The Pleasure Trap (30 page)

Disbelief exploded in Ash’s brain. “My God,” he muttered, “what have I done?”

Chapter Twenty-five

For the longest time, Eve sat in a daze, absently sipping at her jug of punch as the thoughts teemed inside her mind. She was hardly aware of who came and went in the cookshop. All she could think about was her father’s letter and how it made nonsense of what she had sensed with her celebrated Claverley charisma.

Thomas Messenger had hanged for the murder of his wife and son eight years before. There was only one Messenger left—Lydia. But if Messenger was dead, that meant that those half-formed impressions she’d sensed from Angelo tonight were either a figment of her imagination or they came from Lydia.

Everything inside her rejected that conclusion. She couldn’t bring Lydia Messenger’s face to mind, but she did remember that she was just a slip of a girl, perhaps a year or two older than her brother. Thin, shrinking, fearful—that was what she remembered when she thought of Lydia. In fact, much like the Lydia of today.

Her memory could be at fault. After all, she’d only met the Messengers at the White Hart, and they’d kept pretty much to themselves. She thought of them now and tried to bring Lydia’s image into focus. Could she have pushed Antonia from the top of the quarry? Could she have murdered those so-called accident victims in Antonia’s stories? Was it Lydia’s thoughts she’d read when Nell was attacked? And what about the attack on Lydia? It didn’t make sense.

She was missing something. The first chance she got, she was going to read those stories again. The first time she’d read them, she hadn’t realized they were her mother’s stories. After that, she’d read them believing that Thomas Messenger was the murderer, but if Messenger was dead, what was she left with?

She was startled when someone said her name. Jason Ford had got up and was smiling down at her.

“We’ve been sitting here too long,” he said. “Shall we go for a walk to stretch our legs? I’m beginning to get pins and needles in my toes.”

She’d forgotten that Jason had been asked to keep an eye on her. She was still thinking about Antonia’s stories and was impatient to go through them one careful line at a time.

On impulse, she said, “I want to go back to the Manor.”

“The Manor? That’s a long walk. Why do you want to go there?”

She said the first thing that came to her. “To change my coat. The one I’m wearing isn’t warm enough now that the sun has gone down.”

He hesitated, then lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug, as if to say,
Women!
“I should tell Lady Sayers where we are going. Hawkins, I know, won’t let us out of his sight, so I suppose there’s no harm in it. Don’t move from this spot. This won’t take long.”

He was right about Hawkins. She’d seen him from time to time, floating around, always within earshot, but her other protectors had relaxed their vigilance since Ford had taken over. They must know that he was good at his job. As a former soldier and Special Branch agent, he was undoubtedly the best to be had.

The minutes ticked by. She was wondering what had happened to Ford when a sudden burst of energy exploded behind her eyes, blinding her momentarily. When the light faded and she could see again, she could feel that the fine hairs on her neck were raised like a cat’s fur.

Angelo. He was here somewhere, and no one and nothing could convince her to change her mind.

Ford was gone so long that she was becoming alarmed. She didn’t complain when he returned, however, firstly because she was still shaken from her most recent brush with Angelo and secondly because she felt beholden to him. He should have been flirting with all the pretty girls, not acting nursemaid to her.

“Shall we go?” He seemed a little out of breath.

When she got up, she looked beyond him to the bandstand. The May dancers had left and their places had been taken by girls from the village. Girls in white dresses were whirling around the floor in tempo to the music.

It wasn’t a figment of her imagination. This was a signpost. It was time to move on.

Nell flattened herself against a tree as the bad man and the kind lady crossed a short stretch of turf to the path that led to the big house. Her eyes strained through the gloom to keep them in sight. They were leaving the fair, leaving the bright lights behind. It was the sound of the music that had lured her to the fair. It made her feel happy, but that was before she saw the man with the limp. Now she was terror-struck. Where was the man called Hawkins? Why wasn’t he following the kind lady?

Eve.
That was her name.

The girl dressed as a boy mouthed the word, but no sound came. Eve and all the other kind ladies were her family now, and Dexter, and Fanny and Fiona and Faith. Anna said that families were not always made up of parents and children but of kindred souls who stuck together through thick and thin.

Fear gripped her heart. Her family didn’t know that the bad man had taken Eve away. If she went back to the fair, she would lose sight of them. She looked around wildly. No Hawkins, and no Lord Denison. Anna said that they were friends. They would help her, but they were not here.

She had never seen the bad man’s face until tonight, but she knew his gait. He wore a boot with a raised heel. She’d heard him when she’d hidden in the tall grasses and he’d run away after he’d stabbed Lydia. She’d heard how he dragged his left leg when he tried to give chase.

She whimpered and looked at the two figures on the path who were melting into the shadows. The bad man had tried to kill Lydia, then her. Was he going to do the same to Eve?

She took a shuddering breath and went after them.

It started with the same vague impressions that she had picked up earlier, something moving at the edge of her mind, and she blocked out the sound of Jason’s voice to listen with her inner ear.

Amusement. Derision. Superiority.

She opened her mind, hoping to absorb more, then quailed at the sudden surge of a voice that was jubilant with the prospect of a kill.

She thinks I don’t know about the pistol in her reticule. A blind man could see it. That’s a good girl, Evie. Keep walking. Keep listening to my inane banter. Only a little while longer and I’ll slit your throat.

She didn’t stumble, she didn’t falter, but only because she was numb with fear. By sheer force of will, she kept her panic at bay, and she had good reason to panic. The charming, handsome man at her side was going to kill her.

Angelo was Jason Ford. She recognized the bitter aftertaste he left in her mind. She would puzzle it out later, if there was a later for her.

Thoughts chased through her mind at the speed of lightning. There was no Hawkins nearby to save her. That blast of energy she’d felt must have come when Ford disabled him. Oh, God, she hoped he wasn’t dead. Why hadn’t she read him better? Was it because she was too taken up with her own thoughts? Too preoccupied? Just as she was now?

She opened her mind a crack and was overwhelmed by the tide of hatred that pushed inside.

You should have kept your nose out of my business. You shouldn’t have stirred up a hornets’ nest by publishing those stories. No one gets the better of Albert Messenger and gets away with it. Fucking bitch! How did you come to know so much?

Her mind went blank, then burst with enlightenment. Albert Messenger was Jason Ford! He hadn’t died in that fire. And if she didn’t get away from him, she’d become his next victim.

One part of her brain was telling her feet to keep moving. Another part was trying to think of a plan of escape. She couldn’t get to her pistol because he knew about it. She couldn’t outrun him, though it might come down to that yet. She had to do something.
Think, Eve, think!

He had a slight limp. Maybe she
could
outrun him.

“You’re very quiet, Miss Dearing.”

At the sound of his voice, she suddenly stopped and clutched a hand to her heart. Stupid, stupid, stupid to give herself away like that!

His eyes narrowed on her face.

She managed a wan smile. “I have a stitch in my side. Could we rest for a moment?”

The suspicion in his voice faded. “Of course.”

He turned his head, looking back the way they had come. She could read him clearly now. He was making sure that there were no witnesses so that he could finish her here. If she didn’t act now, it would be too late.

“Can you see Mr. Henderson?” she asked, improvising madly. “He said he would catch up to me at the house.”

She could tell that he didn’t like that.

He took his time to scan the shrubbery and trees bordering the path. “It’s too dark to see much beyond the lights at the fair—”

Before he had stopped speaking, she swung her reticule in a great arc, aiming for his head. He was too quick for her. He ducked, and the force of the blow caught him on the shoulder. Down he went, but as he fell back, he grabbed for her skirts and pulled her down with him.

He was above her, and, dark or no, she could see the silver gleam of a blade as he brought it down. To avoid the thrust, she twisted sideways and rolled frantically. The knife sliced her arm from elbow to wrist, and he raised it again.

Just when she thought her last moments had come, a feral cat—something—catapulted from the bushes, fastened itself around Jason’s arm, and bit down on his wrist. His howl of pain as he dropped the knife sent shivers down Eve’s spine. She didn’t have to read his mind. She could tell that he’d been bitten to the bone. She scrambled to her feet.

Her right arm—the arm he’d sliced—was aching as though a hot coal was embedded in it. Blood was dripping from her fingers. She was in no condition to get her pistol out of her reticule, and she didn’t know whether she could shoot with her left hand.

She let out a shaken breath as the wild cat loomed in front of her.

“Eve…” The voice was low, the word not quite perfect, as though a baby was testing its speech. It was Neil who came to her side. Anna’s boy. Nell. “Eve…come.”

Eve looked past Nell. Ford was searching the ground for his knife. She felt the exact moment his hand closed around it. His savage anger filled her mind with dread. He had a gun in his right pocket, but he would use it only as a last resort.

“Run!” she cried, and she and Nell dashed for the cover of the trees.

If it had not been for Nell, she would have been running in circles. The trees were so dense that she quickly lost her bearings. As they stood in the shelter of a bushy evergreen, Eve sorted all that she knew into slots that would help her decide what to do next.

The house was close by, but all the doors and windows would be locked to keep out the riffraff. By the time one of the night porters answered the knocker, Jason would have caught them, and he would be expecting them to make for the house. But Dexter was there with Andy. If only she could get Andy to let them in…or she could fire her gun to attract attention. That wouldn’t do. The porters would come running, but Jason might get to her before they opened the door.

In a sea of indecision, she began to examine the only other alternative—to return to the fair—when, through a gap in the trees, she saw the moon in all its majesty appear from behind a cloud. Its pale, silvery shafts of light glazed the roof of the Manor and the tops of the trees nearby.

Her breath caught. It was just like the night she went out to look for her mother. The moon had come out from behind a cloud to guide her steps. Some would call it a coincidence. She saw it as a sign.

“We’re going to the Manor,” she whispered to Nell.