The Haunting of a Duke(30)

Michael looked at Rhys curiously. “That was interesting."

Rhys didn't comment. His gaze was fixed on a point in the thick shrubbery near the path where Miss Walters had emerged. He had spent enough time on a battlefield to know the glint of sunlight on the barrel of a gun or on a blade. Someone else had been in the garden, and he or she had been armed.

"I think,” Rhys said, turning to face Michael, “that there is no longer any question that Miss Walters is in grave danger."

"From someone other than your aunt?” Michael had wasted no time in informing Rhys of Lady Eleanor's thinly veiled interrogation.

The woman was not someone to be trifled with. She could ruin Miss Walter's without even putting forth considerable effort, and she was ruthless enough to do it without compunction.

Rhys eyed him askance. “Aunt Eleanor is a bit put out with her, but she's hardly dangerous."

Michael shook his head. “Your aunt will not physically assassinate Miss Walters, but she will assassinate her socially, unless you intercede on her behalf."

Rhys nodded. “I will do what I can, but the other matter I find more pressing. Something frightened her in the garden, and in spite of her assertions that she speaks with the dead, or perhaps because of them, I do not think she is a woman given to being easily frightened. Whoever was following her today was doing so with the intent to harm, otherwise there would have been no need for weapons."

"I agree,” Michael said. “The question is how do we proceed?"

"She is not to be alone,” Rhys said.

Michael concurred. “Miss Walters has not yet discovered anything about Elise, but she has seen Melisande. Perhaps Melisande's killer fears he will finally be found out."

Rhys’ jaw firmed, and he fought down the stabbing guilt that always assailed him. He had not been able to offer justice to Melisande, and if Miss Walters could name his sister's killer, regardless of her means, his gratitude would be endless. Though the ultimate conclusion had been that her murder had been committed by a stranger, by a vagrant passing through, he had never believed it. “Perhaps, Michael. Do you really believe that she is speaking with Melisande? That my sister is still here in some capacity?"

Michael paused, and sighed heavily before answering. “I do believe her, but I can't tell you why. I'm not a man given to fancy, as you well know, but there is something about Miss Walters that I simply trust. Whatever anyone else thinks of her motives, I think they are pure."

Rhys considered that as he let himself back into the house to seek out the lovely medium and place himself in the role of guard dog. He could not accept with the ease that Lord Ellersleigh had that she could converse with the spirit world. He preferred to believe only in things that were tangible, that he could see and touch and feel. Anything else, especially something as nebulous as the spirit world, was simply too far outside his realm of experience. But she believed it, he thought, and apparently a killer believed it as well.

Hidden behind a copse of trees, he cursed her. His blood had run cold when he'd listened to her conversing with a spirit. It wasn't possible, of course. He refused to believe that. He had watched her die. He'd felt the life seep from her body and had seen it fade from her eyes. He was the bringer of death. He chose when life ended. No one defied his will.

If those he had taken remained behind, watching, observing—No, he shook his head. He wouldn't allow her, with her airs and her deceit to make him question what he knew. She would pay for that, as well, he decided. He added it to her list of sins and determined that he would make her pay far more dearly than any of the others had.

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Chapter Six

Emme had not had a moment's peace. It had been just over a day since the incident in the garden, but since that frightful event, she had literally been tripping over Lord Ellersleigh and Rhys. His Grace, Emme mentally corrected herself for the hundredth time. She didn't understand how it had come to be that, in her mind, at least, she had made so familiar with his name. There was no connection between them and there simply never could be. She didn't want a connection with him either, she told herself. He was stodgy and bossy, he thought she was a feather brain, believed her to be a liar or a lunatic and had as much as told her so.

It didn't matter that he was ridiculously handsome or that her heart pounded when he was near. It didn't matter that she could pinpoint to the second when he entered a room that she was in or that her eyes could find him unerringly even in a crowd. It was infatuation because he was so handsome and it would end as soon as she left Briarwood Hall. It had to.

Entering the breakfast room, Emme noted immediately that Lord Ellersleigh was there. As she filled her plate from the sideboard, she noted that he was drinking copious amounts of coffee rather than tea and looked more than a bit bleary-eyed. According to the gossip Gussy had brought her that morning, several of the gentlemen had engaged in card play the previous evening that had not been part of the scheduled entertainment and that had sent one man hastening to depart. Lord Alistair Brammel had wagered quite recklessly. He had lost a goodly sum of money and was known to be in dun territory.