Almost Heaven Part 31

"Don't touch me!" she cried.

Bentner's voice came from the doorway. "Is aught amiss, my lady?" he asked, glaring bravely at Ian.

"Get out of here and close that d.a.m.ned door behind you!" Ian snapped furiously.

"Leave it open," Elizabeth said nervously, and the brave butler did exactly as she said.

In six long strides Ian was at the door, shoving it closed with a force that sent it crashing into its frame, and Elizabeth began to vibrate with terror. When he turned around and started toward her Elizabeth tried to back away, but she tripped on the coverlet and had to stay where she was.

Ian saw the fear in her eyes and stopped short only inches in front of her. His hand lifted, and she winced, but it came to rest on her cheek. "Darling, what is it?" he asked. It was his voice that made her want to weep at his feet, that beautiful baritone voice; and his face-that harsh, handsome face she'd adored. She wanted to beg him to tell her what Robert and Wordsworth had said were lies-all lies. "My life depends on this. Elizabeth. So does yours. Don't fail us," Robert had pleaded. Yet, in that moment of weakness $he actually considered telling Ian everything she knew and letting him kill her if he wanted to; she would have preferred death to the torment of living with the memory of the lie that had been their lives-to the torment of living without him.

"Are you ill?" he asked, frowning and minutely studying her face.

s.n.a.t.c.hing at the excuse he'd offered, she nodded hastily. "Yes. I haven't been feeling well."

"Is that why you went to London? To see a physician?" She nodded a little wildly, and to her bewildered horror he started to smile-that lazy, tender smile that always made her senses leap. "Are you with child, darling? Is that why you're acting so strangely?" Elizabeth was silent, trying to debate the wisdom of saying yes or no-she should say no, she realized. He'd hunt her to the ends of the earth if he believed she was carrying his babe.

"No! He-the doctor said it is just-just-nerves." "You've been working and playing too hard," Ian said, looking like the picture of a worried, devoted husband. "You need more rest."

Elizabeth couldn't bear any more of this-not his feigned tenderness or his concern or the memory of Robert's battered back. "I'm going to sleep now," she said in a strangled voice. "Alone." she added, and his face whitened as if she had slapped him.

During his entire adult life Ian had relied almost as much on his intuition as on his intellect, and at that moment he didn't want to believe in the explanation they were both offering. His wife did not want him in her bed; she recoiled from his touch; she had been away for two consecutive nights; and-more alarming than any of that-guilt and fear were written allover her pale face.

"Do you know what a man thinks," he said in a calm voice that belied the pain streaking through him, "when his wife stays away at night and doesn't want him in her bed when she does return?"

Elizabeth shook her head.

"He thinks," Ian said dispa.s.sionately, "that perhaps someone else has been taking his place in it."

Fury sent bright flags of color to her pale cheeks.

"You're blushing, my dear," he said in an awful voice.

"I am furious!" she countered, momentarily forgetting that she was confronting a madman.

His stunned look was replaced almost instantly by an expression of relief and then bafflement. "I apologize, Elizabeth. "

"Would you p-please get out of here!" Elizabeth burst out in a final explosion of strength. "Just go away and let me rest. I told you I was tired. And I don't see what right you have to be so upset! We had a bargain before we married-I was to be allowed to live my life without interference, and quizzing me like this is interference!" Her voice broke, and after another narrowed look he strode out of the room.

Numb with relief and pain, Elizabeth crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up under her chin, but not even their luxurious warmth could still the alternating chills and fever that quaked through her. Several minutes later a shadow crossed her bed, and she almost screamed with terror before she realized it was Ian, who had entered silently through the connecting door of their suite.

Since she'd gasped aloud when she saw him, it was useless to pretend she was sleeping. In silent dread she watched him walking toward her bed. Wordlessly he sat down beside her, and she realized there was a gla.s.s in his hand. He put it on the bedside table, then he reached behind her to prop up her pillows, leaving Elizabeth no choice but to sit up and lean back against them. "Drink this," he instructed in a calm tone.

"What is it?" she asked suspiciously. "It's brandy. It will help you sleep."

He watched while she sipped it, and when he spoke again there was a tender smile in his voice. "Since we've ruled out another man as the explanation for all this, I can only a.s.sume something has gone wrong at Havenhurst. Is that it?"

Elizabeth seized on that excuse as if it were manna from heaven. "Yes," she whispered, nodding vigorously.

Leaning down, he pressed a kiss on her forehead and said teasingly, "Let me guess-you discovered the mill overcharged you?" Elizabeth thought she would die of the sweet torment when he continued tenderly teasing her about being thrifty. "Not the mill? Then it was the baker, and he refused to give you a better price for buying two loaves instead of one."

Tears swelled behind her eyes, treacherously close to the surface, and Ian saw them. "That bad?" be joked, looking at the suspicious sheen in her eyes. "Then it must be that you've overspent your allowance." When she didn't respond to his light probing, Ian smiled rea.s.suringly and said, "Whatever it is, we'll work it out together tomorrow."

It sounded as though he planned to stay, and that shook Elizabeth out of her mute misery enough to say chokingly, "No-it's the-the masons. They're costing much more than I-I expected. I've spent part of my personal allowance on them besides the loan you made me for Havenhurst." "Oh, so it's the masons," he grinned, chuckling. "You have to keep your eye on them, to be sure. They'll put you in the poorhouse if you don't keep an eye on the mortar they'll charge you for. I'll have a talk with them in the morning."

"No!" she burst out, fabricating wildly. "That's just what has me so upset. I didn't want you to have to intercede. I wanted to do it all myself. I have it all settled now, but it's been exhausting. And so I went to the doctor to see why I felt tired. He-he said there's nothing in the world wrong with me. I'll come home to Montmayne the day after tomorrow. Don't wait here for me. I know how busy you are right now.

"Please," she implored desperately, "let me do this, I beg you!" Ian straightened and shook his head in baffled disbelief. "I'd give you my life for the price of your smile, Elizabeth."

"You don't have to beg me for anything. I do not want you spending your personal allowance on this place, however. If you do," he lied teasingly, "I may be forced to cut it off." Then, more seriously, he said, "If you need more money for Havenhurst, just tell me, but your allowance is to be spent exclusively on yourself. Finish your brandy," he ordered gently, and when she had, he pressed another kiss on her forehead. "Stay here as long as you must. I have business in Devon that I've been putting off because I didn't want to leave you. I'll go there and return to London on Tuesday. Would you like to join me there instead of at Montmayne?"

Elizabeth nodded.

"There's just one thing more," he finished, studying her pale face and strained features. "Will you give me your word the doctor didn't find anything at all to be alarmed about?"

"Yes," Elizabeth said. "I give you my word."

She watched him walk back into his own bed chamber. The moment his door clicked into its latch Elizabeth turned over and buried her face in the pillows. She wept until she thought there couldn't possibly be any more tears left in her, and then she wept harder.

Across the room the door leading out into the hall was opened a crack, and Berta peeked in, then quickly closed it. Turning to Bentner-who'd sought her counsel when Ian slammed the door in his face and ripped into Elizabeth, Berta said miserably, "She's crying like her heart will break, but he's not in there anymore."

"He ought to be shot!" Bentner said with blazing contempt.

Berta nodded timidly and clutched her dressing robe closer about her. "He's a frightening man, to be sure, Mr. Bentner."

Chapter 33.

When Elizabeth hadn't arrived at the town house in Upper Brook Street by Tuesday night, all the misgivings Ian had been trying to stifle came back with a vengeance. At eleven o'clock that night he sent two footmen to Havenhurst to ask if they knew where she was, and two others to Montmayne to see if she was there.

At ten-thirty the next morning he was apprised of the fact that the Havenhurst servants thought she'd gone to Montmayne five days ago, while his servants believed her to have been at Havenhurst the entire time. Elizabeth had vanished five days ago, and no one had thought to sound an alarm.

At one o'clock that afternoon Ian met with the head of Bow Street, and by four o'clock he'd hired a private team of one hundred investigators to search for her. There was little he could tell them. All anyone knew for certain was that Elizabeth had vanished from Havenhurst, where she had last been seen that night with him; that she had apparently taken nothing with her except whatever clothes she was wearing; and no one yet knew what clothes they were.

There was one other thing Ian knew, but he wasn't yet ready to reveal it unless he absolutely had to, and it was the sole reason he was desperately trying to keep her disappearance a secret. He knew his wife had been terrified of something, or someone, the last night she was with him. Blackmail was the only thing Ian could think of, but blackmailers didn't kidnap their victims, and for the life of him be couldn't imagine what in Elizabeth's innocent young life she might have done to attract a blackmailer. Without blackmail as a motive, no criminal would be demented enough to abduct a marchioness and set the entire English justice system on his heels.

Beyond all that, he could not bear to consider the one remaining possibility. He wouldn't let himself even imagine that she might have run away with some unknown lover. But as hour merged into day and day followed night, it became harder to banish the ugly, tormenting thought. He prowled around the house, he stood in her room to be closer to her, and then he drank. He drank to still the ache of her loss and the unnamed terror inside him.

On the sixth day the newspapers learned of the investigations into the disappearance of Lady Elizabeth Thornton, and the news was splashed across the front pages of the Times and the Gazette, along with a great deal of lurid speculation that included kidnapping, blackmail, and even broad hints that the Marchioness of Kensington might have decided to leave "for unknown reasons of her own."

After that, not even the combined power of the Thornton and Townsende families could keep the press from printing every word of truth, conjecture, or blatant falsehood they could discover or invent. They seemed to know, and to print, every morsel of information that Bow Street and Ian's investigators were discovering. Servants were questioned at all of Ian's houses and at Havenhurst, and their statements were "quoted" by the avid press. Details of Ian and Elizabeth's private life were fed to the insatiable public like shovelfuls of fodder.

In fact, it was from an article in the Times that Ian first learned that he was now a suspect. According to the Times. the butler at Havenhurst had supposedly witnessed a quarrel between Lord and Lady Thornton on the very night Lady Thornton was last seen. The cause of the quarrel, the butler said, had been Lord Thornton's vicious attack on Lady Thornton's moral character as it pertained to "certain things best left unsaid."

Lady Thornton's maid, according to the paper, had broken down and wept as she related having peeked in on her mistress and heard her "weeping like her heart would break." The maid had also said it was dark in the room, and so she could not see whether or not any physical abuse had been done to her mistress, "but she could not and would not say it wasn't likely .

Only one of the Havenhurst servants gave testimony that didn't incriminate Ian, and when he read it, it caused him more agony than anything they could have hinted about him. Four days before Lady Thornton's disappearance, a newly hired gardener named William Stokey had seen her ladyship go into the arbor from the back door of the house at dusk. and Stokey had started after her, intending to ask her a question about the mulch being laid on the flower beds. He had not approached her, however, because he had seen her embracing "a man who weren't her husband."

The papers promptly remarked that infidelity might cause a husband to do more than berate his wife, that it might provoke him into making her disappear. . . forever.

The authorities were still hesitant to believe Ian had done away with his wife merely because she'd purportedly met an unknown man in the arbor, which was the only motive he appeared to have.

At the end of the second week, however, a witness who had been away from England read the paper and reacted with instantaneous rage to the discovery that Lady Thornton had mysteriously disappeared. So d.a.m.ning, so shocking was the testimony of Mr. Wordsworth, a private investigator in the lady's employ, against the Marquess of Kensington that it was given under the utmost secrecy, and not even the press could discover it.

The following day the Times reported its most shocking and t.i.tillating piece of news yet. Ian Thornton, Marquess of Kensington, had been taken from his London town house and brought in for official questioning to ascertain his part in the disappearance of his wife.

Although Ian was not formally charged with responsibility for her disappearance, or imprisoned while the investigation continued, he was ordered not to leave London until a tribunal had met behind closed doors to decide whether or not there was enough reason to try him either for his wife's disappearance or on the new evidence provided by Wordsworth concerning his possible part in the disappearance of her brother two years before.

"They won't do it, Ian," Jordan Townsende said the night after Ian was released on his own recognizance. Pacing back and forth across Ian's drawing room, he said again, "They will not do it."

"They'll do it," Ian said dispa.s.sionately. The words were devoid of concern; not even his eyes showed interest. Days ago Ian had pa.s.sed the point of caring about the investigation. Elizabeth was gone; there had been no ransom note, nothing whatever-no reason in the world to continue believing that she'd been taken against her will. Since Ian knew d.a.m.ned well he hadn't killed her or had her abducted. the only remaining conclusion was that Elizabeth had left him for someone else.

The authorities were still vacillating about the other man she'd allegedly met in the arbor because the gardener's eyesight had been proven to be extremely poor, and even he admitted that it 44might have been tree limbs moving around her in the dim light, instead of a man's arms." Ian, however, did not doubt it. The existence of a lover was the only thing that made sense; he had even suspected it the night before she disappeared. She hadn't wanted him in her bed; if anything but a lover had been worrying her that night, she'd have sought the protection of his arms, even if she didn't confide in him. But he had been the last thing she'd wanted.

No, he hadn't actually suspected it-that would have been more pain than he could have endured then. Now, however, he not only suspected it, he knew it, and the pain was beyond anything he'd ever imagined existed.

"I tell you they won't bring you to trial," Jordan repeated. "Do you honestly think they will?" he demanded. lookin8 first to Duncan and then to the Duke of Stanhope, who were seated in the drawing room. In answer, both men raised dazed, pain-filled eyes to Jordan's, shook their heads in an effort to seem decisive, then looked back down at their hands.

Under English law Ian was ent.i.tled to a trial before his peers; since he was a British lord, that meant he could only be tried in the House of Lords, and Jordan was clinging to that as if it were Ian's lifeline.

"You aren't the first man among us to have a spoiled wife turn missish on him and vanish for a while in hopes of bringing him to heel," Jordan continued, desperately trying to make it seem as if Elizabeth were merely sulking somewhere-no doubt unaware that her husband's reputation had been demolished and that his very life was going to be in jeopardy. "They aren't going to convene the whole d.a.m.n House of Lords just to try a beleaguered husband whose wife has taken a start," he continued fiercely. "h.e.l.l, half the lords in the House can't control their wives. Why should you be any different?"

Alexandra looked up at him, her eyes filled with misery and disbelief. Like Ian, she knew Elizabeth wasn't indulging in a fit of the sullens. Unlike Ian, however, she could not and would not believe her friend had taken a lover and run away.

Ian's butler appeared in the doorway, a sealed message in his hand, which he handed to Jordan. "Who knows?" Jordan tried to joke as he opened it. "Maybe this is from Elizabeth-a note asking me to intercede with you before she dares present herself to you."

His smile faded abruptly. "What is it?" Alex cried, seeing his haggard expression. Jordan crumpled the summons in his hand and turned to Ian with angry regret. "They're convening the House of Lords. "

"It's good to know," Ian said with cold indifference as he pushed out of his chair and started for his study, "that I'll have one friend and one relative there."

When he left, Jordan continued pacing. "This is a bunch of trumped-up conjecture and insult. That's all it is. The duel with Elizabeth's brother-all of it. Her brother's disappearance is easily explained."

"One disappearance is relatively easy to explain," the Duke of Stanhope said. "Two disappearances-in the same family-is another story, I'm afraid. They'll tear him to shreds if he doesn't do something to help himself."

"Everything that can be done is being done," Jordan a.s.sured him. "We have our own investigators turning the countryside upside down looking for a trace of Elizabeth. Bow Street thinks they've found their guilty party in Ian, and they've abandoned the theory of Elizabeth going away of her own volition."

Alexandra stood up to leave and loyally said, "If she did, you may be certain she will have an excellent explanation for it-rather than a fit of missish sulks, as all you men seem to want to believe."

When the Townsendes had left, the duke leaned his head wearily against the back of the chair and said to Duncan, "What sort of 'excellent' explanation could she possibly have?"

"It won't matter," Duncan said in a harsh voice. "Not to Ian. Unless she can make him believe that she was forcibly abducted, she's as good as dead to him."

"Don't say things like that!" Edward protested. "Ian loves her-he'll listen."

"I know him better than you, Edward," Duncan replied, remembering Ian's actions after his parents' death. "He'll never give her another chance to hurt him. If she's shamed him voluntarily, if she's betrayed his trust, she is dead to him. And he already believes that she has done both. Watch his face-he doesn't so much as flinch when her name is mentioned. He is already killing all the love he had for her."

"You can't just put someone out of your heart. Believe me, I know."

"Ian can," Duncan argued. "He'll do it so that she can never get close to him again." When the duke frowned in disbelief he said, "Let me tell you a story I told to Elizabeth not long ago when she asked me about some sketches of Ian's in Scotland. It's a story about his parents' death and the Labrador retriever that belonged to him. . . ."

When Duncan finished the tale, the two men sat in bleak silence while the clock chimed the hour of eleven. Both of them stared at the clock, listening. . . waiting for the inevitable sound of the door knocker. . . dreading it. They did not have long to wait. At a quarter past eleven, two men arrived, and Ian Thornton, Marquess of Kensington was formally charged with the murders of his wife and her half-brother, Mr. Robert Cameron. He was placed under arrest and told to prepare himself to stand trial before the House of Lords, four weeks hence. As a concession to his rank, he was not imprisoned prior to the trial, but guards were placed outside his home and he was warned that he would be under constant surveillance whenever he went about the city. His bail was set at 100,000.

Chapter 34.

Helmshead was a sleepy little village that overlooked a bright blue bay where sailing ships occasionally threaded their way into port, navigating between dozens of smaller fishing vessels dotting the harbor. Sometimes seamen came ash.o.r.e hoping for a night of wenching and drinking; they sailed out again with the morning time-reminding themselves not to bother leaving their ship next time they put in there. There were no brothels in Helmshead, nor taverns that catered to seamen, nor wenches who sold their wares.

It was a community of families, of hard-bitten fishermen with hands as tough as the ropes and nets they hauled each day; of women who carried their wash to the community well and gossiped with one another while their reddened hands worked lye soap into sun-bleached cloth; of small children playing at tag, and mongrel dogs barking in ecstatic delight at the chase. Faces there were suntanned and weathered and strong, with character lines and squint lines feathered and etched upon them. There were no elegant, bejeweled ladies in Helmshead, nor finely dressed gallants offering their arms so that gloved hands could be placed upon them; there were only women carrying heavy baskets of wet clothing back home and rough fishermen who overtook them and, grinning, hoisted the heavy burdens onto their own muscular shoulders.

Standing on a gra.s.sy ledge near the center of the village, Elizabeth leaned back against the tree behind her, watching them. She swallowed past the permanent lump of anguish that had been lodged in her throat and chest for four weeks and turned her face in a different direction, looking across at the steep cliff that rose upward from the sparkling bay below. Gnarled trees clung to the rock, their bodies disfigured by their lifelong battle with the elements-twisted and ugly and strangely beautiful in their showy autumn garb of red and gold.

She closed her eyes to shut out the view; beauty reminded her of Ian. Ruggedness reminded her of Ian. Splendor reminded her of Ian. Twisted things reminded her of Ian Drawing in a long, shattered breath, she opened her eyes again. The roughened bark of the tree trunk bit into her back and shoulders, but she didn't move away; the pain proved to her that she was still living. Except for the pain, there was nothing. Emptiness. Emptiness and grief. And the sound of Ian's husky voice in her mind, whispering endearments when they made love. . . teasing her.

The sound of his voice. . . the sight of Robert's battered back.

"Where is he?" Jordan demanded of Ian's London butler, and when the servant replied he brushed past him, striding swiftly to the study. "I have news, Ian."

He waited while Ian finished dictating a brief memorandum, dismissed his secretary, and then finally gave him his attention. "G.o.d, I wish you'd stop this!" Jordan burst out.

"Stop what?" Ian asked, leaning back in his chair. Jordan stared at him in helpless anger, not certain why Ian's att.i.tude so upset him. Ian's shirtsleeves were rolled up, he was freshly shaven, and, except for a dramatic loss of weight, he looked like a man who was in control of a reasonably satisfactory life. "I wish you'd stop acting as if-as if everything is normal!"

"What would you have me do?" he replied, getting up and walking over to the tray of liquor. He poured some Scotch took them and, grinning, hoisted the heavy burdens onto their own muscular shoulders.

"No, at the moment I'm glad you're not given to the masculine version of hysterics. I have news, as I said, and though you aren't going to find it pleasant from a personal viewpoint, it's the best possible news from the standpoint of your trial next week. Ian," he said uneasily, "our investigators-yours, I mean-have finally picked up Elizabeth's trail"

Ian's voice was cool, his expression unmoved. "Where is she?"

"We don't know yet, but we do know she was seen traveling in company of a man on the Denman Road two nights after she disappeared. They put up at an inn about fifteen miles north of Lister. They"-he hesitated and expelled his breath in a rush-"they were traveling as man and wife, Ian."

Other than the merest tightening of Ian's hand upon the gla.s.s of Scotch, there was no visible reaction to this staggering news, or to all its heartbreaking and unsavory implications. "There's more news, and it's as good-I mean as valuable-to us."

Ian tossed down the contents of his gla.s.s and said with icy finality, "I can't see how any news could be better. She has now proven that I didn't kill her, and at the same time she's given me irrefutable grounds for divorce."

Biting off an expression of sympathy he knew Ian would only reject, Jordan watched him return to his desk, then he continued determinedly, "A prosecutor might try to contend that her traveling companion was a kidnapper in your pay. The next piece of news could help persuade everyone at your trial that she had planned and prepared in advance to leave you."

Ian regarded him in dispa.s.sionate silence as Jordan explained. "She sold her jewels to a jeweler in Fletcher Street four days before she disappeared. The jeweler said he hadn't come forward sooner because Lady Kensington. whom he knew as Mrs. Roberts, had .seemed very frightened. He said he was reluctant to give her away if she'd run from you for some good reason."

"He was reluctant to-give away the profit on the stones in case they hadn't actually been hers to sell," Ian contradicted with calm cynicism. "Since the papers haven't reported them stolen or missing, he a.s.sumed he could safely come forward."