Satisfaction Page 29

  She had no money, save the pittance Hugo had paid her; she'd brought one change of clothes, but no jewelry except her wedding band. And, as a souvenir of this whole disgraceful episode in her life, that odd little stone she'd found in Olivia's room.

  If only she hadn't been so curious, if she'd just not pursued it so obsessively, if she'd not gotten so besotted by the idea of solving the mystery of Gaunt's disappearance, she'd still be at Waybury, waiting for Lujan's return.

  Which was preferable? Waiting for him forever, or losing him altogether?

  Euuwww. Emily understood; the tone and tenor of her voice said as much. She jumped up onto the table right by Jancie's chair, and rubbed her head against Jancie's shoulder. It will work itself out.

  Jancie wasn't so certain. And she was tired. And the whole idea of returning to her father empty-handed was abhorrent to ner. But she had no other choice. She couldn't stay. She had to go. She'd have to send word to him tomorrow. It would take time to arrange things, in any event.

  And it solved nothing . . .

  She wished Olivia were still here.

  Eooowwww. . . Don't forget me—oh, Emily for sure didn't '*ke the notion of being supplanted by memories of Olivia.

  'All right," Jancie whispered, her eyes stinging with tears. Oh, no—she wasn't one to cry over something like this. Not this. Not

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  when years at St. Bonny's had taught her to be stoic about everything.

  No tears . .. "You're right. You're my very best friend, and I'm still just a blundering dirty girl." The tears came then, anyway.

  And I don't know how to make anything right.

  ******************

  Was she crying?

  There wasn't a man alive who could cope with a woman's tears. He himself could be brutal about that sort of thing, had been on occasion, but this was Jancie, in his house, sobbing so quietly that no one, unless he were within three steps of her bedroom door, would have ever known it.

  Jancie had backbone—it would take a lot to dissolve her into tears. Nothing at all for her to dissolve in his arms.

  She wasn't skulking down the hallway with a weapon, intent on harming him. He had to let go of that idea. She wasn't his enemy. He didn't feel as if she were his enemy, but when had he ever relied on feelings?

  Those feelings had propelled him down the hallway to her room, and now he stood uncertainly outside the door, effectively dissuaded from high-handedly walking in and throwing her on the bed.

  Not a good tack when she was so distraught.

  He knocked instead. "Jancie . .."

  "Go away ..."

  No sane man would go away. He eased the door open. His whole body shot to attention at the sight of her, curled on the chair, facing away from the door, so that her hair tumbled all over her shoulders and legs, her shoulders shaking with those subdued and anguished sobs.

  "Jancie . . ." His voice was soft, low, compassionate, and so unlike him, he wondered if some entity had taken over his body and was speaking for him.

  "Don't come in." Her voice was muffled, tear-sodden. He came in anyway, and she was aware of his approach, his kneeling down next to the chair, of him extending his hand to Emily and her nuzzling and rubbing against it.

  Emilv was a traitor.

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  "I'm in." Not as in as he wanted to be, the desire rising instantly in him like fire, searing him, stunning him.

  This wasn't a sexual foray—or was it? He thought he had purer motives, but maybe anything like that went by the wayside where she was concerned. The safest thing was not to move. Not to touch her. Just to ask the question he'd come to ask.

  She said nothing, but her suppressed sobs seemed to have subsided; she seemed calmer, and more accepting of his presence.

  Good. 'Tell me why you came."

  "It's nothing." She lifted her head, her eyes still liquid with tears. "I'll be leaving in the morning."

  Tears destroyed him. No, Jancie's tears destroyed him. And her leaving was out of the question. "We'll talk about that in the morning. Tell me why you came."

  "It's nothing in light of the larger picture—you never wished to marry me, you abandoned me twice, you subsequently demolished my life, and you think I'm capable of murder. Anything else pales next to this litany of ills. I'm done."

  "Yet there was some reason you came."

  "It was time for you to return to Waybury."

  "No, it's my father's or Kyger's task to wrest me from the clutches of the demimonde. A wife wouldn't go within ten miles of that tall tale. Tell me, Jancie. It can't be worse than anything I deduced today about your father."

  But her sin was worse. She'd been spying and plotting against Hugo, all on her own. And to admit that on top of Lujan's pinning her about her father would put the cap on the bottle. She'd be out of there like a hound after a fox and to the nearest hotel before she could catch her breath.

  And there was no excusing it, no rational reason for it. And it defined her so completely as her father's daughter, she almost couldn't bear to think about it.

  There was no difference between her searching for clues to Gaunt's disappearance, and her searching for clues to the putative cache of diamonds that Hugo had allegedly stolen. None whatsoever.

  "Jancie ..."

  She stiffened. "All right. Why not? I'll say this—you were aifly dead-on in your assessment of howT everything came to

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  pass, with this exception—I had no notion that your father would offer me the position here. I fully expected to join my father in Delhi directly after I completed my studies at St. Bonny's, It's also true he encouraged my taking the position, but I can't speak to whether he also encouraged Hugo to offer it to me. But Father was adamant that he didn't want me in India just yet. Too much disease, too hot—I don't know—he had a variety of excuses, all of them reasonable, none of them questionable, and so I came.

  "Only two years later did it come to me why he wanted me here. I never expected to have feelings for you. To me, coming here was a way to discover concrete evidence of whether Hugo had betrayed my father. It seemed the least I could do for him. He'd lost years, he'd lost Olivia, he'd lost my mother, he'd lost the comfortable life he might have had from his share in the profits from their strike.

  "Nor was it easy for me to see just what our life might have been like had fate not intervened . . ."

  Her voice trailed off. It didn't seem necessary to round out the picture. That was enough—she'd confirmed nearly everything he'd surmised, and more. What more was there that didn't redound badly on her? And by her own account, her own purpose in coming to Waybury was every bit as nefarious as her father's in sending her there.

  "I was not grateful," she added.

  "And so what happened yesterday?"

  She could fall in love all over again with this Lujan, this patience, this warmth, this unusual kindness when his wont was to be merciless.

  "... I've been looking for evidence that Hugo's wealth derived from the strike at Kaamberoo. About a week ago, I was searching the upper shelves in the library when I came upon a book that turned out to be an album of photographs . .."

  "Oh?" Now he stiffened, all his sympathy gone, the face of the pitiless Lujan back in place.

  "Of Gaunt. There were eight or nine altogether. Two of them portraits of you, Kyger, and him. He haunted me. I wanted so badly to discover what had happened to him. I kept the album in Olivia's room, under the footboard of her bed. I don't know—-it

  Satisfaction / 267

  made sense somehow. It felt as if he were buried in the library where no one could ever find him. And in Olivia's room, at least, he could be with her ..."

  It sounded insane, and not her decision to make at all. Someone had done that. Banished Gaunt for all time on the library shelf.

  She swallowed hard. "Anyway, after I finished looking at the photographs with a magnifying glass one morning, I stepped on something on the ca
rpet. Emily had been under the bed, and I thought she had been playing with a pebble or something. But that it was so odd to find a pebble in Olivia's bedroom—

  "Well, I suggested to Hugo that perhaps it was time to dismantle her bedroom. He was adamant that it be left as it was, and that I not intrude by going in there anymore. He said he would lock it up if I did not respect his wishes."

  "Let me guess," Lujan said coldly. "You didn't."

  "I didn't." The words sat heavily in the air. "It felt as if she were being buried all over again. I went back that night to look under the bed."

  Again her words sounded deranged. Who would go contrary to a husband's wishes and poke and pry under his deceased wife's bed?

  "And you found—what?" If his voice went any colder, she'd freeze.

  "More pebbles. A lot more of them. I grabbed a handful. And sawdust. Dust drifts. I couldn't see, it was dark—but there was something there, under the bed, something hard, wooden, something Emily could have been scratching at. . . and—suddenly there was nothing more because I woke up the next morning in my own bed."

  "Walking in your sleep." He sounded relieved—but still cool, removed, a little wary of her.

  "Or—not. One more thing—I went back to Olivia's room the next morning to look and see in daylight what I felt the night before. And there was nothing there. Not the album, the pebbles, the wooden object, whatever it was. Nothing."

  "You dreamt it. It was a dream, Jancie. You just wanted to find the boy."

  "I didn't dream it. Someone stopped me from exploring Olivia's room any further. Someone tried to scare me. Someone

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  removed everything that was under the bed because his ideal hiding place had been found out."

  "Don't say it, Jancie."

  "Fine. And one more thing. I have the original pebble. That's how I know it wasn't a dream."

  "Where?" His voice was clipped, angry. He didn't believe her. It sounded awful, even to her. It sounded like the most base betrayal—of him, of Olivia, of whatever there was of their marriage.

  "I have it."

  "Show me."

  She unwound herself from the chair, moved to the dresser, and rummaged in the top drawer for a moment.

  "Here."

  He turned the stone every which way in his fingers, and held it up to the dim light of the table lamp. "You saw more of these? Under the bed?"

  "Yes. I think I picked up about a dozen all together, and they were all gone the next day."

  "Jancie ..." His voice had changed, lowered, warmed. "This is a diamond."

  A chill shot right through her body like an arrow. "How do you know?"

  "He taught us about them many years ago."

  "Oh my God—" Everything she'd been looking for had been right in plain sight, under that sacred shrine, Olivia's bed.

  And she hadn't even told him about the ghostly, crickling, rolling sound in the hallway .. .

  "That's why I came to London," she whispered. "I didn't know it was a diamond. I just thought he would come after me anyway."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Suddenly everything was turned upside down.

  "My father??" Lujan murmured in disbelief. He kept rolling the stone around in his fingers, seeing in it Hugo hiding his secrets under Olivia's bed, more secrets buried with Edmund Renbrook in the explosion at Kaamberoo all those years ago.

  Hugo consorting with murderers and thieves, in the familiar family history, but not because he'd been kidnapped—but no, these had been hirelings who'd helped him bring out a cache of rough diamonds he would never have to share with anyone but his ghosts.

  Every story, every justification a lie?

  Hugo the potential killer—not Jancie?

  Who else could Hugo have killed to protect that secret?

  Jesus God. And then his father living all those years on the knife-edge of wondering if Edmund had even survived, and terrified he might return from the dead to blackmail him.

  And the ghost had come back. After all those years, there was Edmund, hovering in the background. Asking for nothing. Just making certain that Hugo was aware. Aware of what he could ask for, aware of what he had the potential to do.

  It was monumental. He had the power to ruin Hugo. It must

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  have always been in the air—that he would do it, under certain circumstances, even if he never saw a shilling from his share of the diamonds.

  His father, Lujan supposed, was a reasonable man, but how nerve-wracking must it have been, waiting for Edmund's ultimate demand?

  How little it must have seemed when it finally came.

  Support Edmund's daughter at boarding school? Happy to comply. Ask her to Waybury to care for Olivia? Surely Hugo knew how much Edmund had cared about Olivia. Let his daughter stand in his stead and help her through her final days.

  The perfect solution to a thorny situation,

  Hugo must have been relieved beyond the moon.

  And when Olivia passed away—

  Another solution to another prickly situation instantly presented itself: propose to marry Edmund's daughter, and by doing so, avert the threat of Edmund ruining him altogether.

  And here it was—the father and his profligate son plotting to keep Edmund and his potential for blackmail at bay.

  He bore just as much guilt as Jancie ... for everything. Plots and schemes. They were all guilty—Jancie had been the one caught in the middle.

  It was a diamond.

  And if there had been a stash of them under his mother's bed—which meant Hugo had brought them out of South Africa in the rough—he had done more than just swindle Edmund out of his share; he had also lied egregiously to his family about his past history and what had really happened at Kaamberoo. And had taken Olivia's money without qualm into the bargain.

  "Lujan?" Jancie was back in her chair, her knees drawn up, her eyes grave.

  "I'm still putting it all together in my mind."

  But the obvious was obvious, Jancie thought. "He lied about the diamonds."

  Lujan didn't want to condemn Hugo quite yet. "So this suggests."

  "They could have been under her bed all the years since he returned from South Africa."

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  Lujan shook his head. "I wouldn't think so. Mother was a stickler for turning out the rugs and cleaning out the rooms every season."

  "All right—then hidden ..."

  "We can infer that—" Lujan agreed impatiently, still reluctant to believe even a part of what sounded so utterly unbelievable, and indefensible, even, "if you saw all those stones under the bed..."

  "I saw them. I had them in my hand. I wish Emily could tell you—she was always under the bed, she was obviously scratching at something. I found sawdust in her claws both times we were there, and she batted that stone—that diamond—out from under the bed. That's how I found it—I stepped on it. . . I—"

  She broke off abruptly because even to her own ears, she sounded incoherent now, and he still wavered, still wanting to believe that the world that Hugo had created for his family was still intact, and that his father was not an out-and-out liar.

  And that those stones were not the mythical diamonds that had been stolen by the long-ago kidnappers. And that Hugo was not a thief.

  Emily said, owww, as if to punctuate Jancie's testimony.

  He stared at the stone. It was so long ago. How could anyone make reparations for a life not lived? Only Jancie had even a chance at reclaiming the past, but only because Edmund had schemed to put her in the one place she could take it back.

  God. Had they all been just pawns in the games their fathers played?

  A cache of diamonds hidden under Olivia's bed. He shook his Head. How was it possible? But of course, she had been ill in those years, and things had not been done to her usual precise specifications.

  And the cat hadn't ever gone in there, except in the last days as she was dying. Possibly the cache had been mov
ed there after her death? Sawdust presupposed some kind of wooden box or container.

  The perfect hiding place, then. A dying woman. Her indigent companion linked to her by a mutual history that was secreted under her bed.

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  Had Hugo been drunk, mad, or just plain arrogant?

  Or was it just that under Olivia's bed was the last place anyone would look for anything at that point?

  He was too tired to sift through all the details any further. He hadn't expected this stunning revelation, and he still couldn't quite grasp the enormity of Hugo's duplicity and Edmund's guile.

  He didn't want to. Not tonight.

  Far easier to bury himself in Jancie's enfolding heat, as he had fully intended, and just rock and root there forever.

  He still wanted it. Above and beyond his suspicions, his anger, his desire to keep her at arm's length, he still only wanted her.

  Jancie's deceptions were nothing to his own—he was no saint. But he was not roaming the streets looking for easy cunt, either, as he might have done two months ago.

  And his father's sins were not his. He felt as if Hugo's life were a piece of fiction, and he had come to the resolution of the story, and put it down because he didn't want to read the rest.

  He felt removed from his father, and closer to her. He didn't want to move, didn't want to leave her. He wanted to stop this moment before any further disastrous revelations destroyed it.

  Something had changed.

  And it wasn't whether this irregular, dirt-encrusted, glassy piece of rock represented the truth.

  It was just that his wanting her was a constant ache that couldn't be assuaged by any other woman anywhere.

  Whatever that meant in terms of his past, or for his future.

  ******************

  But he wasn't struggling with it any more fiercely than she was, Jancie thought. Because the diamond proved that everything Edmund had ever told her was true.

  But then that made Hugo the villain.

  There was no good outcome to this.

  She wished she could make time stand still, that anything beyond this moment could be lost forever in history.