A Lady's Honor

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  You’ve made your bed. You can lie in it. I doubt Romsford will want you now.

  If only Mama were right. Unfortunately, she’d heard the marquess remained in Truro, though he had made no attempt to see Elizabeth.

  Suddenly, the empty stretch of beach no longer appealed. Nor did walking anywhere but inside Grandmama’s walled garden draw her interest now that she realized how easily, in this remote county, Romsford could take her away, carry her off to Guernsey or even Scotland by boat where no one was likely to catch up with them.

  Yet surely the man didn’t want or need her that badly. He couldn’t need the money. His wealth, garnered from the dowries of his previous wives, was legendary.

  And so was hers. So was the connection of her family.

  Senara should recognize that she was the fortunate one. If a man of wealth asked her to marry him, she’d know it was because of who she was, not because she brought anything but herself to the marriage.

  She stared at her reflection in the glass and the darkening sky beyond. “I think we will have fine weather tomorrow.”

  A banal thing to say. If she and Grandmama were alone, she’d have asked about family history and treasures worth more than Bastion Point and why Grandpapa had suddenly decided to place Bastion Point on the family auction block instead of passing it to Elizabeth’s father and then Drake in the normal scheme of inheritance when a male heir was present.

  Not that Drake was present. He’d sailed four days earlier, headed for the West Indies, provided a French ship didn’t capture his vessel along the way. He’d promised to write. He’d left a note for her in the cave, telling her to be wary of the stranger Rowan Curnow.

  For all you know, he works for Romsford.

  That, at least, she didn’t believe against him. Too easily, he could have turned her over to the marquess between meeting her on the road and seeing her safely into Grandpapa’s care. He worked for Austell Penvenan. Lord Penvenan, apparently, since the man held an unbreachable alibi for the night of Conan’s murder. Not that he couldn’t have hired someone to do it. Considering how much money he was already spending on Penmara and workmen to repair the old manor house, hiring an assassin seemed a trivial expense. The rumors circulated around the neighborhood like a hurricane wind, growing stronger with each passing day, according to the callers at Bastion Point.

  Sick to her stomach all of a sudden, Elizabeth drew the curtains closed against the dying light and headed for the parlor door.

  “Where are you going?” Senara pushed herself out of her chair like an old woman with rheumatism.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath to master her impatience, trying to think how lost she’d feel without her brother, even if they had seen nothing of one another over the past six years. “I am going to my room to lie down before dinner. I am afraid I’ve the headache.”

  Senara’s countenance drooped from her eyelids, to the corners of her mouth, to her chin that was threatening to become a double one soon. “I am so used to talking to Conan in the evenings, I feel quite lonely.”

  Elizabeth cast Grandmama a helpless glance.

  “Why do you not rest also, Senara.” Grandmama rose. “We will put together a puzzle game after dinner. I just received a shipment of new ones.”

  Senara’s face lit. “I do love puzzles. But I am used to having a household to take care of.” Senara’s lower lip protruded.

  “I am afraid the housekeeper would not appreciate me having you dust the library shelves.” Grandmama smiled. “But if work is what you would like . . .”

  Elizabeth escaped, slipping down a back passageway to side steps so Senara wouldn’t catch her on the main staircase. If she left her room dark and locked the door, perhaps she could have a few minutes of peace and truly rest.

  Her first hint that this wouldn’t happen struck her before she reached her door. A veritable gale of cold air flowed from beneath the portal, strong enough to flip up the flounce at the hem of her dress. If Grandpapa had been home, she’d have gotten him to go into the chamber. But he was in the village hearing cases as his responsibility as justice of the peace. A footman stood at the top of the steps awaiting anyone’s command to have an errand run, but Elizabeth didn’t like to call him to her room over something likely nothing more than a window left open.

  By whom? With rain still falling earlier, she hadn’t opened the windows before descending to the parlor to attend to the guests. Miss Pross disliked the cold air off the Bristol Channel and wouldn’t have opened a window. Perhaps a maid . . .

  Even as she lifted the door handle and flung the panels wide, Elizabeth knew no maid would dare open the closed window over the garden and forget to shut it again. Yet she didn’t know why anyone else had. Though clearing, the air held a biting chill and strong aroma of the sea softened with a hint of lilac from Grandmama’s walled garden. Elizabeth’s nostrils flared, catching another scent she didn’t immediately recognize, though instinct told her it should be familiar.

  She paced the room. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. The wind fluttered the pages of a book left open on her desk and billowed out the bed curtains. She slammed the window closed, rattling the diamond panes. Needing more light against the grayness cast by the ancient glass, she picked up the tinderbox from her desk and attempted to light a candle. Not until she failed to hold steel to flint hard and long to catch a spark in the oiled waste did she realize her hands were shaking. She set the tinderbox down, commanded herself to be calm, and tried again. This time the flame caught and held long enough for her to set fire to the wick. This time she saw why someone had ventured into her chamber.

  Gleaming in the yellow candle flame, the mother-of-pearl head of a hatpin jutted from one of her pillows, its point jabbed through a length of ice-blue satin ribbon encircling a rolled sheet of parchment.

  Her hands trembling once more, Elizabeth set down the candle and slipped the ribbon off the scroll. The parchment unfurled, suggesting it hadn’t been in its tubular form long. Nor had the parchment held the ink for long, as its sharp scent stung her nose.

  The words burned her eyes.

  The sun rises at six o’clock tomorrow. I’ll meet you on the beach with your horse.

  The message bore no signature. She’d never seen his handwriting, but she knew who had dared to sneak the missive into her bedchamber in broad daylight.

  “The rogue. The unconscionable . . .” She ran out of epithets.

  The parchment tore between her hands. She balled up the scraps and threw it against the wall as hard as she could. It bounced off the beak of a parrot molded into the plaster, struck the bedpost, and dropped to the floor. Elizabeth kicked it under the bed, thought about a maid finding it, and dove beneath the frame to retrieve the note. The man had gotten into her bedchamber and taken one of her hatpins!

  If only she could ride then, she’d send the horse flying across the sand or countryside, chase the wind, as she and Rowan Curnow had the night they fled from Romsford.

  The night he duped her into thinking he was Drake.

  She jammed the hatpin into its cushioned holder only to realize it wasn’t her pin at all. She didn’t own one of mother-of-pearl. Mama would consider that too common. Yet it didn’t look common laid across her palm. It shimmered and glowed as though holding its own light. The surface slid through her fingers as smooth as scented oil.

  Scent. Ah, now she knew it. He’d left his scent behind—leather and the sea, a sailor’s aroma, a countryman’s aroma.

  She opened a vial of violet perfume and inhaled deeply enough to numb her nostrils.

  She shouldn’t have been able to catch his scent with all that wind blowing through unless he hadn’t departed but seconds before she opened the door. Heaven forfend, if Senara had come with her . . .

  Her heart clenched. “Are you trying to ruin me, Rowan Curnow?”

  She tore the note into pieces and tossed them on the hearth. A touch of the candle and the note vanished with a curl of smoke that cleansed the room
of all scent of him as well. If only she could as easily banish him from her life. But if she wanted to ride, she’d be on the beach to meet Rowan Curnow at first light.

  CHAPTER 10

  WALKING THE HORSES ALONG THE BEACH TO PREVENT them from standing in the misty morning chill, Rowan kept his gaze on the cliff path. At a quarter past six o’clock, she hadn’t arrived for his proposed rendezvous. He couldn’t wait much longer for the sake of the livestock and the quality of the beach itself. In another half an hour, the tide would turn. A half hour after that, the half-moon cove below Bastion Point would be cut off from the rest of the beach.

  He turned his mount, a fine roan gelding, and cantered to the far side of the cove, where an arm of the cliff jutted into the water so far that reaching the beach on the other side was impossible at any level of the tide. When he turned back, she’d appeared on the cliff path, statuesque and shapely in her fitted riding habit of dark blue velvet.

  His mouth went dry. His eyes burned from staring at her with the brisk wind blowing into his face. Only the pressure of willpower kept him from touching his heels to the gelding and sending him and the mare swooping across the tide-packed sand toward Elizabeth, to Elizabeth. He rode at a sedate walk, never taking his gaze off her, drinking in the way she descended the path with her smooth, long-legged gait. By the time he met her at the base of the cliff, his heart pounded as though he had run the quarter mile instead of riding like a novice on a job horse.

  “You came.” It was all he could think to say as he dismounted and gave her a bow.

  “You have the only mounts Grandpapa says are suitable for me.” Though the blue of her habit had darkened her eyes to aquamarine, the glare she shot his way held shards of blue ice. “I’d report the stable hands you bribed if it would not get them dismissed, though why you would waste your wages on bribing stable hands is beyond my comprehension.”

  Rowan winced at her use of wages. He smiled into her eyes. “I had to find some way to talk to you.”

  “I cannot imagine why. I’ve nothing to say to you.”

  “Not even ‘help me mount, you scrub’?”

  She gave him a blank look.

  “A man of low work, though playing your groom this morning does not fall into that category.”

  One corner of her mouth twitched—a good sign. “You have a smooth tongue for a . . . a—”

  “Mere secretary? An uncouth American?”

  “A man who—” She snapped her teeth together, then sighed. “It’s untrue that I’ve nothing to say to you. I’ve a great deal to say to you, none of it complimentary. But I wish to ride the beach while I still can.”

  “Then ride the beach you shall.”

  Rowan stroked the mare’s nose, told her to stand, and rounded to the left side of the horse.

  Elizabeth followed. The excess fabric of her habit looped over her arm. She grasped the reins in one hand. “She’s absolutely perfect. What’s her name?”

  “Grisette.”

  “Of course. Little gray one.” Elizabeth stroked the mare’s mane, then stepped into the cup of his hands he braced on his bent knee.

  “Ready?” He grinned up at her.

  “I am.”

  “One. Two. Three.”

  On the count of three, he lifted. She bounced off her right foot at the same time. In one smooth motion, she landed on the saddle, her right knee hooked around the saddle horn, her skirt draped over her legs to preserve her modesty.

  For the first time since she noticed him in the grandparents’ parlor, she cast him an approving glance and something he could call a smile. “Thank you. That was well done.”

  “The fault is all yours.” Feeling as though someone were tossing him into the air, he returned to the gelding and leaped into the saddle.

  She said she wanted to talk to him, and she’d smiled at him.

  And he was a fool to care so much about either from her.

  He backed his mount out of her path. “You lead.”

  She led, walking Grisette at first, settling into the gray’s gait. Once around the outcropping of rock that separated Bastion Point beach from Penmara land, she increased her speed to a trot, then a canter, and with two miles of open, hard-smooth sand before her on the beach below Penmara, she let Grisette have her head.

  And she could ride. He’d known as much already. Conan had assured him of the fact when they made their mad-dash escape from Romsford’s men six nights ago, telling him how Elys—what he and Drake called her—used to ride astride her horse as a child. But he had never seen her ride in the daylight, in the open. Her hat blew off in the wind off the sea. One by one, her hairpins worked loose. Freed from its moorings, her hair flowed behind her in a long, silken curtain glinting with coppery highlights in the slanting rays of the morning sun.

  Rowan leaned low and scooped up her hat by its plumes without missing a stride in the gelding’s gait, then sent his own mount racing after her. She glanced over her shoulder, saw him gaining on her, and leaned over Grisette’s neck, apparently coaxing a little more speed from the gray. Rowan did the same with his gelding. Such speed wasn’t safe. He shouldn’t encourage it, but when her laughter rippled behind her brighter than the morning, he couldn’t resist the lure, the chase that brought such joy springing forth.

  It ended all too soon. A tumble of rock from a cliff collapsed in some storm decades earlier created a hazard on the beach. She drew up her mount, then wheeled her around to walk her back to where Rowan paused to stroke the gelding’s neck.

  “Thank you.” She looked at him with genuine warmth.

  “For what?” He turned so they walked their mounts side by side, cooling them down.

  “Not stopping me.” She turned her face away. “I’ve been unable to ride like that for years—other than the other night, and that was different. I was not . . . free.”

  “And you are now?”

  She didn’t respond. Face turned away from him and toward the waves rolling in from a sea the color of a slate roof tile, she rode at an easy trot back to the half-moon cove below Bastion Point before she spoke again. “You were guiding my mount.” She slid to the ground and glared at him over the back of the mare. “You duped me and then dragged me into the night.”

  “I never said I was your brother.” He held her gaze.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You knew I thought you were. And when I discovered you were not, you told me you knew Drake and had just seen him hours before.”

  “I did lead you to think I knew Drake and he’d sent me.” His conscience pricked his heart. “I am guilty on both accounts. I thought it was the right thing to do at the time, as I didn’t think you’d come with a perfect stranger otherwise.”

  “Stranger, yes. Perfect?” Her nostrils pinched.

  “All right then, not perfect.” He tried not to smile. He only half succeeded in keeping his mouth neutral; one corner curled up, and the other twitched. “I’m a flawed being, but the Lord loves me anyway and has seen fit to forgive me for my lack of judgment, however well it was meant. I can only ask for your forgiveness and hope one day you’ll grant it.”

  Her face twisted as though a pain had stabbed her, and she turned away. Reins in hand, she walked Grisette along the base of the cliff. Sixty feet above her, the gray stone and diamondpaned windows of the oldest part of the house were poised like a sentry guarding the copper mines and farmland beyond. The Trelawny legacy. Elys Trelawny’s legacy, at least in part.

  Because of his choices, he had too little to offer a lady with so much. Not nearly enough with which to woo a lady with everything and more.

  But he would try.

  He fell into step beside her, leading his horse from the other side so the equine didn’t come between them. “We should get off the beach before the tide pins us down here for the next four hours.”

  “I know, but I’d rather not go back into the house just yet.”

  “Who said anything about going back into the house? We can’t run the horses acro
ss the fields, but we can still ride.”

  “You’re willing to do that? You do not wish to return for your breakfast?”

  His stomach protested, but he shook his head. “As long as you won’t be missed, I’m willing to ride with you.”

  “I’ll be missed, but that is rather the point of being out.” Her voice held a hard edge to it.

  Something to explore, if she’d tell him, though he suspected he already knew what troubled her at home.

  “Shall I help you mount again?”

  She nodded, and they repeated the ritual of earlier. It went as smoothly—with one exception. Her loosened hair blew across his face, as soft as a caress brushing his cheekbone. Once perched atop her mount, she brushed the strands behind her ear with a quick, impatient gesture and glanced at the sand as though she believed she’d find her errant pins.

  He removed her hat from where he’d hung it over the saddle-bow and gave it to her. She set the velvet confection with its now battered feathers atop her head and wheeled Grisette for the gentler cliff path on the Penmara side of the beach.

  They rode in single-file silence, Rowan following like some hired hand. He was a hired hand for now. If Penvenan chose to go riding with her, he got first choice and Rowan got left behind. Penvenan, however, was too thoroughly occupied with solicitors and excise officers—the former explaining succession laws, the latter hunting for clues to who had murdered Conan—builders, and account books to have time to ride or even court. For a while, Rowan could keep her safe and escort her on her rides as long as she allowed it.

  “Do you want to stay on Penmara land, or go around the wall to Bastion Point?” Rowan asked.

  Bastion Point offered neatly raked paths beneath neatly trimmed trees in the parkland. Penmara offered a tangle of overgrown underbrush and trees, the former able to catch at a horse’s legs, the latter at the rider’s hair.

  She glanced from the upper stories of the house visible above the dividing wall, to the unkempt woodland ahead, then at him. “Stay on Penmara land for now. Otherwise we can be seen from this side of the house, and if Senara sees me with you . . .” She shuddered hard enough for Grisette to toss her head and snort as though in agreement.