Digging into death, p.21
Digging Into Death, page 21
A wounded hero who had reached above his station.
Had Arkwright meant that Gawen would be blamed for Spirios’ murder? Or only that he would be blamed for the theft of artifacts? Or that Gawen was guilty and they two had proof? Or that Arkwright knew who was guilty yet he would ensure Gawen would be both blamed and discredited?
The strands wound too tightly for her. Tired as she was, she could not uncoil them tonight. She needed the freshness of morning.
She stood gingerly. She dared not venture through the sitting room with the drunk Arkwright on the couch. Her path had to be the exterior stair and around the balcony to her room on the far side. She tiptoed to the steps.
And heard someone call out.
She froze.
The call came again. Unintelligible words. Like the back passage, the stone floor amplified sound. The storeroom was empty. The call had to come from Madoc’s room. As she hesitated, he called again, and this time she heard the words. “Hal, Charles! Get down. Get down. Get—! Damn, damn, damn!”
Chapter 18 :: Tuesday night, October 21
Isabella opened the door to Madoc’s room. The light from the passage streamed into the tiny room.
Caught in a nightmare, he writhed on the narrow bed. “Shells! Get down. Down! Charles! Charlie? Where’s Charlie? Dammit!”
Isabella reached him. From her time going with Lady Baskille to the hospital where soldiers fresh from the front lines recovered from wounds both physical and mental, she knew the horrors of war lived in his nightmares. What to do? Stop the nightmare? Let it run its course? While she decided, she lit a candle. When she turned back, she saw his grimace, his clenched fists. She could not bear his anguish. Hoping that touch was the best answer, she slipped inside the mosquito netting and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her hand slid on sweaty skin. “Madoc, wake up.”
He flung out his arm. It hit her thigh and staggered her.
“Madoc, wake up. You’re dreaming.”
He jack-knifed up, seized her arm and shoved. His eyes stared but saw only the war. “Get off,” he snarled. “Get off, you bastard.”
She knelt beside him. She didn’t want to slap him awake, answering violence with violence. She clamped her arm around his shoulder and pressed her cheek to his, trusting to touch and warmth and softness. “You’re dreaming. Wake up, Madoc. It’s Isabella. Wake up.”
“Bella?” He shuddered as he came awake. Stiffness sapped from him. His arm lifted to encircle her waist. He leaned into her. “Bella.”
“You had a nightmare.” She released him and would have scooted away, intensely aware of his bare skin, but he held tight.
He buried his face in her neck and inhaled her scent. His hand lifted to her hair. His fingers sifted through it to her scalp. “Bella,” he sighed, his breath hot, as hot as his skin.
“Wake up, Madoc,” she said sharply. Her hands again slipped over his sweaty skin. “Let me go. You had a nightmare.”
At the words he stiffened as if it had returned. He released her and bolted up. He jerked the mosquito netting out of his way. Two strides took him to a small chest. He fumbled in the top drawer. Light flashed on glass as he lifted and drank. She smelled whiskey when he stopped to breathe. Then he drank again.
Remembering Arkwright’s drunken anger, Isabella recoiled.
Madoc’s hand shot out as she headed for the door. He snared her arm. “Wait, Bella.” As if he had read her mind, he said, “It cuts the nightmare.”
“Whiskey is no help for nightmares.”
His short laugh had no humor. “Cuts it, doesn’t help it. Stay, will you? Talk a bit. Gawen does. That’s the best cure.”
She hesitated. “Only if you don’t drink.” And she perched on the bed.
He released her to stopper the bottle. Then he lit a candle—and she realized he slept naked. She averted her eyes as he shook his trousers from the heap on the floor. Now that she was no longer intent on helping him, she shivered, still cold from her hours on the terrace.
Madoc shut the door. “For privacy. How did you hear me?” After she explained, he said, “Pretty deep thoughts to keep you out late. Did I frighten you? You’re trembling.”
“I’m cold,” she complained. “I sat outside too long.”
He squatted before her and rubbed her arms. She felt surrounded by him. “What were you thinking, Isabella? Will you tell me?”
Wanting to sink into him, she leaned back. “No. I won’t.”
“Won’t is better than can’t. What’s the worst? Did you lie about Harcourt-Smythe?”
“You think I lied?”
“No, but—. Bella, I don’t understand why you suddenly walled yourself away. You were so open and happy before.”
Surrounded by him, warmed by him, she couldn’t lie, but she told only half the truth. “If any artifacts are stolen, I may be accused of being Mr. Harcourt-Smythe’s accomplice. Even if I am not, the police might suspect me of collusion.”
“I told you not to worry about that.”
“I wasn’t going to, then Matthews came to the same conclusion.”
He gripped her elbows painfully. “Matthews told you that? Hamilton Matthews? That little—he’s a jerk. I thought he was a friend.”
Like a woeful child, she said, “He was only speculating about what could very easily be.”
“No.” His hands slid to hers. He clasped them between his. “No, I’d say not. He’s not learned to keep his thoughts to himself. I can guarantee Petrie would have added that the police will think you are Harcourt-Smythe’s minion.”
“You ignored me when I said it. Why do you accept it as more credible when Matthews and Petrie say it?”
“Don’t fire up at me, Isabella. I don’t think it more credible. I had hoped no one else would make the connection. If they see it, then our murdering thief also has.”
“I was also warned,” and she omitted by whom, since Petrie jammed his judgment, “that you and Madoc could be the criminals.”
“You were with me when Spirios was murdered.”
“Your brother Gawen has no alibi.”
“Petrie told you this?” He surged up then strode away, a two-step pace in the tiny room. “Petrie said Gawen had no alibi? I need to talk to him.”
“Petrie didn’t say it, no. He didn’t speak against it, either.”
Madoc braced an arm on the side door, hemming her between him and the bed. Muscles flexed in his arm. “If you heard this with Petrie on Monday, then who knows who else is blathering about Gawen’s lack of an alibi.”
“Don’t reject it because Petrie said it. I can’t.”
“Isabella, do you think Gawen is a criminal?”
She pressed her lips together. She clenched her fists. She met his brilliant gaze without flinching. And she still didn’t know. “Don’t you see, Madoc? This is eating me up. I don’t know. Your brother, you—and I blithely accept anything you tell me.”
Again he squatted before her. He covered her clenched hands. “I would never harm you, Bella, not when—.” He stopped. His callused thumbs rubbed over her curled fingers, worked against her nails and palms, trying to coax open her fists. “I couldn’t hurt you or bear to see you hurt,” he whispered.
Oh, she wanted to believe him. Her heart wept with the need while her mind cried for proof. “Upon what should I base my trust, Madoc?” His gaze met hers levelly. She inhaled sharply at that honest look. Her nails bit more deeply into her palms. “I need proof for my trust.”
“You have my word.”
Tears stung her eyes. “You could be lying to me, just as I could be lying to you.”
“Not you, Bella.”
“Oh, Madoc, not five minutes ago you asked if I had lied about Mr. Harcourt-Smythe. It’s hard to know the truth, isn’t it? Cecilia has the same quandary about Gawen, but she says he’s too arrow straight to be a criminal. Perhaps she’s deluding herself. Perhaps she uses that for the reason he continues to refuse her, that he can’t stand theft of any sort, of an artifact or a man’s wife. Kat said a criminal would be twisted one way, twisted another. Yet even that’s not essentially true. Not if you are both extremely clever.”
“I’m not that clever.”
Isabella shook her head. “And I can see that you are. I’ve seen your mind bent toward good, thinking of ways to help me, working problems at the dig. At the road washout, you organized and ran a job you didn’t half understand with men you didn’t even know. Michael Tredennit spotted your cleverness immediately. Why do you think he offered you a job?”
“That wasn’t cleverness. I was just doing the next thing.”
“A mind to organize, to manipulate what’s available, to change as the situation fluctuates—that’s all it takes.”
He didn’t answer immediately. He looked at their hands. His thumbs circled over her soft skin. Then he looked up and caught her staring. “Bella, do you think I would let harm come to you?”
“My heart says no. My head doesn’t know. I can see both sides. I’m sorry, Madoc.” And her heart ached when he glanced away and down, when his mouth compressed.
Then he looked up with a wry expression. “If I tell you to listen to your heart, I’m being shrewd. If I kiss you, I’m making your heart befuddle your head. Do you know my fear, Bella? It’s tied up with Harcourt-Smythe’s arrival. I thought it was only that Petrie would get ammunition to discredit Gawen and to slander you. Since Sunday I’ve realized there’s a worse situation: you jailed as his accomplice while my brother is accused of murder. The only way I can prevent that is to catch the thief and coerce him into confessing to the murder. I can’t catch the thief until Harcourt-Smythe arrives. I need him here, and I don’t want him here for what he can do to you.”
“I told you he can do nothing to me now.”
“You think not? Think what the Standings would do if they knew you were here with me now. If they knew that I had kissed you in your room. Haven’t you heard Kat’s university gossip? Petrie’s just as bad. They all delight in other people’s misfortunes. I don’t want rumors circulating about you.”
Was this more evidence of Madoc’s goodness? Or part of his continued campaign to dupe her? “I came in to stop your nightmare. I should leave now. Unless you want to talk about that.”
He gritted his teeth. “My turn to say ‘no’, Bella. Maybe someday. The nightmares have eased off with time. I don’t have them so often now. Just when things get bad.”
He released her and backed away, toward the low chest. Although the whiskey was no longer visible, she was suddenly afraid he would turn to it if she left. She saw again the flash of glass, the slosh of amber liquid, and Kat’s words echoed: Twisted one way, twisted another.
Isabella stayed planted on the bed, unwilling to leave him to the night, his war memories, and the whiskey. “Your nightmares are the other reason you wanted a room off the balcony. Down here, if you call out, no one will hear. What happened before I came?”
“Gawen usually woke me. Since Cecilia’s distracted him, I couldn’t trust he would do it. So now I can guard the storeroom and the entrance and yell all I need to.”
His flippancy did not quite hide his frustration. His wound from the war, a hidden wound that few people would understand.
He had hidden his weakness from slanderous gossip. She doubted anyone else knew about his nightmares. They were no ruse. No one could have faked that staring horror, his thumping heartbeat, the sweat that still sheened his skin. Looking back, she saw evidence: the gallons of coffee, the need to walk at night to exhaust himself, his sudden and heavy sleeps at the cove and on the mountain, not naps but dreamless exhaustion.
That evidence she could see. Why couldn’t she see evidence that pointed to the thief? “Do you still think the thief is one of them?”
He had followed her train of thought. “Has to be. No one else has any access to the artifacts. All of them have opportunity to steal. The motive is the third oldest in the world: greed, supplied by Harcourt-Smythe’s money.”
Distracted, she asked, “Oh, what are the first two?”
Sweeping the netting behind him, he sat on the bed, inches from her. “Ambition. Lust.”
“Deadly sins, greed and envy and lust.” She tried not to envision his muscled body when he’d leapt from the bed. The candle glow flickering over his sweaty skin. The heat of him, the feel of him, his muscles rippling with the pent-up emotions stirred by the nightmare.
“We’re a cauldron of all the deadly sins. And Harcourt-Smythe will multiply their effect.” His hand covered her knee. The heat and weight of it heightened her sinful thoughts. “Isabella, are you truly not worried about his arrival? I’ll do what I can to build a fence around you, but I can’t restrict him too much. Our thief must already be on edge. With our talk of stolen artifacts, he knows we’re watching for that. I think his murder of Spirios wasn’t planned, but I don’t want to provoke that reaction again. So we must accept Harcourt-Smythe when I’d rather send him to the devil.”
His comments seemed to reinforce his innocence, but a clever schemer would use the same words. “I will appreciate your running interference between Mr. Harcourt-Smythe and myself.” She stood to leave, and he stood with her. She made herself smile as she added, “As long as I must not give up my room to him as you did for me.”
“He can doss down in here. I’ll take the cot in Gawen’s study. Don’t worry, Bella.”
“And the storeroom?”
“By the time he arrives, we’ll have crated the best of the finds.”
“And then you’ll be gone, delivering the crate on Friday.”
“I may delay that trip to Heraklion. Another ship will dock on Wednesday; I could take the crate then. I should do that so he has no chance to badger you.” He gathered up her hands. “Isabella, has this talk settled anything for you?”
An easy ‘yes’ would have pleased him, but she wouldn’t lie. “I’m sorry, Madoc. I wish it had. Like you, I want evidence that only Harcourt-Smythe can roust out.”
Her answer disappointed him, but he didn’t argue. Wordlessly he opened the side door and stepped into the passage. Heart aching, Isabella followed him back to her room.
The candle in her room guttered in the draft when he opened her door. It had burned down during her long vigil. In the jumping light the room looked alien and cold.
Then Madoc caught her arm and pulled her around. “I’m damned either way,” he muttered and pulled her into his embrace.
He shushed her surprise. His hands pushed into her hair. Pins hit the floor, then her hair spilled down her back. He tilted her head. With his breath caressing her face, his work-roughened fingers explored her features like a blind man. “Damned either way,” he repeated and kissed her.
Isabella wrapped her arms around him and gloried in his kiss. She splayed her hands on his naked back, her fingertips on his spine. Deadly sins, she thought and wanted more and more of the sensations only he could arouse. She loved him, but she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t tell him that her heart and her head were at war. Her heart had won tonight’s battle. She would be mortified in the morning. She knew these things, but she ignored them for the delight he roused.
Then he stopped. His hands dropped from her to clench at his sides. He stepped back. In the flickering light his eyes glittered in his stark face.
Her eyes burned with tears at his sudden rejection. “Madoc—.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know if you can trust me, but you let me kiss you. I’ll take anything you give me, Bella. You’ve given me dreams I thought I had lost. Sweet dreams, instead of hellish nightmares.”
He was gone even as she reached for him. She stared at the closed door then moved automatically to lock it.
When she lay on the bed, she stared at the blackness with burning eyes while she wept inside for a loss she didn’t quite divine.
Chapter 19 :: Wednesday, October 22
Breakfast was a new testing ground for Isabella. Above table, Madoc treated her as casually as any other morning. Below table, his knee pressed against hers. Every time he used his napkin, he laid it back across his lap with a sweep of his hand that landed on her thigh. And he used his napkin a lot. He drank less coffee than usual. She asked for a third cup, risking the jitters from drinking too much of Dorcas’ dark brew. Gawen and Standings talked about the photographic record with Lamb. Cecilia seemed immersed in her thoughts. Nigel gloomed with his usual morning blackness. Brown hair falling over his eyes, Petrie was unusually quiet, but Castlereagh and Matthews filled his silence with a debate about footballers.
Only Lamb didn’t troop down to the site, staying behind to develop his work over the previous days. Isabella trailed to the site as well. She hoped to find an artifact that would echo her success with the bracelet and the stirrup jar.
The excavation had changed since last she saw it. The mudslip had destroyed one complete side. They had abandoned it to concentrate their efforts on the still-exposed foundation and house interior. They were well below their work from when she had arrived. The change possible in that short two weeks amazed her. As she circled the site, looking for potential sketches, she came up behind the Tarrant brothers.
“Any nightmares, little brother?”
“Last night, but then I had the best distraction in the world.”
“Are you sure you want to get involved with her?”
“At least she’s not married.”
“That’s below the belt, Madoc. I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t seek comfort there ever again.”
Isabella backed off and headed in the opposite direction before they saw her.
Since she sought an artifact, she planted herself with Cecilia under the tarp and helped sort objects that the new boxman brought. Change had also happened here. Shaped stone was coming in with the clay disks.
“Look. We’ve unearthed a handful of these, rough and badly formed.” Cecilia handed her one of the stone images. “The first ones surfaced yesterday. My scholarly husband wanted to discard them. Gawen said no.”
“Why? It’s just rock, shaped by time.”
