Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) (32 page)

“Stop that,” Edgar said sharply, swinging his cane into Samuel’s side. The large man groaned as the knob on top of the cane connected with his ribs. “You can deal with her later. Put her in the carriage.”

Harriet moaned as Samuel pulled her limp body down the stone steps and out of the rear of the Royal Academy, passed the kitchens and into a small cobbled lane. A large coach waited; its door hung open. A lady peered out, the worry evident on her face.

“Have you got her?” she called.

Edgar got into the carriage in front of Harriet, and then took her from Samuel’s arms. With little finesse, he drew her body into the coach and then pushed it onto the seat next to the lady, who drew away as if burnt. Dazed, Harriet tried to focus.

“Didn’t think you would see me again, did you?” Mrs. Sumner taunted Harriet.

Harriet shook her head. She couldn’t say anything. Using the wall of the coach, she squirmed up the padded sides to pull herself upright. She refused to look at Mrs. Sumner. Instead she stared at Edgar, who had flung himself into the opposite seat.

“What do we do now, dear one?” Mrs. Sumner asked Edgar.

“We wait,” Edgar said shortly. He glanced at Harriet. “Stop looking at me.”

Harriet narrowed her gaze, her eyes flicking down to the cane that Edgar played with in his hands.

Edgar pressed a button and the cane came apart at the middle to reveal a knife. “It’s this that you want to see, isn’t it?” he said, leaning forward towards Harriet. Running a finger over the blade, he turned it over and over in the dim light that filtered in from the open door. “You’re wondering if it was used to kill your parents.” He stared at her and then slipped the blade back into the cane. “Not directly, but yes, I did use it when I cut the traces to your father’s carriage.”

Harriet inhaled sharply, the gag sticking to her tongue. It had been Edgar all along. The boy who had taunted James and her as they played when they were younger. Who had watched her grow up. Who had offered to marry her on many an occasion. How he must have laughed knowing that he had killed her parents.

“I couldn’t have the world knowing that I was Lord Stanton’s bastard son,” Edgar continued. “If your father hadn’t found me, half-dead and raving in the bushes after that day’s beating, I wouldn’t have had to kill him or his pretty wife. Too bad you survived.” Edgar stabbed the cane to the floor. “Bloody artists and their paintings,” he roared. “I hate the lot of them, tramping around the countryside looking for the best views, poking their noses in where they are not wanted. Just like Fairleigh did too.”

“Calm down, Edgar darling,” Mrs. Sumner said, her head darting between Edgar and the door to the carriage. “We don’t want to attract any attention. What are we waiting for anyway?”

“We’re waiting for James.” Edgar leant his head back against the carriage wall and closed his eyes. “You know, if Lady Guthrie hadn’t intervened I would have killed Fairleigh long before I did. It all worked out rather nicely for me though in the end.”

“I’ve sent a note.” The supercilious tones of the lawyer Mr. Granger filtered into the carriage from outside. He put a foot on the step of the carriage and leaned in, glaring at Harriet. “James won’t be able to help himself. After all, we have everything that he wants.”

Edgar nodded at Harriet. “That’s true. And after tomorrow we’ll have everything we want, too.”

CHAPTER 32

Where had she gone? James pushed his way through the audience, drawing Melissa in a tight grip by the hand after him. He should have told Harriet his plan, he’d been stupid not to. But it would have been too dangerous. Harriet’s dramatic face would have shown everything to Edgar. The slimy bastard needed to see her hurting to believe that James intended to carry on with marrying Melissa regardless of the will. James’ grasp tightened on Melissa’s wrist and then relaxed again. It wasn’t her fault. She had been marvelous, putting up with him for three long weeks as he plotted to bring Edgar into the open.

In fact, her voice had held an indecent amount of relief when he had finally cornered her in the knot garden at Brambridge and told her that he wanted to break off the engagement.

He was still in the dark as to what Edgar wanted. But it was obviously tied up with the Brambridge Manor. The only piece of jigsaw that James had was that Mrs. Sumner had pretended to be the mother of Marie Mompesson in order to force him into an engagement with Melissa, that she had knowledge of the house, and that she was engaged in intimate relations with Edgar who had appeared at every point of misfortune in James’ life.

Where was he now?
James looked away from where he had last seen Harriet. Edgar was nowhere in sight. James stopped in the crowd and swung his head left and right.

“What is it?” Melissa asked, putting her free hand on her wrist and drawing herself out of his grasp. “Who are you looking for? The happy couple?”

James shook his head. At least that was one thing tidied away. Agatha stood near them, a diamond sparkling at her neck, and a large golden ring adorning her hand that was held firmly in Lord Anglethorpe’s grasp. “No, not them. Harriet.”

“But I just saw her, she was over by the painting over there—oh.”

“Exactly.”

James took another look around the crowd. “Where has she gone?”

Melissa shivered visibly. “I can’t see Edgar either.”

That was not good. Three long weeks he’d spent trying to draw Edgar out.

Melissa took a deep breath and pushed her hands into her skirts. “Do you know what my mother told me this morning?” She drew out a delicate object in her hands and narrowed her eyes, staring hard at James.

He shook his head. Where was Edgar?

Looking down, Melissa put her hands to her face, and smoothed her fingers behind her ears. Then with a deliberate movement she looked up again into James’ face. Her frown had gone, instead her eyes were reflected in through ten shards of glass, held together by the brass rims of a pair of misshapen spectacles.

Good god! No wonder her eyes changed constantly. The poor girl hadn’t been able to see him!

Melissa folded her arms around herself. “She told me that she wasn’t my mother.”

James made to speak, but Melissa shook her head. She pointed at the glasses. “Edgar did this, in our little front room at our house in Bayswater.” She lifted her chin. “Two months before we came to Brambridge.”

“Edgar knew your mother before?”

Melissa nodded. “I thought you knew.” She took off the spectacles and rubbed a finger over the shiny curves of the ear hooks. “They made quite a few plans for me that I had no knowledge of. They gave me a season, but refused all my offers of marriage without me knowing… there was someone… but then he… they all started ignoring me. Only one man was left. Earl Babington.”

“But he died last year!”

Melissa nodded and hooked the glasses back on her nose. “Precisely. Edgar and mother got greedy, they spent too long negotiating. No one else would come near me.”

James continued to scan the crowd for Harriet. “And so they brought you to Brambridge.”

Melissa swallowed visibly and nodded. “James, I believed my—mother—when she said that I was Marie Mompesson. I… I know you are a good man. I was relieved to accept your offer of marriage.” A shudder ran up and down her body as he turned to her and put a hand out. She backed away from him.

“But Melissa, I still don’t understand… what use am I to your mother?”

“It’s not Eliza you are of use to—”

“Excuse me? Lord Stanton?” A footman stopped in front of them. He stared at James and Melissa and then seemed to consult an internal memory. “Lord Stanton?” he said tentatively again.

James nodded. The man needed to get out of the way. He was impeding his view.

“I have a note for you.” The waiter balanced his tray of drinks with one hand and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket.

James stopped trying to look over the waiter’s shoulder. Putting out his hand slowly, he plucked the note from the waiter’s hand and held it between thumb and fingertip as if it might shatter.

“What does it say?” Melissa asked.

James pulled at the folded edges.

Want to see her alive? Get in the carriage. Now.

The note fell through his fingers to the floor as he drew in a deep breath.

“Hell and damnation,” he muttered. His hands shook slightly as he bent to pick the note up again. He hadn’t planned for that. Of course Edgar would go after her. She was, after all, the key to the estate. How could he have been so blind?

“I have to go after her.”

“I’m coming too.” Melissa grabbed at his sleeve and stopped him. “You might need my help. After all, my mother… my so called mother, might be there too. And I haven’t told you about—”

James shook his head. “I want you to find Freddie, tell him what has happened. He’ll get the others. I have to go now. Her life depends on it.”

Melissa looked squarely him in the face. “You really love her, don’t you?” She shook her head and released his arm quickly. “You are both lucky that you love each other. Godspeed.”

James touched a gentle finger to Melissa’s hand. “Thank you, Melissa. Thank you for everything. I hope that someday you meet someone that will want you for who you are too, rather than for what you have.”

Melissa pulled her hand away. A small tear ran down the corner of her eye. “I have nothing,” she said in a low voice. Dashing away the tear with her gloved hand, she pushed at James’ arm. “Go. Don’t worry about me. Find Harriet, before it’s too late.”

James hesitated, but Melissa pushed at him again. He had to prioritize. Melissa wasn’t in danger. Harriet, his love, was. Heart feeling heavy at every step, he pushed through the crowd towards the doors of the exhibition. At the grand staircase he took the steps two at a time, pulling at his cravat as he ran.

The heavy doors to the Royal Academy of Arts swung shut behind him as he barreled onto the courtyard of New Somerset House. The carriage stood waiting just as the note said. Before he had taken two steps towards it, he felt pressure underneath his arms, and the door to the carriage was swept open.

“Good afternoon, Lord Stanton.” Mr. Granger pulled James’ arm behind him. James’ shoulder joint gave a scraping sound and the skin pulled at the wound that had nearly healed. Faint under the pressure, he barely noticed as his other arm was pulled behind his back. Mr. Granger looped some rope around his wrists and pulled it into a noose.

“Throw him into the carriage, Samuel. Careful mind. He needs to be awake for the ceremony.”

James arched his back as Samuel tugged at the noose on his hands and pulled him towards the carriage doors. But it was no use; the large man tossed him onto the floor of the carriage, where a booted foot pressed hard on his face against the floor. The tip of a cane rested against his nose. He struggled to breathe under the pressure, thrashing like a salmon out of water, but the force was relentless.

“Dear James. You won’t help yourself by resisting, you know. After all, I have you and I have darling Harriet. Until you stop moving I won’t let you up. Or would you rather meet the end of my cane? I don’t believe I’ve cleaned it since I used it on that poor customs man two years ago. I might cause you an infection.”

“You!” James breathed out hard through his nostrils. He had been able to believe Edgar of most things, the devious behavior, stealing from the estate, collusion. But not the murder that had forced him to flee. He forced his body to relax.

“Ha. Most people listen to the power of the cane. Don’t they, beloved?”

The pressure on James’ face lessened to the point where he could turn his head to survey the occupants of the carriage.

Mrs. Sumner looked down at him with an interested look on her face. “Indeed they do, darling Edgar,” she said with a catlike smile.

Edgar shook his head and smirked. “To think that everyone believed that the man fell off the cliff and knocked his head on the rocks.” He laughed, twirling the cane in his hand.

A sharp intake of breath drew James’ attention to the corner of the coach. Harriet sat bolt upright, a gag in her mouth, and her own hands behind her. His heart warmed; Harriet showed no jot of fear. Her eyes were bright, and her immaculately braided hair had come loose. Twin spots of red to match the color of her hair sat high on her cheeks. She was as angry as Athena the goddess of war.

“In case you were wondering, the Grangers are on top of the carriage,” Edgar said in a bored voice. “Oh, do get up. You can’t spend the journey on the floor. We’ve got at least sixteen hours before we reach Brambridge.”

James drew in another long breath. He had to find out what Edgar wanted and then try to persuade him otherwise. He drew himself into a kneeling position, falling lightly against Harriet’s knees as the coach jolted along some cobbles. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. He was sorry for everything. Pushing one foot underneath his body, he stood upright and fell sideways on his injured shoulder onto the padded bench next to Edgar.

“At least,” he gasped. “At least take off Harriet’s gag.”

“I don’t see what harm it can do,” Mrs. Sumner said. “You have a knife, and both of them are bound. It might be quite interesting to hear what the lovebirds have to say to one another.”

Harriet turned a wide eyed stare to Mrs. Sumner. James stiffened.

“Of course we noticed. Did you think we were blind?” Mrs. Sumner reached over and roughly untied Harriet’s gag. “I think most of the village knew. Mrs. Madely found it laughable. Her maid, the schoolmistress and Lord Stanton. Little did she know.”

“I, we…” Harriet stumbled over the words.

James shook his head. “Don’t give them the satisfaction, Harry. They are just looking to needle you, to give them an excuse to harm us.”

“Harm you? Why would we want to harm you?” Edgar said in a low voice. “My own flesh and blood?”

James frowned. What was Edgar talking about?

“He’s your brother,” Harriet said thickly. She spat on the floor. “Bill is too, but you knew that. The painting I was standing by in the exhibition… it showed it all.”