Almost Heaven (64 page)

“I-I don’t know.”

“In all the time I’ve been here, have I ever done or said anything that would have made you think I was crazed? Or would you say I’ve merely seemed very unhappy and a little frightened?”

“I would not say you” – she hesitated, and in those moments there was an understanding, a communication that sometimes occurs when women reach out to one another for help – “I do
not
think you are crazed.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said feelingly, giving her hands a tight squeeze of gratitude as she continued speaking, half to herself. “Now that we’ve gotten this far, I need to find a way to prove to you who I am – who Robert and I are. In the paper,” Elizabeth began, groping her way through the mire of explanations, mentally searching for the quickest, the easiest proof, and then
any
proof. “In the paper,” she began hesitantly, “it said the Marquess of Kensington is believed to have killed his wife, Lady
Elizabeth
Thornton, and her brother,
Robert
Cameron, do you remember?”

Mrs. Hogan nodded. “But the names are commonplace,” she protested. ,

“No, don’t start thinking yet,” Elizabeth said a little wildly. “I’ll think of more proof in a minute. Wait, I have it. Come with me!” She nearly dragged the poor woman out of her chair and into the tiny bed chamber with the two narrow cots that she and Robert slept in. With Mr. Hogan standing in the doorway to watch, Elizabeth reached beneath her pillow and pulled out her reticule, jerking it open. “Look how much money I have with me. It’s a great deal more than ordinary people such as Robert and I – such as you
think
Robert and I are – would have, isn’t it?”

“I don’t rightly know.”

“No, of course you don’t,” Elizabeth said, realizing she was losing Mrs. Hogan’s confidence. “Wait. I
have
it!” Elizabeth ran to the bed and pointed to the paper. “Read what it says they believe I was wearing when I left.”

“I don’t need to read it. They said it was green – green trimmed in black. Or they thought maybe it could be a brown skirt with a cream jacket –”

“Or,” Elizabeth finished triumphantly as she opened the two valises that held what few articles of clothing she’d taken, “they thought it could be a gray traveling costume, didn’t they?” Mrs. Hogan nodded, and Elizabeth dragged all the clothes out of the valises and dumped them on the bed in triumph. She knew from the woman’s face that she believed Elizabeth, and that she would be able to make her husband believe her as well. Swinging around, Elizabeth began campaigning against a harassed Mr. Hogan. “I need to get back to London at once, and it would be much faster by boat. “

“There’s a ship due in next week what goes ter –”

“Mr. Hogan, I cannot wait. The trial began three days ago. For all I know, they’ve convicted my husband of murdering me, and they’re planning to hang him.”

“But,” he cried irritably, “you ain’t dead!”

“Exactly. Which is why I have to go there and prove it to them. And I can’t wait for ships to come into port. I will give you anything you ask if you’ll take me to Tilbery in your boat. From there the roads are good, and I can hire a coach for the rest of the journey.”

“I don’t know, missus. I’d like ter help, but the fishin’ has been goodes’ now, an’ . . .” He saw her look of fierce alarm and glanced helplessly at his wife, lifting his hands in a shrug.

Mrs. Hogan hesitated, then she nodded. “You will take her, John.”

Wrapping the woman in a tight hug, Elizabeth said, “Thank you – both of you. Mr. Hogan, how much would you earn for a week’s excellent catch?”

He told her, and Elizabeth reached into her reticule, extracted some bills, counted them, and thrust them into his bands, squeezing his fingers closed over them. “That is five times the amount you named,” she told him. It was the first time in all her life Elizabeth Cameron Thornton had ever paid more than she absolutely had to for anything. “Can we leave tonight?’“

“I-I s’pose, but it ain’t wise to be out there at night.”

“It has to be tonight. I can’t spare a moment.” Elizabeth shook off the unspeakable notion that she might already be too late.

“What’s going on in here?” Robert’s voice rose in surprise as he noticed Elizabeth’s clothing tumbled onto the bed. Then his gaze riveted on the newspaper, and his eyes narrowed in anger. “I told you –” he began, turning furiously on the Hogans.

“Robert, you and I need to talk.” Elizabeth interrupted. “Alone.”

“John,” said Mrs. Hogan, “I think we ought to go for a nice walk.”

It was at that moment that Elizabeth realized for the first time that Robert must have had the newspaper hidden from her because he already knew what was in it. The idea that he knew and hadn’t told her was almost as unspeakable as discovering that Ian was being accused of their murder. “Why?” she began in a sudden burst of anger.

“Why what?” he snapped.

“Why haven’t you told me about the things in the paper?”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“You
what?”
she cried, then she realized she didn’t have time to debate the technicalities with him. “We have to go back.”

“Go back,” he jeered. “I’m not going back. He can hang for my murder. I hope he does, the bastard!”

“Well, he’s not going to hang for mine,” she said, shoving her clothes into her valise.

“I’m afraid he is, Elizabeth.” It was the sudden softness of his tone, his complete indifference, that made her heart freeze and an awful, unformed suspicion begin to tear through her. “If I had left a note, as I wanted to do,” she began, “none of this would have been necessary. Ian could have showed the note to . . .” She broke off as a realization hit her. According to the testimony of witnesses published in the paper, Robert had twice tried to kill Ian, not the other way around. If he’d lied about that, then he could have
would
have lied about the rest. The old, familiar pain of betrayal began to hammer in her mind, only this time it was Robert’s betrayal, not Ian’s. It had never been Ian’s.

“It’s all a dirty lie, isn’t it?” she said with a calm that belied her rioting feelings.

“He destroyed my life,” Robert hissed, wrathfully looking at her as if
she
were the traitor. “And it’s
not
all a lie. He had me hauled aboard one of his ships, but I escaped in San Delora.”

Elizabeth drew a shaky breath. “And your back? How did that happen?”

“I had no money, damn you – nothing but the clothes on my back when I escaped. I sold myself as a bond servant to pay for passage to America.” he flung at her, “and
that
is how my master dealt with bond servants who sto – who didn’t work fast enough.”

“You said ‘stole’!” Elizabeth flung back at him in shaking fury. “Don’t lie to me – not again. What about the mines the mines you talked about – black pits ‘in the ground?”

“I worked in a mine for a few months,” he gritted, walking toward her with menacing steps.

Elizabeth snatched up her reticule and stepped back as he grabbed her shoulders in a vicious grip. “I’ve seen unspeakable things, done unspeakable things – and all because I tried to defend your honor while you were playing the slut for that son of a bitch.”  

Elizabeth tried to twist free and couldn’t, and fear began spiraling through her.

“When I finally made it back here, I picked up a paper and read all about how my little sister’s been doing the elegant at all the
ton
parties while I was rotting in a jungle picking sugar cane.”

“Your little sister,” Elizabeth cried in a shaking voice, “was selling everything we had to pay off
your
debts, damn you! You’d have landed in debtors’ gaol if you showed your face here before I stripped Havenhurst of everything.” Her voice broke, and she panicked. “Robert, please,” she choked, her tear brightened eyes searching his hard face. “Please. You’re my brother. And part of what you say is true I
am
the reason for much of what’s happened to you.

“Not Ian,
me.
He could have done much worse to you if he were truly cruel,” she argued. “He could have turned you over to the authorities. That’s what most men would have done, and you would have spent the rest of your life in a dungeon.”

His grip tightened, and his jaw was rigid; Elizabeth lost the battle against her tears, and even her battle to hate Robert for what he had planned to do to Ian. Drawing a suffocated breath, she laid her hand against his lean cheek while tears danced in her eyes. “Robert,” she said achingly, “I love you, and I think you love me. If you’re going to stop me from going to London, I’m afraid you’re going to have to kill me to do it.”

He shoved her backward, as if the touch of her skin suddenly burned his hands, and Elizabeth landed on the bed, still clutching her open reticule. Filled with sorrow for all he had been through, she watched him pace the room like a caged animal. Carefully she pulled all her money out and put it on the bed, then she separated some bills to hire the coach she would need. “Bobby,” she said quietly. She saw his shoulders stiffen at the use of his boyhood nickname. “Please come here.”

She could see the battle going on in his mind as he continued to pace, then abruptly turned and stalked over to the bed as she stood up. “There’s a small fortune here,” she continued in the same gentle, sad voice. “It’s yours. Use it to go anywhere you want.” She touched his sleeve with her left hand. “Bobby?” she whispered, searching his face. “It’s over. There’ll be no more vengeance. Take the money and leave on the first boat going anywhere.”

He opened his mouth, and she hastily shook her head. “Don’t tell me where, if that’s what you were going to do. There’ll be questions about you, and if I don’t know the answers, you’ll know you’re safe from me and Ian and even English law.” She saw him swallow repeatedly, his forlorn gaze on the money lying on the bed. “In six months,” she continued, as desperation lent an odd clarity to her thoughts, “I’ll deposit more money into any bank you tell me to use. Put an ad in the
Times
for Elizabeth – Duncan,” she fabricated hastily, “and I’ll deposit it in the name of whoever signs the ad.”

When he seemed unable to move, she clutched her reticule tighter. “Bobby, you have to decide now. There’s no time to lose.”

His throat worked as he struggled to ignore what she was saying,  and after an endless minute he sighed harshly, and some of the tension drained from his face. “You always had,” he said in a resigned voice as his eyes roved over her features, “the softest heart.” Without another word he walked over to his valise, threw what few articles of clothing he possessed into it, then snatched the money from the bed.

Elizabeth blinked back a flood of tears. “Don’t forget,” she whispered hoarsely, “Elizabeth Duncan.”

He paused with his hand on the door latch and looked back at her. “This is enough,” For a long moment brother and sister looked at each other, knowing it would be the last time; then his lips quirked in an odd little smile of pain. “Good-bye,” he said. “Beth,” he added.

Not until she saw him striding swiftly past the window of their room, heading for the road that twisted down to the sea, did Elizabeth relax, and then she sagged onto the bed, boneless. She bowed her head, and tears slid down her cheeks, dropping onto the reticule that covered her hand; tears of sorrow mingled with tears of relief and fell from her lashes – but all the tears were for her brother, not for her.

Because inside the reticule was her pistol.

And from the moment she realized he might not agree to let her leave, she’d been pointing it at Robert.

CHAPTER 35

Elizabeth made the four-day journey from Helmshead to London in two and a half days – a feat she managed to accomplish by the expedient, if dangerous and costly, method of paying exorbitant sums to coachmen who reluctantly agreed to drive at night, and by sleeping in the coach. The only pauses in her headlong journey were to change horses, change clothing, and gulp down an occasional meal. Wherever they stopped, everyone from post boys to barmaids talked about the trial of Ian Thornton, Marquess of Kensington.

As the miles rolled past, day receded into black night and gray dawn, then began the cycle again, and Elizabeth listened to the pounding hooves of the horses and the terrified pounding of her heart.

At ten o’clock in the morning, six days after Ian’s trial had begun, the dusty coach she’d been traveling in drew up before the Dowager Duchess of Hawthorne’s London town house, and Elizabeth hurtled out of it before the steps were down, tripping on her skirts when she hit the street, then stumbling up the steps and hammering on the door.

“What in heaven’s name –” the dowager began as she paused in the hall, distracted from her worried pacing by the thundering of the brass knocker.

The butler opened the door, and Elizabeth rushed past him. “Your Grace?” she panted. “I –”

“You!”
the dowager said, staring woodenly at the disheveled, dusty woman who’d deserted her husband, caused a furor of pain and scandal, and now presented herself looking like a beautiful dust mop in the dowager’s front hall when it was all but too late. “Someone should take a strap to you,” she snapped.

“Ian will undoubtedly want to attend to that himself, but later. Now I need” – Elizabeth paused. trying to still her panic, to carry out her plan step by step – “I need to get into Westminster. I need your help, because they’ll not want to let a woman into the House of Lords.”

“The trial is in its sixth day, and I don’t mind telling you it is
not
going well.”

“Tell me
later!”
Elizabeth said in a commanding tone that would have done credit to the dowager herself. “Just think of someone with influence who will get me in there someone you know. I’ll do the rest once I’m inside.”

Belatedly, the dowager comprehended that regardless of her unforgivable behavior, Elizabeth was now Ian Thornton’s best hope for acquittal, and she finally galvanized into action. “Faulkner!” she barked, turning to address what seemed to be the staircase.

“Your grace?” asked the dowager’s personal maid who materialized on the balcony above.

“Take this young woman upstairs. Get her clothes brushed and her hair into order. Ramsey!” she snapped, motioning to the butler to follow her into the blue salon, where she sat down at her writing desk. “Take this note directly to Westminster. Tell them that it is from me and that it is to be given
immediately
to Lord Kyleton. He’ll be in his seat at the House of Lords.” She wrote quickly, then thrust the missive at the butler. “I’ve told him to stop the trial
at once.
I’ve also told him that we will be waiting for him in front of Westminster in my coach in one hour. He is to meet us there so that he can get us into the House.”

“At once, your grace,” said Ramsey, already bowing himself out of the room.

She followed him out, still issuing orders. “On the oft’ chance Kyleton has decided to be derelict in his duties and not attend the trial today, send a footman to his house, another to White’s, and another to the home of that actress he thinks no one knows be keeps in Florind Street. You,” she said, bending an icy eye on Elizabeth, “come with me. You have much to explain, madam, and you can do it while Faulkner attends to your appearance.”

“I am
not.”
Elizabeth said in a burst of frustrated anger, “going to think of my appearance at a time like this.”

The duchess’s brows shot into her hairline. “Have you come to persuade them that your husband is innocent?”

“Well, of course I have. I –”

“Then don’t shame him more than you already have! You look like a refugee from a dustbin in Bedlam. You’ll be lucky if they don’t hang
you
for putting them to all this trouble!” She started up the staircase with Elizabeth following slowly behind, listening to her tirade with only half her mind. “Now, if your misbegotten brother would do us the honor of showing himself, your husband might not have to spend the, night in a dungeon, which is
exactly
where Jordan thinks he’s going to land if the prosecutors have their way.”

Elizabeth stopped on the third step. “Will you
please
listen to me for a moment –” she began angrily.

“I listen to you all the way to Westminster,” the dowager snapped back sarcastically. “I daresay all London will be eager to hear what you have to say for yourself in tomorrow’s paper!”

“For the love of God!” Elizabeth cried at her back, I wondering madly to whom she could turn for speedier help.

An hour was an eternity! “I have
not
come merely to show that I’m alive. I can prove that Robert is alive and that he came to no harm at Ian’s hands, and –”

The duchess lurched around and started down the staircase, her gaze searching Elizabeth’s face with a mixture of desperation and hope. “Faulkner!” she barked without turning, “bring whatever you need. You can attend Lady Thornton in the coach!”

Fifteen minutes after the duchess’s coachman pulled the horses to a teeth-jarring stop in front of Westminster, Lord Kyleton came bounding up to their coach with Ramsey trotting doggedly at his heels. “What on earth –” he began.

“Help us down,” the dowager said. “I’ll tell you what I can on the way inside. But first tell me how it’s going in there.”

“Not well. Badly – very badly for Kensington. The head prosecutor is in rare form. So far he’s managed to present a convincing argument that even though Lady Thornton is rumored to be alive, there’s no real
proof
that she is.”

He turned to help Elizabeth, whom he’d never met, down from the coach while continuing to summarize the prosecutors’ tactics to the duchess: “As an explanation for the rumors that Lady Thornton was seen at an inn and a posting house with an unknown man, the prosecutors are implying that Kensington hired a young couple to impersonate her and an alleged lover – an implication that sounds very plausible, since it was a long time before she was supposedly traced, and an equally long time before the jeweler came forward to give his statement. Lastly,” he finished as they rushed past the vaulted entryway, “the prosecutors have also managed to make it sound very logical that if she is still alive, she is obviously in fear for her life, or she would have shown herself by now. It follows, according to them, that Lady Thornton must know firsthand what a ruthless monster her husband is. And if he
is
a ruthless monster, then it follows that he’d be fully capable of having her brother killed. The brother’s disappearance is the crime they believe they have enough evidence on to send him to the gallows.”