The Passionate One (13 page)

“Merrick. Ash Merrick. Carr’s son—”

A flicker ignited
in the cool depths of Ash’s dark eyes as he searched the faces turned toward
him. He was not drunk, he was pretending, Rhiannon thought. And all those
things he’d said, all those words he’d played upon...

“What sort of a
game is this?” she heard Edith Fraiser exclaim. The company parted and she
sailed forth, her skirts bunched in fists on either hip, her face rouged with
concern. Purposefully, she stomped toward Merrick, bypassing the knife without
a glance.

With a start,
Rhiannon realized that her foster mother, as well as the vast majority of those
present, was unaware of how close that blade had come to separating Rhiannon’s
spirit from her flesh.

“Is that really Mr.
Merrick, then?” Edith demanded.

“Aye, madame,” Merrick murmured in a low, distracted tone. “And I, too, would like to know what game this
is.”

He turned and
suddenly his face wore a lopsided smile. “Ala
th
... I mean alas... I am
revealed!” he called, bowing inelegantly. “And since
I
am revealed, I
insist my cohorts suffer likewise. Unmask! Unmask!”

With a drunken
shout, Phillip tugged until his mask came off. “Me, too!” he cried jubilantly.
“Revealed, that is!”

The others followed
his example. Around them, Lady Harquist’s astounded guests stared, snickered,
smiled, and finally laughed. Even Lady Harquist, seeing how well the fake
acrobats were received, allowed herself a moue of self-congratulation.

True, a few ladies
sniffed—these, confirmed sticklers—but overwhelmingly the crowd approved. A
spattering of applause even broke out and Phillip’s father, hunched and
crippled with gout though he was, banged his cane upon the floor in approval.

“This your doing,
Mr. Merrick?” the old man demanded. “Good for you, sir. Our society is grown
stale of late. We’re wanting a bit of piss to shine the pewter!”

With a debonair
swoop of his hand, Ash saluted the crowd and then ruined the gesture by
staggering sideways and tipping into the wall. His shoulder hit the paneling
with an audible thud. He stayed there, canted against the paneling, his face
six inches from where the knife protruded. He cocked his head and studied it.

“What’s this?
What’s this?” he muttered.

He was drunk after
all, Rhiannon thought and then castigated herself for being disillusioned.

So? She’d mistook a
spark of reflected light in his pupil for keenness and the candle-made shadows
beneath his cheeks for taut alertness. She’d supposed his words filled with
meaning when they were filled only with mead. She averted her eyes from him.
They felt hot and she would not cry. She had no reason to cry.

Ash craned his head
around and, seeing her, smiled stupidly. She winced and then, realizing how
unfair she was, forced a smile. It was no part of his fault that she’d dressed
him as her knight and that the shining armor did not fit.

His expression
betrayed a momentary puzzlement and then he pointed at the knife. “You were
standing here, weren’t you, Miss Russell?”

“Yes,” she
answered. “What of it?”

Curious partygoers,
finally alerted to the presence of a knife in their hostess’s linen-paneled
wall, had gathered in a loose semicircle around them.

“He thinks someone
hurled a knife at Miss Russell,” a lady said.

A snort of
masculine contempt. “Some bungler missent it. Accident.”

“Probably one of
Watt’s fool friends,” an older man declared. “Not a grain of sense amongst the
lot.”

A low murmur
rippled through the assembly.

“What’s that Merrick fellow doing now?” a lady near Rhiannon asked.

“Who cares? Just
let him stretch the cloth tight across those shoulders once more and I’ll be
counted content,” a low feminine voice whispered in approval.

“Handsome creature,
is he not? Dark as a storm-tossed night,” another lady concurred.

“Aye and I’d be
tossed right enough... if I could arrange to meet him of a night,” came the throaty
rejoinder.

Rhiannon bit back a
reply. It was no concern of hers what these trollops thought. Ash finished his
scrutiny of the stiletto and turned. His gaze lit on her.

“Begad! I have it!”
he declared with an air of sudden inspiration. “Someone here has mistook this
tasty morsel for his dinner!” He pointed at her. Dozens of eyes followed his
gesture with amused interest.

He clucked his
tongue. “Now what knave would seek to use a knife on what is so clearly...
finger food?”

Heat raced up
Rhiannon’s throat and burned in her cheeks. Several of the men caught back
their laughter, and smiles were traded behind the shield of lace handkerchiefs
and widespread fans. He was easing the tensions that had grown in the
overheated room, Rhiannon realized. Relaxing them. Why?

“Come now,” Ash
said, “someone must claim this knife. Where did it come from, friend rogue?” He
hailed the wiry acrobat who’d clambered on Phillip’s shoulders.

She’d forgotten
Phillip. She looked around. Her fiancé was no longer sitting on the floor. He’d
disappeared.

“I do not know
where that comes from,” the gypsy answered. “I was concentrating on the knives.
My
knives. That sticker isn’t a Romany blade.”

Ash jerked the
blade from the wall. “True,” he said. “No gypsy threw this pretty steel.”

He ran his
fingertip along the blade, testing the edge. He withdrew a finger marked with a
thin red line.

“And as we all can
attest, the only reason a blade leaving a Romany hand would hit this wall is
because that is where the gypsy wanted it. Why would one of them do that, do
you suppose? It’s a far bit too early for them to be expressing disappointment
in the tips.”

Laughter met this
unassailable observation. Merrick sighed gustily, squinting at the knife.
“Whose then?”

He lurched toward
Rhiannon and without warning grasped her upper arm, pulling her near. His grip
was strong; his body exuded the remnant heat and scent of his exertions.
Earthy. Masculine.

His dark face moved
close. His rum-soaked breath sluiced over her face. She should have been
disgusted and part of her was, but another was not. Another part of her wanted
to discover if his mouth tasted of the drink, if drunk he could still make her
knees grow weak with his kiss, if his body was as hot as it seemed.

“Who do you think
flung that knife, miss? And why? Did someone think to make symmetry on that
lovely face of yours with a twin scar?”

“I’m sure it was an
accident.” She pulled back; it would be too easy to lean forward.

“Aye. Accidents.”

“Here now, Merrick!” Phillip’s loud salutation broke over their heads like a thunderclap. He appeared
behind them, lowering over them like a convivial giant.

He swung one of his
huge arms around Rhiannon’s shoulders and another around Ash drawing them both
together in an embrace that brought them within inches of each other. “It won’t
do any good, Merrick!” he said, fondly ruffling Ash’s black hair.

“What won’t do any
good?”

“Fussing over that
damned sticker won’t divert anyone’s attention from the fact that you owe St. John two hundred pounds!” At this, Phillip crowed with laughter.

“That’s right,
Merrick,” St. John said, making his way toward them. “Your disguise didn’t last
the hour you promised.”

“What’s this about
a bet?” one of the gentlemen asked.

“True, sir,”
Phillip said. “Mr. Merrick here bet St. John that he could cozen you all into
thinking him one of these gypsy knaves for just as long as he wanted. Well, he
lost and now he can stay and take his comeuppance.”

Phillip exerted
another powerful squeeze on his hapless prisoners. Ash was no proof against
Phillip’s strength. He stumbled toward Rhiannon who, manhandled in a like
manner on Phillip’s other side, toppled forward. Ash’s hands flew out, catching
her around the waist and steadying her.

His touch set her
afire. She swallowed, willing herself not to react, not to flush, not to melt.

Even through the
thick satin material, his touch burned her. So little a thing, so harmless, and
yet, it stirred her blood, incited riotous visions. Visions she had no right
entertaining.

She was worse than
any flirt; she was a right molly, a slut, but that knowledge did not stop her
from hating it when he took his hand away. She looked around in a panic,
anywhere so she wouldn’t have to encounter his eyes, and found Phillip watching
her.

“
Th
ass right.” His handsome golden head bobbed with soggy approval. “Make
up. Be friends.”

“Why should they?” St. John’s humorous voice intoned. “She’s the author of his loss. ’Twas she who called out
Merrick’s name. She revealed him.”

“Did she, now?”
Phillip asked, eyeing Rhiannon proudly. “What do you think of that, Ash
Merrick? I think I ought to collect half the winnings.”

“Not bloody
likely,” St. John said before Ash could answer. He leaned in close, his mouth
inches from Rhiannon’s ear, but though he whispered close to Rhiannon ’twas Ash
his gaze fixed on.

“Best watch that
girl, Merrick,” St. John advised. “She’ll be the ruin of you.”

Ash blinked at St. John, a vague smile on his handsome face. “Unless I’m wrong, I believe she already has
been.”

He smiled
throughout the rest of party. He smiled as he drank his way through an
additional two bottles of port and he smiled as he traded suggestive sallies
with Margaret Atherton. He smiled as he danced and he smiled as he counted out
two hundred pounds into St. John’s plump, gloved hand. And he smiled, by God,
as he saw Rhiannon’s confusion become disappointment then hurt.

When dawn stained
the sky with her orchid-colored blood, he smiled and accepted Lady Harquist’s
offer of a bed. He was smiling as he staggered from the salon, and when he
turned the door handle to the bedchamber, he was smiling still.

Because while
tomorrow his obligation to his brother might make him a cheat or a thief or
even a murderer, here, tonight, in this place, he was a congenial rascal, a bon
vivant. A smiler.

But when the door
shut behind him and he leaned his head against its panels, his smile died. He’d
lost two hundred pounds because of her. Raine rotted in a French prison and he
played fast and loose with money that could buy his freedom. And why? Because
someone had thrown a knife too near her and he’d immediately concluded that her
life was in mortal danger and he must save her, revealing himself—and losing
his bet—in the process. At least he’d had enough presence of mind to mask his
concern beneath a façade of drunkenness.

He should be strung
up and gutted. One minute of lucid thinking would have shown that it
had
been an accident just like the highwayman having targeted Rhiannon’s carriage
had been simple ill luck.

Ash had searched
the countryside without finding a trace of the robber. And the reason for that
was simple: He’d found none because the bounder had fled. There was no
malevolent assassin lurking about waiting for the opportunity to kill a
penniless girl.

Ash sneered. Either
the two accidents had been just that, unconnected misfortunes, or someone in
Fair Badden wanted Rhiannon dead. And who would that be, and why?

He was the worst
kind of fool, one who needed to romanticize simple lust. He’d spent most of the
week trying to get drunk enough to lose his erection. It hadn’t worked.

He closed his eyes,
willing the liquor in his blood to erase the taste of her soft mouth, the
fragrance of her dark hair... Six more days. Then she’d belong to that big,
congenial boy.

Ash’s hands
clenched at his side, as he forced one last smile around his teeth. He had to
get out of here. He had to get out of this damnable place, these terrifyingly
defenseless lambs. The wolf should slink back to the black forests and leave
the sheep wholly innocent of what had, for some short weeks, moved undiscovered
amongst them.

He could leave now.
There was no real reason for him to stay. He pushed himself away from the door.
He
would
leave now.

Except that someone
had
thrown that knife. At her heart. He knew it.

He twisted,
pounding his fist against the door. The stiletto had impaled the paneling at
chest level. It stood at right angles to the wall. Someone had hurled it with
deadly speed and precision.

He cursed roundly
and viciously, but in the end it didn’t affect his decision. He’d stay until
she was another man’s concern, another man’s responsibility.

Another man’s.

Chapter Twelve

Edith Fraiser sat
on the bench outside the kitchen door, the gay ribbons that would adorn
Rhiannon’s May Day dress spilling over her skirts. She peered at the horizon.
Dark weather was coming. Not today or this night, thank the Lord, which was
Beltaine Night. No one enjoyed a soggy Beltaine. But perhaps tomorrow—which
would be a shame as a soggy May Day was almost as sad.