The Kill (17 page)

Manning tugged her arms loose from his neck. “It was just a little rain, no big deal. Besides—” he broke into a grin and reached into the pocket of his breeches—“look what I found.”

Abigale squealed as he held up the horn. “You found it! Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. Where was it?”

“On that trappy trail leading from up Goose Creek into the Bellevue woods. Remember after we crossed the creek with the hounds and Tally spooked and bolted around that rotted log? That must have been when the horn slipped from its case. It was buried in the high grass and at first I didn’t see it, but I heard a clang when Samson grazed it with his hoof.” He held it out for her to see, his strong fingers gracefully exploring the dented bell. “I’m sorry it’s all banged up. I’ll ask Smitty if he knows where I can get it fixed.”

“I don’t want it fixed.” Abigale slipped her hand in his and leaned up to kiss him. “It’s perfect this way. It will always remind me that you went back and found it for me.”

Abigale shook off the memory and sighed, placing the horn back beside the spurs on the shelf. She turned to leave the closet when a stack of what looked like half a dozen or so letters tied together with a pale blue ribbon caught her eye. Abigale recognized her mother’s handwriting on a note card on top of the pile and frowned, reaching for the packet.

She carried the letters into the bedroom and perched on the window seat in one of the dormer windows. Sunlight streamed through the glass and Abigale shifted position so her eyes were shaded from the glare. She untied the ribbon and lifted her mother’s note.

Abigale’s fingers trembled as she set aside her mother’s note. Slowly, she lowered her eyes to the top envelope. It was addressed to her, with Manning’s return address in the upper left-hand corner. The postmark was seventeen years old.

Oh, Daddy, what did you do?

B
y the time Abigale finished reading the letters, long shadows had crept across the room. Anger burned, so fierce her chest felt like a pressure cooker ready to blow. She thought back to those lonely months in Switzerland, how as days had turned into weeks her father had stood by and watched her suffer as she longed for some word from Manning. Yet he’d known all the while Manning had written—countless times! Her father had intercepted the letters. He’d even gone so far as to tell her Manning’s silence confirmed he didn’t love her. That she’d been a summer fling, nothing more.
How could her father have been so cruel?

All these years she’d refused to accept that her father was right, that Manning had never really cared for her at all. She’d chosen instead to believe that Manning blamed her for Scarlet’s accident. That had been easier to handle, thinking he hated her rather than that he’d never loved her. She gently shuffled the letters back into a pile and retied the ribbon, then ran her fingers across Manning’s boyish script. Manning hadn’t blamed her for the accident; the letters proved that. He’d written over and over that it was
his
fault. Asked her to forgive him. God, what must he have thought—how must he have felt—when she never responded? Despite the fact that she’d never received Manning’s letters, she should have written to him, apologized for what she’d done. She’d thought about it often enough, even composed letters in her head late at night. But she’d listened to her father and…well, the letters went unwritten.

Abigale heard a door slam downstairs. A voice called, “Abigale?”

It was Margaret.

“I’m upstairs. Be right there,” Abigale replied. She hastily tucked the letters on the closet shelf behind her jewelry box and ran her fingertips beneath her eyes, hoping there weren’t telltale smudges of mascara.

As Abigale descended the stairs and rounded the curve in the stairwell, she saw that Manning was with Margaret in the foyer. He faced out the window, his back to her.

Margaret’s head was tilted expectantly upward. “There you are. I just left the kennels and decided to swing by and take a chance you’d still be here.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, no, nothing’s happened. I want to tell you about Richard’s will.” Margaret’s lips pressed into a thin line as she shot a glance at Manning. “I’ve already briefed Manning and Smitty.”

Manning turned, giving Abigale a ghost of a smile, and the breath caught in Abigale’s throat. Words from his letters whirled through her head, ripping open feelings she’d buried, if not forgotten. Should she tell him she’d found his letters?

He raised an eyebrow as if to say,
Why are you looking at me like that?

A blush flamed Abigale’s cheeks. She turned to Margaret. “Do you want to go in the gathering room?”

“That’s a fine idea. Manning can light the fire and get some of the chill out of the air. This house feels far too empty.”

M
argaret wasted no time laying out the provisions of the will, seeming genuinely happy that Richard had kept Dartmoor Glebe in the family by leaving it to Abigale. But her manner turned brusque, almost disapproving, as she outlined the bequest to Manning. She told Abigale the will made no mention of funeral plans and left a copy of the will for Abigale to read, then made a hasty exit, saying she had to attend an emergency hunt board meeting.

The entire time Margaret was talking, Manning leaned against the wall next to the fire and never said a word; his gaze was fixed toward the floor, as if he’d spotted something fascinating on the toe of his paddock boot.

When Abigale returned from walking Margaret to the door, Manning had abandoned the fireplace for the liquor cabinet. He’d draped his coat over the end of the bar and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. As she approached, he unscrewed the cap of a whisky bottle.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked.

She watched the brown liquid splash into a lowball glass until it was full to the brim. “No. Thanks,” she said, sinking into one of the leather wing chairs that flanked the fireplace.

Manning twisted the top back on the bottle. “You sure?”

She nodded.

He tossed down a generous swallow, closing his eyes with a sigh.

“Bad day?”

“You could say that.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Their eyes connected for a flash, then, as if a veil lowered over Manning’s eyes, the moment was lost. He glanced away. “Not really.”

Manning drained the glass and Abigale’s stomach clenched as she watched him eye the whisky bottle.
Please don’t pour another drink
. Her disappointment flared as his fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle, but he opened the liquor cabinet and shoved the bottle inside.

The logs in the fireplace tumbled with a crackling display of sparks, and Manning grabbed the poker and jabbed at the wood.

“The fire feels good,” Abigale said, wrapping her arms across her chest.

Manning nodded and returned the poker to its stand. He dropped into the chair across from her, hiking one leg over the other. Abigale noticed splatters of gray paint on his paddock boots and the hem of his khaki pants. He ran his fingers through his hair, revealing a smear of gray along his right wrist.

“Margaret told me you and Smitty were painting at Longmeadow today. Looks like it was a big project.”

“Yeah.” He glanced down at his boots. “I guess I should have worn different shoes.”

“What were you painting?”

“The stewards’ stand.” Manning blew out a breath. “The deck needed to be repainted before the races.”

“I guess with horses there’s always work that gets put off until the last minute.”

One corner of his mouth twitched in a humorless smile. “Right.”

Manning’s eyes shifted to the fire and he twirled a finger around a brass brad in the arm of the chair. His facial expression gave no hint of what was going through his mind, but the nervous jiggling of his foot and the twitch of his cheek muscle said enough. Abigale bet the bottle of whisky wasn’t far from his thoughts.

“Margaret seemed pretty upset. Was it about Uncle Richard’s will?”

“Only as it relates to me.”

“I would think she would be happy about you taking over the hunt.”

“Under different circumstances perhaps she would be.” Manning’s voice was quiet, his drawl barely more than a rumble in his chest.

“You mean if Uncle Richard hadn’t died.”

Manning lifted his gaze, and Abigale could see his eyes were ablaze. “No. I mean if Mother didn’t think it gave me a motive to murder him.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I wish I weren’t.”

“That’s crazy. Just because Uncle Richard included you in his will?”

“There’s more to it than that. Apparently Richard had second thoughts. According to what his lawyer told Mother, he was going to talk to me and threaten to change his will if I didn’t make some lifestyle changes.”

“So you knew about the provisions of his will?”

“No. That’s just it. I had no idea. I gather that he was going to tell me about it in the hopes that it would give me an incentive to be more responsible. To prove to him that I was worthy of the bequest.”

“But he didn’t tell you.”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

Abigale frowned. “I don’t get it. You don’t know if he told you?”

Manning tilted his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “No. I don’t.”

The reality of what Manning
wasn’t
saying finally hit Abigale. “Oh, my God. Margaret thinks Uncle Richard might have told you on the day he was murdered. Only you were too drunk to remember whether you even went to the racecourse, let alone whether or not he told you about his will.”

He opened his eyes, his expression as bleak as a winter’s day. “Guess the gossip mill’s alive and well. You’ve been back what, twenty-four hours, and you’re already up to date on my drinking habits?”

“No one’s gossiping. Julia told me.”

“Ah.”

Abigale forced herself to ignore the look of betrayal in his eyes. “Are you saying Margaret thinks if Uncle Richard did tell you about changing his will, you might have become so angry you grabbed his rifle and shot him?”

“Bingo.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Apparently Mother doesn’t think so.”

“She can’t really believe that.”

“Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn’t. I’d say at the very least she’s unsure. And Mother doesn’t deal well with uncertainty. The fact that I can’t remember is entirely unacceptable to her. She keeps demanding that I try harder. As if she can order away my blackout.”

“Did Uncle Richard’s attorney actually say he was going to talk to you about his will that day? The day he was murdered?”

“I don’t think she knew when he was going to talk to me. Just that he planned to do so.”

“Don’t you think he’d pick a more appropriate time than when you were working on the racecourse? Especially if it was obvious that you’d been drinking?”

“Who knows? Maybe the fact I was drunk would have made it the perfect time to have the conversation.”

Abigale considered that for a moment. She’d never known her uncle to do anything important spur-of-the-moment. He was almost as methodical as her father. Everything planned to perfection. Especially important conversations. No, she just couldn’t believe he would confront Manning about his drinking in such a casual manner. Particularly if Manning was drunk. “Was it supposed to be just the two of you working on the racecourse that day?”

Manning’s eyes flattened and he shook his head, giving her a look as if to say,
what part of ‘I don’t remember’ don’t you understand?