“I suspect no one and I suspect everyone,” she said. “But whoever did it must have had motive and opportunity.”
He laughed harshly. “That’s what you said about me once.”
“You weren’t the only one at the Black Swan that night.”
“There must have been at least twenty other people who witnessed my fight with your father. Do you suspect all of them?”
“I wasn’t thinking of them.”
“Then who were you thinking of?”
“Adrian, Rupert, I don’t know. You had dinner with them that night. And they left just before my father arrived. One of them could have done it.”
She could see it in her mind’s eye. They would have
seen her father enter the Black Swan and one of them could easily have taken up a position on the bridle path, lying in wait for him.”
“That’s preposterous. Do you know who you’re talking about? These men are my friends—Adrian and Rupert. We went to school together and through the war together. I know them. And I’m telling you that neither of them could have murdered your father.”
Put like that it did seem preposterous. She liked Rupert and Adrian, and she couldn’t see them doing something so heinous.
People were such fools. They looked at him and saw exactly what he wanted them to see. No one had ever suspected him of murder
.
“Jessica,” he said, “these are honorable men. They would never have shot your father in the back, even if they had a motive for killing him.”
She gave him a sharp look. “Maybe not, but I think you know more than you’re telling me. What are you keeping from me?”
“God, this is insane! What could I be keeping from you?”
She was as intense as he. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Who are you protecting, Lucas?”
“Do you never listen?” His teeth were clenched and his hands had balled into fists. “The only person I’m protecting is you! You had the motive and opportunity. Isn’t that what you’re looking for? Then look no further than yourself.”
“What motive?” she scoffed. “Everyone knows I thought the world of my father. He may not have been easy to get along with, but he was devoted to me and I to him. Everyone says so. I would never have done anything to hurt him. Tell me about this motive that was so compelling that I murdered my father. There isn’t one, Lucas, and you know it!”
“Your admirable father,” he said savagely, “wanted to
sell you into sexual bondage. He was going to auction you off as though you were a slave. Jess, your father would have sold you to the highest bidder to line his pockets.”
She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t believe you.”
“You didn’t know your father, Jess. You thought he was going to take you to London to help him run a gaming house. You begged me to help you and I promised you I would. But it was worse than that. What you didn’t know was that he planned to sell you. There was going to be an auction …”
Memories too painful to contemplate swam at the border of her mind, but she didn’t want to know them. “Liar!” she screamed and flung herself away from him.
He halted her flight by grabbing her shoulders, and she lashed out with her open palm. She would have hit him again if he had not captured her in his arms and held her flush against his body. But nothing could subdue the ferocity of emotions his words had stirred up.
“Liar!” she sobbed. “Liar!”
“Jess, Jess,” he murmured soothingly. “Hush now. Stop this. Darling, you’ll hurt yourself.”
His soothing words only enraged her more, and her struggles to free herself became wilder. When she sank her teeth into his shoulder, he jerked himself free, then half carried, half dragged her to the bed. Forcing her down, he came down on top of her. The press of his weight succeeded at last in controlling her struggles, but it didn’t make her soften toward him.
Between sobs and moans, she got out, “You wanted to hurt me. That’s why you’re saying all this. It isn’t true. I know it isn’t true. My father loved me. He loved me. That’s why he kept me with him. He must have loved me. He must have.”
His face was parchment white and his eyes were almost black. “I should never have told you. I never meant to. I may have been mistaken. I can’t remember now. It
was so long ago. Jess, Jess, don’t take on so. Love, please! It doesn’t matter now. After all this time, it can’t possibly matter.”
Though she knew he meant to comfort her, each word pierced her heart like a barbed hook. It must be true, or he would not be trying to take back his words. And it was all there in his face for her to read—guilt, remorse, anxiety, helplessness. He was sorry, now, that he had said so much.
It was true, then. Her father would have sold her to the highest bidder. She shouldn’t be so shocked. The same thing had happened to some of their orphanage children, until they’d been rescued by the good Sisters of Charity.
His lips touched her forehead and she jerked herself away. “Don’t touch me!” she cried, then a keening cry of despair tore from her throat, and she turned her face into the pillow, away from him, and wept.
She didn’t know how long she had lain there, facedown on her bed like a broken doll. She heard him moving around the room and she heaved herself up. There was a large white handkerchief crumpled in her hand. She couldn’t remember how it had got there, but she used it to mop her cheeks and blow her nose.
He was standing on the hearth, sipping what looked like brandy from a crystal glass, watching her over the rim, as though he were the mouse and she was the cat. It made a change.
“You can relax, Lucas,” she said. “I’ve done all the crying I’m going to do. Now I want answers.”
“Jess, it’s late—”
“You started this.”
He heaved his shoulders in a gesture of resignation and sat at the foot of the bed. “I’m sorry I shocked you like that,” he said. “And you must know that I don’t believe for one moment you murdered your father. That was said in anger.”
She’d lost interest in finding out who had murdered her father, at least for the moment. It was her father she wanted to know about. And herself. “Tell me about the auction.”
“I only know what your father told me. It was going to take place in London. I knew it had to be soon, because it was no secret that your father was drowning in debt.”
“Who else knew about it?”
“No one else knew. If it had become known in Chalford, your father would have been strung up on the nearest post. No one liked him, Jess.”
“Except me,” she said bitterly. “How much money was involved?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that your father thought that marriage to me was a catastrophe. I was only a poor soldier then. There would have been no marriage settlement to pay off his debts or money to set him up in style. He was angry when he entered the Black Swan, and crazy with anger when I …” He trailed to a halt.
She said coldly, “When you refused to marry me?”
“Jess, I had already asked Bella to marry me just a few hours before. I couldn’t back out of it, not then. And I was angry with you for setting your father on me. You had lied, of course. You’d told him that you were no longer a virgin.” He hesitated, then went on.
“Damaged goods
were the words I believe he used. It wasn’t true, Jess.”
“Don’t worry, Lucas. You’re not hurting my feelings. I want to understand my father, that’s all. You came to see me that day. Tell me what happened.”
“I came to see your father that morning, but I found you instead. I was angry with your father, violently angry, because of what Adrian had told me. You had become a recluse. You never went anywhere, never did anything. You had no friends. And your father didn’t care. He had become an inveterate gambler and a drunkard and Hawkshill was going to ruin.”
“No wonder you didn’t want me to go to Bella’s ball!” she said bitterly. “You were afraid everyone would cut me dead.”
“That’s not true. The people of Chalford have accepted you, Jess. They like you.”
“Because of you! What I can’t understand is why you cared, then or now.”
“Why do you think?” he retorted. “Because there was always more between us than I was willing to admit.”
She wasn’t interested in what had once been between them. He had hurt her, and she thought she would never forgive him for doing it deliberately. “Just tell me what happened when you found me.”
He looked at her for a moment then looked down at the glass in his hands. “You told me you were going to London with your father, that he would open a gaming house and you would be its drawing card. I wasn’t really listening, not then. I didn’t realize you were asking for my help. All I could think was that you would be a gaming-house wench and no better than the barmaids at the Black Swan.” He shook his head and smiled in self-derision. “You have no idea what that did to me, Jess. I can only explain it by saying I went a little mad. I forgot about honor. I forgot about Bella. I …”
He took a long swallow of brandy before continuing. “I’m not proud of what happened next. But I frightened you, and that brought me to my senses. Then I listened to you. Unlike you, I could easily believe the worst of your father, and I was determined to get you away from Hawkshill. My mother was in London and I was going to send you there until I could think what to do about you.”
“And I agreed?”
“I wasn’t going to give you a choice.” “I begged you to marry me, didn’t I?” A muscle tensed in his jaw. “Yes.” It didn’t matter, she told herself. It didn’t matter. “Then what happened?”
“I went to see Bella late that afternoon.”
She drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them to her. “And you proposed to her?”
Another derisory smile. “Yes. You told me how it would be, that I would come to regret it, but I wouldn’t listen. It didn’t take me long to discover that you were right. I’ll never forget sitting in her drawing room like an ice sculpture, after she had accepted me, wondering why I felt so cold.”
“Then you had dinner with your friends at the Black Swan. Where was my father that day?”
“He was in Oxford, I believe, selling the last of his stock. Jess, your father was always in debt.”
“Tell me what happened when my father found you.”
He sighed. “He found me alone and sat down beside me. He’d been drinking. At first, I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. I’d ruined all his grand plans, he said. Then he blurted it out. There were men in London who could buy and sell me ten times over, and they would pay handsomely to get you, as long as you were a virgin. Now that you were damaged goods … Jess, I think I’ve said enough.”
There was a dull pain where her heart should have been. “The question is,” she said, “did I hate my father enough to murder him?”
“I don’t care if you did murder him,” he said fiercely.
“So you think I did it?”
The anger went out of his eyes. “No, Jess. You could never kill anyone. You’d finally had your eyes opened. But in spite of what I said earlier, I don’t think you hated your father even then. I think you would have forgiven him anything. You were always making excuses for him.”
Something else occurred to her. “I could never have found work as a governess or a companion, could I, Lucas? I wasn’t respectable enough. That’s why I stayed with my father. What else could I do?” She bit down on her lip, and he reached for her.
“Jess—”
She jerked away from him and got to her feet. After wandering aimlessly around the room, she stopped at the window and drew back the curtains. Her eye was caught by her sapphire betrothal ring. “I once had a sapphire ring that I wore around my neck, didn’t I, Lucas?” When he was silent, she turned to face him.
“You remember about the ring?” he said.
“No, Perry told me. Tell me about it.”
“It was your mother’s,” he said, “and the only thing that you had of hers. It was your most precious possession.”
“Did I lose it?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I remember, or I think I remember, coming to the Black Swan to find you to tell you about it.”
He nodded. “You were distraught. And I promised to buy you another sapphire ring when I made my fortune. It didn’t help. You didn’t want another ring. Nothing could replace your mother’s ring.”
She said with sudden insight, “I didn’t lose it. My father took it away from me and sold it. Didn’t he?”
“I … I can’t say for sure. It’s possible.”
“Tell me the truth. I have a right to know.”
“Yes. He sold it, and gambled the money away. I found out he’d sold it to Lady Radford. You won’t remember her. When she died last year, I bought the ring from the estate.”
She looked down at her ring. “Are you telling me that this is my mother’s ring?” she asked incredulously. “Yes,” he said simply.
Sudden tears stung her eyes and she turned her back on him. Any normal woman, she told herself, would be touched by his gesture. And she was touched, but she also felt horribly ashamed, and she couldn’t explain it.
When she was sure she had control of her voice, she
said, “I tried to make everyone believe that my father spoiled me, but you never thought so, did you, Lucas?”
“No, I never thought so. It’s what you wanted to believe, Jess, and you tried to make others believe it, too. He was a selfish man. Brutal in many ways. I never understood how he could have fathered a daughter like you. But you would never hear a word against him.”
She gave a brittle laugh. “I’m much wiser now, you’ll be happy to hear. I should have known how it was from my work with our children. You’ve no idea how much children will endure and still remain passionately loyal to parents whom you and I would consider loathsome.”
“I understand,” he said quietly.
She turned to face him. “You understand?
You understand
?” Her eyes were raw with pain. “You understand nothing! What do you know of a child’s hunger for love? You were born to parents who loved you. You grew up anticipating everyone would like and admire you. And they do. You’re the most popular man in Chalford. Ask the constable. Ask your attorney.” Her breathing was becoming irregular and it punctuated each word as she tried to articulate her thoughts. “Just to see you at a ball is a real pleasure. Everyone should have so many friends. Don’t tell me you understand, Lucas Wilde, because you could never understand what loneliness is.”