Hours of terror, a waterfall of tears and the death knell of love had drained every drop of energy from my body, yet I could not sleep. A myriad thoughts churned through my mind—tantalizing sparks of reason swiftly doused by fragments so fantastical I could only pound my pillow and wonder if I were going mad. At one point I even suspected Vanessa was deceiving us all, taking to her bed to divert the accusations of anyone who might accuse her of murdering her mother.
Absurd, I know, but reason plays no role when a heart is broken and unnatural death hovers like a giant storm cloud above us all.
Had Hycliffe killed his wife and her lover? Had he killed Mary, Nell, and Sal? Or were the girls’ deaths totally unrelated and a madman stalked the land?
And so went my night, as every single person I had met since stepping off the stagecoach into the mist became a threat. Even the vicar, included solely because I so heartily disliked him. I finally settled on a more immediate problem, one localized to Moorhead Manor and surely easier to solve. If Robert did not shut me into the cave, who did?
Only Hycliffe and Robert knew I was party to a deadly secret. And what other reason could there possibly be?
Yet in all fairness . . . who knew I had left the house? The kitchen staff, which meant that anyone in the house might have found out. Kenrick knew where I liked to walk. He had followed me once . . .
David?
David was my friend. David would never hurt me. Yet he might well have sensed the secrets suddenly tainting my mood, the silences, the distraction, the whiff of fear. His Celtic ancestry stretched back to long before the Conquest, and I often felt he could sense, and understand, nuances no one else noticed. He, too, might have followed me to the garden, but shut me in? That made no sense at all. He had no reason to silence me. Unless he felt I was a rival for Vanessa’s affections. Or . . . did he fear the progress she was making, knowing any effort she made toward independence brought her closer to the day she would no longer need him?
Which totally belied the encouraging words he’d said to me.
And then I recalled that one of the assistant gardeners was more than a little slow in the head—good enough for tidying up debris, yet not competent enough to know a weed from a flower. Could he have come along, “tidied up” the rock, shoved the portal shut, and gone about his business, not being bright enough to realize the significance of what he had done?
Relief rushed through me. Surely that was it. Not Robert, not Hycliffe, not a plot to murder me. Just the sad result of a sluggish mind.
As the gray light of predawn peeked around the edges of the draperies, I finally slept.
I woke to Alice Ord delivering breakfast in bed. Though mortified to find myself being treated as an invalid once again, I had to admit the sight of her cheerful face elevated my spirits. “Lord Exmere sent word to let you sleep, miss,” she told me. “Said you’d had a mishap on the moor and come back late.”
“How kind,” I murmured, at a loss for anything more cogent. And what a vague but clever way to explain my absence at dinner, resulting in search parties being sent out to find me. I opened my mouth to say I’d merely lost my way when I realized I had no idea what details Exmere had invented. He could scarcely admit he had never taken Zeus from his stall, never gone near the moor, but I supposed Dobbins would corroborate any tale Hycliffe’s precious heir wished to spin.
Words from Scott’s Marmion flitted mockingly through my mind: O what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive.
When I joined Vanessa and her eager helpers for our morning routine, David even deserted his post long enough to place a blanket over my lap before handing me the English translation of the Odyssey, which, I must admit, seemed to be taking us as long to read as it did Odysseus to return to his Penelope.
Over the next few days, I embraced routine—the panacea of troubled minds. In addition to reading, painting, and embroidery, punctuated by moments of song, we had added massage of Vanessa’s legs and exercise of her upper body to our daily schedule. Twenty or thirty minutes twice a day. At the beginning of our bouts of exercise, Maud and I had taken turns, with David banished to the sitting room. But propriety soon gave way to reality. David’s hands were stronger, and besides Vanessa positively blossomed at his touch. She not only cooperated, she actually attempted to move muscles that had lain dormant for years.
Yet another secret to keep, as Maud and I stood sentinel and watched David strive to bring Vanessa’s legs back to life. If my thoughts sometimes strayed to wondering how it would feel if Robert were massaging my legs . . .
Maud cast a few knowing glances my way when she caught my blushes.
The days passed, with Sunday bringing a surprise request from Lady Emmaline. Now that the Durrant family’s visit had revived the custom of the residents of Moorhead Manor attending church, she would like to continue the tradition. “So much sorrow,” she murmured. “I feel the need.”
So naturally I went with her, with Huntley and Kenrick—grumbling over what he called his mother’s eccentricity—providing our escort. Robert, however, joined his father in his continued conspicuous absence from hallowed ground.
In spite of our hopes for solace, all we received for our efforts was yet another boring, self-righteous sermon from Mr. Aylworth, though the experience was somewhat enlivened by the surreptitious glances cast from one parishioner to the next as they made no secret of wondering who among us was capable of murder. Of savagely beating a young barmaid to death.
After dinner, served at one o’clock on Sundays, I felt the urge to go for a walk—though I doubted my feet could ever be coaxed into taking me back to the walled garden. The cliffs? But who would go with me? Both Hycliffe and Exmere were adamant about no female walking alone outside the house—a rule, I had told myself, that did not apply to the gardens. To my misfortune.
Or perhaps that wasn’t true. Perhaps I’d had an escort after all, an unseen one?
No! I had been shut in the cave by ignorance, not deliberation. No one was trying to kill me. Really.
But I would not request Exmere’s escort. I had angered him enough. Therefore, when I reached the front hall, I asked Allard if there was a footman available to accompany me on a walk.
“Will I do?”
Startled, I looked around to see David standing in the corridor that led to the green baize door that marked the way to belowstairs. “I thought you always spent Sundays with your family,” I said.
“I returned early and am not expected upstairs for an hour or more.” He smiled and any doubts I harbored fell away. This was David. Friend and fellow sufferer in the cause of improving Vanessa Wetherington’s life.
“Splendid,” I said, and off we went, though I had the distinct impression Allard did not approve.
The day was partly cloudy, with a weak sun attempting to warm the brisk November air. But as soon as we walked under the Gothic arch that graced the entrance to Moorhead Manor, I put my head down and turned into the stiff breeze blowing off the ocean. I welcomed the challenge, needing it to clear my head. David, hunched into his short coat of boiled wool, doggedly kept pace. I’d wanted an opportunity to speak privately with him, but the wind seemed ready to pounce on any words, tearing them out of my mouth and tossing them away like chaff.
And then, suddenly, as we crossed the coaching road and approached the cliffs, the wind died. Perhaps the tide had changed, for even the boom of the surf seemed quieter.
“There is something—” We both spoke at once. Then laughed.
“You first,” David said.
And now the moment was upon me, I was tongue-tied. Which could not be allowed—yet my resolution wavered. “David,” I said at last, treading as carefully as a scout behind enemy lines, “I can, of course, have no idea what you are truly thinking . . . what you feel about Vanessa. But sometimes I think I see devotion beyond what is good for either of you.” I held up my hand to keep him from interrupting. “But if you truly care for each other, as I think you do, then there is only one solution. One I have already mentioned to Vanessa, which is why, I believe, she is trying so hard to be mobile again.”
“There is no solution, Penny. For you and Exmere, possibly. For Vanessa and myself, no.”
For a moment I was shaken by his reference to Robert, but I shut out his words and said, “You must go to America. Not the Canadas, but to the United States, where you may be judged on merit and not on birth.”
We stood there not ten feet from the edge of the cliff, his dark eyes stabbing through me, flickering with a sudden wild mix of emotions. I knew I should be afraid, and yet I simply could not fear a man who had given up his life to look after the woman he had worshipped from afar. If only Robert cared for me a tenth as much . . .
“You’re mad,” David declared. “How would Vanessa survive?”
“She can only go if she recovers, and she knows it. Why do you think she is finally making the effort?”
Sheer disbelief distorted David’s handsome features. “She would do that? She would leave here forever?”
“For you, yes.” Though I said a swift and fervent prayer that Vanessa’s declarations of love were not frail will-o-the-wisps, dissolved as easily as the mists. For I had done it again—overstepped my bounds, meddled, possibly precipitating more heartbreak in a household already beset by tragedy.
David shook his head, his servant’s mask firmly back in place. “She is privileged, selfish,” he said quietly. “A true child of the aristocracy. I find this difficult to believe.”
I bit my lip as I acknowledged how clearly he saw reality. “She is spoiled,” I agreed, “and being an invalid has made her even more self-centered, yet I know she is trying. She has told me what is in her heart, and though I admit I cannot know if she will stand firm, I believe there is reason to hope.”
A particularly shrill shriek from a gull interrupted this delicate moment. Once again, I could only wonder, Oh dear God, what have I done?”
David turned and gazed out to sea, beyond the white caps to where the ocean churned blue-gray under a fitful sun. I fancied he was looking west toward a new world where rules were not so strict, where men and women were not totally bound by tradition. And then he surprised me, abruptly changing the subject.
“You have been walking in the gardens, Penny, on days almost too dim to see your hand before your face. And taking a lantern. Have you found the old smugglers’ cave, I wonder?”
I had heard the expression “my blood ran cold.” Now I knew what it meant.
“Smugglers’ cave?” I asked while my stomach churned and my brain screamed, Run!
“It hasn’t been used for many a year, but at one time it was safe storage for one of the most successful bands of smugglers on the coast. There is an entrance at the back of the hill, hidden by bushes,” David continued when I said nothing, “and easy access up the cliff next to a stream.”
“Have you been inside it?” I managed through jaws that seemed frozen in place. “Recently?”
“Not since I was a lad.” I fought to stifle my gasp of relief. “But all the boys played there at one time, though Hunt was a bit young and big-eyed about it all. The rest of us thought it the greatest place ever.”
“All the boys?” The words, hoarse with disbelief, barely made it past my lips.
“Oh aye. “Rob, Kenrick, Hunt, young Tom Ridgeway, my brother and me.”
Stunned, the only thing I could think of to say was, “How do you know I’ve been walking in the walled garden?”
“I saw you that day when you boxed Blythe’s ears. I don’t spend all my time in the house, you see, and there I was, hidden by the mist, when you entered the folly, with him soon dogging your heels. I was about to rush to your rescue when you settled the matter yourself. Since I didn’t want you to think I’d been spying on you, I took myself off. Least said, soonest mended.”
“But now you speak of it.”
“Aye.” He shifted his feet, flicked his gaze over the ocean, suddenly appearing more awkward and uncertain than when he had questioned my opinion of Vanessa’s feelings for him. “I wanted to say—though well I know it’s none of business—that if you’re meeting Rob—Lord Exmere—in the cave, it’s not . . . wise.” David gave his head a swift shake, gulped, and pressed on. I, naturally, was struck dumb. “You’re a fine woman, Penny. A friend to both Vanessa and me. I don’t want to see you come to harm.”
I gasped, suddenly realizing my hands were so tightly clasped together, pain was shooting up my arms. I broke my hands apart, wiggling my fingers to restore circulation, all the time frantically searching for a response. “David,” I finally managed, “Though I am gratified that you are concerned for me, I am disappointed you think me that much of a fool. I assure you I would not indulge in an assignation with Lord Exmere anywhere, and most particularly not in some place as dark and secretive as a cave.” Making an effort to lighten the atmosphere, I added, “Good heavens, there are likely bats and spiders and goodness knows what.” I shivered dramatically.
He eyed me askance but evidently decided there was no point in pursuing the matter. “Well, good then,” he declared. “My apologies. My only concern was that I did not wish to see you hurt. Exmere has a certain reputation, you see . . .” His voice trailed away.
“It is my years with the army, is it not?” I mused. “You all think I cannot be anything but a doxie.”
“Penny!” He appeared genuinely shocked. “If I thought that, I would not have bothered to warn you. And besides, with a murderer among us, you do not want to be caught wandering alone anywhere, even in the gardens. You must take more care.”
“As I did when I came to the edge of the cliffs with you?” I left the challenge hanging.
Slowly, he nodded. “We are all suspect, are we not?”
I shook my head, letting my gaze drift over the edge of the precipice to the sandpipers, looking more like ants, treading a narrow crescent of beach far below. Had David truly not been in the cave since childhood? Or had he watched that day, seen me discover the opening, then satisfied a natural curiosity to visit an old haunt?
Or did he not have to look because he knew what was there? And was relieved to hear I had not gone inside. At least that was how I hoped he had interpreted my words. But perhaps he had been watching when Exmere and I went there together . . . or when I finally found the entrance for myself . . .
And he was the one who shut the door.
I pulled up my hood, clutched my cloak around me, and set off toward the house, leaving David to catch up. Perhaps it was best if Lord Hycliffe and Exmere sealed the cave, burying the evidence of murder forever. And to the Devil with Right and Wrong. The problem would be over. Done with. Gone. As if it never existed.
The wind chose that moment to come howling back, blowing us home at twice the pace we had set on the way out. Yet it did not keep me from wondering about David. Common sense dictated that he, a mere stripling at the time, had no reason to murder Lady Hycliffe and her lover. But the three dead girls . . . that was something else again.
And then there was Robert, who had never indicated by so much as a jot that he had played in that cave as a boy.
I should leave Moorhead Manor. That much was clear. But the Wetheringtons were all I had. My new family. Too much of my heart lay vested behind these forbidding stone walls. As we passed the statue of David adorning the courtyard, for the first time I made the connection with the tousled-hair David pacing me step by step.
I blushed. Furiously. My mind, unbidden, making the leap to our own David naked. And then, inevitably, to Robert. Though his nakedness I reserved for my eyes only.
I fairly galloped up the two flights of stairs, slammed the door of my room behind me, and cast myself on my bed, burying my face in my pillow. Terror, lust, embarrassment, relief at my escape—I had no idea which emotion dominated. I only knew I had finally found a situation beyond my ability to cope. The daughter of the regiment was at point non plus and had no idea where to turn.