Angel In My Bed (6 page)

If she'd held anything in her hand, she would have hurled it against the door. He was worse than a wicked snake, entwining himself in her thoughts and bending her will. Yet, strangely, with his departure, the last tremulous ray of warmth vanished, and the room grew cold. Maybe it was because her life as she knew it had just come to an end.

V
ictoria stood in David's dressing room, grateful for the hearty meal Agatha had brought up after she'd awakened from a nap. After three days in this room, she would maim anyone who tried to stop her from going home. At least her head no longer ached, and the egg-sized lump near her temple had receded to a tender swell.

Unable to wrestle with her thoughts any longer, Victoria drew on her drawers over her stockings and tied them at her waist. Given the debacle that was now her life, she considered wallowing in another good cry. One that she could appreciate without a layer of laudanum in her blood. But what she really needed was to see her family.

She stood in front of the long mirror in David's dressing room, examining the bruises on her ribs. She looked as if she'd been in a brawl. Maybe she had when she considered her unorthodox departure from her horse at David's hands.

She had not seen her husband since the morning of her in
terrogation with Kinley. From Agatha she'd learned that David left every morning after breakfast, only to return late. She didn't know where he slept. Last night, she thought he'd been standing beside the bed, but when she rose on her elbow and looked around, the room had been empty.

Victoria touched the bruises against her ribs, and, unbidden, memories returned. She knew, without having realized, why her thoughts kept returning to David. After all, no other man had ever lain with her or touched her in all the ways that he had. The bruises on the outside didn't nearly match those on the inside. She closed her eyes, for there was pain and anger that even the years could no longer keep buried.

Nine years ago, she almost killed him. She had discovered who he was, whom he worked for the day she had come from the consulate physician, preparing to surprise him with the news that she was carrying their child—only to find her father's bungalow in chaos. Hurrying to her bedroom, she'd found a man bleeding profusely from a wound in his chest, but still strong enough to hold a gun on her, demanding her silence while her father's men looked for him. He'd told her who David was and that a raid was about to take place on the house. Orders signed by her husband that included her arrest.

Victoria only remembered confronting David with the gun the agent had held on her before he'd died. She warned him not to touch her, to let her go. She'd pleaded. It was the closest she had ever come to killing another human being: the closest she'd ever come to pressing the barrel of a gun against her own temple. Only the fact that she had carried another life inside her body kept her from ending her life. But instead, she had run from all that she knew and loved, and never looked back…until now.

Her mind spun even further back to the first time she'd met
David, and knew the exact moment when her life had truly changed, the catalyst that had set her fate in stone. She first glimpsed him on the polo field, riding a low pony and leading his team to victory. He'd been a new arrival in India, working in the diplomatic corps. No man had ever made her breath catch as hers did when he walked his horse off the field, turned his head, and looked directly at her on the sidelines. He'd tipped his riding hat, and she'd watched as he led the horse back to the stables, aware of the whispers around her.

She remembered feeling young and silly that he singled her out and that she had blushed, her reaction so completely girlish that she evaded him for a week afterward—until a dinner at the governor general's house brought them face to face.

To her discomfort, she'd watched him through the entire meal, barely aware of her own thoughts. In truth, she had never been like other girls her age. She found the cosseted female gender childish and shallow. She disliked the superficial layers of their society, but she played the social game well because it served her purpose. That night she shone.

After all, she was the infamous Meg Faraday, who had spurned the attentions of a wealthy duke two months before. She was the girl all the other girls whispered about behind her back because her mother had run off with a captain from the Bengali army.

Meg was ten years old at the time, and had neither seen nor heard from her mother from that day forward. One never discussed the topic in the Faraday household. A little girl in need of love, she had become her father's perfect daughter. She learned the lessons well. There was nothing more terrible than when he withdrew his love for some perceived wrong she committed, nothing more frightening than when
he left her standing alone in a room wondering if this would be the moment he'd leave her like her mother did.

At first, Colonel Faraday had encouraged her friendships with the daughters of diplomats. She learned where valuables and important papers were kept. In the beginning, she bought into his lies that these people were somehow a threat to England. He worked for the security of the consulate, after all. What fourteen-year-old would not believe her parent? She became a valuable asset to him. She could climb into third-story windows and unlock doors as deftly as she could scale rooftops.

By the time she was seventeen, she suffered no more illusions about her father or her own crimes against those she had befriended. She never suspected that the governor general had launched an internal investigation into her father's activities or that she was the key target, the weakest link; she only knew that she wanted out of a life that had descended her into a nightmare.

A week before her eighteenth birthday, she had met David on that polo field and had fallen in love, never once suspecting the truth behind his appearance in her life or the motives behind his whirlwind seduction. For the first time, another man became a bigger presence than her father. Here was a man who could have had any woman at his calling, and he had chosen her. David Donally had been the first man to love her for only herself, not for what she could give him in return; at least that was what she'd believed. She let him into her bed and her heart like the novice virgin she was. Then she'd brought him into her father's circle, never knowing how cleverly David had manipulated her every move to get there.

What were a young girl's dreams worth, after all? she re
membered wondering as she'd watched her future die beneath her father's indoctrination of her husband.

Victoria closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath to clear her mind. She wiped the dampness off her face with the back of her hand and turned away from the mirror. Outside the dressing room, someone was removing the tea tray. Victoria slipped into her shift and eased the stays around her ribs. She had been in the changing area for an hour. Agatha brought her the clothes Mr. Rockwell had retrieved from Bethany a few days ago when he went to tell Sir Henry her whereabouts.

Another voice intruded, and Victoria knew David's countess and partner had entered the bedroom. Her flowery perfume wafted into the dressing room.

“Where is she, Agatha?”

“She be in the dressing room, mum.”

Victoria slipped the dress over her head, and slid her arms into the long sleeves as a knock sounded. “Miss Faraday?”

She hated that everyone insisted on using that wretched name. “I suggest that if you wish to carry off this ruse, you call me by my correct name,” she said, walking out into the main room to retrieve her shoes.

Pamela was wearing a lemon yellow satin gown trimmed in Chantilly lace as bright as sunlight. A glittering pair of emeralds in her upswept blond hair gave her an elegance to match her faux title. Indeed, she looked like a spoiled countess as if born to the role.

Agatha stood in the doorway and spoke to Pamela. “Mum, Mr. Rockwell is here to return her back to her family.”

“David has sent a message with arrangements to see you delivered to your family,” Pamela said. “He told me to tell you that everything is in order.”

Victoria hesitated. “Does that mean he paid the taxes on Rose Briar?”

“I believe that it does.”

She was struck silent as she instantly forgot that she disliked him immensely. Of course, it would be dangerous for her to forget this was only business, his side of a bargain. Nothing more. Nellis would be furious, she thought.

“David is very persistent when it comes to the job,” Pamela reminded her, the woman's use of his first name not going unnoticed. “If he says he will do something, I guarantee he will. It is one of those qualities a woman can count on.”

Victoria slipped her feet into a pair of old slippers. “Do you know Mr. Donally well?” she asked after a moment, turning to face the other woman.

“Since he rejoined the team three months ago, we have gotten to know one another. One does under such circumstances.” Pamela nodded to Victoria's bodice where it sagged off her shoulders. “Do you need help?”

Victoria could not fasten the buttons at her back. Hesitantly, she turned and lifted her hair. “Thank you.”

Pamela's fingers deftly finished the buttons. “He was somewhat of a legend in his day, and most people were as surprised by his departure as they were by his return,” she continued. “It even surprised Kinley that he came back. After all, they had barely corresponded in the nine years he was away.”

“David left London? When?”

“Three months after your ship went down. It took him that long to recover from the wound you gave him.”

“Three months?” Victoria laid her hand atop the back of the chair. “I didn't know.”

“I suppose you didn't. From what I understand, despite his
injury, David tore up Calcutta looking for you after you disappeared. Kinley had sent every available man to bring you in dead or alive. David was the one who finally found your father. He and Kinley had a falling out shortly after that,” Pamela said. “No one ever knew why.”

Victoria looked at the gold band on her finger. David's robe lay draped over the chair beneath her hand. “How did they finally catch him? My father, I mean?”

“Someone tipped off the authorities. David captured him boarding a ship to Alexandria.”

“I see.”

“He's an adept agent.” Pamela drew the robe through Victoria's fingers and, dropping it on the bed, turned with a lift of her brow. “And he never belonged to you, Miss Faraday.”

 

David turned up the collar of his woolen greatcoat and came to a stop at the top of the hill. The sleepy stillness surrounding him did not fit the uncertain mood of the pewter sky. His tall boots hugging the barrel of his horse, he withdrew his field glasses and looked down at the cemetery spread around the burned-out shell of an old church. He quartered the thinning forests and distant fields.

One corner of his mouth lifting in a meager smile, he returned the field glasses to their leather casing and tucked them inside the haversack behind his saddle. A stiff chill found its way beneath the lapel of his coat. He kicked his horse into motion and cleared the ditch in a graceful arc as he continued down the back road into the cemetery. After a few days of rest—or as Meg accused him in his absence, her captivity—Ian Rockwell would be returning her to her cottage this evening. David had stayed away from her—as far
away as he could while he sifted through the facts of this case. He'd already risked compromising this investigation by demanding that she remain in his custody, but he knew Kinley had been manipulating him from the moment he'd shown up in Ireland and asked David to rejoin the case.

One gloved hand resting near his thigh, David kept his gaze on the ground, alert to his thoughts as he lifted his head and looked out across the rows of stones. Meg had come straight to this place after Sheriff Stillings confronted her with the earring. David suspected the reason was more complicated than anyone thought.

She'd said the earring had been a prearranged signal with her father. But her fear of Colonel Faraday had been as genuine as her love for Sir Henry and his family. If Meg had betrayed Colonel Faraday in some way, when she was faced with the realities of what happened to those who betrayed the colonel, her terror of her father would be justified.

So why did she come here?

Leaning over the stallion's neck, he found the tracks he'd been seeking and urged his mount around the wrought-iron fence surrounding the churchyard. He established the point where Meg had stopped that night—before he'd alerted her to his presence and she'd pulled the mare back into the woods. He looked across the row of stones nearest him and considered the possibility that she had been telling the truth when she'd said she'd hidden here upon hearing someone following her. But he doubted it.

David slid to the ground and looped the reins around the fence. In one easy movement, he placed both hands on the iron railing and vaulted to the other side. He dropped to his haunches in front of the headstone nearest to the fence and
cleared away the dead leaves that had blown against the marble. It belonged to a woman who had passed away in 1856. One arm resting across his knee, he scooped up a handful of duff from the ground and let it filter through his fingers.

For years, the whereabouts of stolen priceless artifacts and relics had remained unknown. Kinley believed Meg had absconded with the treasure. Then why would she be living a life in genteel poverty, struggling to take care of an old man and his family if she was in possession of such wealth? Would she not have purchased Rose Briar herself? How would she have gotten something like that out of India?

Too many unanswered questions lay at the threshold of his thoughts. His eyes came to focus on a distant trail of gray smoke rising from the treetops, bringing him back to the present. Colonel Faraday was still his biggest threat. Maybe even hers.

His horse snorted, warning of someone's approach. David stood and saw a young girl standing at the arch entrance. She carried a straw-plaited basket. With her hair hidden behind the hood of her cloak, he could not tell her age.

Dusting off his hands, David shoved them in his pockets, and remained at a standstill. She did likewise as she seemed to debate the wisdom of approaching a lone man in the cemetery.