“I won’t depart. I’m having too much fun, listening to your absurd alibis.”
Jacob piped in with, “I’m having you arrested.”
Kit’s innards clenched. “Arrested! For what?”
“You’ll be charged with arson, destruction of property, embezzlement, and . . . attempted murder.”
“Who have I tried to murder?”
“Focus Kit. It was Miss James and Clara—who is your daughter.”
“Her niece is not my daughter, and I didn’t try to murder anyone.”
“There’s no use denying it,” Jacob said. “You lit their house on fire while they were asleep. We’re lucky it was only an attempt at murder. If you’d been more cunning, it would have been a full-on homicide.”
Kit quailed with dismay. “You’re joking, aren’t you? Is this some kind of game? Some kind of trick? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that my family has given you every single thing you’ve ever had, and you were never grateful for any of it.”
“I’ve worked hard for you!”
“I suppose I could line up the servants and ask their opinions.”
“The servants love and respect me.”
Both brothers laughed at that, and Jacob said, “What about you and Roxanne? Stop pretending you never had intimate relations with her.”
“I can’t win this argument. It’s a lie, disseminated by Miss James to ruin me. If I refute it, you’ll ignore my protestations of innocence.”
“Roxanne has already confessed, so there’s no reason to keep up the ruse.”
Jacob’s comment fell between them like a death knell, and Kit seethed, “The bitch confessed? I warned her to shut her mouth.”
“I figured that was your plan, but I’d like you to be honest with me. Once in your sorry life, admit your folly.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I expect this will be the last time you and I ever speak to one another, and since this will be our final conversation, I’d like to hear the truth.”
It suddenly occurred to Kit that he’d always taken their friendship for granted. Now, with Jacob claiming it revoked, he was sick with regret and wondering how he’d carry on without Jacob.
Jacob couldn’t intend to sever ties, and Kit needed to get them back on firmer ground. Perhaps he should beg for mercy. Jacob was demanding candor. It Kit supplied it, would it help?
“We were children,” he said. “She was fifteen, and I was but a few years older, so you shouldn’t judge us. It was just one of those unfortunate scandals that engulfs young people.”
“As I told Roxanne, I don’t judge you for the affair. I judge you for your conduct afterward. I judge you for keeping the situation a secret. I judge you—and I condemn you—for letting me proceed to an engagement with Roxanne, while you snickered and bit your tongue.”
“We didn’t mean any harm.”
“You had a daughter with my fiancée! You hid the information for over a decade, and you didn’t mean any harm?”
“Your mother arranged the betrothal without apprising me. What was I supposed to do? When Roxanne waltzed in the door, should I have tossed her out?” Kit leaned toward Jacob, hoping he appeared sincere. “We were protecting you! We recognized how the facts would wound you, so we agreed to bury them. We did it for you!”
Caleb Ralston snorted with disgust. “That is the most self-serving, ridiculous excuse ever uttered.”
“You were protecting me?” Jacob’s skepticism was alarming. “And when you threw that torch through Miss James’s window, when you could have killed her and your daughter, how would you describe your actions then? After Clara was born, you still haven’t clarified what you presumed happened to her. Did you think Clara was smothered after the delivery? Did you assume she was given to the fairies to raise?”
Kit’s cheeks heated. “Roxanne told me she was adopted.”
“When you realized she was at Ralston, what then? You didn’t kill her when she was a baby, so you decided to kill her now?”
“I simply wanted to scare them,” he vehemently insisted. “Roxanne and I thought they should leave the area, but Miss James is such an imperious shrew that we didn’t feel she’d go unless she was pushed.”
“That sounds like an admission to me,” Caleb Ralston said, “and I’m a witness.”
“I . . . I . . . am not admitting to anything,” Kit hurried to claim, “but whatever occurred at Miss James’s cottage, it was Roxanne’s idea. She was determined you never discover her past. I yearned to confide in you, but she constantly threatened me. You ought to know too that she was chased out of Italy because two lovers dueled over her, and there’s been gossip that she entertained a hundred different men in Florence. You shouldn’t marry her! It would be a huge mistake.”
Kit sensed he was babbling, but his fever was making him lose track of the issues. He’d expected that the news about Roxanne and Italy would be a welcome revelation, but Jacob and his half-brother glared as if he’d posed a complex riddle.
“I’m delighted that Joanna’s dog attacked you,” Caleb Ralston said. “I wish he’d ripped off your entire leg.”
“Please tell me that vicious animal is dead,” Kit said, when he probably should have remained silent.
Whenever he closed his eyes, he could see that malicious beast leap out of the dark as Kit approached the cottage. The only bright spot of that whole wretched night was how he’d whacked the dog with his ax. He’d been praying ever since that he’d slain the loathsome creature.
“That vicious animal,” Caleb Ralston said, “is alive and healing just fine. But I’m predicting the bite he inflicted will kill you painfully and slowly. It will save the courts from having to waste energy punishing you.”
Jacob rose to his feet, looking like a judge about to pass sentence. He studied Kit’s deteriorated condition, and he laughed in a cruel way.
“I have been kind to you,” Jacob said. “I have given you a good life, a good job, a good home, and every minute that you were wallowing in my largesse, you were betraying me.”
“I never betrayed you!”
“You embezzled from me.
