Courting Susannah (36 page)

Ethan followed her gaze and muttered something under his breath. Some of his color was coming back, but he was still leaning against the wall. He would be a long time getting over what he'd learned that day, though she wouldn't have been surprised if he never mentioned it again.

Susannah shivered as another cold wind ruffled the water and then rolled over her like an intangible wave.

“I won't ask what you're doing here,” Aubrey said, looking at Susannah, “since it's obvious. You're looking for trouble, as usual, and my guess is, you found some.”

Susannah glanced at Ethan, hoping for a word of support, but he was stubbornly silent, his lips pressed together into a thin line. He thrust a hand through his
hair and glared at Aubrey, as though all the sorrows of the world were his fault.

Aubrey, meanwhile, shifted his attention from his wife to his brother. “You promised to leave this alone,” he said, and Susannah knew he was referring to the inquiry into Mrs. Parker's death. They were on a public street, and passersby nodded in greeting or tipped their hats, their glances avid and curious.

Susannah took Aubrey's arm, then Ethan's. Their breaths made vapor in the cold. “If we must discuss this further,” she said, “might we at least do so in private?”

Five minutes later, they were in Aubrey's office over the store. He sat on the edge of his desk, arms folded, while Susannah took a nearby chair and Ethan stood at the window overlooking the street. It wasn't hard to guess what he was thinking about.

Aubrey poured brandy for himself and his brother and produced a mild blackberry cordial for Susannah. She normally did not indulge in spirits, but she was still freezing from her impulsive trek to the waterfront, and poor Su Lin and her child were very much on her mind. Too, now that she was well away from the docks, she was beginning to imagine some of the singular calamities that might have befallen her there.

“Hollister swears the police are questioning every man on the shoreline,” Aubrey said, speaking to Ethan's back. “For the time being, brother, that has to be enough.”

Ethan turned. “My life is at stake here,” he said. “I'm not going to stand by and wait for Hollister or anybody else to solve the problem.” His face contorted. “Su Lin is dead,” he rasped.

Aubrey and Susannah exchanged glances, but neither one spoke.

Ethan sought and held his brother's gaze. His anger
and pain were palpable. “It's my fault. If I'd married her—”

Susannah set her glass on Aubrey's desk, not trusting herself to hold it steady. Aubrey did not look away from Ethan's face; his shoulders were straight, and he held his head up.

“You can't change the past. Sometimes you just have to walk away from it.”

Ethan's smile was terrible to see. “Ironic advice, coming from you,” he said.

The silence that followed was lengthy and palpable.

“I'm sorry,” Aubrey told his brother. “About Su Lin, I mean.”

Ethan's gaze flickered in Susannah's direction as he'd just remembered her presence; she grasped the arms of her chair, her way of saying she wasn't going anywhere. He turned back to the matter at hand.

“There's more.”

Aubrey poured himself another splash of brandy and sipped from it. Susannah's heart beat faster.

“Yes,” Aubrey said, and waited.

“You gave her money. You paid her off.”

Aubrey shook his head. “No,” he said.

“The draft was drawn on one of your bank accounts,”

Ethan said. Another dreadful pause ensued. “Why?” the younger brother ground out, agonized. Then he slammed both fists down on the surface of Aubrey's desk.
“Tell me why!”

The atmosphere in the office seemed charged; Susannah didn't dare move or speak.

“I told you,” Aubrey said. “I didn't go near Su Lin.”

Ethan leaned forward. “Did you tell her she would bring disgrace on the Fairgrieves, Aubrey? Did you tell her that her children—
my
children—would be outcasts?”

Aubrey's jawline clamped down hard. Susannah could see that his control was stretched to its limits.

She closed her eyes, awaiting the explosion, but it didn't come. When she looked again, Aubrey and Ethan were still well apart, taking each other's measure.

“You bastard,” Ethan said at long last.

Aubrey ran the tip of his tongue along the inside of his lower lip, a gesture that Susannah recognized as an effort to hold on to his temper. “Think what you like,” he replied.

“I need a drink,” Ethan said. Then he turned, without another word, and walked out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

“How could you, Aubrey?” Susannah asked.

He heaved a sigh. “Not you, too.”

“You had no right, interfering like that.”

“Thank you for your faith in my word, Mrs. Fairgrieve.”

“There was mention of a bank draft,” Susannah said stubbornly. “I was there, if you will recall.”

“I can't explain that,” Aubrey said. “You'll just have to trust me.” He sighed, staring off into space. “I won't deny that I was afraid for both of them,” he confided. “Ethan was eighteen years old at the time, and he thought he could hold off a world full of bigots. Su Lin was sheltered, innocent. The two of them would have suffered beyond anything they could have imagined.”

Susannah held her tongue. She had begun to believe Aubrey, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, and she could not bring herself to admit as much.

Aubrey lowered himself into his desk chair—a place, she reasoned, where his authority was absolute. He looked pale and gaunt sitting there but in no way diminished. He was without question the strongest person she had ever known, and yet he had been very
nearly destroyed by a single, feckless woman. A sobering measure, that, of his attachment to Julia.

He sat back and gazed up at the ceiling. “Oh, yes,” he agreed, having taken the time to absorb her statement regarding Su Lin's tragic death. “She suffered.”

“You know what happened on the ship, don't you?”

He sighed again, nodded. “Word got back to me, yes. Su Wong made sure of that.”

Susannah sat for a moment with the backs of her fingers resting against her mouth. “I don't understand—why didn't you tell Ethan?”

By then, Aubrey had taken his brother's place at the window; perhaps he could see Ethan walking away from where he stood, perhaps not. “We haven't been on the best of terms lately,” he said.

Susannah stared him down.

“All right,” he admitted. “I couldn't do it. I tried, but I just couldn't seem to get the words out.”

For a long time, neither spoke. Then Aubrey turned to face her again. “Let's go home,” he said.

Susannah nodded and got to her feet.

Downstairs, lost in her own thoughts, she perused a selection of fabric while Aubrey spoke with an associate and Mr. Hawkins rushed out to summon the carriage and driver. It startled her a little when Aubrey appeared beside her, placing his hand over hers.

Soon, they were in the carriage, jolting up the hill toward the house. Snow drifted past the windows, but they were warm, sitting close together the way they were.

Susannah drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I expected you to lecture me for visiting the waterfront on my own,” she ventured to say.

Aubrey chuckled, but there was little humor in the sound. He sat with his head tilted back and his eyes
closed. “Would it have done any good?” he asked without looking at her.

“No,” Susannah mused, “I don't suppose it would have.”

He sighed. “Just don't do it again, please.” At last, he turned and met her upraised gaze. “If you must go to the waterfront, the jailhouse, or some equally unsuitable place, have the courtesy not to go alone. Take Ethan. Hell, take Maisie. But for Victoria's sake, as well as your own, please be more careful after this.”

Aubrey had spoken calmly, and yet Susannah felt as though she'd been roundly—and justly—scolded. She wanted to explain, all of the sudden, despite her intense pride, but she wasn't exactly sure how to go about it. After all, she didn't know herself what she'd hoped to accomplish by crossing Water Street to the wharves.

“The answer is there somewhere,” she said.

Aubrey took her chin in one hand, but gently.

“You're right,” he said. “But finding it isn't your responsibility, Susannah.” He paused, tightened his jaw for a moment, then went on. “My God, if something were to happen to you—”

She waited, her heart in her throat, but Aubrey didn't say he loved her. He just bent his head and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

“Aubrey,” she began, fully meaning to tell him how she felt about him, that she loved him as a wife should love a husband, but in the end her courage failed her. Perhaps she had used it all, visiting the waterfront.

“Yes?” he asked in a teasing voice, still tasting her mouth.

“Nothing,” she said.

His glance was wry and a little sad. “If you say so,” he replied.

Chapter 18

T
he heartbreaking realization brought Susannah shooting straight up out of a sound sleep. She sat blinking, with her back rigid and her heart hammering in the back of her throat. “Aubrey,” she gasped, feeling for her husband in the darkness and finding that his side of the bed was empty.

Disappointment seized her, fierce and desperate, and she scrambled out from under the covers to turn up the nearest gas lamp. She was winded, as though she'd just run a great distance, and she needed a few moments to catch her breath. Aubrey was nowhere in sight.

She found her way into the nursery, where Victoria slept peacefully in a spill of moonlight from the windows, but Aubrey was not there, either.

After pulling on a wrapper, Susannah descended the rear stairway into the kitchen. A single light burned on the bureau, and the remains of some midnight repast were on the table. A book lay open beside that, spine up. Stepping closer, she saw that it was Julia's journal.

Leaving plate, crumbs, and book for later, Susannah lit a small lantern and pressed on to the study. At last, here was Aubrey, not seated at his desk but standing at the window, watching snow fall through the darkness, opalescent in the flimsy glow of the street lamps. He was fully dressed, in trousers and a shirt, boots, and even a jacket.

“If we find Su Lin's father,” she said, knowing by the stiffening in his broad shoulders that he had either heard or sensed her approach, “we'll find Mrs. Parker's killers. He knows something, Aubrey.”

Aubrey turned to look at her. She could not read his expression in the gloom, but his tone of voice revealed a certain skeptical interest. “On what do you base that farfetched conclusion?” he inquired.

“Think about it. He hates Ethan. He might have thought he had to avenge his daughter's honor in some way.”

He sighed and thrust a hand through his hair, already rumpled from previous passes of his fingers. “There are probably others,” he said. “My brother is no saint, after all—he has his share of enemies.” He paused, reflected upon thoughts of his own, thoughts he did not choose to share. “You know, don't you, that Hollister will probably dismiss the idea out of hand? Su Wong has a grudge against Ethan, no denying that, but he probably didn't even know Delphinia.”

Susannah set down the lamp and put her hands on her hips. “Be that as it may, if you won't take me to the police station first thing tomorrow morning, Mr. Fairgrieve, I shall go on my own.”

She saw his jaw work as he suppressed his irritation. “You might be just foolish enough to mean that,” he answered. “Given that you went wandering along the waterfront today. We'll talk to Hollister together.” He paused. “Susannah—where did this notion come from?”

“Call it intuition,” she replied. “I've been working the situation over and over in my mind, waking and sleeping.
A little while ago, the answer woke me up.” The answer and something else. She was not ready to speak of the private and shattering decision she'd made, not yet.

He crossed the room to kiss her forehead. “Go back to bed,” he said. “The matter can wait.”

She didn't move. “You've been reading Julia's journal. I saw it on the kitchen table.”

Aubrey sighed. His hands lay lightly on her shoulders; she liked his touching her, even in so mundane and ordinary a way, and couldn't hold back a soft crooning sound as, with the pads of his thumbs, he rubbed the tense muscles supporting her collarbone.

“I found the diary by accident,” he said. “And I was curious. There are those, you know, who would maintain that I have every right, given the fact that Julia was once my wife.”

“What were you hoping to find?”

He pulled her close and, for a moment, rested his chin on the crown of her head. “It was more a question of what I was hoping
not
to find,” he answered. “I was disappointed.”