Must Have Been The Moonlight (34 page)

“My source is meeting me tomorrow morning,” Cross told the gathering crowd of men, his light brown eyes nearly gold behind his thick spectacles. “He knows the exact location of the warehouse we’re looking for. He wants his money tonight.”

Cross went on about the arrangements, briefing those gathered in the plan for tomorrow.

After a while Michael removed himself from the group to retrieve his coat and hat. “You’re not satisfied with the arrangement?” Lord Ware approached him. A big man with graying hair and muttonchop whiskers, he was Lady Alexandra’s father and a rumored thorn in the side of the entire Donally clan. Michael felt almost disloyal admiring the man. But then, his wife was no longer a Donally.

She belonged to him.

“Has anyone checked the validity of Cross’s source?”
Michael asked, shrugging into his coat. “Brought him in for questioning? For the kind of money this government is paying—”

“Mr. Cross believes the man will flee if he gets wind of a double cross,” Ware said. “The informant does have what looks to be a scarab tattoo on his forearm. Cross feels he is legitimate and will take us to the others. Perhaps letting one go is the price we pay to get the rest.”

“Even if that one may be the leader? Or the bloody bastard who shot me?”

“Some of the items the informant brought in belonged to Captain Pritchards’s outfit. Evidence enough to link the smuggling to the caravan attacks. London was the receiving end for what went out of Egypt. With Sheikh Omar dead, I also believe the Cairo connection is severed.”

“It’s obvious we’re close enough to the heart of them,” Cross said, his words sounding loud as silence filtered down the ranks of the room. “Someone has clearly decided to exchange the end of a rope for his life.”

Michael’s gaze settled on Cross. His burnished hair was nearly blond in the lamplight. The man didn’t appear as bookish in these surroundings as he had in Cairo. Nor timid. “You’re a very good actor, Cross,” Michael said quietly, knowing damn well he would offend most of the men in the room, who fancied Cross a hero. “I wouldn’t have recognized you from the man I saw at the Bulaq Museum in Cairo.”

“It was a job,” Cross said. “One that I obviously performed well.”

One that Michael felt he sure as hell should have been informed about.

“Or maybe your pique springs from injured pride,” Cross said. “You failed to find these thugs. I have not.”

Sliding on his gloves, Michael transferred his gaze to Ware, then Bedford. “I’ll be taking my leave.”

“Major Fallon,” Cross said. “Would you give your wife my regards? Your marriage was sudden even by polite stan
dards. I didn’t have a chance to see her before she left Cairo. Perhaps I can call on her.”

If Cross wanted to live a long and healthy life, he would stay far away from Aldbury. “If you will all excuse me,” he said to Ware.

Bedford caught him as the butler was handing him his hat and cane at the front door. “I’ve been curious about something ever since I read about your discharge from the army,” he said, amused. “The British consul in Cairo was ready to sacrifice you to appease the khedive’s loyalists over Sheikh Omar’s murder. What happened?”

“I had a credible alibi,” Michael responded laconically, aware that he had crossed a line with his mood and would not pretend otherwise.

“A firebrand with blue eyes, no doubt. Maybe the injured pride belongs to Cross. By the looks of it, you took something that he wanted. Will you be at the docks tomorrow?”

Michael’s gaze lingered on Cross, who had turned away to receive a drink from a footman. “Who is watching him?”

Bedford observed the subject of Michael’s query. “That would be my men.”

“I’ll be there.”

Michael left the house. The night was wet and he pulled up his collar as he approached his carriage. Streetlights blurred in the thickening mist. “Your Grace?” The driver leaped off his perch to reach the door before Michael. “You’ve company,” he whispered to Michael’s arched query. “I thought—seein’ as how there’s folks about—you’d be wantin’ to know.”

The curtains in the carriage were drawn shut. Caroline sat inside, her face pale beneath a fur blanket. The back of her hand went across her cheeks, and whatever she’d been thinking when he opened the door went behind the mask of her posture. “I needed to talk,” she said.

Their eyes met in the gilded shade of light cast around her by the lamp. She’d been stunning as a younger woman. She
was no less beautiful now. She was also drunk, he realized. He could smell the bourbon.

“You’re impossible to catch alone,” she said. “I’ll be going back to Aldbury probably before you. I’ve been away too long from my daughter.”

A subtle shake of his head told his driver to remain in the drive. He climbed inside. “Do you do this often?” He eased a flagon from her hand. “Wander outside in the dead of night? You’ll have your brother’s servants thinking this house is haunted.”

“I’ve been drunk twice in my life, James Michael Fallon…Aldbury. Both times because of you. You have no right to take that bottle from me.”

Michael held the flagon out of her reach and set it on the floor. “I have every right.”

“I despise domineering men. Hounds and horses—” She leaned against the corner. “Especially horses…and domineering men. You think that you are not like him. But you are.”

Michael adjusted the collar of his coat and sat back, bracing an arm across the seat. “Is that a perceptive remark from one who knows me?”

“I didn’t want you leaving tonight until I could talk to you. Alone.” Her green eyes glittered brightly in the lantern light beside her head. “You’re Edward’s family. My daughters’ guardian…”

“I know all of this, Caro.”

Somewhere outside, a dog barked. “I’ve never been able to tell you that I was sorry,” she said. “I made such a mess of both of our lives. I was young and foolish. And frightened. I should never have allowed you to take all the blame for something that was my fault.”

Although the age difference between them was barely a year, she was suddenly that girl he’d tormented with frogs and spiders. “You don’t deserve all the censure for poor judgment, Caro. Do you honestly think what happened was the worst incident in my life?”

She peered at him in amused horror. “How can you joke about that?”

A grin turned up his lips. “You live a sheltered life, Caro.”

Beneath the blanket, she folded her arms. “Was it hard for you…after you left here?”

“Not as hard as coming back and starting over,” he said.

“I…didn’t know if there would ever be a chance for us….”

“I’m in love with my wife, Caro,” Michael said softly.

She didn’t miss the softening in his expression. “And you will find she is an understanding person…to a point.” He opened the door and stepped out. “I may be used to facing the ignominy of a tattered reputation, but you’re not. Do you want your maid?” He lifted her from the carriage. She wore a gown of soft white silk, ridiculously virginal against her curves. But it wasn’t her body Michael felt beneath his hands or her scent that made his heart beat harder in his chest. He felt sorry that she had lost almost everything.

“I can walk, thank you, your Grace.” She wobbled with dignity.

“That’s good, Caroline. Because if you pass out on the ground, I’ll get you a blanket. I’m not taking you to your room.”

Nodding to his footman to escort her to the door, Michael waited at the carriage to make sure she would make it back to the house. She turned. “I would be lying if I told you that I did not envy her.”

Long after Michael left Bedford’s house, long after he realized that the investigation might finally be over, he sat in his carriage, the lingering cadence of his thoughts lulling him to sleep.

He loved Brianna.

The words he’d spoken struck him—not so much because of the discordant observation, but because they were true. At least in part.

He was obsessed with her. There could be no other expla
nation for his need of her, especially after he’d made love to her that night in London and let her climb inside his soul. He wanted her.

Was utterly consumed by it, and could easily trace the beginnings of his ignoble defeat back to the day he’d found her head scarf beyond the watchtower oasis. To the point when he’d seen her for the first time draped in desert moonlight like an apparition out of his deepest erotic fantasy, never mind the gun she’d pointed directly at his heart or that he walked into her snare like some bloody tenderfoot. Or that he’d been making careless blunders with his life ever since.

He lifted his head and saw a distant flash of lightning out the window, as if the storm churning inside him were not enough. For long ago, disabused of wonder, Michael had stopped believing in many things.

Perhaps there was irony that love could find someone like him a willing recipient at all. For indeed it had.

Hell, he could only blame it on the moonlight.

And Brianna’s gentle touch.

The door slammed.

A portent of doom to anyone within listening distance of the lodge.

Amber spun around, surprise and horror momentarily stalling her decision to run as her round gray eyes crashed against Brianna standing with her palm braced on the portal. Her rare show of fury had already left the servants at the house exchanging nervous glances. Yet, as she’d made her way to the lodge today, no one had wondered what force had fallen upon her to put her in her current state.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Brianna warned as the girl darted her gaze to the window in the other room.

Her doll clutched in one hand, Amber’s small chin hiked like a porcelain martyr ready to face down the forces of death. Brianna might have admired her defiance if the precocious brat hadn’t been in need of a thrashing. She could very
well have burned down the entire lodge yesterday with her antics in this lab.

“I didn’t mean to drop that bottle!” Amber cried. “I don’t even like this stinky old room!”

“Oh, please, Lady Amber”—Brianna rolled her eyes at the dramatics—“you honestly don’t expect me to buy those tears, do you? For someone who is a holy terror, I expect more courage from you.” Brianna clicked the key in the lock, then turned to face her adversary. “No one is going to save you, no matter the screams of pain and agony that they hear.”

Amber had backed against the desk, and Brianna tossed the quirt on a wooden chair. “You aren’t going to strike me?”

“Why?” Brianna set her fists on her hips. “Would that keep you out of this darkroom? Or save that poor frog in the greenhouse? Is that the attention you want? If I can’t make them notice me one way, then I’ll do it another.” Brianna knew the type. She’d looked at that woman every day in the mirror for twenty-two years. “How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“When I was eleven no one would have captured me.” She held out her hand for the doll Amber clutched feebly to her chest. Reluctantly, the girl parted with her precious treasure. “Your uncle James gave you this?”

Brianna examined the frilly ruffles and curls. Michael had given her the doll after one of his trips into the village. “What’s her name?”

A shrug of her shoulder told Brianna that she hadn’t been named yet. “It usually takes me months to name something, too,” Brianna said. “I haven’t even named my horse. Names are special.”

Implied permanence.

“I named my cat Sam.” Amber studied the toe of her slipper. “Sam is the name of the man who clips the grass. He always runs my cat away with a rake. So I named him Sam and dress him up in ribbons.”

“That will show him, won’t it?” Brianna crossed her arms. “Do you want me to leave Aldbury Park? Is that why you’re doing the things that you do?”

Amber wiped the back of her hand across her nose. “Everyone always leaves,” she whispered; then her eyes narrowed as if Brianna had tricked her into revealing something about herself she didn’t want to share. “And you can’t make me be nice to you. I put vinegar into Lord Chamberlain’s milk this morning. I’ll do the same to you every day.”

“I hadn’t thought about vinegar.” She set the doll on the chair. “Is that the worst you’ve done?”

“I put ants in my last governess’s bed.”

Brianna was unimpressed, and it showed.

Amber slanted her a glance. “What about you?”

“I guarantee that whatever you think up, I can think up a lot worse. You do
not
want to go to war with me, Lady Amber. There are spiders and snakes in this world that put our English species to shame. You’ll never get another decent night’s sleep as long as you live, wondering if you might find something beneath your pillow. Think about that the next time you decide to disobey me.”

“What kind of spiders?”

Brianna walked to the desk. She reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out a box. Inviting her young protégé to sit on the floor, she carefully removed the lid. “What I’m about to show you can never leave this room without my permission. These are mine and I will cut off the hands of she who disobeys my edict.”

Reluctantly, Amber watched as Brianna laid out her photographs. Her mouth dropped opened. “Yes,” Brianna said. “Those are dead people. Mummified after being buried in the desert.”