Jo Beverley (26 page)

His eyes opened and he looked at her, seeming almost lost but loving. Then he groaned her name and moved in strong, deep thrusts that she met even when they hurt because she wanted this more than anything in life.

Vaguely she noticed how he supported himself, how his torso never pressed where he might hurt her. Even in extremis he thought of her, and she loved him beyond bearing.

She didn’t quite find that perfect pleasure again, but she loved the swirling madness of it and the signs of his ecstasy. His choked groan, his shudders, the pulsing deep inside her where they were securely, infinitely joined.

She ran her hands up and down his back from buttocks to shoulders again and again, drifting in sated wonder. She’d never known. It was wrong, she thought, to keep this secret. Everyone should know. Everyone should do this as much as possible.

Poor Betty Crowley, whose young husband died soon after the wedding, and whose second husband was incapable.

He stilled, resting his head beside hers, breathing deeply, even desperately. At that moment she sensed something terribly, terribly wrong.

He pushed back and rolled to collapse on his back. “I had better have killed you.”

She reached for him. “Don’t be silly—”

But he rolled back over her. “Damn it all to Hades, Damaris, I just ruined you!”

“Ouch!”

He jerked off her. “Zeus, I’m sorry.” But then he looked at her and, teeth gritted, put a hand around her throat. “I really should throttle you.”

She swallowed, aware of how easily he could do it and that he was truly furious.

“My chest did hurt,” she whispered, tears stinging in her eyes. “A little. And you didn’t ruin me, because I want to marry you.”

“Then you ruined me. Rothgar will kill me.”

“You can defeat him.”

He practically levitated off her. “You think I would kill a man over this? When I’m in the wrong?”

She sat up, swallowing tears. No, she didn’t want him to kill anyone, especially not a man who’d been kind to her, but this was a battle—a battle for the treasure she wanted more than anything else in the world.

“I love you, Fitz. You love me. Deny it if you can.”

“I deny it.”

“And I call you a liar!”

She remembered what he’d once said—that he’d walk away from any woman who doubted his word.

He turned away, dragging in a deep breath, sitting on the edge of the bed, head thrown back. She should have her mind on higher things, but truly he was a most beautiful man.

“I can marry whom I wish,” she said in the calmest voice she could find, “and I wish to marry you. Rothgar has nothing to say about it. I’m of age. He can withhold my money, but a fig for that.”

“And how do you intend to survive?”

“With you, and by borrowing from the moneylenders.”

He dropped his head into his hands, his elbows braced on his knees, and his desperation finally silenced her. He really did see his actions as dire and dishonorable.

And she understood.

Too late, she understood what she’d done.

When he was fifteen a woman called Orinda had stolen his honor, carelessly, in lust and to spite her husband. Over the years, against bitter odds, he’d painstakingly re-created it as best he could, even with fate constantly stepping in his way.

Tonight she, in seizing what she wanted, had stolen it again. He didn’t believe they should marry, but she’d forced this upon him, where he should marry her or be dishonorable.

It didn’t even matter if anyone ever knew what they’d done here. He knew, and honor was more than reputation. It lived in a person’s soul.

How like her selfish, piratical father she was.

All words seemed shallow. She longed to soothe him, to apologize, and yet still to find a way to possess him. She reached out to touch him but then pulled her hand back. Quite likely he’d throw her off, which would hurt her and slay him.

He coiled off the bed, picking up his robe and covering his long, lean body. Then he faced her from a distance of about eight feet.

“This is what we shall do. If you prove to be with child, I will marry you, if you still wish it. In the meantime you will tell no one about this. It will be as if it never happened. We go to London tomorrow, and there we’ll find your heir and eliminate the danger. You’ll follow Rothgar’s plan and enter society. You’ll meet eligible men, many of them far finer fellows than I. The Duke of Bridgewater may be exactly to your taste.”

“How can I marry another man now?”

“It’s possible to conceal the lack of maidenhead from most men. And besides, given your financial attributes, your husband will probably put aside any suspicions.”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t be cruel.”

She struggled off the bed, dragging her own clothes together, feeling soiled for the first time. She hurt between her legs, and in her chest, where she’d been wounded twice—one above the heart and once deep inside it.

“It wasn’t cruelly meant. You will do as I say?”

She stood with her back to that soulless voice, fumbling with buttons in the dim light. “What choice do I have?”

“You can tell Rothgar what happened here. Or Ashart, for that matter. It might result in my death, or I might be forced to marry you. Are you a gambler?”

She turned to look at him through blurred eyes. “Forced? It would be so bad as that?”

“I’m the worst possible husband for you, Damaris. I’m trying to protect you.”

“Whether I want to be or not?”

“Whether you want to be or not.”

The fire showed only the slightest, surly glow, and drafts nibbled at her bare toes.

“You’ll thank me one day,” he said. “I hope you’ll thank me—”

A shriek cut off his words.

“Maisie!” Damaris gasped, rushing to the door.

He grabbed her. “You can’t be caught leaving here like that.”

Her loose hair, her torn nightgown, which was probably stained with blood.

Maisie let out another yelp, then shouted, “Miss Damaris? Miss Damaris! Save us all, she’s been stolen away!” A moment later an explosion rocked the air, and Maisie really screamed, on and on and on.

Fitz’s hand had tightened, but now he pushed Damaris away. “Stay here. I’ll see to her. Then you slip back into your room.” He looked her over, then shook his head. “Do the best you can.”

Then, desperately, he kissed her, and it seemed to her that fate fought against their parting.

He pulled away and opened the door—to walk into a flood of light. Ashart stood in the archway, the flaring candle in his hand almost blinding Damaris to Maisie, hands over her mouth, behind him.

Silence crackled around them like thin ice. Ashart turned to Maisie. “Go back to your room and keep your mouth shut.”

Maisie nodded fiercely and scurried away.

“Ash? Damaris? Fitz?” Genova appeared with another candle.

All in all, Damaris would rather have had less light than more.

Genova understood all at a glance and stepped close to Ashart, close to her tiger. Damaris wanted to faint. As Genova had said, Ashart considered himself her protector, Rothgar’s substitute here in his house. And to him she had been violated.

Perhaps he’d insist on a wedding? The look in his eyes spoke of death.

He walked forward, and Damaris and Fitz retreated until they were all in the room.

“I should kill you,” Ashart said.

“He didn’t force me,” Damaris protested. “I came here—”

“And he took advantage of it. I’ve ignored his reputation, which was obviously foolish.”

“He was fifteen when—”

Fitz grabbed her arm. “Don’t.” He met Ashart’s frigid gaze. “Yes, I’m in the wrong. But whatever you decide, it would be better if I accompanied you all to London tomorrow to ensure Damaris’s safety.”

Ashart’s free hand was fisted, but he was otherwise in perfect control of himself. Damaris found it more terrifying than open rage.

“Very well. Rothgar can deal with you, as you’re his man anyway, I suspect. If I have your word that you won’t flee before hearing his judgment?”

“No!” Damaris protested.

But Fitz overrode her. “You have it.”

Ashart turned his eyes on her. “You will return to your room and stay there.”

The icy authority almost had her bobbing a servile curtsy. She’d never known he could be so terrifying.

Genova urged her out of the room. Damaris didn’t want to leave the two men together, but Genova gathered in Ashart on the way so that the three of them ended up on the other side of the closed door.

“It was my fault,” Damaris insisted. She licked her lips, then bared her shame. “I wanted him, and thought this the best way to break his will.”

Ashart’s dark eyes seared her. “Then spend the night on your knees praying you haven’t killed a good man in your greed.”

He grasped her arm and marched her to her room, pushed her in, and closed the door. Damaris leaned back against it, tears streaming down her face, with an ocean more aching in her chest.

She thrust a hand to her mouth to stifle cries, and Maisie rushed over and took her into her arms. “Oh, I’m that sorry, Miss Damaris! I never guessed. But how could you? Oh, that terrible man. I warned you. I warned you….”

Damaris burst into racking sobs in her arms.

D
amaris slept because Maisie insisted that she take laudanum. She woke when the shutters were opened, dulled by opium, remembering waking from another drugged sleep. Again she didn’t want to face the day or the people who knew her shame, but there was no question this time of running away. She couldn’t abandon Fitz.

Surely she’d be able to convince Rothgar that she’d brought about her own ruin, wouldn’t she? Even if he barred them from marrying, he couldn’t
kill
Fitz for being seduced by her.

But she knew enough of men now to know that he might do it. The challenge would be trumped up over something else to spare her name, but it would happen, and Fitz would die. He wouldn’t defend himself when he thought himself in the wrong.

It was all her fault. How could she not have thought, not have known what being seduced by a woman he should not touch would mean to him? He who’d been seduced when young by his sister-in-law.

Her throat ached again, but she wouldn’t cry anymore. Crying achieved nothing—unless it might sway Rothgar to mercy. Yes, she’d store up her tears for that.

“Up you get, miss,” Maisie said, with a painful attempt at cheerfulness. “We’re off within the hour. I’m mostly packed, and you need to eat breakfast. Your hot water’s here. Oh, do come on, miss,” she cried. “You
have
to.”

Maisie had explained last night that a mouse had woken her by scuttling right by her face. Of course she’d screamed. Then she’d realized Damaris was missing and rushed out crying for help. And that nasty gun thing had gone off. She’d apologized long and often for it, in between berating Damaris for folly and predicting disasters of every sort. All of them Fitz’s fault.

All of them possible, Damaris accepted as she climbed out of bed, but all that mattered was that Fitz be safe. She walked to the washstand, aware of changes in her body and soreness, but only longing to be with Fitz again.

She stripped, washed, and put on the shift that waited in front of the fire.

“How’s your wound, miss?” Maisie asked.

Damaris had forgotten it, and she touched the spot. “Healing.” Unlike the imaginary, bleeding one beneath.

“Sit and eat, miss. There’s your chocolate just as you like it, and bread that was fresh yesterday….”

Damaris’s stomach rebelled, but she needed her strength. She drank some chocolate and ate a little bread, staring into the flames, trying to see a way out of this circle of fire.

She would run to the ends of the earth with Fitz, but even if they could escape Ashart and Rothgar, she knew he’d never agree. He would escort her to London and then submit to judgment.

And he probably hated her.

“Miss Damaris, come on! They’ll be knocking for the luggage any moment now.”

Damaris hurried into a warm blue gown. Maisie pushed her into a seat and replaited her hair, then coiled it at the back and stuck pins in to hold it in place. If only life could be coiled back into order as simply. Then she remembered the trigger for last night, the excuse. Her will.

“Where’s my writing desk?”

“In the big trunk, miss.” Maisie put a three-cornered hat on top of Damaris’s head and thrust another pin in to keep it in place. “You never want it now?”

Damaris pushed up and hurried over to the locked trunk. “I need paper. The key!”

Maisie dug it out of her pocket, complaining, but unlocked the padlock and threw back the lid. She pulled the wooden desk from under a top layer of clothes. Damaris took it to the table, opened it, pulled out a sheet of paper, and uncapped the small inkwell. She dipped the pen without trimming it, then paused, remembering Fitz trimming a pen for her with his very sharp knife that first morning, when he’d persuaded her to return to Rothgar Abbey.

The knife he’d used to cut off her clothing yesterday.

She’d dripped a blob of ink on the paper. She began to toss the sheet away, but what did an inkblot matter? She scribbled, trying to follow the form she remembered from her mother’s will. She should have kept it simple, but she found herself listing the bequests she wanted to make, as if it might happen. As if she might die today.

She heard footsteps approaching.

“Here come the men for the luggage, miss. This is no time to be writing a letter!”

Someone knocked at the door. Damaris nodded, and Maisie went to open it. Two men came in, bobbing bows and going toward the trunk.

“Can either of you read and write?” Damaris asked.

The men had politely avoided looking at her, but now they did. One, a sturdy, grizzled man with bright blue eyes, said, “I can, miss.”

“Your name?”

“Silas Brown, miss.”

“Come here if you please, Mr. Brown. This is my will, which I’ve just written. I am about to sign it, then I want you to sign as witness.”

The man nodded.

Damaris signed, then dipped the pen and passed it to him. He signed his name in a steady, strong script.

“Thank you. Maisie, you shall witness it, too.”

Maisie looked alarmed, but she could read and write. She wiped her hands on her skirt, took the pen, and carefully wrote her full name, Maisie Duncott, below Silas Brown’s.

Damaris let out a breath and even smiled. “Thank you both. Maisie, put away the desk again, please.”

She gave the groom a crown for his service. As soon as the trunk was locked again, the men carried it away. The ink on the will was dry, so Damaris folded it, considering what to do with it. She didn’t want to carry it herself in case something happened to her that could lose or destroy it.

She’d like to give it to Fitz, but they’d probably not let her close to him. It would have to be Ashart, which made her shudder.

“Are you ready now, then, miss?”

Damaris attempted a smile. “Yes, of course. Don’t worry. I’m not turning mad. Once we’re in London we can get this all straightened out.”

“Aye, miss.” But Maisie’s expression was as doubtful as Damaris’s thoughts. She helped Damaris into her cloak and handed her dark brown gloves. Damaris was as ready as she would ever be to face this day, so she left the room. At the sight of Fitz outside her door she stopped dead.

“Escort,” he said impassively. “An attack between here and the coach is unlikely, but we’ll take no chances.”

She wanted to say many things, but it was as if he’d encased himself in ice. She’d expected it, but now it hurt like a bolt to the heart.

“Thank you.” She held out the folded paper. “Please carry this.”

He took it. “Your will?”

“Yes.”

“Witnessed?”

“By Maisie and one of the grooms.”

“Which one?”

“Silas Brown.”

“One of Rothgar’s men. He’ll do.” He put the paper in his jacket pocket and gestured for her to precede him through the arch.

Damaris hesitated, searching for something to say, something that might help. A raging fight might melt the ice, but she wondered if it wasn’t the ice that was holding him together. She turned and walked the gauntlet of Trayce, Prease, and Stuart portraits, then down the stairs to where the others waited. When she joined them, Fitz stayed apart.

Damaris wondered if Lady Thalia knew. She must. She would have heard the trip wire go off.

A maid came in and curtsied. “All’s ready, milord.”

“We’re leaving by the side door on the east,” Ashart said. He seemed as calm as Fitz, and yet Damaris sensed fire beneath. Hot fury. She recognized that he felt responsible for her ruin, and there was nothing she could say that would ease things. “The coach can draw up closely there, and it’s less exposed than the front.”

They went quickly to where the coach waited. Six horses stood in the traces, stamping, breath white in the cold morning air. Damaris, Genova, and Lady Thalia hurried inside their coach under Ashart’s escort. Fitz kept his distance, but Damaris thought that now it was not so much ostracism as that he was alert for any sign of attack.

She would have taken the backward-facing seat, but Genova insisted. Fitz and Ashart mounted their horses, joining four other outriders, and they were off. Damaris wanted to get to London, where answers lay that could keep her safe, but she dreaded it, too.

What would her guardian, the Dark Marquess, do?

She wished she could talk it over with Genova, but Lady Thalia might not know everything. And anyway, she wasn’t sure words existed for the pain and fear consuming her. She couldn’t even watch Fitz. He rode on the opposite side of the coach and ahead, out of sight. On purpose, she knew.

She glanced at Lady Thalia, who had loved and lost. The old lady looked back, her eyes steady and in some way strengthening. But then those eyes widened and brightened. “Three-handed whist, dears?”

Damaris agreed. Anything to help this journey pass.

They stopped often for new horses, but never delayed. Just over three hours had passed, by Genova’s heavy pocket watch, when rural hamlets came closer together, and much of the land beside the road was kitchen gardens. These provided vegetables for the crowded city.

Soon the road became busier, and even the groom’s horn couldn’t clear a way through packhorses, pedestrians, carts, and other vehicles. Damaris shrank back, seeing how easy it would be for someone to approach the coach and fire into it. Probably for that reason Ashart rode close on one side, Fitz on the other. She could see him at last, her hero, her lover, her despair.

Houses became larger and closer together, and then their horses’ hooves clattered on cobbled streets past ranks of new, tall houses. The name of one, set in black bricks in paler stone, made her start: Rosemary Terrace.

That row was part of her inheritance. She’d never actually seen one of her properties before. It was such a peculiar notion that she stared, forgetting to be cautious.

“Do you know someone there?” Genova asked.

“No,” Damaris said, sitting back. What good was enormous wealth if it wouldn’t buy her what she wanted?

Not long after, they turned into a grand square. It was built around a railed garden with a pond. A woman and two children were throwing bread to noisily enthusiastic ducks by the water. Most of the houses around the square were in short terraces, but some were mansions. The carriage turned into a courtyard in front of the largest one.

They’d arrived at Malloren House, where Rothgar must be faced.

Damaris’s knees weakened as she climbed out of the coach and went with the others into a wood-paneled hall. How unlike Cheynings. Here a fire blazed in the hearth and light shone in through a large fanlight over the door. Somewhere, potpourri carried memories of summer. On a table a bowl held crocuses, forced into early bloom. A promise of spring.

In what state would her life be by springtime?

A smiling housekeeper and cheery-looking maids and footmen stood ready, but Damaris was strung tight with apprehension, praying for a little time before she need face her guardian.

But then he emerged from the back of the house. “Welcome to Malloren House. Lady Arradale remains at the abbey to conclude our party there, but I came ahead to deal with these developments. Thank you for alerting me, Ashart. Ladies, you will want your rooms?”

For a moment Damaris thought Ashart had sent news of her disgrace, but she realized it would have been news of the documents. If Rothgar caught any hint of other disasters, he showed no sign of it. Damaris wanted to escape him, but she also wanted to take position by Fitz’s side and defend him from all harm. She’d have done it if she didn’t think it would make everything worse.

Cowardice or sense—she couldn’t decide which—sent her upstairs with Genova and Lady Thalia. At the top of the stairs she looked back at Fitz, standing at elegant ease between two powerful men who could destroy him with a word.

He met her eyes and smiled. If he meant to reassure her, he failed.

Fitz permitted himself to watch Damaris until she disappeared. No point in discretion now. The omniscient one had to be skilled at reading expressions, and Ash was a walking growl. When she disappeared, Fritz turned back to the other two men, aware with detached numbness that he might never see her again. The most he could pray for was that his ability to protect people would buy him a few days’ grace.

Rothgar indicated a corridor. “If you would come to my office?”

In the businesslike room, he said, “You have the papers, Ashart? May I see them?”

Ash gave him the pouch.

“Please be seated,” Rothgar said, and settled behind his desk to read.

Ash flashed Fitz a searing glance, then sat, though he looked as if he’d rather pace the room. Perhaps the glance was a command that Fitz not dare to make himself at ease, but he preferred to stand anyway. It gave an illusion of being in control of his fate.

“So,” Rothgar said, looking up, “there was a marriage.” He folded the papers. “Lamentable.”

“But of little importance, given the Act of Succession.” Ash’s voice was expressionless.

“Any element of doubt will distress His Majesty, and there’s something in his nature that suffers from distress.”