• twenty-two •

Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride—was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate.

—Jane Eyre

Luke left right after breakfast the next morning to get his warrant. Jeremiah and his crew arrived as usual, sans Roman, of course. Emily was still debating how to spend her day when the doorbell rang. Katie was busy washing up, so Emily went to the door herself.

Roman stood on the doorstep.

Emily summoned Beatrice’s shade to augment her own rather shaky authority. “Roman, you are not welcome in this house. Katie does not want to see you, and neither do I.”

He scowled somewhat sheepishly. “Left my hammer on the roof. Came to get it back.”

Emily waffled for a moment. Allow Roman in her house, or send someone else to get the hammer? A gust of wind blew up, driving the rain almost horizontally before it. No, she couldn’t risk another person’s life on that roof for the sake of Roman’s hammer. If he cared about it enough to go after it in this weather, let him.

She watched him up the main stairs, then went to the kitchen to warn Katie to stay put so she wouldn’t be in Roman’s path. That is, unless he came down by the back stairs. Emily mounted the back stairs herself to make sure that didn’t happen.

She hung around in the deserted hallway for several minutes, half her mind on Roman and the other half on the slightly faded wallpaper of the hall: Should she replace it? And if so, with what? It wouldn’t do to favor one end of the nineteenth century over the other when she had author rooms covering the whole span.

Her attention was arrested by a sliding sound from above, followed a second later by a loud thud, a second sliding sound, and a crunching thud from the front of the house. She raced through the Brontë room and onto the balcony where, by leaning out, she could get a view of the drive just in front of the house.

On the drive to the right of the porch steps lay a crumpled form with a pool of blood oozing around its head.

*   *   *

Luke had stopped by his office and was only a couple of miles down the road when his cell rang. “Call an ambulance and come back right now!” Emily commanded him, offering no explanation. He used the radio to make the call as he turned on his siren, flipped a U on the highway, and headed back. It couldn’t be Emily herself who needed the ambulance, since she was able to call him. He prayed it wasn’t Katie or Lizzie. If he was too late with that warrant, he’d never forgive himself.

He crunched to a halt on the wet gravel of the drive and ran to where Emily stood with her arms around Katie, huddled against the rain. Next to them a dark shape lay on the ground. “What happened?”

“It’s Roman. He fell off the roof.”

Luke bent over the body, checked the pulse and respiration, even though Roman was obviously dead. His eyes were glazed, his head bashed in. Near his right hand lay a hammer.

He straightened. “What the hell was he doing on your roof?”

“He left his hammer up there the other day. Came back to get it.”

Luke looked up, pulling his cap brim forward to keep the rain out of his eyes. “Up there by the tower?”

“Yes.”

“Three stories. That could kill a man, all right.”

“I think he hit the porch roof on the way down.”

“Yup. That makes sense. It’d break his fall a little, but it’s still far enough to be lethal.” He looked down at the crumpled remains. “Even if he was a murderer, that’s a hell of a way to go.”

He went up on the sheltered porch and pulled out his cell phone to call his deputies and tell the ambulance not to hurry. What he needed here was an ME, not a paramedic.

He waved Emily and Katie up onto the porch. “Now tell me exactly what happened.”

Emily related what she’d heard and seen.

“Anybody else go up on the roof with him? Or see him go up?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go past the second-floor hall. You’d have to ask Jeremiah.” He turned toward the door, but Emily stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. The jolt that went through him spoke of how long it had been since she’d touched him.

“Luke—there’s something else you need to know.” She lifted Katie’s face from where it was buried against her coat. “Katie? Do you feel up to talking about it?”

She nodded.

“Talking about what? You see something, Katie?”

“Not today. I was in the kitchen. But when I saw him lying there—and all the blood—” She shivered, and Emily held her tighter. “I remembered. What happened before.”

Luke sized up Katie’s condition and said, “Let’s get you inside and get something hot into you.” He led the two women into the library and seated them in front of the fire, then poured them each a brandy—faster than making coffee or tea.

“Now take your time and tell me what you remember.”

Katie groped for Emily’s hand and squeezed it hard. Emily said, “It’s okay, sweetie. You can do this.”

Katie nodded, closed her eyes for a second, then spoke. “I needed to go upstairs, like I told you before. I opened the door to the secret stairwell and I saw something lying on the floor. It was dark in there with only the candlelight from the library coming in. I couldn’t tell what it was, so I went closer.” She shivered. “I knelt down beside the thing and then I saw it was a person. A man. I saw the knife sticking out of his chest and I reached for it. I don’t know why. It just looked so—wrong—sticking out of him like that. I didn’t really think, I just grabbed the knife and pulled it out. And then the blood—”

She went pale, and for a second Luke thought she was going to be sick. But she took another sip of brandy and went on. “It spurted out of him. All over me. And that’s when I screamed.”

That all fit in with the evidence he had. Except one thing still didn’t make sense. “Katie—what were you going upstairs for?”

She glanced at him, wide-eyed, then looked down again. “I—well, I guess I can tell you now. If you’re sure it was Roman who killed him.”

What the hell—?

“I was going up to confront Jake. He’d messed with Abby, and I was so mad I couldn’t see straight. I was going to go all she-wolf and make sure he never bothered any woman in my family ever again.” Then she seemed to realize what she was saying. “I mean—I wasn’t going to hurt him. Just give him a really big piece of my mind. But then—I guess Roman saved me the trouble.”

Luke’s head was swimming. “Let me get this straight. Abby had some kind of run-in with Jake?” He glanced at Emily. If Abby had told her that, why hadn’t she passed it on? Emily’s face was as red as her hair. She must have known. And deliberately concealed it from him.

Katie nodded. “He’d been flirting with her. I’d never told her about him being Lizzie’s father. She didn’t know what a dick he was. She went up the back stairs to meet him in the secret stairwell, but then she saw him there with Ms. Fitzgerald. She thought they were—you know—and she was devastated. She came running down and I caught her in the kitchen and made her tell me everything.”

“And you didn’t tell me this—why?”

Katie squeezed her eyes shut. “I was afraid Abby might have gone back up and confronted him. I knew she wouldn’t kill anybody on purpose, but—well, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t want to get her in trouble.”

Luke caught Emily’s gaze and held it. He could see in her face she’d known all of this. She’d seen how it gave Katie an even stronger motive for killing Jake, and she’d chosen to keep it to herself.

He could understand Katie keeping quiet to protect her sister. But he’d foolishly believed Emily’s first loyalty would be to him—and to the truth. Obviously he’d been mistaken.

How could he ever trust her again?

*   *   *

Katie was still shivering under Emily’s arm, although her brandy glass was dry. “Can Katie go now, Luke? She needs to get into some dry clothes.”

“Yeah, all right.”

He stood and turned his back on them as Katie left the room. Emily felt cold to her core, and not just from standing in the rain over Roman’s body. She’d left her confession too late. Would Luke ever believe she’d intended to make it at all?

“Luke—I was going to tell you.”

He spun to face her. She’d never seen him look like that—not only hurt and angry, but stone-faced, all the love-light gone out of his eyes.

“When? When were you going to tell me? When we’re old and gray, sitting around swapping stories about the good old days?”

Every word of his was a dagger, but she knew she deserved each one. “Today. I was going to tell you today. I decided in Portland I’d have to come clean. I would’ve told you last night, only when you said you were going to arrest Roman—well, it didn’t seem that urgent anymore.”

“It didn’t occur to you it might make a difference?”

“Well—no. I mean, the fact that Katie had a stronger motive didn’t make her guilty.”

He passed a hand over his eyes. “It isn’t so much that you didn’t tell me last night. It’s that you didn’t tell me in the first place. You heard the whole story from Abby, didn’t you? Three days ago?”

She nodded dumbly.

“And you just glossed over all that—made it sound like Abby seeing Jake with Cordelia was a pure accident, of no significance to her at all.”

“I thought—the fact that she’d seen them together was the important thing. Not why she was there to see it.”

“No, you didn’t. You thought if you told me the truth, you’d be handing me ammunition, which I would then turn around and use on Katie.”

Why didn’t he just cut her heart out and get it over with? She’d admitted just that to Father Paul last night, but to hear it now from Luke was like surgery with no anesthetic.

“I’m sorry, Luke. I was distraught. I had to protect Katie.”

“Against the truth?” His voice dropped from the high pitch of anger to a nearly inaudible whisper of pain. “Against me?”

She couldn’t answer.

“Couldn’t you trust me to have her best interest at heart? Don’t you know I love her almost as much as you do?”

Emily noticed he didn’t say almost as much as I love you. Oh God, what had she done?

“I—I wasn’t thinking clearly, I guess. I was desperate.” Justification was pointless now. “I was wrong, Luke. I know I was wrong. I acted against everything I believe in. But I never thought—”

“What? Never thought I’d find out? So you think I’m stupid into the bargain?”

Her chest was so tight she could hardly speak. She shook her head. “Never thought I might be doing something that could cost me your love.”

“And I never would have thought that could happen.” His expression offered her no hope.

*   *   *

This conversation had reached a low from which Luke could see no recovery. Meanwhile he had a second death to investigate.

“You better go get dry. I need to talk to Edwards.”

He followed her into the front hall. Dumbly, with an air of beaten-down hopelessness, Emily started up the stairs. Luke followed her at a distance, wondering if he’d ever be able to look at her the same way again.

She turned off into her bedroom, and he went on up to the third floor, where Jeremiah and his two workers stood clustered around the window of the front room. They turned to greet him with shocked faces. “Any of you see Roman on his way up?”

“We all did.” Edwards spoke for the three of them. “He came up, and I asked him what he was doing here, since I’d dismissed him yesterday in no uncertain terms. Said he’d left his hammer on the roof. I let him go up and followed him to be sure he didn’t cause any trouble.”

“How’d he get to the roof?”

“Window of the tower bedroom.”

“You follow him all the way onto the roof?”

“No, I stayed inside. By the window.”

“Could you see him from there?”

“Not the whole time. He disappeared around the corner. Few seconds later I saw him fall. Roof’s slick as greased lightning in this rain.”

Luke nodded. “All right. You can get back to work.” Jeremiah headed into the soon-to-be bathroom, and the two young men turned to follow him. “Just a minute, you two.”

Luke knew them—Bobby and Bertie Fillmore, two brothers who looked alike enough to be twins, though they were actually a year apart. Good kids. Luke waited till Jeremiah started hammering, then asked them, “You confirm what he said?”

Bobby, the older one, spoke up. “We saw him go into the tower room after Roman. Then a while later we heard Roman fall. That’s all we know.” Bertie nodded his confirmation.

“All right. Off you go.”

Wheels crunched on gravel, and Luke went back outside. The ambulance was pulling up to the door with Pete and Heather in the department SUV, plus Sam Griffiths in her Subaru, not far behind. Luke stood by while Heather photographed the body and Sam examined it.

“Story is he fell off the roof. That what you’re seeing?” he asked Sam.

“Injuries consistent, I’d say. Nothing to suggest otherwise. Have to get him on the slab to be sure.” She scratched her head. “One thing’s funny, though. Way his head’s bashed in, looks like he fell headfirst. If he slid off a slick roof, wouldn’t you think feet first?”

Luke studied the body’s presumed trajectory. “Yeah. I would. But maybe he didn’t slip—just lost his balance and fell backward.”

He turned to Pete and Heather. “We’ll assume accidental death for now. But you two be thorough just in case.”

Luke went back inside and up to the third floor. In the tower bedroom, he examined the window closest to the adjoining roof. The sill was wet, as he’d expected, with one pair of muddy bootprints in the water. The casement was damp, too, but he did his best to dust it for fingerprints. Not that he really expected to find any evidence of foul play. Roman may have been a nuisance, even a murderer, but as far as he could see, nobody in this house had reason to want him dead.

He opened the window and leaned out. He wasn’t about to risk his own neck on those shingles in this weather, but from what he could see the roof looked undisturbed. He pulled his head in and shut the window.

He found Emily, changed into dry clothes, huddled with a blanket in front of the library fire, a coffee tray on the table next to her. She looked so small and defeated sitting there, he was tempted to forget everything that had just passed between them and take her in his arms.

But that would be to build their relationship on a lie.

She looked up as he came in, and gestured toward the coffeepot to ask if he wanted a cup. They’d been so close, they didn’t need words to communicate. And yet she hadn’t been able to trust him to make proper use of the truth.

“No, thanks. I’m going into town to close the case.”

“So you’re sure Roman really was the murderer?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? I was about to arrest him. And you’ve been saying Roman was the culprit all along.”

“I know.” Emily picked cat hair off the hearthrug—pointless, since the three cats were still sitting there, lined up facing her like the no-evil monkeys. “I just have a funny feeling about it. It doesn’t feel as if everything is over.”

“Your feelings just haven’t had a chance to catch up to reality yet, that’s all. You’ve had trouble in this house for what, almost a month now? Since Jake first came? You’ve gotten used to trouble. It’ll take a while to get used to it being gone.”

“I guess you’re right.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

And even if the murder trouble was over, the trouble between the two of them was far from done.

*   *   *

Jake, and now Roman. And my memory came back. I should be relieved. And I am, kind of. But also freaked.

Two guys were after me, one way or another. And both of them are dead.

Am I some kind of jinx? Did some old hag put a curse on me—“Love her and die”?

Not that anyone would call what Jake had for me “love.” Roman used the word, but his didn’t feel like love on my end, either. “Lust after her and die,” maybe.

I can’t help but wonder if Jamie is safe. He actually loves me, I’m pretty sure of that, though of course he hasn’t said so yet. So if the curse says “lust,” he’s probably okay.

But I’d better stay away from him just in case. At least for now. That hurts, because I was really starting to care for him. But I can take it. I’m used to being on my own.

It’s just you and me now, Lizzie-lou. Now and maybe forever.