Page 82 of The Hidden Heart

“Richard! Jessica! Are you all right?” Rachel was upon them now. She pulled off her cloak and wrapped it around Jessica. “You poor thing. You must be frozen.”

If she found anything odd in the sight of Richard holding his ward’s governess as if he would never let her go, she did not say anything.

“Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie!” Gabriela was there, too. “Are you all right? I saw him carrying you out of the house, so I ran to tell the duke!”

“You were a very smart girl,” Rachel told her, pulling the girl to her and hugging her. “If it had not been for you, there is no telling what might have happened.”

“Why did he carry you out here?” she went on, turning to Jessica. “Is he the one who killed that other woman?’

Jessica nodded, shivering and clinging to Richard. They all turned to look at the pond where Kestwick was floundering. Lord Westhampton was running around the side of the pond, Cobb puffing along behind him, shouting discouragement.

“You cannot try it, my lord! You’ll go under just like him!”

“I cannot stand here and let him drown,” Westhampton expostulated. “Whatever he did.”

Michael stepped carefully out onto the ice and began to make his way across it. Rachel, suddenly pale, ran toward Mr. Cobb. “No! Michael, no!”

Kestwick’s head bobbed up to the surface, and he flailed, his hands hitting against the ice but sliding off slickly. There was a groan in the ice, and suddenly a crack began to form, splitting right in front of Kestwick and running toward Michael. Rachel shrieked, and Mr. Cobb had to grab her to keep her from running out on the ice after her husband.

Michael, who was now only ten feet from where Kestwick was spluttering and trying to stay afloat, lay facedown on the ice to distribute his weight more evenly and crawled forward. “Take my hand!” he shouted to Kestwick, creeping toward the edge of the ice and extending his hand toward the other man. Kestwick floundered toward Westhampton, grabbing the ice beside him with his hand and trying to slide along it to safety. There was another loud crack, and the ice in Kestwick’s hand broke off. He sank again and never reappeared.

A crack appeared in front of Michael, and he scrambled quickly backward. Mr. Cobb crawled on hands and knees out onto the pond, grabbing Michael’s foot and yanking him back just as another crack opened beneath Michael. The two men crawled rapidly toward the rear as the ice in front of them broke off and floated across the pond. They reached the shore and tumbled into the snow, panting.

Rachel, who had been standing as rigid as a statue, dropped to her knees, covering her face with her hands. Gabriela ran to her, putting her arms around her and helping her up, and by the time Lord Westhampton and Mr. Cobb got shakily to their feet and turned to trudge back to them, Rachel had pulled her face back into a semblance of calm.

“I am freezing,” she said shortly, and turned and walked back to where Jessica and Richard had gotten to their feet and were looking out across the pond. There was no sign of Kestwick. Everyone stared blankly, and a long moment passed. Still there was no sign of the man. All of them knew that there was no way Kestwick could survive now. He had been under the water too long; he could never fight back up under the dragging weight of his clothes and boots.

“The fool,” Richard said shortly. “He’s gone. Let’s get back inside before we catch our deaths of cold. Then we’ll try to sort this all out.”

* * *

So it was that an hour later they were seated in the sitting room. Jessica, whom Gabriela, Rachel and one of the maids had hustled into warm, dry clothes and given a cup of hot tea liberally laced with brandy, now sat on the couch beside Richard, also dried off and warmed up. Everyone else was scattered around—Cobb, the Westhamptons, Miss Pargety, Mr. Goodrich, Darius Talbot, and even Radfield Addison, whom Richard had declared deserved to hear whatever they could find out about what had happened to his sister, despite his status as Cobb’s prisoner. Gaby had fussed about being excluded from the discussion, but both Richard and Jessica agreed that the subject was not one fit for her young years.

Each of them held a steaming cup of hot chocolate and listened as Jessica described what had transpired in her bedroom earlier, and how Lord Kestwick had inadvertently revealed that he had killed Mrs. Woods, then admitted that he had also been responsible for the destruction of Jessica’s jewelry box, as well as the break-ins at the General’s house and here in the nursery.

“But why?” Radfield asked, his voice wavering pitiably. “Why would he want to hurt Bets?”

“I think she threatened to reveal something about him. Apparently she knew him from before…in London. But he would not tell me what it was…or why that box was so important. I don’t understand it at all.”

“And we may never know,” Lord Westhampton said heavily.

“Don’t blame yourself, Michael,” Richard told him. “You did everything anyone could do to save him. He signed his own death warrant by swimming farther out into the pond.”

He turned and fixed Darius Talbot with a cold gaze. “However, I think that we might be able to learn a little more about what Kestwick was doing. Mr. Talbot?”

Darius, who had been sitting in his chair the whole time like a man turned to stone, shifted nervously and grew even paler under Cleybourne’s stare. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice coming out in a rasp. He cleared his throat and repeated. “I don’t know. I swear.”

“Did you help your friend Kestwick break into my home? And the General’s house?”

“No!” Darius clasped his hands together in his lap. “I tell you, I knew nothing about what he was doing. I—he—I met him in London at my club. It was shortly after his mother’s death, and I offered him my condolences. He said that he was going up to Norfolk to tell an old friend of his mother’s death—”

“Norfolk?” Jessica repeated. “Do you mean—he went to see General Streathern?”

Darius nodded. “Yes. I—I had no idea that you were there, of course.”

“Then Kestwick’s mother must have been the old friend whose death upset the General so,” Rachel mused. “It was when he read of her death that he suffered an apoplexy. He was…very fond of her.” She saw no reason to mention what the General had told her of his love for the woman.

Darius shrugged. “I don’t know. Kestwick didn’t say much about it. He just said he had to see the General and he asked if I would like to come with him. I was—” He looked slightly embarrassed. “I was rather pleased. He is an earl, and his father was an important man in the Government before he died. I knew Kestwick to chat with and so on, played cards together some, but we were not what one would call close friends. I was flattered that he had asked me to go with him.”