Seduced by a Stranger (18 page)

“No, that is not right,” Madeline murmured, sounding perplexed, her eyes remaining closed as she spoke. “He killed only one, lifted it from the nest and twisted its head clear around before he was interrupted. I was there, in the woods, watching though he did not know it. He meant to kill another. I saw it in his face, but there was the snap of a twig. Someone else was there. I heard it, as did he.” Her words had taken on a whispery, breathless quality, as though she ran headlong down a hill and could not stop. “He took up a sharp stick and ran through the forest. I could not keep up. He was bigger and faster, and I was hampered by my skirt.” She sucked in a sharp breath. Her hand fluttered at her throat. “And then there was so much blood. Everywhere. On his hands. On mine.”

“Whose blood was it, Madeline?” Catherine felt the weight of Madeline’s story like a great stone on her breast. “Was it yours? Did he hurt you?”

“Me?” Madeline’s lids opened wide and she appeared startled by the question. “No.” She fell silent, and each second that ticked past made Catherine so anxious for the remainder of the tale that she thought she would jump right out of her skin. But she suspected that Madeline would not be rushed, and to try to press her might well result in no information at all.

Madeline shivered and shifted on the bed and pushed at the covers, writhing to be free of their weight.

“Whose blood was it, Madeline?” Catherine stroked her hand, hoping to ease her distress.

Raising her head, Madeline grew still, her blue eyes wide, her gaze steady and bare.

“She is in the graveyard. Buried under the stone in the corner. No one ever knew her name. There was blood that day, as well. So much blood, and her bodice was split open. I saw it, though they tried to turn me away. I wanted to go closer. To know.”

“To know what?” Catherine tried to make sense of Madeline’s ramblings, her thoughts tumbling one against the next. Though the narration was far from clear, Catherine surmised that Madeline described two different occasions, two different deaths.

And that, somehow, Madeline held Gabriel responsible.

Madeline clutched tightly at her wrist, her fingers cold as ice against Catherine’s skin.

“I should have told that day.” Madeline wet her lips.

Catherine glanced at the pitcher and glass on the washstand. She made to rise and fetch Madeline a drink, but Madeline clung to her like a hawk clinging to its prey, her nails biting tender flesh.

“I should have told them what I saw,” Madeline cried, her eyes grown wild now. “But I was afraid they would not believe me. I was only newly come from Browning, my parents so recently dead. I was the outsider. The unwanted burden. I was afraid to tell them what I saw. Do you understand? I was afraid. And then he killed her.
He killed her
.”

“Shh, Madeline, shh,” Catherine whispered, and Madeline relaxed a little, enough to release her clawlike grasp of Catherine’s arm.

“How was I to know they would send him away for good?” she pleaded. “I thought they would send
me
away, and where was I to go? With my father’s death, Cairncroft passed to his brother, my uncle, and I became only a guest here in my own home.” She sighed. “They never came to love me.”

With that admission, Madeline faded, the light in her eyes dulled, the tone of her muscles relaxed. She appeared to sink into the bed, into herself. Even her cheeks grew hollow.

Catherine was at a loss, all the words of comfort she might offer dry and stale on her tongue. She had never known just how closely Madeline’s circumstance paralleled her own. Parents and home lost. Dependent on relatives for kindness and charity. But despite her empathy, she was having difficulty believing Madeline’s assertions. Only parts of her friend’s story made any sense.

Frowning, she tried to follow the tangled threads to some sort of logical conclusion. From what she could patch together, Madeline spoke of two different occasions, perhaps months, or even years apart. One where she had watched someone—presumably Gabriel—kill a bird and then run through the woods with a stick, and ultimate, undefined tragic results.

And a second event, where a girl’s body had been found.

Unease crawled through her like a centipede, making her shiver.

That day when she and Gabriel had walked in the graveyard, when he had gifted her with the red and gold tin, he had blocked her path and kept her from seeing the headstone in the corner. Madeline’s bewildering account made her suspect that the murdered girl was buried there.

But that knowledge only circled back to more questions. Why had Gabriel kept her from seeing the stone?
Had
he kept her from it? Thinking back on it now, she wondered if she could possibly have misread his actions. Perhaps he had only been intent on holding her attention long enough to offer his gift.

And the girl who was buried there…had she been murdered as Madeline intimated, or had she died in some horrific accident? And what did her death have to do with Gabriel, or with Madeline’s assertion that she had watched him from the woods while he killed a bird?

None of this made sense, and Catherine had no way to tell if all was fact or all was a fantastical nightmare Madeline had carried forward to her waking hours.

Perhaps the truth was some patchwork of the two.

The place to start was the beginning, and so she picked up that thread of Madeline’s ramblings.

“Madeline,” she said, taking her friend’s hand between her own. “What happened to the birds? Tell me about them.”

Turning her head on the pillow, Madeline smiled, serene and calm. “I hear them singing. Such a lovely day. The birds are singing.”

They were. Catherine could hear them through the glass of the window. But it appeared she would hear no more of Madeline’s tale. Not now.

Whatever brief coherence had touched her friend’s mind, it was gone.

Catherine could only wonder when—and if—it would return.

With Madeline fast asleep, Catherine left her for a few moments, intent on retrieving her novel from the sitting room she had visited earlier in the day. Following the maze of stairs down, she came to a sharp corner that she must round to reach the passage that led to the next flight. Voices carried to her, and she hesitated, listening, a feminine voice answered by a masculine; Mrs. Bell and Gabriel engaged in conversation. She could not say what made her remain there, holding her breath, loath to betray her presence.

No, that was not true. She could say exactly what made her do it. She
wanted
to overhear, to listen, unseen. She wanted to glean any information about Gabriel St. Aubyn that she could. Perhaps if she knew enough, she could convince herself he was a villain, convince herself not to long for his touch. His kiss. The feel of his arms tight about her.

Madeline was afraid of him, perhaps even hated him, but given the multitude of things that made Madeline afraid, Catherine could not blindly trust in that. Was he the monster she claimed, or just a man? A strange, enigmatic, arousing man?

He annoyed her, angered her, fascinated her. Beguiled her. And despite it all, he haunted her every thought.

He had comforted her, been a brief calm place in the storm of her grief. Was that enough to make her believe there were depths to him she had not seen? Was it the tiny foundation on which to build the beginnings of…something? What? An assignation? An association? What exactly did she want of him? Of herself?

“Will that be all, Mrs. Bell?” Gabriel asked, ruthlessly neutral.

“No, Sir Gabriel. I do not wish to overstep—”

“Then by all means, do not,” he interjected.

The housekeeper exhaled noisily, and though Catherine hugged the wall and the shadows and could see them no better than they could see her—which was not at all—she imagined the woman crossing her arms over her belly as she was wont to do, and regarding Gabriel with both wariness and frustration.

“Sir Gabriel,” she began again. “I wish to speak with you about Susan.”

The silence stretched, and Catherine could imagine the exact expression on his face…or rather, lack of expression as he waited for the housekeeper to continue.

“Susan Parker,” she clarified, and still he said nothing.

But the name meant something to Catherine. She knew that name. It was—

“She is one of the upstairs maids,” Mrs. Bell said, at the exact moment that Catherine recalled precisely who Susan Parker was: the maid she had encountered her very first night here at Cairncroft, the one she had intimidated by implying she would report her to the housekeeper. The episode was not one she was proud of.

“Yes, I am aware of who she is.” His assertion surprised Catherine, and then she recalled how he had known Peg’s name, and she thought that perhaps he made it his business to know something about each of his staff. She could certainly believe it of him. “What is it you wish to tell me about her?” Gabriel prompted.

“She walked to the shoemaker the day before last to be measured for new shoes. It was her half-day and she left promptly at noon.” Catherine heard the clink of Mrs. Bell’s key ring, and she thought the housekeeper must have knocked it by accident, or was perhaps worrying it out of nervousness. “Susan never returned.”

“Is she due wages?” Gabriel asked, his tone bland. Yet something in his question made Catherine suspect he was more interested in the matter than he wished Mrs. Bell to know.

“No, sir.”

“She must have run off.”

Mrs. Bell huffed in a breath, loud enough that Catherine could hear it where she stood, far down the corridor and around the corner.

“What if she didn’t? What if the same thing happened to her that happened to—”

“Mrs. Bell,” Gabriel cut her off, his tone silk and steel. “We both know that is an impossibility. Let us not raise the issue.”

“We do not know—”

“We do.” His words, his tone, both absolute in their finality, ended the argument. But again Catherine had the impression that his words masked his true thoughts. “Speak to the other servants. Find out if she had a beau. A sick family member. Any reason that she might have left precipitously.”

“And if there is no reason?” Mrs. Bell asked, oddly forlorn.

“There is always a reason, Mrs. Bell. You know that as well as I. Questions always have answers. Puzzles have solutions. It is only that we do not always like the resolutions and explanations we discover, and so we discount them, though they settle the matter quite satisfactorily”—he paused—“even if not pleasantly.”

Again, a long moment of silence, and then Mrs. Bell asked in a harsh whisper, “Is that what you call murder? A satisfactory resolution?”

Catherine pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, stifling her gasp, her pulse speeding up like a cart on a hill.

“Our discourse is complete, Mrs. Bell,” Gabriel said, his tone calm and even, though Catherine could not imagine how he held his temper in the face of the housekeeper’s temerity. “I expect you will keep me apprised of any information that you uncover regarding Susan Parker.”

Because he expected information to be uncovered. Catherine was convinced of it. But he did not trust the housekeeper with his suspicions.

Mrs. Bell inhaled sharply, and when she spoke, her voice was tight. “Very well, sir.”

A moment later, there came the rapid shush of the housekeeper’s footsteps and the swish of her skirt as she moved in the opposite direction. For a slow count of ten, Catherine stayed exactly where she was, motionless as a hare in a field, straining to hear the sounds of Gabriel’s retreat. But she heard nothing at all. Not a footstep or breathing or anything to indicate whether he had stayed or gone.

There came a dull thud, like a door closing, or a fist knocked against wood.

Warily, she peeked around the corner. The hallway unfurled before her, the dark walls and blood-red carpet disappearing into dim shadow. Of Gabriel St. Aubyn there was no sign.

“Curiosity can be a dangerous thing.” His low voice came from directly behind her right shoulder and she whirled, pressing her palm flat against her chest, her heart twitching and writhing like a landed fish.

“How—” She stumbled away and spun to peer around the wall at the empty hallway where she was certain he had been standing. Of course, the passage was empty. Turning back toward him, she stalked two steps forward, disbelieving. “How did you get there without me seeing you pass?”

He made a hushed laugh, a lush, tantalizing sound she had never before heard him make. It made her shiver. It made her ache.

Deliberately, she took a step back. Equally deliberately, he took a step forward.

Reaching out, he rested his palm against the wall at her back, caging her between wood panel and the length of his body. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her mouth went dry. He was strong and near, his eyes glittering in the dim light. His gaze dropped to her lips, her breasts, and she stopped breathing entirely.

After a moment, an eternity, his eyes lifted to hers. She gasped at the things she read there: primitive desire, bared and unchained. Bending her knees, she dipped down below his outstretched arm and scooted to the side, away from the threat of him…the temptation of him.

He made no move to stop her.

Leaning to the side, he pressed his weight onto his outstretched hand, touching a particular spot on the heavy wooden panel. It swung open to reveal a yawning tunnel, dark as sin.

Grateful for the distraction, she looked away from his face and peered into the gloom, her nose wrinkling at the stale smell and the cobwebs that hung in long, ghostly pale tendrils, broken where he had passed through them.

“You went in there without a candle?” she blurted.

“I did.”

“I would not like to.” The narrowness of the passage made her shudder.

“Afraid of the dark?” he murmured, too close. He had come up beside her. She wondered that such a tall, powerful man could move with such grace and quiet.

“I am not afraid of the dark,” she demurred. “Not since I was a child. It is the confined space I do not like.”