Susan Carroll (33 page)

"So what did your Irish spy find out in
France?" he asked. "Obviously not enough for you to go running to
your grandfather and have me whipped at cart tail's end for the low
impostor that I am."

"Gilly found out nothing that I didn't
already know," she said. "He went to France the same day I tried to
have you arrested for theft-before I ever came to your bed, before
I even dared whisper to myself that I loved you."

She searched his face, praying for one sign
that he believed her words. But his eyes were like blue steel. She
continued desperately, "I spent yesterday afternoon trying to
persuade Gilly you really are the Marquis de Varnais, attempting to
deceive him. Gilly, my dearest friend, who has been like my own
brother."

Armande raised an eyebrow. "And did he
believe you?"

"No." Her mouth quivered into a lopsided
smile. "I'm such a terrible liar."

"One improves with practice." Armande's hard
words seemed to mock himself more than her.

"The important question is whether you
believe me," she said.

"You cannot think that I seduced you in order
to-"

"It is not important whether I believe you or
not."

"Not important? How can you say that when
this is wrenching us apart?"

"You cannot tear apart what never has truly
been together."

His words filled her with despair. "We have
been living in a fool's paradise, my dear. But even fools must
eventually grow wise."

Her arms slipped from around his neck,
dropping back to her sides. It was as though his coldness had
finally seeped into her heart, leaving her numb.

"Was it so foolish," she asked, "your loving
me?"

"The most stupid thing I've ever done." His
harsh answer caused her to flinch. "Love cannot survive where there
is no trust. I realized that at the outset and should have spared
us both this misery. There is no way you can ever have any faith in
me, no way you will ever be able to trust me."

She drew herself upright, stung by his words.
All these weeks she had demanded no explanations, never pleaded to
know his real name. What more proof of her love and trust did the
man require?

Yet her anger was tinged with guilt. She had
willingly closed her eyes and turned her head the other way. But
self-deceit was not the same as trusting, putting complete faith in
the man one loved. She had held back as much from Armande as he
from her.

"You give up on our love far too easily,
Armande,” she said. "If it is trust you want, I shall bring it to
you. The kind you can hold between your hands."

She ignored his bewildered frown as she ran
from the room. She rushed to her garret, unlocked the desk drawer
and yanked it open. Grabbing up a handful of the ribbon-bound
papers, she raced back down to the music gallery.

Armande hovered upon the threshold as though
he had been on the verge of coming after her. Phaedra shoved him
back into the room, closing the door.

"Here," she said. "This will show you how
much I trust you."

She tugged the ribbons off the paper and
slapped the unfolded parchment upon a table before Armande, as
though she were flinging down a gauntlet.

Armande regarded her uneasily. "Phaedra, I
don't understand."

"Just read," she commanded.

He picked up the sheets with reluctance and
skimmed the black ink, his brow furrowing into an even deeper
frown. "I still don't understand. These seem to be some sort of
political tracts, pages of text copied from what is that blasted
paper? The Gazetteer?”

"Not copies," she said. "The original drafts.
What you see before you is the hand of Robin Goodfellow."

She waited for his reaction, but he still
looked confused.

"My hand," she added.

The truth broke over him at last, his eyes
flashing to meet hers in a startled expression. "You are Robin
Goodfellow!"

"That's right. So never again tell me that I
cannot trust you. You are holding enough there to ruin me and my
grandfather, as well."

All color drained from his face as Armande
clutched the sheets.

The first feelings of doubt niggled at
Phaedra. She had not known quite what to expect from Armande at
this moment. Amazement certainly, but where was his realization of
how much she did love him? She had expected even a little praise
perhaps, some pride in those achievements of her mind that he had
always claimed to admire. What she had not expected was this
silence.

"Don't you understand what I have given you?"
she cried. "It is my life bound up in those pages-"

"It is you who do not understand!"

Phaedra recoiled before the anger that flared
in Armande's eyes. It was a fury strangely mixed with despair.

"Damn you! I was trying to make it as plain
as possible that you dare not trust me." He flung the papers back
at her and they fluttered to her feet, like leaves tossed by the
wind. "If you have any more such secrets, keep them to
yourself!"

He stormed from the room, slamming the door
behind him. Phaedra stared after him, hardly able to breathe. At
last, she bent and began gathering up the scattered papers. She
felt like a gambler who had taken an enormous risk and lost. Most
disturbing of all, she wasn't even certain how high the stakes had
been.

Phaedra snapped open her parasol to shield
her face from the afternoon sun beating down upon the lawn, hoping
that it shielded her unhappy expression as well. She picked her way
past her grandfather's servants struggling to clear away the
remains of the fete luncheon.

The table looked like a field of battle at
the end of a fray, with linen cloths hanging askew, some of the
crockery broken, and forks like discarded weapon strewn through a
trail of cake crumbs. But the combatants had not retired. Tearing
past Phaedra's skirts, some fifty boys whooped, their voices
ranging from the childish treble to those cracking on the brink of
manhood. Most of them were from hard-working families known to
Sawyer, lads he and Jonathan had seen placed beneath the tutelage
of good, honest masters to learn a trade.

Some of the boys crammed their cheeks full of
gingerbread, while others wrestled, traded cuffs, or played at tag,
as frolicsome and clumsy as puppies in a kennel. Phaedra started
back as a horseshoe whizzed past her nose.

Several stout lads who were supposed to be
playing at quoits were growing more unruly by the minute. The game
that had resulted in the misfired shoe broke into a bout of
fisticuffs. Grinning like a boy himself, Sawyer guffawed,
encouraging the rough-and-ready behavior. It was left to a
harassed-looking Jonathan and one of the footmen to separate the
young pugilists before any came away with a bloodied nose.

"Tell Mrs. Searle to fetch more cakes for the
lads," Sawyer bellowed. "Blast it all, where is that woman?"

"More cake is the last thing they need,"
Jonathan snapped. The heat appeared to be affecting even his solemn
composure. He tried desperately to catch Phaedra's eye.

"Phaedra, I must talk to you," he said as she
glided past, but she ducked deeper into the shade of her
parasol.

Her mind was yet too full of the scene with
Armande. She barely heeded Jonathan or the boys' antics, not even
when one bold rascal let loose a frog near her petticoats.

"You must have been mad." She rebuked herself
for the dozenth time. "Whatever possessed you to confess to Armande
that you were Robin Goodfellow?"

And yet, she thought, why should she continue
to fret so over the incident? It was not as if Armande were the
enemy she had once imagined him to be. This was the man who had
cradled her in his arms so many hot summer nights, vowing his love
for her. And she had believed him.

If only his reaction to her secret had not
been so strange. She had never seen such anger in his eyes, an
anger that she sensed had been directed against himself as well as
her.

Her gaze strayed to where Armande stood at
the far edge of the lawn. No trace of his wrath remained as he
tried to help a chubby, freckle-faced lad string a bow that was
much too large for him. The boy thrust his tongue between his
teeth, puffing and turning red as he tried to bend the supple wood
back far enough to slip the string into the notch.

"I doubt biting your tongue off will help,
monsieur," she heard Armande say. The teasing light springing into
his blue eyes played havoc with her heart. How oft had she glimpsed
that same expression in the hours when they exchanged banter that
so frequently concealed a growing desire.

"A little more muscle is what is wanted."
Armande's strong, slender fingers closed over the small pudgy ones,
helping the child accomplish the task. He handed the boy the arrow,
and then tousled his hair. "Now don't shoot any of your comrades,
hein?" He smiled as the boy gave his promise and ran off.

Hope fluttered inside Phaedra. At this moment
Armande looked very like the man who had so tenderly lifted her out
of the saddle yesterday afternoon. She rustled toward him, but his
smile faded the instant their eyes met. It was the Marquis de
Varnais who raised his head and attempted to stride past her.

His rejection of her pierced her more keenly
than any wound Ewan, with all of his studied cruelties, had ever
been able to inflict.

"You needn't take to your heels the instant I
approach, monsieur," she said. "I assure you, I don't intend to
burden you with any more of my secrets."

"I pray you don't have any more such to
reveal," he muttered.

He had started to move away, when he turned
and came back as though drawn to her side against his will. "I am
sorry if I lost my temper with you earlier." His apology was as
stiff as his manner. "You took me by surprise when-"

Armande's eyes darkened as he bent forward,
his voice hard and bitter. "Why in blazes did you choose to confide
in me now? Where you hoping for some sort of trade? Your secrets
for mine?”

"And you presume to lecture me on the subject
of trust!"

Phaedra arched her brows, trying to look
scornful-but it was difficult with tears burning behind her eyes.
"No, monsieur, I was not seeking a trade. I merely had some foolish
notion that it would help if I offered you proof of my love. I fear
I always have been too stupid to know when matters are past
mending."

This time it was she who tried to walk away
from him, placing her parasol between them like a shield.

"Phaedra." He breathed her name, but whatever
Armande had been about to say was blotted out by the sound of
another voice, whose lilting notes carried above the shouts of the
boys.

"Top of the afternoon to you, Master Weylin.
Master Burnell. 'Tis that sorry I am to be late. I can see I've
been missing a feast fine enough to take the shine out of Paddy
Duggan's wake."

Phaedra whipped about in time to see her
cousin, resplendent in a scarlet frock coat, sweeping off his
three-cornered hat and favoring Sawyer with a jaunty bow. The
bruises marring Gilly’s eye and jaw had faded to an unbecoming
shade of yellow, but they did nothing to tone down his
impudence.

She had nearly forgotten he was coming, as
well as his reasons for doing so. Never had she thought the time
would come when she would view the sight of those sparkling green
eyes with such dismay.

She glanced at Armande and saw him go rigid
at Gilly's approach, the wary expression upon his face far from
welcoming. Her stomach knotted tighter.

After greeting her grandfather and Jonathan,
Gilly vaulted toward her in three quick strides. "Phaedra, my
sweetest coz. Sure and you're looking as fair as the shamrocks in
the springtime."

Despite his jovial expression and the thick
brogue he was putting on for her grandfather's benefit, she saw the
hard glint of determination in Gilly's eyes. His resolution to
search Armande's room had not abated a jot in the past twenty-four
hours.

Her cousin bruised her ribs with his rough
embrace. She hissed in his ear, "Gilly, I swear if you go near the
house today, I will break your head."

He merely laughed, giving her chin a hard
pinch. "Ah, sweet, indeed, and a tongue to match."

He turned to Armande, sweeping into a mocking
bow. "By all the saints, if it isn't his lairdship, the Marquis de
Varnais. A good day to your worship. You're looking elegant enough
to coax the snakes back into Ireland."

"Mr. Fitzhurst." Armande's smile was cold.
"You seem to become more Irish each time I meet you."

"Ah, well, 'tis a damn sight cleverer than
becoming more English."

Phaedra's breath snagged in her throat, but
Armande's only acknowledgment of her cousin's biting comment was a
slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. He bowed and tried to
move on his way, but Gilly barred his path, her cousin's chin
tilted to a pugnacious angle.

"I have recently returned from France. A
charming country. But sure and I don't have to be telling your
lairdship that."

Armande's lips compressed as he nodded in
polite agreement. Once again he tried to sidestep her cousin, but
Gilly laid a restraining hand upon his arm.

"I even had the good fortune to travel by
your lairdship's own estates, and what do you fancy I-"

"Gilly!" Phaedra cried. She sensed the
belligerence coursing beneath her cousin's lazy smile, the tension
masked behind Armande's expression of indifference.

Armande removed Gilly's hand from his sleeve
in an elaborately courteous manner. "I am glad you had such a
rewarding journey," he said. He took out his snuffbox, flicking
open the lid, the gesture laden with weariness almost as though he
himself had conceived a distaste for the role he had to play. "You
have not been spending your money unwisely again, I hope?"

"After all your grand advice when last we
met? Certainly not. I expect far greater results from my
investments this time." Armande closed the snuffbox with a click.
Phaedra wondered if he realized he had forgotten to pretend to take
a pinch.