It didn’t seem real to her any longer, not the questions she was going to ask, not the half-formed thoughts that had tumbled about her head since she had seen Rhys beside Old Tom’s body. She couldn’t remember why she thought the things she did, couldn’t concentrate on anything when she was this close to Rhys and he was searching her face with his smoky eyes. “Did you send for the authorities?” she asked finally.
It was a beginning, Rhys thought, and he went along with it. “Yes, Nick and I talked to them. McNulty and Wilver. I believe those were their names. They seemed like good men. They certainly asked a lot of questions. They wanted to talk to you, but Nick wouldn’t let them. They’ll probably be back in the morning after they talk to Tom Allen’s sons.”
“I’d like to speak to them,” Kenna said. “I want to help.”
“I know you do. I think there is every chance they’ll find the poacher. If they don’t, Nick will. He was livid when I told him about the trap on his land and your own narrow miss of it.”
“He’s going to be angry with me for not telling him right away.”
“I think he’s calmed down. In the morning his head will be throbbing too hard to give you proper scold.”
“Is that why you’re being kind to me now? Your head’s throbbing, too?”
“I never mean to be unkind to you, Kenna. Sometimes—well, too often you strike a nerve and I say things I regret. But then you are not so different from other women there. You always knew you could hurt me.”
But I didn’t know that at all, she wanted to say. Of late Rhys’s mind seemed impenetrable to her. She never could guess what he was thinking or feeling. She had concluded he thought overmuch and felt not at all. She could not find the words to express what she was thinking and perhaps it was just as well. She did not know what to make of this softening, this new vulnerability, she felt toward Rhys. She steered the conversation back to her original intention.
“Do you really think Old Tom was killed by a poacher, Rhys?”
“No.” He couldn’t find it in himself to lie to her now, no matter what she would make of it.
“I don’t either,” she said slowly.
“Do you still think I did it?”
Kenna’s fingers curled around the belt of her robe and she toyed with the knot. “I did. Earlier. I don’t know any more.”
“Yet you came here. Why? Did you think I might confess?”
He had caught her out so neatly that she gave a little start.
“Don’t bother to answer. I can see that you did,” he said mostly to himself. It was no more than he expected but it still had the power to disappoint him. He reached his innermost soul for calm when all he could feel was a rising anger. “Let us suppose I did kill Tom—”
“I said I wasn’t certain any longer.”
He waved aside her hasty reminder. “For the sake of argument, let us say I did kill Tom. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Do not play the scatter-brain for me now. Why would I kill Old Tom? You must have some theory.”
“I thought he could have identified the trap.”
“As mine?” Rhys asked, clearly incredulous. “Kenna, be serious.”
“I didn’t think he would know it was yours,” she said quickly. “But mayhap he would have known if it was made locally and if it was, it could be traced to the purchaser.”
“That’s a quite a bit of speculation,” Rhys said dryly.
“Well, I didn’t think you’d have carried the thing the whole way from London so, of course, I thought you bought it locally.”
“Why would I be carrying the damnable contraption in the first place? I can hunt on Dunnelly lands freely if I have a mind to. Why must I resort to a trap?”
Kenna drew in a deep breath and said in a rush, “Because it had to look like an accident, you see. You knew where I rode every morning, you said so yourself. And if Pyramid had found the trap who would suspect it was you who had laid it? Who would have considered you set the trap before you announced your arrival and that you came to ride with me only to steer me and my horse toward the trap. I would have been thrown and trampled and no one would have thought of you.” Her hands were trembling now. “It would have been some poor poacher who would have been held for the blame. Perhaps even Tom Allen.”
“My God!” Rhys breathed heavily. He got up from the bed, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep from making Kenna’s words come true. At that moment there was little that would have given him more pleasure than strangling her. He sat down beside her and when she recoiled from what she saw in his face, the terrible anger that had hovered near the surface finally broke through. His hands came out of his pockets and he grasped her shoulders, shaking her first then doing the only thing that would give him more pleasure than throttling her.
He kissed her.
