Storm Ravaged (Storm Damages 2) (Storm Legacy) (5 page)

Why did she turn down my marriage proposal when it’s quite obvious she desires me? It makes no sense. I put a smidgen of distance between us but keep her close to me. “You want me. I know you do.”

She emits a bitter laugh even as her fingers strum across my lips in a soft caress. “Wanting you was never a problem.”

Prompted by her admission, I help myself to another taste of her sweet flesh, push my hard length into her soft belly. “Then why?” I whisper against her tantalizing mouth. She shakes her head, denying me the answer I seek. Frustration drives me to plunge once more into the heat of her mouth, take possession of it, own her. But she pushes me back. Much as I regret it, I give in to her silent plea and give her the distance she seeks.

She gulps in air, as she tries to catch her breath. And it’s not from the passion we just shared. No, she’s bloody panicking, as if she’s reached the end of her rope. “If we marry, she will ruin you, destroy your family.” Tears spike her lashes.

“She? Who are you talking about?”

She shakes her head, and the hair she’d pinned up tumbles loose around her shoulders, the devastation no doubt caused by my marauding hands.

I thread a hand through her dark tresses and tug a little until she’s looking at me again. “Tell me.” I demand in a hoarse voice.

“I can’t. I can’t. If I do, your mo—”

“My mo—” My hand jerks open, releasing her glorious curls, as the implication hits me. “My mother? What does she have to do with this?”

“I can’t tell you. Please let it go. Let me go.” She pushes against my chest, harder than before. Without my stick for support, I stumble back which gives her time to reach the door and fling it open.

Samuel stands on the other side. For a second, he takes us both in. No doubt what he sees, tears in Liz’s eyes, hair disheveled, clothes mussed up. His face reflects disapproval. “Ms. Watson, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she says in a shaky voice. “Please, Samuel, take me home.”

It’s a measure of the man he doesn’t wait for my consent, but simply takes her by the arm and leads her away.

Just as well, I’ve gotten the information I need. She won’t agree to my proposal. Not until I solve this riddle. I fish out my mobile from my jacket, and dial my pilot. “Get the plane ready. We’re leaving tonight. At seven if you can manage it.”

I need to get back to London and find out what evil scheme my mother hatched, vile enough to stop Liz from marrying me.

Chapter 5

______________

Gabriel

AFTER RETURNING TO ENGLAND, I bid my time for an opportunity to talk to my mother’s maid. If anyone knows the witch’s plot my mother devised three months ago, it would be Tilly. A week later, my patience is rewarded when my mother travels to London to visit her spa and hairstylist, leaving Tilly with a few hours’ free time.

I seize the opportunity and invite her to tea. Even though I have every right to hold our discussion in my parents’ town mansion, I choose my penthouse in The Brighton, since I don’t wish for news of our meeting to trickle back to the Countess.

When the concierge announces Tilly’s arrival, I ride down on my private elevator to the lobby to greet her. “Good afternoon, Tilly.”

She bobs a curtsey. “My lord.” Time has taken a toll on her. Hair, which glowed bright gold once upon a time, is grey now, and the lines on her face bear witness to the misery she’s endured at my mother’s hands. Not to mention she’s so thin a puff of wind could blow her away. By the way she’s clutching her handbag, nerves have gotten the better of her as well. Shame, for I do not intend to harm her. If anything, I aim to make her life easier to bear.

On our ride up, we make small talk about the weather. “I’m sorry I asked you to travel on such a cold and rainy day. I thought it best if we conduct our conversation in private.”

“Yes, my lord.” Her blue-eyed gaze flickers uncertainty from a worried face. At sixty-five years of age, she’s faithfully served my mother for forty years. Never once taking a vacation, she’s performed her duties quietly, efficiently, without fuzz.

When the elevator doors open, her gaze bounces around my living room before she steps out. “We the only ones here, my lord?”

The third ‘my lord.’ Tradition demands the honorific, since I’m the heir to an earl, but I hate being addressed as such. I take her elbow and guide her toward the burgundy leather sofa, next to which a spread fit for a queen resides on the crystal coffee table. “You don’t have to be so formal, Tilly. I remember when you used to call me Master Gabe.”

A reluctant chuckle escapes from her. “I haven’t called you that since you were eight.”

“Well, if that’s too familiar, Mr. Storm will do.”

Her head bobs. “Yes, Sir.”

“Tea?” I’ve ordered a special spread, complete with Tilly’s favorites—pekoe tea and orange scones—served on heirloom china.

“Thank you kindly.” Even though she’s lived in England for four decades, a Texas twang still resonates in her voice.

I wait until she’s sipped the tea and eaten half a scone before I circle around to the object of her visit. “How are you, Tilly?”

“Fair to middlin’. This old body ain’t what it used to be.”

I pour my own cup and balance it on my knee, the good one. “You’ve been with my mother close to forty years, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Sir. Since she was a young lady.” Having polished off the first pastry, she helps herself to another.

“Do you ever miss your home?”

“No. Not really. My family lived in a one-room shack with only dirt for a floor.”

I’d hope a visit to her family would prove a treat, but no help there, so I move on to option B. “Have you ever thought of retiring?”

She shrugs. “Where would I go?”

I offer her my most charming smile, the one that used to win her over during my wayward youth. “Why, anywhere you wished. You’d be your own mistress. Set your own clock. No more waking up before dawn to perform onerous chores. You would answer to no one. And have enough money to live comfortably the rest of your days.”

She squints her eyes at me. Her third pastry lands, untouched, back on the plate. “That . . . would be right nice.”

Good. She’s beginning to see the possibilities. “If you could choose a place, anywhere on earth, where would you go?”

For a few moments, wheels grind in her head. “A place where my bones could soak up the sun. Near a beach so I could hear the ocean race to the shore, especially at night. And lots of colors and scents.”

“The Caribbean has many such places,” I say softly, hoping not to overplay my hand.

She rests the cup of tea on the coffee table, right next to the pastry plate. “You didn’t invite old Tilly only for tea and scones, Master Gabe. You have sumthing on your mind?”

Uneducated she might be, but she’s never been stupid. “Yes, I do. The Countess. Do you recall Ms. Watson, Tilly?”

“Yes, Sir. The young lady who came to the castle.”

“That’s right. Do you know if my mother discussed anything in particular with her?”

There’s only a moment’s hesitation before she answers. “Yes, Sir. She did.”

Finally, we’re getting somewhere.

“Your mother. She had a mighty hankerin’ about Lady Melisssande.”

Lady Melissande, the duke’s daughter my mother had chosen for my wife. After my accident, my mother insisted I was engaged to her. Something I couldn’t refute since I couldn’t remember the turn of events. But when I approached Lady Melissande, she denied I’d ever proposed.

“She wanted the duke’s daughter to marry you and give her grandbabies. ‘My blood will mingle with that of a king. How about that, Tilly?’ she’d say. Can you imagine?”

Yes, I can. The Duke of Marchstone is a direct descendant of William IV. On the wrong side of the blanket, but what did that matter to someone like my mother?

“But Ms. Watson was standing in her way. She took a powerful dislike to her. Probably because you liked her so much.”

Even Tilly had caught on to my fascination with Liz? I brush a hand across my brow. How could I have been so careless? “How so?”

“Anyone could see by the way you looked at her. Like she was the sun, the moon, and stars all rolled into one. I hadn’t seen you that happy for a long time.”

Happiness. That emotion has eluded me most of my life. Wish I could remember. “Was I?”

“Yes, Sir. And Miss Margaret? Well, she was plumb scared you’d marry her instead of Lady Melissande.”

Miss Margaret. Nobody called my mother by her first name except Tilly. Doubt anybody even remembered it since she demanded everyone call her by her title—Lady Winterleagh—or my lady. But Tilley had known her since she’d been plain old Margaret Simmons, the poor little rich American girl who’d inherited millions from her American ancestor. Hungry to marry into the British aristocracy, she’d gone on the prowl for a peer who’d want her money badly enough to give her the title she coveted so fiercely. And she’d found one in my father—the Earl of Winterleagh.

“So she planned and plotted. The night she held the dinner party to celebrate the closing of the deal, she snuck into the powder room to talk to Ms. Watson.”

“Do you know what my mother said to her?”

“Yes, Sir. I do.” She gulps, twists her gnarled hands on her lap. “You have to understand Master Gabe, I wouldn’t have told her if I thought she’d use it against you.”

Bloody hell. “Told her what?”

“I was confused, didn’t know what to do, so I told her what I’d seen.”

I reach over and cover her troubled hands with my own. “Tell me what you saw, Tilly.”

“Your father, pushing Mr. Snipes down the stairs.”

Mr. Snipes, the tutor who’d beaten me at my mother’s command from the time I was five, whose death had been ruled accidental eighteen years ago.

“That night I took his dinner up to him, even though that wasn’t something I normally did, but the kitchen maid had come down with a tooth ache, and she asked me to cover for her. When I got near the nursery, I heard yelling and screaming. Lord Winterleagh was furious about the tutor damaging your hand.”

Damaging my hand. The son of a bitch broke every finger in my left hand one Christmas after I told my mother I planned to become a concert pianist and tour the continent when I reached the age of majority. I was fourteen at the time. She’d demanded I study business so I could manage Storm Industries, the company she’d run into the ground. When I balked at following the path she’d set out for me, she ordered the tutor to injure me so I could no longer play. Something the sadistic bastard enjoyed doing to me.

“Mr. Snipes laughed at him. Told him he knew who wore the trousers in the family and it wasn’t the earl. Next thing I know there was a scuffle, and your father dragged Mr. Snipes to the top of the stairs and threw him down. Mr. Snipes didn’t move after that. Even though it was colder than a witch’s tit, your father climbed to the castle roof and got himself good and drunk. He never saw me, hiding as I was in the shadows.”

For a long time, I’d suspected my father killed my tutor, but hadn’t confirmed it until now. Such a revelation could destroy my family name. And it wouldn’t do any good to bring my father to justice. Several months back, he’d suffered a stroke. Although he’d been making progress, he’d recently taken a turn for the worse. The doctors confirmed a second stroke, one which left him paralyzed and barely coherent. So this crime would need to remain secret. “So after you witnessed this, what did you do?”

“I crawled down the stairs, trying hard not to look at the body. It was crooked like with the head bent at a strangle angle.” She shivered. “So I went to Miss Margaret and asked her what I should do.”

“And what did she say/”

“She ordered me to say nothing. If anybody asked, I was to say I was with her. But nobody ever asked.”

“And the next day they found Mr. Snipes.”

“Yes. They ruled it an accident. He’d been drinking you see. I think your father got him drunk on purpose.”

Yes, my father would have thought that far ahead.

“Lady Winterleagh used the story to blackmail Ms. Watson.” She whimpers and her hands flutter. No doubt with genuine sorrow. But she’s not to blame. My mother’s actions can not be laid on Tilly’s fragile shoulders.

“How?”

“She demanded Ms. Watson break up with you, in exchange for your mother’s silence about the murder.”

I hiss out a breath. Questions whirl in my mind. Did Liz break up with me as my mother demanded? Was that what drove me to drink and crash my Jag against a tree? I can’t reconcile such actions with the self I remembered. The one who’d never once cared about a woman.

And my mother. She hated my father, but to the level of destroying the family name, ruining Storm Industries? Yes, she would. Power is everything to the Countess. Something precipitated her action, though. Had I challenged her authority by going against her wish for me to marry Lady Melissande? I can’t remember. There is more to this story, but for now I need to deal with Tilly’s revelations.

“You must not breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“No, Sir. I haven’t, except for Miss Margaret. Not to anyone.”