At Long Last Page 8

  Surveying his handiwork, the visitor absent-mindedly wiped the blood from his stiletto on the faded gold drapery and deftly replaced the knife in his boot. Plucking the snifter from Leyton's limp fingers, he swallowed the scant remains which had not spilled, then wiped the glass dry on the same drapery he had used to clean his knife. Replacing the snifter on the tray, he glanced carefully around the room. There was no reason to search it again. He had done that earlier and was confident of one thing—the letter was not there.

  Except for his cloak—and poor Leyton, of course—there was no other sign that he had been here. Crossing the room, he put on his cloak and, after one more look around the room, glided to the French doors and slipped outside.

  His horse had been hidden in a small copse not far from the main house, and it took him only a few minutes to reach the animal. A moment later, he was gone, melting into the night.

  * * *

  Tony's arrival was nearly half an hour later, and his approach was cautious, though he expected no trouble. There was little moon, but the faint, silvery light allowed him to pick out the main house and the outbuildings. Coming upon the house from the front, all was in darkness. It didn't surprise him, although considering the hour, it would have been more normal for some signs of light to have shone out of one or two windows of the house.

  As he rode silently by the main house, he noticed the faintest hint of light coming from one of the rooms at the rear of the building. Good. Leyton was no doubt inside congratulating himself on his narrow escape. Before confronting Leyton, however, Tony wanted something a little more tangible than a hunch and mere suspicion with which to confront his target.

  Halting Sugar before the dark stable, Tony dismounted and quietly entered the still building. Moving like a cat through the utter blackness of the interior, he used touch as sight to find his way. As he had suspected, given Leyton's precarious financial state, there were only four horses in what had once been a fine, extensive stable.

  Just as well, Tony thought to himself as he listened to their soft blowing and restive movements; otherwise, his task might have taken all night. Entering the various stalls one by one, he quickly ran a sure, questing hand over each of the animals. The third animal he touched gave him the information he had hoped to find. Despite the passage of time, the animal's coat was scratchy and sticky where the lather and sweat had begun to dry and the horse was still faintly damp under the area where the saddle had been, indicating that it had been ridden hard not too long ago.

  A lathered horse was little to go by, but increased Tony's confidence that Leyton had been the robber. Remounting Sugar, he guided the stallion toward the big house. Leaving his mount tied to a small, ornamental bush near the pair of French doors from which the fitful glow of light shone, Tony walked into the room.

  At first glance the area appeared empty. Idly his gaze slid over the dark gray jacket thrown carelessly on the chair. The candles were guttering in their holders, and there was an unpleasant odor in the room.

  Tony halted just inside the French doors. He had not been in the presence of many dead bodies, but he instantly recognized the smell. Swiftly crossing to the only place hidden from his sight, the area behind the desk, he wasn't surprised to see the body of a man lying on the floor.

  Though there was little blood, only a small patch where the knife had gone in, he surmised from the foul smell and the eerie stillness of the body that the man was dead. Gingerly, Tony turned him over. As he had expected, it was Leyton, and the welt on his face told Tony he had found Arabella's would-be robber.

  Gently repositioning the body, he glanced around the room. Except for Leyton's body there was nothing out of place. He stood there a moment indecisively, his brain racing. Under normal circumstances, rousing the house would have been the thing to do, but with his reputation, Tony didn't think that he wanted to be the one to have discovered Leyton's body. His lips thinned. There were already enough people convinced that he had murdered two wives, and he didn't want Leyton's death laid at his door.

  Concluding that a silent retreat was the best course for him, Tony left. A moment later, he was riding away from Oakmont.

  Tony had little remorse about Leyton's death or the violent manner of it—the man had been without honor, a parasite, and it had been generally agreed that he would come to a bad end. He grimaced. Which half the population of Natchez firmly believed about him.

  Leyton's connection to Arabella, however, bothered him. It was too coincidental that Leyton should die almost immediately after attempting and failing to rob Arabella.

  Leyton's death, and the whip mark, only intensified Tony's certainty that Leyton had indeed been the bandit. Besides himself and Arabella, Leyton had been the only other person who had known that Arabella had carried the deeds to Greenleigh with her that afternoon, and would be driving home from the direction of Sweet Acres. Granted the attorney, Haight, had known she had taken the deeds with her, but unless Haight had followed her or hired someone to follow her—in which case, he had changed drastically since Tony had known him—the attorney had had no way of knowing her destination.

  Thinking of the bespectacled, eminently admired Mr. Haight, Tony dismissed all notion of his having had anything to do with that night's events. No. The identity of the robber could only have been Leyton. But then who had killed Leyton, and why?

  Chapter 6

  It wasn't to be expected that Arabella's arrival home would go unnoticed, but she was surprised to be greeted by the entire family and several servants when she entered the house. In the act of removing her bonnet, she stared in astonishment at the crowd that was gathered in the middle of the elegant rose-and-cream hallway. From the anxious expressions on everyone's faces, she feared that a calamity had befallen the house. Had something happened to Jeremy on his way to Greenleigh?

  Arabella's stepmother, Mary, whose fair head had jerked around at the sound of the opening of the door, spied her and gave a shaken cry of relief. As one, the crowd surged in Arabella's direction. Engulfed by the family, her ears assaulted by the babble that arose around her, she was tightly clasped against her stepmother's bosom. "My dear," exclaimed Mary in agitated accents, "you are alive and safe! Thank heavens! I have been beside myself with anxiety once darkness began to fall and I learned that you had not yet returned home. Where have you been?"

  Embarrassed to realize that she had been the cause of their distress, Arabella gently extricated herself from Mary's frantic embrace and smiled reassuringly at the worried faces clustered around her. In addition to her tall, slender stepmother, Mary, there was Sara, as golden and ethereal-looking as her mother; clearheaded Jane; exuberant and mischievous George; and, hanging on to her skirts for dear life, the angelic-faced baby of the family, John. Beyond them hovered the butler, Lawrence, his usually austere features creased into a wide smile. Just behind him stood his wife and the family housekeeper, Mrs. Lawrence, her plump form appearing even plumper as she stood beside the cook, Mrs. Hickman, who was stick-thin despite all the delicious meals she prepared day after day for the family.

  John tugged impatiently at Arabella's skirt. "Bella," he cried. "George said that a bear had eaten you. Did you see a bear, Bella?"

  Arabella laughed and bent down, pressing a kiss to John's pink cheek. "Indeed I did not! George," she said warmly, "was only teasing you."

  Blue eyes gleaming, John glanced triumphantly back at his nine-year-old brother. "See, I told you! I knew that Bella was too smart to be eaten by a bear!"

  "Well, she could have been," George insisted stubbornly, his lower lip jutting.

  "Don't be silly," chimed in Jane. "It would be highly unlikely that Bella would be anyplace where she would meet a bear."

  "Children, children," scolded Mary gently. "Shall we forget about the bear for a few minutes and see that our Bella really is safe?"

  "We were so concerned," said Sara, her celestial blue eyes wide in her delicate face. "No one knew where you had gone, and when dusk came and there
was still no sign of you, we all became anxious about you. Even the Lawrences and Mrs. Hickman. We were so frightened that something had happened to you. Mother was on the point of sending a servant for Uncle Richard to implore him to go look for you."

  Arabella kept her face blank as she sent a rueful look around the hall. Mary's brother, Richard Kingsley, was not one of her favorite people. In fact, she often wondered how someone as vain and conniving as Richard could be related to her own sweet step mama. And the thought of Richard finding her with Tony made her shudder.

  Richard Kingsley had been one of the most vociferous opponents of her engagement to Tony five years before, and she was certain half of her father's and Mary's objections to Tony had been because Richard had filled their heads with every vile story he could recall. Arabella's mouth twisted. Not that most of the stories about Tony didn't hold some kernel of truth.

  Unhappy at having caused such worry amongst those she loved, Arabella murmured, "I apologize for alarming all of you. My errand took longer than I expected it would. There was nothing for anyone to worry about—after all, I am a grown woman. Not," she said affectionately as she gave Sara's chin a gentle pinch, "a flighty little chit like some I could name."

  Sara giggled, but it was Mary who asked the question that Arabella had hoped to avoid. "But where did you go?" Mary inquired, clearly perplexed. "It is not like you to leave without telling anyone where you are going—or without a servant with you."

  Arabella had not planned to return so late and had hoped that she would be able to pass off her absence as having merely gone for an impetuous pleasure drive. Obviously, without some swift improvisation on her part, that excuse was not going to pass muster.

  Stripping off her driving gloves, she said carelessly, "Oh, nowhere in particular. There were a few things I wished to discuss with Mr. Haight so, on a whim, I drove into town. When I was finished with Mr. Haight, it was such a beautiful day, I decided to take a drive along the bluff and look at the river." She laughed deprecatingly. "Would you believe that I managed to get the cart stuck when Sable took exception to a blue jay and shied? I do not know what I would have done if some very nice strangers hadn't happened along eventually and freed my wheel from where it had lodged between a half-rotted log and a small sapling." Arabella knew she was elaborating too much, so she quickly finished her mendacious tale. "And there you have it, nothing very exciting at all and certainly nothing for any of you to be worried about."

  Mary was not a suspicious person, and she readily accepted Arabella's story. "It must have given you a start when you discovered your predicament," she commiserated, her affection for her stepdaughter obvious.

  "Indeed it did," Arabella replied. Looking in the direction of the servants, she asked prettily, "Dear, dear Mrs. Hickman, would it be possible for you to make up a plate for me? I know that everyone else has eaten, but I am famished."

  Recalled to their duties, the servants reverted to their usual roles. "As you wish, miss," said Mrs. Hickman and darted into the nether regions of the house. Mrs. Lawrence, realizing that there was no longer any reason for her to stand gawking about, added briskly, "And I shall go up and see if your bed has been turned back."

  When the two women had bustled off, Lawrence bowed, and murmured, "If you will hand me your hat and gloves, miss, I shall put them away for you."

  Arabella smiled at him and, though she was perfectly capable of putting away her own things, meekly handed him the hat and gloves. "Oh, thank you so much. I do not know what I would do without all of you. You pamper me shamelessly."

  Many of the Montgomery servants were English which was rare amongst the majority of the wealthy planters in the Natchez area. When William Montgomery decided to leave England and settle in the New World, most of his existing staff had opted to come with the family—which wasn't surprising, since many of them were third and fourth generation in service to the Montgomerys. The very real concern of the Lawrences and Mrs. Hickman for the missing Montgomery member was understandable; they had seen Arabella grow up from a chubby baby to the woman she had become.

  When the servants departed, Arabella and the others immediately made for the large, untidy room on the second floor where the family usually gathered on quiet evenings at home. It was a pleasant place with high airy ceilings and plenty of space for the family to spread out, yet it still retained a feeling of intimacy. The furniture had comfort more in mind than style and was arranged haphazardly. The effect was welcoming and charming.

  Seating herself on one of the long sofas that faced its twin near the hearth of a brick fireplace, Arabella looked around and smiled. It was obvious from the scattered rods, that George and John had been playing Pickup Sticks before the growing anxiety over Arabella's absence had interrupted them. Jane had been painting, her small easel and tray of watercolors near one of the long windows, which opened onto a small balcony at the far side of the room. An embroidery frame had been left on the seat of a chintz-covered chair, and a Gothic novel by the English author Ann Ward Radcliffe, Mysteries of Udolpho was lying nearby on the gaily painted carpet: Sara had been practicing her stitches and Mary had been reading.

  Leaning back against the couch, Arabella asked, "Did anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

  "I found a bird's nest this afternoon," piped up George, as he settled himself on the floor near the couch. "There were four eggs in it."

  "I trust you left it undisturbed," Arabella commented dryly. George's penchant for dragging home various bits of nature could be unsettling, especially since he had once brought home a baby skunk and let it loose in the nursery.

  After a few minutes of desultory conversation, it was as if Arabella had never been away. Sara had picked up her embroidery and begun to ply her needle; Jane started again on her painting, and the boys were once again engrossed in their game. Only Mary had not yet picked up her novel and begun to read.

  Fixing her stepdaughter with a stern eye, Mary asked quietly, "What is all this nonsense about Jeremy going to Greenleigh for you? He was extremely vague about it when he came to bid me farewell this morning."

  Arabella sighed. When she had left Highview this morning, she'd had a simple plan: get her deeds from Mr. Haight, come to some agreement with Leyton, and be home before anyone even realized that she had been gone. She had also planned on having enough private time in which to formulate a reasonable excuse for Jeremy's sudden visit to Greenleigh. Nothing, she thought with a grimace, had gone as she had hoped.

  Considering and discarding a dozen little white lies to throw Mary off the scent, she finally settled upon something that had some basis in truth. Shrugging, she said, "I know that he is a grown man and can do as he wishes, but it seems to me that of late he has been spending too much time in, ah, unhealthy pursuits. I thought that enlisting his aid in seeing how Greenleigh was being maintained was an excellent way to wean him away from dangerous pastimes for a while."

  Mary nodded. "I wondered if it wasn't something like that. I have not been happy about his late nights, but I felt that commenting on them would only cause him to puff up like a toad and be more determined than ever to show me just how very adult he is." She smiled fondly at Arabella. "You are so clever, Bella, always seeming to anticipate trouble before it actually occurs. I do not know what we would do without you. Your father would be proud of you and the way you always watch over us."

  Arabella flushed and glanced away. She felt mean-spirited deceiving Mary thus and had the lowering feeling that the ugly sensation was only going to grow worse as she embarked upon her career as Tony's mistress. She was, she realized sickly, going to be put to a great deal of subterfuge in the following months, and lying was, no doubt, going to become second nature to her. How else was she going to keep her liaison with Tony a secret?

  The enormity of what she had agreed to do had not really sunk in and it was only when she was finally alone in her own bedchamber, lying sleepless in the big bed with its pale yellow silk canopy, that she perceived t
he trap she had set for herself. Tonight had been just a little example of the deception that lay before her.

  She did not, she admitted with brutal candor, even have the comfort of putting a noble face on her actions. Her first instincts may have had some nobility about them—after all, she had been willing to give up her own fortune to secure the fortune of her family—but once that particular plan had fallen by the wayside... She swallowed painfully. Tony's teasing comment that only she would consider living at Greenleigh to be comparable to abject poverty rankled and cut a little too close to the bone.

  If she had thrown his disgraceful offer back in his face, it was true that the family's great fortune would be lost, and that the younger ones would have a hard time of it when they reached adulthood, but it was not as if they would have been reduced to living on the streets and begging for crusts of bread from strangers. She made a face. And of course, Richard would have no doubt come to the aid of his sister.

  The problem was, she would rather die than have the family beholden to that pompous ass. Richard was thirty-six, a determined bachelor, used to pleasing only himself. He tolerated his nieces and nephews and treated his sister with affectionate contempt. He would never, Arabella knew, let Mary forget that she and her children owed their financial well-being to him. Money would be a powerful weapon in his hands, and he would not be averse to using it. No. Whatever other foolish decisions she may have made that day, not going to Richard Kingsley had been wise. And, she admitted wearily, agreeing to become Tony's mistress had been most unwise....

  She tossed restlessly in the bed. Faced with the choice between the loss of the family fortune or becoming the mistress of a man who had betrayed her—yet who still held a mesmerizing fascination for her—had not seemed like such a bad trade at the time. Tony Daggett had been her first and only lover. She had loved him once, and perhaps in a tiny corner of her heart she still did, so it wasn't as if she were giving herself to a man who filled her with revulsion. And that, she admitted, was the sticking point.