CHAPTER 16

The door opened. No knock or forewarning.

Jack Livingston appeared. He was on the short side but muscular, with silver-gray hair trimmed close to his head and a weathered face with intense dark gray eyes.

“Well, Victoria, how are you feeling?”

“I’m doing quite well, Jack,” she said, not quite truthfully. She was beginning to pave the way toward their exit from this place. “I had a good nap.”

Jack walked over to them. By now Kenton had come to his feet. Jack gazed down at his half sister. “I still can’t believe you’re here, Victoria. Can’t believe you’re alive. All them years that old Brady here spent looking for you, I thought he was crazy. So did a lot of others.”

Kenton smiled just a little. “I might note that there are plenty who think you’re a little crazy yourself, Jack. You live up here in this big house, run people off who come around, act like a hermit … then every now and then you take a notion to go to town and buy everybody a drink.”

“It ain’t always that. Once I went into the Buckeye and bought everybody in the place a plate of flapjacks.”

“You’re an odd man, Jack. Then again, so am I, I suppose.”

Jack smiled at his half sister. “Your face is as pretty as ever, Victoria, but I can see the tracks of what you’ve been through in your eyes. What did this Kevington fellow do to you?”

“He loved me, and he imprisoned me. He saved my life, then took my life away. He delivered my daughter while I lay unconscious, then gave her to a servant family to raise as their own. He declared that I would have all the good things life could offer, but denied me my freedom. He told me I was his wife, but treated me as his slave. In short, he subjected me to a life of contradictions, Jack. That was my life with Dr. David Kevington.”

Livingston’s left cheek twitched. “I’d like to shoot the bastard myself.”

“I’d like to beat you to it,” Kenton said. “I almost had the opportunity, you know.”

“Did you? I wish you’d done it. Was that while you were spiriting Victoria out of his estate?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”

“Now’s as good a time as any, seems to me.”

“Later, maybe.” Kenton wasn’t about to go into details on the spot of what had been a horrifying series of events for Victoria. His removal of her from the Kevington estate near London had been nearly fatal for both of them. When Kenton thought back on the rabid fury that Kevington had displayed when he caught Kenton smuggling away the woman he had in his snare for years, it was easy to realize that Victoria was right when she predicted that Kevington would surely come after them.

“There’s things about this I have a right to know,” Jack said. “Is Kevington likely to show up here?”

“I don’t believe Kevington is likely to find us easily … but eventually, yes, I think he will find us. We were just talking about that, Victoria and I, when you came in.” Kenton didn’t figure this was news to Livingston, who probably had been crouched with his ear to keyhole throughout the couple’s conversation.

Kenton despised having to live under the protection of a man he never would really like.

“Let him come,” Livingston said icily. “I’ll blow his candle out for him.”

Kenton realized that Victoria had grown tense in the last few moments, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the armrest of the wicker chair. He felt a surge of mixed emotions. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, he knew Victoria still held an affection of a sort for Kevington—who had, after all, nursed her away from the brink of death after her train accident. It was probably difficult for her to listen to him and Livingston talking about killing Kevington as if it would be a privilege.

Victoria had made it clear that she hated Kevington, but Kenton knew that her hatred was not pure. For her there would always be a measure of affection mixed with her loathing. Kenton could not blame her for this. It was possible, maybe likely, that if not for Kevington’s intervention after Victoria’s railroad accident many years before she might not be alive.

“Come to think of it, maybe it’s time to tell you the full story after all, Jack,” Kenton said. “Let’s go downstairs, leave Victoria in peace, and get ourselves a glass of that good whiskey of yours. Then we’ll talk.”

*   *   *

Billy Connery had given up sketching the Livingston mansion only minutes after he started. He wasn’t in Culvertown to sketch but to find Brady Kenton … and now that he had a likely idea of where Kenton was, his courage was failing him.

Part of it was simple fear over how the eccentric Livingston would react to a visitor at his door. But Connery was almost as worried about how Kenton would receive him. The man wasn’t hiding for no reason and surely would not be happy to be ferreted out.

So Connery found himself unable just yet to force himself up to that big house on the hill.

A beer was what he needed. Maybe two. A couple of beers, and he’d have the courage to do what needed doing.

He headed for the nearest saloon and along the way chanced to pass the local undertaking parlor. The door opened as he passed; a man came out. Connery looked through the door before it could swing shut and was just at the right angle to see through a second, interior doorway, back into the rear room where the dirty work of undertaking was done.

For just a moment he caught a glimpse of two bodies laid out, one on a slab, naked, the undertaker leaning over it, hard at work, with a cigar dropping hot ashes on the dead man. The other corpse was still clothed and waiting his turn on the floor. The outer door swung closed, and the vision of mortality was gone.

But Connery was shaken. Maybe he’d have three beers instead of two.

In the saloon with the first beer in hand, he further pondered the two dead highwaymen. Who had killed them? Whoever he was, he was a good shot to have plugged both so neatly, from a distance, with shots between the eyes. That was one man the pair shouldn’t have tried to rob.

He wondered if the local law would spend much time investigating the deaths. He would be willing to wager that they would not. No one would be much inclined to punish men who had rid the region of two troublesome highwaymen.

So here’s to you, whoever you are, he said mentally as he raised his glass to the unknown marksman. May you forever eliminate thieves and keep our roadways safe … and, just in case, may you forever keep your distance from me.