So Wild a Heart (39 page)

"Dev!"

But he had already turned and was striding from the room.

_{Chapter 20}

Devin rode to Vesey Park, impelled by a white-hot fury. He reined up in front, turning his horse over to a groom, and went to pound on the front door. A startled footman opened the door, then hastily stepped back as Devin pushed his way through it.

"Where is she?" he growled, and when the footman began to stutter out a response, he yelled, "Leona! Leona! Where the hell are you?"

"Sir!" The footman gaped at him. "I shall announce you if you—''

Devin did not spare the man a glance as he strode through the entry hall to the staircase and began to take it two steps at a time, bellowing Leona's name. The footman hurried after him, wringing his hands and calling out, "Sir!" ineffectually.

Leona appeared in a doorway halfway down the hall. A smile curved her mouth, and she sauntered toward Devin, waving back the footman. "It's all right, Portman. I will see Lord Ravenscar."

She waited for Devin, arms crossed beneath her breasts, a smug smile firmly in place. "Well, well, Devin, even sooner than I thought... I told you that you would come running back to me, didn't I? Now, the question is, how much should I make you crawl before I take you back?"

"Don't flatter yourself." Devin hooked one hand around her arm and dragged her into the sitting room.

"What do you—" Leona yelped in protest. "If you think
that
is going to win me back, I can tell you that you are fair and far off!"

"I don't give a damn about winning you back. I came here to tell you that I am on to your scheme. And I swear to you that if you harm one hair on Miranda's head, I will not rest until I have hunted you down and put you in the ground."

Leona gaped at him, her preconceptions tumbling down around her with a thud. "What? Miranda? How dare you!"

"Oh, I dare!" he shot back. "Don't think that you can twine me around your finger again. I know you. I know all the things you did—the lies you told me, the games you played."

"What? Don't be absurd. I have no idea what you're talking about."

Devin opened his mouth to explain about Elizabeth, but stopped. He was not about to give Leona any ammunition to use against Miranda or anyone connected to Miranda. He would have liked to spew out what he thought about her and what she had done to both him and Elizabeth, but he knew that Leona must never know who Elizabeth was or that Veronica was his illegitimate daughter. So he shoved back his grievance and said only, "Oh, yes, I think you do. You have played me for a fool for years, Leona, and you may think that I will never hurt you because I've been your lapdog for so long. But I am not anymore. You have seen how I am with others who cross me. You know what I'm capable of."

"I know that you have gone quite mad," Leona snapped back, trying to wrest her arm away from him.

"No, not yet. But I can promise you I will if any harm comes to my wife."

"You keep prating on about her! I have no idea what you're talking about."

"The 'accidents' that have been befalling her, that is what I am talking about. I realized that it was you who must be behind them. So I came here to tell you that it will do you no good. I will never come back to you, no matter what might happen to Miranda. The thought of touching you again makes my skin crawl. And should she be hurt, I will know that you are the one who caused it, and I will make sure you pay for it Physically, socially, every way possible. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly!" Leona seethed. "Now let go of me. I hate you!"

He released her abruptly, and she staggered back a little. "Then the feeling is mutual," he told her bitterly. "Just remember what I said. Leave Miranda alone."

"I wouldn't touch your precious little wife!" Leona cried, her voice cracking with fury. "Now get out of my house."

"Gladly." Devin knew that he had made an implacable enemy of her, but he also knew that Leona was far too interested in self-preservation to discount his words.

He took a last long look at her, wondering how he had thought himself in love with her for so long. Then he turned on his heel and strode out.

******************

After Devin left, Miranda went down to the library. It had been a taxing day, and she was glad to seek the solace of her work. Hiram was not there, being upstairs closeted with Joseph and the architect, going over the expenditures for the renovation of the house. Mr. Strong, however, was there, and she remembered that yesterday she had told him to meet with her almost an hour earlier. He jumped to his feet when she came in.

"My lady."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Mr. Strong. I forgot our appointment."

"That is perfectly all right, my lady," Strong said with alacrity, getting to his feet. "I will come back another time."

"No, we should go ahead," Miranda said. "I need to get it done before Lord Ravenscar and I leave for Apworth Mountain."

"Apworth Mountain, my lady? Are you sure? I mean, are you still planning to go after, well, your ordeal yesterday?"

"Of course. Why not? Now, where were we? The final set of books?"

"Yes, my lady. But, ah, I was thinking. Perhaps we might ride over to one or two of the tenant farms today. You had been wanting to go to them, you said."

"That's true." Miranda considered the idea. It was tempting to think of riding out instead of staying cooped up in the house today. And now that Devin had figured out that it was Leona who was to blame for the "accidents," she supposed there would be no problem with leaving the house. She sighed. "No, I had better not. I need to get through with this or I will find it hard to enjoy our excursion."

"Of course." He started to sit down, then stopped. "Oh, wait, I left part of the papers in my office. If you will excuse me for a minute."

"All right." Miranda sat down at the table and pulled the ledger book to her as he left the room.

She was deeply engrossed in an examination of the accounts some ten minutes later when the door opened again.

"Ah, there you are," she began, swinging around to look at Strong. To her surprise, it was Devin's uncle who had come into the room. "Oh! Uncle Rupert I thought you were the estate manager."

"No. Sorry." He smiled. "How are you doing, my dear? All recovered from your fright yesterday?"

"Oh, yes." She smiled. "I am rather resilient."

"Yes, I can see that you are. I was going out for a ride, and I thought I would stop in and see if you would like to go with me. Over to the abbey ruins, perhaps?"

"No, I had better not. I'm waiting for Mr. Strong to return. We have to finish the books today."

"Oh, surely that can wait," the older man said jovially. "It is a beautiful day for a ride."

"No. I'm sorry. I cannot."

"Oh. Pity." Uncle Rupert reached into his jacket and, much to Miranda's amazement, pulled out a pistol. He leveled it at her. "I am afraid that I must insist my dear."

Miranda stared at him, her brain suddenly numb.
Uncle Rupert?
"It is you?" she asked. "You are the one who—"

She broke off, turning as the door opened, and Strong stepped into the room. "Mr. Strong!" she cried with relief. "Help me."

But Strong only glanced at her nervously, then looked toward Rupert. "People will see the gun," he said agitatedly. "You cannot walk out of here carrying that, sir."

"I am afraid you're right, Strong." Uncle Rupert started toward Miranda.

Miranda stared at them, stunned.
The two of them were in on this together!
Suddenly it came to her like a blow to her skull.

"The estate!" she cried. It was the only thing that connected the two men. "You have been cheating Devin on the estate!"

Uncle Rupert sighed. "That is your problem. You see? You are simply much too clever for your own good."

He stopped beside her, and before Miranda knew what he was about to do, he raised the pistol and brought the butt end down sharply on her skull. Everything went black, and she crumpled to the floor.

******************

It was completely dark when Miranda came to, and for an instant she was terrified that she was back in the dreadful cellar again. But then it impinged on her consciousness that there was light coming in through some large cracks in the ceiling. She knew that the cellar had not looked like that.

Her head was splitting. She sat up gingerly and looked around her. There was a little more light than there had been yesterday in the cellar, and she was able to see that she was sitting on an earthen floor, earthen walls all around her. The light from above came through in four lines the shape of a rectangle. A vague shape of stairs went up to the rectangle. She was again underground, she thought, this time with a trap door instead of a regular door and earthen walls instead of stone ones. She supposed it could be another part of me cellars, or perhaps even some other outbuilding of Darkwater.

Or it could be the abbey ruins.

That thought took hold of her mind, and the more she contemplated it, the more she thought that the abbey was the likely answer. They would not want to risk her being quickly discovered again, as she had been yesterday. No doubt they would think it better to get her away from the house.
But how had they managed to carry her unconscious body out of the house without anyone noticing?

She sat for a while longer, gathering her strength. She knew that she would have to make the attempt to open the trap door, but right now she felt too sick and weak from the blow Rupert had given her to do much of anything.

Sighing, she leaned back against the wall. Rupert had accused her of being too clever. The truth was, she thought, she hadn't been clever enough. After weeks of going over the books and looking through the estate business matters, she had not caught on to the fact that Rupert and the estate manager were cheating Devin. No doubt they had a false set of books which they had shown her. They must have been collecting more money in rents than they showed in the books and pocketing the difference. The estate must not be in the terrible shape the two of them had pretended.

She remembered now her questions about one of the tenant farms and how much more prosperous it looked than the records indicated. Why hadn't she realized what that meant? It had been foolish in the extreme to simply take Strong's explanation on faith.

The fact was, she had been too distracted to give the estate the full attention she should have paid to it. There had been the renovation of the house and grounds, of course; those things had taken away a good deal of her time. But the biggest distraction had been Devin himself. She had been too busy trying to get him to fall in love with her to really notice much of anything else.

Unfortunately, it looked as if she might have to pay for that inattention with her life.

She thought about the first "accident." It had happened immediately after she met the estate manager. She recalled his amazement when she had told him that she would be running the estate herself. No doubt until then he and Uncle Rupert had expected to be able to continue the same game that they had been playing with Devin's estate all along. Perhaps they had even thought that they would now have her money at their disposal, as well. Upon hearing the truth, Strong must have rushed to arrange the first "accident," knowing that she would be exploring the library that afternoon.

When that failed, Uncle Rupert had invited her out for a ride along a trail where a limestone rock could conveniently split her skull open. Then there had been a lull of a few weeks without accident Perhaps when their books had held up to her inspection they had decided that murder would not be necessary. But in the past week or so, they had now tried to kill her three times: the drug in the hot chocolate, which Elizabeth had drunk; the cellar; and now this. Something had frightened them into renewed action. She wondered what it was.

Of more immediate importance, of course, was when Devin would return home and when he would set up another search for her. Given the fact that he had become convinced that Leona was the culprit, she had to wonder if he would even worry about the fact that she was not in the house. All she could do was hope that he would. But even if he was worried about where she was, how could he realize that she was at the abbey?

No, she thought, she could not afford to trust in Devin's rescuing her. She had to make plans for herself. The first thing, of course, was to find a weapon that she could use against them when they came back—
provided they were planning to return, of course, and had not simply thrown her into this room to die a slow death of thirst and starvation.
She shoved aside that discouraging thought and began a slow perambulation of her prison. One hand trailing along the earthen wall, she walked, sweeping the floor beside her with one foot, searching in the almost nonexistent light for something she could fashion into a weapon. A few times she came upon small rocks, which she pocketed, but after circling and crisscrossing the room, that was still all she had.

Miranda sat down on the bottom step and examined her discoveries: three rocks, two a little larger than pebbles and one that would fit into the palm of her hand. She thought for a moment, then removed her handkerchief from the pocket of her dress. Spreading it out on her lap, she centered the three stones on it and neatly tied them up in it so that she had a small sack with the rocks firmly lumped together, and therefore larger and heavier than they were singly, and with the advantage of having a knot of material beneath the rocks by which she could grasp and wield the makeshift weapon. It was not, perhaps, the most dangerous weapon she could have—she wished sincerely that she had decided to carry a pistol or a knife strapped to her leg—but it was better than being unarmed. Besides, she would have the element of surprise on her side. Uncle Rupert and Strong would not expect her to have a weapon; she was obviously not the sort of female they were accustomed to.