“They might have been introduced only after he returned from South Africa, but I believe he’d been fixated on her since long before.”
Something in her tilted dangerously at his revelation. She had thought for certain that she knew everything she needed to know about her aunt and her uncle. “Why do you think so?”
“The paintings at Highgate Court. Freddie tracked down a sister painting, done possibly in the late sixties. Yesterday I went to Kent to see it. It too had an angel and a man: The angel was all in white and the man on his knees in rapture. The angel had Mrs. Douglas’s face. The artist, whom I believe to be your uncle, sold the painting to finance his trip to South Africa.”
“He went to South Africa for her?”
“Perhaps not for her, but it appears she loomed large in his mind. It was something close to an obsession.”
She rose; she could remain seated no longer. “And then what happened?”
“He failed—your uncle lacks either luck or acumen in business, or perhaps both. But someone he knew found a rich vein and boasted to everyone who would listen. This man was going to voyage to England and glory in his newfound wealth. His name was Edmund Douglas.”
The ugliness he implied—she did not want to hear any more. Yet she must know everything. “Go on,” she croaked.
“I have cause to believe that your uncle murdered the real Edmund Douglas en route from South Africa to England. Upon his arrival in England, he established himself as Edmund Douglas, used the dead man’s letters of credit, and married your aunt under false pretenses.”
She had thought that she was prepared to hear the worst. But the whiskey glass still fell from her hand. It thudded softly onto the rug and rolled away.
“Inquiries have been sent to South Africa. People who knew Edmund Douglas before he left the mines remember him as a man who spoke with a strong Scouse accent, and had a scar slashing through his left eye from a pub fight gone wrong when he was still in England.”
“Why—why has no one else ever suspected my uncle of being an impostor?”
“He is clever. He lives in a remote area and socializes rarely; he has never returned to South Africa; and it’s possible he also murdered the real Edmund Douglas’s sole remaining relative in England.”
She shivered.
“But I think your aunt found out.”
She gripped the back of a chair. “Are you sure I can’t have any more whiskey?”
He fetched a new glass and poured her another finger. She downed it so fast she barely felt the burn. “How did my aunt find out?”
Her husband glanced at her. “I don’t know. People find out all kinds of things in a marriage.”
“That’s your entire explanation?”
“That’s my explanation for why your uncle behaves as he does. He believes himself a romantic hero, willing to go to any lengths for love.”
She shivered again. “He said that to me when we were last at Highgate Court.”
“So he committed the ultimate crime, possibly more than once, for the woman he considered his angel. He impressed himself. And yet once she discovered what he had done, like any sane person, she was not only not impressed, she was horrified and appalled. That was what he considered the angel’s betrayal; that she had no appreciation for the sacrifices he’d made for her, and instead recoiled from him. That was why he painted her fleeing from him, having run him through with a sword.”
“And that is what has driven his cruelty all these years,” she murmured.
“I wouldn’t have told this story to someone with less steely nerves—but you can handle it. And you need to know, so that you understand why your aunt is so frightened of him even when he is a fugitive. So that you recognize what we are dealing with here.”
She pulled at her collar. “Will the police be any help?”
“We will, of course, need the police for his apprehension. But until then, I’m hesitant, especially to involve county constables—hostage rescue is not what they are trained to do. Besides, we have no evidence whatsoever of his involvement. As far as anyone knows, Mrs. Douglas has taken off by herself to London, which she is at perfect liberty to do.”
She dropped into a stuffed chair and pressed her hands into her face. “So we just wait?”
“Your uncle will contact you.”
“You sound very sure of it.”
She heard him take the chair next to hers. “Would you say your uncle is vindictive?” he asked softly.
“Yes.”
“Then trust that he is not finished yet. Merely getting his wife back is hardly vengeance enough. He will want to inflict something on you too.”
She emitted a whimper. “How long will we have to wait?”
“My guess is you will hear from him by the afternoon post. After all, time is not on his side.”
She didn’t want to, but she moaned again in fear. She bent over and hid her face between her knees.
To Vere’s relief, she did not remain hunched in defeat for long. She rose, walked the length and the width of the room, ignored the luncheon Vere asked to have brought in for her, stirred her tea without drinking it, and looked out the window every minute or so.
He’d dashed out several cables and had them sent. He’d had his luncheon and his tea. He even glanced through some of the other letters that had come for him in the morning. And now he, too, had nothing left to do, except to watch her in her agitation.
“Why do you keep a book in your underthings drawer?” he asked.
It was better to keep her mind from the worst possibilities for the remainder of their wait.
She’d been picking out and putting back random items from the mantel. At his question she spun around. “What were you doing mucking about in my things?”
“I had to search every room in the house. Yours was no exception.”
But of course hers had been an exception. He’d rifled through any number of women’s unmentionables in the course of his work, but he’d never lingered as he had among her soft, pristine linens. And that was after he’d already learned that her smiles were but tools.
“Just so you know, I didn’t find anything of interest—except, as I said, I’d never seen a travelogue among a woman’s undergarments before.”
She sat down on the window seat, her entire person stiff and tense. “I’m delighted to have provided you a moment of diversion. And just so you know, the travelogue was only carelessly placed among my undergarments when my uncle was away. When he was in residence, it stayed hidden in a scooped-out volume of something Greek, on a shelf with three hundred other books in Greek.”
He read five languages other than English and had thought nothing of the dearth of English books in Douglas’s library. But to someone who had not been educated in continental languages, visiting that library must have been as tormenting as dying of thirst in the middle of an ocean.
Underneath every detail of her life was a history of oppression. And yet she’d emerged not only with her spirit intact, but with a capacity for joy that he had only begun to understand. That he would now never truly know.
The thought was a stab in his heart.
“The book in your drawer was a guide to Southern Italy. It had something on Capri, I imagine?”
“Not very much. There was a better book, but I lost it when my uncle purged the library.”
Memories of the night came unbidden: her arms holding him, her lovely voice speaking of her faraway island. He realized he’d never given any thoughts as to what his milk-and-honey companion would do when faced with his nightmares. He had simply assumed they wouldn’t exist anymore when he had his gentle, pure paragon.
She’d been looking out the window, but now her face turned toward him. “Why did you make me listen to you sing? You are a horrendous singer.”