Chapter Sixteen

The day’s meeting with Armbruster’s man-of-business had resulted in good news and bad news. The bad news was that the earldom Jacob had inherited was not flush with riches. The good news was that it wasn’t exactly poor, either.

The other bad news was that Jacob had some things to learn and things to do if he wanted to make the earldom profitable. Huntley, the man-of-business, had been optimistic. There was good land surrounding the estate. The former earls had been lucky and had been able to keep the land, whereas others had been forced to sell off pieces to stay afloat.

There were opportunities for more farming and to build a factory, if he wanted, although he hated the idea of disrupting the countryside with more factories even while he understood that factories were the way of the future and provided much-needed jobs for the area.

He had a lot of thinking to do and another meeting scheduled with Armbruster and Huntley in the future.

When he arrived home he found Charlotte in his office, staring out the window. Usually she was in the upstairs study waiting for him, so he was taken aback to see her here.

“You’re home early,” she said, her voice oddly detached.

“I met with Armbruster’s man-of-business. We went over the records of the Ashland estate. It didn’t take as long as I thought.”

“And is it good news?”

“Good and bad. Seems I have my work cut out for me.”

“Are you pleased with that?”

“Mostly.” He actually was energized by this new opportunity. He’d always liked to learn new things, and this was certainly going to be a learning experience. And the opportunity to help people, to enrich his new tenants’ lives, had excited him.

This new revelation had surprised him, but he had decided to embrace it and to use his newfound position to do good.

Maybe Charlotte was his first project.

“Most people would love to be the earl of something or other.”

He tossed his hat on the chair by the door. “I am becoming accustomed to the idea.” She didn’t seem herself. There was an emotionless aspect to her that was disconcerting.

He gave her the time she needed to gather her thoughts by sitting at his desk and eyeing the large pile of mail that had been accumulating. Invitations, Mrs. Smith had said. There were quite a lot of invitations. He wasn’t certain that he would be able to embrace this aspect of being an earl.

Maybe Armbruster was right. Maybe if he married Charlotte the invitations would go away because he would not be in the market for a wife.

What a shameful thought that was. Taking a wife for a shield against Society was not a good reason to marry someone.

“Lord Chadley called on me today.”

Jacob’s head came up, and he was instantly on edge. “And?”

She was looking down at her hands folded across her stomach, her thumbs twirling around each other the only indication of her unsettled feelings.

“And we talked. He’s a nice man, very apologetic.”

“That’s good.” Right? That was good? Why did he have the feeling that it wasn’t as good as he hoped?

She shrugged. “It doesn’t erase what they did to my mother. She’s the one he needs to apologize to. No. His father is the one who needs to apologize to her. He’s the one who caused her so much anguish. Not me.”

“Maybe they have mended their differences in heaven.”

Her lips twitched in a grin that made him relax somewhat. She wasn’t nearly as cross with him as he had first thought.

“The former marquess’s actions hurt you, too,” he said. “You deserve an apology as well.”

“Maybe. But it wouldn’t change anything.”

“You can forge a future that was heretofore denied you.”

Her eyes held a defeated quality that he didn’t like to see. “It’s too late for that.”

“It’s never too late to take a different turn.” He found his hope sliding away, and he hated himself for hoping in the first place. And what in the hell was he hoping for anyway? He’d already determined he wasn’t going to marry her.

Marry Miss Morris.

For God’s sake, Armbruster needed to get out of his head.

“Maybe five years ago, three years ago, or even three months ago, things might have been different,” she said. “But not now.”

“Why?” He slammed his hand down on his desk, frustration and anger boiling over. Damn it, but she was being so obstinate, refusing to open her eyes and see the possibilities.

“Because it is!” she shouted back, her face suddenly pink with… Anger? Regret? God, why did he hope it was regret?

“It’s not. It’s never too late.”

“You have such a simplistic view of life.”

He felt as if he’d been slapped. “I watched my wife die and then my son. There was nothing simple about either of those things. But what I do have is optimism and the belief that you can change your own destiny. You have that same optimism, or you wouldn’t have fled your aunt’s house and made plans to go to America.”

She huffed out a breath, and he felt as if the conversation had derailed.

“Do you really think I fled because I had this absurd hope for a better future? Because I wanted to change my destiny? I fled to save my life.” She yelled the last word and pounded her chest with her fist. Her color was high and she was breathing deep and she never looked more beautiful to him, but her words made him cold and fearful.

“Why were you scared for your life, Charlotte?”

She passed a hand over her eyes and dropped it to her side. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“If you’re in danger I have a right to know. I brought you into my house, and I have people here to protect as well.”

“No one knows I’m here. You should be safe.”

“Should be? Should, Charlotte? What the hell does that mean? And you’re wrong. A lot of people know you’re here. Armbruster, Chadley, Mrs. Smith, Sarah, Suzette. So, you had better tell me what kind of danger you are in and, by association, I am in.”

She pressed her lips together.

“You can’t suddenly be silent now.” He was seething, and he realized he hadn’t felt this high emotion for a long time, since the early days after his family’s death. It felt good. It made him feel alive.

Damn it, he wanted to help her and he would. Whether she wanted it or not.

“You can trust me,” he said softly.

“I know that.”

“Then why don’t you want to?”

The minutes ticked by while she gathered the courage to tell him. Jacob grew lightheaded while waiting, then realized he was holding his breath in anticipation. What could have frightened her so much that it had chased her into the rookery for weeks?

“I think I know who is killing those women.”

She said it so softly that he didn’t catch the first part of it. The only thing he heard was “those women.”

“What did you say?”

She drew in a deep breath. “I think I know who is killing those women.”

Everything came together with sickening clarity. She wasn’t running from her aunt. She was running from a killer. A person who had murdered multiple women.

“I think it might be my cousin.”

Jacob’s mind was running slow because it took him a moment to recall who her cousin was. At first he thought she meant Chadley, but that wasn’t right because he was her uncle.

“Lord Morris?”

She nodded. She was wringing her hands, and she looked distressed and frightened, and she kept glancing at the door as if she still wanted to run.

“Why do you think it is him?”

“Can we sit down?”

“Why don’t we go upstairs to the study where it’s more comfortable.” He wanted to shake the answers out of her before she lost her nerve, but he also knew pushing her wouldn’t help the situation.

He followed her up the steps and could see her hand shaking as she grasped the handrail. They settled onto the couch, and he poured them both a glass of brandy, thinking she needed the fortification as much as he did.

She took the glass but held it between her hands, her knuckles white, her face even whiter.

Jacob waited impatiently, trying not to show it.

“He’s an odd person, Edmund. Mainly silent. When he does speak, my aunt chastises him. It doesn’t matter what he says, even if he agrees with her, she finds something wrong either with what he’s saying or the tone of his voice. In the beginning, I tried to be friends with him. I thought that if we were a solid front against my aunt it would help. But he shied away from any overtures of friendship.”

“Considering his mother berated him so much, it’s not a wonder.”

“I feel bad for him. How horrible does that sound? Five women dead, and I think he might have killed them, and I feel bad for him. It’s almost as if his mother made him into the monster he’s become. If it is him murdering those poor girls.”

“There are many children mistreated by their parents, but they don’t grow up to kill.”

She turned her glass around in her hands. “One day, not long after I had moved in, I found Edmund in my room. I had brought a doll with me that had been my mother’s. It was the only thing left of her that I owned. Everything else had been lost or taken by my aunt. But for some reason, she’d let me keep the doll. Edmund had just been yelled at by his mother. I can’t even remember what it was about. I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible during those moments for fear she would turn her wrath on me. I think I had gone into the garden. I could hear her yelling through the closed doors and windows. A little while later I snuck up to my room in the hopes of avoiding my aunt, and Edmund was there. He had these long…” She swallowed, and her fingers clutched the glass until her knuckles were white.

“He was holding long scissors, and he was just standing in the middle of the room. I said his name, and he looked at me, but it was like he wasn’t seeing me. His eyes were blank. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She paused to consider her thoughts or to gather more courage.

“I looked down at the floor and there…th-there was my doll, my mother’s doll. Her head had been ripped off, and he’d taken the scissors and stabbed it over and over and over…” A tear dripped down her cheek, and Jacob pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

Inside he was cold. Stabbed it over and over and over. He recalled his conversation with Armbruster, who had said all of the victims by the river had been stabbed repeatedly.

“I screamed,” she whispered. “I think more because I was so surprised. And…” She swallowed and closed her eyes, squeezing more tears out. His handkerchief was bunched in her hand, forgotten.

“Those glass eyes… They were staring at me. Accusing me, like I had let this happen. I gathered her head and her b-body and my aunt came running in and she saw what had happened and I think it was the first and only time I’ve seen her speechless. She just stared down at me and my doll with her mouth open and then she looked at Edmund and I remember…I remember her saying softly, ‘What have you done?’”

Jacob felt like he was sitting on the edge of his seat, waiting for the next act. She was pulling so many emotions from him—anger, fear, sadness.

Stabbed. They had all been stabbed. The doll. The women.

Good God. Is Edmund the killer?

“And then what happened,” he finally asked.

Charlotte stood and put her still-full glass down on a side table before moving about the room. She touched the petal of a flower in a vase but didn’t seem to see it.

“Nothing.”

Jacob paused. “Nothing? Nothing happened?”

“Aunt Martha took the doll from me and led Edmund out of the room. It was like he was a wooden toy, in a trance. He went where she prodded him.”

“And nothing was said about it after that?”

“I was told to forget it ever happened. My aunt even offered to buy me a new doll, but I didn’t want a doll that she had bought me. I wanted my mother’s doll.”

How odd that this miserly, stingy woman would offer to purchase Charlotte a new doll. Jacob highly doubted the woman felt badly for what her son had done. Or, had she thought it a bribe to keep Charlotte quiet?

“And so you went about your daily life even though Edmund had decapitated and stabbed your doll?” Just like those five women were decapitated and stabbed.

“Yes and no. Things returned to their type of normal. But the doll was only the first incident.”

She’d moved from the flowers to the window where she touched the curtain that was closed against the chilly, rainy night and let her fingers drift through the tassel on the tieback.

“It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized he’d moved on from inanimate objects.”

The brandy he had drunk boiled and roiled in his stomach, and he had to swallow a few times to keep it down. He really didn’t want to hear more, but he wanted to help Charlotte, and the only way to do that was to listen to her story and help her decide what they should do.

“You mean he moved on to animate objects? Living objects?”