The Secret Pearl (38 page)

“You would have helped me?” she asked.

“It is my job to help people in trouble,” he said gravely. “In your case, Isabella, it would have been more than my job.”

“Oh,” she said. “I did not know. I thought you would have called me murderer and turned me over to Matthew.”

“The only sin you are guilty of, I believe, is uncontrolled passion,” the Reverend Booth said. “That is not quite murder.”

“Uncontrolled passion!” Miriam said scornfully. “What was she supposed to do, Daniel? It was most improper of Lord Brocklehurst to expect Isabella to stay in the house alone with him. If he had tried to detain me under such circumstances, I would probably have taken an ax to both him and his valet.”

“Miriam!” her brother said reproachfully.

“I did not steal any jewels,” Fleur said. “I did not even know I was accused of such a thing until Matthew told me so a couple of weeks ago. Do you believe me, Daniel?” She took a few steps toward him.

“Of course I believe you if you say so,” he said gently.

“Well, I believe you even without your saying so,” Miriam said hotly. “The very idea! You have seen Lord Brocklehurst, Isabella? And escaped from him again?”

“It is a long story,” Fleur said. She covered her face loosely with her hands. “Oh, how good it is to be with friends again and not have to hide the truth. I had to come back to see where it all happened again, to try to fill in some gaps of memory, to ask a few questions.”

Miriam patted her reassuringly on the back. “We will help you in any way we can,” she said. “We have been longing to do just that. Haven’t we, Daniel?”

“I’ll tell you everything,” Fleur said. She looked up again at the Reverend Booth. “Will you do something for me first?”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I have to go back into the library,” she said. “I have to see where it happened. I am afraid to go in alone.”

Miriam’s arm came about her shoulders again. But the Reverend Booth had moved. He was beside her, his arm extended for hers. She slipped her own gratefully through it and looked up into his unsmiling face.

“You are to be greatly commended for your willingness to face your past,” he said. “Lean on me, Isabella. I will help you.”

The library was, of course, just the library, as it had always been. Nothing was different. There was no blood on the hearth, no signs of a struggle, no ghosts lingering behind the curtains or among the books. Just the library, a room of which she had always been fond.

It was there she had stood, she thought, abandoning the arms of both her friends, forgetting their very presence, a few feet in front of the fire, facing Matthew in anger and accusing him of being a gothic guardian who had done everything but lock her up in order to curtail her freedom.

And Matthew had been telling her that she would not demean herself by living with Miriam Booth and that she would not marry Daniel Booth by special license or elopement or any other means. She would not be leaving the house. She would be staying there, where she belonged.

Through her fury she had gradually seen and understood the look on his face. And she had understood what he meant when he said that no other man would ever want her by the time she next left the house.

Matthew had been troublesome for a few years and she had come thoroughly to dislike him for his unwanted attentions. But she had never been afraid of him. She had never been afraid for her virtue.

But the circumstances, she supposed, had inflamed him. Apart from the servants, he had her alone in the house. She had seen in his face that he had meant to have her—that night and in that very room.

And she had understood that it was no momentary decision on his part. It was unlike him to have his valet with him in a downstairs room. She had wondered why Hobson was there, pretending to be busy with something at the far side of the room. But she had understood finally.

And fear had mingled with her fury. She had seen the look
Matthew had directed at Hobson and had felt rather than heard the man come up behind her. She had known exactly what was about to happen to her.

She still could not recall the rest, even staring as she was at the place where it had all happened. Just someone screaming and flailing her arms. And Hobson lying on the floor, his head sliding from the corner of the hearth, his face ashen, his eyes staring upward. And Matthew leaning over him, kneeling beside him. And looking up at her.

“I hope you are satisfied, Isabella,” he had said in a queer, tight voice. “You have murdered him.”

And panicked flight. And the small measure of reason somewhere at the back of her mind that told her she could not go to Daniel or Miriam or to anyone she knew—because she was a fugitive from the law, a murderer who would be hanged if caught.

“It was not reason but the devil who counseled you so, Isabella,” Daniel’s quiet voice said from behind her, and she realized that she had spoken all her memories out loud.

“Oh, Isabella,” Miriam said, her voice full of distress. “How you have suffered. And what a villain Lord Brocklehurst is. I always thought him guilty only of being a tyrant. He is the one who deserves to hang. No, Daniel, I mean it. Every word of it. And then he put the jewels in Isabella’s trunk just in case the murder charge was not quite enough.”

The Reverend Booth offered his arm and they returned to the salon. Fleur wished he were not quite so proper in his behavior. She needed badly to be held in his arms, to rest her head on his shoulder. But it was a pointless thought anyway. Even if he did not believe her guilty of murder and theft, there was that other thing now to set her forever apart from him.

There was no point in loving Daniel any longer.

She told them everything, omitting only the way she had met the Duke of Ridgeway and the real reason for Peter Houghton’s being at Miss Fleming’s employment agency.

“So I came home,” she said when she had come to the end of her story. “I suppose Matthew will be here tomorrow, or perhaps even later tonight. I suppose I will be in prison somewhere by this time tomorrow.”

“Nonsense,” Miriam said briskly. “But you must come to the rectory for tonight, Isabella. You will be safer there.”

Fleur shook her head. “No,” she said. “I am staying here. But I will come tomorrow morning. I want to see Hobson’s grave. I must see it. Was his funeral well-attended, Daniel?”

“It was not held here,” he said. “His body was sent away to the town where he was born.”

Fleur frowned. “But where?” she said. “Oh, I must find out. I must see his grave. I don’t think I will quite be able to accept the reality of it all until I do. I did not mean him harm, you know. I was terrified, and I suppose I wanted to hurt him so that I could get away. But I never wanted him dead.” She closed her eyes. “Can you find out where he was taken, Daniel?”

“I don’t know how,” he said. “I think it best if you stay away from there anyway, Isabella. If he has family members there and they see you and find out who you are, they will suffer greatly.”

She looked down at the hands in her lap.

Miriam patted them briskly. “Enough for tonight,” she said. “You must be exhausted, poor Isabella. And if you will not come to the rectory, then we will come back here as soon as possible in the morning to help you face Lord Brocklehurst when he arrives.”

The Reverend Booth got to his feet. “That sounds like the best plan,” he said, “if you are sure you will not come with us. Sleep well, and try not to worry. I will speak myself in court if I must, and give you a good character.” He lifted one of her hands to his lips. “Good night, Isabella.”

“Good night, Daniel,” she said.

Miriam kissed her and hugged her.

For the first night in a long while, Fleur slept soundly, undisturbed by either dreams or nightmares.

T
HE
D
UKE OF
R
IDGEWAY
put up at the village inn for the night. He could have journeyed on to Heron House, but it would have been close to midnight by the time he arrived there, and he decided to wait until the morning. She was in no great danger. He knew he was ahead of Lord Brocklehurst, even if that gentleman had decided to return to his home.

Besides, he did not think that Brocklehurst would try anything too foolish as far as Fleur Hamilton was concerned. Fleur Bradshaw. Isabella Fleur Bradshaw.

Fleur.

It was almost the middle of the next morning when his carriage took him along the winding, wooded driveway to the neat Palladian mansion that was Heron House. It was flanked by an orangery and greenhouses at the one side, stables at the other. There were colorful formal gardens set out before it. The sun was trying to break through the clouds as the carriage drew to a stop before the marble steps leading to the main doors.

“Miss Bradshaw, if you please,” he told the butler, handing him his hat and cane.

“Miss Bradshaw is in London with Lady Brocklehurst, I’m afraid, sir,” the butler said, inclining his head.

“Miss Isabella Bradshaw,” his grace said.

“And who may I say is calling?” the man asked.

“You may not,” the duke said curtly. “Show me to the room where she is, please.”

Something in the duke’s manner caused the man to turn and lead the way to his left along a tiled hallway to a room at the front of the house. She must have heard his approach, then, the duke thought. She must have seen his arrival.

He walked past the butler into a square room that was obviously
a morning room. Sunlight was slanting through its long windows. The clouds must have parted finally, he thought irrelevantly.

She was standing in front of a chair from which she must have just risen, across the room from the door. She stood very straight, her chin high, her hands clasped loosely before her. She was wearing a pretty sprigged-muslin dress. Her hair was styled in soft curls and ringlets.

She looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her, his grace thought, even as his eyes took in the pallor of her face, the firm set of her jaw.

And then her expression changed and the tension almost visibly disappeared from her face and body.

“I thought you were Matthew,” she said. “I thought that was Matthew’s carriage. I thought he had come.”

He took one step toward her, thinking that she was about to faint. But instead she moaned and hurtled across the room and straight into the arms he reached out for her.

“Oh, I thought you were Matthew,” she said as his arms closed about her softness and his nostrils were filled with the sweet fragrance of her hair. “I thought you were Matthew.”

“No,” he murmured against her ear. “It’s just me, love. He is not going to hurt you anymore. No one is going to hurt you anymore.”

She looked up at him, her eyes dazed, and her fingertips touched the scar along his cheek. “I thought I would never see you again,” she whispered.

He swallowed as he watched her eyes fill with tears.

“I am here,” he said. “Can you not feel my arms about you? I have you safe, love.”

And he lowered his head and opened his mouth over hers.

And heard her moan again.

I
T HAD BEEN A FRUSTRATING MORNING. FLEUR had woken up with renewed energy and hope after a good night’s sleep. The rain had stopped, although the sun was still covered with clouds. And she remembered the visit of the evening before and smiled at the knowledge that she still had friends.

But there must be so little time, she told herself as she went downstairs for an early breakfast. Matthew would surely be home at any time. He must guess that she would have returned to Heron House rather than to London. Or would he? Perhaps it would seem to him that she had fled again, hoping never to be found. London would be the obvious destination if that were the case. Perhaps he would pursue her there.

Unless he had the sense to call at the stagecoach office, of course, to find out where her ticket had taken her.

Annie was gone. That was an annoyance. There were all sorts of questions concerning the jewels that she would have liked to ask her former maid. But there was no time to brood on regrets.

“Chapman,” she asked the butler at breakfast, “where was Hobson’s body taken for burial?” She flushed at the necessity of speaking so openly on a topic that must have the servants’ quarters abuzz.

“I don’t rightly know, Miss Isabella,” he said.

“Then will you send me someone who does,” she said.

“I’m not sure that anyone knows,” he said.

Chapman had never been the most garrulous of souls.

“Someone must have taken him there,” she said. “And perhaps someone went to attend the funeral. One of his friends? Lord Brocklehurst himself?”

“His lordship, yes, miss,” he said. “Flynn drove the carriage. He is with his lordship now.”

“The body would have gone separately,” she said. “By wagon, I suppose. Who drove that?”

“Yardley, miss,” the butler said.

“Then send Yardley to me, if you please,” Fleur said.

“He is gone, Miss Isabella,” he said. “Into Yorkshire, I believe it was. He took a new position there.”

“I see,” she said. “I suppose if I were to ask to speak with the person who laid out Hobson’s body and placed it in the coffin, that person would also be gone.”