To the Rescue Page 5

  “And you immediately assumed I was the one who killed him? How could you? Or weren’t you told that the police questioned me and were satisfied I wasn’t a suspect?”

  “Neither Barbara or I assumed anything. And, yes, I was told you weren’t a suspect. But a P.I. likes to ask his own questions, especially when they concern the death of his brother. Went to your mews cottage the next morning, Jenny, to ask those questions. You weren’t there. A neighbor told me you were in a big hurry when he saw you coming away with your suitcase. Said you went tearing up the street in a small, green Ford. Kind of suspicious to run away like that, wouldn’t you say?”

  “And that made me guilty?”

  “Not guilty. Not yet. Let’s just say your action makes you a strong possibility. After all, you were involved with Guy. But if you’re so innocent—”

  “I am innocent.”

  “Then why are you on the run?”

  “I have my reasons. Good ones.” But Jennifer wasn’t ready to share them. She still wanted answers. “Just how did you find me?”

  “You were careless, Jenny. You must have called directory assistance and then jotted down the number they gave you.”

  On the back of an old bill next to the telephone. She remembered that and how afterwards she had crumpled up the bill and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  “I called the number,” he said. “Turned out to be the King’s Head Inn in Heathside. I took a chance and told them I was Jennifer Rowan’s husband just checking to be sure they had my wife’s reservation for a room. It paid off. They were happy to verify your reservation.”

  “You broke into my cottage and went through my wastebasket? You had no right,” she accused him, resenting the man’s total brashness.

  “Now how else could I look for some evidence of where you might have gone?”

  “And, of course, you didn’t share that evidence with the police.”

  “Didn’t think they’d like hearing I entered your cottage.” His eyes narrowed. “Besides, it had become very personal by then.”

  So personal, Jennifer thought, that she realized Leo McKenzie would go to any length to see his brother’s killer convicted of his murder. And if she was his chief suspect, maybe his only suspect at the moment, then maybe he was prepared to wring the truth out of her, no matter what it cost either of them. And the police be damned.

  Guy and Leo. She was still shaken by the revelation that they had been half brothers. There was nothing about their characters or looks that were alike. Except for one thing. Guy, too, had been single-minded in his determination to go after what he wanted.

  “I’m waiting, Jenny,” he said, sounding patient about it.

  But she knew he wasn’t patient at all. He had given her his story, and now he demanded hers.

  “What’s the point?” she said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Haven’t you already condemned me?”

  “I don’t remember saying that. Hell, I’m a reasonable man, willing to listen to all the arguments. Maybe you’ve got a good one. So, go on, tell me, and if I like what I hear—”

  “What?” she cut him off sharply. “You’ll reconsider your judgmental opinion of me?”

  “Depends on how well you explain what made you run to Yorkshire. And while you’re at it, don’t leave out the Warley Madonna.”

  He had surprised her again. “You know about the Madonna?”

  “It’s no secret it’s missing. What do you know about it, Jenny?”

  But whatever she told him, if she decided to tell him anything at all, would have to wait. They were interrupted by a tap on the hall door. Before either of them could answer it, the door opened and the cheerful face of Brother Timothy poked around its edge.

  “Looks a rare treat, this does. The both of you awake, and my patient sitting there like he no longer needs me. Feeling better, are you, lad?”

  Leo grinned at the monk. “The cure would be complete, friar, with a cup of strong coffee.”

  “If you’re up to it, I’m thinking we can do better than that.” Brother Timothy came into the room. “There’ll be breakfast waiting for the two of you in the guests’ dining parlor. Or a tray here for you, lad, if you’re of a mind to keep to your bed for a bit.”

  “No trays,” Leo said firmly. “I’m ready to join the living.”

  “That’s the ticket. Give you a chance to meet the others in your dining parlor.”

  “There are other guests in the castle?” Jennifer asked him.

  “There are.”

  This was certainly unexpected. Maybe it was what Father Stephen had meant last night when he’d mentioned that other matters had delayed him in welcoming her to Warley. Had he been attending to those guests?

  “The lot of you will make a regular party,” Brother Timothy said. “Now, they’ve had their turns in the bath, so I’m guessing you’ll want your own, and then I’ll take you down.”

  Not only unexpected, she thought, but another complication.

  A SHOWER AND A SHAVE had Leo feeling halfway human again. Getting the meal inside him that Brother Timothy had promised them would be even better.

  Not that breakfast was the most important thing on his mind, he thought, eyeing the closed door to the room that adjoined his as he tucked the tail of a fresh shirt inside the waistband of his jeans. She was on the other side of that door, waiting for the monk to come back and conduct them to the dining parlor.

  Yeah, she was on his mind all right. More than he wanted her to be, and that worried him.

  Jennifer Rowan was not what Barbara had led him to expect. The treacherous seductress who had stolen her husband. Oh, maybe she did physically fit the image, with that shoulder- length hair the color of rich mahogany, a pair of jade-green eyes and a body that a man would eagerly welcome into his bed.

  He could see why Guy had been captivated by her. He was susceptible to that allure himself, and if he didn’t watch himself…

  The thing of it was, though, nothing else about Jennifer smacked of a conniving woman. She struck Leo as being intelligent, independent, not lacking spirit and scared. Scared with good reason, considering the circumstances.

  Okay, maybe all that vulnerability, the kind that made a man want to be protective of such a woman, was nothing more than an illusion. Her face alone could be responsible for that. He remembered that his ex-wife had angelic features like that.

  But there had been no angel underneath, he sourly reminded himself, dragging a sweater over his head.

  Leo hadn’t trusted a sweet face and a hot body since then.

  Anyway, he knew from his work that what people were on the outside seldom matched what they were inside. Look at how he had caught her going through his things. Maybe just an act of desperation. Or maybe she was guilty of something. Because if she were so damn innocent, why had she run? He kept coming back to that.

  Sliding his feet into a pair of loafers, he looked at the closed door again.

  He could swear Jennifer had been relieved by Brother Timothy’s interruption, and afterwards she couldn’t escape into her own room fast enough. Why? Had she been panicked by Leo’s demand to hear her version of her involvement with Guy and the explanation for her flight from London the morning after his murder? Had she needed to get away from Leo long enough to put together a convincing story?

  He wasn’t certain of anything at this point except his frustration. As hungry as he was, breakfast meant a delay, and he wanted to hear Jennifer Rowan’s story. Needed to hear it.

  Only that wasn’t completely true. There was one other certainty. He couldn’t stop thinking of that enticing mouth of hers and how they were stranded here together.

  Hell, none of this was going to be easy.

  “YOU’RE SURE of it now, are you?” Brother Timothy asked as he escorted them along the corridor.

  “I’m sure, friar,” Leo answered, trying to be patient with the monk’s excessive concern. “No headache and no chest pains. Just a little tenderness around
the ribs.” He didn’t add that he was relieved to be rid of the tape in that area, which he had removed before his shower. Brother Timothy might not be happy with him if he knew about that.

  “You’ll do then.”

  The monk played guide as they continued along the route to the dining parlor, pointing out things and telling them there were many areas in the castle that the monastery rarely used. Leo could believe it. The place was immense, and probably rooms like the great hall would be impossible to keep comfortable in weather like this.

  Jennifer beside him was quiet, offering no comment. She was close enough to him that he could catch whiffs of her fragrance, something subtle but seductive. Damn. It was bad enough that he had to be aware of everything else about her that was desirable.

  She didn’t look at him, but Leo sensed that she was equally aware of him. And nervous about it.

  “Turned real nasty again, it has,” Brother Timothy observed as they paused at an embrasure where a window in the stone wall looked down into a courtyard. There was a snow-covered sundial in its center surrounded by a formal arrangement of elevated beds framed by clipped hedges.

  Or at least that’s what Leo thought he was seeing. It was hard to tell through the curtain of driven snow that had resumed after a brief lull in the storm. Even in this enclosed place the wind had the force of a gale. Not the kind of weather you’d choose to be out in, and yet there was a solitary figure down there pacing the paths. Head bent inside his cowl, he seemed oblivious to the conditions. Strange.

  Leo noticed that Jennifer was intently watching the small, stoop-shouldered figure, whose habit identified him as one of the monks. “He doesn’t seem to be minding the cold,” she murmured.

  “Not even noticing it, I’m thinking,” Brother Timothy said. “Our Brother Anthony has a deal on his mind these days. Only permits himself to leave his cell to exercise a bit in the cloister yard there or to pray in the chapel on the other side.”

  “That is Brother Anthony then?”

  “It is.”

  Jennifer obviously knew about this Brother Anthony and was interested in him, though Leo couldn’t imagine how or why. And it didn’t look as though either she or Brother Timothy was going to bother to explain it to him.

  So just what was that all about? Leo wondered as the three of them moved on along the passage.

  He was to ask himself the same thing a moment later about another mystery when, pausing as they arrived at the top of a spiral stairway, Jennifer turned to the monk with a sober “Brother Timothy, I have another question for you.”

  “If it’s about my days in the ring…”

  “No, nothing like that.” She hesitated before asking what was clearly a self-conscious “Have there…well, ever been any tales about Warley Castle being haunted?”

  Leo stared at her. Hell, was she serious?

  The monk looked amused. “A ghost at Warley? Never heard of any ghost being sighted here. But if one was to turn up, I don’t see our Abbot Stephen tolerating him. Mind the stairs now. They’re a bit steep.”

  There had been her interest in Brother Anthony, Leo thought as they descended the coiling flight. And now she was worried about a ghost? She seemed too levelheaded for that one, but something was up.

  Okay, this made two more questions, among all the rest, that he intended to put to her when they were alone again. He just wished that, breakfast or not, he didn’t have to wait to ask them.

  When they reached a landing less than halfway down the flight, Brother Timothy opened a door on the right and led them through a stone archway into the guests’ dining parlor. Leo could see why it was named that. There was a sitting area at the far end of the long room. It was furnished with easy chairs and a sofa.

  The seven people who occupied the room were all gathered at this end, which served as the dining area. Some of them were busy helping themselves from a breakfast buffet laid out on a sideboard while others were already seated with their plates at a long trestle table.

  Leo was surprised. Considering the weather, he hadn’t expected to find these number of guests at the castle. Or maybe it was just because of the weather that they were here. He could feel glances of curiosity directed at Jennifer and him.

  “No need to go and worry about names,” Brother Timothy assured Jennifer and Leo. “Time for that when you’re settled with your plates.”

  Of all the company, only one of them hovering near the sideboard wore a habit. Leo noticed, however, that he lacked a monk’s tonsure. Brother Timothy asked the young man to join them.

  “Here now, this is our Geoffrey,” he said. “A novice, Geoffrey is, who has yet to take his final vows.”

  Which explained why the young man with his fair hair and pale, melancholy face didn’t have a tonsure yet, Leo guessed. But it didn’t explain why he looked so unhappy when Brother Timothy turned them over to him with a hasty “I’m off to prime.”

  “Prime is one of our daily communal prayers,” Geoffrey said when the monk had departed. “I’m excused. It’s because of Patrick.” He indicated another young man who waited for him at the sideboard. “Patrick is here because he wants to join our order, but he isn’t permitted into the monastery side of the castle until he’s certain of his calling. Father Stephen has asked me to look out for him.”

  And Geoffrey, Leo decided, isn’t any more happy about playing nanny to Patrick than he is about Jennifer and me.

  “Don’t worry, Geoffrey, we can take care of ourselves.”

  An introduction to the breakfast buffet wasn’t a problem anyway. There were more than enough dishes to choose from when he and Jennifer helped themselves at the sideboard. Oatmeal, scrambled eggs, sausages, toast and fish. Why the English had a taste for fish at breakfast was something Leo had never understood. He took some of everything but the fish and the oatmeal. Jennifer, he noticed, had very little on her plate.

  An introduction to the others when they joined them at the table was another matter. They struck Leo as a quirky bunch. Edgy, too, if he wasn’t mistaken, and his work as a P.I. had taught him to be fairly accurate in his observations about people. But the weather was probably responsible for that edginess.

  “Any of you have a working mobile phone?” the woman seated across from him asked. “Mine absolutely refuses to cooperate.”

  The others shook their heads.

  “Well, there you are. We’re not only stranded here, we’re stranded without communication.”

  “Have a battery-operated wireless,” a man down the table said. “A lot of crackle on it, but I was able to raise a weather forecast. More of the same filthy stuff on the way, I’m afraid.”

  “Then we might as well make the best of it.”

  Ignoring Jennifer, she smiled at Leo across the table. A smile that was more than just polite. Hell, was the woman flirting with him? Well, she was attractive enough, if you went for the brittle, consciously elegant type. He wasn’t interested. And wouldn’t have been, even if she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “Sybil Harding,” she introduced herself. “And this is my husband, Roger.”

  She indicated the man beside her. He had a moustache and wore a stolid expression on his lined face.

  “Once upon a time Roger was one of the brothers here,” she went on to explain, “which is why he comes back to the monastery on retreat twice a year. A bit excessive, but I think he regards it as a holiday from me. One can only imagine his disappointment when, after dropping him off, a blocked road forced me to turn back.”

  Roger Harding’s face reddened. “These people aren’t interested in hearing this, Sybil.”

  “Dear heart, we’re all in this together, so why not be friendly?” She turned her attention back to Leo. “Let me see now. You’ve already met Geoffrey and Patrick, haven’t you?”

  Leo glanced in the direction of the two young men. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the novice had shadows under his eyes, as if he’d slept badly. His charge beside him, skinny, round-shouldered and
with a face suffering from acne, looked equally miserable. Maybe because he was painfully shy or because Geoffrey pointedly ignored him.

  “And the other couple there,” Sybil went on, “are the Brashers. Fiona and Alfred, I believe.”

  A timid-looking pair, they nodded by way of acknowledgment.

  “If they have an exciting tale of their own,” Sybil said, “then we have yet to hear it.”

  Alfred Brasher cleared his throat before responding with a quiet “Just travelers on our way to the coast and caught on the road like the rest of you.”

  The group seemed to have already been told beforehand who he and Jennifer were, Leo thought, helping himself to more coffee from the pot on the table. And maybe how they had ended up at Warley themselves. No one asked, anyway.

  “And our friend with the battery-powered wireless,” Sybil continued, gesturing toward the balding, thick-waisted fellow at the end of the table, “is—”

  “Harry Ireland,” he introduced himself. “In sales. I call at the monastery every few months to take orders on goods the brothers like delivered to their gate, then move on to the next place. Some people still like the old-fashioned door-to-door service.” A laugh rumbled out of him. “Couldn’t move on this time, what?”

  All of us trapped here in this isolated place, Leo thought, finishing his eggs. Was there something just a little too coincidental about that, or was he imagining it? And the edginess in the company he had noticed earlier…he was sure now he wasn’t imagining that. You could almost smell the tension in the air. Just the weather, or was there another explanation?

  He didn’t have to wonder about the tension of the woman at his side. He already knew. Jennifer hadn’t spoken a word since they’d entered the dining parlor. But those wary green eyes of hers said a lot whenever he caught her watching him. She was definitely worried.

  “Have I left anyone out?” Sybil wondered. “No? Then Mr. Ireland concludes the introductions.”

  “Just Harry,” he insisted.

  “Yes, just Harry. Well, it makes us a cozy party, doesn’t it? Although,” she added, looking around the room, “one could have wished for a cheerier setting.”