Chapter 23

CHAPTER23

"Your Grace, the Marquess of Coston is here to see you," Willoughby informed Edward as soon as the couple had returned home. "He is waiting in the parlor. Since you said you would be returning by three, I have taken the liberty of informing him of the same, and he decided to wait."

"Thank you, Willoughby," Edward replied. "We shall head there immediately."

"Could you please send for some tea?" Leah asked, to which Willoughby bowed, and the couple immediately headed where their friend was waiting.

As soon as they opened the door, Andrew jumped up from his seat, shaking head disapprovingly. "Where have you been, you two? A guest comes to see you, and what do you do? You leave him to wait for hours and hours."

Edward laughed. "Hardly hours, old boy. Willoughby mentioned you’ve been here a short while."

"Ah," Andrew grinned. "Then my plan of making you feel bad has been ruined."

"I’m afraid so," Edward laughed. "But it is still good to see you, old boy."

"You, too," Andrew replied, shaking his friend’s hand, only to turn to Leah to kiss hers instead. "And you look as lovely as ever, my dear."

"Always the charmer," Leah chuckled. "Let us all sit down and have some tea. Edward and I have something to share with you."

"I hope it is not gossip," Andrew frowned. "I am not dreadfully keen on those."

"Neither are we," Leah agreed. "This is something far more important than mere gossip."

"It is?" Andrew’s eyes widened curiously.

Leah and Edward proceeded to share with him everything that had happened in the past several days, endeavoring not to omit a single piece of information, so he could get the whole picture. Once they were done, Andrew seemed to be lost in thought, tugging at his chin hair with his fingers.

"So, you are telling me that your parents hired a criminal?" Andrew wondered, to which Edward merely nodded. "That does sound like something they would do, to help him out, of course. And you knew nothing of this?"

"Of course not," Edward shrugged. "It was none of my concern whom my parents would employ."

"I see," Andrew was still pondering. "Well, there is the answer to your mystery, right there," he finally said, sounding all important.

"Where?" Edward and Leah both exclaimed at the same time. Neither of them could see what Andrew was referring to, at least not without being pointed in that direction.

Andrew got up and started pacing about the room, with his hands crossed at his lower back. He looked like a detective about to reveal the entire mystery of how the crime was committed and send the guilty party to prison. Leah liked detective stories. She wished that things were that easy in real life, though. There were some difficulties for the protagonist as he or she tried to find the solution to the mystery, then suddenly, with one single piece of evidence, everything would start to make sense. All the pieces of the puzzle would fall into their rightful place and voila! The mystery was solved.

Unfortunately, that was not how things were in real life. If they were, Leah would have found out what happened to her mother a long time ago. The same would be with Edward’s parents. But they were still in the same place as before, with the exception of that address that they knew about. Leah could not wait to head there and see who was hiding on the premises. Whoever it was, they had to know something.

"It must have been someone from the footman’s criminal past," Andrew offered his view of the events. "Someone who was out for revenge, and the duke and the duchess were simply caught in the middle of it all."

Leah looked at Edward. That seemed too simple of an explanation. The way he gazed back at her assured her that he felt the same way. Something simply wasn’t adding up.

"What? It doesn’t sound plausible?" Andrew wondered, his head turning toward Edward, then Leah, then back at Edward.

"It does," Edward shrugged. "It just seems like too much effort to murder three people when you only want to murder one of them. Wouldn’t it have been easier to catch Harry alone? Perhaps when he went to visit his family. If your version of events is true, Andrew, then whoever murdered Harry took a great risk in murdering both a duke and a duchess along with a common criminal. It just... doesn’t add up."

"I have to agree with Edward here," Leah nodded. "It seems like making a plan much more twisted and complicated by adding two such high ranking people in society. No. I just don’t see it like that. "

"Well, do you have any theories on what happened?" Andrew asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"That is the problem," Leah admitted. "We don’t. We cannot figure out what happened, even if our lives depended on it."

"Perhaps you don’t know everything you need to know," Andrew reminded them. "There is still that address you need to go to."

"Yes," Leah sighed. "Edward thinks we need to find out more about this whole thing and especially about Harry’s criminal dealings, but I think we ought to go to there as soon as tomorrow." She looked at Edward, expecting a reaction. She thought he would again disagree, but to her surprise, he did no such thing.

"Maybe you’re right," he acquiesced. "We have been waiting for so long already. There is probably no point in wasting any more time on this. We have an address that your mother thought was important enough to write down in her diary. It is at least worth looking into as soon as possible."

Leah beamed at hearing his words. "Then, we can go tomorrow?"

"Yes," he nodded. "But whatever or whoever we find there, we need to be cautious. We don’t know what to expect."

"I know," Leah confirmed.

"Maybe you would like a third musketeer to join you?" Andrew suggested playfully.

"No, old boy," Edward shook his head. "We need you to remain put. Someone needs to stay behind, someone who knows everything we’ve been doing so far."

"I understand," Andrew nodded. "You can count on me."

The rest of Andrew’s stay was spent in conversation about less serious matters, and both Edward and Leah welcomed the change of topic. Andrew had spoken about upcoming balls that they were all to attend, about his own trip to Spain several months back and the lady he had only recently started to court. Upon his departure, cordial goodbyes were exchanged, and both Edward and Leah watched his carriage disappear down the gravel pathway that led away from the mansion.

When the sound of the horse’s hooves could not be heard any longer, Leah turned to Edward. "What if it was really all true? What Andrew said? That the death of your parents was just a mistake–"

"No," he shook his head even more firmly than before.

"I don’t think I would be able to live with that," she admitted, her voice down to a whisper. Instinctively, Edward wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer to him, so that now her head was resting on his shoulder. She could hear the faint sound of his heartbeat and it soothed her. "To know that your parents were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"No," he repeated, more firmly this time. "I would understand it if Harry died in that fire alone. But he didn’t. That fire took three lives with it, and I am positive that it wasn’t an accident. Someone started it on purpose, someone who had planned it very carefully. Maybe we are looking at it from the wrong perspective."

"What do you mean?" she wondered.

"We have been thinking all this time that Harry was the target," he pointed out.

"Well... isn’t he?" Leah echoed. "I mean, I thought they were all targets, your parents, Harry, my mother. They were working together on something."

"Yes, that is how we should look at it," Edward agreed. "There is something interconnecting them all, something that we still aren’t seeing."

"Maybe that address will reveal something we don’t know yet," Leah said, sounding hopeful. She knew that she shouldn’t be, because there could be no one there. It could be just another dead end, and after that, there would truly be no other lead. They would be stuck, just like they’d been all this time.

"We shall see that tomorrow," he said, turning around and leading her back into the mansion.

"I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight," she said with a heavy sigh. She was excited, afraid. She was feeling a whole array of different emotions and she knew that, under their influence, she would not be able to get a wink of sleep, which she would be in desperate need of. She needed a clear head tomorrow. She needed to be well rested and ready for whatever.

"Perhaps you need some help with that?" he whispered into her ear, chuckling. She couldn’t help but join in, elbowing him gently in the sides.

"Is that all you ever think about?" she teased.

"When one has a wife such as you, there is nothing else one can think about, my dear," he said, turning around, sliding one arm underneath her armpit and back and the other under her knees, so that now he lifted her up into the air and started carrying her toward his chamber.

"Put me down at once!" She pretended to be displeased with what he was doing, but the truth was far from it. She was giggling and chuckling, unable to cease, as he kept climbing the stairs slowly, minding each step so they wouldn’t fall.

"I shall put you down," he nodded. "Right into my bed, my dear. That is where I intend to keep you the entire night, just in case you have nightmares. If you do, I shall hold your hand, so you can rest and know that nothing will happen to you now, tonight, or tomorrow, or in the next several years. In fact, nothing will happen to you for as long as you live, because I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe and protected."

All of these words simply flowed out of him effortlessly, and all she could do was listen. There was nothing to say, but just smile. She had never felt so happy, so protected, so loved. And she had this man to thank for all of that, this man next to whom she had simply woken up one night, without the slightest idea how she had gotten there.

In fact, they still didn’t know how this happened. They stopped discussing it, but it was obvious that they were both equally curious about that night. Only, they had more urgent mysteries to solve first. After they had found out the truth behind the deaths of their parents, they would be able to solve the mystery of their falling in love.

It’s just that Leah didn’t mind not knowing this one. All that mattered was that they were in love. Everything else was irrelevant.