Through the Smoke (5 page)

“If you think I can tell you that, my lord, you are sure to be disappointed.”

“Someone knows what happened that day.” The flames cast moving shadows on the side of his face. “According to my sources, your father received a large sum of money two weeks before the fire. I would like to know where it came from.”

This was the question Rachel had expected, yet defensiveness, in place of honest answers, rose to her lips. “Would it be too difficult to believe he received some sort of inheritance? My grandfather’s patronage is, after all, how my mother came into possession of the bookshop, is it not?”

“Did he?” The earl’s eyes glowed with the same tawny light as the fire.

Rachel wondered if he could see right through her. “Receiving a large sum of money doesn’t necessarily make him guilty of anything.”

“Especially if you can prove its origins.”

The hiss of the fire grew louder. Suddenly, Rachel felt scorched by its heat. Her father had hated the earl as far back as she could remember, even before Tommy’s death.

She hated him, too—or, rather, she didn’t know him well enough to hate him personally, but she hated what he stood for. He was responsible for the miners’ terrible lot. Underpaid and overworked, they suffered too many accidents like the one that had claimed Tommy’s life. The long hours of crouching and crawling in narrow tunnels had stunted the growth of some and distorted their bodies. Others had miner’s lung, the disease that had killed her father. Yet the earl lived in luxury, apparently indifferent to their difficult existence.

“Miss McTavish?” he prompted when she didn’t speak.

“Someone paid my father to fire Blackmoor Hall.” She stated it baldly and then looked away to avoid seeing the satisfaction on his face. “He took the money… but he could not go through with the agreement.” She faced him, hoping to convince him of something she was no longer sure of herself. “He did
not
set the fire.”

“And how can you be so sure?” The tension in Lord Druridge’s body reminded Rachel of a hound straining at the end of a leash, only he was, at the same time, master, holding himself in check.

“Because he told me so.”

“Would he readily admit to murder, Miss McTavish?”

“Why would he deny it? He knew he wasn’t long for this earth.”

“To protect you from the taint of his deeds, perhaps?”

“No. He told me about the money so he could die with a clear conscience. Why admit only half the truth? Leave something far worse to harrow up his soul?”

Druridge seemed skeptical, but didn’t press the point. “Who gave him the money?”

“He wouldn’t say, so for all I know”—Rachel clenched her hands in her lap—“the money could have come from you.”

The earl gave an incredulous laugh. “You think I tried to hire your father to fire my home and kill my wife and, when he refused, did it myself?”

Superstitiously fearing the earl’s hypnotic eyes, Rachel once again dropped her gaze to the floor. “That is one possibility.”

He moved toward her, his deliberate steps reminding Rachel that she was completely at his mercy. She doubted whether any of the servants sleeping in the nether regions of the manse would hear her should she cry out. There was only Mrs. Poulson, and she was no ally.

“Except that I did not hire your father,” he breathed, now only inches away. “That much I know, despite my fickle memory. If I tried to pay a man to kill my wife, I would be more prudent than to let him live long enough to die of miner’s lung. Or to tell someone like you, someone who could conceivably prattle the tale about town.”

His words caused the short hairs to rise on Rachel’s nape. Half-expecting him to reach for her, to encircle her neck with his powerful hands, she shrank into the chair as he towered over her.

“Have you no answer to that?” he asked.

She dragged to her lips the words flying around in her head. “Perhaps you thought the money sufficient to buy his silence.”

“So my bothering you is just a way to see if he kept his end of the bargain?”

“I don’t know you, my lord,” she said, scrambling to hide her fear. “I can only judge according to instinct, and my instincts tell me that you are indeed capable of such a thing.”

“Capable of murder?” He laughed. “Perhaps. But then, under the right circumstances, I think we are all capable of murder.”

Rachel said nothing. She wanted to leave and never see this man again, but he leaned over, propping his hands on the arms of her chair and pinning her to her seat.

“Your attitude raises another question,” he said. “Believing, as you do, that I tried to finance the commission of this crime, I cannot help but wonder why you haven’t contacted the authorities. Was it because you were so eager to keep the money? Is that why you closed your eyes to the probable truth? Were you hoping the deed would simply fade into the past? That no one would come looking for the money or for answers?”

Rachel dared not move lest she come into contact with him. She tilted her head back to look in his face and saw a steely determination that frightened her even more than his words. “My mother insisted we say nothing. We needed the money to stock the shop”—she cringed at the mercenary light in which her words painted Jillian—“and we did not know who to return it to. If you had indeed paid my father to set the fire, we felt safe as long as we said nothing. Our shop serves a great purpose. It is the only outpost for books this far north. Many of the country homes in the surrounding counties rely on us to stock their libraries, seeing that we are much closer than London.”

“Justification, surely.”

“Not only that but my mother was trying to protect against—”

“My turning you out.” His breath, smelling faintly of brandy, fanned her cheeks, and Rachel nodded.

“Funny how you suffered no qualms about keeping money that was not your own. That was, according to your knowledge, given in trade for a woman’s life. Yet you dare censure
me
?” His voice sharpened. “You would let the mystery of a murder go unsolved while holding a piece of the puzzle, and for money and security’s sake never come forward? Tell me, have you no respect for truth and honesty?”

Rachel stiffened at his condescending tone. The question of whether or not it had been honest to keep the money and hold her silence had troubled her from the beginning, but she’d used her belief in her father’s innocence to justify her behavior. In the beginning, no one had connected Jack McTavish with the fire. So why cast any aspersion on his name? Her father hadn’t killed Lady Katherine. Someone else did, and it could have been Lord Druridge as easily as not.

She summoned the last of her courage. “That’s an easy thing for you to say,” she replied. “Forgive me for not shouting what I know from the rooftops, but I felt the money well spent. It is not as though we have lived like you do.” She waved a contemptuous hand around her. “We used the money to keep the shop open and to buy books—for our wealthy clients, yes, but also so that we could teach the villagers how to read and write. On some level I considered it your contribution to the community, if you will. Besides, what I know would not have helped anyone, you least of all. So forgive me for letting you run the gauntlet alone. You, who are virtually untouchable by the law and, by comparison, have known so little of need or loss or difficulty. Even the fire rid you of a wife you no longer wanted!”

The muscles of the earl’s face tensed until he looked as though he had been carved and polished out of marble. With a haughty glare, he pushed himself away. “Are you certain my life is so much better?”

“At least you don’t have to worry about hunger or deprivation.”

“I didn’t know that affluence, or possessing a title, for that matter, made me any less human, any less capable of feeling than other men.”

“My lord, if you had a heart beneath that fine dressing gown, you would not have forced me to betray my father’s memory to save my dying mother—”
Her voice broke, causing Rachel to draw a shuddering breath that sounded more like a sob. Standing, she shoved past him and headed for the door, eager to make good her escape before she lost any more of her dignity. “I am going back, with or without your precious physician. So if you plan to kill me as you did your wife, you had better do it quickly.”

Catching her by the elbow, he spun her around before she could reach the door. “Kill you? You little idiot! If I were the monster you accuse me of being, you would have been dead long before now. Instead, you are alive and well enough to make damning judgments on matters you know nothing about. Do you think I felt no betrayal when my wife slept with other men? Do you think it wasn’t painful to be taunted by the knowledge of it? To receive the bland smiles of those I considered my friends, who had taken my wife into their beds? That I could not feel—that I still do not feel—the loss of my son, a life I valued more than my own?” His fingers tightened almost painfully on her arm.

“Stop, you’re hurting me,” she said, but he wasn’t hurting her. Not yet. She was just afraid he would. The pressure of his grip eased, but still Rachel could not twist out of his grasp.

“Not until you answer me. Do only the poor feel pain, Miss McTavish, while the rich know nothing but peace and happiness? By your own admission, you are an educated woman. Please, do not try to sell me that bag of rot.”

Rachel didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t think when he was so close. She blinked up at him, her heart pounding.

A slight flaring of his nostrils revealed the degree of his anger. “If you espouse such a philosophy then perhaps I am not the only one walking numbly through life.”

She didn’t feel numb now. She felt vitally aware of him, more aware of this man than any she’d ever met before, and it came as a total shock that he seemed to be having the same reaction to her.

His gaze dropped to her lips, which she instinctively parted. But then someone knocked, and he shoved her away.

The housekeeper entered, stopping midstride to glance curiously at them both. “Doctor Jacobsen is ready.”

The earl pivoted toward the fire. “Thank you, Mrs. Poulson.” He sounded calm and in control again. And when he finally turned to Rachel, his face was shuttered, revealing none of the heated passion that had played upon it a heartbeat earlier. “I will go change. But first, I have one more question.”

Rachel scarcely heard his words. The emotional storm that had gripped them both seemed to have passed as quickly as it had broken, but the earl’s touch had left her shaken, burning with a memory she already knew she’d never forget.

“Can you give me the names of any of those at the colliery who were involved in this with your father?”

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “No.”

“Because you don’t know or because you won’t tell?”

“I don’t know.”

Sharp movements revealed the fact that he wasn’t as calm as he pretended to be when he retrieved the poker and stabbed the logs of the fire. “Very well, Miss McTavish.” He tossed the implement against its brass stand with a resounding
clang
. “You shall have your doctor. If you will excuse me, we will soon be on our way.”

The earl swept past her, leaving Rachel in a tangled web of half-thoughts and sensation. Had he really looked at her as if… as if he might
kiss
her?

Mrs. Poulson followed him out. When the door closed behind them, Rachel touched her lips, realizing with a flash of guilty insight that some small part of her had reacted to the passion inside him. Despite his role as a titled gentleman, there seemed to be a facet inside him that society could not tame, something stimulating yet dangerous, like standing at the edge of a cliff and feeling the mysterious, subtle pull to jump.

Overwhelmed, she dropped her hand. Her mother required a physician. The rest was madness and should be ignored. For better or for worse, she had fulfilled her half of the bargain with Lord Druridge. Now it was time for him to make good.

Staring into the fire, she waited for the housekeeper or Lord Druridge to return and escort her out. But no one came. The mantel clock ticked loudly above the fire, mocking the passage of time and drawing out Rachel’s nerves
until she thought she might scream. When would they leave? Her mother needed her!

Finally, she could take no more. Regardless of the earl, or his doctor, or the storm that raged against the house, she was going home. Grabbing her cloak, she marched across the room, flung open the door, and stalked into the hall.

But there a sudden jolt knocked her to the floor.

Chapter 3

Rachel blinked up at the earl in surprise.

“Do you always charge from a room with such force?” he asked.

Having donned a white shirt and stock with his stirrup trousers, as well as a green brocade waistcoat with a knee-length overcoat and top hat, he reached down to help her up. He appeared unruffled and remote, while Rachel felt as though she had just barreled into the stone wall surrounding the manse.

“I am sorry. I didn’t know you were there,” she muttered as she regained her feet.

Ignoring her apology, he turned to Mrs. Poulson. “Has Wythe returned?”