by Liz Carlyle
Elizabeth sat uneasily at his elbow as they spun between Squire Tafton’s gateposts and onto the village road. Suddenly, she glanced back over her shoulder with a wistful expression. “I liked them, but they will forget about us soon enough,” she said in a voice that held more hope than certainty. “Won’t they? Everyone, I mean. We will go back to London, and if God is kind, your grandfather will live a while yet. We will go back to our ordinary lives.”
He made a dismissive sound. “You wouldn’t know an ordinary life if it jumped up and bit you,” he said, casting his gaze heavenward. “Nor, perhaps, would I. And now look. It’s going to rain.”
“Blame the unseasonable heat, not me.” Elizabeth was neatening the pleats of her carriage dress. “Just hurry your horses a little.”
He did, but the drive back to Burlingame’s gate was six miles by village road, and another four along the winding drive that led to the house. Soon the rain began to patter a little, the temperature dropping precipitously. In the trees that lined the road, leaves began to ruffle in great waves, and then to flick upside down.
Napier pushed on, but as they passed through the village, an ominous crack of thunder rattled the windows in the Duck and Dragon. He started to pull in—and should have done—but in the graveled yard a snorting, white-eyed bay was wheeling his hindquarters wildly, kicking up gravel and grit as an ostler fought to hold its head, while a black-and-red mail coach was drawing up from the opposite direction, three thoroughly drenched fellows swaying upon the top bench.
Thinking the poor ostler had his hands full, Napier drove on. It was to be the least of his mistakes that afternoon. Half a mile later, Elizabeth was pulling her shawl tighter, and casting up anxious glances.
“Perhaps we might wait it out?” she finally suggested. “The folly tower, perhaps?”
“Too far,” he said, “and Craddock has it locked so they can rig up scaffolding. The parapet’s giving way.”
“Yes, Gwyneth borrowed the key from Marsh last week,” she replied. “I nearly died of exhaustion climbing up, but if you make it to the very top and lean far, far over the edge, you can see for fifty miles.”
He shot her a dark look.
“What?” Lisette threw back her head and laughed. “I’m teasing. We were careful. And it’s only thirty miles.”
Napier just shook his head. “We had better go in by the back drive,” he said. “I know a place we can stop.”
By the time they did so, however, the rain had commenced in earnest with a promise of a true torrent rolling over the horizon, the source of the mail coach’s drenching, no doubt. After a quarter mile, Napier gave up and turned his team down a side lane. In a matter of minutes, they reached the little spinney he remembered that stretched beyond either side of the road.
Leaping from the seat, he went around to hand Elizabeth down. “The gamekeeper’s cottage is through those trees,” he shouted over the rain. “Better a cup of tea with Mrs. Hoxton than your taking a chill from the damp.”
“I assure you, I’m not that frail,” said Elizabeth.
Napier turned to secure the horses. “And I hear we’ve a footman half dead already,” he said. “So have a care.”
“It’s dyspepsia, not a chill.”
“Then it’s a dashed bad case,” Napier answered, grabbing her hand and starting into the wood. “Duncaster said they’d sent to Marlborough for the doctor. Poor devil turned convulsive in the night.”
“Dear God.” Elizabeth looked suddenly solemn. “I hadn’t heard.”
Taking her hand, Napier led her along the footpath through the trees. Here the rain was a bit less fierce as the silence of the wood settled around them. But his boots were beginning to sop and he could only imagine the state of Elizabeth’s dainty slippers.
A few yards along, they reached the house he’d espied on one of his rides with Craddock; the old gamekeeper’s cottage, the estate agent had called it. But Napier should have taken better heed, he belatedly realized, of that word old, for after dashing up the steps he realized there was a decided air of abandonment about the place.
Abandonment, perhaps, was not the word. The house was well kept like all of Burlingame, but the curtains were drawn, the stoop scattered with leaves, and no sign of life within. Hammering upon the door with one hand, he drew Elizabeth into his lee with the other.
“No one lives here,” she said, beginning to shiver. “J-Just lift the latch.”
After a moment, he did so, pushing open the door to a cool, shadowy parlor and a hearth that likely hadn’t seen a fire in months. The sharp tang of lime dust hung in the air, but the room was partially furnished with an oak settle, a table with chairs, and a thick, well-worn red carpet beneath the whole. More importantly, a coal scuttle sat near the grate.
Lisette sniffed. “Someone’s plastering.”
“We’ll wait it out here,” he ordered. “Put your shawl and shoes by the hearth. I’ll build up a fire.”
An old match tin hung from a nail near the mantelpiece, and after laying up a bit of kindling, it did not take Napier long to set the room aglow. He could hear Elizabeth in the back of the cottage rummaging about.
She returned to the front parlor, sliding her hands up and down her upper arms. “Is there a Mrs. Hoxton?” she asked, casting her gaze about the place. “Someone’s been repairing plaster and paint, but there are no personal effects whatever.”
Still kneeling by the hearth, Napier pondered it. “There’s a Hoxton Farm on the east edge of the estate,” he said. “Could the fellow still live with his parents?”
“He did look young.” Elizabeth shrugged, and sat down on the wooden settle near the fire.
Napier added the last bit of coal and rose, his leather boots squeaking.
“You need to take those off,” Elizabeth advised.
There being an old iron bootjack hammered into the floor by the hearth, Napier took her advice. That done, he padded across to the mullioned window set deep into the thick stone wall, and threw back the curtains. Fat raindrops were racing one another down the leaded panes, and catching in the Vs of the solder.
“This won’t last,” he said over one shoulder, praying he was right.
But the words were barely spoken when a fearsome crack of lightning lit the cottage and thunder rumbled like a giant beer keg across the cottage roof. At once the rain began to hammer down.
She smiled up at him. “Do you know, I don’t mind it here,” she said, scooting her stocking feet back and forth on the blood-red carpet. “It’s cozy. Burlingame is oppressive, and everyone seems on edge.”
He turned, speaking a little gruffly. “I’m sorry you don’t like it.”
She scowled back at him. “Lord, Napier, don’t glower at me,” she said. “You don’t like it, either. Do you?”
He returned to the hearth, stripped off his frock coat, and tossed it over an old ladder-back chair, uncomfortable with his sudden pique. Why should her opinion matter?
“It’s too grand, yes,” he said, propping one shoulder against the mantel. “But I’ve little choice in the matter. Nonetheless, I don’t wish you unhappy.”
She gave a short laugh, and took off her hat. “Recall, if you will, that you didn’t give a jot for my happiness when we started all this,” she said, her voice falling. “And, to be fair, it doesn’t really matter.”
“What do you mean?”
She lifted both shoulders, her smile crooked. “Do you know, I honestly can’t remember the last time I was truly happy.”
“Try,” he said, surprising himself. “I would like to know.”
Elizabeth had bent over to shake out her short, fiery curls, raking her fingers through the dampness. “Oh, perhaps my twenty-first birthday?” she suggested, swiveling her head to look up from the floor. “Aunt Ashton dug out Mother’s gold locket. It had been stored away in Ellie’s trunk.”
“And that made you happy?” he murmured, watching her across the small room.
“For the hour that I wore
it, yes.” She sat back up and shook her curls into place in that way that always made his breath catch. “Then Uncle came home half-sprung and insisted it should be his in recompense for putting up with me.”
“Good Lord.”
She smiled thinly. “A great row ensued,” she went on. “Ashton jerked one of the bowls from Aunt’s silver epergne and hurled it. It shattered against the chimneypiece. She burst into tears. And then—”
He waited, but she said no more.
“And then what?” he pressed.
Lisette flicked him a weary gaze, her jaw hardening. “And then, when her tears dried, she blamed me. That’s how things went in Boston. Nothing could ever be Uncle Ashton’s fault, and peace was to be kept at all cost.”
“Ah,” he said quietly. “One of those marriages.”
She looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”
He stirred from the mantel, dragging a hand down his face as he wondered how to answer. “I see them, sometimes, in my line of work,” he finally said. “But we cannot stop them. The law permits a husband great latitude. It is a sort of mental cruelty—and, I daresay, he beat her physically, too?”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. “Yes. Sometimes.”
Napier felt his blood boil. “And you?”
“Never.” The word was fierce and hard. Like her.
“I’m glad of that, at least.”
“Because I’d have run away,” she added, “or cut his throat in his sleep, if I had to. And he knew it. He browbeat and he threatened, yes. But somehow . . . somehow, in the end, he always walked a wide circle round me.”
That, Napier did not doubt. Bullies always sensed how far they could push. And he—well, he was fast realizing one ought never push Elizabeth.
“Do you have the locket still?”
She lifted her chin, and drew a finger beneath her neckline. “Ashton was so drunk he didn’t recall it the next morning,” she said, drawing it out. “Otherwise it might have been sold.”
The delicate locket nestled between her breasts, brilliant gold against the fabric of her gown. “And is that all you have to remember your mother by?” he asked, forcing his eyes up.
“I have better things,” said Elizabeth. “The necklace and earrings I wore to Burlingame, and other pieces she brought to the marriage. After her death, Mr. Bodkins put them in his safe. But some of the stones had already been pried out and replaced with paste to settle Papa’s debts.”
Her voice, he noted, was dispassionate but she sat a little slumped on the settle, tilting toward the fire that was beginning to chase the damp from the room. She had suffered tragedy upon tragedy, he realized, and enough indignity to last a lifetime. And it had made her what she was. Bloody, perhaps, but ever unbowed, Elizabeth Colburne was a fighter.
And clever. Oh, he did not for one moment discount that. It was how she’d managed to survive in an unwelcoming world. Her father had been nothing but a slick, spineless roué who’d simply shot himself when life threw up a hard hurdle. Lord Rowend had failed her utterly. And the drunken, bourgeois Mr. Ashton sounded worst of all.
It left him wondering if there had been one person in her life who had loved Elizabeth unselfishly. One responsible adult she could look up to or count on. It seemed not—and it made Hanging Nick Napier look almost doting by comparison.
But when had he come to care so much?
He was, as she’d once pointed out, accounted a heartless bastard. He’d earned an ugly nickname honestly, because there was damned little he wouldn’t do to see a criminal convicted, or to simply mete out justice—justice as he defined it. But this visit to Burlingame—or her—something was throwing him off. He felt . . . odd, as if he were being altered by it somehow.
Restlessly, he rolled his shoulders beneath the tight constraints of his waistcoat.
“I know what you’re thinking.” She turned around on the settle to pin him accusingly with that cool green gaze. “You’re thinking my father was a cad. That he did not love us. But it isn’t true. It isn’t. He was improvident, I know, but he was the most convivial of men, and we had . . . oh, we had the best times, the three of us. And he adored us, Ellie and me.”
Convivial Sir Arthur might have been, but Napier still burned to reach into the grave and strangle the bastard’s cold corpse. A blithe disposition and a pack of cards wouldn’t feed a man’s children or put a roof over their heads. And in her heart, she had to know it.
Elizabeth was just clinging to what might have been, reaching up from a deep well of sorrow to grab on to the memory of some knight in shining armor; seizing onto a dream in the faint hope it could keep her from drowning in her own sense of loss. And she had, indeed, lost everything. But he kept these thoughts to himself.
“You don’t remember your mother?” he said instead.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Not well. I remember she was warm and very beautiful—and that she always smelled of Esprit de Fleurs. Papa would buy it for her in the rue de la Paix whenever he went to Paris.”
And bought it out of guilt, Napier suspected, though he did not say as much. The gaming hells of Paris were legend.
Suddenly something occurred to him. “Esprit de Fleurs—is that by chance the scent you wear?”
“Lately, yes,” she said, smiling up at him. “It’s . . . warm. Like lilies and jasmine. I’m surprised you noticed.”
And again he felt that shaft of lust drive deep into his belly—that intense, frightful thing that came out of nowhere, swamping him. That same thing he’d felt at tea in the withdrawing room. In his bedchamber. In the library.
And he realized suddenly that it might have been easier for both of them to have driven on in the rain and risked dying of a chill.
The journey to Tafton’s had been made under a placid sky, the conversation entirely matter-of-fact, as if they both hoped to edge back from the thing that had flared between them yesterday. Nothing had been said of that wild, heated kiss, nor had he apologized for it—and truth to tell, he couldn’t make himself regret it.
Elizabeth had spoken only of the gossip she’d picked up, and relayed bits and pieces of her conversations with his family. He, in turn, had spoken of his afternoons spent with Duncaster, and of his frustration at having been unable to run the elusive Dr. Underwood to ground. Mundane things, for the most part.
But now it was as if the benign sky had conspired against them, for nothing about the quiet intimacy of this dark cottage felt mundane, and already he could feel that inner storm roiling. He returned almost hopefully to the window, half wondering if he’d already fallen in love with her.
But how could that be when, as she’d pointed out, he knew precisely what she was?
Knew better, really, than to trust her.
And it made no difference.
Napier burned for a woman he was well nigh certain was a murderess. Empires had fallen for less. Certainly his career would collapse; the Home Office would be scandalized. And yet, something about Elizabeth Colburne—her unconventional charm or her pale, ethereal beauty—something left him willing to throw his morals and his life to the wind.
But his life was already on the cusp of an awful change that was not within his power to stop. Duncaster might be tough as old shoe leather, but his days were numbered just like everyone’s. And soon, like it or not, Napier’s allegiance would lie beyond the Home Office.
He set a hand to the glass and soaked up the cold against his skin as if it might jolt him to sense. Beyond the glass, black skies pressed down and the world seemed on the edge of twilight. He, too, felt on the edge of something portentous. He had begun to want Elizabeth with a near bone-deep ache, and it was no use to pretend otherwise.
It was as if she read his mind. “Napier, do you ever wonder,” she said softly from the settle, “if perhaps you overthink things?”
He fisted his hands at his sides, so hard he felt his nails digging into his palms. “Lisette—” he said, the words hoarse as he stared through the rain. “Lisette, w
hat are we to do about all this?”
She did not even pretend to misunderstand. “I don’t know,” she whispered from her settle. “But at least you’ve stopped calling me Elizabeth.”
He turned from the window, crossing the room in three strides. Wordlessly, he stopped before the old settle, extending down his hand.
She looked up, her dark lashes falling shut, feathering across her cheeks almost shyly. Then she placed her hand in his, her fingers cool as they curved around his, and opened her eyes again.
“Is there nothing of the romantic in you, Napier?” she asked, the intensity of her gaze piercing him. “Nothing at all?”
“No,” he answered.
“Good,” she said, standing. “Pretty words come cheap to most men.”
It was, he realized, one of the truest things she’d ever said.
His hand was still cold as he cupped her chin, lifting her face to his. He kissed her tenderly and slowly this time, saying with his mouth and his hands what he could not speak. Eloquence was not his strong suit; he was a gruff, plain man. And those pretty words she spoke of likely couldn’t have been beaten out of him with one of his constable’s truncheons.
But he wanted her above all things.
And in this moment, at least, he wanted her to know it.
When he lifted his head, she was watching him. “Lisette,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands. “I’m not pushing you onto a bed again. I’m not doing anything remotely against your will.”
“Nor would I let you.”
He let his hands slide up her arms, his nostrils flaring wide, and he dragged the scent of lilies and woman deep into his lungs. “Then tell me you know what this is,” he whispered. “Tell me you want it.”
She pushed him a little away then. “I want you,” she said simply. “And I think you want me. But I really doubt, Napier, that either of us has a clue what this is.”
He greatly feared she was right.
And he feared, too, the bond that kept drawing him to her—not the sweet bond of lips or even loins, but the intense bond of eyes. Of honesty. Though how it could have been that the most disingenuous woman he knew could look so deeply and so penetratingly—so straight into his soul, it felt—utterly escaped him.
