“Doesn’t that make you wonder?”
“Yes, actually—but how do you know this?”
“I went to see him today,” Kimberly admitted. “Did you also know that Mr. Ables refused to have a doctor look at his head injury? It wouldn’t have cost him anything, so why would he refuse?”
“It does sound strange, doesn’t it,” the duchess agreed, frowning.
While the duchess was digesting this, Kimberly said, “Megan, he was lying about Lachlan, I know he was, and it would be so easy to prove.”
“How?”
“You mentioned your footman is Scottish, and there are others here, including Lachlan’s clansmen. If you gathered them all together with Lachlan, and had them each say something identical, with your groom able to hear them, but unable to see them, he wouldn’t be able to say which was Lachlan, and that would prove he was lying.”
Megan grinned. “That’s rather clever, but what if he picks one of Lachlan’s kin? That would still indicate Lachlan, albeit indirectly.”
Kimberly sighed. “You’re right. Lachlan’s kin shouldn’t be used a’tall. I don’t suppose you have a few more Scotsmen working for you?”
“One that I know of, yes, and another that can be fetched. He doesn’t work for us, but he lives just north of here and I’m sure he’d be willing to participate.”
“Wonderful!”
“I’d say we could try this tomorrow, at the latest, the next day. But I should still point out, Kimberly, that if as you say, Ables was lying, then he’ll be guessing when asked to pick out Lachlan’s voice, and there is still that possibility that he just might guess accurately.”
“There is that,” Kimberly allowed. “But if I’m right, then he wasn’t really injured, it was just a ruse, and that makes him involved in this thing. So I’m hoping the very situation will so fluster him that he might just do something stupid.”
“Like confess?”
Kimberly grinned. “That would be nice. You—ah—won’t tell your husband about this, will you? At least until after we’ve tried it?”
Megan chuckled. “I imagine Devlin will be spending the next few days out in the woods, he’s so bloody determined to catch the chap red-handed. Don’t worry, m’dear, he can find out the good news—or bad, after he returns.”
31
After her talk with Megan, Kimberly was finally feeling a bit more optimistic. Their plan was going to work, it had to. The alternative was—unacceptable. And once this was behind them, she could get back to concentrating completely on what she was here for—a husband.
As a matter of fact, James Travers had leaned forward to whisper to her, when he held her chair for her at dinner, that he wanted to have a private word with her sometime tomorrow. She had little doubt that he was going to ask her to marry him. Just the thought should have thrilled her. Instead she had still been engrossed in the meeting she’d had with Ables and how she was going to put her suggestion to Megan.
But now, with that done, she had time to consider James—and she wondered why the thought of marrying himstilldidn’t thrill her. They were ideally suited. She knew he could make her happy—well, she was reasonably certain that he could. And her father would be extremely pleased, could find no fault with him whatsoever.
There was still Howard Canston, of course, who had apparently cooled on his former flirtation and had been showing much more interest in her just lately. He was younger than James, even more handsome, was also going to be a marquis when his father passed on, and was certainly just as wealthy as James.
A prime consideration, that last, for her anyway. At least with both James and Howard, she had no fear that they were solely interested in her for the money that would come to them from her father. They wouldn’t even know, until after the marriage when she chose to mention it, just how wealthy she really was. When they learned of the inheritance she had from her mother, it would merely be a nice surprise.
Returning to her room that evening after her talk with Megan, she was still wondering what she was going to say to James tomorrow when…
“You’re keeping late hours, Kimber.”
“Good God!” She gasped. “Frighten me to death, why don’t you!”
A chuckle came from the dark. “Och, I’d no’ be wanting tae do that.”
“You could have fooled me,” she mumbled as she moved to fetch a twig from the fireplace to light the lamps. “And what, may I ask, are you doing lurking in my room, Lachlan?”
She, at least, had no trouble identifying his voice in the dark. No one could, really, who’d actually heard him speak before. His voice was distinctive.
“Lurking? Nay, merely waiting,” he said, explaining, “I didna want tae miss seeing you and have you return tae your room and slip into bed wi’out my hearing it. So I came here to await you.”
“Seeing me?” she said just as the first lamp was turned up. She glanced around the room then, until she found him in the comfortable reading chair by her window. “Well, you can see me now, so…?”
