Silver Deceptions

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “I know what you want,” he rasped. It was what he wanted, too. As soon as he got her answer. “If it’s not his name, then whose is it?”

  “Please . . . Colin . . .”

  He waited until he had her panting, then murmured, “Just tell me, dearling, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  “It’s . . . my father’s name. Or so my mother said.”

  He froze, her confession stunning him. This wasn’t what he’d expected. Nor Walcester, apparently, either.

  “Colin?” she asked, her voice trembling. He could see from her face that she hadn’t meant to tell him.

  He wanted to know much more. How her mother had died, why Annabelle had endured her stepfather’s cruelties for so long . . . Yet he must be very careful with her if he wanted all the truth. He slid his hand up to caress her cheek, but she shoved his hand aside with a look of pure betrayal.

  It struck him like a sword in the belly. “Forgive me, dearling, I didn’t mean . . . I shouldn’t have pressed you.”

  For a moment, she looked uncertain whether to trust him. Then she let out a long, harsh breath. “It’s all right. You might as well know the truth.”

  “You came to London in search of your real father.”

  She nodded tersely. “I was all alone in the world. I thought . . . I’d at least look for him. Mother told me he was a gentleman from London with the surname of Maynard. That was all. Then Charity and I got here. We didn’t know where to begin. So I took his name and we found work in the theater, as I told you before.”

  He cursed himself for pressing her so sorely. Her story made perfect sense, and he could hardly blame her for wanting to seek out her real father. He’d have done the same in her place. Slowly, he slid off to lie beside her. She curled her body into a ball, her breath coming in quick gasps.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  She shot him a defensive look. “So you could think that I just wanted to blackmail him or something equally mercenary?”

  He stared hard at her. That was something to consider. Although she would hardly have brought it up if that was what she intended. Would she? “Have you had any luck finding him?”

  She stared up at the ceiling. “You mentioned an earl a few days ago. That’s the only lead I’ve had.”

  Could Edward Maynard really be her father? She didn’t appear to resemble him much, except for her blue eyes, but then, that proved little. “I see.”

  She faced him, her eyes watchful. “Now that you know the truth, perhaps you could aid me in my search.”

  He searched her face. “Perhaps.”

  The tension seemed to leave her body. “If you did, it would mean so much to me.”

  He suddenly wondered who was manipulating whom. “Do you have anything concrete I can use to find this father of yours or at least prove that the Earl of Walcester is your father?”

  She averted her gaze, her fingers working nervously at the sheet. At last she nodded. “I do have one thing.” Wrapping the sheet around her, she slid from the bed. She went to her bureau and took out a box of inlaid ivory. Then she blocked his view with her body, but he could hear the sound of her setting the box down and then a faint click as she apparently unlocked it. He heard the faint click again as she locked the box.

  When she returned, she held an object, which she handed solemnly to him. It was a man’s signet ring of solid gold, rather ornate and bearing a coat of arms.

  “Do you recognize the insignia?” she asked as she sat down.

  Oh yes. It was Walcester’s.

  He fingered the ring a moment longer in silence. What was he to do? Tell her who her father was? He couldn’t do that without first speaking to the earl, but the yearning in her face made his gut twist. ’Sdeath, but she’d had a hard life. She deserved to know her father.

  Then again, there was still one thing her story hadn’t explained. “What has the Silver Swan got to do with all this?”

  She looked startled. “What do you mean?”

  “Why does everyone call you the Silver Swan?”

  “ ’Tis a nickname, that’s all.”

  No, it wasn’t all, and he knew it by the flicker of alarm in her eyes. Why was she lying about that one bit of information?

  He wanted to rail against her, to make her tell him the truth. It wounded him to realize she could still keep something from him after the honest way she’d given him her body.

  Aren’t you keeping something from her as well? his conscience whispered.

  A groan escaped him. He couldn’t blame her for distrusting him, when he distrusted her. Besides, he might be hasty in attributing suspicious motives to her when she might simply be anxious over discussing her absent father.

  “Do you know whose ring it is, Colin?” she asked, interrupting his dark thoughts. “I do wish to find my father.”

  His gaze locked with hers. “Why?”

  “That . . . should be obvious. Everyone wants to know who their real parents are.”

  “Do you wish him to acknowledge you, to give you a portion since your stepfather and mother left you penniless?”

  “No!” The sharpness of her answer took him aback. “No, I don’t care about money.”

  Yet she cared about something, he could tell. She cared very much.

  That decided him. There was another who depended on Colin’s discretion, a friend he’d made a promise to. He dared not tell her more until he knew more.

  He continued to finger the ring. “I’m not sure about the crest, but I might be able to identify it if I ask the right people.”

  A relieved smile crossed her face. “I knew you could help me!”

  Then why not ask for my help before?

  The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he shouldn’t put her on her guard by asking too many questions. He’d have to get his answers another way.

  He glanced at the box on her bureau and wondered what secrets she kept so carefully locked away. Could he get a look inside without arousing her suspicions? Perhaps once she slept . . .

  Suddenly he remembered Mina’s sleeping powder.

  Setting the ring on a nearby table, he gathered her in his arms. “Let’s not talk any longer about matters that make you sad.”

  She easily accepted his embrace. “No, let’s not.”

  He drew her down on the bed, and she curved her body against his, resting her head on his chest. Hell and furies, but despite her suspicious behavior, she still made him want her more fiercely than any woman he’d ever known. It took all his will to fight the stirring in his loins. Nor did it help when she started planting soft kisses over his chest.

  “I don’t think that’s such a wise idea,” he ground out.

  “Why not?” A coy smile gilded her rose-red lips, tempting him to taste of them once more. “Have you exhausted your strength?”

  “Nay, but your body has had plenty of excitement for one day. You’ll be sore enough as it is in the morning.” Nonchalantly, he added, “Tell me, do you feel quite normal now after enduring Mina’s physic?”

  “Not exactly normal.” She licked his nipple. “But it has nothing to do with the physic.”

  His cock instantly responded to her teasing. Oh yes, he’d transformed her into a temptress. He tried to think of anything other than what lay beneath the sheet still wrapped around her seductive little body.

  “I ask,” he said in a strained voice, “because I almost forgot to give you the physic Mina left for you. She said you might feel aftereffects, and this would counter them.”

  Her attention effectively diverted, Annabelle propped her chin on his chest. “Really? Aftereffects?”

  “Yes. In fact, I think you should take it now. I wouldn’t want you to wake up ill in the morning simply because I forgot to give it to you. Mina would chasten me sorely for my omission. Shall I get it?”

  She sighed. “All right, but I certainly tire of filling my body with medicines.”

  Quickly he left the bed before her beau
tiful body could tempt him into changing his mind. He found the pouch of powder and mixed it with some water, then brought the cup to her.

  He watched as she sipped it, guilt stabbing him unexpectedly. In all his years as a spy, he’d never felt quite as much the varlet as he did right now. “Annabelle, is there anything else you think I should know before I go off on this quest for your father?”

  He had to give her the chance to tell him the whole truth.

  For a moment, he thought she might. She concentrated on the contents of the cup. At last she muttered, “Not that I know of,” and drank the whole of it.

  But she avoided his eyes, and he knew she was lying. It cut him down deep, in the part of his heart he’d protected all these years. This was why he had to stop all his intriguing. Because it had begun to hurt.

  Especially when the intriguing involved someone he cared about.

  Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she said, “That’s nasty stuff Lady Falkham is giving out.”

  He nodded, his heart heavy. “Aye, but she says it works.”

  A few moments later, when Annabelle’s head dropped onto the pillow and her eyes drifted shut, he grimly acknowledged that Mina hadn’t lied. The powder worked like a charm. He waited until he was sure Annabelle was asleep before leaving the bed.

  Pulling on his shirt and breeches, he headed for the bureau. Like most people, Annabelle wasn’t terribly imaginative when it came to hiding places, and he found the hidden key to her box easily, tucked inside the binding of a book of poems on her bureau.

  Glancing back to make certain she slept soundly, he opened the box. Inside he found a woman’s usual trinkets—a pressed flower, a thin silver neck chain, a few small rings, the swan brooch. And a piece of rolled paper with a broken seal and a faded ribbon tied around it.

  Carefully, he removed the ribbon and unrolled the paper. A spidery script filled the page, and he realized after reading it that it was a poem. He thought it an odd poem until he read the inscription at the bottom. The Silver Swan.

  Quickly he scanned the lines again. This was no ordinary verse, but a coded one of the kind spies often used to pass messages. Walcester had undoubtedly written it. Judging from the yellowing of the paper, it had been penned some time ago, possibly during the earl’s days spying for the Royalists.

  Colin squeezed his eyes shut as a terrible hurt tore at his heart. Annabelle had lied about the Silver Swan, and Walcester hadn’t been wrong to suspect her. Clearly, she knew far more about Walcester and his political activities than she’d let on, and obviously had no intention of revealing any of it to him.

  He’d been duped by her sadness and tale of woe. “Damned lying actress!” he hissed. He glared at her sleeping form. A seeming innocence lit her face, her eyelashes feathering her cheeks and her hair lying in a tangle over her shoulders, making his emotions clamor riotously within him. Hell and furies, how could she affect him so fiercely?

  Had her story of her fiendish stepfather and her quest for her real father even been true? She did have Walcester’s signet ring in her possession, which was admittedly a sign of something, and she was the right age to be his daughter.

  And there was no doubt she’d been beaten by someone.

  His throat tightened. If he couldn’t get answers from her, he would get them elsewhere. Quickly he memorized the poem, then locked it back up and replaced the key in its hiding place. Picking up the signet ring from where it lay on the bedside table, he slid it on his finger and donned the rest of his clothes.

  If he hurried, he could visit the earl and be back before she awakened. The hour was late, but Colin didn’t care. He wanted the truth, and only Walcester could give it to him.

  With a parting glance at the woman lying in such glorious splendor on the bed, he strode from the room, his jaw clenched. Yes, Annabelle, sweet lying Annabelle, had made him want answers. And he’d get them if he had to shake them out of the earl.

  COLIN TURNED AS the earl entered the drawing room of the Walcester town house. It had taken some talking to convince the man’s steward to disturb his master, but at least Walcester hadn’t kept him waiting once he was roused. Judging from his unbuttoned vest and half-tucked shirt, the earl had dressed in a hurry.

  “I hope you have a good reason for wrenching me from a warm bed in the middle of the night,” Walcester grumbled.

  “I have something to show you.” Colin handed the signet ring to the earl.

  Walcester gave a start as he saw what it was. “Where did you get this?”

  “Is it yours?”

  “Of course it’s mine. You can see my coat of arms on it. Now tell me where you got it!”

  Colin watched the earl carefully. “From the actress. Annabelle Maynard.”

  He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it wasn’t the shock that spread over the older man’s face. The earl dropped into a nearby chair, his eyes riveted on the ring. “Where did she get it? Do you know?”

  “From her mother. She claims it belonged to her father.”

  The blood drained from the earl’s face. He stared past Colin, his eyes bleak. “What town is . . . the actress from?”

  “I only know that it’s in Northamptonshire.”

  “Norwood,” Walcester said. “I can’t believe it. ’Tis impossible.”

  “What’s impossible?” Colin demanded. “That she’s your daughter?”

  “Yes. No.” Walcester fingered the ring in an almost wild distraction. “A pox on it, Hampden, I don’t know if she is or not.”

  No. Half the time the men didn’t know they’d sired children, did they? No wonder Annabelle had been so insistent about his using a sheath. Guilt ate at him. “Is there any chance of it?”

  “There’s always a chance. My God, Hampden, you should know that a man on the run takes his pleasure where he finds it.”

  “You were on the run in Norwood? When was this?”

  A shuttered look came down over the earl’s face. “When I was a spy for Charles I in Cromwell’s army.”

  Colin’s eyes narrowed. “Norwood is close to Naseby.”

  The Battle of Naseby had ended disastrously. Not only had the Royalists lost, but some of the king’s papers had been found by Cromwell’s men, revealing that Charles I was plotting with the Irish, Danes, French, and God knew who else to help him regain power in his kingdom. That had given the parliamentary forces popular support as nothing else had. From there, matters had steadily worsened until the king was finally executed.

  Could Walcester have been part of all that? It didn’t seem likely, but . . . “Were you in Norwood then?”

  Walcester closed up. “What does that have to do with this Annabelle Maynard woman?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out her connection to you, which is what you asked me to do. So she may or may not be your daughter, born of your union with . . . whom? A milkmaid? A cook? A tavern wife you tumbled as you passed through Norwood? All of these?”

  Walcester groaned. “Nay. If she’s of Norwood and bears my ring, then only one woman could be her mother.” The soft glow of candlelight lit Walcester’s tortured face. “Phoebe Harlow, the daughter of Sir Lionel Harlow.”

  Colin gaped at him. Sir Lionel Harlow? So Annabelle’s mother wasn’t some chambermaid or doxy. No wonder Annabelle could play a gentlewoman to perfection. She was a gentlewoman.

  The ramifications of that fired his temper. “You lay with an unmarried gentlewoman and left her with child? Had you no care at all for what you were doing?”

  Walcester bristled at the condemnation in Colin’s voice. “I never knew of the child. After I left, I heard that her family arranged a profitable marriage between her and a powerful squire named Taylor. Even if I could have returned for her during the height of the war, I couldn’t have had her. She’d already married.”

  “Aye. Because you left a babe in her belly.”

  Rising stiffly, Walcester glared at Hampden. “You have no right to speak to me like that. You’ve no doubt le
ft a trail of bastards. I sired only one.”

  Only with extreme difficulty did Colin rein in his temper. “I’ve taken great pains not to sire any. But even if I had, I would have made certain they were well provided for.”

  Walcester didn’t even flinch. “My daughter—if she is my daughter—was raised in a wealthy squire’s home. Is that not ‘well provided for’?”

  Colin glowered at him. “That wealthy squire beat her—quite often, apparently. I saw the marks of his crop on her back.” He added, when Walcester paled, “He also beat her mother. No, I don’t think either of them was ‘well provided for.’ ”

  Turning on his heel, the earl went to stand at the window and gaze out into the cold, dark night. “You’re a damned insolent pup, Hampden.”

  “Aye. You knew that when you asked this favor of me.”

  The older man cursed under his breath. “What of her mother now?”

  “Both she and the squire are dead, or so Annabelle says.”

  He whirled around. “But the woman would only be about forty.”

  “Annabelle said no more than that, but I believe her when she says they’re dead. She says she came to be in the theater because they left her penniless.”

  Walcester’s expression hardened. “Ah, yes, the theater. You’ve done your work well. You’ve unearthed my dark past only to present me with a whoring daughter. Thank you for that fine favor.”

  Struck dumb by the vehemence in those words, Colin balled his hands into fists. “Haven’t you been listening? Your daughter grew up being beaten by the man to whom you abandoned her. Knowing that, all you can say is that I’ve presented you with ‘a whoring daughter’?”

  “No doubt the wench deserved beating if she acted as she has these past months in London. From what I hear, she’s taken more lovers than anyone can count.” He glared at Colin. “And I should rejoice to have such a daughter?”

  Colin wanted to throttle the arse, then set him straight about Annabelle’s many supposed lovers. But that would mean admitting to taking Annabelle’s innocence, and he doubted that Walcester would approve.

  Besides, as far as the earl was concerned, his daughter had shamed him publicly by getting herself talked about as a wanton. Walcester wouldn’t care whether she really was one.