d touched him.

“Where were you struck?” she asked him.

“Outside your chamber’s door, m’lady” he drawled.

“No, Guthrie, where on your head?”

He pointed to the top of his skull. She skimmed her fingers over the spot he’d indicated. Guthrie yelped at the lightest touch.

Elsbeth frowned. In her experience, head injuries swelled up rather quickly. Considering the amount of pain he purported to be feeling, she should be able to find at least the beginnings of a bump or a knot. She was beginning to believe that she was examining an exceptionally healthy skull.

“You may stand now.” She wiped her hands on the blanket and took a moment to consider what she should do next. She glanced at Nigel. He shrugged.

Guthrie rose. Anger filled the large man’s eyes when his gaze met hers.

“There is nothing wrong with your head, Guthrie, except for a rather unfortunate case of lice. Do you care to tell us who paid you to drug me and then abandon out in the middle of a storm?” She glanced toward Charlie, hoping to prompt Guthrie into loosening his tongue. “Was this the same man who paid you to put a burr underneath Lord Edgeware’s saddle, nearly killing him?”

“’E never said anyone would be killed, m’lady! I never killed anyone!” Guthrie shouted and then made a dash for the door.

“Just give us a name!” Elsbeth called after him.

Nigel, Charlie, and Lord Ames all dove for the footman. But he evaded their hands and the hands of the servants that charged into the room roused by the commotion. With a shout, Guthrie disappeared out the door. The men in the room, except for Lord Purbeck, ran after him.

Soon after, the sound of a gun’s shot ricocheted through the silent room. A man screamed. Another shouted “no.”

Lauretta covered her mouth with her hands and darted to the window. Lady Dashborough’s daughters, pale with shock, followed.

“Oh my,” Olivia whispered, “poor, Elly.”

No one else spoke.

Charlie ran back into the drawing room. “The footman’s been shot! He’s dead!”

Lady Dashborough fainted.

* * * *

Over an hour passed before the guests settled down. No one seemed interested in seeking out their beds. The drawing room remained crowded. Several guests sank into comfortable chairs, some meandered around the room, staring quietly at each other.

“There’s no sign of the man who fired the weapon,” Elsbeth overheard Nigel whisper to Charlie upon his return.

“You already know who did this,” Charlie replied.

Slowly, the talk returned to the subject of the smugglers. Elsbeth seemed to be the only one who believed them innocent of the killings. And since she didn’t want to talk about what had happened to her out in the storm, not until Mr. Waver had a chance to explain himself, she decided to keep her thoughts to herself.

“What do you need us to do?” Lord Ames asked. “I, like Charlie, find it difficult to believe that your army of footmen couldn’t catch even one person out of what had to have been more than two dozen men unloading a boatload of smuggled goods. Could it be possible that your smugglers are local town’s people? Possibly relations of your footmen?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Nigel said. “Which makes the thought of them wanting me dead even more chilling.”

“The smugglers aren’t trying to kill you,” Elsbeth said before she could stop herself. She slammed her hand over her mouth and hoped no one had heard her.

“What did you say?” Nigel crouched down beside her and gently pried her hand from her mouth.

“See, Nige, I told you.” Charlie said. Like his father had done earlier, he wagged a sharp finger in Elsbeth’s direction. “Let me have twenty minutes alone with y
our wife
. I know how to twist the truth from her.”

The room erupted with excited chatter. Elsbeth sat as dead as a statue awash in dread. In a fit of rage Lord Mercer had once handed her over to Charlie for an entire evening. Charlie, parroting her husband’s behavior, had slapped her across the face, knocking her to the floor. And when she’d tried to defend herself, he’d kicked her until she was huddled in a corner, fearing for her life. That’s when he’d grabbed the front of her gown and ripped it. He’d pressed his vile lips to hers and Mercer had allowed it. Her husband had actually laughed when she’d tried, and failed, to push Charlie away. That was the night Lord Ames had tried to defend her. The foolish man’s gallant attempt to rescue her had only made her husband’s rage that night turn all the more violent. She shuddered to remember more…She would kill herself before willingly let anything like that happen again.

“Silence!” Nigel shouted. He turned back to her. “Elsbeth, I’m sure you understand why I need to know what’s going on.” His voice was frighteningly steady, but his eyes were alive with a look of ruthless determination. “What do you know about these smugglers?”

The man responsible will not live much longer
, he had vowed. And she was fairly certain from the way he had said it that he intended to personally see that the punishment for their crimes were carried out. As the highest ranking landholder in the area, he would of course have say over the proceedings.

What to do? What to do? She couldn’t tell him what she little knew, for she knew only one name. And Nigel was liable to kill Mr. Waver if she told what little she knew about his involvement with the smuggling operation. Circumstances did make him appear horribly guilty. And although she felt fairly certain he wasn’t a murderer, she had no proof. But she needed to say
something
to Nigel. He might never trust her again otherwise, and she needed him to trust her as she was beginning to trust him. She pinched her eyes closed and wished herself invisible.

“Elsbeth,” Nigel said. She flinched when his hand cupped her chin. “Elsbeth, look at me.”

She refused, knowing what her refusal meant. His trust. Her happiness. Their marriage.

“Let me have time alone with her, Nige.” Charlie said again, sounding hungry for the opportunity. “I know how to deal with her.”

“No, I can handle this.” Nigel took her hand and pressed it against his cheek. “Elsbeth, it is important that you tell me everything you know. It may mean my life, my dove.”

To tell Nigel might bring about an innocent man’s death. But to hold back the truth, she was likely going to destroy her future and her chance at finding happiness with a man she was beginning to love. She fiddled with her locket. She knew so little of love, so little of life. But she did know about honor. She wouldn’t let Nigel kill an innocent man.

“I gave the man my word,” she said with frightful ease. “I cannot give you his name.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Damn, he was a fool. Apparently all his efforts to win Elsbeth’s heart had completely failed. She seemed more willing to protect a murderer’s identity than to preserve her own husband’s life.

Nigel let her hand slip from his fingers. He spoke not a word. He simply rose and walked out of the room. He needed to get away from this hell and just paint. It had been too damn long.

“Nige,” Charlie called from down the hall.

“Don’t you dare touch her,” he said without breaking his stride.

He needed to find some canvas to paint on. Hell, even a roughly cut board would do.

“Nige! Someone is trying to kill you. What should we do?”

What should he do?
He wasn’t sure anymore. He’d hosted this blasted house party and put up with having all these blasted guests in his home in order to restore Elsbeth’s reputation. Then, after his hasty marriage, which had caused most to rush back to London, he’d let the few remaining guests stay. He’d known Elsbeth would be uncomfortable dealing with him on an intimate level. And had hoped the guests would serve as a buffer, giving her time to learn to trust him.

His plan had failed miserably. He now feared he’d never find a way to win her trust, or her heart.

Which meant the guests were no longer needed or wanted. He’d personally arrange for Elsbeth’s cousin’s to be safely escorted back to their father. Everyone else, though, could do whatever the hell they wanted…as long as they did it outside the walls of Purbeck Manor.