by Joan Vincent
“He’s gonna kill her, he is,” Jemmy shouted.
“Who?” Lucian demanded as he leaped from the saddle.
“Mr. Clayton. He’s gone mad, he has,” Jemmy said automatically taking the reins Merristorm thrust at him.
Lucian took the steps in one leap and ran towards the sound of raised voices. A violent splintering crash put his heart in his throat as he skidded around the corner and through the door into the office.
Near tripping over the remnants of a smashed chair, Lucian jerked to a halt. In the far corner Sampson, his hands about Ruth’s neck, pressed her against the wall. A sobbing Marietta hit at his back with a book.
Ruth’s red panic-stricken face nearly undid Lucian. He was directly behind Clayton without knowing how he got there. Shouldering Marietta aside, he grabbed the closest of the vicar’s wrists and violently wrenched it.
With a screech of pain Sampson released Ruth.
Lucian struck Clayton’s jaw with the full force of his closed fist. He didn’t bother to look as the man fell but caught Ruth in his arms. To his amazement she shrieked and thrust her hands against his chest. Stumbling back Lucian nearly tripped over Sampson.
“How could you?” Ruth shouted her hands outstretched to push him again.
Stunned, Lucian backed over the prone Sampson. He watched in disbelief as Ruth fell to her knees beside her father and began to smooth back his hair and murmur soothingly to him. The scene became even more surreal when Sir Brandon Thornley hurried past him and went down on one knee beside Clayton.
Fear, anger, jealousy swirled in a nasty stew that stirred Lucian’s thirst as he watched Thornley console Ruth and help her loosen her father’s cravat. When Marietta pushed past him with a wet cloth exclaiming at Thornley’s goodness, he bolted past Jemmy who stood outside the office.
Every ounce of his being screamed for Lucian to ride into Whitby and drink himself under the table before night fell. He stalked towards the stable but at the last moment veered around it. His mind stuttered against the dichotomy of Ruth’s dread-filled face and her screech of protest at her rescue.
The past week swirled about him, a shower of intermittent hail that pummelled and bruised; provoked and challenged. Lucian heaved to a halt on the brink of the promontory and stared at the endless ripple of sea before him.
* * *
“There he is,” shouted Jemmy. He thumped his heels against the cart pony’s ribs at sight of Merristorm sitting on a large rock well back from the cliff.
De la Croix slowed his bay and watched as Lucian ruffled the boy’s hair and then looked in his direction.
“I told him ye wouldn’t go fer the drink.”
“I agreed with you,” protested André amiably.
“Miss Ruth be fine though she’s some’t upset. She knows ye didn’t mean ta harm him, sir.”
Lucian nodded curtly. “Is Thornley still at the vicarage?”
“The hero of the hour,” de la Croix quipped.
“Nay, not fer Miss Ruth,” Jemmy protested vehemently. “Miss Marietta’s the one makin’ a fool o’herself o’er that jackanapes,” the boy said contemptuously.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” André complimented the lad. He rode forward with Merristorm’s saddled gelding in tow and handed over the reins to Lucian.
Seeing the struggle in Merristorm’s eyes, de la Croix looked back the way he and boy had come. “Any idea on where you were struck down last eve?”
“A fair one.” Lucian stepped into the saddle.
“Why don’t we check the area?”
An hour later Lucian told Jemmy to put up the cob. “I have some business to attend in Whitby but will be back in time to sup,” he told the boy.
André watched Jemmy lead the horse to the stable. “Clever sorts, smugglers,” he commented. “Quite the ruthless sort.”
Lucian nodded. “I wish you had met Captain Geary.”
“Why?”
“Something isn’t right. Perhaps he’s in part and parcel with the smuggling. Perhaps you’ve encountered him in your work with the government.”
“None by that name,” André told him.
Lucian shook his head, grimaced, and then stiffened his shoulders. As they mounted he said, “I’ve a mind to have a document drawn up. Would you witness it for me?”
* * *
St. Cedds Vicarage October 22nd Late Afternoon
Lucian prowled around the parlour examining each wall in turn and the fireplace in particular. Like every other wall in every other room in the vicarage he found nothing. No secret panel, no entrance to a basement.
Resting one hand on the mantel Lucian stared down into the fire. The flickering golden oranges and reds became Ruth’s tresses. Urgency danced in his heart like the tips of the flames.
Ruth’s scent filled his senses a moment before he heard the soft pad of her soft-soled shoes. Lust thrummed but an even stronger desire to protect this woman rose to a fever pitch. He clenched his fingers against the cold wood of the mantel to steady himself.
“Marry me,” Lucian said, his voice hoarse and rough with emotion.
“Why?” Ruth asked softly.
The simple question loomed like a quagmire to Lucian. He frantically searched for what answer would move her to accept. The reasons he most deeply wanted to voice sounded trite and ungrounded considering the kind of man she thought him.
What is most important to Ruth? The answer rang crystal clear. He turned to face her. “You owe it to your family.”
Lucian watched as denial and refusal washed over Ruth’s features. It lashed his heart like a cat of nine tails. He failed to see the flash of anguish before she lowered her gaze.
“I—I apologize for my words and action this afternoon,” Ruth said, her voice shaking despite her effort to control it. “I know you meant only to help. Father would not have harmed me. He would have realized—”
“You father belongs in a madhouse and mine should have been hanged with a silken noose,” Lucian said bitterly.
“Love worketh no ill,” Ruth quoted. “Miss Randolph would not have wanted you to hate your father,” she said carefully. “If she loved you she would have done all she could to make certain nothing came between you and him.”
“This has nothing to do with Jasmine.”
“But it has everything to do with your father. With my father,” she countered. “You have hated yours so long, how are to you understand my love for my father?”
“I would make no demands on you,” Lucian said stonily.
Ruth shook her head. “It would be best if you joined your friends in Whitby.”
“No.”
Their gazes met, locked. Obstinacy, buffeted by desire and need, by lust and want, swayed. Carried by the undercurrents of too strong emotion Ruth and Lucian took a tentative step towards each other.
“Mr. Merristorm,” Marietta said at the doorway.
Ruth started and then turned. “What is it?” she prompted.
Marietta looked from Lucian to her sister and then back. “Father wishes a word with you, sir. If it is convenient?” she added nervously.
For Ruth’s sake Lucian curbed the instant refusal that rose to his lips. He nodded curtly.
“He is in his study,” Marietta said.
“I shall go with you,” Ruth said.
“I will not harm him,” Lucian snapped.
“I didn’t mean—” Ruth began but Lucian was already half way out of the room.
Outside the vicar’s study Lucian paused to calm a surge of jealousy. Ruth loved this mad old man more than she would ever, could ever love him. With rigid honesty he admitted Sampson Clayton, even when not in possession of all his faculties, deserved that love for the vicar held his daughters as dear as life.
Halstrom’s image rose before Lucian. A longing for the Clayton’s familial love, denied through eight years of abhorrence and self-detestation, smote him. He opened his mind to the possibility and searched his father’s reflection. To h
is great surprise and not a little dismay, he found a mustard seed of hope for that kind of love still weakly pulsed.
The door opened and Jemmy almost ploughed into Lucian.
“There ye be,” the boy said and backed out of the way. “Why ye standin’ there? Come in. Mr. Clayton be that tired and very anxious to speak wit ye.”
Lucian looked at the wan figure hunched in the chair behind the desk, a bundle of clothed bones. He was relieved to see that Sampson’s eyes gleamed with recognition, intelligence, and grief. What Ruth’s pain must be to have him and yet not, he thought shaken to his core. To lose him bit by bit.
“Leave us,” Sampson said faintly. He motioned to a chair set but a foot from his.
Lucian found a fierce determination glittered in the tired old eyes when he sat and met his gaze. He debated apologizing but he had no idea if the vicar remembered what he had done when in the grip of the madness. Would be kinder not to tell the man, he decided.
“Jemmy explained that you rescued Ruth from me this afternoon,” Sampson said.
“Sir—”
Sampson raised a palm upward then let it drop when Merristorm fell silent. “I know that I forget things, even who my daughters are. Who I am. ” He rubbed his hand back and forth on the desktop, his face crumpled with fear.
Putting a hand over Sampson’s, Lucian stilled it. “It will be all right.”
The vicar stilled and slowly withdrew his hand. “That is not what I need to speak with you about,” he said a new urgency. “Give your word you shall listen to what I have to say? Until I finish?”
Something in Sampson’s eyes set Lucian’s heart to hammering. The desire to bolt from the room almost had him on his feet before he squelched it.
“Your word?”
With a mute nod, Lucian clasped his hands and rested his forearms on his thighs.
“I have many sins to regret but this I will not.” Sampson paused as if to collect his thoughts.
Lucian prayed the old man would remain silent. Fear rose in his breast like the whoosh of a bat’s wings in a dark cave. Unaware he did so, he dug his nails into the base of his hands.
“About a year after Jasmine Randolph fell to her death your father paid a visit to me at Blewbury. He was vastly troubled and greatly alarmed for your safety. He swore me to secrecy and told me what happened that day.” Sampson touched Lucian’s hands, met his gaze.
“There was no artifice or contrivance in what he said. He did not deny culpability. But his guilt is not what you believe it to be.”
Sampson sighed and closed his eyes. He wet his lips. “Halstrom knew about Jasmine Randolph before you brought her to the Keep.”
The drone of Clayton’s voice dipped and rose in unhurried tread. His words zigged and zagged like wild cannon through the battlements built the moment Lucian had seen Jasmine in his father’s arms. He tried to stand, to walk away and could not.
It’s not right. Jasmine’s not here to defend herself, Lucian thought over and over. Each time, he heard Ruth.
Open your heart and mind to the truth.
The words continued to flow. They tore first one then another shackle from the locks that had anchored the guilt if not the nightmare to him. The pain roiled and boiled. The scabs over the wound so long buried under drink, roughed and loosened by Ruth’s gentle probing fell away. The wounds throbbed fresh and raw.
In the deep silence that fell when Sampson finished it spewed out in a great sob. Heaving in air, Lucian backhanded tears. “I am to believe this?”
“He has never forgiven himself,” Sampson said. “He will not be able to until you forgive him.”
“What the bloody hell do I care?”
“Forgiveness is very powerful. It doesn’t mean you forget. We are human after all, but forgiving Halstrom will free you. Surely you realize you must do it if you ever hope to marry Ruth.”
Lucian gazed at the old man like a starving child offered a luscious fruit. “She will not have me.”
“You have asked her?”
“Twice.”
Sampson met his gaze. “Ruth accepted the first proposal she received.”
Lucian stared at the vicar. “But she did not wed?”
The vicar’s eyes grew troubled. “On her betrothed’s last visit I must have had one of my—my spells. I don’t know. Whatever happened Ruth told me they would not marry.” Sampson studied Lucian anew. “It was for the best. He did not love her enough. Do you?”
The flash of anger against the man who had hurt Ruth along with a jealous twinge was washed away by Clayton’s question.
Lucian thought first of his desire for her that simmered so near the surface at all times. It flexed each time he thought of her and the jolt of a mere touch set off a riot of sensations. Even sitting here with her father Lucian could feel the press of her soft curves against him.
Lust, Lucian knew, but more than that. The need to protect, succour Ruth, to keep her safe coloured heightened desire but enabled him to weld it into a force that would do no harm.
I love her? Lucian pondered the thought with some surprise.
“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; . . . Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”
Lucian raised his gaze.
“You have but to tell her what is in your heart to win hers,” Sampson said. He closed his eyes. An exhausted sigh slipped through his lips.
Emotion tightened Lucian’s throat. Did he love her enough? Then it hit him, a Mendoza punch to the solar plexus. If he loved her he would have to face his father; face himself.
“Love demands much and at times rewards little,” Sampson told Lucian. “If you love well, it makes no difference.”
After a long silence Lucian met the vicar’s gaze. To his dismay confusion had risen in Sampson’s eyes.
“I’d best be about writing my sermon for the Sabbath,” the vicar said faintly.
Lucian stood. “Will you be all right, sir?”
Sampson marshalled a show of reaching for paper and pen. “Yes. Yes. Be on your way.” He angled the paper before him, dipped his pen, and began to write.
Outside the study Lucian paused. He loved Ruth. Did he love her enough? He started toward the kitchen where he could hear Ruth and Marietta but halted.
Ruth.
His father.
Ruth.
Lucian’s brain spun with revelations and realizations, an incoherent melange. Driven to sort it out, to bring it to reason he strode out of the house and towards the promontory where he had almost lost Ruth forever.
Chapter Twenty-three
St. Cedds Vicarage October 22nd Late Afternoon
Ruth quietly eased open the door to the study. Her father sat slumped in the chair behind the desk, his chin to his chest. His features, so loved, looked more worn and fragile than she ever remembered. For a moment panic tickled at her throat but then she saw his chest gently rise as he took a shallow breath.
She ran a glance across the study in a futile hope for some sign of what her father had discussed with Lucian who had left the vicarage without a word. Catching sight of the piece of parchment the desk before her father Ruth eyed the few lines scrawled upon it.
Impossible to read them from the door, Ruth bit her lip. Curiosity won the briefest of battles. She slipped to the side of the desk and read.
Love one another
Golden
Law
Love
A deep sadness settled around Ruth’s heart as she looked from the gibberish to the age-lined face so peaceful in repose.
When he next opens his eyes will he recognize me? Ruth wondered. How long before he does not? Before he never will again? Her stomach clenched and roiled with the memory of her father’s attack. When Lucian had burst into the study she had been embarrassingly relieved. Never would she forget the stark fear in Lucian’s eyes. It’s intensity thrilled and terrified. It said he would kill to protect her.
&n
bsp; Such was her relief she momentarily forgot it was her father from whom Lucian sought to protect her. She had lashed out not because she was angry with him, she realized, but angry that she had failed her father and guilt-ridden to rejoice in someone taking care of her.
Lucian deserved so much better, Ruth thought, a hand to her heart. A rush of fierce protectiveness filled her and a great weight lifted from her shoulders. Every time he had been hurt, had not her heart bled? Was there anything she would not do to save him?
“For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh,” Ruth whispered. An anguished sob bubbled up without warning. She hurried out of the study, closed the door and leaned against it. Ruth hugged herself.
Lucian’s woodsy herbal scent filled her senses. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. Desire uncoiled in her belly. She put a hand to her lips remembering the movement of his lips, the chiselled muscles of his chest and back, the aura of safety in his arms.
Ruth ached to hold him, to caress his face. In her mind’s eye she traced the line of Lucian’s jaw. The sensual scratch of his dark stubble aroused a warmth low in her belly. Unconsciously she bowed her lips to kiss.
Marietta’s light laugh rang in the kitchen.
Crimson heat rushed to Ruth’s cheeks. How has it come to be that this man so consumes me? She half smiled but then uncertainty pulled her lips downward.
What will you do if Lucian asks you again?
What if he does not?
’Haps he has gone as I demanded, Ruth thought in a sudden panic. She hurried for the stairs and ran up then halting just inside Lucian’s chamber. There had never been any personal belongings strewed about like men do. Had he gone?
The new clothing that had been delivered to the vicarage earlier in the day still hung on the hook on the wall.
Ruth let out a slow breath. “He would not go without a word,” she said slowly but with certainty.
* * *
“You are looking frightfully worn,” Marietta scolded when Ruth went down to the kitchen to help with preparations for supper. “Go to the parlour and take a moment of rest.”
