A Lady Never Surrenders (21 page)

“Mrs. Duffett, I do regret this, but—” Jackson began.

“Come now, you can’t leave yet. I’ve barely had the chance to talk to my little girl here.” She seized Celia’s hand as she faced him down. “I want to hear all about the family—what they’ve been doing, how everyone is faring … what the people they married are like…” She brightened. “Did they come with you to town, Mr. Pinter? I mean, what with Lady Celia being unmarried, I know you didn’t come here alone with her.”

Celia shot Jackson a warning glance. “The family is back at Halstead Hall, I’m afraid, but we brought my maid. Unfortunately, she was famished, so we left her at the coaching inn down the road, since we weren’t sure how long our visit to you would take.”

Nurse seemed to swallow that tale whole, thank heaven. “Well then, no need to run off, eh? And you must be pretty famished yourself by now. Stay for tea at least.”

Celia appealed to Jackson. “Can we? Perhaps Nurse will remember more details as we talk. And I have so many questions still unanswered, so many possibilities to—”

“It’s past noon already,” he warned.

“If we stay an hour, we’ll still get home around three. People will barely have been up.”

He glanced from her to the expectant faces of the other two ladies and sighed. “All right. An hour. But
only
an hour, do you hear?”

Celia nodded. It wasn’t much time to unravel the secrets of a lifetime, but it would have to do.

T
WO HOURS LATER,
Jackson was torn between wanting to strangle Celia and wanting to comfort her as she said her tearful good-byes to Mrs. Duffett. He understood why Celia had dallied. She was clearly still reeling from the news that her mother might have had a lover, and she was trying to find any crack in that tale.

But if they didn’t return to Halstead Hall before their absence was discovered, she’d be ruined. A young unmarried female couldn’t just go off on a trip, no matter how short, with an unmarried gentleman. They’d have to marry.

Yes—they
would
, wouldn’t they?

A powerful longing swept him as he watched her hug Mrs. Duffett. For one fleeting moment, he indulged the fantasy of being Celia’s husband.

He would return to Cheapside every day after work at Bow Street to find her, his wife, waiting in his home to greet him with a kiss. They’d have a pleasant dinner, then walk down to Blackfriars Bridge and stroll across the Thames to watch the sun set in summer or the moon rise on a chilly night in winter.

Once they returned home, he’d write up his reports as she darned his socks—

A harsh laugh clogged his throat. As if a lady like her would ever darn socks. Or be satisfied with a simple walk across a bridge in the moonlight instead of a night at the theater.

You could afford a night at the theater from time to time, and new socks anytime your old ones get holes.

But only if he became Chief Magistrate. And once the children came along…

Children? That was quite the leap forward, considering that a marriage between them was impossible. Damn Mrs. Plumtree to hell.

“Lady Celia,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended, “we have to go.”

She broke away from Mrs. Duffett with a parting smile. “Yes, of course, Mr. Pinter.”

At last they were walking back to the livery where their horses were stabled. He waited for her to speak, but she remained quiet while they fetched their horses and headed out of town.

After a few furlongs, he could no longer wait to broach the subject. Unlike this morning, when the road had been busy, it was practically deserted now, midafternoon. “I’ve been considering what Mrs. Duffett said in light of your memory of that morning.”

She sighed. “So have I.”

“And what conclusions have you drawn?”

“I simply can’t believe Mama would have been unfaithful to Papa after how she railed at him for his own infidelities. It makes no sense.”

“Celia…” he began in a low tone.

“I know.” Her voice grew choked. “It makes no sense—but it has to be what happened. I can’t make it work any other way. Mama wouldn’t have come in to check on me only to leave me alone, then come back ten minutes later to check on me again … And Nurse is right—Papa rarely came into the nursery. He wouldn’t have been there at all so early.”

She took a heavy breath. “I keep thinking about everything I remember. The voices are just whispers—there’s no reason to believe that Papa was there if not for the words, ‘
mia dolce bellezza
,’ and that could just have been Mama’s lover mocking Papa. I can easily understand how that would have annoyed Mama.”

“That’s my conclusion as well.” He wished he could wipe out her pain, could go back and erase everything she’d heard. Aside from the betrayal she must feel, it must also be humiliating to know that her mother had been so indiscreet that even the servants had noticed. “So none of you ever suspected that your mother—”

“No. I daresay even Gran was oblivious.” She stared blindly at the road ahead. “Though perhaps if you ask Oliver and Jarret, they might remember something pertinent. They were old enough to pick up on such clues. I was too young.” Her face crumbled. “Oh, Lord, you have to tell them, don’t you? It’s going to destroy Oliver. He’s always blamed Papa for everything that went wrong in their marriage.”

Never had Jackson wished more that he had the right to hold her and soothe her hurt. He struggled for words that might make it better. “For all we know, this was her only indiscretion. No one could blame her, given your father’s behavior.”

“You don’t believe it’s Mr. Virgil, do you?” Celia asked.

“No. It had to have been Rawdon. Think of what your mother said that morning at your bedside: ‘I loathe how she looks at me whenever you speak to me. I think she knows.’ Mr. Virgil had no woman for her to compete with, that we know of.”

“Unless that part really
was
a dream. I can’t be sure.”

“It doesn’t seem like something a child would invent, does it?”

“I suppose not.” She sighed. “I just don’t understand how she could rail at Oliver for his behavior with Mrs. Rawdon. He told us months ago that she compared him to Papa, claiming that Oliver was becoming ‘the same wicked, selfish creature as he is, sacrificing anyone to his pleasures.’ Those are hard words coming from a woman who is doing the same thing.”

“I find that people often use the hardest words for sins in others that they themselves commit. She was feeling guilty over what she’d been doing, so she lashed out at Oliver to cover her own guilt.”

“That makes sense,” she said in a sad voice. “And it shows how astute you can be when it comes to understanding people. I don’t understand people at all. I thought I understood Mama’s and Papa’s marriage, but now…” She let out a long breath. “Do you think Mama was in love with … with the captain?”

“I don’t know. Her words to Oliver that day imply that she might have been. She said that Mrs. Rawdon ‘already had
him.
’ That’s what you tell a woman you envy.”

“So you think Mrs. Rawdon killed Mama?”

“I’m not sure of that either,” Jackson admitted. “How did she know about the assignation? We’ve already established that your father was the one to notice your mother riding off when he went to the picnic and apparently followed her.”

The wind kicked up, and Celia drew her cloak more tightly about her. “Mrs. Rawdon could have followed her, too.”

“Perhaps, but surely your mother would have taken measures to prevent that. And your father would have noticed, in any case. Besides, we’ve also established that it was midafternoon when they headed out for the hunting lodge. But Desmond heard the shots at dusk, hours later. If she’d followed them, she would have killed them right away.”

“And Captain Rawdon was probably the man who showed up after they died, so his wife couldn’t have followed
him
there,” she said.

“It baffles me. I would suspect that it really was a murder-suicide, that your parents argued and your mother shot your father, except for the gun not being the one that was used to commit the murders.”

“Perhaps Captain Rawdon tidied up the scene,” she said.

“Why would he do that unless he was tidying it up for his wife?”

“And assuming that Mrs. Rawdon somehow learned of the assignation and killed them, why didn’t Desmond see her leave?” Celia pointed out. “Where was she? Desmond never said exactly what he saw that day.”

“We need to question him again,” Jackson said. “I want more details about what he saw when he entered the lodge.”

She was silent for a brief pace. “There’s another possibility,” she said softly. “Desmond could have some of the details wrong. Or perhaps the captain
had
been riding away, and he’s covering up for him.”

“Perhaps Desmond is lying for other reasons,” Jackson said grimly. “We still can’t be sure
he
had no part in it. And then there’s Benny’s death—the Rawdons are in Gibraltar. So who killed Benny? And why?”

“Could Mrs. Rawdon’s lady’s maid, Elsie, have been involved somehow, and Benny suspected it? Could
she
have killed Benny?”

“Then why wouldn’t he have told me his suspicions when I first talked to him?” Jackson pointed out.

Neither of them had an answer.

They rode a few moments without speaking. The beech woods were thick and shadowed at this point in the road, lending a hush to their surroundings. This was the time to broach the subject of Ned. After what Mrs. Duffett had said concerning Celia and her young cousin, Jackson had to wonder how she’d gone from fancying him to being afraid of him. “Celia—”

A crack sounded somewhere nearby. He didn’t register what the sound was until Celia’s horse reared and another crack sounded. When he saw the blood seeping from her horse’s shoulder and heard her cry, “What the devil?” he realized what was happening.

Someone was shooting at them.

E
verything happened quickly after that. Celia had barely registered the two pistol shots and was just feeling Lady Bell stagger beneath her when Jackson rode up next to her and hauled her off her horse and onto his.

As she grabbed his waist, he spurred his horse into a gallop. She glanced back to see Lady Bell stumble, but at least the mare was still moving. Celia strained to see who was shooting at them, but the smoke obscured her view and the person was firing from just inside the woods.

More shots followed, and Celia could hear hooves thundering behind her. Oh, Lord, someone really was trying to kill them! And in this heavily wooded, deserted stretch of road, the person might actually succeed.

“We have to leave the road,” Jackson called back to her. “We’re sitting ducks out here, and we can’t outride anybody with two of us on one horse.”

That was all the warning he gave her before he veered off into the forest. Beech branches ripped at them, forcing the horse to slow.

Jackson leapt from the saddle, then pulled her down beside him. “Come on! We’re safer on foot.” He paused only long enough to jerk the saddle bags from the horse, throw them over his shoulder, and then slap his horse on the rear to send it heading back to the road. “That ought to throw them off for a few minutes.”

Then he grabbed her hand and dragged her along with him as he took off at a run deeper into the woods. Underbrush tore at her skirts as they rushed past bared branches and crashed through piles of leaves. He stopped abruptly, held a finger to his lips and dug through the saddle bag until he found his pistol and kit.

He swiftly loaded the gun, keeping an eye on the woods between them and the road. Back around that vicinity they could hear someone cursing as their assailant discovered that the horse emerging onto the road was riderless.

Jackson grabbed the pistol with one hand while he tried to tug her away again with the other.

She held firm. “Why can’t we just stand and fight?” she whispered.

With a scowl, he pressed his mouth to her ear. “Those shots were too close together to be from one firearm, so I’m outgunned and possibly outmanned. I’m not risking you in a fight that I might not win.”

Eyes darkening, he pulled her forward. “Now come on. We’ve got to find a hiding place, or at least somewhere less exposed.”

They started moving again, this time more slowly as he cautioned her to make as little noise as possible. Fortunately, their pursuer wasn’t taking such care, which made it easier for them to head away from him. So she and Jackson scrambled over logs, darted across long stretches of beech, skirted the edge of a pond. She had no idea where they were going—she could see the sky through the barren branches overhead, but the sun was already too low for her to fix its location. Did Jackson have a plan, or was he just leading her blindly through the woods?

It seemed as if they’d been running forever when they began climbing a rise. Suddenly, Celia tripped and fell over something protruding up from the ground. As Jackson helped her up, his gaze narrowed on what had made her fall.

He kicked away some debris to reveal what looked like…

“A chimney?” she asked, perplexed.

He arranged the pile of debris back over the chimney, then said, “This way.” Looping an arm about her waist, he tugged her to the edge of the hill, which fell abruptly before them. He glanced over it, then followed the curve of the hill down and pulled her around to the front of the cliff they’d just been standing on.

He pushed some dead vines aside. “It’s a poacher’s cottage,” he murmured. “Sometimes they build them into the sides of hills to make them harder for the authorities to find.”

As the sounds of someone crashing through the brush above them came nearer, he shoved aside the vines to find a rotting door. He opened it, dragged her inside, then pulled the vines back over the opening before closing the door.

Touching his finger to his lips, he pulled her deep into the bowels of the long-abandoned cottage. At the back lay a hearth filled with debris, an open cupboard with a few cheap pans and various bits of crockery, a battered tin pail, and a bedstead with a moth-eaten blanket stretched halfway across a thin mattress. Pieces of straw stuck out from the mattress’s worn cover.