Beatrice (23 page)

He held
the hedge back to allow her to climb through and followed her down
the road. As they walked, he glanced at her and just had to touch
her. For his sake, he had to reassure himself that she was
alright.

“Beatrice?”

Right
there, in the middle of the road, he drew her into a kiss that was
so swift, so fierce, that her world spun on its axis. His lips lay
siege to her senses and left her reeling beneath the weight of
sensual promise. Tongues mated hungrily, lips duelled lovingly, and
arms cradled protectively. In that one brief moment, their worlds
collided and changed irreversibly, because they both knew that they
were now together.

“Are you
alright?” he growled when the need for air made him lift his
head.

She
nodded and lifted onto her tiptoes to place one last kiss on his
lips. “I am fine.”

“We are
going to talk about this later,” he warned, and captured her lips
in a kiss that sealed the promise. “Let’s go.”

They
were closer to Tipton Hollow than she had realised and, within
minutes, pulled up outside of the constable’s house. Fred was
luckily at home, and swiftly on his way to take a look at the
carriage.

“Where
is it, did you say?”

“We will
show you,” Beatrice sighed. She glanced at Ben and sensed his
argument, but quickly looked away. “The carriage is familiar to me,
and not just because it is the same carriage that nearly ran me
other the other day. I have seen it before around and about before
then, I am sure of it.”

“In
Tipton Hollow?” Fred demanded with a scowl as Ben turned the
carriage around in the road.

Beatrice
put her head in her hands and scoured her memory for details of
where she had seen it last. “It is very similar to Caroline
Smethwick’s carriage.”

“Can’t
be hers,” Fred replied. “She got rid of it once the Detective
Inspector arrested those psychics.”

“I am
not saying it is hers, but it looks similar.”

Fred
frowned. “Let’s go and take a look, shall we?”

Silence
settled over them until they got to the site of the accident. Fred
climbed down and stared at the carriage with a dark frown on his
face. He shoved his way through the hedge and studied the horse
before he took a closer look at the firmly embedded
carriage.

“It’s
the same one,” he growled, clearly bewildered.

“What do
you mean?” Beatrice’s stomach dropped to her toes. “It’s the same
one as what?”

She
threw a somewhat panicked look at Ben, and was suddenly glad that
she had decided to return to the site. A wild thrill of
anticipation swept through her at the thought that they were going
to get at least one answer today. Unfortunately, her anticipation
was quickly replaced with doubt and concern. She saw the look on
Fred’s face, and knew that she wasn’t going to like what he was
about to say.

“Unless
my eyes are deceiving me, this is indeed Caroline Smethwick’s
carriage.”

Beatrice’s first instinct was to burst out laughing and tell
him not to be so ridiculous. Caroline Smethwick was a member of the
Circle, and a friend. It was inconceivable to think that she would
do something so heinous as to try to run her over – twice, and run
Ben off the road – twice.

“What
makes you think that?” Ben snapped and stared at the constable
before he turned to study the carriage a bit more
closely.

“There
are some small nicks in the traces; here look.” Fred pointed to
three deep grooves in the trace closest to them. “This is where the
lads banged it against one of the posts in the coal merchant’s
yard.”

Beatrice
stared at the horse for a moment. “I thought she sold both the
carriage and the horse months ago.”

“I did
too,” Fred replied. “It certainly hasn’t been stored in Brewster’s
yard, I would have seen it. She said she had gotten rid of it, but
there is nothing to say that she didn’t keep it and just move it
somewhere else. This is definitely her carriage, I am sure of
it.”

“Good
Lord, why would Caroline Smethwick want to hurt you?” Ben growled,
completely astonished at the thought that a villager could be
trying to kill her - them.

The hurt
and confusion on Beatrice’s face made him incredibly angry, and
Ben’s fists clenched against the urge to storm over to Caroline’s
house and demand some answers.

“I will
go and see if I can find her,” Fred declared firmly. “First, I need
to have a word with the lads down at the station. I don’t know if
the Detective Inspector is back from London yet. If he is, I think
he needs to look into this. She tried to run you off the road, you
say?”

“Twice,”
Ben growled. “We also think it was her who tried to run us over on
Sunday. Why though? I mean, what is she trying to do?”

Fred
shook his head and scratched his head.

“
Caroline is my friend. She wouldn’t do something like this,”
she whispered with a shake of her head. Hurt swept through her at
the thought that someone she had considered a friend hated her so
much that they were prepared to physically injure her, or kill her.
A part of her simply refused to believe it; although deep inside
she rather suspected it was true.

She
turned doubtful eyes on Ben. “Why?”

“I don’t
know darling, but I am damned sure that we are going to find out.”
He turned to Fred. “She had abandoned the carriage by the time we
got here, and headed that way. She may have been injured when this
thing crashed through the hedge, I don’t know. It was certainly
going fast enough that it could have thrown her off.”

Fred
looked at him. “I need to get someone to get this damned thing out
of here, and the hedge filled in so the horse doesn’t
escape.”

“Do you
want to go back to the village, or go the farm first to have a word
with the farmer? It is going to need the plough horses to pull this
huge monstrosity out of the mud.”

“I think
the plough horses come first. I need to send Farmer Barney’s lad
over to the station in Great Tipton for reinforcements.”

They
climbed aboard Ben’s carriage and, for the second time that day
headed toward Tipton Hollow. They all kept their eye out for any
sign of Caroline Smethwick, but of course there wasn’t
any.

Having
dropped Fred off at the farm, Ben turned the carriage around and
pulled up outside of Beatrice’s house nearly an hour
later.

“God,
what a day,” Ben sighed as he secured the reins and climbed down.
Now that there was no carriage in hot pursuit, it was safe to take
Beatrice directly home and, he wasn’t afraid to admit, it was a
relief to finally get there.

Beatrice
threw him a worried look. Her head was whirling by the time she let
herself into the house, and she didn’t think anything of Ben
following her into the sitting room. They both slumped wearily onto
the couch for a moment and stared into the cold grate.

“Are you
alright?” Ben asked as he picked her hand up and kissed the back of
it.

Her
fingers clung to his for a moment and she stared into the fireplace
without answering. Right now she didn’t know how she felt. There
were so many emotions churning through her that she didn’t know
where to start to put a name to them all.

However,
like a beacon of light down the end of a long, dark tunnel, the one
strong emotion she could recognise was the deeply abiding love she
felt for the man seated beside her. The strength of emotion she
felt for him frightened her a little, at the same time that she
found it immensely reassuring. Although he had yet to declare any
deep feelings for her, she knew, without any doubt, that her love
for him was now an intrinsic part of who she was. She loved him,
and that only made her stronger and more capable than she had ever
been in her entire life.

She eyed
the clock on the mantle. It was too late to cancel the Circle
meeting tonight.

“What do
we do if she turns up tonight?”

“I am
going to be here,” Ben declared flatly. “She won’t be in a position
to hurt you, Beatrice. I promise.”

“We have
no proof that it was her, Ben. She could have sold that carriage to
someone local.” When she sensed that Ben was about to argue with
her, she turned her head to look at him. “While I am not protecting
her, or trying to find excuses, we have to be logical in this. We
saw someone running away from the scene of the carriage accident,
we didn’t exactly see her. Well, I didn’t. There is nothing to say
that the driver of that carriage was her, although I have to admit
that it does look likely. What I am asking is; what do we do if she
does turn up as though nothing has happened? We can hardly accuse
her of trying to hurt us without proof.”

“I don’t
want that woman in this house, Beatrice. She could have caused us
both significant injury.” He held his hand up when he saw her take
a breath to argue with him. “I think that while the finger of
suspicion points in her direction, she has to stay away until she
can prove her innocence. Tell her that the meeting has been
cancelled; that you are not well or something.”

Beatrice
kissed his jaw and leaned against him. “With the mystery over the
plant to contend with as well, I don’t know how much more I can
take.”

Ben
sighed and drew her closer. He rested his head against hers while
he tried to think of the best way to get them both through the
evening ahead. Beatrice looked pale and shaken, while he was
blazingly angry, and more than a little disgusted with Caroline
Smethwick. He had no doubt in his mind that she was the one who had
driven the carriage.

To Ben,
it was evident that she hadn’t sold the damned thing at all. She
had lied, kept it, and merely moved its storage location so that
nobody knew she still had it. If she had nothing to hide, why would
she need to be so secretive?

One
thing was certain. If, for some reason only known to herself, she
had decided to target Beatrice, and had taken the opportunity to
make several attempts to either scare or hurt her, then it was
evident that the woman knew exactly where Beatrice was going, when
and who with.

They
were being followed, and it wasn’t by Sigmund Hargraves.

Was
Caroline Smethwick responsible for killing Brian Mottram? If so,
why? Ben hadn’t seen much of Brian Mottram’s corpse to know how
tall he was. Had he been murdered in a case of mistaken identity
because the killer had struck thinking he was Beatrice?

Ben
cursed his own foolishness. He had been so wrapped up in the
wonderful woman in his arms that he hadn’t seen this new set of
surprises coming. He briefly wondered whether they should call at
Harriett’s and see if Mark was at home but, given that it was still
the middle of the afternoon, Mark was most probably at work in
Great Tipton. However, given the nature of his job, it was unlikely
that he was at his desk. They could traipse all the way over to
Great Tipton for nothing and, right now, he wanted Beatrice out in
the open as little as possible.

“Oh God,
no,” Beatrice whispered when several loud thumps on the front door
rang hollowly around the house.

“I’ll
go,” Ben said as he stood up. “It could be Fred.”

That was
enough to get Beatrice up too, and she moved to stand in the
sitting room doorway while Ben disappeared into the front parlour
to look out of the window.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“It’s
Mark and Isaac,” he announced when he re-appeared in the hallway
seconds later.

Beatrice
almost sagged beneath the enormous weight of relief that swept
through her, and hurried across the hallway to let him
in.

“Thank
heavens you are here,” was all she managed to get out before she
burst into tears.

Ben
immediately drew her into his arms and cradled her while she cried
into his shoulder. He shared a look with Mark and Isaac as they
entered the house.

“I am
sorry,” Beatrice whispered as she wiped her eyes. “A few weeks ago,
I thought my life was boring. I wish it was now.”

Mark
smiled and shared a rueful look with Ben as he followed everyone
into the sitting room. “Look on the bright side; it will be
something to tell your children.”

“What do
you know?” Ben asked when Beatrice had composed herself.

“The
carriage belongs to Caroline Smethwick. I have been to see it, and
recognise that horse. I don’t think she sold it as she claimed she
had. We know it hasn’t been kept at Brewster’s Yard, so I think she
just relocated it and lied to everyone.”

“I have
been to Caroline’s house, but there is nobody at home,” Isaac added
quietly.

“The
next meeting of the Circle is tonight.” Her eyes met and held
Mark’s for a moment. “What do we do about her?”

“I think
that it has to go ahead, Beatrice. I really don’t know if she will
come or not. If she is completely innocent, then she will arrive as
though nothing has happened and have absolutely no idea about what
has been going on. Even guilty, she may try to brazen it out anyway
and attempt to deny everything. We know that she is a great actress
because she lived in disguise as her aunt for weeks in an attempt
to try to gather information on the fraudsters who were targeting
her relation. Unfortunately, we just didn’t consider her to be a
danger to anyone. At the time, she said that she was gathering
evidence to bring to the police so we could arrest Madame Humphries
and Hepplethwaite. There was nothing to suggest she was anything
but truthful. I am going to stay here and wait, if that is alright?
If she turns up tonight, I will take her down to the station to
answer some questions. There is nothing to lose even if she is
innocent because if she has genuinely sold her carriage, we need to
know who she sold it to, where and when.”