“Yes—we need your parents, at least, and Thomas, too, I think.”
After he finished the short statement to his family, she added a few lines to Thomas, and they dispatched Sean to carry the missive to the Vale. With that taken care of, Marcus sent Fred with a note to his staff at Bidealeigh, with instructions to return with the letters and ribbon from his study desk, as well as his packed bag.
They then turned their sights on summoning the local magistrate, Sir Godfrey Riddle. With Marcus’s assistance, Niniver composed a carefully worded note declaring that they had apprehended a felon and had evidence to lay before Sir Godfrey; they asked him to call that afternoon, as well.
Fred returned with Marcus’s bag. Marcus briefly left her writing while he went upstairs to wash and change out of his ruined clothes. He returned as she was sealing the note to Sir Godfrey. She put it into Mitch’s waiting hands; he saluted them both and left.
Then Ferguson looked in to announce luncheon, and they repaired to the dining room, where Hildy joined them. Up to that point, neither Niniver nor Marcus had explained to any of the clan just what had happened before they’d returned to the manor, dusty, scratched, and bruised. Prompted by Hildy’s excited questions, Niniver realized that the easiest way to eliminate speculation was to tell their tale to the entire household, and then let them spread the word.
One thing a clan excelled at was spreading information far and wide.
She explained her thoughts to Marcus. He nodded. “Good idea. Otherwise, we’ll end up repeating the tale again and again, and it’ll evolve into something even more fantastic.” He smiled at her. “It was fantastic enough, but not something I think either of us need to relive more than necessary.”
Looking inward, she realized that was true. While the relief of getting him out alive, of surviving herself, was precious and intense even in recollection, and that euphoric relief was indeed a feeling she would always hold in her heart, the gut-wrenching anxiety preceding it, and the horror she—and she was sure Marcus, too—had experienced when it had seemed they might not get out in time…she didn’t need to revisit that more than once. Or twice, given they would have to relate their story to his family and Sir Godfrey later.
As soon as they’d finished eating, she asked Ferguson to summon all the staff currently at the manor. Although he did his best to hold to his usual impassive butler’s mien, like everyone else, he seemed unable to stop smiling.
With Marcus and Hildy, she repaired to the drawing room. She sat in her usual armchair. Rather than sit in its mate across the hearth, Marcus took up a position beside and a little behind her chair, one boot propped on the fender, one arm elegantly resting on the mantelpiece.
The household filed in, all eager to hear their tale. She directed the older women to take the seats, while the men and the younger maids stood all around. When everyone was there, she glanced up at Marcus. “You start.”
He met her eyes, nodded fractionally, then looked at the assembled crowd. “I was about to leave Bidealeigh this morning, intending to return here, when my housekeeper handed me a note found on the front step.” He continued, relating what he’d done. Niniver broke in to explain how her favorite ribbon with her cameo attached had vanished the day before, presumably from the library, sometime after McDougal had called on her there.
“I thought I saw him slip something into his pocket when he turned away from the desk,” Ferguson said. “But I couldn’t think what he might have taken.”
She nodded. “I’m sure that’s where I left it, but it wasn’t there later.” She glanced back at Marcus.
He took up the tale. “So I rode out to the mine—the one where the gantry still stands.” Most of the local males knew where that was; heads nodded around the room.
She sat back and listened. Although Marcus’s words were matter-of-fact, given the connection between them, she could easily place herself in his shoes; knowing how she would feel if it had been him supposedly kidnapped and she the one walking into the mine, hoping to find him, she could appreciate his emotions, the raw intensity of all he’d felt.
After he described how McDougal had knocked out the tunnel supports—“I suspect he’d already weakened them”—and then related McDougal’s words to him, the men in the clan shifted, restive and restless, wanting vengeance.
Marcus looked down at her. “I noticed there was a small gap left in the upper left corner, where the fallen rock hadn’t quite filled the tunnel. I started digging there.”
At his nod, she cleared her throat and looked around at the faces. “I’d decided to call at Bidealeigh this morning, not knowing that Mr. Cynster was intending to return. Sean and the others in the stable were out in the paddock tending to a mare, so I saddled Oswald and rode out. I stopped at old Egan’s place…”
As she went through the steps and stages that had led to her walking into the old mine and finding Marcus trapped behind the rock wall, she realized this was an excellent way of rehearsing what they would need to tell the others—Marcus’s family, Thomas, and Sir Godfrey—when they arrived.
Both she and Marcus trimmed their tale to the essential facts, leaving out much of the drama, the moments of near-horror, and the consequent elation. As they neared the end of the story, with her hounds bringing down McDougal on the lawn, she recognized that telling so many of the clan in this manner was also the right path to putting the episode behind them all in the cleanest, neatest, most final way.
When the tale was done and everyone had finished exclaiming, she concluded, “We—Mr. Cynster and I—have told you all this so that you’ve heard it from our lips and can pass it on to others in the clan, along with the news that we are to wed, as soon as we can make the appropriate arrangements.”
The household clapped and cheered again, then, beaming with delight, everyone filed out, already chattering and certain to spread the news to all their kin just as soon as they possibly could.
Marcus crouched by Niniver’s chair. When she looked at him, he met her eyes. “That went well, I think.”
She nodded. After a glance at the retreating backs, she murmured, “I honestly can’t remember the members of this household ever smiling so much.”
He felt his lips curve. He didn’t tell her that she, too, was smiling, and had been consistently smiling for longer than he’d ever seen her smile before. Rising, he tugged down his waistcoat, then a movement outside caught his eye. “Ah—we have visitors. And it appears that my family took my assurance that there was no further danger to heart. They’ve even brought the babies.”
Indeed, barring Annabelle, still in London, Marcus’s entire family had come—his parents, his younger brothers, plus Lucilla and Thomas and their twin daughters, Chloe, the elder, and Christina.
Catriona, Lady Cynster, led her tribe up the porch steps to where Marcus and Niniver waited. His mother halted before them and studied them, then she smiled, spread her arms wide, and embraced them. “My dears, I am so very very pleased for you.”
Lord Richard was at his wife’s heels. As Catriona released them and stepped aside, Richard swooped in to plant a kiss on Niniver’s cheek. “Welcome to the family, my dear. We’re a rambunctious lot, but you’ll get used to us.”
Richard’s smile took all threat from his words. Niniver found her usual shyness, her customary uncertainty in social situations, evaporating. She watched as Richard met his eldest son’s eyes and grinned. He held out his hand. “Welcome to the club. Now you’ll understand all the mutterings Thomas and I share.”
Marcus laughed. He slanted a smiling glance at Niniver. “Oh, I think I understand some of those already.”
Then Lucilla was there, and Thomas, too, each holding one of their baby daughters. Moments later, Calvin and Carter joined the group. Niniver expected to feel overwhelmed, but Marcus’s hand found hers, his fingers twined with hers, and she found that relaxing, smiling, and letting that rambunctious warmth wash over her wasn’t so difficult.
They were still standing on the porch when t
he clatter of hoofbeats coming up the drive had them all looking out. Sir Godfrey rode up on a good-looking chestnut. Sean appeared to take the horse. After dismounting and handing over the reins, Sir Godfrey strode toward the steps. He halted at the bottom and looked up at all the faces. “Well! This looks like a family gathering.”
“It undoubtedly is, Godfrey, dear,” Catriona said, “but I understand that there is, indeed, a felon around here somewhere.”
“Ah, well. That’s all right, then.” Sir Godfrey started up the stairs. “But what’s the occasion?”
Marcus told him. Sir Godfrey was fulsome in his compliments to them both. “Excellent match, what? Yes, yes—very appropriate in so many ways.”
“Please”—blushing, Niniver waved to the open door—“do come in and sit down.”
“Indeed.” Marcus ushered his mother, sister, Thomas, and the babies forward. “We’ve a story to tell, and it’s just as well you’ve all come—we can tell you all at once.”
Everyone found themselves seats in the drawing room. Niniver sat in her usual armchair, while Catriona took the armchair opposite, and Lord Richard assumed a mirror pose to Marcus, standing behind his wife’s chair with one arm propped along the mantelpiece. Thomas and Lucilla sat on the sofa, each holding one of the babies. Calvin and Carter fetched straight-backed chairs and set them beyond the end of the sofa, facing the fireplace, while Sir Godfrey took the armchair opposite the sofa.
“Well, then.” From beneath his bushy eyebrows, Sir Godfrey looked at Marcus. “Might I suggest you start at the beginning, wherever the beginning might be?”
Marcus paused, then drew Glencrae’s letter from his coat pocket. “In reality, the beginning lies some years back. I had reason to wonder why a man like Ramsey McDougal was hanging around Ayr, as he has been for several years, so I wrote to one of our cousins in the Highlands—the Earl of Glencrae—and asked what he knew of McDougal.” He unfolded the letter and read the earl’s reply aloud.
Sir Godfrey humphed. “I’ve wondered, too. I’ve run across McDougal from time to time socially, and he always struck me as a shady character. Not quite up to snuff. Seems we were both right to view him askance.” Sir Godfrey fixed Marcus with a shrewd eye. “I take it McDougal is the felon you’ve summoned me here to deal with?”
Marcus nodded. “McDougal is presently residing in the cellar, behind a stout locked door. To explain, it seems that McDougal had designs on Niniver—on marrying her, one way or another, and thereby assuming control of the Carrick fortune and also the clan estate.” Steadily, step by step, Marcus outlined what they now knew Ramsey McDougal had done.
At every revelation, Sir Godfrey halted Marcus’s recitation and asked what evidence existed as proof, what witnesses they might call to attest to the truth of what they believed had happened. For all his bluff geniality, Sir Godfrey was an exceedingly shrewd man; as the tale of McDougal’s perfidy continued, it was plain he was taking in every fact.
When Marcus described what had occurred when he’d responded to McDougal’s note and gone to the old lead mine, Niniver noticed a change in all the members of his family. An increased tension in the men, a heightened alertness in Lucilla and Catriona. Thomas looked grim, and even the twin babes had locked their wide gazes on Marcus and looked unwontedly serious.
Eventually, Marcus paused and looked at Niniver. She met his gaze briefly, then took up the tale, explaining how she had gone to Bidealeigh, realized from the letters and ribbon Marcus had left on his desk what had happened, and set out to find Marcus.
Lucilla and Thomas, and Marcus’s brothers, were intrigued by her description of how she’d used her hounds and their peculiar talents to locate him.
Then Marcus took back the reins and filled in the rest, glibly passing over the more emotionally fraught moments by sticking to the bald facts.
When, between them, he and she gave a verbatim account of what McDougal had said when she’d returned to the library and found him looking through the estate ledgers, Sir Godfrey snorted. “A bad egg, through and through, and not even very clever about it.” He eyed Marcus and Niniver. “I take it you have others who overheard?”
She nodded. “Several clan elders, and also my old governess, Miss Hildebrand.”
Marcus described the final scene.
“Aha!” Sir Godfrey grinned. “So he ran, did he? Excellent. That’s the best admission of guilt there is.” He glanced at Richard, then at Catriona and the others, then Sir Godfrey looked at Niniver. “My dear, I believe we can settle this quite quickly, especially given I have three local landowners present—Lord Richard and Lady Catriona, yourself, and Mr. Cynster. If I might speak with your clan members—those who overheard what McDougal said—then I believe I can reach a summary judgment and take McDougal off your hands.”
“Our butler, Ferguson”—Niniver looked at Marcus and he moved to tug the bellpull—“will arrange for you to speak with whomever you wish.”
Ferguson duly arrived, and with a few quick words, all was arranged. Sir Godfrey rose and arched his brows at Lord Richard. “Richard, Marcus—and perhaps, in the circumstances, you might come, too, Thomas?” To Niniver, Sir Godfrey said, “As McDougal’s principal target was you and the clan, then it might be best were you not present at the questioning, but Thomas can represent the clan at one remove, so to speak.”
“Yes. Of course.” If Marcus was to be present, Niniver had complete faith that the full truth of McDougal’s machinations would be exposed.
“Besides”—Sir Godfrey’s eyes twinkled as he turned away—“I rather think you have a wedding to organize. Excellent entertainments, Cynster weddings.”
With that, attended by his selected group of gentlemen, he followed Ferguson from the room.
“Well!” After settling Christina in her arms, Catriona, her green eyes alight, looked from Niniver to Lucilla, then back again. “I rather think Godfrey’s correct. We need to make plans. Have you and Marcus decided when you wish to marry?”
Niniver blinked. “We had thought…as soon as possible?”
Catriona widened her eyes, plainly considering, then she smiled. “Indeed—why not? So…” She looked inquiringly at Niniver. “The first thing we need to decide is when ‘as soon as possible’ actually is.”
Niniver inwardly braced, expecting to feel overwhelmed. Instead, although Catriona and Lucilla had plenty of opinions and ideas, which they freely shared, both deferred to her—and, more, encouraged her to offer her own views, her own wishes and inclinations.
“Your wedding is your day, my dear,” Catriona decreed. “From morning to night, you get to choose.”
Somewhat to Niniver’s surprise, both Marcus’s brothers—Calvin, an elegantly sophisticated young gentleman-about-town, and Carter, the youngest of the brood, a budding artist and a rather quieter and, Niniver judged, more sensitive gentleman—joined in, making just as many suggestions as Lucilla, although generally on different aspects of the day, such as how many guests might be accommodated in the small village church.
“If we managed for Lucilla’s wedding, we’ll manage with this one.” Carter smiled encouragingly at Niniver. “And I’m getting the distinct impression that Niniver and Marcus would prefer a much smaller affair.”
Remembering Lucilla’s wedding—massive by local standards—Niniver glanced at Catriona. “I know there are a lot of Cynsters, but perhaps if we limit it to just family?”
Catriona smiled reassuringly. “That won’t be a problem. We can let Marcus decide exactly whom of the family to invite, but we’ll endeavor to keep a balance between the two clans, as it were.”
They were all in agreement that banns should be read, and finally settled on a date nearly four weeks away.
“But that will give you time to get your gown made.” Lucilla smiled. “Believe it or not, you’ll find that absorbing, and very memorable.” Lucilla tipped her head, studying Niniver. “Indeed, you’re so very delicate, you’re going to look like a fairy princess no matter what you we
ar.”
“Hmm.” Carter leaned forward, his gaze travelling over Niniver’s face and figure, but in a distinctly academic way. “I could do some sketches—it might be fun.”
Calvin laughed and ribbed Carter, but in a lighthearted, good-humored way, and Carter responded in kind.
Niniver felt as if she was whirling; her wedding— her wedding—was taking shape before her very eyes. And it all seemed so…effortless. She’d expected to feel pressured, to feel defensive and uncertain. Instead, she found herself relaxing into the easy camaraderie the Cynster siblings shared.
So this is what it feels like to have a real family.
It was so very tempting to let the sense of being a part of it sweep her away.
Then male voices sounded outside the door. A moment later, it opened, and Sir Godfrey led the gentlemen in. He smiled kindly at Niniver. “Well, my dear, that’s done, and I’m satisfied. I believe I have enough sound evidence before me to pass judgment on McDougal and remove him from society, ours or anyone else’s.”
“However,” Richard said, his diction crisp as he walked forward to reclaim his position beside Catriona’s chair, “there is an issue, or so Marcus says.”
Thomas returned to sit beside Lucilla. All eyes turned to Marcus as he shut the door and came forward.
He halted and met Niniver’s eyes, then looked at his mother. “If Sir Godfrey convicts McDougal of attempting to murder me, then McDougal will hang.”
Niniver felt an icy sensation brush over her nape. She couldn’t have explained it, but something in her recoiled at the thought. It wasn’t that she thought McDougal didn’t deserve to hang; he’d nearly succeeded in killing Marcus, and she didn’t want to think what he’d had in store for her. But…
Marcus met her eyes. “I don’t feel a hanging is the right prelude for our marriage.”
“Ah.” Catriona was staring at Marcus. After a long moment, she said, “I have to agree.” Looking up, she held out a hand to Richard; when he grasped it, she spoke, to him but also to them all. “As much as I would prefer to see McDougal removed from this world and thus denied any chance of harming anyone again, Marcus is correct. For him and Niniver to start married life with a hanging…The Lady wouldn’t approve. She is life, not death. And while Marcus and Niniver might marry in a church, they are also marrying under Her aegis. They have both lived all their lives under Her hand, and they are both Her chosen, just as Lucilla and Thomas are—just as you and I are.”