Chapter Twenty-Six. An Intrepid Imposter
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
An Intrepid Imposter
WITH Annabelle’s stolen reading card in hand, I left the Ashmolean and made my way to the Bodleian Library. In another time, another place, I might have been excited to see inside the ancient and hallowed space—and yet a growing dread took hold of me.
You’re too late, Ruby Vaughn. Leona’s already dead.
Entering the square courtyard dappled with the winter afternoon shadows, I looked up at the grand fifteenth-century building housing the library with its ornate spires and great glass windows.
What was I even doing here? I had no idea what I expected to find in the book, and the Radix certainly wouldn’t tell me where Leona was.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and gave my head a shake when I spied a familiar figure leaning against the yellow stone courtyard wall opposite the library.
“Hari! What are you doing here?” I cut the distance between us, oddly buoyed by my solicitor’s unexpected appearance. “Never mind it, I don’t care why—you are just the person I need!”
He raised his brows, studying me as I hurried across the courtyard to him. “You are impossible to track down sometimes, did you know that?”
Evidently not too difficult as I was currently being followed by enough people I’d lost count. I frowned. “You haven’t hired anyone to keep an eye on me, have you?”
His laugh echoed off the high walls surrounding us as he cast his hazel eyes up to the gray sky overhead. “What good would it do me? You do as you please, despite my advice. It would be a great waste of your money if I did. Besides, your housekeeper told me I could find you here.”
My expression faltered.
Hari spotted it right away and drew nearer, dropping his voice to a hush as he noticed the wound at my temple. “What has happened to you?”
“Nothing important.” I adjusted my hair to cover more of the damage. I took a step closer, dropping my voice. “Hari, I believe I’m being watched.”
He frowned. “You didn’t get a scrape like that from being watched.”
A half dozen little house sparrows hopped around on the cold stone before me, searching for food in the cracks of the pavers. “Yes, well. One of them did a little more than watch.”
Hari swore, pulling his coat tighter around him as a gust of wind ripped through the walkway sending the birds up on the wing, out of the courtyard in search of food elsewhere. “One of them? Ruby, what is going on here?”
“Someone has been following me. Several someones. I was attacked by a man, but there was a woman too—Ruan saw her watching us not long after the attack. I thought—hoped—that perhaps she had something to do with the imposter.” At least the imposter didn’t want me dead—she likely only wanted money.
That’s what they all wanted in the end. Despite initial protestations to the contrary, it always came back to cash. There was an odd comfort in that.
Deep lines formed at the edges of Hari’s mouth. “It is possible. It is because of her that I’ve been trying to find you. She is threatening to go to the papers if you don’t speak with her. She’s given me three days to arrange the meeting.”
“Three days?” I let out a bitter laugh. “What does she think she has that is enough to tempt me to meet with her? The papers already know the worst of my secrets. What more could she expose?”
Hari shifted closer to me, wincing with the movement. The weather must have been aggravating his old wound. His voice came out scarcely over a whisper: “She is threatening to tell the world that you are not legitimate. That your parents—”
Whatever I’d expected him to say, it was certainly not that.
“How could she possibly know that? Even I did not know until we found the documents after they died.” I could still recall that stifling hot afternoon in my father’s study.
Hari had insisted on joining me in New York when I went to settle their estate.
I’d been going through my father’s books, boxing them up, when a slip of paper fell out.
Innocuous looking, but when I unfolded it, I’d found record of my parents’ marriage.
A marriage that occurred a year to the day after my birth.
I’d not thought about it in years—it hadn’t mattered at all to me, but there were some in this world to whom it would matter a great deal.
Hari touched the back of my hand gently, his expression a reminder that he recalled how poorly I took that discovery, wondering what other essential truths my parents hid from me. “I do not know how she could. But this woman has told me about your strange dreams.”
Hair pricked on the back of my neck as I swung my gaze to his sad, hazel eyes. Pity thick in the air.
It was impossible. Utterly impossible. The woman somehow learning of my parents’ delayed marriage was one thing, but even Hari didn’t know about my dreams, or how I sometimes saw things that later happened—how I’d witnessed their deaths on the Lusitania long before my family ever left America.
I stepped back, shaking my head hard. I could not deal with this now and especially not with Leona in danger.
“It’s impossible. Make her go away, Hari.
We have greater problems than an imposter. ”
“I do not see how that is possible.” He reached out, taking my gloved hand in his, pulling me back toward him, and squeezed it gently. “You must deal with it. For your own sake. You put everyone before yourself—what would you have me do if I were in your shoes? Answer me that.”
I clenched my jaw tight, then saw the surrender in Hari’s eyes.
He stepped back, holding up his hands. “I ask you as a friend—speak to this woman. See what she wants.”
My nostrils flared.
But Hari had not been cowed by the German artillery during the war, and he certainly wasn’t threatened by my quicksilver temper now.
“Sometimes I think beneath your skin you are the most frightened person I know. Every time someone gets too close to the mark you tighten your walls. Your Cornishman must be a madman or a fool to try to surmount your guard.”
I closed my eyes, willing the pounding in my brain to go away. “Three days?”
“Three days,” he confirmed. “What would you have me tell her?”
“Very well. We shall do it tomorrow. At eight in the morning, she has ten minutes of my time. I have no more to spare. Leona is missing. I have to find her.”
The color drained from Hari’s face. “Missing? Are you certain?”
A-half-dead-woman-in-my-attic certain. But I didn’t voice that, at least not here. “As much as I can be. Her house was ransacked. I think it has to do with a book in the library.”
“And you are investigating this, yourself.” Not a question. Hari knew me far too well for that.
“I don’t have a choice. I’ll explain later when we have privacy.”
“Do you think she is running or was taken?” he asked softly.
That was the very question I had been wondering myself. “I don’t know.”
“I will try to find her.”
In an uncharacteristic show of affection, I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “Thank you. I mean it. And Hari…”
“Mmm?” he asked, stepping back and smoothing his jacket from my unseemly fit of affection.
“Be careful. I could not bear it if you came to harm because of this.”
“I’ll inquire discreetly. You know Leona, she has a habit of doing exactly as she pleases. Just like someone else we know. I am certain she’ll come up all right.”
And I could only hope that Hari was right, like he had been so many times before.