"So where do we go from here, Sara?"
She gave a tiny shrug. "I"m to meet up with Miss Beattie in Salisbury. Of course, I thought I"d be married to Mr. Townsend by then and could produce a marriage certificate for my attorneys. Now ... " She shook her head, "I suppose we"ll return to Bath and I"ll choose one of my other prospects."
He kept his voice unthreatening, when what he really wanted was to roar at her. "You"re determined to go through with this marriage of convenience?"
"It"s the only way."
"You"re going to divide your fathers fortune equally among his children, even his stepchildren? You expect me to believe that?"
She smiled faintly, and reaching under her collar, extracted a chain with a key attached to it. She undid the chain and offered him the key. "Maybe this will convince you. It"s the key to my bag."
He took the key from her, then reached for the leather bag. Inside, there was nothing but legal doc.u.ments. They were drawn up by a firm of solicitors in London, and were obviously the marriage contract Townsend would have signed. It was extremely complex and on his first reading, Max merely scanned each page. Sara had not lied to him. She"d divided everything equally amongst all her siblings.
He looked at her thoughtfully.
"What?" she demanded.
"Why didn"t your father make a will like this? Why leave it all to you?"
"He trusted my judgement, and he didn"t trust William. He wanted to protect Anne, I suppose. I don"t really know."
He was missing something important here, but he couldn"t figure out what it was. Maybe he hadn"t been asking the right questions.
The trouble was, his mind was blunted with fatigue. He"d been up half the night worrying about her while she, by the sound of it, had been treated like royalty in the city jail.
He cast a baleful eye upon her.
"Satisfied?"
"I"ve only glanced at it."
"Take all the time you need."
She stretched, got up and began to wander around the room, eventually settling herself on a settee on one side of the fireplace. Max went back to studying the legal papers, reading every word slowly and carefully.
Sara stretched her cramped muscles and slowly opened her eyes. The room was flooded with sunlight. Sounds ran together in her mind: the clip-clop of horses" hooves over cobblestones; muted masculine laughter outside her window; songbirds. She thought she smelled coffee.
When her blanket began to slip, she reached for it and her hand closed around something small and hard. A silver b.u.t.ton, she remembered. It wasn"t a blanket that covered her, but Max"s coat. She wasn"t in her bed, but curled up on the settee in the little parlor. It hadn"t been a dream, then. Max had covered her with his coat and kissed her on the brow.
"Max."
"I"m here."
His voice acted on her like the report of a pistol shot. She gasped and hauled herself up.
He was towering above her, with the light behind him. "We"re too late for breakfast," he said, "but I ordered coffee. They"ll bring us something to eat shortly."
"What time is it?"
"It"s past noon. We"ve both overslept."
She took the cup he offered her. "What are those?" she asked.
Max looked at the table. "Those," he said, "are the sandwiches George brought me last night while you were sleeping. And you were wrong, Sara. He knows well enough what "carnivore" means." To the question in her eyes, he replied, "They"re chopped liver, rare, chopped liver. Almost raw, in fact."
She smiled in spite of herself. "Is George still alive?"
"He was too quick for me. By the time I"d taken my first bite, he had vanished into thin air."
He was different this morning, she thought, more like his charming self. And that"s when Max Worthe was most dangerous.
Max slumped into a chair and rested his booted feet on the seat of another chair. He"d removed his neckcloth and opened the top b.u.t.tons of his shirt. He looked casual and unthreatening. But she was wiser now.
"It"s amazing what a few hours" sleep will do for you, isn"t it?" he said. "My head is as clear as a bell."
"Really?" she murmured.
"Yes, really. I"ve done a lot of thinking in the last hour or so, and I"ve found a solution to your problem."
She said slowly, "What are you talking about, Max?"
"William Neville. You think he"s stalking you. I, on the other hand, am convinced William is dead. Therefore, it must be someone else. Just think about it, Sara. Why would William disappear like that? What did he hope to gain?"
"Maybe he wanted me to hang for his murder."
"Why send you notes? If he"s alive and wants the Carstairs fortune, why is he holding off?"
"For revenge! That"s how his mind works. He wants to see me suffer."
"Revenge for what?"
She cursed herself silently for being caught out, and she frantically searched her mind for a reason he would accept. "For breaking off our affair. For telling him that I was going to marry Francis Blamires." His lips thinned in a disapproving line. "All the more reason, then, to flush this stalker into the open."
"Get to the point, Max."
"The point is, we can"t be sure who this stalker is, and we can"t know what his motives are. Maybe it has nothing to do with your father"s will; maybe it"s more personal than that. So, marrying Townsend or any of your so-called "prospects" wouldn"t do you a bit of good."
Stalker. The word made her shiver, but it was the right word. Stalkers tracked their prey till they finally cornered them, then the hunters finished them off.
"It has to be William," she said. "No one else has a motive for wishing to harm me."
Max had his own ideas about that. He said mildly, "If he wants revenge, Sara, he won"t care whether you"re married or not."
"I wasn"t going to hang around and wait for him to show up. I"m not stupid. I would have handed my proof of marriage to my solicitors and run off to America with Anne."
His charm swiftly evaporated. "And you"d go on running for the rest of your life. Or do you plan to change your name again and go into hiding? You"d always be looking over your shoulder, you know that, don"t you?"
She shivered. "I hadn"t really thought that far ahead."
"Well, think about it now."
Her eyes narrowed on his face. "Where is all this leading, Max?"
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back, balancing his chair precariously on two legs. He said quietly, "I told you. We should be trying to flush this thug into the open. Once we know who he is, we can deal with him."
We. This was what she had feared. The Courier"s special correspondent wouldn"t give up easily. "You want to come to Stoneleigh with me?"
"Who else is going to take you on? You can forget about your prospects in Bath. You don"t imagine Townsend is going to keep his mouth shut? He"ll make hay of what happened here in Wells. He"ll exaggerate my involvement, make out, I suppose, that there is something between us."
"That wasn"t my doing, it was yours!"
"It doesn"t matter whose doing it was; the damage is done. Don"t you understand? I"m trying to help you."
She briefly closed her eyes and thought of all the obscenities she"d heard on her brothers" lips but could never say herself.
"How?"
He smiled. "Simple. We more or less follow your plan."
He had managed to confuse her. They couldn"t follow her plan unless she married, and she couldn"t believe he would go that far just for a story. She said carefully, "I won"t marry you, Max."
"G.o.d forbid!" He seemed genuinely shocked. "You don"t imagine I want to marry every pretty girl I"ve ever ... kissed?"
She was incredibly hurt. "I was thinking of my fortune," she snapped.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully, "you do think about money a great deal of the time, don"t you? Don"t marry a poor man, Sara. You"d only make his life miserable."
He brought his chair down with a thud to ret squarely on the floor. "Now about my plan. I"ll play the part of your betrothed. We"ll be the happy couple with stars in our eyes and a wedding to plan-not that it will ever come to that. There"ll be no talk of having your husband sign away his rights to your fortune. As far as anyone will know, once the wedding takes place, control of your fortune will pa.s.s to me." He grinned. "That ought to stir up a hornets" nest. But more to the point, I"m convinced that William or whoever he is will show his hand, and I"ll be ready for him."
Her worst fears had come to pa.s.s. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to go to h.e.l.l, but she had too much to lose to be swayed by anger. She didn"t want to see her name blazed on the front page of his newspaper; she didn"t want the Courier to stir things up at this point. All she needed was a little time.
Then she would tell him to go to h.e.l.l.
"Have a care, Max," she said and smiled. "For all you know, you may be tangling with a woman who has already done murder. What"s to stop me from murdering again?"
His brows rose slowly. He stared at her long and hard, and finally, he grinned. "Then kill me now, Sara, because that"s the only way you"re going to get rid of me."
He was impossible! He was unbearable! But what really rattled her was that he was as immovable as a brick wall.
*Chapter Eleven*
Constance Streatham-Carstairs, as she now styled herself, twitched the drawing-room curtains aside and looked out. The long avenue of old oaks drooped miserably under the weight of their sodden foliage, like mourners at the graveside of some departed friend. The melancholy vista did nothing to lighten her melancholy frame of mind. She could have wept in frustration. It was true, then. Sara really was going to be married. It was all in the letter she"d received yesterday by express. Sara would be arriving today with her betrothed. And once the wedding took place, once Sara"s husband took control of the purse strings, Constance did not doubt that the Streathams would be out in the cold.
Then she"d be stuck in this dreary prison for the rest of her life. Tears of self-pity filled her eyes. It was so unfair. She was only thirty-six years old. She"d married a rich man with every expectation that her life would be glamorous beyond anything she had ever known, and she"d ended up in this G.o.dforsaken backwater, friendless and unappreciated, all her hopes in ruin now that the letter from Sara had arrived. She might as well be locked up in Newgate.
She hated this house. Longfield had not been refurbished to please her, but to gratify her husband"s conception of how a country squire would live out his days. While other rich men were building stately marble homes in the neocla.s.sical style, Samuel Carstairs had purchased a dilapidated Elizabethan manor with dark oak paneling, smoking chimneys, and depressingly small windows that barely let in the light. The stags" heads and antlers that adorned the Great Hall, as well as the gloomy portraits of no one knew whose ancestors, had all been bought at auction. Only this drawing room and her bedchamber had been refurbished to her taste. The wall paneling had been lightened to a pale gold, and the great beamed ceilings replaced with intricate plaster work in a cla.s.sical design.
She might as well have saved herself the bother and her husband the expense. No one of any note ever came to Longfield. Their circle of friends had been drawn from the limited society in which they"d found themselves: the local doctor, the vicar, retired army types, and others of that cla.s.s. But that was before Sara"s trial. In the last three years, their friends and acquaintances had dwindled to almost no one.
It could all have been so different if Sara had only married the Viscount Hale. Such opportunities did not come a young girl"s way too often. She, Constance Carstairs, had been the driving force behind that match. Her burning ambition had been to climb the social ladder. With a t.i.tle in the family, with the right connections, they would have moved in far superior circles than Stoneleigh had to offer. But Sara could not be persuaded, and Samuel Carstairs had not insisted. Sara always got her own way.
If she was bitter, thought Constance, she had good cause. Her husband had never really got over the death of his first wife. He"d put Maria Carstairs on a pedestal, just as he"d done with Sara. They did not lack for common sense, he was fond of saying; they knew the value of money; they did not pine for the bright lights of the city. The list of their virtues went on and on. All that might have been forgiven if Samuel had rewarded her for her years of devotion, but all she"d got was her widow"s portion, and it wasn"t nearly enough to support her and her three children in style.
And now Sara was going to be married.
She needed a drink. Badly.
She turned from the window and looked at the other occupants of the room. Her sons, Simon and Martin, were hotly debating the merits of two prize pugilists who were to meet that week in nearby Romsey, and her daughter, Lucy, was curled up in the sofa with, it went without saying, her head in a book.
They wouldn"t notice if she slipped upstairs to the secret bottle of brandy that was hidden in her clothes press. On the other hand, Sara and her betrothed could arrive any moment, and Sara would know. Sara always knew.
Sara was going to be married.
She hadn"t believed Simon and Martin when they"d told her. But there was no getting around the letter from Sara. Well, she had herself to think about now. There was one virtue she possessed that put all the Carstairs in the shade: She had more ambition than all of them put together. Sara and Anne had let their opportunities slip through their fingers. She wasn"t going to make the same mistake. And if no opportunities presented themselves, she"d make her own.
She"d made a beginning. She"d acquired a powerful ally who could open the right doors for her if only Sara would agree to sponsor a Season in London for Lucy. And if Lucy went to London, her mother, quite rightly, would accompany her. And why not? She was far too young to bury herself in this depressing tomb of a place. And when they reached London, she would shed the name Carstairs. It was a millstone around her neck, just like this house, this monument to her late husband. No one would connect Lucy Streatham and her youthful mother with the scandalous events at Stoneleigh. And if things worked out the way she wanted, she need never come back.
But it was all in Sara"s hands.
Sara, on her own, wouldn"t be too hard to persuade, because she had a soft spot for Lucy. But Sara"s betrothed was a different matter. Until she"d sized him up, she wouldn"t know how to play her cards.
No. She"d better not have that drink until after she"d met the mystery man.
She spoke abruptly to her sons. "Sara must have given you some hint about this man she means to marry."
"She didn"t," said Martin glumly. "All she said was that when she was married, her husband would have control of her fortune."
Constance twitched her skirts and sat beside Lucy on the sofa. "Sit up, Lucy," she commanded. "You"re not a child now. When I was your age, I was already married." She stopped when Lucy obediently sat up and laid aside her book. Her daughter, thought Constance, did not lack for beauty or intelligence, but the girl had no style. She was too unworldly for her own good.
Simon yawned and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. "We"ll know soon enough what he"s like," he said. "They can"t be much longer now."
Constance frowned at her elder son. "You"re taking this much too lightly, in my opinion, Simon. You do realize what this can mean to our family? The man is probably a fortune hunter. I mean, what kind of man would marry a woman who had stood trial for murder?"
"She was acquitted," he pointed out quietly.
"That"s not the point!"
Constance drew in a long, angry breath. She was surrounded by idiots, it seemed. She was the only one who took the threat of this marriage seriously. Even with Simon, she had to watch her step. After all the sacrifices she"d made for him, she had a right to more loyalty than this.
She went on, "All I"m saying is that he may be an unprincipled fortune hunter."
"You mean," said Simon dryly, "like us?" When it looked as though his mother might explode, he grinned disarmingly. "Mother," he said, "Sara is many things, but she is not stupid. If he"s an unprincipled fortune hunter, she"ll show him the door."