The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter (4 page)

“I prefer a more independent path,” she said. “I cannot accept the fact that everything we are, everything we can ever aspire to be, is contained within the duties of daughter, sister, wife, and mother.” Her explanation sounded shrill and false, even to her own ears, though he made no comment.

They danced past the orchestra, the statues from Italy in their wall niches, the portrait of Penelope Beresford above the mantelpiece. They passed the chaperones and young ladies seated in the chairs lining either side of the room, then the orchestra again.

“After reading your books, I had pictured you far differently,” he said.

Elizabeth imagined his disappointment. Undoubtedly, he expected her to be like her heroines. True, they were somewhat vapid. But they were also sprightly and witty, amusing their male partners. They were sweet and compliant, so as not to arouse tempers. They were pure and self-controlled, successfully elevating morals—except when they were being ravished by monks and debauched kings. In other words, her heroines were the perfect complement to a man, something she could never be.

“How did you picture me?” she asked bluntly, abandoning any pretense at witty, sweet, and compliant.

His gaze lingered on her bosom, and she was certain he disapproved of her décolletage. He probably expected her to wear a high-necked muslin frock patterned with dainty flowers.

“I think you are a very formidable force,” he said.

A lady might be described in many ways but formidable could never be construed as a compliment. Elizabeth searched desperately for something clever to say, or better yet, something innocuous. “Where are you from?” she finally managed. “Your accent tells me you're not from these parts.”

“I've lived in many parts of England. In my business I travel a good deal.”

“And what business are you in?” Judging from his clothes, it was a profitable one.

But he merely shook his head. Elizabeth could smell food and burning candles and the faint sandalwood scent of John himself. She glimpsed their reflection in the wall mirror, the brightness of her scarlet gown and his deep blue jacket. Chandeliers shed their sparkle-bright tears while wooden cherubim seemed to swoop down from the rococo moldings. The music drifted to an end. Without asking, John ushered her outside, onto the terrace.

***

The boldness of Elizabeth Wyndham's gaze and her forthright manner perfectly suited her lush sensuality, Rand thought. As they paused at the railing, his inner voice warned him to lead her back to her drum, then return to the safety of the Rookery. On the other hand, he felt an overwhelming conviction that his first inclination had been correct. They
were
connected in some bizarre manner, for he had never been so powerfully attracted to a woman. In fact, during their dance, his mind had danced with images of lovemaking. He felt as if he already knew every enticing inch of her body.

He forced himself to keep his gaze on the starless sky. “You're from the Yorkshire Dales, are you not?”

“You've done a bit of checking on me, sir. I'm flattered.”

“I've never been to the Dales,” Rand stated, thinking that the sultry air smelled strongly of coal ash, and more faintly of Elizabeth's perfume. Thank God he had introduced himself as John Randolph, an alias he frequently employed. The name Rand Remington was not unknown in London. After all, he had been a war hero, fussed over and feted by the very same aristocracy he now robbed.

He had instinctively withheld his name from the beautiful woman who stood by his side. Watching her approach him, watching her weave her way through the faceless dancers, admiring the luminosity of her black-hued eyes, the word
betrayal
had momentarily thrummed inside his head.

“You should visit the Dales, Mr. Randolph,” she said. “'Tis not unpleasant there, though you might find it quiet after London. I believe the most strenuous activity our justice of the peace has is signing the parish clerk's accounts.”

“There is little crime, then?”

She laughed. “Indeed not. And if there were, Lord Stafford, our J.P., would be too impotent to deal with it.”

The orchestra struck up a quadrille, and Rand silently congratulated himself on his self-control. Until he felt Elizabeth's hand close over his own. Slowly, reluctantly, he looked down into her eyes.

“I know why you seem familiar,” she murmured. “I have long imagined someone like you in my novels.”

“The hero, I trust,” he said lightly. But he knew who she meant—Ralf Darkstarre. The knowledge was intoxicating and frightening, exactly the same mix of emotions he experienced while practicing his profession. Reaching out with his free hand, he stroked the contours of her face, lingering at a wispy curl in front of her ear. “'Tis not only the darkness of our hair that is similar,” he said, “but the darkness of our pasts.”

***

John Randolph's words made no sense to Elizabeth, yet on some level they did. A voice whispered:
I have seen your face before. I have seen that look before.

She felt as if her past had fallen away, as if there had never been a time when they hadn't known each other, so it wasn't only the chill of the evening shadows that caused her to shiver.

“We have met before,” she whispered. “But why don't I remember?”

His finger caressed her earlobe, sending even more shivery sensations up and down her spine.

“Formidable is too mild a word for you, Bess. Dangerous is more apt.” Cradling her chin, he turned her face, then touched his tongue to the ear he had caressed with his finger.

Elizabeth's heroines were always being “overcome.” As she clutched John's shoulders, for the first time she understood the meaning of the word.

“Kiss me,” she said, her tone not unlike the one she had used when she asked him to dance. But he merely continued exploring her ear. She felt like a marionette whose strings had been snipped. Only the tender strength of his palms against her chin kept her from sinking to the ground in a puddle of brocade. “Kiss me,” she pleaded.

Rand traced Elizabeth's cheekbones. Then he stroked her brow. Finally, very gently, he caressed the fragile softness of her eyelids.

All at once, the crack of a pistol shattered the night.

From Stratton Street came shouts, the slap of running feet, and the clatter of horses' hooves.

A second shot sounded.

“Help!” somebody yelled.

Another screamed, “I think we hit him!”

Heedless of his bad leg, Rand raced down the terrace steps, followed by Elizabeth.

“What is it?” she cried.

“Sounds like a robbery.” Rand feared he knew the identity of the robber. When he had left the Rookery, Zak had been well on his way to a roaring drunk. It would be just like him to put in an unscheduled appearance.

People were milling around the horses and carriages.

Tethered between a brown gelding and a black coach, Rand's stallion tossed his head.

A tall man wearing a beaver hat waved his pistol and shouted, “I hit him! I think I hit him!”

“What happened?” Rand asked a coachman standing by the front gate.

“A damnfool highwayman came out of nowhere an' thought to rob Lord Dunstable. M'lord pulled a pistol on 'im. Then the parish constable took off after the blackguard, bellowin' an' shootin'. I think they both hit 'im.”

“Did you see what the blackguard looked like?”

“No. He stayed mostly to the shadows. But he would have made two of Lord Dunstable, I can tell you that.”

A watchman had already gathered together a search party. “Follow me,” he called, waving his torch in a smoky arc.

Rand tried to calculate where the parish boundaries were. He figured the demarcation would take place no more than three streets north, which meant that if Zak could reach the other side, neither the watchman nor the constable would have jurisdiction. Zak should be at least temporarily safe. But Rand must find him before the mob did.

“I'm joining the hunt,” he told Elizabeth, who had remained by his side throughout.

“Where do you live? I want to see you again.”

“That would not be wise for either of us.” Rand traced her profile with his fingertips, lingering at her lips. Then he walked briskly across the street, untied his stallion's reins, and vaulted up into the saddle.

Belatedly, she called, “What do you mean? I must see you!” But he had already joined the crowd surging toward the juncture of Stratton Street.

“John!” Helplessly, Elizabeth watched the shadowy wave of men, on foot and on horseback, as they followed the bobbing eye of the watchman's torch. Then the torch and the men disappeared down a side street and she saw nothing at all.

Hour after hour, Elizabeth listened to the watch call out the time. She heard the rumblings of the early morning delivery carts and saw the first traces of dawn, but still sleep eluded her. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't shake the memory of John Randolph.

Despite his words to the contrary, she had hoped he would come calling. Three days had passed since the night of her drum, however, and John appeared to have vanished as completely as the mysterious highwaymen who had robbed Lady Avery. Moreover, when Elizabeth had questioned the Beresfords and others at the drum, not one person had known anything about John. Since London numbered nearly a million people, she had no idea where she could begin a search.

She accepted invitations to stroll in Vauxhall Gardens and visit Pall Mall's fashionable shops, but during each outing she had to restrain herself from racing back to the townhouse to determine whether John had appeared in her absence.

Had his interest in her merely been a ploy? Did he possess a perverse sense of humor? Perhaps from her books he had deduced her version of the ideal male and decided to act the part. No. If John had copied her heroes, he would have been perfumed and painted, his speech affected. Furthermore, why would he concoct such a scheme? He had never even met her.

Or had he?

The suspicion that they had met before still gnawed at Elizabeth, like a mouse gnawing at a piece of trap-cheese. Although she didn't care to ponder the possibility, perhaps John was akin to Walter Stafford, the Dales' Justice of the Peace. Lord Stafford had long pursued her, but his interest stemmed primarily from his conviction that she was a wild horse in need of being broken. “You are unappealingly masculine in your attitudes, my dear Elizabeth,” was one of Stafford's most oft-echoed comments.

She knew that most men shared his sentiments, but the truth was that few women could afford to be so openly opinionated. Even her Aunt Lilith, a strong personality, docilely allowed her husband's mistress to sup with them. Conventional wisdom, which Elizabeth suspected was merely a phrase concocted by men to keep women in their place, held that if a husband strayed, his wife was at fault. Had she been more loving and subservient, her spouse would never have been forced to find solace elsewhere.

Perhaps John had shown interest in Elizabeth Wyndham, Authoress and Spinster and Champion of Unpopular Causes, out of some evil-intentioned desire to prove his dominance. If true, she had responded correctly. Her body still throbbed every time she remembered their embrace. Her body had betrayed her… nay, her intellect had forsaken her, just as John had forsaken her with his abrupt and apparently permanent disappearance.

She heaved a deep sigh as she absently worried the folds of the counterpane resting beneath her chin.

I must not succumb to nerves or foolish desires,
she thought.
I must concentrate on my forthcoming visit to the central library and forget all about John Randolph. I am financially independent. Why do I need a man? I cannot allow twelve years of hard work to suffer because my mind is filled with images of a handsome, dark-haired traitor.

Traitor? Where the bloody hell did that word come from?

“Traitor,” she whispered. “Betrayer.” Both words seemed an odd choice on the basis of a fleeting encounter, and they evoked an uneasiness in Elizabeth. The morning light streamed cheerily between the green moreen curtains, across the Turkish carpet, yet she felt as if the room was swathed in shadows.

The clock on the mantel struck eight. Summoning Grace, Elizabeth began her morning toilette. Generally by now she would have joined her host and hostess at the breakfast table. An early rising was an anomaly among the leisure class, which seldom stirred before noon. But Charles Beresford, who had inherited his publishing empire from his wife's father, continued his mercantile habits. When Penelope encouraged him to linger over his coffee and buttered toast, he'd say, “I've a great deal of work awaiting me, my dear,” then reach for his greatcoat. Penelope would look distressed, but any mention of money—or more precisely, the disbursement of it—promptly improved her spirits. Penelope was currently infatuated with bronzes, and unless sidetracked, would spend the entire meal rhapsodizing over her latest Greco-Roman find. Her most recent “must have” was a statue of Fortuna. Elizabeth thought the yellowish-brown statue unsightly, if not unshapely, yet it carried a price tag that approximated her yearly earnings.

This morning Elizabeth had decided to avoid breakfast. While she figured she could prevaricate as well as anyone, she didn't want to inadvertently reveal her impending visit to the central library. Questions would surely follow, and Penelope, in her artless but brutally effective manner, would undoubtedly extract from Elizabeth the fact that she was hoping to solve her writer's block by means of an ancient manuscript.

With Grace's help, Elizabeth finished dressing. Then she sat in the window seat overlooking the street until Charles Beresford scurried off in the direction of Minerva Press. Successfully evading Penelope, Elizabeth ordered a carriage and set forth upon her mission.

“This is far nicer than the carriage we took from home,” said Grace, rearranging her skirts. “The seat is a bit high, though. You'd think with all their money, the Beresfords would have insisted on softer cushions.”

Elizabeth braced herself as the carriage swayed 'round a corner, and tried to ignore her servant. Their journey south had taken six agonizingly long days. By the end of the first day, Elizabeth had contemplated in what ditch or lonely stretch of road she might deposit Grace. By day three, Elizabeth had wondered what ditch or road
she
might take refuge in.

Grace peered out the window. “So many buildings,” she said, the expression on her angular face clearly registering her disapproval. “I've seen at least a dozen sprout up since we've been here. And all made of red brick. Why is that, I wonder?”

“I trust you've heard of the Great Fire, Grace.”

“Mercy! When did that happen?”

“Last week,” Elizabeth replied, even though the Great Fire had occurred more than a century past.

“Mercy!” Grace repeated. “The Beresfords' help are a snooty lot. They never tell me nothin'.” She scrutinized the rows of spacious town homes where servants were scrubbing muck from the entrance steps. “No wonder everything's so filthy. I thought 'twas coal dust but it must be ashes.” She clucked her tongue. “I remember last month when I was cleanin' the fireplace at the White Hart and yer mother—”

“Stepmother.”

“—Mrs. Wyndham tells me to use wood ash to scour the andirons, but I like a mix with baking soda and some other ingredients, I forget which ones right now. I was cleanin' like I usually do—”

“Pardon me?” Elizabeth interrupted, already irritated beyond endurance. “I've never noticed your penchant for cleaning.”

“I thought writers was supposed to notice everything. I wonder what kind of books ye write, Mistress.”

Elizabeth's fingers tightened on her parasol. She felt the same urge toward violence that had overwhelmed her during the last leg of their journey from the Dales. If London had been but a few miles farther south, Grace never would have arrived intact.

In any case, at her advanced age she didn't need a chaperone. “Do be quiet, please,” she said, as the carriage passed through a park where expensively garbed couples strolled beneath towering oaks. “You're giving me a headache.”

“I've not seen one gent so handsome as Lord Stafford,” Grace said as she surveyed the scene. “I trust ye'll appreciate him more when ye return. I hear he's been seein' someone in Richmond who's a good ten years younger than ye, Mistress. Don't keep him waitin' too long, or ye'll lose him altogether.”

“But he's not a real man,” Elizabeth murmured, thinking of John.

“Whatever d'ye mean?”

“Real men are hard and muscular, with chiseled faces and callused hands. Real men wear rough woolens, and they have beards that would scratch my cheek should I rub against them.”

Delighted by Grace's shocked expression, Elizabeth continued. “Real men smell of leather and horses and sweat. They smell of sandalwood and the sea and faraway places where no lace-cuffed gentleman would ever dare travel.”

“Horses and sweat,” Grace said with a disdainful sniff. “Mercy, Mistress, ye've just described Tim the Ostler.”

John's hands are callused,
Elizabeth thought, as she experienced an overwhelming sadness. Upon returning to the Dales, she would try unsuccessfully to conjure up John's face ten years… nay, ten weeks from now, and she would always wonder what she might have missed.

Damn the lawless footpad who had fumbled his attempt to rob Lord what's-his-name! Instead, he had stolen John and robbed her of John's kisses.

As Grace droned on and on, Elizabeth put aside thoughts of John and concentrated on her mission. What would she find at the central library? James Waterman, the curator, had agreed to translate portions of the
Alcester Chronicles.
Elizabeth believed she must be missing something pertinent about Simon de Montfort and the rebel uprising, something that the
Chronicles
would reveal. Mr. Waterman's reply to her written request had been so gracious, Elizabeth had momentarily forgotten that if she had been a man, she would have no need of the curator's assistance. If she had been a man, her childhood tutor, Lester Dubbs, never would have dared refuse to teach her Latin.

“Too much cultivation of the mind is selfish and unfeminine,” Dubbs had been fond of saying. When Elizabeth pressed, claiming that no one need know, Dubbs had charged that she was trying to establish her mental equality with a man, an unacceptable ambition. “A woman doesn't need intellect to be successful in this world,” he had said. She had begged, cursed, and cajoled, but he would not be moved.

The carriage deposited Elizabeth in front of the library steps. “Remember what I told you about why we're here,” she said to Grace. “Mr. Waterman has been most kind in his compliments concerning my books, and he wishes to discuss them with me.”

If Grace knew the real reason for the visit, she would trumpet it to the world.
Hark! My high and mighty mistress can't write no more.

Grace surveyed the library's imposing columnar front. “I wonder if bats are a problem,” she said, her hands creeping up her mob cap. “I've never liked bats.”

Once inside, they were greeted by the seemingly endless shelves of books. As they made their way toward the rear of the library, per Mr. Waterman's instructions, Elizabeth heard her maid emit disapproving grunts. Since she couldn't read, Grace considered books unnecessary, and she was surrounded by far too many of the bothersome things.

“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I wonder who dusts them all.”

“You never dust at home, so why would that concern you?”

Before Grace could spew a rebuttal, Elizabeth spied an elderly man who was carefully inspecting the binding of a book. After pointing her maid toward a seat, she approached the stoop-shouldered, white-haired curator.

“What a pleasure this is, Miss Wyndham,” Waterman said, taking her hand in his. “I do so enjoy relaxing in the evening with your works.”

“I'm surprised that a man of your learning would find my works interesting,” she responded, charmed as much by the curator's courtly manner as his compliment.

“Hogwash, if you'll pardon the expression. Most other writers of Gothic novels seem determined to have our ancestors waving pistols and wearing wigs, which, in my humble opinion, are the biggest fashion nuisances ever created. And those silly writers make their characters live in ruined abbeys and crumbling castles, as if our forefathers actually built them that way.”

Elizabeth had written more than her share of scenes that involved pistols, wigs, and dilapidated buildings, but she pretended to share Mr. Waterman's outrage. “While an author must keep contemporary taste in mind,” she said, “we must also strive for verisimilitude.”

“Exactly! Sometimes you paint a wonderfully accurate picture, Miss Wyndham. I am particularly enjoying
Castles of Doom.
I can imagine Lord Darkstarre striding through his Great Hall, followed by his yapping dogs and his mastiff. I can hear Ralf bellowing to his men, and I tell myself if Darkstarre did not exist, he certainly should have.”

“That is high praise indeed,” Elizabeth murmured, even though she privately wondered at the wisdom of having a madman as the most unforgettable character in one's work.

“Listen to me ramble,” Mr. Waterman said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I assure you, I am not generally so voluble.”

He beckoned her to follow him. As they walked down the poorly-lit hallway, Elizabeth thought:
In a few minutes I will know.
But what would she know? The hall seemed to contract, and she felt as if the shadows were smothering her, as if someone pressed a gray feather pillow against her nose and mouth. From a great distance, she heard an eerie howl. It sounded like the laughter of a demented soul.

Elizabeth felt faint. Not enough air! Not enough light! Struggling to breathe, she raised her hand and pressed her palm against her mouth. At the same time, she pinched her nose with her thumb and first finger. Then, realizing what she had done, she dropped her hand and placed it over her racing heart.

She continued forward, taking deep breaths, trying to keep her panic at bay. Why did she experience such an overwhelming terror? She had never feared the unknown before. Was she afraid that her raven-haired knight—a man conjured up out of her imagination—had actually lived and breathed? No. Her trepidation had to do with his
death.

But Ralf Darkstarre didn't exist, had never existed!

Elizabeth told herself that reason was stronger than fear. She told herself that the hallway sustained a draft, an annoying influx of air that caused the flesh beneath her sleeves to goose bump. Her petticoats swayed and swirled, as if caught in the throes of a nautical cat's-paw, but she told herself that the swirl was caused by the draft, or perhaps her swift movements, certainly not by her trembling limbs.