Almost Heaven (Sequels 3)

The authorities were still vacillating about the other man she'd allegedly met in the arbor because the gardener's eyesight had been proven to be extremely poor, and even he admitted that it 44might have been tree limbs moving around her in the dim light, instead of a man's arms." Ian, however, did not doubt it. The existence of a lover was the only thing that made sense; he had even suspected it the night before she disappeared. She hadn't wanted him in her bed; if anything but a lover had been worrying her that night, she'd have sought the protection of his arms, even if she didn't confide in him. But he had been the last thing she'd wanted.

No, he hadn't actually suspected it-that would have been more pain than he could have endured then. Now, however, he not only suspected it, he knew it, and the pain was beyond anything he'd ever imagined existed.

"I tell you they won't bring you to trial," Jordan repeated. "Do you honestly think they will?" he demanded. lookin8 first to Duncan and then to the Duke of Stanhope, who were seated in the drawing room. In answer, both men raised dazed, pain-filled eyes to Jordan's, shook their heads in an effort to seem decisive, then looked back down at their hands.

Under English law Ian was entitled to a trial before his peers; since he was a British lord, that meant he could only be tried in the House of Lords, and Jordan was clinging to that as if it were Ian's lifeline.

"You aren't the first man among us to have a spoiled wife turn missish on him and vanish for a while in hopes of bringing him to heel," Jordan continued, desperately trying to make it seem as if Elizabeth were merely sulking somewhere-no doubt unaware that her husband's reputation had been demolished and that his very life was going to be in jeopardy. "They aren't going to convene the whole damn House of Lords just to try a beleaguered husband whose wife has taken a start," he continued fiercely. "Hell, half the lords in the House can't control their wives. Why should you be any different?"

Alexandra looked up at him, her eyes filled with misery and disbelief. Like Ian, she knew Elizabeth wasn't indulging in a fit of the sullens. Unlike Ian, however, she could not and would not believe her friend had taken a lover and run away.

Ian's butler appeared in the doorway, a sealed message in his hand, which he handed to Jordan. "Who knows?" Jordan tried to joke as he opened it. "Maybe this is from Elizabeth-a note asking me to intercede with you before she dares present herself to you."

His smile faded abruptly. "What is it?" Alex cried, seeing his haggard expression. Jordan crumpled the summons in his hand and turned to

Ian with angry regret. "They're convening the House of Lords. "

"It's good to know," Ian said with cold indifference as he pushed out of his chair and started for his study, "that I'll have one friend and one relative there."

When he left, Jordan continued pacing. "This is a bunch of trumped-up conjecture and insult. That's all it is. The duel with Elizabeth's brother-all of it. Her brother's disappearance is easily explained."

"One disappearance is relatively easy to explain," the Duke of Stanhope said. "Two disappearances-in the same family-is another story, I'm afraid. They'll tear him to shreds if he doesn't do something to help himself."

"Everything that can be done is being done," Jordan assured him. "We have our own investigators turning the countryside upside down looking for a trace of Elizabeth. Bow Street thinks they've found their guilty party in Ian, and they've abandoned the theory of Elizabeth going away of her own volition."

Alexandra stood up to leave and loyally said, "If she did, you may be certain she will have an excellent explanation for it-rather than a fit of missish sulks, as all you men seem to want to believe."

When the Townsendes had left, the duke leaned his head wearily against the back of the chair and said to Duncan, "What sort of ?excellent' explanation could she possibly have?"

"It won't matter," Duncan said in a harsh voice. "Not to Ian. Unless she can make him believe that she was forcibly abducted, she's as good as dead to him."

"Don't say things like that!" Edward protested. "Ian loves her-he'll listen."

"I know him better than you, Edward," Duncan replied, remembering Ian's actions after his parents' death. "He'll never give her another chance to hurt him. If she's shamed him voluntarily, if she's betrayed his trust, she is dead to him. And he already believes that she has done both. Watch his face-he doesn't so much as flinch when her name is mentioned. He is already killing all the love he had for her."

"You can't just put someone out of your heart. Believe me, I know."

"Ian can," Duncan argued. "He'll do it so that she can never get close to him again." When the duke frowned in disbelief he said, "Let me tell you a story I told to Elizabeth not long ago when she asked me about some sketches of Ian's in Scotland. It's a story about his parents' death and the Labrador retriever that belonged to him. . . ."

When Duncan finished the tale, the two men sat in bleak silence while the clock chimed the hour of eleven. Both of them stared at the clock, listening. . . waiting for the inevitable sound of the door knocker. . . dreading it. They did not have long to wait. At a quarter past eleven, two men arrived, and Ian Thornton, Marquess of Kensington was formally charged with the murders of his wife and her half-brother, Mr. Robert Cameron. He was placed under arrest and told to prepare himself to stand trial before the House of Lords, four weeks hence. As a concession to his rank, he was not imprisoned prior to the trial, but guards were placed outside his home and he was warned that he would be under constant surveillance whenever he went about the city. His bail was set at 100,000 pounds.

Chapter 34

Helmshead was a sleepy little village that overlooked a bright blue bay where sailing ships occasionally threaded their way into port, navigating between dozens of smaller fishing vessels dotting the harbor. Sometimes seamen came ashore hoping for a night of wenching and drinking; they sailed out again with the morning time-reminding themselves not to bother leaving their ship next time they put in there. There were no brothels in Helmshead, nor taverns that catered to seamen, nor wenches who sold their wares.

It was a community of families, of hard-bitten fishermen with hands as tough as the ropes and nets they hauled each day; of women who carried their wash to the community well and gossiped with one another while their reddened hands worked lye soap into sun-bleached cloth; of small children playing at tag, and mongrel dogs barking in ecstatic delight at the chase. Faces there were suntanned and weathered and strong, with character lines and squint lines feathered and etched upon them. There were no elegant, bejeweled ladies in Helmshead, nor finely dressed gallants offering their arms so that gloved hands could be placed upon them; there were only women carrying heavy baskets of wet clothing back home and rough fishermen who overtook them and, grinning, hoisted the heavy burdens onto their own muscular shoulders.