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"You like to worry, husband?" she asked.
Lyon didn't bother to answer her. "Give me your promise again," he demanded.
"I'll not leave your side." She repeated the vow she'd already given him at
least a dozen times. "No matter what, I'll stand next to you."
Lyon nodded. He took her hand and started up the steps. "You really aren't
frightened, are you, love?"
"A little," Christina whispered. "Richards has given me his assurance that
justice in England is equal to that of the Dakotas. He'd better be right,
Lyon, or we shall have to take matters into our own hands." Her voice had
turned hard. "Strike the door, husband. Let's get this pretense of joyful
reunion over and done with."
Richards was waiting for them in the foyer. Christina was surprised by his
enthusiastic reception. Lyon had lost his grim expression, too. He acted as
though he hadn't seen his friend in a long while, which was exactly what they
wanted everyone to believe.
After greeting their host, a dour-faced man with a portly figure, Christina
asked if Baron Stalinsky was in the receiving room.
"I can imagine how eager you must be to meet your father," Porter announced,
his voice filled with excitement. "He's still upstairs, but he will certainly
be joining us in a moment or two. I've kept the list of guests to a minimum,
my dear, so that you may have time for a lengthy visit with your father. You
must certainly have a book's worth of news to exchange."
Lyon removed Christina's wrap, handed it to the butler waiting beside them,
then told Porter he'd take his wife into the drawing room to await the Baron.
Her hand was cold when he clasped it in his own. He could feel her trembling.
The smile never left his face, but the urge to take Christina back home and
return to face her father alone nearly overwhelmed him.
The Dakotas had the right idea, Lyon decided. According to Christina, verbal
slander was all that was needed for an open challenge. What followed next was
a battle to the death. Justice was swift. The system might have been a bit
barbaric, yet Lyon liked its simplicity.
There were only eighteen guests in the drawing room. Lyon counted them while
Christina had a long conversation with their hostess. Although his wife stood
next to him, he paid little attention to what the two women were discussing.
Richards had walked over to join him, and he was trying to listen to his
friend advise him on the merits of the changing weather.
When their hostess left, Christina turned to Richards. "Are you aware that our
host previously worked for your government in the same manner as you?"
"I am."
She waited for him to say more, then let him see her displeasure when he
failed to comment further. "Lyon, Mrs. Porter surely exaggerated her mate's
position, but she did mention a fact I found most enlightening."
"What was that, love?" Lyon asked. He draped his arm around her shoulders and
pulled her closer to him.
"She's a gossip," Christina began. "When she saw the way Richards greeted you,
she boasted that her husband held the same favor when he was a younger man. I
asked her why he'd retired, and she told me she didn't know all the facts but
that his last assignment had soured him. It seemed he handled a project that
caused a good friend of his some discomfort. Yes, she actually used that word.
Discomfort."
"Discomfort? I don't understand. Do you, Richards?" Lyon asked.
Richards was staring at Christina. "You would do well to work for us,
Christina. You have ferreted out what took me hours of research to ascertain."
"Lyon, can you guess the name of Porter's good friend?"
"Stalinsky," Lyon said in answer to Christina's question.
"Porter wasn't guilty of error, Christina. His only mistake was in befriending
the Baron. He trusted him—still does, for that matter. The baron is a
guest in his home, remember. God's truth, I think you'll understand what an
easy man the Baron is to trust when you finally meet him."
"By England's standards, perhaps," Christian replied. "Not by mine.
Appearances and manners often cloak a black soul. Are you still unconvinced
that Lyon and I are right about the Baron, then?"
"I'm convinced. The court might not see it our way, however, and for that
reason we're bypassing our own legal system. There are those who believe
Jessica had lost her mind. The argument that your mother had imagined—"
"Did she imagine the mark she gave the baron in his right eye when he tried to
kill her? Did she imagine that her friends' throats were slashed? Did she
imagine she stole the jewels and hid them under the roses? You've seen the
gems, Richards. Did you only imagine you saw them?"
Richards smiled at Christina. "You really should work for me," he said in
answer to her challenges. "Now, to refute your arguments. One, the baron could
have others testify for him, telling a different story of how he came by the
scar. Two, Jessica was the only one who saw the baron kill the husband and
wife on that wagon train. No one else saw anyone, according to the writing in
her journal. It would be next to impossible to track any of those people down
to determine how the couple was killed. We have only Jessica's diary to tell
us what happened. In a court of law that wouldn't be enough. Three, there [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]