His eyes suddenly teared. How could it have come to this? Wild thoughts darted through his mind as he tried to find an answer to his own question. There was no answer. There was only bitter, bitter regret.
There was no time to debate the rights and wrongs of what he should do. And still he hesitated. Whoever raised a hand against Jessica was his mortal enemy. He wanted to kill Rupert with his bare hands. He wanted—
“For friendship’s sake,” Rupert repeated, and there were tears in his eyes, too.
Lucas came to his decision. Quickly crossing to the desk, he put his pistol into Rupert’s hand. “I’ll make everything right,” he said, “but I must know how Stone died.”
“I broke his neck.”
Something slammed into the door and a panel shattered.
A look passed between the two men. Rupert mouthed the words, “Forgive me, my friend.”
The door burst inward as the gun went off.
A mile away, Jessica felt as though a sun had exploded behind her eyes.
She sensed something and turned to her side. Moonlight gilded the familiar objects of her room. On the table beside
her bed was a prayer book and a glass carafe filled with water.
“Lucas,” she whispered, and hauled herself up.
He was sitting in the only chair in the room, in semi-darkness, his legs stretched out in front of him. He stirred when she said his name, and slowly rising, came to the bed. His face was to the window and she could just make out the harsh set of his features, the unsmiling mouth, eyes that were like gouges against the pallor of his skin.
“He’s dead,” she said softly, “isn’t he?”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “He killed himself with my pistol.”
A breath shivered out of her. She was too much on edge to ask how it had happened. She didn’t want to know, and maybe she would never want to know. “What did you tell the constable?”
He said something short and violent under his breath. “How well you know us! You’re right, of course. We closed ranks yet again, to protect one of our own.”
This was said with so much bitterness that she put out a hand to comfort him, but she let it fall away. There was something about him that told her the gesture would not be welcomed.
“I told him,” he said, “that Rupert believed Stone had insulted you when you were a guest of his house. They quarreled. Stone fell against the fire fender and broke his neck. Rupert panicked and buried his body in the crypt. I discovered the grave and taxed him with it. Rather than face the disgrace, he killed himself.”
She swallowed hard. “I see. And did Constable Clay believe you?”
“No, he didn’t believe me. There were too many gaps in my story. The crypt for one. No one knew there was a way into it, and I could not give a satisfactory account of how I’d stumbled upon it. But whatever Constable Clay suspects, he can prove nothing, not unless you tell him what you know.”
“I see,” she said again, not knowing what he wanted her to say.
He rose abruptly and paced to the window. “If you think about it,” he said, “this is the best solution. This protects everyone, not just Rupert. If I’d handed him over to the constable, everything would have had to come out—what your father did to Jane Bragge, Rodney Stone’s part in this—you see what I mean. Innocent people would have been hurt.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” He swung to face her. “You’re very forgiving. My God, Jess, he almost had you! Up there on the cliff? If we hadn’t found you when we did, it would be
your
body that the undertakers would be laying out right now.”
She flinched and looked down at her hands. They felt oily from the salve Sister Dolores had rubbed on all the cuts and abrasions she’d sustained while trying to climb down the cliff face. Without being aware of what she was doing, she began to massage them. “You never told me,” she said, “how you found me.”
“Luck! Sheer luck!” His voice was so savage that her head snapped back. She watched him warily as he walked to the end of the bed. “I knew you would make for Haig House. Where else could you go? But when we arrived, the servants had not seen you. All they could tell us was that Rupert was in the conservatory. But he wasn’t in the conservatory. What we found were your gloves. And I knew then, I knew—”
There was a long silence. He looked exactly as she’d seen him when she’d left Rupert’s library—unmoving as a statue.
He expelled a long breath. “We fanned out,” he said. “I took the path to the pavilion. I don’t know why. When we heard rocks falling, we all converged on the sound. Do you know how lucky you were that we were on horseback? Do you realize how close you came to losing your
life? Can you imagine how I felt? Why, Jessica? Why did you do it?” He made a small sound of derision. “What a stupid question! You thought I was the murderer. There’s no other explanation. You thought I had murdered your father. You thought I had arranged things with Rodney Stone to abduct you and God knows what else. You thought I was going to murder again. You thought I was your Voice.”
She felt as though the darkest, ugliest part of her soul had been prized out of her and brought into the glaring light. Her throat tightened alarmingly. “Please, Lucas, try to understand. Ellie told me about the straws. She saw and heard everything. And I always knew that if I could discover who had murdered my father I would know who my Voice was. Don’t you see, I knew he was going to murder again, and I had to stop him.”
“When did Ellie tell you about the straws?”
She couldn’t think. Night and day had not had much meaning for her since she’d found out. “Our last night in London.”
“And before that, did you suspect me of murder then?”
“No,” she cried out. “No, I swear it. I suppose I always sensed you were hiding something, something to do with your pact. I understood about Ellie, but I could not understand how I came into it. I read the letter from your attorney. I know that Adrian and Rupert gave you the money to buy Hawkshill. But I don’t know why.”
“Why do you think?” he said wearily. “You were part of the pact. If I had died in battle, the others would have taken care of you. I made them swear to it. And later, if anything happened to me and you came back, I didn’t want you with nothing to live on. Yes, Rupert and Adrian helped me scrape the money together for Hawkshill. I had supposed that they felt guilty for having considered executing your father. And Rupert …” He paused. “Rupert insisted on it. And now I see why.”
“Lucas …” Her voice died away. She couldn’t find the words to tell him how his constancy shamed her.
“Why didn’t you confide in me? Why, Jess?”
“What could I say? That I heard voices? That I had visions? I was afraid you would think I was mad. I don’t know. I tried to tell you. I just couldn’t find the right words.”
“You found the right words in Rupert’s library.”
Biting her lip, she looked away. “I had no choice. I had to tell you. But would you have believed me if Rupert hadn’t confirmed what I said?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Lucas,” she said, groping for the words that would soften him. “Try to understand. When you appeared at the priory, I was shaken. I was sure Rodney Stone’s body was there and that my Voice had put the thought in my mind. What else could I think but that you were my Voice, and you’d come to stop me?”
“I see what you mean. It never occurred to you, I suppose, that I was worried out of my mind and had come to find you? Do I seem unreasonable? Well, maybe I have a right to be. It’s not every day that a man is betrayed by the two people he trusts most in the world.”
His manner chilled her more than his words. He sounded so formal, and not like the Lucas she knew. If only he would curse, blaspheme, go on a rampage, she would weep with joy.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not myself. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. This discussion can wait for another day.”
“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “I want it to be over and done with. I can’t bear this … misunderstanding between us. What is it you wish to know?”
He propped one shoulder against the bedpost. “Tell me about your Voice. Tell me why you thought it was I. When did it first come to you? I don’t know. Just tell me about it.”
She took a moment to gather her thoughts. In little more than a whisper, she began to speak. “I called it my Voice because I didn’t know what else to call it. It came to me in impressions and pictures, not words. I suppose I was first aware of it when you began to take an interest in me. You must understand, Rupert’s thoughts were not violent then. He thought I was pretty, that I was clever, and that I was quality. I thought it must be you I was reading. I mean, I was hardly aware of Rupert. You were the only one who meant anything to me. I couldn’t talk to you about it because you had made it quite clear that you regarded this … talent … with extreme distaste.”
“But why Rupert?”
“We were related, or so he told me.” And she went on to tell him all that Rupert had told her.
Many minutes went by before he spoke again. “Tell me about the night you ran away from Hawkshill. Did you tell your father we were lovers? Did you send him to find me?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I thought, believed, you loved me, whatever you said. And I thought Bella would not marry you if the story that we were lovers got out. She was too proud.”
Swallowing the tears in her throat, she went on. “I didn’t do it only for myself. I did it for you, oh, not so that you would marry me, but so that you wouldn’t marry Bella. You didn’t know her as I knew her. She was cruel. She was a liar and a cheat, and, oh—all the things Rupert said. I knew you could never be happy with her.”
She let out a pent-up breath before continuing. “Then, I don’t know, I sensed something, and I was terribly afraid. I was on my way to your house, thinking that’s where my father had gone, when something came over me. I knew it was my Voice. Lucas, I thought it was you. You were angry, maddened, but that’s what I expected after what I’d done. Then it changed. Murder, it told me. Oh God, it was awful. I ran down the bridle path to stop
you, but I was too late. I don’t know exactly what happened next, except that the murderer came after me, and all the time, I thought it was you. You weren’t going to give up. Nothing but my death would satisfy you.”
She had to swallow several times before going on to tell him how she had managed to escape, and how it had ended with a carriage running her down in front of the convent.
Another endless silence ensued. He shifted slightly and there was an odd note in his voice. “You sensed that Rupert was sorry he had to kill you?”
She nodded. “He was telling the truth. Back there at Haig House? He was telling the truth. He feared and hated this horrible talent I have, but he didn’t hate me.”
From another part of the house, the sound of a child’s cry came to them. The wind rattled the windowpanes. Along the corridor a door opened and shut.
Lucas let out a long sigh. “Try to get some sleep, Jess. I’ll look in again tomorrow.”
She tried one last time to break through the barrier he had erected against her. “Let me come with you. I don’t want you to be alone. I know how much Rupert’s friendship meant to you. I’m sorry, Lucas. I’m truly sorry.”
“I believe you mean that.”
“I do.”
For the first time, his voice betrayed all the strain he had been under. “It’s best if you stay with the nuns for now. Adrian and I have much to do. We have to get our story straight. There’ll be an inquest, of course, and we have to arrange Stone’s funeral as well as Rupert’s.”
“Where will Rupert be buried?”
“At the priory. There have been Haigs buried there for over two hundred years. The church may object because he took his own life, and that’s something else Adrian and I will have to deal with, so you see, I won’t have much time to give to you.”
She couldn’t argue with him. She understood only too
well. Their grief for Rupert would be exclusive, and she would only be in the way. She understood, but it still hurt.
“Till tomorrow, then,” she said.
“Good night, Jess.”
When the door closed and she was alone, she kept the tears at bay by retracing in her mind everything that had happened since that evening at vespers when she’d learned that her Voice would murder again. She’d made mistakes, but if she had to do it over, she didn’t see how she could do anything differently. She was sorry about Rodney Stone, bitterly sorry. But she hadn’t failed altogether. She’d stopped a murderer from murdering again.
Bella
. Rupert’s words came back to her.
What an irony
. And it was an irony. All the trials and tribulations she had endured had been for the sake of a woman she thoroughly detested. Bella! Of all people!
That’s when she began to cry.
CHAPTER
28
R
osemary left Jessica and Ellie taking tea in the Lodge’s morning room, and went in search of Lucas. She found him in his study, stuffing papers and documents into the leather grip she had given him on his last birthday. She knew this wasn’t the best time to have a conversation with her son. They’d just returned home from the priory after Rupert’s funeral service. Lucas had taken his friend’s death very hard, in fact, they all had. And now that he was executor of Rupert’s estate, he was leaving within the hour with Bella to consult with Rupert’s attorneys in London.
In normal circumstances, she would have kept her peace until he returned, but he was expected to be away for at least a week, and what she had to say could not keep for a week. No, nor for another day.
“Mother,” he said, when he caught sight of her, “come in.” He shut the grip and fastened it. “I’m relying on you to keep an eye on Jessica while I’m away. This has all been a terrible ordeal for her. See that she gets plenty of
rest, and try to make her eat. These last few days, all she has done is pick at her food.”
“I’m afraid I can’t oblige you this time, Lucas,” she said. “You see, I won’t be here.”
He looked up with a frown. “What do you mean, you won’t be here?”
“I’ll be with Sir Matthew Paige, that is, if he’ll still have me after the shabby way I’ve treated him.”