Read Online You Only Love Twice by Elizabeth Thornton - Free Book Online Page B

because I’d taken his pistol away from him. What’s wrong with that? And you have to understand how it was with us. My God, I’d been looking after you since you were a scrawny brat. You looked up to me. I felt responsible for you. Somebody had to. Your father was a wastrel. He never gave a thought to your welfare.”
    Her breath was coming thick and fast. “Don’t you dare speak ill of my father! What would you know about him? You were a soldier! You were away at war.”
    “And you’ve lost your memory. He was a gambler, Jess. He drank too much.”
    Tears were shimmering in her eyes. “So he wasn’t a saint. But he kept me with him. He didn’t abandon me to some distant relative who would have used me as a drudge. I could have earned my own living, as a governess or … or a lady’s companion. He must have wanted me with him.”
    Something flickered briefly in the depths of his eyes before his expression became veiled. “So that’s the way of it,” he said.
    “What does that mean?”
    “Your father …”
    “What?”
    He shook his head. “Maybe you’re right, but that’s not how it seemed to me at the time.”
    His placating words came too late to stem the tide of emotions. “My father was brutally murdered,” she cried, “and I’m not going to let this rest till I find out who was responsible.”
    Several moments elapsed before he said anything. “Do you really think I’m capable of murder, Jess?”
    It didn’t matter what she thought. She was playing against long odds, and she had to take chances. “You had motive and opportunity.”
    “What motive?”
    “You were in love with this girl, Bella. I think myfather threatened to tell her about me. You didn’t want to lose her. That’s why you killed him.”
    “Tell her?” He laughed harshly. “It was too late to keep anything from her after that brawl. Everybody there knew, or thought they knew, that we were lovers. And it was a damn lie! You wanted to ruin things for Bella and me. And you succeeded. Soon after you left Hawkshill, Bella married my best friend, Rupert Haig. That’s what your lies did, Jess.”
    “If it wasn’t true, why would I tell my father?”
    “Why?” He leaned closer so that they were glaring eye to eye. “Because you were infatuated with me. You thought I’d be forced to marry you. You wouldn’t be the first female to try and compromise me.”
    Oh, she could well believe it, and for some odd reason the thought inflamed her. “If you didn’t do it, I think you know who did. Who are you trying to protect, Lucas?”
    He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Who the hell do you think I’m trying to protect? You, of course. Don’t you understand anything? The murderer was never caught. If you stir things up, he may decide to do away with you, too. And there’s something else you’re not taking into your calculations. You disappeared the same night your father was murdered. No one knew where you were. For all anyone knows, you could have murdered him.”
    He dropped her at the front door of the house. She was in too much of a daze to respond coherently to his parting words. Her brain felt as though an electric current had passed through it. Thoughts chased each other in a frenetic jig. She didn’t know what to hold on to or what to let go.
    This wasn’t the time to think about things. She heard voices coming from the breakfast room, which was now also their communal office. After removing her bonnet, she forced her lips into a serene smile and went in.
    The nuns were sitting at the table, making entries inone of the ledgers. Sister Dolores, close to sixty, was tall and thin with a sallow complexion and the most eloquent dark, bushy eyebrows that Jessica had ever beheld. Her stately manner and air of authority had earned her the nickname Sister Duchess. When she told a patient he was going to get well, so the novices joked among themselves, he hastened to obey her or he died in the attempt. Sister Elvira was about ten