Clandestine (24 page)

“No,” he said. “I'm not.”

“Yet you still want me?”

“Yes.”

“Then I was wrong to demand that we not speak of what happened, and I think we had better get it all out in the open, after all.”

He strode past her to the door. Black shadows beckoned in the woods, places the sun never reached, yawning like the openings to caverns that might swallow a man into darkness.

“Very well,” he said. “When a lion wakes up, it's usually best to pay it some attention. Of course, I knew exactly why Annabella Overbridge originally invited me here. She's even given us adjoining bedrooms. I don't know whether I'd ever have acted on that, because instead I find you…”

He hesitated as pain knifed through his heart. Sarah dropped her head forward. Her hood muffled her voice, as if she could only speak honestly to the darkness.

“As I find you?” she asked.

“God!
Attractive
is too weak a word. Fascinating. Enthralling. If circumstances were different, Lottie Whitely's warning might have proved prescient. Nevertheless I just undertook not to kiss you again, even though I don't know if I can really promise that or not.”

“Yes,” she said. “I feel the same way. But it's just a superficial, physical thing, isn't it?”

“Perhaps. In which case, in the circumstances, no man of honor would ever act on it. Yet I'm standing here craving you right now, Sarah.”

“It's an infatuation.” She cupped her forehead in one hand, as if to shield her face from the heat of his passion. “If we refuse to give in to it, it'll pass soon enough.”

“We must hope so.”

“After all, we barely know each other, so our feelings cannot be truly personal.”

“Then why do I feel as if I've known you all my life?”

She looked up and her hood fell back. Her clear gaze pierced his heart, as if he were pinned to the wall with a rapier.

“Yes, and deeper strangers have shared a bed before, but there are a million reasons why it would be most unwise for me to begin an affair with you.”

“Though you wish to?”

Sarah clenched her hands together on the table. “I don't know. Though I crave your touch as a moth craves a candle, I also know that I can't trust the way I feel.”

“Why not?”

She sprang to her feet and gathered her cloak about her skirts, as if she would flee past him to escape outside. He immediately stepped back to allow her to pass, but she remained frozen in place, staring up at him.

He could not tear his gaze from her face. Heat passed between them in palpable waves. Her lips parted a little. A wave of desire shot straight to his groin.

Yet she ducked her head and walked straight past him to the doorway.

She stopped at the threshold and lifted her chin. “I'm a widow, sir, not an inexperienced girl. I can certainly choose to embark on an affair, if I wish. Yet I've known what it is to truly love a man, and these feelings are nothing like that.”

“Even though this lion is roaring from its pedestal?”

“Especially then,” she said.

Calling on every ounce of self-control, Guy took another step back, so that she could walk away from him unimpeded.

“Then, like Medusa,” he said, “we must turn our beast back into stone.”

“Thank you, Mr. Devoran. You embody such a glamorous fantasy, you see. Why should I be immune to the attraction of that flame? Yet for me to crave a gentleman's bed, when—” She broke off and glanced back at him. Hot color scorched over her cheeks. “Now that really
is
unseemly of me!”

“It's the dark,” he said lightly. “It makes it too easy to exchange confidences. Yet it's almost dawn. Perhaps by shining the clear light of day on our problem, we'll find that our lion's just a toothless old pussycat, after all.”

Her skin flamed, yet she glanced back at him and grinned with glorious bravado.

“Mew?”

Cleansing laughter washed up from deep in his heart, and she walked away down the path, releasing him.

Guy leaned one shoulder against the jamb. For a few minutes he could see her in glimpses through the trees, before she disappeared from sight.

The sky was still dim, shell green at the horizon. White bryony climbed over a stump near the hut. The flowers gleamed faintly, as if they still held reflected moonlight.

He looked up as his eye caught a hint of movement in the distance.

Her cloak flying behind her, the hood down, Sarah had walked out onto the open path by the lake.

In a flash of yellow, the sun broke over the top of the next ridge to the east.

Light flooded the landscape. Colors leaped into brilliance. The leaves were emerald and verdant, the sky and water luminescent.

Her hair caught fire in bright shades of copper and gilt. Her cloak was bottle green. Her skirts fluttered like a blue flag.

As if the sun had shouted at her, she stopped to glance back up into the woods, though the hut must be impossible to discern among the trees. She stood and stared for a moment as if she might discover the answer to some great riddle, then turned and hurried away.

Perhaps she really believed his nonsense about pussycats. Perhaps only he heard the majestic tread of the lion padding at her heels.

S
ARAH AVOIDED HIM FOR SEVERAL DAYS
. S
HE SPENT ALL OF
her time in the gardens with the young ladies, talking of stamens and sepals and bracts, and showing Miss Carey and Miss Pole—who almost seemed genuinely interested—how the calyx protected the tender bud before the flower bloomed.

Sometimes she saw him walking with Lady Whitely, who ignored Sarah entirely, or with Lady Overbridge, who seemed content to be pleasant, if only to please Mr. Devoran.

Sometimes he rode away on horseback, either in the company of other gentlemen, or alone, but not again, for some reason, with Lady Whitely. Perhaps Lord Whitely had put his foot down.

Meanwhile, Sarah was haunted: her nights restless with dreams; her days lived in nervous starts, as if a monster might leap out at her at any second from the back of the herbaceous borders.

The lion was the noble king of beasts, but she had begun this quest thinking only of the Minotaur, who ate young females alive. Absurd, of course, to refine so much about one passionate kiss.

Yet Sarah could no more forget it than she could forget that the white bryony, which she had noticed growing near the Deer Hut, bore poisonous fruit, or that she was only here in Devon for Rachel's sake.

Guy had spoken to her only once since that last dawn meeting. A fast exchange near the rose garden, the air heady with bees, when she was hurrying in to fetch a shawl.

“You're all right?” he had asked.

She had nodded and smiled brightly. “Yes, of course.”

“I sent a note to Whiddon, returned with a polite refusal. He doesn't wish to see anyone. The man's more secretive than the grave.”

And then he had walked away, just in time to avoid Lady Whitely discovering them together.

Even that, just that one short conversation, had left Sarah feeling breathless and giddy, as if she were falling from a great height with no landing visible.

As she and the girls strolled back to the house, she tried not to think of him, not to fret about how they were ever to learn the truth about Rachel.

But how could she and Mr. Devoran uncover the identity of Daedalus, when one of their prime suspects was an elderly baron who locked himself away in his home and refused even a duke's nephew?

Miss Pole bent to examine some meadow cranesbill growing beside the lake. “Oh, look, Mrs. Callaway!”

Sarah dragged her mind back to the present.

“That's only a weed,” Miss Carey said. “We ought to confine ourselves to proper flowers.”

“But all plants are formed on similar principles,” Sarah said, “even when we call them weeds.”

“See! Those are the stamens,” Miss Pole said, pointing. “That's the male part, with the pollen-producing anther at the top. Then here's the female part, where the seeds will be produced.”

Miss Carey bit her lip and met her friend's eye. Both girls burst into giggles.

Perhaps botany really was an unsuitable subject for young ladies!

Some other guests were approaching over the ornamental bridge. Sarah's pupils ran off to join them. The ladies clustered together in their pretty summer dresses, sleeves billowing, parasols gleaming as if silk mushrooms had sprouted from the stone.

“Why didn't you tell me,” his voice asked quietly in her ear, “that you have written a book?”

Sarah spun about and looked up. Guy Devoran was standing beside her, a quizzical smile on his lips. Her visceral response was immediate. Hot color flooded over her neck and face. Her heart leaped as if she were struck by summer lightning.

“Only an amateur botany guide for young ladies,” she said. “It was published over a year ago in a very limited edition.”

He smiled, and her pulse launched into mad, uneven new rhythms.

“So it made you neither famous nor rich?”

She laughed. “On the contrary, it died with very little fanfare. How did you ever hear of it?”

“Whiddon sent me a stiff note this morning, asking why he had not been informed before that you were staying here. Mrs. Sarah Callaway, botanical author, is obviously more famous than you think. He read your book and he wishes to meet you.”

“Lord Whiddon wants to meet
me
?”

He grinned. “We may go there this evening, if that would be convenient. We're invited to partake of a light supper and spend the night. He lives with an elderly spinster sister, who'll be our hostess and your chaperon. I can take you in the gig.”

L
ORD
Whiddon's watery gray eyes peered at Sarah through thick spectacles. Wisps of thinning white hair floated over his pink scalp. Everything about him seemed mean and pinched, except for his fabulous hothouse, where an immense collection of huge, showy cattleyas, waxy and sensual, flaunted their extravagant petals.

Sarah wandered past the orchids, her heart beating hard.

Baskets of
Aerides odorata
struggled to breathe, their perfume heavy in the moist air, their sprays of lemon-and-pink blooms clustered like butterflies.

Epidendrum conopseum
added even more fragrance, though the blooms lurked shyly among the foliage like odd green insects.

Catasetum fimbriatum
added both spice and color, the lips of the flowers frilled with light green around each spotted center.

Beyond the open doors, the garden faced south over a small sea inlet, trapping the sunlight.

She felt giddy, like a woman transported to some exotic wonderland, where the leaves might part at any moment to reveal Titania and Cobweb and Peaseblossom.

Guy Devoran, tall and elegant, gazed at the orchids with something close to reverence, as if they stood within the arched spaces of an ancient cathedral, rather than in the glasshouse of a reclusive and obsessive collector.

Yet as they examined flower after flower, he had subtly interrogated their host and his gardener, and achieved precisely nothing, as far as Sarah could tell. Lord Whiddon had shown them his flowers and briefly asked about her book, but otherwise barely been civil.

Mr. Hawk, his gardener—like his rival, Mr. Croft—was another blue-eyed, brown-haired Devonshire man, but he was as tight-lipped and morose as his master. Yes, he had been to London with Mr. Croft that spring, but he volunteered no more about his journey, except to agree that he had purchased several new specimens at Loddiges.

Lord Whiddon at last led the way inside the house, where his sister—tall, stick-thin, and querulous as a broody hen—waited to preside over their cold supper. Mr. Hawk tugged at his forelock and walked away, back to his potting sheds and hothouse stoves.

Seizing that one moment of privacy, Guy Devoran leaned close to whisper in Sarah's ear. “Daedalus and Falcorne?”

She watched their host's narrow shoulders as he scurried ahead of them, then glanced back at the retreating figure of the gardener. “They're both unpleasant enough, certainly. Mr. Hawk rather gave me the shivers.”

“Yet, once again, what's the motive?”

“Lord Whiddon has no wife,” she said.

“And wants none. He cannot have persecuted your cousin from any kind of desire for her. He has no interest in the fair sex. Furthermore, he cannot have met Rachel in society, because he takes no part in it.”

“Then could she have become accidentally involved in some rivalry over orchids? Lord Whiddon's extremely possessive about his flowers.”

“A passion as great as any man's for the lady who captivates him? If so, we may give him credit for that faithfulness, at least.”

He gave her a careful smile, as remote as the sun god's, and ushered her into the house.

The supper was stilted and awkward. In spite of Guy Devoran's attempts to offer polite conversation, Lord Whiddon fidgeted and answered in monosyllables. The sky was still light when his sister offered to show Sarah up to her room.

“You'll forgive us, I'm sure, ma'am,” Mr. Devoran said with a bow. “But we cannot, after all, enjoy your kind hospitality tonight. Lady Overbridge has planned a breakfast with charades in her Dutch water garden in the morning. So we're obliged to return to Buckleigh this evening, after all.”

Sarah gave him a quick glance. It was the first she had heard of any such breakfast.

Lord Whiddon remonstrated immediately, then insisted to the point of being rude. For the first time since they had arrived, he became animated, almost shouting. He had never been so insulted in his life. His sister would take it as the greatest affront. The roads were dangerous at night. Vagabonds and Gypsies were lurking in the area.

Mr. Devoran raised a brow. “Surely you do not suggest, sir,” he asked with icy softness, “that I am either remiss in manners, or incapable of protecting Mrs. Callaway?”

Lord Whiddon subsided into a red-faced silence. Within half an hour the gig was bowling back through the gathering dusk, the groom up behind, and Mr. Devoran at the reins.

Behind them, Whiddon's dull gray house huddled in its valley, the splendor of his orchids hidden as if a blanket had been thrown over a fire.

“Why did you wish to leave so precipitately?” Sarah asked.

“Only because Whiddon was so anxious to have us stay.”

“I don't really understand why he invited us at all,” she said. “It was not to talk about my book, certainly. He showed no real interest in my paltry literary efforts, and he already knows more about plants than I could ever hope to teach.”

The horse trotted up a long lane that seemed to lead straight toward heaven.

“I'm afraid Whiddon used your book only as an excuse to try to discover why I really wanted to see him.”

“He didn't believe you wished simply to admire his orchids?”

“Even if he had thought so, he wouldn't have cared. As you saw, his passion for his flowers is a private obsession, not something he normally shares with anyone. No, he had some other motive. He must have stewed about it for days.”

“You think he's hiding something?”

“I'm sure of it. Yet I'm damned if I see how it could be related to our quest.”

Though the evening was balmy, Sarah shivered.

Their road dipped up and down as they crossed the many brooks that ran from Dartmoor to the sea. In each little valley, humpbacked stone bridges, damp with moss, crossed running water. Birch woods clustered, whispering among the shaded rocks, before the road climbed again onto another ridge, where long shadows stretched across open fields.

In one of the broader valleys, they clattered through a small village. A handful of thatched houses straggled beside the stream, with an ancient inn hunched at one end. No one seemed to be about, though a dim light glimmered here and there from a window, and a snatch of song echoed from the inn.

They had trotted up from the village through a winding gorge to pass over the next rise, when Guy Devoran jerked hard on one rein. Sarah clutched at the rail to prevent herself from sliding into him as the gig lurched and one wheel dropped into the ditch. The horse stopped and blew nervously at the hedge.

“Alas,” Guy said calmly. “We've come to grief. We may have damaged the axle, and our horse has certainly sprained a tendon.” He glanced back at the groom. “Take the gig back to Stonecombe, Tom. Spend the night at the inn. Mrs. Callaway and I will walk back to Buckleigh.” He tossed the man a small purse. “Make up any tale that you like—except that you'll not mention us to anyone. Is that clear?”

Tom stared for a moment, his forehead creased in a puzzled frown, then he thrust the money into a pocket, touched his hat, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Devoran grinned at him and leaped down. “Good man! We'll rescue you in the morning.”

He seized Sarah by the waist and swung her to the ground.

“I hope your footwear will allow you to stroll along a footpath?” he asked. “It's less than a mile to Buckleigh over the cliffs.”

“Yes, of course! I never travel in shoes I can't walk in.”

“Sensible Mrs. Callaway,” he said with a wry smile.

Sarah glanced away, her heart thudding.

The groom took the reins and turned the gig back toward the village. The horse, obviously not lame, trotted away.

Guy Devoran ran up a set of stone steps half-hidden in the bank. They led to a stile in an opening in the hedge. He reached down with one hand and smiled with real gaiety.

“Come!” he said. “We must hurry, before it gets dark.”

“But why are we walking?”

“To investigate a theory and to show you something.”

Shadows fell darkly from the hedge, but he was silhouetted above her against a luminescent sky, bright with the promise of sunset. A deep excitement thrummed through her blood.

“Should I be worried?” she asked.