Sea of Desire Read online

  “Or perhaps,” Jared mimicked, “someone knocked me over the head and used my pistol to kill your father.” Her noise of disbelief and disgust infuriated Jared. “The hell with what you think. That’s what happened. I was in here discussing business with your father, and someone came up behind me. The next thing I knew there was a ten-ton giant standing on my shoulder.”

  “That’s a preposterous story. I’m surprised even you have the nerve to suggest it.”

  “I’ll suggest something even more preposterous. The person who hit me was wearing scarlet.” Jared cocked his brow. “You were wearing a scarlet cape earlier, weren’t you, Lady Merideth?”

  “You can’t be suggesting that I... You obviously have more nerve than sense, Mr. Blackstone.” Merideth took a moment to rein in her anger. When she spoke again, her voice was tight with control. “I shouldn’t have even wasted my time talking with you.” Merideth moved toward the door, determined to watch her prisoner, yet keeping as much distance between them as possible. “I shall leave it to the constable to discover why you were at Banistar Hall.”

  There was a pounding on the door, but it wasn’t so loud that Merideth missed the cold deliverance of Mr. Blackstone’s next words.

  “For your father’s sake, and yours, I don’t believe you want the constable to know why I came here.” Merideth’s eyes locked with the stranger’s. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. But there was no time for him to answer, even if he planned to; for Thurston, usually notoriously slow in answering the door, had already opened it. The constable, followed by two of his deputies, entered the library.

  “Your Ladyship.” Constable Samuals bowed toward Merideth. His stoic expression wavered only slightly as he took in the sheet-shrouded form sprawled on the floor, the pistol Merideth still held. “What happened here? Your man came pounding on my door, squealing something about an emergency. And this not a fit night for man nor beast.”

  “I can hardly control the weather.” Merideth didn’t much care for the constable’s attitude. She didn’t believe that the retainer she’d sent to fetch him hadn’t explained what the problem was. But then Amos Samuals hadn’t held the Banistars in very high regard since Lord Alfred had run up a large tab at the Three Gate Tavern, the establishment owned by Amos’s brother. Neither of the brothers was happy when Alfred was unable to pay. But that shouldn’t keep the constable from discharging his duty, Merideth thought. She nodded toward Jared. “This man murdered my father.”

  “I see.” Samuals pursed his lips as he glanced toward Jared and then knelt beside the body. “Looks as if he was shot.”

  “Of course he was shot!” Merideth felt her patience slipping as sure as the weight of the gun pulled her hand down.

  “No need to get yourself all uppity.” The constable flipped the sheet back over Lord Alfred’s lifeless form. “You say this fellow done it?”

  “He did.” Merideth glanced toward her prisoner, wondering why he wasn’t saying anything in his own defense. He simply stared back.

  “Who is he? Don’t think I’ve ever seen him in these parts.”

  “I’m Jared Blackstone.” Jared kept his tone even. “And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like a moment alone with Lady Merideth.”

  Her jaw dropped. Merideth couldn’t help it. Of all the gall! The stranger made the request as easily as if he were asking for an introduction.

  “Well, it so happens I do mind. You ain’t getting no special privileges here. A moment alone, indeed. I imagine you’d be likin’ untied and a sound horse too.”

  “I’d like to speak to him.”

  “What?” The constable turned on Merideth, his eyes bulging. “This ain’t no tea party here, your Ladyship.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that? This man killed my father... my father, Mr. Samuals. And I want to speak with him alone.”

  Hands on his knees, Samuals pushed to his feet. He mumbled something about the gentry—a remark that Merideth neither caught nor truly cared about—before he headed for the door. With a nod he motioned for his two deputies to follow.

  “We’ll be right outside, so don’t think of trying anything,” he said to Jared before closing the door behind him.

  “Well?” Merideth leveled the pistol with both hands. Jared’s eyes met hers. He didn’t completely trust her. Hell, he didn’t trust her at all. But even pointing a gun at his chest, she seemed a better choice than the constable. Besides, she might have a stake in this deception too.

  “I didn’t come here to take money from your father. I came to give him some.”

  Her snort of disbelief was anything but ladylike. “It’s true. He was selling me something for a generous amount of gold.”

  “I didn’t send the constable out of the room so I could listen to lies. My father didn’t have anything worth a great deal of gold... except Banistar Hall. And he never would have sold that.”

  “He had information.”

  Jared spoke the words softly, but he saw them spark interest in Lady Merideth’s face. She was either a superb actress or she knew nothing of her father’s activities. But from what Lord Alfred had said about his daughter knowing the name of the traitor, that was impossible.

  “What kind of information?”

  “It’s not important now.” No sense chancing her turning him in as a spy as well as a murderer. “What is, is that I had no motive to kill your father.”

  “I still don’t believe you came to give him money.” Merideth started toward the door.

  “I can prove it.” Jared twisted to his side, groaning at the pain that caused. “It’s in my waistcoat pocket. I never had the chance to give it to him.” Or to receive the name of the American traitor, Jared thought. But Lady Merideth knew who it was. He’d bet on that.

  Merideth let her eyes drift along his broad chest to where his black waistcoat draped open. This was ridiculous. There was no packet of gold. She shouldn’t even be tempted. But she was. Something about the way he spoke or the look in his sea-green eyes made her move toward him.

  “Even if you have gold, it doesn’t prove anything,” Merideth bit her bottom lip and took another step. Closer.

  “It proves I came here to give money rather than take it,” Jared said, though he knew she was right. It didn’t prove anything. But desperation spurred him on. “It shows I had no motive to kill Lord Alfred.”

  She could smell his scent now, dark and mysterious, like the sea during a storm. His green eyes were rimmed by a darker hue. They drew her.

  The silk of her skirt brushed his bent knee. She was standing above him now. Looking down. The pistol still aimed at his chest. If she fired it, there was no chance she would miss. But if he somehow managed to get hold of the gun, he would kill her.

  Merideth’s gaze flashed to where his hands were tied behind his back. He couldn’t grab the gun. But she stepped back and placed it on the desk just the same. Then, before she could change her mind, Merideth knelt beside the stranger.

  The heat from his body seemed to scorch her fingers as she reached inside his waistcoat. Merideth’s knuckles brushed his shirt and she could feel the hard muscles through the fine cotton, smell the sticky sweetness of his blood. She tried to ignore his nearness as she hurriedly rifled the pocket he indicated with a thrust of his jaw.

  “It’s empty,” she said, leaning back on her heels and giving him a look that clearly meant she should have expected nothing else.

  “It can’t be.” Jared twisted around as best as he could, his shoulder knocking into her arm. She skittered back as if his touch were poisonous. Tucking his chin, Jared tried to see. “Check again.”

  “I will not. There’s nothing there, I tell you, and you know it.” Merideth tried to stand but something caught her, and when she glanced down she saw her lavender overskirt trapped beneath the stranger’s knee. “Let me up.”

  “Why should I?” Jared hadn’t purposely snared her gown, but now that he had he shifted his weight to hold her captive. His expression was har
d. “Look again.”

  Grabbing the flap of his waistcoat, Merideth rummaged her hand in the pocket. Nothing. “As I said before, it’s empty. Now, if you don’t let me up,” Merideth began, her words grinding out between clenched teeth, “I shall scream.”

  Jared paid no heed to her threat. “Someone must have stolen it,” he mumbled more to himself than her. “I had it when I entered the library. Whoever killed your father must have taken the money too.” His eyes met hers. “Don’t you see?”

  “Don’t be absurd. I don’t believe in fairies or pixies of old legends. There was no one here but the servants and me...” Merideth stopped. What was she doing even discussing this with him? Of course, he had already implied that she might be the killer. He was grasping at anything. With a determined yank she freed her gown, falling back on the floor in the process. She scrambled to her feet.

  “No, wait—” But Jared could say no more as the constable slammed open the library door.

  “Ain’t waitin’ no longer to take the prisoner into the village. Looks like there’s a break in the storm.” He motioned for his deputies to haul Jared up, and they did with obvious delight for the pain they inflicted.

  Merideth straightened her gown and kept her eyes averted. She didn’t want to notice what they were doing to the stranger... and she didn’t want to see the way she knew he was looking at her.

  “What you want me to do about... him?” Amos Samuals twisted his grizzly head toward the covered body on the floor.

  “If you would get word to the vicar, I would appreciate it.”

  Samuals nodded his agreement, then led the way out of the room. Merideth glanced up in time to see the deputies yank Jared Blackstone through the door. His head was bleeding, and crimson dripped onto his waistcoat. Merideth wished she’d thought to suggest they bandage him before he rode the three miles to the village. But then her gaze swung around to her father’s body and her heart hardened. What did she care what happened to the man who had murdered her father?

  By the time the door clicked shut she was down on her knees beside the linen shroud, tears streaming down her face, her breathing punctuated by heartrending sobs.

  Merideth stared down at the array of papers spread across the mahogany desk. She had spent the sennight since her father’s funeral trying to make sense of them... trying to figure out a way to save Banistar Hall. Not just for herself. One conclusion she came to during the long night she grieved beside her father’s body was that she cared little about the ancestral home. It was her father who had prized it, though he’d spent little of his time here until age and finances forced him to curtail his travels.

  Yet she couldn’t help wondering where she would go... what she would do... without Banistar Hall.

  Sighing, Merideth let a parchment note fall from her fingers. Perhaps she could find a solution to her dilemma if her concentration would stay focused. But like the parchment, it slipped... often. And then she was looking into Jared Blackstone’s sea-green eyes. For your father’s sake, and yours, I don’t believe you want the constable to know why I came here. What did he mean?

  “Don’t be a fool. It was nothing more than a ploy to save his murderous neck,” Merideth said to herself. “And it won’t work.”

  Because tomorrow he was to hang. For the murder of Lord Alfred Banistar.

  “ ‘Tis only just,” Merideth assured herself as she started to read the document she picked up from the desk. If there was a good reason for him to be here that night, Mr. Blackstone would have mentioned it during the trial.

  Oh, he had repeated his preposterous lie about delivering gold to her father and someone stealing it. But no one believed him. Especially when he could give no logical reason why he would have money for Lord Alfred.

  Merideth snorted. “Because there was no gold.”

  Jared’s entire defense was based on half-truths and maybes. Dr. Foster couldn’t say for sure that the wound on Mr. Blackstone’s head was from a pistol ball. But he couldn’t say he was knocked over the head either.

  “No, I couldn’t swear the cut wasn’t caused by the defendant being hit with a sharp object,” Dr. Mason had said. “But there was the spent pistol clutched in Lord Alfred’s lifeless fingers. I’d say it likely his Lordship shot wildly, grazing the defendant’s head,” the white-haired doctor pronounced.

  Jared Blackstone’s only response was to vehemently insist he was hit from behind.

  “Ridiculous lies,” Merideth mumbled, pushing herself away from the desk. “Mr. Blackstone might as well have confessed and saved everyone the aggravation.” Merideth walked to the window and looked out over the heath to the cove. “At least he didn’t mention his contention that someone wearing scarlet hit him.”

  During the trial Merideth had expected Jared Blackstone to cast suspicion on her with his story of a scarlet-clad assailant. But he hadn’t.

  “He probably forgot he even made that up,” Merideth said, then shook her head. “Now I’m talking to myself. Not just talking but holding an entire conversation.”

  In frustration she marched back to the desk and sank into the chair. She reached for the locket hanging from the ribbon around her neck. Her fingers closed over the smooth gold.

  “I have to find out,” she finally whispered. “Oh, Papa, I have to find out what he meant.”

  Her shoulders squared, Merideth stood. After asking Mort to saddle her horse—one of the few her father hadn’t sold off—Merideth went to her room to change into a riding habit.

  “I ain’t sure I should be doin’ this,” Lester Hawson scratched his grizzled head and looked around the anteroom to the jail as if the answer might lie in the stone walls.

  “I shall take full responsibility,” Merideth assured him. She was glad to find Lester, one of Samuals’s deputies, on duty, rather than the constable himself.

  “Still ain’t rightly sure. ‘Course, I can’t ask the constable, since he went to Foxworth to visit his lady friend. Usually makes the trip on Saturday, but weren’t ‘bout to do it on the morrow. Not with the hangin’ set for then.”

  “And by then it will be too late for me to say what I must to your prisoner.”

  “Now that’s for sure,” Les answered, with enough enthusiasm in his voice for Merideth to know he looked forward to tomorrow’s “festivities.”

  “So, may I see Mr. Blackstone now?” Merideth tried not to fidget, but Les still leaned against the door leading to the cell, his bulky shoulders blocking the way.

  “Well, I guess it won’t harm nothin’. You ain’t plannin’ on shootin’ him or nothin’, are you? Wouldn’t want to cheat the hangman?”

  “No. I simply want to talk to him about something.”

  “Good luck to you.” Les shifted his weight. “He ain’t the talkin’ kind. Hardly said two words since we locked him up. Real unfriendly.”

  Merideth paid no attention to Les’s harangue as he fiddled with a large brass key. The heavy door swung open and Les lead the way inside.

  “I best stay here with you.”

  “No!” Merideth paused. “I mean, that won’t be necessary.” She couldn’t possibly find out what she wanted to know with Les hovering about.

  “But this man’s a killer. I can’t let you—”

  “I said I shall take responsibility. Besides, he has no weapon and you do. If there’s a problem, I shall simply call out.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Nothing will happen.”

  Jared lay on the cot, staring at the cobwebbed ceiling, his head cradled on his crossed arms. He was listening to Lady Merideth plead her case with the jailer. At this point he didn’t much care which of them won. He probably should, but hell, he was going to hang tomorrow.

  “Do I have your word you won’t do nothing to her Ladyship?”

  Jared twisted his attention away from the spider crawling across the beam when he realized the deputy was talking to him. “But of course,” he responded in his most sarcastic tone. What the hell did the m
an think, that a killer would keep his word?

  But apparently the subtlety was lost on the jailer, for he grunted his approval and backed out of the cell.

  Lady Merideth seemed less assured. She remained by the door. But she stood her ground. Jared watched her, his lids partially lowered, and had to admire her courage. That is, he would have if he thought she believed him a murderer. He doubted she did, because he wasn’t so sure she didn’t know who the real killer was.

  Merideth cleared her throat. “I... I came to ask you a question.”

  “And here I thought this a social call.” Jared stretched and crossed his booted ankles.

  “You needn’t be so... so...”

  “So rude?” Jared cocked a raven brow. “Is that the word your Ladyship is searching for?”

  “Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of ‘barbaric.” But then that’s all one can expect from colonials, isn’t it?”

  For someone with the face of an angel, she could look pretty haughty when she raised her chin a certain way. Jared came close to smiling at the picture she made. Then he remembered his circumstances, and all traces of mirth left his face.

  “What is it you want? I’m somewhat busy, and time is running out.”

  “You don’t look occupied to me.” Merideth took a step forward, away from the security of the door. Though it was midmorning, the light inside the cell was dim, filtered through the narrow bar-covered window. She brushed her hands down the deep-blue skirt of her riding habit.

  “Perhaps I’m contemplating my life,” Jared said, his tone bored, his gaze once again focused on the process of the busy spider.

  “I thought maybe you were begging God’s forgiveness.”

  That got his attention. Merideth nearly flinched at the look he shot her. His green eyes were dark and intense, bright with barely controlled violence. Merideth swallowed, wondering anew about the prudence of coming here.