Chapter 9 #5
She wanted to say something, but no words could articulate her emotions.
He had apologized, but it seemed grossly hypocritical to accept that apology when it was she, in fact, who had sought him out, venturing to his room in the middle of the night in nothing but a nightrail and shawl.
She had wanted to talk to him, to understand what had compelled him to take such enormous risks on Charlotte’s behalf.
She had also hoped to strip away some of the veils that shrouded the man whom the rest of the world believed to be her husband.
But these were not the only reasons she had gone to his room, she realized, nearly sick with shame.
The passion that had flared between them several nights earlier in the drawing room had awakened powerful feelings in her that she hadn’t known she possessed.
Despite her efforts to lock them into a dark corner of her mind, she had longed to experience those feelings again.
On some level that was incomprehensible to her, she had wanted Haydon to touch her, had been desperate to know what it was to have him kiss and caress and worship her body, and to fill her to the core with his heat and strength and passion.
She flew across the room and jerked open the door, desperate to be away from him. The corridor was cold and black as she stepped into it, leaving all the heat and light that had flamed with such joyful brilliance but a moment earlier fading in the chamber behind her.
…AFTER THAT HE LEFT THE JAIL WITH THE GIRL AND returned to Mrs. Blake’s house at approximately four o’clock.”
Mr. Timmons scratched a rather alarming pimple on his nose as he closed his notebook, indicating his report was finished. “I remained on the street until eleven o’clock this evening—just before I came here. Mr. Blake did not leave, nor did any of the other inhabitants of the household.”
Vincent Ramsay, the earl of Bothwell, drummed his manicured fingers thoughtfully upon the scratched surface of the small table in his room.
Then he rose, withdrew an envelope from an inner pocket in his coat, and slid it across the table.
“Thank you, Mr. Timmons. I shall be in touch if I find I have further need of your services.”
Mr. Timmons’s mouth gaped open as he glanced at the thick pad of notes bulging within the envelope.
“Thank you, Mr. Wright, sir,” he gushed, overwhelmed by the generosity of his mysterious employer.
“I’m happy to be of service to you. If there is anything else I can do—perhaps I should watch Mr. Blake again tomorrow… .”
Vincent opened the door to his hotel room, anxious to have the wheedling little man gone from his sight.
He despised men who made their living by prying into the lives of others, and disliked Mr. Timmons in particular because his very presence was an intrusion into Vincent’s own life.
He had paid him well to ensure his discretion, but the earl was not foolish enough to believe that his confidentiality was absolutely assured.
“That will be all for the moment.” Best to let the little toad think there might be more work coming his way. That way he would be more inclined to keep his tongue still. “Good night.” He shut the door abruptly, leaving Mr. Timmons standing in the hallway with the envelope clutched in his hand.
Vincent poured himself a glass of insipid sherry, took a sip and cringed.
He was not accustomed to drinking such cheap vintages, but he had made every effort since his arrival in Inveraray to do nothing to draw undue attention to himself, and that included not indulging in his fondness for discriminating wine.
Hence he had registered in this decrepit little hotel as Mr. Albert Wright, a businessman from Glasgow who was on his way north to investigate the production of charcoal in the hills north of Taynuilt.
He dressed modestly and kept to himself, giving no one any reason to notice him except when they served him his stringy, grease-laden meals, either in his room or in the dreary restaurant below—with its copiously stained rug and hopelessly tarnished flatware—that he felt obliged to patronize on occasion.
He presented himself as a quiet, polite, wholly uninteresting man, who he hoped was forgotten the moment he was out of sight.
He had no wish to make an impression of any type on anyone during his stay here.
Except, of course, for the missing Marquess of Redmond.
When he first received word that Haydon had actually managed to fend off the attackers he had hired to kill him, Vincent had been infuriated.
Ultimately he consoled himself with the view that hanging was just as fitting an end for the rutting bastard.
The fact that Haydon was paraded before a court like a common criminal and found guilty of murder seemed ironically appropriate.
There had been the added pleasure of imagining him languishing for weeks in a fetid, vermin-infested cell, surrounded by the scum of humanity, undoubtedly beaten and abused, all the while desperately protesting his innocence to no avail.
Vincent had dallied with the idea of traveling to Inveraray to attend the hanging, but ultimately decided that the whole miserable business was best left to play out in his absence.
He had wanted Haydon dead, but he had not felt any compelling need to witness it himself.
All he had desired was some small measure of retribution for the unspeakable humiliation and suffering the marquess had so casually inflicted upon his own life.
It had cost a substantial sum and had taken some discreet arranging, but ultimately Vincent had been certain that both the funds involved and his time were well spent.
What he had not anticipated was that Haydon would escape his death a second time.
The idea that his deceased wife’s lover had managed to elude the sharp talons of justice and was roaming about, hunted but free, grated mercilessly upon him.
After waiting impatiently to see if he would be recaptured, Vincent ultimately realized he had no choice but to take the matter into his own hands.
He had traveled to Inveraray and hired Mr. Timmons, an experienced investigator whose discretion, like almost everything else, could be reasonably assured for a price—at least for a time.
Mr. Timmons was easily able to secure information on Haydon’s trial and his sojourn in the jail.
What struck Vincent as most interesting was the fact that a pretty, well-meaning spinster had been the last person to visit the marquess in his cell before he escaped.
According to the warder, who had been eager to talk to Mr. Timmons when he realized the investigator was willing to buy him unlimited pints of ale, his lordship had looked little better than a filthy, broken beggar on the night of his escape.
Vincent had suspected that may not have mattered to the eminently altruistic Miss MacPhail.
The Marquess of Redmond had always had a talent for enchanting and seducing women, regardless of the circumstances.
That was what had enabled him to crawl between the legs of his lovely Cassandra.
He took another bitter swallow of sherry.
The humiliation of his wife’s affairs still had the power to enrage him.
He reminded himself that she had been a selfish, spoiled bitch, and Vincent had been glad to be rid of her when she died some two years earlier, after some ignominious doctor had tried to scrape the progeny of her latest lover from her womb.
The shambles of their marriage had ceased to matter after Emmaline was born eight years prior.
With her wonderful, miraculous arrival, everything else in his life had suddenly diminished in importance.
When Vincent had learned that Cassandra was finally pregnant after more than six years of marriage, he had unashamedly hoped for a son.
A son would inherit his title and his holdings and leave an important mark upon the world.
When little Emmaline was handed to him in his study an hour after her birth, her face all pink and shriveled and squalling, he had known a moment of wretched disappointment.
He tried to give her right back to the nurse, but the frazzled woman said she had to fetch something immediately for his wife and bolted from the room.
And so he was forced to carry Emmaline up the long staircase himself to deliver her back to his wife’s bedroom.
Somewhere along the way Emmaline stopped crying and settled contentedly in his arms. She opened her blue eyes and regarded him with quiet satisfaction, as if to say that she had only been crying for him, and now that she had found him, all was well.
It was in that moment that Vincent discovered what he had believed was the purest form of love.
The knowledge that he had been wrong burned a deep, agonizing hole through him.
He set down his glass and went to the window, pulling back the cold, musty drape so he could look out at the frozen street below.
He did not know for certain that the man known as Maxwell Blake was, in fact, the Marquess of Redmond.
Tomorrow he would keep vigil near the house, and every day after that, until he caught a glimpse of him and determined his identity.
If he did turn out to be the man who had destroyed his life, then Vincent would make very sure that this time he succeeded in killing him.