“Lie down with me, then,” he said. “I do not want to let you out of my sight.”
She came around the bed and lay down beside him beneath the covers. “Rest,” she said. “I should not have said anything until you were strong again.”
He took her hand in his and turned his head to look at her. “Let me make love to you?”
She hesitated, but she shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not yet, Neville. It is not the right time.”
She was calling him Neville again, he noticed. And although she had said no, she had addednot yet. He closed his eyes and smiled. Where the devil would he have found the energy if she had said yes?
“Besides,” she said, “you are still too weak.”
“Grrr,” he said without opening his eyes.
She laughed softly.
She must have used up a great deal of energy nursing him. And for all her calm manner, she must have been exhausted by anxiety. She was fast asleep within minutes.
Neville lay beside her, staring upward. Someone wanted Lily dead. It made no sense. Why? What possible motive could anyone have? Who could possibly have any reason to resent her? Try as he would, he could think only of Lauren or Gwen. And the sort of resentment either of them might feel was certainly not the stuff from which murder came. Besides, they were far away, Gwen at Newbury, Lauren at her grandfather’s. She had decided to go there quite on the spur of the moment soon after his departure for London, his mother had written, but had refused company for the journey.
Who else?
There was no one else.
What did Lily have that anyone could want, then? Lily had nothing. Her locket was the only thing of any value that she possessed, and no one would want to kill her for the sake of a gold locket when almost every mansion in Mayfair must be loaded down with far costlier jewels. Besides, until the evening of Vauxhall, she had not worn the locket since the Peninsula. There might have been money for her in Doyle’s pack, but it would not have been a sum for which to kill. Besides, whatever it was had been burned.
His mind for some reason stuck on that idea. Perhaps because therewereno other ideas.
Was it likely that Bessie Doyle would have burned the contents of that pack without sifting through them first? If there had been anything of value, would she not have kept it?Hadshe kept something apart from the bag itself? She seemed a woman of open enough honesty, though. He had not been given the impression that she was hiding anything—he still did not believe it.
She had been away from home when the pack arrived. Presumably her husband had received it. He had died in an accident before she returned home, leaving the pack and its contents spilled all over the floor in one corner of the cottage.
Almost as if he—or someone else—had been searching for something.
Without understanding the reason, Neville felt chilled and uneasy.
Sergeant Doyle had been trying to tell him something before his death. Something he ought to have told Lily and someone else. Something about the pack he had left back at the base. He had repeatedly told Lily that there was something inside it for her. Was it possible that William Doyle had found whatever it was?
And had been killed as a result?
But there was no way now of discovering the answers.
This was ridiculous, Neville thought impatiently. He would be writing Gothic novels before he was finished. But then the idea of three attempts being made on Lily’s life was ridiculous too.
And then a memory popped into his head as if from nowhere—a detail he had not paid much attention to at the time. A letter had come, Bessie Doyle had told him, informing them of Sergeant Doyle’s death. And William, who could not read, had taken the letter to the vicar to read to him. If the pack itself had contained a letter or a package with some writing,would he have taken that too to the vicar?
This was ridiculous stuff, Neville thought again.
Someone wanted Lily dead. Nothing was more senseless than that. But somehow, somewhere, there must be a reason for it.
He knew then what he was going to have to do.
He closed his hand more protectively about Lily’s.
He was going to save her. If it cost him his life, if it cost himher, he would save her from terror and death. He would not stop looking until he found and destroyed whatever—orwhoever—was threatening her.
23
Lily was feeling depressed. Neville had made a quick recovery after coming out of his fever, as might have been expected of a seasoned soldier, and had returned to Kilbourne House two days later. He had called the day after that, but only briefly to announce that he was leaving town for a few days. He had not explained either where he was going or when he expected to return—if he ever did. His manner had been abrupt and impersonal, though he had taken Lily’s hands in his when he took his leave. Elizabeth had been in the room too.
