Angel In My Bed (31 page)

Victoria stared at the paper in her hands, giving no hint that she wavered between feverish exhaustion and disbelief.
But her hands trembled as she opened the folded paper and read her mother's name. “I don't understand. Who gave this to you?”

“That young man sitting behind you. He told me to give you that slip.”

Victoria came to her feet and turned.

David was sitting in the last row of pews. His arm in a white sling, he came to his feet, and her heart leaped with an aching love. His dark hair fell over his brow and white collar. He did not walk toward her, but in standing surrendered that choice to her.

She stopped in front of him. She did not touch him for fear she would crumble if she did.

“Is Nathanial safe?”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

They had both spoken at the same time.

And a sob formed in her throat. “I think so. Yes,” she whispered, perhaps not so well physically, but her strength and purpose had never been clearer. “I am very all right.”

He held out his hand as if she had not gone missing for three weeks, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that he should do. She looked at that hand, aware of the constancy of its strength, and let him take her fingers, his height bringing her chin higher.

Then he pulled her to him within the protective circle of his arm, and pressed his mouth against her temple. He'd not shaved. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. He was not so well put together as she'd originally thought.

She set her fingers against the loose wave of his hair that touched his collar, and, closing her eyes, she felt everything dark inside her simply disappear in the peace that filled her.
She was crying but they were not tears of sadness. “How did you know where to find me?” she rasped against the dark stubble of his chin.

“I've been staying at the inn that overlooks this cathedral. I saw you walking from the direction of the field.”

“My father is dead.”

“You cannot know how I wish I had been there for you.” He turned his face against her cheek, then he cupped the back of her head and kissed her, finally searing her with his need and hers. Their lips met again and again, openmouthed and hungry. “I missed you.” He turned his face against her cheek and she choked on the intensity of his emotion as he moved his lips back to her mouth. “I couldn't get to you sooner. I thought I had lost you.”

And like the whisper of her name, the words echoed with tenderness of her own feelings. She had lost weight and her clothes were in disrepair, but she was better than all right, and she held him to her, her heart brimming. But before she could speak, movement drew her attention to the back of the cathedral where she saw the young vicar leave, his echoing footsteps fading in the empty silence surrounding her. A glance around David's injured shoulder told her that they were alone. The morning was too beautiful to be so void of life.

It occurred to her then that she had not seen anyone else since she had entered the cathedral. Her hand closing around the precious paper the vicar had given her, she met the searing blue of David's eyes. She would not allow him to hold himself responsible for what had to be done, and with a sudden vulnerability and weakness she could not fight, she was glad everything was over. “Am I under arrest now?” she asked.

His smile hinting at so much more than love touched her with sudden splendor. “Come,” he whispered against her temple, withholding nothing from the force of his words. “I have something to show you.”

T
he carriage stopped near an isolated cemetery. Victoria looked out the window at the white caps on the sea. David had found her mother for her. The locket pressed in her palm, she looked out across the cemetery. Her eyes touched the small Romanesque chapel on the knoll overlooking the sea, then the marble mausoleum next to the dormant gardens, a smaller version of the cathedral she'd just left. A pair of Doric columns supported a domed roof. She turned her head to find David watching her.

After years of hiding, this moment felt surreal. Her gaze dropped to the gold band on David's hand, then on hers. “If you can't do this, we'll leave now.” He took both her hands in his and brought them to his lips. “I'll take you back to the inn. You can bathe and sleep. We'll do this tomorrow or never if that is what you want.”

She was a little afraid, but she was no longer frightened. At least she wasn't as much about what tomorrow held as she
was about the next ten minutes. Ten little minutes that had her quaking in her shoes.

“Wait.” Pulling his hand to her cheek, she held his gaze. “I need you to promise that no matter what happens…that come tomorrow…” A brief gust of wind buffeted the carriage, and she tightened her hands around David's. “I don't want you and Nathanial involved in this case anymore. Please tell me that you will protect him and yourself. Promise me that you will tell Sir Henry…that I love him. Bethany…she is tenderhearted and needs to know that she is important. People will not be kind to any of them.”

“What about you?” His eyes softened on her face. “What do you ask for yourself?”

“That my son will have a future untarnished by me.”

“Remember you promised to trust me? That includes with our son's future.”

David reached around her and opened the door. A groom set the step and stood aside as he stepped down and waited until she was ready to descend from the carriage. The wind played with her cloak as he took her elbow and led her to the steps between the columns. “I didn't know your mother's middle name was Victoria.”

“She was named for her mother. I didn't know her maiden name was Sullivan.”

Victoria looked up at the circular stained-glass window above the weathered door depicting a white lily. She stopped.

The inscription above the lily had been carved in Latin.

It was the same inscription in her locket.

“
There are no miracles to the man who does not believe in them
,” David said, standing behind her. “A proverb. It is a ceremonial to life.”

“You can read all of this?”

He opened the door and stood aside for her to enter. “Something of my old ecclesiastic training,” he said.

Victoria entered and, for a moment, blinked trying to adjust her eyes to the shadows. Candles fluttered in wall sconces and she looked around the empty room before realizing David had not followed. A question formed but he touched a finger to her lips.

“This, you have to do alone,” he said.

Victoria stood silent as he shut the door, leaving her in semidarkness. The room smelled of earth and dead flowers. The window slats opened to the sea, and, as she stepped beneath the archway into a veritable Garden of Eden, she stopped.

Breathless, she lifted her gaze. A stained-glass skylight domed the ceiling in a heavenly tableau. An angel cloaked in flowing white lilies spread her arms.

Victoria turned and touched her hand on the names and dates of those buried within the granite wall. She found her mother's name engraved on the floor nearest to the garden, and she sank to her knees. For a long time, she leaned with her palms pressed to the name.

And as the sun shifted across the morning sky, she held her hands to the stone marker inscribed with her mother's name. The bright light spilling through the stained glass revealed two slight indentations on the stones next to her mother's. Wiping away the tears, Victoria withdrew the locket and held it to the oval dimple. She slid her fingers along the heavy square granite, working her nails around a wedge of stone, and realized it could be removed. The blood left her face. Then she stood, backed away from the stone and sat on the bench, opening her palm that held the locket.

“It's a key,” a voice said from the shadows behind her.

With a gasp, she bounded to her feet. Lord Ravenspur sat on a stone bench against the back wall, the top half of his body shadowed. “Once the locket is inserted, you twist the lid. Your father built this mausoleum with the stipulation that no one but his wife ever be buried in the floor.” He rose to his feet as if unfurling to face a sudden gust of wind.

He wore no hat, and he held his gloves in his hand. He'd folded his coat beside him.

“But if someone already knows where the treasure is, one doesn't need the locket—”

“One does if one doesn't want to use dynamite to blow up this mausoleum.” He did not approach her. Instead, he walked to the window and looked out across the sea. “There is a recompense for the one who finds that treasure. Even a small percentage would make a person wealthy.”

“But I didn't find it. David did.”

“David is giving you his percentage. I promised him that should you choose to leave, I would not stop you. Or he wouldn't tell me what he'd found.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “He is a stubborn man who walks the line of sedition as if it were a two-foot high tightrope. Give it back to him.”

Ravenspur narrowed his eyes on her, but they had lost some of their sterling brittleness. His hands behind his back, he rocked on his heels, then returned his attention to the window. “He was laid up for three days. I thought he would kill himself trying to get to you. I don't know how he knew that you would be in Brighton. But he wouldn't leave. A week ago, he located your parent's marriage record. Your mother's name was Sullivan. She and your father were married in the Chapel by the Sea.” Lord Ravenspur nodded to the stone plate on the floor. “We can open it.”

Victoria looked at the locket in her hand, and then held it out to him. “I don't want any part of that treasure. And I'm finished running. Open it after I leave here, please. Then give my locket to my son.”

Ravenspur's mouth pulled at one corner as he approached and took the piece of jewelry from her. “He told me you'd say that.”

“Then this was some test?”

“No, I did have to swear I'd let you walk out of here if you chose.” He pulled a fistful of paper from his jacket. “He will do what it takes to see you free. Are you worthy, Victoria?”

“My name is Margaret Faraday, Your Grace. I think we both know that.”

“Except I have witnesses that claim Margaret Faraday died, December 18, 1863, off the coast of Bombay.”

“What?”

“It's true, Lady Munro. You see, not even Lord Ware can wave a magic wand and erase the first eighteen years of Meg Faraday's life. Even if she received a new tribunal and was acquitted of all charges, once the recovery of this treasure becomes public, she could never lead a normal life. Her connection to Colonel Faraday would forever make her a prisoner of her own reputation and mark those she loves most. It is a stain not so easily erased.”

Victoria comprehended his words only too well.

“And, as it is, witnesses have died—”

“Do you think
I
killed them?”

“Pamela Rockwell is responsible for that. We believe she married Ian Rockwell three years ago to get closer to his father. She gained access to Major Rockwell's papers on the case, worked her way to Kinley and through him to your fa
ther. She was our mole, and committed high treason for her share in gold. Unfortunately, we don't know how much damage she and your father did to the department.”

“Where is she?” Victoria whispered.

“As we speak, her husband is taking her to an asylum in the south of Wales. In lieu of a public trial and her execution, she will spend the rest of her life confined in a stone cell. Do not feel sorry for her,” he said when she looked away. “She tried to kill her husband and would have hurt your son had Rockwell and David not come in time.”

“It was Pamela's bullet that killed my father. That he should save my life, in the end, at the cost of his own must be the ultimate Greek tragedy for him.” She folded her arms. “His body is in a cottage not far from here.”

“David's men followed your tracks to the cottage.”

She tightened her arms over her torso. “What happens now?”

“You are all that remains of the original Circle of Nine,” he said, pulling her gaze back to his face. “But since Meg Faraday aided our agents in Calcutta and helped break a major case there as well as here, the government is willing to see that her past is buried here in this vault and that her name is cleared posthumously. There will be no reopening of the case. No public tribunal to endure. After today, the files on Colonel Faraday's daughter will be destroyed. As Victoria Munro, she'll be given a chance at a new start in life. I can offer her that much to protect her identity and that of her family.”

She pressed a fist to her mouth. Even now, she could not comprehend the words. “But Meg Faraday is David's wife. We have a son. Does David understand how this could affect Nathanial?”

“I believe this was his idea, as well as Sir Henry's.”

“What?” she rasped.

“David has secured a special license. He will marry you before your return to Rose Briar. Life may never be a hundred percent perfect, but it can be damn close. When you walk outside this chapel, you will be free, Victoria.”

Free!

Her heart raced until she thought she could not take another breath. Would anyone possibly understand that one word represented all the riches in the world to her? “You have no idea how many years I've waited to hear that word.”

Lord Ravenspur laid his jacket over his arm and held out his hand. “Let me be the first to welcome you to my wife's family, Lady Chadwick.”

She flung her arms around him. “Thank you, Your Grace. Thank you.” Even if it wasn't a proper show of restraint, she couldn't help herself.

“Your son and Bethany have been staying with my wife for the past few weeks at my estate in Aldbury. The entire family is with them by now. You can thank David's brother Christopher for the new puppy Nathanial is about to bring home. Chris enjoys sharing. He is generous like that. Just ask Ryan or Johnny or Colin.”

She laughed through a watery smile. “They sound perfectly wonderful.”

“They are,” Lord Ravenspur said with heartfelt sentiment that she had not seen in him.

Dashing the tears away, she looked down at her feet. Victoria bent and touched her mother's name, then looked up at the stained-glass angel peering down on her. If anything good had come from the first eighteen years of her life, he was standing outside this marble sanctuary waiting for her.

She saw David sitting at the top of the broad white steps of the chapel overlooking the sea. He looked up as she appeared in the garden and stopped, the wind buffeting her hair and cloak.

Only when he rose did she hike up her skirts and run toward him. He bounded down the stairs, and she flew into his arms laughing, his arm wrapping around her, and, when he kissed her, it was as if it was for the very first time. It was a long kiss, warmed with passion and love, and remarkable tenderness. There was only his mouth on hers, his hand in her hair, her body pressing against the length of his, his warmth and hers. She took it all into her heart and returned it tenfold, until she grew dizzy in his arms and he at last lifted his head and looked into her face.

“I'm sorry I couldn't tell you,” he said against her hair. “How this played out had to be your choice.”

“We have a son, David.” Years of protecting him continued to make her cautious. “How will this affect him?”

“We still have a son, and Sir Henry has a grandson. I've no entailed estate, and my title cannot be inherited. When Nathanial is older, we can tell him more about the circumstances of our decision today. He will never know uncertainty about his legitimacy.”

“You are sure. No doubts? This will not be easy.”

“Would a lifetime be enough time for us to make everything work?” he asked, pulling her into the circle of his arms and holding her tightly. “Whatever we have to face, we'll do so together this time.”

Voices behind her lifted his head, and David looked over her shoulder. Three men stood in front of the mausoleum carrying pickaxes and shovels. Victoria did not move from his arms, but she'd seen what caught his attention and turned
her face against his shoulder. David regarded her profile, his mood frayed by her silence. “Do you want to wait and see what they find?”

“I already know what they will find,” she replied, and he immediately regretted that he had asked. She had been through hell these past weeks. He would not ask her to go there again.

“There will be a bath and a hot meal waiting for you at the inn,” he said. “We will talk more after you have rested.”

“I would like that.”

Together they walked to the carriage. “What else would you like?”

“I'm all right,” she said, leaning against his shoulder. “Truly.”

“I know.”

But he still did not let her go.