Swept Away (23 page)

“Are you sure you want to see this?” he asked abruptly. “I must have been mad to have said I would show you. It will only make you unhappy. That is why Varian and I decided to conceal it in the first place.”

“I want to see it,” Julia retorted flatly. “If, of course, you really have it. Or is it just something you made up?”

“Of course I have it,” he snapped. “Unlike you, I am not in the habit of lying.”

He took a small key from his pocket and unlocked one of the drawers of the desk. He rifled through it for a moment and came up with a piece of paper, which he held out to Julia expressionlessly.

Julia's stomach clenched, and her heart began to beat rapidly. She reached out with fingers that trembled slightly and took the paper. The familiar handwriting seemed to leap off the page, and she felt dizzy. She sat down abruptly in the nearest chair. It was her brother's handwriting, and she was suddenly frightened. It took all her courage to force herself to focus on the page.

It was signed with Selby's bold, slashing signature.

The paper blurred before Julia's eyes. Her ears were filled with a roaring sound, and she thought she might be sick. “Oh, God!” she moaned, then clapped her hand to her mouth. But she could not stifle the sobs welling up in her throat. “Selby!”

She began to cry, harsh, racking sobs that shook her body. She raised her hands to cover her face. Dimly she was aware of Stonehaven letting out a curse, and in three strides he was around the desk and pulling her out of her chair. He cradled her against his chest, his arms encircling her.

“I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I shouldn't have let you see. I was a fool. If only I hadn't been so angry, I would have known better. Forgive me.”

He murmured soft, meaningless words of comfort as he stroked her hair and back. Julia clung to him, crying her heart out, grateful for his strength and sympathy. She felt his lips press softly against her hair.

“Deverel,” she breathed.

“Julia.” He kissed the side of her face, her forehead. She tilted back her head, and suddenly they were kissing with all the hunger that had lain suppressed within them for two days.

Julia let out a little moan, and her hands went up behind his head, pulling him closer. The pain, the fear, all the tumultuous emotions of the past week, exploded and were burned up in the fire of passion. She was on fire for him, her body alive and aching. He kissed her as if he could never get enough of her, his mouth buried in hers. His hands slid down her back and over the curve of her hips, digging into her buttocks and lifting her up into him. She felt the hard length of his desire against her, heard the harsh rasp of his breath, and her own passion blossomed. There was a damp heat between her legs, and her loins felt as if they had turned to wax. His fingers began to knead the fleshy mounds of her buttocks, and she trembled.

He breathed her name again, and his lips left hers to travel across her cheek to her ear. “Thank God,” he murmured as he began to kiss and nibble at her ear. “Now you understand. Now you know the truth.”

Julia stiffened, alarms sounding in her head. She pulled back from him, looking up with sudden, sharp suspicion. “What did you say?”

“What?” Deverel looked bewildered. “Only that now you see that I am not what you think I am. That it was Selby who—”

“No!” Julia ripped herself out of his grasp, stumbling backward, suddenly filled with self-loathing.
How could she have forsaken Selby so quickly? How could she have believed the letter without question and then fallen into this man's arms?
“No, I don't—I can't—”

She bent quickly and retrieved the letter from the floor where it had fallen when Deverel had taken her into his arms. With a low cry, she turned and ran out of the room, the letter in her hand.

J
ulia ran to her room and locked the door, then threw herself onto the bed and indulged in another, shorter fit of tears. How could she have done what she just had? She felt as if she had betrayed her brother. She had vowed to clear his name, but she had crumpled at the first obstacle. She had looked at the suicide note and seen his handwriting, and she had, for a moment, believed that Selby had actually done it, just as everyone else had. Even worse, she had fallen into the arms of Selby's enemy, the man who had brought all this down onto Selby's head.

For a long time she lay on the bed, wrapped in misery and self-condemnation. She wished Phoebe were here, so that she could talk to her, but immediately on the heels of that thought came the realization that she could not show this letter to Phoebe. It would hurt her far too much. Irritation filled her as she realized that such a thought was exactly why Deverel said he and Varian had hidden the letter from them. She sat up, disgruntlement finally rousing her from her depression.

Getting up, she washed her face, picked up the letter from where she had thrown it on the bed and sat down in the chair to read through it again. She turned it over and looked at the back, running a thoughtful finger over the broken seal of wax. Turning it back over, she read it through a third time, then sat for some time, frowning in thought.

Finally she stood and marched downstairs, her back ramrod straight. She went to Deverel's office and knocked on the door. His voice answered, and she went inside, nerves dancing in her stomach. He looked up from the work on his desk and jumped to his feet when he saw her.

“Julia!” He came around from behind the massive desk. “Are you all right?”

Julia nodded, closing the door behind her. “Yes. I have been in my room thinking.”

“I hope you will accept my apology. What I did was inexcusable and inappropriate, given your state of mind. I took advantage of your weakness.”

Julia looked at his cool, carefully controlled face. He hardly seemed the same man as the one who had kissed her earlier with such heat and passion. “It doesn't matter. I came to talk to you about this letter.”

“I see.” If possible, it seemed as if his face shut down even more. “Of course.”

“Selby did not write it.”

Deverel sighed. “I might have known.” He motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down and tell me.”

Julia sat down while Deverel perched on the corner of his desk and folded his arms, looking at her with a determinedly patient expression. “You needn't look at me like that,” she snapped. “I'm not a fool. I have perfectly good reasons for believing what I do.”

“All right.”

“For a moment I was fooled by the handwriting. If those other letters look as much like Selby's hand as these, I can understand why everyone was taken in by them. But obviously, if they were forged, then there's no reason why this suicide note was not forged, as well.”

“Obviously.”

“Do stop being so odiously superior and listen to what I have to say! I went over this note several times, and a few things became clear to me. The first is that I do not believe Selby committed suicide. He was a fighter. He would not have abandoned Phoebe and Gilbert and me to the world. That was the act of a coward, and you must agree that Selby was never a coward.”

“No. You are right about that. But even a strong man can break—and given the weight of the evidence, he must have known that he was caught. Pamela was pushing for a criminal investigation. He may have felt that he was saving his family from further scandal, stopping the investigation with his death. It would have been far worse for you if he had actually been tried and convicted and sent to prison as an embezzler.”

“If he wanted so much to save us from scandal, why would he have written a note confessing to the embezzlement and, more than that, admitting to having a mistress?” As she said the words, a second question flickered through her mind: Why had Stonehaven not shown such a condemning note to the world? It would have put the final seal on Selby's guilt.

“Perhaps the weight of his crime was too much for his conscience. It happens. He was essentially a good man, and he went astray. His passion for a woman caused him to do things he would not normally do, and he was racked with guilt over what he had done. So he felt he had to confess, but he could not face the shame of it.”

“Oh, twaddle!” Julia snapped, letting go of the strange thought. “That is another thing that rings false. Selby loved Phoebe. He would not have been unfaithful to her. He would not have kept a mistress hidden away in London.”

“It is a common enough practice,” Deverel remarked. “Even among men who love their wives.”

“Oh? Is that what you plan to do when you are married to m—” She stopped, realizing what she was saying, and blushed to the roots of her hair. Suddenly the very air between them was alive with sensuality. “I—I didn't mean—”

“What I do or what you do is an entirely different case.” Deverel's eyes shone with an odd light.

“Yes, of course,” Julia replied caustically. “After all, Selby
cared
for Phoebe.”

“Perhaps that was because Lady Armiger never knocked her husband out and tied him up!”

Julia could not think of any reply, so she simply glared at him. They stood for a moment, scowling. Then Deverel got up and walked away, going to the window and looking out at the rose garden.

“I am sure,” he said in a careful, even voice, “that Selby loved his wife and son. His having a mistress doesn't mean that he did not love them.”

Julia grimaced. “Don't condescend to me. I believe I knew my brother better than you. I know that he had mistresses before Phoebe, but he did not have one after he married her. Had you ever heard him speak of this woman? Had Varian? Or Fitz? Was there gossip about it in the clubs?”

“No, I heard no gossip. As for Fitz, or any of Selby's other friends, I don't know what they knew. Varian seemed surprised, I think, when he read the note, but, then, we were both so shocked by his death that I'm not sure whether he knew about the woman or not. Selby certainly did not tell me, but I was not as close to him as either Walter or Varian. We had been better friends when we were younger, but over the years we had drifted apart. After Walter died, I frankly did not see him much.”

“Even so, don't you think it's strange that if Selby had a mistress no one had heard about it?”

“I don't know that
no one
had. Julia, you are building a case on thin air. You have no proof of anything, only unsupported beliefs and suppositions. Against that we have a letter in Selby's handwriting saying that he did it.”

“There are other things. One is that he hardly mentioned Phoebe and Gilbert, just a brief sentence to say that he loved them. Selby would have said far more than that. And I almost never heard him call her Phoebe. He always, always called her by a nickname, usually Fee. Sometimes Delight.”

“Really, Julia, I think you are reaching. This was his last statement to the world. It is likely to be more formal. He wouldn't use a pet name.”

“Selby would have. He always made up nicknames for people, and that is what he called them. He called me Jule or Julie. He called Gilbert Jin-Jin, because that was the closest Gil could come to saying his name when he was learning to talk.”

Deverel shrugged, obviously unconvinced.

“All right. No doubt you will discount this, too, but I find it significant. That note made no mention of me whatsoever.” At Deverel's skeptical expression, she hurried on. “Yes, yes, I know. A man isn't going to remember all his relatives in his suicide note. But Selby and I were very close. I was his only near relative, except for Phoebe and Gilbert. Our parents are both dead. He wrote me a great deal when he went away to college, and when he was a young man and living in London, before he married and settled down. Even since his marriage, when he's been away, he has either written me or, in his letters to Phoebe, he has written a line or two to me, or asked her to tell me that he loved me. He would not have left me out when he was facing death. I know it.”

“Julia…”

“If my knowledge of my brother is not enough, there's another, tangible proof. Look at the seal on this letter.” She handed the letter to him, pointing to the pieces of red wax where the letter had been folded and sealed.”

Deverel looked at the wax, then up at her. “Yes?”

“You see the imprint in that wax. That is Selby's signet ring. He used to use it to seal his letters. But at the time of this note, he did not have the ring.” She paused to let the significance of this fact sink in. “He had lost it a month or two before. I know that because he had everybody turning the house upside down looking for it. It was very important to him.”

“The ring was on his finger when we found him. He must have left it at his hunting lodge earlier, that's why he couldn't find it. Then, when he returned to the lodge, there it was.”

“Oh!” Julia bounced up. “You are so maddening! You already have your mind made up! You won't listen to anything I say!”

He gave her a quizzical look, and Julia realized with a start that she had been arguing with him over this letter, trying to convince him of its falsehood, as if he were an impartial observer. But that was ridiculous. Obviously, if he was the one who had done the embezzling, he already knew that the suicide note was false.

“Oh.” She plopped back down in her chair, feeling very odd. “Of course. Why am I telling you all this?”

“Julia, have you thought about what you are saying? Do you realize that if this suicide note
is
a fake, if the same person forged it who wrote the other letters, then that person must have killed Selby? Why else would he have written a suicide note?”

Julia felt faintly sick at her stomach. Of course he was right, although she had not really thought about the implications of her argument. She had only been interested in clearing Selby of the suicide and of the things that were said in the letter. But now she saw that if the suicide note was false, then her brother had been murdered in cold blood by the person who had written it.

“Julia, I understand how little you want your brother to be guilty, how much you don't want to believe that he committed suicide. But you have advanced nothing but wild theories. You have no solid evidence to back up anything you've said.”

“I know Selby.”

“People change. They make mistakes. Sometimes, just for a moment, they act in ways that they would not normally.” She regarded him with stony silence. He went on. “If you are right, that would mean that someone imitated your brother's handwriting so well that even he admitted that it looked like his. They wrote several letters in his handwriting getting the money, and they used ‘Jack Fletcher,' all to make it look as if Selby was the embezzler. Then they stole Selby's signet ring a month or two before they killed him, forged the suicide note, and stamped the seal with his ring. Then they found out that he was staying at his hunting lodge instead of at home and went there, killed him, laid the false note on the desk and wrote another note in his hand to me to get me to come discover the body.”

“When you put it that way, it does sound farfetched,” Julia admitted.

“What other way is there to put it? That is how it would have had to happen for you to be right.” He paused. “I have found over the years that the simplest and most obvious solution is generally the correct one.”

“You
would
say that,” Julia replied darkly and got to her feet. “I see now that it was useless trying to talk to you about it. You are determined not to believe it.”

She turned and started toward the door. His voice stopped her. “Julia!”

Julia turned and looked back questioningly at him.

“Do you actually think that I did all this? That I embezzled that money and laid the blame on Selby? That I went to his hunting lodge and
killed
him?” His handsome face was bleak.

Julia wavered. Did she believe that Deverel had robbed the trust and killed Selby? Only minutes earlier she had caught herself trying to convince him that Selby had not written the note, which implied that he did not already know that. And there was that nagging question that had recently popped into her head: Why would the man who did those things then conceal the suicide note that would have made everyone believe that Selby had been guilty? Most of all, there was an odd feeling in her chest, a painful feeling, that cried out against the idea that Deverel was a murderer.

“
Someone
did it,” she answered bitterly, and turned and walked out of the room.

 

Deverel watched her go. He supposed that her vague answer had been an improvement over her earlier accusations. Still, he found that his chest was filled once again with the same curiously cold and empty feeling, as if there were a hole there that could never be filled.

It seemed as if every succeeding thing that happened with Julia was worse than what had come before. First there had been her betrayal, the sickening realization that she had played him for a fool, lying to him with every kiss and caress. That had been followed by finding out that she was convinced he was an embezzler who had laid the blame on her innocent brother. Now the part she had assigned to him was that of a murderer.