A Heart in Jeopardy (21 page)

North pulled her backward. She stepped over the hoe with her left foot, straddling it. Then she pulled her right foot back, using her left foot as a fulcrum. The hoe swung forward, tripping her and crashing into the crockery. She pitched forward. North, startled at the loud crash of pottery, swung his pistol that way.

It was the opening Deveraux needed. He lunged for North, carrying them backward to the ground. Leona scrambled out of the way and to her feet. The men rolled on the ground, struggling for control of the gun. Suddenly the gun went off, and the sound released Leona. She looked around for the pistol Deveraux dropped. She ran for it.

It was kicked out from beneath her fingers. She looked up. Jewitt stood over her, a long kitchen knife in her hand. She grabbed Leona by her braid, yanking her upright She held the knife blade against her throat and together the women watched the men fight. They were evenly matched, though there was an underhanded viciousness in North's attack. Leona watched helplessly as North threw mud in Deveraux's face. Deveraux twisted his head aside at the last moment. He grabbed at one of the crockery pots lying on its side nearby, then with a fluid movement he brought the pot up and crashing into the back of North's head. The man slumped to the ground.

Deveraux staggered to his feet wiping with the back of his hand at a trickle of blood from a cut lip.

"Give it up, Jewitt" he said, breathing hard. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, as he gulped air.

"No! She's ruined everything!"

"No, your stupid desire for revenge has ruined everything. If you'd been content with money, you would have had that the first week you kidnapped Chrissy."

"But I need my revenge! I have to have it! The money is nothing, I tell you! Nothing! I waited and planned so long—"

"Too long. My brother has consumption. Damn it! He's a dying man! Isn't that revenge enough?"

"It's not enough! All the Deverauxs must suffer as I have suffered. And I've discovered just how I'd make you and Miss Leonard pay." She pressed the knife closer to Leona's throat.

Leona felt a slight stinging and a trickle of warmth down her neck.

"I'm going to kill her, and you're going to watch."

A fear Deveraux had never experienced in his life twisted his stomach into knots. He was near to casting up his accounts. It was only the knowledge that he had to save Leona that kept his nausea at bay.

Jewitt was dangerously unstable. If he goaded her, prodded her further into anger at him, would she take immediate action against Leona? Or could he divert her attention, turn her wrath solely against him? With the knife creasing Leona's neck and Jewitt lost to any human decency—to any feelings of guilt or remorse—it was his only hope.

He began to laugh. He put his hands on his hips and threw his head back, laughing as if he'd just heard the richest joke of his life.

"What's so funny?" Jewitt snarled.

"You are!" Deveraux exclaimed, shaking his head as he laughed. "Miss Leonard may be a winsome handful, but what makes you think she matters to me? After all, I am a Deveraux! And while my family honor may demand I make Miss Leonard an offer after the situation you placed us in last night, I would be gratified at any possibility that would relieve me of that tiresome duty. Miss Leonard is to me as you were to my brother. A pleasant diversion. Go on, kill her! Then I will kill you and claim—in deepest remorse—how I could not save Miss Leonard. I shall be universally pitied."

"No! That's not true! I saw you and her yesterday!" She wavered, her knife hand easing away a few inches.

He drew himself up to his most arrogant stance. "And do you think that is any behavior for the wife of a Deveraux?" he sneered, his upper lip curling derisively.

Jewitt looked confused. She froze, though her eyes darted about as she tried to make sense of the situation.

Leona stomped down hard on her instep at the same time she bent her head forward to bite her hand. She bit savagely until she tasted blood.

Jewitt shrieked with pain and rage, the knife falling from her hand.

Deveraux lunged for the woman, knocking her down. Jewitt was a wild animal, thrashing and kicking at him, the mud making her slippery and hard to hold. Her fingers clawed at his eyes, and a low guttural snarl came from deep in her throat, her face contorted into a horrid rictus of hate. She spotted the gun where she'd kicked it. Blood trailed down her fingers as she stretched her hand out to reach it When her fingers closed around the pistol butt, a triumphant gleam lit her face. She brought her hand up, aiming the pistol at Deveraux as he tried to hold her down. She pulled back the hammer.

"Nigel!" Leona screamed, starting forward.

Jewitt pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Enraged, she pulled it several times more. Still nothing happened. The safety pin was still in place!

Weak with relief, Leona fell to her knees beside the two wrestling bodies. With an ease that amazed her, she wrested the pistol from Jewitt's hand.

Suddenly, Jewitt stopped struggling and began sobbing instead, her body soon wracked with the intensity of her feeling. Carefully Deveraux rose off her. She curled up into a ball and began rocking. He turned toward Leona.

"Do you have any rope about?"

"I think in the shed. I'll get it— Nigel! Stop her!"

In the brief moment Deveraux looked away from Jewitt to Leona, the woman with the agility of a cat had found her lost knife. Deveraux turned in time to see her plunge it deep into her own stomach, a look of stunned surprise on her face as she crumbled forward and fell to the ground.

It was odd how one day could be so dramatically different from another. Leona leaned her head against the wooden window casement and stared out into the yard of the Golden Goose Inn. Two days ago when she drove into the yard, it had been a gray, dingy sight welcoming her with its formality. Last night when Deveraux brought her to the inn rather than allow her to spend the night alone at Rose Cottage, its oil-lantern lit expanse glistening wetly in the steady rain was a haven from the horror of bloody death.

This afternoon brilliant sunshine poured into the cobble-stoned yard rendering the memory of the past two days a fantasy. Already the ground was dry save for the shadowed corners under archways and benches and the low spots where the cobbles long ago settled. There was an aspect of cheerfulness in the hustle and bustle of horses and carriages coming and going that was soothing. Leona watched Abraham Tubbs whistle for his dog and set off under the archway toward the village with a fishing pole over his shoulder. Mrs. Tubbs came out to shake a rug and stopped long enough to admonish one of her sons for something, and that young man looked sheepish, then broke into a broad grin when his mother turned her back. These were all normal, sane sights. Leona clung to those images, using them to banish the visions of a frightened child in a room stripped bare, of a dovecote burning, of threatening knives and guns, and of two dead bodies. She soaked in the normalcies of a busy inn to counter the memories of Jewitt's insanity and desire for revenge, and of North's cold-bloodedness and greed.

Or Rickie, as she must now learn to think of Howard North. Howard Rickie, sometimes known as Harry Rickie. An opportunist who saw in Sarah (Sally) Jewitt Northythe and her desire for revenge the means to a wealthy end. And what of Mrs. Northythe and her daughter Joanna? Last night after they contacted the magistrate and brought Rickie to the Golden Goose, Rickie began to talk. He claimed the Northythes were badly frightened by their landlady's rescue of Lady Christiana. They turned tail and ran for the Continent, urging Sally to do the same, but Sally was too far gone in her determination to get revenge to heed their pleas.

Their desertion suited Rickie. He hated playing the old woman's son. It was he who discovered the button in the bedroom at Lion's Gate and Sally who devised the notion of luring Leona Leonard to Castle Marin. That, Rickie claimed, was their biggest mistake. His face twisted into a rictus of hate when he looked at Leona. It was supposed to have been Sarah Jewitt who discovered the dovecote fire and raised the alarm after Rickie was back from setting the fire. That was why she happened to be in the hall with a cloak in her hands when Lucy needed one. Leona's precipitous alarm before Rickie made it back to the stable meant he had less time and opportunity to steal Deveraux's prize horses.

Working on the suspicions of the servants was child's play. Glibly they absorbed any suggestions made to them, particularly when Alan Gerby, the head groom, proved especially gullible (on learning this, Deveraux decided it would be best if Gerby found employment elsewhere). George Ludlow was a surprising problem. He liked Leona and so decided to investigate on his own. It was unfortunate that one night he saw Rickie and Jewitt meet and later, after one of the meetings in the village, followed Rickie up to the keep. He swore they hadn't intended to kill him. It was an accident. They weren't murderers, Rickie insisted. They kept him trussed up in the keep, only he broke free. He was going to escape. They couldn't let that happen. There was a fight, and during the fight Ludlow was killed.

Then Sally got the idea to steal the jewels. It was ridiculously easy. The night of the ball, instead of packing them back into the casket, she pushed them into the dressing table drawer. As she suspected, the valet never looked in the casket. She should have snuck away then. But no, she had to try to find a way to pin the theft on Miss Leonard. He laughed then, deriving satisfaction from the thought they were stolen by someone else. When Leona contradicted him and informed him they were hidden at Rose Cottage, he tried to bound out of his chair to throttle her, but two of the Tubbs boys standing guard over his chair caught him and "accidentally" -- or so they assured Sir Nathan Cruikston -- knocked him unconscious.

It was a blessed relief for Leona. With the man no longer able to talk, Mrs. Tubbs led her to a bedroom and sent maids scurrying to fetch warm water for a bath. She fussed and cosseted her like a mother hen, insisting she relax in the warm bath, insisting she eat, and then insisting she sleep. Like a puppet, Leona obeyed.

Early in the morning Mrs. Tubbs and Abraham went to Rose Cottage and fetched clothing for her and the Nevin jewels from their hiding place. When Abraham saw what was in the scarf-wrapped bundle he'd brought back, his eyes nearly popped from his head. His expression drew the first smile from Leona that day, the first sign of her conquering the numbing horror that had consumed her since she watched Sarah Jewitt North plunge the knife into herself.

Through it all, Deveraux had been sweetly solicitous. She smiled softly when she remembered his tongue-tied hesitancy early that morning while they sat in the private parlor that Mr. Tubbs made available to them and ate their breakfast.

"Leona, you don't believe what I told that North the woman, do you?" he asked, his voice hoarse and strained. He coughed, clearing his throat.

"About what?"

"About— You know—" he dabbed his napkin to his lips. "About, well, you not being good enough for a Deveraux. I didn't mean it."

She smiled at him, touched by his discomfort. "No. I know you better than that, Mr. Deveraux."

"I was attempting to divert her anger. To direct it solely at me."

"I know," she repeated. "And it worked beautifully. I took advantage of the diversion you created, just as you took advantage of the diversion I created with Rickie. Isn't that what you had intended?"

He ran his hand through his hair. "I truthfully had not expected you to take such precipitous action. Though why I shouldn't have, I don't know. You certainly were a woman of action last night!"

A small giggle escaped her. "Not at all your expectation of a gently reared young woman."

"Well, let's just say I can't see Lucy behaving in the same way," he drawled, relaxing.

"But Chrissy would."

He sighed. "Yes, Chrissy would. I fear my brother will have his hands full there when she is older."

Leona agreed. Poor Deveraux. All his preconceptions regarding women were shattered; yet manfully he was holding up. It was quite impressive, when considered objectively, that last night he allowed himself to be generaled by a woman. If she ever did allow herself to contemplate marriage, she couldn't do better than Nigel Deveraux. And never would.

She discovered, to her deep sorrow, that she loved him. And she believed him when he said he loved her! But it was because she loved him that she could never contemplate marriage to him.

Nigel Deveraux was a man with dreams and ambitions. She was a penniless female. There was nothing she could give him. She would only take away. She couldn't do that to him. She must reject the suit he felt duty bound to offer.

A band tightened around her heart. She rose hurriedly from the table and turned her back to him so that he might not see the quick sheen of tears in her eyes. She fought against those tears as determinedly as she had in her youth. She drew in a deep breath and blinked the tears away.

"Leona?" Deveraux came to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders. "What is it, my love?"

She laughed brokenly. "That's just it," she said, "I can't be."

"What are you talking about?" He turned her around to search her face.

Leona now had her emotions under control, though admittedly that control was fragile as spider silk. "I want you to know that I do not in any way consider myself compromised."

He grinned. "So you adamantly said yesterday."

She looked at him uncertainly. "Then you agree there is no need for us to marry?"

"I didn't say that." He smiled and traced the curve of her cheek with a rough fingertip. "I think our marriage is an imminently agreeable idea."

"Well, I don't!" she flared, backing away from him.

He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes narrowing as he considered her. "Leona, I believe you are aware of my feelings for you."

"Oh, please!"

"And I believe they are reciprocated. Is that not true?"

Leona couldn't answer him, her tongue cloying to the roof of her mouth. She wanted to be able to deny her feelings, but the words wouldn't come. Her heart would not allow her to hear. She stared at him, wide-eyed and helpless.

"Don't—" she finally managed, the single word a broken plea that caught in her throat.

"Don't what?"

"Don't ask. Don't love me."

"For God's sake, why not?" he angrily demanded.

"I have nothing to give you," she whispered.

Silence hung heavy in the room.

"Are you saying you don't love me?" he finally asked, his voice tight with disbelief.

She whirled away, staring up blindly at the beamed ceiling. Her chest heaved, fighting the tightness lodged there. She bit her lip as she fought for some semblance of control.

"Damn it, Leona! Don't do this to me! To us!" He grabbed her and roughly turned her to face him. His face was dark, a vein drumming visibly in his temple. His eyes were chips of blue ice burning with cold. One hand caught her about the waist, the other clamped the back of her head. He pulled her close, settling her between his legs. Then his head descended, his lips capturing hers in a punishing, bruising kiss, a kiss meant to stake claim and call forth the same from her. His lips ground against hers, full of passion and frustration. His lips parted, and before she could react, his tongue thrust between her teeth exploring the cavern of her mouth, tangling with her own tongue in a wild dance as his tongue stroked hers and she responded in kind.

A small sound, a mew of satisfaction, rose in her throat as her hands came up to clasp his broad shoulders and spear the thick pelt of hair at the back of his neck. A fine trembling swept through her, churning a thousand moths in her stomach to flight. She rose on her toes, crowding against him to get closer, the evidence of his manhood pressed hard against her stomach through layers of clothing. Her breasts tingled where they pressed against his chest. She writhed against him.

His mouth left hers as he rained kisses across her face, in her hair, in the hallows of her neck. She gasped, knowing she would fall if he let go of her.

"Oh, Leona, my beautiful Leona," he murmured exaltedly. "You do love me!"

His words shattered her.

She collapsed against him, her face buried in his coat as the tears she fought all morning flowed, cut loose from her soul. She railed against them, against life's injustice that made her poor, against a love that threatened to consume her soul, against the aloneness she was destined to face all her life. Murmuring repeatedly a broken "No!" she fought to dam the tears and her own weakness.

His body stilled at the sound of that one word, a word repeated over and over with heart-wrenching agony. She couldn't mean it. Why was she doing this? Her sobs tore at him, and a large, empty cavern formed in his chest. His hands shook as he pushed her away from him and she slid down onto the bench of a high-backed settle. With jerky, drunken steps, he staggered away from her. He stopped at the door to look back at her. He shook his head in numb disbelief, his eyes twin pools of fathomless blue. Then he lurched out the door.

Leona rose unsteadily, the words on her lips to call him back, but they remained unvoiced as the door closed firmly behind him. She sank back down, never feeling so lost and alone in her entire life. But it was done. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, once again an empty husk.

It was late afternoon when the Nevin coach that first took Leona to Castle Marin rattled into the yard of the Golden Goose Inn. From her spot by the window where she'd spent the day in numbing agony, Leona saw Lady Lucille and Mr. Fitzhugh descend from the carriage. They were both strangely solemn, even their clothing reflected their demeanor.

Deveraux, who had spent the day apart from her in the tap room, came out quickly. When Lucy saw him, she ran toward him, her cloak billowing behind her. In the instant before she threw herself into her brother's arms, Leona thought her face unnaturally pale and pinched.

A sick horror of foreboding churned in Leona's stomach. Her hand rose to her lips as she saw a white-faced David Fitzhugh hand Deveraux a letter. He clutched it in his hand, staring at it, the color draining from his face. He shook his head from side to side. Lucy backed unsteadily away from him into the comforting curve of Fitzhugh's arm. Deveraux staggered away from them, turning to stare into the window of the room where Leona sat. She shrank back into the corner of the settle, terrified to know the meaning of the scene before her.

Deveraux ran back into the inn and a moment later, the door to the private parlor where Leona sat crashed open. He strode two paces into the room then stopped, his body rigid. He stiffly raised the arm that held the envelope. He looked at it, then at her, his expression that of a lost and bewildered soul.

Leona rose to her feet and took an uncertain step toward him.

"Help me," he whispered, his words taut with pain.

She stepped closer. "Deveraux, you're frightening me. What is it?"

With a groan of relief, he gathered her tightly in his arms. "Thank you, my love, thank you. I'll make you happy somehow, I swear it."

He led her over to the settle and sat down beside her. Leona held onto his upper arm as he loosened the wafer and spread open the letter. He scanned it quickly, his jaw clenched tight. Suddenly he sagged back against the settle, his features easing. One tear tracked down his rugged cheek.

"Nigel?" Leona whispered.

He turned to look at her, more tears streaming down his face, but now he was smiling. "He lives! Oh, God, Leona, he lives! And Emily writes that he is much improved! Even the doctors are amazed. They think there's a chance! They ask— They ask if I might bring Chrissy to them in Switzerland. Brandon will have to stay there a while longer, but now since he appears out of danger, they want her with them!"