And Ian told her about those trials as well.
Huddled in her dressing gown, Hero looked about her, not seeing just his wardrobe but the whole of the castle that had long been her home. She’d always been safe there. Felt secure within the thick stone walls. Now she didn’t know what to think. “You should have told me,” she scolded and raised a hand to halt his defense. “Yes, I already gathered that you did it to protect me, but that is not reason enough to keep something of this magnitude to yourself. Had you perished, I would never have known the reason. Never expected the truth.”
“I would do anything to spare you heartache, my love. Anything to keep you safe.”
“The truth would accomplish either,” she insisted. “Promise me you won’t lie to me again.”
“Very well,” he said, then sighed at the impatient look in her eyes. “I swear.”
Hero released a sad sigh as well, shaking her head. “So what now?”
“I plan to interrogate the man who was hired to set the fire. I’ll need a confession for the magistrate to press charges. Daphne had help in this. He says there was another man who hired him as her agent. I think that man may have been Jennings.”
“Jennings,” she exclaimed. “Why surely…”
It seemed he could read her thoughts as clearly as she often read his, for he laughed humorously. “Aye, doesn’t come as much of a surprise, does it? It would be Jennings’s best bet for more freedom in ruling Cuilean.”
“Actually, I always rather considered her his worst alternative in the succession because she would want to rule with an iron fist,” she said. “Nevertheless, I’ll admit he could have been swayed by her. What if the man doesn’t recognize Jennings?”
“Then we are back at square one,” he told her. “Though I don’t think I could keep Jennings on with any unresolved suspicions, if that were the case. Who else on the staff might have assisted her?”
She shook her head almost immediately. “Most of the household staff have been here for almost a decade. They are loyal to the marquessate and to Dùn Cuilean; I know it.”
“And the others?” he asked. “What about Simms and Cooper?”
There was little to consider regarding her father’s nurses. “Both came with us from London, as did Mandy. They’d have no reason to assist Daphne, even if she had opportunity to approach them. But what of these other men you have hired?”
“The magistrate personally vouched for them.” He dismissed the thought. “What of those on the grounds? How many are there?”
With a slow release of breath, she considered the width and breadth of Cuilean and all it encompassed. “More than twenty in the castle, four in the laundry, six in the stables. Out on the grounds? The garden? The farm? A hundred, Ian. Easily.”
“That’s a broad pool of suspects.”
She nodded absently in agreement. “Docherty was about on the grounds late one night…ah, I see, he was searching the grounds for you.” Even if the groundskeeper hadn’t been out on the grounds at Ian’s command, she wouldn’t have been able to believe the man capable of this level of duplicity. She knew these people. They wereherpeople, for all that she had left nine months before. Good, honest workers who spoke with her about their families and children. Who laughed and joked with her. She wouldn’t accept that the villain was one of her own.
Yet after what had happened tonight, she couldn’t deny that there was a murderer at large.
“I can hire more men to protect us,” he went on. “In the meantime, you stay close at all times, do you understand me? I dinnae want an argument from you, lass. I had thought you were no longer a target but this last has proven me wrong. Daphne is showing no reluctance in including you in her treachery.”
Nodding, she rose to slide into his arms. She held him tight, pressing her cheek against his chest. His heartbeat was strong and sure. “I can’t lose you, Ian.” The words were wrenched from deep within her. Surely, the utopian destiny Plato wrote of wouldn’t deliver a soul mate to her only to rip him away from her so soon, she thought, but fear for him held her firmly anyway.
His lips brushed the top of her head as his strong arms wrapped around her. “You won’t, my love. We’ll catch her, I promise you. You’re going to be stuck with me for a long while yet.”
His words weren’t meant only to reassure but to tease as well. Hero, however, found no amusement in them. Despite his reassurance, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the danger wasn’t going to end anytime soon.
“Did I miss the campfire?” Beaumont asked from the doorway, wearing a blue silk waistcoat over his nightshirt and a pair of galoshes. The normally deep creases of his face were folded into even graver lines of disappointment.
Hero only rolled her eyes with a groan, unable to find the humor in her father’s antics as she normally did. This was more than a gray cloud hanging over their heads. Dark and ominous, sending a shiver of foreboding down her spine.
Chapter Thirty-Three
A week later
Shrugging on his jacket, Ian made his way down the stairs, nodding to his guards as he passed. A week had passed since the fire. A week without further incident. While that was something to be glad for, he also knew that something would have to change soon.
Without the arsonist’s identification of Jennings as the agent who had hired him, there’d been no progress made in finding conclusive evidence of Daphne’s culpability in the attacks. After a week spent securing the grounds and vetting the estate workers, her accomplice still hadn’t been identified. Knowing a killer lingered in his home vexed him, but short of giving the entire staff the boot, Ian could think of no absolute solution to solve the problem.
But the entire staff was also aware of the reason behind the recent interrogations. They would be watching one another, and his hired guards patrolled the castle at all hours now as well, keeping a watchful eye out for strangers and unusual movement. They’d not be caught unawares again.
