“Bigamist!” The tendons in her throat tensed into tight cords as she tried to pull her hair free from his grasp, but he yanked her head back upon his shoulder and, slipping an arm about her throat, applied pressure until she was forced to cease her struggles or be choked to death. Her outrage was not so easily subdued. “Murderer!”
Forcing her face around with his wrist, Malcolm stared down into the blazing emerald eyes and smirked. “You needn’t be jealous, my pet. I took care of her. She’s naught but ashes now.”
“You set fire to the madhouse?!” Lenore questioned, horrified at the extent he would go to achieve his own ends.
“I’m very good at building fires, my dear,” he boasted. “I take great pleasure in doing it well. Whenever I’ve paid others to do a like service, they have failed me. Wingate’s warehouses, for instance. A clever ploy to get him away from Belle Chêne so you could be pressed to do the honorable thing, but those sheds were supposed to burn…all of them, and the blame was to be cast on Horace Titch.”
The wall was slowly crumbling, and the horror was beginning to spill through the widening fissures. “You had Sarah committed after we met, while her brother was still abroad and I was in England. I don’t know what evil quirk of your mind made you choose Natchez…or why you didn’t kill her.”
“I had gained the sympathy of the family attorneys with all the distress I had to go through having to commit her. It would have been foolish to arouse their suspicions, especially when any investigation into the accident that killed her father would have implicated me. Since the lawyers were willing to believe her brother would never return, they let me have everything I needed. It was disappointing to learn how quickly the family’s wealth could be exhausted. I had just seized upon another outlet when her brother came…and took you away.”
“We had only arrived in Natchez and were making plans to visit Sarah the next day. How did you manage to arrange everything so quickly?”
“You made the mistake of traveling by carriage across land, my dear. I left immediately by boat and went up the Mississippi by steamer. You had to allow rest for the horses and a night’s lodgings; nothing delayed me.” Malcolm loosened his grip on her arm and caressed it as he murmured against her ear. “You should never have come to his room when you did…”
“I heard arguing….”
“Aye, and your curiosity nearly bought you a grave, my love. I could not let a witness to one of my murders live, no matter how fond of her I was.” His stroking hand came upon her breast and sent a shiver through her. “It would have been so easy if you’d have allowed me to remove the man’s body in secret. Then you’d have thought he had disappeared and was only playing you for a dupe. You certainly would not have been able to make inquiries at the madhouse after I torched it and secured the silence of those who knew me.”
“I really don’t understand the workings of your mind, Malcolm,” she said in some amazement. “Can you honestly believe you can continue in your evil ways?”
“I’m very ambitious, my dear…and I have the intelligence to bring into being all that I desire.”
“If you think you’re so intelligent, tell me why you filled my trunk with stones and left it here to be discovered. Why didn’t you just dump it in the river?”
“Oh, but I couldn’t. At least, not while that coachman I hired watched me so closely. He helped me carry it out of the inn and kept insisting he’d handle the baggage…even when we got here. I didn’t want the servants to open it, so I had him help me bring it up here. It seemed safe enough behind a locked door.”
“But the body…when did you get rid of it?”
“The first night we stopped on the road…I had to sneak out of the inn and carry it into the woods…then I filled the chest with stones so the coachman wouldn’t get suspicious. You just don’t know how much I regretted that you went off without our driver.”
“A man you hired!” she scoffed. “Even if he had consented to take us, he’d have left a trail so wide, you couldn’t have missed it.”
Malcolm gloated. “I have been blessed immeasurably by the loyalty of my men.”
“Cutthroats! Thieves! Rapists!”
He chuckled at her rising ire. “I have to allow them a few pleasures now and then.”
“Why didn’t you let them take me? Why did you make such a pretense of saving me from them?”
“Ahh, my dear,” he sighed. “There are some pleasures a man wants to preserve for himself.”
“You could have forced yourself on me then. Why did you insist on courting me and pressing for my hand?”
“I was not content with mere tidbits. I wanted it all. The first time I saw you, I was intrigued by your beauty. When I made inquiries, you became even more desirable to me. I thought I had lost you…and then to my joy I found that my men had taken you prisoner. They had made plans to ransom you, but first they agreed to pass you around among themselves….”
“That’s when you fought them off.”
“I had to make it look good, you understand. When I delivered you safe and sound to your father…I became a hero.” Malcolm’s brows drew downward into a sudden scowl. “But even then you denied me…and it seemed that I had failed. I was turned away, but my hopes rose again when you came to Biloxi to live.” His fingers tightened as they came upon her arm, and he was pleased by her pained grimace. “You still did not make it easy for me. You were too set on mourning your husband.”
“Aye! And I should never have let you wear down my resistance. I would have saved myself a lot of misery.” She resisted the prodding prongs of fear when his hand lifted to caress her throat, as if he seriously contemplated her extinction. “If you’re going to kill me, Malcolm, get it over with,” she gritted. “There’s nothing to stop you now.”
“Ahh, but there is, my dear.” He chuckled with more amusement. “’Twas the reason I married you. Your vast fortune could do great wonders for me. I have all the documents I need to prove that we are married. They’ll give me title to everything that is yours. There’s even a will….”
“I’ll never sign anything like that!”
“You needn’t, my dear. Samuel Evans is quite adept at his work. He wrote out the documents and made them look legal. He can just as easily sign your name to them. Why, no one even noticed how he touched up our marriage document. I could not let that devil Wingate know just when we exchanged vows.”
“For all of your planning and scheming, Malcolm, you’ll still get nothing. If I die, what I have…except for this house…reverts back to my father. It’s his wealth, and his it shall remain.”
Malcolm regarded her with heavily hooded eyes that gleamed above a smug smile. “I’ve already taken care of that matter. By now, the man I sent to perform the task has no doubt carried through, and your father’s demise will soon be announced.”
“Nooo!” she moaned, falling limp against him.
“There, there, my dear. No need to mourn. With your father in England and you here, you can almost make believe he still exists. I only await the word of his death to begin collecting, since it is the law that I inherit all that he leaves you, but if you have the imagination for it you’re quite free to think of him as still alive.”
Wearily she rolled her head upon his chest. “What do you plan to do with me?”
“Oh, I’ll keep you around for a while, just to make sure there are no surprises concerning your father’s inheritance. I don’t want Wingate intruding into this. I know a little madhouse along the river where you will be safe…until you are of no more use to me.”