Page 91 of An Affair at Stonecliffe

Carlisle jumped up and pulled Noelle into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he squeezed her close. “Noelle. My love.” He broke off and kissed her.

When at last he raised his head, he said, “You frightened the life out of me. I thought you believed him.”

Noelle pulled back sharply, giving him a not-so-gentle slap on the arm. “You thought I swallowed his story? How could you? Honestly, Carlisle, you have so little faith in me?”

“It wasn’t that!” he protested. “I was scared that you still harbored a distrust of me. Because of what I did in the past. That you—”

“What utter nonsense!” She planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. “If I were not so insanely happy to see you, I would give you a tremendous scold. To think that I would take the word of a stranger over that of the man I love!”

Her words shot straight through him, filling him with such a strange, hot, sweet emotion that it was almost painful. He couldn’t speak, his mind so numbed by this final revelation coming on top of a day filled with confusion and fear that he could scarcely think.

Noelle turned away quickly. “We should tie him up. I don’t want him waking up and shooting us while we stand about chatting.”

“No. I—yes, of course.” He took a step closer. “Noelle...”

“But what will we use to tie him?” Noelle ignored Carlisle, surveying the room. “There’s nothing here. I haven’t even a ribbon in my hair. I could tear off a ruffle.”

Carlisle frowned, starting to speak again, then stopped. She was right; this was not the moment for this discussion. They would talk later. Right now was a time for practicality. “No, I’ll use my neck cloth.” He began to unwind the once elegant knot.

Rolling the unconscious man over, he pulled Thompkins’s hands behind him and securely tied his wrists, tying the other end of the cloth around the leg of the table. Noelle in the meantime ripped off the ruffle of her petticoat to tie the man’s feet together, as well.

“That should hold him for a while,” Carlisle said, rising to look down at his handiwork. “As soon as we get back to the Hall, I’ll send someone around to take him to the constable.” He looked around, frowning. “Where is Gil? Is he not with you?”

“In the bedroom, asleep.”

“Asleep?” His brows shot up. “Through all this?”

“Diggs drugged him. I managed to wake him up to escape, but then I thought we were safe—” She cast a dark look at the bound Thompkins. “And I put him back to bed.”

She led Carlisle into the other room, where Gil still lay, asleep. When Carlisle picked him up to carry him out, Gil’s eyelids fluttered and opened. “Uncle Carlisle.” The boy smiled sleepily and laid his head against Carlisle’s chest. “I knew you would come. Didn’t you, Mama?”

“Yes.” Noelle smoothed a piece of hair back from Gil’s forehead. “I knew he would.”

THEY FOUND THAT the pony, which had bolted when Diggs attacked them, had returned to the cottage and was placidly munching grass in the clearing. Carlisle harnessed him once more to the cart, and they started back down the trail toward home. Gil, now wide awake, was happily ensconced in the cart and enjoying the ride. Carlisle led the pony, and Noelle walked beside him, relating everything that had happened to her and Gil since they left Stonecliffe with Diggs.

“I would never have guessed that Diggs was working against me the whole time,” Carlisle said. “It’s still a shock. He must have been the one who hired the ruffians who pursued you, and he was in a perfect position to slip something into his agent’s drink and send another man to kidnap Gil.”

Noelle, breathing a little sigh of relief that he hadn’t asked her again about her declaration of love earlier, continued this safer line of conversation. “Do you think it was Diggs who shot at Gil that day?”

“I presume it must have been. Though Thompkins certainly seemed to have excellent aim to drop Diggs like that.” He looked over at Noelle. “I am so enormously sorry, Noelle.”

“It’s hardly your fault.”

“It is, though. I am the one who bungled everything from the moment I first met you and then compounded my sins by hiring Diggs to search for you. I doubt Thompkins would have ever thought to hire Diggs if I had not already set him to the task. I paid him and never once was wise enough to doubt him. How could I have been so blind?”

“It is, I think, easier to deceive people who are honest and forthright. Devious people distrust others from the beginning,” Noelle told him. “Besides, you had no reason to suspect him. I imagine when he began, he probably was just trying to find us and talk to me, as you hired him to. Later he decided he could get even more money by betraying you. How could you have known that? Who would have thought Thompkins would have hired Diggs—or that Thompkins would have had such a mad plot to begin with? Speaking of which, why in the world did Thompkins hire him? Why did he want to kill all those people?”

“I finally understood it when I saw him there with you. The answer was right before me in the document. I read it, but with everything that happened afterward, I didn’t really think about it. Freddie Penrose said that the fund had made a great deal of money the past few years. Thompkins the son was apparently good at investing. He must have started thinking, ‘Why should some aristocratic descendant get all this money? I’m the one who’s doing the work. I deserve the benefits.’ Or maybe he was simply greedy and evil from the start.”

“Whichever he was, I don’t see how it benefited him. He wasn’t one of the possible beneficiaries.”

“Ah, but he did benefit from it—if all the heirs died before the trust ended. In that case, the fund would have gone to a charity, also overseen by Thompkins. He killed the others and was planning to lay the blame on me or Nathan, whichever worked out the best. My guess is when we look at the fund’s books, we will find that he has been siphoning off cash ever since he took over from his father. It would have been easy. I doubt he had any supervision, at least not after Lord Drewsbury died. Haverstock and Freddie clearly paid no attention to the workings of it. Nor would Nathan’s father, and the others were gone.”

“So he could transfer the funds to the charity and continue to embezzle from it.”

“Exactly.”

“What a cold-blooded man.” Noelle shuddered. “To decide to kill all those people...”