CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BARNABAS WATCHED COLERAINE. HE went from surprise, to shock, to anger and confusion. It would be hard to fake that series of emotions, but Barnabas was trying to figure out if Coleraine was play-acting or just reacting. His instincts said just reacting, but he wasn’t certain he trusted his intuition any longer.
Coleraine asked, “Where?” in a voice gruff with emotion. He started to rise and looked out of the doors to the entry hall beyond. “Is she here?”
Aidan Gilvaroy leapt to the girl’s side and tried to steer her out of the dining room.
Barnabas needed more eyes to watch everyone at once. He kicked Henry under the table. “Watch her for me,” he mouthed. He jerked his head in the girl’s direction.
Henry gave him a sour look and shook her head negatively.
Barnabas wanted to wring her neck. She was so damn stubborn. Surely she had to see that his investigation took precedence over any news she needed to report.
“She’s down by the sea,” the girl sang. “You have to come quick, before the tide comes in.”
Shock again on Coleraine’s face—and fear. Fear was interesting. He fell back into his chair as if his legs wouldn’t support him. He raised a hand to his face. “Get her out of here.”
“But it is your wife,” said the girl. “She wanted you to know she was sorry to leave you.”
Barnabas watched the whirlwind of emotion on Coleraine’s face, looking for the one thing that would give him away, but he didn’t see it. Nothing seemed wrong in the way Coleraine reacted, unless it was just a little too much emotion. But an actor would likely focus on one emotion or at best two.
The company split. Half of them went with the girl as Aidan carried her out of the dining room, leaving only Barnabas, Coleraine, and his sister in the dining room.
Barnabas needed to pin Coleraine down to what he believed happened to his wife, before the remains told their own story. He had to see if the man would slant his story in any way to cover his tracks. Always before, the earl refused to say what he thought had happened to his wife or where she was.
Barnabas had a better idea of what the staff suspected, although there were some secrets he hadn’t entirely pried out of them. But Coleraine and his wife had fallen out on the night his father died. The countess hadn’t been the same afterward. Oddly, she’d been the one who seemed to grieve and be despondent. Some thought she’d decided the marriage wasn’t for her and left. Others thought she’d walked into the sea and drowned herself.
Coleraine shrugged away from the comfort his sister tried to offer and leaned against a windowsill, staring outside.
Barnabas walked toward the earl but stayed just out of arm’s reach in case the man was angry enough to lash out. “Did your wife commit suicide?”
“I don’t know,” Coleraine spit out. “But if she did, she bloody well isn’t lying out there by the sea, seven years after the fact. I don’t know who that girl is, but she must be insane.”
“Hmm,” Barnabas made a sympathetic sound. Coleraine was consistent. He’d always said he didn’t know. “I’ll just go see what I can learn.”
*~*~*
Henry stared with dismay as Siobhan ran down the hillside at a faster clip than she could manage in her high heeled boots on the slippery grass. Barnabas and Miss Hall were following the girl, too. They all wanted to see if there really was a body in a cave by the ocean, as the young woman had claimed.
“You have to hurry,” Siobhan called back to them. Her vivid red hair streamed out behind her, while her cloak billowed with the wind. She was slender and long-legged in a way that made Henry feel top heavy and bottom heavy and well, jealous that she’d never be tall or willowy. Siobhan ran like a colt, all long graceful strides.
Henry supposed she ran more like a duckling, all waddle and bounce. Her heel sank into a soft patch and caught. She wrenched her heel out of the ground with a grunt.
Miss Hall gave her a questioning look, but didn’t wait for her. Neither did Barnabas, the rotter. Instead he grabbed the lantern from Miss Hall and left them both behind.
With her next step, instead of catching, her foot slid too far forward. Her arms windmilled. Finally, she caught her balance. All right, there wasn’t any point in tumbling down the hill, so she slowed to a trot.
She wondered if she should return and watch Coleraine. But she rather suspected that when Mr. Gilvaroy had been unable to stop Siobhan from saying what she wanted to say, he’d turned to calm his cousin or to answer for bringing the young woman.
Barnabas was right on the girl’s heels. Henry wasn’t too happy with him. How like him to ignore her all day, then make that ribald comment about purchasing French letters, and then to demand she help him while at the dinner table.
Coleraine’s reaction to learning his wife’s body had been discovered was what sold papers. Admittedly, she didn’t like preying on people’s emotions, but it was that sort of thing that the public was interested in reading. It wasn’t as if Barnabas would fill her in on all the details of how Coleraine reacted. Barnabas shared almost nothing, and less since he’d learned she was a reporter.
But in the end, she’d followed the clairvoyant girl because that was rather fascinating.
Siobhan—which was the only name Henry knew at this point—had explained she’d found bones in a cave. When Henry asked how she knew it was Lady Coleraine, she’d just said she knew.
Mr. Gilvaroy had said grimly, “She knows things. She knew my father would die on the voyage when his ship foundered. She warned me to stop him before he left.”
He’d called her fey.
Barnabas had followed them into the hall and had heard enough to start barking orders. He’d instructed Miss Hall to fetch a lantern and matches. He’d told Siobhan to show him the cave.
Several yards ahead of her, Barnabas was scrambling up a rock mound or cairn. He turned back and gave his hand to help Miss Hall and cast a disparaging look in Henry’s direction.
It wasn’t her fault she had short legs and wasn’t wearing shoes meant for traipsing around nature. “Harlow,” she called.
He ignored her.
That made her eyes burn.
He didn’t let go of Miss Hall’s hand.
What the hell?
She struggled to find footholds in the rocks. Her palms were gritty and she slipped back down. There was no way she would make it over in her heels. She sat down and pulled them off, her stockings, too.
She scrambled over the boulder. The cold rock scraped her bare feet.
None of them were in sight. A pebble and sand beach narrowed to a single-file shelf. One side was flanked by a basalt cliff, dark and jagged, the other by the sea. Water rushed and gurgled over the beach. How far ahead of her were they?
Siobhan seemed to pop out of the wall in front of her. She waited for the wave to recede and then ran back to where Henry sat, but she didn’t make it all the way before a wave caught her and soaked the hem of her gown. She didn’t look as graceful as she slopped and slid forward with the water lapping at her ankles. “They need to get out of there or they’ll be trapped.”
The wave washed in again, covering an additional foot of shore and hitting the wall, where it splashed and foamed.
But neither Miss Hall or Barnabas appeared. Henry’s heart thudded against her rib cage. She tried shouting to them. “Barnabas! Miss Hall!”
More waves pounded in, rushing higher and higher. The surf roared, undoubtedly drowning out her call.
Siobhan started back toward the cave, but a wave knocked her into the rock wall and she retreated to the wider half moon slice of shore where Henry stood.
“They’ll be stuck in there all night,” Siobhan said grimly. “I told him we had to go right away or we wouldn’t have enough time. Now they’ll have to wait until the tide goes out.”
The rushing of water filled Henry’s ears. The waves broke with more and more violence against the cliff face.
Maybe Barnabas wanted to be trapped with Miss Hall. Maybe in the cold and damp cave they’d have to huddle together for warmth. Maybe he even had his French letters in his pocket.
Henry knew she was being stupid. Miss Hall probably wouldn’t want to have intimate relations in the presence of a skeleton. But it didn’t stop her stomach from hurting or her too vivid imagination from supplying details.
“At least they have the lantern,” Siobhan said.
But that only made it worse.
*~*~*
Barnabas couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was rare to find complete skeletal remains, except in a grave, but somehow in this cave every bone appeared to be present. Of course they were in a bit of a jumble since they were disarticulated. He pushed Miss Hall’s hand up to hold the lantern over the bones, trying to get a picture. Given the breastbone was on top of pieces of spine, he would surmise the person was lying supine on the high ledge at the back of the chamber.
As caves went it wasn’t that large. Perhaps a dozen feet deep and half that across. At its zenith it was maybe eight feet high. He’d barely fit through the narrow opening. The sand, pebbles, and rocks provided a shifting mound up to the ledge.
Miss Hall’s hand shook, sending the light wavering.
Henry would have been steadier. On the other hand, she’d be relishing the details so she could write another damn article. There was a decayed shoe, a woman’s shoe, but little else. No clothing or flesh remained. After seven years, he wouldn’t expect it.
He pulled Miss Hall’s hand up toward the skull, looking for the glint of jewelry. A necklace or earrings. Not seeing any, he followed the long bones of the arms until he found the smaller finger bones. A ring, thank God.
Then he saw it, a nick in the fourth rib. Or at least he thought it was the fourth rib. A doctor would need to assemble the bones and verify. “Definitely murdered.”
Miss Hall gasped. Her voice crested high as she asked, “Could it have been a suicide?”
He looked for additional nicks to the bones. What he suspected was the next rib was turned over, but he’d lay money on there being an additional cut to that rib. He plucked the ring from the finger bone, being careful not to disturb the remains any more than he had to. “No. That would have taken some force to slice a rib like that. The chances of her living long after that wound are slim. I don’t see a knife. Granted it could have fallen off the ledge, but only if it had been pulled out.”
Along the back wall were scratches in the stone. He tried to make out if they were words, but her arm had dropped again.
“Hold up the lantern.”
She raised the lantern. Brody Egan Gilvaroy, it trailed at a downward angle and the G ran into the n, the scratches not as deep. Were there numbers after it? A year? No just three numbers. One, Eight... A three or a five? He couldn’t tell. He needed better light, maybe an etching.
“Miss Hall, I don’t want you to tell anyone what you’ve seen here,” Barnabas said. “Just that there were bones. And this.” He held up the ring, then stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket.
She gasped. The lantern waved wildly.
The ocean sounded louder than before.
He turned and water slammed at the shale and pebbles inches from their feet. The narrow opening to the cave was half underwater. “Shit!”
The cave was filling with water. They would drown. Too late he realized what the sandy, pebbly pile in the cave meant. Water filled the place almost entirely at high tide. The girl, Siobhan, had tried to tell them they didn’t have enough time for more than a quick look.
His breath came in short bursts as the space seemed to shrink around them. Miss Hall stared at him with huge eyes. What the hell did she expect him to do?
If the idea of squeezing onto that narrow shelf amidst the bones bothered him, she would probably have hysterics. Would they even both fit? Somehow he doubted it. The wave rushed out swirling with sand and pebbles of shale.
Coleraine shouldered through the narrow opening. “Tessa!”
He yanked her skirts and hauled her down into his arms. The lantern went flying. The flames flickered on the water covering the floor of the cave for half a second before drowning.
“We have to get out now.” Coleraine tugged Miss Hall outside and then swept her up in his arms as another wave forced Barnabas back into the cave.
His heart pounding, Barnabas tried to slow his breathing. The earl had followed the wave as it swirled out, and he steeled himself to do the same. But as he was squeezing out Coleraine grabbed his arm and yanked him through the narrow opening.
His shoulders caught.
“Come on,” said Coleraine urgently.
Barnabas wiggled until he was free, but they hadn’t gone two steps before a wave slammed against them, knocking his legs out from underneath him. Coleraine grabbed his coat, keeping him more or less upright. It wasn’t lost on Barnabas that the man he was about to take back to London for trial and probable hanging was saving his life.
The power of the water was immense and Barnabas wondered if they were safe yet, even though they were out of the cave. It seemed half likely the ocean wanted to suck him out, churn him around a bit before letting go. He never found the balance that Coleraine managed. Stumbling, Barnabas fell to his knees on the wider part of the shore once they reached it.
He had half a second of thinking he should just bend down all the way and kiss the gritty beach.
Coleraine hauled him up by his arm. “I should have left you there overnight.”
His face was stark and pale. He let go and walked to where Miss Hall wrung out her skirts. “Come on. All of you need to get into dry clothing.”
Henry was gingerly working her way toward him. She tottered and swayed as she tried to avoid the worst of the rocks.
Coleraine bent and put his hands on his knees, as if he was about to be sick. His voice was low and hoarse, “Tess, is my wife in that damn cave?”
Tone of voice was one of the hardest things to fake.
Miss Hall gave a glum nod.
Coleraine turned sharply on his heel and walked off. Damn, the man. Barnabas needed to question him before he learned about the stab nick on the bone, before he learned his wife had been murdered.
He should follow the earl, but in the end he didn’t, because the three of them who could inform Coleraine of what was in the cave remained behind.
*~*~*
As the evening crept on and Coleraine didn’t return, Barnabas wondered if he’d made a mistake letting the earl walk away. Sitting in the shadows of Coleraine’s dimly lit office waiting—or hiding from Henry, Barnabas wasn’t certain which—he sighed.
Thus far he’d staved her off with promises of later. If nothing else it might guarantee she’d open her door for him, because he wasn’t entirely certain she would otherwise.
He didn’t understand why she would let him take her virginity if she didn’t see a future for them.
Now the clock kept ticking and he truly didn’t know what to think. Two women murdered, scores and scores of miles apart—different land masses, even—and the only thing the two women had in common was the earl. One had been his wife, the other his pretend mistress. It poked his stranger theory full of holes. No man in Coleraine’s situation would have the bad luck to coincidentally have two women he was involved with murdered.
At last Coleraine entered the office and sat behind his desk.
“Was starting to wonder if you were ever coming back,” Barnabas said.
Coleraine started, then closed his eyes as if he could blot out Barnabas’s presence. “Are you sure it is my wife in that cave?”
Barnabas might as well start with identifying the remains. He pulled the dirty pearl ring from his pocket and placed it on the desk. He’d showed Coleraine’s half-sister, who’d thought it was her sister-by-law’s ring, but she hadn’t been certain. “Well, first things first. Is this your wife’s?”
Coleraine looked at the ring as if it might bite him. “Her wedding band was engraved.”
Barnabas hadn’t seen a wedding ring. It might be there in the pile of bones, but until they were moved, he couldn’t be certain.
Coleraine picked up the ring and looked at it as if he’d been asked to examine a gruesome thing. “This looks like hers.”
He put it back on the desk and pushed it to the far edge, as if he didn’t want it close. The distaste for the ring might be because it confirmed his worst fears or because the soil on it was likely what was left of his wife.
“Maybe it was someone else’s. Minette had dark hair. Did she have dark hair?” His voice broke like an adolescent boy’s.
A wash of sympathy poured through Barnabas. It was never easy telling a family member that their loved one was dead. And even though Coleraine suspected, getting confirmation was something different. “Uh, we’re going to have to rely on the ring.”
The earl’s color drained away leaving him sickly pale, almost green.
“I’m sorry,” Barnabas said.
Coleraine’s mouth was a silent cry of pain, but then he blinked, regained control, and focused on the far side of the room. “I didn’t want her to be dead.” He blinked some more and took a steadying breath. “I assumed she was, but I didn’t want that.”
As if he didn’t want to face Barnabas if he shed tears, he stood and moved to the decanter on the shelf behind and poured a glass of whiskey. “I want to give her a good Christian burial. I need to do that for her.”
It would be a couple of days before that could happen. Barnabas cleared his throat. “Before we move her remains, I need to get a photograph.”
Coleraine spun and hurtled his whiskey at the far wall. The glass broke. “Why? Isn’t it enough that she killed herself in a place that terrified me?”
Barnabas couldn’t move for a second, the earl’s outburst had caught him so off guard. Excessive shows of grief were often a hallmark of a murderer. Or was this just summoning anger to keep from breaking down and crying?
He should give the earl time to collect himself, but neither one of them had time. “Tell me what you know about that cave, and who else knows about it.”
He did the next best thing in that he gave Coleraine a little space by collecting the broken shards of glass.
“You don’t have to do that,” the earl protested, sounding embarrassed.
“The cave,” he repeated.
“Probably most locals know about it,” Coleraine said, but didn’t continue.
Barnabas would have to pull it out of him, but he needed to know if the carving was done by Lady Coleraine or the earl. “Why were you terrified of it?”
The earl told him how when he was a child, he and his siblings had been told to stay away from the cave, but his brother and sisters nonetheless played pirates hunting treasure there. Only one time, he’d been caught inside when the tide came up. The waves had knocked him back when he tried to get out. He hadn’t known if the interior of the cave went completely underwater during high tide, but he’d feared it. He’d huddled on the shelf waiting for the water to cover him.
Barnabas kept prodding him for more information until Coleraine finally told him that he’d tried to scratch his name and the year in the wall, so they’d know what happened to him if his body didn’t wash ashore.
That he had an explanation for the name scratched in the back wall was good. That he hadn’t volunteered it first thing was good, but nothing was good about his wife and house guest being murder victims.
Still, Coleraine didn’t seem to realize just yet that his wife had been killed. Although a photograph of the remains should be a clue that her death needed to be investigated. He’d probably realize once he thought about it. In any case he’d know for certain on the morrow when Barnabas guided local authorities to the discovery. He would have to make certain it was handled correctly. Solving a seven year old murder would be difficult enough. But maybe, just maybe, there would be something that could put guilt squarely on the earl’s shoulders.
Because more and more that seemed to be where it belonged.
Barnabas let out a sigh as he climbed the stairs to his room. He needed to find Henry. He didn’t really want to talk to her, but he needed her arms around him. Even more than he needed to have her, he wanted her to hold him together. Because the doubts about Coleraine’s innocence had come to him so late he felt betrayed. Not just by the earl, but by his own instincts and abilities.
Maybe Henry had come into his life now just to prove to him he wasn’t as good at figuring out people as he thought he was.