In Your Wildest Scottish Dreams Page 28
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were on board the Raven when your husband was killed?”
“Does it matter whether or not I was there?” Lucy said.
“It matters a great deal. You might’ve seen something.” She tapped the end of the umbrella on the floor as if it were a cane. “You left this behind.”
“Yes, thank you,” Lucy said, turning and reaching for the umbrella.
“Why did you leave it behind?” Glynis asked, pulling it away. “Were you in that much of a hurry? Did you see anyone aboard the Raven?”
Lucy shook her head.
“No one at all? Matthew Baumann wasn’t there? Did he kill your husband, Lucy, and pay you to keep silent?”
“Who is Matthew Baumann?”
Was it possible Lucy had never met the man? Or was she just a superb liar?
“You don’t have to be afraid of him.”
“I’m not afraid of anyone and I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Glynis blew out a breath, feeling foolish. She’d been so certain Lucy had been convinced to remain silent.
She walked to the door, opened it, and turned.
“You didn’t see anything? You’ve no idea who killed your husband?”
Lucy shook her head.
She realized she still held the umbrella. She was extending it to Lucy, but the other woman didn’t wait and jerked it out of her hand. Glynis’s fingers slid on the handle, accidentally releasing the opening mechanism.
Slowly, the umbrella unfurled, the black fabric stained the color of rust. She stared at it, thinking as she spoke. “If you left the Raven before your husband was killed, how did blood get on your umbrella?”
She watched as Lucy’s face changed. Gone was the whiner she’d met during their day of shopping and sightseeing. This woman looked older, the lines around her thin lips accentuated and a calculating look in her narrowed eyes.
“Do you know what he wanted me to do? He wanted to take me in the captain’s cabin. To christen it, he said. To make sure it knew I was welcome. As if a ship had thoughts and feelings. He cared more about the Raven than he did me.”
“No one else was there,” Glynis said, taking a step back. “You killed Gavin.”
“I killed him,” Lucy said, her smile eerily pleasant. “I stabbed him with his own stupid knife. It was so incredibly easy, I should have done it earlier. If I had known how quick he would die, or how good I’d be at it, I would have.”
Glynis gripped the frame of the door to steady herself. Otherwise, her knees might have given out.
“He loved that cane of his. He was forever showing it off. He had another one made, you know. A wedding present.” She smiled, revealing a great many white, sharp teeth.
She pushed a button Glynis hadn’t seen on the umbrella handle, grabbed the crook and pulled it free. At the end was a stiletto, the match of the one she’d seen buried in Gavin’s chest.
“I’m going home,” Lucy said brightly. “You can’t stop me. I’m leaving this horrible country and returning to England. I’ll be with my parents and my brothers and sisters and Jasper.”
She would be hanged. But Glynis didn’t say that. One did not argue with a madwoman.
She took another step back, and Lucy followed her. Yet another step as Lucy’s smile grew broader.
Tension hummed through her as she slid her hand in her reticule, feeling a measure of hope once her fingers skimmed the cold metal of the Derringer.
“Shall we see if practice makes perfect?” Lucy asked. “Do you think my aim will be as good with you as it was with Gavin? Will you die as quickly?”
“How are you going to explain me being dead in your room?”
Fear was a narrow ribbon tightening around her chest, harnessing her breath.
For a moment madness left Lucy’s eyes and calculation took over. “Thank you, I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps I can simply drag you to one of the empty rooms.” Her gaze swept over Glynis. “You don’t look like you weigh much. I doubt it will be difficult.”
With her thumb, Glynis fumbled for the mechanism to cock the gun. She had never fired the Derringer before and hoped it was as easy as simply pulling the trigger. Why hadn’t she checked to see if it had a bullet in it? For that matter, how did she check to see if it was loaded?
Lucy was too close, but wasn’t a Derringer a close-range weapon? It was nothing like a rifle for shooting game at a long distance. No, the victim had to be within a few feet.
Nausea zigzagged down her spine at the thought of shooting anyone.
A flash of something caught her attention but she didn’t turn her head. Please let it be the porter or someone else, a witness who would summon help.
Terror rooted her to the spot. Fear clamped her insides, making it difficult to breathe.
“Everyone talked about you,” Lucy said. “It was sickening. Glynis MacIain, returning to Scotland like a prodigal daughter. That’s all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to go home. Do you think I’m going to let you stop me now?”
Lucy lunged. Glynis threw her midsection back, avoiding the knife by a hair. Suddenly, she was grabbed, jerked from the doorway and thrown to the side. Lucy shrieked, raised her arm and launched herself at Glynis.
The sound of the exploding shot deafened her.
She slid to the carpet in a jumble of ill-connected limbs. Nothing was working the way it should. Pain raced through her, making her gasp.
Her hand fell trembling but useless. She hadn’t shot Lucy. Looking up, she tried to focus. Where was that pain coming from?
She closed her eyes, then opened them a second later. The tableau had not changed. Matthew Baumann stood there holding a smoking gun. At his feet was Lucy Whittaker, blood spreading from the wound in her stomach.
Had she been shot, too?
She couldn’t die now. Not when she’d come home to Lennox. Not when he loved her. Not now.
The smell of gunpowder hung in the corridor. Thundering footsteps made it sound as if a crowd raced toward them, but it was only the porter and the man who’d greeted her at the desk.
Baumann would have to explain. Right now, breathing was all she could do.
Glynis made herself look at Lucy’s face, away from the blood and into the madness.
“All I only really wanted,” Lucy said weakly, her gaze on Glynis, “was to go home.”
Glynis looked away as pain jutted through her, writhing from her arm to her chest. She swallowed against it, clinging to coherence. She thought of Lennox, kept his face in her mind.
She had to be brave because of him. She couldn’t die now.
Her feet didn’t look damaged. Nor did her legs. She made herself look at her stomach, afraid to find a matching wound to Lucy’s. Nothing.
Blood soaked her left sleeve.
Her new dress was ruined. The tear from the knife might be able to be repaired, but the blood would be very difficult to get out of the pale yellow fabric.
Her stomach rebelled, threatening to publicly humiliate her. She closed her eyes. She breathed deeply a few times until she mastered her nausea, then fixed her gaze on Baumann. He was tearing a towel into strips.
“Were you following me?”
“No,” he said. “I was watching her.”
“Why?”
“I knew I hadn’t killed Gavin Whittaker,” he said. “That didn’t leave too many other suspects.”
The porter knelt beside her and tried to put a compress on her arm. She batted him away or at least thought she did, but he clung to her like a tick.
“Please, madam, let me help you.”
She reluctantly nodded, hoping she didn’t scream, but he was pressing very hard against the wound.
“I even considered you or your husband,” Baumann said, taking the rest of the toweling he hadn’t given the porter and using it to press against Lucy’s wound.
“You thought me capable of murder, Baumann?” she asked, trying to take her mind from the pain.
“
I suspect you could do almost anything you wanted to do, Glynis, given enough motivation.”
“What was my motivation in your imaginary scenario? Why would I have killed Gavin Whittaker?”
“The better scenario was your husband killing him. Maybe he didn’t want to turn over the Raven after all.”
She shook her head then closed her eyes on a wave of dizziness.
“What a silly thing to think. Lennox wouldn’t kill anyone.”
Another set of footsteps should have warned her, but she was so faint she wanted to lay down on the floor alongside Lucy.
Of course it was Lennox, and of course he was instantly furious.
“What the hell happened, Baumann?”
“Mrs. Whittaker tried to kill your wife, Cameron. I saved her. I’d appreciate if you didn’t look like you’re ready to shoot me.”
She wished everyone would be quiet and the porter would stop hurting her.
Lennox brushed him away, but his touch was even more forceful.
“That hurts, Lennox.”
“I know, love. We have to stop the bleeding.”
We? It was her blood, although her blood wasn’t as copious as Lucy’s. But the porter and the man at the desk were now helping Baumann. How strange to shoot someone and then try to save her life.
“You need to tell Baumann you didn’t kill Gavin.”
“Later. I’m going to pick you up now.”
She blinked at Lennox. She was feeling very, very odd.
“I want you to hold this in place.” He guided her hands to the compress, her fingers smooth against the cotton. Was this a MacIain Mills product?
“Glynis, do you understand?”
She nodded, glancing at her arm and instantly wishing she hadn’t. What an ugly wound. Her flesh gaped open like a gutted fish, her blood spurting on the floor, the cotton, and her clothing. Even Lennox was bloody.
He gently pulled her into his arms and stood. How very strong he was.
She would have said something, tried to explain the situation, given him an assurance she was fine, just fine, but the air was growing oddly gauzy, like gloaming.
Grayness enveloped her, pain her escort as the world fell away.
WHEN SHE woke, it was in their suite with the drapes open to reveal a bright and sunny day.
Why was she so woozy? And hungry? Her eyes felt gritty, the corners pulled too tight. She blinked, her vision finally clearing. Feeling the pull of his presence, she slowly turned her head.
Lennox was sitting there staring at her as though he wanted to imprint her face in his mind.
Through half-closed eyes she watched him. Sunlight danced on the windowpane as if wanting to get into the room to touch him. The cooing of the doves was almost like a chant, a bright day, a bright day, a bright day refrain, as if giving the other birds a foretelling of the weather.
How very precious he was to her. She moved the hand closest to him, only to wince in pain. She stared at the impressive bandage on her arm and, in that instant, remembered everything.
“Is she going to live?” she asked.
“The woman tried to kill you, Glynis.”
“I know.”
Lucy Whittaker was a pathetic creature, one with whom she surprisingly had something in common. Perhaps she would’ve been as desperate and maddened if she’d been unable to come home to Scotland.
If she hadn’t had Lennox, a lodestone for her heart and her dreams, what would have happened to her?
“I don’t know how she is,” he said. “She’s still alive.”
Lucy had been shot in the stomach. From what she’d heard in Washington, those were the worst kind of wounds. The poor victim would suffer, sometimes for weeks, before finally succumbing to their injury. Either that or septicemia set in. Perhaps Lucy would be more fortunate than those Civil War combatants and survive.
“And Baumann?”
His face stiffened.
“He saved my life,” she said.
“I know, but I don’t have to like him.”
“No, you don’t have to like him.”
“He took advantage of you.”
She only smiled, knowing better than to defend Baumann in any way.
Baumann was determined to win his own personal war. But she was the one who’d gone to him in the first place. She’d initiated everything.
“I should have figured it out,” Lennox said. “She never asked how Gavin died. I should have noticed that, but I didn’t.”
“Have you much experience with murderers?”
His smile was wry. “Less than you. How did you know it was Lucy?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “Not until I was in the hotel room and the umbrella opened.” In a halting voice she explained what happened.
The encounter had left a residue on her soul, a bit of ash that might disappear with time. Or would it always remain there, a reminder of more naiveté that had been burned away?
“Saving your life is the only decent thing Baumann’s done since arriving in Glasgow,” he said, his frown an impressive demonstration of irritation. “But how? Was he following you again?”
“He’d been watching Lucy,” she said. “He suspected she had something to do with her husband’s death.”
“It would’ve been nice if he’d told someone.”
She agreed. “But I don’t suppose it’s reasonable to ask a spy to divulge his secrets.”
“The man needs to leave Glasgow, leave Scotland, and stay on his own side of the Atlantic.”
Another point on which she agreed.
She didn’t need constant reminders of Washington to recall her time there. Those years remained in her mind and her memory. One day, hopefully, she’d be able to replace them with better thoughts and recollections.
“Are there any other secrets in your past?” he asked.
“I’ve loved you ever since I was a girl,” she said. “Now you know my last and greatest secret.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, only looked at her.
“And now?”
“I love you still, damn it.”
He smiled as he leaned over and gently kissed her.
When she’d been hurt, all she’d thought about was Lennox. She was alive and so was he, sitting beside her with a look of love in his eyes.
She stretched out her right hand over her body and he grabbed it, bent and placed a kiss on her knuckles.
He really shouldn’t do things like that. He would bring her to tears, and she felt too close to crying as it was.
If not for the pain, the world would be a perfect place.
Chapter 39
“I would have come if you asked,” Matthew Baumann said, pulling his sleeve away from James’s grasp. “There was no need to send one of your men after me.”
Lennox dismissed James with his thanks and sat behind his desk. Once he learned Baumann had taken a room at the Lafayette Hotel, the better to watch Lucy, he simply sent James to retrieve him.
“On the contrary, I think there was every need.”
He sat relaxed, his arms bent at the elbows and leaning slightly forward. A deceptive pose since he wanted to march across the room and punch Baumann in the face. If he broke the man’s jaw, he wouldn’t mind. Perhaps doing so would make it difficult for him to speak or threaten anyone in the future.
Baumann was walking the walls of models, picking one up, putting it back in place. He stopped in front of the Vixen, surveying the model from all sides.
“You’re a talented designer, Cameron. Are you building more iron-hulled ships? This one is a beauty.”
“I didn’t bring you here to discuss my ships.”
“No, but you do want to discuss your wife.” Baumann turned and faced him, a rakish smile on his face. “How is she?”
“Better,” he said. The day after the incident, Glynis refused to stay in bed, insisting on being up and about.
“I have important things to do,” she said when he questioned her. “First, I h
ave to make a list of all the duties Mary and I have to discuss. Who will be in charge of meals and other tasks. Secondly, I have to bury my gun.”
“Your gun?” he asked, startled.
She nodded, then shocked him by pulling a Derringer from her reticule.
“It was Richard’s. I would have used it on Lucy, but I froze. I wanted to shoot her, but my finger wouldn’t move.”
“And after you bury the gun?” he asked. “What will you do then?”
“Look over the household ledgers,” she said. “We could practice some economies. There’s a great deal of waste at Hillshead.”
A surge of warmth almost knocked him back on his heels. Not simply desire this time but another emotion, love coupled with joy.
“Then have at it,” he said. “My life and my ledgers are open to you.”
For now, however, he was facing down Baumann, and ensuring the man knew he was no longer welcome in Glasgow.
“What do you want to ask me? Go ahead, as far as Glynis is concerned I have no more secrets.”
“I would reassess the statement if I were you,” Lennox said. “That’s my wife you’re talking about. She’s not your operative any longer.”
The other man’s eyes widened. “I’m surprised she told you.”
“She’s my wife.”
“As you’ve said.” Baumann shrugged. “I don’t go around telling people who I employ, or don’t, for that matter.”
“I suggest you not try to employ anyone else in Glasgow.”
Baumann startled him by laughing. “I doubt I could. I’ve been the recipient of more than one strange glance, let me tell you.”
“I’ll thank you for saving Glynis, but it’s little enough payment for taking advantage of her.”
“Did I? War makes people think differently than they would in peacetime, Cameron. All sorts of things that were once meaningful no longer are, like chivalry.”
“Or honor?”
Baumann’s mustache tilted. “Honor is defined according to which side you’re on, Cameron. Am I honorable to the War Department? Most assuredly. But to a Confederate? I’m the epitome of a slimy snake.” With the last two words his voice altered, took on a southern drawl. “A friend of mine has a saying. ‘War is hell.’ Sherman fights in the trenches. My battlefields were in the ballrooms and at the dining tables of Washington.”