Make Me Love You (16 page)

When his expression turned sad, she asked gently, “How did she die, Gabriel?”

She didn’t need to hear the words. She could tell what he was going to say from the wary expression that returned to his face. “You’ll need to ask Dominic if you want to know about that.”

She sighed. As if that subject were ever going to be safe with the wolf. But she glanced behind her at the locked room he’d mentioned yesterday, trying a new tack. “What about that room?”

“Ella’s? I told you it’s kept locked.”

“You also said I could see her room another time. Now’s a good time.”

“Why do you even want to?”

“So I can understand a little better the people responsible for my being here, Dominic, Robert—and Ella.”

Gabriel hesitated before he nodded and moved past her to unlock the door. “Please don’t tell Dom I allowed this,” he whispered.

She held out her hand for the key. “I promise he’ll never know. I’ll lock the door when I leave.”

Gabriel nodded, then continued on his way downstairs.

Brooke entered the room and quickly closed the door. Would she find anything of interest in the dead girl’s room? It wasn’t going to tell her how Ella died. It was dark and musty in here with the thick drapes closed. She opened one panel before slowly walking about the room.

She might be seeing it exactly as Ella had last seen it, except for the portrait of a beautiful young woman leaning against one wall. Eloise Wolfe? She had a strong feeling that it was, and it must have been painted right before her eighteenth year—black hair, amber eyes, joyful. Excited about her upcoming Season? It had probably had a prominent place downstairs until her death made it too painful for her family to look at, and it had been stored behind a locked door instead.

Nothing appeared to be out of place or missing from the room. The vanity was still filled with perfumes and baubles, the small dressing room was still cluttered with clothes, bonnets, and shoes. There was a painting of a beautiful white horse, and another of two sailboats on the sea. Ella definitely liked the outdoors. A miniature of Dominic sat on a night table next to the bed, a younger Dominic, though old enough for the image to closely resemble the man he’d become. Ella loved him, had been close to him from what Gabriel had said. A jewelry box had a wolf’s head carved on the top of it. A family heirloom? She opened the box and was surprised to find it nearly empty except for a tarnished pair of small silver earrings. If Ella had her own money, why wasn’t that box filled with expensive jewelry?

The girl had also liked frilly things. Ruffles were on the bedcover, the drapes, the vanity—or perhaps she’d never got around to redecorating after she grew up. A large bowl of small seashells was at the center of her bureau, with large shells placed
around it. She must have had fun on that Scarborough beach as a child. With Dominic? Did they build sand castles together? Swim together? Brooke wondered if he would ever talk about the sister he’d lost.

She started opening the bureau drawers and felt guilt creeping up on her. This was snooping of the worst sort. But how else was she supposed to find out what happened to Dominic’s sister when he wouldn’t tell her anything beyond Robert’s being responsible for her death?

The first drawer of the bureau she opened was filled with fans. Brooke was amazed to find so many. She started opening them and saw that they were all quite fancy, each made with a different-colored lace and with different gems dotting the painted frames, no doubt to match Ella’s large collection of evening gowns. Then she opened an unusual one. The frame was plain, unpainted wood, no gems attached, and the panels were made of white paper with a faint cursive handwriting design on it. Well, that made it more unusual, and since no gems were on it, she didn’t think anyone would mind if she borrowed it for a while.

She didn’t own any fans herself. Harriet had completely overlooked that accessory or they hadn’t been delivered to Leicestershire before Brooke had been sent here. But a fan would certainly come in handy to hide a grin if she felt like grinning at an inappropriate moment, or to keep Dominic from seeing her gritting her teeth. She stuck the fan in her pocket before opening more drawers.

She found nothing else of interest, and the only other thing to open and look inside was the chest at the foot of Ella’s bed. As she’d suspected, it only contained bedding. But just to be thorough, she reached inside and ran her palm across the bottom of
the chest and touched a piece of hard leather. She pulled out a large book, but it had no title on the cover. Opening it, she read,
Stay out,
which was written in a childish scrawl. She was incredulous when she realized she was holding Eloise Wolfe’s childhood diary. She quickly flipped through the pages and saw that the handwriting changed, becoming more formal and mature. Her eye caught phrases about fittings and gowns and house parties. It wasn’t just a childhood diary but one that Ella had kept later in her life. Maybe she had written about Robert. Maybe the diary contained clues about Ella’s death. Brooke wanted to read the entire thing. So she left the room with the diary, locked the door, and hurried to her own room.

She spent the rest of the day as well as the next two days combing over seven years of Ella’s life, from the day the eleven-year-old girl started the diary to her eighteenth year. Brooke found the diary quite entertaining and actually laughed out loud when she read about Ella and Dominic’s getting lost in a snowstorm and being led home by a big white wolf—Ella’s description of the dog that had helped them. The girl had had a childish crush on one of her brother’s friends and worried that he’d marry someone else before she was old enough to propose to him, though she never mentioned it again, so she must have outgrown the notion.

The diary contained so many amusing anecdotes. Ella’s peeking in on Dominic in a corner of the gardens when he tried to kiss one of the local girls, who ran away screaming. Dominic’s pretending it was an accident when he fell on their sand castle—they did build them together!—just so they’d have to start over. Ella had even beat him at some of their races and mentioned every win, though she did suspect he had allowed her to. Brooke hated to put the diary down when she had to
exercise Rebel, help Alfreda set up her new herb garden, or perform her least favorite task—visiting the wolf’s room to tend his wounds.

She was terribly disappointed when she reached the end of the diary because there were only a few entries from the summer of Ella’s Season and none from the autumn when she died. Those pages had apparently been ripped out, everything after the day she met “him.” That’s the only way Ella referred to the man who had fascinated her at her first ball. The six pages after that were missing. Brooke’s breath caught in her throat when she saw that whoever had ripped them out had missed the last page of the dairy that contained Ella’s handwriting. Had Ella removed the evidence before she died? No, Brooke realized Dominic must have ripped them out in the rage that overcame him when he found the damning words that had sent him to kill Robert. But no wonder he’d overlooked that last page when only two lines were on it:

laughed when I told him about the baby, but the baby leaves me no choice. Damn Robert Whitworth for ruining my life!

Brooke didn’t know what to think when she read that last page. So her brother didn’t just take Ella’s virginity, he’d left her pregnant? Lied to his own parents about it, refused to take responsibility for it, even laughed when Ella told him? Brooke was horrified that her brother could be that cruel to Ella, and he didn’t even care about his own unborn child! Brooke cried when she realized she’d lost a niece or nephew when Ella died. Yet, Dominic didn’t just blame Robert for seducing his sister, he blamed him for her death. Did Dominic think she took her
own life—because of Robert? Was it in those missing pages? Just those two last lines might have made Dominic think that. If that was so, he didn’t just hate Brooke because her brother caused the death of his sister, but also the death of his niece or nephew.

Why couldn’t someone here at Rothdale have just told her that? Or did everyone else think Ella’s death was a tragic accident? But Brooke was no closer to feeling comfortable about asking Dominic about it.

She’d lied the other night when they’d had their second dinner together, telling him she had an earache so she couldn’t hear well. That had helped to keep her from reacting to his barbs. For the next two days he stopped trying to get her angry enough to leave; he simply stopped talking at all, waiting for her “deafness” to go away. While the quiet had been nice for a couple days, it wasn’t getting her anywhere. His fever and the inflammation were gone, and so was her excuse to enter his room.

Now that she’d finished reading the diary and had even more questions about what had happened to Ella, she decided her ears would make a full recovery by tomorrow morning.

“T
HIS IS WHY YOU
sent me off on that errand!” Gabriel accused when he returned to Dominic’s room and found him standing at one of the back windows. “So you could sneak out of your bed again?”

“I don’t sneak.” Dominic didn’t glance back, though he lifted the cane in his hand to show how he’d gotten to the window. “I hobbled with this.”

“Still—”

“There’s nothing wrong with the rest of me, Gabe. The fever broke a few days ago, and I’m damned if I can see any redness around the wound.”

“
That’s
good news.” Gabriel joined Dominic at the window. “I’ll let Miss Wichway know her—”

“No, you won’t.”

“But it will give me an excuse to seek her out.”

Dominic glanced to the side. “Why would you want . . . ?” He didn’t finish. Gabriel’s expression was quite explanatory. Dominic rolled his eyes. “You haven’t noticed she’s too old for you?”

“She’s nothing of the sort.”

Dominic snorted. Those two women were wrecking his household, charming his cook, charming his best friend. Even his reticent valet had smiled more in the last five days than Dominic had ever seen him smile before. And Wolf didn’t even bark at either of the women when he should have. The dog didn’t like strangers. If Dominic didn’t know better, he’d think both women were witches.

But the younger of the two sat on a bench beneath a white willow reading, shielded from the sun that flooded the park, her long black hair no longer tied back but flowing loosely around her narrow shoulders. Like a young girl, she didn’t appear to care about her appearance when she thought no one was around—or watching her.

Her lips were plump. He imagined she was biting the lower one as she read, as he’d seen her do three times since she’d arrived here, his eyes drawn to her mouth each time. Bloody hell, he was counting? Her eyes were fascinating, so pale a green, like dew-glistened grass. Lightly tanned skin, which indicated how much she enjoyed the outdoors. How unladylike was that?

She should be fashionably pale, but she wasn’t. Other ladies rode and walked outdoors, but only with hats, veils, or parasols to shield their delicate skin from the sun. She should be demure but was bold instead. She should have been mortified to enter his bedroom the day she’d arrived, but he hadn’t noticed pink cheeks. She had pretended to be cowed, but how quickly she’d dropped that pretense.

She was a wisp of a girl, only slightly taller than most, narrow of frame, and yet the plumpness of those breasts she’d flaunted at him in that yellow gown her first night here . . . Good God, how was he surviving this?

It had been a gut-wrenching blow that she looked as she did. Unexpected, unwanted. And why hadn’t she run crying from the room when he’d kissed her . . . ?

He wasn’t going to think about that backfiring failure again, but her reaction to it suggested she wasn’t a virgin. Was she as immoral as her brother?

She’d been hiding in her room the last few days, according to the staff. He thought her ears might be paining her, yet she’d showed no evidence of discomfort when she’d rushed in and out of his room to apply the salve with barely a word the last couple of days. She seemed more distracted than anything else. He’d had to repeat himself too many times, loudly, to want to continue baiting her. Yesterday they’d barely said two words to each other. He didn’t
like
the silence.

“Is she appealing to you yet?” Gabriel asked, following Dominic’s gaze if not his thoughts.

Dominic looked toward the pastures before he said, “Like fungus.”

Gabriel tsked but didn’t comment.

Good. Dominic did
not
need to hear her praises sung again. “My guess is George didn’t know what he was sending me or he would have added her to his own tally. Our prince has led a life of dissipation, wild extravagance, escapades, and has had too many mistresses to count, yet he can raise a brow over a few duels? Someone put this scheme in his ear. I would like to know who to thank for it.”

“You mean who you can challenge to a duel next?”

Dominic didn’t answer. He felt an urge to look down at the park again, so this time he focused his attention on the pasture. “Royal needs exercise.”