Gemma had no sooner stepped through the door of Beauchamp House when she was waylaid by Serena, who, rather than scolding, simply enveloped her in a fierce hug.
“I thought you’d be furious,” Gemma said with a startled laugh once her chaperone had let her go.
To her further surprise, Serena was wiping tears from her eyes.
“I guessed you were with Cam, of course.” The lady, who was most often as calm as her name implied, shook her head a little. “But after the dangers that the others faced when they began digging into my aunt’s past, I feared that you both might have been kidnapped or worse.”
That possibility hadn’t even occurred to Gemma and she suddenly understood why both Ben and Sophia had been angry as well as relieved upon finding them.
“I am so sorry,” she said, grasping her chaperone’s hand. “It didn’t occur to me that you’d worry on that score. I did tell George that we’d be back last night but we were delayed because of weather and—”
“—and now will be married by special license as soon as Cam can obtain one, I’ll wager,” said Serena with a twist of her lips. “I will go down in the annals of chaperonage as the most incompetent ever. That will make four of you who managed to slip past my ruthless attempts to preserve your reputations.”
Though she said it with a bit of a laugh, Gemma knew she genuinely felt the sting of her failure. “And four who have married happily,” she reminded her. “That is no small thing, I believe.”
“Come, let’s go upstairs and you can tell me what you’ve discovered in your search for your fossil,” Serena said.
Once they were in Gemma’s bedchamber, Serena called for tea and a bath for her charge and while they waited, Gemma filled her in on the details of the journey—minus the pretend marriage and night in the inn—and when she began to tell of the relationship between Lady Celeste and Lord Crutchley, Serena looked thoughtful.
“I think I remember that,” she said with a faraway look. “Kerr, Maitland and I were children, but I do remember one summer in particular when my aunt had one gentleman friend who brought along his … godson, I think it was? My cousins will perhaps remember more of the time than I do. I was only Jeremy’s age, but I do remember the godson because he was a bit of a terror. He broke my favorite dolly, you see and that was the most—”
Gemma interrupted her. “Godson? Are you sure of it? Do you remember his name?”
She was furious with herself for not realizing it sooner. Had Paley been following their every move with them none the wiser?
“Toby?”
“Topher?” Gemma asked, with a rising sense of excitement remembering that Topher was sometimes used as a diminutive form of Christopher—as in Christopher, Lord Paley.
“Yes,” Serena said with a nod. “I knew it was something I’d never heard before because I remarked upon it. I think that’s why he retaliated with my doll, if I recall correctly.”
Serena’s maid arrived then with the tea tray, and despite her earlier fatigue, Gemma moved to the wardrobe and removed her cloak.
“Where are you going?” Serena asked. “You just returned. What about your bath?”
“I need to speak to Cam,” Gemma explained as she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. “And it can’t wait until morning.”
“Gemma, you just apologized for running off with him yesterday.”
She paused in the doorway. “I know, but please trust me. I think I know who killed Sir Everard. And we have to alert Mr. Northman.”
Not waiting to hear Serena’s reply, she hurried down the hall toward the cellar entrance to the tunnel.
* * *
Cam felt at loose ends almost as soon as he entered the vicarage with Sophia and his brother.
It felt wrong to have left Gemma at Beauchamp House.
They’d spent the past two days in one another’s pockets and her absence was a physical ache. An ache that had nothing to do with the intimacies they’d shared and everything to do with the love he’d professed for her.
He closed the door to his bedchamber in the vicarage, having decided to allow his brother and his wife some time alone without his interference. He had little doubt that Sophia would have some choice words for Benedick after his accusations in the carriage.
The knowledge that his brother thought him capable of seducing and abandoning Gemma had stung. How could it not have? But not as much as it would have if he hadn’t known, deep down in his bones, that the accusation was dead wrong.
He knew better than anyone what his intentions had been when he entered that inn with her, and there was nothing for him to be ashamed of.
And Gemma knew that too, if her leave-taking kiss had been anything to judge by. It did bother him that she’d not returned his sentiment, but he knew better than to rush his fences. Especially in such a delicate situation as this.
Tomorrow he would travel to London and get a special license, and when he returned they’d be married. Gemma’s feelings would catch up to his. He was confident of it.
He began to unravel his cravat, and realizing the curtains were still open, he moved to close them against the already dark night. But as he did so, a flash of light caught his eye.
This side of the house faced west, toward the shore below Beauchamp House. Another flicker shone then and he swore under his breath.
Had the killer returned to the scene of the murder? Or was someone searching for more fossils where the famous Beauchamp Lizard had been recovered?
He made haste down the stairs, not caring if he disturbed his brother and sister-in-law. If someone was there, it could be the key to finding Sir Everard’s murder. And getting the Beauchamp Lizard back for Gemma would be the perfect wedding gift.
Retrieving his greatcoat from the butler, he told the man not to lock the cellar door to the secret passageway, and with a lit lantern in hand, he stepped into the darkness.
* * *
Because the secret passageways to the beach weren’t linked, Gemma had to step out onto the shore before she could locate the door leading into the vicarage tunnel.
Thus, when she stepped out onto the shore, she was hit by a brisk, cold wind that made her pull her cloak closer.
Then, almost as suddenly, a dark figure moved closer and she was suddenly in the grip of very strong arms.
“Convenient of you to bring a lantern, my dear,” said Lord Paley as he pulled her out onto the rocky beach, one gloved hand covering her mouth so that she couldn’t cry out. “It will make my search that much easier.”
Why was he here? she wondered. He already had the Beauchamp Lizard, she was sure of it now.
“If you’ll promise not to scream,” he said coldly, “then I’ll remove my hand. But if you renege, I’ll kill Lord Cameron.”
The threat against Cam sent a jolt of fear through her, and despite her wish to thwart the man holding her, she nodded.
He removed his hand, but then began to tie her hands behind her back with rope he must have had on his person.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, thinking to distract him with talk as he shoved her along toward the chalk cliff where she’d found the skull fossil. “No one would be foolish enough to hide the same fossil here a third time.”
He laughed softly and she heard a note of disgust there. “I have the Beauchamp Lizard, you dolt. I want the rest of it. There can’t be just a skull with no body. There has to be a full skeleton there beneath the chalk. And I intend to find it.”
“But, it was a fossil,” she said, puzzled. “If it were an actual bone, perhaps, but there’s no guarantee that the entire lizard…”
“I’m not a simpleton,” he snapped. “I know the chances are slim, but I need something to set me apart. And I won’t be able to declare I’ve found the Beauchamp Lizard for decades thanks to Sir Everard and his blasted boasting. It will mark me as his murderer as surely as if declared it on the front page of the Times.”
“Then why kill him for it?” she asked, genuinely curious. It made little sense if he’d only wanted the fossil.
“Because the blackguard intended to cut me out of our arrangement,” Paley said with a scowl. “I’m the one who told him about the Lizard in the first place. And where I thought it was hidden.”
“Because you were there,” she said softly. “When Lady Celeste and your godfather found it.”
“Lady Serena remembered, then,” he said with a sour smile. “I knew it was a risk, but I assumed that enough time had passed and I’d grown enough that she would have forgotten.”
“You broke her doll,” Gemma said simply. “Of course she remembered.”
“She was too young to play with us lads, anyway,” Paley said with the pique of a remembered childhood anger. “I thought it would make her leave, but it just made her cousins angry. I went out to the shore because they shunned me.”
“And saw your godfather with Lady Celeste,” Gemma guessed. Not particularly appropriate viewing for a child, no matter how nasty he grew up to be.
“Actually,” he said with a shrug, “I was surprised to learn that from Crutchley this morning. I’d guessed, of course, but I’m grateful I missed that bit. But I did come upon Pearson. He was furious, and brushed past me as if the hounds of hell were on his heels. I don’t even know that he saw me, he was so incensed.”
“What did you see, then?” Gemma asked.
“The Lizard, of course,” he said as if she were stupid. “They were obviously excited about it. Lady Celeste held it up in the light and it was glorious. And then I heard my godfather tell her that she’d be famous for it. She would be famous.”
He shook his head in disgust. “It was just as much his find as hers. He was there too. But he was giving her the credit.”
“Because she unearthed it,” Gemma said before she could stop herself.
Paley glowered. “Of course you would think like that. Women have no business putting their names on artifacts. If it were up to me, they wouldn’t be involved in the collecting world at all. In that, at least, Pearson and I are in perfect agreement.”
“So Pearson had nothing to do with Sir Everard’s death, then?” Gemma asked.
“Of course not,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “But he made the perfect scapegoat once I heard the story of his unrequited youthful passion for Lady Celeste. What better person to blame for the murder of the man who stole her most famous find?”
The wind was picking up, and Gemma couldn’t stop the shiver that ran through her. She was beginning to lose feeling in her fingers.
“What will you do with me?” she asked, realizing that Serena thought she was at the vicarage and would very likely not search for her if she didn’t come back tonight, thinking she’d just chosen to remain at her sister’s house.
“You’ll keep me company while I dig,” said Lord Paley. “And if I don’t find anything I will find … other ways to amuse myself with you.”
Gemma swallowed. “But it’s so cold,” she said in a plaintive tone. “Won’t you at least let me use my cloak?” He’d removed it before tying her hands.
“If you think yourself a man’s equal, Miss Hastings,” he said with a cruel smile, “then you can manage a few hours in the cold. I have endured far worse in the quest for evidence of our natural history.”
“That’s Lady Cameron Lisle to you,” she said with equal coldness. Perhaps reminding him that she was not without a champion would give him pause.
But Paley laughed. “You don’t really think I believed that charade at the inn?” he asked with a shake of his head. “My dear Miss Hastings, you were both as transparent as a pane of glass. It comes from being truthful most of the time, I would imagine. Though I did enjoy it when your sister and brother-in-law arrived at my godfather’s house looking just like what they were—angry relations searching for a couple on the run.”
“If you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” Gemma asked, genuinely wondering. “You might have sent us on our way.”
“Because I needed to hear the whole blasted story from my godfather’s perspective,” he said with a shrug. “He never would tell it to me. I think because he suspected I would resent him for his weakness in the matter. Which he was perfectly correct about. But being faced with Lady Celeste’s chosen collector, he couldn’t resist.”
“You really hold him in no affection at all?” Gemma asked.
“Why should I?” he asked sullenly. “He might have taken me under his wing when I showed an interest in geology, but instead he claimed it was too painful for him because it reminded him of her. Simpering fool.”
She’d been standing the whole while they spoke and suddenly, she felt a tremor run through her as the cold wind hit her.
“Oh sit down, you foolish child,” Paley said as he saw her wobble. Before she could brace herself, he placed a hand on her shoulder and shoved her into a sitting position. The rocks were hard on her bottom and back, but Gemma didn’t make a sound.
He was shuffling back up to where he’d been digging when Gemma saw movement at the other side of the little crescent of shoreline.
As she watched, Cam crept soundlessly across the rocks. He held a finger to his lips, indicating that she should keep quiet and she clenched her teeth so that she wouldn’t cry out her relief at seeing him.
Some sixth sense, or perhaps some sound of boots on stone, alerted Lord Paley to his presence, however, because he turned suddenly.
On seeing who was creeping up on them, he stood up and opened his arms wide.
“Oh look, it’s the debaucher of innocents come to rescue his false bride,” he said with a sneer. “Do come closer so that I may greet you properly, Lord Cameron.”
And to Gemma’s horror, she saw that in one of those outstretched hands Lord Paley held a pistol.