Chapter Thirty-Three

N at strode down the corridor to his grandfather’s room, his muddy boots clacking on the wooden floorboards, and rapped smartly on the door.

After a few moments, it opened to reveal Rodgers, her square face creased in a scowl. “Yes?”

“I’ve come to see my grandfather.”

“Much good it’ll do you.”

He glared back at the woman. “Get out of the way and let me in.”

She stood back with surprising meekness for one normally so aggressive to visitors, and Nat entered the room. Immediately, the realization that the room had transformed from simple bedroom to sickroom bore down on him. An unhealthy, stuffy miasma pervaded the air, and his grandfather lay flat and still on the big bed, his slight body raising the covers only a fraction. Beside the bed, on an upholstered stool, sat his stepmother, her bony hands resting on the covers, with Aunt Agnes beside her in a high-backed chair.

Nat approached on hesitant feet. The left-hand side of Sir Hugh’s face had fallen to one side, as though a heavy weight were dragging it down, and his skin had the sunken, waxy look of death, that Nat knew well. Only his stertorous breathing told Nat he still lived.

“What happened?”

His stepmother raised her head. “He had another of his turns first thing this morning when Jan went in to see him. Jan wanted to discuss some matters of business that needed your grandfather’s approval.” Her hands gripped the bedclothes so hard the knuckles whitened. “We sent for the doctor straightaway. He’s been here all day, bleeding Sir Hugh, but to no avail. He was about to leave when you returned. Where have you been, I’d like to know, while the house has been in crisis? We looked everywhere for you after it happened, but it appears you were out gallivanting with the boy and his governess. Doing what, I cannot imagine, having seen the state you were all in. Still are.” She ran her gaze over his filthy, coatless attire and her lip curled in a sneer.

Nat ignored most of what she’d said as being not worthy of a reply. “Can the doctor do anything for him?”

She shook her head. “He bled him copiously, but can do no more. He said it’s just a matter of time, now.”

“Going to meet his maker, he is,” Aunt Agnes put in. “Be with Robert and Kenver, he will.” She chortled. “And I’ll be goin’ there soon, meself. Mark my words.”

Nat’s stepmother shot her a malevolent glare, as though she saw the old woman as an unwelcome intruder in the sickroom.

Nat studied his grandfather’s ravaged face. His stepmother had played no part in this, he felt sure. But what about Trefusis? Was it not rather more than a coincidence that the blackguard had been in here when the apoplexy had occurred? He’d set Yves on the path to explore the beach adit and counted him lost or drowned, which he would have been but for Caroline. No doubt it had been he who’d interfered with Nat’s saddle then removed the evidence. And now Sir Hugh was handily at death’s door. After a visit from Trefusis.

Nat felt grief, of course, but his grandfather had reached a far greater age than most, and he’d disliked being bedridden and at the mercy of Rodgers. No life for a man who’d always been so active. Common sense told him not to feel sorry for Sir Hugh. And besides, Nat had other far greater worries to attend to. The first of which was to get rid of Trefusis before he did any more harm.

“Where is Trefusis now, Mother?”

“Downstairs. Waiting in the parlor.”

Nat turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

The patter of her light slippers told him she’d followed.

Without pausing, Nat descended the stairs and went into the parlor, shoving the door open so hard it banged against the wall. Trefusis was by the window, but he turned as Nat came in. He must have been able to tell by the expression on Nat’s face that all was not well.

“Get out of here,” Nat began with, not being one to beat about the bush. “You’re dismissed. I want you gone.”

The man’s dark face darkened even further. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Nat crossed the room and stopped in front of him, almost nose to nose. “You heard. Pack your things and go. You are no longer employed here.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Trefusis said, his normally calm voice edged with tension and his gaze going over Nat’s shoulder toward the still open door. “You can’t do that.”

Nat didn’t bother to look behind him, but guessed his stepmother had come into the room. “Can’t I? You watch me.”

Trefusis’s lip curled in a sneer. “You don’t have the authority to dismiss me. I’m not your employee.”

Nat’s face must have matched his. “Don’t I? You think so? We’ll see about that. If you don’t want me to kick you down the drive, then you’ll leave right now. Or I’ll call the Pascoes and have them throw you out. We’ll all kick you down the drive.”

“What do you think you’re doing, Nathaniel?” His stepmother finally found her voice, an icily cold one. “Jan is needed here. We can’t manage without him.”

Nat didn’t take his eyes off Trefusis. “No. He is not. How do you think my saddle came off my horse, Mother ? Someone damaged the girth straps then went out and threw my saddle over the cliff or down an old mineshaft before I could find the evidence. Trefusis delayed Pascoe from retrieving it when I asked, so he could get there first.”

“Rubbish,” Trefusis snarled. “Your fall has addled your brain.”

“That is a ridiculous accusation,” Nat’s stepmother said. “Why on earth would Jan do that? He has no reason to want you to have an accident.”

“To want me dead, you mean.”

“I don’t want you dead,” Trefusis snapped. “Perhaps you should look at the way Old Pascoe looks after the saddlery and lay the blame where it truly belongs. On the shoddy work of one of the staff. The man is a drinker.”

Nat grit his teeth. “And you sent Yves out this morning to explore the adit in Penmar Cove, knowing full well how dangerous this would be and that Yves would do it on his own.”

His stepmother blustered, not quite so confident now. “That isn’t true. Yves wouldn’t do that. He’s far too sensible.”

“He did, Mother, he did. Caroline—Miss Fairfield—and I have just returned from Wheal Jenny. Thanks to her prodigious detective skills your plans have failed. We followed Yves into the adit on the beach, but the tide was fast coming in, and the only way out was to make our way up through the workings. Yves is safe, thanks to Miss Fairfield. Hetty overheard your friend Trefusis telling Yves about where to get into the adit and recounted it all to Caroline. He knew a boy like Yves couldn’t resist the adventure of it.”

Trefusis’s already darkened face now reddened in anger, turning a disturbing shade of puce. “How could I have known he’d do that? I don’t have the power to see into the future. If the boy was stupid enough to go down there by himself, it has nothing to do with me.”

Nat prodded Trefusis in the chest with a long finger. Hard. “And you were with my grandfather when he was taken ill. One of these things you might have been able to wriggle out of, but not all of them. And on top of that, there’s Yves’s medicine. Bridget has been trying to dose him with laudanum, as no doubt you both already know. Which one of you gave it to her? Which one of you persuaded her to dose him hoping that one night she’d give him too much and he wouldn’t wake up?”

His stepmother had come round to stand shoulder to shoulder with Trefusis, her face ashy pale. “Why would Jan want to do that?” Her eyes glinted like sharp flints. Nat’s heart did a leap of fear as he recognized the guilt in them. It was her. Caroline had been correct. Perhaps she had no knowledge of the rest, but she was behind the poisoning. Knowledge of her crime was written all over her face.

“Because he wants all of us gone,” Nat said. “As do you. Yves and I stand between him and what he’s come to see as his inheritance. What you’ve allowed him to come to see as his. Because he plans to marry Hetty and get his hands on this estate.”

His stepmother’s eyes widened in shock, all appearance of sangfroid flown. She hadn’t known that one. “That’s not true,” she blustered. “Tell him it’s not true, Jan. It’s me you love, not her.”

Trefusis must have realized his case was lost. “Why would I want a dried-up old hag like you, when I could have a fresh fruit ripe for the picking like Hetty? You stupid woman. I’ve had enough of pandering to you and your vanity.”

Her hand jerked back and the sound of the slap ricocheted around the parlor. “How dare you presume to cast your filthy gaze on my daughter! Get out! I never want to see you again. Get out right now.” Her coldly furious gaze looked daggers at the man she must have thought she loved. How swiftly love can turn to hatred. In the blink of an eye.

It seemed Nat wasn’t going to have to kick Trefusis down the drive. His stepmother might beat him to it.

Trefusis threw them both a furious glare and, shoving between them, stormed out of the parlor. Silence reigned for a long half minute, before Nat swung round on his stepmother. “And you needn’t think you’re staying. I know it was you with the laudanum, you murdering, cold-hearted woman. You made my life a misery when I was a boy, then you made Hetty’s life the same. I won’t allow you to repeat history by doing it to Yves. And you can take that shrew of a nursery maid with you. I know she’s in your pay. Go on. Get out.”

Her mouth hung open, for once lost for words.

“And don’t go anywhere near my sister before you leave.” He marched out of the parlor and into the hall, buzzing with pent up anger. Maybe he should have punched Trefusis in the nose. Several times. That might have drained away some of this emotion and made him feel better.

Having dispatched a shocked Ennion to give Bridget her immediate marching orders, he paced up and down until his stepmother emerged from the parlor. Ignoring him, she stalked up the stairs, back ramrod straight. “And don’t you touch any of the silver,” Nat shouted, as a parting shot. Maybe he was behaving in a rash and petty manner, but compared with how he felt, this outburst was nothing.

She disappeared from view, and Nat strode up and down again, fists clenched by his sides, chest heaving. A thought fought its way to the surface of his jumbled mind. Caroline. He needed to tell her what he’d done. Some of the tension fizzled out of his body at the thought of her, but by no means all of it. He took the stairs two at a time in a run.

He met Caroline, much cleaner now than she had been and wearing a fresh gown, in the gallery and ground to a halt facing her. “Caroline. I was coming to look for you.”

“And I for you.”

She sounded breathless, her cheeks a becoming pink. She’d only had time to braid her hair but had not put it up on top of her head. It suited her. She had a hairpin in her hand which she quickly tucked into the bodice of her gown.

The world stood still around him, the sounds of the house receding into nothingness.

He gazed into her eyes, lost in their depths, for an eon of time that might only have been seconds. His heartbeat pounded in not just his chest but throughout his body, and he felt himself harden with desire again. She was quite the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, even with a smear of dirt high on her forehead that she’d missed.

For once he had to let impulse have its way.

Stepping forward, he caught her in his arms and her face turned up to meet his. Her compliant body molded against his and she must have been able to feel the extent of his arousal, but he wasn’t embarrassed. This time, though, he ought to play the gentleman and seek her permission. Her face was so close to his he was breathing her in. “Do you mind if I kiss you again?” The words came out a little hoarse.

Her dark eyes flashed. “I should like it very much if you did, Nat.”

He needed no further bidding but bent his head and pressed his lips to hers. They parted, his tongue slipped in and met hers and her hands came up to grip his shoulders. His head spun and he might have fallen had there been something handy like a bed to fall onto, preferably with Caroline still in his arms. But there wasn’t, and he had to remain upright, his now throbbing arousal pressed against the softness of her stomach, something that only added to his ardor.

She kissed him back with enthusiasm, her hands rising from his shoulders to bury themselves in his hair, careless of the bump on the back of his head, pulling him ever closer. How small and delicate she felt in his arms despite her height, how fragile for someone who had just traversed an entire mine.

Eventually, they had to come up for air, breathless and gasping. But neither released their hold on the other. “Nat,” Caroline whispered. “Oh, Nat…”

He couldn’t resist the sound of his name on her lips. He kissed her again, drowning in the depths of her mouth and the willing body pressed against his own. Oh, how glorious it would be to whisk her into his bedroom right now and throw her onto the bed. To remove her clothes bit by bit, to kiss each newly exposed bit of skin, to finally part her legs and let his hungry manhood slide inside her where it belonged. He had a feeling that right now she might do nothing to resist him if he tried this. With great difficulty, he remembered he was a gentleman, and gentlemen didn’t behave like that with any young lady, particularly not one of their employees.

He released her mouth and stepped back, disentangling himself from her arms. “I-I must apologize for my behavior, Caroline.” His voice came out hoarse still, and squeaky as though he was back to being fourteen with it newly broken. If only he were carrying his coat, he could have put it in front of his trousers. She must be able to see all too clearly what he was thinking.

“You have no need to apologize,” she said, her face serious. “For I enjoyed being kissed like that enormously.”

His cock twitched at her reply, trying to influence him again. He had to get it under control. “I am glad to hear it.”

She laughed, a gay, carefree sound in the glum silence of the house. “Oh, Nat, do not look so worried. I am a woman, not a goddess you fear defiling with your attentions.” Her eyes twinkled. “Come, kiss me again, for I fear I shall faint for wanting you to.”

This time his passions nearly got the better of him. This time he found he had her pressed up against the wall, his cock pushing against her stomach so hard he felt it might burst already and disgrace him. And she kissed him back with as much passion as he had himself. Her mouth hungry for his, her hands sliding up under his loosened shirt onto the naked skin of his back. Oh God, how much he wanted her to touch him all over.

A discreet cough disturbed them.

Oh my God. Hetty . She was standing at the far end of the gallery looking extremely interested in what he’d been doing. What they’d both been doing. A complete passion killer. No need for a coat to hide anything now. The shock had returned him to normal in a trice.

“Does this mean you’re going to marry Caroline?” Hetty asked.

Nat looked from her to the woman still in his arms. “Yes,” he said. “I think I am, if she will have me.”