The Light in the Darkness (40 page)

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Carey did not look as surprised as Grey had expected. “Yes, Jennifer said Diana was having an affair with someone whose initial was C. I suppose it could have been Christopher Lightfoot as well as anyone.”

“It was, I’m certain of that. I recognized his handwriting on the letters he wrote to Diana. And Jennifer must have realized that he was the one having an affair with Diana as well. But somehow, from that, I think she has made the improbable deduction that he was the one who murdered Diana. That’s why I was going after her.” When Carey only looked at him skeptically, Grey explained further in a rush of words. “I’ve known Christopher Lightfoot as long as I can remember. All through our boyhood we were friends. But when we were young men I caught him in several cruelties—I don’t have time to describe them now. Suffice it to say that he is dangerous. Jennifer may have trouble with him.”

“If that’s the case, why didn’t you simply stop her from going to talk with him?”

“Jennifer is stubborn,” Grey said, unaware that the affection he felt for his wife was clear in his tone. “She would have tried again. And I might not be able to stop her next time. Carey, I’m going to Williamsburg tomorrow. I’m going to turn myself in.”

Carey looked at him blankly. “You mean that you are going to admit that you murdered Diana? After all this time?”

Grey nodded.

“They’ll hang you,” Carey predicted with grim satisfaction.

“Very probably. A murderer deserves no less.” He took a deep breath. “Carey, I swear to you on my honor that I was following Jennifer, not to injure her, but to protect her. I have to get down to the wharf and make certain Lightfoot does her no harm. Will you let me go?”

Carey stared at him for a long moment. Finally he said grudgingly, “Only if you let me go with you.”

“Very well,” Grey replied, coming easily to his feet and helping Carey to his as though they had not earlier been at each other’s throats. He bent and picked up one of the pistols, handing it butt first to Carey, who looked surprised.

“You do realize,” Carey said slowly, accepting the pistol, “that you will have a ball between your ribs if I have any reason to believe that you intend to hurt Jennifer?”

Grey grinned at him, the honest smile that he reserved for close friends. “You are your father’s son,” he said, picking up his pistol. “I expected no less.”

He turned and strode toward the river. Carey followed, bewildered by the friendly note he had heard in the other man’s voice. It was as though Grey had finally accepted him as an equal. He felt oddly disarmed by the implied compliment.

But of course, he was dealing with a criminal, a man who had killed his wife in the most horrible of ways. He could not forget that, even for a second.

If he had not forcibly reminded himself that Grey was a murderer, however, he would have found himself liking the man.

The two men crept toward the river, concealing themselves in the brush that grew down to the beach. Jennifer and Christopher stood near the wharf, conversing intently, and Grey’s chin dropped as he saw the gown she was wearing, and the charms it amply displayed.
Good God,
he thought in astonishment,
I was right to worry about her.

“And what do you think?” Lightfoot was inquiring. “Do you believe he is a murderer?”

Jennifer shuddered delicately. “I simply don’t know what to believe,” she declared. “Grey is always so cold, so remote.”
Except last night, when he made love to me for hours,
she amended mentally. “But I know he loved his first
wife very much. I find it terribly difficult to believe he killed her. And it’s not surprising he worshipped her so. She was so very beautiful.”

Christopher’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and she was chillingly aware that she had not brought up the subject of Diana with a great deal of subtlety. “Indeed,” he said softly. “But of course, I did not know Diana well.”

Cursing her lack of finesse, and frightened by the ugly expression that had entered his eyes, Jennifer took a deep breath and forced her pounding heart to slow. “Really?” she said, her eyes widening innocently. “I had been told you knew her well.
Quite
well, in fact.”

Christopher caught her arm and yanked her up against him. Looking up into his face, she quailed. His dark blue eyes no longer seemed friendly. They were like chips of ice—brittle and very, very cold. The eyes of a murderer.

In the brush, Carey started to jump to his feet, but Grey’s hand on his arm restrained him. “Wait,” he barely whispered.

“But he’s—”

“Wait a moment,” Grey repeated in a low voice.

If it became necessary, he himself would defend his wife, not Carey. He had no intentions of letting Lightfoot manhandle Jennifer—he would strangle the man if he so much as bruised her, damn it—but he wanted desperately to know the details of Lightfoot’s relationship with Diana. He
had
to know. How long had it gone on? When had it started?

And, God help him, had it begun while he still considered Christopher his best friend?

“You know about Diana,” Christopher said, reading the fear written on the delicate planes of her face as easily as he might read a printed page. “You know that we had an affair.
That’s what this is all about. You don’t want me at all. You simply want to know more about Diana.”

Despite her paralyzing fear, Jennifer forced herself to nod.

He shoved her away with such force that she stumbled and fell to the ground. His action was all too reminiscent of her uncle’s abuse, reminding her painfully of her life in the tavern. Suddenly the last year fell away. She was no longer the self-confident, silk-clad lady she had become through painful effort and study. She was merely a defenseless tavern wench, cringing in fear of a blow from an angry man’s fists. She could not have done anything to save herself if her life depended on it. Anticipating a blow, she lowered her head.

But Christopher did not strike her. He knelt on the ground in front of her, holding her arms in a painful grip, and stared coldly, angrily into her eyes. “I loved Diana,” he gritted out between his teeth, “ever since I laid eyes on her. I went to Williamsburg with Grey to meet her and I fell in love with her. But she had already agreed to marry him when I presented my suit. She told me that she loved me, but her parents were happy with the match and she would not break it off. Besides, Grey was building her a mansion, the finest one in the colony. I couldn’t afford to give her so much—I couldn’t afford to give her what she deserved. My holdings are far less extensive than Grey’s.

“We met in Williamsburg as often as possible without raising her parents’ suspicions, and when she came to Greyhaven we started meeting in the woods. She loved me, I know she did. But then—”

Jennifer managed to fight off some of her paralysis. “She broke off your affair?” she hazarded.

“No.” Christopher’s eyes were filled with cold rage. “She told me she was going to have a baby. She didn’t know for certain—but she thought it was my child. I couldn’t stand to see her raise my child as Grey’s. I couldn’t stand it.”

“So you killed her?”

Christopher said nothing. His eyes blazed with fury.

Jennifer felt a constricting knot of horror in her throat. Despite everything she had done, Diana had not deserved such a fate. Certainly her unborn child had deserved better. Hoarsely, she said, “But it might have been your child! How could you kill her? How could you kill her baby?”

“It might have been my child. It might not have been.” Christopher stared into her face, and she shuddered at the slightly vacant expression in the dark blue eyes. For the first time she fully understood that he was not sane. “Don’t you understand? Grey already had
everything.
He had a house that was the envy of the colony, he had Diana, and he was going to have the child. A child that was very probably mine. He was going to claim my child as his own, just as he had claimed my beloved as his own. Grey had everything and I had nothing. I could not bear it. I had to kill her, don’t you understand?”

Hidden in the brush, Grey felt a wave of nausea overcome him. He felt the overpowering urge to double over and vomit, and he fought frantically against it. Memories, excruciatingly painful memories, surfaced, assailing him and all but driving him insane with agony and horror.

It was all my fault.…

He did not want to remember.

But he had no choice.

Grey had never before been as drunk as he was this night Earlier, he and his young wife had fought bitterly, and he had drunk to forget the ugly things she had said to him. Yet despite the quantity of brandy he had imbibed, he could not seem to forget How could he forget that the woman he loved no longer wanted to share his bed? The pain of that knowledge was still as sharp as a sword edge, lacerating his pride as well as his feelings.

Slumped in his chair, his head in his hands, he heard stealthy steps tiptoeing past his study. Diana. Lurching to his
feet, he staggered across the chamber, which for some reason seemed unusually large. After some effort, he found the door and made his way out into the hall.

Catherine, emerging from the parlor, saw him stumble from the study. She hobbled across to him. “Grey,” she protested, “let her go. She’s not worth the effort.”

Grey tried to focus on her, but there seemed to be four of her. “She doesn’ love me anymore,” he said blearily. “I wanna know why.”

“Grey!”

She tried to restrain him, to hold his arm, but even drunk, Grey was stronger by far. He wrenched his arm free and staggered out the door after his wife.

Somehow he mostly kept on his feet as he trailed her through the woods. Once he fell down, scraping and bruising his face badly against the rough bark of a fallen log, but he struggled to his feet and kept following her like a hound on the trail of a fox. Lost in thought, she did not appear to be aware of him trailing her.

At last he halted at a clearing. Leaning wearily against a tree, his head whirling, he saw that his wife was talking with a man. A man who had formerly been his friend—Christopher Lightfoot. He watched in drunken bewilderment. Their voices were too low for him to overhear, but it was clear they were arguing about something.

Slowly the brandy he had consumed began to overpower him. He sank to the ground, still leaning against the tree trunk, barely upright as he watched the drama in the clearing unfold. His eyelids were beginning to close despite himself.

Suddenly, through half-open eyes, he saw Christopher Lightfoot strike his wife. Horrified, he tried to stand up, only to find that the brandy he had consumed had done its work too well. He was too drunk to stand. Another blow snapped Diana’s head back and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

Barely conscious himself, Grey struggled to crawl across to his wife, to save her from the man who was now viciously raping her unconscious body, but he could not move. He could only watch in stunned horror as her throat was cut.

He could not so much as crawl over to her body as he wept helplessly.

It was all his fault.

His wife had been beaten, raped, and killed, and he had been utterly powerless to help her. He might as well have killed her himself.

It was all his fault.

He had killed her.

That was his last thought before unconsciousness finally claimed him.

“Bastard,” Grey growled beneath his breath. His earlier warnings to Carey forgotten, he leaped from the brush. “You bastard!”

Jennifer, who of course had no idea that he had followed her, blinked at him in shocked surprise. Then she yelped in terror as Christopher, with the speed of a striking snake, jumped to his feet, pulling her up against him. The savagely sharp edge of a knife was pressed against her throat.

She had not realized he had been holding a knife in his hand.

For the first time she realized that Christopher had planned to kill her, just as he had killed Diana.

“Drop it, Grey,” Christopher spat.

She saw the pistol in Grey’s hand. For a long space of time Grey said nothing, stared at his opponent with eyes like molten steel. The knife pressed more tightly against her skin.

“Drop it. Or I will cut her throat, just as I did Diana’s.” Grey dropped the pistol.

“That’s better.” Christopher smiled. “Of course, I always planned on slashing her throat anyway, eventually.”

Jennifer saw Grey’s eyes drop to the knife at her throat, saw him swallow. It was the only evidence that he gave of his nervousness as he said coolly, “You must hate me a great deal, Chris. Why?”

“Why?” Christopher repeated. “Why? You ruined my life. You stole Diana from me, you son of a bitch.”

Grey refrained from retorting that Christopher had stolen Diana from him, not the other way around. The man was clearly not rational. “But that wasn’t all,” he speculated idly in a calm voice, fighting to keep his gaze from straying to the knife at Jennifer’s throat. His opponent must not know how frightened he was.

“No. That wasn’t all. You nearly cost me my inheritance, damn you.”

Grey blinked. “Do you mean that business about the slave girl?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Christopher growled. “You told my father that you caught me lying with one of your slaves—”

“You were raping her, damn it!”

“What of it? She was nothing but a slave. You told my father, and he began to worry that I was too irresponsible to run a plantation. Just the week before I had run his prize stallion into the ground. And we had been fighting about my gambling. He was going to disinherit me, to leave everything to my younger brother. If he hadn’t fortunately eaten something that disagreed with him and passed away that very week, I wouldn’t have gotten the Cove. I would have gotten nothing at all.”

“You killed your own father,” Grey said slowly. He remembered the way the elder Lightfoot had died, the horrible stomach pains and retching, and he stared at Christopher with wide eyes that clearly expressed his revulsion and horror. This man had once been his best friend, but Grey had ended their friendship abruptly, refusing to have anything further to do with him, after he had caught him raping a terrified slave girl—a girl who was only thirteen or so.