Through the Smoke Read Online Free PDF Page B

Blackmoor Hall.” She stated it baldly and then looked away to avoid seeing the satisfaction on his face. “He took the money… but he could not go through with the agreement.” She faced him, hoping to convince him of something she was no longer sure of herself. “He did
not
set the fire.”
    “And how can you be so sure?” The tension in Lord Druridge’s body reminded Rachel of a hound straining at the end of a leash, only he was, at the same time, master, holding himself in check.
    “Because he told me so.”
    “Would he readily admit to murder, Miss McTavish?”
    “Why would he deny it? He knew he wasn’t long for this earth.”
    “To protect you from the taint of his deeds, perhaps?”
    “No. He told me about the money so he could die with a clear conscience. Why admit only half the truth? Leave something far worse to harrow up his soul?”
    Druridge seemed skeptical, but didn’t press the point. “Who gave him the money?”
    “He wouldn’t say, so for all I know”—Rachel clenched her hands in her lap—“the money could have come from you.”
    The earl gave an incredulous laugh. “You think I tried to hire your father to fire my home and kill my wife and, when he refused, did it myself?”
    Superstitiously fearing the earl’s hypnotic eyes, Rachel once again dropped her gaze to the floor. “That is one possibility.”
    He moved toward her, his deliberate steps reminding Rachel that she was completely at his mercy. She doubted whether any of the servants sleeping in the nether regions of the manse would hear her should she cry out. There was only Mrs. Poulson, and she was no ally.
    “Except that I did not hire your father,” he breathed, now only inches away. “That much I know, despite my fickle memory. If I tried to pay a man to kill my wife, I would be more prudent than to let him live long enough to die of miner’s lung. Or to tell someone like you, someone who could conceivably prattle the tale about town.”
    His words caused the short hairs to rise on Rachel’s nape. Half-expecting him to reach for her, to encircle her neck with his powerful hands, she shrank into the chair as he towered over her.
    “Have you no answer to that?” he asked.
    She dragged to her lips the words flying around in her head. “Perhaps you thought the money sufficient to buy his silence.”
    “So my bothering you is just a way to see if he kept his end of the bargain?”
    “I don’t know you, my lord,” she said, scrambling to hide her fear. “I can only judge according to instinct, and my instincts tell me that you are indeed capable of such a thing.”
    “Capable of murder?” He laughed. “Perhaps. But then, under the right circumstances, I think we are all capable of murder.”
    Rachel said nothing. She wanted to leave and never see this man again, but he leaned over, propping his hands on the arms of her chair and pinning her to her seat.
    “Your attitude raises another question,” he said. “Believing, as you do, that I tried to finance the commission of this crime, I cannot help but wonder why you haven’t contacted the authorities. Was it because you were so eager to keep the money? Is that why you closed your eyes to the probable truth? Were you hoping the deed would simply fade into the past? That no one would come looking for the money or for answers?”
    Rachel dared not move lest she come into contact with him. She tilted her head back to look in his face and saw a steely determination that frightened her even more than his words. “My mother insisted we say nothing. We needed the money to stock the shop”—she cringed at the mercenary light in which her words painted Jillian—“and we did not know who to return it to. If you had indeed paid my father to set the fire, we felt safe as long as we said nothing. Our shop serves a great purpose. It is the only outpost for books this far north. Many of the country homes in the surrounding counties rely on us to stock their libraries,