Page 79 of Impetuous

“I said—”

“No, I heard what you said. It just doesn’t make sense. I didn’t send you a note.”

“I received one, signed by you.”

“Where is it? Let me see it.”

“I don’t have it. I put it in my pocket, and when I awoke, it was no longer there.”

“Damn!”

Cassandra lifted her brows. “Do you think I’m making it up?”

“No, of course not. But I—it could not have been my handwriting.”

“I am not very familiar with your hand,” Cassandra admitted.

“Someone obviously lured you out there to abduct you.”

“But why, Philip? That’s what I want to know. What good could it possibly do anyone to kidnap me and stick me in an abandoned windmill?”

“It has to be connected with the map.” He frowned. “It would delay our trip to London. I mean, if you were hidden away somewhere for a few days, and I was out looking for you, we could not have left when we planned. If someone—your American cousin, for instance—wanted to get to the Queen’s prayer book before us—”

“First of all, David Miller is not even in England. He had to return home.”

“So far as you know.”

She grimaced. “All right. As far as I know. But how would he know about the Queen’s prayer book? We found out only two days ago. Do you think your mother told him? Or your great-great aunt?”

“I don’t know!” he snapped. “Perhaps one of the servants overheard us. Perhaps Mother or one of the children said something about it in front of a servant, and he told the others. If Miller had bribed one of them…”

“Then you think that David has been hanging about Haverly House, talking to the servants and bribing them, and no one has seen him? That he has been here, yet there has been no gossip about a stranger in the village?”

He shrugged. “It does seem unlikely. But who else would you suggest, then? Do you think one of the servants did it? One of our families?”

“Besides,” Cassandra went on inexorably, bringing out the final, most damning detail, the thing that she had tried her utmost to ignore, but could not, “how would David Miller, or, indeed, anyone, know to tell me to meet you at the abbey? How would they know that it was our favorite place to ride?”

He stopped, frowning. “I don’t know….” Suddenly understanding dawned on his face. “My God! You think that I did it, don’t you? You think that I lured you out there and whacked you over the head and stashed you in the mill! In the name of all that’s holy, why would I— Oh, but of course, with you out of the way, I would have the treasure all to myself, wouldn’t I?”

He swung around. “Bloody hell!” He shoved aside a chair, sending it crashing to the floor. “After we—you can think that I—”

“I don’t want to believe it!” Cassandra cried, springing to her feet. “I’ve tried every way I could think of to disprove it! I don’t think that you—it is just that it is so suspicious.”

He turned back to her, his face blazing with a fury so fierce that Cassandra shrank back. “Damn your devious Verrere mind! Have you so little trust, so little regard for me? I’ll tell you this truth.” He jabbed his forefinger at her. “We are going to London, and we are going to find that benighted book and the map inside it. Then I am going to get that bloody dowry and dump every last jewel and coin and statue in your lap. You can have the Spanish dowry, every last penny of it. I want none of it.”

His words struck Cassandra like blows, and she paled, feeling sick to her stomach. “Philip, please…”

“Please what? Please prove to you that I am not the one who hurt and frightened you, who left you thirsty and starving in that mill? You have no faith in me, no trust, and without that, there is no way that I can make you believe I am not a villain. How can I prove I did not write you a note that you don’t have? How can I prove that I would never harm a hair on your head if our lovemaking did not tell you that already? I could tell you that I was with the estate agent until four o’clock that afternoon, but that would not be enough for you. After all, I might have hired someone to go out and knock you over the head. Perhaps the same fellow I hired to ransack Chesilworth that night?” he suggested with awful sarcasm.

Cassandra began to cry quietly. She felt as if his words were tearing her apart inside.

“Oh, Cassandra, please, at least spare me your tears.” He turned on his heel and strode out the door, closing it with a quiet finality behind him.

Cassandra crumpled to the floor and wept.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE JOURNEY TO London was not pleasant. They left the following day, for Cassandra had insisted that she did not need to rest from her ordeal. She did indeed feel sick, but she knew that it was not from the night she had spent locked in the windmill, but from the fact that she felt as if her heart had been torn from her chest. She wanted only to get everything over with and return to Chesilworth, where she could curl up and lick her emotional wounds in peace.