England's Perfect Hero (21 page)

"Yes, I do. After we spoke yesterday, I went through some of my father's journals. I knew he'd mentioned Chateau Pagnon, but I couldn't remember what he'd—"

"Forget what I said. It wasn't important," he interrupted, trying to ignore the jolt to his insides. After three years, he still couldn't even stand hearing its name.

"Robert. Why were you there? The general wrote that it was well fortified, but not a place of strategic interest. But it was significant, or you wouldn't have mentioned it."

He'd known this would happen. With anyone else, he would simply have walked away. He could talk to Lucinda, though. And her presence eased the distance between himself and the world.

"I was a prisoner," he forced out.

"A pr—"

"This has nothing to do with our agreement," he broke in, shoving his hands into his pockets so she wouldn't see them shaking. "Tell me about your third lesson, why don't you? I may need some preparation time."

Lucinda began pacing again. This time he followed her, catching her arm as they reached the end of the drive. She shrugged free even before he could release her. "Don't change the subject," she said stiffly. "I want to know about Chateau Pagnon."

He studied her face for a long moment. "No. Lesson number three."

Her lips twitched. "Has anyone told you that you're stubborn?"

"Yes."

"Robert, I…" Frowning, she turned her back on him. "I came here to find out more about you."

Her bonnet blocked his view of her face. "Why?" he asked, touching her shoulder and drawing her around to face him again.

"Because."

He lifted an eyebrow. "I thought I was the one with the limited vocab—"

"Blast it, tell me," she interrupted.

Robert studied her expression, a growing suspicion pulling at him. He knew why he resisted talking, but he wasn't certain why she was doing so. "Something's happened. Did Geoffrey disagree with your… tolerance for me?"

"It's not tolerance, for goodness' sake, and we can discuss Geoffrey later."

Something was definitely troubling her. "Lucinda, you can tell me anything."

Lucinda stopped at the foot of the steps. It was the first time he'd called her by her given name, and she liked the sound on his lips. "We are friends," she returned, facing him again. A very odd pair of friends who kissed and who, for her part anyway, thought of kissing each other quite a bit. "But if you won't talk to me, why should I talk to you?"

Sky blue eyes met hers and slid away. It seemed to be the one advantage she had, that he had a keen sense of fair play. If she could remind him of that, perhaps he would stop pressing her for information—information she hadn't yet decided how to tell him, about how she didn't need him any longer, but wanted him there, anyway.

"What do you want to know?" he asked quietly.

The pain and reluctance in his voice almost stopped her. She might have given in, if her father's "it's important" hadn't been so fresh in her thoughts, along with Robert's specific request that the general not be told. At any rate, she wasn't going to make him shout it halfway across the drive. "Shall we go inside?" she suggested.

Robert shook his head. "I don't know how much I can tell you," he said, "but I… need to be outside."

She returned to him. "Give me your arm, then, and we'll take another walk. A short walk."

For a moment she didn't think he would comply. "What about a chaperone?" he muttered.

"Hang the chaperone," she retorted. "We're walking around the block, in the open, for heaven's sake."

He held out his arm, and she wrapped her hand around his sleeve. His leg did seem better, but it gave her a pretext for touching him, for leaning into him. He smelled of fresh earth and leather, and more faintly, of shaving soap. She caught herself gazing at his sensuous mouth, and resolutely looked away again.
Friends
. They were friends.

As they continued on in silence, she realized she was going to have to begin the conversation. It wouldn't be an easy path to tread. The last thing she wanted to do was cause him more pain, but she wanted, she needed, to know more about him. And not just to satisfy her curiosity about her father's comments.

"In the general's journals," she said, sending up a quick prayer, "I've noticed that he has three reasons for leaving out details. The first is that the campaign was so involved or was moving so quickly that he simply didn't have time to record everything. The second is that the incident or battle was too… disturbing, and he didn't want to record the details. The third reason is that he intentionally didn't note certain things for reasons of security or to ensure the safety of his men—in case his journals were lost or captured."

"Lack of detail could also be because of simple lack of significance," Robert put in.

"Yes, I suppose, but he tended not to mention insignificant things in the first place."

He looked at her sideways, surprising her with the appreciation in his gaze. "Does General Barrett have any idea you've figured him out to such a degree?"

"Oh, I think he has a fairly good idea." She smiled. "I ask a great many questions."

"I've noticed that." They walked past another house and turned the corner. "You're very fond of General Barrett, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. He's never treated me like an inferior because of my sex, and he saw to it that I received a first-rate education."

" 'I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings,'" he recited, his fleeting smile appearing again.

"That's from
Frankenstein
, isn't it?" she asked, remembering the tattered pages of the book he'd been reading the day all of this had begun.

"Are you guessing, or do you know?"

"I used deductive reasoning," Lucinda returned. "I'm good at that, too. For instance, I have deduced that my father's brevity concerning Bayonne and Chateau Pagnon was for all three reasons: time, content, and security."

She felt his arm muscles draw tight beneath her hand, but his expression didn't change. "I couldn't begin to deduce what General Barrett might have been thinking," he said in a low, hard voice, "but I would guess that
you
are correct."

Lucinda swallowed. She could ask him why he disliked her father, or she could ask him about the thing her father had deemed important. From what she'd begun to learn, she had the feeling they were connected. With another swift glance at his tense, handsome face, she decided. "So Chateau Pagnon was a prison."

"Of sorts."

"Of what sort?"

With a ragged intake of breath, he began speaking, his voice low and rough and distant. "I didn't see much of it, but as far as I could tell, it was a prison for British officers. A place where they—the French—tried to get… information."

He meant a place where British officers were tortured. Where
he
had been tortured. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"It wasn't your fault."

"You've never told anyone about this before, have you?" she asked, tightening her grip on his arm.

"No. I mean, I told Georgiana a little, about not being permitted to talk. That's all. She didn't need to know anything more than that. She may not have realized it, but she didn't
want
to know anything more than that."

"You weren't permitted to talk?"

"Not to each other. If a guard heard anyone even whisper, even one word, they would drag us out and beat us."

"But you said they wanted information. If you weren't allowed to speak, how—"

"We were only allowed to talk to him." A violent shudder went through his lean frame.

"Robert?"

He closed his eyes for a moment. "I've spent three years trying to forget this," he murmured. "I don't like remembering it again."

"You don't have to, then." She meant it. Her father's quest for information, and her own curiosity, could wait.

They walked a few steps in silence. "No, I think maybe I do. It's… strange, but if I can remember and not die, I think it might help."

My
God
. Abruptly the question wasn't whether he would talk about it, but whether she could stand to listen. She'd heard so many tales and anecdotes from her father and his cronies, but none of them had been so immediately and plainly… horrific. "Tell me what you can, then," she said hoarsely.

He looked over at her, a hundred things passing behind his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"You don't need my nightmares, Lucinda. You talk to me like I'm human, and that's enough."

They passed between a tall stand of pink rhododendron and an empty coach stopped at the edge of the street, and abruptly she couldn't stand it any longer. If she couldn't touch him, comfort him, do something, it would cause her physical pain. Tightening her grip on his arm, she pulled him around and leaned up to tangle her fingers through his hair, drew his face down, and kissed him. Heat flooded her. Making a small sound deep in his chest, Robert pressed her back against the side of the coach.

Her mind-couldn't seem to grasp anything beyond the need to be closer to him. His pain, his frustration, his damaged pride and anger all melted into her with such ferocity that it was almost tangible. If she could have taken it all into herself, she would have.

His hands slipped down her shoulders, brushed the outsides of her breasts, and slid warm and solid around her waist. At the same time his mouth broke from hers, dipping to taste the line of her jaw and the base of her throat. Her knees went weak, and she fleetingly thought if not for the coach at her back, she would have fallen to the ground.

Robert pulled away from her. "Lucinda," he whispered, "st—"

"Shh. Kiss me."

She tried to pull him closer again, but she could as easily have moved a stone statue. That was interesting. Before, when she'd tugged at him and he'd acquiesced, she hadn't realized how much he'd simply been letting her get away with.

"Carriage coming," he breathed, setting her back from him a second time.

A heartbeat later she heard the curricle rattling down the lane toward them. Thank goodness Robert had very good hearing. Swiftly she took his arm again, and resisting the urge to straighten her bonnet, started back up the street beside him.

"You still haven't told me about your next lesson for Geoffrey," he said, his voice stronger, as if he hadn't just a moment before been discussing torture and death—or half a moment before, kissing her.

Kissing her
. That was why he'd brought up Geoffrey again; to remind her that she hadn't chosen Robert Carroway for lessons, or for anything else. At least one of them remembered what they were supposed to be doing.

"I'm still planning on telling you tonight," she returned.

"It must be bad."

It
was
, for him—and maybe for her. "Nonsen—"

"Bloody traitor!"

Robert whipped his head toward the street, stepping in front of Lucinda and blocking her view. She leaned around him.

The curricle hugged the far side of the street as it passed them at high speed. "Who was that?" she asked.

"Sir Walter Fengrove and Lady Daltrey," he said absently, watching the carriage as it bumped down the lane past them.

"Was he talking to us? Why would he say such a thing?"

He shrugged once more, finally facing forward again. "I don't know," he said, but his face had gone gray.

"Robert?"

"I'm fine," he said. "We should get back to Georgie."

Lucinda had the distinct feeling that he wasn't fine, but she had no wish to distress him more than she already had this morning. "Yes, you're right," she said. "Back to Georgie."