Acrid smoke burned Gerard’s throat. His pleasure spoiled, he snuffed out the cheroot and hurled it into the darkness, quenching it as ruthlessly as Lucien Snow quenched all traces of his daughter’s spirit whenever she was in his exalted presence.
Gerard exhaled sharply as a figure appeared in the window, silhouetted against the lamplight. He scowled. The girl was as slight as a wraith, yet the gentle curves outlined beneath the fabric of her demure nightdress were unmistakably those of a woman. Her pale hair, caught in two long plaits, gleamed like braided silver in the moonlight.
She was angled toward the gatehouse and he wondered if she might be searching the night for him. Impossible though it was, he would have almost sworn their gazes met and mingled through the darkness before she reached up and snatched the drapes shut, her outrage a palpable thing.
Gerard might have been amused had he not been so consumed by his thwarted plans. While he could afford no distractions, he also couldn’t allow himself to forget that the Admiral’s daughter wasn’t dry tinder, but a damp fuse on a keg of gunpowder—slow burning, unpredictable, and dangerous.
CHAPTER SIX
AT PRECISELY 0600 THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Smythe came tapping at the gatehouse door. Believing there was little need to guard Miss Snow’s precious life while she dressed and coiffed herself, Gerard dragged the quilt over his head and ignored the butler’s polite queries as to his state of wakefulness until he finally went away. Gerard crawled out of bed after nine o’clock, his head pounding from too little sleep and too many misgivings.
After giving himself a meticulous shave, polishing his spectacles, and breakfasting on a stale torte, he reported to the great house for duty only to discover that instead of exploring Ionia as he’d hoped to do, he was to accompany Miss Snow on some trivial errand.
From what he could gather from the frantic menservants, their negligent young mistress had misplaced a valuable resource—the recently published memoirs of Admiral Lord Howell. As penance, she was to be sent to Lord Howell’s country estate to secure another copy. Her father had determined she could make the most efficient use of her time by letting the visit double as a social call to Lord Howell’s daughter Sylvie.
Gerard was waiting in the entrance hall, tapping his hat impatiently against his thigh, when Lucy came tripping down the stairs in a pair of delicate sandals. The white muslin of her simply cut dress was gathered in tiny pleats beneath her breasts and complimented by a pastel pink stole. Her straw bonnet sported matching satin ribbons. She painted such a portrait of girlish charm that Gerard could not help smiling.
Until he saw her eyes. Her gaze was a blast of early winter that might have withered a lesser man. Taking a wary step out of her path, he donned his hat and swept a mocking hand toward the front door.
Without missing a step, she slapped a brass spyglass into his palm. “Perhaps in the future, Mr. Claremont, you’d care to use this for your nocturnal spying.”
If a footman hadn’t scampered to open the door, Gerard was convinced she would have walked right through it.
Watching her pert rump twitch beneath the clinging muslin, he muttered “And a good morning to you, too, Miss Snow,” before plunking the spyglass down on a pier table and following.
The morning dazzled Gerard’s eyes as they waited for the carriage to be brought around from the stables. Sunlight poured down like manna from a heavenly vault of azure blue, blistering the crowns of the maples to fiery peach. Gerard breathed deeply, savoring the crisp fragrance of autumn. Not even being forced to dance attendance on the Admiral’s brat could spoil his ravenous appetite for fresh air and sunshine.
A mischievous breeze wafted off the river to sift the treetops, sending leaves cascading down in showers of crimson and gold. Gardeners were scattered across the grounds, their rakes poised to capture the daring interlopers before they marred the pristine carpet of the lawn. Gerard fought a wicked urge to kick his way through their captive piles, scattering them to freedom. Instead, he threw back his arms and stretched, exulting in the flex of his restless muscles.
Beside him, a delicate throat was cleared. Gerard glanced down to find Miss Snow’s generous lips pressed to a disapproving pucker. If it hadn’t been physically impossible, he would have sworn she was gazing down her slender little nose at him.
“I’m terribly sorry I missed breakfast,” he said, sniffing the air for her tart perfume. “The lemons must have been delicious.”
He was rescued from her retort by the clatter of carriage wheels on the cobbled drive. What a shame, Gerard thought, to be traveling in a closed conveyance on such a flawless day! He had hoped for a curricle or even a sporty perch phaeton that he might drive. But Fenster, the aged coachman, crouched on the driver’s bench like a squat, shriveled spider, his countenance even more sour than his mistress’s.
Which should have warned Gerard when Lucy laid a gloved hand on his arm and smiled sweetly up at him. “I do hope the motion of the vehicle won’t aggravate your …” She glanced around as if to ensure no one would inadvertently mock his shame, before whispering, “Unfortunate condition.”
Refusing to be disarmed by her smile, he tipped his hat back with one finger. “Your concern touches me, Miss Snow, but I don’t generally get seasick on carriage rides.” He proffered her the carriage door.
She climbed into the vehicle with the assistance of an underfootman and tried to tug the door shut in Gerard’s face. Elbowing the hapless servant out of the way, Gerard clambered in after her, settling into the opposite seat.
Infuriated by his gall, Lucy drew herself into a sullen knot to keep their knees from touching. She’d always prided herself on her independence and loathed the thought of relinquishing her privacy to a man who was little more than a mercenary.
As the coach rolled into motion, she blurted out, “Wouldn’t you be better able to protect me if you rode outside the carriage with the coachman? What if we were set upon by highwaymen? Or pirates? Or … or … Indians?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware there’d been a rash of Indian attacks in Chelsea.” He eyed the silky sheafs of hair streaming from beneath her hat. “Although I must confess your scalp would be a trophy even the most civilized of savages would be hard put to resist.”
Lucy tingled beneath his sleepy-lidded perusal. “All the more reason for you to ride with Fenster.”
He sighed as if possessed by a patience too great for her comprehension. “Your father can assign outriders to protect the outside of the carriage if he deems it prudent. As your personal bodyguard, it is my duty to remain by your side.” A faint wince of distaste crossed his features. “Every hour of the day.”
Lucy found the notion almost as insufferable as the man. Oblivious to her horror, Mr. Claremont drew a calf-bound book from the inside pocket of his coat and began to read. Pretending to straighten her gloves, Lucy studied him from beneath the scooped brim of her hat.
With his mild expression and those homely spectacles perched on the bridge of his well-defined nose, he resembled a schoolmaster more than a soldier of fortune. What would he do if they were set upon by highwaymen? Lucy wondered. Cane them? Whack them over the knuckles with his book?
Her disdain was tempered by the memory of him stretching in the drive as they had awaited the carriage. He had flexed his muscles beneath the brown cloth of his coat like a dangerous beast that had been caged too long. Lucy had found his sensual pleasure in the boorish act most disturbing.
She narrowed her eyes, trying to deduce why she had taken such an instant dislike to the man. Perhaps it was his disarming size. He seemed to grow larger at each of their meetings. Even now she was huddled against the leather squabs to escape the muscular length of his thighs, outlined all too clearly beneath the clinging doeskin of his pantaloons. Each time the carriage struck a rut in the dirt road, their knees brushed. His very presence crowded her, made her breath come short and fast as if there weren’t enough air in the carriage for both of them to breathe.
> Perhaps it was his manners she abhorred—his delicate juggling of insolence and deference. She reminded herself that he was a man of the working class. He was no gentleman and it was unsporting of her to judge him by the standards of her peers. Her innate sense of fairness demanded she offer him a chance to redeem himself.
When her polite sniff failed to draw his attention, she pasted on a stiff smile and asked, “May I inquire what you are reading, sir?”
His gaze remained fastened on the page. “Robinson Crusoe by Mr. Daniel Defoe. Have you read it?”
Lucy shook her head violently. “Oh, no. Father doesn’t approve of the reading of fiction. He thinks it weakens the mind.”
Claremont slanted her an inscrutable glance over the spine of the book. “And what do you think?”
Having never had her opinion solicited before, Lucy could only stare at him blankly.
He quirked one eyebrow in blatant amusement. “Are you sure you haven’t been reading novels on the sly, Miss Snow?”
Knowing it might take several minutes before she realized he’d insulted her, Gerard buried his nose back in the book. He was only too aware that the conventional Miss Snow would never have been allowed to venture out unchaperoned with a man of her own class. But his servant’s status effectively emasculated him in the eyes of her father. Probably in her eyes as well. The irony failed to amuse him as it should have.
When Mr. Claremont remained immersed in his book, Lucy resolved to shock him out of his mocking complacency.
“I may very well be the first person abducted by Captain Doom to live to tell of it,” she announced.
Claremont responded with a noncommittal grunt.
“The rogue is utterly ruthless. ’Tis fortunate I was blindfolded, for one look from his evil eye will turn you to stone. His ship comes out of the mist like Satan’s chariot fleeing the gates of hell. Some say he’s the ghost of Captain Kidd haunting the seas to seek revenge against the investors who betrayed him.”
Claremont slowly lowered the book. Lucy knew she was babbling, but now that she had his attention, she was loath to surrender it. She raced on, shamelessly embellishing the tales she’d heard from the sailors on the Tiberius. “He wears a hideous necklace of human ears. He plucks the hearts from his victims barehanded and feeds them to the sharks while they’re still thumping. He drinks human blood for breakfast and he’s been known to carve the entire text of the pirate articles on the chests of his captives.”
Claremont’s gaze dropped to the snowy expanse of skin revealed by the fashionable décolletage of her bodice. “You seem to have remained relatively unscathed. Not even a freckle.”
Unsettled by his scrutiny, Lucy demurely drew her stole around her shoulders. “I was very fortunate.” She gazed into her lap, completely unaware of the dreamy cast that overtook her features or of its jarring effect on her companion. “Doom is utterly merciless when it comes to the pursuit of his own pleasures. Tis rumored he can ravish ten innocents in a single night. Before midnight,” she added, inspired.
Gerard was mesmerized by the haze of pink blooming in Lucy’s cheeks, the voluptuous slackness of a mouth that begged kissing. He realized that it wasn’t her features that had been pinched, but her expression. He’d never thought himself the sort of man to envy a ghost, yet his fingers bit into the cover of the book as he lifted it to hide his expression.
“You have to admire the man’s stamina,” he said coolly. “Virgins are such a bother.”
Lucy was silent for several revolutions of the carriage wheels, as if trying to digest such a crude observation. “I fear I was in danger of being ravished myself.”
Her thoughtful confession did not improve Gerard’s temper. He snapped the book shut, raking her slender figure with such a scathing glance of appraisal that she would have had every right to slap him had she been so inclined. “I think not, Miss Snow. I’ve heard Doom’s tastes run to women with a little more meat on their bones.”
Lucy paled, her gray eyes dominating her gamin features. She turned her face to the window as if captivated by the elm-lined drive streaming past.
Halfway regretting his deliberate cruelty, Gerard laid the book aside. “Forgive my lapse of manners, Miss Snow. I’m a professional man and this position isn’t quite what I expected it to be.”
Gerard was startled to realize that honesty had become so foreign to his nature that even the truth had the discordant ring of a lie.
Lord Howell’s country estate presented a startling contrast to the regimented existence at Ionia. Here the falling leaves whirled in a merry dance only to be caught by pudgy little hands and scattered gleefully to the wind or gathered into crispy amber mountains for disheveled children to romp and tumble through.
Gerard drank in the sight with a thirst that parched his throat with bitterness. He’d once envisioned such a future for himself only to have it snatched from his fingertips like a leaf before a harsh winter wind. He was reminded of how quickly seasons passed and opportunities were lost.
More eager than ever to escape this farce and be about his business, he swept open the carriage door. As Lucy alighted, a pair of spaniels and a lanky greyhound loped out to greet them. A dusky-haired young woman flew across the grass, her lavender hat ribbons streaming behind her. Her squeal of delight drowned out even the excited yipping of the spaniels.
“Lucy! Dear, dear Lucy! I’ve never known you to make a morning call. What’s the occasion? Did the Admiral get his chronometer crossed with his barometer again?”
Gerard ducked his head to hide a smile, already liking Miss Howell immensely.
“Good morning, Sylvie. I do hope our unexpected visit won’t cause you any undue inconvenience.” Lucy stood stiffly in her friend’s embrace, deigning only to press her pale cheek to Sylvie’s rosy one.
Gerard cynically supposed that given Miss Snow’s frigid temperament, the affected gesture was tantamount to an undying declaration of love.
Sylvie’s blue eyes twinkled as they peered over Lucy’s shoulder to discover Gerard lounging against the carriage door. “Oh, my God!” she said in a stage whisper loud enough to be heard at the Theater Royal on Drury Lane. “Where did you find such a handsome creature? That hair! Those shoulders! Why, he’s sumptuous! Incomparable! Have you a beau?”
Lucy could feel Claremont’s mocking amusement warming her shoulder blades like a palpable thing. After unwittingly exposing him to Sylvie’s shameless adulation, she felt compelled to deflate him.
“I should say not. He’s no one,” she explained. “A mere servant.”
Sylvie’s artfully plucked eyebrows shot up. “Do tell.”
“Oh, very well, if you insist. Father hired him to be my bodyguard.”
Sylvie erupted into musical trills of laughter. She cupped her hand around Lucy’s ear to whisper something. Claremont’s smug expression warned Lucy that he had deduced every scandalous syllable.
His smirk melted to wariness as Sylvie turned the full force of her dimpled charm on him. When he politely declined her invitation to accompany them, she caught his hand and tried to forcibly drag him away from the carriage.
“Oh, no, Miss Howell. I really should stay here. My job, you know. I must keep an eye out for cutthroats and brigands.”
“And Indians,” Lucy interjected. Relishing his discomfiture, she said, “Come now, Mr. Claremont. Wasn’t it you who told me that outriders should be hired to look after the carriage? ’Tis your duty to look after me.”
Gerard glared at her over Sylvie’s head, warning her that he’d love to look after her. Later. In private.
She’d left him no choice but to follow Sylvie’s chattering path up the leaf-strewn slope. They were forced to dodge several scampering children before arriving at a blanket spread on the poorly trimmed grass. An enormous baby sat in the middle of it, his countenance as placid as that of a well-fed Buddha.
A uniformed man and gaily dressed woman waved cheerily from the bowling green at the foot of the hill. Gerard suppos
ed them to be the parents of all these remarkable progeny.
“ ’Twas Mama’s idea to breakfast alfresco while the weather was still warm,” Sylvie explained as she filled a china plate from a tea cart laden with food.
She thrust the plate into Lucy’s hand. Lucy stared down at the buttered eggs, salted ham, and marmalade-slathered hunks of freshly baked bread with undisguised longing before stealing a surreptitious glance at the silver watch pinned to her bodice. Gerard couldn’t bear it.
He snatched the plate from her hand. “Now, now, Miss Snow,” he chided. “You know you’re not to eat again until eleven-thirty. What would the Admiral say?”
Just as he’d anticipated, Lucy snatched the plate back. Her gray eyes blazed with defiance. “You’d do well not to forget your place, sir. My eating habits are none of your concern.”
Sylvie was openly gaping at them, making Gerard wonder if this was her first glimpse of the mouse’s fangs. It seemed she only bared them in her father’s absence. From the amusement sparkling in Sylvie’s eyes, he gathered the sight hadn’t entirely displeased her. His regard for the girl shot up another notch.
While their hostess prepared a plate for him, Lucy claimed the farthest corner of the blanket and drew off her gloves. She snapped tiny bites from her ham as if afraid he might have another change of heart and take it away from her. Gerard dove into the feast with relish, the torte he’d breakfasted upon nothing more than a vague memory.
“There are twelve of us in all,” Sylvie began with no prompting whatsoever. “I’m the eldest and Gilligan here is the youngest. Mama always said that every time Papa went to sea, he left her something to remember him by.”
While Sylvie regaled Gerard with her unabridged family history, Lucy tried to ignore a pang of guilt as she imagined what the Admiral would say if he could see her eating ham with her fingers. At ten hundred hours no less.
Thief of Hearts Page 6
