Chapter 20

TWENTY

Belladonna had unpacked her meager belongings. She hadn't wished to bother a maid when there was so very little of it. There were few servants in the house at any rate, most of them having taken their half day to attend a traveling show in a neighboring village.

Eyeing the lot of it, Belladonna was struck by how shabby they appeared in the master's suite of Highwood Abbey. She had never aspired to riches in her life. The idea of dressing fashionably or living in leisure had been so far removed from her existence. But she'd need to think about them now.

Looking around her, she sighed. It had been a point of contention about taking the chamber. Initially, she had refused because she felt as though they were evicting Edwina from her personal space. But then Edwina had informed her that she had not stayed in those rooms since the night Thomas had died. Finding out that he had in fact died in those rooms was doubly distressing.

It wasn't that she feared ghosts. If he was haunting the house, he'd be as benevolent in death as he had in life. It was more than feeling the echoes of such pain and grief in that setting would hardly make it restful. Still, there had been no way to offer up that protest to Edwina without making an already difficult situation worse.

It was while she was placing hairpins and brush in one of the drawers of the dressing table that the gleam of something caught her eye. Tucked into the corner of the drawer was a single gold stick pin, a cravat pin. The initials on it were TFH. Thomas Hollander.

With trepidation, Belladonna picked it up. She would return it to Edwina who was probably beside herself thinking it lost. But the moment she closed her hand around it, she heard the voices. Not in the room with her, or even in the hall beyond. They were in her mind. Shouting at one another. And they were horrifyingly familiar.

Thomas Hollander had argued with Reverend Stalker while wearing that cravat pin. And they'd argued about her. Because Stalker had attempted to sway Thomas to his way of thinking and the man, far too good for this world as Desmond had said, would have no part of it. In fact, he had threatened to have Stalker removed from the parish if he did not halt his hate mongering.

Her stomach heaved and Belladonna fell to the floor, the pin clattering on the wood as it bounced off the carpet. Covering her mouth with her hand, she managed not to retch. When she had calmed herself, she retrieved the pin, but did not hold it in her bare hand. Instead, she picked it up and tucked it into her pocket before going in search of Edwina. She needed to find out the truth and she needed Desmond. Because she feared very much what might happen if Stalker discovered they had wed.

Opening the door, Bella rushed into the corridor but halted almost instantly. Edwina was there. But she was not alone. Standing beside her, his hand gripping her upper arm forcefully enough to bruise, was Reverend Stalker. And in the man's other hand was a wicked looking blade. Quickly, she considered her options. Running was out of the question. She would never leave Edwina to fend for herself. Screaming for help would be futile. There were only a handful of servants in the house and they were all in the kitchens, several floors below. Overpowering him was out of the question, as well. That left only one choice. Outsmarting him.

"I have no quarrel with Mrs. Hollander and no wish to hurt her. You will come with me, Belladonna Goodwynne, and face the consequences for your actions… for your pact with the devil," Stalker said, all but spitting the last word.

"Do not do it!" Edwina cried. "He will kill me anyway because I am a witness to his madness."

"He murdered Thomas," Belladonna said. She reached into her pocket and retrieved the stickpin. "I found this in a drawer and meant to bring it to you. But when I picked it up, I saw… well, I saw everything. Reverend Stalker followed him from the church after a confrontation and he murdered him in cold blood."

"Shut your mouth!" Stalker all but shrieked.

"He killed him because Thomas threatened to have him removed from his position at the church due to his hatefulness and his obvious bias towards me. It was becoming clear to you husband, Edwina, that the reverend was quite mad."

Stalker pulled the knife from Edwina's throat and pointed at Belladonna. "You spread the devil's lies!"

"Do you deny killing him?" Belladonna challenged. "Cutting him down in cold blood? Which of us, Reverend Stalker, is doing the devil's work?"

"The pair of you," he said, gesturing from one to the other of them with the knife, "Will come with me."

"No," Belladonna said. "I will not. I refuse. It's clear you mean to kill us. I'll not make it easier for you to conceal the crime!"

Desmond stared at the woman before him in confusion. In her hand she held a bundle of cloth that she slowly began to unravel. Wrapped inside those layers of fabric was a stone, still dark with blood. A stone that he knew, that he recognized. "Why is that in your possession?"

"I knew, when he came home that evening, that he'd done something horrible," she said. "So rather than disposing of the evidence for him, as he wished for me to do, I hid it… My husband, Mr. Crane, is not a kind man. I married him because I simply had no other choice. My own father was a poor vicar in a distant parish who had no means to support a grown daughter. When Lynden proposed it had seemed like a Godsend. But it was less than a week after our wedding that he beat me so soundly I could not even get out of bed."

"So you thought to blackmail him?"

"No. I thought to see him hanged if possible. I do not wish to stay his hand in my direction, Mr. Crane. I have lone recognized that only death will spare me further violence. Whether that death is mine or his remains to be seen."

Desmond frowned deeply. He'd never known a person quite so resolute. It seemed as though she truly did not care which one of them lived or died so long as they not occupying either of those states together. "Where is your husband now?"

She sighed wearily. "I could not say with any certainty. Before I tell you my theory on the matter, there are other things you must know, Mr. Crane… Your brother-in-law came here to this house to speak with my husband the day of his murder. Indeed, he had been gone from here only for no more than an hour and a half when news reached us that he received a likely fatal injury."

A terrible suspicion built within him. "What did your husband do when Thomas left here?"

"He followed him," she said. "He followed him and he came home bloodied."

"And you said nothing because no one would have believed you or done anything about it… and then Stalker would have killed you," he surmised.

"Precisely," she answered. "You'll have no help from the local magistrate. He is a toadying sycophant who will do whatever is necessary to curry favor with those whom he perceives to have power. If Lynden is eliminated, the power reverts to those who hav wealth and land. In short, it will be you."

"Where can I find him?"

She shook her head. "If I tell you, and he comes home, he will kill me."

"I will not let that happen. I offer you whatever aid and protection it is within my power to provide."

She was thoughtful, considering, weighing. "So long as he lives, that will be limited."

"So it will, Mrs. Stalker. I cannot tell you that I will see him dead, but I can tell you that if a choice must be made between his life and the lives of those whom I love—" Desmond stopped. Those whom he loved. Did he love Belladonna? It was so fast. Instantaneous in fact. All her talk of curses and spells was not something that he could so easily dismiss under the circumstances. Because he'd never experienced that depth of emotion for a mother human, much less to have fallen headlong into the swirling abyss that was love within only a matter of days. "I'll do what I must, Mrs. Stalker, regardless of what that may be." …And

She was quiet for a moment and then nodded. "I believe, sir, that he has gone wherever your bride is. He is quite obsessed with her. He has been since our arrival in this village. I confess to feeling some degree of guilt because I saw his obsession with her, dangerous as I knew it was, as a relief for me. It diverted his attention from me and allowed me a respite. That is my shame to bear."

He would have offered her comfort, some reassurance perhaps. But he was already running. Back to Highwood Abbey. Possibly straight into the doom that Belladonna had insisted was their fate. Because of a curse.