Page 5 of The Hidden Heart

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It was late at night and the house was dark, everyone tucked up in their beds, when a side door opened quietly and a dark figure slipped inside. The man stood for a moment, still and watching, then moved with equal silence down the hallway and up the servants’ stairs to the second floor. Once again he waited, poised at the top of the stairs for the slightest sound before he went on to the door he sought. He opened it and peeked inside. There was no sign of the General’s valet or a nurse keeping watch over the old man.

He slid through the door and closed it softly after him, then glided across the floor until he stood beside the bed. He stood for a moment, gazing down at the old man. The General looked so frail that for a moment he wondered if this was really necessary. The man had just, after all, almost died. There was always the possibility that he would not regain his health, and then General Streathern would be of no danger to him.

As he watched, the old man’s eyes opened, as if he had sensed the watcher’s presence. His eyes narrowed. “You!” he rasped. “What the devil are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” the younger man said lightly. “I am never to taint you with my presence. But, I thought it best to talk to you. You see things have changed.”

“Yes, they have.” The General pulled himself up into a sitting position against his pillows. His uninvited guest noted that it was something of a struggle for him.

“I wanted to make sure that you were not thinking of doing anything foolish.”

“You mean revealing what really happened? What makes you think I wouldn’t?” the General shot back, rather injudiciously. “I have no reason to keep silent anymore.”

“There is the slight problem of your not having brought the matter up years ago, when it mattered. It would not reflect well on you. Your name would be ruined.”

“Perhaps that is as it should be,” the old man remarked heavily.

“Easy for you to say, when you are facing the grave, anyway. I, on the other hand, have many years to live, and I have no desire to do so under the taint of scandal.”

“It would be worse than that.”

“Indeed? I think not. Only your word against mine, and you are an old fool who has just suffered an apoplexy. Everyone would assume that your brain simply was not working properly any longer.”

“Oh, they would believe me,” General Streathern said, contempt and hatred lighting his eyes. “I have proof, you see.”

The other man’s eyes were as cold as the General’s were heated. He surveyed the old man for a moment, then said, “Well, I am sorry to hear that.”

Swiftly he picked up a pillow from the bed and put it over the old man’s face. The General struggled, but he was weak from his illness, and it was not long before his struggles ceased. The visitor waited another long moment after that, then lifted the pillow and set it back with the others. He pulled the old man back down in the bed so that he was no longer sitting up but would look as if he had died peacefully in his sleep.

He cast a quick glance around the room, and it was only then that it struck him: if the General truly had proof against him, he could still be in danger. His jaw clenched, and he glanced at the still man in the bed, anger surging up in him. The old fool had made him so angry, he had acted in haste. He should have made him reveal where and what the proof was before he killed him.

He went over to the chest across the room and began to search through it, realizing even as he did so how difficult it would be to find what he needed. To begin with, there was the possibility that there was no actual proof, that the General might have been merely bluffing, hoping to scare him. And if the old goat had been telling the truth, he still had no idea even what the proof consisted of. Was it an object? A piece of paper? Whatever it was, he was certain that the General would have secreted it away somewhere. A safe was the most likely choice, so he searched the room but found none, knowing even as he did so that the safe was just as likely to be downstairs in the old man’s study or smoking room, or even where they locked up the precious silver. Finding it would be a daunting task in the best of circumstances. At night, with a houseful of people around who might wake up and discover him, it was almost impossible.

Even as he thought it, he heard the sound of the doorknob turning. He darted into the shadowy spot between the wardrobe and the corner of the room and waited, holding his breath. He heard the shuffle of an old man’s feet across the room and saw the flickering low light of a candle. Fortunately the light did not come close to where he hid. He, however, could see the features of a man close to the General’s age, dressed in nightclothes and dressing gown. The General’s valet, he thought.

The servant stopped at the foot of the bed and stood for a moment. Then he began to frown and edged around the bed to stand beside the old man. He sucked in his breath and let out a low wail. “Oh, no, oh, my lord, no!”

He moaned again, then turned and left the room at a pace close to a run.

The intruder did not hang far behind. He raced to the door after the servant and saw him shuffling down the hallway, moaning and crying out, “He’s gone! The General’s dead!”

He did not pause, but slipped along the hall in the opposite direction, running lightly down the main stairs and out of the house.

CHAPTER 2

The carriage rolled to a stop, and Jessica pushed back the curtain to peer out into the dark, a question on her lips. As soon as she saw what lay before them, the question died unanswered. The coachman had stopped, no doubt, just as she would have, because of the looming dark bulk that lay ahead of them. It was a massive structure of dark gray stone, obviously built centuries before in a time of frequent strife, and added onto throughout the years until it was a sprawling hulk of sheer stone walls, battlements and Norman towers. Lights burned on either side of its open gateway, doing little to alleviate the darkness. It was gloomy and foreboding, dominating the countryside from its seat on a slight rise. Castle Cleybourne.

Jessica had little trouble believing that it was the country seat of an old and powerful family. Nor was it difficult to imagine the place being besieged, war engines hammering away at its massive walls, soldiers on the battlements shooting down arrows on the troops below. What was harder was to picture it as a welcoming place to bring an adolescent girl who had just lost her last loving relative. She could not hold back a sigh.

Perhaps it had been a mistake, after all, to act this precipitously upon the General’s orders. It had shaken her so when the old man’s valet had run through the halls, wailing out the news of his death, that she had immediately set about readying Gabriela and herself for the journey to Gabriela’s new guardian. General Streathern’s death, following as it did hard on the heels of his seemingly prophetic words to her, jolted and frightened her, lending an eerie importance to what he had said. Had he foreseen that his death would come that swiftly? And had he foreseen other things, as well—things that had made him urge her to take Gabriela safe out of Lord Vesey’s hands?

She had sat up with Gabriela the rest of the night, holding the girl while she cried out her grief until Gaby fell, finally, into a restless slumber. Jessica had remained by the girl’s side, dozing by fits and starts in the padded rocker beside the bed, thinking about the General and letting her own tears flow for the man who had been so kind to her, standing by her when the rest of the polite world had scorned her. She had not cried like this for anyone since her father’s death ten years ago.

The next morning, she had told Pierson, the butler, about the General’s last instructions to her, and he had immediately set two of the maids to packing up her and Gabriela’s clothes and other necessities for the journey. He would not have ignored the General’s orders in any case, nor would any of the other servants, but Jessica could see in his eyes that he agreed with the General about the wisdom of removing Gabriela from Lord Vesey’s vicinity.

Jessica had gone about her business, seeing to the funeral arrangements and notifying all who needed to be notified of the old man’s death, including Lord Vesey at the inn in the village—even though it was like a stab wound to her chest to think of that loathsome man’s probable pleasure at the news. She had penned letters to the General’s friends, telling them of his demise, and another to the Duke of Cleybourne explaining the situation, while the servants went about the necessary arrangements to the house—draping crepe above doors and turning mirrors to the wall, muffling the door-knockers. Every spare moment, Jessica had spent with Gabriela, trying to ease the pain of this new death and separation.