“Though he never found out about the wedding in Strathbrae?”
“He did not.”
“But Major Crabtree knew—he had these papers here all along.”
“And must have realized what they would mean to Lady Augusta and Diana. When the major turned up here with me, Lady Augusta was a widow, seven months with child. This news would have crushed her. I never thought Sir Robert so noble, but life is full of surprises.”
Eleanor felt overwhelmed. As she thought of Moira Campbell, vainly searching for her baby and then dying alone among strangers, tears burned fiercely in her eyes.
“You come from a ruthless line on both sides, don’t you?” she said. “Who among them all cared about your poor mother?”
Lee reached up to brush the moisture tenderly from her cheek. “Eleanor, sweet girl, don’t cry!”
“I am not crying!”
She turned her head to hide the tears and raised both hands to brush them away.
Was it only natural that Leander Campbell should take her by the shoulders and pull her gently into his arms? As she struggled not to break down, he held her against his lithe strength, while his long fingers moved over her hair, smoothing it.
The edge of his jacket lay beneath her cheek. The clean scent of his shirt filled her nostrils. His heart beat a steady rhythm. His fingers on her hair felt wonderful. She relaxed against him. He took her hands one at a time and gently moved them into her lap, then he tipped her face up to his. Eleanor couldn’t understand the expression that darkened his eyes, but it seemed filled with pain and longing.
“I care, brown hen,” he said gently.
His voice was stripped of all sarcasm. It was a tone she had never heard him use before.
Light kisses moved across her cheeks and eyelids, smoothing away the tears and beguiling her into closing her eyes. He brushed a loose wisp of hair from her cheek and nibbled gently at her ear. The sensation was exquisite.
At last his lips moved down to hers and he took possession of her mouth. In the next moment she forgot everything but the passion that seared between them. He kissed her until her mouth felt swollen and hot. Delight burned through her veins like a fever. Her arms moved unwittingly around his neck. The softness of his dark hair and the strength of his body beckoned with a strange, enticing delectation.
She slid one hand beneath his jacket. His muscles flexed hard beneath her palm as she caressed him, finding the strong indent of his spine, the heat of his skin beneath his shirt. She knew with a burning shame that her surrender to him was absolute and that she didn’t care. She didn’t want any of this to stop.
Firm hands grasped hers and pulled them down. He released her mouth, leaped up, and strode away to the fireplace.
He leaned against the mantel and grasped his head in both hands, as if he were facing some great struggle and was drawing together all of his resources.
“Damn it all!” he said.
Then he turned to her and laughed.
“That’s how it’s done,” he said ruthlessly. “No doubt it’s how my father did it. But Moira Campbell wasn’t an earl’s daughter, so he faced no reprisals for his seduction. You had better be more careful in future, Lady Eleanor Acton. Rakes have few scruples.”
Her heart simply snapped, like a bone caught in a mantrap. The pain of it blinded her for a moment, leaving her nothing to call on except pride. She straightened her spine as if she buckled on armor—too late, too late!
“And you have none,” she said.
His face was a mask. “That’s right. Nor do I want to be earl. The gutter suits me far better.”
“Then return there.”
The candlelight threw deep shadows under his strong jaw and chin.
“I shall, with pleasure,” he said calmly.
He took the papers from the mantelpiece and looked at them one last time. The birth and death certificates he slipped into his pocket, but he very deliberately held the other page to the candle. The marriage papers blackened and curled, then burst into flames. He held them by one corner for a moment as they flared up, then he dropped the remains into the fireplace where the ashes disintegrated into soot.
“And so ends our little melodrama,” he said. “You will tell no one what you learned here tonight, of course.”
“What do you take me for?” Eleanor said. “I hope I have sufficient honor to hold my tongue. You may have my word on it. I understand your motives very well, but I haven’t forgotten what it would mean for Diana to be disinherited and disgraced. Or even Lady Augusta! Though I’m sure you don’t care about her. I’m only surprised that you didn’t keep the papers to hold over her head.”
“And blackmail her, too? Perhaps I’m not as thorough as you think me, Lady Eleanor. It may surprise you to learn that the events of this evening have slightly disturbed my equilibrium, and so I have lost a golden opportunity. Strangely, I regret nothing.”
“Well, I do!” Eleanor said with passion. “I regret that I ever met you.”
“And I you,” he said without mercy. “I prefer my ladies with a little more polish and a lot more experience. Now, for God’s sake, will you let me take you home?”
“I should rather die.”
He raised a brow. It was the most insulting gesture Eleanor could imagine.
“Dear child,” he said. “We are civilized human beings in the staid and ordinary county of Norfolk. Heroines in romances would rather die. Ladies in the nineteenth century recognize that it is perfectly unexceptionable to allow a gentleman to escort them home.”
“At night? Through three miles of dark lanes?”
“You think I shall ravish you under a bush? Alas, I like my creature comforts too much for anything so gothic. Now, let’s go.”
He went to the door and opened it. There was nothing Eleanor could do except walk through.
She pulled her cloak tight to her chin and held up her head in the most superior manner taught by Miss Able. Mr. Campbell followed. He pulled back the bolts and chains that secured the front door and they stepped out onto the driveway. He made no attempt to take her arm or touch her again.
With Eleanor walking stiffly at his side, the true Earl of Hawksley strode away toward his rejected inheritance in silence. When the house loomed up before them, she marched around to the window she had left open. They had just walked three miles without exchanging a word.
She turned to him and tossed back the hood of her cloak.
“What are you going to do about my mother?” she asked bluntly.
The moonlight shadowed his face in shades of gray, but his smile seemed perfectly relaxed. “What would you like me to do?”
“Return the letters to her, of course.”
“The letters will be returned.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Let’s just say it’s an intent.”
“Because your word means nothing and you have no honor at all, have you? I despise you.”
Lady Eleanor Acton climbed in through the window before she should change her mind.
For she didn’t despise him. She didn’t really know what she felt, except misery.
In spite of everything, Leander Campbell entranced her. Her blood burned as if his lips still moved on hers and his lithe strength flexed beneath her palms. The way he laughed. The way his throat flexed as he turned his head. The way he rode, and walked, and tossed his defiance at the world.
His energies might be devoted to mischief and destruction, but his mind was brilliant, his diffidence fascinating—and his beauty haunted her dreams.
How humiliating to feel a misplaced schoolgirl crush when you knew that the object of your infatuation was a wicked, unmitigated rogue!
* * *
Lee knew he was close to the edge.
Moira Campbell, his mother, had married the future Earl of Hawksley in the kirk at Strathbrae. He wasn’t—had never been—a bastard. His father had behaved unforgivably, but perhaps he wasn’t entirely wicked. Lee had never thought it mattered what kind of man his father had been, but it did, of course.
When Gerald Hart went to Scotland, he had been young and foolish, and Ian Campbell must have been a formidable opponent. There may even have been threats. Between them, Moira had been crushed like a shell beneath the surf. Yet it hadn’t been a casual seduction. They had married, with witnesses and with the blessing of the church.
Yet tragedy compounds on itself. Butcher Cumberland had rampaged viciously through the Highlands after Culloden, leaving ruined homes and shattered lives in his wake. As a child Ian Campbell had suffered the loss of everything he knew and been trapped ever afterward in bitterness and hatred for England.
So he had torn his legitimate grandson from his own daughter’s arms and sent the baby to Ireland.
Lee choked back a storm of emotion. The knowledge hammered at his defenses. He must hold on for Diana’s sake. Yet as Earl of Hawksley he could claim rank, fortune, privilege—and court Lady Eleanor Acton with honor—but only at the cost of ruin for his sister and stepmother.
He could never do it.
Was anyone hurt by his sacrifice? Only himself. Lady Eleanor Acton actively despised him—he had made sure of that. There was nothing else he could do under the circumstances than see that she continued to feel that way, and in time she would forget him.
With ruthless self-discipline, Lee studied and accepted every consequence of his decision. Then he strode back to Deerfield through the shattered remains of the night.
Only one purpose had brought him to Norfolk in the first place—blackmail.
In finding out about his mother’s marriage he had almost forgotten that. For someone who prided himself so much on clear thinking and competence, he hadn’t managed very well tonight.
Yet as he had guessed when he first saw them together, Lady Acton had come to Norfolk to pursue an affair with the major. Now he knew also that she had written love letters, which had been stolen. And so she was being blackmailed, which was what linked Manton Barnes and Lady Acton. It was up to him to discover who the blackmailer was.
There was only one clue, though it seemed too unlikely.
Dawn was creeping up the sky like a blush when he reached the major’s home and strode into the library. He walked up and down for several minutes, before he threw himself onto the sofa.
As if all his resolution meant nothing, he was enveloped in the memory of Eleanor’s soft skin and sweet scent, and felt stunned once again by the passion and honesty of her response to his lovemaking.
He dropped his face into his hands and began to curse, very deliberately and very thoroughly. She was also lovely, and brave, and clever, and honorable to the core. The one catastrophe he could never have planned for had struck him down like a thunderbolt: He was in love.
Immediately he straightened up and laughed.
“For God’s sake, Leander Campbell,” he said aloud. “You’re no better than a smitten miss. If your gambling cronies could see you now, it would be the end of all bets on your skill.”
* * *
It was a very long time before Eleanor could get to sleep. She was privy to information that could destroy Lady Augusta and Diana. Even if she hadn’t given her word to keep it secret forever, she would never have revealed it.
But what about Leander Campbell? Could he really be trusted? Mr. Campbell might have destroyed a critical part of the evidence, but the marriage had still taken place. Once his first shock had worn off, would he regret his impulsive action? Or had he enacted that entire little drama just to impress her?
She wished fervently that she had never gone to Deerfield and found those papers. For now she had put them all into the hands of a man who was quite ruthless. Meanwhile, her mother’s letters were still missing, leaving Lady Acton and Major Crabtree at the mercy of the blackmailer.
So how could she still yearn for Mr. Campbell’s company? Why couldn’t she control her feelings for him? Because she was young and inexperienced and he, quite simply, was not.
With determination, she turned over and closed her eyes. What she had discovered didn’t change a thing. True earl or not, Leander Campbell was beneath contempt. If he decided to claim his birthright, she couldn’t prevent it. But whatever happened, Diana would never learn the truth from her.
* * *
Lee left for Norwich before the sun rose much further. None of the major’s servants had any idea that their guest had returned, only to go without sleep for a night, and was now leaving without breakfast.
Frank Garth looked up in surprise when Mr. Campbell’s black horse came trotting into Little Tanning. Even the farm laborers were mostly still abed. The sound of the horse’s hooves rang in counterpoint to the voices of birds greeting the dawn.
“Good morning, Mr. Garth,” he said, saluting the old man with his whip. “You’re up very early. How do you and your wife do this morning?”
“Well enough, sir, and all the better for seeing you.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Garth, for I have some questions for you.”
Frank Garth set aside the blade he was sharpening and gazed up at the young man. He was shrewd enough to know that something was wrong, though the handsome features were schooled into indifference. Mr. Garth quietly refrained from letting his own face shown any concern. Leander Campbell had been a proud and private individual even as a lad. Frank Garth would only know what the matter was if the young gentleman chose to tell him.
“Fire away, Mr. Campbell,” he said.
Lee stepped down off his horse and sat down on a stone bench in front of the cottage. He leaned back and closed his eyes, allowing the weak sunlight to play across his eyelids.
“I would like to know,” he said after a moment, “about your brother. I am given to understand that he was a famous carpenter?”
* * *
When Lee reached Norwich it was well past noon. He strode into the dining room of the Dog Inn and ordered a substantial meal. For someone who had apparently done no more than hack up from Deerfield, he seemed to have taken a profligate amount of time, and the state of his horse had caused the ostler some complaint. The black was hot and lathered. It would have to be walked out before it could be put away.
The landlord had already cleared away the remains of the roast beef and left Mr. Campbell idly sipping at his claret, when Major Crabtree came in and joined him at the table.