Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

T heir absence that afternoon had not gone unnoticed, but fortunately, they merely received a few ribbing remarks from the younger set and some stern glances from the older.

Noelle could handle both of them.

She’d married a man she loved – even if she hadn’t told him yet.

It was Christmas. Life was perfect.

Yes, there was still the business of an unsolved murder, but she imagined they could get through anything as long as they had one another.

The Christmas Eve feast would be second only to Christmas dinner, and Noelle was famished after her rather… rigorous afternoon.

Hermione watched her eat with a raised eyebrow while Brighton made more than one snide comment. Noelle chalked it up to jealousy, and when the ladies retired after dinner, she found that she was so caught up in what was to come once more that evening that she hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation.

When the men finally joined them, she nearly jumped off the sofa to find Cooper, but a glance around the men filing in told her what her heart already knew – he wasn’t there.

He had told her that he was going to ask Lord John to review a couple of things about their deal that had been nagging at him, but she had hoped he would do so while the men were together.

Except… there was Lord John in the corner, talking to Hermione. So where could Cooper be?

Perhaps he had excused himself for a few minutes or was walking the grounds as he did when he became overwhelmed. She sighed out her impatience and decided that she wouldn’t wait around. She was finished with this party for the evening and ready to start her wedding night – even though she’d already had a wedding afternoon. A newly married woman could take what she wanted.

She decided she would start looking for him at his library desk and perhaps in the orangery, which had become a secret place for them. He would often hide away there if he needed space from the party.

Well, there or the grounds, but the wind was howling fiercely tonight, and she had no desire to find her outdoor garments to see if he had left the house.

She would have to wait until he returned if he was out for a walk.

No one paid her attention as she left her seat, placing her drink on the table by the drawing room door before continuing through the foyer and then on to the back of the house.

The doors to the library were open, and when she walked through them, a gust of cold air reached her. Had the terrace doors been left open? She shivered as she stepped into the usually warm and cheery room.

“Cooper? Are you in here?” No response. “Is anyone in here?”

She heard nothing but the wind sweeping in through the doors, and she rushed across the room, looking outside to see if Cooper had perhaps left to walk in the snow. She couldn’t see him leaving the doors open behind him, but perhaps they had blown open accidentally.

She was about to shut them when she saw a figure heading toward the house, cloak billowing behind him.

“Cooper!” she called out in relief as the darkened figure approached. “There you are. I was so worried.”

The man looked up at her and stopped abruptly before marching toward her again, his steps more hurried. Noelle frowned. His gait was unfamiliar, and the closer he came, the more she realized his stature was wrong. This wasn’t Cooper.

His face lifted toward the house, the sconces within the room shining just bright enough for her to make out his features in the dim light.

It was Lord Andrew or Lord Rochester. She couldn’t be sure which from this distance.

And the sneer on his face was not one that she recognized. She paused for a moment. She had known these men since she was a child. They had been raised in the same circles, had attended the same events, and had even been mentioned in the same conversations regarding marriage at one point.

But this man… this was not a man she knew.

Realizing the threat, she backed away, shutting the doors as quickly as possible.

Panic dulled her senses as she searched for the lock as he reached the terrace. She knew that he would only push open the doors and catch her if she turned and ran. Her movements became frantic, but she cried out in relief when she finally found the mechanism and turned the lock just in time.

He reached the door, trying the knob, banging his fist against the glass with a thud when it denied him, causing her to jump.

She backed away slowly, terrorized by the menacing look in his eyes – terrorized but livid. Angry that he would scare her like this, angry that he might have played a part in the murder of Lord Northbridge. Why else would he look at her like that, with such hatred in his eyes? She had known him since they were children, and he had no reason to hold any malice against her.

Unless… her heart started beating erratically when her mind cleared slightly now that the initial threat had vanished, realizing what this could mean.

Cooper was missing. Could this man have had something to do with it?

She hadn’t stopped walking backward and suddenly bumped into a bookshelf just as she noted a strange look of recognition on the face of the man banging on the door. It was almost… relief?

And then, suddenly, the supposed bookshelf behind her moved.

Her breath caught in her throat as she turned around slowly, looking up into the face that matched the one outside the door.

This was Lord Rochester.

Meaning outside was Lord Andrew.

Only, there was no safety to be found here. For not only did these men wear identical faces, but their expressions currently matched.

Holding malice and, to her dawning horror, satisfaction.

For they had caught her.

Cooper groaned as he came to, the room in front of him swimming into focus.

The first thing he noticed was the cold. It was freezing here, his breath smoking in the air before him. A room of plain wooden boards surrounded him; the furniture dark shapes in the dim light. A tiny candle smelling of tallow burned on the table beside him, meaning he had little time until it would be extinguished altogether.

He tried to move his hands, but they were tied together with rope that scratched into his bound wrists.

He blinked rapidly, trying to focus on what had happened, how he had gotten here, and, most importantly – how he would escape this predicament.

There was also something nagging at him, something far more important.

Oh, yes. Why had they not just killed him outright?

He didn’t have long to think about it, however, for the door burst open, allowing in a gust of cold winter air, snow, and Lord Rochester. Or was it Lord Andrew? Cooper couldn’t be certain, for his focus was as fuzzy as the light.

It had taken both of them to subdue him and carry him here. Of that, he was sure.

“You’re awake.”

“What the fuck is happening?” he demanded, and Lord Andrew – yes, this was Lord Andrew – grinned at him.

“Oh, what fun we are going to have. In fact, the fun has already started.”

The pieces of Cooper’s memories began to join together. He had been walking out of the dining room with the other gentlemen, ready to rejoin the women. He and Lord John had planned to discuss their deal, but Lord John asked for a moment with one of the women first – Lady Hermione, if Cooper was not mistaken. He couldn’t see what Lord John saw in the woman, but that was neither his business nor his problem.

As they exited the dining room, the butler had approached and held out a letter to him that hopefully contained the information he had asked from one of his men of business regarding the land he had wondered about.

Before he could open it, however, Lord Rochester had asked for a moment to speak to him, suggesting the library. Cooper had been wary, keeping the man in his sights. Then everything had gone black when they had walked through the doors. Cooper must have been hit on the head. There was no other explanation.

And Lord Andrew must have done it. The brothers were working together.

This begged the question – where was Lord Rochester right now?

And why was Cooper here and not lying on the ground, dead by gunshot like Lord Northbridge?

“Why the fuck am I still alive?” he demanded.

“Such language,” Lord Andrew said, shaking his head at him. “And that accent. Your true self is coming out.”

“I’ve never been anything but my true self,” Cooper retorted. “Not like some people.”

“We are doing what we must do to preserve our way of life,” Lord Andrew said. He dragged a chair across the floor toward him, the sound grating on Cooper. “If only all of you fortune hunters would stay out of it.”

“Is that what Lord Northbridge was? A fortune hunter? Thought he was your friend.”

“He was more of an acquaintance,” Lord Andrew said, crossing one leg over his other. “And in this case, he didn’t understand that he needed to keep his nose out of where it didn’t belong.”

“Why not just warn him off of this deal?”

“He was ruining everything. He tried to keep you out of this, to send you home. Do you remember being locked in the orangery? It was his juvenile attempt to keep you from knowing what we were doing with our deal.”

“But you stood up for me to him.”

“Because we knew that we might need you to blame if things went wrong – which they did, of course. You would have been such an easy scapegoat if Noelle hadn't turned on all of us and backed you up. So we had to plant that pistol in Bingly’s room – not that he was the most believable murderer.”

He said it as though it was Cooper’s fault that he hadn’t been able to frame him.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Oh, why are you still alive? Well, to kill you outright would bring too much scrutiny upon us after Northbridge. We had to make this believable and not put the true motive in question.”

“So, you have an alternative?”

“Why, yes, we do.” His grin was sickeningly sweet. “You are a newlywed, but it will come to light that your new wife wasn’t as pleased as she seemed with the marriage. She came to her senses and told you she no longer wanted to be with you and would return home with her father instead. In a fit of rage, you killed her, and then you killed yourself in grief. You will leave a note, of course.”

Anger grew within Cooper at every word, so strong that he nearly used it to break the bonds that tied his wrists.

“You would never get away with something like that.”

“Would I not? You see, Hartwell, not many people question a lord, which my brother is, if you haven’t noticed. You? You are no one without your money. No one cares about you.”

Someone did. His wife. Who he had to protect with every part of him. He wished desperately that she was staying in the drawing room with the other ladies, that she would realize by his absence that something was amiss. He might not make it out of here, but he had to ensure she didn’t go down with him. It was no fault of hers that he had wanted to be part of this deal.

Was it his own greed that had brought him here? Should he have just dropped this when everyone associated with this rail line had gone missing?

Most likely.

But it was too late for that now.

“Why do you care so much about this railway deal?” he asked, still needing to know, even though the circumstances had overcome him. “You must understand that it will happen one way or the other, at some time or another, whether you like it or not.”

“That might be true,” Lord Andrew said, “but we are going to be part of it and ensure that it takes the route we need it to and stops both when and where we want it to.”

“Then why not just be a part of it from the start?”

“Because we need more time. Time to raise our own capital. Unlike what you might think, we’re not all sitting around on stacks of coin like Northbridge was. My brother and I need to earn our way forward, which happens once a year – at a little festival near our estate called The St. Swithin’s Summer Fayre.”

The ire that had been simmering in Cooper’s family threatened to explode at the extent these men had gone to – although he wasn’t surprised. He had seen people do far worse for far less.

“So you needed one more summer season?”

“That’s right. One more year, and we should have enough. But not if your damn railroad gets built through there first. We would not only lose out on the railroad but also on all of the people who would bypass the town. People learn about the festival while stopping through overnight when travelling.”

“None of this is worth killing for.”

“We didn’t think so, either – not at first. But then when we took Sanderson just to scare him, we accidentally went too far, and you know what? It wasn’t as difficult as we thought and made everything much easier for us.”

Cooper cursed, inwardly this time. Here, he’d thought this party would open up opportunities for him. Instead, he had only embroiled himself in a murderous scheme and a love that had wrapped itself around his heart – which was likely more dangerous than anything else could ever be.

For if anything happened to Noelle, he would never forgive himself.

Nor be able to live without her.

“So, what now?”

“Now, you wait,” Lord Andrew said far too cheerfully. “Your wife should have been here by now. I best see what’s taking my brother so long. Fear not. You will be reunited momentarily.”

That didn’t give him a lot of time.

He had to get them out of this.

And he had to do it quickly.