CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“IS THAT WHAT YOU think of me?” Barnabas sat and faced Henry. Hot molten lava flowed through his veins. He was furious with her, at the same time he was frustrated. His stones ached. If she just would have gone to sleep he could have stopped thinking about kissing her, touching her, making love to her. Or at least summoned enough decency to not molest her while she was unconscious. “That I would have us drugged, stripped, and locked up just to be alone with you?”
“To seduce me.” She might be refusing to look at him, but her words were defiant. “Or to get out of arresting the earl.”
He tossed the blanket at her and lowered himself to the mattress again. He put his arm over his face. As much as he was angry with her, it was nothing compared to his own self-loathing at the moment. His stomach hurt with it. He hadn’t meant to arouse her, but when she turned breathless at a simple stroke of his hand, he didn’t know how to stop touching her. But that she thought he would go to such lengths to seduce her sliced him deep. “When exactly would I have set this up?”
She didn’t answer.
He raised his arm and looked over at her. The long dark curtain of hair hung down her back and pooled at her hips. She rocked a little, facing the fire.
Concern broke over him like a crushing wave. He should be protecting her, not tempting her into sin when she was vulnerable and trapped.
“You wouldn’t have, unless you did it on the ferry. But that would have required making a bargain with a person or people you didn’t know well. Or you sent someone ahead before leaving London, but then you wouldn’t have known I would be with you. Hmm. Or know that my seasickness would cause a delay.” She talked as much to herself as him as she reasoned her way out it. “So you didn’t arrange for us to be here, which means the earl, likely with his brother’s help, did.”
Barnabas tensed. “It could have been Mr. Gilvaroy’s voice I heard.” Coleraine’s brother had to be part of it. He was the only one who knew they were traveling. Whether or not the earl was involved remained to be seen, but Barnabas couldn’t fault her reasoning. “He probably didn’t think it would be a bad thing since you announced to everyone in the station that we’d slept together.”
“And you told him I was your intended.”
“Have you absolved me of guilt?” He moved beside her so he could see her face. “Or do you think I wanted to torture myself by being alone with you for who knows how long?”
Her eyes widened in a hurt way, then she fired back, “If you planned to have your—“
“Making myself look a fool is obviously not the way to charm you,” he interrupted.
She bit her lip.
He relented and softened his voice. “Regardless of who is responsible, we’re stuck here for now and we need to deal with it.”
God, was Coleraine behind this?
She put her chin on her knees and the long dark curtain of her hair slid off her shoulder.
He took a deep breath. In spite of what had happened between them already, she wasn’t ready to go further, yet. Whether or not she wanted to marry him, this thing between them had grown. It would come to fruition at some point, but he’d do well to remember she was inexperienced—and trapped. He should not take advantage of her in this situation.
“You are right. It is dangerous for us to sleep at the same time.” He moved off the mattress onto the cold floor in front of the hearth ahead of her and sat cross-legged. “You sleep. I will sit and watch the fire.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “That’s why I was trying to get you to talk about something...something that should put a damper on things.”
What she wanted him to talk about would likely do the trick. Already his memories pushed at his thoughts as if they’d been kept at bay far too long. He never discussed what had happened. Hell, he never would have mentioned it, except in a knee-jerk response to her wrong-headed accusation that he believed aristocrats weren’t capable of committing murder. A chill ran through him and he scooted closer to the fire.
The explanation pushed at his lips as if it wanted out. He just wanted to tell someone who would believe him—not that Henry was a good choice. But he’d never told anyone since it happened. He rubbed his forehead. Telling Henry was a bad idea on so many levels, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to confide in her. If for no other reason than to show her she was wrong about him. He didn’t have a closed mind. “Can I trust you? If you ever wrote about it, I would be sunk.”
His family’s disapproval of what he did would sour to the point of severing relations with him. For a second he wondered if that would be a good thing.
“I’m not going to write about it.” She looked over at him. “I promise. No tricks. You’ve made your point.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. He wasn’t certain what point he’d made or that he’d been trying to make a point. “What point?”
“That it isn’t right to follow the letter of an agreement, but not the spirit.” She scooted to the floor beside him, tucked the blanket under her toes, and put her chin on her knees. “You knew what I meant when I said ‘no kissing.’”
His face heated. He knew, but had been unable to resist touching her. He hadn’t been trying to teach her any kind of lesson. He reached for a poker to stir the fire, only there wasn’t one. “You’re just so soft, it’s hard to not touch you.”
Her mouth tightened.
Her displeasure confused him. He’d meant it as a compliment. “I guess neither of us is to be trusted.”
“I mean it.” She grimaced, but then raised her chin. “I don’t see any reason to write about what we discuss here. I’m here to write about Coleraine’s arrest...or escape.”
He could tell her the story without naming who he was talking about. With that rationalization, he knew he would tell her. They had to come to trust each other or there was no hope for their future. And no matter how many times he told himself there was nothing between them, he yearned for her all the time. He had to be the one to offer an olive branch. While telling her what had happened and not telling her who the story was about was only giving her a half measure of trust, it was more than he’d offered anyone else. And he needed to think about something other than how sweet she tasted. “It was some time ago.”
He stared into the flames, his mind spinning back to that awful summer that had formed him. His chest tightened.
“Were you investigating a murder?” she prompted.
“Not at first. I, uh, was only fourteen years of age.”
Her brow puckered. “You investigated a murder when you were a teen?”
He gave a short nod in answer. He could see the gears turning in her head so he waved his hand to stave off further inquiry. “There was a...uh...gentleman.” He didn’t like the word in that context. He hadn’t been a gentleman in behavior. “A gentleman by birth. A young man with an honorary title and expectations of inheriting his father’s title.” Thank God, that would never happen.
“A nob.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. All the layers of distinction in the rank and file of aristocrats and their families meant nothing to her.
“Was he murdered?” She leaned toward him.
He needed to control the delivery of the story or he risked telling her too much or giving her the detail that would help her put things together. That she’d figured out Miss Hall’s identity without much help from him gave him pause. “Do you want me to tell the story or would you rather question me about what happened?”
“Do tell, but he’s either the murderer or the victim.” Her shoulders lowered a fraction. “I’m assuming a murderer because you said the murderer was a nob. Unless the victim was one, too.”
He was glad to see her relaxing. “We were playmates as children. He was a few years my senior, but close enough in age to be a constant companion. Still, I knew him well, better than most.” Barnabas had been with him when he pulled the wings off butterflies, then moved on to inventive ways of starting fires to flush out rats just to bash them into bloody pulps. There had been a fascination with cock fighting and dog fighting. When Barnabas objected to the cruelty, their fellowship had cooled or heated depending on how one interpreted their fisticuffs. “I know he was drawn to violence.”
Henry inched closer and leaned to watch him. He supposed she wanted to see his expression as he told the story. His fingers curled into fists and his stomach clenched as it often had back then.
“There was a young woman who’d caught his fancy.” Barnabas chose his words with care. “A butcher’s daughter, not in his league.” Hell, he should have just named her a villager, or a tradesman’s daughter.
“Not someone he’d marry,” observed Henry with a wry tone.
“Not a girl he would marry.” Barnabas echoed. The kind of girl who could be made a mistress for a few coin, except she was a good girl. “But that didn’t stop him from pursuing her. Nor did her refusals.”
“She was murdered?” asked Henry.
“Not only murdered, but beaten, strangled, and raped.” He winced for Henry’s sake. “She was found off a path through a wood. Not far from”—the mill—“where a simple man lived with his parents.”
The miller’s son had been a decade older than Barnabas. The man had the distinctive distorted features of those with less than full faculties, and had the sweet disposition those of his kind possessed. “He’d made the mistake of asking the butcher’s daughter to marry him the week before she was killed.”
Henry was listening raptly, her eyes glistening with interest. “Was the girl unkind in her refusal?”
“Not that I know. This simpleton, he asked at least one pretty girl to marry him every year. No one ever thought anything about it, but then again none of the girls had come to harm before. He was accused of murdering her, and people came to believe he must have done it. He was induced to confess.”
Her brows drew together. Most people doubted anyone would confess to a murder if one hadn’t done it, and Henry didn’t look any different.
“He had a childlike mind, he would say anything if he thought it was what the listener wanted to hear. I know. He often was teased mercilessly until he said things that made him the butt of a joke.”
She looked skeptical, but it happened.
“People think only torture would make someone admit to something they didn’t do, but that isn’t true. With the right pressure, a confession can be wrought out of an innocent. Especially a simple-minded one.”
“If you say so,” she said in a voice that was more placating that convinced.
He shook off the faint spike of annoyance. He’d had as much hubris when he was her age. She’d learn if she kept reporting on crime. “In any case, I didn’t believe he’d done it. I thought it more likely the, uh, gentleman had.”
Barnabas smoothed his hand down his thigh, trying to release tension. The fear of confrontation, the sick dread, the knowing without wanting to acknowledge the truth haunted him. “I asked him about his pursuit of her. He denied any interest in the girl. Said he was long over her.” Barnabas took a deep breath. “But I could tell he was lying. And he was quite impervious to any grief he should have felt over her death.”
Henry put her hand on his shoulder, as if she knew how difficult it was to talk about it.
Barnabas closed his eyes for a second. The details smashed in with a battering ram’s subtlety, hitting him hard in the stomach. An unexplained scratch on the hand, the flatness of his cousin’s eyes, the lie that he’d stayed after tea an hour longer with Barnabas’s own family.
Barnabas had walked home knowing he’d been talking to the murderer, but proof was slim. A time line that wasn’t accurate, a scratch... His ears had been ringing and his legs felt as if they were made of wood. He’d known he had to do something, but he hadn’t known what.
Henry squeezed his shoulder. For once Henry was waiting for him to continue and not pushing with questions. He turned toward her. She’d moved near enough to touch, the blanket wrapped around her like a shawl. Somehow she cut through the desert of his isolation. His family had withdrawn from him, was still keeping him at arms length.
“I became an investigator then. I went to the place the girl’s body had been found and got down on my hands and knees and searched the dirt and weeds. I found a button made of jade.”
“Not the kind of button a simpleton would be likely to wear,” she observed. “Nor a butcher’s daughter.”
Worse than that. “I recognized the button.”
He remembered the sick wash of certainty that had come over him, holding that tiny tangible bit of proof in his hand. His stomach had threatened to reject its contents. Even now, more than a dozen years later, his stomach churned.
She leaned against him in what was probably a show of sympathy. “What did you do?”
The surge in his blood wasn’t sympathy. Still the desire to pull Henry close didn’t mesh with the images in his head. “I took it to him and showed it to him. Told him I knew he had killed her. I tried to appeal to his sense of honor that an innocent man would hang for something he didn’t do. Told him that I knew he didn’t intend to kill her.”
He’d even gone so far as to say the girl deserved what she got because she was stupid enough to refuse an affair with a lord, but the miller’s son shouldn’t hang for it. He’d only meant the last part. He’d thought if he made what happened seem understandable, an admission might be forthcoming. Barnabas shook his head at his own stupidity. “I should have gone to his father.”
“What happened?” Henry prompted quietly in a manner he knew to be effective for interrogation once someone had begun talking.
He filed away the observation. He didn’t see her mode of prompting, pushing, and then listening as calculating on her part, but more a natural ability to get people to talk. He’d had to work towards developing the skills.
“When it was clear he wouldn’t confess, I turned to leave.” Barnabas stared into the fire as the echoes of terror swept over him. He kept himself still and worked to modulate his voice to sound normal, although he sounded flat instead. “He wrapped an arm around my neck, and the next thing I knew we were in the wine cellar. He was sitting on me and pouring brandy down my throat.”
He’d choked awake with the sensation of drowning and pressure on his chest, but the liquid hadn’t stopped. He’d swung wildly, knocking the cask away, but the burn as the alcohol hit his eyes had blinded him. George pinned Barnabas’s arms with his knees. “All I could do was swallow so I wouldn’t breathe the brandy. I still can’t abide the taste of it.”
“Was he trying to kill you with drink?”
“Yes.” That was a simplified version. Barnabas had been certain he would die, drown in the brandy pouring down his throat. His lungs had burned with it, his stomach had revolted, and his body had grown numb.
As a last ditch effort he stopped breathing, stopped swallowing, stopped fighting. The brandy continued into his mouth and came out his nose. He stayed that way counting in his head to a hundred, his lungs screaming, his stomach lurching, his reflexes trying to fire. Only fear kept his pretense at unconsciousness from becoming reality.
Then the button was dug out of his pocket. Still counting he managed to let his head loll to the side to let the liquid fall out of his mouth. He only made it to a hundred and forty-two before he gasped and coughed and took a wild swing at the same time.
“What happened?” Henry asked.
“I feigned death and he finally left.” But not before Barnabas had been unable to contain a gurgling cough and received more brandy down his throat. He passed out a couple of times. When he woke he was alone and gagging.
The wine cellar had been spinning, and he’d been unable to stand. He’d stuck a finger down his throat until he rid himself of as much of the brandy as he could. Then he’d collapsed on the floor, falling in and out of consciousness until a servant found him. “I was sick for a couple of weeks with pneumonia. No one was certain I would live.”
“Pneumonia?”
“I breathed in a lot of the brandy.” And other things. He’d learned later that it had been a maid asking if he was staying to dinner that had saved him from being killed with the first choke hold, and his cousin’s need to appear on time at dinner that led to him leaving before the job was done. In any case, Barnabas had almost died anyway.
During his recovery, he’d scarcely been able to breathe, and breathing hurt with stabbing pains throughout his chest. He’d been in and out of consciousness during the first few days. “I don’t think my parents left my side.” Or George might have finished him. “But they thought I’d gone on a binge on my own.”
“When I had my senses, I tried to tell them what had happened, but it was too late for the man who’d confessed. He’d already been hanged. Then they didn’t want to believe me.”
The burn of their doubt never left him. As if he’d make up such a story. But his cousin had planted lies while he lay near death. Told them Barnabas had asked what to drink if he wanted to get drunk. Told them some far-fetched tale of refusing to help him and that I had gone wild and threatened horrible things if he didn’t help me get into the wine cellar. His family had preferred to believe his cousin rather than the awful truth.
The button—his only real piece of proof—had been sewn back on his cousin’s coat and worn proudly the day he visited. He’d shown all kinds of concern. Asked the doctor if Barnabas could have suffered vivid nightmares while unconscious. Nightmares so vivid they supplanted reality. Then his cousin had looked so oddly at Barnabas’s younger sister, he knew she was at risk.
“I was too late in waking to save the innocent man, and I feared what this gentleman might do to my sisters if I persisted. In the end I told them I was lying about it all. That I had dreamt it.”
Henry reached out and he took her hand. Somehow the simple act reassured him. She believed him. But of course she didn’t know who he was talking about or the complicated relationships involved.
He entwined their fingers and struggled to keep his grip from crushing her delicate little bones.
“You’re cold,” she said and moved closer, offering the edge of the blanket.
The memory chilled him more than the ambient temperature. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders anyway. “That is how I know that a nob can be a murderer.”
“Hmm,” she responded. “You know it wasn’t your fault that justice went astray.”
Intellectually knowing he’d tried to stop an innocent man from being hanged didn’t absolve him of guilt. He always wondered if there were other victims.
Then, of course, because Henry would want to know the rest of the story she interrupted his musing. “Was he ever held accountable?”
Barnabas settled against her warm body and wrapped an arm around her waist. The residual heat of his banked desire stirred. “No, not really.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s dead now.” A cliff diving accident in Greece or so they’d been told.
She turned and studied the side of his face. He held his breath, half suspecting he wouldn’t like turning away the rest of her questions, but he had to.
“It was your cousin, then?”
He jerked. How in the bloody hell had she figured that out? And if she had been uncertain, his response gave it away.
“Of course it was,” she answered herself. “That does explain why you would become an inspector.”
How had he betrayed himself? If she ever told anyone, let alone wrote about his cousin, he would be cut off from friends, family, and expectations. He was foolish for trusting her with such an important part of his life story. “What gave it away?” he asked carefully.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “You were being so careful”—she yawned—“with what you said. And well, his death. I think I can sleep now.”
He had half a mind to shake her. He’d bared his darkest secret and she was falling asleep on him.