The Passionate One (39 page)

He’d made love
with Rhiannon.
He allowed the words to sweep over him
with all their sweet, shattering power. He’d loved Rhiannon.

He braced his arms
atop the satchel, his head falling forward. He’d loved Rhiannon and he’d never
told her. In a life rife with misadventure and iniquity he knew that was the
one act for which he would never forgive himself.

He threw his head
up, inhaling through clenched teeth. It was as well for her that he’d never
told her. It would have only added to her confusion. She loved Fair Badden. She
cared for Phillip. If she would never again know such passion—he stopped,
forcing himself to bitter honesty—if
he
never again knew that passion,
many lived without it.

If this emptiness
held at its core a hurt that threatened any second to erupt and consume him, he
would survive that, too. It need only take time to heal. Say, a few eternities.

Yet, he thought, he
would not have traded a second in her arms, a single word, not one of her
smiles in order to extinguish all his anguish. Whatever pain it cost him was
well worth the remembrance of her.

He released a long,
shuddering breath and forced himself to buckle the satchel’s straps. France waited.

He threw the pack
over his shoulder and without looking back, walked away from the room, along
the empty corridors, past the silent servants’ furtive glances, down the
filth-littered staircase, and out into the bleak morning light. He headed
across the moss-slick cobbles toward the stables.

A dog’s plaintive
yip echoed through the yard. Dully, he looked about. A big yellow hound had
been tied to the rail. Though the rope bit into her muscular throat she strained
against her bounds. A prime case of Wanton’s Blush tenderness, he thought
bitterly, and went to the beast, bending down and unknotting the choking noose.

“Best leave,” he
muttered. “Take your chances in the mountains. Wanton’s Blush is no place for man
or beast.”

The dog tucked tail
and loped off, it’s stiff hind leg in no manner impeding its speed. Ash stared
after it. “Stella?”

The hound stopped
at the stable yard entrance and looked back.

“Stella,” Ash spoke
quietly. “Come.”

The hound turned
its great head in the direction of the mountains, black nostrils quivering.

“Come.”

Reluctantly, the
dog returned to him. It was Stella. A tiny fire seeped through Ash’s numb
heart. Rhiannon would never have left Stella at Wanton’s Blush. Whatever she’d
intended when she’d gone to meet Phillip, she’d planned on returning. She had
not willingly left here. Joy mingled inexorably with anxiety. He needed to find
her. He started for the stables at a trot.

“Ash!”

He looked back. Fia
was hastening across the courtyard, her cape whipping in the swirling wind.
“Wait!” she called again.

He paused, anxious
to be off, but he waited until she’d reached his side.

“You’re leaving,”
she said.

“Yes.” He was eager
to go, but Fia obviously wanted a few words, and he knew that even if Rhiannon
was an unwilling companion, she was in no danger from Watt.

“You were not going
to bid father a fond adieu?” Her smile was bright and mocking. “Or your little
sister?”

His own raw
vulnerability identified the subtle disappointment in Fia’s young voice. He
regarded her sadly. Whatever Fia was, she had been made that way through no
offices of her own. “Fia, do you want to leave here?”

His words took her
aback. Her smooth face softened with astonishment. She searched his face
warily, as if suspecting a trick. “No, no... I can’t.” The words tumbled out.
“Where would I go? What would I do?” She lifted her chin. “Why would I want to
leave, anyway?”

“I can’t take you
with me now,” Ash said, reading the distrust in her gaze. “Not now. But if you
wish, I will come back for you, Fia.”

She opened her lips
to frame some stinging reply but her mouth snapped shut without uttering it.

“Think on it, Fia.
I’ll write. I promise.”

He called the dog
to his side and had started past Fia, when she caught at his sleeve. “Where are
you going?”

“Rhiannon,” he said
shortly.

Her brow puckered.
“She’s gone?”

“Yes.”

“But she can’t. She
mustn’t.” Fia’s silky voice had roughened with such fear that Ash halted in the
act of uncurling her fingers from his sleeve.

“What is it you know,
Fia?” Ash asked. She hesitated. “Fia!”

“I think Rhiannon
is in danger from Carr. I read his letters last night, all of—”

“What did you find,
Fia?” Ash cut in.

“Her brother, Ian
Russell, he’s alive. He lives on one of the French-owned islands by the Americas.”

“Still alive?”
Ash’s tension eased. “Then Rhiannon is not an heiress. She should be safe.
Unless Carr has hired someone to kill her brother.”

He threw the
consideration out without thought and was shocked when he saw Fia blanch. Dear
God, he thought in astonishment, she had not known what Carr was capable of and
was only now discovering it.

“Yes,” she said in
a distant, hushed voice. “I don’t think... Russell has been sending Carr money
for Rhiannon’s support and a substantial dower. Over the last ten years Russell
has sent Carr thousands of pounds. Money Rhiannon never saw.”

The quarterly entry
in Carr’s ledger. The overseas property Carr’s little man of business had
mentioned. Of course.

“There’s more,” Fia
went on, lifting her face and speaking calmly now, too calmly. “I found a
letter from this Ian Russell. Though he’s a Jacobite fugitive, he grows
homesick. Ash, he’s coming here for one day, to see Rhiannon and then return to
his island. I think Carr plans to have him arrested or... or killed.”

One day.
Realization swept over Ash in a cold, tidal wave of fear.

“No, Fia,” he said.
“Carr would never allow his association with a known Jacobite to become public
or Russell to testify; it would end any hope Carr has of returning to society,
if not forfeit his own life. And Carr can’t take the chance that a hired
assassin might fail. Russell is an unknown quantity, an adult, a battle-tested
man who may well arrive with his own complement of companions.”

He turned from Fia
and began moving away, but Fia caught his arm again. “Why do you look like
that?” she demanded. “What does he plan?”

He jerked his arm
from her hold. “He plans to kill Rhiannon.” He threw the words over his
shoulder as he broke into a trot, his thoughts racing. That is why Carr had
sent him to Fair Badden. Ash had been sent not to retrieve Rhiannon, but
Rhiannon’s corpse.

Ash ran faster, the
king’s edict ringing in his head: “No flower of England must die while under
Carr’s care.” Carr had made sure that Rhiannon wasn’t under his care, that she
was miles away, that she had, in fact, never even met Lord Carr. Why, Ash
himself would provide witness to that fact.

He burst through
the stable doors and raced to his horse’s stall, snatching it open and
entering. Carr had planned it so perfectly. Ash would return with the body.
Carr would strip the rings from Rhiannon’s cold fingers and give them to Ian
Russell, who would be too overwhelmed by grief to ask questions, and soon after
gone forever, never realizing that not a penny of his money had reached
Rhiannon. Should Russell find out otherwise, there was no telling what
retribution he would seek, what he would do.

Hands flying Ash
bridled and saddled his horse and leapt into the saddle, grabbing for the
reins. No wonder Carr had been so stricken when he’d arrived at Wanton’s Blush
with Rhiannon. It was the one place on earth Carr could not allow her to die.

But now she’d left,
and Carr’s agent, whoever he’d hired or blackmailed into killing her, could
finish the job.

Ash dug his heels
into his horse’s sides, flaying, it with his hand and calling out loudly as the
steed launched itself from the stable doors.

He had to get to
Rhiannon before the assassin did.

“Where the bloody
hell has she gone?” Phillip roared. His voice sent the starlings shrieking from
the pine branches.

“Back to her
lover,” St. John sneered, crawling to his feet.

“I’ll get her
back,” Phillip declared. His fury was a living thing. Merrick had taken her not
once, but twice now. This last time Merrick might not have dragged her off, but
she hadn’t left here of her own volition. She’d become Merrick’s doxy, chained
to him by carnal desire.

“Nay, Phillip,”
John Fortnum said gravely. “Nay. The lass doesn’t want to be rescued. It’s
clear to see.”

Phillip swung on
him, his hands balling into fists at his side. “She doesn’t know what’s good
for her. She’s fascinated, under his spell. I’ll break the hold he has on her
when I break his filthy neck.”

The others gained
their feet and traded cautious glances.

“I didn’t come here
to commit murder,” Ben Hobson finally said.

“Is it murder to
rid the world of a devil?” Phillip demanded. “He taints whatever he touches and
destroys what he seduces. He deserves nothing less than death!”

“No, Phillip,”
Fortnum pleaded. “Think what you’re saying. He’s a man, Phillip, like any other
man. No demon.”

Phillip ignored
him, ignored them all, stalking past the shuffling, muttering men and slinging
his saddle over his mount. He laced the cinch straps and tightened the girth,
the air hot in his lungs as he put on the bridle. Finished, he swung into the
saddle, yanking back on the reins and spinning the horse around.

The men had not
moved and Phillip scoured them with his glare. “Go then! Tuck tails and run!
I’ll find him without you!”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Hie on!” Ash
shouted. The great, yellow bitch darted about the cold campfire with increasing
agitation, her hackles rising and foam spattering the huge muzzle sweeping the
ground. At the edge of the clearing she suddenly lifted her head and shot into
the brush, angling back the way they’d come. Ash hesitated. There would be no
reason for Watt to take Rhiannon back toward Wanton’s Blush. Nothing lay
between here and there but rough wilderness.

He bent over in his
saddle, studying the ground. The majority of hoof prints clearly led south and
to the west, yet Stella’s attitude had been nearly frantic, as though the scent
had been thick in her nose. She’d not led him wrong yet.

Ash spurred his
horse, plunging down the rocky slide of land after the hound.

The beast had been
misplayed, he thought watching her. She was no gazehound, but a scent hound.
She’d taken the lead from the beginning, quartering in sharp angles ahead of
him, her nose to the earth, following a trail only she could discern. It was
almost enough to make Ash believe in a benevolent deity, one who’d sent Stella
to him as guide, for without her he would never have been able to pick up
Rhiannon’s trail in this unmarked wasteland.

But the hound had
been crippled and the day had worn perilously hard on her injured leg. Except
for sporadic bursts of speed, she lagged now, loping on three legs.

With increasing
regularity Ash had circled the failing dog in ever widening rings, stopping
often to rise in the stirrups and call Rhiannon’s name. Each minute now
portended a coming crisis, a fatal meeting between Rhiannon and Carr’s
assassin.

Around noon
Rhiannon reached a high pasture. She sat down and pulled off her half boot. She
tore another strip of silk from her underskirt and replaced the bandage
covering the open blister on her ankle. A shiver racked her body and she
shrugged out of her damp jacket, hoping that the weak sun would warm her.

She shouldn’t be
stopping at all, but she was beyond tired—wet and still cold from her night out
on the mountain. Twice now she’d thought she’d heard the sound of pursuit. Once
she’d glimpsed a lone rider on the lower slopes of the mountain. But that had
been early and she’d kept to the steep upper slopes since then, eschewing the
easier footing below.

All of her years as
mistress of the hunt stood her in good stead. She knew the tricks of
backtracking, the importance of moving with the wind through the densest brush
and of staying away from the open places. Each time she utilized these lessons,
she swore she would never again chase down an animal for sport. She understood
too well now what it was to be the prey.

She forced her
swollen foot back into the half boot and stood, looking cautiously down the
long, empty pasture. The storm had blown over at dawn, leaving only a thin fog
that the sun had quickly burned away. Before her the field grasses bowed low,
fanned by a chastising breeze.

It would be
criminally easy to spot a dark-clad figure moving across that flat green
expanse but the alternative of climbing through the steep banks flanking the
narrow valley would cost her hours. Hours Phillip would put to good use. He had
the advantage. He knew where she was going and he must know she dared not spend
another night exposed to the elements on the open mountains. Her only hope lay
in reaching McClairen’s Isle before he found her.