Authors: Brenda Joyce

The Third Heiress (53 page)

BOOK: The Third Heiress

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She had done enough.

She started past the manor, head down, tears in her eyes, trying not to think about Alex and failing miserably. She finally brushed her arm over her eyes. It was a bit late to have realized that she had somehow fallen in
love with him. It was too late to change the past. She couldn’t undo any of the harm she’d inflicted on his family. And nothing would ever bring Lucinda back to life—and there would never be justice for Kate.

Jill still had trouble grasping the fact that Lucinda would have killed her last night without any remorse at all.

She paused before the tower, chills sweeping over her, hating the very sight of it. She wasn’t sure she had the courage to go inside. It was a place of death. First Kate, and now Lucinda, and dear God, if Alex hadn’t been there last night, she might be the one who was in the Scarborough morgue.

“Hey.”

Jill froze at the sound of Alex’s voice, just behind her. She hadn’t been aware of his approach. She slowly turned and met his brilliant blue regard. It was probing. And he still looked like hell.

He did not smile. “You ran out on me last night.”

She swallowed. “I was afraid I’d hurt you in the middle of the night. Your shoulder.” It was a lie. And she knew he knew it. She’d been afraid to wake up beside him, afraid of what would—or wouldn’t—happen next.

He didn’t reply.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” she asked nervously. He was still pale. He’d forgone shaving, and he almost looked menacing. But his eyes, which were soft, negated that possibility.

“I feel fine,” he said. “Well—” his smile was brief—“considering.”

“I am sorry,” Jill cried passionately, thinking about William, sobbing over the death of his mistress, and Margaret, who must know and must hurt. “I never meant to hurt you or your family. I never meant to do any of this.”

“I know. I never meant to hurt you either, Jill. Please try to understand, please try to believe that,” he said as vehemently.

She stared, hands deep in her pockets, her heart thudding with fear. They were at the point of no return. Finally, after all the twists and turns that the search for Kate Gallagher had entailed, it had brought them to this singular point and place in time. The road forked here. Their paths would diverge—or not. “You lied to me, Alex. You stole those letters.”

“I know.” His jaw flexed. “And I’m not happy about it.”

She wanted to believe him.

“I was stuck. Between a rock and a hard place. Trying to head you off at the pass and protect my family while falling head over heels at the very same goddamn time.” He made a sound, not quite a laugh. “Life sure has its surprises, doesn’t it?”

Jill nodded, afraid now of the future—of a future spent alone, back in her dreary life in New York City. A future without Alex. “Did Kate ever write about being afraid for her life? Does she ever point her finger at anyone?”

“No. I’ll give you the letters. Oh, I forgot, you have them.” He sighed, the sound heavy and resigned.

Jill didn’t like that sound. “Were you ever going to tell me about the DNA tests?”

“Yeah.” He wet his lips. “Honey, I had to know conclusively that you were Kate and Edward’s great-granddaughter. Things were getting out of hand. After Lady E., I got scared.” He met her gaze. “I got scared as all hell for you—and I was scared about who was behind her death.”

“So you hoped to pay me off so I’d go home.”

“Peter’s trust belongs to you.”

“I didn’t start this to find and claim Kate’s fortune.” Jill took a deep breath. “William’s my half uncle. Thomas and Lauren are my cousins.” It had hardly sunk in.

“I know.” His gaze veered to the tower. “I appreciate what you did last night.”

Jill nodded, following his gaze and shivering. She could see Lucinda flat on her back, eyes wide, unseeing. “I don’t think William really wanted to hurt me or anyone. I think Lucinda led him astray.”

“I hope you’re right.” His expression changed, becoming fierce. “I know you’re right! He told me she killed Lady E. He told me he hadn’t any idea she would do such a thing. He was weeping, Jill. I think she flipped out and he feels as betrayed as we do.”

“Will he be okay?”

“I don’t know. He’s aged, he’s aged so much even since yesterday, not to mention since Hal died.”

Jill closed her eyes, shivering, but not because of the cold bite of the wind. “Everyone knew, didn’t they, about Hal’s obsession with Kate? Everyone recognized me, didn’t they, the minute I walked in the door?”

“Yes. We did. I did. I’m sorry. Everyone was scared, Jill. Scared of you and what you stood for and what you might do.”

“Well, I’m not doing anything. Anne murdered Kate, she told William herself. But we’ll never know where Kate is, or how she died. But maybe that’s for the best.”

“You don’t mean that,” Alex said.

“I don’t know what I mean,” she said, head down.

“Do you know how you feel about us?”

Her head popped up, her heart slammed to a halt before starting again. “What?”

He just smiled. It was sort of sad.

She stepped closer to him, gripping the left sleeve of his jacket. “You saved my life last night.”

“I’d do it again,” he said flatly. “I’d do it over a thousand times. That’s how much you’ve come to mean to me.”

Jill was overwhelmed. She couldn’t speak. And his question echoed in her mind. But could he really forgive her for destroying his family? And even if he thought he could, would he, with his heart? Could two people start over when a past filled with lies and deceptions lurked just behind them—between them?

“Jill?” Alex finally said. “Thank you for last night. And I’m not talking about stopping me from calling the police.”

Jill bit her lower lip so she wouldn’t cry and she nodded.

“Hey.” He put his good arm around her shoulder, hugging her to his body. “Everything’s going to work out.”

His tone was so firm that she started and looked into his eyes and saw a promise there. “I hope you’re right.”

He cocked his head behind them. “Shall we take one last look around before we go back to the house?”

Jill jerked. “What do you mean?”

“She’s got her hooks in me, too. I want to know what happened. Even if I dared ask, which I won’t, I don’t think William will tell me what really happened.”

“She’s in the tower,” Jill said, her hands deep in the pockets of her anorak. Her voice sounded odd, even to her own ears. “I’m certain.”

Alex nodded.

A
lex stood beside her as two gardeners continued to dig up the earthen floor of the ruined tower. Clods of dirt and stones flew off of their shovels. “I wonder if you’re right,” he said. “Maybe that’s why, when I was a kid, the locals always said this place was haunted.”

Jill felt her eyes widen. “Is that the village gossip?”

He met her gaze. “Yeah.”

Jill leaned against the stone wall, continuing to shiver, watching as the two men who worked at Stainesmore steadily dug up the ground inside of the tower. They had gone several feet already, but had come up with nothing. Jill was beginning to feel dismay.

Maybe Kate was supposed to remain lost forever.

Maybe Jill had opened up a can of worms that fate had never intended to be opened in the first place.

“Me lord,” one of the gardeners said. “Ain’t nothing here but dirt an’ rock.”

Alex stepped forward, regarding the area. “It looks like you’re right. Jill, they’ve gone a good eight feet. She can’t possibly be buried in here.”

Jill stepped into the tower, beside the two sweating gardeners, an odd desperation washing over her. “She has to be here, Alex. Where else would she be?” But she could see that he was right. Kate wasn’t here. By now they’d have found something, anything.

“Maybe she was tossed over the cliffs.”

Jill hated the thought. A moment later the two gardeners were being dismissed, Alex insisting they call him Mr. Preston, not “my lord,” while pressing a few pounds into their palms. He came to stand beside her inside the four ruined stone walls.

“I guess this has been a wild-goose chase from the start,” Jill said.

“Has it? She was an extraordinary woman, and she was your great-grandmother. Maybe that’s all we were ever meant to learn,” Alex said, his hand on her shoulder.

Jill smiled slightly. “You’re becoming spiritual.” In frustration, she kicked at the dirt at her feet and watched a rock roll away, hitting the bottom of the facing stone wall. Jill blinked.

And felt a pressure on her shoulder. For one moment, she thought Alex was pushing her, urging her forward. But then she realized she had walked away from him and the pressure was only her imagination.

Jill stared at the dull gray stone wall.

And suddenly, as she looked down, something caught her eye. Jill dropped to her knees, her pulse soaring, staring, wondering if there was a letter just barely visible on the stone wall, and thinking, No, it couldn’t be.

“Jill?”

Jill didn’t really hear Alex. She brushed the dust off of the rough stone, watching as the crude lines of the letter A emerged from the years’ accumulation of dirt and grime. Stunned, Jill began brushing off the entire section of the wall with both hands, frantically, eyes wide, staring in disbelief as letter after letter was finally revealed.

“Oh, God!” she cried. “Alex, come here! It’s a message—and it’s from Kate!”

TWENTY-EIGHT

OCTOBER 6, 1909

T
he early autumn day was brilliant with sunshine. It should have been dismal and gray. For it was terribly painful being back at Coke’s Way. Edward knew he shouldn’t have come.

“Papa.”

Edward realized that the sixteen-month-old bundle in his arms was squirming to be released. Gently, he set Peter down. The red-haired toddler swayed unsteadily, beaming at Edward, who could not smile back, before staggering off toward the boarded-up manor house. Abruptly tears filled Edward’s eyes.

The grief would not go away. The grief, the anger, the confusion, and the self-pity.

There were times when he forgot, only to suddenly, violently, remember everything.

Like now.

He rubbed the sleeve of his hacking coat across his eyes, regained his composure, and started after his son. He had not been to Stainesmore in over a year, but affairs of the estate demanded his attention, and the earl had insisted he go. He had expected this, hadn’t he? The sorrow, the angst, the memories of Kate. What he had not expected was for Anne to insist that she would accompany him to the north, or for the grief to be
stronger than ever, the memories more insistent, more haunting, than in the past.

She was at the house right now, waiting for him to join her for tea, pretending not to be livid that he was with his son. His son—Kate’s son.

Peter had wandered past the house and was ambling toward the tower. “Peter! No!” Edward called after him, lengthening his strides.

But Peter, who was a very happy boy, only laughed and ran faster, his arms flailing like windmills at his side. His cap fell off. Edward wished he could smile at his child’s antics. He no longer knew how to do so. He had not smiled in what felt like an endless lifetime. He watched his son swaying precariously from side to side. It was only a matter of moments, really, before he fell. And just as Edward finished the thought, Peter went face down in the grass and dirt.

Edward reached him instantly, lifting him into his embrace. But Peter was grinning from ear to ear, in delight. “Run, run,” he shouted, squirming enthusiastically. “Peter want run!”

He was exactly like Kate. Kate, whose will knew no force greater than her own, who had cherished and loved every moment life had offered her. Kate, who had disappeared without a trace, who had, perhaps, left him for another man.

Edward patted Peter’s head awkwardly, hardly seeing him.
Damn it, but who could live this way, not knowing what had really happened?

He had no choice but to release his overenergetic child, and he did so, dutifully watching him again as he staggered enthusiastically off. To this day his cloying, annoying wife, whom he had no interest in, insisted that Kate had run off with a lover. In the beginning, shocked, angry, betrayed, it had been easier to believe Anne than not. The anger had enabled him to go through with his wedding. And now, how he regretted that.

Had Kate run off with another man? His heart shrieked a No! at him. But he did not know what to think, dear God.

And he never would. Somehow, he must be resigned to that. For try as he might to will the truth to come to him in a flash of insight, he could not comprehend what had really happened to Kate, or why she had left him.

His mind had spun a thousand circles in the year since she had disappeared. Round and round and round, like a mouse on a treadmill, with no way to get off. Had Kate run away with a new lover? Or had some terrible tragedy befallen her? Or had she, being the Kate he had so thoroughly known and loved, run away in an ultimate act of self-sacrifice, refusing to stand in the way of the title and the fortune that he had been prepared to give up for her, for them?

He had finally ruled out the notion that Kate had been the victim of tragic circumstance. Because she had left Peter with his mother before disappearing, so that disappearance had to have been an act of her free will, a premeditated act of her free will.

“Oh, Kate,” he whispered, a moan. How could she have done this to him? And the worst part of it was, he would never know if she had left him for someone else or if she had left him because she loved him so selflessly.

Edward suddenly realized that Peter was about to stumble into the tower.
The tower, which had always terrified and repelled Kate.
Seized with an unreasonable fear, almost a panic, Edward shot to his feet and ran after his son. “Peter! No! Do not go inside!” he shouted.

But Peter disappeared into the ruins.

His fear spiraled to terror.
He had lost Kate, he could not lose Peter, too
. Edward rushed inside the tower, only to find Peter sitting in the dirt, making mud pies. He relaxed, closed his eyes, and realized that he was shaking like a leaf.

His reaction had been absurd. He could not understand it.

Peter suddenly pushed up to his feet and toddled over to the wall, talking in gibberish, falling against it. For one more moment, Edward watched Peter, who was beaming, who looked just like Kate. He suddenly shivered and glanced warily around the tower, feeling as if he were not alone. As if he were being watched.

But no one was about.

Chilled and uneasy, finally understanding why Kate had always hated this place, Edward strode to Peter, lifted him up, and quickly left the tower. Outside, he began to breathe easier as he put Peter down. If anything had happened to his son, he knew he could not have borne it.

And suddenly a searing realization struck him. He had been so caught up in his grief and misery, in his confusion, that he had not only been neglecting the affairs of the estate, he had been failing his son.

Edward was stunned.

“Papa, down,” Peter demanded. “Down!”

Edward slid him to the ground, staring at him as if seeing him for the first time. Peter toddled off to inspect a fallen tree branch. He quickly became interested in a nest of ants.

Edward stared, his life passing before his eyes, every wonderful, painful moment of it. He felt a hundred years old, but he wasn’t even thirty—he was still a young man. A young man with a young son and a bride and a
vast earldom to run. He had responsibilities, and this past year he had thoroughly shirked his duty to his family and the earldom.

“Papa, Papa, look, look,” Peter chanted happily, pointing at the ants.

“Yes, I see,” Edward said quietly. He might not be able to demonstrate his affection as he had once been able to, but there were other ways to care for one’s family. “Peter, it’s time to go home. I have much to do.”

Duty. It was a terribly comforting thought, and Edward clung to it for the rest of his life.

ANNE KILLED ME GOD SAVE HER SOUL

“O
h, my God,” Jill whispered, her hand on the stone. Alex knelt beside her, shining his penlight on the coarse wall. “Anne killed me God save her soul.” Goose bumps covered her entire body. Jill met Alex’s gaze.

“Christ,” he said quietly.

Jill’s heart was pounding as she stood. “She was here. She died here. She wrote this message before she died. God.” And Jill could see Kate, dirty and bloody, frightened and terrified, there in the tower, begging for her life. Tears filled her eyes.

Alex slipped his arm around her and Jill leaned into him without thinking. “I wonder if this would have held up in a court back then. I don’t think so.”

They stared at one another. “Anne was insane,” Jill finally said.

“That’s putting it kindly, don’t you think?” Alex returned.

“And she’s not buried here. And she wasn’t buried in the grave. Anne must have erected that stone, don’t you think?”

“Unless she had an accomplice.”

Jill’s eyes widened.

“You think she had an accomplice?” Jill cried.

“Honey, I don’t want you to get started. But how did Anne get Kate up here? Maybe it was the hired coachman, but she had to have had help. Let’s go.”

Jill bit her lip. “She deserves a proper burial.”

“We’ll never find the body, Jill.”

She hated accepting that. Jill walked past him, outside. The mist had evaporated. The sun was, miraculously, trying to shine through the overhead clouds. A gull wheeled above her head.

Alex was probably right, she thought grimly, staring blindly toward the house. Kate had been murdered by her best friend, she had died in the tower, but God only knew where she was right now. It was sad. Kate deserved a real burial, a real grave.

Jill paused, absorbed in her sorrow, her hands in the pockets of her anorak. A breeze was sweeping past her, causing tendrils of hair to tickle her nape. Suddenly Jill felt a tension settling over her. Suddenly she felt as if she were being watched.

Jill stiffened. The sensation of eyes trained upon her increased. She glanced first at the manor, then at the driveway and road. Silver bark and pale leaves were shifting and shimmering in the glade ahead of her, by the cemetery. No one was present.

Her imagination was running wild again, Jill thought. But the hairs were now raised on her entire body, and she had forgotten to breathe. Abruptly she whirled, to see if someone was watching her from behind. It was only Alex, pausing beside her.

“You look like you just saw a ghost,” he joked.

She faced him. “I just had the strongest feeling of being watched.”

Their gazes held. “Kate?”

“Maybe.” Jill realized how much she wished that she had seen her—and this time, clearly, so there would not be any doubt whether it was her imagination or not. “I think I saw her once, in town, at my flat.”

Alex nodded. “I think it’s time to let her go, Jill.”

“Yeah,” Jill said roughly.

“Are you about ready to go back to town?” he asked.

Jill looked around—at the tower, at the manor, and then at him. Alex was right. They weren’t ever going to find Kate, but they had found the truth. And that was going to have to be enough—it was time to let go.

She met his gaze. “Should I take a train? So you can drive William back?”

“Would you mind?” he asked. “I really need to take care of him right now.

Suddenly Jill felt like an outsider all over again—even with Alex. But she was an outsider, wasn’t she? She forced a smile. “No problem. I need to think, anyway, and the ride will give me a chance to do that.” Abruptly she started toward the Land Rover, leaving him behind.

But she only took one step. Alex caught her by the arm, halting her in her tracks. “What do you need to think about, Jill?” he asked very quietly, his gaze boring into hers.

Jill stared. Did she dare be honest? How could she not? So much was at stake! She wet her lips, choosing her words with care—not being quite as brave and open as she could be. “I guess I need to think about going back home and getting back to work,” she said slowly. When what she really needed to think about was her future, and him.

His face tightened. “What about us?”

Jill didn’t breathe. “I didn’t know there was an us,” she finally said.

He rolled his eyes. But it wasn’t comical. “If there isn’t an ‘us’ then I don’t know what the hell there is.”

Her heart began to race. He had said “us.” Which meant that a relationship was on his mind, too. But Jill was so afraid. “Maybe we both need to think, and carefully, Alex.”

“Why are you being so cautious? Usually you don’t mince words.”

Jill hesitated. “All right. I care about you. I admit it. Maybe a lot. But God, look at what’s happened—and it will always be between us.”

“Why?” He stared.

Jill just stared back and then she had to smile briefly. “You can be succinct, Alex. Don’t you think a foundation of lies just stacks the odds against us?”

“I think it can bring us closer together, if you want it to.”

Jill froze. A long moment stretched between them. “I’m afraid,” she finally said. “I don’t want to be hurt again.”

“Maybe I’m afraid, too. Maybe I’ve never felt this way before and I’m not sure of what to do or when to do it or even how.”

She gazed into his soft blue eyes and realized he was as scared as she was. “There are no crystal balls,” she whispered.

“Maybe we can find one.”

Jill smiled.

He smiled, too. “You know, being as you are such a romantic, you can always look at this as Kate having brought us together.”

Jill froze.

“In a way, it feels like she did bring us together,” Alex said. And he flushed.

Jill couldn’t needle him about his romanticism now. But her search for her great-grandmother had brought her to Alex. “Maybe we can finally end a terrible, destructive cycle of the Collinsworth men falling for women they can’t have.”

His gaze slammed to her. “I don’t want you to go back to New York, Jill.”

Jill inhaled. “I don’t want to go back.”

BOOK: The Third Heiress

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