Secrets of the Heart (30 page)

“No doubt because it is senseless,” Michael commented tartly.

“Was it the footman?” Anthony asked. “Hargreaves? Is he the one behind this?”

“No,” Michael responded tersely. “If he had sent you those notes, he would have asked you for money to keep from implicating you. Most people would have.”

“It seems absurd,” Anthony went on. “I can see that anyone would disbelieve me if I told them. But it is the truth.”

“Where is the note about Rachel?” Michael asked. “I want to see it.”

Birkshaw looked sheepish. “I—it made me angry, and I wadded it up and tossed it in the fire. I don't have it. I see now that I should have kept it. It would be proof of some sort, but…well, I didn't think.”

“Is that why you came to me and asked for Michael's help?” Rachel probed. “Did the note tell you to do that?”

“Oh, no. You see, at first, I thought, ‘I won't do it.' I wasn't going to let him scare me, whoever he was. But then it seemed like such a little thing to do, especially compared to people suspecting me of killing Doreen. And it made me wonder, you know, if someone really had killed her and why. Just so I would pay you a call or two? That's insane.”

“It would certainly seem so,” Michael agreed.

“Then I remembered what Lord Arbuthnot said about you, Westhampton—about your having solved things when the Bow Street Runners could not. And it seemed to me that that was the way out of my predicament!” His face brightened a little as he remembered his cleverness. “I decided that I would call on you, Rachel, and whoever it was would know, I suppose, that I had done so. And he would not do anything to me. But while I was there, I would ask you to get your husband's help on the matter. And perhaps that would get me out of this thing altogether.”

He paused, looking from one to the other in a hangdog way. “I'm sorry. I should have told you all about it right from the beginning. I realize that now. You are suspicious of me because I did not. It was just—I felt like such a coward for giving in to the fellow and calling on you. And it all seemed so ridiculous—I was sure you would think me a fool. I am sorry,” he finished lamely.

“Is there anything else you have not told us?” Michael asked, looking stern. “Any more instructions from this man?”

Anthony shook his head. “No. He has sent me nothing. I cannot understand why anyone would do this to me. I did what he asked. Do you think he knows that I asked you for help?”

“It's possible.”

“I don't understand. Why would anyone do this to me? Who hates me that much?”

“I'm not sure that it is you at whom all this is aimed,” Michael replied, looking grim.

M
ichael turned to Rachel. “I think it is time we took our leave. If I were you, Mr. Birkshaw, I would be very careful over the course of the next few days. I will try to find out what is going on as quickly as I can. But I cannot rule out the possibility that you are in danger.”

Anthony stared back at him, his eyes so wide that they looked as if they might pop out of his head at any moment.

Michael and Rachel left him there contemplating his future and started walking toward home. For a moment they strode along in silence, then Michael burst out, “What poppycock! That is the biggest bag of nonsense I have ever heard.”

“You don't believe him?” Rachel asked, looking at her husband.

“No, but it is so idiotic that I cannot believe anyone would make up a story so feeble!” Michael exclaimed. “If he had really killed his wife, surely he could have come up with a more intelligent story than that.”

Rachel nodded. “Yes. Well, I think we know one thing for certain. Anthony could not be the mastermind behind this…this web of crime. He is far too stupid.”

Michael let out a short bark of laughter and turned to look at her. Rachel's blunt statement let him know, more than any honeyed words of love and desire could have, that he had no need to feel jealousy where Anthony Birkshaw was concerned.

“Well?” Rachel said somewhat defiantly. “It is the truth.”

“Yes. It is. I think someone far more clever than our friend Birkshaw is behind this.”

“And when you said that to Anthony back there, that perhaps it was not aimed at him, what you meant was that by using Anthony he was aiming it at
you.
”

Michael nodded. “I was foolish not to pay more heed to the highwayman's warning. I was so far from discovering anything that I felt sure no villain would have seriously thought he was in danger from me. I wrote the warning off as the highwayman's wanting money. I came to London only because as long as there was even a possibility, however remote, that someone might harm me, I feared that he might try to do it through you.”

“And he did work through me, didn't he?” Rachel said. “Why else would he have sent Anthony to visit me? He must have hoped that it would reawaken your dislike and mistrust of the man.”

“Yes, and I fell right into the trap.”

They walked along for a few more moments in silence before Rachel said in a troubled voice, “Michael…if some person
is
planning all this, and if he
is
trying to make you believe that Anthony killed his wife, then he is using him as a sort of decoy, isn't he? To distract you and get you working on this murder instead of tracking him down?”

“It would seem so,” Michael agreed.

“What a monstrous thing to do!” Rachel exclaimed. “That would mean he has taken an innocent man and made it appear that he is guilty of murder. Anthony could be put to trial, even hanged. And it would mean that this criminal killed the footman, as well, because that is the primary piece of proof against Anthony. And he would also have killed Anthony's poor wife, or he would not have been able to set up the whole thing.”

Michael nodded. “I suppose that Mrs. Birkshaw could have simply died from natural causes, as everyone believed at the time, and that our villain simply saw the opportunity to turn my suspicions against Birkshaw. But certainly he would have had to kill the footman in order to leave the suicide note implicating Anthony. And, in all probability, he engineered the whole thing. I would suspect he hired the footman to kill Mrs. Birkshaw, then killed
him
to throw suspicion on Birkshaw.”

“What a heartless, cold-blooded man he must be!” Rachel cried in a low voice. “To destroy people like that—not even out of hate or anger but merely to throw you off the scent! It is abominable.”

“Yes, I agree. The man is inhumanly cold and calculating.”

They continued to their house, thinking their own thoughts.

But later that night, as they were sitting in the music room after supper, as Rachel was idling over the keys of the piano, lazily picking out a tune while Michael read, she turned to him and said, “I am sorry, Michael.”

“What?” He looked up blankly from his book. “Sorry? About what?”

“That he has used me to hurt you,” she said. “Whoever is doing these things. That he used Anthony to divert you.”

Michael shrugged. “It is scarcely your fault that his mind works that way.”

“No, but it is my fault that you had reason to be jealous of Anthony. It is because of me that you dislike him.” She paused, then asked tentatively, “Are you indeed that jealous of him?”

Michael brows shot up. “Jealous? Of course I am jealous of him.” His voice roughened, and he stood up abruptly. “It scores my soul to know that he is the love of your life.” Though he knew that Rachel did no longer love Anthony, he could not forget that Anthony, not he, was the only man to hold her heart.

“But I do not love him!” Rachel exclaimed, aghast. “I have not loved him for—oh, years and years. I don't even remember when I got over feeling the hurt. Frankly, I am not entirely sure that I ever loved him. I didn't really know him, you know. We were always surrounded by parents and friends and—well, it was never a natural situation. I had no way of knowing what sort of man he really was. All I knew was that my heart fluttered whenever I saw him. It was probably as my mother said, merely an infatuation.”

“There is no way of knowing, I suppose, since you were not allowed to follow your heart.” Michael was turned away, not looking at her.

“There is no feeling in me for him any longer,” Rachel told him. “When he came here to ask for your help, I wondered what I would feel when I saw him, but the truth was, I felt nothing. Whatever I felt for him, love or infatuation, it died long ago. And, believe me, nothing I have seen of him since that day has awakened any renewal of it.”

“Rachel!” Michael strode across the room to her and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off her feet and kissing her fiercely.

Then he pulled away and swept her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom, not caring if any of the servants saw them. All he could think of was Rachel and his need to be inside her, to kiss and caress her until both of them were teetering on the edge of the dark vortex of passion.

They made love hungrily, passionately, like people too long denied the pleasures of their bodies, coming together at last in a wild cataclysm. Afterward they slept, curled together.

Michael awoke some time later, stirred to consciousness by the chill in the air. He got up and pulled the covers up over both of them. Rachel murmured in her sleep and snuggled up against him. He curled his arm around her and kissed the top of her head, feeling a happiness and peace he had never known before.

He lay there in the dark for a long time, thinking about love and jealousy and times past, of enemies and friends, and when at last he fell asleep, he knew what he would do.

 

“I think I may know how to solve this investigation,” Michael said the next morning over breakfast.

Rachel stared at him, his words chasing away the last cobwebs of sleep. “What? How?”

“We may be able to smoke out the criminal.”

“How?”

“I will tell you in a little while,” Michael said, a smile touching his lips at her impatient expression. “But I need to talk to Perry about it, so it will be easier if I wait and tell you both at the same time.”

“Perry? Perry Overhill?” Rachel asked, confused. She could not imagine their portly, genial friend being able to help them solve a mystery. “But why? What can Perry do?”

“Patience. I will explain it all to you.”

Rachel was anything but patient as they strolled over to Perry's house. She peppered Michael with questions, which he deflected with a smile.

Overhill's butler showed them into the drawing room, which was decorated with Perry's usual impeccable taste. A moment later Perry himself bustled in, beaming. He made an elegant bow and placed a kiss on Rachel's hand, though both gestures were rendered faintly absurd by his pear-shaped figure. “Rachel, my dear, you are lovely, as always. And Michael—such a pleasant surprise to see you back in town. When did you return?”

Michael smiled, shaking his friend's hand and saying, “It's all right, Perry, Rachel knows all about it.”

Perry put on a confused air. “All about what?”

“Everything,” Rachel said, chuckling. “Michael's sister Lilith, his disguises, his work. I know the whole story that you have tried so valiantly to hide from me—and, by the way, I have a bone to pick with you over deceiving me for years—so you can cast off that vague air.”

“It was not my preference, I assure you,” Overhill told her earnestly. “Gracious me, Michael, what has come over you?” He looked searchingly at his friend, and his eyebrows rose. “Ah…” he said almost to himself, nodding sagely. “I see.”

“See what?” Rachel asked.

“Why, that our Michael is a changed man.” His eyes danced as he turned back to Michael, saying a trifle archly, “One can only wonder what happened to the fellow.”

“No need to wonder. You know as well as I do that the change is due to Rachel.” Michael took his wife's hand and lifted it to his lips, smiling at her tenderly.

“Sit down. Sit down.” Perry gestured them toward the arrangement of sofa and chairs that centered the elegant blue drawing room. “Let me ring for some refreshment. Then you can tell me what has brought you here, for I cannot feel that you are in need of company right now.”

“I have a favor to ask of you,” Michael said, getting immediately to the point as his friend tugged at the bellpull. He walked with Rachel over to the couch, but remained standing, his hand clasped behind his back.

Perry glanced at him and frowned as he saw the serious expression on Michael's face. “Westhampton…what is it? You look as grave as a parson.”

“I am a trifle worried,” Michael admitted. “It is this investigation I am working on. The thing is, I—I would like for you to escort Rachel to the opera tonight. I have things to attend to, and I want to be certain that she is safe. If I know that she is in your care—”

“Michael!” Both Rachel and Perry exclaimed, staring at him.

“What are you talking about?” Rachel went on, rising to face her husband. “Why would I not be safe? Where are you going to be? What are you going to be doing?”

“Yes,” Perry agreed. “I must say, old chap, you are sending chills up my spine. What is the danger?”

“I think, perhaps, that I have been betrayed by…someone I am close to.”

“Michael!” Rachel paled, her stomach suddenly icy. “What are you talking about? Who? Why didn't you tell me?”

“I wanted to explain it only once,” he said. “It is a difficult thing for me to say.”

“I should think so!” Perry exclaimed, looking shaken, and he sank down in a chair. “Pray explain yourself.”

“I have been working on a case. Several cases, actually, that have certain things in common. There is no need to go into all the details, but yesterday I began to suspect that I have been led deliberately astray, that I have been pointed in a false direction.”

“Toward Anthony, you mean?” Rachel asked.

“Who?” Perry asked, blinking. “Anthony who? Oh!” His face cleared. “You mean the chap you were asking me about? You are investigating him? Why? Because of his wife? You think he killed his wife?” Overhill gaped at Michael.

“I have been suspicious of him,” Michael replied. “You see, there were obvious clues pointing toward the man.”

“Good Gad. That is incredible!” Overhill gasped. “I don't know the man well, but…well, I mean, not the sort of thing one would expect.” He shook his. “Are they going to arrest him?”

“No. I haven't gone to Bow Street with this yet. No one knows but me…well, me and the real murderer.”

“The real murd—” Perry gazed at him blankly. “You mean—it isn't Birkshaw?”

“I think not. It simply did not fit together well.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were inconsistencies, things that might lead one to think it was not Birkshaw who killed his wife. But I had overlooked them, you see, because of my jealousy.”

Perry stared. “Jealousy! What do you mean?” He glanced over cautiously at Rachel. “Had the fellow made…uh, unwelcome advances?”

“No,” Rachel put it. “But once, a long time ago, before I married Michael, Anthony and I fancied ourselves in love with each. We hadn't seen each other in years, but…”

“But when his name came up, I reacted more like a jealous husband than an impartial investigator. Once I realized that, I saw that someone had used that knowledge against me. He had tricked me into suspecting Birkshaw, knowing my feelings about him would make me believe almost anything bad about the man.”