Strangers at Dawn (36 page)

“Don’t I know it,” said Sara with feeling.

“She’s lonely,” Max repeated softly. “A woman like that needs a husband. And once she’s married, she’ll be much happier, and so will we.”

Sara sighed. “It’s not as easy as that. We don’t have friends and acquaintances in London, and even if we did, who would want to marry someone whose name is Carstairs?”

“I did.”

She chuckled. “Yes, but-”

He silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I have friends and acquaintances in London. Butlet’s not get caught up in mere details. Once we know what the problem is, we can think of ways to solve it. And it seems to me that money won’t solve this family’s problems.”

“I never said or believed that money would solve all our problems. Yes, I wanted to protect Anne, but I also wanted to fulfill my father’s dying wishes, that’s all.”

He linked his fingers through hers. “And you did, by marrying me. He trusted your judgment. That’s why, in his will, he allowed the trust to be dissolved on your marriage. Now there are two of us to decide how best to take care of your family.”

She smiled at Max. “I remember thinking,” she said, “that night in Reading, that you were a good, kind man. I think I must have had a guardian angel who sent you to the wrong room that night.”

“And I remember thinking,” he said, “that fate had touched me on the shoulder, and that if I didn’t accept it, I would always wonder what I’d missed.”

She bent over him, and their lips met, but the pressure of her hand on his chest made him wince, and she pulled away.

“Admit it, Sara,” he said, “I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“I’m not denying it, but-”

“But what?”

She wasn’t sure that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
“I
wish Anne could be as happy as I am.”

“If we could solve the riddle of William, I think she would be happy, or at least she would be at peace.”

“I thought we were going to forget about William. I thought you said you were no longer interested in getting the story for your newspaper.”

His lashes were drooping, and he missed the flash of fear in her eyes. “I’m thinking of us,” he said, yawning. “I don’t want William casting a shadow over our lives. We’ll find him, Sara, or at least we’ll give it a good try.”

He gave a slow, sleepy smile and edged onto his side. “When are you going to admit it, Sara?”

Fear shivered through her. “Admit what?”

“That you love me? Then I’ll admit …” He sighed.

She stood there, staring down at him, her heart beating frantically against her ribs.

There was a knock at the door, and she went to answer it. It was Arthur, the footman. She sent him away. Max was sleeping and she didn’t want to waken him. She didn’t want him to say the words, because she didn’t know how she would answer him.

She covered him with the eiderdown, and made herself comfortable on one of the chairs. But no matter how hard she tried, sleep would not come.

Twenty-two

I
N THE FOLLOWING DAYS, NO HINT OF THE TURMOIL
that raged inside Sara showed on the surface, and the fiercer the turmoil, the quieter she became. She’d been living in a dream world, allowing herself to drift with the current, and that current had dashed her up on a rocky shore.

The problem with William wasn’t going to go away. Max wouldn’t allow it. He was determined to clear her name. She had no choice, now, but to face whatever awaited her in the dower house. But she would do it without Max, because she had more to worry about than herself.

There was more to it than that. She’d fallen in love with him. Love, she discovered, was painful. She’d made mistakes, serious mistakes, but she wouldn’t allow anyone to pay for them but herself. If her worst fears were realized, she would pay the penalty, even if it meant losing Max. The last thing she wanted was for him to be tainted with her guilt.

She made her plans with care. The first thing she did was find another pistol to replace the one she’d lost, and this time, she promised herself, if someone attacked her, she would not run away. Then she checked on the supply of
laudanum in the medicine box and found it more than adequate for her needs. Finally, she gave the order to have the dower house cleared of all rubble and fallen beams. She told Drew that she had engaged a builder to look over the empty shell and assess whether it was worth the money to rebuild it, and she didn’t want any accidents to happen while workmen were poking around.

The work began at once. Sara went through the motions of taking up her life again. She went to church services; she visited the local shops; she spent time in the sickroom with Max; but she was only biding her time until the dower house was ready.

From the very first, the day after the fair, Max knew something was wrong. He was confined to bed, and though Sara was pleasant when she read to him or shared his dinner tray, he recognized the look on her face. She was too calm and too pleasant by half. She’d withdrawn into her shell, shutting him out. He thought he understood why. She was afraid of her feelings, afraid to admit that she loved him because it would make her vulnerable. Well, that was too damn bad. He hadn’t been looking for love either, but now that it had found him, he didn’t go around whining about it. It was done. There was no changing it. She might think that she could keep him at arm’s length, but as soon as he was on his feet again, he was going to prove how wrong she was.

It came to him gradually that there was more to it than that. One of the workmen had found a pistol beside the path that led to the dower house, and he sent it up to the “master.” The footman delivered it to Max. It belonged, he said, to Samuel Carstairs. No one knew how it had come to be near the dower house, but Max thought long and hard about the night Sara was attacked and he began to add things up.

His suspicions intensified when Sara suggested he might like to move back into his own room, just for convenience,
and those suspicions solidified into convictions when he learned workmen had begun to clear out the dower house.

P
ETER FALLON WAS AWAY FOR FOUR DAYS,
and on his return, as he approached the front steps, Max, with a glass of brandy in one hand and a thin cigar in the other, came forward to meet him. It was late, and the candles had been lit. As a footman carried his box upstairs, Peter picked up a candle and led the way to his office. From the drawing room upstairs came the sound of someone playing the piano, a violent piece.
Scarlatti,
thought Peter, and the music suddenly stopped.

After the usual casual conversation between friends, he got down to business. “Drew Primrose,” he said, “as far as I can determine, was not in Bristol the night William Neville disappeared. I checked the hotel where he was supposed to be staying; I checked with the clients he was supposed to have seen. Oh yes, he was there and he did see them, but one day later than he would have us all believe.”

“And it’s only a day’s drive from Stoneleigh to Bristol,” said Max. He was doodling with a pencil on apiece of paper.

Peter stared at him for a moment. “That’s it?” he said. “You send me to Bristol to find out if Drew Primrose has an alibi, and when I tell you he hasn’t, you’re not even interested?”

Max looked up. “I’m interested. Very interested.”

“Or maybe you’re still feeling under the weather?”

“I’m perfectly recovered from the fight, if that’s what you mean.”

“All right. But something has happened to take the stuffing out of you. What is it, Max?”

Max smiled, but there was no smile in his voice. “Small things that add up. You see, Peter, I think that tonight we’ve reached the crisis point. And now that you’re back, you can be of great help to me.”

“How?”

Max told him in a few clipped sentences, then rose to leave. Peter was still trying to recover from the shock of what Max had asked him to do when Max shocked him even more.

“Oh, by the way,” said Max, “don’t drink that brandy.” He gestured to the untouched glass of brandy he’d left on Peter’s desk. “My wife gave it to me and it’s laced with laudanum.”

H
E WAS SEETHING WITH A RESENTMENT HE
could hardly master. They were husband and wife; they were lovers. She had no hesitation in giving him her beautiful body. But her heart wasn’t his. He didn’t think she had a heart to give.

He’d tried making excuses for her, and he knew that some of them were valid. Her caution had been learned in the harsh school of life. She hadn’t survived by being free with her trust, and maybe she’d had good cause to distrust him in the past. But once they became lovers, none of that should have mattered. And it hadn’t mattered until he’d practically asked her to give him the words. And from that moment on, a veil had come down. She’d cheapened something precious that had flowered between them and turned it into dross.

She must think him a simpleton not to have put two and two together. She couldn’t seem to understand that he didn’t give a damn about William Neville. What he cared about was protecting her, but she still saw him as a threat to her precious family.

And, fool that he was, he might have forgiven her everything if she had not offered him, with her own hands and a sweet smile on her face, a glass of brandy that a schoolboy would have known was doctored.

He’d taken one sip and left the drawing room at once,
because if he’d stayed, he would have been tempted to throttle her.

She would go to the dower house, of course, after she’d made sure that he was practically insensate with her laudanum. He would catch her in the act, and this time, by God, there would be no half-truths and evasions.

He went to his own room first, a room that he used only to store his belongings. If he’d agreed to his wife’s oh-so-casual suggestion that he sleep in his own room, where he could smoke whenever he pleased, he might have been spared the laudanum. Damn her cheating soul to all eternity!

He found a glass just like the one Sara had given him and poured enough brandy into it to convince her that he had swallowed some of her witch’s brew, His temper was on a short leash when he made his way to her bedchamber.

S
HE WAS SITTING AT HER DRESSING TABLE IN
her nightclothes, brushing out her long dark hair. She looked as fragile as a fine porcelain figurine. But Max no longer believed what his eyes told him. He knew she was as hard as nails.

He closed the door softly and crossed to her. She watched him in the mirror as he took a long swallow of brandy from the glass in his hand.

“You left the drawing room very suddenly,” she said.

“I went outside to smoke a cigar. You have beautiful hair. May I?”

He put his glass down and took the brush from her. There was something different about him. With his tawny hair, he looked like a slow, sleepy lion and just as unpredictable. She glanced at the brandy glass and wondered if the laudanum had something to do with it.

Their eyes met in the mirror. He wasn’t brushing her hair. He was running his fingers through it, fluffing it out in voluptuous disorder.

“We haven’t made love for several days,” he said.

“No.” She inhaled deeply. “Did you mind?”

He began to brush her hair. “Of course I minded. You’re incomparable, my love. In fact, I’d say you’re the most responsive, passionate woman I’ve ever had in my bed, and that’s saying something.” He put the brush down and reached for his glass.

“Max, I don’t think you should drink any more of that brandy. You don’t sound like yourself.”

He lifted the glass to his mouth and tipped it back. He smiled at her, not the smile she loved, but a twisted smile with a hint of cruelty in it.

“You know what they say,” he said.
“In vinoveritas.”

He put the glass down, drew her back against his thighs, and framed her face with both hands. Her heart was pounding; her fingers curled into fists.

“Do you know what I think, Sara?”

She shook her head. She was beginning to be frightened.

“I think …” His words were becoming slurred. “I think love is highly overrated, don’t you?”

She swallowed hard. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“Take us, for example. Take that first night in Reading. We didn’t know each other. It wasn’t love. What we felt was purely physical. I remember thinking that I wanted to make you my mistress. How in hell’s name did we ever get to be married?”

“You said,” her mouth was completely dry, “you said that you felt as though fate had touched you on the shoulder.”

“Did I? Perhaps I was being gallant.” He chuckled. “I can be charming when I want to be. Then, so can you, my love.”

She felt as though a shard of glass had pierced her heart. He wasn’t himself. It was the laudanum that had loosened his tongue. But he couldn’t say these hateful things if he hadn’t been thinking them.

She shrugged out of his grasp, rose to her feet and turned to face him. In a few minutes, he would fall asleep. All she
had to do was get him into bed, and he would fall asleep. She couldn’t let herself be ruled by hurt pride at this stage of the game.