Blood Lust (22 page)

The glass shook in her trembling hands. She took a sip and set it on the table. “I miss him, already I miss him so much.”

“Elizabeth, how did it happen?”

“There was an accident, the carriage veered off the road and went into a pond. My father drowned.” Tear-filled eyes lifted to his face. “
He
did it. I know he did. Somehow Benjamin killed my father.”

Stunned silence overcame him. An icy shiver ran down his spine. “Elizabeth, surely you’re mistaken. The news of your father’s death has come as a terrible shock. It is understandable that you are upset. Surely the duke would not. . .”

Her fingers bit into his arm. “You don’t know him as I do. You don’t know how ruthless, how cruel he can be. I think my father had begun to see. I think he had started to worry he had made a mistake in choosing Benjamin.”

John’s head sprung up, the words gripping him even more fiercely than her unexpected accusations. “Your father was the one? You did not wish to marry Benjamin?”

Pain washed over her face. Her eyes slid closed and a flood of tears washed down her cheeks. “I wanted to please him. He was an old man and I wanted to make him happy.” She leaned toward John, her anguished gazed fixed on his face. “I would have married you, my lord. I was in love with you.”

“Elizabeth. . .” he took her gently in his arms, whispered soft words of comfort, and let her weep against his shoulder. He held her and his heart filled with pain, for himself and for Elizabeth.

“The night of the Chastain’s party,” she started, “he tricked me into leaving. He took me to an inn. I thought my father was there, but it wasn’t the truth.” A wrenching sob slipped out. “Benjamin tore off my clothes. He did things, terrible things. It was so awful, so horribly vile.” She shook her head as more tears rolled down her cheeks. “I always imagined that it would be beautiful.”

Anger overcame him, and a fierce jolt of regret. It would have been, John thought, if he had been the man making love to the gentle Elizabeth.

She drew away from him then, pulled back to look him in the face. “I can’t stay there a moment more, my lord. I can’t face him knowing what he has done.”

“You can’t be sure the duke is responsible, Elizabeth.”

“He wanted my father’s money. As my husband with my father gone and his fortune left to me Benjamin controls everything. Can’t you see? It was Benjamin. Somehow he found a way to get what he has wanted all along.”

John wasn’t sure he believed the duke would go so far as to kill the old man, but it didn’t really matter. The duke of Sussex had already done more than enough to his loathing.

“He beat me,” she whispered, and his whole body went rigid. “He was careful to be sure the marks did not show. I try not to anger him, I try, but I cannot seem to please him.” She looked up at him with tearful eyes. “Please, my lord, will you help me? I have nowhere else to go.”

John worked to stay calm. He wanted to kill Benjamin Spencer with his own two hands. “Elizabeth, of course, I will help you.” His mind worked frantically, sorting through the possibilities. “But even if you weren’t married, you couldn’t stay here. I’m a bachelor. The gossip would soon leak out that there is a woman staying in my house.”

“What am I going to do then?”

What indeed? He needed the help of someone he could trust. Someone who would understand. “There is a woman who may be able to help us. I believe the lady may have discovered the truth of Benjamin’s cruelty. Perhaps that is the reason she ended their betrothal.”

“You are speaking of Katherine?”

“She is Lady Habersham now, but yes, that is the woman I speak of. Do you know her?”

John urged Elizabeth to her feet. Picking up her cloak, he enveloped her in his deep disguising folds. “Benjamin won’t like being thwarted. As soon as he discovers you have left him, he’ll be looking for you. With the money he now has at his disposal, he can hire an army if that is his wish.”

“I left him a note. I told him I was too grief-stricken to stay in London. I told him I was returning to my father’s house in the country, that I would await him there. The funeral is set for the end of the week.”

“He will make a point of being there. If you go, he will know that you suspect him. He will see it in your eyes. There is no telling what he might do.”

“I know. That is the reason I came here.”

John nodded. “We’ve some time yet. You’ll have to stay out of sight until we can figure out what to do.”

Elizabeth rested a slight, shaking hand on his arm. “Thank you, my lord.”

A tender smile rose to his lips. “I liked it better when you called me John.”

Elizabeth’s cheeks grew hot, soft spots of color in a face that was otherwise pale.” He made no further comment, just guided her toward the door and ordered the butler to have his carriage brought round. All the while his mind was turning, wondering how he could possibly right the awful wrongs the duke had done to his Elizabeth.

Katherine sat in the drawing room across from a pale-faced Elizabeth Spencer, dressed in a modest house dress. The notion struck her, that by an odd twist of fate, Elizabeth was her sister-in-law, though of course she did not know it. John Stanton stood at her side, protective in his stance as she had never seen him.

The earl had come to her less than an hour ago. He had asked if they could be private, uncertain how he should proceed in front of her new husband. But William wasn’t at home.

Katherine had ushered Stanton into the drawing room, along with the small cloaked figure he had helped down from his carriage. Halfway through the incredible discussion that painted Benjamin Spencer even more a villain than she had believed. William had returned from his meeting with Damien and their man.

At William’s appearance, Lord Stanton had stiffened protectively over Elizabeth, but Katherine had assured them her husband would be most sympathetic to their cause, and that they could totally trust him.

She wasn’t afraid that either of them would guess whom William was. He had told her that he had met John Stanton only once in passing more than ten years ago, and he had never met Elizabeth. Elizabeth glanced across at William, who listened to the tale of her forced marriage, his jaw clamped hard, a muscle in his cheek bunched.

If the situation hadn’t been so awful for poor Elizabeth, Katherine might have smiled at his bookish disguise, tiny wire-rimmed spectacles perched on his straight well-formed nose, his dark hair hidden by a plain gray bagwig that made him look years older than he was. He was dressed more like a tutor than the wealthy noble he was suppose to be, in a plain brown velvet coat, white jabot, and beige breeches, his muscled calves encased in white stockings.

“There is more to the story than I have told you.” Elizabeth suddenly said, and Katherine’s gaze swung sharply in the woman’s direction. “Lord Stanton does not wish me to say this, since as yet I have no proof, but if you are willing to help me, you should know the extent of what you risk.”

“Go on,” William prodded. “Whatever you say will go no further than this room.”

Stanton seemed to relax, but Elizabeth looked even more tense. “I told you my father is dead. I did not say that I believe my husband was somehow responsible for the death.”

William’s face turned grim and Katherine’s stomach knotted. Elizabeth went on to explain about the inheritance Benjamin would control and that she thought her father had begun to grow suspicious of Benjamin’s ill treatment of her.

“I never told my father the truth about him. I didn’t want him to blame himself and I know that he would.” She began to cry softly, and Stanton rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I should have gone to him, told him the truth about Benjamin. My father would have found a way to protect me. He would have used his influence to ruin the duke, it was what it took. Instead, now he is dead.”

Stanton handed her handkerchief, then turned the full measure of his regard on William and Katherine. “My mother and brother are in residence at my country estate. Elizabeth can’t stay here in the city. I am at a loss as to what I should do.”

“Oakley Manor,” Katherine said with a glint of determination. “it shan’t be luxurious, certainly nothing of what she is used to as the wife of a duke.” Stanton’s shoulders went stiff, as if the words were a painful reminder that Elizabeth did not belong to him.

“Katherine’s right,” William added. “Oakley Manor will serve well enough. There are only a handful of servants in residence, but that should work in your favor.”

“And those that are there are extremely discreet,” Katherine added. If Stanton thought it odd that the wealthy heiress lived a frugal existence in what was thought to be a lavish country estate, he did not say so.

“Elizabeth will be safe at Oakley Manor,” Katherine finished. “It is a place the duke will never think to look.”

Stanton came to his feet and so did Elizabeth. “Then Oakley Manor it shall be. You will never know how much your help has meant to Elizabeth and to me. If there is ever a favor you need, anything at all that I can do, do not hesitate to ask.”

William nodded. “The time may well come, and not in the far distant future. If it does, it is good to know Katherine and I may count you among our friends.”

Stanton did not ask what the cryptic words meant, just nodded and shook William’s hand, then bundled Elizabeth up inside her cloak. “If you’ll send word ahead, I’ll see Elizabeth arrives safely.” He glanced down at the top of her head, invisible beneath her hood. “It’s been a difficult time for her. Perhaps I shall stay until she is settled in, if that is alright with you.”

“Of course,” William said. They watched the two of them leave, and the moment they were gone, Katherine went into William’s arms. He did not turn her away.

“He has killed someone else,” she said, her cheek pressed against his solid chest.

“We do not know that for certain.”

A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Sooner or later, his greed will make him careless. When it does, we’ll be ready.”

Katherine pressed closer. She could feel William’s heart beating beneath her hand. Her own heart was beating in a uneasy rhythm.

Suddenly she was afraid.

Chapter Sixteen

The day for Katherine to have tea with Jane Robert’s arrived, but instead of having tea, Katherine found herself seated next to William, jostling along the muddy road in Damien’s borrowed carriage on the way to the Lion’s Den.

Katherine had had to beg William to let her come along.

“I won’t be a burden,” she’d argue. “I can help you. If I dress as a chambermaid, I can move more freely among the servants. They love to gossip. I can get them to tell me things you couldn’t begin to extract from them.”

He scowled. “You don’t look at all like a servant. There isn’t one of them you’d be able to fool.”

She held her chin up and flashed him a saucy dazzling smile, clamped her hands on her hips, and tossed her head. “I’d have to differ with you gov. I’d have to say I could do a right fine job of makin’ them believe me, if I were a mind to.”

William’s jaw dropped. “Good God, how did you learn to talk like that?”

Katherine grinned. “Have you ever listened to Mary? With as few servants as we had left at Oakley Manor, we all grew fairly close.”

William shook his head. “I don’t like it Katherine.”

“You don’t have to like it. You can pretend you don’t know me. I’ll arrive on horseback, say I’m headed for a job at the earl of Stanton’s or better yet, Sussex Manor. That will give me an opening to talk about the duke. I’ll say my cousin works there, that she got me the job. The rest I’ll play by ear.”

“I don’t know. . .” William replied. “Benjamin’s even more dangerous than we believed. If he somehow got wind that you were sniffing around again, if he started putting things together. . .”

“That isn’t going to happen. The man isn’t invincible. There is no way he could know we were there.”

William said nothing for a few moments. “I still don’t like it.”

Katherine grinned at him. “But you’ll do it, right, gov?”

A slight hint of amusement then a frustrated sigh. “I have to find out if anyone at the inn actually saw the murder. As a servant, you might have a chance at the truth. Besides, I’ll be there to make sure you don’t get into trouble.” He solemnly stared at her. “Isn’t that right, my love?”

“Of course, my lord,” she replied.

She wasn’t about to argue. She wanted William there, wanted to be with him as much as she possibly could. She was determined she could make him care for her enough to stay in England, or if he left, to take her with him. Being married to her, she had decided, was in his best interests as well as her own.

And so they’d set out the following day, William driving Damien’s stylish one-horse surrey, a bony bay saddle horse tied on behind for Katherine’s hopefully inconspicuous arrival at the inn. William would be playing the part he had played before, William Hunt, a member of the landed gentry just passing through.

Less than a mile from the Lion’s Den, he pulled off the road and helped Katherine down, then settled her astride the bay, pulling her simple woolen skirt down to cover her legs as best he could. Then scowling at the portion of trip, stockinged ankle still exposed.