Alaric stepped onto the front porch and looked up at the sky. The night was clear, with no clouds to shadow the black velvet in which myriad stars shone brilliant and bright.
Drawing in a deep breath, he inhaled the scent of the surrounding woodland—a scent he’d known from infancy—replacing the stale air of the drawing room and the cloying miasma of perfumes. Feeling rejuvenated, he started down the steps and heard the door close behind him. On reaching the gravel of the forecourt, he lengthened his stride and headed around the house, then diverted into the shrubbery, taking his customary shortcut to the stable.
There, he found Percy’s stableman, Hughes, holding Alaric’s horse, a huge gray hunter named Sultan, saddled and ready. “Didn’t think you’d be much longer, my lord.” Hughes ran his hand down Sultan’s long neck. “This old fellow seemed to know—all but put his own nose in the bridle.”
Alaric grinned, scratched Sultan between the ears, then took the reins Hughes offered; while Carradale Manor was within walking distance, to attend the house party’s events, he’d elected to ride, taking the bridle path that connected the two properties, stable to stable. “Thank you, Hughes.” Alaric swung up to the saddle, then raised a hand in salute. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Ride safe, my lord.” Hughes stepped back.
Alaric wheeled Sultan and set him trotting out of the stable yard, then picked up the bridle path and, allowing the big horse to choose his own pace, headed for the manor.
For home.
Two-thirds of the way along the path, on impulse, Alaric reined Sultan in. The horse stamped, then reluctantly settled. At that spot, a gap in the trees and a dip in the land afforded Alaric a view of Carradale Manor that he’d long considered his favorite vista. From where he sat, perched high on Sultan’s back, the woodland fell away, and rolling fields—all part of the Carradale estate—lay gently illuminated by the faint light of the moon. And on the distant rise, his house—his home—Carradale Manor stood framed by woodland, a comfortable manor house in excellent condition, the windows of its three stories arranged in simple symmetry to either side of the front porch; in bucolic peace and untrammeled serenity, the manor overlooked the lands some long-ago ancestor had claimed, the house’s pale-gray walls rising above the darker shadows of the lower-lying gardens.
It was a sight Alaric never tired of seeing, but it was rare to see it as it was at that moment, rendered in shades of gray and black by the lucent glow of the new moon.
Home.
Until recently—until he’d started thinking of a wife and of what was important in his life—he hadn’t consciously acknowledged how much he loved the place, how it called to something deep in his soul.
How it anchored him.
Now he’d realized that, the house had, in a way, become a touchstone for him; any lady he took to wife would have to fit—to suit the place as well as suit him. Indeed, she couldn’t do the latter if she didn’t do the former.
Sultan had grown restless; he stamped and shifted.
Alaric loosened the reins, pressed his knees to the horse’s flanks, and set him trotting once more. Generally speaking, riding deeply shadowed bridle paths at night was a foolish act, but he knew this path literally better than the back of his hand.
Not long after, Sultan clattered into the manor’s stable yard. Hilliard, Alaric’s groom, had heard their approach and was waiting to catch Sultan’s bridle.
“A good evening, my lord?” Hilliard asked.
“Well enough.” Alaric dismounted and handed over the reins. “I’ll need him again tomorrow—about nine o’clock.”
Hilliard stroked Sultan’s nose. “Back to the Hall?”
“Indeed.” Alaric started toward the manor’s side door. “Only four more days to go, thank God!”
Hilliard chuckled; a local and longtime servitor, the grizzled stableman was aware that Alaric was attending Percy’s house party more from a sense of duty and loyalty than from any real wish to indulge.
Alaric continued along the flagstone path; through the pervasive quiet, he heard Hilliard coo to Sultan and the heavy clop of the horse’s hooves as he was led into the stable. Alaric reached the side door, opened it, and strode along the corridor that led to the front hall.
The lamps in the hall were still lit, but turned low. Through the dimness, Johns, Alaric’s gentleman’s gentleman, came hurrying from the rear of the house. “Do you require anything, my lord?”
Alaric paused to consider, then shook his head. “No—you can retire.”
With a dip of his head, Johns retreated.
Standing at the base of the stairs, Alaric debated where best to think—in his bed or over a nightcap in the library?
The nightcap won. He walked on to the library and went in. No lamps were lit, but the heavy velvet curtains had been left open, and sufficient light streamed in through the tall windows for Alaric’s purpose. He crossed to the tantalus and poured a measure of French brandy into a cut-crystal tumbler; the clink of the decanter against the lip of the glass produced a pure, clear note that hung in the silence.
Glass in hand, Alaric sank into his favorite armchair, angled before the cold hearth. Given the season, no fire burned in the grate, yet there was a certain comfort in the familiar position.
He sipped, and his gaze rose to rest on the coat of arms carved into the stone overmantel. It fell to him to marry and beget an heir so the long line of Radleighs could continue unbroken—from father to son down the generations. He’d always known that to be his duty, and now…it was time.
Everything was in readiness; there was nothing left to do—to prepare. All that remained was for him to choose.
So who was the lady who would be the right wife for him?
With his gaze locked on the empty hearth, he tapped the bottom of his glass against the chair’s arm. “I have no clue who she might be, so perhaps I should define what she needs to be.”
That seemed the most logical way forward.
He tried to conjure a vision of his paragon, imbuing her with the characteristics he required. She would, he assumed, be sweet faced and gentle, mild mannered and biddable—an elementally cheerful soul to balance his more cynical nature. Importantly, he required a lady unlikely to challenge, in any meaningful way, the direction in which he chose to steer their joint lives.
He knew himself well enough to admit that he never appreciated being countermanded, much less being directly opposed. He could and would hold his own in any confrontation, but he didn’t like being forced to do so. Consequently, in order to guarantee a peaceful married life, his lady should be an acquiescent sort, one who would lean on his arm and leave it to him to guide them both.
On the thought, an image of Glynis Johnson as she’d looked up at him while on his arm and strolling the terrace blazed across his mind.
After a moment, he grimaced and drained his glass. “Obviously, my vision of my ideal wife requires further work.” His hard edges and implacable will would frighten the Glynises of this world, and she—they—would bore him within a week.
And if a niggling inkling that a gentle, submissive wife might not be good for him—might exacerbate rather than ameliorate his tendency to hold aloof from the world—kept prodding at his brain, there was no denying that marrying such a lady would result in a more peaceful life.
Alaric snorted, rose, set the empty glass on a side table, and headed for the door.
As he climbed the stairs to his lonely bed, he reflected that that, at least, would shortly be rectified—just as soon as he found his ideal wife.
* * *
By the time Alaric rode into the Hall stable yard the next morning, the sun was well up, promising another warm summer’s day.
After handing Sultan’s reins to Hughes, Alaric, as usual, strode into and through the shrubbery. The area was extensive; the Mandeville Hall shrubbery consisted of five garden clearings of varying sizes, lined with high hedges and linked by grassed paths. The central clearing hosted a stone-li
ned rectangular pool with a small gazebo tucked away at the far end. The ivory water lilies floating on the surface of the pool had opened to the sun, and lazy droning drifted on the air as bees dipped into the cosmos nodding their bright flower heads along the pool’s edge.
Fixing his gaze on the neatly clipped grass before his boots, Alaric strode briskly over the lawn bordering the pool. Another glorious day he was proposing to waste pretending to enjoy a type of entertainment that had palled and, in truth, now bored him to the depths of his soul.
I’ve outgrown this.
The next phase of his life hovered in the wings—waiting for him to give it his full attention.
But first, he had to weather the rest of Percy’s house party.
Alaric’s feet followed the route to the shrubbery’s main entrance without the need for conscious direction. Turning in to the final avenue that led to the archway cut into the hedge bordering the side lawn, he glanced ahead—and saw a bundle of crumpled silk lying on the grass just inside the shrubbery entrance.
He blinked, stared, then understanding dawned, and his stride faltered. He recognized that particular shade of pale-blue silk.
He caught his breath and ran.
A second later, he stood looking down at Glynis Johnson. She lay discarded—thrown aside like a broken doll. Her pretty blue eyes stared sightless at the sky, her pale skin was discolored, and her tongue protruded between her once-lush lips. A ring of dark bruises circled her slender throat, an obscene marring of what had once been so lovely.
Alaric felt light-headed. He hauled his gaze up—away. Focusing on the green wall of the hedge, he forced himself to breathe…
Then he looked down again. Feeling battered by a rising tide of emotions—anger and fury foremost among them—he crouched and forced himself to look more closely, more impartially. To bear witness to the atrocity.
Who had dared to do this?
This, truly, was desecration of an innocent, and Alaric’s true self—the inner man who was not nearly as far removed from his warrior ancestors as his elegant sophistication led others to believe—was already reaching for his sword.
Why he felt so strongly over a girl he’d barely known, he didn’t know, but this shouldn’t have happened.
Not here. Not now.
Not ever.
His faculties slowly emerging through the fog of shock, he reached out and gently drew down Glynis’s lids. There was no point checking for a pulse; she’d passed beyond reach long ago. The dew had dampened her gown, enough to make it cling, converting the ball gown into a chilling shroud.
He stared, committing the sight to memory; there was something—some point, some earlier observation—niggling at the back of his brain, but he couldn’t seem to catch it and haul it forward.
Registering the coldness of the skin beneath his fingertips, gently he grasped and lifted one outflung arm. The limb was slightly stiff—stiffening. Although it was summer, the night had been clear, the air cool.
He heard the brisk rustle of skirts, then Monty’s voice piped, “This is the shrubbery.”
Before Alaric could react—could find his tongue and call a warning—an Amazon swept through the archway in the hedge.
The Amazon’s gaze fell on him, still crouched by the body. The woman—the lady—froze.
Garbed in a green carriage dress and with a hat perched atop glossy brown hair, the lady was tall, curvaceous, and statuesque, and with just that one glance, Alaric knew she possessed a commanding, forthright, and forceful nature; a peaches-and-cream complexion notwithstanding, her character was there, displayed in her face for all to see. And to take warning.
With her, nothing was hidden; she made not the slightest attempt to veil the power of her personality.
Then her wide green eyes shifted and locked on the body itself…
On the periphery of his awareness, Alaric registered that Monty had followed the Amazon past the hedge and, goggling, stopped to one side and a pace behind her.
Also stumbling into view on the Amazon’s other side was Mrs. Macomber, Glynis’s chaperon. She peered at the body and went as white as a sheet. “Oh no!” came out in a thin wail.
The sound pricked the Amazon to life.
She swayed, then her gaze snapped to Alaric, and gold blazed in the green. “What have you done?”
Constance struggled to breathe. Glynis—that was Glynis lying there dead! And this man…
Her eyes took him in as he slowly rose, straightening to a height she didn’t want to be impressed by. His face was of the sort she’d heard described as that of a fallen angel—a term she’d always associated with Lucifer and evil. The black hair that fell in thick locks, one sweeping over his broad forehead, added to the image, as did his clothes—a superbly cut gray coat over buff breeches and top boots.
Light-headedness threatened, but she thrust the sensation aside.
She was a second away from accusing the man of murder when he said, “I just found her.”
His voice—deep, but strangely flat—held undertones of sadness and respect for Glynis and, buried beneath that, if Constance wasn’t mistaken, a shock to rival hers.
He looked at the body, then drew in a breath, one that shuddered slightly. He glanced at Constance, then waved toward the woods. “I live in the neighboring manor house. I just rode in—this is the shortcut I always take to the house.”
His gaze returned to the body. “I found her like this.”
Mrs. Macomber’s wail had devolved into ugly gulping, racking sobs.
“Of course you did.” The dapper gentleman Constance had been introduced to and who’d volunteered to come with her to search for Glynis—Montague Radleigh—was chalk white and having difficulty catching a decent breath, but he waved at the other gentleman and gabbled, “He’s Carradale. Lord Carradale. M’cousin, you know.”
The name meant nothing to Constance, but the evidence of her eyes did. Despite his current pallor, despite his evident shock, Carradale was instantly recognizable as a dangerous sort. He doubtless possessed a languid façade, but the circumstances had stripped that away, revealing the unforgivingly hard angles of his face and the innate power beneath his surface.
A hedonistic rake he might be, yet by all the signs—his dry and pristine attire, the dampness of Glynis’s gown and the sheen that dewed her skin, plus his shock and total lack of guilt—she’d been wrong to imagine he had any hand in Glynis’s death.
Glynis is dead.
The realization was difficult to assimilate, even with the dead body before her. As for her emotions—the stunned shock, pending sorrow, and the underlying anger—she would deal with them as she always did, by giving vent to them through action.
She dragged in a breath, then looked directly at the gentleman—at Carradale; his gaze had returned to Glynis’s body. “I apologize for leaping to an unjustified conclusion.”
He glanced at her, then faintly frowned and waved one hand dismissively before his gaze again fell to the body.
Oh yes, the languid hauteur was there, albeit currently largely in abeyance.
She followed his gaze, forcing herself to catalog the horror that had been visited on her innocent relative. From the way Glynis was lying, with her knees and legs together, wrapped in the tangle of her skirts, which still covered her calves, it seemed unlikely she’d been ravished; at least, she’d been spared that.
But death at a man’s hands should not be for the likes of Glynis, who had always been a sunny, unthreatening soul.
After a moment of dwelling on that—and the urge for vengeance that was steadily building—she cleared her throat. “How long ago do you think she was…killed?”
He didn’t look up, just drew breath and said, “Sometime in the small hours.” He nodded at the body. “That’s the gown she wore for the soirée yesterday evening.”
Constance frowned. “I thought you lived next door?”
Alaric finally looked up and met the Amazon’s green eyes. “I do, but I’m a
n old friend of Mandeville’s and always attend his house party. This year, I elected to ride back and forth.” He paused, then added, “My people and Mandeville’s can confirm I wasn’t here through the night, and when I left, Miss Johnson was very much alive and the soirée was still going.”
“S’right.” Monty tugged at his collar as if it was the reason he couldn’t breathe properly. “As far as I recall, she was there to the end. And that was an hour or so after you left.”
Alaric focused on the Amazon; he couldn’t go on labeling her that. “Having established my bona fides, who are you?”
She blinked, and faint color returned to cheeks that shock had rendered over-pale. Her face was striking, not pretty. Dramatically winged brows lay otherwise straight, angled over her large, well-set eyes—possibly her best feature. Her nose was too strong for feminine beauty, and her chin gave clear warning of her stalwart character. Her mouth was too wide, but combined with lips rosy and firm was of the sort to make men fantasize.
As he stared, those fascinating lips thinned, then parted on “My name is Miss Constance Whittaker. I’m Glynis’s distant cousin.” Miss Whittaker looked down at the body—and again, she swayed fractionally. Immediately, she stiffened her spine, then she drew in another breath and, in an uninflected tone, declared, “Glynis’s mother sent me to fetch her home.”
That information seemed to penetrate Mrs. Macomber’s awareness. She stopped sobbing, stared at Miss Whittaker in something close to horror, then Mrs. Macomber gulped and gulped and dissolved into a fresh bout of racking sobs that sounded halfway to outright hysteria.
Apparently, Miss Whittaker thought similarly. She swung to Monty. “Mr. Radleigh, could I ask you to take Mrs. Macomber back to the house and place her in the care of the housekeeper?”
“Yes. Of course.” Monty tugged down his waistcoat, advanced gently on Mrs. Macomber, and solicitously took the older woman by the arm.
“And if you would also inform Mr. Mandeville that we’ve found…my cousin?” Miss Whittaker’s voice wavered, spurring Monty to shoot a helpless look at Alaric.