Brighter Than The Sun (24 page)

"I suppose if you put it that way ..."

She held out her hand. "Let's go back to the house. You'll need something cold on your ankle to bring the swelling down."

"How the hell am I supposed to find the killer when I can't even walk?"

Ellie leaned up and kissed his cheek. She knew how awful it was to feel helpless, but all she could do was comfort him. "You can't," she said simply. "You'll have to wait a few days. In the meantime we will concentrate on keeping everyone safe."

"I am not going to stand idly by while—"

"You won't be idle," she assured him. "We must see to our protection in any case. By the time our defenses are in place, your ankle will be well enough healed. And then you can"—she couldn't suppress a shudder—"seek out your enemy. Although I wish you would just wait for him to come to you."

"I beg your pardon?"

She prodded him until he started moving slowly back to the house. "We haven't the faintest idea who he is. Best to stay at Wycombe Abbey where you will be safe until he reveals himself."

"You were at the Abbey when you were poisoned," he reminded her.

"I know. We shall have to increase our security. But it is certainly safer here than anywhere else."

He knew she was right, but it galled him to sit around and do nothing. And sitting was all he would be doing with this damned ankle. He growled something that was meant to convey his agreement and continued hobbling home.

"Why don't we go through the side entrance?" Ellie suggested. "We'll see if Mrs. Stubbs can give us a nice cut of meat."

"I'm not hungry," he grumbled.

"For your ankle."

He didn't say anything. He hated feeling foolish.

* * *

By the middle of the following day, Charles felt a little more in control of his situation. He might not be well enough to hunt down his enemy, but at least he had been able to do a bit of detective work.

An interrogation of the kitmen staff had revealed that the most recently hired maid had mysteriously disappeared the night of Ellie's poisoning. She had been hired only one week earlier. No one could remember if she had been the one to deliver the custard to the master bedroom, but then again, no one else could remember doing it, so Charles felt it was safe to assume that the missing maid had had ample time to tamper with the food.

He had his men search the area, but he wasn't surprised when they found no trace of her. She was probably halfway to Scotland with the gold she'd undoubtedly been given to dispense the poison.

Charles had also instituted new measures to protect his family. Claire and Judith were expressly forbidden to leave the house, and he would have issued the same edict to Ellie and Helen if he'd thought he could get away with it. Thankfully, both women seemed inclined to stay indoors, if only to keep Judith entertained so that she didn't complain about not being able to ride her pony.

No progress had been made in the search for the person who had placed the nail under Charles's saddle, however. Charles found this particularly frustrating, and decided to inspect the stables himself for clues. He didn't tell Ellie what he was doing; she'd only worry about him. So while she was busy having tea with Helen, Claire, and Judith, he grabbed his coat, hat, and walking stick, and hobbled outside.

The stables were quiet when he arrived. Leavey was out exercising one of the stallions, and Charles suspected that the rest of the stablehands were taking their afternoon meal. The solitude suited him; he was able to give the stables a more thorough inspection without anyone looking over his shoulder.

Much to his frustration, however, his search produced no new leads. Charles wasn't exactly certain what he was looking for, but he certainly knew when he'd found nothing. He was just preparing to head back to Wycombe Abbey when he heard someone enter the outer door to the stables.

It was probably Leavey. Charles ought to let him know he'd been snooping around. Leavey had been instructed to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, and if Charles had disrupted anything during his search, the stablemaster would surely notice and grow worried.

"Leavey!" Charles called out. "It's Billington. I came to—"

There was a noise behind him. Charles turned but saw nothing. "Leavey?"

No answer.

His ankle started to throb, as if to remind him that he was injured and unable to run.

Another noise.

Charles swung around, but this time all he saw was a rifle barrel swinging down toward his head. And then he saw nothing.

Chapter 22

Ellie wasn't sure just what made her start to worry. She'd never considered herself a fanciful person, but she didn't like the way the sky suddenly clouded over. It made her skin prickle with an irrational fear, and she suddenly felt an intense need to see Charles.

But when she went down to his study, he wasn't there. Her heart skipped a beat, and then she saw that Charles's cane was also missing. Surely if he'd been abducted, his captors wouldn't have taken his cane.

He must have gone off investigating, the blasted man.

But when she realized that more than three hours had gone by since the last time she'd seen him, she started getting a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She began to search the house, but none of the servants had seen him. Neither had Helen or Claire. In fact, the only person who seemed to have any idea of his whereabouts was Judith.

"I saw him out the window," the little girl said.

"You did?" Ellie asked, practically sagging with relief. "Where was he going?"

"To the stables. He was limping."

"Oh, thank you, Judith," Ellie said, giving her a quick hug. She dashed out of the room and down the stairs. Charles had probably just gone to the stables to try to figure out who had tampered with his saddle. She wished he'd left her a note, but she was so relieved to know where he was that she felt no anger at his oversight.

When she reached her destination, however, there was no sign of her husband. Leavey was supervising several stablehands who were mucking out the stalls, but none of them seemed to know the earl's whereabouts.

"Are you certain you haven't seen him?" Ellie asked for the third time. "Miss Judith insisted she saw him enter the stables."

"It must have been when we were exercising the horses," Leavey replied.

"When was that?"

"Several hours ago."

Ellie sighed impatiently. Where was Charles? And then her eye caught upon something strange. Something red.

"What's this?" she whispered, kneeling down. She picked up a small handful of straw.

"What is it, my lady?" Leavey asked.

"It's blood," she said, her voice shaking. "On the straw."

"Are you certain?"

She smelled it and nodded. "Oh, dear Lord." She looked back up at Leavey, her face going white in an instant. "They've taken him. Dear Lord, someone's taken him."

* * *

Charles's first thought upon regaining consciousness was that he was never going to drink again. He'd been hungover before, but never had he felt this brand of skull-pounding agony. Then it occurred to him that it was the middle of the day, and he hadn't been drinking and—

He groaned as splinters of memory shot through his mind. Someone had bashed him over the head with a rifle.

He opened his eyes and looked around. He appeared to be in the bedroom of an abandoned cottage. The furnishings were old and dusty, and the air smelled of mildew. His hands and feet were tied, which didn't surprise him.

Frankly, what
did
surprise him was that he wasn't dead. Obviously someone wanted to kill him. What was the point of kidnapping him first? Unless, of course, his enemy had decided he wanted Charles to know his identity before delivering the final blow.

But in doing so, the would-be killer had granted Charles a little more time to plot and plan, and he vowed to escape and bring his enemy to justice. He wasn't sure how he would do it, bound as he was and with a sprained ankle to boot, but he'd be damned if he'd depart this world mere weeks after discovering true love.

The first order of business was clearly to do something about the ropes binding his hands, so he scooted across the floor to a broken chair sitting in the corner. The splintered wood looked sharp, and he started rubbing the rope against the jagged edge. It was clearly going to take a long time to break through the heavy rope, but his heart lifted with each tiny fiber that snapped under the friction.

After about five minutes of rubbing, Charles heard a door slam in the outer room of the cottage, and he quickly brought his hands back to his side. He started to move back to the center of the room, where he'd been dumped unconscious, but then decided to stay put. He could make it look like he had moved across the room simply to lean up against the wall.

Voices drifted through the air, but Charles couldn't make out what his captors were saying. He caught a snatch of a cockney twang, and deduced that he was dealing with hired thugs. It just didn't make sense that his enemy would be from London's underworld.

After a minute or two, it became apparent that his captors had no intention of checking up on him. Charles decided that they must be waiting for whomever was in charge, and he went back to work fraying the rope.

How long he sat there, moving his wrists back and forth across the jagged wood, he didn't know, but he was barely a third of the way through the rope when he heard the outer door slam again, this time followed by a distinctly upper-class voice.

Charles yanked his hands back to his body and pushed the broken chair away from him with his shoulder. If he guessed right, his enemy would want to see him right away, and—

The door opened. Charles held his breath. A silhouette filled the doorway.

"Good day, Charles."

"Cecil?"

"The very one."

Cecil? His mealy-mouthed cousin, the one who had always tattled when they were children, the one who had always taken an inordinate amount of pleasure in stepping on bugs?

"You're a hard man to kill," Cecil said. "I finally realized I was going to have to do it myself."

Charles supposed he should have paid more attention to his cousin's fixation with dead bugs. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Cecil?" he demanded.

"Ensuring my place as the next Earl of Billington."

Charles just stared at him. "But you're not even next in line to inherit. If you kill me, the title goes to Phillip."

"Phillip is dead."

Charles felt sick. He'd never liked Phillip, but he'd never wished him ill. "What did you do to him?" he asked hoarsely.

"Me? I did nothing. Our dear cousin's gambling debts did him in. I believe one of his moneylenders finally ran out of patience. He was fished out of the Thames just yesterday."

"And I suppose you had nothing to do with his debts."

Cecil shrugged. "I might have steered Phillip in the direction of a game or two. But always at his request."

Charles swore under his breath. He should have watched out for his cousin, realized that his gambling habit was becoming a dangerous problem. He might have been able to counteract Cecil's influence. "Phillip should have come to me," he said. "I would have helped him."

"Don't scold yourself, cuz," Cecil said with a clucking sound. 'There's really very little you could have done for dear Phillip. I have a feeling those moneylenders would have gotten to him no matter how promptly he repaid his debts."

Bile rose in Charles's throat as he realized what Cecil meant. "You killed him," he whispered. "You threw him in the Thames and made it look like the moneylenders did him in."

"Rather clever, don't you think? It's taken over a year to execute; after all, I needed to make certain Phillip's connections with London's underbelly were common knowledge. I laid my plans out very carefully." His face grew ugly. "But then you ruined it all."

"By being born?" Charles asked, baffled.

"By marrying that stupid vicar's daughter. I wasn't going to kill you, you know. I never cared about the title. It was just the money I was after. I was biding my time until your thirtieth birthday. I have been rejoicing over your father's will since the day it was read. Nobody thought you'd actually obey his terms. You've been acting out just to spite him your entire life."

"And then I married Ellie," Charles said in a dull voice.

"And then I had to kill you. It was as simple as that. I saw it coming when you began to court her, so I tampered with your curricle, but all that gave you were a few bruises. And then I engineered your fall from the ladder—that was difficult to do, I'll tell you. I had to work very quickly. I wouldn't have been able to do it if the ladder hadn't been in a bit of disrepair to begin with."

Charles remembered the searing pain he'd felt when his skin had been sliced open by the splintered ladder, and he shook with rage.

"There was quite a bit of blood," Cecil continued. "I was watching from the forest. I thought I had you that time until I realized you'd only cut your arm. I'd been hoping for a chest wound."

"I'm sorry to have disobliged you."' Charles said in a dry voice.

"Ah yes, that famous Billington wit. Such a stiff upper lip you possess."

"Clearly I need it at times like these."

Cecil shook his head slowly. "Your wits won't save you this time, Charles."

Charles stared his cousin hard in the eye. "How do you plan to do it?"

"Quick and clean. I never intended to make you suffer."

"The poison you fed my wife did not precisely sit gently in her stomach."

Cecil let out a long-suffering sigh. "She is ever getting in the way. Although she did cause that nice kitchen fire. If the day had been windier she might have done my job for me. I understood you fought the flames yourself."

"Leave Ellie out of this."

"At any rate, I do apologize for the virulence of that poison. I had been told it would not be painful. Clearly I was misinformed."

Charles's lips parted in disbelief. "I cannot believe you're apologizing to me."

"I am not without manners—just scruples."

"Your plan is going to fail," Charles stated. "You can kill me, but you won't inherit my fortune."

Cecil tapped his finger against his cheek. "Let me see. You have no sons. If you die, I become the earl." He shrugged and laughed. "It seems simple to me."

"You'll become the earl, but you won't get the money. All you'll get is the entailed property. Wycombe Abbey is worth quite a bit, but as the earl, you will be legally barred from selling it, and it costs a bloody fortune to keep it up. Your pockets will feel even more pinched than they do right now. Why the hell do you think I was so bloody desperate to get married?"

Beads of sweat appeared on Cecil's brow. "What are you talking about?"

"My fortune goes to my wife."

"No one leaves a fortune like that to a woman."

"I did," Charles said with a slow smile.

"You're lying."

He was right, but Charles didn't see any reason to inform him. In all truth, he'd planned to amend his will to leave his fortune to Ellie; he just hadn't gotten around to doing it yet. Charles shrugged and said, "That's a gamble you'll just have to take."

"That's where you're wrong, cuz. I can just kill your wife."

Charles had known he would say that, but it made his blood boil all the same. "Do you really think," he drawled, "that you can kill both the Earl and Countess of Billington, inherit the title and the fortune, and not be a suspect in our murders?"

"I can ... if you're not murdered."

Charles narrowed his eyes.

"An accident," Cecil mused. "A terrible, tragic accident. One that takes both of you away from your loving relatives. We shall all grieve terribly. I will wear black for a full year."

"Very sporting of you."

"Damn, but now I'm going to have to send one of those idiots"—he flicked his head toward the outer room—"back out after your wife."

Charles began to struggle against his bindings. "If you harm a hair on her head ..."

"Charles, I just told you I'm going to
kill
her," Cecil said with a chuckle. "I shouldn't worry too much about her hair, were I you."

"You will rot in hell for this."

"Undoubtedly. But I shall have a grand time here on earth beforehand." Cecil scratched his chin. "I don't really trust them to do a good job with your wife. I'm amazed they managed to get you here without mishap."

"I wouldn't call this lump on my head 'without mishap.' "

"I have it! You shall write her a note. Lure her out of the safety of her home. I understand the two of you have been quite amorous of late. Make her think you have arranged a lovers' tryst. She'll come running. Women always do."

Charles started thinking quickly. Cecil didn't realize that he and Ellie had already guessed that someone was out to do them harm. Ellie would never believe that Charles would plan a tryst amidst such danger. She would immediately suspect foul play. Charles was sure of it.

But he didn't want to raise Cecil's suspicions by appearing too eager to write the note, so he twisted his face away and spat out, "I won't do anything to lure Ellie to her death."

Cecil strode forward and yanked Charles to his feet. "She's going to die in any case, so she might as well do it with you."

"You'll have to untie my hands," Charles said, keeping his voice sullen.

"I'm not as stupid as you think."

"And I'm not as dexterous as
you
think," Charles shot back. "Do you want my handwriting to look like chicken scrawl? Ellie isn't stupid. She'll be suspicious if she receives a note that doesn't look to be in my hand."

"Very well. But don't try anything heroic." Cecil pulled out a knife and a pistol. He used the knife to cut through the rope around Charles's wrists and kept the pistol pointed at his head.

"Have you any paper?" Charles asked sarcastically. "A quill? Ink, perhaps?"

"Shut up." Cecil paced across the room, keeping the pistol pointed at Charles, who couldn't have gone far in any case with his feet tied together. "Damn."

Charles started to laugh.

"Shut up!" Cecil screamed. He turned to the doorway and yelled, "Baxter!"

A burly man opened the door. "Wot?"

"Get me some paper. And ink."

"And a quill," Charles said helpfully.

"I don't think there's any of that 'ere," Baxter said.

"Then go buy some!" Cecil screamed, his entire body shaking.

Baxter crossed his arms. "You 'aven't paid me for nabbing the earl yet."

"For the love of God," Cecil hissed. "I'm working with idiots."