Whispers at Midnight (13 page)

Ryne’s eyes had never left Amanda’s face and
now there was such an air of seriousness to his expression that she
felt a strange touch of alarm.

The tips of his nostrils thinned and his
dark brows drew together. “Then you must have dreamed that part,”
he said slowly. “Otherwise how could the blood disappear?”

Amanda’s fingers trembled and she laced them
together to still them. “Someone could have wiped it away,” she
answered.

“Wouldn’t you have seen whoever it was?”

She shook her head. “No. I was far too
concerned about Elizabeth. I wouldn’t have noticed anything for a
moment.”

“And tonight?”

“Tonight I heard the whispering again,
someone calling my name and giving a warning. I dreamed of rain,
felt it on my face. Only it was blood, drops of blood. I saw it in
the mirror.”

“I don’t see . . .”

“There was a towel at the washstand. I wiped
it off.”

She caught the hesitancy in his voice when
he spoke once more. “Then there would be stains on the towel.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, remembering that
she had wiped her face and dropped the soiled towel at her feet.
She had splashed cool, clear water on her cheeks afterward. The
towel would still be on the floor and the stains would prove she
hadn’t dreamed the blood.

“Show me,” Ryne said, taking her arm and
supporting her with a surprising gentleness as they walked from his
room to Amanda’s. He had taken up the candle, and the way he held
it, two shadows danced ahead of them in the corridor. Amanda
watched the dark shapes soundlessly precede them on the smooth
slate floor. She was suddenly aware the house had been unnaturally
quiet for a long time. The rustling of the branches had ceased and
the whistle of the wind had died away. Not even the usual creaks
and groans she had become accustomed to at Wicklow could be
heard.

It was as if the house had conspired with
the night to make their trek down the hall so silent that her
heartbeat sounded louder than the patter of footsteps. She tried to
force back a half-thought forming deep in her mind. It was too
disturbing to believe that what had happened had not been simply a
crude prank, but might instead have been a malicious warning that
she was not safe at Wicklow.

“It’s there,” Amanda said, pointing to the
place she had dropped the towel.

Ryne lit candles so that her bedroom was
bright as daylight. Amanda paused to pull on a dressing gown, and
when it was tied about her waist, hurried to the washstand. But she
stopped suddenly and drew her breath in sharply. The white linen
towel hung crisp and neat over a wooden rod and was both clean and
dry. It couldn’t possibly have been used by anyone recently.

“No,” she whispered, moving once again and
plucking the towel from the rod. She turned it over and over in her
hands until there could be no doubt in her mind that it was
unstained. The water too was clear and clean and there were no
splash marks around the basin to indicate someone had washed only a
few minutes earlier. She spun around and her eyes sped to the
pillows on her bed, but they too were as white and unstained as a
summer cloud.

“You had a dream,” Ryne said with a tone of
condolence.

“But it couldn’t have been,” she said
shakily. Amanda swallowed a painful lump in her throat. She should
have been relieved. But to think that a dream could frighten her so
much she couldn’t cut it from reality gave her little solace.
Surely it had not been a dream. It had been alarmingly real. But
the blood was gone, and no other explanation bore logic.

“Amanda,” Ryne said softly, though a curious
light flickered in his eyes. “If it really bothers you for me to be
in the house, then . . .”

“No, no. You must stay, Ryne,” Amanda
mumbled. She felt drained and oddly weak, as if she had just been
defeated in some game where her life had hung in the balance. She
had accused him of madness and now it seemed she was the one in
question, imagining things and blaming Ryne because they were at
odds on another matter. Soon she’d be seeing the ghost she had
heard about. “I apologize,” she went on weakly. “I was wrong to
accuse you.”

He stared at her for a moment. She was
trembling and he knew she was still afraid, as much of him as she
was of the nightmares that plagued her. He felt the struggle of
cross-purposes within him. He wanted to cosset and console Amanda
Fairfax, to say some careful words that would assuage her fears.
But he held his tongue. He must not forget she had trained with one
of the best actresses in all England.

“Go to bed,” he murmured as she stood beside
her bed looking disoriented and altogether desirable. “You need
rest.” Ryne moved purposely about the room, snuffing out all the
candles but the one that burned on the little table by the door.
His back was to her, but soon he had turned and was watching as she
smoothed the sheets and coverlet that had been flung aside. Though
he tried, he couldn’t keep his eyes away from her. “I’ll leave this
one lit,” he said. “You sleep.”

Amanda climbed into bed, mindless of Ryne
watching. She thought he was smiling a reassuring smile at her, but
how could she trust her eyes anymore? When he came to her bedside,
she had let her heavy lids slip down so that her lashes only
flickered a little as he pulled the covers to her chin and bade her
good night. At least now she was too tired to dream.

She didn’t know how long Ryne stayed, but
when she woke he was gone. The window curtains were closed, though
a breeze had them fluttering and the sun was shining through as
best it could. Amanda lay still a moment, listening to the welcome
chatter of the birds outside and enjoying the peaceful feeling of
having slept a very long time.

Yawning, she sat up and pulled the bed
curtains open further. She glanced around the room. The candle by
the door had burned down and gone out, hours ago from the look of
it. Her eyes came back to the rose-colored coverlet on her bed. Now
she could see an odd strip of black that marred its smooth
surface.

She twisted around. The pillow beside her
looked distinctly as if someone had slept upon it. But of course
that was impossible. Ryne would have left the room as soon as she
had fallen asleep. What was that beside her? She reached for the
dark strip and was surprised when her fingers clutched a black silk
cord. Like the one Ryne used to hold his hair in a queue.

Somewhere down the hall someone was moving
along noisily. A gust of wind blew the window curtains out and
allowed a narrow band of light to sweep across the floor until the
panels rippled back in place and shut it out. But Amanda, sitting
rigidly in her bed, saw and heard nothing while her eyes grew wide
and questioning as she stared at the cord in her hands.

***

“You awake, Miss Fairfax?” Gussie’s loud
voice came with a persistent tapping on the door. Amanda
instinctively stuffed the cord under her pillow and leaned back
against it.

Without waiting for an answer, Gussie
bustled in and went straight to the windows, where she drew back
the heavy curtains that had kept out most of the light. A sudden
infusion of brightness filled the room. She was soon aware that she
had slept through the entire morning and that it was the strong
afternoon sun streaming hotly in her windows.

“My goodness, Gussie. What time is it?” she
asked.

“Mr. Ryne said you was all spent and to let
you sleep all the day if you would. But now Mr. Baldwin is here
with those women, and them expecting to meet you. Ought to let a
person know when callers are coming. Don’t like surprises. No, I
don’t.”

“Has Ryne left the house?”

“Ought to give me time to air out the rooms
if you’re going to have people staying.” She shook the wrinkles out
of Amanda’s dress and hung it in a wardrobe. “Not a bad sort, that
Emma Jones. Looks like a solid woman. Don’t know about the niece.
Looks too pampered. Like you. Won’t know her way around a kitchen,
you can bet.”

With a sigh, Amanda sank deeper into the
pillows. It was exasperating trying to carry on a conversation with
Gussie and never getting an answer to a question, at least not one
that made any sense concerning what you asked. She did wonder about
Ryne. She had a few questions at issue with him, not the least of
which was that he had no business giving Gussie orders for her
care.

“I’ll have to get dressed quickly,” Amanda
mumbled as she slowly peeled the covers back and set her feet on
the floor. “Gussie, you go down and tell them I’ll be with them in
a few minutes. Please see that they are made comfortable while they
wait.” Amanda shouted, wondering if she weren’t speaking so loudly
her message might be given without Gussie’s assistance.

For once Gussie seemed to hear what she
said. The old woman nodded and started for the door. “You be
needing any help to get dressed?”

“No, thank you. I can manage on my own. Now,
hurry, Gussie, and tell Mr. Baldwin I’ll only be a moment.”

She was a bit longer. Her hair proved to be
a mass of difficult tangles that took as long to brush out as to
braid and pin in coils over her ears. Concerned that she was
keeping her callers waiting, Amanda hurriedly dressed in a chintz
gown and an embroidered linen waistcoat that accented her slim
waist.

She took a moment more to make her bed. She
didn’t want Gussie doing that task for her either, especially not
with the cord still concealed under the pillow. As she worked, her
mind was occupied with hopes that Emma Jones and her niece would
prove to be compatible and that both ladies would be agreeable to
the proposition Cecil Baldwin was about to make.

There was so much about living at Wicklow
she hadn’t anticipated. She particularly hadn’t expected the
feeling of unrest that kept growing within her. She might blame
Ryne Sullivan for that. Nor had she expected the dim shadow of fear
that sometimes swept over her. She realized as she gave the
bedcovers a last smoothing stroke that she was counting heavily on
having the two women stay.

The bed finished, Amanda dashed out into the
hall and hurried toward the stairs. She had gone only a few paces
when she was aware of someone walking behind her and spun around to
find Ryne catching up to her.

Unconsciously she furrowed her brow at the
sight of him, but mostly because he brought a secret stirring deep
inside her. He was again clad entirely in black, and she wondered
briefly if he ever dressed otherwise. Certainly the choice was a
wise one for attractiveness. The color became him and made his blue
eyes shine like sapphires in contrast. At least for once his shirt
was fastened and tucked into his breeches.

As if he had made one more concession to
conventionality, he also wore a black leather stock at his collar
and silver cufflinks in his sleeves. To see him with the warm smile
and outward look of pleasure on his face, Amanda had no wonder that
women were drawn to him.

“Amanda”—his eyes regarded her with
good-natured amusement—”you slept well, did you not? And long?”

For some reason she couldn’t pinpoint, his
cheerfulness annoyed her.

“Yes, I did,” she answered with a forced
pleasantness, though her eyes narrowed with the effort.

A cool, appraising smile touched his lips
and fled. She wondered if he were telling her he wanted to put
their quarrel behind him and was disappointed that she would
not.

“You’re angry,” he said with a note of
mockery.

“So you read faces, Ryne?” She was sure now
he had left the cord behind simply to make her wonder if he had
lain beside her. He hadn’t needed to play a trick like that if he
wanted them to be on friendly terms.

He chuckled. “If there is no other way to
find the truth, I do so.”

Suddenly she wanted to pay off the debt and
make him feel as uncomfortable as he had made her. Amanda inclined
her head so that her dark braids swung rhythmically.

“While we are in pursuit of truth,” she said
firmly, “there is a question I would ask you.”

“Then ask,” he said lightly. “I am known for
being candid. It is one of my few virtues.”

He took such delight in baiting her that she
was pleased to be able to retaliate so cleverly. Her eyes were
bright with purpose as she boldly met his gaze.

“I have looked for the ivory-and-ebony chess
set that was in the parlor and cannot find it in the house. Did you
take it?”

“Take it?” There was an almost imperceptible
change in his face, as if he had been about to catch his breath but
overcame the impulse.

“Yes.” Amanda lifted her chin stubbornly.
“Did you take it and dispose of it? Sell it or pawn it
perhaps?”

“Why would you think that I had?” A curious
look shone in Ryne’s eyes. Amanda marked it to guilt.

“You said you had no money,” she answered,
her head lifted high in a gesture of triumph. “I thought you might
have sold some of your mother’s things.”

A muscle twitched in Ryne’s cheek, but other
than that he stood quite still. As the moment stretched out, Amanda
felt the alarm quicken and stream through her. She couldn’t have
imagined his eyes could look so dark and hateful beneath his
scowling brow. What folly had led her to trifle with a man as
dangerous as Ryne Sullivan? She waited, like a tiny bird trapped by
a hungry cat—waiting for what he would say or do, powerless to
break the stare between them.

At last she saw a shudder shake his
shoulders with the force of some terrible emotion. His mouth took
on an unpleasant twist and she knew he was about to speak. Amanda
took a halting step back, dreadfully afraid she had stirred up more
of a tempest than she could tame.

“Amanda, dear cousin,” Ryne said, his voice
hard and exact. “No matter how little money I might have, I would
not resort to thievery. And never would I have taken even a
shilling from my mother without her consent.”