Page 35 of Death at a Highland Wedding (Rip Through Time #4)

THIRTY-FIVE

Gray isn’t at the lake. I can see that as soon as I’m on top of the hill. I still pause there, squinting down. Then I check my pocket watch. Twenty past midnight.

Okay, either he forgot all about it or he presumed I’d know our meet-up was canceled, in light of his early-morning trip.

I’m not sure whether to be relieved or frustrated. I don’t want to talk about the marriage thing again, but I also don’t know for certain that’s what he’d wanted to discuss.

What else could it be?

What else did I want it to be?

Damn it, I need to stop this.

I turn on my heel and stalk back toward the house as I fume at myself. I know full well what I was hoping for, as much as it shames me to admit it.

I was hoping for the same damn thing I’d been hoping for when I told Gray I wouldn’t marry someone who didn’t love me.

I wanted him to tell me he did.

No, I just wanted him to tell me he could. I didn’t actually expect him to say he felt the same way I did.

A tiny voice in me whispers, But it would have been nice.

Damn it. I don’t want to be that person. I’m the practical one who knows the most she can hope for is an admission of deeper feelings that could blossom into more.

But I am hoping for those deeper feelings. Is that fair to Gray? I’ve known guys who seemed happy to be friends until they admitted to hoping for more and it hurt. It hurt. My friendship hadn’t been enough. I hadn’t been enough.

A few had half joked—even complained—about being “friend-zoned.” God how I hated that phrase. As if the only reason men befriended women was in hopes of sex.

Once I made it clear that I wasn’t interested, they’d ended the friendship. But that’s not what I’d do with Gray, because that is not why I’m in this relationship. His friendship isn’t a consolation prize. It’s the main prize and anything else is a bonus.

Does that make it better? I think so.

I need to be absolutely certain that if I’m angry over this marriage-of-convenience nonsense, I’m not actually angry because he isn’t offering more.

I’m walking and thinking when I hear a tiny meow. I almost ignore it. I’ve been sleeping in the same room as a wildcat kitten. I’m accustomed to meows. Except I’m not in my room. I’m outside.

The meow comes again, small and plaintive.

I stop and peer along the side of the road. The noise comes from inside a row of bushes.

Had we missed one of the wildcat kittens?

Gray and I had followed the mother and her babies, and there’d been three. Had there been a fourth somewhere? Or another wildcat with kittens? Or did one of the two in the barn escape?

These are all valid explanations. Explanations that should have me walking into those bushes to rescue a lost kitten.

Instead, the hairs on my neck rise. I’m thrown back a year, jogging through the Grassmarket in the twenty-first century, hearing a woman in trouble and going to investigate. Because of course I’d try to help.

I’d been lured in by a killer, which is how I ended up in Victorian Scotland.

In this case, I hate to say it, but I’m not hearing a person in distress. It’s a kitten, and I’m not even sure it’s distressed about anything except being lost. There are no larger predators out here. I can head to the barn, check on the kittens, and if one is missing, I’ll make a decision then.

I look around. There’s no sign of anyone, and I might feel silly being suspicious, but my hand still slides into my pocket for my derringer. I don’t even have time to feel around the oversized pocket depths before I’m cursing.

My derringer is in the dress I was wearing earlier, and I’d pulled on a different—darker—one for this nighttime foray.

I do have my switchblade, though, in the pocket of my cloak. I palm it and then resume walking, my gaze and all my attention on that stand of bushes. I get three steps before a crackle sounds behind me, and I realize I’d been watching the wrong damn bushes.

I wheel, knife blade shooting out… and find myself staring down the barrel of a rifle.

“Not going to help that poor wee kitty?” Müller says, mangling a Scottish accent.

I say nothing. My brain is whirring as I assess my surroundings. I’m on the road to the house, in a stretch with bushes on either side. The rows of bushes aren’t thick enough to make this an inescapable gauntlet, but with the shadows, I can’t see a clear way through to the fields beyond.

Müller waggles the gun barrel. “Forgot your little gun, girl?”

I only adjust my grip on the knife, which makes him laugh. It’s a dry, raspy sound, raw with contempt.

If this is an ambush of opportunity, he wouldn’t have had time to get the cat. Did he know I was coming to see Gray? How? He’d never get in the house to read the note.

Does it matter?

It might. There’s a big difference between targeting me and ambushing the first person who steps out of the house alone. A difference that will tell me how to play this.

“I thought you were gone,” I say at last. “Your cottage is empty.”

“Move.” He indicates with the gun. “Back the way you came.”

When I don’t move, his eyes harden. “I said move, girl.”

“Move away from the house?”

He sneers. “I do not need you farther from the house. You are far enough. You could scream, and they would not hear.”

“You know that for a fact? Because no one heard Ezra Sinclair when you clubbed him?”

The sneer only grows. “I did not kill Ezra. His death has been nothing but trouble for me.”

Ezra. He calls Sinclair by his first name. He wasn’t exactly respectful when he referred to Cranston, but this is another level of familiarity.

“You were leaving, though,” I say. “That says you’re guilty of something.”

“No, it says I knew your detective friend was going to accuse me of something. Him and that girl.”

“Lenore?”

The sneer returns, telling me I guessed right.

I continue, “You knew she was coming back to tell us how her belongings got under that floorboard.”

“She would not tell. She knows better.”

“Knows better than to admit she had an affair with Ezra Sinclair?”

When his lip curls, my first thought is that we’re wrong. But then he says, “That is a pretty word for it. Girls always have pretty words for it. They need to believe it means something when a man wants them. All fancy bows and flowers, ending with a wedding ring.”

“Maybe he was in love with her.”

Müller’s laugh is so ugly something inside me hardens. I fight to tamp it down. As long as that gun isn’t moving—and he isn’t insisting I move—that’s good enough. Lower his guard while getting what answers I can.

And there’s an answer dangling here.

“It wasn’t love,” I say. “But he did care about her.”

“I am certain that is what she will say. She knows the truth, but she will not admit it even to herself. They never do.”

“The truth being that he only wanted sexual relations. That’s what you presume because you can’t imagine anything else. You can’t allow for the possibility that he might have cared—”

His laugh answers my question, but I still need to push, and maybe that’s for Gray and McCreadie’s sake. They want to believe their friend was a good man who saw beyond class and fell in love.

“You sound very sure of yourself,” I say.

“I am very sure of myself.”

“Because you knew Ezra and knew he was not the man everyone thought him to be.”

He only smiles. “If I told you the truth about your Ezra, you would not believe it.”

“I might.”

Müller shakes his head. “Walk. Head down the road. I will tell you when to stop.”

“You were blackmailing him.”

A pause. Müller’s face screws up. “Black mail?” His English is excellent, but he must not know that word.

“Threatening to reveal what you know about him. To tell people what he did.”

“Why would I want to tell people?”

“To keep your job. Ezra got it for you, and Mr. Cranston was going to let you go. What you knew about Ezra gave you leverage.”

I expect one of two responses. He’ll deny it or he’ll laugh it off. Instead, his face goes dark.

“Move,” he says.

“You—”

“I said move. ”

The gun barrel rams into my shoulder so suddenly that I stumble back. When I open my mouth, Müller slaps me. I reel, hands flying to my face.

“Move!”

I had a chance there, when he took his hand off the gun to hit me. But I missed it. I won’t do that again. Stay calm and watch for another opportunity, and do not let him catch me off guard again.

I turn around and walk as I think.

Müller is genuinely angry at the suggestion that he’d blackmail Sinclair. I didn’t expect that. I’d insulted him, of course, but we’d already accused him of stealing those objects from Lenore. Hell, I accused him of murder, and that hadn’t fazed him. This did.

What had he said when I accused him of killing Sinclair? That it wasn’t in his best interests to do so, which made sense if Sinclair was helping him keep his job.

I’m missing something.

Clear the mental chalkboard and rethink this.

Lenore had a fling with Sinclair. Müller confirmed it. Lenore thought it was a love affair. It wasn’t, and Müller suggested she’d know that, even if she couldn’t admit it.

Sinclair was taking advantage of her. Something went wrong—maybe she realized he didn’t love her—and she quit.

Müller said she’d never tell. Why?

I mentally shift to the items found under that floorboard. My first thought had been “trophies.” It’s a classic sign. Predators like to keep items belonging to their victims, as talismans that allow them to relive those moments.

I’d reframed them as blackmail fodder. But Müller’s reaction said they weren’t. He’d been confused, as if he’d never considered such a thing.

Swing back to trophies then. Trophies of what? The bit of bloomers tells me it’s sexual. Did Müller watch Sinclair with Lenore? I certainly wouldn’t put that past him. But how would he get those items from her? She could have left the ring behind and lost the hair ribbon, but her underwear?

If I told you the truth about your Ezra, you would not believe it.

Why wasn’t Sinclair worried about Lenore talking?

Why did Müller have those items under his floorboard?

These two things are connected. Lenore did something she was ashamed of. Another form of blackmail. One that involved Müller.

A threesome?

I hear Müller walking behind me, his breathing letting me picture the man, and that scenario makes me shudder. Could Lenore have overlooked her revulsion because she was curious? Or because she was in love and her lover wanted her to do this?

If I told you the truth about your Ezra, you would not believe it.

Is “talking his young lover into a threesome” enough to warrant that statement? In my time, I’d laugh at the thought.

But this isn’t my time, and maybe what Müller meant was that I would be shocked as a young Victorian woman.

“Turn left,” he says, startling me from my thoughts.

I glance back, but he only waves the rifle in the direction he wants me to go.

I have a very strong sense that Müller was involved in something sexual with Sinclair and Lenore. That isn’t necessarily a problem, though. Not if she consented.

Did she consent?

Holy shit.

Did she consent?

My gut goes cold.

I need to get out of here. Yes, that should be obvious, but my cop brain has taken over, chasing clues dangled in front of me. That’s a better trap than a lost kitten, and I fell for it.

I’d been thinking when I need to escape.

Because I do need to escape… before Müller does whatever he plans to do.