Chapter Twelve
Eleanor, drawn from her room by the sounds of distress from the girl who had discovered Vicky, came into the parlour wrapped in a pink dressing gown. Her thick, fair hair hung loose about her shoulders. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and she looked like a little girl who had spent the night crying. When Tynan gravely told her what had happened to her friend, she sank down into a chair and covered her face with her hands. Tynan sat next to her and drew her into the circle of his arms.
“Cad,” I murmured, and drew him apart from the others so that I could speak to him in a quiet undertone. “I understand now what you meant about how the murdered girls look. Can it be true? Is he killing Eleanor each time?”
As if drawn by my thoughts, Lucy appeared in the doorway. The thick, lustrous length of her own hair was drawn back into a neat chignon. It was almost impossible to judge her age. From a distance, she could easily have been a young girl.
“Perhaps not,” Cad said, and I think I knew it all in that instant. My mind just refused to accept a truth too awful to be reality. I was distracted when Eddie, who had been sitting with his head in his hands, suddenly rushed from the room with a shaking hand raised to his mouth. His face was drained of all colour and his eyes were dark and ghastly. We heard the sounds of him retching, just outside the door.
“Come to the library, I can’t talk to you here.” Cad left the room and, a few minutes later, I followed him into the library. I walked straight into his arms. He held me close, and his touch caused some of the day’s horrors to recede.
“I can’t tell Eddie about us. Not now, not yet. You have just seen how Vicky’s murder has—broken him.”
“I know.” His tone was calm. I think I loved him even more for accepting the delay without demur. He understood that to tell Eddie now, when he was even more fragile than usual, that I was in love with the brother he hated and mistrusted would not only cause him immeasurable hurt; it would destroy him. “But you are mine, Dita. Just as I am yours. I knew it in the first instant I saw you, and I know you felt it, too. It’s not something we can fight. It just is.”
I drew in a ragged breath. “I have no right to feel happy when…” I stopped. The memory of Vicky’s body, flung down on the snow like a discarded doll, was fresh in my mind.
“It’s a damnable situation, I know.” Cad’s lips twisted. “Particularly as Inspector Miller still has me at the top of his list of murder suspects.” For the first time, I saw in his face how much he was hurt by that fact. “But I didn’t do it, bouche.”
“I know.” And I really believed, in that instant, that what he was telling me was the truth. I held a comforting hand to his cheek, and he turned his head to kiss the inside of my wrist.
“If legend is allowed to prevail, however, the world will always believe that, in a past life, I was Uther Jago. A murderer for whom no deed was too evil. Because that is, after all, what my own parents thought when I was a child. Perhaps they occasionally still think it. Although they would strenuously deny it, of course. I have lost count of the times I have cursed this face, bouche. And cursed Uther Jago for bequeathing it to me. But I’m not him. He has not touched or tainted me. You, of all people, have to believe me.”
“I do believe it.” When I was in his arms, it was easy to do so. “I know you better than anyone knows you. Better, I think, than I know myself.” I held him closer and felt some of the tension leave his strong frame.
“None of the horrors of the past, or the present, can change the fact that you and I are meant to be together. I can’t pretend I don’t want you to come away with me now, right this minute, Dita. Patience has never been one of my character traits, but I am content to know it will happen for us. I can wait.”
“Am I a wild grain?” I asked, thinking of Tynan’s words.
“Well, you certainly drive me wild,” he laughed, nuzzling my throat. “I suspect you may have been talking to my father, bouche. I confess, I have sown my fair share of wild oats. I may even have sown a few other men’s shares, but every one of them has led me to you. You are everything I want and need.”