Feeling as if she were coming off a wretched bout of drinking, she pulled herself out of bed and stumbled to the basin of water. She splashed her face, and then, bracing both hands on the basin, looked at herself in the mirror. She was pale as death as if she'd been the one to bleed her lifeblood all over the floor. Touching her swollen bottom lip, she examined the cut on the inside of her mouth. She must have bitten the tender flesh when Devonshire had shoved her against the desk.

Elsie helped Rachel dress in a simple auburn muslin gown. Ryan was still with Mary Elizabeth an hour later when Elsie finished braiding her hair. "Why don't you go downstairs and eat, mum," Elsie quietly said.

But as Rachel left her chambers, she only knew she would go insane if she stayed a moment longer doing nothing. She played out the events from the office in her mind. Over and over. Reliving what she could have or should have done. Dissecting, analyzing every awful moment from the time she'd walked into the office and seen Devonshire.

How had he gotten past the watchman?

Knowing now what she knew of the man, she questioned the circumstances that found her trapped in the vault weeks ago. There was no such thing as too many coincidences. And she was determined to find answers that could put Devonshire in prison.

"How long has she been here?"

"Nigh on two hours, sir," said the D&B night watchman, a stocky man in his forties who had acquired his shock of white hair only in the last year of the eight he'd been working for Ryan. "I was surprised to see her, sir. That's why I sent ye the message. She come in and asked to check the register. Then wanted to see the books back for months. It took me nearly fifteen minutes just to locate them all. Then she checked the keys to the vault and to the doors. She wanted an accountin' of them all, sir."

"What did you find?"

"We're not missing a one. 'Cept the one you keep."

The one he kept in his desk at Ore Industries.

Clenching his teeth, Ryan sensed the uncompromising tone in Rachel's actions. He was still furious, but as much at himself for not noticing she'd been gone from the house for so long. What was she thinking, coming here in the middle of the night?

He jaunted up the stairs to the third-floor entry, pausing as he glimpsed a faint handprint of dried blood on the rail. Except for the area where carpet lay on the floor, Stewart had already seen the rooms cleaned. Ryan opened the glass door into the reception area. He followed the light down the corridor. A heavy clunk against the ceiling lifted his gaze. The rasping noise led him past the conference room and through another door that opened into a private dressing room. He walked into the lounging area in time to see a pair of stocking-clad legs wriggle from the trapdoor in the ceiling and dangle blindly as the owner of that body lowered herself from the ceiling onto the dresser.

Rachel clearly struggled with her grip, cursing her idiocy for not removing her cumbersome apparel. She levered downward, seeking a solid perch beneath her feet when Ryan wrapped his hands around her waist.

She might have screamed had she not slipped and tumbled into his arms. "What the hell are you doing?" His furious voice resounded in her ear.

"Mother Mary!" Her skirts rucked around her waist, Rachel unhooked herself from Ryan's death grip. She shoved away from him. "Don't ever do that again!"

Incredulous, he started to reply when he shut his mouth and glanced at the trapdoor. "I should be telling you that. Have you lost your mind or merely your way? What the hell are you doing coming here in the middle of the night?"

"There is a pathway up there that leads to the roof." Smoothing her bodice and skirts, she returned her gaze to the trapdoor. "An entire block of buildings connect to our roof. It could explain the break-ins."

"Rachel"-he clawed a hand through his hair-"that is the building's ventilation shaft. We've already-"

"I know what it is," she snapped at him. "But anyone could come into this building from that way. Have you considered that?"

"We put a lock on the grate eight weeks ago."

"Well it isn't there now." She leaned against the chair for support.

His eyes took on a steely hardness. "When was the last time you ate?" he asked.

"I don't know." She scraped her palm through her hair, then looked at the ceiling. "I left the lantern in the passageway. I have to fetch it."

"You're not going back up there," he said. "Stay here."

He raised his arms and gripped the edge of the trapdoor, stretching the cloth of his white shirt across his shoulders as he lifted himself into the crawlway. He was still wearing the same clothes he'd worn yesterday.

Ryan found the lantern. Then raising it, he crawled along the shaft and checked the grate. The blades of the fan were still as the eerie night beyond, which only meant no breeze moved the air. He checked the lock on the grate, frowning when he found it missing. Five minutes later, he lowered himself and brought the lantern down with him.

"Devonshire was in this office when I arrived," Rachel said, when he secured the trapdoor and turned. "He did not sign in. So how did he get up here to my office? Maybe we can prove he is behind the burglaries. Maybe-"

"Rachel, I'm as interested in this as you are, but not at two o'clock in the morning."

She pulled out of his reach. "You must know Devonshire is guilty. You've already figured everything out. I know you have."

"Frankly, Rachel, it doesn't matter what I think. We have no physical proof to verify one single goddamn accusation."

"He had someone steal the files because he was trying to cover up the brittle fracturing problem we have in Scotland. He would have blamed you-"

"We caught the problem in time."

"You're not going after him because of me. And he knows you won't."

"Listen to me, Rachel."

She stepped backward, away from his hands, her breath laboring. Her hazel eyes filmed with tears. "I warned you this could happen. I told you." She dared him to remain silent. "What pound of flesh is Devonshire extracting from you?"

Even as he pulled her into his arms, she was still fighting him, and as he held her he didn't know how she would be able to live forever under someone's magnifying glass like a specimen spread out for dissection. "Look what you are doing to yourself, Rachel."

"Johnny should have stayed in Carlisle." She raised her small fists and hit Ryan's chest. "He should have stayed."

He held her face pressed against his chest as she wept in his shirt. "We're engineers," she said. "We're supposed to be able to fix problems."

Closing his eyes, he was shamed that he'd reduced Rachel to this. He held her against him as if he truly did have the power to fix all problems while silently berating his own lack of character, aware as the holy moral bugler blew a death knell over his entire future with her. She wasn't the threat to him. Just the opposite. The consequences of his own actions and associations had come back to bite the people he loved most.

Devonshire hurt her. He hurt her with his daughter only three rooms away. Sweeping an arm behind her shoulders and another beneath her knees, he lifted her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him as he bore her out of the private dressing lounge, through the conference room, and into the corridor.

"We can't just do nothing."

"I know, Rachel."

Ryan stopped at the bottom of the stairs as the watchman hurried forward to open the front door. "Turn off the lamps upstairs," he instructed, started to turn away, then stopped. Rachel's gown flowed over his arm. "Who was on duty this weekend?"

"McKinney, sir. He works the weekend shifts."

"Do you know if he left his post at all?"

As if sensing the sudden silence, Rachel turned her head. Ryan asked the question again. "It's important," he reiterated. "Did McKinney leave this post?"

"He's got them kids, ye know." The man rubbed his bristly jaw. "They come here, and he leaves to eat lunch with them out back near the thoroughfare. He never goes far and doesn't stay gone for long....He never meant no harm, sir."

"I want to see him in my office tomorrow." Ryan's voice held a poorly concealed edge. "He's worked shifts at Ore Industries. He knows where to find me."

"Don't discharge him." Rachel's quiet plea vibrated against his shoulder. "Please."

"We'll discuss it later, Rachel." He shoved open the door.

A heavy fog was rising up out of the night, almost as if alive and breathing. He could hear the distant blow of a foghorn on the Thames. The clip-clop of horses' hooves on brick. An orange glow hovered over the gaslamp outside the door, picking out the shiny, dark shape of a carriage down the walkway. He'd brought Ravenspur's carriage and fancy blacks and was indisposed to be picked out as an easy target by some novice footpad. Especially with his wife in his arms.

"Ryan..." Rachel struggled to get out of his arms. "I fear I'm going to be unwell."

He lowered her feet to the ground. She turned her head away and was promptly sick in the small patch of flowers outside the door. It did not occur to him to leave her to her privacy. He held her hair off her face and, when she was finished, he accepted a glass of water and a damp rag from the carriage driver, who had gone inside the building to fetch them from the night watchman.

He patted her forehead. "You've made yourself sick. You can hardly stand."

"I haven't eaten. There's nothing inside me."

"Swish." He offered the glass.

As the carriage made its way back to Kensington, he pulled Rachel into his lap. Holding her against him, he bent forward and dimmed the light against the gloom.

It was nearing dawn when he finally left Rachel sleeping in bed. The door to Johnny's room was open. Ryan stepped over the threshold. Hesitated, as he saw the figure of his brother in the massive bed. A low fire burned in the hearth. Brianna and his oldest brother Christopher were sitting vigil next to Johnny, who lay unmoving, his chest and shoulders wrapped in swaths of white.

Christopher unfolded himself from the chair. He'd not shaven and looked like some brigand from the desert. Unlike the rest of the family, he and Brianna shared their mother's same blue eyes, and the contrast was stark in the shadows of his face. "Ryan," Christopher said. His dark hair was longer than Ryan remembered, a dusting of silver lightening his temples. They were the same height, the same build.

Ryan stopped on the other side of the bed as if he'd come up against an invisible shield. His hands shoved in his pockets, he peered across at his oldest sibling.

He had not seen Christopher in a year. They had never been particularly close, not like he and Johnny were-perhaps as much because they were so much alike as they were separated by years and Rachel's girlhood affection. But Ryan knew it was not simple to decipher his feelings. His relationships never were easy for him to understand. Yet, he felt a strange loss for allowing himself to become a stranger to his oldest brother.

"Moira fell asleep," Chris said. "Colin took her back to her room."

"No one can find David," Brianna said.

"I'm not dead, yet," the strained whisper came from the bed. "Spare...me David."

Ryan pulled his hands out of his pockets.

"Johnny-" Brianna was suddenly at his side.

"How...long have I been here?"

"Almost four days," Christopher said. "Plus or minus a few minutes."

Johnny asked about Rachel in a low raspy voice. Brianna answered his questions, then pressed his limp hand to her cheek. "You've lost a lot of blood. The bullet did not penetrate your lungs." Or he would not be alive.

"I feel like hell."

"I think he will go to any means to have us wait on him," Christopher commented, offering Ryan a vague smile, but there was a mist in his eyes as he dropped to the chair.

Johnny's dulled gaze raised to his.

Ryan had not spoken.

He had remained in the shadows, separated by more than the width of the bed, unprotected by the layers of his life he'd carefully and arrogantly constructed through the years. He didn't know what was happening to him. His chest was tight.

"Don't blame yourself, Ryan." Johnny's breathing slowed, and he seemed to fade into the sheets, the words striking Ryan as nothing else had.

For Kathleen's last breath to him on this earth had held those very same words. "Don't blame yourself, Ryan."

It was as if he'd come full circle in his life-and the man in the mirror was not a man he liked.

Chapter 23.

"H asn't anyone informed you yet that I'm not going to die, Rachel?" Johnny's voice rasped. "It's been nearly two weeks. You don't need to tiptoe around me."

"I'm not tiptoeing." Exactly.

Wide strips of cloth bound Johnny's chest. His face was no longer pale but ?ushed slightly with fever. Sitting on the edge of his mattress, her skirts spread around her, she attempted to pretend that his appearance did not affect her. Nor could the warm midday air and the scent of fresh-cut ?owers disguise the reek of carbolic soap and disinfectant.

Still the physician had been optimistic and, since yesterday, Johnny's chambers were no longer a place of hush as it had been days before. Christopher stood at the end of the bed helping Moira with the tray as she settled next to her husband. Colin, who could have been Johnny's twin, sat with his long legs stretched out, joking with his brother about all the service he was getting. Amid the somber merrymaking, Ryan's absence was conspicuously glaring in a moment that the entire family had come together. He hadn 't even made a brief enough appearance in her life this week for her to tell him that he was going to be a father.

"So tell me what you have been doing at D&B, colleen," Johnny asked.

"Stewart has traced every ounce of steel and materials procured from the Welsh foundry owned by Devonshire," Rachel finished their conversation as she adjusted the pillows behind her brother-in-law for his meal. "It will take a few more weeks for the results of the inspections to come in, but we are confident everything is in hand."

"Only because D&B is notoriously circumspect in its safety," Christopher said, and, as former chairman of D&B, not without experience on the matter.

"Ryan has kept this out of the financials," Johnny said. "How?"

"He's put all the focus on himself," Christopher said.

"As it should be," Moira said. "I lay the blame at his feet for what's happened to my Johnny.... Him and his high-handed ways."

Rachel glared at her sister-in-law. Her assertion illogical and ridiculous in the face of their current company. "You don't mean that, Moira."

"No, she doesn't," Johnny said.

But the words had already been spoken, and Rachel was angry. Ryan had managed to keep her name and Johnny's out of the news. A week ago, he'd taken Mary Elizabeth back to the country, away from the public eye. Then he'd returned and initiated an investigation into Devonshire's Welsh foundry in an attempt to subpoena records. While he'd been in Wales, the accusation of financial irregularities at Ore Industries brought in a slew of government auditors. Stocks plunged. Rachel was sure D&B would be targeted next for an investigation, along with all of Ryan's holdings. Deciding this was not the time to be intimidated by a fractious public when he was taking a beating on all fronts, personal and professional, she'd hunkered down this week with Stewart and others at D&B and managed to put the company's affairs in order.

She had every confidence D&B would survive scandal, though not completely unscathed. Her only desire was to spike a stake through Devonshire's heart.

But circumstances had changed everything.

Yesterday the physician had examined her.

"Perhaps you could all change the subject?" Moira asked, attempting to feed Johnny the gruel in the bowl she held.

"Wife," he rasped, his black eyes narrowing in a grimace, "get that stuff away from me."

"You're a wretched patient, Johnny Donally." She set the bowl on the tray.