Come the Night (The Dangerous Delameres - Book 1) (6 page)

“I should think it highly likely, madam,” came the cool reply. “Few people venture onto Blackwood’s heath after light fades. Few
honest
people at least.”

But blood was oozing down his ribs and pain tore at his side. A wave of tiredness washed over him. He had to make haste. “A pleasure to have met you. I trust you will have a diverting night.”

Renwick’s hands closed to fists. He cursed savagely as the highwayman remounted. “I’ll find you, swine! I’ll not stop until I do. This time you’ve gone too far, for you’ve tampered with official Crown business. But you’ll live only long enough to regret it, by God!”

“I trust you are wrong, my lord,” Blackwood said silkily. “Meanwhile accept my hopes that the chill of the ground does not worsen your gout.”

“Worsen my—” Renwick inhaled audibly. “What do
you
know of my gout, swine?”

“Everything there is to know, I should imagine. And many other things you might prefer to keep secret. But the moon is rising. It is time for me to bid you adieu.” A lady’s reticule went flying through the air and landed at Diablo’s feet. “I do not stoop to pilfering trinkets from females. Especially when the jewels are worthless paste, madam.”

Renwick shot his companion a furious look. The woman reddened. “What does
he
know? They are all there, my lord, exactly as you gave them to me. Check them yourself.”

“Oh, but I intend to, my love. You may be very certain of that,” Renwick said coldly.

Blackwood’s assistant, meanwhile, had climbed onto the seat to set the team into motion.

“Ladies. My lord.” The scourge of the high road bowed with exaggerated courtesy. “Enjoy the beauties of the Norfolk night. I have heard it said that the sky here seems to go on forever. I trust you will not find it quite so far as that to the next hamlet.”

Blackwood was smiling as he nudged Diablo into a gallop.

Silver sighed and brushed back a wayward strand of russet hair. Before her ranged two dozen bottles of lavender oil. They gleamed in the lantern light, pale gold and of excellent quality. They would fetch a fine price from the dozens of superior London establishments whom Lavender Close Farm kept supplied with product for restorative salts, tonics, dusting powders, and perfume.

Outside the polished glass walls of the conservatory the purple tide of twilight washed up the valley.

Silver stared out into the darkness, watching lights play along the high road. A carriage, perhaps, or a rider with a need to light his way.

With a sigh she turned back to the cluttered desk before her.

She and Tinker had already begun taking precautions against the return of the four men who had swaggered over her fields that afternoon. Next time they would
not
find Lavender Close undefended!

But now Silver was bothered even more by the sense of something unfinished here at Lavender Close. Something overlooked. Something that was terribly important.

She studied the beautiful workroom where her father had carried out all his tests and distilled their first vats of fragrance oil. Here, too, William and Sarah St. Clair had blended their first samples of the haunting perfume that came to be known as Millefleurs.

Why would such a meticulous man leave behind no records of any sort for his children?

Silver ran her hand over her father’s burled oak desk, just as she had done a hundred times before. She had searched it drawer by drawer but had found nothing beyond a sprinkling of dust. Where were the careful notes? Where were the lists of essential oils and rare resins he had experimented with in creating Millefleurs?

The magistrate had had a simple answer. He’d shaken his head, saying that St. Clair had been a secretive man who trusted no one with his discoveries. But Silver couldn’t believe it. There had to be some other explanation.

For a moment anger coursed through her. Even with the year’s fine yield it would be nip and tuck. The cost of fuel had grown and experienced workers were hard to find. And now with these threats…

Silver stared at the creamy petals of a camellia, fighting back fury. No matter what, she would not allow Sir Charles Millbank to interfere. That snake would
never
have Lavender Close! She’d die before she’d let that happen.

A muttered oath hissed off Silver’s lips as she gave the fine old writing desk a very unladylike kick.

And then her eyes widened. Was it her imagination or had the desk tilted? Frowning, she bent closer.

Sure enough, the left rear leg was aslant.

Pushing aside a spray of jasmine, Silver ran her hand along the back of the desk, but found nothing beyond polished wood. It was only then that the realization hit her. It wasn’t the desk that was awry at all. It was the
floor.

Her angry kick must have dislodged one of the flagstones.

Breathlessly, Silver shoved the desk toward the wall and tugged at the piece of slate beneath it.

A moment later she was staring down into a six-inch hole.

Goose bumps rose along her neck. Was she finally about to have answers to the thousand questions that had haunted her since her father’s death?

An oilskin bag was the first thing she found. Next came an ebony box inlaid with ivory. It had been shoved to the back of the hole and was covered with a layer of dust. With trembling fingers Silver opened the oilskin bag.

Seed reports and planting records, all in her father’s careful script, tumbled down onto the floor, more precious to her than any jewels might have been. There had to be ten years’ worth here! But no formula for Millefleurs, she thought, frowning.

And then Silver’s gaze fell upon the box. Dust streaked the fine wood and grime darkened the brass hinges.

Carefully she slid back the latch. Inside, nestled on a cut velvet cushion, lay a small book. The leather cover was cracked with age and the pages had turned the color of weak tea. Her father’s diary!

How often Silver remembered watching him frown over some page, quill clamped between his teeth.

Her pulse began to race. Opening the heavy, tooled cover, she turned to the first page and began to read.

Midnight.

Outside the moon is waning.

I write from my desk where I can hear the wind sigh, playing through the lavender. I have opened the workroom doors so I can smell the lush, velvet fragrance of the night. Before she died, my beloved Sarah liked to sit here. She could name every flower in bloom, my Sarah.

Now I try too. There is the sharp sweet tang of lavender along with the clear beauty of violets. There are jasmine and honeysuckle and even the dusky scent of oak moss from the stream.

But I am no good at this game. Ah, my Sarah could say which variety of seed and even what week the buds were in. She could tell
stoechas
from
augustifolia
or
dentata,
and whether the lavender had come from Hitcham or Provence or even from the faraway hills of Greece.

Dear Lord, how much I miss her, with the smell of summer all around me. Sweet flowering orange, jasmine, and rosemary all remind me of what I’ve lost.

They killed her, you see. I realize it all so clearly now that it is too late. They killed my beloved Sarah because I would not do the things they wanted. I was a fool, head over heels in love, and convinced I was invincible. Oh, I told myself I could protect her.

But I could not.

And now they are coming again. Last week I found another letter…

The script ended in a stark slash of black ink. There was no date.

Silver stared down, frozen, the letters blurring before her eyes. So her father
had
been in danger. He had been so secretive in those last months, always on edge, yet trying to conceal the worry from her and Bram.

Then he had taken his final trip abroad for lavender. When he’d come back, he’d seemed so much more calm, the way he used to be when her mother was alive.

Except that he wasn’t. Not really. His body had been found in the icehouse barely two weeks after his return. His stiff fingers had held a terse note of apology for his children. In the magistrate’s view it was a clear case of suicide.

Silver hadn’t believed that for a second. How she missed him, with his nonsense and eccentricities. He had known every vine and branch growing on these hills, and he had loved every one of them.

Now she knew the grim truth:
both
of her parents had been killed, murdered by criminals who needed William St. Clair’s help in some sort of illicit scheme. The thought was nearly too much for Silver to bear. She brushed away a tear. Now she would have a chance to prove her suspicions. Maybe she and Bram could find the formula for Millefleurs, locate her parents’ murderers, and—

A creak came from the far wall of the workroom. Quickly she shoved the box down into its hiding place, replaced the piece of slate and slid the desk back over it.

Then Silver screamed.

Something hurtled toward her, shattering the wall of glass. She saw a brick with a piece of paper wrapped around it.

The message was short and ugly.

The boy is next.

~ ~ ~

Blackwood inched his horse along the dark ridge overlooking the heath. At the top he halted and opened the leather satchel slung across his saddle.

By the light of the moon the highwayman skimmed the naval dispatch he had taken from Lord Renwick’s carriage.

Frowning, he scanned the terse lines of numbers indicating latitudes and longitudes of the various trading vessels and passenger ships active in the Channel and farther south off France and Spain. There was nothing earthshaking in the information. Outwardly at least, it was a routine list of shipping facts.

But something about those numbers nagged at the highwayman. Something that was not quite as it should be. He knew that water well, of course. Five years ago he had tasted its brine and shivered in its frigid swells. Most of the numbers marked locations off the coast of Spain and Portugal and a few farther south near the mouth of the Mediterranean.

Yes, there was something there all right, something that pricked at dark memories, but try as he might, Blackwood couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Grimly, he shoved the papers back into the satchel, then ran a gloved hand along Diablo’s gleaming neck.

The pain in his chest had stilled to a throb. He had stanched the blood with a handkerchief and sent Jonas on to deposit Renwick’s carriage in the main street of Kingsdon Cross. Someone would be sent to search for the travelers once the carriage was found, and until then, the lord and his ladies could amuse themselves as they saw fit.

Diablo’s head rose. The black horse gave a restless whinny.

Cursing softly, the highwayman tugged off his mask, letting the cool wind rake his cheeks. Off to the east the sky was tinged with gray and above him the stars were starting to fade. In an hour it would be dawn.

Dawn.
One more day of bitterness and regret. One more day without hope. One more day that brought him no closer to his goal of revenge. The tall figure cursed, then spurred his horse forward.

He knew he should go home.

He knew he should give up his dangerous masquerade and ride hell for leather toward Waldon Hall and the safety its palatial rooms offered.

But he didn’t. Instead the highwayman turned south. He studied the dark hills, thinking about innocence and youth and a woman with green-gold eyes and lips like crimson silk.