Angel In My Bed (18 page)

“Has Doyle said anything more about what he might have seen in the church?”

“No, but there are caves in this bluff. Sheriff Stillings confirmed it.”

“You went to see Sheriff Stillings?” He would bloody throttle Rockwell for allowing Meg anywhere near Stillings.

She looked up at him as if they'd been remotely civil to each other since his return, as if he wasn't suddenly thinking of committing some spontaneous act of self-destruction with her—and something else very much like possessiveness flared inside him. Clad in a gown he had not seen on her before today, she presented a striking figure as she met his scrutiny with growing defiance.

“You have given orders that have made me a prisoner.” Her eyes locked with his. “But you did not order that I couldn't talk to people or make certain decisions regarding the welfare of those for whom I feel responsible. If you haven't noticed yet, I shall point out that I've not been idle.”

As if for the first time, David glimpsed a groom walking out of the stable to help Mr. Gibson. Of a sudden, he looked at the manor house, the clean mullioned windows and gardens cleared of weeds. Two chambermaids he didn't recognize were outside beating a rug, their laughter carrying to him on a gust of wintry wind.

He returned his gaze to rest on her face. Both his eyebrows lifted in response, his state of awareness akin to the way he'd felt in the drawing room when he'd pressed her against the curtains and buried himself in her body. “You've been busy during my absence. Are you planning on staying for any length of time?”

Meg brought up the hood on her cloak to cover her hair. “Nathanial and Robbie are eating lunch. I sent Mr. Rockwell to the cottage to let Sir Henry know that I will be bringing Nathanial shortly. I need to be the one to do this. Until then, you're welcome to join us for lunch,” she said from behind the bow of her perfectly shaped mouth. “Mrs. Gibson is an excellent cook.”

“What did you do with my cook?” he thought to ask her.

“Esma discharged him. He's better with horses. No doubt most of your hirelings are spies, but I added some of my own. People who actually know how to cook and clean.”

The corners of his mouth softened. “I shall keep that in mind lest I'm tempted to take a meal here.”

“Truly David,” she chided. “Don't fill my head with ideas.”

Dismissed like a servant just taken to task, he raked his gaze over her backside as she breezed past, their stalemate no longer intact. He was still staring at her when she turned and caught his gaze, his actions only adding to her bewilderment—and his.

Emotion banked the embers in her eyes. “Do you mind that I take Nathanial to the cottage?” she asked in a voice oddly vulnerable to him. “It is not my want to exclude you.”

He nodded to the carriage and said, “Use the coach and four. I will join you later.”

“David?” Their eyes locked, and he knew in that moment of reckoning that he was surely a fool for having granted her any wish at all—but for some reason couldn't bring himself to care. “I promise I won't instruct Mrs. Gibson to poison you. I'm over wanting to kill or maim you.”

David allowed a brief grin to form. He could read in her eyes that she wanted to say more. But it was one thing to loosen his grip on his son and an entirely different problem altogether to forgive her. Or forget where they stood with each other.

He might have been a priest at one time expounding eternal forgiveness upon all, but this was personal.

Yet it was precisely for that reason he had returned.

“Did you really ever want me dead, Meg?”

“No.” Her eyes held his. “I just wanted you. Period.”

David did not attempt to temper his reaction to her answer. Watching as the door shut behind her, he lifted one eyebrow in an incredulous arc, cognizant of how easily a single two-letter word followed by one substantial sentence could change the timbre of their discourse and touch the very fabric of their relationship.

D
avid reined in Old Boy just past the cemetery, peering up at the church tower as he rode into Doyle's enclosed yard. As he tied the reins to a post, a familiar Irish hail greeted him from the direction of the burned-out church. “If it isn't himself come ridin' over the hill.” Ralph Blakely stood in the weed-infested churchyard wearing heavy leather boots and a thick woolen shirt. His gold tooth flashed upon David's approach. “Will ye be stayin' long, Mister Donally?”

David followed him into the rectory. Once out of the wind some of his body warmth returned. “Only tonight. I have business to attend in London. I'll be back in a few days.”

“Ye told me not to be leavin' the church till I found the tunnel.”

“Are we that fortunate?” Peering warily at the thick wooden beam overhead, he ducked to avoid a splintered shaft of wood and stopped beneath a blackened overhang that opened into the nave. A bright patch of blue sky ap
peared. Unlike certain members of his family, he wasn't a structural engineer, but good sense told him this place was as close to collapsing as any dilapidated tenement flat, of which he'd seen plenty of in his lifetime.

Blakely shoved his thumbs into his waistband. “No, but the boys and I, we've done everything else you've asked. We found the hounds a few days back. They're part of a pack someone let lose up here what roams these hills and kills the livestock. Seems to me someone 'as done his utmost to run off every tenant. Also found the vicar what used to work in this church.”

David pulled his gaze back to Blakely. “You spoke to him?”

“Wish I could say I had. He died a few months ago and is buried in Halisham. His missus said I wasn't the only one what visited her askin' questions aboot the old tunnels. Some months back, a dark haired-woman and a heavy man with white hair nosed aboot askin' the same questions.”

“A white-haired man…”

Kinley.

The description fit, maybe too conveniently, and it was precisely that initial assumption that put the skids on his thoughts, that and the dark-haired woman. But Kinley was six feet tall and could fill the footprints David had found leading from this church the morning after the snowstorm.

A crisp breeze disturbed the dead leaves at David's feet. His gaze touched the blackened stones, lingering on what remained of the chancel and pulpit. He felt an odd connection to this place. Meg and his son had attended services beneath this roof. Nathanial had been christened here.

David moved away from the stone wall and shifted his focus. He had never been in a church that did not hold tight to its secret vaults and chambers. Meg had confirmed there
were caves beneath these bluffs. Yet chances were that most of the tunnel network had probably not been used in centuries and was unsafe, which would account for the locals not knowing much about them.

The
clip-clop
of an approaching horse drew David around. He looked out across the graveyard to see Rockwell approaching. “Do you still have someone watching Nellis's residence?” he asked Blakely.

“Aye. He's not returned from London.”

“I would prefer not to involve anyone else for now in our findings past or future,” David said. If he trusted anyone at all, he trusted the men he'd brought with him from Ireland. None of them worked for Kinley. “I will find a stonemason. In the meantime I want this room shored up completely before we begin taking out the walls.”

His attention moved to the belfry. If there was a way in or out of this place, he wanted it found and permanently sealed.

A few minutes later, David mounted Old Boy and met Rockwell coming up the small gravel path to the churchyard. It bothered him that his suspicion of Kinley transferred to Rockwell, by his very association with Pamela. For David had also found a woman's tracks that day after the storm. Pamela had blond hair, but could have worn a wig if she had been with Kinley. Clearly, someone wanted him to believe that woman had been Meg.

Rockwell slowed at David's approach. “You appear troubled.”

“What were you bloody thinking taking Meg to see Stillings?”

He looked affronted and amused at once. “You try stopping her from doing something once she sets her mind to a task.”

In no mood for musings, David nudged his horse with his heels only to hear Rockwell yell. “I wouldn't go to the cottage just this moment, sir.”

He reined in Old Boy. “Why not?”

“Is that boy your son?” Rockwell asked. “Is that why you went to Salehurst? It's already town gossip, Donally.”

Biting back an oath, David looked away. He had told only one person his purpose for leaving. “That
boy's
name is Nathanial,” David answered shortly. Rockwell could figure out the complications on his own time. “I'm taking him to London tomorrow night and handing him over to my sister until…” Shaking his head, he crossed one hand over the other and glared across the cemetery. “Until I close this case.”

“Until you hand his mother over to Kinley, you mean?”

David's features hardened, the truth of that statement only exacerbating his temper.

“And since you are as incapable of shirking responsibility as she is of shifting it to others”—Rockwell shoved his hand into his pocket and tossed a gold locket to David—“I came here to give you that.”

David caught the trinket and turned it over in his hand.

“I rescued it after your wife bartered it for a bolt of fabric.” Rockwell's horse sidestepped and had to be reined in tighter. “She wanted to give Miss Munro a new gown. Or else she just wanted to get rid of the locket. I suspect both.”

A sinking feeling in his gut, he snipped the latch. Someone had tried to remove the woman's image inside. The miniature daguerreotype was Meg's only remaining possession of a woman her father had viciously exorcised from her life. But Rockwell's reasons for giving it to him were hardly rooted in sentiment. “Let me guess the conundrum.” He shut the lid.
“This was not among the things she packed and brought from the cottage when she moved back to Rose Briar, which meant she retrieved it from inside the house
after
she returned to the manor house. Maybe you're mistaken.”

“I know exactly what she took because I helped her move.”

“Why not take this straight to Kinley?”

“Kinley is impatient,” Rockwell finally said,
sans
the boyish dimple that made him look less than his twenty-six years. “I suspect his concern over Colonel Faraday is not nearly so top shelf as gaining a percentage of the spoils on this case. That locket may not mean anything, or it might mean a lot. I thought I'd leave it to you to find out. Not him.”

David's gaze remained on the cemetery as his mind dwelled on the riddle surrounding Meg's last few weeks in India. A part of him recognized this locket might hold significance. He knew her father had given her the trinket. Knowing what he did now of Meg's mother, David understood that the locket meant something else entirely to Faraday.

He also respected the symbolic gesture of Meg's defiance against her father when she had quit wearing the locket shortly after they were married. He suddenly realized he knew exactly at which point she had begun to take a stand against her father.

Even then, he recognized that as Colonel Faraday allowed David into the inner Circle of Nine, Meg was trying to escape.

Shoving the locket into his pocket, he looked at Rockwell. “How is it you and your wife were assigned this case?”

“Kinley contacted me shortly before he contacted you. My father was Kinley's aide-de-camp when they worked on this case in India.”

“Your father worked on this case?”

A ghost of a frown flitted across Rockwell's features, as he
became aware he'd revealed something that he shouldn't have. David was thinking of that damnable earring that miraculously came into Kinley's possession, and who might have had it all of these years, for Faraday couldn't have kept it with him in prison.

“My father is dead. I have as much a personal stake in this case as you do.”

“How is that, exactly?”

“You and I depend on each other,” Rockwell said, avoiding the question. “Trust me to do my job as I trust that you'll do yours.”

“What I depend on is loyalty and the assurance that no one is going to undermine me. That this is a sanctioned operation.” He no longer took pains to avoid the topic uppermost in his mind. Nor would he rely on Pamela's loyalty. “And I trust if someone wanted to kill Meg or me, it wouldn't be someone working for my own government.”

“Listen to yourself.” Rockwell laughed. “Have you considered that the woman you came here to apprehend has twisted your bloody breeches in a knot? Or is it always your habit to populate every country where you work?”

David smashed a fist across Rockwell's jaw. Both horses reared. Rockwell tumbled from the saddle. David gripped the reins of his own startled horse to keep from trampling his partner to bone and dust. When he brought Old Boy under control, he slid from the saddle and dropped to the ground in front of Ian, his heavy coat brushing his calves.

“You have never impressed me as being thick-witted, Rockwell.”

“Maybe I lack finesse in my delivery, but I believe I have gotten my point across.” Ian struggled to his elbow. “You
would know that if you were not so singularly wrongheaded. Face it, you have a bloody
tendre
for your wife, Donally.”

Hell yes, he did. “Meg stood up to Faraday ten years ago. Even when she had nowhere to turn and every bloody person betrayed her, she did the only right thing she could and she did it alone. It was because of her that we caught Faraday the first time.”

“And are you willing to betray your oath to save her now? That is the question pressing on your soul. The one that makes you dangerous to the rest of us on this case.”

Staring down at Ian, David found his temper sorely wanting of common sense. What the hell did Rockwell or anyone else know about his soul?

“If you're finished going cork-brained on me, help me up, Donally. I'll be lucky if I'm not crippled for life.”

In no mood for charity, David crouched in front of Ian. “How long has this operation been ongoing?”

“Faraday disappeared shortly after he was transferred to Marshalsea six months ago. That's all I know.” Ian wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and examined his glove for blood. “Kinley was the man in charge of overseeing his incarceration. He is also the one who sanctioned this operation. My father was part of Kinley's team in Calcutta. Kinley owed me.”

“What did he owe Pamela?”

“Bugger off, Donally. Your only job is to keep Meg Faraday alive.”

Rockwell's life and career centered on his service. David had read his exemplary files. He would be the agent the foreign secretary called in to investigate another operative. “It was your idea that Meg remain here as a lure for her father.
Kinley wasn't expecting that. In fact, he was in a royal pisser about the idea. Who is the
real
target? Kinley or Faraday? Or someone else?”

“You've just proven to me you're bloody compromised. Don't think you're getting anymore answers. And all records concerning this case are in the foreign secretary's office. So, unless you know Lord Ware, you aren't going to find out anything else.”

“You're a fooking bastard, Rockwell.” David surveyed Ian's sprawled form, his beaver hat askew, and somehow, he tempered his anger as he stood.

“Take your son, Donally. In fact, I suggest that you do, but Meg Faraday stays. If you compromise this case, Kinley will arrest you for treason. He's still your superior.”

“Who shot Meg?”

When Rockwell didn't look to be any more cooperative than he had thirty seconds before, David fixed his boot on the man's chest. “I swear I don't know.”

“Has Kinley ever been up to this bluff?”

“I know you two have a long history—”

“Kinley couldn't find his way out of a glass jar if someone dumped it upside down. If the bastard is ghosting us then someone else is pulling his strings.”
And the Foreign Office is after whomever Kinley is working for.
“Tell me one thing. Is Faraday dead or alive?”

Rockwell's jaw clenched but the brief fire of defiance yielded to the threat apparent in David's own expression. “That's part of the problem. We don't know. We only know someone wants his daughter enough to kill to get what she has.”

A treasure worth the meager price of an oath—certainly worth the kingdom it could buy. So why hadn't Meg taken the bloody thing and run when she'd had the chance?

But as he looked around him at the church and the dome of blue sky above, he knew the answer. He knew in his heart that even if she had the treasure, she would never touch it. For Meg had found a treasure more valuable to her than that offered by diamonds and gold. It lived in the people who loved her, the family she had never had, the trees, the land, the house on the hill. It lived in her son.

“Pamela is investigating a lead,” Rockwell said, still on the ground. “So, if your oath to this crown means anything, bloody stay here and do your job and allow us to do ours.”

David recognized a spoken threat when he heard one, but it was the unspoken one that troubled him because it came from Rockwell himself. It was unfortunate the younger man hadn't broken at least one bone in his body, David thought, removing his boot from Rockwell's chest and offering his hand in a gesture of goodwill and concord that extended no farther than his eyes. It was also unfortunate for the young upstart spy that David did not intend to sit quietly in the background.

“Are you going to live?” David asked.

“I confess I've been deuced inconvenienced.” Rockwell brushed off his cloak. “My horse has abandoned me. You can trust me not to toss down the gauntlet a second time.”