Eliza’s sob caught in her throat. She wouldn’t let him
hear it. She couldn’t! But it burned so cruelly for release that she feared she’d suffocate.
A diversion. That’s what she’d been to him. A diversion.
Trying her best to control her trembling, she lifted her chin and gave him her coldest, most seething glare. “Well, then, I suppose that’s just as well, for that’s exactly what I considered you.” Then her voice broke and she was unable to maintain that facade any longer. With an anguished cry she turned and fled.
She shouldn’t cry over him, not such a despicable, heartless unfeeling wretch as Cyprian Dare. But Eliza did cry. She couldn’t seem to stop. Every hurt—every hope dashed, every tender look and fiery caress—came back to her as a new and painful betrayal until she was overwhelmed with such a crushing sorrow that she could do nothing but cry.
She fled down the hall, then blindly descended a narrow stairway, not able to stay even one of her tears. At the base of the stairs she shoved at a door, then finding herself outside, ran down a pebbled path. She was in a garden still abloom, though winter was supposed to be upon them. But this was the Isle of Alderney and none of the rules of real life applied here, she realized when she slowed her headlong pace. She sank to her knees in a bed of lacy ferns and covered her wet face with her hands. Her whole body shook with the force of her sobs. Here it was still springtime. Here proper young women forgot a lifetime of propriety and turned into wantons. Here men proposed marriage in one breath, then broke hearts in the next.
In her misery she huddled in a ball, crying as she’d never cried in her entire life. But then, what had she ever had to cry for? Her life had been so lovely, so pleasant and easy. Now … now she hurt so badly she thought she might die from the pain.
Her hair clung in snarls to her wet cheeks. It tangled about her face and arms and caught in the buttons of Cyprian’s coat. At once a new wave of misery engulfed her. She still wore his coat—and nothing else. His scent clung to it. Spicy. Salty. She fancied that the heat of his body still permeated the fine merino fabric.
She raised her head and ruthlessly scrubbed the tears from her eyes. She sat in a bed of yarrow, she realized. In the kitchen garden. The house was behind her, and beyond a low stone wall, a hill lifted, spotted with jagged gray boulders and still green heather.
Where was she to go? she fretted as she pulled her knees beneath herself and shakily pushed to a stand. She could not go back there. Not to his home. Not after what had passed between them. But she could go nowhere else either, not with only his coat to cover her nakedness.
It was Ana who came to Eliza’s rescue. As if she’d been watching for Eliza, Ana appeared at the garden gate, and upon spying her, hurried to her side.
“I … I’ve quite ruined the … the yarrow,” Eliza choked out, wiping once more at her tear-stained face.
“It will recover,” Ana replied, her olive-skinned face serene and understanding. “You will recover as well,” she added. She moved a wet strand of hair back from Eliza’s cheek, then smiled reassuringly. “Come, I will take you to my home and we will talk there.”
“But I—my clothes—”
“I will tend to that,” she said, turning Eliza and steering her toward the garden gate. “I’ll tend to everything.”
How Eliza clung to Ana’s words. She’d been so confident, so cocky, when she’d suggested this journey to Madeira. And look what it had come to. She was ruined —her reputation destroyed and her heart shattered. And Aubrey—kidnapped by a man who claimed to be his half brother.
She followed Ana woodenly, holding Cyprian’s coat
tight around herself, and excruciatingly aware of her bare legs. But as her feet hurried along the narrow stone walk to Ana’s home, her mind turned around and around that one shocking fact. Cyprian was Uncle Lloyd’s natural son. Though never acknowledged—though he’d been utterly abandoned, it seemed—he was Sir Lloyd Haberton’s firstborn son.
No wonder he hated Aubrey and everyone else who’d lived the privileged life he’d been denied. No wonder he’d used her so shamelessly.
Yet he had offered marriage, albeit not in a very loverlike fashion. Then again, maybe he hadn’t meant it. Maybe he’d thought only to put an end to her objections with that wretched proposal of his. Oh, but she could make no sense of any of it at all.
“Come in and sit down,” Ana ordered when they reached a charming little cottage. Red roses clambered up a trellis arching over the front door. Inside the wood plank floor gleamed and the scent of lemon oil and fresh bread pervaded.
Like a wooden puppet, Eliza followed each of Ana’s commands. When the exotic woman pushed her into a chair, she sat. When Ana tucked a woven blanket around her legs, Eliza shifted as necessary. When she pressed a hot cup of tea into Eliza’s hands, she drank, though without any real enthusiasm. Only when Ana began to question her did she balk.
“I can’t talk about it. Please, don’t make me,” she implored.
But for all Ana’s tender ministrations, in this the woman refused to be gentle. “If you cannot tell
me
your troubles, Eliza, who can you tell? I am your ally, the only woman in this domain of hardheaded men. If we are to prevail, we must help one another.”
“What do you mean, prevail?” Eliza asked, as confused by Ana’s attitude as by everything else.
“Prevail? I mean, get our way. What
we
want.” She
shrugged and smiled. “We must teach these men that what we want will make them far happier than what they think
they
want.”
Eliza shook her head. “I don’t think you understand about Cyprian.”
“Oh, but I do.”
“No, it’s too complicated—and too hopeless. You see, Aubrey … Aubrey is his brother,” she revealed, still finding it hard to believe.
“His half brother,” Ana corrected her. “Xavier told me.” She stared at Eliza with her dark, almond-shaped eyes. “Does it bother you that Cyprian is a bastard?”
Eliza lowered her cup. “No. No,” she repeated.
“Well then, does it bother you that he has no title, that he earns his way in this world through his own hard work and ingenuity?”
“No, of course not,” Eliza snapped. “That has nothing to do with anything.” She sat the cup on a side table and stood up. “You just don’t understand!”
“Are you in love with him?”
Eliza’s chin began to quiver and she had to clench her teeth to make it stop. “That has nothing to do with anything either. He doesn’t love me and he never will. Oh, but I must get away from this place.” Then to her enormous chagrin, she began to cry once more.
Ana pressed Eliza back into the chair. But her expression was not in the least perturbed. In fact, she was smiling. “Well, that is good to know, though I expected as much. Now you just drink your tea. I’ll get clothes for you so you can dress and comb your hair. Xavier will be back soon to eat. If you truly want to leave this place, he’ll find you passage home. And if you truly love Cyprian,” she paused and her smile broadened ever so slightly. “Well, if you truly love Cyprian, maybe Xavier will send you home anyway.”
Eliza shook her head. “But I don’t understand—”
Ana tilted her head and gave Eliza a wise look.
“Sometimes love needs a little help. That’s what friends are there for—to help.”
“You can’t help with this,” Eliza replied morosely.
But the woman only smiled. “We shall see. We shall soon see.”
W
ith Ana pushing, things happened so fast that Eliza’s head seemed to spin. She donned a simple gown of gray and white striped linen and at Ana’s command used a brush and comb to work out the tangles in her hair. Meanwhile Ana continued her work as if nothing at all out of the ordinary was happening. She added onions and peppers to a pot of veal stew simmering on the hearth. By the time Eliza was reasonably presentable, the stew smelled delicious, the kitchen table was set for five, and bread, butter, ale, and fresh milk were set out as part of the meal.
Ana gave her a critical glance. “Wash your face.” Then she smiled. “Things will work out, Eliza. I feel it here.” She touched her chest with one hand.
Eliza forced a smile for Ana’s sake, but she could not share her confidence. When a footstep sounded on the walk, she stiffened. But when Xavier entered, she wasn’t sure whether relief or disappointment was the stronger of her emotions.
“Eliza. I hadn’t thought to find you here—” He broke off and peered at her more closely. Then he glanced questioningly at Ana.
“A lovers’ quarrel,” she answered his unspoken words.
“That’s not true,” Eliza countered. “We’re not—that is—this … this is not just a quarrel,” she finished lamely.
Xavier raised his ebony brows and looked from Ana to Eliza and back to his wife.
“Cyprian told her about his relationship with Aubrey, and now she means to leave Alderney,” Ana explained. “Can you arrange for her to leave?”
“Ah.” Xavier nodded in understanding, but then he frowned and moved to stand directly before Eliza. “Still, you cannot leave, Eliza. Cyprian would be very angry—”
“I hate him,” she swore, and at the moment she almost did. Almost. But she ignored that fact. “I cannot stay here a minute longer. I will not!”
“I think Oliver should take her back to London,” Ana remarked.
“Oliver? Oliver!” Xavier sputtered. “Cyprian would kill the boy if he were to take—” He broke off and he and his wife shared a long look. Then he smiled. “Oliver,” he repeated in a most considering tone. “She
would
be safe in his care.”
“I thought so.”
“I don’t want to get Oliver in trouble with Cyprian,” Eliza said.
Xavier shrugged and moved to the table. “Ollie’s always in trouble with Cyprian. But he always forgives him.”
“Do you really think he’ll help me?”
“He and Aubrey are coming in now,” Ana said. “You can ask him yourself.”
When Oliver and Aubrey came in, all smiles and towering good humor, Eliza couldn’t help staring at her young cousin. The similarities between him and Cyprian were there, she realized. The same black curling hair, and they both had blue eyes, though Cyprian’s were darker. And Cyprian was tall like her Uncle Lloyd, just as Aubrey probably would be.
But she wasn’t going to tell Aubrey, she decided on the instant. That news must come from either Cyprian or Uncle Lloyd. It was not her place to reveal such awkward news to the boy. She turned instead to the subject of her departure.
To her surprise, however, Oliver was not nearly so eager to help her as she would have thought.
“I don’t think you should flee Cyprian on account of one disagreement,” he advised her as they all sat down to eat. “If Ana had done that to Xavier, where would they be right now?”
Xavier nodded and Ana smiled her serene smile, but that only made Eliza more adamant. “This is not the same thing. I … I have a fiancé waiting for me,” she explained after searching her mind for some pressing excuse for leaving. Not that there weren’t any number of good reasons. Her parents. Her brothers. In truth, Michael had nothing at all to do with her need to flee. Especially now. There was also Aubrey’s family to consider. She leaned forward with an earnest expression on her face.
“Aubrey and I must escape, Oliver. We cannot stay—”
“You said nothing about Aubrey,” Xavier interrupted.
“Well, I just assumed—”
“I’ll help
you
leave, but Aubrey must stay,” Oliver stated. Xavier and Ana both nodded their agreement.
“It’s all right, Eliza. I’ll be fine,” Aubrey piped up. “I like it here. Only I hope Oliver won’t be gone too very long.”
“But Aubrey
must
come,” Eliza cried. “You must,” she repeated to him as she took his two arms in her hands and bent down to stare into his young face. “You’re the one who was kidnapped. You’re the one who must escape.”
But neither Oliver or Xavier, nor even Ana would
agree to helping Aubrey flee. In the end she had no choice but to accept their terms, though she was infuriated by their obstinance. Weather permitting, they would set sail in Xavier’s single-masted sailboat at the turn of the tide, the men decided. Oliver could easily manage the sturdy vessel alone, and within a day and a half they should make land at Portsmouth. While Ana assembled food and clothes and other gear, Xavier and Oliver plotted their course. Eliza was so stunned by the swift progression of events that she could only sit silently amid the hubbub around her.
When Aubrey approached her, limping only a very little, she took both his hands in hers. “Aubrey, I can’t bear to leave you here. There must be a way to smuggle you onto Xavier’s boat.”
But the ten-year-old only shook his head and shrugged. “You needn’t worry, Eliza, for I’ll be just fine. Truly. Only you must send Oliver directly back, all right?”
“Once I am returned to London I’ll tell them all where you are,” she said. “Your father will come for you right away. I know he will.”
“Well, don’t tell him or mother that I can walk now. I want to surprise them.” He gave her an impish grin.
“But they will want to know how you are faring.”
“Just tell them that I’m having a jolly good time. You see,” he added matter of factly, “if I walk up to them on my own, I’m thinking that my father will be so surprised and pleased that he’ll forget all about being angry at Cyprian.”
At the mention of Cyprian’s name, Eliza blinked and looked away. “Yes, well, perhaps that’s a good idea,” she murmured. But though Uncle Lloyd might eventually forgive Cyprian Dare, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to.
To cover the sudden rush of embarrassing tears, she drew Aubrey into her arms and gave him a tight hug.
“Everything will turn out all right in the end,” she whispered. At least for him, she silently added.
“Not so tight,” he complained, but good-naturedly. “Oh, and Eliza, be sure to tell Father to give Oliver a big reward, all right? A very big reward.”
Cyprian watched them cast off from a hill above the house. He could make out the several figures on the shore, especially the two that boarded Xavier’s sailboat. Oliver was taking her back—and he was letting it happen.
He shrugged and turned away from the distant scene, but despite his every attempt to feel indifferent to what was happening, he could not. With a sudden curse he spun on his heel, snatched up a jagged bit of rock, and flung it with all his strength at them. At Eliza.
She could have stayed. They could have sorted things out. But she was fleeing from him the very first chance she had.
Well, damn her to hell. Damn her and his father and all of them.
Damn them all to bloody hell.
They set sail in the late afternoon. Xavier, Ana, and Aubrey saw them off, but there was no sign of Cyprian. That was good, though. Truly, it was. For even if he did not order her to stay, he would most certainly take odds with one of his men taking her back to London.
Even knowing that, however, Eliza could hardly bear the knowledge that she would never see him again. She sat in the cockpit of the little sailboat, gripping the rail with both hands and staring back at Alderney’s rocky shore as it slowly receded into the sea.
In the long hours on the vessel Oliver taught her how to sail, though little enough of it sank in. She was too mired in her bleak thoughts. He explained about the wind and tacking, about the sails and the rudder. But
not once did they speak about what it was that had sent her fleeing. Nor did Oliver flirt with her in other than the most mild of fashions, the way he did with Ana, she realized. Somewhere along the way he’d acceded to Cyprian’s claim on her. Had she not been relieved that she didn’t have to fend him off, she would have been even more depressed. Xavier, Ana, and now Oliver. They all paired her with Cyprian, even though they should know better than anyone why it was an impossible match.
And it was impossible, she told herself. Even if he’d been the least bit honest in his feelings toward her—even if he’d gone so far as to fall in love with her—it would never have worked. They were too different, too vastly different. She’d tried to convince herself that was an advantage, but she knew now it was not. How many fellows had her parents dismissed as potential suitors for her who were far more suitable for her than Cyprian could ever hope to be?
Then there was the cold hard fact that Cyprian did not love her. That he’d only enjoyed her company for a few hours. That he’d used her.
As the dark sea swelled up beneath the little boat and the wind pushed them ever nearer her home, she rued the day she’d ever set off for Madeira. She should have been content with the future planned for her. Now … now who knew what her future held?
They sailed through the night, all the next day under a dreary gray sky, and into the next night. Dawn was approaching when the lights of a small town guided them toward shore. Though Eliza was alarmed at the idea of docking while it was still dark, Oliver was obviously well-acquainted with this particular harbor. When he handed her ashore, she swayed a little, disoriented and exhausted.
“There’s a posting house up the hill. We can take a room and then catch a coach to London as soon as we
can,” Oliver said, hoisting their meager bags in one hand and supporting her elbow with the other. “Can you make it?”
She could and she did, but barely. She fell asleep half-clothed in the room he eventually guided her to, and when his knock sounded later in the day, it was all she could do to rouse herself from the stupor of sleep.
The remainder of the day passed in the same sort of thickness. Eliza did as Oliver told her, including boarding a coach, but she felt as if she were sleepwalking. The next day was better. Perhaps it was the bitter cold that wiped away the cobwebs from her mind. Whatever, by the time the laboring team of horses made their way into London, she was alert, albeit tired and sore from the long ride.
Diamond Hall was lit as if for a ball and a manservant stood sentinel on the front steps, lantern in hand. He was waiting for her, Eliza realized, for Oliver had sent word ahead that they were coming. Before the coach ceased its swaying, her entire family tumbled forth through the pair of mahogany and brass front doors.
Had she ever been so happy to see them? Eliza did not think so. Despite the pervasive weariness that had gripped her the past three days, she fell into the bosom of her family, laughing, weeping, and holding each of them as if she would never let them go.
“Oh, my darling,” her mother cried against her neck. “Oh, my dearest little girl.”
“We’ve been waiting forever!”
“What an adventure you’ve had!” Perry exclaimed. “You must tell us every little detail.”
Then her father swept her into his arms. “Eliza,” he whispered, squeezing her so tight she feared her ribs might crack. “Eliza.”
When she finally surfaced, the Thoroughgood brood was herded by the beaming butler, Tonkins, into the foyer. It was then that she spied Aubrey’s parents.
Aunt Judith was as pale as death. Her eyes were huge and she’d lost enough weight that her dress hung loose on her. Uncle Lloyd too was thinner and somehow shrunken. In his blue eyes there showed a fear that she’d never seen before. A fear for his absent child. At once she broke away from her parents’ embrace and made her way to her grieving aunt and uncle.
“He is fine,” she said in the quick hush that fell. “Truly he is. Healthy, happy—”
“Happy? How can he be happy—” Lloyd Haberton broke off when his wife turned weeping into his arms. Eliza berated herself for her poor choice of words. As she cast about for a better explanation, she caught Oliver’s eye. He’d sidled into the house with the rest of the crush, but up to now he’d been ignored. Now, seeing the desperation in Eliza’s eyes, he came to her rescue.
“Aubrey’s quite well,” he announced above Aunt Judith’s muffled weeping. All eyes turned at once to him.
“This is Oliver Spencer,” Eliza explained. “He’s the one who delivered me from …” She trailed off, uncertain how to term Cyprian. Her captor. Her lover.
“From that Cyprian Dare,” Uncle Lloyd supplied the name in a stinging, contemptuous tone.
Eliza nodded but her uncle was staring at Oliver. “Why couldn’t you have delivered Aubrey as well?”
Oliver raised his brows and Eliza feared for a moment that he would make some flippant reply, or else reveal something he shouldn’t. Such as the fact that Aubrey could walk now, and that he was having a glorious adventure.