“You thought Nicholas would marry you, didn’t you? If Olivia was dead. Instead, he chose to die with her. Or was killed. Or killed her, then himself. They’re the only possibilities we have.”

Her face crumpled, and furious with himself for what he’d done, he reached for her, pulling her into his arms. She buried her face in the front of his coat and cried, her body shaking with the force of her grief. “Tell me what you know,” he urged, against her hair, his voice little more than a whisper.

“He wrote to me before he died—Nicholas—” she began brokenly.

Then the door slammed open, and Cormac FitzHugh came into the room, his shadow springing before him across the ceiling, like a great black monster, breaking the spell.

“What the bloody hell!” he exclaimed, staring at them in sheer astonishment. “What are you doing—what’s going on here!”

Chapter 16

16

Startled and red-faced, her tears catching in her throat, Rachel broke free from Rutledge’s hold and whirled to the night-darkened windows, as far from Cormac as she could move in the little room, drawing silence around her as if it made her invisible.

Rutledge, furiously angry, turned on him instead. The two men glared at each other, shoulders tight, on the balls of their feet, ready to act or to block. They were breathing hard, for an instant the only sound in the room.

“I might ask you the same question!”

“What is this, harassment? Or a rendezvous?”

Their voices clashed, loud and thick with the force of dislike.

Hamish was clamoring. Warning. Rutledge ignored him, his whole attention concentrated on Cormac. For an instant it was touch and go, the policeman struggling to rein in his desire to wipe up the floor with the man in the doorway for interrupting when he did, and the levelheaded entrepreneur fighting the primitive urge to feel fist against flesh. The soldier and the Irishman. But Scotland Yard and the City won.

With difficulty, Cormac managed to say in a near-normal tone, “I saw the light in the kitchen. I came to find out who was in the house. What’ve you done to Rachel? Why is she crying?”

“The Hall upsets her,” Rutledge retorted. “But she came to help me look for something. It was kind of her. Leave her alone.”

“Rachel? Has he hurt you?”

She answered softly, without turning around. “I’m all right, Cormac. Just—it’s as he said. I—I still haven’t—Olivia and Nicholas. And Stephen. I—if they ‘d only hurry up and sell this house, I’d he all right!” she finished despairingly. “I can’t go, I can’t stay! I beg you just put an end to it!”