Rand shrugged. “Ours is not a warm family.”
“You’ll be warm now,” she warned, “with my sister. Or—”
“Peace, Rose. I love Lily more than my life. Read the rest, will you?”
Kit laughed. At a time like this, he laughed. If Rand hadn’t been so tense, he’d have reached over and slapped him. But in his present mood, he feared he might do his old friend permanent damage.
“‘Hawkridge refused as always,’” Rose continued slowly. “‘I followed Margery to Armstrong’s place, her sobbing all the way. And there, they plotted to elope.’” She reached for her Madeira and took a swallow. “Here,” she said, handing Rand their notes. “You read the rest.”
He took a deep breath before reading, for the first time, the individual words they’d translated, all pieced together. “‘When I overheard their plans, I felt I couldn’t draw air. My heart swelled to such a size it filled my chest, squeezing my lungs, robbing me of sustenance. I cannot allow this to happen. Margery will be mine. They leave in a week, and before that, I must kill him.’”
“There it is,” Kit said admiringly.
“Yes, there it is,” Rose echoed with a satisfied sigh.
“Thank God.” Rand sent a quick thanks to heaven. “And both of you. If—when—Lily and I wed, I’ll be silently thanking you as we recite our vows.”
Dawn was breaking when they left the library. Rose had made peace with the fact that he’d chosen Lily over her, and amazingly, she and Rand were friends. But Kit, Rand was sure, wanted to be more than friends with Rose.
A shame she hadn’t seemed to really notice him.
“Go to Lily,” she told Rand. “Go tell her what we’ve found.”
“Go to her in her chamber? You…you’ll come along, won’t you?”
“No.” She flashed the sort of smile that only Rose could flash. “But if you’re not out in five minutes, I’m coming in. Even you, Rand Nesbitt, cannot ravish a woman in five minutes flat.”
Rand didn’t need a second invitation.
Lily looked like an angel, her hair a dark halo on her pillow. But her mouth was turned down in a frown. Her dreams, he knew, weren’t sweet.
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to those pouting lips. They curved up, and her arms rose to wrap around his neck.
She smelled of sleep and lilies. “Rand?”
“Yes, sweetheart. I’m here.” Was it silly of him to be so glad she hadn’t called another man’s name? He knew she was his, knew it as well as he knew which English words came from Latin.
Her eyes slid languidly open. “Could you read the diary?”
He smiled and sat beside her on the bed, his fingers playing idly in her hair. “Alban Nesbitt,” he said, “has never contrived a code I couldn’t decipher.”
She sat up, suddenly wide awake. “What did it say, Rand?” Her hands twisted together in her lap, her fingers rubbing the faint scars. “What did it say?”
“It said he planned to murder Bennett. I love you, Lily Ashcroft, and we’re going to be married.”
He would make it so. He hadn’t come this far to fail now.
Before Lily rose for breakfast, he was riding hard for Hawkridge, the diary and notes in one hand.
SIXTY-FIVE
RAND ARRIVED at Hawkridge to find the marquess and Margery at breakfast, sullen and silent.
His arrival took care of that.
“It’s here,” he said, striding in and waving the diary and some papers. “In Alban’s own hand. His plans to kill Bennett Armstrong, here in black and white.”
Margery’s face lit like a full moon on a cloudless night. The marquess took one look at her and frowned. “Sit down, Randal. I haven’t finished my breakfast.”
Rand took some spice bread and a bowl of meat pottage from the leather-topped sideboard and carried them to the table. He sat and spread his evidence on the cedarwood surface.
The marquess deliberately looked away, focusing on his food.
Margery pushed her pottage around in her bowl, evidently too excited to eat. “What did you find, Rand?”
“The diary ended on the day of Alban’s death.” Ignoring the marquess’s wince, Rand took a big bite of the fruited spice bread. He’d been awake twenty-six hours without taking any time to eat. “Here”—he rustled through the papers with one hand—“here’s the crucial passage.” He held out a page to Margery.
Her hand shook as she took it. Although it was a translation, not Alban’s writing, the words on the paper were his.
As she scanned down the page, a soft gasp escaped her lips. Rand’s father looked annoyed before she even started reading. “‘I cannot allow this to happen. Margery will be mine. They leave in a week, and before that, I must kill him.’”
The marquess snatched the sheet from her hand. His eyes narrowed before his gaze shifted to Rand. “This isn’t Alban’s hand. It’s yours.”
“Actually, that’s Rose Ashcroft’s writing.” Rand wasn’t at all surprised the man didn’t recognize his own son’s hand. The marquess had never bothered to look at any of his lessons. “Her writing is much tidier than mine.”
With a flick of his still-supple wrist, his father tossed the paper onto the table. “I’ll never believe that’s what the diary says. Do you think me a fool? You’d claim anything in order to wed that Ashcroft chit.” He looked back down to his food, cutting a bite of ham with a fitful, angry motion. “Those aren’t Alban’s words. I know—I knew—my son.”
Rand struggled for calm. “No, Father, you didn’t.”
The man’s gaze jerked up from his breakfast. Rand hadn’t called him Father in twenty years or more. Staring at Rand, he stabbed blindly with his fork.
“You didn’t know him,” Rand repeated. “You knew the son you wished he was.”
“Hogwash.” Having managed to spear some ham, he stuck it in his mouth, taking his time to chew and swallow before continuing. “My son was incapable of premeditated murder.”
“Are you aware that your son kept knives under his bed?
