A Dangerous Courtship (25 page)

"Dearest God," Julian breathed. He whipped his gaze from the diamond to a sullen, quiet Wil, and then to Garn. "Where did you find this, Garn? What the devil is going on?"

"My son," Garn answered. "It was Wil who had the Eve Diamond, m'lord. Has had it, in fact, since that ugly night August last."

Julian was speechless. He felt as though he'd been given a mighty blow to his solar plexus and could now not even fight to get air into his lungs.
His father's diamond. Here. Not with Rathbone, but here, in this flat, with Wil.

He moved into the room, fighting down the fury that had no place in the face of a young lad who'd been motherless from the point of his birth and fatherless due to the fact Garn had left England only to serve Julian. He sank down in the antiquated, thickly padded chair opposite Wil and the table with the diamond. Julian folded his still-gloved hands in front of him, steepled his fingers, then leaned forward, pressing that steeple to his tight lips.

He gazed straight into Wil's green eyes, trying to see him for the young man that he was, trying to make some sense of what he'd just learned.

Garn quietly moved to the opposite side of the small room, clearly having decided that his lordship would deem the fate of the son he'd claim but had not fathered.

"Start at the beginning, Wil," Julian said, lowly, carefully, trying hard to contain his rage. "How did you come to have that diamond in your possession?"

Wil's face was spotted with two bright circles of red on each of his cheeks—proof he'd been crying, perhaps for a long time. He could not meet Julian's black gaze, did not dare. "I-I had run away from home days before you and my father arrived in London, m'lord," he began, his voice just a hoarse whisper. "I-I'd heard from Aunt Meg that you'd be docking from your—your trip to Africa. I... I was sick of living in that cottage, in the country, while my father sailed round the world with you, m'lord. I wanted more from life. So... so I ran away and came here, to London."

Garn ran one thick hand over the back of his own neck, as though he'd known a long, wearying time of getting the truth from his son. "Go on, boy. Get to the heart of the matter. Tell his lordship about the night of the explosion. And the rest. Tell him the rest."

Wil shifted uncomfortably atop the worn cushions, trying to stretch his long legs, but only managing to bang his knees against the table, upsetting the diamond and causing it to rock back and forth and wink its too-bright light. "Very well!" he muttered. "I'll tell it all."

With that, he glanced fully at Julian with all the bold, stupid daring of a fifteen-year-old lad fighting for his independence. "I went to that fine home of your family, m'lord, and—and I waited outside, in the shadows, for you and my father to present yourselves.

"After I saw your entrance, I then peeked inside one of the windows, at all the presents and food laid out in that one room, and I-I just stood there, with my nose pressed tight against the windowpane, wishing, ever wishing, I could be part of a family that was so happy, so filled with love. And when all of you moved out of that room, I stood stock-still, because I didn't want to blink or miss any of the magic of that place.

"And... and that's when I saw them... saw two men—big, hulking brutes—sneaking around the place, to the very room where you and your family were inside. They bent down near a window, fiddled with something—explosives I-I know that now. Then I-I saw a spark, a flame, and... and suddenly it felt like the very world exploded... and I-I heard screams and saw the men dash toward me. I ducked, hid, and watched as they broke a window, went into that room with all the gifts and the food and the warmth, and they came out with a wrapped package. I tripped the first man, hit the other in the face with my bare fist and then... and then, m'lord, I took the package from the one brute's hands and I-I ran. I just ran because I was so scared and the entire night was just a blaze of flames... and the screams, oh, God, they had stopped by then, swallowed up by the sounds of wood burning, and when I... when I looked back I-I saw that the whole front of that house was on fire...."

Wil stopped, unable to say more. He jerked his gaze away, staring into the far corner as he wiped the back of one hand across his eyes that were wet with tears. His lower lip was trembling; he was fighting for breath.

Julian sat very still, his fingers still steepled. He did not blink. Did not move. He simply watched the boy, but did not really see him. Instead, he was reliving that horrible, horrible night, hearing again his mother's screams, hearing his sister, Suzanne, only nine years of age, screaming out for Julian to help her because the blast had rocked the very foundations of that side of the house and had brought down a heavy chandelier that had hung in the room, brought it down on top of her legs... and Suzanne, dear, sweet Suzanne, had been pinned beneath it, her skirts catching fire, her young body trapped. She hadn't been able to move....

Julian felt his blood roar through his veins as the scene played itself out more fully. He could suddenly taste the smoke in the back of his throat. He felt again as his body had been thrust to one side with the rocking of the blast. He'd hit his head on the heavy statuary his mother had just bought... and damn, but he remembered what it had been now... a sculpting of a robed Venus! How hideously ironic, Julian thought now.

He'd hit his head so soundly that he'd been knocked out, coming to what must have been a long time later....

Suzanne was no longer screaming. Nobody was.

Flames were all around him. The smoke was so heavy it clung to his lungs and threatened to suffocate him. But he moved, b'God, hearing nothing, but seeing
everything.
His father, the brave earl, flames riding his own back, even his hands on fire, was bent at the waist, reaching past the burning wicks of the chandelier, reaching right through them, toward his young daughter, toward Suzanne, once so lovely, but whose skin had been blackened, her lovely dark hair singed away....

Julian, deaf and numbed by the blast, staggered to his feet, trying to help, trying to save Suzanne, and the earl... and his mother—God, his mother!

Julian closed his eyes, willing away the remembered sight. But it was there, as it had always been whenever he closed or opened his eyes.

He saw himself back in that house, that blazing inferno, and he could see his mother, at the opposite end of the room, her entire gown aflame, her arms flailing as she tried to douse the fire at the same time as trying to reach her husband and their daughter.

And that was when it happened... when the entire floor above them came crashing down on the far side, just above the countess, raining down on her with flaming wood, spilling down with all the contents of the room above.

Julian cried out, but he did not even hear his own hideous wail. He lunged forward, in one last, desperate attempt to reach his family... and then something hard from above came down atop him, and he felt no more, saw no more other then the black wings of darkness fluttering in front of his eyes, claiming him totally....

Julian dropped his fingers from their steeple, pressing them tight over his closed hands. "Dear God," he whispered, racked with remembering, not certain he wouldn't become violently ill. He squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly, forcing himself not to cry, but he couldn't help himself. His family. Gone. From one violent act. Tears streamed past his closed lashes, the bitter salt of them burning his face.

He heard Garn from the opposite side of the room. "Go on, Wil," Garn said lowly, a treacherous note in his voice. "You tell his lordship everything, you hear, boy?
Everything.
This is the murder of his family we are talking about, and you will, dammit, tell him
all."

Julian forced his eyes open then. He looked at Wil, who sat huddled forward now on the couch, his face in his hands, his young body racked with sobs. Garn, in the far corner, did not fare much better. There were ghosts in his haunted blue eyes—eyes that were usually so merry, but no longer. Clearly, he felt responsible for whatever part his son had played in that fateful, cruel night.

Wil lifted one arm, bent at the elbow, toward his own face, pressing the crook of it to his mouth. He sucked in a deep breath, grimacing as he swiped that same arm across his tear-soaked features.

He finally met Julian's gaze with his own. "After I-I saw what happened, m'lord, after the flames started and I-I hid that package, I ran around to the servants' entrance, found my father, then led him to you. He—he dragged you out of the place, he did. Tried to get your sister, too, and your parents... but the house, it just caved right in over them. There—there was no help to be had for them. We... we brought you here, 'cause that's what you muttered for us to do. And when my father insisted on getting you to a doctor, you sat straight up, you did, as though you hadn't heard a word he said, and told him to take you to Fountains. Said at Fountains you'd get well. So we—we took you back to Aunt Meg's, and she... she saw to what burns you had, and your bruises, and all the while you begged to be left at Fountains, for my father to tell no one you still lived. You swore you'd one day find the murderers. And so that's what my father finally did. Left you at Fountains when you were well enough, so to speak, to be on your own.... You—you know the rest from there, m'lord."

"The hell he does," Garn said. "Go on, boy. Keep telling this sordid tale of yours. Tell him about that diamond, lad."

Julian looked from the son to the father, back to the son. Clearly, Garn and Wil had had a long, long talk, and now, the truth would be told. Julian waited.

"I-I thought you went to Fountains to die, m'lord," Wil whispered, shame in his tone. "I never told my father about the package I hid, the very one I went back to claim before we headed home to Yorkshire. When I opened it, and found that diamond"—he nodded toward the table—"inside one of the chess pieces, I knew then what those men were after. I decided to—to ferret them out. So I ran away once more, back to London, and scoured the worst parts of the city, looking for those men. Found them, too—or, at least, a messenger who could be in contact with them. I-I told them the Eve Diamond was up for sale. Named a high price and told the man to give me his highest bidders. I got two names, m'lord, even a heavy bit of coin from one of them."

Julian finally dropped his hands to his lap, leaning forward.
"Who?"
he demanded. "What are their names, Wil?"

Wil hesitated, and then, pointing to the diamond and to a pouch Julian had overlooked until now, he said, "Lord Darius Rathbone was the first. He paid me in pure gold. It's all in that pouch, m'lord. The second message came from a Mr. Bartholomew Swann. He sent no coin, but a threat. Said I should turn over the very property he'd paid to have taken from your father's house, m'lord. It is Swann who hired those two men to set explosives at Eve House... and—and from what I overheard the night you met with my father at Meg's house, it is Swann's men who jumped you, m'lord." Wil fell silent then, thoroughly ashamed of himself.

"You're not done yet with the telling of your tale, boy," Garn muttered. "Tell his lordship the final part."

Wil grimaced. He met Julian's gaze. "Those men were at Fountains to find
me.
Swann had learned that Lord Rathbone never received the chess set and diamond, and he knew Rathbone was sending me word to deliver all of it or else pay the consequences. I'd given Rathbone's messenger—some street urchin—directions to Fountains because I wanted no one to find me at my aunt's cottage." Wil bent his head. "As I told you, m'lord," he whispered, "I thought you went to there to die. How was
I
to know you'd finally get to your feet with your hearing, and come upon that street urchin and Rathbone's package? After Rathbone paid me I-I sent him one of the chess pieces wrapped in sheepskin. He sent it all back, I take it."

"That he did, Wil," whispered Julian, finally knowing the full story. "And those thugs nearly beat the life out of me."

Wil winced. "I-I am sorry, m'lord. T-truly, I am." He licked his dry lips, then glanced at his father. "But I did all of this because I only wanted my father to take notice of me. I wanted to uncover the truth of that night, and thought that, if I put word out in the worst parts of the city that this diamond, and the chess set, were up for sale, I'd have the culprits bared."

Julian only nodded, still digesting all that he'd learned
.
My God
,
he thought
,
but I had those vile river rats in my grasp at Fountains—the very same who no doubt laid the explosives that killed my family
!
Rage bubbled up once more within him, choking him, gagging him.

He thrust back in his chair, covering his face with his hands. "Damn, damn,
damn them to hell,
" he muttered, his fingers digging into the skin his scalp.

"M'lord."

It was Garn, who had moved to his side. He placed one hand atop Julian's shoulder, squeezed once, and said again, "M'lord?"

"I want to kill them," Julian gasped, his throat constricting with deep, heated rage. "I do, Garn. God help me, but I want to kill those unholy bastards."

"Allow me, m'lord," Garn whispered, his own voice choked with emotion. "For all they have wrought upon you... and—and for the part my own son played in all of this, please, m'lord,
allow me.
I will hunt them down, and Rathbone, and Swann, too, and I will see them all brought low and placed in a grave. Let me do this for you, m'lord, and I swear I shall make them suffer as your dear family suffered. Let me do this, m'lord... and take the noose as well. And in the end, I'll either see my precious Annie again, or I won't. Whatever comes of it, I'll at least have paid back to you a small portion of what you gave to me by saving me from a life of wandering. Your hiring of me pulled me up by my bootstraps after Annie's death. I'd been brawling my way from one end of the shire to the other, all on a death wish. You ended that life for me, m'lord. And because of you, and your generosity, Wil here has blunt enough to travel the world or to set himself up like a bloody king. He knows that now, m'lord, though but a few days ago he'd merely thought this less-than-fatherly figure of his had simply forgotten him."