Page 5 of Through the Smoke

Tonight he craved a simpler diversion, like sorting through the myriad social invitations he had failed to answer over the previous months.

The first of the rose-scented cards received his attention, but his chin soon bumped his chest.

Sliding his chair back so he could lay his head on his arms, he decided to let himself rest for a few moments. But as soon as his eyelids closed, he was riding through the streets of Creswell when an old woman harangued his coach, sounding as though she stood at his side. “Murderer!”

He twitched but couldn’t wake as her rotten apple thumped his coach, followed by another and another until the sky seemed to be raining refuse. Calling to his driver to stop, he got out and opened his mouth to deny her words. But the instant he laid eyes on the old lady, her straggly hair turned into bright, golden tresses, her eyes into icy, blue pools and her rotting teeth into Katherine’s accusing lips.

“Murderer!” Her fingers grabbed for him, clawing the air in desperation—and suddenly they were in the library together at Blackmoor Hall, surrounded by fire.

Smoke filled Truman’s vision and burned his nose and throat. Despite the pain that seared his left hand as if he had thrust it into a cauldron of boiling water, he could think of nothing besides Katherine’s betrayal. The baby. Someone else’s child.

I’ll kill her for this. He uttered the words over and over until they sounded like an incantation. Katherine screamed, as if in answer, and Truman jerked again. She wasn’t far; he could hear her panicked movements not two feet away.

Strangely, her suffering brought him no pleasure. He reached out, but whether to pull her to him or push her away, he didn’t know. Before he could touch her, everything went black and he didn’t come to until his cousin Wythe hefted him over one shoulder.

“M’lord?”

With a start, Truman raised his head and blinked at the wood paneling of his study, the dying embers of the fire and, finally, the small pointy face of Susanna, one of his maids.

Shaking his head to clear his mind of the sounds that echoed there, he forced himself to return to the present. It had only been a dream, a slight variation of the nightmare that constantly plagued him. No doubt the storm raging outside, making the trees knock against the windows at his back, had been the apples that thundered upon his carriage.

If only that knowledge could ease the torment inside him.

“Can I bring ye anythin’ before I retire, m’lord?” the maid asked, bobbing in a curtsy.

Truman took a deep, cleansing breath. “You’re still up, Susanna?”

“Aye, m’lord.”

“I told Mrs. Poulson not to have anyone wait up for me. I certainly cannot expect my servants to keep such hours.”

“She didn’t charge me ter wait, m’lord. I”—Susanna glanced at her feet—“well, ye seem a bit troubled of late. An’ I thought per’aps ye might ’ave need of”—her gaze lifted, then darted away the moment her eyes met his—“some female companionship, m’lord.”

Was this shy, young maid offering herself to him for the night? He had taken no one to his bed since Katherine. For all his wife’s accusations, he had remained loyal to her for fidelity’s sake alone. Since her death, the fear that he would wake in a cold sweat, as he had just done, kept him from letting anyone get too close—that and the doubt he saw in so many women’s eyes, the doubt that mirrored his own.

But this girl seemed so unassuming, so eager and so safe he was almost tempted.

“Master Wythe says I can ease a man like no other,” she added.

Her words were meant to entice, but they doused any desire her initial offer had kindled.

“He would know.”

“Beg yer pardon, m’lord?”

“Nothing.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Thank you for your kind offer, Susanna. Please forgive me if I say I am too tired… tonight,” he added to soften his refusal.

Looking like a child whose bedtime kiss had been rejected by a parent, she nodded and turned to go.

“Susanna?”

“Aye, m’lord?”

“For your own sake, I would let Wythe ease himself somewhere else. A babe is no small burden for a woman alone.”

“Aye, m’lord.” She flushed to the roots of her dark hair and quietly shut the door.

When she was gone, Truman dropped his head into his hands. He had to speak to Wythe about dabbling with the servants. But with his cousin still out he couldn’t do it now.

It wasn’t long before his mind returned, inevitably, to his most recent dream. Why couldn’t he remember what happened the day Katherine died? He could recall, in minute detail, the events leading up to the fire: Katherine’s letter informing him of the babe she carried, his mad dash from London, the frightened look on his wife’s face when he confronted her in his anger.

But what, exactly, had followed their first heated words?

Closing his eyes, he grappled with the remaining wisps of his dream, opening himself up to all sensation, anything that might have made an imprint on his brain, both real and imagined. And suddenly, almost too simply, too easily, it was there: a slight but important detail he had never noticed before.

The realization of what his discovery could mean brought him to his feet. “My God! Could it be true?”

He rounded his desk to pace in front of the fire, examining the vision in his head until he felt quite certain of it. Then he penned a letter to an acquaintance in London.

When he finished, he looked at Katherine’s portrait again, only this time he smiled. He wouldn’t let her win. In life, she had tried to destroy him, had hated him for knowing the leprous character beneath her pretty face. In death, she was more vengeful still. But he would persist, and when he could eventually see through the smoke that clouded the truth, he would know, at last, whether his soul had been worth the fight.

Chapter 2

Blackmoor Hall was a daunting edifice. Built in the Strawberry Hill Gothic style, with a little Palladian thrown in, its gray stone walls rose several stories high, extending along cliffs that fronted the ocean. Although most of the structure had been rebuilt after the fire, nothing looked new. Large, diamond-cut windows spaced symmetrically on two long wings collected snow in the cradle of their thick panes. At least half a dozen chimneys rose from the roof. And an elaborate portico sheltered the entrance. Ancient and overwhelming, the manse resembled something out of a history book, with tall columns, expansive gardens, fountains and Greek statues. Now, late as it was, the estate was dark and rather forbidding.

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