Page 81 of A Stolen Heart

Instead she forced herself to move away. “Well,” she said a little shakily, avoiding his eyes. “I, uh, guess we had better start walking.”

“Alexandra…”

She raised her eyes to his, steeling herself against their appeal. “What?”

“Nothing. You’re right. Let’s go.”

THEY MADE THEIR WAY ACROSS the verdant pasture, watched by the indifferent sheep. Alexandra’s green half kid boots were scarcely made for such a procedure, and she thought with an inward sigh that they would be entirely ruined by the time they reached any habitation. She gathered her muslin skirt and wrapped the excess around her arm so that it ended at the more practical level of her knee. Alexandra saw Sebastian glance at her legs and then quickly away, and she wondered with an inner sense of satisfaction whether the sight had affected him.

They trudged for some time. The area seemed to be deserted, with dark clusterings of trees on either side of the lush pasture. They followed the course of a stream until they spotted a stile. They made their way toward it, crossed a fence and found themselves on a sort of track, not quite well-traveled enough to be considered a path, but eventually it led to a better-marked path, and that, in turn, fed into a narrow country lane, hedged on either side with rhododendrons.

As they walked, they talked. Alexandra found it curious that once they returned to earth, their conversation turned to more mundane matters.

“It’s obvious,” Sebastian began, reaching out a hand to steady her as she jumped across a little ditch, “that someone is out to harm you. This latest attack had nothing to do with your mother. It was only you.”

“I know. I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of who it could possibly be. I know no one in England except you and the Countess.”

“It has to be connected to…well, to the mystery of your birth—whether you are Chilton’s daughter and how you wound up in America. It seems far too coincidental otherwise.”

“But who could it harm if I am the Countess’s grandchild? Lady Ursula and Penelope are the only ones I can think of, and it seems absurd to picture either of them as a killer, even by proxy.”

“Yet someone tried to kill your mother and has attacked you twice and tried to kidnap you. I have given up my position that you have past swindling victims seeking revenge. But what does that leave?”

“Nothing. No one…unless…what about Lord Exmoor, the one who got the title?”

Sebastian chuckled. “Believe me, there is no one I can see better in the role of villain than Richard. I would love to discover that it was he. But to what purpose?”

“You said that he inherited the estate because the Countess’s son and his children were all dead. If one of them isn’t dead, then—”

Sebastian shook his head. “No. The entire estate and the title pass only to males. Your appearance on the scene would make no difference to him. He would still be entitled to everything he inherited. Now, if the boy, your brother, were the one who had shown up after all these years, I am sure that Richard would be homicidal. But a woman—the most you could inherit would be part of the Countess’s fortune when she dies. It is not enormous, but it would be a comfortable living. The problem is that only Lady Ursula could be hurt by any rewriting of the will. The Countess dislikes Richard and wouldn’t leave him a farthing of her own money, anyway. I am sure he knows that.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, then Sebastian said, “Perhaps we are looking at this wrong. What about the Ward family?”

Alexandra gave him a blank look. “My family? What are you talking about? What do they have to do with this?”

“If you are really the Countess’s granddaughter, then you are not Mrs. Ward’s child. I would think that there might be some people who would resent that, who would feel that a stranger should not inherit Mr. Ward’s estate.”

“Well, I haven’t inherited it. I mean, not really. Mother inherited it, and I manage it for her.”

“But it will be yours when she dies.”

“Then why would they attack Mother?” she pointed out. “That would only cause me to get it sooner.”

He frowned. “You’re right. That would not be logical.”

“Besides, my closest relative is Aunt Hortense. And I will not believe that she could ever try to do away with me. She raised me as much as my mother.”

“Which brings us back to square one. There are no suspects.”

“Yet it happened. Someone did it. Someone hired that ruffian to kill Mother, and I would imagine that someone hired that man today.”

“There has to be something we’re missing. We’re looking at it wrong somehow.”

“But how else can we look at it? We come to London, and the very night I meet the Countess, I am attacked and told to go back where I came from. When I don’t leave and instead start talking to the Countess and she declares that I am her granddaughter, someone tries to murder my mother, the only person who could tell us the facts of my birth. Now they’re trying to kidnap me.”

“There must be some other person, some motive we aren’t seeing.”

Alexandra sighed. “We’re getting nowhere.”