The Passionate One (37 page)

Donne saw Rhiannon
walking swiftly toward the conservatory, a cape over her arm and a huge, lanky
yellow hound pacing beside her.

“You’re not
thinkin’ of going out today, Miss Russell?” Donne called after her.

She looked round in
surprise and smiled doubtfully as he approached. This morning she wore her
beauty full open, a lush highland rose radiant with youth and promise. He only
wished his heart allowed room for something so fresh and honest. Alas, it was
too full with the need for revenge.

“Well, yes... I
was,” Rhiannon said.

“You’ll be blown
from the cliffs, Miss Russell. But if go you must, allow me to accompany you.”

“That is most kind
of you, Lord Donne,” Rhiannon said, “but I confess today I would most enjoy my
own company.”

“But I insist,”
Donne said. He moved close to her and looked down at her shining cap of
unpowdered hair. “I have a note for you from a friend of yours.”

“A friend?” she
repeated.

“Aye. A friend from
Fair Badden.” He offered her his arm, and after that first startled hesitation,
she placed her hand upon his forearm. “Not another word, Miss Russell. Carr was
quite right to term Wanton’s Blush his kingdom and he the king. A despotic
king. He rules through many means, intimidation and blackmail being but two.
Whenever you speak, whatever you say, I advise you to be oblique.”

“Lord Donne, pray
remember that Lord Carr is my guardian,” she said uncomfortably, her eyes
searching his face.

Yes, he thought,
during her short stay at Wanton’s Blush she’d learned to be wary, to trust no
one. Pray God she wouldn’t have to stay and learn harder lessons still.

“So he is,” Donne
said smoothly. They’d reached the conservatory doors. He took her cape from her
arm, spread it wide, and settled it gently on her shoulders. Once more he
offered her his arm. “Shall we walk?”

She nodded and he
drew her outside. The rain fell in fits and starts, stripping the petals from
the flowers. The small ornamental trees in the formal gardens danced with each
gust, the creak of their branches underscoring the rushing sound of wind.

He drew her close
to him, angling himself to protect her as best he could. He led her out onto
the terrace and from there down the stairs, ducking beneath the arch that gave
entry to the kitchen gardens and from there the sea.

At the Seagate he
finally stopped and positioned himself so that he acted as a barrier. He handed
her the letter. She stepped back, half turning for privacy, and broke the seal.
She read and as she read her fine, gold-buffed skin paled, the color bled from
her lips, and her hands shook.

“I would go to him,
Miss Russell,” he said.

Her eyes snapped
up.

“I intercepted the
messenger your fiancé sent, a boy named Payne. I convinced him I had only your
best interest at heart. He was scared. The young should never be burdened with
such responsibility,” he murmured, his gaze distant. He gave himself a little
shake and looked toward her. She was watching him closely. “He told me about
it. About Phillip Watt, and Merrick kidnapping you.”

“You don’t
understand.”

He shook his head
gravely. “I do. Ash Merrick is a ruthless man. I know him. I understand him and
in some ways,” he admitted with a wry smile, “I even admire him. And because I
understand him, because we are in some ways but different sides of the same
coin, I tell you this, Miss Russell. There’s no room in his heart for anything
so fragile as affection or so nebulous as honor.

“There is nothing
for you on McClairen’s Isle but pain, Miss Russell. If you stay you will end up
being a pawn. Carr already has an interest in you, which is frightening enough.
Add to that Merrick’s interest and you have a very unprepossessing future. Did
you know that Merrick specifically asked me to discover how your death could
benefit someone?”

Her head snapped up
at this, her gaze unreadable but intent.

“Yes,” Donne said
gravely, unwilling to hurt her but knowing he could not spare her, “Merrick, too, is trying to determine your worth in this mad chess game being played.”

“Thank you for your
concern, Lord Donne.” She sounded breathless. “It is much appreciated.”

The fear he’d hoped
to engender was nowhere to be seen in her lovely, composed face. Only a deep
sorrow and, oddly, something like peace. Frustrated Donne tried again. “You
don’t understand. This isn’t simply a rather nasty family. It’s evil.

“Carr
killed
his first wife and then killed the next two. No one says it, especially those
dependent on him for their gambling. Who would dare? But in London everyone
knows it, accepts it as fact—including the king.

“Carr is not living
here because the air suits him, Rhiannon. He’s here because he’s been
exiled
here. The king will not have him in London and what’s more, the king has
promised to separate his head from his shoulders should any other heiresses die
under his care.

“That’s what your
guardian is, Miss Russell! He left his sons to rot in God knows what form of
hell rather than spend his precious money to ransom them.

“
And Merrick is his
son.
The same blood runs thick in his veins, believe
me. I’ve seen him skewer a man’s hand for cheating and you saw him fighting—”

“He had to,”
Rhiannon broke in. Her eyes had grown cold and her face frozen. “He has to do
what he does in order to free his brother.”

“His
brother
raped a nun! He is as bad as his sire. They all are.” Donne shouted, infuriated
by her inconceivable faith in Merrick, her abysmal naïveté. “Fia is nothing but
Carr’s whore, groomed to fetch the largest marriage settlement possible!”

“Lord Donne,” Rhiannon
said, the mist beading on her lashes and coating her lips in salty spray, “I...
I am so sorry.”

“I don’t want your
condolences. I want your promise that you will go to Watt. That you will leave
this cursed place.” He grabbed her upper arms, unable to keep himself from
shaking her. “I am
trying
to
help
you, Miss Russell!”

She lifted her
chin, her gaze scouring his face, a slow dawning inspiration turning her
expression first to amazement and then to consternation. “Yes,” she swallowed.
“I promise. I will go to him.”

He released her and
she turned, the wind catching her cape and sending it billowing out behind her
as she retraced her path, leaving him behind in the heightening wind.

* * *

Fia heard the
receding crunch of Donne’s boots on the gravel path. He was leaving.

Her knees buckled
and she slid down the outside of the garden wall, her sodden cloak pooling
around her on the muddy grass. She closed her eyes.

Murder. Whore.
Mad.

That small child
who still dwelt, hidden and secret beneath Fia’s sumptuous, worldly exterior
whimpered. She wished she’d not come here. She wished she could forget what
she’d heard.

She’d come down the
stairs and seen Donne approach Rhiannon and speak. Whatever he’d said had
arrested Rhiannon and with every appearance of consternation, she’d allowed him
to lead her off.

Mindful of Carr’s
instruction to gather whatever information one could, she’d slipped along the
outside of the kitchen garden wall until she’d heard them speaking.

It had not been
hard. Donne’s voice had risen above the rush of heightening wind. She’d heard
every word.

She wished she had
a knife like Ash’s. When Rhiannon had left Donne she would have met him at the
terrace bottom and pierced his black, lying heart. But she didn’t have a knife
and Donne was large and strong and harder than any man she knew, harder even
than Ash.

She had thought
Thomas Donne was perfect: polished, hard, yet with a core of something
immutably... compassionate. She rolled her head against the hard, gray stone,
sobbing on laughter. Compassionate.

She’d fallen in
love with him two years ago, the first day she’d seen him, when he’d come to
Wanton’s Blush with friends and stayed a weekend. Since then she had loved him
with all the intensity of her passionate young heart, doing whatever she could
think of to attract his notice, to secure his regard.

It had been hard.
Every day she’d had to fight to overcome the shyness that drowned her whenever
she was in his presence. Too often she’d succumbed to the insecurities that
made her flee a room he’d entered rather than risk making a fool of herself in
his presence.

She’d adopted every
artifice and embellishment that instructors and governesses, artists and
dressmakers, perfumers and wig makers could provide. For him. And he hated her.
Hated them all.

Because—she bit her
lip until it bled—because, or so he said, her father had murdered her mother.
And Ash was evil and manipulative, and Raine had raped a nun, and she? A little
keening sound rose from deep in her chest. She was a whore. Carr was her procurer.

For the first time
in years, tears sprang to her eyes. They spilled from her lids and streamed
down her face mingling with the pouring rain. More and more of them, a torrent
of them, all the tears she’d never shed and all the ones she would never allow
again. And when she had spent them all, when she was exhausted and soaked with
rain and shivering with nausea and cold, she planted her fists wrist-deep in
the muddy ground and pushed herself upright and made herself walk through the
storm back to Wanton’s Blush.

To her father’s
office.

Chapter Thirty

“What do you mean
you’re not coming with me?” Phillip’s voice rose. Rhiannon met his gaze sadly.
The rain had faded to a soft misting drizzle. Her eyes were as calm and impenetrable
as an autumn pool. She did not look like Rhiannon. She looked like a stranger,
a sad, pitying stranger both older and wiser than the Rhiannon of Fair Badden.
Too wise. He wanted to erase that wisdom from her eyes.

“I can’t go back,
Phillip,” she said. “I came because I owed you more than a note, not because I
intended to leave with you. I’m so sorry, Phillip. I appreciate it so much that
you came here. I only wish I could have spared you the journey.”

“Appreciate?” He
shoved his hand through his wet hair. “You
appreciate
my coming here?
That’s all?”

She didn’t reply
and he felt the fury that now always seemed to be simmering just beneath the
surface of his thoughts boiling forth. “What will you do? Go back to that,” he
flung his hand in the direction of the castle,
“
brothel,
and whore for Merrick? Is that what you choose
over me?”

If his words hurt
her he could find no evidence of it. Her lovely face only grew sadder; her pity
became more pronounced.

“It’s no use,
Phillip,” she whispered. “Even if I agreed—which I never would—your father
would never let us marry and you’d be thankful. Because in your heart, you do
not want to marry me.”

“Don’t say that!”
His glance slewed back to where his companions waited beneath the dripping
trees. Even from a distance, he caught St. John’s disgusted expression and
Fortnum’s miserable one. “We can find a way round my father. He’ll come round.
As long as we live in Fair Badden, he’ll come to accept it. Why, for God’s
sake, he all but chose you to be my bride in the first place!” He tried to
deliver a laugh and failed.

She shook her head.

He ignored her
rejection, anger overwhelming cautionary reason. The moment Ash Merrick had
entered his life, he’d begun destroying it.

God, how he hated
the man! thought Phillip. Merrick had turned his world upside down, charmed and
mesmerized him, and then betrayed him in the most basic sense. Betrayed them
all, Phillip thought, looking back at the others who’d lost money and peace of
mind to that dark prince.

Merrick
would demonize them no longer.

Phillip grabbed
Rhiannon’s arms, hauling her close, vaguely aware that she winced, but too
overwrought to care.

“We don’t need to
get married in a church,” he said. “We’re in Scotland, dammit. We have only to
say the words before a proper witness. We can return to Fair Badden with the
deed already done.”

“But I won’t say
the words,” Rhiannon answered softly.

He shook her hard,
a terrier with a rag, unable to stop himself. “What is it, Rhiannon? Do you
think to become mistress of that castle? Don’t you know what Wanton’s Blush is?
It’s a byword for perversion.”

She squirmed in his
hands. “Phillip, please. You’re hurting me.”

“I don’t care!” he
thundered, his roar rising above the gusting wind. “I don’t care. I have been
hurt, too!”

She stilled. Her
head dipped, but with sadness not shame.

“I know,” she said.
“I know. But this isn’t the way, Phillip. This isn’t going to make it stop
hurting.”